Who are the refugees?
Palestinian refugees, according to the UN, are any Arabs who lived in the country for 2 years prior to 1948. This obviously includes a lot of migrant workers who had no previous link with the land. In 1948, when the State of Israel came into being, they and thousands of other Arabs, who had been resident in Israel for many generations, left for neighbouring countries.
Why did they become refugees?
Five Arab countries attacked the fledgling State of Israel directly the British Mandate forces left. They told the people to leave, assuring them that they would “push the Jews into the sea” and create a Palestinian state for them to return to (there had been no Palestinian state before this; the country had been occupied by various powers between AD135 and 1948). Although they captured the West Bank and Gaza, their hoped-for victory over Israel proper did not materialise and the refugees were left stranded.
Didn’t Israel expel them?
There was no official policy to do so and, while some renegade paramilitary groups destroyed Arab villages, other Jews pleaded with their neighbours to stay. Most of those who left did so on the orders of their Arab leaders, e.g. “The most potent factor was the announcements made by the Arab-Palestinian Higher Executive, urging all Haifa Arabs to quit. It was clearly intimated that Arabs who remained in Haifa would be regarded as renegades” (The Economist, 2/10/48) and “[Arab leaders] are responsible for the flight. They disseminated rumours…they instilled fear in the hearts of the Arabs, until they fled” (Jordan’s Al-Urdun, 9/4/53).
How many people were involved?
About 630,000 Arabs left Israel (450,000 of them voluntarily). Of these, 100,000 were allowed to return after the War, 100,000 were absorbed into Arab countries, 50,000 Bedouins joined their tribes in Jordan and Sinai, and 50,000 migrant workers returned home. That left 330,000 refugees whom nobody wanted.
Isn’t it Israel’s fault?
At the same time as the Arabs were leaving Israel, Jews were being forcibly evicted from Arab countries. Israel welcomed all 820,000 of them without question, so had no room to absorb the 330,000 homeless Arabs as well. They offered compensation but it was rejected. The Arabs who had chosen not to flee were made Israeli citizens, with the same rights as Jews.
Why are they still refugees?
The obvious solution would have been for the Arab nations, left with vast amounts of confiscated Jewish wealth and lands, to offer the refugees a home. They refused, so the UN set up refugee camps. “We brought disaster upon the refugees by inviting them to leave their land, their homes, their work and their industry… We have rendered them dispossessed” (Khalid al-Azm, former PM of Syria). “The Arab armies abandoned the Palestinians, forced them to emigrate, and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos where the Jews used to live (Mahmoud Abbas).
Where are the camps?
There are 27 in the West Bank and Gaza and a further 32 in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, all administered by the UN. The West Bank camps have been the source of numerous terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians, e.g. when the IDF raided Jenin in 2002, they discovered arms caches, bomb factories and rocket-making plant. “The decades of humiliation and deprivation in the refugee camps would ultimately turn generations of Palestinians into potential or active terrorists” (Benny Morris).
Why do the refugees still live in camps?
They could easily have been integrated into the West Bank and Gaza while these areas were under Arab occupation (1948-1967), but they were left homeless. The West Bank has been administered by the PA since 1993 and Gaza by Hamas since 2005, but they too have not attempted to rehabilitate their people into permanent housing.
Are they being exploited?
The refugees have been left in squalid camps for 60 years, sacrificed by their Arab “brothers”, because their misery is good propaganda and a useful bargaining tool. “We exploited them in the service of political purpose” (Khalid al- Azm, former PM of Syria). “We will give the land to anyone – Ibos, Koreans, Americans – anyone but the Palestinians, because we must keep their hatred directed against Israel” (a Syrian official when asked why, since they were seeking immigrants, they would not admit Palestinians).
Why don’t they have the right of return?
The Second World War created 100m refugees and the partition of India 5m, but nobody has ever suggested that their descendants should have the right to return to their ancestral lands. The Palestinians are the only refugees to whom the UN applies a definition that includes descendants.
Palestinian refugees now number over 4m and all of them are demanding the right to return to Israel, a country neither they nor their parents have ever seen. To absorb all of them would dangerously alter Israel’s demographics, since 20% of its population is already Arab.
The right of return is based on a desire not of individuals to return to a particular home or village, but of a people to return as a majority so as to eliminate the State of Israel. “It is well known and understood that the Arabs, in demanding the return of the refugees to Palestine, mean their return as masters… they intend to annihilate the State of Israel” (Foreign Minister of Egypt, 1948).
What is the UN’s role in all this?
The UN includes in its membership dozens of Arab/Muslim states who deny Israel’s right to exist. In 2002, the year that a bomb factory was found in one of its refugee camps, a UN Human Rights Commission Resolution condoned “all available means, including armed struggle to establish a Palestinian State”. The Palestinian camps are administered by the UN Relief and Works Agency, which was set up specifically for Palestinian refugees (all others are looked after by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees). UNRWA not only has a much broader definition than UNHCR of who is a refugee, but it has a different mission: It is not concerned with finding permanent homes for the refugees but only with maintaining and supporting them in the camps.
Given that it is geared towards dependency, it could be argued that their administration of the camps is only exacerbating the situation.
See also:
Who are the Palestinians?
Is Israel occupying the West Bank?
Are the settlements Illegal?
Is the media biased against Israel?
October 2009
