UNRWA
AT 70
PALESTINIAN
REFUGEES
IN CONTEXT
UNRWA AT 70
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES
IN CONTEXT
UNRWA
AT 70
PALESTINIAN
REFUGEES
IN CONTEXT
Editor: Pietro Stefanini
Design and Layout: Isaac Gertman, The Independent Group
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-901924-62-6
Copyright © Palestinian Return Centre 2020
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CONTENTS
7
PREFACE
Karen Abu Zayd
8
INTRODUCTION
Pietro Stefanini
12
SOLIDARITY IN TIMES OF TROUBLE:
NABLUS AND THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN 1948
Johnny Mansour and Ilan Pappè
21
WHOSE AGENCY?
UNRWA AND THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN HISTORY
Anne Irfan
30
‘I’M A REFUGEE, BUT I LIVE IN PALESTINE, MY HOMELAND.’
NARRATIVES OF HOME, CAMP AND IDENTITY AMONG PALESTINIAN
REFUGEES IN THE WEST BANK
Sophie Richter-Devroe
45
DEFINING WHAT IS ‘IMPORTANT’ AND WHAT IS ‘URGENT’
IN THE PALESTINIAN ISSUES. TOWARD ENGAGING UNRWA
IN THE CAMP GOVERNANCE
Sari Hanafi
54
ADVANCING PALESTINIAN REFUGEE RIGHTS AFTER
A 70 YEAR LONG IMPASSE: WHAT ROLE FOR INTERNATIONAL LAW?
Franesca P. Albanese
70
UNRWA AND PALESTINE REFUGEES:
SERVICING PEACE INTO AN EIGHTH DECADE
Terry Rempel
92
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
PREFACE
KAREN ABU ZAYD
This remarkable collection of essays based on presentations at the London conference ‘UNRWA at 70: Responding to crises and building a just future’ is a must read for
all who are interested in the past, present and future of Palestine refugees.
What stands out in the analyses from different perspectives and time periods,
are both the criticisms and praise from the several writers, describing various periods and locales. Even more striking is the depiction of the resilience and strength of
the refugees who have managed to confront decades of political and social difficulties, and outright opposition, but with strength and wisdom, and slow but sure advances. Despite multiple adversaries and adversarial conditions, they have carried
on with determination, goodwill and hope, and, most of all, the knowledge that their
cause is just.
The quality and breadth of the articles reward readers from different backgrounds and interests with intertwining depictions of both historical and present
day encounters, as Palestinians live their challenged lives with strength, fortitude
and optimism for the sake of their future, and that of their children.
The participants could not leave the conference without a genuine appreciation
of the depth and breadth of Palestinian life, culture and politics, despite decades of
struggle-which continues unrelentingly. The issues are covered from many different
Palestinian viewpoints, but always, steadfastly, acknowledging, and believing that
one day the shadow of refugeehood will be left behind. Contributors come from a
variety of backgrounds, and described different challenges, but all with the commitment to a future that would reward the refugee struggle.
No matter how or why one approaches this fascinating, historical compilation,
the reader will be rewarded, with old and new insights, conveying possibilities for
that future which will be a tribute and a reward to those who have engaged in years
of struggle for justice.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
7
INTRODUCTION
1
PIETRO STEFANINI
This book grew out of a one-day conference hosted at the British Library in London,
UK organised by the Palestinian Return Centre with the collaboration of the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies and the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. The conference took place on November 30, 2019 to coincide with
the seventieth anniversary since the establishment of UNRWA (December 8, 1949).
Along with marking the Agency entering into its eighth decade of existence, the conference was organised in response to the US-Israeli plan to defund UNRWA and to
liquidate the issue of Palestinian refugees once and for all. This book, in its many
perspectives—historical, political, legal, ethnographic - centres Palestinian refugees
as political subjects that aren’t merely passive recipients of humanitarian assistance
but have, and continue to, actively assert and articulate their demands. The collection of academics whose work is included in this book have made important and
ground-breaking contributions in their respective fields. The articles in this volume
are in no way a comprehensive account of UNRWA and Palestinian refugees in the
past seven decades. It is a modest attempt to enter a new decade learning from the
past while offering thoughtful and critical research for the future.
Ilan Pappè and Johnny Mansour’s chapter ‘Solidarity in times of Trouble: Nablus and the Palestinian Refugees in 1948’ shines light on a little known but significant instance of community-based response during the Nakba—the dispossession
of Palestinians to make way for the creation of the Israeli state. Their contribution
explores the emergence of a solidarity network that preceded the creation of UNRWA,
which showed remarkable intra-Palestinian support. They have obtained access to
previously unpublished documents from the Nablus’ municipal library that detail
the work of a committee created specifically to support the newly displaced Palestinians. The documents recorded fully the work of this Nablus committee’s engagement
with Palestinian refugees for over a year. The Nablus municipality provided food,
medicine and money to a community that otherwise would have struggled to survive.
The documents reveal a story of vital solidarity towards a huge influx of refugees,
notwithstanding the municipality’s scarce resources, at a time of political limbo and
while fighting went on in their vicinity. In the concluding remarks the authors discuss
the implications of this historical case study for refugee responses globally and with
1. I would like to thank all the
contributors for their work, which
made this book possible. I would
also like to thank those who
were involved in the ‘UNRWA
at 70’ conference but could not
contribute chapters to the book
due to other commitments: Ghada
Karmi, Karma Nabulsi, Leila Hilal
and Michael Dumper. In terms of
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
production, I’m grateful to Isaac
Gertman for his work on the cover
and internal design.
8
Palestinians in particular. Pappè and Mansour draw attention to an interesting hypothetical dynamic that dominant discussions in the media have largely ignored to the
benefit of Israel’s hegemonic order: the possibility that following the Syrian conflict
the Palestinian community in Israel could have absorbed Palestinian refugees fleeing
the violence of war. In doing so, they offer further arguments that support processes of refugee returns in times of crisis, and situate solidarity as a viable alternative
framework to the reliance on international aid.
UNRWA was first established with the tasks of short-term humanitarian care
(‘relief’) and longer-term refugee integration and resettlement (‘works’). Rosemary
Sayigh notably suggests that Palestinians initially considered UNRWA to be ‘part of
the machinery of dismemberment and dispersion’2 intent on settling the refugees
in host countries rather than finding a political solution to their dispossession.3 This
led refugees to contest the types of policies UNRWA planned to impose. Palestinian
refugees have thus often resisted resettlement plans they saw as a way to undermine
their right of return, while seeing short-term aid as a deserved prerogative from the
international community. Anne Irfan’s chapter ‘Whose agency? UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees in history’ analyses the paradoxes inherent in UNRWA, given the
tensions resulting from its set-up. Western states primarily fund the Agency, yet over
90 percent of its employees are Palestinians. Further, without the compliance of Palestinians the Agency could not carry out its work successfully. These are the leverages Irfan traces through a historical perspective, which centres Palestinian refugees
as active agents and activists, maximizing their limited power over UNRWA. She discusses the ways in which Palestinians through protests and informal leverage have
exerted their influence, both as aid recipients and employees. The tensions in how
the organization operates, she suggests, can also be attributed to the origins of UNRWA and the politics of humanitarianism emerging out of oppressive structures such
as colonialism. Nonetheless, Irfan’s chapter calls for further attention to the ways in
which Palestinian refugees have been remarkably successful in forcing UNRWA to
acknowledge and meet their demands.
Terry Rempel’s chapter ‘UNRWA and Palestine Refugees: Servicing Peace into
a Eight Decade’ advances a further historical account by analysing a postage stamp
from 1960 made for the occasion of World Refugee Year. He uses the images in the
stamp to reflect on the present predicament of Palestinian refugees and UNRWA.
Rempel uses the stamp’s three interrelated images—the tent, two young refugees,
and a map of Palestine—to analyse what the artist may have wanted to convey about
the ‘Palestinian refugee story’. In regards to the tent, Rempel suggests the image
shows a clear representation of the loss of home and livelihood, alluding to refugees’
eligibility for UNRWA’s relief and works program. Meanwhile, the depiction of two
child refugees seemed to convey UNRWA’s goal of raising funds to help pay for the
expansion of its education and vocational training programme during World Refugee Year. Interestingly, Rempel contends that the artist might have used the map of
2. Sayigh, R. (1984), Palestinians:
From Peasants to Revolutionaries.
London: Zed Books, p. 109.
3. Khalili, L. (2009), Heroes And
Martyrs Of Palestine. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
9
Pietro Stefanini
Palestine to suggest that a political solution involved a process of decolonization. In
the concluding remarks of the chapter it is offered some reflections on the challenges
UNRWA presently faces. Here Rempel focuses on three major concepts that inform
UNRWA’s work, which are human development, refugee livelihoods and self-reliance, and peace-serving. Particular attention to these notions and their application,
argues Rempel, may support UNRWA to better carry out its mandate in light of present challenges.
Sophie Richter-Devroe’s chapter investigates narratives of home, camp and
identity among Palestinian refugees in the West Bank. Richter-Devroe’s ethnographic account exposes the paradoxes of refugee life and identity for Palestinians
displaced inside the homeland. Her intervention is attentive to the positionality of
West Bank refugees, which are subjected to a multiplicity of sovereignties—i.e. the
Palestinian Authority (PA), UNRWA and the Israeli settler-colonial regime. This complexity deserves nuance to fully comprehend the ways in which refugees struggle to
maintain their unique refugee identity. Relying on fieldwork conducted in the refugee camps of Aida and Deheishe in the Occupied West Bank, Richter-Devroe traces
the evolving connotations of refugee identity, camp and home. She analyses the way
these notions have transformed over time, investigating three related but distinct periods: the aftermath of 1948 Nakba, the First Intifada (1987–1993), and the post-Oslo
period under PA governance (1993–today).
Sari Hanafi’s chapter ‘Defining what is “important” and what is “urgent” in the
Palestinian issues. Toward engaging UNRWA in the camp governance’ shifts our
attention to Palestinian refugees in exile, focusing his contribution on the case of
Lebanon. The issue of assimilation or tawtin (naturalisation) has been exploited in
different degrees by the refugees’ host states. The discourse of tawtin has been used
by certain host countries (most prominently Lebanon) to claim that conferring full
rights amounts to assimilation and therefore would jeopardise the refugees’ right
of return. Ruba Salih elucidates how refugees deconstruct this top-down rhetoric
stating that they ‘defy the opposition between return and rights, which they do not
see as mutually exclusive political projects.’4 Refugees recognise how the tawtin narrative serves the host countries’ aim to legitimize their denial of rights. Hanafi’s essay
provides an important addition to these debates through advancing the distinction
between what is important and what is urgent for Palestinian refugees in the present
times. He seeks to unsettle the debate among the Left regarding the principal vs secondary contradictions dichotomy. Exemplary of the essence of Hanafi’s intervention
is the text of a banner that he encountered in the Palestinian refugee camp of Beirut’s
Shatila in 2005: ‘the right to return, but we want to live.’ The ‘important vs urgent’
frame is then used by Hanafi to discuss and argue for UNRWA to further engage in
camp governance.
Francesca Albanese’s chapter titled ‘Advancing Palestinian refugee rights after a
70-year-long impasse: what role for International Law?’, seeks to provide knowledge
4. Salih, R. (2013), ‘Reconciling
Return And Rights: Palestinian
Refugees And The Emergence Of
A "Political Society"’, Jadaliyya,
available at: http://www.jadaliyya.
com/Details/28300/ReconcilingReturn-and-Rights-PalestinianRefugees-and-the-Emergence-ofa-Political-Society, accessed on 22
July 2020.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
10
Introduction
against the numerous efforts to deligitimise Palestinian refugees and their legal
status. Albanese argues that the attacks are based on false representations of facts
regarding UNRWA and Palestinian refugees along with an erroneous portrayal of
international refugee law and the Agency’s mandate. She unpacks the relationship
between Palestinian refugees and international law by looking at, inter alia, the ways
in which the law has evolved since 1948. Her chapter also offers a renewed framework based on international law for advocacy, mobilisation and policy-making in
support of Palestinian refugee rights.
WHAT NEXT FOR UNRWA AND PALESTINIAN REFUGEES?
Another paradox of UNRWA is that it is an organization providing vital services to
Palestinian refugees, yet, its continued existence is a living proof of the injustice imposed upon this population. Absence of the Agency would add to the vulnerability
of refugees facing oppression in different states of the Levant. However, justice for
the question of Palestinian refugees should include the termination of UNRWA and
an end to the permanent humanitarian regime that refugees have faced for the past
seven decades. Yet, given the absence of the issue of return within the mainstream
discourse, UNRWA as an institution continues to be seen as an essential preserver,
or reminder, of the refugees’ right of return. The challenge going forward remains
envisioning how UNRWA can empower refugees in their struggle for liberation and
return to a potential decolonised Palestine.
While discussing at the aforementioned conference the so-called US ‘deal of the
century’, Karma Nabulsi stated that our first responsibility is to understand where
we are at this particular juncture in history. According to her the attacks on UNRWA
and Palestinian refugees are ‘about the project of settler colonialism, its acceleration, and the opportunity that is presented to the settler-colonial project to complete
what was attempted in 1948’.5 She remarked that for this project to be completed it is
necessary ‘a silencing of solidarity and of Palestinians.’ It is hoped that these essays
can make a small contribution against the ongoing erasure of Palestinians and create
more avenues for solidarity.
5. Palestinian Return
Centre (2020, January 8),
UNRWA at 70—Final Panel:
Justice for Palestinian
Refugees, available at:
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=48vYg-Xn80o
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
11
SOLIDARITY IN
TIMES OF TROUBLE:
NABLUS AND THE PALESTINIAN
REFUGEES IN 1948
JOHNNY MANSOUR AND ILAN PAPPÈ
INTRODUCTION
During 1948, the Zionist forces expelled hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The
refugees who were expelled by the army from Haifa, Acre, the villages of the lower
Galilee and the coastal plain made their way to Jenin, Nablus and Tul Karm. They
settled in the towns and in the villages around them.1 The small city of Nablus had to
absorb refugees in great numbers that exceeded that of its own population. A similar
situation befell on the neighboring towns of Jenin and Tul Karm.
We have been very fortunate to gain access in Nablus’ municipal library (and
we are extremely thankful for the director and his staff’s help in this venture) to a
large number of documents that recorded fully the work of a committee in Nablus
that coordinated the engagement with these refugees for about a year and a half. The
documents also relate to work in Jenin and Tul Karm and villages in their vicinities.
The documents reveal a story of genuine solidarity towards a huge influx of refugees by the Nablus municipality with its scarce resources, at a time of political limbo
and while fighting went on in their vicinity (and in the case of the Jenin area at a
time when Iraqi troops were trying to defend it from repeated assaults by the Zionist
forces). We will describe in this chapter what we have found in the boxes and what
are the implications from this historical case study for the current engagement with
the refugee problem in the world in general and the Palestinian refugee question
in particular.
This solidarity operation was led by the municipality of Nablus. The municipality
established a special committee, ‘the general committee for assisting for the refugees
and the displaced persons’, immediately after the arrival of the first refugees. The
1. See Pappe, I. (2007), The
Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
London and New York: Oneworld.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
12
committee operated for 19 months, until the establishment of UNRWA. It managed
not only the affairs of the refugees who reached Nablus but also those who dwelled
in the neighbouring towns of Jenin and Tul Karim and the villages around these
three towns.
The effective swiftness with which the municipality faced the new challenge
would be rare even today in many places. The mayor established a committee that
provided food, medicine and money to a community that otherwise would have hardly survived. This was a very comprehensive project. In fact, not one person was left in
need. In this article we claim that the committee’s motivation and mode of operation
are a fascinating case study which raises afresh the role solidarity plays and can play
in the absorption of refugees.
Although this is not the main focus of our research, we also would like to point to
the methodic and pedantic treatment by the committee and its members, as it transpires from the documents. This allows to appreciate more fully what Palestinians
lost, as individuals, when they were forced out of their home towns and villages (most
of this information was later given to the Red Cross when the committee finished its
activities in 1950). The refugees came to Nablus almost with nothing apart from few
things they were able to grab in the last minute from their homes.
The first wave of refugees came in early 1948 and was made of urban families
from Haifa and Jaffa who hoped that the fighting in their towns would soon subside
and they will return home. Their homes came under severe attacks from the Zionist
gangs such as the Hagana and the Irgun and they decided to leave.
The next significant wave came after the Zionist leadership adopted Plan Dalet
on 10 March 1948. On the basis of that plan in the month of April and the beginning of
May 1948, the vast majority of the people of Jaffa and Haifa were ethnically cleansed
by the Zionist forces.2 Some of the families made their way to Nablus and other towns
in what became the West Bank, others went to the Galilee, where they later were
cleansed once more in the summer and were expelled to Lebanon. In the summer,
when the ethnic cleansing extended to other parts of Palestine, more refugees from
other places came to Nablus and increased the numbers there.
The initiative in Nablus was led by the mayor, Suleiman Abd al-Razaq Touqan.
We were intrigued by the question of what motivated him, and the other staff in the
municipality, to embark on such a complicated project. We were further asking how
could the small municipality with a very limited budget take such good care of the
refugees? We believe that the answer to the first question is his particular personality
and biography and the second has to do with a history of solidarity of a city that has
known human and natural disasters in its modern history.3
Touqan (1893–1958) was born in the Eastern Bank of the Jordan but his family was Nabulsian. He finished his graduate studies in the late Ottoman period. He
was a leading figure during the 1936 revolt in Palestine. He became a mayor in 1925
and was one of the founders of ‘al-Difa’ party, aligned to the Nashashibi clan. After
the Nakba, he embarked on a promising political career in the Hashemite Kingdom,
2. Ibid.
3 For the origins of the committee
see Sabri B. H (1991), The General
Committee for Refugee Affairs in
Palestine Based on the Municipal
Documents and Papers of the
Municipality of Nablus. Nablus: the
Documentation and Publication
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
center in al-Najah University in
Nablus.
13
Johnny Mansour and Ilan Pappè
which included a term as a Minister of Defense in the 1960s.
Touqan tapped successfully into a sense of solidarity among the people of Nablus in the face of the waves of refugees entering the town. This is not the place to
dwell theoretically on the meaning of solidarity and what it entails in societies which
themselves had meager means and resources.4 But suffice it to say that the sense of
belonging to the same nation/community/people of course played an especially important role in developing this network of crucial, lifesaving, assistance. There were
also familial connections between the refugees and the host community, and all in all
we are talking about communities that were geographically neighbours until 1948
and were organically integrated in all walks of life.
Apart from the question of motivation behind this extraordinary human effort
by Touqan, there is the question of how were they able to perform such an operation
so well? It was a very meticulous organisation and a protracted one as the refugees
came in few waves (already the first wave was in numbers the exceed the number of
the city inhabitants and similar situation occurred in Jenin and Tul-Karm and the
villages round them).
THE INITIAL ACTIONS OF THE COMMITTEE
It was Musa Naser (1895–1975), the deputy chair of the committee who conceived the
idea in the first place of such a committee. An aide to the secretary of the Mandatory
government, after serving on the committee, he commenced a political career in Jordan as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the end of the 1950s. He left politics for his life
project, establishing the Bir Zeit college that became a university.
It was established with the help of another body, the National Committee (a body
that led the city in times of crises such as during the Arab Revolt and the days of the
Nakba). All over Palestine in 1948, there were 21 National Committees, the one in
Nablus was the strongest. Mayor Touqan was the chair of the national committee and
so his chairmanship of the three outfits: the municipality, the national committee and
the new committee allowed him to coordinate efficiently the activities for the refugees. At first he thought have a sub-committee for refugees within the national committee but he opted, which in hindsight was a very positive move, for an independent
committee. Later on, he even dropped his chairmanship of the national committee
and focused on the work of the refugee committee. The first meeting took place on
20 June 1948.5 The first decision was to send emissaries to Jerusalem and Amman
to find out the view from both the Palestinian and Transjordanian leaderships and to
learn whether they intended to take over the refugee issue. Thus, Shaykh Abd al-Hamid Sayekh and Musa Naser went on this mission first to find out how much help can
they get from Palestinian organisations.
In the second session the two emissaries brought their report. Whoever was left
of the Arab Higher Committee, the leadership of the Palestinian during the Mandatory period, and other leaders of the community such as Musa Alami, whom, the em4. See Dicket, S; Slovic, P (2009),
“Attentional mechanisms in
the generation of sympathy”.
Judgment and Decision Making.
4(4): 297-306 and Lowenstein, G;
Small, D.A. (2007). “The
scarecrow and the tinman: The
Vicissitudes of Human Sympathy
and scaring”. Review of General
Psychology. 11(2): 112-126.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
5. The Archives of Nablus Public
Library, (ANPL) box 137/4/17, 20
and 23 June 1948.
14
Solidarity in Times of Trouble
issaries met, told them that they had no resources to give them. But it seems that the
Nablus delegation prodded some of the Palestinian politicians to establish a central
Palestine committee for refugees that intended to recruit money for aiding the displaced Palestinians.6 Realising they have no one to rely on, the Nabulsian committee
decided to take matters into its own hands. But they were not alone. The national
committees of Jenin, Tul-Karm, al-Lid, Ramallah and al-Bira decided jointly to use
their budgets for helping the refugees (al-Lid it should be noted was not yet occupied
by the Israeli army). The Jerusalem committee joined in the effort a bit later.
THE ACTUAL WORK
In its third session on 28 June, the committee laid the foundation for the mechanism
for distributing help or as the committee put it: ‘to ease the burden of the refugees’.
They also decided on a covenant or constitution (dustur) that would guide them in the
future (and appointed a secretary, Wasfi Anbatawi, and an assistant Secretary, Jamil
Qadumi). This was also necessary so as to attain the permission of the military governors, who were for such an activity. This was not a mere procedural process. There
were three governors in Nablus and you had to appease them all: The Arab Legion
governor, the Iraqi army governor and the Arab Liberation Army governor. Thus, if
you wanted to purchase a wireless for the refugees you need their approval as Radio
was considered a security issue.7 This move also allowed the committee to ask AlQuds broadcasting, Izzat al-Quds, to announce its existence on the wireless. Throughout the crisis, the Jordanian Refugee Committee in Amman requested reports on the
actions in Nablus, and occasionally offered help (which in most cases did not arrive).
By the beginning of July, the committee was already working very closely with
the municipality of Nablus. The municipality transferred part of its budget to the
Arab Bank for distribution among the refugees. The committee also tried to figure
out how many refugees arrived by July. At that point, the committee’s records give
some idea of the numbers involved for the three towns and the villages around them.
Up to the fall of al-Lid and Ramallah, and not including those who arrived from there,
the number was 154,675 refugees. The committee was relentlessly seeking sources
for funding and aid for the refugees. It succeeded in eliciting promises, but they took
time to materialize—time the refugees did not have. Members of the committee met
King Abdullah who promised 15,000 Palestine pounds (which was at the time also the
currency in Jordan) and they have received, with his encouragement, a promise for
150,000 pounds from the Islamic Bank in Amman and Jerusalem. There were also
promises from the Arab League, but none of them came early enough. The committee
was looking for additional and immediate help and for that reason also approached
the Ramallah branch of the Egyptian Red Crescent Association. Even that assistance
lingered on and most of the aid to the refugees had to be collected locally.
Already in the beginning of July, the committee was dealing with the distribution
of wheat for the refugees. We gleaned from the documents that all the members of
6. Ibid, 23 June 1948.
7. ANPL. Box 137/4/17, 11 July
1948.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
15
Johnny Mansour and Ilan Pappè
committee took constant interest in supervising a smooth and swift system of aid
to the refugees. The documents show also the ability to increase the efforts after the
arrival of the expellees from the towns of Al-Lid and Ramleh (which occurred in the
second week of July 1948). The distribution of necessary commodities was executed
in all three towns: Nablus, Jenin and Tul-Karm.
The committee managed to reach each refugee and provide all of them with 100
mil (the Palestine Pound had 1000 mil in it) a day worth of necessary commodities.
At the same time, it kept sending delegations to Arab capitals seeking more help, as
most of the promises made by the end of July did not materialise. But at least, the
Arab League recognised the committee as an official body responsible for the welfare
of the refugees. This was not a mere achievement, as the Arab League did not look
favourably at an organisation under a Hashemite control.
No less impressive, were the internal debates in the committee about favouritism and professionalism. There were debates about close familial relationships with
refugees that produced some nepotism and lack of professionalism. This was actually quite an impressive process of self-assessment of whether the refugees’ needs
are being met properly.8 In fact, the difficulties for running the operation smoothly
stemmed less from internal inefficiency, and much more from the poisonous clash
between the Hashemites and the Arab Higher Committee over the question of representation of the refugees. As mentioned, The Arab Higher Committee was the leadership of the Palestinians during the mandatory period. After the war, it regrouped,
with Egypt’s help, and formed a government in exile, the All Palestine government,
seated in Gaza. It was headed by Ahmed Hilmi Pasha and was strongly associated
with Haj Amin al-Husayni. It also had the support of the Arab League. The move was
opposed by King Abdullah in Jordan and his Hashemite ally, Iraq. Abdullah responded by a series of actions that were meant to assert his role as the king of the Palestinians as a whole and began the process of annexing the area that what become known
as the West Bank. The Egyptians on the other hand, were loyal to the Arab League’s
resolutions on Palestine and declared that only the Palestinians can represent themselves and that liberated parts of Palestine should be given to them, once the liberation is complete.9
Against this backdrop, the committee had to show loyalty to the Hashemites
but not burn bridges with the representative bodies of the Palestinians, which they
succeed in doing quite impressively. The Mayor’s known connection with the Mufti’s
rivals helped in this respect and the other members had connection to other Palestinian outfits and personalities. The trick seemed to be, not to pretend to be a national, but rather a local, committee. All in all, and in the end of the day, all that did not
matter much as help did not come from either side quickly enough, if at all. When the
local committee realized that there was no help coming from anywhere despite all the
promises, it continued more intensively its own plan of help to the refugees.
As we mentioned, the first step was trying to find financial resources out of the
municipality’s budget, as nothing came from the outside. The next step was to resolve
the issue of dwellings. Most of the houses and flats were in full capacity. So, mosques,
8. ANPL, ibid, 21 July 1948.
9. ANPL, Box 150/4/17, The
whole month of August 1948.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
16
Solidarity in Times of Trouble
churches and open fields were used as spaces for habitation. The fields proved a problem when they were needed for cultivation and again the committee was looking for
an alternative. This went with a search for kindergartens and schools for the children.
The most urgent issue was providing food. The committee energetically bought
commodities on the eastern bank and succeeded in negotiation with the Jordanian
authorities to exempt them from duty or tariff on these deliveries. This arrangement
was almost abolished due to a curious incident. In July 1948, refugees arrived from
the towns of al-Lid and al-Ramla. These two towns were deserted by the Arab Legion,
the Jordanian army, that could have defended them as it showed when it defeated the
Israeli army both in Laturn and the fight over the old and eastern city of Jerusalem.
The incoming refugees from these towns, enraged by this behaviour, took down the
Jordanian flag from the municipality roof. In response, the Jordanian government
stopped the transit of flour to Nablus, that had to go through the Jordanian general committee for the refugees. A special delegation apologised to the king and convinced him it was the action of the few and not the many. The supply (especially of 100
tons of flour) was resumed.10
The next stage was to deal with the health issues, and it appeared that the growing
influx of refugees in the summer required more tents and clothing. The committee now
was divided to three sub-committees, for each of the three towns: Nablus, Jenin and Tul
Karm. The general committee in the towns and in the rural areas acted as mediation
and reconciliation committee: solving issues of wedding and divorce, incidents of violence in the family or in the community. At the village level the committee would enlist,
through the good connection of Mayor Touqan, the local mukhtar. Touqan was willing
to be involved himself in mending the fences for very old disputes on theft of a goat that
occurred many years before or revenge issues of all kinds, when they erupted.
We also learn from the various instances in the boxes that the refugees did not
want to be called, the displaced, al-Nazihun, but rather, Lajiun, refugees believing it is
a better term that respects their right of return. They also were organised themselves,
and using their own professions, such as teachers, to provide the necessary services
for their community.
THE FINAL DAYS OF THE COMMITTEE
There was some interruption when the summer was over, as the Israeli forces tried to
occupy Jenin, but were repelled by the Iraqi forces there (and have also bombarded
heavily Nablus from the air). These actions led to the creation of more sub committees (al-lajna al-Fari’ya in Arabic) at the level of villages (which included the Mukhtar
of each village). All in all, there were 30 subcommittees for 76 villages.
By the end of July in the areas of the three towns there were more than 150,000
refugees. The numbers grew constantly. The documents tell us that by 3 September 1948, the town of Nablus with a population of 25,000 received 26,000 refugees
and the villages around it another 22, 567 refugees. The town of Tul Karm with 8500
inhabitants received 4,185 refugees and its villages 32,443. The town of Jenin with
population of 4,000 received 3,134 refugees and the villages around it 40,600.11 One
10. ANPL, Box 150/4/17,
for the month of July.
11. ANPL, 147/4/17,
3 September, 1948.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
17
Johnny Mansour and Ilan Pappè
can see from this that the small villages around these three towns had to cope with
huge numbers and it was the work of the central committee in Nablus and the subcommittee in each village that saved the lives of these refugees.
The last months of the year were a bit easier to handle, as the numbers decreased
somewhat; some of the refugees moved to Jerusalem, Khalil (Hebron) and the eastern
bank of the Jordan. So, it is possible that families registered in the archive had not
stayed long in the Nablus area. Those who stayed were able to have the beginning of a
new life only thanks to the assistance of the people of Nablus and the other two towns.
The documents are also recorded of the individual stories of refugehood and
steadfastness. They also contain vital information about the origins of the refugee and
what they left behind. Some of this data was registered by the committee in Jordan, and
maybe could be found there. There is also a survey of financial conditions of each individual and family. This was based on the refugees’ own testimonies that were authenticated by a local Shaykh, a priest, a head of municipality or a mukhtar. The detailed
account includes a list of the exact amount of money that was distributed and to how
many families. In terms of money, all in all the committee cared for 73,997 refugees
who were given a total of 11,000 Palestine pounds. Not all the refugees needed money
and were supplied instead in kind. Others received money directly without registering.
Looking back at its work, it is clear that the days of Ramadan were the most difficult ones for providing help, and yet were inspirational days for overcoming shortage
in manpower, commodities and food. Other difficulties appeared through the period
in question such as nepotism in the appointment of family members, or in the choice
of which families to care for as a priority. There were cases of corruption and fabrication of documentation, especially by non-refugees who were looking for help. This
forced the committee to re-issue identity cards. But all in all, by the time its activities
ceased, it was very affective and beyond food, drinks, basic abodes and medicine, it
was able to collect furniture and blankets, from people who themselves did not have
much of it in their own households.
Towards the end of this period, finally the efforts to reach out to external sources
of aid were rewarded. NGOs from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt chipped in, sending
milk, dates, soya and contact their medical staff in nearby institutions to help with the
general effort. During the month of May 1949, the committee’s work slowly came to an
end. The last recording effort was to recalculate the number of refugees and to find out
how many new babies were born, who left, who was arrested etc. This very act signalled
to the refugees that the day of the committee would soon be over, something that caused
dismay among them. But this was the beginning of the end. The work was now done
in a limited capacity and the committee announced in November 1949 that it would
cease its activities in the beginning of 1950. Even after the disbanding of the general
committee in Nablus, the three local ones continued to work in the beginning of 1950.
Slowly the work of the committee was taken by the International Red Cross. There
was no official collaboration, but all the committee’s documentation was passed to
the international organization. In the beginning of 1950, UNRWA came into the picture. It is also noteworthy that after the implementation of the armistice agreement
between Israel and Jordan in June 1949, certain villages were taken out of the three
towns’ jurisdiction because the redrawn boundaries between Israel and Jordan. By
1950, the West Bank was unified with the East Bank and voluntary Palestinian actions
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
18
Solidarity in Times of Trouble
ceased. The same mayor that started it is the one who brought it to an end.
CONCLUSION
Initial research has indicated how resourceful were both the uprooted and the absorbing communities and how their survival was achieved through solidarity and
interdependence, long before international aid has arrived. This model of absorption has far-reaching implications for two discrete, and yet interconnected, issues.
The first is re-writing a chapter in the history of the Palestinians, which hitherto was
under-researched and depicted as a period of disarray and passivity. Secondly, this
case study points to a heritage and customs of solidarity and commitment that shed
light on regional attitudes of compassion and absorption, which were ignored in the
past and today when the refugee issue in the Middle East is discussed in the media
and in politics. This is a question both of image and of practical options in treating the
refugee issue today in the light of the present predicaments.
The absorption of refugees by a small, disempowered and relatively poor community is a fascinating historical case study in the history of the dispossession in Palestine
and beyond, from which much can be learned about the present displaced persons and
refugees’ crisis. And yet despite its obvious weakness, it managed to act as a state in a
state-less reality. Compared even to the best known cases of absorption of refugees in
the current refugee crisis (erupted in 2012) one can hardly encounter a case as this one,
where solidarity plays such an important role (compared to policies, capacities and
social attitudes). Such a show of solidarity in the case of Nablus was not new. Solidarity
was needed quite often when natural disasters hit the town. This was particularly evident before the Nakba during the horrific 1927 earthquake that the people of Nablus
were able to deal with due to show of solidarity and municipal intervention.
We believe that the solidarity shown by Nablus in the face of the catastrophe is
a past model for absorption of refugees with implications for the future. In the wake
of the Syrian crisis and the influx of refugees into Europe and beyond, the research
community focused on international and local governmental and non-governmental
engagement with the crises. The responses by the society at large was left for an anecdotal media coverage, which focused on the more negative aspects of xenophobia
and suspicion.
Looking at the documents one can see that this is not just a case study that shows
how Palestinians taking care of other Palestinians. There is an overall human impulse in this case study which led sections of the community and its leaders to empathise with the predicament of another human being; a complex process that does
not always translates into the kind of massive assistance that we witnessed in 1948
Nablus. We expanded a bit about this aspect as we feel that the role of that kind of
human empathy in the process of absorption of the refugees is an under-researched
topic in refugee studies. From the theoretical literature on the topic, we gather that
aid was not just a question of material assistance but included professional as well as
intuitive mental comfort, assurances and support.12
12. In addition to the sources
we mentioned in note 3 see
also: Dicket, S.; Sagala, N.;
Slovic, P. (1Oct. 2011). “Affective
motivations to help others:
A two—stage model of donation
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
decisions”. Journal of Behavioral
Decision – making. 24(4):361376.
19
Johnny Mansour and Ilan Pappè
Finally, one can also hypothesise what would have happened had Israel allowed
the Palestinian community in the state to absorb in a similar way Palestinian refugees
fleeing from Syria after 2012. Unlike the other historical case studies, the absorption
here would be not only of people from same national, ethnic, religious or cultural
background, but in many cases of close relatives. A common regional or even national
place of origin, as well a traditional culture of hospitality made up—in all these case
studies—for lack of resources and infrastructure. This is a model can be improved
and empowered in the future.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
20
WHOSE AGENCY?
UNRWA AND THE PALESTINIAN
REFUGEES IN HISTORY
ANNE IRFAN
As UNRWA begins its eighth decade of operations, it faces unprecedented levels of
hostility to its work.1 Many criticisms are centred around alleged impropriety in its
positioning; critics from various political perspectives contend that UNRWA should
function differently in view of its status as a UN body, a humanitarian agency, or a Palestinian organisation. Despite the variation, these critics are united in one respect:
they all make claims to ownership over UNRWA, and accordingly extend the right
to pass judgement on its operations. The tensions stemming from these competing claims have been an inherent dynamic of UNRWA’s functioning over the last 70
years, as the Agency has struggled to negotiate its relationships with different actors.
This article examines what this set-up has meant for UNRWA’s relationship with the
Palestinian refugees themselves—the community that arguably holds the greatest
claims to ownership over the Agency, at least in principle. It is argued that despite
the refugees’ formal exclusion from UNRWA’s structures, refugee communities have
succeeded in gaining some leverage over the Agency’s work, through their positions
as its recipients and as a large proportion of its employees.
In structural terms, of course, there are numerous actors with formal leverage
over UNRWA. Officially speaking, the Agency is a UN body mandated by the General
Assembly (UNGA) and accordingly accountable to the latter.2 It must submit annual
reports to the UNGA detailing its work, and on this basis the UNGA votes on whether to renew UNRWA’s temporary mandate every three years or so.3 Yet financially,
UNRWA is dependent not on the UNGA but instead on voluntary donations, which
have historically come overwhelmingly from Western governments, particularly the
US, UK and EU.4 For many decades the US was UNRWA’s largest single donor, but
this changed in 2018 when the Trump administration sensationally defunded the
1. Gunness, C. ‘The UN’s fight
for Palestinian refugees goes
on—but its key agency needs
help’, The Guardian, 8 December
2019, https://www.theguardian.
com/global-development/
commentisfree/2019/dec/08/
the-uns-fight-for-palestinianrefugees-goes-on-but-its-keyagency-needs-help
2. UNGA Resolution 302(IV), A/
RES/302(IV), 8 December 1949.
3. UNRWA Annual Reports,
starting 1951, https://unispal.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/udc.
htm?OpenForm
4. On UNRWA’s funding, see Ibid.
21
Anne Irfan
Agency5 and plunged it into a deficit of more than $400 million.6 Since then, UNRWA
has diversified its donor pool, receiving increasing levels of support from European
governments—notably Germany, Sweden, and the EU itself—as well as Japan, Russia,
and the Gulf states.7 There is therefore a disjuncture between those with the power
to mandate UNRWA’s work (the UNGA) and those that make it possible for UNRWA to
fulfil that mandate (the donor states).
However, these are not the only parties with leverage over the Agency. In logistical terms, UNRWA also depends on the cooperation of the host states to be able
to operate.8 In other words, it requires permission from the governments of Syria,
Lebanon and Jordan in order to work in each of those countries. In the West Bank
and Gaza, the peculiarities of long-term Israeli occupation mean that cooperation is
needed instead from the Israeli government, and to a much lesser degree the Palestinian Authority (PA).9 As such, all of these governments have the power to put an end
to UNRWA’s work, at least in theory.
Notably absent from this list are the Palestinian refugees themselves. Instead
of formal leverage, their interactions with the Agency often take the form of external pressure. Media reports frequently show images of Palestinian refugee protests
against the Agency, covering stories of demonstrations, strikes and sit-ins.10 Such
organised protests, and the attached hostilities, have been a continuous feature of
UNRWA’s 70-year history, which is itself telling. In simple terms, the use of such tactics is indicative of the refugees’ formal exclusion from UNRWA’s structures. Having
never been factored into UNRWA’s set-up, they remain outside its decision-making
apparatus, at least in official terms. Their absence in this regard is reflective of their
broader marginalisation, and is moreover consistent with the continual attempts to
silence them politically across history.11
The refugees’ protests against UNRWA are also emblematic of how they have
resisted this exclusion and succeeded in gaining informal leverage over UNRWA.12
They have done so through the two primary ways in which they interact with the
Agency. First and most obviously, the refugees are the recipients of its services. As
such, their cooperation is vital if UNRWA is to fulfil its mandate; without it, the Agency
cannot report successfully to the UNGA and the donor states. Secondly, Palestinian
5. Irfan, A. ‘Trump cuts funding
to Palestinian refugees—and
throws their future into doubt’, The
Conversation, 25 January 2018,
https://theconversation.com/
trump-cuts-aid-to-palestinianrefugees-and-throws-their-futureinto-doubt-90282
6. UNRWA, ‘Ministerial meeting
on UNRWA raises remarkable
US$122 million’, 28 September
2018, https://www.unrwa.org/
newsroom/press-releases/
ministerial-meeting-unrwaraises-remarkable-us122million
7. UNRWA, ‘How we are funded’,
nd, https://www.unrwa.org/howyou-can-help/how-we-are-funded
8. Interview with Filippo Grandi,
former UNRWA CommissionerGeneral, Beirut, 19 January 2015.
9. The basis of UNRWA’s
arrangement with Israel in the
West Bank and Gaza is laid out
in: Agreement reached between
UNRWA and Israel on Aid to
Palestine Refugees, 14 June
1967, File OR210(IS), Box OR59,
UNRWA Central Registry, Amman.
10. See for example: Khazaal,
C. ‘Palestinian refugees protest
against UNRWA’, Huffington Post,
21 January 2016, https://www.
huffpost.com/entry/palestinianrefugees-prot_b_9038304; Khan, I.
‘Thousands protest against planned
UNRWA aid cuts’, Al Jazeera,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
29 January 2018, https://www.
aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/
thousands-protest-planned-unrwaaid-cuts-180129180614926.
html; ‘UNRWA fires 17 teachers
from its schools in Lebanon’, Middle
East Monitor, 9 January 2020,
https://www.middleeastmonitor.
com/20200109-unrwa-fires-17teachers-from-its-schools-inlebanon/
11. On the history of the
Palestinians’ political
marginalization, see: Khalidi, R.
(2006), The Iron Cage: The Story
of the Palestinian Struggle for
Statehood, Boston: Beacon Press.
12. Irfan, A. ‘Activism and
the Agency: The Palestinian
22
Whose Agency?
refugees comprise more than 90% of UNRWA staff (some estimates place the figure
as high as 99%).13 In view of this extremely high proportion, there is a question mark
over whether it is even valid to speak about a relationship between ‘UNRWA’ on the
one hand and ‘Palestinian refugees’ on the other, as though they are separate entities.
It arguably makes more sense to analyse UNRWA as a hybrid body, with numerous
competing actors pushing their various claims of ownership over the Agency.
Informal leverage notwithstanding, it is undeniable that the Palestinian refugees have less power over the Agency than the aforementioned other actors. While
refugees comprise the vast majority of UNRWA staff, they are disproportionately employed in more junior roles, while senior management is dominated by so-called ‘internationals’, who are in practice nearly always Westerners.14 Yet regardless of their
structural disempowerment, Palestinian refugees have continuously used the little
leverage they do have in order to exert their influence and their claims to ownership
over UNRWA, sometimes with considerable success. In this way, they have successfully inserted themselves into the list of actors vying for control of the Agency.
To understand the Palestinian refugees’ success in this regard, it is first necessary to identify their main demands vis-à-vis UNRWA. While the specifics of their
many campaigns against the Agency have of course varied, certain common themes
connect them. In a 2016 interview with the author, Salah Salah, former Head of the
Palestinian National Council (PNC) Refugee Committee, identified two such themes
in particular: the demand for increased investment in UNRWA services; and the demand that UNRWA take more action in representing the refugees’ political rights.15
Both grievances can be found throughout the continual tensions between UNRWA
and the Palestinian refugees over the last 70 years. The remainder of this article details how, by examining the refugees’ interactions with the Agency in two guises: first
as its service users, and secondly as its employees.
GRASS ROOTS PROTESTS: PALESTINIAN REFUGEES AS UNRWA SERVICE USERS
Since beginning operations on 1 May 1950, UNRWA has come to fulfil many of the
functions of government for stateless Palestinian refugees in the Levant. It delivers
large-scale health and education programmes, provides municipal services in the
58 recognised refugee camps16 across its ‘five fields of operation’,17 and issues identity documents for stateless Palestinians living in Syria and Lebanon.18 The quasigovernmental nature of its work has been widely observed, leading one commentator
refugees’ UNRWA campaigns’,
Rethinking Refuge, https://www.
rethinkingrefuge.org/articles/
activism-and-the-agency-thepalestinian-refugees-unrwacampaigns
13. UNRWA, ‘Frequently
Asked Questions’, nd, https://
www.unrwa.org/who-we-are/
frequently-asked-questions;
Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Elena.
‘Palestinian refugees lament as
Trump funding cuts create job
insecurity and a pension crisis’,
The Conversation, 26 March 2018,
https://theconversation.com/
palestinian-refugees-lamentas-trump-funding-cuts-createjob-insecurity-and-a-pensioncrisis-93447; UNRWA, ‘UNRWA
in Figures 2018-2019’, 8 March
2019, https://www.unrwa.org/
resources/about-unrwa/unrwafigures-2018-2019.
14. On proportions of Palestinian
staff at UNRWA see Ibid.
15. Interview with Salah Salah,
former Head of PNC Refugees’
Commission, Beirut, 3 December
2016.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
16. UNRWA, ‘Palestine refugees’,
nd, https://www.unrwa.org/
palestine-refugees
17. The ‘five fields’ are Syria,
Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank,
and the Gaza Strip. UNRWA,
‘Where we work’, nd, https://www.
unrwa.org/where-we-work
18. Sayigh, Y. (1997), Armed
Struggle and the Search for
State: The Palestinian National
Movement, 1949–1993, Oxford:
Clarendon Press, pp. 41–49.
23
Anne Irfan
to describe it as ‘the Blue State’, in reference to the UN’s distinctive branding colour.19
In the eyes of many Palestinian refugees, however, UNRWA’s function as de facto
state government has been far from sufficient. Its restricted mandate and limited
capacity have left the impression that the stateless Palestinians have been shortchanged. In a 2014 media interview, the aforementioned Salah expressed this sentiment when he commented that ‘the Jews got Israel and we got UNRWA’.20 His juxtaposition of the creation of Israel with the establishment of UNRWA speaks to the
widespread belief that while their Jewish counterparts gained a fully-fledged sovereign state with an infrastructure and a powerful military, the Palestinians were left
with a poorly-funded aid agency with a restricted mandate. In other words, UNRWA
was an inferior compensation prize. Such thinking has fuelled Palestinian criticism
of UNRWA as a toothless quasi-state that has failed to properly advocate for the refugees’ rights on the world stage.
This underlying grievance has always underpinned refugee protests against
UNRWA, even those that were ostensibly about other issues. As noted above, such
protests have long been a feature of UNRWA’s operations. As early as 1951, UNRWA’s
very first annual report to the UNGA described:
Demonstrations [by Palestinian refugees] over the [UNRWA] census operation,
strikes against [UNRWA] medical and welfare services, strikes for cash payment
instead of relief, strikes against making any improvements, such as school
buildings, in camps in case this might mean permanent resettlement.21
Here, UNRWA’s first Director John Blandford depicted an active and wide-ranging
organised protest movement among the refugees. Tellingly, he described refugee
protests over both service provision (the demand for ‘cash payment instead of relief’),
and more overtly political issues such as the possibility of ‘permanent resettlement’
in the host states, rather than return to Palestine. The latter is a particularly apt example of how UNRWA’s operations were always politically loaded, despite its claims
to be apolitical; in this case, improvements to infrastructure in the camps carried
potential implications for the refugees’ futures.22
The protests of 1950–51 would prove prescient, not only in their multiplicity but
also in how they connected UNRWA services to the politics of the refugees’ plight. For
example, UNRWA service cuts became a recurrent cause of refugee protests, starting
in the late 1960s and continuing to the present day. Again, these protests connected
the two themes identified by Salah; refugee communities contended that in cutting its
service provision, UNRWA was not only damaging their well-being but also infringing
on their political rights.
19. Riccardo Bocco, ‘UNRWA
and the Palestinian Refugees:
A History within History’, Refugee
Survey Quarterly, 28:2–3, March
2010, p. 234.
20. Quoted in Asger Gorup
Nielsen, ‘Is this UN agency
merely a political tool for Western
governments?’, 11 November
2014, http://www.yourmiddleeast.
com/culture/unrwa-in-lebanona-political-tool-for-westerngovernments_27855.
21. Blandford Jr., J. Report of
the UNRWA Director, A/1905,
28 September 1951.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
22. On UNRWA’s initial ties to
resettlement schemes, see: Anne
Irfan, ‘Educating Palestinian
refugees: The origins of UNRWA’s
unique schooling system’, Journal
of Refugee Studies, 2019, doi:
10.1093/jrs/fez051, pp. 11–13.
24
Whose Agency?
This interpretation can only be understood by looking to the refugees’ conceptualisation of UNRWA. Palestinian communities largely see UNRWA’s work not as
charity but as an entitlement; its services are their right by virtue of their position and
status as Palestinian refugees.23 This idea is grounded in the widespread Palestinian
belief that the UN bears responsibility for their statelessness because of its culpability in facilitating the Nakba through the Partition Plan of 1947.24 From this perspective, the UN has a duty to take care of the refugees until their plight is resolved.
As such, UNRWA services are a political right rather than charitable welfare. This
idea has been expressed repeatedly over the years in refugee communications with
the Agency. As early as 1960, a refugee group in Lebanon calling itself ‘the Badge of
Arab Palestine Youth’ issued a statement describing the UN as ‘an [original] cause of
the [Palestinians’] disaster’. It went on to say that ‘the services of our Agency are our
rights and not favours or charity from her [sic].’25 A year later, the Chair of the Damascus branch of the General Union of Palestine Studies (GUPT) wrote similarly to the
UNRWA Director in Syria that it was the Agency’s ‘duty… to alleviate the pains of [the
Palestinian refugees, who have been] wronged and oppressed’.26
This viewpoint was not limited to the initial decades following the Nakba. Nearly
20 years after the GUPT Chair in Damascus wrote to UNRWA, a West Bank refugee
camp mukhtar wrote a strikingly similar letter to the Agency’s Commissioner-General, stating that, ‘we [Palestinian refugees] are your responsibility and you should
provide us with relief, care and services.’27 The letter formed part of a wider set of
demonstrations, as the mukhtar in question was part of a group in the West Bank
organising sit-ins to protest UNRWA service cuts.
This conceptualisation of UNRWA’s work thus transcended time and space. If
UNRWA’s service provision was the fulfilment of a right, it followed that service cuts
were an infringement of this right. In resisting the cuts, the refugees were accordingly campaigning for their rights to be protected.28 As such, refugee protestors saw
themselves as campaigning not only for their humanitarian rights but also for their
political and even their national rights as dispossessed Palestinians. This approach
stemmed directly from the contention that UNRWA was ‘owed’ to them because of
the UN’s historic failures; in other words, from the perception of ownership over the
Agency’s work. By utilising their leverage as service users, the Palestinian refugees
were highly successful in making this perception a reality.
23. Feldman, I (2008), Governing
Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and
the Work of Rule, 1917–1967,
Durham: Duke University Press,
p. 138. Gabiam, N. (2012) ‘When
“Humanitarianism” becomes
“Development”: The Politics
of International Aid in Syria’s
Palestinian Refugee Camps’,
American Anthropologist, 114:1,
96, 101. Kagan, M. ‘“We live in
a country of UNHCR:” The UN
surrogate state and refugee policy
in the Middle East’, Research
Paper No. 201, February 2011, p.
4. Peteet, J. (2009), Landscape
of Hope and Despair: Palestinian
Refugee Camps, Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press,
2009, p. 81.
24. UNGA Resolution 181, A/
RES/181(II), 29 November 1947.
25. Badge of the Arab Palestine
Youth in Lebanon, Statement, 1
January 1960, File RE150 I, Box
RE3, UNRWA Central Registry.
26. Chairman of the Damascus
Branch of the General Union of
Palestine Students, letter to DUO/
Damascus, 27 August 1961, File
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
RE230(S)1, Box RE21, UNRWA
Central Registry.
27. Abdullah Bishawy, letter to
UNRWA Commissioner-General,
22 October 1979, File RE410(WB)
II, Box RE65, UNRAW Central
Registry.
28. Irfan, ‘Activism and the
Agency’.
25
Anne Irfan
ORGANISED LABOUR PROTESTS: PALESTINIAN REFUGEES AS UNRWA EMPLOYEES
Within the long history of refugee protest, UNRWA staff have played a particularly
important role. They occupy a distinctive position, given their dual identities as both
Palestinian refugees and UN employees. Yet despite their affiliation to UNRWA, Palestinian staff have frequently been critical of the Agency, with tensions sometimes
exacerbated by their regular exclusion from senior management.29 Thus in addition
to the grass roots demonstrations described above, Palestinian protests against UNRWA have also consisted of strikes by staff unions over labour issues such as salaries,
working conditions, and benefits.
Protests over these issues have been recurrent throughout UNRWA’s history,
but have increased at times of particular financial turmoil for the Agency. Large-scale
strikes have been particularly powerful, with Palestinian trade unions regularly
organising industrial action across one or more of UNRWA’s fields of operation. Such
action could also be spontaneous; after Palestinians took control of their camps
in Lebanon in 1969, a wave of strikes swept the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in
solidarity.30 Two years later, refugees in camps across the five fields went on strike in
solidarity with Palestinians in Jordan, following Black September.31
In addition to these acts of political solidarity, many staff strikes were organised
over the same issues driving industrial action across the world.32 In January 1981,
for example, UNRWA employees in the West Bank went on strike for six weeks as
part of a campaign for fairer pay and improved working conditions. Their activism
included sit-ins and hunger strikes at the UNRWA offices in Jerusalem, Ramallah,
Nablus and Hebron.33 In calling for better conditions, their campaign aligns neatly
with what Salah identifies as the Palestinian refugees’ first major grievance about
UNRWA, namely that it provides insufficient investment in its services and resources
(including human resources).
Yet alongside these typical employment grievances, Palestinian UNRWA staff
also organised protests with more overtly political aims. Teachers played a particularly prominent role here, often demonstrating over their right to express their national identity in their work. As education comprised UNRWA’s largest programme
in both budget and personnel,34 their activism was especially significant. Moreover,
Palestinian teachers themselves had originally set up the refugee schools before UNRWA even arrived on the scene,35 meaning that they had a particular claim on the education programme and that the Agency was dependent on them for its continuation.
The teachers’ political agitation covered too many issues to be fully detailed
here, but a particularly recurrent grievance concerned the material taught in UNRWA
29. Gabiam, N. (2016), The
Politics of Suffering: Syria’s
Palestinian refugee camps,
Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, p. 71. Farah, R. (2010),
'UNRWA: Through the Eyes of Its
Refugee Employees in Jordan',
Refugee Survey Quarterly, 28:2–3,
p. 401.
30. Cable from West Bank
Director to CommissionerGeneral, 8 February 1969, File
RE230(WB-3)I, Box RE22, UNRWA
Central Registry.
31. General Union of Palestinian
Teachers, Statement, 21 February
1971, File RE230(L-5), Box RE21,
UNRWA Central Registry.
32. Abu Moghli, M. and Qato, M.,
‘A Brief History of a Teacher’s
Strike’, Middle East Report Online,
5 June 2018.
33. ‘UNRWA Strike enters sixth
week’, Al Fajr, 11 January 1981.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
34. Tjitske de Jong and Miriam
Aced, ‘UNRWA’s “traditional”
programmes as a catalyst for
human development’, in Hanafi, S.
Hilal, L. and Takkenberg, L. (ed.s),
UNRWA and Palestinian refugees:
From Relief and Works to Human
Development, London: Routledge,
(2014), p. 47.
35. Irfan, ‘Educating Palestinian
refugees’, pp. 4–5.
26
Whose Agency?
schools. From early on, UNRWA management took the decision to use the host state
curricula, meaning that Palestinian refugee children living in Syria would learn the
Syrian curriculum, and so on (schools in the West Bank and Gaza used the Jordanian
and Egyptian curricula respectively).36 The policy was justified on the grounds that it
enabled Palestinian refugee children to later participate in the host states’ secondary
and higher education systems, and compete on their job markets.37 Yet it was always
controversial, with many Palestinians concerned that it was designed to facilitate
their permanent resettlement in the host states and thus undermine their right of
return.38 Given the limited coverage of the Nakba in the host state curricula—or in the
case of Lebanon, its complete absence39—the policy also meant that refugee children
were not formally educated about their national history and, specifically, the background to their exile.40
Such criticism can be found in numerous sources. One prominent example is the
acclaimed memoirs of Fawaz Turki, a Palestinian refugee from Haifa who grew up
in Burj al-Barajneh camp in Lebanon after arriving there with his family during the
Nakba. Recalling his education in an UNRWA school, he wrote:
The schools that UNRWA sponsored were designed—unwittingly or not—to raise
Palestinian children on, and educate them in accepting their plight of life as a
preordained thing. No attempt was made to explain the situation and the forces
behind it that ruled their lives, or how they were to respond to them…. No courses
were offered to show where they came from, the history of Palestine….40
Turki was far from alone in this sentiment. In 1973, leading Palestinian intellectual
Ibrahim Abu Lughod wrote an in-depth critique of the UNRWA school system in the
Journal of Palestine Studies, contending that the Agency was ‘educating the Palestinians without attention to their Palestinian consciousness and identity’. He added that
the effect was to ‘weaken Palestinianism’.41
Just as Turki accused the UNRWA education programme of presenting the Palestinian refugees’ plight as ‘a preordained thing’, so Abu Lughod wrote that the host
state curricula ‘leaves [refugee children] unaware of the type and nature of the struggle which the Palestinian people waged to prevent the usurpation of Palestine’.42 In
other words, both objected to the denial of Palestinian agency inherent in the host
state curricula—a denial at risk of being reproduced by UNRWA’s use of these curricula. Instead, Turki and Abu Lughod called for what anthropologist Ilana Feldman calls
‘the right to be political’43—meaning that they wanted a system that allowed space for
36. Schiff, B. (1995) Refugees
unto the Third Generation: UN
Aid to Palestinians (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, p. 28.
37. Dickerson, G. (1973)
,‘Education for the Palestine
Refugees: the UNRWA/UNESCO
Programme’, Journal of Palestine
Studies, 3:3, p. 128.
38. Sayigh, R., ‘What history
books for children in Palestinian
camps?’, Jadaliyya, 7 July 2014.
Peteet, Landscape of Hope and
Despair, p. 90.
39. Irfan, ‘Educating Palestinian
refugees’, p. 17.
40. Turki, F. (1972), The
Disinherited: Journal of a
Palestinian Exile, New York:
Monthly Review Press, p. 58.
41. Abu Lughod, I., ‘Educating a
Community in Exile:
The Palestinian Experience’,
Journal of Palestine Studies,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
2:3, Spring 1973, p. 97, 111.
42. Ibid., p. 96.
43. Feldman, I. (2019) Life
Lived in Relief: Humanitarian
Predicaments and Palestinian
refugee politics, Berkeley: UC
Press.
27
Anne Irfan
the Palestinian refugees to engage with the political nature of their situation, and to
express themselves politically.
The Palestinian refugees’ long-term agitation on this issue would eventually bear fruit. In the late 1960s, UNRWA announced plans to introduce the teaching
of Palestinian history and geography into its schools in Lebanon, where the formal
curriculum neglected these subjects entirely. In internal communications, UNRWA
senior management acknowledged that the policy shift was the result of consistent
pressure from Palestinian refugee communities. Palestinians themselves were given a leading role in the project, as UNRWA hired Palestinian educators to devise the
relevant syllabus, which was then implemented in its schools across Lebanon over
the 1970s. There were limits to the success of the ‘Palestinianised’ syllabus; it was
never rolled out across all the five fields where UNRWA worked, and was eventually
scaled back in Lebanon too, in large part because of the impact of the civil war and
the Israeli invasion of the country.44 Nevertheless, the fact that UNRWA made such a
policy change in response to Palestinian campaigns marked a major victory for the
refugees, and clearly demonstrated that they could use their leverage, limited though
it was, to effect real change in the Agency’s operations.
CONCLUSION
The dynamics between UNRWA and Palestinian refugee communities are emblematic of deeper tensions at play in the Agency’s set-up. UNRWA was created at the end
of 1949, at the very time when the modern-day culture of international humanitarianism was being constructed. From the outset, it has been deeply entangled in the
politics of humanitarianism, which requires political neutrality and impartiality in
all aid work.45 With roots in both oppressive hegemonic systems like colonialism,
and early harbingers of human rights movements like abolitionism, humanitarianism has often been characterised by tensions between these divergent approaches
to working with disadvantaged populations.46 UNRWA’s history reflects this tension.
In particular, the Agency’s early approach to the Palestinian refugees embodied the
top-down hierarchies of humanitarian culture in the immediate post-war era. Its
programmes constructed the refugees as passive recipients of services, rather than
active agents with a role to play in their own destiny. Like many other international aid agencies, UNRWA administered its beneficiaries as apolitical humanitarian
objects.47 Yet despite this, the examples presented here show how Palestinian refugee communities have been remarkably successful in resisting this construction
and repositioning themselves as political actors.48 Notwithstanding their exclusion from UNRWA’s formal structures, they have been able to utilise their limited
44. Irfan, ‘Educating Palestinian
refugees’, pp. 17-18.
45. On the politics of
humanitarianism, see: Feldman,
Life Lived in Relief; Allen, L. (2013)
The Rise and Fall of Human Rights:
Cynicism and Politics in Occupied
Palestine (Palo Alto: Stanford
University Press; Scott-Smith, T.
(2016) ‘Humanitarian Dilemmas
in a Mobile World’, Refugee Survey
Quarterly, 35, pp. 1–21. On how
this has shaped UNRWA, see:
Irfan, A. (2020), ‘Palestine at the
UN: PLO relations with UNRWA in
the 1970s’, Journal of Palestine
Studies, 49:2, [forthcoming].
46. Mayblin, L. (2017), Asylum
After Empire: Colonial Legacies
in the Politics of Asylum Seeking,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield,
ch.s 4-6.
47. On this tendency in
humanitarian culture, see: Malkki,
L. (1996) ‘Speechless Emissaries:
Refugees, Humanitarianism,
and Dehistoricization’, Cultural
Anthropology, 11:3, pp. 377–404.
48. For more on this, see: Irfan,
‘Activism and the Agency’.
28
Whose Agency?
leverage through organised and unified activism, making the most of what power they
do hold. The result is that 70 years after UNRWA began operations, no discussion
of its ownership can be complete without considering the role of the Palestinian
refugees themselves.
As UNRWA begins its eighth decade of operations, it remains a hybrid body. Its
‘owners’ are a collection of competing actors, with the host states and donor states
pushing for leverage alongside the refugees themselves. In the context of recent attacks on the Agency, there has been a particular fixation on the actions of the donor
states, driven partly by the possibility that other governments may follow the US’ lead
in defunding UNRWA. Yet notwithstanding the very real financial risks to UNRWA,
it is important not to lose sight of the voices of the refugees themselves. While the
Agency has made considerable progress in refugee representation since its early era,
its setup today continues to be characterised by a disjuncture between the mandating
body, the funding bodies, and the refugee recipients. It is vital that the refugees do
not get lost in this. On the contrary, they must be central to the struggle to maintain
UNRWA’s work against sustained attacks. Without listening to and acting on the demands of the refugee communities themselves, there can ultimately be no hope of
protecting Palestinian refugee rights in the next decade.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
29
‘I'M A REFUGEE, BUT
I LIVE IN PALESTINE,
MY HOMELAND’
NARRATIVES OF HOME, CAMP,
AND IDENTITY AMONG PALESTINIAN
REFUGEES IN THE WEST BANK
1
SOPHIE RICHTER-DEVROE
INTRODUCTION
Nour’s statement ‘I’m a refugee, but I live in Palestine, my homeland’2 captures well
the paradoxes of refugee life and identity in the West Bank. Occupied by the Israeli
settler-colonial regime since 1967, the West Bank has been quasi-governed by the
Palestinian Authority’s (PA) since 1993, which simultaneously acts as home and
host government to Palestinian refugees there. With a family history originally from
Deir Aban, an uprooted Palestinian village in the Jerusalem area, destroyed and depopulated in the 1948 Nakba, Nour today lives in Deheishe refugee camp in Bethlehem, one of the 19 UNRWA registered camps in the West Bank. Deheishe camp, given
its strong political and social identity, is often considered the ‘de facto leader of the
1. I thank all those who
participated in and facilitated
our fieldwork and interviews in
Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon.
This ethnographic research was
conducted jointly with Ruba Salih
(SOAS). I am grateful for her
comments on earlier drafts of this
paper, as well as her continuous
advice and support throughout
the project. I also thank the Gerda
Henkel Foundation and the Council
for British Research in the Levant
for their financial support for
this research. Parts of the paper
were presented at a conference
in December 2019 on “UNRWA
at 70: Responding to crises and
building a just future”, organised
by the Palestinian Return Centre
(PRC) in collaboration with the Al
Jazeera Centre for Studies and
the European Centre for Palestine
Studies at the University of Exeter.
I thank the conference organisers,
the panellists, and the audience
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
for the constructive discussions
and feedback.
2. Nour, Interview, Deheishe,
2012. All interviewees’ names
are changed to protect their
anonymity.
30
West Bank’s refugee camps’,3 and Nour has established himself as one of the local
refugee community leaders in Deheishe, playing an important social and political
role in the struggle to give voice to, mobilise and find forms of political representation
for Palestinian refugees in the post-Oslo political landscape.
Today, more than 800.000 UNRWA-registered Palestinian refugees live in the
West Bank which makes it the third largest refugee community in the UNRWA operated areas, after Jordan and Gaza. Ca. one quarter of them reside in refugee camps,4
where space is constrained and services often minimal. The remainder live in Palestinian towns and villages. Overall, refugees comprise ca. one quarter of the total population in the West Bank.5 Refugees in the West Bank, like Nour, live the paradox of
being displaced in their own homeland, Palestine. They are refugees, expelled from
their ancestral towns and villages in historical Palestine, but also hold certain political rights in the PA-administered quasi state in the West Bank, such as candidature
and voting in the Palestinian Legislative Council. They are subjected to a multiplicity
of sovereignties: the PA, which functions as their host state (while also often claiming
to represent them); UNRWA, which in the West Bank acts as sole legal administrator
of the refugee camps; and the Israeli settler-colonial regime, which under its civil and
military law classifies Palestinian refugees—just as non-refugees—as resident aliens
in the occupied West Bank.6 Given their complex and paradox status as refugees
with certain (quasi-)citizenship rights in their home/host country, refugees in the
West Bank are careful to uphold their distinct refugee identity—symbolically, legally
and politically.
In refugees’ struggle for rights and representation, notions of home, camp and
refugee identity hold crucial, but shifting meanings. Refugees, particularly camp
residents, have often been reified in nationalist top-down representations as either
heroic resistance fighters or passive victims of brutal Israeli assaults.7 Refugees
have also, particularly in the early decades after the Nakba, been stigmatised as
poor landless peasants, placed at the lowest end of the social hierarchy.8 Identity
lines dividing between refugees and non-refugees have thus been drawn differently at different historical moments. In this process refugees have been careful
to balance their double membership in the Palestinian national and the refugee
community.
3. Abourahme, N. and Hilal,
S. (2009), “The Production of
Space, Political Subjectivication
and the Folding of Polarity:
the case of Deheishe Camp,
Palestine”, Campus in Camps,
p 34. Accessed 3 April 2020.
http://www.campusincamps.ps/
wp-content/uploads/2012/12/
Nasser-Abourahme-and-SandiHilal_Deheishe-Paper.pdf
4. UNRWA, accessed 1 April
2020, https://www.unrwa.org/
where-we-work/west-bank.
5. PCBS, accessed 1 April
2020, http://www.pcbs.
gov.ps/site/512/default.
aspx?lang=en&ItemID=3486
6. Rempel, T. (2006), “Palestinian
Refugees in the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip” Forced Migration
Expert Review, p.5 accessed 1
April 2020, https://web.archive.
org/web/20120720010956/
http://www.forcedmigration.
org/research-resources/expertguides/palestinian-refugees-inthe-west-bank-and-the-gaza/
fmo043.pdf. See also Kadman,
N. (1999), Families Torn Apart,
Separation of Palestinian Families
in the Occupied Territories,
Jerusalem: B’tselem
7. Tabar, L. (2007), “Memory,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
agency, counter-narrative:
testimonies from Jenin refugee
camp”, Critical Arts, Vol. 21, No. 1.
8. Bisharat, G. (1997), “Exile to
Compatriot: Transformations in
the Social Identity of Palestinian
Refugees in the West Bank”, in
Gupta, A. and Fergusan, L (eds)
Culture Power, Place: Explorations
in Critical Anthropology, Duke
University Press.
31
Sophie Richter-Devroe
In this article, I rely on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Deheishe and Aida
camps in the West Bank9 to trace shifts in the roles and meanings of refugee identity,
camp and home, focusing on three distinct historical periods: the aftermath of 1948
Nakba, the First Intifada (1987–1993), and the post-Oslo period under PA governance
(1993–today). These notions have undergone dramatic transformations, often reflecting wider historical and political dynamics in Palestine. Yet, in negotiating their
complex positioning as ‘refugees in their own homeland’, Palestinian refugees in the
West Bank have managed to carve out a specific refugee political subjecthood for
themselves, thus emerging as political actors in their own rights.
THE 1948 NAKBA: UNRWA, THE CAMP AND REFUGEES
Most of the 350,000–450,000 Palestinian refugees, who settled in the West and East
Bank under Jordanian rule came from towns and village of the central coastal plain,
such as Lydd, Ramla and Yaffa.10 Refugees left their villages and towns during the
1948 Nakba in haste and terror—they did not know where they were going, where
they would stay, and when they would return, but most left in the belief that they
would be back home after a couple of days, weeks or months.
For most, expulsion meant a continuous wandering from place to place trying to find refuge, often for several months, or even years.11 Before moving to the
UNRWA-established camps, many refugees first settled in West Bank villages, sometimes hosted by locals, sometimes renting, or simply living outside, without shelters or in caves. UNRWA started operating from May 1950 onward, building refugee
camps on land leased from the Jordanian administrative government. Eventually ca.
one third of refugees who came to the West Bank, mainly those of peasant origin,
moved to refugee camps.12 The remainder, more often of urban origin, settled in West
Bank towns or villages.13 As a result of the substantial number who eventually settled in the West Bank, the total West Bank population increased from ca. 460,000 to
740,000.14 With the West Bank being placed under Jordanian administration, all West
Bankers, refugees and non-refugees, were granted Jordanian citizenship.
Refugees faced military assault from the Israeli army unprotected, but they were
also economically vulnerable with no or very little possibilities of income generation. It is in this context of poverty, that the term laji’ (refugee) was used. The story
9. This ethnographic research,
conducted jointly with Ruba
Salih (SOAS), included fieldwork
in Jordan, the West Bank and
Lebanon. I discuss in this article
only material from the West Bank,
focusing on Aida and Deheishe
refugee camps. Both camps are
located in the Bethlehem area,
were established by UNRWA
shortly after the Nakba, and
today are characterised by
high population density and
unemployment rates.
10. Bisharat, “Exile to
Compatriot”, 169, 176. See also
Plascov, A. (1981), The Palestinian
Refugees in Jordan 1948–1957,
London, Frank Cass.
11. See also Rosenfeld, M. (2004),
Confronting the Occupation: Work,
Education, and Political Activism
of Palestinian Families in a
Refugee Camp, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 43; and Salih, R.
(2017), “Bodies That Walk, Bodies
That Talk, Bodies That Love:
Palestinian Women Refugees,
Affectivity, and the Politics of the
Ordinary”, Antipode, Vol. 49, No. 3.
12. Rosenfeld, “Confronting the
Occupation”, 33.
13. Some refugees who first fled
to the West Bank later crossed
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
the river to the East Bank. As
a result of ongoing migration,
particularly from the West Bank to
the Amman region, the distribution
of refugees across the East and
West Bank changed significantly
during the first decades after the
Nakba. Migration to the East Bank
continued during the 1950s and
60s, given better infrastructure
and employment opportunities
there. See Rosenfeld, “Confronting
the Occupation”, pp. 33-34.
14. Rempel, “Palestinian
Refugees”, p. 4.
32
‘I'm a Refugee, but I live in Palestine, My Homeland’
of Nour’s parents who, after their exodus from their village of origin, Deir Aban, first
settled in the West Bank town of Beit Sahour is illustrative:
[After their exodus, my parents’] lives began [in Beit Sahour]. They had their first
boy, and he grew up and started playing with the children. They [the West Bank
local children] made up a game about him. They would say things like: “You’re a
laji’ (refugee)” and insult my family, saying my family was poor and had nothing.
It was true we lived from UNRWA, but they also made a sort of class issue out of
it - a class difference between them [the West Bank locals] and us [the refugees…].
They had an idea about us: that we were backward, uneducated people.15
Laji’, as Nour’s quote illustrates, acquired a derogatory meaning with strong class
connotations. Refugees were sometimes viewed with a mix of pity, contempt and/
or disrespect by West Bank residents for having been defeated and having left their
lands and homes.16 Mostly the term laji’ was used for poorer refugees of peasant
background, i.e. those who could not pay rent or purchase property in the West Bank,
and thus settled in camps. Refugees of middle or upper-class urban (often Christian)
background, who were able to bring their assets, purchase land, and become owners
of land and property, were rarely referred to as laji’, although they were of course
also expelled from their homes and livelihoods.17 Until today the term is largely used
when referring to camp residents, including those of the younger generation who
were not actually displaced themselves.18
For the laji’een, i.e. those landless poor refugee camp residents of peasant origin
who had lost not only their lands and livelihoods, but also their social status, the refugee camp offered much needed refuge, but also a space of solidarity and support.
Nour continued the story of his parents:
[It] is the discrimination that makes people gather together and come to the camp
and say: “No, we’ll [better] live with the marginalised people, the people who are
down on their luck, sick people, and people who are dying of exhaustion. My son
goes to school with no shoes, and nobody bothers each other.” So when everyone is
at the same level, they can work together.19
15. Nour, Interview, Deheishe,
2012.
16. Bisharat, “Exile to
Compatriot”, p. 174; Sayigh, R.
(1979) Palestinians: from
peasants to revolutionaries:
a people's history. London:
Zed Books, p. 126.
17. Plascov, “The Palestinian
Refugees in Jordan”
18. Bisharat, “Exile to
Compatriot”, 174
19. Nour, Interview, Deheishe,
2012.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
33
Sophie Richter-Devroe
Nour recounts that his parents first tried to establish their lives in Beit Sahour, but, as
a result of hostile attitudes by locals, later decided to move to Deheishe refugee camp.
The camp provided a space where they would not be stereotyped and looked down
upon, but be among equals.
At the same time, moving to the camp was also experienced as a severe shock
and humiliation by many. Im Mohammad, a 83 year old Nakba survivor from Ras Abu
'Ammar, put across her frustration clearly when we asked her how Deheishe was like
when she moved there in the mid-1950s:
We went to Dheisheh and built a skeefa, a shelter. We had never done something
like that […] Then UNRWA came and built for the refugees. So for families that
have 4 members, they got one very small room 3x5m. What could we do? Where
could we go? The sky was above us and the earth was below. […] Beit Jala was
better. At least we were living in a house. Here in the camp water came through
the clay and rained on us and we would get wet. It would rain on everything.
[…]. Nothing was nice: it was full, crowded, people we didn’t know. [But then]
the families from Ras Abu 'Ammar gathered around our house; they built their
shelters around us.20
As the wife of the mukhtar of Ras Abu 'Ammar, Im Mohammad had lost not only her land,
property and sources of subsistence, but importantly her social status as a result of the
expulsion. The brief period she spent in urban Beit Jala living in a rented house thus,
for her, contrasts positively to the stark form of dispossession and dependency in the
camp. Yet, Im Mohammad’s story ends on a more upbeat tone: A sense of familiarity
and community was restored for her, when the families of Ras Abu 'Ammar started
gathering around her family’s skeefa in the camp. Most refugees who moved to camps at
first gathered around kin and community members from their villages of origin. Family, kin and village structures formed a social security bond, and pre-Nakba life continued to play a significant role in camp organisation and governance. 21
UNRWA provided refugees first with small shelters, and then set up more permanent structures—one room per family of four, with external toilet and kitchen.22 The
establishment of more permanent structures, however, provoked concern. Refugees
resisted the UNRWA programme starting from the early 1950s onwards to replace
tents with more permanent structures and to build an irrigation system, fearing that
this would threaten their status as temporary residents in the West Bank.23 Similarly,
in the 1970s, when the Israeli Civil Administration promised Deheishans subsidized
20. Im Mohammad, Interview,
Deheiseh, 2012.
21. On the continued importance
of village and kin structures
in Palestinian refugee camps,
see Peteet, J. (1991) Gender in
Crisis: Women and the Palestinian
Resistance Movement, New York:
Columbia University Press; J.
Peteet, J. (2005) Landscape of
Hope and Despair. Palestinian
Refugee Camps, Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press;
Sayigh, “Palestinians: from
peasants to revolutionaries”;
Feldman, I. (2006) “Home as a
refrain: Remembering and living
displacement in Gaza,” History
and Memory 18(2): 10–47; Davis,
R (2011) Palestinian Village
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Histories: Geographies of the
Displaced, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
22. Rosenfeld, “Confronting the
Occupation”, p. 43.
23. Bisharat, “Exile to
Compatriot”, pp. 171–2.
34
‘I'm a Refugee, but I live in Palestine, My Homeland’
housing outside the borders of the camp in return for them giving up their UNRWA
registration cards, camp residents resisted. They saw it as an attempt of tawteen, permanent settlement, that could lead to cancelling their right of return.24
In sum, in the early decades after the Nakba, refugee identity in the West Bank
was constructed through interactions with local West Bank residents. While notions
of class, camp and refugees’ own localism related to their villages of origin played
an important role, the institutional apparatus and policies of UNRWA, too, shaped
constructions of refugeehood, identity, and rights. Registration with UNRWA was
important for refugees to receive support, but wealthier refugees in towns and villages also demanded to be registered by UNRWA. UNRWA registration thus carried a
symbolic and political meaning of strengthening refugees’ status and rights, while at
the same time stressing their temporary status as ‘guests’ in the West Bank.
THE FIRST INTIFADA: REFUGEEHOOD AS RESISTANCE
In the 1980s, the lead-up to the First Intifada, meanings of refugeehood and camp
started to shift. The 1965 founded PLO had transformed the paradigm of Arab nationalism to a more specifically Palestinian nationalist liberation movement,25 thus
initiating drastic shifts in discourse and practice of Palestinian politics, including in
its representations of Palestinian refugees. The PLO substituted refugees’ own localism with a more top-down nationalist discourse which nationalised both the village
of origin26 as well as the camp,27 and elevated refugees as political actors and heroes
in the national liberation struggle.28 Refugees themselves, however, also emancipated and differentiated their notions of identity, camp and home from the post-Nakba
derogatory tones, as well as from the PLO’s top-down discourse.29 The very significant shifts in refugees’ self-representation and their rise as actors in their own rights
manifest themselves particularly during the First Intifada.
Refugees’ narratives on the First Intifada stress the role that a new generation
of young refugees, particularly those who had grown up in the camps, played in initiating and sustaining the uprising. Sahera, who was in her early twenties during the
First Intifada and had actively participated in the Intifada in Aida camp narrated the
beginnings of the Uprising in the following way:
People […] in Aida and Bethlehem consider that the first spark of the Intifada
came out of Aida camp. Because there was a young man from the camp, called
24. Abourahme and Hilal, “The
Production of Space”, p. 23.
25. Sayigh, Y. (1999) Armed
Struggle and the Search for
State: the Palestinian National
Movement, 1949–1993, Oxford:
Oxford University Press; Sayigh,
“Palestinians: from peasants to
revolutionaries”, pp. 153-156;
26. Davis, “Palestinian Village
Histories”
27. Farah, R. (2009) “Refugee
Camps in the Palestinian and
Sahrawi National Liberation
Movements: A Comparative
Perspective”, Journal of Palestine
Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2, p 85
28. On the PLO’s discourse on
refugees, see, among others,
Bisharat, “Exile to Compatriot”,
Khalidi, R. (1998), Palestinian
Identity: The Construction of
Modern National Consciousness,
New York, Columbia University
Press; Rosenfeld, “Confronting the
Occupation”.
29. On the differences between
refugees’ own narratives on
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
identity and camp and the topdown discourse of the PLO, see
also Allan, D. (2013), Refugees
of the Revolution: Experiences
of Palestinian Exile. Stanford
University Press, Stanford.
Feldman I. (2015) “What is
a camp? Legitimate refugee
lives in spaces of long-term
displacement”, Geoforum, Vol. 66,
p. 247; Farah, “Refugee Camps”.
35
Sophie Richter-Devroe
Ishaq Abu Srour, who was martyred in Bethlehem University. Then there were
some incidents in Bethlehem University, and in the camps in the Bethlehem area,
there were demonstrations, and they spread to the other camps […] So there were
demonstrations practically daily in the camp, which continued until the end
of the Intifada—not just [by] the [male] youth, there were girls too.30
Her recounting of the beginnings of the Intifada stresses the key role of the camps
and its residents. As such, it reflects, but also reworks, the semiotics of the PLO’s
nationalist liberationist discourse which elevated the camp as a site of resistance, as
the ‘icon of the nation.’31 Refugees in the West Bank, who formerly were politically
marginalised, assumed more prominent roles in the lead-up to and leadership of the
First Intifada. They were socialised in universities and youth initiatives organised
by political parties, thus integrating the politics of resistance in their everyday life.
The significant participation of refugee women, particularly from the younger generation, is often emphasised as a symbol of the Uprising’s progressive spirit. Sahera,
who was one of the young women leaders in Aida camp recalls with enthusiasm the
various activities that she participated in:
We [the women] had a role in the first Intifada. […] I was one of the girls who stood
with the boys as we threw stones at the army. […] If a truck came into the camp, the
girls were a line of defence for the boys. All the girls, women and mothers protected
the boys and helped them escape. […] That was the woman’s role: if she wasn’t
on the front line, she’d do other things. […] We organized first aid classes […] We
prepared rocks. We acted as human shields to protect them.32
She remembers the First Intifada as the ‘best times’ of her life, full of activism, social and political progress and hope amongst people. Most importantly for refugees
like Sahera, the Intifada established refugees—men and women—as central political
actors on the Palestinian political scene. Refugees no longer were seen as burden
to West Bank Palestinian society, but rather took on a leading role in its emancipation. The term laji’ shifted from referring to landless poor peasants who were looked
down upon to a much more celebratory meaning of the laji’ as main guardian of
the resistance.33
In a similar way, camp residents resignified the camp from a place characterised
by misery, defeat and poverty to a symbol and source of resistance and solidarity. Sahera’s narrative centres on how women activists were breaking the curfews:
At the time, they [the Israeli regime] used to run long curfews. A week or two for
example. So if someone had run out of bread or dough we would distribute it. Or,
30. Sahera, Interview, Aida Camp,
2014.
31. Farah, “Refugee Camps,” 85.
32. Sahera, Interview, Aida Camp,
2014.
33. This shift to a positive
valuation of the laji’ as core of
the resistance is also noted in
other context. Rosemary Sayigh
writes in her seminal study on
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon on
the jeel al-thawra, the generation
of the revolution: ‘For camp
Palestinians of this generation
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
[in Lebanon] the Revolution
brought a new identity which
they eagerly grasped: Palestinian,
struggler, revolutionary.’ Sayigh,
“Palestinians: from peasants to
revolutionaries”, p. 165.
36
‘I'm a Refugee, but I live in Palestine, My Homeland’
we, a group of young women, would bring bread from outside the camp, from the
city, where there was no curfew, and smuggle it back in. There was just a curfew on
the camp, not the city.34
The Israeli army indeed targeted in particular camps during the Intifada, more so
than West Bank cities, and camp refugees were imprisoned, injured and killed in proportionally higher numbers than city dwellers.35 When asked why the army attacked
camps in particular, and placed them under curfew more often than cities, Sahera explained that the Israeli army could control the camps more easily due to their closed
geographical space. Yet, the specific spatial as well as social organisation of the camp
also provided unique possibilities for resistance:
[Resistance took place] in the camps, sourced from and continuously in the camps.
It was hard to move the resistance. The city was difficult, because it’s hard to have
safe demonstrations in an open area. You want a closed area, an area that you
know, where you know the people there. […] In the city you don’t know people. In
the camp we know each other. Socially, we stand shoulder to shoulder, and at that
time more than now. My neighbour didn’t sleep if he knew I was hungry. If he had
bread, he’d share it.36
Additionally to the more closed spatial organisation, Sahera’s narrative stresses
that unity, solidarity and social cohesion in the camp enabled and facilitated residents’
resistance and activism. Her narrative reflects a ‘collective camp-family ethos’, where
the ‘camp is symbolically re-signified as an extended family-collectivity.’37 Later,
Sahera also mentioned specific refugee histories and their predicaments of loss and
oppression as driving forces for political activism and resistance. When asked why
there was more resistance in the camps than in the cities, she answered ‘because
here [in the camp], we’re all refugees’, establishing a direct link between refugee
identity and resistance. She elaborated:
The people who are under control, under oppression, are in the camps. The
resistance is still mostly in the camps. Here are still the people who were thrown
out of their houses, who are living on land which is absolutely not theirs, not
taking their rights, [not] even in terms of air. My house is stuck to my neighbour’s
house, you can’t breathe.38
Her account testifies to the emergence of a unique, but shifting, refugee identity in
the camps. The previous generation’s shared trauma of expulsion finds continuity
in refugees’ contemporary predicaments of dispossession in the camps. Difficult
34. Sahera, Interview, Aida Camp,
2014.
35. Bisharat, “Exile to
Compatriot”.
36. Sahera, Interview, Aida Camp,
2014.
37. Salih, R. (2017), “Bodies That
Walk, Bodies That Talk, Bodies
That Love: Palestinian Women
Refugees, Affectivity, and the
Politics of the Ordinary”,
Antipode, Vol. 49 No. 3, p. 748.
On the symbolic meanings of
camp as family and kin in Lebanon,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
see also Allan, “Refugees of the
Revolution.”
38. Sahera, Interview, Aida Camp,
2014.
37
Sophie Richter-Devroe
living conditions fostered close connections among camp residents, comparable to
and on a par with family and kin. Yet, while Im Mohammad’s post-Nakba narrative
quoted earlier rests on and reifies kin as blood relations, in Sahera’s narrative all
camp residents become fictive kin. The camp thus becomes a source and symbol for
kin-making, constructing social relations of care, solidarity and resistance—something that the city and urban spaces, in Sahera’s view, could not generate in a similar
way. It is from this basis of a distinct camp refugee identity, anchored in its residents’
shared predicament of exile, displacement and dispossession, that a specific political
culture of refugee resistance emerges. This refugee political subjecthood converses
with the national Palestinian markers of resistance and steadfastness, yet, it is distinctly historically-situated in the height of the First Intifada, and locally-grounded
in the camp.
THE OSLO ACCORDS AND THE PA: IN SEARCH OF REFUGEE POLITICAL REPRESENTATION
The signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, which postponed the refugees’ core demand—their right of return—to the final (but never finalised) status issues, constituted a great shock for most refugees. Sahera put it clearly:
Yes, I’m someone who cried at Oslo. It was a disappointment. I felt it was over.
Everything we had done vanished. And anything we did afterwards would fail.39
‘Disappointment,’ ‘shock,’ and ‘alienation’ characterise the narratives of many refugee First Intifada activists on the Oslo Accords. Many had played leading roles in the
First Intifada and had anticipated that this newly gained status and the sacrifices
they made would be honoured in more egalitarian political representation. But factionalism between the internal and external leadership of the Intifada, and between
religious and secular groups had already toward the end of the Uprising led to struggles over its leadership.40 This provided an opportunity for the previous traditional
political elite to re-appropriate some of their former political and social power.41 In the
so-called ‘peace talks’ in Madrid and Oslo the newly arisen refugee political leaders were
sidelined, refugees’ right of return was taken off the table, and the political leadership
was monopolised in the hands of mostly male Fatah members and/or returnees.42
The overwhelming majority of refugees, particularly those of the younger generation and those in camps, thus express great frustration with the Oslo Accords. For
them, the PA not only follows a corrupt political agenda that sold out refugee rights, it
also lacks sovereignty in the West Bank and some accuse it of acting in complicity with
the occupation forces. The large majority of refugees reject the PA as their political
39. Ibid.
40. The competition over
political power and leadership
between different factions also
had specific gendered impacts,
with women’s mobilities and
public spaces becoming more
curtailed. See, among others,
Jean-Klein, I. (2001) “Nationalism
and Resistance: the Two Faces
of Everyday Activism in Palestine
during the Intifada” Cultural
Anthropology, Vol. 16, No. 1 and
Hammami, R. (1990), “Women,
the Hijab and the Intifada” Middle
East Report, Vol. 30, No. 3&4.
41. Bisharat, “Exile to
Compatriot”; Tamari, S. (1991),
“The Palestinian Movement in
Transition: Historical Reversals
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
and the Uprising” Journal of
Palestine Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2.
42. For more detailed critical
analyses of the Oslo Accords and
the PA, see, among others, Said, E.
(1996) Peace and its Discontents,
New York: Vintage Books; Said,
E. (2000) The End of the Peace
Process: Oslo and After, New
York: Vintage Books; Tamari, “The
38
‘I'm a Refugee, but I live in Palestine, My Homeland’
representative. In its stead, many are increasingly looking for other forms of self-management and representation. Hilal and Abourahme summarise the context succinctly:
Refugees previously the “most visible, intelligible, and emblematic constituency”
of the Palestinian nation [Jayyusi 2007: 108] found themselves ‘backgrounded’
by an authority [the PA] fearful of alternative political centers and thrust into a
political equation wherein whatever is gained for the native West Banker is done
so at their expense [Massad 2001: 119]. It is in this new political landscape that
refugees begin to look inwards and embark on a reflexive process that leads to
increased self-reliance.43
West Bank refugees’ search for alternative representation and self-reliance becomes
apparent in their struggle to reform governance structures. Refugees in the West
Bank are governed by a multiplicity of sovereignties. Aside from the most dominating one—the Israeli settler-colonial regime—the PA and its local municipalities, UNRWA as well as local camp popular committees are involved in the governance of
refugees’ everyday lives in the West Bank. With each of these sovereignties, refugees
are carefully negotiating their relationship, weighing needs and risks of institutional
cooperation and enrolment.
This is most clearly articulated in refugee-PA relations. During our fieldwork in
2012, refugees in Deheishe strongly rejected the PA’s sovereignty over them. President Abbas had just, a few weeks before, in an official TV interview, denounced his
right to return to Safad, his village of origin in historical Palestine. His statement that
‘[i]t’s my right to see it, but not to live there’44 was faced with strong opposition in the
Palestinian refugee community worldwide. Mahmoud, a young Deheishan reacted:
There are 9 million Palestinians who can’t give up the right of return. Did you,
as the president of the PA, before you issued that statement, think about those 9
million? That’s what I’m asking. […] I’m waiting for the refugees themselves to
come out with the final decision.45
Most West Bank refugees refuse to accept that the PA speaks on their behalf and call
for radical reorganisation, even abolishment of the PA. Given West Bank refugees’
complex positioning vis-a-vis the PA, which acts as their host government and national representative, refugees refuse to be subsumed under PA sovereignty. Camp
refugees’ decision to abstain from the PA’s municipal elections reaffirms this rejection. Voting in the municipality elections, they argued, would contradict their status
Palestinian Movement”
43. Abourahme and Hilal, “The
Production of Space”, p. 9.
44. See e.g.: http://www.
newrepublic.com/article/112617/
israel-palestine-and-end-twostate-solution. Last accessed 4
April 2020.
45. Interview, Mahmoud,
Deheisheh, 2012.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
39
Sophie Richter-Devroe
as guests of the PA-administered areas and thus risk taking steps towards their permanent settlement in the West Bank, their tawteen.46
The debate over governance, representation and tawteen also is reflected in
camp residents’ struggles to reform the local camp committees, the lijan, which are
camp governance bodies comprised of camp residents. Samir, a resident of Aida
camp who was strongly engaged in the First Intifada and today continues his activism
in the camp through NGO and other social and political grassroots work, explained:
In 1999 the popular committees were formed in all the camps. They were made
by a decision of the PLO for us, because we as refugees, according to the law, we
live as guests of the PA. We don’t have anything to do with it [the PA] – even in the
municipal elections we didn’t have anything to do with it. […] These committees
were formed on the basis of a decision from Abu Ammar, and they represent a
kind of leadership for the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank. With time, they
have become part of the makeup of the nation, between the PA and UNRWA and
the mass of refugees.47
The lijan constitute a representative body for camp refugees, alternative to and in
competition with the PA, its municipal bodies and UNRWA. The committees have,
however, resisted organised elections since their instatement. Samir explained:
…from 1999 until today, over 15 years, there haven’t been any elections or changes
[in the lijan]. […] People say we’re in a camp, we don’t want to live as though it’s
a normal situation, and make elections. […] So if we held elections in Aida, with
everyone having the right to vote, tomorrow I could go to a conference and claim I
represent the people of Aida camp.48
While younger camp residents often explain the lack of elections for camp committees
as a strategy by the older generation to hold on to power, Samir here stresses the risk of
tawteen. For him, holding elections could risk turning camps into municipalities, with
committee leaders assuming the role of refugee camp representatives. His narrative,
however, contains a contradiction: as he himself stated, the lijan, despite the fact that
they are unelected, in any case already, ‘represent a kind of leadership for the Palestinian refugees in the West Bank’.49 The anti-tawteen rhetoric, while justified to a point,
thus also might become a way to block renewal of camp representative structures
through democratic practices. Effectively, the anti-tawteen discourse, as Hanafi and
Misselwitz, have poignantly stated with regard to Lebanon, can work as a ‘scarecrow’,
blocking discussions and steps towards camp reforms and improvement.50
46. On West Bank refugees
and municipal elections, see
also Abourahme and Hilal, “The
Production of Space”, p. 25; Badil
(2010), Palestinian refugees in the
OPTs Citizens or Refugees? Paper
presented to the Symposium
on Basic Rights of Palestinian
Refugees in Host Countries:
Reality And Responsibilities,
Damascus, 12–14 Dec. 2005,
available from www.badil.
org; Bocco, R. and Al-Husseini,
J. (2010), “The Status of the
Palestinian Refugees in the Near
East: The Right of Return”, Refugee
Survey Quarterly, and UNRWA in
Perspective,Vol. 28, Nos 2 & 3,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
p. 274.
47. Interview, Salah, Aida, 2014.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Misselwitz, P. and Hanafi, S.
(2009), “Testing a New Paradigm:
UNRWA’s Camp Improvement
Program,” Refugee Survey
Quarterly, Vol. 28, Nos. 2–3, p.
40
‘I'm a Refugee, but I live in Palestine, My Homeland’
Deheishan community leader Nour provided an additional, alternative explanation for why elections for the lijan have been resisted:
Now the new idea […] is to reconstruct the camp. So UNRWA says: “Ok now that
they have everything clean, new buildings, etc., they can hold elections [for the
lijan].” They tried that several times with the popular committees, to make it like
local elections, like in the village. […] The thing is that if the UN absolves itself of
its responsibility for the camp, and says: “OK you are [now] the leader and you can
have elections with all the people and organise everything like the municipality
elections,”—if this happens, we will not be covered by the UN, and they will stop
everything.51
Nour’s explanation reveals the potential political implications of absolving the UN
of its responsibilities. Several refugee activists in Deheishe and Aida camp whom
we interviewed argued that it is UNRWA’s, not the PA’s, not the local councils’, and
not even the lijan’s responsibility to manage, maintain and provide for refugees. For
them, the UN, given its apolitical mandate as well as, paradoxically, its symbolic political meaning as an internationally body proving refugee status (and relatedly refugee rights), offers the safest bet for camp management. By stressing that they are
under the responsibility of UNRWA, refugees aim to reinforce their status as refugees,
accentuating that they are guests, not citizens, in the PA-administered West Bank.
In doing so they effectively attach an – even if symbolical - political meaning to the
apolitical mandate of UNRWA.52
Being situated between the PA, its municipal governing bodies, the UN, and
local camp committees, West Bank refugees accept none of these as their sole and
full political representatives. The net effect of this maze of sovereign bodies through
and with which refugees are governed and negotiating is, however, that refugees are
left without adequate political representation. A myriad of institutions and political
bodies are involved in the governance and representation of refugees, the camp and
its inhabitants. Yet, none of these offer a realistic platform from and through which
refugees can effectively voice and fight for their rights.
As a result of this precarious situation and left without adequate political representation and leadership, refugees in the West Bank have started to increasingly engage in initiatives of self-reliance and self-representation. In this struggle, the
refugee camp stands out as a positive site of refugee identity, solidarity, and belonging.
364. On camp governance and
refugee self-management in
Lebanon, see Kortam, M. (2011)
“Politics, Patronage and Popular
Committees in the Shatila Refugee
Camp, Lebanon”, in A. Knudsen
& S. Hanafi (eds.), Palestinian
refugees. Identity, Space and Place
in the Levant, London, Routledge,
193–205; Salih, R (2013), “From
Bare Lives to Political Agents:
Palestinian Refugees as AvantGarde”, Refugee Survey Quarterly,
Vol. 32, No. 2, pp 88-89, RichterDevroe, S. (2013) “Like Something
Sacred”: Palestinian Refugees’
Narratives on the Right of Return”,
Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol 32,
No 2, pp. 112–113.
51. Nour, Interview, Deheishe,
2012.
52. Ilana Feldman has
convincingly and with much
nuance analyzed how discourses
of humanitarianism are also
appropriated by refugees
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
for making political claims.
See, e.g. Feldman, I (2012)
“The humanitarian condition:
Palestinian refugees and the
politics of living.” Humanity:
International Journal of Human
Rights Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 155–172;
Feldman, “What is a camp?”;
Feldman, I. (2018) Life Lived in
Relief: Humanitarian Predicaments
and Palestinian Refugee Politics,
University of California Press.
41
Sophie Richter-Devroe
Sahera, whose words on residents’ unity in Aida during the Intifada I quoted earlier, stresses that also today the camp retains these emotional and identity-related
meanings:
We left [the camp] and lived 5 years in a residency block in Karkefeh area, in the
city. We didn’t like it, and came back. We can’t live outside the camp. […] Because
of the social differences between us and the people who live in the cities. You feel
like you don’t know anyone. They’re strangers. I worry, I worry about my children.
I don’t know who those people are. Here [in the camp], I know they [the children]
will be safe in the street. I know everyone in the camp. I want to bring up my
children in the camp. The social situation is much easier. 53
After feeling isolated and alienated in the city, Sahera and her family decided
to move back to Aida camp to find solidarity, support and affinity. The camp in her
narrative is endorsed with a positive image—camp is home, a site of identity and resilience.
Deheishan residents similarly narrate their ‘camp as an emotional space’, 54 but
also as a site of political awareness. For example, Ahmad, a young Deheishan participant in the Campus in Camps Initiative,55 who moved out of Deheishe to the neighbouring suburb of Doha, writes about his relation to Deheishe: ‘When I introduce myself, I say I am from Dheisheh refugee camp even though I am living in Doha. People
know Dheisheh: sumud [steadfastness], a highly aware camp, you feel you are coming
from a strong place’.56 Most young refugees we spoke to understood their camp as
a site of resistance and political awareness. Maysoon, for example, stressed that in
the case of the right of return being granted, she would be: ‘the one who chooses.
This is the important thing that I can choose. If I want to stay here in the camp then I
can. I can stay anywhere.’57 Her political imaginary retains the village of origin as key
symbol of the right of return, but at the same time, foregrounds refugees’ own choice,
agency and links to the camp. Most other camp residents, particularly the young, narrated the camp in ways similar to Maysoon and Ahmad: not as an abject place to be
abandoned for the village of origin, nor as a mere humanitarian space of poverty and
dependency, but rather as a central place of refugee political and collective memory,
identity and subjecthood.58
53. Sahera, Interview Aida, 2014.
54. Feldman, “What is a Camp”,
p. 249.
55. For more details on the
Campus in Camps Initiative, see
http://www.campusincamps.
ps/; Petti, A. (2018) Petti, A.
(2018) “Campus in Camps.
Knowledge production and urban
interventions in refugee camps”
http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/
wp-content/uploads/2009/03/
Knowledge-production-inRefugee-Camps.pdf Last accessed
4 April 2020; and Feldman,
“What is a Camp”.
56. Abu Aker, Qussay, Al Lahham,
Ahmad (2013) “The Suburb:
Transgressing Boundaries,”
Campus in Camps. http://www.
campusincamps.ps/wp-content/
uploads/2013/07/The-Suburb_
web.pdf. Last accessed 3 April
2020.p. 83. The narratives of
young Deheishans presented in
this volume re-signify Deheishe
camp as home and as a political
space, thus differentiating it from
the adjacent urban suburb of
Doha.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
57. Maysoon, Interview,
Deheishe, 2010, quoted also in
Richter-Devroe, “Like Something
Sacred” p. 108.
58. Ilana Feldman’s distinction
between the camp as a
humanitarian, emotional and
political space captures camp
residents’ narratives well.
Feldman, “What is a Camp”.
42
‘I'm a Refugee, but I live in Palestine, My Homeland’
As part of this re-evaluation of the camp as a site where refugee political subjecthood emerges, refugees have also been searching for refugee-specific political representations. The core impetus for this comes from their rejection of the PA as their
representative. In the earlier quoted discussion with refugee youth in Deheisheh in
2012 after President Abbas had denounced his right to return, several participants
raised ideas of alternative, new structures of political representation for refugees.
Mahmoud, for example, stated that he is ‘waiting for the refugees themselves to come
out with the final decision.’59 Another young Deheishan resident, Jumana, who argued vehemently that ‘the PA doesn’t have any rule [sovereignty] over me!’ also provided her thoughts on alternative political representation:
I don’t think refugees think about tawteen [naturalisation] or compensation,
[they are] still here [in the West Bank] like guests. In my opinion we need a leader
from refugees, to honour us, to represent us, because the [current] leader or the
government doesn’t represent refugees.60
Proposals such as Jumana’s of a specific refugee representative body and leadership, which for some could even take the form of a specific refugee political party,
reflect refugees’ disillusionment with and alienation from the PA. Although there
have always been proposals for specific Palestinian refugee political self-representation and self-organisation—both historically,61 and more recently when refugees called for elections to and revival of the Palestinian National Council62—these
initiatives so far have not materialised. Refugees, particularly in the West Bank, are
aware that they have to engage in a difficult balancing act: on the one hand, they need
to maintain their distinctiveness in order to avoid tawteen and keep their refugee
demands on the agenda. Yet, on the other hand, they must be cautious not to overstress their specific identity as refugees in order to avoid further fragmentation
of the Palestinian national political landscape. As such, refugees’ search for alternative, refugee-specific political representation might in fact speak not so much to
their concrete political imaginings and proposals, but rather highlights the paradoxical position that they, as refugees and guests in their own Palestinian home-/land
struggle with.
59. Mahmoud, Interview,
Deheisheh, 2012.
60. Interview, Jumana, Deheishe,
2012.
61. See Plascov “The Palestinian
Refugees in Jordan”.
62. The initiative to revive
the PNC has been discussed
widely and is supported
through various diaspora and
refugee organisations. See
e.g. the published roundtable
discussions by al-Shabaka on 1
May 2013 at http://al-shabaka.
org/roundtable/politics/open-
debate-palestinian-representation
and Jadaliyya on 11 September
2012 at http://www.jadaliyya.
com/pages/index/6082/
roundtable-on-palestiniandiaspora-and-representat. See
also Shweiki (2012) “Palestinian
Civil Society and the Question of
Representation”, Bulletin for the
Council for British Research in the
Levant, Vo. 7, No. 1, pp. 36–41.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
43
Sophie Richter-Devroe
CONCLUSION
West Bank refugees live with the paradox of being refugees in their own homeland,
as Nour’s opening quote to this article poignantly puts it. They are both guests and
members of the PA’s nation-state-in-the-making. This dual (and sometimes partial)
membership of West Bank refugees in the Palestinian nation(-state) and in the Palestinian refugee community takes on context-specific expressions and emphasis.
Careful to maintain their distinct refugee identity in order to prevent tawteen and
reassert their right to return, while also struggling to maintain Palestinian national
unity in the face of settler-colonial erasure, West Bank refugees have had to continuously (re-)negotiate and adjust their notions and meanings of refugee identity, camp
and home. In this article I traced these shifting political cultures and struggles over
political representation in three distinct historical periods: the post-Nakba, the First
Intifada and post-Oslo period.
While in the early years after the Nakba, refugees occupied the lowest strata of
social and political hierarchy in the West Bank, refugeehood was drastically re-evaluated from the 1970s onwards. With the rise of the PLO and under the umbrella of the
Palestinian national liberation movement, refugees defied not only the localism of
the previous generation, but also the West Bank local land-owning elites’ monopole
on political, economic and social power. As part of this struggle, the refugee camp
underwent dramatic semiotic shifts from denoting an abject place of poverty to a site
of resistance. Until today the camp with its distinct refugee political identity is often
represented as a stronghold of Palestinian resistance, and for many camp residents
it represents their home—a place of belonging and resilience, where refugee political
subjecthood can be negotiated and shaped.
Refugee resistance is mainly targeted against the Israeli settler-colonial regime,
but also against the PA. Refugees in the West Bank criticise the PA for its discriminatory policies, and—most importantly—for abandoning their right of return with the Oslo
two-state agenda. Given the lack of adequate political leadership, refugees in the West
Bank have increasingly embarked on different local and global initiatives of self-management and self-representation. Even though these initiatives have as of yet not exercised any tangible impact on refugees’ predicaments and rights, they nevertheless
testify to refugees’ specific political subjecthood. While traditionally perceived as
marker of poverty, dependency, lack of rights and agency, ‘refugeeness’ has now in
the post-Oslo era become ‘critical in the pursuit of political practice’.63 The unique and
paradoxical experience of being a refugee in one’s own homeland, which for refugees
is anchored materially and symbolically in the camp as a site of home, political awareness and resistance, thus gives rise to refugee-specific political identities. These differ
from place to place and from time to time, but they confirm that refugeehood and life
in the camps is not at all outside of the political and/or confined to a humanitarian
space. To the contrary, in the West Bank refugeehood constitutes a political subjectivity which, in its careful negotiations between home and host, guest and member, gives
rise to specific refugee political practices, identities and subjecthoods.
63. Abourahme and Hilal, “The
Production of Space”, p. 32. Ruba
Salih, in a similar vein,
argues that Palestinian refugees
form ‘a “political society”,
composed of new claims,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
narratives and political practices’.
See Salih, “From Bare Lives”,
p. 69–70.
44
DEFINING WHAT IS
‘IMPORTANT’ AND
WHAT IS ‘URGENT’
IN THE PALESTINIAN
ISSUES
TOWARD ENGAGING UNRWA
IN THE CAMP GOVERNANCE
SARI HANAFI
Refugees are precursors of the new “political” space of the Arab uprisings and the
demand for social justice, dignity, and self-determination that were harboured
therein. This space, albeit saturated with contradictions or uncertainties, echoes
the wide disillusionment towards Arab regimes’ empty rhetoric and unfulfilled
promises, proposing a vision at the core of which are the symbolic, political,
and material dimensions of dignity, rights, and state-society and minoritiesmajorities relations in the region.1
Living in a revolutionary moment in the Arab world and thereby witnessing history unfold, I often wonder why some left-wing forces have viewed the ‘revolution"
(against authoritarianism) and ‘resistance’ (against imperialism) as opposing, and
even contradictory, concepts rather than complementary.2 Some leftists adopt the
1. Salih, R. (2013), “Reconciling
Return and Rights: Palestinian
Refugees and the Emergence of
a ‘Political Society.’” Jadaliyya.
https://www.jadaliyya.com/
Details/28300.
2. This question does not
only concern the Arab region.
Participating in the Latin American
Sociological Association (ALAS)
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
conference in Lima (Peru) in
December, I saw similarities
between the pathologies of the
Arab left and their colleagues in
Latin America.
45
Sari Hanafi
approach of Mao Zedong in ‘On Contradiction’, which establishes a strong hierarchy between a ‘principal’ contradiction and a ‘secondary’ one. The struggle against
imperialism, for example, represents the ‘principal’ contradiction of imperialist
vs. colonial (struggle of opposite tendencies), as opposed to the ‘secondary’ contradiction of the bourgeoisie vs. proletariat. When imperialism launches a war of
aggression against a country, all its various social classes can temporarily unite in a
national war against imperialism. Although the principal and secondary contradiction can shift positions, many leftists conceive these contradictions in terms of a sort
of grand periodization, determining the nature of struggle: struggle against imperialism, struggle against capitalism, or struggle against dictatorship. These eras dictate
the strategy, determining where energy should be put. Moreover, this approach can
generate polar, essentialising binaries such as patriot/traitor, resister/foreign agent,
patriot/imperialist, western/eastern, secular/Islamic, modernity/tradition, rational/
irrational, progressive/conservative, that are so divisive in producing different elite
formations, and deep rifts within each society. Such modes of thought categorise the
actors in any conflict not as simple adversaries on specific issues (opponent/proponent) but, as Carl Schmitt would have put it, as foes/friends trapped in an eternal
enmity/friendship.
In this chapter, I argue that many scholars and political activists fall in the trap of
such analysis and it is time to move forward in understanding the today demands of
the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and elsewhere, with the focus on the reluctance
of UNRWA to deal with what is urgent for these refugees.
FROM PRINCIPAL VS SECONDARY CONTRADICTIONS TOWARD
IMPORTANT VS URGENT ONES
My thesis here that it is time to move the dichotomy principal vs secondary contradictions into a more creative and dynamic one: by arguing that some issues are important
while others are urgent. If the conflict with the colonial practices of Israel is important,
as it is for social justice, citizenship, gender equality and respect for human rights,
yet in a specific moment some of these claims are urgent. What today is urgent
for one city is only important in a different place. Such a dynamic thought would liberate us from this grand periodization that blinds us to everyday societal problems,
and preempts us from engaging with an extraordinary range and variety of social
movements.
In Lebanon, in the revolutionary moment of October 2019, there was a heated
debate between two camps. The first one believed that the current youth uprising,
calling for toppling the sectarian political regime and replacing corrupted politicians
is simply a secondary contradiction that would harm the principal contradiction, that
is, the current struggle against imperialism in the region, especially, the one dating
from 1948, when Israel was created and 900,000 Palestinians expelled. The second
camp, which I belong to, thought that the demands of the uprising are urgent, while
the ‘resistance’ to imperialism and Israeli colonial practices is simply important at
this moment in Lebanon. In the same vein, the ‘resisting imperialism’ camp allies
itself with the Syrian regime (ignoring its brutalizing, authoritarian nature and systematic deployment of torture) merely because this regime has been supportive of
the Lebanese resistance (Hezbollah). Likewise, the Lebanese people must endure the
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
46
Defining What is ‘Important’ and What is ‘Urgent’ in the Palestinian Issues
corruption of the resistance camp, or at least that of their allies, in the name of the
main contradiction with imperialism.3
So, the main problem is not in theorizing what the two main and secondary contradictions are, but rather dealing with the mechanisms of the defunct type of authority that Ibn Khaldun wrote about, and after him Max Weber, that relies on charisma or
tribal/familial allegiances (Asabiyya), rather than legal legitimacy (i.e. the rotation of
power through election, respecting basic rights, freedom and citizenship). Why does
the ‘resistance’ camp want to consider that the main contradiction to be addressed
leads to the liberation of Jerusalem, while ending the sectarian political system, giving a Lebanese woman the right to grant her nationality to her children, or giving
the Palestinian refugees basic rights, such as the right to work and ownership, are
secondary contradictions that should simply be postponed?
All of these contradictions are important, but what is urgent among them today is
not necessarily the same as yesterday, and what is urgent here may be no more than
just ‘important’ there. As someone who has been working for a long time on Palestinian refugee issues, I was struck by the sight of a banner held aloft by a demonstrator
in Shatila camp in 2005: ‘the right to return, but we want to live.’ That is, those who
chose that banner understood that they could not be ‘anesthetized’ with regard to
their socio-economic rights in the name of the right of return. Contrary to the political commissars and the right-wing political parties in Lebanon, who seek to eliminate
these rights, Palestinian refugees see that all these rights, the former and the latter,
are important. However, their socio-economic rights are urgent today. The refugees
behind such a banner cannot be criticised for confusing the main and the secondary
contradictions. What is urgent today in the Shatila camp is different from what is
urgent in the Gaza Strip, where the urgent struggle is to end the Israeli occupation.
Thinking of the debate in the Arab world, the ‘ultimate victim’ and the ‘ultimate
enemy’ determines only who is a patriot/authentic or a foreign agent and traitor. But
the volatility of nation-state boundaries in the era of globalisation makes the idea of
loyalty to society or culture other than the local one, pathological. The human yearning for humanity is one of the sources of the multiple allegiances that become the rule
and not at all the exception, particularly when both state and society are animated by
brutalising authoritarian forces.
3. I found the debate in Latin
America followed much the same
lines. The extraordinary congress
of the Latin America Sociological
Association (ALAS) held in
December in Lima and attended
by 3,300 participants was one
of the sites of such a debate,
regarding specifically Venezuela
and Bolivia. Some (rightly) argue
that one needs to denounce the
military coup in Bolivia, but also
denounce Juan Evo Morales,
who previously acted against
the Constitution (which does not
allow more than one re-election).
This topic was confirmed by a
referendum called by the former
government itself. Along the
same lines, they argue one should
denounce the personal power
monopoly of President Nicholas
Maduro in Venezuela and raise
the same question regarding both
Bolivia and Venezuela: why did the
two leaders, Morales and Maduro,
not properly institutionalize their
political parties in a way that
other leaders emerged? Why
are there no second leaders in
many leftist (but not only leftist)
political parties, that can run for
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
office at the end of the original
leader’s term? The same question
can be asked in relation to other
‘progressive’ regimes, such as
those in Syria and Yemen, along
with other republican regimes
that have paved the way for the
succession to power of their sons.
Is there no possibility of resistance
under democratic regimes?
47
Sari Hanafi
THE URGENT AND THE IMPORTANT FOR UNRWA
In his speech at the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets, Moscow, 4 December
1920, Lenin points out that ‘Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of
the whole country.’4 Projecting Soviet Union to a refugee camp, I would say that a
good governance system in a camp should also be composed by a power and service:
ideally power will stem from the community (such as political factions for the political issues and popular committees for administrative and municipal issues) with
services provided by humanitarian organizations and host authorities because they
are a refugee population. However, given that popular committees are often dysfunctional and the host authorities ignore this population, UNRWA cannot afford to become a mere service provider. During the past two decades, governing a nation or a
city or a camp has been shown to require decentralization of the governance system
and involvement of many actors, as Michel Foucault5 reminds us, what is important
is not the formal power that stems from the exercise of sovereignty but rather the effects of power that a governmental technology generates. While UNRWA theoretically
presents itself as simply a service provider, it is de facto much more than that. This
constitutes the major hypothesis I formulate for this chapter.
Because of its mandate, a humanitarian organisation like UNRWA has historically understood its role as a temporary relief provider to a temporary group of victims,
carefully avoiding taking on a wider governing role. At the same time, most refugees
have effectively assigned UNRWA a key role, holding it responsible for problems in
the camps that go well beyond the realm of its mandate. This generates frequent misunderstandings that characterise the current status quo.6
What I will argue here is while service providing is an important task for UNRWA,
what is urgent is to enable the Palestinian refugees to live as political actors and this
cannot be without organizing them politically. This means first to have a kind of municipality power in the refugee camps. Of course, in the dark time of Corona Virus and
current financial crisis worldwide and specifically in Lebanon, we can envisage more
urgent tasks. For instance, Thabit Organization for the Right of Return,7 becomes the
main watchdog in Lebanon constructively criticising UNRWA and proposing urgent
matters to be dealt with such as the Palestinian daily workers who strop working because of the curfew (due to COVID-19).8 But strategically UNRWA should enhance the
immunity of the Palestinian refugees people by facilitating their camp governance.
UNRWA AS A ‘PHANTOM SOVEREIGN’
Traditionally, UNRWA, rather similar to any other humanitarian organizations as we
will point out in the next section, considered refugees to be needy victims. Analogous
to the failure of acknowledging the urbanisation process that transformed tent cities
into complex built environments is the failure of acknowledging that traumatised
and voiceless victims desire to become emancipated subjects, especially after some
sort of normalcy of life in the camps has set in. The paternalistic approach—a relief
4. Lenin’s famous plan of
electrification of Russia (GOELRO
Plan) was born in 1920, under
conditions of utter ruin and
starvation.
5. Foucault, Michel (1990),
The History of Sexuality: An
Introduction, Vintage Books,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
New York.
6. Misselwitz, P. and Hanafi, S.
(2010), ‘Testing a New Paradigm:
UNRWA’s Camp Improvement
48
Defining What is ‘Important’ and What is ‘Urgent’ in the Palestinian Issues
agency serving an anonymous crowd of beneficiaries—enters into crisis, unable to
cope with the ever more complex landscape of emerging community initiatives, local
institutions and social mobilisation.
Many actors are playing a role in the governance of the Palestinian refugee
camps. In Syria and Jordan, the State controls the camps closely and through their
specific state organs assigns a camp director who plays a major role in organising the
urban and political life inside the camp. In contrast to this classical state control over
slum areas including camps, the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
(OPT) and Lebanon is radically different. There is a web of complex power structures
composed of one or two conflicting popular committees (in Lebanon), a security committee, notables (wujaha), political factions, Palestine Scholars’ League (imams coalition close to Hamas), Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)’s popular unions and
organizations (workers, women, engineers, etc.), community based organizations
(CBOs), NGOs and UNRWA Camp officers. These forces vary in their importance from
camp to camp and from area to area. In each camp, leaders have imposed measures,
which are frequently changing as a consequence of a constantly shifting balance of
power between these different groups. The popular committees, however, stand out
as the most important local governing body in Lebanon and the OPT. It is worth noting that the label ‘popular’ could be misleading because it is not based on a popular
vote but it projects the strength of one group or party vis-à-vis others (in Gaza and the
West Bank, the term ‘local committee’ or ‘camp committee’ is also frequently used).9
Instead of one sovereign, camps are ruled by a tapestry of multiple, partial sovereignties. This includes real sovereign bodies like the Lebanese government or the
PLO/Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and a patchwork of actors who contribute
to the governance of the camp. The situation is made even more complex when UNRWA’s role is taken into account. Here, I would like to introduce the notion of ‘phantom
sovereignty’ in order to describe and analyse the critical position of the Agency.
One cannot understand power in a formal way but through the effects of power
that different governmentalities generates. While UNRWA was not intended to, nor
does it pretend to, govern the camps, it is ascribed the status of a sovereign by many
camp dwellers. This is perhaps best exemplified by the ambiguous role of UNRWA’s
camp services officers, a camp-based staff member who historically assumes a powerful position vis-à-vis the camp community. Power included in the past, for example,
the ability to cut ration rolls for an individual who did not obey UNRWA regulations.10
UNRWA historically appointed these officers from among the camp community, after
consultation and verbal approval from the local tribal and village leaders.
This policy is doubly accommodating. By appointing a representative of the
camp’s elite to become an official staff member, UNRWA sought legitimisation and
acceptance. From the early 1990s, UNRWA increasingly appointed members of new
camp elites, such as well-educated camp residents (engineers, teachers, and pharmacists) who were sometimes known historically for their political activism and good
Programme’. Refugee Survey
Quarterly, Number 2–3/2009.
Pp. 360–388.
7. http://thabit-lb.org/ar/
8. http://thabit-lb.org/ar/default.
asp?contentID=2652&menuID=4.
9. For more details see Hanafi
2010.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
10. Feldman, I. (2008), Governing
Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority, and
the Work of Rule, 1917–1967,
Duke University Press, 344pp.
49
Sari Hanafi
relations with the community.11 In interviews, camp dwellers often refer to this officer
as ‘camp director’, yet in reality his official function is merely to act as a facilitator of
access to UNRWA services. Interviews clearly showed the gap between his perceived
role and his actual function. This confusion stems from the historical role played by
the UNRWA camp service officers in not only providing services, but also in administering and coordinating many aspects of the refugees’ lives. As a result, the ‘camp
directors’ are perceived as occupying a ruling position without acting accordingly.
The confusion over the role of camp services officers is symptomatic of the confusion over the role of UNRWA in general. Many camp residents, for instance, consider UNRWA and the popular committees responsible for the disorder in the camps. Expressing her anger at their perceived passivity, a resident posed the question: ‘Who
can I complain to when my neighbor builds a second and third floor without leaving
any proper space for my apartment?’ Many interviewees indeed used words like ‘chaos’, ‘security’, ‘unruliness,’ ‘lawlessness’ (felatan amni), and ‘clanism’ (al-asha’riya)
to describe the situation in the camps and attribute UNRWA’s inaction as one of the
major causes of it. This is why many interviewees’ testimonials showed that the relationship between them and UNRWA is characterized by frustration, mistrust, miscommunication and mutual misunderstandings. But this resentment toward UNRWA is not a rejection of aid, rather a rejection of aid as a substitute for political action,
especially in terms of camp governance.12 To explain this ambivalence of UNRWA’s
position vis-a-vis the camp governance, in the next section, I argue that UNRWA officers are in constant negotiation between its mandate and its transgression.
MANDATE VS. PRACTICES
UNRWA was created in December 1949 by virtue of resolution 302 of the UN GA (it started its operations in May 1950) as a refugee organisation specifically dedicated to the
Palestinian refugees. Its UN mandate included catering for the basic needs of refugees
while promoting integration in the host country, but excluded de jure protection of refugees or their return to their homes.13 Despite its very strict mandate, in the past fifteen
years, there have been cases in which the organization has acted beyond the letter of the
mandate. For example, when it provided ‘passive protection’ for Palestinian refugees
during the first intifada (1987–1994). Since a multi-stakeholder meeting in Geneva in
2004, the organisation has started linking service provision to advocacy, and recently, a rights-based approach to its humanitarian mandate has been emerging. One can
notice relatively strong language used in UNRWA publications to attract the attention
of the international community to the continuous plight of Palestinian refugees. However, taking into account housing, children’s and women’s rights, and other rights does
not mean that the right of return has become part of UNRWA’s advocacy strategy. In
spite of the importance of UNRWA publications for mobilising the international community, the very concept of refugees as an artifact of victimisation discourse obstructs
the possibility of resistance that seeks to advance their return and statehood. The United States and some of UNRWA’s European donors consider that if UNRWA goes in the
11. However, fearing the Israeli
reaction in the OPT, UNRWA
avoided appointing people with
express political affiliations.
12. Parry, M. (2002) ‘Phyrric
victories and the collapse of
humanitarian principles,’ Journal
of Humanitarian Assistance, 94:
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
1–16.
13. For more details see (Khouri
2010; Bocco 2010).
50
Defining What is ‘Important’ and What is ‘Urgent’ in the Palestinian Issues
direction of looking for a durable solution such as settlement and return, it will undergo
dangerous politicisation, although UNHCR’s case has shown that being involved in the
search for durable solutions does not conflict with an essentially humanitarian mandate (Takkenberg, 2006). I was very interested in demystifying the de-politicisation of
humanitarianism ever since the beginning of the Second Intifada. In 2003 in Jerusalem
I co-organised with Adi Ophir a two-day workshop on ‘The Politics of Humanitarianism
in the Occupied Territories’ for international, Palestinian and Israeli human rights and
humanitarian organisations. Scholars and practitioners presented their different visions, generating much discussion and even some tension. So absorbing was the debate
that Peter Hansen, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, who came to simply present a
paper, stayed for the whole workshop. Pursuant this discussion Hansen argued with this
nonpolitical stance, UNRWA has done some politics in its own way.
As the new UNRWA discourse began to appear, Karen Koning AbuZayd, then
Commissioner-General, subtly revealed the tension between what is political and
what is humanitarian in her statement at the Host and Donors Meeting held in Amman on December 11, 2006:
This tension is manifested in a variety of ways. One of its most striking
manifestations is the contrast between the readiness of states to fund emergency
responses, compared to their failure to address the questions of international law
and politics that cause these emergencies. That tension is clear in the way in which
the urgency to resolve underlying questions of justice and peace for Palestinians is
somehow divorced from the challenge of providing for their human needs.14
UNRWA has played a valuable role in empowering Palestinian refugees by providing
primary and vocational/technical education, health services, and sometimes employment, microcredit and microfinance (since 1991), and more recently in being
engaged in public advocacy for the protection of the Palestinian people. In spite of
all these benign efforts, they have not been sufficient to get the majority of the Palestinian refugees beyond the threshold of poverty and isolation and to allow their
social and economic integration into the Lebanese and the Palestinian societies in
the Palestinian territory. While this cannot be attributed to UNRWA alone, I do believe
that due to its mandate, UNRWA has been unable to seize always the opportunity and
promote some changes in the situation of the Palestinian refugees. The involvement
of UNRWA in the reconstruction of the Jenin refugee camp after its partial destruction by the IDF in 2001 is revealing in this sense. Instead of alleviating the crowdedness of the camps by advocating for the return of some refugees to their place of
origin (a third of Jenin’s refugees come from the village of Zaraan, located some 17
kilometers west of the city), UNRWA pursued only two options: rebuilding the camp
while respecting its boundaries and asking the Jenin municipality to allocate a piece
of land to allow its expansion. Also only recently did UNRWA become vocal on criticising some Arab host countries’ policies toward the Palestinian refugees. Because
14. Her speech for the Host and
Donors Meeting held in Amman on
December 11, 2006.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
51
Sari Hanafi
UNRWA’s mandate has never included the repatriation or resettlement of refugees,
the Agency’s ‘care and maintenance’ activities have been widely interpreted by many
interviewees as a failed attempt to appease a population with humanitarian action
in lieu of durable political solutions.15 In addition to the temporary UNRWA mandate precluding long term planning, and having always been financially vulnerable,
UNRWA operates with different pressures on the Agency and is dependent on host
country cooperation.
In all the geographical fields, and in spite of the relative dissatisfaction with UNRWA’s services,16 UNRWA’s role is crucial to the social and economic support and relief
activities, through its programs running in the camp, and through its bodies such as:
the Camp Service Office and the Women Program Centers (WPC). The Infrastructure
and Camp Improvement Program has offered a chance to readdress the relationship
between UNRWA and camp communities. Ambivalence and negotiation have been
characterising the mandate of UNRWA has gone in the last 10 years into to some good
directions but UNRWA is still not playing a major role in facilitating camp governance.
CONCLUSION: LESSONS FROM UNHCR
In this chapter I have argued that the resulting ‘phantom sovereignty’ of UNRWA is
based on this fundamental misunderstanding of roles and responsibilities, which
leaves a problematic void, contributes to the sense of permanent emergency and exception, and fuels mistrust and suspicion. What is urgent is that UNRWA interprets
its mandate concerning their involvement in camp governance. It took UNHCR a long
time, untill early 1990s, to be convinced that governing a camp required a governance system with local participation. Prior to that, UNHCR played a very ambiguous
role in terms of promoting or diminishing the influence of the notables in the camps.
However since the 1990s, UNHCR became more systematic, promoting community
participation and organising elections.
Emphasis on participation can be seen in Tanzania. Looking at the UNHCR’s influence on the physical organisation of camps in Tanzania, it is apparent that the
UNHCR is downplaying traditional authorities within the camps. After the distasteful
experience of locating Rwandan genocide participants in Benaco, and the disastrous
situation of refugee camps being used by various rebel groups as bases for operations
in Rwanda, UNHCR’s attempts to mitigate the influence of former political parties and
notables in these camps were striking. In Simon Turner’s17 description of Burundian
refugee camps in Tanzania and Shelley Dick’s18 description of Congolese camps, both
explained UNHCR’s implementation of a system by which UNHCR created an entirely
new leadership in the refugee communities. In these camps, UNHCR insisted on setting up tents in controlled arbitrary grids, and assigning refugees to plots based on
order of arrival as opposed to home community. In Burundi and the Congo, UNHCR
15. Abu Zahra, N. (2005), “No
advocacy, no protection, no
politics: why aid-for-peace does
not bring peace”, in: Borderlands
(e-journal), vol. 4, n°1, 2005.
16. Al Husseini, J. and Bocco,
R. (2010), “The Status of The
Palestinian Refugees In The
Near East: The Right Of Return
And UNRWA In Perspective”.
A. Knudsen and S. Hanafi (Ed.)
Palestinian Refugees: Identity,
Space and Place in the Levant,
Routledge.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
17. Turner, S. (2006), “Negotiating
Authority between UNHCR and
‘The People’” Development and
Change 37, no. 4(2006):759–778.
18. Dick, S. (2002), Review of
CORD community services for
Congolese refugees in Tanzania.
52
Defining What is ‘Important’ and What is ‘Urgent’ in the Palestinian Issues
also implemented this method of organization, basing community elections on this
layout. Because each voting block was made up of people from many different villages, it was unlikely that former notables would be elected. Instead, camp committee
representatives were often younger men, who were both competent and represented
a change in the authority structure.19
This model was a crucial improvement on the previous models of exclusion and
segmentation. However, I would qualify the UNHCR approach as a top-down model
where the role of participation and election is set from above. UNRWA may adopt UNHCR’s emphasis on governance within the camp, rather than avoiding the issue. UNRWA
should not be merely a phantom sovereign. With more transparent governance system,
the relationship between UNRWA and community could be fostered with a genuine
partnership. In Lebanon, UNRWA’s help to the popular committees is crucial. Why?
First, PLO factions and Coalition factions are so weak that cannot alone negotiate with the Lebanese government, as well as military and municipal authorities on
issues pertaining to the Palestinian rights, camp improvement, etc. Second, there
are more positive signs about some of the first steps towards redefining the roles of
provider and passive recipient into a more genuine partnership between UNRWA
and community, such as the efforts towards reconstruction in urban planning that
have been strongly approved by UNRWA’s new camp improvement department. This
department advocated for a different approach and convinced UNRWA into taking on
a full partnership with the Nahr El Bared Reconstruction Commission for Civil Action
and Studies, a grassroots organization with technocratic experts (NBRC).
Ultimately, the situation can be improved by developing effective, democratically endorsed camp governance structures that represent community interests and
can lead to camp improvements. UNRWA may choose to accept and engage with existing representative structures, overcome its paternalistic approach and sometimes
institutional arrogance, and carefully assist and strengthen camp governance.
My two concrete recommendations could be, first, the best way to be involved in
camp governance is to foster community participation to take part of the decision in
service provided prioritisation. As UNRWA has scarce resources, it is important for
UNRWA to adopt the model of Porto Alegre’s municipality and to discuss its budget
of how to be distributed among different (health, education, hardship, camp rehabilitation, etc.) programs in discussion forums designed in each camp.20 These forums should not be composed by the popular committees but more representative
audience and ask political factions to send educated youth representatives. In a second plan, ask also NGOs and grassroots organizations to send local representatives.
Second, it is crucial that UNRWA empower camp service officers and Area officers
by giving them more power and ask them to be more on the ground listening to the
refugees’ problems.
UNHCR’s Evaluation and
Policy Analysis Unit. Geneva,
Switzerland. December.
19. Abu Z Tonge, A. (2009),
‘Draft of Research on Actors in
Sovereignty and Governance in
Tanzanian, Indian, Sahrawi, Kenya,
and Palestinian Refugee Camps’.
Unpublished report presented to
Issam Fares Institute, p. 26.
20. Hanafi, S. (2010), Governing
Palestinian Refugee Camps in the
Arab East : Governmentalities
in Search of Legitimacy. Beirut:
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Issam Fares Institute for Public
Policy and International Affairs
American University of Beirut.
53
ADVANCING
PALESTINIAN
REFUGEE RIGHTS
AFTER A 70–YEAR–
LONG IMPASSE
WHAT ROLE FOR
INTERNATIONAL LAW?
FRANCESCA P. ALBANESE
* The author is grateful to Nicholas Morris, Lex Takkenberg and Max Cali for their
comments on this chapter. The author also wishes to underscore that section 2 of this
chapter largely draws on research that she carried out in connection with the writing,
together with Lex Takkenberg, of the book: Palestine Refugees in International Law,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2nd ed., 2020.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
54
“A right delayed is a right denied.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
INTRODUCTION
In 2009, on the occasion of UNRWA’s 60th anniversary, UNRWA Commissioner General Karen AbuZayd commented that such an anniversary was ‘hardly a cause for
celebration […] but rather a moment for sober reflection on the contribution UNRWA
has made to the well-being of millions of Palestine refugees and on the challenges
that lie ahead’.1 As UNRWA has just celebrated its 70th anniversary, the opportunity
for such a sober reflection on the state of Palestinian refugees2 and on the challenges
that lie ahead, is even more compelling, given the increasing challenges and political
attacks that both Palestinian refugees and the United Nations agency serving them—
the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA)—endure.
This year (2020), the future of Palestinian refugees and UNRWA appears gloomier than ever. The spread of the Covid-19 disease has deteriorated an already dire humanitarian situation across most of UNRWA’s area of operations (the West Bank and
Gaza under occupation, with the latter also under blockade; Syria trapped in a nine
year violent war; and Lebanon in a downward economic spiral). At this time of increase demand for UNRWA’s services, the worsening financial conditions further impair the agency’s ability to respond.3 Moreover, in recent years, efforts to deny legitimacy and legal status of Palestinian refugees under international law have increased
dramatically. Dozens of political acolytes and pundits in the US, Israel and beyond
have been doubling down on the claims that UNRWA operates outside the international refugee regime and ‘perpetuates’ the refugee crisis by registering ‘illegitimate
refugees (i.e. Palestinian refugee descendants over generations).4 These claims are
not only factually and legally wrong, but they distract from the reality that ending the
de facto indefinite refugee status of millions Palestinian refugees requires political
solutions in line with international law. The failure to find such solutions is the cause
of the continuous existence of the Palestinian refugee question and the growing numbers of refugees. UNRWA stands as a symptom of this chronic political deficit, not its
cause. Meanwhile, UNRWA has been a stabilizing factor by supporting the welfare
1. Karen Abu Zayd, “UNRWA
and the Palestinian Refugees
After Sixty Years: Assessing
Developments and Marking
Challenges.” Refugee Survey
Quarterly 28, no. 2–3 (2009): 227.
2. Distinction is often drawn
between the terms “Palestine”
and “Palestinian” refugee, where
the former refers to refugees
under UNRWA’s mandate and
the latter refers to refugees of
Arab origin only: in 1948 refugees
from Palestine included a dozen
different nationalities all of whom
received immediate UN assistance
and attention (Takkenberg:
1998). In this chapter, the term
“Palestinian refugees” is used
to refer to the Arabs who were
displaced in 1948 and 1967 from
the territory of the former British
Mandate Palestine (including the
one the Gaza Strip, West Bank
and East Jerusalem that were
occupied by Israel in 1967) and
their descendants, for whom a
solution is still to be found. In
UN resolutions, they are referred
to as “Palestine refugees” and
“1967 displaced” respectively. In
the chapter, the term “Palestine
refugee” is used when referring
to persons under UNRWA’s
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
mandate only.
3. UNRWA’s critical financial
situation experienced a new low
after the US administration’s
decision to halt its longstanding
partnership with UNRWA and
completely defund the Agency in
2018 (320 million USD).
4. On the issue see Francesca P.
Albanese, “UNRWA and Palestine
Refugee Rights: New Assaults,
New Challenges”, Current Issues
In Depth, Institute for Palestine
Studies, Issue no.1, November
2018.
55
Francesca P. Albanese
and development of million refugees in the Near East. Ensuring adequate support
to this function of the agency remains the minimum bearable—while insufficient—
response by the international community to Palestinian refugees until their question
is definitely settled within the meaning of relevant UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions.5
In fact the continuous attacks on UNRWA, as the tangible testament of the UN’s
commitment towards Palestinian refugees, Israel and its main ally, the current US
[Trump] Administration, are trying to obliterate the refugee question altogether.
This is epitomized by the peace plan heralded by Donald Trump since 2019 as ‘The
Deal of the Century’. By manipulating these historical facts and their legal connotations, such plan seeks to impose a solution that denies Palestinians (and the refugees among them) their inalienable rights (primarily return and self-determination),
which are firmly grounded in international law, as reaffirmed by hundreds of UN
resolutions. Even though the Deal of the Century seems to have no credibility and
traction at the international level, it has nonetheless further distracted from the main
issues at stake, sparking confusion among international stakeholders and increasing
disillusion among the refugees.
This chapter debunks, and helps reject, the arguments behind the current efforts to delegitimize the Palestinian refugee question and UNRWA, by demonstrating
that they suffer from three critical sins. First they are based on selective use and an
erroneous understanding of facts regarding Palestinian refugees and UNRWA. Second they misconstrue the international legal regime refugee framework, particularly
the mandate of UNRWA. Third they neglect the overall relevance that international
law has for Palestinian refugees. To that end, the chapter offers a broader perspective of the oft-forgotten general relevance of international law to this group (and the
‘1967 displaced persons’) including through the system that was set up for Palestinian refugees seventy years ago; it then explores how international law can be used for
advocacy, mobilisation and policy-making, toward a just future. Some conclusions
are offered at the end of the chapter.
PALESTINIAN REFUGEES AND INTERNATIONAL LAW:
A RELATIONSHIP THAT DESERVES TO BE EXPLAINED
In many respects, and over the decades of their exile, Palestinian refugees have often
been treated as if they were outside the scope of international law and the obligations
it entailed. While some have questioned whether they should be considered genuine refugees, especially vis-à-vis Israel (which was not—some argue—‘their country’
of origin), others have disputed the applicability of relevant human rights norms to
them ratione termporis, on the ground that neither the right of return nor the right to
self-determination had been positively codified at the time of their displacement in
1947–48 (the Nakba).6 The phenomenon is not limited to Israel: in some Arab countries, long-held is the view that generations of Palestinians, as ‘foreigners’, are not
5. E.g. UNGA resolutions 194
of 1948, 302 of 1949, 2252 of
1967, and UNSC resolution 237
of 1967. See also Convention on
the Status of Refugees, Article 1D.
See also UNHCR, Guidelines on
International Protection No. 13:
Applicability of Article 1D of the
1951 Convention relating to the
Status of Refugees to Palestinian
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Refugees, December 2017, HCR/
GIP/16/12, para. 9 [hereinafter
‘UNHCR GIP 13’].
56
Advancing Palestinian Refugee Rights After a 70-Year-Long Impasse
entitled to enjoy a number of fundamental rights. While open discrimination and
deprivation of socio-economic rights have been more manifest in Egypt and Lebanon, discrimination against Palestinians for security reasons7 or simply, in the name
of preserving the right to return (i.e. prohibiting naturalization, limiting acquisition
of property and residency rights) have been widespread practices. In fact an examination of the law as it stood in 1948, and how it has evolved over time challenge the
validity of these arguments and stances.
THE LAW AS IT STOOD IN 1948 AND ITS DEVELOPMENTS
International law has always been of utmost relevance to Palestinian refugees. Compliance with the prevailing international law at the time of the Nakba would have been
sufficient to prevent the expulsion of the Palestinian people or at the very least to address the most harmful consequences of the expulsion. For example, while the right
to self-determination was codified as a binding universal right in 1966,8 the principle
of self-determination was internationally recognized already in 1922, as part of the
League of Nations’ mandate system that the British and French were to implement.9
This principle would have applied to Palestinians—who held British Mandate Palestine citizenship since 1925 (and Ottoman nationality beforehand)10—as it did to the
other inhabitants of Middle East that had been part of the Ottoman Empire until the
end of World War I.11 Denationalization en masse was not only prohibited under the
law of state succession: in the case of Palestine it had been precisely ruled out by the
6. For example, Yaffa Zilbershats,
“International law and the
Palestinian right of return to
the state of Israel” in Israel
and the Palestinian Refugees,
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg,
2007, 191–218; Andrew Kent,
“Evaluating the Palestinians'
Claimed Right of Return.” U. Pa.
J. Int'l L. 34 (2012): 149. These
authors’ claims are abundantly
contradicted by historical sources
and authoritative scholarship.
7. U.S. Central Bureau of
Intelligence (CIA), “Palestinian
Presence in the Persian Gulf: An
Intelligence Assessment”, US
State Dept., July 1983, approved
for release on 11 Aug 2008 (on file
with the author).
8. Common art 1 of the
International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR), 16 December
1966 [entry into force 3 January
1976], UNTS, vol. 993, 3, and the
International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR), 16
December 1966 [entry into force
on 23 March 1976], UNTS, vol.
999, 171.
9. Article 22 of the Covenant of
the League of Nations, 28 April
1919, stipulated that certain
communities (i.e. the peoples of
Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine [including
modern Jordan and Israel] and
Syria, which were classified as
Class A mandates—‘have reached
a stage of development where
their existence as independent
nations can be provisionally
recognized subject to the
rendering of administrative advice
and assistance by a Mandatory
until such time as they are able to
stand alone.’ Britain was invested
of the League of Nations’ Mandate
in 1922. Article 22 provisionally
recognized the independence
of those territories and peoples
as an exception compared to
other territories administered
by members of the League of
Nations (e.g. Class B and Class C
mandates).
10. This is further supported by
the International Law Commission
(ILC) Draft Articles on Nationality
of Natural Persons in relation to
the Succession of States, which
provide that, during the period
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
between the state’s emergence
and enactment of nationality
legislation, persons having their
habitual residence in the territory
are presumed to have acquired
the nationality of the new state
on the date of succession. ILC
Draft Articles on Nationality of
Natural Persons in relation to the
Succession of States, art. 5. The
commentary to art. 6 underscores
the importance of the principle
in art. 5(i)(a) by referring to the
long passage of time between
the establishment of the State
of Israel and the adoption of
its Nationality Law. League of
Nations, Convention on Certain
Questions Relating to the Conflict
of Nationality Law, 13 April
1930, League of Nations, Treaty
Series, vol. 179, 89, No. 413. The
Protocol was adopted by the 1930
Conference for the Progressive
Codification of International Law
at The Hague, 12 April 1930.
11. See n. 9, above.
57
Francesca P. Albanese
UN General Resolution 181 that proposed the partition of Palestine into an Arab State
and a Jewish State in 1947 (‘Partition Plan’).12 Furthermore, disruption of people and
family life, wanton destruction and arbitrary seizure of property, pillage, including
looting, plunder, or sacking by soldiers, carried out collectively or individually during
armed conflict, were prohibited by the 1907 Hague Regulations.13 The Nuremberg
and Tokyo international military tribunals considered forced displacement, mass
expulsions and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations before
or during war as war crimes and crimes against humanity; that constituted customary law in force in Palestine at the time of the Nakba.14
In short, by virtue of the law as it stood at the birth of the State of Israel, Palestinian
refugees who had been subjected to violence, dispossession and expulsions, should
have been allowed to either return to their homes or to relocate elsewhere, had they so
wished; and to be compensated for the loss suffered.15 This was recognized by paragraph 11 of the UN General Assembly resolution 194(III) of 1948, as the drafting history
of the resolution demonstrates.16 Those deciding to return to present-day Israel should
have been offered the option to acquire Israeli citizenship, as had been the case for
the Arabs of Palestine who had not been displaced outside of what became Israel (i.e.
who became the present ‘Arab minority’ of Israel). Instead, Israel’s adamant refusal to
accept the return of the refugees has made any other durable solution (local integration
in a host country or resettlement elsewhere) politically and practically unfeasible.
The failure of the international community to uphold the principles of international law to the benefits of Palestine’s Arabs continued after 1948 as Israel occupied
the Gaza Strip, and West Bank including in Jerusalem in 1967. As a result not only
350,000 Palestinians were displaced (many for the second time); but also since then,
millions of Palestinians—refugees or otherwise—have been suffering a broad range
of abuses under the yoke of the Israeli occupation, which will soon enter its fifty-third
year. In spite of these failures, international law continues to be a potentially powerful
instrument to ensure the delivery of justice to Palestinian refugees and non-refugees
alike. The remainder of the chapter shows the various dimensions of protection that
12. UNGA resolution 181 (II)
of 29 November 1947, Chapter
III, sec. 1 stipulated that the
inhabitants of Palestine had the
‘right to opt, within one year
from the date of recognition of
independence of the State in
which they reside’ (i.e. Arab State
or Jewish State), ‘for citizenship
of the other State, providing that
no Arab residing in the area of the
proposed Arab State shall have the
right to opt for citizenship in the
proposed Jewish State and no Jew
residing in the proposed Jewish
State shall have the right to opt for
citizenship in the proposed Arab
State.’ (Emphasis added).
13. See art. 23(g), 28 and 46 of
the Hague Regulations in Hague
Convention (IV) Respecting the
Laws and Customs of War on
Land and Its Annex: Regulations
Concerning the Laws and
Customs of War on Land, Second
International Peace Conference,
The Hague 18 October 1907.
14. The Nuremberg and Tokyo
trials referred to the Hague
Conventions as constituting
customary international law. See
The Trial of German Major War
Criminals: Proceedings of the
International Military Tribunal
Sitting at Nuremberg, Germany,
especially Part 22, judgment, 22nd
August, 1946 to 31st August,
1946, 30th September, 1946
and 1st October, 1946 (London:
published under the authority
of H.M. Attorney-General by
His Majesty’s Stationery Office,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
1950); and The Tokyo Major War
Crimes Trial: The Judgment,
Separate Opinions, Proceedings
in Chambers, Appeals and
Reviews of the International
Military Tribunal for the Far East,
Annotated, Compiled and Edited
by R. John Pritchard, A Collection
in 124 Volumes (New York: The
Edwin Mellon Press, 1998), cit in
Kattan, Victor, From coexistence to
conquest: international law and the
origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict,
1891–1949, Pluto Press, 2009, p.
203 (n 238).
15. Progress Report of the UN
Mediator for Palestine, GAOR, 3rd
Sess. Supp. 11, UN Doc. A/648, at
Pt. 1, V, paras. 2, 6–8.
16. UNCCP, “Historical Survey
of Efforts of the United Nations
58
Advancing Palestinian Refugee Rights After a 70-Year-Long Impasse
Palestinian refugees should enjoy in light of various branches of international law,
including International Refugee Law (IRL), the Law to protect stateless persons and
prevent statelessness and International Human Rights Law (IHRL). It is long overdue
for the international community to uphold these laws in order to protect Palestinians
as refugees, stateless persons, and ultimately, as human beings.17
LEGITIMATE REFUGEE AND UNRWA’S MANDATE: ‘ANOMALIES’ EXPLAINED
Another misconception is that Palestinian refugees are not legitimate refugees and
may be entitled to lesser protection than other refugees under the 1951 Convention on
the Status of Refugees (hereinafter ‘1951 Convention’), namely those fleeing ‘out of fear
of persecution’).18 This belief has been crystalized partly as a result of the fact that
Palestinian refugees within UNRWA’s area of operations are the only refugee group
that does not fall under the mandate of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In fact, as this chapter argues, this differential treatment is a by-product of
the historical context in which this refugee crisis emerged, and it cannot undermine
Palestinian refugees’ entitlement to protection and human rights enjoyment.
In the aftermath of the Nakba in 1947–49 the UN sought to resolve the Palestine’s
refugee crisis through the kind of ad-hoc response which was typical in the pre-1951
Refugee Convention time. As a result the UN established the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) tasked to negotiate a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict (UNGA res 194[III] of 1948). When peace proved unattainable in
the short term, the UN instituted UNRWA (UNGA res 302 of 1949) to provide assistance
and relief and other functions supporting UNCCP’s mandate, which in practice included the pursuit of durable solutions.19 These arrangements made Palestinian refugees
‘otherwise’ protected rather than ‘unprotected’. The 1951 Convention and the UNHCR
Statute themselves, which were primarily conceived to apply to refugees from Europe
from World War II, were an expression of the same (ad-hoc) refugee response system.20
They eventually became the framework to deal with all refugee crises in modern time,
with the exception of Palestine’s, which retained its ad-hoc arrangement.
Conciliation Commission
for Palestine to Secure the
Implementation of Paragraph
11 of General Assembly
Resolution 194 (III), Question
Of Compensation”, UN doc A/
AC.25/W/81/Rev.2, 2 October
1961.
17. Other bodies of international
law that are relevant to Palestine
refugees’ displacement are IHL
(partly covered in this article),
international criminal law (which
may offer solutions to ensure
accountability over crimes
against Palestinian refugees),
and the Guiding Principle on
Internally Displaced Persons.
For an overview see Francesca
P. Albanese and Lex Takkenberg,
Palestine Refugees in International
Law (Oxford University Press,
Oxford, 2nd ed.) 2020.
18. According to art 1A[2] of
the 1951 Convention a refugee
is a person who finds himself/
herself outside her or his country
of nationality or, if stateless, her
or his country of former habitual
residence, out of “well-founded
fear of persecution for reasons
of race, religion, nationality,
membership of a particular
social group, or political opinion.”
Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees, 28 July 1951, United
Nations, Treaty Series, vol.
189, p. 137 (hereinafter “1951
Convention”).
19. UNRWA was mandated to
implement works programmes
to integrate the refugees into the
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
economies of the host countries,
which was a key element of one
durable solution. It was clear since
the outset that UNRWA was not to
assume a political role in relation
to solutions, its mandate was not
political even though the great
powers hoped to use the Agency
to achieve political ends.
20. The 1967 Protocol to the
1951 Convention removed the
limitations of the 1951 Refugee
Convention and UNHCR’s
functions have progressively
evolved in response to
humanitarian needs. On the latter
see UNHCR, UNHCR’s mandate in
relation to assistance to refugees
and other people of concern,
3 June 2015.
59
Francesca P. Albanese
The decision of keeping this ad-hoc framework was pushed by various UN member states, primarily Arab countries, which recognized the special condition of Palestinian refugees, which required a distinct solution. Unlike most refugees (mainly from
Europe) in the late 1940s who were still to be admitted to safe countries, Palestinian refugees had already been given de facto ‘asylum’ in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, as well as Iraq,
and were granted citizenship in Jordan. As such these refugees were neither seeking
asylum outside of their homeland nor threatened with non-admission and expulsion:
they simply wanted to return to their homes. Their immediate protection needs entailed negotiation for what today would be called ‘voluntary repatriation in safety and
dignity’, which also entailed preserving the properties and assets they had left behind.
The UNHCR Statute and the 1951 Convention acknowledged this rationale. Article 1D of the 1951 Convention excludes refugees who are assisted and protected by other UN agencies from the benefits of the convention—effectively, the refugees from Palestine.21 But, in its second sentence, article 1 D also provides for their
inclusion under the Convention’s purview should the alternative arrangements
(i.e. UNCCP and UNRWA) become not applicable or cease before the underlying conflict
was definitely settled. In this way the drafters sought to ensure no duplication between
the institutional arrangements set up for Palestinian refugees versus those set up for
other refugees. At the same time they aimed to guarantee the applicability of the 1951
Convention should the alternative arrangements no longer work, before the question of
the Palestinian refugees was definitely resolved in line with relevant UN resolutions.22
As such the UNHCR Statute and the 1951 Convention were not meant to make Palestinian refugees ‘without rights’: Palestinian refugees would fall under the purview of
UNHCR and the benefit of the 1951 Convention when the alternative system ceased to
operate. That system responded to the need to ensure ‘continuity of protection.’23
Accordingly, Palestinian refugees are legitimately recognised as refugees whose
status is rooted in the international refugee regime, through a provision other than
other article 1(A)2; and so is until their question (vis-à-vis Israel) is definitely settled.
Until then, Palestinian refugees and their descendants will be registered and protected as refugees as it happens to other refugees in protracted refugee situations.24
When the international refugee regime was established, no one—certainly not
the refugees, nor the drafters of the 1951 Convention and UNGA resolution 194—
could have predicted that the Palestinian refugee question would have lasted over 70
21. In fact at the time of the
Palestinian refugee question,
one other UN agency set up for
another group of refugees existed:
the UN Korea Reconstruction
Agency (UNKRA). Set up in 1950,
it was mandated among other
tasks, to provide relief and
assistance to the refugees and
homeless persons in South Korea.
It ended its operations in 1959:
by then all refugees from South
Korea had been helped find a
durable solution (i.e. citizenship in
South Korea).
22. Article 1D applies also to the
Palestinians who became refugees
in 1967, see UNHCR GIP 13 (fn 5),
para 8–9.
23. UNHCR GIP 13, paras 6, 12
and 17.
24. UNRWA’s registration of
descendants, corresponding
with the need to protect family
unity, is in line with international
law and UNHCR procedures.
UNHCR registers, counts, and
protects descendants of refugees
in similar protracted refugee
situations. That includes 15 million
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
refugees worldwide (two-thirds
of the whole refugee population),
primarily from Afghanistan,
Burundi, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea,
DRC, Angola, and Bhutan. The
General Assembly has supported
UNRWA’s registration of new births
and asked the Agency to deliver
services to children (education)
across generations of Palestine
refugees. See Albanese, n 4 above.
25. Some scholars and
practitioners argue that such a
regime, which largely excludes
Palestinian refugees (at least
60
Advancing Palestinian Refugee Rights After a 70-Year-Long Impasse
years. The impossibility for UNCCP to advance negotiations led to its de facto demise
and as of the mid-1960s, UNRWA was left as the only body responsible to deal with
‘Palestinian refugees’ in the Near East. In UNRWA’s area of operations, assistance
and relief needs evolved over time, and so did the range of functions that UNRWA
delivered. Lacking a durable solution, protection needs of Palestinian refugees—
in UNRWA’s area of operations and beyond—as this chapter also supports, became
progressively more pronounced.
Most of the debate regarding Palestinian refugees’ protection has been centred
around the idea that UNRWA is unable to deliver sufficient protection while no dedicated UN body can negotiate solutions for them, so Palestinian refugees are stuck in
an impasse.25 In fact, the demise of the UNCCP and the protracted lack of solutions
for Palestinian refugees, prompted an evolution of the existing mechanisms to protect Palestinian refugees, which has resolved both in a significant evolution of UNRWA’s functions and its cooperation with UNHCR, in the spirit of ensuring continuity
of protection. The roles of and cooperation between UNRWA and UNHCR, and how
international refugee law and practice have evolved in ways that allow better—if still
far from assured—day-to-day protection is what needs to be discussed so as to give
meaning to IRL for Palestinian refugees. The fact that UNCCP has effectively ceased
to operate while Palestinian refugees remain in need of a solution in line with international law, should prompt to strengthen the current system devised to protect
Palestinian refugees, not to neglect it. Therefore, the current debate should focus on
how UNRWA, and UNHCR where applicable, can interpret the UN mandate for Palestinian refugees in the latter’s interest.
PALESTINIANS TO BE PROTECTED AS STATELESS PERSONS
The vast majority of dispersed Palestinians remain stateless according to the definition of Article 1 of the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (‘1954
Convention’), applicable to de jure stateless persons,26 namely until they can be
considered ‘nationals’ of any state under the operation of its law.27 Statelessness is
considered as the source of a plurality of human rights violations as it affects the
enjoyment of other fundamental rights (i.e. ‘the right to claim rights’).28 The core of
Palestinian enduring statelessness lies first and foremost with the lack of realisation
of Palestinian self-determination as of 1948 and with the over fifty years old Israeli
where UNRWA operates) from
the protection purview of UNHCR
and the 1951 Convention, has to
various extents made them victims
of a “protection gap”, especially
since the demise of the UNCCP.
See BADIL, Closing Protection
Gaps: Handbook on Protection
of Palestinian Refugees in States
Signatories to the 1951 Refugee
Convention, BADIL Resource
Center for Palestinian Residency
and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem,
Feb. 2015 (3rd ed.; 1st. ed.
2005); Akram, Susan, “Palestinian
refugees and their legal status:
rights, politics, and implications for
a just solution”, JPS 31.3 (2002)
36–51; Akram, Susan and Rempel,
Terry, “Temporary protection as
an instrument for implementing
the right of return for Palestinian
refugees”, BU Int'l LJ 22 (2004) 1.
26. Convention Relating to the
Status of Stateless Persons of
28 September 1954, (“1954
Convention”), Preamble (entry into
force 6 June 1960), 360 UNTS
117 (No. 5158); also in UNHCR,
1988, 59; Convention on the
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Reduction of Statelessness (“1961
Convention”), (entry into force
13 December 1975), UNTS 989,
p. 175.
27. Art. 1 of the 1954 Convention,
n.26 above.
28 Carol A. Batchelor,
”Stateless persons: Some gaps
in international protection”,
International Journal of Refugee
Law 7 (1995) 232. Mark Manly
and Laura Van Waas, “The state of
statelessness research”, Tilburg
Law Review 19 (2014) 3, 4–5.
61
Francesca P. Albanese
occupation of the territory slated to become the State of Palestine. This holds the full
realisation of Palestinian self-determination in abeyance and, as such, the Palestinian statehood ‘project’ in captivity.29
Statelessness remains widespread among Palestinians outside the oPt and
particularly in the Arab world. Jordan is the only Arab country which has given citizenship to Palestinians displaced before 1954.30 On the other hand Arab countries
where Palestinians had sought refuge in 1948 (Lebanon and Syria, but also Egypt and
Iraq) or subsequently migrated as a qualified work-force following the oil economy
boom in the 1950s (e.g. Gulf countries and Libya, but also Algeria and others), prevented them from naturalising in the name of preserving their right of return. Over
the years, the precarity of such status (legal stay or legal residency and work permits without citizenship) exposed the vulnerability of Palestinians communities in
Arab countries. Over 700,000 Palestinians (originally displaced in 1948 or 1967 and
their descendants) have been uprooted from Arab countries from the 1970s onward,
mainly as host countries’ attitudes turned against the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), but also owing to open discrimination and persecution, including in the
context of war.31 The increasing number of Palestinians seeking asylum outside the
Middle East continues to prove how the Palestinian refugee question has extended
well beyond the Middle East.
Confusion around the legal implications of the lack of realisation of Palestinian
self-determination (i.e. through full, independent, sovereign statehood) and their
enduring statelessness often results in the denial of protection under international
law. In particular the General Assembly upgrading of the status of Palestine to that of
non-member observer state in 2012, prompted some asylum authorities in Western
countries to change their attitude toward Palestinians’ demand for refugee status on
the ground that Palestinians are nationals of the State of Palestine.32 This is largely
based on the misunderstanding that Palestinians have fully realized their self-determination. This is confirmed by fact that although it was discussed in the past, the
29. Important milestones of
Palestinian statehood are the
Palestine National Council (PNC)’s
declaration of independence in
1988, the mutual recognition of
Israel and the PLO of 1993, the
Oslo Accords of 1993–1995, the
Draft Palestinian Constitution of
2003, the adoption of Basic Law
of the Palestine of 2002, and the
General Assembly upgrading
of the status of Palestine to that
of non-member observer state
in 2012.
30. Not all persons of Palestinian
origins in Jordan have Jordanian
citizenship: those who arrived after
1954 (enactment of Jordanian
Nationality Law). A critical case is
that of the so called “ex-Gazans”,
who were displaced into Jordan
from the Gaza Strip in 1967.
31. Palestinians were forced
to flee: Jordan in 1969/1970
(after the war between Palestinian
guerrilla and Jordanian army
known as ‘Black September’);
100,000 left Lebanon in the
context of the 1975/1990 civil
war and many more have
continued to flee amidst
discrimination and lack of
opportunities; about 400,000
Palestinians left primarily Kuwait
and other Gulf countries in
1990/1991, following the PLO’s
lack of condemnation of Iraq’s
invasion of Kuwait in 1990; about
30,000 Palestinians left Libya
in 1994–1995, when Colonel
Ghaddafi protested the Oslo
Accords; between 35,000 and
60,000 Palestinians have left Iraq
since the 2003 war; and 120,000
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Palestinians have left Syria as of
2011.
32. If circumstances allow, these
Palestinian asylum-seekers may
be granted subsidiary protection.
This however, does not guarantee
enjoyment of all rights under
the 1951 Convention. For more
information see Albanese and
Takkenberg (fn 20 above), chapter
5 section 2 (Palestinian refugees
and asylum seekers in Europe).
33. A 1997 report by UNHCR
mentions statelessness as a
compounding factor of Palestine
refugees’ vulnerability. UNHCR,
The State of the World’s Refugees:
A Humanitarian Agenda, 1997, 11.
Further reports on statelessness in
the world have failed to do so.
34. Reports of the press
conference of the launching
62
Advancing Palestinian Refugee Rights After a 70-Year-Long Impasse
evolving State of Palestine has not yet adopted a citizenship law.
The erroneous belief that Palestinians have achieved full self-determination is
buttressed by official UNHCR statistics on statelessness,33 which do not include Palestinians.34 And Palestinians are similarly excluded from the ten-year campaign to
end statelessness globally that UNHCR launched in 2014.35 Given the political dimension of (and confusion around) the question of Palestinian self-determination and
statehood, it is important to have a clear legal acknowledgement that Palestinians are
to be considered de jure stateless until the day they acquire citizenship of a state, be
it of the independent State of Palestine or of another country.
HUMAN RIGHTS AS CRITICAL PROTECTION TOOL
The oft-precarious legal status which many Palestinian refugees face help explain their
marginalization, poverty, and‚at times—recurrent displacement. International human
rights treaties,36 as the body of international law with the widest application, potentially offers a broader scope of protection, especially to Palestinian refugees living in
countries that have not yet ratified the 1951 Convention or the 1954 Convention. International human rights treaties provide protection from discrimination on the ground
of identity, status, nationality, religious or political affiliations, and promote access
to civil, economic, political and social rights. This broader protection is essential to
refugees in protracted refugee situations whose needs are beyond survival, such as
Palestinians who have been long-term residents in Lebanon and Egypt, but also in the
Arabian peninsula. IHRL also creates an obligation upon states to give nationality to
children born in their territory at birth, when the child would be otherwise stateless.37
IHRL ensures access to justice and fair trial, in places where Palestinians are subject
to serious mistreatments and abuses including ‘as Palestinians’, and it complements
and reinforces the prohibition of non-refoulement under IRL. This may have not been
an issue for Palestinians displaced in 1948, but has become increasingly an issue for
Palestinians displaced in subsequent years and especially since the 2000s.38
the “I Belong” campaign to end
statelessness, refer to the thenHigh Commissioner for Refugees,
António Guterres, stating that that
the campaign did not take the
Palestinians into account, since
the UN General Assembly has
recognized Palestine as a state,
adding that this “very specific
situation” required a ‘political
solution,’ AFP reports cit. in
Haaretz, “UN Campaign to End
Statelessness Jilts Palestinians”, 4
November 2014 [online].
35. UNHCR, ‘Global Action Plan to
End Statelessness’, 4 November
2014.
36. International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, 16
December 1966 (entry into force
23 March 1976), UNTS, vol. 999,
171. International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights, 16 December 1966 (entry
into force 3 January 1976), UNTS,
vol. 993, 3. Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Racial
Discrimination, 21 December 1965
(entry into force 4 January 1969),
UNTS, vol. 660, 195; Convention
on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women,
18 December 1979 , (entry
into force 3 September 1981),
UNTS, vol. 1249, 13. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment
or Punishment, 10 December 1984
(entry into force 27 June 1987),
UNTS, vol. 1465, 85.
37. CRC, art. 7. At the time of
writing, all UN member states
except the United States have
ratified the CRC.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
38. Many Palestinians fleeing
en masse have experienced
restrictions and even refoulement
in a number of cases: after the
1994/5 expulsion from Libya
(in Egypt and Lebanon); from war
torn Iraq after 2005 (in Jordan
and initially Syria); from war torn
Syria post 2011 (Egypt, Jordan
in particular).
63
Francesca P. Albanese
IHRL has the potential to change the culture around Palestinians and Palestinian
refugees. For example, in recent years, using IHRL, UN Treaty Bodies and Special
Rapporteurs have contributed to advance the rights of Palestinian refugees. Various
states party to these treaties in Europe and the Arab region, have received recommendations pointing to the discriminatory treatment Palestinians are often subject
to, and asked to take measures to correct them. Case in point is the discriminatory
treatment of Palestinians in a number of countries: for example, in Lebanon, where
three generations of Palestinians have experienced serious violations of their fundamental rights including to an adequate standards of living, right to work, social
security, and children rights;39 in Jordan, where persons of Palestinian origin experience various forms of discrimination despite their Jordanian nationality,40 as also
demonstrated by the instances of arbitrary withdrawal of citizenship of many Jordanians of Palestinian origins;41 in Egypt, where the government refuses to apply the
1951 Convention to Palestinian refugees does not recognize UNHCR’s mandate to
assist and protect them;42 in Iraq, where persons of Palestinian origins are discriminated in their access to the Nationality Law,43 and have faced ethnically motivated
violence and abuses;44 in Syria, where the upsurge of violence as of 2011 often saw
Palestinian refugee camps directly targeted by violence and abused, and displaced in
the hundreds of thousands, including children.45 After 2012 treaty bodies have been
particularly vigilant in monitoring the discrimination against Palestinian families
and children fleeing the conflict in Syria, many of whom faced refusal of entry, expulsion or deportation in Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon. In 2016 treaty bodies intervened
with Bulgaria, for returning to Lebanon Palestinians asylum seekers from Lebanon;
they were reportedly tortured upon their return to Lebanon.46 The increasing attention paid by treaty bodies to the treatment of Palestinian refugees in the Arab region
and abroad and the resulting recommendations could, if used properly, positively
39. CESCR, Concluding
observations on the second
periodic report of Lebanon, UN
Doc E/C.12/LBN/CO/2, 24 Oct.
2016, paras. 25-26; CEDAW,
Concluding observations on the
combined fourth and fifth periodic
reports of Lebanon, UN Doc.
CEDAW/C/LBN/CO/4-5, 24 Nov.
2015, para. 40; HRC, ‘eport of the
Working Group on the Universal
Periodic Review, Lebanon, UN
Doc. A/HRC/31/5, 22 Dec. 2015,
paras. 132.16, 132.40, 132. 167,
132.203. 132.211, 132.215.
40. In 2014, CERD expressed
concern ‘about reports on the
unequal application of the
Nationality Law to Palestinian
refugees, CERD/C/JOR/CO/13–17,
4 April 2012, para. 12. On
the impossibility to acquire
nationality for children born from
non-Jordanian fathers, see CRC,
Concluding observations on the
combined fourth and fifth periodic
reports of Jordan, UN Doc CRC/C/
JOR/CO/4-5, 08 July 2014,
para. 15, 26; CERD, Concluding
observations on the combined
thirteenth to seventeenth
periodic reports of Jordan, UN
Doc CERD/C/JOR/CO/13–17,
4 April 2012, para. 12. On
discrimination in the participation
in public professions and life, see
CERD, Concluding observations
on the combined thirteenth to
seventeenth periodic reports of
Jordan, UN Doc CERD/C/JOR/
CO/13-17, 4 April 2012, para.
13. On the access to employment
in the public sector and security
forces, see CERD/C/JOR/CO/1317, 4 April 2012, para. 13.
41. CAT, Concluding observations
on the third periodic report of
Jordan, UN Doc CAT/C/JOR/CO/3,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
29 Jan. 2016, paras. 16, 24; CAT,
Concluding observations on the
second periodic report of Jordan,
UN Doc CAT/C/JOR/CO/2, 25 May
2010, para. 24; CRC, Concluding
observations on the combined
fourth and fifth periodic reports of
Jordan, UN Doc CRC/C/JOR/CO/4–
5, 8 July 2014, para. 25, 56.
42. UN Doc CERD/C/EGY/CO/1722, 6 Jan. 2016, para. 25(d).
43. PCERD/C/IRQ/CO/15–21,
para 17.
44. HRC, Concluding observations
on the fifth periodic report of Iraq,
UN Doc CCPR/C/IRQ/CO/5, 3 Dec.
2015, para. 23. CERD, Concluding
observations on the combined
fifteenth to twenty-first periodic
reports of Iraq’, UN Doc CERD/C/
IRQ/CO/15–21, 22 Sep. 2014,
para. 18(a) and 18(b).
45. CRC, Concluding observations
on the combined third and fourth
64
Advancing Palestinian Refugee Rights After a 70-Year-Long Impasse
influence government policy and practice as well as domestic legislation.
The evolution of IHRL also allows to ensure greater protection of pre-existing
rights of Palestinian refugees: the right of return is a case in point. As inferred above,
the legal foundation of the (1948) Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their homes in
modern day Israel, stems from international law as it stood in 1947, and namely from
combined provisions of customary International Humanitarian Law (IHL)–namely
the Hague Regulations, and norms of state responsibility for internationally wrongful
acts. This legal basis of the right of return (that reportedly guided the drafters of UNGA
resolution 194), was further reaffirmed by the IV Geneva Convention—which contains
an absolute prohibition of forced displacement at article 49—and, last but not least, the
International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Building on article 13
of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which the events in Palestine undoubtedly contributed to shape,47 article 12 of the ICCPR articulates the right to leave and
return to one own country.48 The interpretation of article 12 of the ICCPR offered by the
Human Rights Committee speaks volumes with respect to the relevance of this norm,
and the protection that it is meant to bring, to Palestinian refugees.49
LEGAL ADVOCACY AS AN ESSENTIAL PROTECTION TOOL:
IMPLICATIONS FOR PALESTINIAN REFUGEES AND UNRWA
The norms and frameworks referred to above are decades old and numerous scholars and practitioners have demonstrated their relevance to Palestinian refugees.50
While political factors continue to prevent their enforcement, the subjection of international law to political considerations is neither an endemic nor an unchangeable
feature of international law. There are at least two ways to help reverse this subjugation so that international law can help serve the interest of justice for Palestinians: i)
strategic advocacy; and ii) principled policy making.
periodic reports of the Syrian
Arab Republic, UN Doc CRC/C/
SYR/CO/3–4, 9 Feb. 2012, paras.
73, 75.
46. CAT, Concluding observations
on the combined fourth and fifth
periodic reports of Bulgaria, UN
Doc CAT/C/BGR/CO/4–5, Dec.
2011, para. 16(e). For follow up
of the case see CAT, Sixth periodic
reports of States parties due in
2015, Bulgaria, UN Doc CAT/C/
BGR/6, 12 Feb. 2016, para. 138.
47. During the drafting process
of the UDHR, for example, the
Third Committee of the General
Assembly heard a number
of reports on the situation in
Palestine, including presentations
by Ralph Bunche (who was Acting
Mediator for Palestine after Count
Folke Bernadotte’s assassination)
and Raphael Cilento, head of
the UN Disaster Relief Project,
on the humanitarian crisis and
the implications of the mass
exodus. See Third Committee,
O.R., 108th meeting, 20 October
1948, 194–8, and 109th meeting,
21 October 1948, 206. See
Terry Rempel, ‘“The right to
return”: Drafting paragraph 11 of
Resolution 194 (III), December
11, 1948’, Palestinian Yearbook of
International Law (forthcoming).
48. HRC, ICCPR Gen. Comm.
no. 27: art. 12 (Freedom of
Movement), 2 November 1999,
CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9. On art.
12(4) see paras. 19–21.
49. HRC, ICCPR Gen. Comm.
no. 27: art. 12 (Freedom of
Movement), 2 November 1999,
CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.9. On art.
12(4) see paras. 19–21.
50. Among others: Susan M.
Akram, “Palestinian refugees
and their legal status: rights,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
politics, and implications for a just
solution.” Journal of Palestine
Studies 31, no. 3 (2002): 36-51;
Asem Khalil,“Palestinian refugees
in Arab states: a rights-based
approach.” Robert Schuman Centre
for Advanced Studies CARIM
Research Report 2009/08 (2009);
Michael Kagan, “Is there really
a protection gap? UNRWA’s role
vis-à-vis Palestinian refugees”
Refugee Survey Quarterly 28.2–3
(2009) 511–30; Jad Chaaban,
Hala Ghattas, Rima Habib, Sari
Hanafi, Nadine Sahyoun, Nisreen
Salti, Karin Seyfert, and Nadia
Naamani, “Socio-economic
survey of Palestinian refugees in
Lebanon.” American University of
Beirut 8 (2010).
65
Francesca P. Albanese
Legal advocacy should be clearly rooted in the history of the Palestinian refugee
question and the factors that have enabled it (i.e. the ‘root causes’ of the 1948 and
1967 displacement), whose effects continue until present day. It should clarify where
international law stood at the time the Palestinian refugee question arose. Despite the
tremendous efforts at documenting the origins of Palestinian displacement through
Palestinian oral history, and the work of scholars and the United Nations alike, much
misinformation remains around the facts and responsibilities connected to the original Palestinian displacement. This constrains the ability to address the Palestinian
refugee issue and feeds into the efforts to dismiss it altogether.
It is also important to (re-)frame the Palestinian refugee question in terms of
rights conferred by international law rather than in terms of political or security considerations. This has two implications, relevant to both the daily protection and the
pursuit of just and durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. First, it allows to put
the emphasis on Palestinians as individuals, with their daily needs and aspirations
in addition to the rights connected to their national, collective cause. This may lead
to better understand, assess and advance the status and treatment of Palestinians in
the various regions and countries where they currently reside, out of choice or lack
thereof, and realize their rights as refugees, stateless persons, protected persons, or
simply human beings. Affording Palestinians a dignified life does not compromise
the historical rights to self-determination and return. Instead ‘execptionalism’ and
discrimination in determining the legal status of Palestinian refugees disempowers
individuals who could otherwise contribute not only to the host society, but also to
shape their own political future and that of their people.51 And any Palestinian refugees should be given the opportunity to do so through the enjoyment of their fundamental human rights, wherever they are.
The re-establishment of the primacy of rights in the Palestinian refugee question should translate in the enhanced cooperation between UNRWA and UNHCR to
ensure effective continuity of protection for Palestinian refugees. Within UNRWA’s
area of operations, this may include: clarification on UNRWA’s responsibility for all
Palestinian refugees (not only for Palestinian refugee from 1948 already registered
with UNRWA),52 as well as consideration of protection issues that UNRWA deems to
be beyond the scope of its core programmes and services (education, health, and
relief and social services). For example, lack of refugee registration, identification,
and documentation results in a number of protection challenges, from budgeting for
them to intervening on their behalf when needed; also the refugees often need legal
intervention and assistance e.g. in case of arbitrary arrest and detention, lack of access to justice, blatant patterns of discrimination: this protection function is not developed in UNRWA. Outside UNRWA’ area of operations, the role of UNHCR in better
tracking Palestinian dispersal could be pursued, together with the fundamental role
51. Kagan, M., “The (Relative)
Decline of Palestinian
Exceptionalism and its
Consequences for refugee studies
in the Middle East”, Journal of
Refugee Studies 22, no. 4 (2009):
417–438.
52. There are a number of 1948
Palestinians refugees who are not
registered with UNRWA, either
as refugees or for services only;
and there are 1967 refugees
(‘displaced persons’) who,
while from an international law
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
standpoint are no different from
those were displaced in 1948,
are treated differently; they may
receive UNRWA services, but are
not registered with the agency.
66
Advancing Palestinian Refugee Rights After a 70-Year-Long Impasse
UNHCR has undertaken in clarifying the origins and meaning of the special arrangements for Palestinian refugees under the 1951 Convention (e.g. interpretation of
article 1D). This will help asylum systems and authorities better deal with Palestinian
refugees approaching them. Furthermore, while UNHCR determines statelessness
on a case-by-case basis, clarity on the situation of stateless Palestinians may have important protection (and policy-making) implications. A clear position on the question
of statelessness of Palestinian refugees by UNHCR would help national authorities
to understand the overall complexity of this constituency’s legal status and give it
the appropriate level of protection.
The second implication is that determining how Palestinian refugees are protected under international law can advance discussions on just and durable solutions. While the short-term priority is to secure UNRWA’s existence in light of the
existential threats it now faces, humanitarian aid should not be a substitute for political solutions. This requires examining how UNRWA can better serve the refugee
population and uphold their rights, beyond emergency and beyond the humanitarian
function.53 It is often argued that UNRWA does not have the mandate to pursue durable solutions, as other (political) actors have that responsibility, and that such pursuit
would be at odds with UNRWA’s apolitical role. While many actors are key players in
pursuing a settlement of the Palestinian question (including the refugee question),
like any refugees, also Palestinian refugees need an independent international entity to uphold their rights and to support any other durable solutions the refugees
may want to pursue. This is all the more justified by the fact that the UNCCP ceased
negotiating a solution for them in the early 1950s, and has been de facto inoperative
for decades now. This vacuum needs to be filled. And UNRWA is the only functioning
organization that could (help) do that.
The 2016 New York Declaration on Refugees and Migrants (NYD) has offered an
opportunity to break the political impasse and re-think UNRWA’s (and UNHCR’s) role
vis-à-vis durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. I argue that the NYD– which was
adopted by all 193 UN member states—offers the opportunity to provoke a ‘paradigm
shift’ to address the ‘flaws’ of the current stalemate as it provides a UN-sanctioned
mandate for the elaboration of a comprehensive framework for just and durable solutions for refugees.54 It does so by calling for comprehensive responses to refugee crises, especially those of protracted nature, through: (1) addressing the root causes of
original displacement, (2) reaffirming the central role of international law and (3) the
importance of a multi-stakeholder approach in resolving refugee problems.
Such paradigm shift would imply that the UN acknowledges that bilateral
negotiations between Israel and Palestine have failed to advance solutions for Palestinian refugees, and reassumes its full responsibility with respect to the quest for
just and durable solutions. This would also imply re-launching the legal framework
53. Of course the challenge of
pursuing durable solutions in
the absence of a comprehensive
political solution (between
Israelis and Palestinians) is not of
secondary importance, but in the
absence of a settlement, individual
rights cannot be compressed
in perpetuity.
54. The implications that the
NYD and the Global Compact
on Refugees that followed,
are discussed in Albanese &
Takkenberg (fn 20 above).
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
67
Francesca P. Albanese
applicable to the Palestinian refugee question, from 1948 onward, looking at various
bodies of international law, in addition to relevant UN resolutions on Palestinian refugees. Matters such as legal status, durable solutions, as well as the moral and material issues of the Palestinian refugee question should be determined based on rights,
including the right of Palestinian refugees to make informed choices. Mobilizing a
multi-stakeholder approach in the case of Palestinian refugees’ durable solutions
would mean recognizing Palestinian refugees’ political leadership including through
grassroots and diaspora organizations. It would also mean involving the host countries,
which have been progressively left out by the bilateral negotiations between Israelis
and Palestinians; and mobilizing governmental and non-governmental actors who
are genuinely interested in a sustainable solution of the refugee question informed by
international law.
Seizing the opportunity that the existing legal framework offers to Palestinian
refugees, including the NYD, would face many challenges. Yet not acting with a sense
of urgency as the situation of the refugees continues to deteriorate carries greater
risks for all Palestinians and their quest for justice. International and regional diplomacy need to be mobilized to provide support that has hitherto largely been lacking
and for it, a strong legal advocacy which puts Palestinian refugees and their rights
back at the centre of the debate, is today, more than ever, a necessary way to advance
these rights and ultimately justice.
CONCLUSIONS
As Victor Kattan argues, when it comes to Palestine and Palestinians, law is ‘closer to
power than to justice’.55 Yet the harmful subjection of international law to political expedience is not an endemic and unchangeable characteristic of international law, it
can and should be undone so that Law can serve the cause of Justice in the Palestinian
case. In her recent book about law and justice in Palestine, Noura Erekat writes that
Law per se ‘guarantees motion but not direction’ and legal work is one of the factors
that ‘determines direction’.56 Principles of humanity and justice can—and must—be the
moral compass in the application of the Law. This chapter argues that legal research
and advocacy, especially when informed by human rights, may contribute to inform
principled political dynamics, and raise the winds that blow the sail in the direction
of justice. In Palestine and for the Palestinian refugees, this is more crucial than ever.
The current situation around Palestine and Palestinian refugees calls for redoubling the efforts to protect both the refugees and UNRWA in line with international law
as it has consolidated over seventy years. The agency’s mandate, under the auspices
of the General Assembly, remains indissolubly tied to the realization of a just and durable solution for ‘the refugees’. Therefore, continuous adequate support to UNRWA’s
assistance to this group, while insufficient to resolve the problem and deliver justice,
must be maintained until the Palestinian refugee question is definitely settled within the meaning of relevant UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions.57
55. Kattan (fn 16 above), 4.
56. Erakat, N. (2019), Justice
for Some: Law and the Question
of Palestine, Stanford University
Press.
57. UNHCR GIP 13 (fn 5
above), para. 32, states, “This
interpretation of the 1951
Convention is necessarily without
prejudice to the meaning of ‘the
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Palestine people,’ as well as to the
meaning of the terms ‘refugees’
and ‘displaced persons’ as used in
various UN General Assembly and
UN Security Council Resolutions.”
68
Advancing Palestinian Refugee Rights After a 70-Year-Long Impasse
A political solution in line with international law would honour the Palestinians’ right
to self-determination and grant Palestinian refugees a comprehensive plan for just
and durable solutions. Such plan should afford the refugees the opportunity to see
their right of return fully recognized, the choice to rebuild their life in safety and
dignity where and how they wish to, and the opportunity to be compensated for the
injustice(s) and loss they have suffered.
While Israel and the U.S. try to advance a settlement of the Palestinian refugee
question in which international law is simply irrelevant, it is a moral obligation upon
all to remind policy makers that international law must not be dealt with as optional
and looked at with contempt; rather, it must be treated as a necessary condition and
compass for a just and lasting peace. The relevance of international law to Palestinian
refugees must be re-emphasized and further discussed. The protection Palestinian
refugees need both on a day-by-day basis and in terms of access to durable solutions
as other refugees in the world, depends on it.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
69
UNRWA AND
PALESTINE REFUGEES
SERVICING PEACE INTO
AN EIGHTH DECADE
TERRY REMPEL
In January 1960, delegates from around the world, representing some fifty non-governmental organizations and nearly as many countries, gathered in Geneva, Switzerland to mark World Refugee Year. Inspired in part by the visit of a young British journalist to a number of Palestinian refugee camps three years earlier, World Refugee
Year aimed to raise awareness about the ‘world refugee problem’, solicit additional
funds for assistance, and promote opportunities for solutions on a strictly humanitarian basis. According to Dr. Elfin Rees, World Refugee Year’s Executive Director, an
estimated 40 million people had been displaced since the Second World War with
many refugees, including Palestinians, living in what today are described as protracted situations.1 Speaking at the conference, Dr. John Davis, Director of the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, hoped to use the heightened
attention generated by World Refugee Year to clear up what he characterized as a
number of misconceptions about UNRWA, and, in particular, the refugees it served.3
As part of this effort, UNRWA started a newsletter entitled Palestine Refugees Today,
released several films and hosted a visit by Yul Brynner of the The King and I fame.3 A
collection of photographs by Inge Morath of the Magnum Photo Agency and a narrative account of the visit were bundled together with images and stories of refugees
elsewhere under the title Bring Forth the Children: A Journey to the Forgotten People of
1. Rees, E. (1959), We Strangers
and Afraid: The Refugee Story
Today, New York, Carnegie
Endowment for International
Peace. See, generally, Gatrell, P.
(2011) Free World? The Campaign
to Save the World’s Refugees,
1956–63, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
2. Fancher, M. (1964), “Davis,
UNRWA, and the Palestine
Refugees”, Middle East Forum, Vol.
40, No. 3, pp. 24–29.
3. UNRWA (1960), Palestine
Refugees Today: An UNRWA
Newsletter, New York Edition. The
Agency re-issued a slightly revised
version of its short film initially
released for Christmas 1956
called “Bells of Bethlehem”, which
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
was retitled “In Bethlehem Today”
for World Refugee Year. The film
can be viewed on the UNRWA
website, accessed 2 November
2019, http://www.unrwa.org/
photo-and-film-archive.
4. Brynner, Y. (1960), Bring Forth
the Children: A Journey to the
Forgotten People of Europe and the
Middle East, London: Arthur Barker.
70
Europe and the Middle East.4
Davis also hoped to raise an additional $4 million through World Refugee Year,
a quarter of what would be needed for a proposed three-year expanded programme
of education and vocational training. The approach laid out in UNRWA’s 1960 annual
report marked a clear shift away from initial efforts to facilitate the economic reintegration of Palestine refugees through the Agency’s public works programme. At the
time of UNRWA’s founding, it was thought that employment would reduce and eventually eliminate the number of refugees in need of humanitarian relief. Having failed
to secure either objective, for reasons largely beyond its control, UNRWA refocused
its work on the delivery of what became known as ‘essential services’—i.e., health,
education, and social welfare. The Agency explained that
[b]y performing these services for the refugees, [UNRWA] will be alleviating
human suffering, equipping young refugees to lead useful and productive lives
irrespective of where they may live, and supporting the general stability of the
Middle East. This, in turn, will be conducive to the creation of a climate that
will enable the forces that shape the future of the Middle East to work in a more
orderly manner.5
UNRWA hoped to raise the necessary funds for the planned expansion of its education programme, in part, through the sale of commemorative postage stamps issued
during World Refugee Year. Conceived by Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan (who would
later be appointed UN High Commissioner for Refugees), and jointly sponsored by
UNHCR and UNRWA, the 500 million stamps put into circulation in April 1960, the
largest simultaneous release at the time, also aimed to tell what a World Refugee Year
brochure described as the ‘refugee story’.6 A number of Arab countries, including
Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Republic (UAR), and Yemen as well
as Israel issued national stamps to raise funds for refugees.
The kinds of challenges that UNRWA faced at the time of World Refugee Year
were not dissimilar to those the Agency faces today as it transitions into its octogenarian years. UNRWA had just survived its first major financial crisis through a combination of austerity measures, last minute contributions from Agency donors, and
the voluntary contributions of refugees themselves. Applauded by donors for the efficiency of its operations, the Agency cautioned against complacency and reiterated
the urgent need for continued and increased financial support.7 UNRWA also found
itself addressing stakeholder complaints—donors, host states, Israel, and its own
Palestinian staff—about how the Agency defined and registered Palestine refugees.
5. UNRWA (1960), Annual
Report of the Director of the
United Nations Relief for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East, 1 July
1959–30 June 1960, UN Doc.
A/4478, p. 2.
6. UNWRY (1961), The World
Refugee Year Postage Stamps,
Geneva: United Nations Staff Fund
for Refugees. Interestingly, the
publication traced the origins of
the idea to the inter-war period
when postage stamps were issued
in Greater Lebanon and Syria to
raise funds for refugees from the
Djebel Druze war.
7. UNRWA, Annual Report of the
Director of the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East, 1 July
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
1957–30 June 1958, UN Doc.
A/3931, p. 9. On UNRWA’s chronic
funding problem today see, UNSG
(2017), Operations of the United
Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near
East, UN Doc. A/71/849.
71
Terry Rempel
World Refugee Year Postage Stamp, United Arab Republic
These stemmed from a variety of concerns: the rehabilitation of refugees and their
removal from relief, the legal status and protection of the rights, property and interests of the refugees, responsibility sharing in caring for refugees and other displaced
Palestinians, and, not least, collective identity and national belonging.8 Finally, with
its mandate up for renewal in June 1960, UNRWA also had to contend with persistent
questions about its expanding number of beneficiaries and why the Agency had thus
far failed to rehabilitate the refugees and remove them from relief. Debates in the
General Assembly’s Special Political Committee, where the situation of Palestine refugees was discussed each year, revisited what had already become time-worn ideas
from shifting more of the humanitarian burden to Arab host states to shuttering UNRWA altogether.9 As the global refugee initiative was about to get underway, however,
Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN Secretary-General, released a special report which recommended, in light of the economic, psychological, and political factors involved, the
indefinite continuation of UNRWA programmes pending the repatriation or resettlement of the refugees in the region.10
Departing from previous formats, the introduction to the Agency’s 1960 annual report, divided into six inter-related sub-sections—retrospect, present outlook,
8. UNGA (1960), Special Political
Committee, 209th mtg., Nov. 28,
1960, UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.209.
See also, Pinner, H. (1960), How
Many Arab Refugees? A Study of
UNRWA’s Statistics and Reports,
London: MacGibbon & Key.
More recently see, UNGA (2018),
Fourth Committee, 24th mtg.,
Nov. 9, 2018, UN Doc. A/C.4/73/
SR.24; and, Lindsay, J. (2009),
Fixing UNRWA, Repairing the
UN’s Troubled System of Aid
to Palestinian Refugees, Policy
Focus #91, Washington, DC:
The Washington Institute for
Near East Policy.
9. See, generally, the 1960
and 2018 debates in the
General Assembly’s Special
Political Committee, which was
later merged with the Fourth
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Committee.
10. UNSG (1959). Proposals for
the Continuation of United Nations
Assistance to Palestine Refugees,
UN Doc. A/4121. See also, the
response of Arab states, League
of Arab States (1959), Report
Regarding the Proposals of the
Secretary-General of the United
Nations for the Continuation of UN
Assistance to Palestine Refugees,
72
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
UNRWA’s role, future programme, financial needs, and beyond 1963—revealed an
organization engaged in reflection on its first decade of operations and thoughtful
analysis of the Agency’s future, in particular, what might be needed until refugees
were able to return or find new homes elsewhere in line with paragraph 11 of Resolution 194, December 11, 1948. Adopted twelve years earlier, the General Assembly’s
second ‘peace plan’ resolved that the refugees should be permitted to return to their
homes and that they should be compensated for loss of and damage to their properties.11 The resolution then instructed the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine to
facilitate a solution to the refugee situation through repatriation, resettlement, economic and social rehabilitation, and the payment of compensation. When it created
UNRWA one year later, the General Assembly directed the Agency to consult with the
UNCCP with particular reference to the principles and procedures set out in paragraph 11 of Resolution 194.12 The UNCCP later clarified that political implementation
of the paragraph fell within its jurisdiction, while the technical implementation fell
under the authority of UNRWA.13 Looking to the future in 1960, UNRWA reiterated
that the Agency did not have a mandate to facilitate a political solution to the struggle
over Palestine, of which the refugee situation was a central part. UNRWA, nevertheless, held that it could and should work in harmony with forces largely outside the
Agency that would bring about a solution.
In the spirit of UNRWA’s 1960 report, guided by the principles and procedures
set out in paragraph 11 of Resolution 194, this chapter offers some thoughts on ‘UNRWA at 70’ using the postage stamp on Palestine refugees issued by the UAR for World
Refugee Year as a source for reflection. Divided into three sections, the chapter explores what aspects of the ‘Palestinian refugee story’ the artist may have wanted to
convey through the stamp’s three inter-related images—the tent, two young refugees,
and a map of Palestine. In the absence of both knowledge of the artist and documents
from the World Refugee archives, the chapter explores each of the three images in
their historical context relying on a combination of UNRWA publications and secondary literature on Palestinian refugees as interpretative sources. The concluding
remarks offer some reflections on the challenges that UNRWA faces today and how
the Agency might better equip itself to fulfill its mandate to promote the well-being,
human development, and protection of Palestine refugees until a solution to their
situation is found. Focused on three major concepts that inform UNRWA’s work—human development, refugee livelihoods and self-reliance, and peace-servicing—the
chapter suggests that heightened attention to the strategic value of these concepts
and their application may help UNRWA better equip itself to carry out its mandate
UN Doc. A/4237. More recently
see, UNSG, Operations of the
United Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East.
11. UNGA Res. 194, 186th
plenary mtg., Dec. 11, 1948, UN
Doc. A/RES/194 (1948), para. 11.
Resolution 181, adopted just over
a year earlier, was the General
Assembly’s first “peace plan”.
12. UNGA Res. 302, 273rd
plenary mtg., Dec. 8, 1949, UN
Doc. A/RES/302 (1949).
13. UNCCP (1951), Relations
between the Conciliation
Commission and UNRWA, Analysis
of Relevant Texts of the General
Assembly, UN Doc. A/AC.25/W.57.
In January 1952, the General
Assembly decided to devolve
responsibility for a political
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
solution to the parties involved.
The UNCCP subsequently focused
on technical work related to the
identification and valuation of
property losses from the 1948 war
and remained in existence should
the parties require assistance
in reaching agreement on all
outstanding differences.
73
Terry Rempel
and address the above-mentioned challenges as the Agency transitions into its eighth
decade.
THE TENT
It seemed hardly surprising that the UAR’s World Refugee Year stamp began the ‘Palestinian refugee story’ with the image of a tent. Reporting on the origins of the global
initiative in the first issue of Palestine Refugees Today, UNRWA explained that it was
Timothy Raison’s visit to Aqabet Jaber and Mu’ascar camps on the West Bank that
inspired the young British journalist to write an article entitled: ‘Wanted: A World
Refugee Year’.14 The loss of home and livelihood that determined whether a ‘Palestine
refugee’ was eligible for UNRWA’s relief and works programmes was also explicit in
the image of the tent.15 Writing about his visit to the old city of Jerusalem in Bring
Forth the Children, Yul Brynner described how refugees in Mu’ascar, one of the Agency’s smallest camps located within the walls of the Jerusalem’s old city, experienced
the loss of their homes and livelihoods more than a decade after their displacement.
You look down into one of the stone wells. Beneath the banners of dripping
laundry you count five dark openings. Four of them, you are told lead to rooms in
which refugees live. The fifth leads to the windowless room that has become the
communal toilet. You cannot imagine how many refugees live in cavelike shelters
you are being shown, but the UNRWA man has the figure: 5,132.16
In the chambers and hallways of the United Nations, far removed from the streets
and alleyways of the refugee camps spread across the Middle East, loss and livelihood
were the subject of what freelance journalist Margaret Rilhac described as ‘endless
UN debates’.17 That was especially true in the months that followed World Refugee
Year when the discussion of Palestine refugees stretched for the first time well into
the spring of the following year as members debated the pros and cons of setting up
an international custodian to safeguard the property rights of the refugees.18
Beginning the Palestinian refugee story with the image of a tent, nevertheless,
seemed curious for a number of reasons. As the author of the commemorative volume
of postage stamps issued for World Refugee Year observed, referring to stamps issued
by France, Vietnam, and Sudan, the refugee story always began with flight and despair.
By the summer of 1959, when the global initiative began, moreover, no more than a few
thousand tents remained in the dozens of Palestinian refugee camps scattered across
the Arab states that bordered the state of Israel.19 It thus seemed fitting, whether or not
14. UNRWA (1960), Palestine
Refugees Today, p. 10.
15. On the evolution of UNRWA’s
definition of a Palestine refugee
by the time of World Refugee Year
see, UNRWA, The Problem of the
Rectification of the UNRWA Relief
Rolls. See also, Feldman, I. (2012),
“The Challenge of Categories:
UNRWA and the Definition of a
‘Palestine Refugee’”, Journal of
Refugee Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp.
387-406.
16. Brynner, Bring Forth the
Children, p. 102.
17. Rilhac, M. (1958), “UNRWA’s
Threatened Rehabilitation
Program”, Middle East Forum, Vol.
33, No. 4, pp. 11–15, p. 11.
18. A brief description can be
found in, Fischbach, M. (2003),
Records of Dispossession:
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Palestinian Refugee Property and
the Arab-Israeli Conflict, New York:
Columbia University Press, pp.
223–224.
19. UNRWA (1959), Annual
Report of the Director of the
United Nations Relief for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East, 1 July
1958–30 June 1959, UN Doc.
A/4213, p. 3. See also, Berg, K.
(2014), “From Chaos to Order and
74
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
it was planned, that the inside page of UNRWA’s public relations brochure (UNRWA and
the Palestine Refugees: What It Is, What It Does, Who They Are, Where They Are) featured a
black and white photo of a somewhat haphazard tented refugee camp. Revised and released in time for World Refugee Year, this contrasted with a photo of what looked to be
newly-built and well-ordered huts on the brochure’s final page.20 Speaking at a Jewish
Social Studies conference in the fall of 1959, Sherwood Moe, UNRWA’s director of liaison in New York, explained that ‘as hard as the people may be, the tents did not stand up
well under the sun and the rain and the dust and the cold and had to be replaced every
two or three years’.21 This was evident in the artist’s depiction of the somewhat ragged
tent in the UAR stamp. In what appeared to be an attempt to help participants understand the living situation of the refugees, UNRWA’s director of liaison compared their
mud and concrete huts to ‘one of the smaller rooms in a modern New York apartment’.22
Making further use of the comparison, Moe added that in the camps this meant that a
family of five was typically housed in a space of two square yards. The only picture of a
tent in Bring Forth the Children appeared alongside Yul Brynner’s account of his visit
with displaced Bedouin in the Gaza Strip. Describing their tents as ‘dark, shapeless
mounds [...] made low and rounded to resist standstorms’, the American actor observed
that while ‘[m]ost refugees would prefer UNRWA’s cement-block houses; the Bedouins
stick to the way of life they have always known’.23
As Brynner’s comment on the Bedouin might suggest, the artist’s rendering of
the tent may have also symbolized the temporary nature of the Palestinian refugee
situation. Reporting to the General Assembly during World Refugee Year, UNRWA
reiterated that the refugees’ desire to return to their homes had yet to subside: ‘In
their minds the promise made in paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194
[...] continues to be the one acceptable long-term solution to their problem and they
are embittered because it stands unfulfilled’.24 This was regarded by host states and
Agency donors alike as a potential source of instability in the region. In her article on
‘UNRWA’s threatened rehabilitation programme’ in Middle East Forum, a periodical
of the American University in Beirut, Rilhac informed readers that it was the desire
to return that explained why the refugees had refused to participate in the Agency-sponsored public works programme. From their perspective, economic reintegration in the absence of a political solution ‘seemed to take them further away than ever
from their real homes’.25 Brynner heard much the same during his time in the region.
The Middle East refugee clings to the belief that one day he will go home. Tent,
mud hut, or cement-block house—no matter what sort of shelter protects him, he
Back: The Construction of UNRWA
Shelters and Camps, 1950–1970”,
in S. Hanafi et al. (eds.), UNRWA
and Palestinian Refugees: From
Relief and Works to Human
Development, London: Routledge,
pp. 109–128.
20. UNRWA (1959), UNRWA and
the Palestine Refugees: What It
Is, What It Does, Who They Are,
Where They Are. 2nd ed. New
York: United Nations.
21. Moe, S. (1959), “Conditions
Among the Arab Refugees”,
Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 21, No.
4, pp. 228-37, p. 232.
22. Ibid. The living conditions of
Palestinian refugees were covered
quite extensively in books by Don
Peretz and Rony Gabbay published
on the eve of World Refugee Year.
23. Brynner, Bring Forth the
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Children, p. 140.
24. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959 – 30 June
1960, p. 1.
25. Rilhac, “UNRWA’s Threatened
Rehabilitation Programme”, p. 13.
75
Terry Rempel
regards it as temporary. Many of his camps are treeless. It was explained to me
that the planting of a tree might make it appear that the refugee was thinking of
settling permanently where he found himself.26
This was the psychological aspect of the problem that Dag Hammarskjöld referred to
in his 1959 report on the future of UN assistance to the refugees. In mapping out the
contours of its revised programme to the General Assembly the following year, UNRWA concluded that, in light of its first decade of experience, development projects in
the Arab host countries should proceed without reference to the refugees or to their
permanent resettlement in the region.27
It is also possible, however, that the artist wanted to draw attention to Israel’s
ongoing displacement of Palestinians after the 1948 war. On the eve of World Refugee Year, UNRWA reported that it faced ‘fresh and pressing appeals’ to extend Agency assistance to ‘other claimants’ along with other Palestinians who were genuine
refugees.28 This included thousands of Bedouin whom Israel had expelled to Jordan
in 1950. According to UNRWA, as many as 7,000 who were unable to access Agency
relief were on the verge of starvation. By the time UNRWA began operations in 1950,
Israel had expelled as many as 40,000 Palestinians (and quite possibly more) with
hostilities in the Gaza Strip during the Suez war six years later displacing as many
as a thousand and perhaps more.29 In a special report on other claimants five years
later, UNRWA had observed that it was ‘a most serious issue of policy whether or not
the Agency should be responsible for assistance to persons who [had] left Israel since
1948, whatever the circumstances of their departure’.30 The Palestine Arab Refugee
Organization, an American-based non-profit set up in 1956 to raise awareness about
Palestine and the refugee issue, subsequently reported that Israel had expelled several hundred more Bedouin into the UAR shortly after World Refugee Year got underway. Quoting the Egyptian-Israeli Mixed Armistice Commission, the organization’s
newsletter informed readers that
Israeli troops [had] committed hostile acts against these bedouins, which included
the killing of some bedouins, burning their tents and depriving them of their
property, as a result of which the bedouins were compelled to flee [and] that
these actions were carried out in a harsh and cruel way contrary to accepted
humanitarian consideration.31
26. Brynner, Bring Forth the
Children, p. 80.
27. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959–30 June
1960, p. 2.
28. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East, 1 July 1958 – 30
June 1959, p. 5. The term “other
claimants” referred to several
groups of Palestinians who were
in need of assistance, but did not
fall within UNRWA’s definition of a
Palestine refugee.
29. Morris, B. (2004), The Birth of
the Palestinian Refugee Problem
Revisited, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, p. 536.
30. UNRWA (1955), Special
Report of the Director Concerning
Other Claimants for Relief
(pursuant to paragraph 6 of
General Assembly resolution 818
(IX)), UN Doc. A/2978/Add.1, p.
9. UNRWA continued to assist
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
refugees expelled by Israel until
July 1952 when the government
assumed responsibility for
refugees inside the Jewish state.
Other Palestinians expelled from
Israel were unable to register for
Agency assistance.
31. Palestine Arab Refugee
Office (1960), The Palestine Arab
Refugee Newsletter, No. 24, p.
8. See also, Labelle, M. (2018),
“‘The American People Know So
Little’: The Palestine Arab Refugee
Office and the Challenges of Anti-
76
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
A more detailed account of expulsion and forcible transfer after the 1948 war could
be found in books by Don Peretz (Israel and the Palestine Arabs), a Jewish American
peace activist who helped deliver assistance to the refugees during the 1948 war,
and the Palestinian lawyer, Sabri Jiryis (The Arabs in Israel), that were published on
the eve of and shortly after World Refugee Year. Israel’s military government and
its parastatal Jewish national organizations, the Jewish National Fund, in particular,
were both implicated in the ongoing displacement of Palestinians within and from
the Jewish state.33 While displacement had largely come to a halt when the global
refugee initiative began, a high-level Israeli committee, which crafted government
policy on the status of Palestinian residents and citizens, decided that under certain
circumstances, such as war, population transfer would again be considered.34
THE REFUGEES
That two young Palestinians were the main characters in the refugee story also
seemed fitting in light of UNRWA’s goal of raising funds to help pay for the expansion of its education and vocational training programme during World Refugee Year.
Highlighting the Agency’s focus on education, the cover page of the first issue of Palestine Refugees Today featured a student from UNRWA’s vocational training centre at Kalandia just north of Jerusalem. The newsletter also carried stories about the opening
of a new centre in Jordan and the completion of nearly 500 classrooms in Gaza, which
UNRWA described as one of the Agency’s largest single construction projects in the
Strip. Reporting to the General Assembly in 1960, UNRWA explained that its expanded revised programme would enable refugees to lead useful and productive lives until a political solution to their situation was found. Education and vocational training
were important because most of the Agency’s beneficiaries hailed from rural areas
and were unable to secure employment in their host countries which already had too
many farmers and unskilled workers.35 The livelihood challenges that Palestinians
faced inside Israel were of a different order. As Jiryis and Peretz explained in their
above-mentioned books, these included ongoing expropriation of land, restrictions
on freedom of movement, and discriminatory hiring practices. The country’s segregated education system and inequitable investment in Palestinian schools placed
further limitations on what could be achieved. While UNRWA could do little for these
internal refugees, after the transfer of responsibility to Israel in 1952, the Agency
hoped that its expanded programme of education would help create employment
Orientalism in the United States,
1955–1962”, Mashriq & Mahjar,
Vol. 5, No. 2.
32. Peretz, D. (1958), Israel and
the Palestine Arabs, Washington,
DC: Middle East Institute; and,
Jiryis, S. (1968), The Arabs in
Israel, Beirut: PLO Research
Institute.
33. See, generally, Masalha,
N. (1997), A Land without a
People: Israel, Transfer and the
Palestinians 1949–96, London:
Faber and Faber; and, Bäuml, Y.
(2017), “Israel’s Military Rule
and its Palestinian Citizens
(1948–1968): Shaping the
Israeli Segregation System”, in N.
Rouhana and S. Huneidi (eds.),
Israel and its Palestinian Citizens:
Ethnic Privilege in the Jewish
State, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 103-136.
34. Sa’di, A. (2011), “Ominous
Designs: Israel’s Strategies
and Tactics of Controlling the
Palestinians during the First Two
Decades”, in E. Zureik et al. (eds.),
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Surveillance and Control in Israel/
Palestine: Population, Territory
and Power, London: Routledge,
pp. 83–99, pp. 88–89.
35. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959–30 June
1960, p. 2.
77
Terry Rempel
opportunities for refugees in Jordan (including the West Bank), Gaza Strip, Lebanon,
and Syria by expanding their capabilities.36 This was one part of the economic aspect
of the problem that Hammerskjöld examined in some detail in his special report on
the future of UN assistance to the refugees. The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UNRWA’s technical partner in the delivery of education, also underscored the importance of education in a special publication (In Human
Terms: The 1959 Story of the UNRWA-UNESCO Arab Refugee Schools) that was released
for World Refugee Year. Based on visits to 30 camps, 71 schools and 243 classrooms,
Robert Faherty, one of the organization’s public relations officers, observed that ‘[t]he
Arab refugees’ schools help them to see some kind of forward path, learning is light,
says their own legend on their blackboards’.37 With the bulk of Agency finances still
dedicated to emergency relief, John Davis highlighted another reason for UNRWA’s
expanded programme of education. Writing in the United Nations Review in the spring
of 1960, Davis explained that for each refugee who became self-supporting, seven
family members could also be removed from UNRWA’s ration roles.38
The two young refugees in the UAR stamp may have also symbolized the protracted nature of the Palestinian situation twelve years after the 1948 war. In the absence of a political solution, the number of Palestine refugees had grown by around
30,000 every year. Whether or not the second generation should still be considered
refugees was the subject of vigorous debate in the General Assembly’s Special Political Committee during World Refugee Year. Looking beyond its proposed three-year
programme, UNRWA expressed concern that ‘[w]ith the passage of time, the task of
solving the refugee problem [would grow] ever more complex’.39 The increasing number of refugees and limited opportunities for their employment that concerned UNRWA, however, were far from the only factors that complicated a solution to the refugee
problem. For more than a decade, Israel had been deliberately working to prevent
the return of refugees to their homes and places of origin through an array of policies
and related practices known collectively as ‘retro-active transfer’.40 Speaking at the
above-mentioned Jewish Social Studies Conference, Don Peretz pointed out that Israel had absorbed nearly one million Jews since the 1948 war, most of whom entered
the country under the 1950 Law of Return, which a number of Jewish and Palestinian
lawyers had described as the country’s first law to legalize racial discrimination.41
The number of Jewish immigrants was roughly equal to the number of Palestine
36. UNRWA also wanted to bridge
the gender gap in education.
This may also explain the artist’s
depiction of a young girl and
boy in the central image of the
stamp. Several years after World
Refugee Year, Comparative
Education Review published an
article on UNRWA’s education
system which addressed Agency
efforts to promote gender
equality in education. Pillsbury,
K. and Nashef, A. (1964), “The
UNRWA-UNESCO School System
for Palestine (Arab) Refugees”,
Comparative Education Review,
pp. 285–9. See also, Berg, K.
(2008), “Gendering Refugees:
The United Nations Relief and
Works Agency (UNRWA) and the
Politics of Relief”, in N.Naguib and
I. Okkenhaug (eds.), Interpreting
Welfare and Relief in the Middle
East, Leiden: Brill, pp. 149–176.
37. Faherty, R. (1959), In
Human Terms: The 1959 Story
of the UNRWA-UNESCO Arab
Refugee Schools, Paris: UN
Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization, p. 7.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
38. Davis, J. (1960), “The Plight
and Tragedy of the Younger
Generation of Palestine Refugees”,
United Nations Review, pp. 26–27.
39. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959–30 June
1960, p. 4.
40. This included the adoption
of legislation to prevent return,
property destruction, settlement
of Jewish immigrants in the homes
and on the lands of refugees, and
dissemination of propaganda
78
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
refugees on the eve of World Refugee Year. Israel had also adopted a series of laws
which effectively completed the transfer of refugee and other Palestinian property
to the Jewish state. Among these, the 1960 Basic Law: Israel Lands transformed the
land taken from Palestinians into the inalienable property of the Jewish people.42How
this happened, including the particular role played by Israel’s military government
and its parastatal Jewish national organizations, was described by Peretz and Jiryis
in their respective books. It was practices like these that also explained why much of
the world had come to understand the term ‘Palestinian refugee’, as Margaret Rilhac
aptly noted in the pages of Middle East Forum, to mean ‘an insoluble political problem
and endless UN debates’.43
The artist’s decision to place two young refugees with their arms outstretched
towards a map of Palestine at the centre of the stamp nevertheless seemed curious.
In its commemorative book of stamps published after World Refugee Year, the UN observed that ‘[m]any refugees, once their flight [was] over, [could] do nothing but wait
and despair, very often in wretched camps’.44 These concerns—idleness, despondency, and abject living conditions—were reflected in the way refugees were represented
in some of the postage stamps issued during the year. While UNRWA had taken steps
to upgrade refugee shelters and improve opportunities for the employment of refugees, the Agency also expressed concern about the loss of morale and that refugees
often had nothing to do.45 This was also Yul Brynner’s impression from visits with
refugees in Europe and the Middle East. A black and white photo of two Palestinian
women in embroidered dress carrying water down a dusty street with a crowd milling
around in the background carried the following caption.
To our accustomed eyes the streets of Aqaba Jaber [camp in the Jordan Valley]
may at first seem picturesque. On second look, although the setting and clothing
are different, we begin to notice the things we saw in the European camps:
the same idleness, the same dreariness.46
Reporting to the General Assembly in 1960, UNRWA explained how its communitydevelopment programme, which included the establishment of small cooperatives,
sewing centres for women, and activities centres for youth, would help refugees ‘occupy themselves’ and improve their lot.47 These were not the only concerns, however,
against return. At a later stage,
the plan also provided for
assistance to resettle the refugees
in the Arab world. Morris, B.
(2004), The Birth of the Palestinian
Refugee Problem; and, Masalha,
A Land without a People.
41. Peretz, D. (1959), “The
Palestine Arab Refugee Problem”,
Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 21,
No. 4, pp. 219-227; and,
Robinson, S. (2013), Citizen
Strangers: Palestinians and
the Birth of Israel’s Liberal
Settler State, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
42. See, generally, Foreman, G.
and Kedar, A. (2004), “From Arab
Land to ‘Israel Lands’: The Legal
Dispossession of the Palestinians
Displaced by Israel in the Wake of
1948”, Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space, Vol. 22, pp.
809–830.
43. Rilhac, “UNRWA’s Threatened
Rehabilitation Program”, p. 11.
44. UNRWY, The World Refugee
Year Postage Stamps, p. 5.
45. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959 – 30 June
1960, p. 8.
46. Brynner, Bring Forth the
Children, p. 79.
47. UNRWA, Annual Report
of the Director of the United
Nations Relief for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East, 1 July
1958–30 June 1959, p. 4;
and, UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in
the Near East, 1 July 1959–30
June 1960, p. 8.
79
Terry Rempel
that informed the roll-out of the programme. Laying out the rationale for its expanded programme of education and vocational training, UNRWA further noted that ‘[t]
he danger for the future in the build up of an increasingly large body of unskilled and
therefore unemployed, restless and frustrated youth need[ed] no emphasis’.48 Highlighting the link between the provision of services and the stability of the Middle East,
the Agency explained that its education and community rehabilitation programmes
would ‘not only alleviate the immediate problem of idleness but [also] prove of value in the formation of responsible citizens of the future’.49 This connection could be
found in the mandate given to UNRWA by the General Assembly just over a decade
earlier. In his spring 1960 article in the United Nations Review, John Davis described
these outputs—i.e., relief and stability—as the direct and indirect products of UNRWA’s revised programme of essential services.50
Taking the Agency’s observation about citizenship one step further, the artist
may have also wanted to convey a sense of growing political activity among refugee
youth. Evident in the term aidoun (returnees) printed just above their outstretched
hands, the placement of two young refugees at the centre of the UAR stamp also
seemed to underscore their role as the base and vanguard of the emerging political
revolution sweeping the region.51 Writing about the UNRWA-UNESCO school system,
Robert Faherty’s description of the refugees as “a people” and his reference to their
“capacity for self-assertion” seemed to acknowledge the change that was underway
in the camps and communities of exile across the Arab region. The slogans that Faherty saw scribbled on school walls—e.g., ‘We shall never forget Palestine’ and ‘We
shall never accept another national home’—revealed the geographic and political
contours of citizenship that refugees sought to forge.52 Inspired by the Algerian struggle for freedom and independence, the means for liberating Palestine were evident
in Yul Brynner’s observation upon seeing the statute of the unknown soldier in the
centre of Gaza’s main town:
He faces and points north, cradling in his other arm an automatic gun. On the
column that supports the statue you see inscribed a map of Palestine as it used to
be. Something of the spirit of this monument seems common to a large proportion
of Gaza’s 320,000 population.53
In the General Assembly, Emile Ghory, a member of the Palestine Arab Delegation,
warned the Special Political Committee that in the absence of a political solution Palestinians would have little choice but to liberate their country themselves.54 While
48. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959–30 June
1960, p. 2.
49. Ibid., p. 8.
50. Davis, “The Plight and Tragedy
of the Younger Generation of
Palestine Refugees”, p. 26.
51. See, generally, Sayigh, R.
(2007), The Palestinians: From
Peasants to Revolutionaries, New
edition, London: Zed Books; and,
Baumgarten, H. (2005), “The
Three Faces/Phases of Palestinian
Nationalism, 1948–2005”, Journal
of Palestine Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3,
pp. 25–48.
52. Faherty, In Human Terms,
p. 12.
53. Brynner, Bring Forth the
Children, p. 107. See, generally,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Sayigh, Y. (1997), Armed Struggle
and the Search for State: The
Palestinian National Movement,
1949–1993, Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
54. UNGA (1960), Special Political
Committee, 202nd mtg., Nov. 17,
1960, UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.202,
p. 129.
80
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
World Refugee Year marked the first time that the delegation was permitted to appear
before the Committee, Ghory was limited to speaking in his individual capacity. In
what could have been a reference to the map of Palestine on the UAR stamp, Michael
Comay, Israel’s representative warned the Committee about the danger of trying to
put a member state out of existence.55 Unable to stem the political mobilization of
Palestinian refugees in neighbouring Arab states, Israel attempted to suppress the
emergence of an independent Palestinian political movement within the Jewish state
in often brutal ways.56 This was in line with the recommendations of the above-mentioned high-level Israeli committee which concluded, on the eve of World Refugee
Year, that among the factors governing the relationship between the Jewish state and
its Palestinian citizens security should always prevail.57
THE MAP
When viewed in light of the above events, it seemed hardly surprising that the Palestinian refugee story that was told through the UAR stamp ended with a map of
Palestine. In its report to the General Assembly during World Refugee Year, UNRWA
observed that ‘[a]lmost all who have studied the problem have emphasised the strong
desire on the part of the refugees to return to their homeland and to accept no other
answer’.58 The existence of a homeland that was the object of return, notwithstanding
the dissolution of Mandate Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel, was also
evident in UNRWA’s working definition of a refugee, which referred to persons whose
normal place of residence was Palestine for at least two years prior to the 1948 war.59
Visiting with community leaders in a coffeehouse where the walls were ‘adorned with
slogans, maps of Palestine as it existed in 1948, and likenesses of President Nasser’,
Yul Brynner heard the same demand for return. Describing one of the photos from his
visit to Khan Yunis camp in the Gaza Strip, the American actor wrote:
The old man who tended the brazier and kept our cups filled had lost both his sons
in the Palestinian war. He acknowledged the help that UNRWA had provided, as
some of the other speakers did not, but in the main his statement was that of a
man who wanted above all else to return to his homeland.60
UNRWA’s director of liaison, Sherwood Moe, conveyed the same message to those
taking part in the Jewish Social Studies conference in New York. Whether he aimed
to put his possibly skeptical audience at ease, or convey a more complex understanding of the situation, Moe explained that the refugees could impress visitors to the
55. UNGA (1960), Special Political
Committee, 209th mtg., Nov. 28,
1960, UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.209,
p. 156.
56. See, generally, chapter 2 in,
Pappe, I. (2006), The Forgotten
Palestinians: A History of the
Palestinians in Israel, New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, pp.
4–93. See also, Sa’di, “Ominous
Designs: Israel’s Strategies and
Tactics of Controlling the
Palestinians during the First Two
Decades”; and, Lustick, I. (1980),
Arabs in the Jewish State:
Israel’s Control of a National
Minority, Austin, TX: University
of Texas Press.
57. Sa’di, “Ominous Designs:
Israel’s Strategies and Tactics
of Controlling the Palestinians
during the First Two Decades”,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
pp. 88–89.
58. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959–30 June
1960, p. 4.
59. UNRWA, The Problem of the
Rectification of the UNRWA Relief
Rolls.
60. Brynner, Bring Forth the
Children, p. 128.
81
Terry Rempel
camps ‘not only with their passionate desire to return to their homeland, but [also]
with courtesy, gentleness, restraint and understanding’.61 Over at the United Nations,
the discussion of UNRWA’s annual report was unexpectedly less restrained where
the return of the refugees to their homeland, as in previous years, was also the subject of what Rilhac had described as endless UN debates. Responding to Palestinian
demands for repatriation in the years leading up to World Refugee Year, Abba Eban,
Israel’s Ambassador, had argued that the definition of patria, in addition to its territorial meaning, extended to the national identity of a state.62 This meant that from
Israel’s standpoint the word repatriation was not applicable in discussing the return
of Palestinian refugees to the Jewish state. Whether or not Israel was the homeland
of Palestinian refugees was the subject of detailed discussion by a 17-member panel of experts convened by the Institute for Mediterranean Affairs, an affiliate of the
University of the State of New York.63 Released in time for World Refugee Year, The
Palestine Refugee Problem: A New Approach and a Plan for a Solution ultimately focused
on the individual rights of the refugees rather than their collective right as a people
to national self-determination.64 How one defined the homeland, in the panel’s view,
could be discussed at a later date.
The final image in the Palestinian refugee story, as told through the UAR stamp,
nevertheless appeared striking when compared to how other refugee stories were
told during World Refugee Year. According to the author of the commemorative book
of postage stamps, such stories usually ended in the resettlement of refugees. Ending
the Palestinian story with the map of Palestine, in particular, without reference to the
state of Israel, seemed even more striking in light of the strictly humanitarian nature
of World Refugee Year. Before setting out on his own ‘refugee journey’ across Europe
and the Middle East, UNHCR and UNRWA both instructed Yul Brynner to focus on
what could be done ‘to make life more meaningful for the hundreds of thousands of
people who [had] left their homes’ rather than asking questions about the root cause
of their problem.65 The UN Secretary-General similarly observed that the global refugee initiative was simply not competent to deal with the psychological and political problems examined in his above-mentioned report. These problems also meant
that local integration and resettlement, as Hammerskjöld further noted, could not
have been among UNRWA’s aims for World Refugee Year.66 From Israel’s perspective,
however, local integration and resettlement provided an easy solution to the problem
because refugees shared a common race, religion, language, and culture with the citizens of Arab states. Addressing the General Assembly’s Special Political Committee,
Abba Eban cited a number studies published in the lead up to World Refugee Year, including a booklet (We Strangers and Afraid) by Elfin Rees, which rejected repatriation
as a solution for Palestinian refugees.67 In his above-mentioned presentation to the
61. Moe, “Conditions Among the
Arab Refugees”, p. 237.
62. UNGA (1958), Special Political
Committee, 106th mtg., Nov. 17,
1958, UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.106,
p. 84.
63. Paz, A. and Kook, R. (2019),
“Yearning for a Home: Peter
Bergson and Hannah Arendt
on the Palestinian Refugee
Problem”, Ethnopolitics,
DOI: 10.1080/17449057.
2019.1691834.
64. Institute for Mediterranean
Affairs (1958), The Palestine
Refugee Problem: A New
Approach and a Plan for
a Solution, New York.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
65. Brynner, Bring Forth the
Children, p. 75.
66. UNSG (1960), Report of
the Secretary-General on World
Refugee Year, UN Doc. A/4546.
67. UNGA, Special Political
Committee, 106th mtg., p. 83. See,
Rees, We Strangers and Afraid;
and, Witkamp, F. (1957), “The
82
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
Jewish Social Studies conference, Don Peretz suggested that proposals put forward
by a number of groups, including the Institute for Mediterranean Affairs, were hopeful because they emphasised the principle of refugee choice as the starting point for
a solution to the problem.
It may be that with the image of the map the artist thus wanted to draw attention to the urgent need for a political solution. In its report to the General Assembly
during World Refugee Year, UNRWA reiterated that the Agency itself could not solve
the refugee problem. Drawing a comparison between the UN’s two refugee agencies,
Yul Brynner underscored the same point in Bring Forth the Children where he also
noted that unlike UNHCR, which had a mandate to search for durable solutions, UNRWA’s mandate was limited to ‘feeding and sheltering the refugees, caring for their
health, and training them to become self-sufficient’.68 By the time of World Refugee
Year, moreover, the UNCCP which was set up to facilitate the implementation of Resolution 194, had been diplomatically inactive for the better part of a decade. Mid-way
through the global initiative, a small group of Asian and African states introduced an
amendment to the General Assembly’s annual resolution on assistance to Palestine
refugees, which called upon the UNCCP to ‘secure’ the implementation of paragraph
11 of Resolution 194.69 The same states were among a much larger group of states that
voted for Resolution 1514 (Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial
Countries and Peoples) earlier in the year, which declared that all peoples have the
right to self-determination.70 Addressing the Special Political Committee weeks before the adoption of the Declaration, Emile Ghory from the Palestine Arab Delegation
observed that ‘[t]he new states of Asia and Africa, in particular, undoubtedly understood the national aspirations of the Arabs of Palestine and their desire for self-determination’.71 As Sabri Jiryis pointed out in his book, similar language was also being
used by Palestinians in Israel in the years leading up to the global refugee initiative.
Responding to Palestinian demands that refugees be allowed to return to their homes
and places of origin inside Israel, Michael Comay, Israel’s representative, also appeared to draw upon the General Assembly’s Declaration, in particular, the principle of sovereignty and its corollary of non-interference in a state’s internal affairs.
According to Comay, the General Assembly had ‘no competence to confer ‘rights’ on
any individuals to enter the territory of any sovereign state’.72 In other words, while
the Jewish immigrants Peretz had referred to had effectively become native inhabitants of the country by making the Law of Return retro-active to its adoption in 1950,
the refugees who were indigenous to the country had effectively become immigrants
whose entry had become a matter of domestic jurisdiction.
This might lead one to conclude that the map of Palestine might also have
been used by the artist to suggest that a political solution involved a process of
Refugee Problem in the Middle
East”, R.E.M.P. Bulletin, Vol. 5, No.
1, pp. 3–51. See also, chapter
11 in, Israel Information Office
(1960), Israel’s Struggle for Peace,
New York, pp. 88-108.
68. Brynner, Bring Forth the
Children, p. 82.
69. UNGA Res. 1456, 851st
plenary mtg., Dec. 9, 1959, UN
Doc. A/RES/1456 (1959), para. 4.
See also, UNGA (1959), Report of
the Special Political Committee,
UN Doc. A/4342, Dec. 8, 1959.
70. UNGA Res. 1514, 947th
plenary mtg., Dec. 14, 1960, UN
Doc. A/RES/1514 (1960).
71. UNGA, Special Political
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Committee, 202nd mtg., p. 126.
72. UNGA, Special Political
Committee, 209th mtg., p. 155.
83
Terry Rempel
decolonization. Whether the General Assembly’s 1960 Declaration applied to Palestinians was also the subject of endless debates in the Special Political Committee
during World Refugee Year where heated discussions also focused on South African
apartheid. Describing the Palestinian problem as a colonial one, Ahmad Shukairy, the
Palestinian lawyer who was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN, explained that the
origins of the refugee problem lay in the 1917 Balfour Declaration.73 In his book on
Zionist Colonialism in Palestine that was published after World Refugee Year, the Palestinian scholar and political activist, Fayez Sayegh, laid out Israel’s colonial origins
and the related practices that helped bring about the dissolution of Mandate Palestine
and the establishment of a Jewish state.74 Through the Declaration and its incorporation into the Palestine Mandate approved by the League of Nations, the British government had agreed to facilitate the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine.
The procedures that would be used—Jewish immigration, acquisition of, and settlement on the land—and the constitutional foundations of the emerging state were
based on the fundamental distinction between Jewish nationals and what the Mandate described as the “non-Jewish communities” in Palestine who also happened to
comprise the majority of the country’s indigenous population. It was this distinction
that was subsequently enshrined in Israeli law beginning with the above-mentioned
Law of Return that explained why the state of Israel would not permit the refugees to
return.75 In line with the General Assembly’s 1960 Declaration and the principles examined in a 1958 report by the UN Commission on Human Rights (Preliminary Study
of Discrimination in the Matter of the Right of Everyone to Leave any Country, including his
Own, and to Return to His Country), Shukairy argued that
Palestine was a State which had been placed under mandate by the League of
Nations. That was its legal status from the international standpoint. The United
Nations, as the successor to the League of Nations, must respect that State's
political independence and territorial integrity. It should have the refugees
repatriated and the unity of Palestine restored. Needless to say, those Jews who
were legitimate citizens of Palestine would enjoy full rights.76
Arthur Lourie, Israel’s representative, countered that the characterisation of Israel
73. UNGA (1960), Special
Political Committee, 200th mtg.,
UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.200. Four
years later, Shukairy became the
first chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organization.
74. Sayegh, F. (1965), Zionist
Colonialism in Palestine, Beirut:
Research Center, Palestine
Liberation Organization. See also,
Rodinson, M. (1973). Israel—A
Colonial Settler State, New York:
Monad Press; and, Gershon S.
(2017), “Theorizing Zionist Settler
Colonialism in Palestine”, in E.
Cavanagh and L. Veracini (eds.),
The Routledge Handbook of the
History of Settler Colonialism,
London: Routledge, pp. 339–352
75. On the relationship between
citizenship, Jewish nationality,
return, and Israel’s self-definition
as a Jewish and democratic
state see, Handelman, D.
(1994), “Contradictions between
Citizenship and Nationality: Their
Consequences for Ethnicity and
Inequality in Israel”, International
Journal of Politics, Culture
and Society, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp.
441–459; Tekiner, R. (1991),
“Race and the Issue of National
Identity in Israel”, International
Journal of Middle East Studies,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 39–55; and,
Masri, M. (2017), The Dynamics
of Exclusionary Constitutionalism:
Israel as a Jewish and Democratic
State, Oxford: Hart Publishing.
76. UNGA (1960), Special Political
Committee, 213th mtg., Nov. 30,
1960, UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.213, p.
177. UNCHR (1958), Preliminary
Study of Discrimination in the
Matter of the Right of Everyone
to Leave any Country, including
his Own, and to Return to His
Country, as Provided in Article
13, paragraph 2, of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights,
E/CN.4/Sub.2/L.146.
84
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
as a colonial power was a ‘wholly false analogy’.77 Trying to dispel the association between Zionism and the movement’s self-acknowledged origins, and burnish Israel’s
credentials among newly-independent Asian and African states, Lourie described
the Jewish state as ‘the organic continuation of ancient centuries and an autonomous
existence’ and emphasised the liberation of Jews from British imperialism.78 When
the Committee turned its attention to the question of apartheid, Israel’s representative, Tamar Eshel, asserted that racial discrimination was ‘contrary to human dignity,
prejudicial to peaceful relations between States and a cause of suffering and hatred’.79
Pointing to multi-racial societies in Brazil and other Latin American countries, Eshel
called upon the country’s South African ally ‘to grant equal rights to its black and coloured citizens”.80 Months later as the Committee’s long-winded debate on Palestine
refugees eventually drew to a close in the spring of 1961, Arthur Lourie seemed want
to make a similar point when he told fellow member states that Israel’s Palestinian
citizens enjoyed equal protection before law.81 Whether his statement was carefully
scripted or not, the wording glossed over the fact that Israel’s Palestinian citizens did
not enjoy equal protection under the law. On the eve of World Refugee Year, Israel’s
above-mentioned high-level committee on the future status of Palestinians in the
Jewish state had concluded that the integration of the Palestinians as equal citizens
was simply not possible.82
CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS
In January 1961, delegates from around the world reconvened in Geneva to mark the
end of World Refugee Year. According to Dag Hammerskjöld, the UN Secretary-General, the global initiative had contributed to heightened awareness about the ongoing
nature of the ‘world refugee problem’ and the continued need for assistance from
both governments and people. Close to $80 million had been raised for assistance
by the end of September 1960, while solutions had been found for tens of thousands
of refugees through repatriation, local integration, and resettlement.83 What UNRWA had achieved through the global refugee initiative was more qualified. Speaking
at the closing conference, John Davis, the Agency’s Director, conceded that despite
greater awareness about the situation of Palestine refugees certain misconceptions remained.84 The following year, UNRWA released a series of publications on
77. UNGA (1961), Special Political
Committee, 250th mtg., Apr. 14,
1961, UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.250,
p. 112.
78. Ibid.
79. UNGA (1961), Special Political
Committee, 239th mtg., Apr. 3,
1961, UN Doc. A/SPC/SR.239,
p. 61.
80. Ibid.
81. UNGA, Special Committee
Committee, 250th mtg, pp. 113.
82. a’di, “Ominous Designs:
Israel’s Strategies and Tactics
of Controlling the Palestinians
during the First Two Decades”,
pp. 88–89. See, generally, Masri,
The Dynamics of Exclusionary
Constitutionalism.
83. UNSG, Report of the SecretaryGeneral on World Refugee Year.
See also, Gatrell, Free World?, pp.
201–207.
84. Statement by Dr. John H.
Davis, Director of UNRWA, to the
WRY Conference, Geneva, 18
January 1961, UNOG, 55/0088,
File 045, in Gatrell, Free World?,
pp. 216–217.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
85
Terry Rempel
the Agency’s history, registration practices, and programmes, which it hoped would
contribute to clearing up lingering questions about UNRWA’s work and above all the
refugees that it served.85 The Agency was more successful in raising funds for its
expanded education and vocational training programme. By the end of the global
campaign, UNRWA had exceeded its fundraising target by several hundred thousand dollars.86 The following year, however, the Agency was forced to once again draw
down already limited working capital to cover its operating deficit. Later that year, the
UNCCP appointed a Special Representative, Dr. Joseph Johnson, to further explore
opportunities for the implementation of paragraph 11 of General Assembly Resolution 194. The initiative was shelved two years later after Johnson failed to secure the
agreement of Israel and the Arab states to his plan.87
When the General Assembly established UNRWA seven decades ago, it gave the
Agency two primary tasks: to provide relief to the refugees from the 1948 war, and to
facilitate their rehabilitation through a programme of public works. It was further
hoped that UNRWA’s relief and works programme would, in turn, contribute to peace
and stability in the Middle East.88 The Agency reiterated the same objectives, albeit
in somewhat different words, during World Refugee Year: to alleviate refugee suffering, equip them to lead useful and productive lives wherever they might live, and
to support general stability in the Middle East, which would create conditions that
would enable the forces that would shape the future of the region to work in a more
orderly manner.89 The services that UNRWA provides, the ways in which they are
delivered, and how the Agency talks about them have evolved since then. Micro-finance and infrastructure and camp improvement programmes have supplemented
the Agency’s initial constellation of essential services.90 In addition to management
and programme reforms, one of the more significant changes to the way UNRWA
services are delivered has been the mainstreaming of protection within the Agency
and throughout its five fields of operation.91 Describing its mandate for the provision
of essential services to Palestine refugees today, UNRWA explains that the Agency’s
programmes contribute to the ‘well-being, human development and protection of the
refugees pending a just solution [to their situation]’.92 The basic objectives that the
General Assembly set out 70 years ago, nevertheless, remain very much the same: to
provide relief, facilitate rehabilitation, and thereby contribute to peace and stability
85. The release of the publications also aimed to facilitate
General Assembly discussions
about the renewal of UNRWA’s
mandate the following year.
UNRWA (1962), Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near
East, 1 July 1961–30 June 1962,
UN Doc. A/5214, p. 1.
86. UNRWA (1961), Annual
Report of the Director of the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency
for Palestine Refugees in the Near
East, 1 July 1960–30 June 1961,
UN Doc. A/4861, p. 3.
87. UNCCP (1961), Nineteenth
Progress Report of the United
Nations Conciliation Commission
for Palestine, UN Doc. A/4921
and Add.1; and, UNCCP (1963),
Twenty-First Progress Report of
the United Nations Conciliation
Commission for Palestine, UN
Doc. A/5545. See also, Forsythe,
D. (1972), United Nations
Peacemaking: The Conciliation
Commission for Palestine,
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
University Press, pp. 123-414.
88. UNGA, Res. 302.
89. UNRWA, Annual Report of
the Director of the United Nations
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Relief for Palestine Refugees in the
Near East, 1 July 1959–30 June
1960, p. 2.
90. See, generally, Schiff,
B. (1995), Refugees Unto the
Third Generation: UN Aid to
the Palestinians, Syracuse, NY:
Syracuse University Press; and,
Hanafi, S. et al. (2014), UNRWA
and Palestinian Refugees: From
Relief and Works to Human
Development, London: Routledge.
91. Ibid. See also, Lilly, D. (2018),
“UNRWA’s Protection Mandate:
Closing the Gap”, International
Journal of Refugee Law, Vol. 30,
92. No. 3, pp. 444–473.
86
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
in the Middle East.
UNRWA’s capacity to fulfill these objectives as the Agency transitions into its
octogenarian years is a matter of increasing concern. Introducing its Medium Term
Strategy for 2016–2021 half a decade ago, UNRWA warned that ‘the current predicament of Palestine refugees [was] so dire as to be existential in nature’.93 Instability
in the Arab region, pressures on Palestinians, an estimated two-thirds of whom are
refugees, and threats to their future, as described in the Agency’s strategy, have only
increased since then. Emphasising that hope was needed more strongly than ever,
UNRWA further underscored the need for political action ‘to change the circumstances to bring about a fundamental change in paradigm’.94 A more concerted multilateral
effort to uphold the international rule of law and to address the root cause of forced
displacement arising from the unresolved political struggle is fundamental. This is
not to diminish the important support, financial and political, that UNRWA continues to receive, only to emphasise what is already well-known, that political action
falls short of what is required to enable the Agency to fulfill the mandate given by the
General Assembly 70 years ago. What other stakeholders—states, international and
non-governmental organizations, as well as refugees themselves—might do, or do
differently or better, is beyond the scope of this chapter. The basic question here is
how UNRWA might better equip itself as an Agency to address the above-mentioned
challenges, and fulfill its mandate for relief and rehabilitation in order to support
peace and stability in the Middle East.
This is a weighty and complex question that far exceeds what can be accomplished within the limited scope of the few remarks that remain. From its early years
of operation until today, UNRWA has regularly sought to strengthen and improve its
capacity to meet the evolving needs of refugees and respond to changes in the Agency’s fields of operation. The proposals put forward by Dr. John Davis, UNRWA’s Director, during World Refugee Year, along with the more recent reforms being carried forward by Philippe Lazzarini, the Agency’s current Commissioner-General, are part of
this ongoing effort.95 The general suggestion and possible lines of inquiry that follow,
however, are less about how UNRWA manages and delivers its core programme of services on a day-to-day basis, and more about some of the conceptual ideas that inform
the Agency’s ongoing work today. These include human development, self-reliance,
Bartholomeusz, L. (2010), “The
Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty”,
Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 28,
No. 2 & 3, pp. 452–474, p. 465.
93. UNRWA (2015), Medium Term
Strategy 2016–2021, Amman:
Department of Planning, p. 1.
94. Ibid.
95. UNRWA, “End of Year
Message from the CommissionerGeneral to UNRWA Staff”, Dec.
31, 2019, accessed May 12,
2020, https://www.unrwa.org/
newsroom/official-statements/
end-year-message-commissionergeneral-unrwa-staff; and,
UNRWA, “Second Ministerial
Strategic Dialogue on UNRWA”,
Apr. 22, 2020, accessed May 12,
2020, https://www.unrwa.org/
newsroom/official-statements/
second-ministerial-strategicdialogue-unrwa.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
87
Terry Rempel
and peace-building. Discussion about their content and definition, how the concepts
are understood by UNRWA’s stakeholders, and what this means for their application,
not to mention the origins and usage of these concepts elsewhere, has arguably received less attention than their technical implementation.96 Put another way, in addition to their operational utility, concepts like human development, self-reliance,
and peace-building have strategic value that may be of equal importance to UNRWA’s
capacity to fulfill its mandate and the inter-related objectives defined therein.97 This
is because they help to (re)frame the ‘Palestinian refugee problem’, (re)structure perceptions of interests and constraints among stakeholders, and thus inform and direct
the focus of UNRWA policies and related interventions.98
The above-mentioned concepts that inform UNRWA’s work are implicit in the
‘Palestinian refugee story’ or stories told through the UAR’s World Refugee Year
stamp. In brief, it was the loss of refugee homes and livelihoods during the 1948 war,
as symbolized through the tent, that led to UNRWA’s establishment and its focus on
the provision of basic needs and the promotion of development. UNRWA has since
reframed its approach through the human development paradigm, which focuses
on enlarging peoples choices by expanding their capabilities.99 With refugees afraid
that the Agency’s early public works programme would lead to their de facto resettlement, UNRWA sought to facilitate the self-reliance of refugees through education and
vocational training instead. This was represented through the two young refugees
at the centre of the stamp. While different terms have been used—e.g., rehabilitation, self-sufficiency, self-help – the concept of self-reliance arguably lays claim to
96. A useful overview of UNRWA’s
research capacity can be found
in, Terbeck, R. (2010), “UNRWA’s
Policy Analysis and Other
Research Needs: Strengthening
Knowledge Management within
the Agency”, Refugee Survey
Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 & 3, pp.
623–644. Terbeck suggests that
in its early years, the Agency’s
temporary mandate may have
militated against the development
of in-house research and analysis.
UNRWA’s focus on operations and
chronic shortfalls in donor funding
for the Agency’s core services
may be an additional explanation.
Certain research topics, though
relevant, moreover, may have been
regarded as inconsistent with
UNRWA’s humanitarian mandate.
The depiction of UNRWA as a
unique organization, which has
developed largely outside the
United Nations framework may
be another contributing factor.
UNRWA’s use, in varying degrees
and ways of concepts like human
development, self-reliance, and
peace-building, however, suggest
a greater interface between the
Agency, the UN system, and
humanitarian and development
discourse and policy over its
70 year history than is often
recognized.
97. UNRWA (2005), Serving
Palestine Refugees More Effectively:
Strengthening the Management
Capacity of UNRWA, Gaza, p.
7. See also, Grandi, F. (2017),
“Challenged but Steadfast: Nine
Years with Palestinian Refugees
and the UN Relief and Works
Agency”, K. Makdisi and V. Prashad
(eds.), Land of Blue Helmets: The
United Nations and the Arab World,
Berkeley: University of California
Press, pp. 318–34, p. 329.
98. The idea here is drawn
from human development
literature. Gasper, D. (2007),
Human Rights, Human Needs,
Human Development, Human
Security: Relationships Between
Four International ‘Human’
Discourses, The Hague: Institute
of Social Studies; and, Deneulin,
S. (2009), “Ideas Related
to Human Development”, in
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
Deneulin, S. (ed.), An Introduction
to the Human Development and
Capability Approach: Freedom
and Agency, London: Earthscan,
pp. 49-70. On the complicated
relationship between research and
refugee policy see,Jacobsen, K.
and Landau, L. (2003), “The Dual
Imperative of Refugee Research:
Some Methodological and Ethical
Considerations in Social Science
Research on Forced Migration”,
Disasters, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp.
185–206.
99. UNRWA, Serving Palestine
Refugees More Effectively:
Strengthening the Management
Capacity of UNRWA; and,
Bartholomeusz, “The Mandate
of UNRWA at Sixty”. A long and
healthy life, the acquisition
of knowledge, and access to
resources for a decent standard
of living are widely regarded as
essential for human development.
On the limitations of human
development in the absence
of guaranteed human rights
and political freedom see, alDaqaq, I. et al. (2005), Palestine
88
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
the oldest pedigree.100 UNRWA further hoped that by alleviating their suffering and
equipping refugees to lead useful and productive lives, the Agency’s programmes
would also contribute, albeit indirectly, to stability and peace in the Middle East. This
included a comprehensive political solution as symbolized through the map which
was the final image in the stamp. Peace-building occupies somewhat of an interstitial
position when applied to UNRWA’s work. This is because of its conceptual emergence
after self-reliance and before human development and because it acts as a bridge
between refugee’s present condition and a future solution to their situation.101
The various interpretations of the three images also reveal aspects of the Palestinian refugee story some of which are widely-known. To begin, refugees regard
their situation as temporary and want to return to their homes. An important aspect
of peace-building, research on UNRWA’s potential role and practice elsewhere has
generally focused on the return of refugees after a comprehensive agreement to the
conflict has been reached.102 It is also widely recognized that the protracted nature of
the Palestinian refugee situation—i.e., the absence of a comprehensive agreement—
stems from the unresolved struggle over self-determination. Neither the reluctance
of Arab host states to naturalize the refugees en masse nor UNRWA’s promotion of
livelihood and self-reliance strategies in response to their protracted situation is
unique to the Palestinian situation.103 What is largely unique is the dissolution of
the refugees’ country of origin and refusal of the successor state, Israel, which also
occupies and exercises effective control over the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and
the Gaza Strip, to take the refugees back. This is also why a solution for the refugees
Human Development Report
2004, Ramallah: United Nations
Development Programme, p. 35;
and, Hanssen-Bauer, J. and Blome
Jacobsen, L. (2007), “Living in
Provisional Normality: The Living
Conditions of Palestinian Refugees
in the Host Countries of the Middle
East”, in R. Brynen and R. el-Rifai
(eds.), Palestinian Refugees:
Challenges of Repatriation and
Development, London: I.B. Taurus,
pp. 29–45, p. 45.
100. A useful summary of
recent strategies can be found in,
McLoughlin, C. (2017), Sustainable
Livelihoods for Refugees in
Protracted Crises, K4D Helpdesk
Report. On the historical origins of
the concept see, Easton-Calabria,
E. (2015), “From Bottom-up to
Top-Down: The ‘Pre-History’ of
Refugee Livelihoods Assistance”,
Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 28,
No. 3, pp. 412–436.
101. American political scientist,
David Forsythe seems to have
been the first to conceptualize
the Agency’s approach through
the peace-building paradigm,
which he described as ‘peaceservicing’. Forsythe, D. (1971),
“UNRWA, the Palestine Refugees,
and World Politics: 1949–1969”,
International Organization, Vol.
25, No. 1, pp. 26–45. The peacebuilding concept only became part
of the diplomatic lexicon several
decades later after the end of the
Cold War. Chetail, V. (ed.) (2009).
Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: A
Lexicon, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
102. See, Rempel, T. (2000),
The UN Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) and a Durable Solution
for Palestinian Refugees,
Bethlehem: BADIL Resource
Center for Palestinian Residency
& Refugee Rights; Dumper, M.
(2007), The Future for Palestinian
Refugees: Toward Equity and
Peace, Boulder, CO: Lynne
Rienner Publishers, pp. 105-32;
Takkenberg, L. (2007), “The
Search for Durable Solutions for
Palestinian Refugees: A Role for
UNRWA?”, in E. Benvenisti et al.
(eds.), Israel and the Palestinian
Refugees, Berlin: Springer,
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
pp. 373–86; and, Hilal, L. (2014),
“The Role of UNRWA in Resolving
the Palestinian Refugee Issue”, in
S. Hanafi et al. (eds.), UNRWA and
Palestinian Refugees: From Relief
and Works to Human Development,
London: Routledge, pp. 189–204.
103. See, Easton-Calabria, “From
Bottom-up to Top-Down: The ‘PreHistory’ of Refugee Livelihoods
Assistance”; and, Jacobsen, K.
and Fratzke, S (2015), Building
Livelihood Opportunities for
Refugee Populations: Lessons
Learned from Past Practice,
Washington, DC: Migration Policy
Institute.
89
Terry Rempel
should involve some form of political participation.104 Indeed, it is the ongoing desire
of refugees to return to their homeland that has contributed to their individual and
collective political mobilization. This illustrates why development, which does not
address the root cause of the problem, cannot provide or facilitate a comprehensive
solution on its own.105 Perhaps less widely-known, or less represented in policy prescriptions, is the ongoing and inter-related nature of Palestinian displacement that
preceded, continued, and then followed the 1948 war. Settler colonialism, another
aspect of the problem that has received renewed attention in recent years, arguably
provides a more complete framework for understanding the root cause of ongoing
displacement.106
These interpretations raise critical questions about possible assumptions—e.g.,
relationship between development and peace—that inform each of the three concepts
mentioned above. This, in turn, implicates how the concepts are applied and whether
or not their implementation will achieve professed objectives. Further line of inquiry
about how conceptual ideas like human development, self-reliance, and peace-building might be used to better equip UNRWA to carry out its mandate can be derived
from lessons-learned and other relevant literature on the three concepts. To illustrate, the final remark here focuses on peace-building. This is because it is the least
understood and least developed of the three concepts that inform UNRWA’s work. It
may also be one of the most important: a solution to the struggle over Palestine and
Israel would mitigate the need for humanitarian relief and facilitate the economic,
social, and political rehabilitation of the refugees; and, it would also address the two
other major challenges that UNRWA faces, namely, funding shortfalls and misconceptions about the Agency’s work and the refugees it serves. Three important lessons
have been derived from a review of peace-building practices around the world over
the past two decades. First, rigorous and continuous analysis of the peace-building
context is central to sustainability of the peace-building process.107 As noted earlier,
UNRWA does not have a mandate to search for durable solutions for the refugees,
however, reminding relevant stakeholders of the urgent need for a political solution
is part of the Agency’s international protection mandate.108 It has been further argued that ensuring that the causes of protection problems are properly understood
104. A useful discussion about
forced displacement as a form
of political exclusion, which
explains why political participation
is central to durable solutions
can be found in, Katy Long,
Voting with their Feet: A Review
of Refugee Participation and
the Role of UNHCR in Country of
Origin Elections and other Political
Processes, Geneva: UNHCR Policy
Development and Evaluation
Service, 2010, 5.
105. On the complex link
between economics and conflict
see, Hammerstad, A. (2005),
“Making for Breaking the Conflict
Cycle: The Relationship between
Underdevelopment, Conflict and
Forced Migration”, in Developing
DFID’s Policy on Refugees and
Internally Displaced Persons,
Vol. II, Oxford: Refugee Studies
Centre, p. 10.
106. Wolfe’s discussion of settler
colonialism as a structure rather
than an event along with its
objective of ‘eliminating’ the native
helps to understand the ongoing
nature of forced Palestinian
displacement. The structured
privilege that is central to settler
colonial regimes and the fact that
full assimilation of non-Jews is
not possible under Israeli law
provide additional explanatory
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
factors. Wolfe, P. (2006), “Settler
Colonialism and the Elimination
of the Native”, Journal of
Genocide Research, Vol. 8, No. 4,
pp. 387–409, pp. 387–88; and,
Elkins, C. and Pedersen, S. (2005),
“Settler Colonialism: A Concept
and its Uses”, in ibid. (eds.), Settler
Colonialism in the Twentieth
Century: Projects, Practices,
Legacies, London: Routledge,
pp. 1–20. On inequality and
armed conflict see, Baghat, K. et
al.(2017), Inequality and Armed
Conflict: Evidence and Data,
Oslo: Peace Research Institute.
107. Pentuliano, S. (2017), “Why
is Peacebuilding So Difficult to
90
UNRWA and Palestine Refugees
at the highest level of government is one element of UNRWA’s protection role.109 The
immediate question that arises here is how UNRWA conveys and helps stakeholders
understand the root cause of Palestinian displacement and whether or not this facilitates or impedes the prospect for durable solutions to their situation.
A second lesson learned from peace-building practices over the last two decades
is the importance of coherence. Peace-building is a complex process that requires
coordination and cooperation across different sectors—humanitarian, development,
human rights, and peace and security—at the international, regional, national, and
local levels.110 UNRWA’s primary mandate is limited to the well-being, human development, and protection of Palestine refugees and other displaced Palestinians that
the General Assembly has requested the Agency to assist on an emergency and temporary basis.111 Among the questions that could be explored here is whether existing
mechanisms incorporate the range of institutions and organizations responsible for
the various categories of displaced Palestinians within and outside the Arab region
and whether there is effective cooperation among them. Finally, peace-building
experience since the 1990s underscores the linkage between local ownership and
locally-led processes and the durability or sustainability of agreements reached.
Referring to principles and practices elsewhere, UNRWA has emphasised the importance of negotiations that are inclusive in which refugees and their rights are represented.112 This raises questions about the meaning of participation, what kinds of
mechanisms are needed to facilitate participation, how does the conflict paradigm
implicate the type and opportunities for participation and whether and what role
the Agency should play. The conceptual ideas that inform UNRWA’s work – human
development, self-reliance, and peace-building—deserve separate and more detailed
discussion. This is not a project which UNRWA can undertake alone; the contributions of all of the Agency’s stakeholders are important when it comes to making these
ideas matter or at least matter more. While it is neither within UNRWA’s mandate
nor its capacity to create the shift in political paradigm referred to in the Agency’s
above-mentioned Medium Term Strategy, through heightened attention to the conceptual ideas that inform its work, UNRWA may well be better equipped to contribute to a
‘paradigm slide” as the Agency services peace into its eighth decade.113
Achieve?”, Peace & Politics, pp.
112–114.
108. UNRWA (2012), Enjoying
Human Rights to the Fullest,
Factsheet, p. 2. See also, Morris,
N. (2010), “Towards a Protection
Strategy for UNRWA”, Refugee
Survey Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2 &
3, pp. 550–560.
109. Morris, “Towards a Protection
Strategy for UNRWA”, p. 560.
110. See the brief overview
of coherence in, Collinson,
S. And Elhawary, S. (2012),
Humanitarian Space: A Review
of Trends and Issues, London:
Overseas Development Institute,
Humanitarian Policy Group, p. 13.
See also, Barnett, M. et al. (2007),
“Peace-building: What is in a
Name?”, Global Governance, Vol.
13, No. 1, pp. 35–58.
111. Bartholomeusz, “The
Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty”.
112. UNRWA, Enjoying Human
Rights to the Fullest, p. 2.
113. The idea is drawn from
Aleinikoff’s discussion of the role
of development in protracted
refugee situations. Aleinikoff, T.
(2015), From Dependence to SelfReliance: Changing the Paradigm
in Protracted Refugee Situations,
Washington, DC: Migration Policy
Institute, p. 1.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
91
NOTES ON
CONTRIBUTORS
Within the United Nations System, in August 2000, KAREN ABUZAYD was appointed to the
rank of Assistant Secretary General as Deputy Commissioner-General of UNRWA. On
28 June 2005, she appointed to the rank of Under Secretary-General as UNRWA Commissioner-General and served in that position until 10 January 2010. From her base
in Gaza, she helped to oversee the education, health, social services and microenterprise programmes for 4.1 million Palestinian refugees. Since 2011, she has served as
a Commissioner of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry for Syria.
Before joining UNRWA, Ms. AbuZayd worked for the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for 19 years. She began her humanitarian
career in the Sudan in 1981, dealing with Ugandan, Chadian and Ethiopian refugees
fleeing from war and famine in their own countries. From the Sudan, she moved to
Namibia in 1989 to help coordinate the return of apartheid-era refugees, a successful repatriation operation which led to elections and independence. A year later, the
Liberian civil war erupted, and she moved to Sierra Leone to head the UNHCR office
in Freetown, initiating a new emergency response, that of settling 100,000 Liberians
in 600 villages along the Liberian/Sierra Leone border.
From 1991 to 1993 in UNHCR’s Geneva headquarters, Ms. AbuZayd directed the
South African repatriation operation and the Kenyan-Somali cross-border operation.
She left Geneva to go to Sarajevo as Chief of Mission for two years during the Bosnian
war. Four million displaced and war-affected people were kept alive by UNHCR’s airlift and convoy activities, while thousands more were protected from ethnic cleansing by a UNHCR presence. Her last four years with UNHCR were spent as Chef de
Cabinet to High Commissioner Sadako Ogata and as Regional Representative for the
United States and the Caribbean, where she focused on funding, public information
and the legal issues of asylum-seekers.
Before joining the UNHCR, Ms. AbuZayd lectured in political science and Islamic
studies at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and at Juba University in southern Sudan. She earned her B.Sc. at DePauw University in Indiana and her M.A. in
Islamic Studies at McGill University in Canada.
FRANCESCA P. ALBANESE is an international lawyer and legal researcher, affiliated to the
Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM) at Georgetown University. She
is the author of numerous publications and opinions on the question of Palestine
and Palestinian refugees. Her most recent book, Palestinian Refugees in International
Law (Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. June 2020), written with Lex Takkenberg, has
already been praised as an indispensable reference on the question of Palestinian
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
92
refugees in international law (by Prof Michael Lynk, Prof. Marjoleine Zieck, Dr. Anis
Kassim, Dr. Victor Kattan). Prior to becoming a full-time researcher, Francesca worked for a decade with the United Nations, including with the Office of
the High Commissioner for Refugees (OHCHR) and, on her last assignment, with
the Department of Legal Affairs of the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for
Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Francesca’s human rights work
includes numerous assignments in over 20 countries in the MENA region, Africa and
the Asia-Pacific. Her current research focuses on further documenting ‘Palestinian
dispersal worldwide’ and comparative research around 'Palestinian refugees in
the context of the international legal, political and humanitarian response to seventy
years of forced displacement', including UNRWA's mandate and protection function.
SARI HANAFI is currently a Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut
and editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology (Arabic). He is the President of the
International Sociological Association (2018–2022) and previously its Vice President
and member of its Excitative Committee (2010–2018). Recently he created the “Portal
for Social impact of scientific research in/on the Arab World” (Athar). He was the Vice
President of the board of the Arab Council of Social Science (2015–2016). He holds
a Ph.D. in Sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales-Paris
(School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) (1994). Among his recent books
are: Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise. (with R. Arvanitis) (in Arabic, Beirut:CAUS and in English, Routledge—2016); From Relief and Works
to Human Development: UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees after 60 Years. (Edited with L
Takkenberg and L Hilal) (Routledge—2014); The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy
of Israeli Rule in The Occupied Palestinian Territories (Edited with A. Ophir & M. Givoni,
2009) (English and Arabic) (NY: Zone Book; Beirut:CAUS). He is the winner of 2014
Abdelhamid Shouman Award and 2015 Kuwait Award for social science. In 2019, he
was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) of the National University of San Marcos (the first and the leading university in Lima, Peru—established in
1551). His website: https://sites.aub.edu.lb/sarihanafi/
DR . ANNE IRFAN is Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the University of Oxford, where she is part of the Refugee Studies Centre. She has a PhD from the London
School of Economics, a Dual Master’s Degree from Columbia University and the LSE,
and a BA (Hons) from Oxford University. Her current academic research focuses on
UNRWA, Palestinian refugee history, and the origins of the UN’s global refugee regime.
Dr Irfan has published in the Journal of Refugee Studies, Journal of Palestine Studies,
Jerusalem Quarterly and Forced Migration Review. Her article ‘Is Jerusalem international or Palestinian? Rethinking UN Resolution 181’ was named joint winner of the
2017 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Best Essay on Jerusalem. In recent years, Dr. Irfan has
spoken on UNRWA, Palestinian refugees and the Syrian crisis at the UK Parliament in
Westminster and the UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva. She has also contributed articles on these subjects to The Washington Post, The Conversation and Jadaliyya. Dr
Irfan is a member of the ARDD Global Network of Experts on the Question of Palestine,
and a participant in the Academic Friends of UNRWA Working Group. She is currently
working on a book about the history of UNRWA in the Palestinian refugee camps.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
93
Notes on Contributors
DR. JOHNNY HANNA MANSOUR was born in Haifa in 1960. He received his PhD from St.
Petersburg University in Russia in 1998. He taught for many years in the Mar Elias
College in Iblin and leading Palestinian high schools and currently is a faulty member
of the history Department in Beit Berl Academic College in the department of history. Mansour published 29 books to date on the history of the Middle East in general
and Palestine in particular and many articles on similar topics. His latest book is The
Hejazi Railway.
ILAN PAPPE is the director of the European Center for Palestine Studies and a senior fellow in the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the university of Exeter. Pappe was
born in Haifa in 1954 and received his D. Phil form the University of Oxford in 1984.
He taught in the university of Haifa until 2007 and moved to the university of Exeter
in that year. He published 20 books to date on the modern Middle East and Palestine
and his most famous book on the ethnic cleansing of Palestine published in 2007.
TERRY REMPEL, P H D, is an independent researcher. A founding member of BADIL
Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights, he has written extensively about forced displacement arising from the struggle over Palestine. Forthcoming manuscripts explore the applicability of comprehensive plans of action in
facilitating rights-based solutions for Palestinian refugees and examine early UNled negotiations to secure the implementation of paragraph 11 of General Assembly
resolution 194. Additional research interests include a systems approach to forced
displacement in Palestine, understanding prevention in the Palestinian context,
narrating Palestinian displacement through UN resolutions, voting and explanatory
records, forced displacement and settler colonialism in comparative context, and a
transnational history of the Palestinian refugee regime. His most recent publication
Palestine Yearbook of International Law (forthcoming) examines the drafting history
of paragraph 11 of Resolution 194 based on a review of UN, American and British
archives. His doctoral work focused on the law and politics of refugee participation in the negotiation of durable solutions. He blogs on Palestinian refugees at
www.palrefs.com.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
94
Notes on Contributors
SOPHIE RICHTER-DEVROE is Associate Professor in the Middle Eastern Studies Department
at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar, and Honorary Fellow at the European Centre
for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, UK.
Sophie’s broad research interests are in in the field of everyday politics and women’s activism in the Middle East. Her research is based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and Greece. She has done research and
published work on Palestinian and Iranian women’s activism, Palestinian refugees,
Palestinian cultural production, Syrian refugees, and the Palestinian Naqab Bedouin.
From 2014 to 2016, she held an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Early Career Fellowship for her project “Gender and Settler Colonialism: Women's
Oral Histories in the Naqab” which documents the oral histories, memories, and narratives of women from the often forgotten Palestinian Naqab Bedouin population.
She has also worked with Dr Ruba Salih (SOAS) on a joint research on Palestinian
refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and the West Bank. More recently, she has led a research
project on Syrian refugees in Italy and Greece. The project investigates the impact of
the Syrian refugee crisis on family and kinship practices in a transnational context.
She is the author of Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance and
Survival (University of Illinois Press, 2018).
PIETRO STEFANINI worked as a researcher at the Palestinian Return Centre for the past
five years. He has a chapter in the book Open Gaza (2020) edited by Terreform and
published by the American University in Cairo Press. His research on Israel’s siege
of the Gaza Strip has appeared in ‘The Politics of Post-Conflict Reconstruction,’
POMEPS Studies 30 (2018). Stefanini has featured in and worked on the production of
an al-Jazeera TV documentary titled Seven Days in Beirut: Life Inside Burj al-Barajneh
Refugee Camp. In September 2020 he will begin a PhD in Politics and International
Relations at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh.
UNRWA AT 70 PALESTINIAN REFUGEES IN CONTEXT
95
The exile of Palestinian refugees remains at the heart of the Palestinian struggle for
justice and liberation. UNRWA at 70 engages the themes surrounding this UN Agency
and Palestinians beyond the logics of humanitarianism. The book brings together
scholars from Palestine and Israel, Lebanon, Qatar, the UK, Canada and elsewhere,
who specialise in the fields of politics, history, sociology and law, and are renowned
for producing critical research on the Arab region and in particular on the displacement of Palestinians. This project follows previous co-published books by the
Palestinian Return Centre and the Al Jazeera Centre for Studies, which include World
War I Impact on Palestine: A Hundred Year legacy (2016) and Palestinian Refugees in the
Arab World: Realities & Prospects (2015).
“What stands out in the analyses from different perspectives and time periods, are
both the criticisms and praise from the several writers, describing various periods
and locales. Even more striking is the depiction of the resilience and strength of the
refugees who have managed to confront decades of political and social difficulties,
and outright opposition, but with strength and wisdom, and slow but sure advances.
Despite multiple adversaries and adversarial conditions, they have carried on with
determination, goodwill and hope, and, most of all, the knowledge that their cause
is just.
The quality and breadth of the articles reward readers from different backgrounds and interests with intertwining depictions of both historical and present
day encounters, as Palestinians live their challenged lives with strength, fortitude
and optimism for the sake of their future, and that of their children.”
—Karen Abu Zayd, former UNRWA Commissioner-General