Who Are Palestinian Refugees?

A brief historical account of Israeli and Palestinian conflict

The Palestinian and Israeli conflict has been ongoing since the 1800s. Initially, the migration of European Jews to Palestine did not cause conflict, but after the holocaust, more European Jews were of the opinion that they needed their own country. This caused the influx of European Jews – who constituted 90% of the Jews at the time – in the then British-controlled Palestine.  This was seen as an attempt at colonization and thus the conflict between the Arabs of the land and the settler Jews grew.

In 1947, in an effort to bring peace, the United Nations intervened. Contrary to their principle of self-determination for the people, the UN – instead of allowing for a negotiation between the two parties – split the land. Due to Zionist pressure, the UN allocated 55% of the land to a Jewish state. This was despite the fact that the Jews only represented 30% of the whole population and owned a maximum of seven per cent of the land.

Two years after the UN decision, there was a war between the Palestinian and Israeli forces. By the end of the war, Israel was in possession of 77% of the land – except for the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The second war took place in 1967 and was known as the “Six Day War”. The final 23% of Palestinian land was occupied by Israel and is now known as ‘Occupied Palestinian Territories’.

Below is an image of the progression of the Israeli land occupation since 1947. The green area on the third panel of the image indicates what is now known as Occupied Palestinian Territories.The uniqueness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was believed to mean that Palestinian refugees should also be uniquely defined.

Defining Palestinian refugees

After World War II, the international community had taken the consensus to not include Palestinian refugees under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) mandate. Rather, a special UN organization was set up to be in charge of Palestinian refugees and was known as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). This was done in 1950.

In the following year, the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees was put into place and also excluded Palestinian refugees. There was international support for this exclusion as there was the fear that the competence of the UNRWA and the UNHCR might overlap. Additionally, many Arab countries believed that having Palestinian refugees taken care of under a separate mandate meant that more attention would be paid to them. Thus, the 1951 Convention excluded Palestinian refugees through article 1(d) stating:

“This Convention shall not apply to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance.”

The latter part of this clause indicates that the 1951 Convention would apply to said persons if  the special UN assistance comes to an end.

Since Palestinian refugees do not fall under the 1951 Convention, they are defined differently. In fact, the UNRWA defines a Palestinian refugee as “any person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of 1948 conflict”. This definition is also meant to englobe successor generations and thus, by 2012, the number of refugees per these standards amounted to five million. It should be borne in mind that because “the definition was developed to implement the UNRWA relief mandate”, it does not include all the Palestinians who lost their land and were displaced. Thus, the definition was not aimed at providing the population with claims to property, national self-determination and the right to return. In fact, the inadequacy of the definition was acknowledged by the UNRWA in their first annual report, stating that ‘certain groups of deserving people’ had been left out of the definition. Compared to the definition, the mandate of the UNRWA is one which is constantly being reviewed and after the 1967 war, it was extended to Palestinians affected by “the 1967 and subsequent hostilities”.

In 2016, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) established through a survey that there are 5.6 million recognised Palestinian refugees.  Per this survey, there were an additional 2.7 million refugees who were unlisted and were living in the OPT and abroad.

There have been lengthy debates about the issue surrounding the narrow definition of Palestinian refugees. Yet, for the purpose of the present discussion, this paper will focus on the refugees formally recognized by the UNRWA. This is mostly because data collected on refugees have been collected based on this same definition. Despite the differences in definition, the most striking difference between other refugees and Palestinian ones living in OPT, is that the latter chose to remain in the country where they are at risk.

Why are there refugees in Occupied Palestinian Territories?

The case of Palestinian refugees in OPT is complicated because the Palestinians who were made refugees are now staying in the same area where they got persecuted, except some of them now stay in refugee camps and do not have a home to go to. It seemed beyond the author’s comprehension why there would be refugee camps in the very area where the persecution occurred.

Interestingly, the internal refugees were spread out across the land after the war ended in 1948. They were Palestinians who, although they had lost their homes, stayed in their own villages – irrespective of whether it had been occupied by Israel. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drove the refugees over the borders of the country, in an effort to drive them out. IDF’s mission is  “To defend the existence, territorial integrity and sovereignty of the state of Israel. To protect the inhabitants of Israel and to combat all forms of terrorism which threaten the daily life.”

Despite this effort, it is believed that 25 000 internal refugees had managed to stay on the land. The author wants to venture that – since the occupation of Israel was seen as an act of colonization – many Palestinians wanted to resist by staying in their place of origin. This is despite the fact that they were being put in refugee camps and had to rely mostly on the relief provided by the UNRWA.

It should also be noted that the OPT were only occupied as a final land grab by Israel. Palestinians living there had already learnt that Palestinian refugees who had crossed the border and gone abroad, were not given an opportunity to integrate the respective societies and were not granted their right of return either. Thus, unsurprisingly, the majority of the population of Palestinian refugees is found in the OPT. Those refugees have to stay in refugee camps because, as a result of the 1952 Land Acquisition Law promulgated by Israel, the ownership to their land was transferred to state ownership and Jewish settlements were established.