Who is a Palestinian Refugee?

14 July 1999—According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), created in 1948, the Palestinian refugees and their descendants include “any person whose normal place of residence was [British Mandatory] Palestine during the period of 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both his home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Palestinian refugees outside of UNRWA’s responsibility include:

• refugees from the 1948 war who fled to countries where UNRWA did not operate;
  
• internally displaced Palestinians who remained in what became Israel;
  
• residents of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and their descendants who lost their homes for the first time in the 1967 war;
  
• Palestinians deported from the Israeli-occupied territories after 1967;
  
• Palestinians who were outside of Palestine when the 1948 or the 1967 wars began, and whom the Israelis would not allow to return;
  
• Palestinians who left the Occupied Territories to study, visit relatives, work, etc., who were not permitted by the Israelis to return;
  
• 1948 Palestinian refugees who failed to register with UNRWA.

Number and Geographical Distribution:

In 1998 there were some 3.6 million Palestinian refugees registered with UNRWA, almost half of the estimated worldwide Palestinian population of some seven million. They include the 750,000 Palestinians driven from their land and homes during the 1948 war, as well as 400,000-500,000 additional Palestinians made refugees by the 1967 war.

The refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, densely populated and poor, have become permanent towns and villages. Most of the camp dwellers depend on the Israeli or Palestinian economies. All are stateless, i.e. they have no citizenship. Jordan has integrated its 1948 refugees into the local economy and has extended them Jordanian citizenship. In addition, it also hosts several hundred thousand “displaced persons” who were either expelled from Palestine in the 1967 war, or caught outside and not allowed to return, or lost their residence rights for other reasons.

Jordan wantsto return this group to the West Bank. When it signed the peace treaty with Israel in 1994, the Jordanian government insisted on the formation of a quadripartite committee in which Jordan, Israel, the Palestinians, and Egypt would negotiate the status of displaced persons.

Palestinian refugees in Syria remain stateless. They receive the same benefits as Syrian citizens, however, and have been integrated into the Syrian economy. The most desperate Palestinian refugees are those living in Lebanon’s refugee camps. All the Lebanese governments since 1948 have refused to grant them citizenship, to integrate them into the local economy, or to ease their lives in any material way, fearing that permanent settlement of the refugees, most of whom are Sunni Muslims, would upset Lebanon’s tenuous religious and sectarian balance. Lebanon insists that ultimately all the refugees within its borders must return to a Palestinian state or go elsewhere.

Competing Versions of History:

The Israeli version of history, deeply embedded in Zionist ideology, is starkly different from that of the Palestinians. Most Israelis blame the Arab states for creating the refugee problem by refusing to accept the UN partition of Palestine in 1947, declaring war on Israel, and urging the Palestinian population to leave until the Arab armies had defeated the Zionists. Few Israelis would agree with the Palestinian view that Israel itself was responsible for “ethnic cleansing,” and that in rescuing themselves from the tragedy of the Jewish holocaust they, in turn, created another tragedy of loss and exile for Palestinians.

The Palestinian version of history is now being confirmed by a new generation of Israeli historians. They argue that, although there may not have been a coordinated strategy to “transfer” the whole Palestinian population, Israel’s founding fathers recognized that a large Arab population could threaten the Jewish character of the emerging state. Then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his contemporaries used specific acts or threats of force to terrorize Palestinians into evacuating their homes in large numbers. The outstanding instance of such use of force was the massacre of over 100 Palestinian civilians at the village of Deir Yassin on 9 April 1948, conducted by fighters of two irregular Jewish forces, the Irgun and Stern Gang.

Property Expropriation:

While the Israeli and Palestinian versions of history remain at odds with each other, there is no ambiguity about the massive forced transfer of property from Palestinian to Israeli hands. When Israel was established in 1948, Jews controlled only eight percent of the land; the British government held an additional six or seven percent.

Today the situation is nearly reversed, with 93 percent of the land in Israel being held by Israeli Jews. Much was seized from Palestinian refugees now living outside of Israel, as well as from some 230,000 Palestinian Israeli citizens remaining inside. Jewish immigrants quickly settled on the refugees’ land, sometimes occupying their homes, sometimes erecting new towns near bulldozed Palestinian villages. Additionally, some 97 percent of the West Bank and 40 percent of Gaza are physically controlled by the Israeli military.

International Legal and Political Response:

After Israel won the war in 1948, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 194 stating that Palestinian refugees should be permitted to return or receive compensation. Israel explicitly accepted this as a condition of membership to the UN. The U.S., in 1949, persuaded Ben-Gurion to accept a proposal to allow the return of 100,000 Palestinian refugees in exchange for peace by the Arab states and resettlement of all the other refugees in the neighboring Arab countries, but the Arabs rejected this, and Israel later reneged on it.

UNRWA has helped provide food, shelter, schools and clinics to the refugees living in the camps. By keeping the refugees together, UNRWA has helped the Palestinians preserve their identify and keep alive their hope for eventual justice.

The only Palestinian-Israeli exchanges on refugees in recent years have been through the multilateral working group on refugees that was created along with other such groups at the 1991 Madrid peace conference. The U.S., the European Union states, Canada, Egypt and, Jordan also take part in these groups. The refugee group, chaired by Canada, has worked on non-political and technical issues, reserving the core issues for the final status talks.

Fourth Generation Refugees:

Four generations of Palestinian refugees—some 3.6 million persons in all—continue to await resolution of their status as refugees. Most Palestinians now accept Israel’s right to exist and the need for peace through a two-state solution. While polls indicate that most desire to return to their homes rather than receive compensation, it is clear that a lasting resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict will require a just settlement of the refugee question.

This brief was compiled by Center staff.

This information first appeared in Information Brief No. 1, 14 July 1999.