Palestinian Refugees: a Surplus Population
Despite 20 years of peace diplomacy, the majority of the Palestinian people remain in forced exile, mainly as refugees and/or stateless persons vulnerable to persecution and renewed displacement in their host countries. The root causes of Palestinian displacement and dispossession remain unaddressed and there is no respect of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence, sovereignty and return to the homes and properties from which they have been forcibly displaced, despite the United Nations's assertion that “full respect and the realization of these inalienable rights of the Palestinian people are indispensable for the solution of the question of Palestine.[1] Instead, 20 years of peace diplomacy have resulted in a truncated Palestinian people, more than half of whom continue to be afforded the treatment of an “indistinct mass of refugees”[2] or a “surplus population” expected to find individual solutions and to disappear from the political agenda of the peace makers.[3]
The peace process inaugurated in October 1991 in Madrid was
intended to achieve a comprehensive peace between Israel and the
PLO and Arab states through the “Land for Peace” formula in which
Israel was to make room for a Palestinian state in the 1967
Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) in exchange for recognition
and the normalization of relations. Whilst the Madrid Conference
itself did not produce an agreement, it effectively signaled the
end of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) and set the ball
rolling for a process which would subsequently lead to the signing
of the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO in
1993, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and
inauguration of the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations as the
primary vehicle by which Palestinian rights were to be
realized.
Despite these negotiations and the positive dynamics they were said
to initiate, for Palestinians, the process has meant a growing
encroachment of illegal colonial settlements and confiscation of
their land, a marked increase in the restrictions of freedom of
movement, their confinement in fragmented, bantustan-like “Areas A
and B” comprising no more than 40% of the West Bank, the
segregation of occupied East Jerusalem, the blockade of the Gaza
Strip and the entrenchment of the systematic racial discrimination
to which Palestinians are subject both in Israel and the OPT.
Israel, on its part, has used the cover of negotiations to
establish substantial economic, military and diplomatic relations
with numerous Arab states whilst pursuing, in blatant violation of
international law, its grand policy of population transfer against
the Palestinian people with the aim and effect of altering the
demographic composition of the OPT, including occupied East
Jerusalem, as well as of areas located within its borders.
As a result, an estimated 129,000 Palestinians in the OPT have
been forcibly displaced since 1967,[4] with over 80,000 displaced
as a result of the 2008/09 Israeli attack on Gaza.[5] Forcible
displacement is ongoing due to Israel's incessant demolition of
Palestinian homes, military operations and other practices aimed at
dispossessing and displacing them. Those who have remained
steadfast in their homes face a more precarious situation than ever
before with communities in the path of the Wall (498,000 in 92
communities), Palestinian Bedouins, Palestinians residing in the
Jordan Valley, Eastern Jerusalem, Hebron, Southern Gaza and the
Gaza Strip “buffer zone” all at imminent risk of displacement.[6]
Moreover, intentionally ambiguous military orders have been issued
in the OPT, the vagaries of which provide Israel with a 'legal'
framework to facilitate the wholesale expulsion of nearly all
Palestinians residing in those areas.[7]
Palestinian citizens of Israel too are victims of systematic forced
removal from their ancestral lands and places of residence. As the
world celebrated the holiday season, Israel spent Christmas time
demolishing the homes of Palestinian families in Lydd displacing 67
members of the same family, whilst in the Naqab, the unrecognized
Bedouin village of al Araqib, one of dozens of villages in the area
slated for demolition, has been destroyed for the 18th time. In
addition, Palestinian citizens of Israel face a raft of new
discriminatory policies, currently at various stages of the
legislative process, which supplement Israel's apartheid system
with features reminiscent of petty Apartheid in South
Africa.[8]
For Palestinian refugees, the past 20 years have posed a constant
threat to their rights by a diplomatic community focused more on
accommodating Israel's “need” to define itself as an ethnic Jewish
state than on the implementation of international law. Moreover,
the political institutions and procedures of the Palestinian
Authority (PA) have been developed in such a way that the majority
of the Palestinian refugees, those living in exile (as well as
Palestinian citizens of Israel, including IDPs) have been left out
of the PA's “development and state-building” project in the OPT.
Instead responsibility for assistance, protection and development
of the Palestinian refugees has been delegated to the de facto
inactive PLO and the international community, i.e., mainly UNRWA,
“until a just and agreed solution in accordance with UN
resolutions, including UNGA 194 is found”,[9] thereby leaving
Palestinian refugees without substantial representation or
voice.
The neglect of refugees has been most prominent in relation to
refugee exclusion from the peace process, a period during which
refugee involvement in the decisions affecting their lives is
indispensable. In contrast to many other conflict situations where
refugee participation was ensured at the early stages of peace
making, no mechanism has been established for the participation of
the exiled Palestinians refugees in the peace negotiations since
1991 or their active involvement in the Palestinian body politic
since 1994. For Palestinian refugees, therefore, the peace process
has meant no more than the occasional statements of Palestinian
leaders which reaffirm the rights of the refugees, while no
Palestinian strategy is in place for putting these rights into
practice, and no platform is available for effective debate about
strategies required for their realization.
For the estimated five million Palestinian refugees[10] exiled to
Arab states, the past 20 years have been a continuation of a
precarious and uncertain existence. Whilst the three major Arab
host states, alongside UNRWA, provide limited and varying access to
public services to their Palestinian refugee populations, they do
not pursue an active development strategy for Palestinian refugees
arguing that this serves to prevent their permanent settlement.
Whilst the ostensible purpose of this policy is to “support the
Palestinian right to return” by helping to maintain the refugee
community as a collective and “protect their national identity”,
the consequences are that Palestinian refugee communities in many
Arab countries face, often severe, discrimination as host states
ignore the provisions of the Arab League's 1965 Protocol on the
Treatment of Palestinians (Casablanca Protocol), violate their
obligations under customary international law and human rights
treaties to which they are signatories, and do not abide by the
standards of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of
Refugees, which most Arab states have not endorsed.
As the previous and current issues of al-Majdal show, such contempt
for refugee rights has often paved the way for the forced expulsion
of Palestinian refugees, and for their abuse by Arab governments as
pawns in the achievement of regional geopolitical interests. In
this issue, we continue to look at incidents of forced secondary
displacement in/from Arab host states, including the plight of
Palestinian refugees from Iraq now living in Chile, an interview
with Bassem Sirhan regarding the expulsion of Palestinians from
Libya in 1994-1995 and an interview with lawyer Anis Qassem
regarding the complex legal status of Palestinian refugees living
in Jordan and policies that lead to their displacement. Included in
this issue is also a photostory from the occupied and blockaded
Gaza Strip about the ongoing displacement of Palestinians caused by
Israel's 2008/09 military assault.
The tragic incidents and stories of Palestinian refugees covered in
these two issues of al-Majdal have occurred mainly because the
United Nations and its members have lacked the political will to
challenge Israel's policy of forced population transfer and to
protect Palestinian refugees as part of a people entitled to
self-determination and return. Irrespective of the fact, that the
UN has long recognized these rights, little has changed since May
1949, when the UN General Assembly, in response to U.S. pressure,
resolved that “Israel is a peace-loving State which accepts the
obligations contained in the Charter and is able and willing to
carry out those obligations,” and welcomed Israel's membership in
the United Nations in a step which undermined parallel UN-led
efforts for refugee return and comprehensive peace between Israel
and Arab states.
The marginal importance placed by the international community on
protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees in the context of
peace making is evident in the limited powers afforded to UN
agencies mandated to provide assistance and protection them. The UN
Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), the agency
established in 1948 to provide protection for Palestinian refugees
and facilitate comprehensive peace, has long been de-activated and
de-funded; it merely publishes a one-page annual report stating
that “it has nothing new to report” and neither UNRWA nor UNHCR
have been mandated to search for just and durable solutions for all
Palestinian refugees. In a situation where the UN Security Council
and dominant UN member states do not promote their rights to return
and self-determination, this means that Palestinians are without an
effective agency to provide protection of these rights.
The staggering balance sheet of 20 years of failed peace making
highlights the need for a new, rights-based approach that puts
protection of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,
including its refugees, and Israeli accountability, at
center-stage. As under Apartheid in South Africa, no progress can
be achieved as long as Israel's oppressive regime is permitted to
prevail and no negotiation process can succeed so long as it
focuses of which subset of rights Israel is willing to concede to
Palestinians rather than on how Palestinians' inalienable rights
are to be realized. The pieces included in the document section at
the end of this issue of al-Majdal, including an update on recent
achievements of the Palestinian civil society-led Campaign for
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it
abides by international law, and illustrates ongoing efforts in
this regard.
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Endnotes:
[1] See: UN General Assembly
Resolution 3236 of 22 November 1974.
[2] Kathleen Kritisson, Perceptions of Palestine. Their Influence
on U.S. Middle East Policy: University of California Press, 1999;
p. 94.
[3] Borrowed from the population theories of the 19th century
British scholar Thomas Malthus which postulated that surplus
populations would get checked naturally by famine and disease.
[4] BADIL Survey 2008-09. p.63
[5] Al Mezan, On-going Displacement: Gaza’s Displaced Two Years
after the War, Gaza December 27th 2010,
http://www.mezan.org/upload/11208.pdf
[6] BADIL Survey 2008-09 p.19
[7] Al Haq, Al-Haq’s Legal Analysis of Israeli Military Orders 1649
& 1650: Deportation and Forcible Transfer as International Crimes,
http://www.alhaq.org/pdfs/legal-analysis-of-new-israeli-military%20Orders.pdf
[8] Adalah, Inequality Report: The Palestinian Minority in Israel,
December 2010,
http://www.adalah.org/upfiles/Christian%20Aid%20Report%20December%202010%20FINAL(1).pdf
[9] Palestinian National Authority: Ending the Occupation,
Establishing the State. Program of the Thirteenth Government,
August 2009, p.9-10.
http://www.jmcc.org/documents/Fayyadplan.pdf
[10] Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCMS), Press Release
2010.
http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/palpeople2010_E.pdf