BADIL

While refugees are discussing ways and mechanisms for creating their representative leadership, PA President Yasser Arafat approved the establishment of a new High Council for Refugee Camps composed of PA ministers and political personalities who have one thing in common: they do not share the refugee experience and none of them has been involved in the popular refugee initiatives of the past two years. According to Ass'ad
Abdelrahman (Head of the PLO Department for Refugee Affairs), the new Council will serve as an advisor body to the PLO Refugee Department and assist in the implementation of its programs in the refugee camps in Palestine.

The new Council is headed by Yasser Arafat, Ass'ad Abdelrahman will serve as its General Secretary. Additional members are: Muhammad Nashashibi (PA finance minister), Yasser 'Amr (minister of education), Zakaria al-Agha (PLO-Executive Committee), Ghassan al-Shak'a (mayor of Nablus), Intisar
al-Wazir (minister of welfare), 'Azzam al-Ahmad (minister of public construction), Abdel Aziz Shaheen (minister of nutrition), Abdelrahman Hammad (housing minister), Riad al-Za'anoun (minister of health), 'Imad al-Falouji (minister of communication), Ruhi Fattouh (secretary of the PLC), Marwan Barghouthi (head of Fatah High Committee/West Bank), Ahmad Hallas (Head of Fatah High Committee/Gaza), Muhammad Dahlan (head of thePreventive
Security/Gaza), Muhammad Shtaiya (PECDAR director), HassanAbu Libda (Head of Statistics Department), and Fadel Qa'wash (deputy director of the PA Water Authority).
(based on al-Quds, 3-12-1997)

 

The Necessity of Refugees Conferences"
Refugee Activists Discuss Mechanisms of Popular Refugee Conferences

On 16 October 1997, the Campaign for the Defense of Palestinian Refugee Rights held the fifth and final session of a series of workshops conducted in 1997 under the headline "The Right of Return". This final session took place in Qalandia refugee camp/West Bank and aimed at raising for discussion the necessity of holding popular refugees conferences.

On the occasion of the UNRWA donors' meeting held in Amman on 9 September 1997, Palestinian refugees engaged in strikes and protest activities against UNRWA budget-cuts everywhere, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip, in Jordan and in Lebanon. Students and teachers of UNRWA-run educational institutions went on strike in all refugee camps in the region. Popular refugee initiatives in the West Bank accused UNRWA of increasing the impact of Israel's closure policy by reducing health, education and social services to the refugees and demanded an immediate financial solution. This was, in fact, the first time that Palestinian refugees, dispersed in Palestine and in three Arab host countries, succeeded in sending a united message to the foreign governments whose donor policy is held responsible for the current crisis of the regular UNRWA budget.

A |Look at the Past - Perspectives for the Future

Starting with this issue, ARTICLE 74 will regularly present analysis and opinions of activists and researchers on the Palestinian refugee question. In this way, we hope to contgribute to the debate about strategies for the protection of refugee rights. In the current issue, we present the contributions of Salah Abed Rabbo and Dr. Adel Samara.

A UNIFIED STRATEGY AGAINST ALL ODDS:
THE POPULAR REFUGEE MOVEMENT
By Salah Abed Rabbo

Salah Abed Rabbo lives in Deheishe refugee camp/Bethlehem and is the spokesperson of the Union of Youth Activity Centers/West Bank and of the Campaign for the Defense of Refugee Rights. He is a refugee activist involved in the popular refugee initiatives in the West Bank.

Article 74 (December 1997)

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Fifty years have passed without much change in the situation of the Palestinian refugees. Their hopes, dreams, and perspectives have been expressed in tears over lost homes, in poems speaking passionately about the citrus groves which are still waiting for their owners, and about the keys to the old homes hidden and protected in the shelters of the refugee camps. And - in the early days - there was the hope that Israel's prime minister, Ben Gurion, would implement UN Resolution 194 of 11 December 1948, since approval of this Resolution had been a condition for Israel's membership to the United Nations.
The 1960s marked a period of struggle for national liberation and the end of colonial regimes in many parts of the world. Palestinians understood that tears could neither liberate their homeland, nor feed their refugee families. Thus, the PLO was born. Palestinian refugees everywhere joined their movement for national liberation. The PLO raised the slogan of return for the millions of refugees and of a democratic Palestinian state encompassing all the religious denominations present in Palestine. However, the numerous attacks, massacres, and conspiracies conducted against the PLO in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and abroad, diverted the PLO's program and reduced its struggle for return to a minimum. The most recent expression of this diversion are the Oslo Accords signed on 13 September 1993. They allowed for the return of no more than a few thousands of PLO leaders and activists to the cities of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The question of the refugees, like Jerusalem a taboo for Zionist politics, has remained a hairy and complex problem. Palestinian refugees are confronted with a series of challenges:

The challenge presented by the Oslo Accords themselves which aim to lull refugees into illusions about final status negotiations, while even the negotiations over interim solutions have gone into a coma.

The challenge presented by the Palestinian leadership which formed the Palestinian Authority, and agreed to cancel parts of the Palestinian National Charter - i.e. the expression of a broad Palestinian consensus - without any reciprocity. These steps cause deep concern among refugees, who worry about their present as well as about the final destination of their torn vessel on the heavy sea. The fact that the Oslo Accords limit the authorities of the Autonomy Authority to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and that elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council - as we like to call it self-satisfactorily - were restricted to the same areas, left Palestinian refugees in the diaspora in the rain without protection. The Palestinian National Council (PNC) contributed to this misery by conceding to the change of the Charter, instead of providing an umbrella to the diaspora. The PLO leadership followed suit by merging with the PA, leaving the members of its Executive Committee competing for posts as PA ministers. Consequently, the PLO - weakened by the PNC policy - has become unable to stand up on behalf of refugee communities in distress, as illustrated in the case of Lebanon. The return of the PLO leadership and its exclusive effort to build the Palestinian Authority has caused harm to both the refugees and the PLO institutions in the diaspora. It cut one of the two legs of the Palestinian national struggle which must be conducted simultaneously inside and outside the homeland. PLO institutions and representations outside were closed down. The absence of PLO infrastructure and services undermined the capacity of refugees in the diaspora to fight the pressures of resettlement, an infringement of their basic rights. Refugees' civil and social rights - including those of prisoners' and martyrs' families - are neglected. The frustration and disappointment created thereby make refugees susceptible to the promises of resettlement, such as naturalization and camp rehabilitation programs. As the PLO lost its power and authority, other groups gained strength, started legal measures against refugees (e.g. Jordanian landlords petitioning in court for the evacuation of refugee camps from their lands), or launched public initiatives for the integration of camps into the local municipal system (e.g. in the West Bank and Gaza Strip).

The third challenge is UNRWA and the policy of its donor governments aimed at reducing the budget for UNRWA services. Despite the renewal of UNRWA's mandate until the end of 1999, discussion about the agency's future continues. Three scenarios are being raised:

1) The first scenario ties the termination of UNRWA to the regional peace process and not to the implementation of UN Resolution 194. UNRWA, according to this view shared by the European governments, must be linked with the PA and gradually transfer its responsibilities to the latter. Or, in the view of the US government, UNRWA must be transformed into a development agency and operate in coordination with the PA without being subsumed by the latter.

2) The second scenario calls for the continuation of UNRWA until the establishment of the Palestinian state as the outcome of the final status negotiations. Then UNRWA responsibilities, both inside and outside Palestine, should be transferred to the PA. This view is promoted by various Israeli academics, e.g. Emanuel Marx.

3) The third scenario rejects termination of UNRWA until UN Resolution 194 is fully implemented. This is the refugees' position.

The UNRWA donor meeting in Amman in March 1995 showed that there is a broad consensus about the need for UNRWA services until a political settlement of the refugee question is found. UNRWA has thus become linked to the progress of the current peace process and is no longer linked to the international resolutions. This is also the source of UNRWA's Peace Implementation Program. A new strategy for UNRWA has been designed, based on a distinction between UNRWA tasks in the PA areas and its tasks in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

For three years now, Palestinian refugees have been raising their voices against the termination of UNRWA services in protest leaflets, sit-ins, strikes, and press releases. Refugees everywhere have contended this donor policy. They have demanded the continuation of UNRWA services and have rejected the transfer of its tasks to the PA. Moreover, refugees call for coordinated action by the Arab host countries to stop the liquidation of UNRWA. They call upon the rich Arab states, especially the Arab Gulf States, to compensate for all funds which may be withdrawn by the United States. Refugees do not oppose coordination between UNRWA and the PA in the field of services. However, they consider the status of the PA similar to the status of other Arab host countries.

Fifty years after exile, Palestinian refugees have expressed their concern in various ways, the most serious and organized expression being the popular initiative launched in the West Bank by the 1995 al-Far'ah Conference. This Conference, organized by the Union of Youth Activity Centers/West Bank was unique in that it was the first popular refugee response to the Oslo Accords clearly stating refugees' positions and fears. It called upon refugees in Palestine and in the diaspora to organize themselves and to conduct regional conferences, a call which lead to the First Popular Refugee Conference in Bethlehem on 13 September 1996. Gaza refugees held a similar conference at the same time. Since then, popular refugee initiatives based on the program of al-Far'ah have continued, among them the Campaign for the Defense of Refugee Rights launched by three Palestinian organizations (Union of Youth Activity Centers/West Bank, BADIL-AlternativeInformation Center, al-Quds University/Refugee Studies Center) in 1997. These popular initiatives and debates have been documented and widely disseminated.

Refugee criticism has found the support of Arab and Palestinian groups, critical Palestinian individuals outside and inside the PLO (e.g. Farouq al-Qaddumi, head of the PLO/Political Department), and Palestinian intellectuals in the West (e.g. Edward Sa'id) who oppose the Oslo Accords and criticize Arafat's leadership. Some of them (Hisham Sharabi, Nassir Arouri, Clovis Maqsoud/former Arab League representative to the UN) have called for the establishment of a lobby that will pressure Arab governments, the PLO, and the PA on behalf of refugee demands, i.e. for an alternative to the PLO. Other refugee organizations in the western diaspora (e.g. Palestinian Congress/USA, Foundation Conference of the Arab-Palestinian Community in Germany, Conference for the Right of Return/Belgium and Netherlands) have made attempts to re-organize Palestinians to defend refugee rights, to resist resettlement, and to remain committed to the agenda of national liberation in the world in general, the Arab World in particular. Palestinian officials and negotiators, on the other hand, have been on the defensive - as they say - forced to concentrate their efforts to prevent the implementation of destructive foreign plans. A clear Palestinian strategy and program on the refugee question is lacking. The Palestinian negotiators failed to obtain more than a vague mention of the 1948 refugee question in the Oslo agenda. Surprisingly enough, the emergence of the popular refugee initiatives has so far been overlooked by Palestinian experts and academics. Elia Zureik, for example, in his latest book (Palestinian Refugees and the Peace Process, IPS, 1996/English, 1997/Arabic) does not include any references to the popular refugee conferences in Palestine, even in the chapter dedicated to official Palestinian positions and the unofficial refugee stand.

The question is not "What Do Refugees Want?", but
"How Strong Can We Become?"

Refugee demands are based on a broad consensus: the right of return and a solution to be negotiated in the framework of the United Nations, and not in the framework of Oslo. The popular refugee conferences after Oslo have issued the required strategic program (e.g. recommendations of the 1996 conference in Bethlehem, published in ARTICLE 74/17). However, due to the diversity of opinion among refugees regarding the proper relationship to the PLO and the PA, the program of the popular refugee conferences has not yet been implemented, and refugees have remained unable to elect their leadership. The main obstacles encountered are the following:

1. The PA and some Palestinian political parties regard an independent refugee leadership as a threat, because it may present itself as an alternative to the PLO and the PA.

2. The PA fears that an independent refugee leadership will strengthen the Palestinian opposition inside the PLO and from among the Islamic movement.

3. A large sector of the Palestinian leadership views the PA as a personal economic project. In their view, the PLO is no longer needed - at least in the 1967 occupied territories - and the right of return has become obsolete.

4. Part of the Palestinian opposition believes that a new representative refugee body will eventually be integrated into the PA and its negotiation teams. It is therefore wiser to abstain from the establishment of such a body.

5. The fact that refugees in the diaspora (Jordan, Lebanon, Syria) have not joined the initiative of popular refugee conferences has weakened the movement in Palestine.

Given the broad refugee consensus on their central demands, the question is not "what do refugees want?" The question at stake is whether refugees in the 21st century will be able to overcome the above mentioned obstacles despite the unfavorable balance of forces, locally, regionally, and internationally.

PALESTINIAN REFUGEES MUST RE-GAIN THEIR SELF-REPRESENTATION
By Dr. Adel Samara
Dr. Adel Samara is a political economist and director of BADIL/Alternative Information Center- Bethlehem. Below is a section of the working paper Change is Necessary in the Three Dimensions of the Conflict - Palestinian Refugees Must Regain Their Self-Representation, presented by Dr. Samara to the Stocktaking Conference on Palestinian Refugee Research organized by PRRN/IDRC in Ottawa/Canada on 8 -9 December 1997.

Article 74 (December 1997)

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What Have Refugees Gained from Oslo?

The Palestinian question is the question of a people evicted from its homeland, Palestinian refugees are the backbone of the Palestinian question. Their fundamental right is the right of return to their own homes and properties, including the right to restitution for those who are unwilling and/or unable to return. Both the Madrid and Oslo negotiations and agreements failed to guarantee or promise this basic right. The Oslo Accords left the refugees issue to the final negotiations.(1) In place of the return of the five million refugees, Oslo guaranteed the return of the PLO ruling apparatus, especially the high-ranking cadres. It returned the leadership, not the people.

The Palestinian question was removed from its natural place of treatment, the United Nations, to be left in the hands of the United States. The USA as a super power enjoys a monopoly over the international dimension. It is the major supporter of Israeli aggression. The Palestinian question was disconnected from its Arab dimension, giving the capitalist Arab comprador governments the chance to negotiate separately with Israel, as long as the Palestinians did so too. It terminated the PLO 's credibility as the representative of the Palestinian people, especially the refugees, and put the PLO in the hands of the PA, a captive of Israel [...].

A regime of this sort, and in such circumstances, cannot spare time or energy for the refugee question, which is scheduled for liquidation by both Israel and the United States. Thus, the refugee issue remained in the hands of negotiating teams that failed to achieve any progress. In the era following the DOP, refugees were left inside their camps. Most of them are unemployed, except those who are members and supporters of the PA. More and more discussion is taking place on the topic of compensation to the Palestinian refugees.(2) The deterioration of the daily lives of the Palestinian people is deliberately designed through a direct or indirect collusion between:

1. the PA 's corruption and repression;

2. Donors who favor a westernized elite and distribute funds so as to recruit supporters for their politics; (3)

3. Israel which continues its war against Palestinians, mainly by means of the "economics of closure". The three parties aim at pushing Palestinian refugees to substitute the right of return with improvement of living conditions, for which compensation is an important factor. (4)

Towards A Political and Social Agenda for Palestinian Refugees

Refugees are not a single and coherent social class. While most of them are poor and popular classes, not all of them are from a popular class. Accordingly, class terms alone, i.e. mode of production, source of income, place of work, material conditions, form of work, class culture, etc., are not enough to define them. Until recently, (i.e. until the deep change of the PLO's role, politics and structure) refugees were collected around, and integrated into the PLO's policy by the national struggle as slogan, culture, organization and practice. Today, refugees are not represented in most, if not all, Palestinian social and political institutions, despite the fact that refugees are the majority of the Palestinian people. Workers, women, students, NGOs, etc. have formed representative bodies in Palestinian society. Refugees, however, do not have an equivalent representation. The fact that refugees are also part of all these bodies and institutions working in different social fields does not compensate for the lack of their own representation.

Despite the negative developments, refugees have remained united by their political-national aim, much more than by social class agenda. If one combines the political-national aim, the main unifying factor, with the social class factor, we might be able to elaborate a unified agenda for Palestinian refugees.

The vacancy which followed the change of the PLO, the current situation of the refugees scattered in the diaspora, the economics of closure imposed by Israel on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the weakness and malfunctioning of the PA, and the uncertainty about their future, all turned the refugees into the most fragile sector of the Palestinian people. Due to the change of the PLO, they lost their national- organizational security. With Oslo, they lost their hope of return. Due to the economics of closure, they lost their source of income. Refugees, poor and exiled, do not belong to the privileged sectors of society which benefit from the PA.

This fragile situation made it possible and easy for the PLO to ignore them in the negotiations of Madrid-Oslo, and to compose a Palestinian refugee delegation from among persons who act as functionaries and employees, dealing with the refugee question from an academic, rather than from a militant approach. Even if these were the best people to represent the refugees, the refugees themselves never elected them nor have they ever been consulted about their appointment. Given the very low political ceiling of Madrid-Oslo, these people might be the best for negotiations, but still they should not agree to replace the refugees themselves.

When the PLO was the mother of all the Palestinian people, the absence of a special representation of refugees was understandable. Then, the PLO was a political-national organization fighting for the liberation of Palestine, i.e. the land of these same refugees. However, when the PLO became the tool of an elite, influenced by the United States and captivated by the Israeli occupation, and when the PLO was subordinated to the PA - and not vice versa - to the extent that the PNC held its last conference in Gaza which is under Israeli control, refugees had lost their political-national umbrella. Devoid of power, the refugees' issue was neglected in negotiations to the extent that it could be stated that the aim of this peace is to terminate (rather than solve) the refugee question. The deterioration of UNRWA services, and the transfer of large portions of its budget towards income generating and peace implementation projects is just one indicator. (5)

While the Palestinian people is approaching the fiftieth anniversary of its disaster, it is further away than ever from achieving its right of return. The only sector of refugees listed on the agenda of the Madrid-Oslo negotiations are those expelled in 1967. (6) Most of the refugees do not support the Oslo Accords. The only formal reference to the 1948 refugee question was the establishment of the multilateral negotiations track which is restricted to dealing with the improvement of refugee living conditions, (7) i.e. emptied from its political-national content and turning it into an issue of charity. Under US pressure, UN Resolution 194 was excluded from the terms of reference of the negotiations, and the UN itself has been prevented from participating.

To put it briefly: since the peace process failed to tackle the refugee question in an appropriate manner, since the campaign to terminate the Palestinian people's right of return continues, since the same peace process is about to die, and since the Palestinian refugees reject the Madrid-Oslo process, a new refugee agenda is unavoidable.

What is to be Done?

On the local Palestinian dimension, the subordination and the dependence of the PLO on the PA must be reversed. (8) The PLO must be placed outside occupied Palestine, in an Arab country, in order to regain its independence and the ability to represent the Palestinian people properly. The leadership of the PLO must not be the same as the leadership of the PA and/or appointed by the PA chairman. The PNC must not hold its conferences inside occupied
Palestine. PNC members must be elected and not appointed. The members of the PA Self-Rule Council must not be considered members of the PNC, unless they are re-elected directly to the PNC in elections under the sponsorship of an independent PLO.

On the Arab dimension, the Palestinians must coordinate their positions with the Arab countries, especially those aiming at negotiations for an equal and just peace, i.e. Syria and Lebanon. (9) Any improvement in the Palestinian position will strengthen the popular Arab position versus official Arab state positions. It will weaken, and maybe even stop, Arab regimes from dealing with the plans of resettling the Palestinian refugees in Arab and non-Arab countries.

Regarding the international dimension, all Palestinian representative bodies must insist upon taking the Palestinian issue again to the United Nations, and not to any international conference, small or large. The Palestinian people must fight to liberate the peace process from the hands of the United States. In the same context, UNRWA must continue operating under the responsibility of to the United Nations; it must not be dominated by the United States. Palestinians must stand firmly against the politicization of UNRWA; the latter must not be subsumed under the PA as has happened with the PLO.

On the refugee level, a political group to represent the refugees is necessary. This group must be elected directly by and from among the refugees all over the world. It must be obliged to remain committed to the refugees' right of return to their land and properties. This Palestinian refugee body will operate from within the PLO as the only representative of the refugees.

This new refugee body must work with and through the refugee grass-roots organizations. Those who will represent the refugees in the negotiations must be from among its members and working according to the refugees' agenda, supervised closely by the popular refugee organizations. This body must not compete with the PA for power. It will rather serve two main and clearly defined issues:

social, health and humanitarian issues
negotiations issues.
The place of the political struggle of the refugees is in the Palestinian political organizations. The need for a special refugee body derives from the need to protect refugees until the PLO is restructured and operating again as a real representative of the Palestinian people, especially the refugees, or until the Palestinian people decide to create another representative body.
The representative body of the refugees, the Palestinian political organizations and the grass-root organizations must fight for the above mentioned aims. This may help to transcend some of the internal Palestinian problems, e.g. the relationship between the formal and non-formal, between Palestinians outside and inside the West Bank and Gaza, and problems in defining the relationship between the political organizations and the elected body for refugee representation. Research on refugee attitudes towards issues of political and social life should be conducted to support this process.

The march towards the solution of the refugee question is a long one. The focus must be on the grass-root level. Those who are the subject of the struggle and the negotiations must reach the level of self representation and decision making. (10)

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Footnotes

(1) For more analysis see, Muhammad Jaradat, "Palestinian Refugees and the Effects of the Political Agreements" , and Salah Abed Rabbo, "Palestinian Refugee Conferences...Why Now", in Working Papers Presented by the Preparatory Committee for the Refugee Conference in Bethlehem. Published by BADIL-Alternative Information Center-Bethlehem, 1997.
(2) Concerning compensation and the aims of the host governments, see Adel Samara, NEWS FROM WITHIN Magazine, no. 9/1996; published by the Alternative Information Center, Jerusalem.
(3) See Adel Samara, KHATIB.
(4) See Muhammad Jaradat and Salah Abed Rabbo, ibid. 1997.
(5) See Jaradat and Abed Rabbo, 1997, ibid. .
(6) Even the 1967 refugee question, subject of negotiations in the
quadripartite committee (Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian delegations) has not come closer to a solution due to Israel's rejectionism and the stand of the Arab delegations which reflects their separate interests more than the interest of the Palestinian delegation.
(7) Rex Bryen, "The Refugee Group of the Middle East Multilateral Peace Negotiations", in Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture, vol. 2. No 4, Autumn 1995, pp. 53-64.
(8) Members of the PLO's Executive Committee are still appointed by Mr. Arafat who is the PLO and PA chairman! They must be elected from among an elected PNC.
(9) It is important to note here that peace agreements between a matured social formation and strong Arab country , i.e. Egypt and Syria, will be more balanced than an agreement between Israel and the fragile, dependent regimes which serving and dependent upon imperialist policy in the area, i.e. the PA and Jordan. This is why the PA's integration into the Arab dimension is one of the main means to control its deep inclination for compromise.
(10) For the refugees body to do its job properly, an empirical research for the refugees attitudes towards all issues related to their daily life and final solution is necessary