Palestinian Refugee

Palestinian refugee

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Palestinian refugees
Total population: / 4.9 million[1] -- 4.375 million[2] (includes descendants and re-settled)
Regions with significant populations: / Gaza Strip, Jordan, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria
Languages: / Arabic
Religions: / Sunni Islam, Greek Orthodoxy, Greek Catholicism, Other forms of Christianity

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a Palestinian refugee is a refugee from Palestine created by the Palestinian Exodus, which Palestinian Arabs call the Nakba (Arabic: النكبة, meaning "disaster" or "catastrophe").

The United Nations definition of a "Palestinian refugee" is a person "whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict." "UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948" [3] regardless of whether they reside in areas designated as "refugee camps" or in established, permanent communities.[4] Based on this definition the number of Palestinian refugees has grown from 711,000 in 1950[5] to over four million registered with the UN in 2002.

History

Palestinian refugees in 1948

The number of refugees who fled or were expelled is controversial; estimates range from 367,000 to over 950,000. The final UN estimate was 711,000,[5] but by 1950, according to United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the number of registered refugees was 914,000.[6] The U.N. Conciliation Commission attributed this discrepancy to, among other things, "duplication of ration cards, addition of persons who have been displaced from area other than Israel-held areas and of persons who, although not displaced, are destitute", and the UNWRA additionally attributed it to the fact that "all births are eagerly announced, the deaths wherever possible are passed over in silence", as well as the fact that "the birthrate is high in any case, a net addition of 30,000 names a year" (the UNWRA figures included descendants of the Palestinian refugees born after the Palestinian exodus up to June, 1951). By June, 1951 the UNWRA had reduced the number of registered refugees to 876,000 after "many false and duplicate registrations weeded out."[7]

During the period mid-1948-53 between 30,000 and 90,000 refugees (according to Benny Morris) made their way from their countries of exile to resettle in their former villages or in other parts of Israel, despite Israeli legal and military efforts to stop them (see Palestinian immigration (Israel)). At the Lausanne Conference of 1949, Israel offered to let in up to 75,000 more as part of a wider proposed deal with the surrounding Arab countries, but they rejected it, and Israel withdrew the proposal in 1950. Others emigrated to other countries, such as the US and Canada; most, however, remained in refugee camps in neighboring countries.

Palestinian refugees in Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, 1956.

Current Palestinian refugee counts include:

• Jordan 1,827,877 refugees
• Gaza 986,034 refugees
• West Bank 699,817 refugees
• Syria 432,048 refugees
• Lebanon 404,170 refugees
• Saudi Arabia 240,000 refugees
• Egypt 70,245 refugees[8][9]

The Israeli government passed the Absentee Property Law, which cleared the way for the confiscation of the property of refugees. The government also demolished many of the refugees' villages, and resettled many Arab homes in urban communities with Jewish refugees and immigrants.

The situation of the Palestinian Arab refugees is one of the world's largest and most enduring refugee problems. Discussions to allow them to return to their former homes within Israel, to receive compensation or be resettled in new locations have yet to reach a definite conclusion.

Part of Israeli-Palestinian conflict
and Arab-Israeli conflict series
Israeli-Palestinian peace process

Israel The West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights1
Negotiating parties

Palestine Liberation Organization /
Israel
History of the peace process
Camp David Accords·Madrid Conference·Oslo Accords·Hebron Agreement·Wye River Memorandum·Sharm e-Sheikh memorandum·Camp David 2000 Summit·Taba Summit·Road map
Primary negotiation concerns
East Jerusalem·Israeli settlements·Jewish state·Incitements·Prohibiting illegal weapons·Israeli West Bank barrier·Jewish exodus from Arab lands·Terrorism against Israel·Palestinian refugees·Palestinian state·Places of Worship issues·Water issues
Leaders
Mahmoud Abbas·Ismail Haniya2 / Ehud Olmert·Tzipi Livni
International brokers
George W. Bush·Diplomatic Quartet
Other proposals
Beirut Summit·Elon Peace Plan·Lieberman Plan·Geneva Accord·Hudna·Israel's unilateral disengagement plan and Realignment plan·Projects working for peace
1 The Golan Heights are not part of Israeli-Palestinian track
2 Rejects Israel's legitimacy

UNRWA definition of a "Palestinian refugee"

Whereas most refugees are the concern of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), most Palestinian refugees - those in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan - come under the older body UNRWA. On 11 December1948, UN Resolution 194 was passed in order to protect the rights of Palestinian Arab refugees. Resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December1949, set up UNRWA specifically to deal with the Palestinian Arab problem. Palestinian refugees outside of UNRWA's area of operations do fall under UNHCR's mandate, however.

The term Palestinian refugee as used by UNRWA was never formally defined by the United Nations. The definition used in practice evolved independently of the UNHCR definition, which was established by the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. UNRWA definition of refugee is as a person "whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June1946 to 15 May1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict,"[10] Though it is applied only to those who took refuge in one of the countries where UNRWA provides relief. The UNRWA also registers as refugees descendants in the male line of Palestinian refugees, and persons in need of support who first became refugees as a result of the 1967 conflict. The UNRWA definition in practice is thus both more restrictive and more inclusive than the 1951 definition; for example it excludes persons taking refuge in countries other than Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, yet it includes descendants of refugees as well as the refugees themselves (though UNHCR also provides support for children of refugees in many cases).

Persons receiving relief support from UNRWA are explicitly excluded from the 1951 Convention, depriving them of some of the benefits of that convention such as some legal protections. However, a 2002 decision of UNHCR made it clear that the 1951 Convention applies at least to Palestinian refugees who need support but fail to fit the UNRWA working definition.[11] UNRWA records show that there were a large number of false registrants[6]: Today, only a 1/3 of those registering with the UNRWA as Palestinian Refugees are living in areas designated as refugee camps[7].

Critics of UNRWA say that the present definition give Palestinian refugees a favored status when compared with other refugee groups, which the UNHCR defines in terms of nationality as opposed to a relatively short number of years of residency.[8] Historians, such as Martha Gellhorn and Dr. Walter Pinner have also blamed UNRWA for distortion of statistics and even of sheer fraud. Pinner writes that the actual number of refugees after removing UNRWA's own admitted distortion of the number of refugees was only 367,000.[12]

The right of return dispute

Main article: Palestinian Right of Return

The Palestinian refugees claim the right of return, based on Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ("Everyone has the right to leave any country including his own, and to return to his country") and United Nations General AssemblyResolution 194, paragraph 11, where the General Assembly:

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for the loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible...

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation.

Many of them also argue that, by the UDHR, this right is an individual and not a collective one, and that it cannot therefore be restricted by any collective agreement between Palestinian Arabs and Israel.[citation needed] They also regard as a massive injustice the fact that Jews are allowed to emigrate to Israel under Israel's Law of Return, even if their immediate ancestors have not lived in the area in recent years, while people who grew up in the area and whose immediate ancestors had lived there for many generations are forbidden from returning.

The Palestinian National Authority supports this right, although its extent has been a subject of negotiation at the various peace talks; Mahmoud Abbas promised in November 2004 to continue working towards it if elected president.

Critics of Resolution 194 begin by noting that General Assembly Resolutions are not binding, and asserting that they have no effect in International Law. They also note the resolution's provision regarding "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours." Returning home is predicated on wishing to live at peace, and they argue that there is no evidence that Palestinian refugees wish to live at peace with Israelis. In fact, statements such as "to us, the refugees issue is the winning card which means the end of the Israeli state"[13] on the part of Palestinian leadership leads many Israelis to feel that peaceful coexistence is not the goal of the Right of Return. Additionally, they point to the fact that all the Arab member states of the UN voted against resolution 194, precisely because they believed it did not create a right of return.[14]

Other objections to the return of the refugees, with their descendants, to Israel include:

• Israel was founded as a Jewish state to provide refuge to Jews in light of the history of persecutions, regardless of their previous nationality. To allow all Palestinian Arabs and their descendants to return home, would mean that Israel would cease to exist as a Jewish state, given the majority of the population would be non-Jewish if all clasified as refugees were to return. Those who regard Israel's founding as a Jewish state as illegitimate, by contrast, consider this possible consequence to be an advantage of the refugees' return. But some Israelis believe that the true intention of the refugees' return isn't only the destruction of the Jewish nature of the state but also for the purpose of eradicating and demolishing it entirely. Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1961 (interview with Zibicher Woche, September 1, 1961) said "If the Arabs will return to Israel - Israel will cease to exist in the world." The refugee committee in Homs, Syria in 1957 stated in its resolution that the solution should be based on the refugee's right to annihilate Israel. Thus the true intention of the claim for right of return, according to this approach, is essentially aimed at bringing about the entrance of an army (called refugees) for "blowing Israel from within after failing to obliterate it from outside"[15] On July 1, 1998, As'ad Abd-Al Rahman, the PA Minister of Refugee Affairs was quoted in the Palestinian Filistin Al-Youm: "The return of more than 5 million refugees to their homes jeopardizes the Israelis and therefore they utterly object to it." On August 16, 1999, he was quoted in the Jordanian Al-Dustur: "The demand for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their homes and property...is tantamount to the destruction of Israel in the Israeli political culture."[16]

• By various accounts, between 758,000 and 866,000 Mizrahi Jews were expelled, fled or emigrated from Arab Middle East and North Africa between 1945 and 1956. A Jewish study carried out in 2003 estimated the amount of the confiscated property at $1 billion.[17] Approximately 600,000 of them were absorbed and naturalized by Israel. According to Benny Morris, "[i]n the early years of statehood, Israeli leaders like David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett viewed the flight of Palestinians and the influx of Oriental Jews as simply a 'population exchange,' akin to those between Greece and Turkey in the 1920's or India and Pakistan in 1947."[18]IraqiPrime MinisterNuri as-Said and other Arab leaders viewed it the same way.[19], as well as many others.[20][21][22] Some Palestinian refugees never accepted that a "population exchange" had occurred,[18] though others do accept that an irrevocable population exchange has occurred.[19] More recently, the Elon Peace Plan of 2002 prescribes "the completion of the exchange of populations that began in 1948, as well as the full rehabilitation of the refugees and their absorption and naturalization in various countries."[23] In addition, one notes the treatment of 12 million German refugees after World War 2. The idea of returning them to Poland and Czechoslovakia was rejected. The French Foreign Minister, Georges Bidault said: "Poland's new frontier and the transfer of population are accomplished facts and it is no use thinking they can be reversed now."[24]

• Arabs commonly respond that both Palestinian and Jewish refugees should be allowed return to their native countries, citing other population transfers which were reversed with various degrees of success[citation needed], such as most of Stalin's population transfers (including, for instance, the Ingush and Kalmyks) and the exile of the Navajos in 1863 (see Long Walk.) In response, Steven Plaut shows some historical perspective on human migrations and conquests.[25] One state where Jews' property was confiscated, Libya, has unilaterally invited them to return and receive compensation for their original property, on condition that they leave their property in Israel to Palestinians.[26]. Libyan Jews' reaction to the offer of return has been negative; they view it as a stunt intended to improve Libya's standing in both the Western and Arab worlds, cite concerns about religious freedoms, and point out the lack of human rights and democracy in Libya that make such an offer highly unattractive. However, the compensation offer has attracted guarded interest.[27][28]

• Shmuel Katz, an adherent of Revisionist Zionism and former member of the Irgun leadership[29][30] maintains that the Arab refugees were not driven from Palestine by Israel and therefore Israel has no responsibility over the issue. In his book Battleground he writes "that the Arab refugees were not driven from Palestine by anyone. The vast majority left, whether of their own free will or at the orders or exhortations of their leaders, always with the same reassurance-that their departure would help in the war against Israel."[31]

• Israeli historian Yoav Gelber has reached a different conclusion: "... the Israeli traditional argument, blaming the Arab leadership for encouraging the mass flight, has no basis in the documentary evidence. As far as the documents reveal, the AHC, the ALA and the Arab governments made unsuccessful efforts to check the exodus."[32][33] In an article about Gelber's book, Independence and Nakba (Hebrew: קוממיות ונכבה), historian Yehoshua Porath argues that: "it is fact that almost all the Arabic names mentioned in the book - either by statesmen and commanders and also of authors and writers - are brought up in a faulty distorted way" and that in his opinion Gelber does not read Arabic. Porath states that Gelber has disregarded in his book the testimony of Khalid al-Azm, Prime Minister of Syria in 1948-49, who wrote in his memoirs that Arab governments had indeed encouraged the flight from Palestine. He notes that Gelber's book asserts that al-Azam did not know the situation and his words should not be relied upon, but Porath continues to assert that, in his opinion as one of the first to bringing details of Khalid al-Azm's claim to the Israeli public, that this testimony does indeed have weight since throughout the war Khaled al-Azam was a central figure in Syrian politics and would be knowledgable of the strategy of his country's government.[34] However, in a contribution to the New York Review of Books Porath concluded that, "Neither . . . is the admission of the Syrian leader Khalid al-Azm that the Arab countries urged the Palestinian Arabs to leave their villages until after the victory of the Arab armies final proof that the Palestinian Arabs in practice heeded that call and consequently left."[35] Benny Morris has also evaluated this claim and has written: "The former Prime Minister of Syria, Khalid al'Azm, in his memoirs Mudhakkirat Khalid al'Azm, I, 386, wrote: 'We brought destruction on 1 million Arab refugees by calling upon them and pleading with them repeatedly to leave their lands and homes and factories.' (I am grateful to Dr Gideon Weigart of Jerusalem for this reference.) But I have found no contemporary evidence of such blanket, official 'calls' by any Arab government. And I have found no evidence that the Palestinians or any substantial group left because they heard such 'calls' or orders by outside Arab leaders. The only, minor, exceptions to this are the traces of the order, apparently by the Syrians, to some of the inhabitants of Eastern Galilee to leave a few days prior to, and in preparation for, the invasion of 15-16 May. This order affected at most several thousand Palestinians and, in any case, 'dovetailed' with Haganah efforts to drive out the population in this area."[36]

• Benny Morris has concluded that: "Had blanket orders to leave been issued by outside leaders, including the exiled Palestinian leaders - via radio broadcasts or in any other public manner - traces of them would certainly have surfaced in the contemporary documentation produced by the Yishuv's/Israel's military and civilian institutions, the Mandate Government, and British and American diplomatic legations in the area. The Yishuv's intelligence agencies - HIS and its successor organisation, the IDF's Intelligence Service, and the Arab Division of the JA-PD, and its successor bodies, the Middle East Affairs, Research and Political departments of the Israel Foreign Ministry - as well as Western intelligence agencies all monitored Arab radio broadcasts and attended to the announcements of Arab leaders. But no Jewish or British or American intelligence or diplomatic report from the critical period, December 1947 to July 1948, quotes from or even refers to such orders."[37]

• PresidentBill Clinton of the United States, who brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stated on January 7, 2001: "All refugees should receive compensation from the international community for their losses, and assistance in building new lives. Now, you all know what the rub is. That was a lot of artful language for saying that you cannot expect Israel to acknowledge an unlimited right of return to present day Israel, and at the same time, to give up Gaza and the West Bank and have the settlement blocks as compact as possible, because of where a lot of these refugees came from. We cannot expect Israel to make a decision that would threaten the very foundations of the state of Israel, and would undermine the whole logic of peace. And it shouldn't be done."

• Director of Research and Education of the Israel Peace Initiative (IPI), David Meir-Levi, a professor who holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Near Eastern Studies from Brandeis University, writes in his book Big Lies: "Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948 and are still alive have no legal right to return to Israel, because the Arab leadership representing them (Arab nations until 1993, and since then the Palestinian Authority), are still, de jure and de facto, at war with Israel; and these refugees, therefore are still potential hostiles. International law does not require a country at war to commit suicide by allowing the entry of hundreds of thousands of a potentially hostile population. In the context of a peace treaty, in 1949, the Arab refugees could have taken advantage of Israel's offer; but their leadership refused."[38]

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After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Arab governments claimed that their great concern was for the fellow Arab refugees and that Israel stood in the way of helping the refugees. Critics argue the Arab governments could easily have provided the refugees with new homes, just as Israel resettled Jewish immigrants and refugees from foreign countries. It was not done, nor did Arab states provide funds to improve the conditions in refugee camps.[39] Some parties find the lack of Arab effort to relieve the refugee crisis as a way of using the Palestinian Arabs as political pawns, to exploit as tools against Israel, and/or to promote anti-Israel sentiment.[40][41]