Facing the Right of Return

The period of final status negotiations between Camp David II (July 2000) and Taba (December 2000) elicited for the first time since the beginning of the Oslo process a degree of substantive discussion and debate in the Israeli press among journalists, academics, and political figures about the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

The debate ranged from a complete rejection of the right of return to more nuanced approaches that purported to "recognize" the right of return but limit its implementation through a variety of restrictions or disincentives. The broad objective of these arguments is inherently discriminatory - i.e., to maintain a clear Jewish demographic majority in Israel. "The Jewish majority's explicit desire […] to retain its numerical superiority," noted Israeli writer David Grossman in a Norwegian daily newspaper, had become "almost embarrassingly transparent.".

  A small minority of Israeli Jews recognize and support full implementation of the right of return of Palestinian refugees but their voices have yet to penetrate mainstream public debate in Israel. Israeli writers presented a variety of legal, political, social, and "practical" arguments against the right of return during the period of intensive final status negotiations. Some argued that UN Resolution 194 does not recognize a right of return because it excludes the word "right." Others claimed that the individual right of return is not applicable to situations of mass displacement and that the right of return is neither demanded by nor guaranteed to other refugees. In the context of negotiations, a number of Israeli political figures claimed that the return of refugees would be inconsistent with a two-state solution.

 Several academics proposed that the set of rights afforded to Palestinian refugees should be decided by negotiation. Others proposed numerous disincentives to limit the number of returnees, such as restricting the right of return to first generation refugees or establishing a quota consisting of a set fraction of the annual immigration of Jews to Israel. Still other writers were more apocalyptic, stating that violent
confrontation was preferable to implementing the right of return of Palestinian refugees. In all cases, these arguments proved to be inconsistent with international law and practice. (For more on the Israeli debate see BADIL Occasional Bulletin No. 5, April 2001.)

The collapse of the Oslo negotiation process and the move away from a final peace treaty towards indefinite interim arrangements (a euphemism for continued military occupation) under the new Israeli government of Ariel Sharon (Likud), however, has meant that the refugee issue has once again faded from the front pages of the Israeli press. Then Justice Minister Yossi Beilin (Labor) helped foreclose Israeli debate on the refugee issue at the end of 2000 when he rejected requests to open files in state and IDF archives relating to Palestinian refugees. Senior archivists had argued that the contents of the 50-year-old files would damage Israel's foreign relations.

By contrast, however, the right of return remains a central and public demand of the Palestinian people inside Palestine and in the diaspora. Popular rallies and demonstrations during the al-Aqsa intifada continue to call for implementation of the right of refugees to return to their homes and places of origin alongside a state in all of the 1967 occupied territories with Jerusalem as its capital. In January 2001 more than 100 participants of a national conference on the right of return in Gaza, representing grassroots organizations, NGOs, unions, political parties and official Palestinian institutions,reaffirmed that any final agreement that does not guarantee implementation of the right of return will not be considered legitimate or binding.

 In Lebanon, Palestinian children from Shatila refugee camp (the site of the infamous  massacre of several thousand Palestinian refugees in 1982 for which Israel's current Prime Minister has been found at least indirectly responsible) issued a direct challenge to the international community in the form of a "BlackBook" presented to UNESCO officials. The book contains the names of children killed by Israeli  forces during the current uprising (many of whom are refugees) alongside photos of children from Shatila and slogans supporting the children's right to return to Palestine. "[W]e want to show the world that we did not forget Palestine, we are struggling to return, as the pictures of the Intifada children show, and we are also studying, dreaming, and playing to return," said one child who worked on the book.

When told by a UN official that it took time to implement UN resolutions, a 14-year-old girl from Shatila asked, "Why is it then that the resolutions for Israel have been always implemented, but those for Palestine have been pending for 53 years?" At the international level, the right of return of Palestinian refugees was the focus of the Third International Conference of the Human Rights Movement in the Arab World held in al- Rabat, Morocco in February 2001. The conference, which included participation by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, in addition to regional human rights organizations, issued a final declaration that reaffirmed the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or places of origin.

The UN Commission of Inquiry, established to examine the root causes and human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories committed during the al-Aqsa intifada, devoted special attention to the Palestinian refugee issue in its final report, emphasizing the urgent need for international protection for Palestinian refugees. Internally displaced Palestinians have called upon members of the community to visit their villages of origin on Land Day (March 30), while grassroots activists around the world - from Palestine to the United States and from Europe to Asia and Australia - plan to hold mass rallies on 7 April 2001 to reaffirm the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands from which they were expelled in 1948.

The approach of Israel's new government, however, seems to confirm the position expressed in the Israeli press in late December 2000 that violent confrontation is preferable to the right of return. The Sharon government appears fully prepared to escalate the violence of occupation, including settlement construction, land confiscation, and military closure. Shortly after taking office in March, the government revealed "The Right of Return is a Sacred, Inalienable, and Non-Negotiable Right" Children from Bethlehemarea refugee camps hold large keys symbolizing the right of return at a emonstration in front of UNRWA offices in Bethlehem  plans for expanding and building new settlements in the Bethlehem region.

In Jerusalem work is to proceed on a settlement in the eastern Jerusalem Palestinian village of Abu Dis, while approal has been given for the construction of an eastern bypass road necessitating the expropriation of some 658 dunums of land from several Palestinian villages. The ongoing military closure imposed on the Palestinian population, which has severely damaged the Palestinian economy, has been described by the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Occupied Territories as the "most severe and sustained set of movement restrictions imposed […] since the beginning of the occupation in 1967."

At the same time, it seems unlikely that the international community is prepared to adopt much needed measures to pressure or even "encourage" Israel to recognize and implement the right of refugees to return to their homes. The former Clinton Administration supported a solution that accorded symbolic recognition of the right of return but failed to include any real measures for the return of refugees based on international law as affirmed in UN General Assembly Resolution 194. While the less activist approach of the new Bush administration may open the door slightly for other initiatives more amenable to refugee rights, such as the British Joint Parliamentarian Commission of Inquiry into refugee choice (See al-Majdal, No. 7), other key international players in the region like the European Union have not expressed clear support for rights-based durable solutions for Palestinian refugees.

In late March, moreover, the United States vetoed a draft resolution (S/2001/270) in the UN Security Council on the deployment of international forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The US veto came within days of the UN Commission of Inquiry's report calling for international protection for both refugees and the Palestinian people, and one day after the death of 11-year-old Mahmoud al-Darawish, the 101st Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada. An earlier draft resolution for international protection failed to acquire enough support in the Security Council in December 2000. The state Parties to the Four Geneva Conventions have yet to decide on whether to reconvene a conference of the High Contracting Parties to discuss and decide on measures to enforce the Convention in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Mitchell Commission set up by the United States in "consultation" with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as a result of the Sharm al-Sheikh summit in October 2000 has been beset by delays incurred as a result of domestic Israeli concerns.

Meeting in their second summit since September 2000, the Arab states issued a clear statement in support of Palestinian refugees' rights. "Arab leaders hold Israel responsible for the Palestinian refugee problem and they reject Israel's attempts at settling the refugees outside their national homeland." In their final communique from the March summit in Amman, Jordan, Arab leaders "declared their support for the Palestinian people in their heroic struggle and their Intifada, and the right to resist occupation until all national and just demands for the right to return, for the right to self-determination have been attained." However, Palestinians have yet to see the resources promised by Arab and Islamic states at the first summit held in October 2000 during which some $1 billion was pledged to provide emergency assistance to the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian people, meanwhile, including its refugees, continue to pay the heaviest price for the lack of concrete political support in Israel, the Arab world, and in the international community for a comprehensive, just, secure and durable peace for all peoples of the region based on international law and relevant UN resolution, foremost being Resolution 194. Between December 2000 and March 2001 over a 1000 more Palestinians have been injured and nearly 100 have been killed by Israeli military forces bringing the total number of dead to over 400 since the beginning of the al-Aqsa intifada. This failure only underlines the continued importance of sustained grassroots mobilization