The UN General Assembly (UNGA) designated June 20 to be World Refugee Day, in order to raise awareness of the struggles confronting refugees and to create solutions for alleviating their suffering. A unique group of refugees are the Palestinians, who have remained in perpetual refugee status ever since the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49. There are two primary factors that are responsible for the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee issue.
The role of the UN has been a significant factor in the Palestinian refugee issue. After the conclusion of the Arab-Israeli war, UNGA Resolution 302 of December 8, 1949, established UNRWA. Its mission was to “carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestine refugees.” The organization became operational in May 1950.
The same year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established. UNHCR’s mandate was to “resolve refugee problems by repatriation, resettlement or integration.” Over the years, UNHCR has assisted in resettling tens of millions of refugees. In 2016 alone, the organization helped to resettle 189,300 refugees. UNHCR provides assistance to all refugee groups in the world; however, the exception is the Palestinians.
The Palestinian refugees are still serviced under UNRWA, which uses different principles in comparison to UNHCR. For instance, UNHCR uses the definition for refugees that is outlined in the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees in classifying someone as a refugee. Under Article 1(A)(2) of the Convention, a refugee is defined as “an individual who is outside his or her country of nationality or habitual residence who is unable or unwilling to return due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on his or her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.”
UNRWA applies a different definition, defining a refugee handled by the organization as “a person whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Along these lines, UNHCR forbids refugees from passing down their refugee status generation to generation while UNRWA allows refugee status to be transmissible. UNRWA allows for registering the descendants of Palestine refugee males and even their adopted children. So even those that were not present or alive during the hostilities in 1948 are still considered refugees by UNRWA. This explains why the number of Palestinian refugees has grown from 750,000 in 1948 to 5.6 million in 2020.
AN ADDITIONAL difference is that under UNHCR, refugee status is terminated once a refugee receives citizenship, as the Convention on Refugees states, “A person shall no longer be considered a refugee if... he has acquired a new nationality.” However, Palestinian refugees do not lose their status even if they receive citizenship from a country. According to UNRWA’s own website, “Most Palestine refugees in Jordan, but not all, have full citizenship.”
The other major factor that has resulted in the Palestinians remaining refugees for over 70 years has been the refusal of the Arab countries in absorbing the Palestinians. With the exception of Jordan, the Arab states bordering Israel have refused to grant Palestinians citizenship. The Arab governments enacted obstructive policies toward Palestinian refugees that constrain the rights of land ownership, professions that Palestinian refugees can enter, where they can travel, and their access to health care and education.
In April 1952, Sir Alexander Galloway, a former UNRWA director in Jordan, explained that the rationale of the Arab states keeping Palestinians as refugees was, “The Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore... as a weapon against Israel.” Then-Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser explained how the refugees could be used as a political tool in 1960 by stating, “If refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.” This would be accomplished with the “right of return” that the Palestinian leadership has demanded.
The right of return calls for the relocation of all the Palestinian refugees into Israeli territory proper. The aim of the right of return is to transform the demographics of Israel so Arabs would outnumber Jews. Put into practice, if the 5.6 million Palestinians registered with UNRWA were to relocate to Israel, the Arab population would outnumber the Jewish population. This would, as former US president Barack Obama commented, “extinguish Israel as a Jewish state.”
Omar Barghouti, the founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, acknowledged, “If the refugees were to return you would not have a two-state solution; you’ll have a Palestine next to a Palestine, rather than a Palestine next to Israel.” This scenario is why the PLO, which in its founding charter called for the destruction of Israel, has refused to surrender the right of return. Sakher Habash, a senior member of Fatah and an aide to Yasser Arafat, stated in 1998, “The refugee issue is the winning card which means the end of the Israeli state.”
Given that the Palestinian refugee issue has been perpetuated for this long, new solutions are warranted. In order to alleviate the travails of the Palestinian refugees, UNRWA should be dissolved and all of the Palestinian refugees should instead be handled by UNHCR, just like all other refugees in the world. Secondly, the Arab regimes should grant the Palestinian refugees citizenship and fully integrate them into their societies. These policy proposals would help to finally resolve the Palestinian refugee issue.