40, the basic rights of persons to return voluntarily to their country of origin is reaffirmed and it is urged that international cooperation be aimed at achieving this solution.[xi] UNHCRs support for the right of return is based on the idea that the right of return is a recognized customary norm of international law which is included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Fourth Geneva Convention.[xii]. This website is licensed under a Creative Commons License except where noted. The second largest group of refugees is made up of those Palestinians who were displaced for the first time from their homes and communities in 1967 as well as their descendants. Forced displacement in Palestine and Israel, Principles for a just and lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis. 
If Palestinian refugees are exceptional, it is mainly in the lengths that others are prepared to go to deny their rights under international law, since UNRWA registration of descendants follows established norms and international refugee practice in other similar refugee crises. Israels position on Palestinian refugees has not changed since 1948. On January 14, 2021, outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted about Palestinian refugees, proclaiming (less than) 200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria. A month earlier, on December 11, a group of 22 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to President Donald Trump requesting that he instruct the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration to declassify a report on the approximate number of Palestinian refugees, with the intention of redefining and disenfranchising millions of Palestinian refugees of their refugee status. 1, Special Issue: Palestine 1948, (Autumn, 1988), pp. The Middle East Institute (MEI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-for-profit, educational organization. Only by tackling the issue honestly and forthrightly, including by acknowledging the legitimate claims and grievances of Palestinian refugees, can we hope to find a just and durable solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Ending the occupation is not enough. This means that even if Palestinian refugees fell under UNHCR, their refugee status would remain unchanged until the implementation of a long-term solution that is acceptable to the UNHCR, and that would most likely require a political solution between Israel and Palestine. Many of these communities were later destroyed. More than one million (23%) UNRWA registered refugees live in Gaza, nearly 760,000 (16%) live in the West Bank, 462,000 live in Syria[1], and approximately 420,000 live in Lebanon. In Jordan nearly 95% of all Palestinian refugees have been given citizenship and are able to participate in Jordanian political and economic life. 1, Special Issue: Palestine 1948, (Autumn, 1988), pp. The Israeli government does not recognize Palestinian refugees right to return and continues to say that Palestinian refugees and their descendants cannot be allowed to return to the homes and communities from which they were displaced because their return would be a threat to the maintenance of a continued Jewish demographic majority in Israel. 
An additional 130,000 Palestinians are people or the descendants of people who were internally displaced in the occupied Palestinian territory as a result of the 1967 War.[iii]. Attempts to do away with UNRWA and the Palestinian refugee issue as a whole were wholeheartedly embraced by the Trump administration. Our work is based on the belief in the worth of every person, and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice. They have not been granted Lebanese citizenship and are instead considered foreigners. Sign up to receive the latest publications, event invitations, and our weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox. They have almost no political rights and are denied many social rights including access to government run public services such as education, healthcare, and social security. Yet no one has put forward the argument that these refugee populations do not qualify as refugees or that their numbers are somehow inflated. Join today! Following the 1967 war, AFSC reestablished a presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, opening a child education program in Gaza and a legal aid center in Jerusalem for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. I dont see anything immoral in it., In 1940, the director of the Jewish National Fund Lands Department, which was tasked with purchasing lands for the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, wrote in his diary; There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for the Arabs of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Old Jerusalem. Photo by MAHMUD HAMS/AFP via Getty Images. The UNHCR, the main international body providing services to the worlds refugees, also classifies the descendants of refugees as refugees themselves, via derivative refugee status. To prevent Palestinians from returning or regaining their properties, Israeli authorities passed new measures such as the Absentees Property Law of 1950 and the Prevention of Infiltration Law of 1954, ensuring that Palestinian lands would legally never be returned to them and rather would be used for the resettlement of Jewish immigrants and refugees. Nor would it relieve Israel of its responsibility for the creation of the refugee problem. Moreover, even if Palestinian refugees were to fall under UNHCRs umbrella, they would still fall under UNHCRs definition of a protracted refugee situation, which is defined as a refugee population of 25,000 persons or more who have been living in exile for five years or longerrefugees find themselves in a long-lasting and intractable state of limbo. Since 1949, this resolution together with UNSC Res. executing child crisis iman rafah another The Jewish population was only a majority in the middle (coastal) section of the proposed state, but even here 65 percent of the Jewish population lived in the two cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa meaning that Palestinians were the majority population in nearly all of the area set aside for the new Jewish State.[x]. According to the law of state responsibility in international law, Israel is responsible for Palestinian refugees and their right to obtain restitution and compensation for their lost properties, regardless of the reasons that Palestinians were not on their properties at the time of their seizure by the state of Israel. Plan Dalet outlined an explicit strategy for taking over Palestinian communities and expelling the Palestinian population, stating: operations can be divided into the following categories: - Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines and debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously. Under international law, all refugee populations, including Palestinian refugees, have a fundamental right to voluntarily return to their homeland, regardless of the conditions under which they left. There were 61 bodies. Palestinian refugees right to return to the homes from which they were displaced is well established in international law. The nature of the conflict changed dramatically in February and March of 1948 when Jewish forces began systematically depopulating Palestinian communities. In June 2008, Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA) made a statement alleging that Palestinian refugees had no connection to the territory historically known as Palestine and were not in fact refugees, and that a resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue should be resettlement in other countries regardless of whether there is ever a formal resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The proposal, first put forward in 2002 by then Israeli Tourism Minister Benny Elon, also called for Israels annexation of the occupied West Bank. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. As a result, the actual number of Palestinian refugees is inflated. Women came, begged for mercy. Principles for a Just and Lasting Peace in Palestine and Israel, Survey of Palestinian Refugees (2008-2009), Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine, https://afsc.org/story/boycott-divestment-and-sanctions-explained, http://www.endtheoccupation.org/section.php?id=203. Seventy-three years after more than 700,000 Palestinians became refugees following the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict, the loss of their homeland and dispossession of their property continues. 2018 Middle East Institute All Rights Reserved | Accessibility Policy |Built by Social Driver. In the coming days and weeks, we will work to deliver vital food and health services, including psychosocial support, to those who need it most. Myth: Palestinian refugees are the only refugees to pass on their refugee status to their descendants. It is important to note that many of the Palestinian refugees in Syria have been displaced as a result of the Syrian war and Palestinians who remain in Syria have suffered together with other Syrians as a result of the war. [vii] The practice of depopulating and destroying Palestinian communities was turned into official government policy by Plan Dalet which was finalized by the pre-state Jewish leadership in March 1948. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin. On February 15th 1948 all of the residents of the villages of Qisarya, Barrat Qisarya, Khirbat Al-Burj, and Atlit which are near present day Cesarea were forced from their homes. [vi]Many Palestinians who fled attempted to return to their homes during or after the end of the fighting but were blocked from returning by Israeli forces. It is often claimed that Palestinians left their homes in 1948 voluntarily or at the behest of Arab leaders. For the last 73 years, Palestine refugees have remained a scattered people, further displaced by conflicts, blockaded and living under occupation, deprived of rights and fervently longing for a resolution of their exile and dispossession. Plan Dalet was distributed to all of the major Zionist paramilitary organizations, with explicit instructions regarding Palestinian villages that fell in the territory that Zionist leaders sought for the creation of their state, the majority of which resulted in being 78% of historic Palestine. From IDF archives utilized by Ilan Papp these operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their rubble), and especially those population centers that are difficult to control permanently; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. As of 2014 this included approximately 5 million refugees who are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and an additional one million Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 but who could not or did not register with UNRWA for assistance.[ii].
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