Since the 1948 (known as the Nakba, the Catastrophe, by Palestinians and the War of Independence by Israelis), the exile has represented an essential key point of the identitarian construction within the Palestinian nation-building perspective. In the individual and collective narratives, the Palestinian refugees’ question has been the core of the main official negotiations between the two contrasting sides. After the failure of the Oslo agreement and the international revival of the current debate regarding the viability of one or two-state solution, the research paper deals with the centrality of the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees’ discourse in the alternative strategies for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Which political process suggests a just and permanent answer to the issue of refugee return? Considering mainly the historical two-state solution (that would imply the building up of a fully sovereign Palestinian state in all the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, alongside the Jewish state of Israel) and the one-state perspective (as bi-national or secular, democratic and egalitarian state for all its citizens), my contribution wants to put forward a comparative analysis about the different fulfilment of both solutions on the subject of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their native lands. At the present time, the so-called ‘facts on the ground’, shaping the geographical reality of the potential future Palestinian state through more and more new Israeli settlements, cantons and barriers, reflect the need to reconsider the meaning of the most favourable criteria to implement the Right of Return according to the UN Resolutions and the international law. If the status quo does not change the basic conditions in order to make feasible the establishment of a Palestinian state, will the vision of a single state be the only viable future chance within a long-term project of co-existence? Yet, it represents a crucial challenge through which both Palestinians and Israelis could become equal citizens, without any ethnic or racial or religious difference, going beyond the nationalistic dynamics of both peoples.

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