UN and International Protection
There were no major improvements in addressing the problem of international protection for Palestinians in the 1967 occupied territories, in general, and the specific protection gap for Palestinian refugees, in particular, during the second quarter of 2002. Not one single recommendation submitted by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Commission on Human Rights Special Commission of Inquiry, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Territories since the beginning of the al- Aqsa intifada has been implemented.
According to Annan, the force would have four key objectives: to work with the parties to end the violence, in part through monitoring the withdrawal and redeployment of Israeli military forces to positions held before the beginning of the intifada; to gradually create secure conditions in the occupied territories for the resumption of normal economic activity and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian and development assistance; to create conditions to allow the Palestinian Authority to rebuild its institutions damaged or destroyed during Israel's military assault; and, to create a stable environment to permit the resumption of negotiations aimed at achieving a political settlement.
"It is time for the international community to pursue such an option in a pro-active way," stated the Secretary Genera, "rather than waiting for the parties to arrive at this conclusion on their own." The UN Security Council, however, failed to address the issue in substantive terms. The situation on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has deteriorated to such an extent, moreover, that any deployment of international forces in the absence of a clear international framework, work plan, and implementing mechanism for a durable solution to the conflict, may serve to simply further entrench the current status quo. In other words, international forces may end up protecting Israel's military occupation rather than the occupied Palestinian population.
UN Security Council Fact-Finding Mission: On 19 April 2002 the UN Security Council voted in favor of establishing a special team to investigate events in the Jenin refugee camp (UNSC 1405). The team, headed by former President of Finland Marti Ahtisaari, included former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata and Cornelio Sommaruga, former President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), US General Bill Nash (military advisor) and US police expert Peter Fitzgerald was disbanded by UN Secretary General on 2 May, having failed to undertake its mission in light of Israel's refusal to cooperate with the UN team. (See above)
Commission on Human Rights Mission: In early April the UN Commission on Human Rights requested UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (CHR Resolution 2002/1, 5 April 2002) to send a special mission to the 1967 occupied territories to investigate the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. The mission, headed by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson, included former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez and Cyril Ramaphosa the former Secretary General of the ANC. The special mission failed to undertake its mission due to the lack of Israeli cooperation. Israel delayed approval of the mission until Commission members were no longer able to travel to the region and file a report in time for the spring session of the Commission.
International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC):
At the end of May 2002 the International Committee of the Red Cross
issued a special budget extension appeal to facilitate continued
emergency assistance to both refugees and non-refugee Palestinians
in the 1967 occupied territories. The appeal doubled ICRC's initial
2002 budget for Israel and the occupied territories. Existing food
relief programs for West Bank villages will be tripled to cover
some 30,000 families, while humanitarian aid will be stepped up for
some 20,000 families among the most vulnerable in nine larger West
Bank towns. Since January 2001, the ICRC has provided assistance to
more than 7,000 persons whose homes had been destroyed in the Gaza
Strip or the West Bank. The ICRC also multiplied efforts to remind
all the parties of their obligation to respect the basic laws of
war and armed conflict amid deplorable perpetuated instances of
violations of these laws. ICRC officials termed Israel's expulsion
of 13 Palestinians, who were holed up inside the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem, as illegal under international humanitarian
law.
| Camp David/Taba
Redux While final status negotiations between the PLO and Israel came to an abrupt halt in early 2001, various accounts of the negotiations continue to fill local and international newspapers. In June 2002, for example, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave an interview to the New York Review of Books (13 June 2002). Below are excerpts from the interview concerning Palestinian refugees. They [the Palestinians] will exploit the tolerance and democracy of Israel first to turn it into "a state for all its citizens," as demanded by the extreme nationalist wing of Israel's Arabs and extremist left-wing Jewish Israelis. Then they will push for a binational state and then, demography and attrition will lead to a state with a Muslim majority and a Jewish minority. This would not necessarily involve kicking out all the Jews. But it would mean the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. This, I believe, is their vision. (But on the refugee issue, which Barak sees as "existential," Israel had continued to stand firm: "We cannot allow even one refugee back on the basis of the 'right of return,'" says Barak. "And we cannot accept historical responsibility for the creation of the problem.") [Barak] seems to think in terms of generations and hesitantly predicts that only "eighty years" after 1948 will the Palestinians be historically ready for a compromise. By then, most of the generation that experienced the catastrophe of 1948 at first hand will have died; there will be "very few 'salmons' around who still want to return to their birthplaces to die." (Barak speaks of a "salmon syndrome" among the Palestinians-and says that Israel, to a degree, was willing to accommodate it, through the family reunion scheme, allowing elderly refugees to return to be with their families before they die.) |
UNRWA: While UNRWA does not have an explicit protection mandate for Palestinian refugees, it continued to provide limited protection through interventions with the relevant authorities and the deployment of special operational support officers (OSOs) to facilitate the implementation of its humanitarian mandate. Even with the presence of OSO officers, however, UNRWA continues to face severe difficulties in facilitating the provision of basic services to refugees. On 3 April, for example, Israeli soldiers shot at an UNRWA convoy entering the West Bank city of Ramallah despite having made previous arrangements with the Israeli military for humanitarian access to the city. "On the convoy, I can tell you an example of conditions," Commissioner General Peter Hansen remarked to the press on 5 April 2002.
"[A]n UNRWA staff member and operations officer was arrested,
taken away, handcuffed and blindfolded, he was put in a detention
center, on the ground, without walls, there was some corrugated
roof over them so the rain only hit them occasionally. He was
sitting handcuffed and blindfolded for 56 hours, without food for
52 hours, and the food we are talking about after 52 hours was a
few dry crackers."
During the past three months, the Agency played a significant role
in the delivery of critical emergency supplies to Palestinians
throughout the occupied territories (including non-refugees) during
Israel's March-April military invasion. Agency officials also made
repeated interventions with Israeli authorities concerning
humanitarian access and protection of civilians.
"I do not have a count of how many times I have written the [Israeli] Foreign Minister, the Minister of Defense, the Head of the Administration of the Territories," stated UNRWA Commissioner General Peter Hansen in early April 2002. "I have written numerous letters. So far, I do not have a response to a single one of these letters. However, we are not giving up writing, protesting, reminding them of international law and international obligations, and we are refusing to letthe situation become so normal that we even forget or give up writing about it." The ongoing political and humanitarian crisis in the 1967 occupied territories, and the continued absence of international protection for Palestinian refugees raises serious questions about whether UNRWA's mandate should be expanded to include international protection of those refugees residing in its areas of operation.