Editing Right of return (section)

=== Ancient precedents ===
While the right of return was not explicitly recognized in antiquity, [[exile]], being explicitly refused permission to return home, was a common punishment for severe crimes. The topic was discussed extensively by antique writers.<ref name="Gaertner2006">{{cite book|author=Jan Felix Gaertner|title=Writing Exile: The Discourse of Displacement in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pdevCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA89|date=28 December 2006|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-474-1894-8|pages=89–}}</ref> For example, [[Teles of Megara]] in his [[diatribe]] ''On Exile'' wrote "But exiles are not allowed to return home, and this is a severe restriction of their freedom."<ref name = "Gaertner2006"/>

During antiquity, groups of people were frequently deported or uprooted from their cities and homeland, often as part of conquest or as a punishment for rebellion. In some cases they were allowed or encouraged to return, typically after the balance of military and political forces had changed. 

A well-known example is the [[return to Zion]], by which King [[Cyrus the Great]] granted the [[Jew]]s expelled from [[Kingdom of Judah|Judah]] to [[Babylonian Exile|Babylon]] the option to return to their ancestral homeland and rebuild [[Jerusalem]]. Recorded in the [[Hebrew Bible]] ([[Book of Ezra]] and [[Book of Nehemiah]]) this case is often cited as a precedent by modern [[Zionist]]s and also inspired other groups seeking to pursue their own return.

During the [[Peloponnesian War]], [[Athens]] expelled and scattered the inhabitants of [[Melos]], [[Aegina]] and other cities (some of them being sold into slavery). Following the victory of [[Sparta]], the Spartan general [[Lysander]] in 405 BC made a concerted effort to gather these exiles and restore them to their original cities.<ref name=Xenophon229>Xenophon. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0206%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D2%3Asection%3D9 ''Hellenica'', 2.2.9]: "Meantime Lysander, upon reaching Aegina, restored the state to the Aeginetans, gathering together as many of them as he could, and he did the same thing for the Melians also and for all the others who had been deprived of their native states."</ref><ref name=Plutarch144>Plutarch. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0048%3Achapter%3D14%3Asection%3D3 ''Life of Lysander'', 14.3]: "But there were other measures of Lysander upon which all the Greeks looked with pleasure, when, for instance, the Aeginetans, after a long time, received back their own city, and when the Melians and Scionaeans were restored to their homes by him, after the Athenians had been driven out and had delivered back the cities."</ref>

[[File:Magna Carta (British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106).jpg|thumb|''[[Cotton MS. Augustus]] II. 106'', one of only four surviving [[Exemplified copy|exemplifications]] of the 1215 text]]