It is startling to realise that the majority of Palestinians (it is estimated around 4 million) are refugees, whether living in refugee camps in the West Bank or in countries neighbouring Israel/the OPT. There is also an extensive diaspora of Palestinians elsewhere in the world, many of whom say that they would return to Palestine were it to gain its independence (thus refugees in a wider sense). Having now persisted for over sixty years, this is the longest standing and most extensive refugee problem in the world. Not a few have been made refugees twice, first by the 1948 Nakba and then through being displaced from their homes by Israeli demolitions. Or else they went to Gaza in 1948, as did many, and have now been brutally bombed.

What the Nakba meant for Palestinians has been kept hidden in Israeli society and is only now coming to light. It is reckoned that 536 Palestinian villages were destroyed. 750,000 Palestinians became refugees. In Jerusalem 48% of Palestinian buildings were taken over by Jews. Many of these refugees took their house keys with them, expecting to return after the war. These keys have become a symbol of the refugees’ aspiration to return. What were previously Palestinian villages have frequently been built on top of so that there is now an Israeli village, or the area has been made into park land. This, too, has been hidden. Trees have been planted in these parks so that the remains of the villages should not be seen. In the past Israeli children had money boxes to collect funds for these trees. Thus the Palestinian heritage is buried under parks. In an act of supreme irony, the Israeli Supreme Court sits on land which was formerly a Palestinian village.

In the early years Palestinians were sometimes able to return to see the home which had been theirs, though Israelis will not usually let Palestinians enter the house. These days many would have no way of traveling there; though others continue to live in close proximity to their former village. People have maintained village groups in the refugee camps – so that a youngster will say that he or she ‘comes’ from such-and-such a place, a village which he or she has never seen. I found an Israeli woman (who saw counted herself a liberal) impatient at this, speaking of ‘the woman with a key for a house which doesn’t exist any more’ and saying that the Palestinians must move on.

The UN has continued each year to pass Resolution 194, first passed on 11 December 1948. Article 11 (the so-called ‘right of return’) reads that that body: ‘Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.’ But this right of return was not even broached during the Oslo process, it being bracketed until the envisaged ‘final settlement’. It would seem much more likely that any ‘return’ will simply be to the West Bank.

Entrance to Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem

Scene in the camp

Mural with the names of the places from which the refugees have come

Murals

Specialist Literature:

- Palestine’s Ongoing Nakba, al majdal, double issue no. 39/40 (Autumn 2008/Winter 2009) BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.

- ‘Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return’, leaflet, Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

- ‘Dreams of Home’, Lajee Center, Aida Camp, Bethlehem (info@lagee.org).

1. -Walid Khalidi, ‘Introduction’ to All that Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. See details here.
   

2. -‘The Ongoing Nakba’ Palestine News, (PSC magazine) summer 2010.

See Further on this Site:

1. -Jaffa
   

2. -History & Background, 1948.
   

3. -Palestine Papers

The Facts of the Refugee Question

It is reckoned that there are between 5 and 6 million Palestinian refugees (some estimates are higher, depending on how ‘refugee’ is to defined); either themselves, or descendents of, those who fled in 1948. The Palestinian is the largest and most protracted refugee problem in the world. In 1948 and each year since the UN has passed Resolution 194, the so-called ‘right of return’, which reads that that body:

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

It is important to note that it is an individual right of return; such that Palestinians who would uphold this stress that no one else can take this right away from them individually. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) states that those who leave their homes, for whatever reason, have the absolute right to return. Such a ‘right of return’ has, for example, been applied (not least by the Americans) to the case of displaced Kosovans, many of who have returned to their homes.

For a long time it has been widely assumed that any ‘right of return’ was likely to be only to any Palestinian state; but, naturally, Palestinians are unwilling to concede this. The question of refugees is undoubtedly the most intractable question that any two-state, or for that matter one-state, agreement would have to resolve. It is not of course known how many would in fact choose to return. It may be relevant to say that the total Jewish population of Israel at the end of 2010 was 5.8 million; while the Palestinian population is reckoned to be 2.8 million in the West Bank, 1.5 million in Gaza and 1.2 million Israeli citizens. Further there are questions to be solved such as Jordan’s right to pursue claims for the costs it says it has borne as a host country.

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