A Letter from a Palestinian Refugee to Abu Mazen

The moment you took your first step to fulfill your duty as the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and as President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) you declared your committement to the Palestinian national principles: the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, the right of self-determination, and the right to establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. As you strive to achieve these objectives, starting by putting in order the 'Palestinian house' , I wish you the best of success on your difficult and long journey.

At the same time, I feel obliged to convey to you a message that a Palestinian refugee asked me to deliver. He believes he speaks for all his fellow refugees, and that he expresses the position of all Palestinians.

The letter says:

Dear Brother Abu Mazen
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO
President of tthe PNA

We salute you in a way that suites your noble position.

My name and my background do not matter. Our names are all alike and they all start and end with the same nickname - refugee. My address too is not important. As we are not living on our land, we all share the same temporary addresses. Our shelters don’t have numbers and our streets don't have names. Those who settled in the camp and those who live on its outskirts are the same. So are those who stayed in the homeland and those who live in exile.

Our permanent addresses have remained engraved on tree trunks that stayed behind to guard the land and root deeper in it, or on cactus trees whose thorns stab those that attempt to uproot them.

Our permanent addresses are marked by the skeletons of our ancestors that refused to leave, but remained together to comfort each other while awaiting the return of their children and their grandchildren who have been long gone.

We all know you. We have seen you but have never met you. We have chosen you, but the limitations of exile prevented us from loudly voicing our opinion about you and joining our people as they voted for you. The bond between us is a covenant, a patriotic contract. It is stronger than any contract written on paper. According to this covenant you took upon yourself the responsibility to defend our cause, which, we believe, you know in every detail better than anyone. According to this covenant, you promised to restore our rights in accordance with the contract made between us and the PLO at the time we chose it as our representative. As a lawyer you know that a contract specifies the conditions which the parties are obliged to fulifll.

Our camps in exile planted the seeds of the national movement, watered it with our blood and fed it with our sacrifice. When it was in danger, our bodies were the barricades that protected it. The refugee camps in the homeland were not any less forthcoming and loyal to our cause. When the PLO faced the critical threat of demise and needed a shelter to preserve its life and cause, help came from within and the torch of the intifada was lit. It seemed as if the revolution had returned home. Once again the camp became its warm and tender home. You have witnessed both, the struggle in exile and at home. You were there when the National Authority came as the result of our struggle. You took palyed a major role in the PLO then, and now you have taken on primary responsibility.

We realize you will face tremendous difficulties as you defend our right to return. We are aware of the Zionist enemy’s persistent rejection of our rights. They deny all moral or political responsibility for the crime of terrorizing the Palestinian people and expelling them from their land. We heard the first statement of Benjamin Netanyahu in response to your election. He said that you will surrender the right of return, and that you will have the courage to take such a decision. In the past two years, the Israeli government has made considerable effort to obtain Palestinian and international support for extinguishing this right. That is why Sharon wanted the Road Map to include a clear statement that negated the right of return and worked hard to obtain guarantees of the U.S. President, not only against a complete Israeli withdrawal to the borders of 4 June 1967, but also against the return of the refugees into Israel.

We hear Sharon’s frequent statements emphasizing the Jewish character of Israel. These statements are aimed at both closing the doors in the faces of the refugees who wish to return and keeping them open for the expulsion, when possible, of our brothers who have remained in the Galilee and the Naqab, because they are a “threat and pollute” the Jewish state.

We know also about the manoeuvres of the Israeli government vis-a-vis some Arab states, which - by taking advantage of the weakness of Arab regimes and their total submission to the U.S. administration - intend to utilize international aid for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees.

We know all this, and we continue to watch. We also realize the dangers to our cause. At the same time we want to warn you about a danger from within that weakens the ability of Palestinians to confront external threats. The source of this danger includes leading figures, among them members of the PLO Executive Committee and people in leading positions in the PNA. Others are those associated with the so-called Geneva Initiative and the Nusseibeh Ayalon initiative who voluntarily surrender our right of return as if Palestinian land and property were their personal property which they are free to dispose without accountability to anyone.

It is this irresponsible behavior which we would like to bring to your attention, because it undermines our rights.

We demand that you put an end to it and stop those responsible. Let this be a major part of your campaign for putting the Palestnian house in order in accordance with the Palestinian priniciples, foremost the right of return. You can only gain strength for confronting the vicious enemy, if you strengthen the unity and credibility of the PLO. Let us shut the doors in the face of those who lay in wait to break the unity of our people. We believe that you have the key to the lock.

As we ask you uphold our right and prevent any attempt to make it a subject of deals or manipulation, we do so based on the principles and the goals of the PLO. This is our common ground and the basis of our unity.

We also ask you based on your declaration of commitment to the national prinicples based on which you called upon people to chose you, which they did. We rely on what we know about you: that you resisted Israeli and international pressure – when you were the Prime Minister of the the PNA - to acknowlege the Jewish character of the state of Israel so they will not have a document they can hoist in your face when you demand our right of return. We rely on what we heard about your response to a friend who asked you to protect the right of return when you were leaving for the Camp David talks in 2000: “I will rather lose my arm than give up the right of return”.

Your position on the right of return was the reason why your people in the camps of Yarmouk and Rashediya came out by the tens of thousands to receive you and carry you on their shoulders. If your fellow Palestinians in all the refugee camps - from Nahr al-Bared camp in northern Lebanon, to 'Ayn al-Hilweh in the south, and from the Nairab camp in Aleppo, northern Syria, all the way down to the al-'Awda camp in Deraa, from the Gaza camp in Jarash, to Baq’a, and Wihdat in Jordan – had the chance , they would wecome you the same. All this is a message directed to you and a sign of the confidence which they have in you. It is also a reminder to the rest of the Palestinian leadership, as persons and as an institution, of what they owe these camps.

Brother Abu Mazen, this is the will of your people in exile and at home. When Israel raises the issue of resettling refugees outside of their homeland, tell them that your people have refused this for more than fifty years. Tell them that if they were ready to accept another home or another land, they would not have waited all this time. They would not have remained refugee status and suffered all those years. If Israel uses the old pretext of the “land promised to the Jews”, don’t listen and don’t argue. Just say that if one party is to object to the presence of the other, it is us who object. We are the owners of the land while they are aliens. If they claim that Palestine is not big enough for both peoples, remind them that in 80 percent of the land of the state of Israel live only 20 percent of the Jewish population, meaning that most of the land is nearly vacant. There is room for its true owners, those most capable of filling it with life and development. These Palestinian owners deserve the land more than those brought by the Israeli government from the frosty plains of Russia, the heat of Ethiopia, Mexico or elsewhere.

If they try to pressure you by offering you a part of Jerusalem, or the Noble Sanctuary, or tempt you with a state that has borders of their design and whose very existence is controlled in exchange for surrendering the right of return, tell them: Jerusalem is a part of the cause, but the right of return stands for the entire cause. Jerusalem is a part of Palestine while the refugees are Palestine. We do not mean that you should give one issue priority over others, but rather emphasize the preciousness of both to the Palestinian people and the Arab nation. We sincerely do not intend to throw the right of return as an obstacle in the way of returning Jerusalem, or any part of it, if such option did exist. Our people will welcome the achievement of any of our rights, but they will not accept achieving their independent state or Jerusalem by sacrificing the right of the refugees to return home.

Israel will try to distort the meaning of the right of return. They will try to twist it by limiting it to the return of the refugees, or part of them, from outside the land to the territories of the PNA or the Palestinian state. Our and your answer to that must be: it is the natural right of any Palestinian, regardless of where he may be, to come to the Palestinian state, live in it and hold its citizenship. The right of return of the refugees, however, has only one meaning: the return to their property and homeland that was taken from them in 1948. It applies to those who found refuge outside Palestine and to those who found refuge within it, i.e. over 1.5 million refugees living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Return is, moreover, an absolute right of the 250,000 Palestinians who were forced out of their villages in the Galilee, the Triangle and the Naqab but have remained in the territory that became Israel.

They will offer you compensation, but do not accept it. We won’t accept in exchange for the homeland. It is not dead. Our land is still alive, it still exists before our eyes. Our land is planted deep in our hearts. It blooms and yields the fruit of love, compassion and memories every year according to season. They will try to exploit the miserable lives of the refugees. Tell them that poverty is not shame. We have lived with it in our camps since our displacement but it did not diminish our determination. It did not weaken the desire of our people to return but rather addedt to our persistence to achieve our rights. If anybody doubts the depth of our cause in the soul of the Palestinian people, he should visit any of our camps, in Palestine our outside. They should meet some of the children there, even five-years olds, to see how deprived they are even of basic necessities, and they should ask them - even before they ask their fathers or grandfathers - whether they will accept a price for their homeland. That is one way to find out the extent of our resentment to such an idea. Of course, this does not mean that we do not demandi to improve our living conditions. Improving our living conditions is possible without giving up our rights to our land in exchange.

Refugees do demand compensation for the wealth of their land that has been robbed from them and which they could not use in the years of exile. This is one of their natural rights. Such compensation would suffice for improving and developing their living conditions. They do not have to bargain over their land. This is the only kind of compensation that can be discussed. We know that some host governments in our region are eager to obtain compensation and will respond to external temptations and pressures. To them we say: our cause is not for sale, it is not for trade. To those who want to trade our land we say: it is not for auction. We also remind those who have (intentionally) lost their memory: it is an illusion to assume that everything can be bought and sold for money, especially under the influence of the terror and the fear of the U.S.- American monster, and even under the guize of 'being realistic' or the pretext of 'changing political circumstances in the Arab world and the world as a whole.' We remind such people that we have not read the 'schoolbooks of realism' or any text that suggests that a whole nation should abandon all of their rights for the benefit of another. Neither do we understand that we should stop demanding our rights or sign documents which would prevent us or future generations from raising our rights and claims. We do understand that we may not be able to achieve our rights now and in the current reality. However, it may be possible to achieve some of them now and some later. It may also mean that the present generation iwill be unable to do so, but we will not deprive the future generation from claiming their rights and struggling for them. Even if the right of return cannot be implemented now, giving it up is never allowed.

We are aware of the scope of the obstacles that block the return of the refugees to their land and property. However, these obstacles cannot convince our people that it is impossible to make Israel accept the principle that all refugees have a right to return.

Implementation of the right will remain an issue for discussion, in terms of the mechanisms, the modalities, and the amount of time needed. The proper conditions for absorption and rehabilitation of the refugees on their native land will have to be defined, as welll as the number of refugees to be admitted annually, and the the process may take many years.

This above approach will permit us to achieve both: affirming the right of return and challenging Israel's claims that it cannot possibily absorb millions of returnees, and we can expose Israeli's colonial and racist logic that represents the core of the problem.

All Palestinians, whether in exile, in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, or living inside the Green Line, agree with such an approach. All of us have the same right and the same desire to return: the rich and the poor; the residents of the camps and the residents of palaces; and, the refugees who carry travel documents and find the doors of Arab states shut in their faces and those who hold passports of western countries and are received by smiling security officers in the Arab airports.

Brother Abu Mazen, this is how we understand our rights, and this is how we think they should be implemented. You awareness combined with your commitment will be decisive.

On this basis we constantly pray for your success.
Your brother,
A Palestinian refugee.