Right of Return

1967 Refugees - 35 Years of Exile: June 2002 marked the 35th anniversary of the second major wave of mass displacement in Palestine. During the 1967 Israeli-Arab war more than 400,000 Palestinians were displaced, half of whom were 1948 refugees displaced for a second time in less than two decades. As in 1948, it is estimated that the majority of the refugees were displaced due to Israeli military assault and expulsion.

And, as in 1948, Israel immediately began to take control of Palestinian refugee land under a variety of military orders that effectively applied many of the tactics used to acquire Palestinian land inside Israel (i.e., 'absentee property', 'military and public purpose', and 'state land.')

  The total 1967 refugee population comprised approximately one-third of the Palestinian population in the West Bank, including eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip and slightly more than one-quarter of the indigenous Palestinian population still living within the borders of their historic homeland. Refugee property expropriated as 'absentee property' under Military Order No. 58,alone, amounted to hundreds of square kilometers of land. In the aftermath of the 1967 war Israel had displaced more than half of the Palestinian people outside the borders of their homeland andexpropriated around 80 percent of Palestinianowned property.

As in 1948, the United Nations adopted resolutions reaffirming the right of the refugees to return to their places of origin. On 14 June 1967 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 237 calling upon Israel to facilitate the return of refugees displaced during the war. On the 4 July 1967 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2252 (ES-V) calling upon the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) to provide emergency humanitarian assistance to refugees displaced for the first time during the 1967 war. Unlike 1948, however, the United Nations failed to identify the appropriate international mechanism mandated to facilitate a durable solution for the refugees.
Under an agreement concluded between Jordan and Israel in August 1967, a process was established to facilitate the orderly return of the 1967 refugees.

Arbitrary conditions and restrictive time constraintsimposed by Israel, however, limited the number of refugees able to participate in the repatriation scheme and infringed on the voluntary character of return. According Red Cross (ICRC) figures, Israel approved only 13 percent of the repatriation applications allowing only 20,000 of 140,000 refugee applicants to return. Refugees displaced in 1948 and again in 1967 were not permitted to go back to the occupied territories. Israel rejected appeals by the ICRC to extend the time limit to enable the return of all those refugees wishing to do so.
More than three decades after they were displaced and forced into exile, some 700,000 1967 Palestinian refugees are still waiting to exercise their basic human right to go home. The problem of 1967 displaced Palestinians was to be resolved during the interim period of the Oslo process but remains unresolved. While Israel accepts in principle the right of refugees displaced for the first time in 1967 to return to their places of origin in the occupied Palestinian territories, it continues to impose arbitrary restrictionsthat aim to limit the number of refugees able to return and preserve a Jewish demographic majority not only inside Israel but in all of historic mandatory Palestine.

Norwegian NGOs Issue Public Endorsements of
the Right of Return: During June two Norwegian NGOs issued clear statements for a rights-based solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees. In a statement published on 11 June, Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) called upon Israel to allow the refugees in Jenin camp to choose whether they want to have their demolished houses rebuilt in the same refugee camp or return to their places of origin in Israel. "It is difficult to foresee a real reconciliation between the parties before Israel acknowledges its responsibility for the sufferings of the refugees," wrote the NPA. "Israel has the possibility of taking the first step in such a process of reconciliation in Jenin by wishing the homeless refugees welcome home to Israel." NPA further called on the Norwegian government to consider the return of the Jenin refugees as a Norwegian initiative of reconciliation.
On 12 June the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), a major NGO partner in numerous refugee repatriation programs around the world, along with Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) published a joint letter in the Norwegian daily newspaper 'Aften posten' affirming that the Palestinian refugees' right of return is absolute. The letter went on to state that all Palestinian refugees have the right to decide for themselves whether they wish to return to their places of origin. These rights cannot be made the subject of political negotiations for peace. The letter called upon the Norwegian government to use all its power to put the Palestinian refuges on the agenda and work towards a durable solution in
accordance with international law.

Shifting the Borders - A New Proposal to Bypass the Right of Return: In April 2002 the International Crisis Group (ICG), a private, multinational organization committed to strengthening the capacity of the international community to anticipate, understand and act to prevent and contain conflict, published a framework proposal for an imposed solution (also referred to by the authors as an 'outside-in' approach) for the historic conflict in the Middle East. ("A Time to Lead: The International Community and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, International Crisis Group, April 2002). The proposal was later published in the May issue of Foreign Affairs and in numerous Op-eds in major newspapers in the United States and the UK.
Despite the fact that the primary shortcoming of the Oslo process was the failure to incorporate international humanitarian norms and human rights, the framework fails to include a single reference to international law. The proposal infers, for example, that the de facto starting point in crafting a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue is Israel's demand to maintain a Jewish demographic majority. The authors thus suggest that the refugee issue could be resolved by relocating Palestinian refugees in territorial pockets inside Israel but adjacent to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. These territorial pockets or 'refugee reservations' would then be transferred, by agreement between the PLO and Israel, to a Palestinian state established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The idea violates the basic framework set forth in UN General Resolution 194 outlining a durable solution for Palestinian refugees - i. e., specifically return and real property restitution. The Resolution specifically states that refugees should be permitted to return to their homes. (See BADIL Occasional Bulletin No. 11, April 2002) The language in Resolution 194 affirming the return of refugees to their homes is consistent with developments in international refugee law and practice, in places such as Guatemala, Mozambique, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, recognizing that refugees not only have a right to return to their countries of origin but also to recover the homes from which they were previously evicted. The idea also represents a form of population transfer, which must be fullyvoluntary for it to be legal under international law.
Palestinian citizens of Israel, including internally displaced Palestinians, residing in areas designated for potential transfer to a Palestinian state have repeatedly stated their opposition to such a transfer. (The ICG report is available at www.crisisweb.org)
Family Reunification - Return "through the back door?": On 12 May the Israeli government retroactively approved a decision by the Interior Ministry to freeze all applications for family reunification between Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian residents of the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories to prevent the latter from acquiring Israeli citizenship.

According to Interior Ministry figures, more than 22,000 family reunification applications had been approved since 1993. Israeli officials argue that the growth in the non-Jewish population of Israel over the last decade due to family reunification (not to mention the large number of non-Jewish immigrants) is a threat to the 'Jewish character' of the state - i.e., a Jewish demographic majority and Jewish control of the land including land confiscated from Palestinian refugees (Ha'aretz, 1/5/02). Interior Minister Eli Yishai further believes that Palestinian family reunification "is a devious way of getting Arab refugees to return to Israel." (Ha'aretz, 1/9/02) The freeze is to continue until new legislation is prepared that will significantly reduce the number of Palestinians eligible for family reunification.

Potential changes to the law being considered by the Israeli government include longer waiting periods, extensive background checks including the use of private detectives, increase in fees from NIS 500 to NIS 3,000, barring persons who received legal status in Israel in the framework of a family reunification request from applying for family reunification for any other relative and revocation of family reunification for "anti-state activity", a broad term which could encompass legitimate opposition to discriminatory laws which define Israel as Jewish state. On 31 May the Supreme Court ordered the State to respond to a motion for a temporary injunction and a petition filed by Adalah - The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights to urgently freeze the discriminatory decision. The Supreme Court ordered the state to reply to the motion for a temporary injunction within seven days and to the petition within 21 days. (Adalah Press Release, 2 June 2002)