Palestinian refugees

Trapped in Indefinite Exile: The History of Palestinian Refugees Over Last Seven Decades

This is not the first time Palestinians have endured the hardships of forced migration. Palestinians who today live in Gaza and the Middle East fled their homes in what became the state of Israel. Today, they number about 5.9 million refugees, almost half of the entire global Palestinian population.

An estimated 1.4 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes since the Israeli military began bombing the Gaza Strip on October 8 in retaliation to a surprise attack by Hamas militants. Many of these Palestinians have sought refuge in United Nations emergency shelters in a situation the World Health Organization has described as “catastrophic.”

With shelters running out of adequate access to water, food, electricity, and other critical supplies, humanitarian agencies are deeply concerned and fear a total breakdown in order.

While the current refugee crisis in Gaza has raised global concern over Palestinian displacement, this is not the first time Palestinians have endured the hardships of forced migration. Long before the latest upheaval, Palestinians who today live in Gaza and throughout the Middle East were forced from or fled their homes in what became the state of Israel. Today, they number about 5.9 million refugees, almost half of the entire global Palestinian population.

Over the past 20 years, my research as an anthropologist has focused on the situation of Palestinian displacement in the Middle East. Having studied some of the daunting challenges millions of Palestinians face as stateless refugees denied the ability to return to their homeland or the right of compensation, I believe it is critical to understand their history and what is at stake for those trapped in indefinite exile.

Palestinians fleeing their homes after the establishment of Israel in 1948. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/David Eldan/CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED

Fear, violence, and exodus: The Nakba of 1948

The majority of Palestinian refugees today receive aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. Dispersed throughout the region, including in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian territories, about one-third of all Palestinian refugees live in UNRWA refugee camps, while the remaining live in surrounding cities and towns.

The origins of Palestinian displacement are ongoing and cannot be reduced to a single cause. Most Palestinian refugees, however, can trace their roots to two significant events in Palestinian history: The “Nakba” and the “Naksa.”

The principal event in modern Palestinian history and memory is the Nakba, or what is roughly translated into the “catastrophe.” The term refers to the mass displacement of approximately 700,000 Palestinians during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the creation of the state of Israel.

The majority of Palestine’s Arab population fled their homes during the war, seeking temporary refuge across the Middle East but hoping to return after hostilities ceased.

The mass exodus of Palestinians in 1948 resulted in two realities that have marked the region since. The first involved about 25,000 Palestinians displaced within the boundaries of what became Israel. Known as internally displaced Palestinians, this community did not cross any official border and thus never received refugee status under international law. Instead, they became Israeli citizens, distinguished by their legal designation in Israel as “present absentees.”

Through the Absentee Property Law the Israeli state proceeded to confiscate displaced Palestinians’ properties and deny their right to return to the homes and villages of their birth.

The second event involved over 700,000 Palestinians who fled beyond what became the de facto borders of Israel and acquired formal refugee status under the United Nations. This group of refugees sought shelter in areas of Palestine unconquered by Jewish forces, like Nablus and Jenin, and in neighboring states, including Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt.

Immediately following their displacement, these Palestinians were subject to ad hoc support from various international organizations until the 1949 creation of the UNRWA, which assumed official responsibility for the management of direct relief operations and refugee camp infrastructure throughout the Middle East.

In addition to providing education, health care and other services, including microfinancing and jobs training, the UNRWA has been supporting refugee camp improvement projects through road construction and home rehabilitation in the camps.

Refugees in Jordan, Egypt and Syria: the Naksa of 1967

The second-largest displacement of Palestinians occurred in 1967 during the Israel-Arab war known to Palestinians as Al Naksa or the “setback.”

Fought between Israel on one side and Syria, Egypt and Jordan on the other, the war ended with Israel occupying territory in all three countries, including the remaining areas of Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the war, approximately 400,000 Palestinians were displaced from the West Bank and Gaza primarily to Jordan and housed in one of six new UNRWA refugee camps.

Others found refuge in Egypt and Syria. More than a third of those Palestinians displaced in 1967 were already refugees from 1948 and thus suffered a second forced migration. Just as in 1948, when the 1967 war ended, the Israeli government blocked the return of any refugees and proceeded to destroy several Palestinian villages in the occupied territory, including Emmaus, Yula and Beit Yuba. After their destruction, these areas were leased to Jewish Israelis.

Beyond Al-Nakba and Al-Naksa

Although the tragedies of the Nakba and the Naksa turned the vast majority of Palestinians into refugees, numerous events since then have increased their number. One of the most significant causes of Palestinian displacement today is the Israeli practice of home demolitions.

Whether as a punitive measure or the result of a permit system that rights groups say systematically discriminates against Palestinians, between 2009 and 2023 the practice destroyed over 9,000 homes and left approximately 14,000 Palestinians homeless.

The further displacement of Palestinians has also resulted from regional wars involving neither Palestinians nor Israelis. Following the end of Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990, over 300,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait in retaliation for support offered by the leading Palestinian national organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization, to Saddam Hussein.

Since the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, over 120,000 Palestinian refugees have fled the country, primarily to Turkey and Jordan, while another 200,000 have been internally displaced. More recently, the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip has already internally displaced over 1.4 million Palestinians.

Many refugees, many exiles

Because Palestinians live under various governments in diverse circumstances, no single experience can account for their experience of exile. In Jordan, for example, where I have conducted research, Palestinian refugees can be divided into numerous groups, each with its own set of opportunities and challenges.

There are Palestinians displaced in 1948 who became citizens of Jordan but depend on UNRWA for basic services like education and health care. There are also refugees displaced from the Gaza Strip in 1967 who lack citizenship and are thus deprived of certain civil and political rights. More recently, there are Palestinians displaced from Syria for whom movement and work opportunities have been severely restricted in Jordan.

Palestinians living beyond Jordan also face distinct circumstances. In the West Bank, approximately 900,000 Palestinian refugees live under Israeli occupation, subject to a discriminatory system that human rights organizations have called “apartheid.”

Palestinian refugees in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, who today number around one-and-a-half million, are currently living under a 16-year blockade established by Israel but supported by the Egyptian government. Since the closure began in 2007, restrictions on the import of goods, the movement of people and access to basic resources like electricity have produced dire conditions for Palestinians, including over 45% unemployment and food insecurity among 70% of households.

Since 1948, Palestinians in Lebanon have faced severe restrictions in work, education and health. Treated as an unwanted population in the country, their presence has been a source of significant divisions in Lebanon and a factor in numerous conflicts, including the Lebanese Civil War and the War of Camps between Syrian-backed militias and factions within the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Permanent exile or return?

Palestinian refugees represent the longest protracted refugee situation in modern history. For 75 years now, they have been forced to live as a stateless population without the ability to return to their homeland.

The duration of their predicament is undoubtedly tied to the uniqueness of their displacement. Palestinians fled a homeland that became the state of another population, in this case Jewish, whose leaders treat the return of Palestinians as a demographic threat.

Any solution to Palestinian displacement that involves returning to territory in contemporary Israel thus faces the problem of overcoming the idea of Israel as an exclusively Jewish state. And yet that is the challenge. Whatever peace negotiations may bring, no permanent solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict can avoid answering the question of return.

Note: This article first appeared on The Conversation. Read the original piece here.

Michael Vicente Perez is an Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Memphis.

By Fully Supporting Israel, the West Has Chosen to Forget the Suffering of Palestinians

In the aftermath of Hamas’s attack, the West has fully thrown its weight behind Israel. Such an approach, however, takes the world further away from addressing the root cause of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

With Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, Israel and Palestine have plunged into yet another war. The cruelty of both attacks is beyond words, and as always in such wars, common people on both sides are suffering the most.

In the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel, the major Western powers – the US, Britain, France, among others – extended their full solidarity to Israel, and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a statement in support of Israel within hours after it came under attack. Modi who took months to open his mouth on the violence in Manipur, and that too in a very insincere manner, was prompt in conveying his sympathies to Israel. Many columnists fiercely condemned Hamas for starting the war. A number of protests have been taking place across world capitals condemning the Israeli regime’s treatment of Palestinians, and many such protests are either led or seeing the participation of Jews.

Orthodox Jews outside the BBC building in Central London showing solidarity with Palestine. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Alisdare Hickson/CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED.

Modi’s outright support of Israel is in contravention of India’s longstanding view of the Israel-Palestine conflict. India’s position has always been, in a way, to put in Mahatma Gandhi’s words of 1938, “Palestine belongs to the Arabs as England belongs to the English and France to the French.” Gandhi famously observed that Jews suffered at the hands of Christians, but it cannot be compensated by taking away the land of Palestinians to undo the wrongs of history. Jews were the victims of anti-semitism, which prevailed in Europe. Among many roots of anti-semitism was the feeling that it was Jews who were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Later other trade rivalries were added to this resulting in Adolf Hitler pursuing the worst forms of anti-semitism, by massacring lakhs of Jews.

Also read: Israel-Palestine Conflict: Why Has India Forsaken Its Role as a Voice of Moderation?

The displaced Jews had to suffer a lot of discrimination, which resulted in the Zionist movement taking root. Theodore Herzl’s pamphlet, The Jewish State, and a conference of some Jews in 1897 in Switzerland’s Basle further laid the foundations for the Zionist movement. Quoting from the Old Testament in the Bible, Zionists declared that Palestine belonged to Jews and came up with the slogan, ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’. The slogan completely ignored the fact that Palestinians had inhabited the land for over a millennia. And, in fact, Palestinians were not only Muslims (86%), but they were also Christian (10%) and Jewish (4%). In the aftermath of that conference, a ‘Jewish National Fund’ was instituted, and Jews from around the world began to relocate to Palestine and bought lands even before Israel was established in 1948.

Even as this trend began to take shape, a large number of Jews opposed Zionism, which appealed to Jews to move to Palestine and urged specifically not to rent or resell their lands to Arabs. The intentions of Zionists were very clear right from the start that they wanted to increase their numbers in the region. As their numbers increased, Palestine came under the British mandate and the local Arabs began to see what was happening to their land. At this point, the British implemented its Balfour Declaration of 1917, which supported “the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine”. The seeds for the present Israel-Palestine conflict were, thus, sowed by the British colonialists.

Jewish writer Arthur Koestler described the Balfour Declaration in the most succinct way, “It was the most improbable document of all the times.” American-Israeli historian Martin Kramer, on the other hand, called the Declaration as something which “constituted the first step towards the objective of political Zionism…narrow, conditional, hedged…”

The Arab resistance to Jewish migration and Britain’s plan to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine began in 1936. It was, however, crushed by the British.

The persecution of Jews by Hitler intensified the immigration of Jews into the area after the Second World War. Interestingly, European countries and America did not encourage Jews to come to their lands. In due course, the historic Palestine was divided into Israel and Palestine, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem brought under international control. The division of land was very much against the interests of Arabs, as 30% of Jews who occupied 7% of the land were given 55% of the land. Palestinians declared this as Al Naqba (Catastrophe) and were forced to occupy 45% of the land.

Also read: The Israel-Palestine War Is a Stain on Every One of Us

Israel, however, continues to enjoy the support of the Western powers. Through various wars over the last seven decades, it has extended its territory to the extent that today it occupies over 80% of the original Palestine land mass. The Palestinians have since been dispossessed of their land and are turned into refugees. Today 1.5 million of them have to live in camps with poor facilities. Soon after the establishment of Israel in 1948, around 14 lakh Palestinians were displaced from which emerged a resistance group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Leila Khalid was one of its major icons. The other major figure of this resistance was Yasser Arafat, who took the middle path and brought the issue to the global forefront. The Oslo Accord was one such aborted attempt. The solution put forth by the global community – a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine as independent nations – is not acceptable to Israel, for it does not recognise Palestine. Golda Meir, a former prime minister of Israel, once stated that “there is no such thing as Palestinians”. This, in fact, is the underlying policy of Israel.

The expansion of Israel into Palestinian territories has been an ongoing thing since 1948 and many resolutions of the United Nations have not been followed by Israel, as America stands in support of the Zionist policies of Israel. Israel, for its part, also acts as a collaborator in the American designs to control oil resources in the region. The UN, in its Resolution 3379 in 1975, stated that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. However, later another resolution rolled back the view.

Palestinians are probably the worst ever sufferers of discrimination and are being exiled from their own land. This is, perhaps, the most cruel outcome of British colonialism and the United States’ imperial designs. With the UN’s influence waning over the last few decades, the question that arises is who will do justice to the Palestinians.

Now, with Hamas’s latest attack, the gross injustice against Palestinians by Israel has intensified, as the West continues to support Israel. However, peace will remain elusive in the region without addressing the root of the problem, which is the Zionist expansionism and suppression of the Palestinians. For lasting solution and peace in West Asia, underlying issues of conflict need to be addressed. One silver lining following the latest conflict is that a number of Jews around the world have been protesting against the high-handedness of Israel.

Ram Puniyani is president of the Centre of Study of Society and Secularism and has written several books including Communal Politics: Facts Versus Myths (Sage, 2003), Deconstructing Terrorist Violence (Sage 2015), Indian Nationalism versus Hindu Nationalism (Pharos 2014) and Caste and Communalism (Olive 2013).

How the Resistance of Palestinians Has Been Defying Israel’s Ongoing ‘Nakba’

The military power of Israel has failed to curb Palestinian resistance. Palestinians are convinced that the might of Israel’s colonialist-apartheid structure will, one day, crumble, due to its lack of moral legitimacy.

It is, perhaps, crucial to define two terminologies at the very outset that defines the ongoing struggle for justice in Palestine-Israel.

‘Sumud’ – which implies ‘steadfast perseverance’ – is a Palestinian cultural value, ideological theme and political strategy that first emerged among the Palestinian people through the experience of oppression and resistance in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War.

By discrepancy, the ‘Nakba’ (Arabic for ‘catastrophe’) which ‘Sumud’ seeks to confront through multiple forms of resistance, represents the Jewish intent of the permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian Arabs.

Recapping the Israel-Palestine conflict

On the ‘Nakba’ of May 15, 1948, 750,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of Palestine’s Arab population, were forced to flee their homes to accommodate Israel’s creation.

Seventy-five years later, the number of Palestinian refugees is over eight million. These agonising figures make Palestinians the largest and oldest unsettled refugee population in the world.

Israel’s direct repression of Palestine began with the ‘Nakba’. Often referred to as the “original sin” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the refugee crisis is one of the core status questions that define the unsettled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The remaining issues include the status of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, borders, security and water rights, and Palestinian freedom of movement.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Partition Resolution 181 that would divide Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948. It was patently discriminatory. Palestinian-Arab leadership rejected the partition measures as unacceptable, given the inequality in the proposed population exchange and the transfer of one-third of Palestine, including its best agricultural land, to new Jewish arrivals.

The UN partitioned Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem internationalised. Israel proclaimed its independence and in the 1948 war that involved neighbouring Arab states, it expanded its territory of mandate Palestine to 77%, including the larger part of Jerusalem. Over half of the Palestinian Arab population fled or were expelled. Jordan and Egypt controlled the rest of the territory assigned by a UN resolution to the Arab state.

The Six-Day War in June 1967 was fought between Israel and the Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The war was decisively calamitous for Palestine and its neighbours. Following the war, the territory held by Israel expanded significantly and Israel captured more territory that is still deemed occupied. Israel still does not show any intent to return the land occupied under hostilities. The war brought about a second exodus of Palestinians, estimated to be at half a million.

A Security Council Resolution formulated the principles of a just and lasting peace, including an Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied in the conflict, an appropriate settlement of the refugee problem, and the termination of all claims, and of hostilities.

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War, called the Yom Kippur War/Ramadan War, the Fourth Arab-Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria.

The UN Security Council called for peace negotiations between the parties concerned. In the next year, the General Assembly reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence, sovereignty, and to return to their home.

It also established the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and conferred on the Palestine Liberation Organisation the status of observer in the Assembly and in the UN conferences.

Meanwhile, Israel persists in ceaselessly grabbing Palestinian land. It has fought and won eight recognised wars with its neighbouring Arab states, including two major Palestinian Arab uprisings known as the First Intifada and the Second Intifada, (Intifada in Arabic means ‘rebellion’) and a series of armed engagements in Palestinian territories.

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War came the Palestinian Fedayeen (Fedayeen means someone who redeems himself by risking or sacrificing his life), when Palestinian militants engaged in insurgency (1950s-1960s) to which there was furious retaliation by the Israel Defence Forces.

Other uprisings included the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”), the first large-scale Palestinian uprising against Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from 1987-1990. This Intifada was a robust display of the militancy and muscle of the Palestinian youth. It led to the Oslo Accords which held out a mirage of peace. The Oslo Accords lacked political construct, and therefore, collapsed. Its failure led to the Second Intifada (2000-2005), a period of intensified violence, which began in late September 2000.

Later, multiple vigorous clashes occurred such as the three-week armed conflict between Israel and Hamas during the winter of 2008-2009. Israeli forces attacked military and civilian targets, police stations, and government buildings. The uninterrupted airstrikes, artillery shelling and ground operations resulted in the killing of 1,383 Palestinians, including 333 children and 114 women, and injured over 5,300 people.

Israel’s appetite for killings seemed unquenchable. By November 2012, it launched an operation in the Gaza Strip. Two years later, it launched yet another war in Gaza in response to the collapse of the American-sponsored peace talks, and attempts by rival Palestinian factions to form a coalition government. This led to an increase in rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas militants.

In May that year, there were riots between Jews and Arabs in Israeli cities. Hamas in Gaza sent military rockets into Israel, and Israel viciously retaliated.

Since the first five months of 2023, the number of people killed by the Israeli forces have tripled as compared to the figures in January and December 2022.

Amjad Mitri, a human rights lawyer, points out: “Millions of Palestinians worldwide live in forced diaspora and are cut off from their homeland by Israel’s colonial practices and policies. The Zionist movement and the army has displaced more than half of the Palestinian population and in turn created numerous laws, regulations, and military orders such as the Prevention of Infiltration Law and military orders to prevent Palestinians from returning to their homes and properties.”

“Israel marks Palestinians who try to do so as “infiltrators”, and has deported or even shot at them on sight. Israel has created a privileged colonial status, which in all facets of life, including the political, social, and cultural levels, is superior to that of non-Jewish Palestinians. Whether this system is labeled as apartheid, colonial rule, or Zionist state ideology, it is a manifestation of control and domination of one people over another that leaves no room for alternative interpretation,” he added.

The Israeli mindset seeks to erase Palestinian identity and history and wipe Palestine off the map. Israel makes the fictitious claim that Palestinians and Palestine never existed; they were simply scattered groups of people living in the area before 1948.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, believes that the new generation of the dispossessed and displaced indigenous population will self-erase their heritage and sense of belonging to their land. Israel must obstruct them from making their claim that they have the right to return.

Representative image. The Israeli mindset seeks to erase Palestinian identity and history and wipe Palestine off the map. Photo: Unsplash

Also read: In State Repression and Its Justification, India and Israel Have Much in Common

Palestinian resistance

‘Sumud’ captures their resilience and fearlessness.

As mentioned earlier, ‘Sumud’ means collective determination and resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of ongoing challenges, including displacement, occupation, and discrimination. It encompasses maintaining their cultural identity, preserving land and property, upholding their rights, and sustaining a sense of community.

Dheisheh, a Palestinian refugee camp located just south of Bethlehem in the West Bank, typifies ‘Sumud’. Established in 1949, after its inhabitants were dispossessed by marauding Zionist forces, the population fled seeking safety for their lives.

In 1948, these families originally came from 44 Palestinian towns and villages from the borders of today’s Israel. They established a camp in 1949 located along the main street in Bethlehem. The camp, originally built to serve 3,000 refugees, now has a population of roughly 15,000. It has strong civil society organisations whose resistance is vigorous.

Israeli settlers in Hebron, West Bank. They often bring their assault rifles around. Photo: ISM Palestine/CC BY-SA 2.0/Wikimedia Commons

As Palestinians commemorate the 75th anniversary of the ‘Nakba’ in 2023, Palestinian refugee camps like Dheisheh continue to be subjected to exclusion, an acute lack of basic services and unyielding marginalisation and habitual military assaults by Israeli forces.

Dheisheh has been the centre of constant Israeli raids, resulting in the loss of young lives. This year started with the killing of two teenagers by Israeli forces during military raids. They were aged 14 and 15, middle-school classmates and friends. They had something else in common: they both carried farewell letters in their pockets – they were prepared to die.

Many Palestinian teenagers carry farewell letters in their pockets. It is not a symbol of resignation; rather an assertion of the right to resistance against an illegal and racist colonisation of Palestinian lands. They know they may die anytime at the hands of a sharp shooter atop a building, or even a deliberate face-to-face murder by an armed soldier or Jewish settler.

In January this year, Israeli forces arrived at the Jerusalem-Hebron road that connects the north of Bethlehem to its south. Military vehicles stopped at the road, unloaded dozens of foot soldiers, armed and trained for army-to-army combat. As Israeli forces withdrew news began to flow from house to house that one of the youngsters was killed during the raid.

Adam Ayyad was only 15. In his pocket, his friends found a wrinkled notebook paper, with 11 lines of scribbled hand-written text. The letter read:

“I had many things that I dreamed of doing, but in our country, one cannot realise one’s dreams. I want to send my message to the entire world, I want all the people to wake up, and direct all your compasses towards the occupation.”

“Adam was a normal boy, playful and helpful to all people around him,” his mother mourned. He had wanted to continue his studies and become a lawyer.

Manaa, a 22-year-old young man, was killed in an earlier Israeli raid in December. According to Ayyad’s mother and aunt, the death of Omar Manaa impacted him so much that he began to spend hours on end by his tomb at the Dheisheh cemetery.

“We only thought that Adam was sad for his friend, but never thought at the beginning that he was entertaining the idea of death himself.”

He witnessed an occupation raid for the first time when he was five, and grew up seeing people in the camp and neighbourhood being arrested or killed.

Countless families welcome mourners into their house. The open-house ritual usually lasts for three days, but it had been a week since 14-year-old Amer Khmour was killed by Israeli soldiers during their last raid into Dheisheh, and mourners kept pouring into his family’s house.

Khmour didn’t talk a lot about politics, or about the situation in the camp, as he was mostly having fun with his friends, like all boys his age.

Also read: Does Modi’s India Care About Palestine Any More?

Colonialism

Israel’s stealth and occupying presence on Palestinian land, employing militaristic strategies rooted in colonial-racist ideologies, results in assaults targeting children and youngsters. It even targets the elderly who only ask for their right to liberation and dignity.

When Britain abandoned their mandate and handed it to the United Nations, it was clear that the US and Europe would choose sides and advocate for an uneven resolution in favour of Zionist demands, rather than addressing the concerns of Palestine.

Zionism is an ideology which shoves Palestinians to the margins of political space. It is aligned with the movement to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine during the 19th and 20th centuries. Its history and significance are a matter of contention.

The Balfour Declaration was the direct outcome of a sustained effort by the Zionist Organisation to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. It meant that Palestinians faced the prospect of being outnumbered by unlimited immigration, and of losing control of Palestine to the Zionist drive for sole sovereignty over a country that was then almost completely Arabic in population and culture.

In order to achieve justice, it’s imperative to put an end to the misrule of Occupied Palestinian territories, which are subjected to Israel’s racist laws, colonial practices, and an apartheid regime.

The two-state solution, as a means to end the Palestine-Israel conflict, appears to be no longer viable. By clinging to this impossible solution, the international community prolongs Palestinian agony.

With some 750,000 illegal settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem the principle of separation of the two communities is an absolute non-starter. Achieving lasting peace in Palestine-Israel requires an innovative solution, which must prioritise justice above all else.

Ranjan Solomon is a political commentator, writer, and human rights activist. His work for solidarity with Palestinians began in 1989 and continues to this day through global and national networks.

Israel Attack on Jenin Camp Creates 4,000 New Refugees, Part of Unabated Palestinian Displacement

Jenin has now sheltered more than three generations of refugees. It is home to more than 14,000 people, surviving on less than half a square kilometre of land. When up to 4,000 Palestinians were displaced from the camp this week, they became refugees twice over.

The Israeli army’s recent attack on the Jenin refugee camp resulted in 13 deaths (12 Palestinians, including four children, and one Israeli soldier killed by suspected friendly fire). An additional 143 Palestinians were injured, with 20 in critical condition and up to 4,000 displaced.

While this mass displacement has received less media attention than other aspects of the Israeli operation, it is central to understanding the region’s politics.

Forced migration has always been core to the dynamics of modern Palestine and Israel. Most Palestinians are refugees, and Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is organised around control of movement.

While often framed as a fight over religion and ideology, this is ultimately a struggle around demographics, displacement, and mobility.

Why is Jenin a refugee camp?

Much of the social media rhetoric on Jenin this week has asked why there is a refugee camp in the West Bank. It’s a question that reflects widespread historical ignorance both in Israel and across the West. In fact, there are 19 refugee camps in the West Bank, and eight in the Gaza Strip. More than 2 million Palestinians across the two territories are registered by the United Nations (UN) as refugees – and their original dispossession goes to the heart of the violence today.

When the state of Israel was established in 1948, it took over 78% of Palestine (much more than the 55% that the UN had originally allocated to the nascent Jewish state). Around three-quarters of the Palestinian population – 750,000 people – became refugees, expelled directly by Zionist militias or fleeing to escape massacres and other violence.

These events are known by Palestinians as the Nakba (“the catastrophe”), and are commemorated annually by refugee communities across the Middle East.

By the autumn of 1948, a humanitarian disaster of immense proportions had taken shape, with more than 750,000 Palestinians in flight.

Palestinians began fleeing in late 1947, but the bulk were displaced from their homes between April and August 1948. pic.twitter.com/8bmrP3RpJv

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) May 15, 2021

In the immediate aftermath of the Nakba, the refugees sought shelter in the neighbouring Arab states and the two areas of Palestine that did not become part of Israel: the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Camps were built to house those with nowhere else to go. Jenin was one such camp, predominantly sheltering refugees from Haifa and Nazareth.

At the end of 1948, the UN passed Resolution 194, calling for the refugees to be allowed to return to their homes at the earliest opportunity. Successive Israeli governments consistently opposed this, and with no resolution, the refugees have remained in exile and in limbo.

Fast forward to 2023 and Jenin has now sheltered more than three generations of refugees. It is home to more than 14,000 people, surviving on less than half a square kilometre of land. When up to 4,000 Palestinians were displaced from the camp this week, they became refugees twice over. This is not the first time this has happened – Israel’s previous attack on Jenin in 2002 also displaced 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the camp’s population at the time.

Why displacement matters

The displacement of Palestinians did not end in 1948 but has continued for 75 years. In 1967, the Israeli army occupied the two parts of Palestine not subsumed in 1948: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (known thereafter as the Occupied Palestinian Territories or OPT). As a result, nearly 400,000 Palestinians became refugees, more than half for the second time. Jordan established six new refugee camps to house them.

The Israeli occupation places millions of civilians under martial law. Displacement and immobility are core features of the regime. The construction of illegal Israeli settlements often entails both, uprooting existing Palestinian communities and curtailing their freedom of movement by seizing land across the territory.

In addition to land grab, other Israeli measures that cause continual Palestinian displacement include forcible evictions, house demolitions, denial of residency rights, and discriminatory planning and zoning. This means that Palestinians must live with the constant threat of displacement hanging over them, and no protection of their civil rights as a population under occupation.

Also Read: UNSC Must Act to Protect Palestinian Residents of West Bank From Attacks, Pogroms

In all cases, Palestinians across the occupied territories struggle to negotiate their rights without the claims of citizenship. Recent high-profile cases of forcible displacement include Israeli eviction orders against Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah to make room for Israeli settlers. In the southern West Bank, Palestinian communities in Masafer Yaffa are facing expulsion as Israel appropriates the land for military training.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza face displacement of a different kind. Although Israel withdrew its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Palestinians there have continued to lose their homes due to ongoing waves of violence. Some 72,000 were displaced during the 2021 air attack on Gaza, as 2,200 homes were destroyed and another 37,000 damaged.

As around 70% of the Gaza population are refugees, this figure is a stark reminder of the continual nature of Palestinian forced migration. Many Palestinians now speak of “ongoing Nakba” to reflect this reality.

All this is possible because the Palestinians’ statelessness deprives them of basic rights. While discussions about the peace process is often framed in terms of conflict resolution and security, for many Palestinians the real priority is ending their dispersal and displacement.

The attack on Jenin may have now ended, but there is no bigger resolution in sight – and no sign that the continual rounds of Palestinian displacement will end any time soon.

Anne Irfan, Lecturer, UCL.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Syria: Islamic State Loyalties Linger Despite Defeat

The US-led coalition against IS in Syria, says it wants to be certain all civilians have been evacuated from Baghouz before it launches a final assault to capture the area.

Syria: Having joined Islamic State in Syria four years ago, the Algerian woman only abandoned the jihadists’ last scrap of besieged territory when her daughter was shot in the leg.

“I don’t regret it, even now… If my daughter was not injured, I would have stayed,” said the woman, speaking behind a full face veil as her 19-year-old daughter lay on a mattress nearby unable to walk.

A fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) helps a woman near the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Rodi Said

At a checkpoint operated by US-backed forces some 30 km (20 miles) from Islamic State’s last enclave at Baghouz, a village on the Euphrates, she described her faith in a movement that once held and terrorised large swathes of Syria and Iraq.

“Even if I’m here because I have no choice, I still believe, and I know this isn’t over,” added the woman, who finally joined the exodus from Baghouz on Monday evening.

The pro-Islamic State loyalties among evacuees showed the potential risk it still poses despite territorial defeat.

Women sit with their children near the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Rodi Said

The militants once redrew the map of the region with a cross-border “caliphate” amounting to roughly a third of Iraq and Syria. But this has shrunk to Baghouz – a collection of hamlets and farmland – since they lost the bulk of their territory in 2017.

The group has been adapting for some time and has mounted a spate of guerrilla-style attacks in Syria of late.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the main partner of the US-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria, says it wants to be certain all civilians have been evacuated from Baghouz before it launches a final assault to capture the area.

Numbers of evacuees have surpassed initial SDF estimates, and there was no sign of the evacuation ending on Tuesday when dozens of trucks ferried more out along dirt track roads.

People coming from Baghouz in recent days have shown more open loyalty to Islamic State than those who left earlier on, according to a volunteer medic at the checkpoint where they are subjected to preliminary security screening.

“Now they are more hardcore,” the medic said.

A girl looks on, near the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 26, 2019. REUTERS/Rodi Said

Gunshots and mortars

All the women at the checkpoint on Tuesday were dressed head-to-toe in black including the full face veil, or niqab.

A handful of tents on the desert ground were not enough to accommodate all gathered there. Warplanes with the US-led coalition could be seen overhead.

Some children, their faces covered in dirt, cried.

The Algerian woman said there had been more gun-battles and mortar shelling than air strikes of late.

Her husband and two other children had been killed by shelling earlier in the war.

She had no desire to return to Algeria, where the government fought a civil war with Islamists in the 1990s.

“I can’t return to people who do not like me and who I don’t like,” said the woman, who lived in France for a time.

Asked why she went to Syria, she said: “This is what I believe in… the laws of God.”

Islamic State used its ultra-radical interpretation of Sunni Islam to justify atrocities including enslavement, mass killings, and draconian punishments including crucifixion.

The evacuees from Baghouz were being taken to a camp for internally displaced people at al-Hol, a town near the Iraqi border. The SDF wants foreign governments to help repatriate Islamic State activists, saying the burden and risk of holding them is growing.

Adnan Afrin, an SDF official, said the civilian convoys from Baghouz have included a growing number of surrendering militants. They are searched for bombs and mines before being allowed to go any further, he said.

Children sit together near the village of Baghouz, Deir Al Zor province, Syria February 25, 2019. REUTERS/Rodi Said

The SDF estimates about 30,000 people have left Baghouz. It aims to eliminate or force the surrender of remaining fighters, who, according to the SDF, have dug defensive tunnels.

Many fighters remain, according to Afrin.

“We know from the civilians who came out that there are a big number, mostly European and Asian jihadists.”

(Reuters)

Syrian Refugees Remain Trapped in Lebanon’s Power-Sharing Politics

The intricacies of Lebanese sectarian politics mean Syrian refugees, like their Palestinian predecessors, continue to be scapegoated.

World leaders gathered in Marrakesh on December 10 to sign a historic agreement safeguarding the rights of migrants. Despite the withdrawal of some countries, the Global Compact on Migration was approved by 164 countries. It follows the Global Compact on Refugees, approved at the UN in mid-November by all countries, bar one – the US.

Despite the current optimism around the potential good these new global compacts on refugees and migrants will have, the current political situation in Lebanon – home to 1.1m Syrian refugees – shows why there is still a long way to go. Infrastructure to accommodate the refugees in host countries such as Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan is still dire and requires emergency funds to ensure basic needs are met.

In Lebanon, Syrian refugees are viewed not only as an economic burden, but a political threat so severe that their presence threatens the country’s delicate power-sharing balance. Even in the aftermath of elections in May 2018 that brought a modicum of political stability in Lebanon – although still no agreement on cabinet positions – Syrian refugees are still scapegoated by Lebanese politicians. Increasingly xenophobic rhetoric has worsened.

Also Read: UN Conference on Migrants and Refugees Undermined by Last-Minute Withdrawals

Meanwhile, Lebanon has stepped up efforts to return Syrian refugees, committing significant resources to ensure the return of as many people as possible. But this is highly controversial. Many Syrians fear reprisals or arrest by the Assad regime, possible conscription into the army and a basic lack of infrastructure when they arrive.

Even with the prospects of new international agreements on refugees, no discernible positive impact can be expected for Lebanon’s Syrian refugees. Lebanon has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, so that it isn’t legally required to protect the estimated 450,000 Palestinian refugees who also live in the country. The convention provides the legal parameters to ensure refugees are given the right to work, education, housing and non-discrimination.

Memory of the past

Part of the reason why Lebanon has ignored this international mandate for refugee rights is a reflection of the divided nature of Lebanese politics, which values stability between the Lebanese elite above all else. But the cost of that stability is currently being paid disproportionally by Syrian and Palestinians as they face marginalisation and exclusion.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, Syrians who sought refuge in Lebanon have faced systemic marginalisation through policies that limited their ability to gain residency and labour rights. For Lebanon’s political elite, the presence of Syrian refugees represents a dangerous reminder of the Palestinian refugees who played an important role in the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990, and are now commonly, and wrongly, blamed for being one of the causes of the conflict.

Two Syrian refugee children pose while their family undergoes medical screening before the beginning of an airlift to Canada, in Beirut, Lebanon December 9, 2015. Credit: Reuters/Corporal Darcy Lefebvre/Canadian Forces Combat Camera/Handout via Reuters

Lebanese political power-sharing is based on a prescriptive sectarian parliamentary balance between Christians and Muslims. The focus on a demographic balance between Christians and Muslims within Lebanon’s institutions has a direct influence on political decision making: from ensuring representation in the cabinet to enshrining the rejection of the right for Palestinian refugees to settle in the constitution.

Also Read: Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Face a Tough Choice: Stay Back or Go Home

Because of this, the Christian political elite view Syrians and Palestinians not as vulnerable groups in need of basic assistance, but as a potential seismic demographic shift. The common theory explained to me on a recent research trip to Lebanon was that if either group were to be settled in Lebanon permanently, the balance of sects would shift to favour to Sunnis and result in their dominance over the political arena at the expense of Shia and Christians.

What’s old is new again

It was clear that for many of the Christian political elite I spoke to, the Syrian refugees were viewed as an existential threat that could undermine the delicate sectarian balance in the country and destroy the power-sharing agreement that guarantees representation for all Lebanese groups.

In the face of all this, Lebanon’s response to the presence of refugees has been uncharacteristically cohesive. It introduced a national strategy in 2014 entitled the “policy on Syrian displacement”, aimed primarily at ensuring that Syrians were limited in their ability to settle permanently in Lebanon.

A Syrian couple wait near their luggage before heading to the airport, after the Italian charity Community of Sant’Egidio helped 81 Syrian refugees leave Lebanon for a settlement in Italy as part of a project called Humanitarian Corridors, in Beirut, Lebanon, June 15, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Jamal Saidi

Now, arguments that have been used to marginalise Palestinians are now repeated in reference to Syrians. In May 2018, former foreign minister Gebran Bassil proposed that Lebanese women would finally be allowed to pass on nationality to their children, unless they were married to a Syrian or Palestinian. Previous arguments on why this right should be denied to Lebanese women were made in reference to children of Palestinians only.

Also Read: Lebanon’s Scapegoating of Refugees Did Not Start With Syrians, but With Palestinians

The focus on maintaining sectarian equilibrium will always be an obstacle for international legal instruments designed to give refugees their rights in Lebanon. For the Syrian and Palestinian refugees living in the country, the power-sharing system will continue to entrap them as they face systemic exclusion, with politicians trying to make their living conditions as difficult as possible to ward off any potential settlement. If stability in Lebanon continues to be managed by sectarian head counting, any mechanisms to protect refugees will not be implementable and suffering will continue unabated.

Drew Mikhael is a research fellow in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hope UN Member States Will Support Palestinian Refugee Agency After US Refusal: Sushma Swaraj

She said from this year, India has increased its contribution to UNRWA from $1.25 million to $5 million annually, the country’s highest annual voluntary contribution to any of the UN’s funds and programmes.

United Nations: India on Thursday expressed hope that other member states, including the traditional donors, will step in to support the UN agency for Palestinian refugees which is facing serious resource crunch after the US decided not to provide further funding to it.

The Donald Trump administration had last month announced that after carefully reviewing the issue it has decided not to make additional contributions to the United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

“India has supported UNRWA’s work since its establishment. UNRWA has been carrying out commendable work for Palestine refugees,” external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj said at the Ministerial Committee of the NAM on Palestine held Wednesday on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly.

“We hope other member states, including the traditional donors will also step in to support UNRWA at a time when it is faced with a serious resource crunch,” Swaraj said.

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert had announced that the US was no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA’s costs.

“When we made a US contribution of USD 60 million in January, we made it clear that the US was no longer willing to shoulder the very disproportionate share of the burden of UNRWA’s costs that we had assumed for many years,” Nauert had said in a statement on August 31.

Swaraj also voiced concern over the deterioration in the security situation in the region, reiterating that a negotiated two-state solution remains the only viable solution to the issue to bring sustainable peace and lasting security.

“Restraint and moderation are required on all sides. The stagnation since the collapse of talks four years ago and the deterioration in the security situation continues to cause serious concern. We hope for an early resumption of talks between Israel and Palestine that can move towards finding out a comprehensive resolution of the issue,” she said.

She said India’s continued commitment to the Palestinian cause and earnestness to develop stronger bilateral relations is demonstrated in the successive high level visit in the recent past.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited Palestine in a “historic” trip.

Swaraj told the meeting that India is investing in projects of healthcare, educational infrastructure, women empowerment and a printing press, in addition to other capacity building programmes.

India has also set up various bilateral institutional consultation mechanisms including Foreign Office consultations and a Joint Commission, which pursues these partnership projects. Development partnership projects worth around $70 million are under implementation during the last five years, including flagship projects like the super-specialty hospital in Beit Sahour and the India-Palestine Technology Park, which was inaugurated last year in Ramallah, she added.

Skills and capacity development for the youth and their enhanced engagement, as an investment in a better future, is also one of the focus of India-Palestine partnership, she said.

While the number of youth delegates to participate in the youth exchange programme has been doubled this year, India has also substantially enhanced the scholarships made available for Palestinian professionals and students for technical training and higher education from this year, Swaraj said.

By Cutting Aid to Palestinian Refugees, US Is Fuelling Uncertainty in the Middle East

In collusion with Israel, the Trump administration is pursuing a two-track policy: emasculating UNRWA of funds and calling for a redefinition of the term “refugee”.

London: With a curt declaration, the United States struck a blow at a nearly seven-decades old UN project to provide humanitarian aid to the millions of Palestinian refugees and aligned itself further with Israel. The move threatens to produce serious social-political consequences and inflame Palestinian militancy.

The US State Department capped its August 31 decision to discontinue its financial contribution to the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), declaring that the 69-year-old organisation’s work is an “irredeemably flawed operation.” In its robust riposte, the office of UN Secretary-General António Guterres applauded UNRWA’s “high quality education, health and other essential services, often in extremely difficult circumstances.”

In the words of Pierre Krähenbühl, the UNRWA’s commissioner general, Washington’s move was “an evident politicisation of humanitarian aid.” Quite so. At the root of this US-induced crisis lies the unannounced strategic decision of the Donald Trump administration to remove all permanent status issues between Israel and Palestinians, to be settled bilaterally according to the 1993 and 1998 Oslo Accords – including the Palestinian refugees’ right of return and the mutually agreed status of Jerusalem – from the negotiating table.

The UN General Assembly condemned Donald Trump’s December 6 decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital by 128 votes to nine in a rare emergency session. Stung by this humiliating blow from the international community, his administration cut a scheduled UNRWA payment of $130 million by half and demanded unspecified reforms. During the subsequent months, the United States failed to notify UNRWA of the specific reasons for the dramatic cut.

UNRWA is charged with providing education, medical care and emergency assistance to more than 5 million Palestinian refugees in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Its monthly budget is $90 million, with about a third coming from the United States since 1974. After January of this year, UNRWA scrambled for increased financial assistance from other donors to continue operating. It managed to secure $150 million from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. A further $88 million came from Canada, Norway and Turkey. Those cash injections are on the verge of exhaustion.

The precipitate cancellation of US funding has left a shortfall of $217 million, according to UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness. He warned that “After September we won’t have enough money to run our schools, health clinics and our relief and social services programs.” Of its 30,000 employees, 22,000 are teachers.

The scale of the agency’s operations can be judged by the fact that 252 UNRWA schools serve 240,400 students in the Gaza Strip. Of the Strip’s 1.8 million inhabitants, 70 percent are registered as refugees. Given the self-governing territory’s 30% unemployment rate, more than one million people survive on food aid from UNRWA. Unsurprisingly, crowds stormed a UNRWA compound in Gaza to protest the US cuts.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior official of Hamas, which administers the Gaza Strip, tweeted: “The US decision to cancel aid to UNRWA aims to remove the right of return and represents a serious American escalation against the Palestinian people.” On the West Bank, where a third of its 2.4 million inhabitants are registered as refugees, Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah described the US move as “its latest blatant aggression against the rights of the Palestinian people, international law and UN General Assembly Resolution 302 of 1949, which specified that the UN agency was established to provide its services in all areas until the refugee issue is resolved.”

Subsequent to that resolution, the UN secretary-general established UNRWA at UN offices in Vienna. That meant having to deal with 914,221 Palestinians of whom some 500 000 qualified for UNRWA relief. Israel’s seizure of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War created another 335,000 displaced Palestinians, of whom 193,600 were eligible for the agency’s support.

As expected, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the US decision to cut aid to the humanitarian organisation. He claimed that UNRWA was formed “not to absorb the refugees but to perpetuate them.” In the past he has argued that the agency should be abolished and its functions transferred to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It is worth noting that the UNHCR, founded in December 1950, came into existence one year after UNRWA.

US President Donald Trump walks to Marine One while departing the White House in Washington, U.S., September 6, 2018. Credits: Reuters/Chris Wattie

In collusion with Israel, the Trump administration is pursuing a two-track policy: emasculating UNRWA of funds and calling for a redefinition of the term “refugee.” David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, refers to “so-called refugees” from other countries, “who have never spent a day of their lives in Israel.” However, there is no prospect of the United Nations altering its 69-year practice of treating the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees as refugees.

The consequences of weakening or abolishing UNRWA would be dire, most specialists on the Middle East have warned. Adnan Abu Hasna, the UNRWA spokesman in Gaza, said that if the agency’s network in the territory collapsed, all those school students would be in the streets: “There would be more negative energy – that’s a security danger not only for Gaza… but also for Israel. It’s a gift to terror.”

Outside of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the country most affected by the collapse of UNRWA would be Jordan. Of its 9.5 million inhabitants, 2.1 million are Palestinian refugees. Little wonder that its government has sponsored an emergency fundraising conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly due to open in New York on 18 September. Meanwhile, King Abdullah II of Jordan summarily rejected the Trump administration’s call to take over UNRWA’s Jordanian educational network. Jordan’s fear of regional destabilisation caused by a debilitated or abolished UNRWA – likely to lead to the strengthening of such militant organisations as Hamas – is shared by the Arab Gulf monarchies and the European Union.

Noting that UNRWA’s funding crisis is fuelling uncertainty, Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas addressed a letter to other EU foreign ministers, stating that Germany was ready to raise its agency contribution from the present sum of $94 million this year. In recent years, the European Union has been the second-largest contributor to UNRWA, accounting for $142 million in 2017. Expressing regret about the US decision, the EU said, “It is committed to secure the continuation and sustainability of the agency’s work which is vital for stability and security in the region.” From that perspective, contributions by EU member-states could be seen as part of their national security budget.

While the current financial crisis can be defused, the Trump administration is preparing to raise diplomatic barriers. According to Israel’s Channel-2 TV report, citing senior Israeli sources, the United States will not prevent the Gulf States, Arab nations and others from providing emergency funding to keep UNRWA running this year. Afterward, the United States will consent to further funding by Washington’s Arab allies only on a reevaluation of UNRWA’s role and a redefinition of whom the agency defines as a Palestinian refugee.

If so, it remains to be seen which Arab state will fall in line with Trump’s diktat, which expects aid to be offered only to those Palestinians displaced in 1948-1949 and 1967, but not to their descendants, thereby reducing the total by 90%. That would mean unilaterally usurping a right that rests exclusively and legally with the United Nations.

Dilip Hiro is the author of A Comprehensive Dictionary of the Middle East (Interlink Publishing Group, Northampton, MA. His forthcoming 37th book is Cold War in the Islamic World: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Struggle for Supremacy (Oxford University Press, New York/; Hurst & Co, London; and HarperCollins India, Noida).

This article was originally published on YaleGlobal Online. Read the original article.

US Halts All Funding to UN Palestinian Relief Organisation

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the decision as “a flagrant assault against the Palestinian people and a defiance of UN resolutions”.

Washington/Ramallah: The United States on Friday halted all funding to a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees, in a decision further heightening tensions between the Palestinian leadership and the Trump administration.

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the decision as “a flagrant assault against the Palestinian people and a defiance of UN resolutions”.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the business model and fiscal practices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) made it an “irredeemably flawed operation”.

“The administration has carefully reviewed the issue and determined that the United States will not make additional contributions to UNRWA,” she said in a statement.

Nauert said the agency’s “endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years.”

The latest announcement comes a week after the administration said it would redirect $200 million in Palestinian economic support funds for programs in the West Bank and Gaza.

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness voiced the agency’s “deep regret and disappointment” at the decision, which he said was surprising given that a December US funding agreement had acknowledged UNRWA’s successful management.

“We reject in the strongest possible terms the criticism that UNRWA’s schools, health centres, and emergency assistance programs are ‘irredeemably flawed,'” Gunness added in a series of Twitter posts.

The 68-year-old agency says it provides services to about 5 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank and Gaza. Most are descendants of people who were driven out of their homes or fled the fighting in the 1948 war that led to Israel’s creation.

US President Donald Trump and his aides say they want to improve the Palestinians’ plight, as well as start negotiations on an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

But under Trump, Washington has taken a number of actions that have alienated the Palestinians, including the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. That move was a reversal of a longtime US policy and led the Palestinian leadership to boycott the Washington peace efforts being led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law.

The United States paid out $60 million to UNRWA in January, withholding another $65 million, from a promised $365 million for the year.

A Palestinian employee of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) holds a sign that reads, ” no for political blackmail and starvation policy” during a protest against a US decision to cut aid, in Gaza City, January 29, 2018. Credits: Reuters/Mohammed Salem/Files

‘Not part of the solution’

“Such a punishment will not succeed to change the fact that the United States no longer has a role in the region and that it is not a part of the solution,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters.

He said “neither the United States nor anybody else will be able to dissolve” UNRWA.

In Gaza, the Islamist group Hamas condemned the US move as a “grave escalation against the Palestinian people.”

“The American decision aims to wipe out the right of return and is a grave US escalation against the Palestinian people,” said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

He told Reuters the “US leadership has become an enemy of our people and of our nation and we will not surrender before such unjust decisions.”

Earlier on Friday, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Germany would increase its contributions to UNRWA because the funding crisis was fuelling uncertainty. “The loss of this organisation could unleash an uncontrollable chain reaction,” Maas said.

UNRWA has faced a cash crisis since the United States, long its biggest donor, slashed funding earlier this year, saying the agency needed to make unspecified reforms and calling on the Palestinians to renew peace talks with Israel.

The last Palestinian-Israeli peace talks collapsed in 2014, partly because of Israel’s opposition to an attempted unity pact between the Fatah and Hamas Palestinian factions and Israeli settlement building on occupied land that Palestinians seek for a state.

Nauert said the United States would intensify talks with the United Nations, the region’s governments and international stakeholders that could involve bilateral US assistance for Palestinian children.

“We are very mindful of and deeply concerned regarding the impact upon innocent Palestinians, especially school children, of the failure of UNRWA and key members of the regional and international donor community to reform and reset the UNRWA way of doing business,” she said.

Gunness told Reuters earlier in August that UNRWA’s support would be needed as long as the parties failed to reach an agreement to end the crisis.

“UNRWA does not perpetuate the conflict, the conflict perpetuates UNRWA,” he said. “It is the failure of the political parties to resolve the refugee situation which perpetuates the continued existence of UNRWA.”

(Reuters)

Lebanon’s Scapegoating of Refugees Did Not Start With Syrians, but With Palestinians

‘The deplorable living conditions of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon after 1990 are a direct consequence of their use as scapegoats for the country’s civil war.’

A woman walks past a graffiti in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, January 29, 2018. Picture taken January 29, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Mohamed Azakir

Ever since violence erupted in Syria following the 2011 revolution, neighboring Lebanon has become (alongside Turkey and Jordan) the primary country of destination for Syrians desperate enough to flee their homes. As such, there are about 1 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon as of 2018 (although the actual number is larger).

They haven’t always been welcomed with open arms. These refugees soon found themselves scapegoated by the media and by politicians and religious figures for Lebanon’s problems, which pre-date their arrival.

This has followed a pattern that is familiar to another group of refugees in Lebanon: Palestinians, who are often unfairly blamed for Lebanon’s 15-year-long civil war, between 1975 and 1990, or treated as demographic threats.

Lebanon has hosted Palestinian refugees since 1948, the year of the Nakba (“Catastrophe” in Arabic) when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes by Zionist militias as the state of Israel was created. In 1948, to quote Palestinian academic Rashid Khalidi, “half of Palestine’s… Arabs were uprooted from their homes and became refugees”.

Seventy years later, the basic rights of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are curtailed in a number of ways. And according to the United Nations’ relief and works agency, more than half live in camps, where poverty is common and housing conditions are poor.

This, wrote Lebanese researcher Bassam Khawaja in 2011, is no accident. Reflecting a popular sentiment, Palestinian journalist Yasser Ali believes that the government wants “Palestinians to give up, despair and emigrate. That’s the main goal.”

As mentioned in part one of this series, an Instagram photo uploaded by Lebanese Foreign Minister (and the president’s son-in-law) Gebran Bassil in August 2017 captures this attitude toward Palestinian refugees in relation to the influx of Syrians. The photo shows Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian Refugee Camp in the south of the country in the 1960s; the caption reads, “Do not accept [refugee] camps [for Syrians], oh Lebanese” followed by the hashtag “So that the country remains ours.”

The message was simple: If Syrians get too comfortable, they will want to stay like the Palestinians and cause trouble like the Palestinians supposedly have (never mind the fact that the Palestinian right of return was always denied at the source, the state of Israel).

Screenshot of the image posted by Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil on August 24, 2017. Credit: Instagram

Palestinians, scapegoated for starting Lebanon’s civil war

The photo taken of the Ain Al-Hilweh Palestinian Refugee Camp was not long before the start of the Lebanese civil war. If various social, political and religious issues plaguing the country were the fuse, one event, sometimes euphemistically referred to as the “Ain el-Rammaneh incident,” is widely seen as the spark.

On April 13, 1975, following a wave of tit-for-tat fighting, militiamen belonging to the Phalange party opened fire on a bus carrying mainly Palestinians, killing 28 passengers.

Thereafter, subsequent waves of violence would then engulf the country and lead to a war involving multiple armed groups comprising Lebanese and non-Lebanese (notably Palestinians), as well as invasions and occupations by both Israel and Syria which, while different in nature, lasted until 2000 and 2005 respectively.

But that is significantly simplifying the situation. If there is one thing that can be said about the Lebanese civil war, it is that it cannot be explained by simplistic narratives as the shift of loyalties often defied sectarian, ethnic or ideological rationales.

To give one example: The primary adversary of the Maronite Christian warlord and current President Michel Aoun was another Maronite warlord, Samir Geagea, the current head of the Lebanese Forces party. So violent was the rivalry between them towards the end of the civil war that it was referred to as “the war of elimination.”

Palestinian armed factions, collectively becoming the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), were driven out of Jordan following ‘Black September‘ in 1970, the conflict between the Jordanian Armed Forces and the PLO. Jordan allowed the Fedayeen, as they are called in Arabic, to make their way to Lebanon via Syria. This was facilitated by the 1969 Cairo Agreement between Yasser Arafat, chairman of the PLO at the time, and the Lebanese army commander General Emile Bustani, an agreement which was brokered by Egypt’s Nasser. (The agreement was declared null and void in 1987 by the Lebanese parliament).

Under the agreement, the PLO would be allowed to operate in the south of Lebanon against Israel and control over the 16 Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon passed from the Lebanese Armed Forces to the Palestinian Armed Struggle Command.

This in turn came two years after the 1967 war between Israel and a number of Arab states (notably Egypt, Syria and Jordan), which ended in an Israeli victory and lead to the occupation of the Palestinian East Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza as well as the Syrian Golan Heights, a reality which continues to this day. The violence would result in about 250,000 Palestinians fleeing to neighbouring Jordan and, to a lesser extent, Egypt, in addition to between 80,000 and 100,000 Syrians fleeing the Golan Heights. Many of the 1967 Palestinian refugees were already refugees from 1948.

To get back to Lebanon, by 1975 tensions had risen between the PLO and the Phalangists until the so-called ‘spark’. For a simplified version of a timeline of events before and after 1975 and until 2009, the following is a list provided by Sami Hermez in his book ‘War is Coming: Between Past and Future Violence in Lebanon. As with any list attempting to list key events in a country, it cannot go through them all. One event missing, important for our purposes, is the expulsion of the PLO from Lebanonfollowing the Israeli invasion in 1982.

In post-1990 Lebanon, however, the complexities of wars are often ignored and the narrative that “the Palestinians collectively started the war” never went away. No distinction is made between armed factions and civilians either.

When Lebanon’s civil war ended, the warlords who had engulfed the country in a 15-year conflict found themselves in government. Some have been in power since the 1990s, while others came back to the political scene later on.

With a lot of incentives to turn the attention away from their roles in the war and towards something else, Palestinians found themselves an all-too-easy target. As Khawaja wrote:

“The [Palestinian] refugee presence provided a common enemy that sewed as a crucial unifying factor in postwar Lebanon.”

The influx of Syrians have thrust this tendency once again in the spotlight. For example, a few years ago Lebanese member of parliament Nayla Tueni wrote in her family’s newspaper An-Nahar that Palestinian-Syrians (Palestinian refugees in Syria) seeking refugee from the Syrian war in Lebanon:

“…will lead us to find ourselves facing a new reality, and new settlers, and a new burden, returning to our memories of the Palestinian nightmare in Lebanon [in the 1970s].”

A woman walks past clothes left to dry in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, January 29, 2018. Picture taken January 29, 2018. Credit: Reuters/Mohamed Azakir

Palestinians, accused of threatening Lebanon’s power-sharing system

Another way Palestinians are trotted out as a boogeyman has to do with demographics.

The Palestinian population is widely accepted as standing at 450,000, often rounded up to 5,00,000. This figure, however, was recently debunked following a census by the government’s Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee, which revealed that there are 174,422 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

But since 1990 in particular, the 500,000 number has been used by Lebanese politicians and religious figures seeking to stir up xenophobic sentiment to prevent any discussion on the rights of Palestinians in the country.

The widespread politicization of Palestinian refugees could best be summed up by a 2014 interview with the head of the Maronite Church, Boutros Al-Rahi, in which he said:

“Now you want to throw at us the million and a half Syrians. These equal one third of the Lebanese population. And with half a million Palestinian, that’s 2 million, that’s equal to exactly half the Lebanese population.”

Echoing a common trend in Israeli politics, that of viewing Palestinians as demographic threats, Gebran Bassil even said in 2012, “When we say we do not want displaced Syrians and Palestinians, it is because they want to take our place.”

Given that most Palestinian refugees are Sunni Muslim, the idea of giving them basic rights is often publicly avoided or outright opposed on the ground that it would disturb the balance between the country’s sects.

Lebanon has what’s known as a confessionalist system (better known as sectarianism) that distributes power based on religion: the president has to be a Maronite Christian, the speaker of parliament has to be a Shia Muslim, and the prime minister has to be a Sunni Muslim. Each sect also has a number of seats allocated in the parliament. AJ+ has a good video explainer of how this works below:

To supporters of this system, it allows the country’s three most populous sects to feel represented. The country itself is estimated to be roughly 27% Sunni, 27% Shia, 40% Christian (of which half are Maronites) and 6% Druze, in addition to a small number of Jews and other religious groups.

One important factor to remember is that the aforementioned numbers are not taken from any official state census as there hasn’t been one since 1932. And in the absence of formal numbers, perceived ones can be (and often are) politicised.

For example, a sectarian interpretation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni, being a patron of the Lebanese Palestinian Dialogue Committee would be that, as a Sunni, he wants Palestinians to become citizens as it would benefit Sunni politicians at the expense of Shia and Christians.

This has contributed over the years to popular resistance to the integration of Palestinian refugees into Lebanese society, whether via naturalisation or via increased rights. But it doesn’t mean that no Palestinian was ever naturalised. Whereas no official numbers are available, it is estimated that around 60,000 Palestinians were made Lebanese citizens as of 1996.

(Disclaimer: The grandfather of one of the authors, benefiting from the relative ease for Palestinian Christians to be naturalised, is among those naturalised in the 1950s)

But naturalisation was, perhaps unsurprisingly, painted with the language of sectarianism. To give an example, below is an excerpt of a 1996 paper from the US-based Middle East Report:

“In the first round [of naturalisation] in 1994, most were Shi’a from border villages who had Palestinian refugee status; the rest were Sunnis who, for reasons not made public, were naturalised in 1995, perhaps to balance out the Shi’a naturalisation. Maronite protest ensured that the few remaining Palestinian Christians without Lebanese citizenship were then naturalised.”

In other words, whether the topic is naturalization or increased rights, it is the subject of sectarian negotiations rather than considered on the basis of basic human rights.

Joey Ayoub is the MENA Editor at Global Voices as well as a Lebanese researcher currently living in Edinburgh. Elias Abou Jaoude is a Lebanese engineer and activist currently based in Lebanon.

This article was originally published on Global Voices. Read the original article.