REFUGEE PROTECTION
British Commission of Inquiry on Palestinian Refugee Choice Meets with Representatives of Refugee Organizations About the Commission:
The Commission of Inquiry is an initiative of the Joint British Parliamentarian Middle East Council and based on the recognition of Britain's historical responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.
The first in a series of meetings between a British Parliamentary Mission of Inquiry on Palestinian refugee choice was on 1 September, in the hall of the Youth Activity Center in Aida refugeecamp, Bethlehem. For more than three hours some 45 Palestinian community activists, representatives of refugee organizations and Palestinian political parties, members of Palestin-ian Legislative Council (PLC) and the Palestinian National Council (PNC), as well as delegates of the National Committee forthe Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced in Israel gave testimony of their preferred option for a solution of the Palestinian refugee issue and answered the questions raised by the British Commission.
Similar refugee hearings in Palestine were held in Gaza (office of the Union of Youth Activity Centers, September 2) and Balata Camp/Nablus (Yafa Cultural Center, September 3) The message conveyed by refugees in Palestine, Jordan, Syria was clear:*
1. That Palestinian refugees opt for a return to their original
homes and lands located in what is now Israel, restitution of
their roperties, and compensation for material and
non-material losses and damages.
2. That refugees are unified behind the right to return and have
expressed this desire For the last 52 years.
3. That a resolution of the refugee issue must follow international
law and UN Resolutions, notably UN Resolution 194 of 1948.
4. That the right of return is both a collective and individual
right and is non-negotiable.
5. That a peaceful future in the Middle East for Arabs and Jews is
dependent on implementation of the right of return.
Palestinian refugees in the West Bank clarified that implementation of return was possible, because new Jewish settlements have been built on some 20% of their original villages only, while the rest is destroyed and empty. The fact that Israel has refused to permit the return of the some 250,000 internally displaced Palestinians proves that Israeli security-, space-, and demographic arguments are no more than a pretext used to avoid a responsible and constructive approach to the solution of the refugee problem.
They also stated that while they will continue to consider the PLO their sole legitimate representative as long as its negotiators uphold their right of return as a non-negotiable principle, they expect the international community to pressure Israel to recognize UN Resolution 194 and to provide international mechanisms and experience which will allow proper implementation of their return.
BADIL Submission to the British Commission of Inquiry
(excerpts)
To the British Joint Parliamentarian Commission of Inquiry -
Palestinian Refugees:
Ernie Ross (MP Labor)
Nick St. Aubyn (MP Conservatives)
Neil Gerrard (MP Labor)
Menzies Campbell (MP Liberal-Democrats)
Bridget Gilchrist and Maria Hold (Secretariat)
"Recognition, Protection, and Implementation of
Palestinian Refugee Rights:
A Condition for a Durable Solution of the Palestinian/Arab-Israeli
Conflict"
• BADIL's position on the preferred durable
solution of the Palestinian refugee problem is determined by the
mandate received from the institutional leadership of the refugee
community: BADIL promotes a solution based on international law
(including international Refugee Law) and UN Resolution 194. Some
800,000 Palestinians were evicted and displaced from their homes
and lands in the period between the November 1947 UN Partition
Resolution (181) and the Israeli-Arab armistice agreements in
1948/9 as a result of military action and deliberate ethnic
cleansing operations by Zionist forces and the new Israeli
state.
Both their eviction and Israel's refusal to implement UN Resolution 194 (1948; right of return) are a violation of UN Resolution 181, under which Israel was obliged to protect property, human and civil rights of its Palestinian citizens. Today, they and their descendents number some 5 million persons (3.7 million of them UNRWA registered refugees), scattered over the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, as well as other Arab countries and the western diaspora. Some 250,000 of them have remained as internally displaced persons inside the territory of the Israeli state. All of them lack the international protection available for other refugee groups in the world, and a durable solution for their problem has not been found.
• It is BADIL's position that a durable solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees must be a rightsbased solution, and that any solution which does not meet minimum standards of justice (i.e. international refugee rights standards) is doomed to failure, because Palestinian refugees - who comprise some 70% of the Palestinian people, will not accept a solution which gives reference to Israeli (and foreign) strategic and political interests at the expense of their internationally recognized rights.
• BADIL is convinced that a durable solution of the refugee issue will be possible only when Israel will accept: I) responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem; ii) Palestinian refugees' right to a free, fair, and educated choice of their preferred option (including the option of return-estitutioncompensation); iii) the Palestinian right to self-determination; and iv) full restoration of the human and civil rights of Palestinians living inside the territory of the Israeli state.
• BADIL's preference for and focus on the option of
repatriation, restitution of property and compensation is the
result of the following factors:
a) Return to and restitution of original property is the preferred
option of Palestinian refugees, historically and today (as
documented in UNRWA reports of the 1950s, in the political demands
of the Palestinian National Movement, in recent opinion polls among
refugees, and in the official Palestinian negotiating
position);
b) Israel's (and the international community's) persistent objection to the option of repatriation (while promoting host county absorption and third country resettlement) has been the main reason for the continuation of the Palestinian refugee problem and its transformation into the world's oldest and largest refugee problem.
It is BADIL's position that Israel's objection to the principle of refugee choice is guided by an ideology and policies striving for maximum benefit from refugee properties while maintaining a Jewish ethnic majority in the Israeli state - a discriminatory stand which is unacceptable under international law and standards.
c) Palestinian refugee rights (right of return, restitution and compensation; right to self-determination; economic, social, and cultural rights) are both individual and collective rights. The lack of an international protection regime for their individual rights has led to a situation where these nonnegotiable individual rights are being made subject of the political negotiations between Israel and the PLO, irrespective of the fact that - according to international tandards - individual refugee rights and claims are to be respected separately and outside of collective, political agreements.
d) Israeli and international recognition of the Palestinian refugees' ight to opt for repatriation to their homes and lands (in what is now Israel), restitution of properties and compensation is crucial, should future political, social and economic crisis be avoided in the Middle East - a crisis which would result in the destruction of local and international resources already invested in the region.
• Representativity of BADIL's opinion: On a formal level, the above opinion is representative of the members of BADIL's General Assembly, Board, and Staff (i.e. some 60 persons). On an informal level, however, BADIL's opinion is part and parcel of the united Palestinian position with regard to a durable solution of the Palestinian refugee question. This is held by refugee grass-roots organizations in Mandatory Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere, Palestinian national institutions, and expressed in the official Palestinian negotiating position - there is not more than one Palestinian opinion about what is the preferred option to the solution of the Palestinian refugee question, the total consensus is return, restitution and compensation.
• Meaning of the implementation of the right of return in practical terms: Palestinian refugees, historically and today, face the problem that they are pushed into a battle over the principle of their right to choose by the Israeli rejection of this right. A serious and professional debate over implementation of the right of return will not be possible, until the principle of the right to choose is recognized by Israel. As a result, the Palestinian debate over practical modalities of implementation of their right of return is underdeveloped. Moreover, due to the exclusion of the Palestinian refugee case from the international refugee regime available to other refugees, Palestinian refugees are little familiar with policies and practice of international organizations, e.g. the UNHCR, elsewhere.
a) BADIL has conducted debates with refugee community activists about how to relate to the fact that practice of their right of return today will mean return to the Israeli state under Israeli sovereignty, an idea which contradicts the old Palestinian program of return in the framework of national liberation of Palestine (including the territory of what is now Israel). The consensus emerging among refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip - who are familiar with Israel and the situation of Palestinian citizens of Israel - is that this is an acceptable option.
(It is important to emphasize here that while this debate is new in its current political context, refugees have always demanded and tried to implement the option of individual return to Israel. Thousands of refugees ("infiltrators" in Israeli terminology) have thus been killed while crossing armistice lines/ Israeli borders in order to return to their lands during the early years after the Nakba.
b) BADIL has conducted "return visits" (fact finding missions) with refugees to their original homes and lands. In the framework of these visits, refugees inspected their lands and investigated the amount of Jewish settlement on them. The conclusion reached was that in most rural areas (especially south-east Israel, Naqab/Negev, and the Galilee) refugee return would result in little physical displacement of secondary occupants of refugee property. Provision of alternative housing for secondary occupants, however, is a major issue to be tackled in the coastal area and in the urban centers, e.g. Jerusalem, Haifa, Jafa.
(These findings are supported by recent research; see for example: Dr. Salman Abu Sitta, 1998). During these visits, refugees moreover discussed and supported the idea that not all of them would be able to return to agriculture- ased villages, but that new, urban-style communities would be required in the framework of repatriation.
c) Additional practicalities required for refugee repatriation are in a very early phase of study by professionals and not yet discussed among the refugee community, e.g.logistics for refugee choice; matching of various existing property registries (UNCCP, UNRWA, property documents still held by the refugees themselves); matching of educational/professional profile of returning refugees with the Israeli labor market; quality and amount of international rehabilitation efforts required in the framework of repatriation, etc. Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, director, BADIL Salem Abu Hawwash, Head of Board, BADIL Bethlehem, 30-8-2000.