Submission to the
Joint Standing Committee on
Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade
INQUIRY INTO
AUSTRALIA’S RELATIONS WITH THE MIDDLE EAST, INCLUDING
THE GULF REGION
APHEDA Union Aid Abroad
April 2000
1. INTRODUCTION
APHEDA Union Aid Abroad (Australian People for Health, Education and Development Abroad) is the humanitarian aid agency of the ACTU. APHEDA was established in 1984 partly as a response to the violation of Palestinian peoples’ human rights and their struggle for self-determination. Our program aims to demonstrate solidarity and commitment with the Palestinian people through advocacy, lobbying and humanitarian assistance.
1998 marked 50 years of unresolved conflict between Arabs and Israelis. The region continues to have enormous humanitarian needs, the peace process has reached a critical phase yet AusAID’s current commitment to an NGO program is winding down. The region is closely linked to Australia’s national interest in regards to global stability, historical involvement and extensive community ties and trade. Australia has contributed to the social and economic development of the Middle East by assisting with relief and development projects and we believe the need for an Australian presence is now greater than ever. Hence our concern for a new funding program for the Middle East to cover the next three years.
APHEDA, with AusAID and Australian trade union funding, has been assisting a wide range of development aid projects with Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza and refugees in Lebanon consistently since 1984. Our main partners responsible for delivering programs are the Women’s Humanitarian Organisation in Lebanon and MA’AN Development Centre in the West Bank & Gaza Strip.
APHEDA’s projects assist mainly refugee women in Lebanon through skills and vocational training including an on the job training scheme; health services particularly for the elderly and disabled; a child care centre permitting women to work; computer and small business training and a literacy and vocational training program for adults. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip APHEDA’s assistance has contributed to institutional strengthening and skills development to personnel in the public, private and community sectors assisting poverty reduction, administration and management; English language for the labour market; environmental awareness campaigns and training in sustainable dry land agriculture and organic farming techniques.
APHEDA’s program in the Middle East targets two main groups. The economically and psychologically disadvantaged form one category, such as refugees, women, the aged, isolated people in rural areas, survivors of torture and trauma, the underemployed workers and the unemployed. The second group consists of members of civil society, public and private, who need training and resources in order to improve the functioning of the new Palestinian state. APHEDA also takes an active advocacy role within the aid community in Australia through convening the ACFOA Middle East Working Group since its creation in 1995.
In this submission APHEDA has prepared responses to the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference 2 ‘The Middle East Peace Process’, with particular focus on the issue of the Palestinian right of return as a major facet of final status negotiations; Terms of Reference 6 ‘Human Rights in the Middle East Region’, with particular focus on continuing Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinians under occupation; and Terms of Reference 7 ‘Social and Cultural Linkages’, with particular focus on Australia’s overseas aid program to the Middle East.
2. Term Of Reference Two:
THE MIDDLE EAST PEACE PROCESS[1]
Australia’s contribution to the Middle East peace process and the prospects for resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
‘The peace process finally has come down to the one issue that has been at the core of Palestinian depredations since 1948: the fate of the refugees who were displaced in 1948, again in 1967, and again in 1982…That the Palestinians have endured decades of dispossession and raw agonies rarely endured by other peoples…is of course the locus of “the Palestinian problem”.’
Edward Said, Arabic Media Internet Network, 10 February 2000.
2.1 Australia and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
While Australia has long been a vigorous supporter of Israel’s right to exist, APHEDA believes that all nations and peoples in the Middle East have the right to live in peace and security in their own homelands. Such peace and security will remain an illusion if the fundamental rights of national sovereignty of all citizens in the region are denied. In particular the Palestinian right of return to a national sovereign state remains a cornerstone of the Middle East peace process, and that without this issue being resolutely addressed the prospects for an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict remain dim.
The historical position of successive Australian governments in relation to this conflict in the Middle East is reflected in the statement by the present Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1996:
‘Australia is fundamentally committed to Israel’s right to exist within secure
and recognised borders. The Government also supports - as did previous
Australian Governments - the right of the Palestinians to self-determination…
The Australian Government is committed to constructive participation in efforts to support the peace process within our means and the scope of our expertise.’[2]
In addressing the inquiry’s term of reference relating to the MEPP, APHEDA has focused its response on the Palestinian right of return as a major issue to be addressed within the final status negotiations. APHEDA believes that without a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian refugee situation, which includes the right of return, the right of restitution and the right of citizenship in their nation state, long term regional peace will be seriously jeopardised.
2.2 Australia and the Middle East Peace Process
The current Middle East peace process (MEPP) is generally considered to date from the Oslo Accords of August 1993 following the widely publicised signing of the interim agreement in Washington by Israeli’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Yasser Arafat. Included in this agreement was the PLO’s end to Palestinian claims on Israeli Territory, Israel’s recognition of the PLO and their granting of limited Palestinian autonomy in the Territories in return for peace.
The Palestinian ‘tract’, however, while the dominant element is still only one element in a comprehensive settlement of the Arab Israeli conflict. Israel still occupies the Syrian Golan Heights and southern Lebanon. Nonetheless, peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have been signed. However, talks with Syria regarding the Golan Heights, restarted in early 2000, are presently stalled and the agreement by Israel in March to withdraw from its twenty-two year occupation of southern Lebanon has been replaced by a more recent statement of partial withdrawal only.
2.3 The Palestinian tract of the Middle East Peace Process
The 1993 Oslo Accords and the subsequent signing of a Declaration of Principles by Israel and the PLO in May 1994 saw the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in Gaza and the town of Jericho in the West Bank. The road to peace was seriously stalled with Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by a fellow Israeli in November 1995 which led to a general election in 1996 and the success of the conservative Binyamin Netanyahu elected on a political platform generally opposed to the peace process.
Palestinian opposition to the peace process also existed and was expressed in a series of horrific suicide bombings with considerable loss of Israeli life. However the response by the Netanyahu government, which included harsh collective punishments on the entire Palestinian population, was excessive, condemned internationally and did not conform with the principles of international humanitarian law.
Throughout 1996, in continued violation of the Hague Convention and various United Nations Conventions, including the Forth Geneva Convention, the building of Jewish settlements expanded, more Arab land was seized, and the freedom of movement of people and goods was seriously curtailed. Due to the closure of East Jerusalem maintained since March 1993, Palestinian access to major medical, educational, religious, economic and cultural facilities was also seriously curtailed. In violation of International Labor Organisation (ILO) conventions Palestinian access to employment, especially in Israel, was seriously hampered with Israeli military checkpoints and closures inside the West Bank and Gaza as well as on the borders with Israel. These closures and the imposition of serious restrictions on the daily freedom of movement of the Palestinian population all constitute major violations of international law.
Under pressure from the international community, and sponsored by the United States, both Israel and the Palestinian Authority signed the October 1998 Wye River Memorandum, and in May 1999 a new general election in Israel saw the re-election of the Labor Party with Ehud Barak as its leader. By the end of last year Israel had agreed to withdraw from 18.1 percent of the total areas it had taken in 1967 leaving a truncated and ‘Bantustan like’ Palestinian ‘homeland’ with limited autonomy, limited access to its own borders and subject to the continued economic dominance of the Israeli state. Nonetheless both parties have committed themselves to a comprehensive peace agreement by September 2000.
In addition, in February 2000 Israeli and Arab leaders agreed to reactivate the working groups on economic cooperation, water, refugees and the environment which had basically stalled after the failure of the 1991 Madrid Conference. Satisfactory resolution of all of these key issues is fundamental to regional peace.
2.4 The United Nations and the Palestinian Right of Return
The background to this present day peace and security crisis in the Middle East lies in the fifty-one year violation of Palestinians’ fundamental human rights. In 1974 the UN classified the right of return for refugees as an ‘inalienable right’. The UN, and particularly the Security Council, has supported the right of return around the world by diplomacy (in Tajikistan, Abkhazia, Namibia and Cyprus) and sometimes by force (Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor).
Following the 1948 war and the creation of the state of Israel, the United Nations estimated that there were 726,000 Palestinian refugees living outside and some 32,000 inside the armistice lines. Of the approximately 800,000 Arabs originally living in Palestine in the area that became Israel only 100,000 remained in their homes and became minority citizens of the newly created Jewish state. Following the invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967 a further 350,000 Palestinians left the then Occupied Territories becoming, for a large number of them, second-time refugees.
The right of return for Palestinian refugees is internationally recognised and enshrined in UN Resolution 194: item 11 of December 1948 which states:
‘[Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbours 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 loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Government or authorities responsible.’
This resolution is endorsed annually by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and since 1948 UN Resolution 194 has been confirmed by the UNGA over one hundred times.
This internationally endorsed fundamental right of return is also enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949); the Convention relating to UN High Commission on Refugees (1950), and the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. In April 1999 in a resolution adopted by the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), the Commission reaffirmed the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination according to the two UN Resolutions, 194 and 181. Thus, through the UN the international community has recognised multiple times over the past fifty years that the refugees’ right of return is central to Palestinian right to self-determination.
2.5 Perspectives on the Palestinian Right of Return
Dr Salman Abu Sitta, a civil engineer who has been a member of the Palestine National Congress for 20 years, has meticulously researched and built a database of demographic, geographic and economic statistics to support the theory that without an equitable and just solution for the Palestinian refugees, permanent peace in the Middle East will be impossible.
In a paper presented at the recent ‘Right of Return’ conference held in Boston, USA, in April 2000, Abu Sitta refuted the unquestioningly accepted Israeli refrain that there is not enough space in the country to repatriate the Palestinian refugees. Using the Galilee region in northern Israel as an example Abu Sitta notes that,
‘…assuming a return of all the refugees to their original lands and villages in the Galilee, population density would be 482 persons per square kilometre, not quite double the current ratio of 261 persons per square kilometre…Why, then, is it practical and acceptable that Palestinian refugees in Jabalya camp in Gaza can live in conditions where the ratio is 4000 persons per square kilometre, or in the West Bank, where the ratio now stands at 880 persons per square kilometre?’[3]
Concerning the future state of the MEPP, in particular the spectre of future wars over sparse water resources, Abu Sitta notes that,
‘…Israel could conclude a regional agreement on water sharing with Syria and Lebanon in exchange for permitting the return of the 1948 refugees…If, however, Israel continues to impose its control over land and water and plans further expansion on the belligerent principle that “water cannot be a consequence of peace, but only a condition of peace”, then the region may well witness another fifty years of bloodshed and destruction.’[4]
2.6 Recommendations on Term of Reference 2 ‘The Middle East Peace Process’
For final status issues to be seriously addressed, and any lasting settlement found, the situation of Palestinian refugees must be prioritised. APHEDA calls on the Australian Government to act decisively at the international levels to ensure that the Palestinian right of return is addressed in the Middle East peace process.
As part of Australia’s ongoing commitment to the Middle East Peace Process we urge the government to:
· Actively support the Palestinian right to self-determination as based on UN Resolutions 181, 194 and 242.
· Actively support a just and durable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194 and subsequent UN Resolutions enabling Palestinians refugees from 1948 and 1967 the right to return to their homeland or to receive compensation for their losses.