By Najib Farraj
The Alternative Information Centre has recently published the first comprehensive study on Palestinian refugees, written by three Palestinian scholars, Bilal Shakhsheer, Waheed Qirsh and Nayef Jredat.
The authors claim that the number of refugees has increased from 700,000 to 3 million, according to UNRWA statistics. The refugees are distributed as follows: 40% in Jordan; 21% in Gaza; 17% in the West Bank and 11% in Syria and Lebanon.
The authors note that their study does not include those refugees whose names were erased from the records of UNRWA when they emigrated, acquired a new nationality or moved from the location where they had originally settled, following their flight, to a new address. In addition, the names of some Palestinian refugees were never recorded.
One focus of the study is the problems caused by the decision to differentiate between the Palestinian refugees fleeing the 1948 war and those fleeing the 1967 war. The first group is known simply as "refugees" while the second group is called "refugees of 1967".
A Quadrilateral Committee was set up to discuss the return of the "refugees of 1967" to areas under PNA control.
However, because Israel disagrees with the definition of a refugee and with the statistics agreed upon at the international level, it has refused to allow a solution to be found for the 1948 refugees.
According to Israel, there are no more than 300,000 refugees. This insistence on a significantly lower estimate, and the ongoing deliberations on who or what constitutes a refugee, have together held up progress in the Quadrilateral Committee and stymied any effort to reach an agreement.
The study also points out that the issue of the refugees was brought up within the framework of the multilateral talks, even though neither Syria nor Lebanon has joined those talks. A special follow-up committee, headed by Canada, was established. The objectives it discussed were confined to raising the standard of living in the camps, rehabilitation programs and resettlement plans.
Participating governments have included France and several other European governments. They offered aid and loans for development programs for the camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jordan. They also offered help in finding new homes inside the camps for refugees from diverse areas.
At a meeting of the Committee for Refugees in Antakia in December 1994, Turkey and Bulgaria were cited as models for the successful resettlement of refugees. The United States, especially, gave its fullest support for the proposal to end the work of UNRWA as soon as possible, handing over the responsibility for the refugees to the PNA by 1999.
The study predicts that the debate over who is a refugee, which shackled the Quadrilateral Committee on the refugees of 1967, will occur within the Committee on Refugees. The seeds of this debate can be discerned in the UNRWA 1995 report, published in its Vienna headquarters. For UNRWA, the issue is not political but procedural.
UNRWA defines as refugees those needy individuals who, following the establishment of the state of Israel, took refuge in parts of Palestine, such as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Syria and Lebanon, and were registered by UNRWA officials before July 1, 1952. The term also applies to the children of those refugees and to refugee women who married non-refugees but who later were either widowed or divorced.
The study also describes the events following the Balfour Declaration of 1917 as a model of how a people, deeply rooted in their land, can be elbowed out after a mere two decades.
The authors note that there were 600,000 Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, in Palestine before the Balfour Declaration was published. The Jewish population did not exceed 55,000 then, according to a report submitted by the British mandate government to the League of Nations.
The study also shows how the Zionist movement, supported by the mandatory government, used every possible means to rid themselves of the Palestinians.
The Zionists forged title deeds to settle Jewish immigrants on the lands of Arab farmers and employed tactics combining psychological warfare and massacre to frighten off the villagers. Examples are the destruction of Arab towns and villages now "inside the green line", such as Qubeibeh, Deir Yasseen and Kfur Qasem, and the massacre or ousting of their inhabitants.
According to the study, the Zionists destroyed no less than 69 Arab villages in 1948. The ousted populations sought refuge in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Others landed in Egypt and other Arab states.
The study establishes that, before 1948, Palestinians possessed 80% of the land. They had planted over 50% of the citrus groves and over 90% of the olive groves. The Palestinians also owned over 100,000 stores. By 1948, all of this property had been seized by the Zionists.
In their conclusion, authors Shakhsheer, Qirsh and Jredat underscore the need for a clear definition of a refugee.
Their suggested definition is: "A refugee is anyone whose natural home is Palestine, and who lost their home and livelihood due to hostile activities". The authors insist that the culpability and responsibility for this displacement should be unequivocally attributed to Israel.
They also insist that fresh and accurate statistics on the number of refugees should be gathered, especially as the Oslo accords did not offer a practical solution to the problem of the refugees.
They note that the delays in the Quadrilateral Committee will hamper progress towards a solution for the larger problem of the refugees, and stress that UN Resolutions 237 and 242, passed in 1967, should be used as a reference point for the talks.
[Abridged from the Jerusalem Times.]