Palestinian Refugees: The Need for a New Approach

Otto Hieronymi is head of the programme of international relations and migration and refugee studies at Webster University, Geneva. Chiara Jasson, a research assistant, is currently completing her MA in international relations at Webster University.

The last fifteen years have seen the outbreak and perpetuation of violent, mainly internal, conflicts on four continents, with millions and millions of victims. After the end of the Cold War, the question of how to cope with the resulting widespread humanitarian crises became one of the central preoccupations of the international community.

 

Most of these conflicts have been characterised by a high degree of viciousness, fed by a toxic mixture of ideological, ethnic, nationalist and religious propaganda that utterly disregards the real interests of the populations concerned. Civilians were often the real targets of the violence, instead of just being its “accidental” or “collateral” victims.

 

Ethnic cleansing was commonplace even where the term was never used. As a result, a key aspect of these conflicts has been the spread of forced migration—the plight of close to fifty million refugees and internally displaced people in one decade.

 

The reaction in the international community has been both compassion (with an unprecedented deployment of humanitarian assistance) and preoccupation with the large number of asylum-seekers. While the vast majority of asylum-seekers found refuge in neighbouring countries, there was also an explosion in the number who sought asylum in some of the more distant member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

 

Besides the refugee issue, the flow of so-called illegal immigrants, primarily into western Europe, also became a source of political and social tensions in the host countries. Thus, there has not only been concern about the unwillingness to liberalise immigration and asylum policies in the OECD nations, and particularly in the European Union, but also fear of a severe backlash against migrants and a breakdown of the international refugee regime.

 

Yet on the whole, the international refugee regime, founded more than fifty years ago, withstood the test of the 1990s. No doubt it has numerous shortcomings, both at the international level and in the implementation of solidarity it requires at the national level. However, its basic principles and commitments were solemnly reaffirmed by the countries party to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees on its fiftieth anniversary in December 2001. The so-called global consultations about the future of the international refugee regime, initiated earlier in 2001 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with some trepidation about the response, have produced generally positive results.

 

Thus, the international refugee regime has survived its most extensive test so far, to the benefit of millions of refugees. At the same time, despite initial hopes at the start of the 1990s, no significant progress was achieved in the world’s longest-lasting major refugee crisis: that of the Palestinian refugees. In fact, the predicament of the Palestinian refugees has continued to deteriorate and today their future looks as bleak as ever.

 

Among the various factors that have contributed to this situation one should mention the failure of the Palestinian leadership to distance itself adequately from Iraq’s 1990 occupation of Kuwait (which led to the expulsion of thousands of Palestinians from the Persian Gulf), the failure of the Oslo process to bring a real improvement in the economic and social circumstances of the Palestinians, and, of course, the breakdown of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in 2000 and the ensuing senseless violence and destruction.

 

These developments show that peace and reconciliation remain hostage to the extremists on both sides. But they also show that the international community—the United States, western Europe, Israel and the Arab countries—has been unable or unwilling to agree on a common strategy that would allow the development and implementation of a solution to the Palestinian question in general and the refugee problem in particular. This is clearly in contrast with the efforts invested in the refugee crises that arose in the 1990s—and with the relative success of these efforts.

 

The rest of this article deals with four issues:

 

• The urgency of finding a durable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem and of adopting an approach that will incorporate lessons from the experience of the UNHCR and the international refugee regime.

 

• The contrast between the international refugee regime, on the one hand, and the approach hitherto taken towards the Palestinian refugee problem, on the other. The role of this approach in perpetuating the Middle East crisis will also be discussed.

 

• Features of the international refugee regime and of the experience of the last fifty years that could be relevant to a new, more effective approach to the Palestinian refugee situation.

 

• The need to prepare inputs for this new approach that could be the basis for concerted action by the international community to help secure a lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee problem and to the Arab–Israeli conflict.

The Palestinian Refugee Crux

Today, it is generally recognised that the international refugee regime, under vastly changing political and material conditions, has made an important contribution to solving numerous refugee crises worldwide ever since the 1950s. Its relevance and flexibility were demonstrated once again during the new crises of the last decade. This largely positive record contrasts sharply with the failure of the international community over the last fifty years to help achieve a durable solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis.

 

In the 1990s, the UNHCR, because of its systematic efforts not only to assist but also to protect millions of refugees and internally displaced people, became one of the UN bodies most respected by experts and the general public. While the UNHCR, like all organisations, has its fair share of critics (and some of the criticism is justified), its record certainly compares favourably with the lack of effectiveness of both the UN Security Council and the General Assembly.

 

Yet, in contrast to this record, no long-term solution was found for the Palestinians, who in the Middle East have been refused effective refugee status ever since the 1940s, and who to this day remain outside the protection of the international refugee regime.

 

There has been little or no reference in the debate on the Palestinian refugee problem to the substance of the international refugee regime and to the lessons that could be learned from its fifty years of experience in dealing with refugee protection and assistance. The various categories of long-term, durable solutions that have been an essential part of the international refugee regime have also generally been ignored.

 

Today, there is general agreement that the Arab–Israeli conflict, which has been destabilising the Middle East for half a century, must be brought to an end. This is in the vital interests not only of the countries of the region, but also of the international community as a whole. The current Arab–Israeli deadlock reflects to a large extent the inability or unwillingness of all the parties concerned to deal with the Palestinian refugee issue in a constructive manner. Since from the beginning the refugee issue has been at the heart of the Arab–Israeli conflict, it must also be at the centre of the solution.

 

The refugee problem is arguably the most sensitive and complex issue in the Arab–Israeli conflict. As a result, it has been too often assumed that real negotiations on the refugee problem can proceed only when virtual agreement has been secured on all the other major issues, such as the borders of any future Palestinian state, the fate of Jewish settlements and the status of Jerusalem.

 

However, experience shows that it would be a serious error to neglect consideration of the refugee problem until such agreement has been arrived at and negotiations on the refugees once again resume. Trying to improvise a refugee solution, without serious preparation, could lead to a renewed breakdown of peace efforts. Thus, it is time to start preparing inputs for a new approach to achieve a durable solution of the Palestinian refugee problem.

 

My main contention in this article is that it is essential to identify and to incorporate into this necessary new approach the lessons from the record of the UNHCR and from the 1951 refugee convention and related instruments that are relevant for a durable solution to the Palestinian refugee problem.

Exclusionary Treatment

The Palestinian refugee situation and the militant intransigence it has fostered on both sides have engendered in the Middle East the longest-lasting and most explosive manmade humanitarian crisis of our times.

 

The fact that the Palestinian refugees who live in the Middle East do not benefit from the international refugee regime as defined and implemented by the statutes of the UNHCR, the 1951 refugee convention or a regional equivalent, as is the case in Africa, has been one of the major factors responsible for this situation.

 

The Middle East is the only region in the world where the great majority of refugees were born refugees, rather than being direct victims of flight or forced expulsion: they are second‑, third‑ and fourth‑generation refugees, and have no stable legal status or protection. Most of them have not benefited from any of the long-term solutions defined by the international refugee regime: (1) local integration, (2) third-country resettlement and integration, and (3) voluntary return.

 

UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, was founded in December 1949, a year earlier than the UNHCR. Its task has been to aid the Palestinian refugees, but not only does it lack a protection mandate similar to the UNHCR’s, it is also effectively barred from assisting in job creation. The “work” mandate specified in UNRWA’s title has been eliminated for fear that providing the refugees with employment might reduce their desire to return to their place of origin or to that of their parents or grandparents.

 

There were essentially two sets of justifications for the original exclusion of the Palestinians from the international refugee regime and for the perpetuation of this exclusion. First, for the Arab countries and their allies, it helped maintain the fiction that the Palestinian refugee situation was temporary, and would be resolved with the final elimination of Israel. Importantly, it also averted any obligation to facilitate local integration and third-country resettlement.

 

Second, Israel has opposed extending the UNHCR mandate to the Palestinians because it deeply doubts the impartiality of the United Nations towards the Jewish state and because it fears that recognising such a mandate would strengthen, rather than weaken, emphasis on the return of the refugees as the only durable solution.

A Perpetual Source of Conflict

This situation has clearly aggravated the conditions of the Palestinian refugees and has led to their radicalisation. Because of the lack of effective resettlement, because of the limits of local integration, and last but not least, because of systematic militant propaganda, for hundreds of thousands of children and adults the only hope in life, the only perspective for the future, is “return”, return to a place and to a past that no longer exist. For many, even in the Gaza Strip, leaving the camps to live in Gaza City was seen as a form of betrayal.

 

The refugee deadlock has been and remains a source of major international and regional tensions, as well as a real or alleged source of hostility between the Arab and Western worlds. It has also contributed to the general neglect by Israel’s neighbours of their own pressing needs for economic, political and social development and integration.

 

However, the failure to protect the Palestinian refugees and to resolve the refugee problem has also impaired Israel’s security. The continued plight of the Palestinians has reduced the “moral capital” that Israel enjoys not only in the United States but also in the rest of the Western world. A continued downward spiral in the situation of the Palestinians is likely to lead to a further erosion of this moral capital, a moral capital which is indispensable for the long-term security of the state of Israel. While today progress on the refugee question seems completely blocked, it is more obvious than ever that an equitable solution to the problem is in Israel’s fundamental long-term interests.

 

During the last ten years, sympathy for the Palestinian refugees has reached unprecedented levels, not only in the Arab countries but also in the West. Yet despite this sympathy, the actual conditions—economic, social, political and psychological—of the Palestinian refugees have continued to deteriorate. As recognition of the Palestinian cause has spread, the situation of the refugees has worsened.

 

Arab–Israeli hostility has dramatically intensified since the autumn of 2000, when the second Palestinian intifada or uprising broke out. But even before then, and in fact since the beginning of Oslo process in 1993, the economic and social situation of the Palestinians was deteriorating—not because of Oslo but because economic promises and clauses were ignored virtually on all sides. The plan of leading Israeli politician Shimon Peres for the integration of his country’s economy with that of the Palestinians and of the region as a whole has been totally ignored and the Palestinians today are less integrated in the region economically and socially than they were in the past.

 

Although the “Palestinian cause” has received considerable international attention, no realistic proposals have been forwarded to resolve the refugee problem. All other issues, from the status of Jerusalem to the question of Jewish settlements to the security of Israel and of the future Palestinian state have received much more public notice and have been the subject of countless proposals and counter-proposals. Moreover, the economic and social situation of the refugees has always been subordinated to the struggle for an overall political solution. Thus, as noted already, UNRWA was prevented from fulfilling its original mandate to provide work opportunities.

 

The Palestinian leadership, its allies in the Arab world, and the international community as a whole have all failed to translate the “capital of sympathy” enjoyed by the refugees into a concrete improvement of their current lot and future prospects. It is no exaggeration to say that the Palestinian leadership, “moderates” and “extremists” alike, have made the wrong choices virtually every time the future of the refugees was at stake.

 

It is symptomatic that in both the very extensive literature and public debate on the Arab–Israeli conflict, relatively little attention has been paid to possible alternative solutions to the refugee problem. The focus has largely been on the origins of the problem and the current plight and behaviour of the refugees. The paucity of systematic thinking and preparation on possible refugee solutions bodes ill for a successful conclusion to the problem, if and when the peace process should resume.

Relevant Lessons

The international refugee regime, as embodied in the UNHCR’s statutes, the 1951 refugee convention and related instruments, was meant to be a temporary solution to deal with the people displaced by the Second World War and the establishment of Soviet rule over eastern Europe. The scope of the international refugee regime, however, has been gradually broadened over the years. By the 1990s, after the end of Soviet communist rule, the UNHCR and the 1951 refugee convention came to occupy centre place in the international community’s treatment of refugees.

 

A look at some of the main features and the record of the international refugee regime can illustrate the contrast between the mostly successful efforts to deal with refugee crises outside the Middle East over the last fifty years, and the general failure of the approach adopted towards the Palestinian refugees during the same period.

 

In the long run, the international protection of refugees has become a tool of peace, one for defusing conflicts and preventing their perpetuation. The international refugee regime was designed to be “refugee-centred” and the work of the UNHCR was to be explicitly non-political. Refugees were not to be used as tools for revenge, for liberating their country of origin or for other political or military purposes. Maintaining people as “refugees”, if necessary into the fourth generation (and offering them return as the only outlet), would have been seen as dangerous and counterproductive for the refugees, for the host country, and for the international community in general.

 

Anyone who was a refugee and was allowed to start a new life, anyone who is a child or grandchild of refugees and is today a member of a new community, anyone who has ever met or worked with former refugees, knows the difference between legitimate memories of and ties to one’s place of origin, and the sense of despair (which easily generates revenge and violence) of those whose identity is that of “refugee” year after year and who remain rootless generation after generation.

 

Today, some people (wrongly) argue that the UNHCR and the 1951 refugee convention were “tools in the Cold War”. Yet one of the central objectives of the UNHCR and the convention was to avoid protracted refugee situations and the creation of a permanent body of refugees in western Europe whose only future in life would have been to wait (and fight for) the end of communism in the east. No so-called Cold War refugees were exploited in such a way.

 

Consider, for example, the treatment of the waves of refugees that followed the imposition of communist regimes in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Vietnam. They were given a fair chance of resettlement. They were not maintained in camps under the illusion that the collapse of communism was imminent. However strong and legitimate the opposition to communism might have been, they were not trained to wait for the ultimate fight or to carry out terrorist actions against the Soviet Union or its satellite governments. The record shows that respect for the principle of considering the best interests of the refugees, and refusal to exploit them for political or military ends, benefited the refugees themselves, their host countries, and the international community as a whole.

 

The international refugee regime emphasises the responsibility of the host countries and their partners, rather than that of the country of origin, to provide the chance of a normal life for the refugees and their descendants. The regime is forward-looking, not backward looking: it seeks long-term solutions. A key objective has been the search for durable solutions through one of three options: local integration (and naturalisation), third-country resettlement (and integration), and voluntary return or repatriation to the country of origin.

 

Currently, for a number of reasons, the main emphasis is on voluntary repatriation. Yet today it is too often forgotten that previously the chief and almost only realistic durable solutions were local integration and third-country resettlement (and these turned out to be the most successful solutions of refugee crises over the last fifty years from the viewpoint of both the refugees and the international community). Also, the more time that has elapsed since the original flight, the more problematic voluntary return becomes both for the refugees (or former refugees) and for the country of origin, even though fundamental political changes for the better may have occurred in the latter.

 

Legal protection is an essential element of the international refugee regime. This means not only observing the principle of “non-refoulement”, which forbids the forcible return of refugees to countries where they face persecution, but also providing refugees with a new legal personality that confers certain important rights and duties, similar to those of full citizens.

 

Importantly, this legal status does not define a refugee’s identity exclusively in terms of the country of origin, which she or he had to flee. Refugees have to be given the chance to become good citizens and they have to fulfil the conditions of being good citizens in their host countries. Ultimately, refugees originating from the same country, or whose parents or grandparents did so, may end up having different citizenships; the prime objective, however, is that they should all enjoy the full legal protection of a citizenship, whatever that citizenship may be.

 

For the Palestinian refugees there will have to be three solutions: limited return to Israel, citizenship in a new Palestinian state and integration in their current states of residence. What is needed for all three categories is not a common legal identity, but the full protection of a citizenship.

 

Assistance, like protection, has been a key component of the international refugee regime. However, assistance—both in the texts of that regime and in practice—has had a broader meaning than mere provision of the minimum material resources necessary for survival. It also means encouraging and providing the conditions for self-reliance, for leading a normal life in economic and social terms.

 

With regard to the Palestinian refugee problem, solidarity and burden-sharing by the international community are essential conditions for a solution. However, in order to produce results, international economic solidarity must not be confined to relief. The success of the overall peace effort will depend to a very large extent on the effective integration of the Palestinian refugees into the economies where they live, and on the integration of the economies of the region—of Israel, the new Palestinian state and their neighbours. To achieve this integration, the international community, both the private sector and governments, have to meet the challenge.

Action Imperative

The refugee issue is at the heart of the Arab–Israeli conflict. It concerns the largest and most vulnerable group of people caught up in the conflict. Its solution will affect not only the refugees themselves, but also Israel, the future Palestinian state and the Arab countries hosting the bulk of the refugees. Without a solution to the refugee question it would be illusory to imagine that the other elements of the “final-status” negotiations—borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements—could be successfully resolved.

 

Thus, an equitable and realistic long-term solution of the refugee problem has to be a core component of a true “peace process”. Any new political initiative that fails to address the refugee issue adequately is bound to fail.

 

It is clear that systematic thinking and preparation regarding the content and conditions of such an initiative must not be delayed until the “time is ripe” for restarting the peace process. It is also clear that trying to improvise a refugee solution at the negotiating table during any future final-status talks is a recipe for failure.

 

Inputs prepared by an independent and impartial institution (not tainted by the acrimony and violent rhetoric of either side) could help prepare a new approach for a durable solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis. The principal objective should be to identify applicable lessons that can be drawn from the record of the international refugee regime—lessons concerning not only the legal status of refugees, but also their economic, political and social status.