The Longest Refugee Crisis
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 and the Palestinian Refugee Question
I just finished “Empire of Sand,” Walter Reid’s 2011 book about Great Britain’s accession to dominance in the Middle East after World War I, including references to the November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration that committed Britain to supporting a “a Jewish National Home” in Palestine. The declaration also contained the provision that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” Fast Forward, though, to New York in December 11, 1948, when the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194 in the wake of the Arab-Israeli war that year and the refugee problem it created.
Most famously, the non-binding resolution declared that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”[i]
Much debate over 194 deals with the concept of a right of return. The word “right” does not appear in the English rendition of 194, but the Resolution is assumed to mean just that by supporters of the refugees. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees only calls for “voluntary” repatriation of refugees from other conflicts in the world, but Palestinian refugees have always been dealt with separately, including being the charges of a different UN agency, namely UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency), and also in counting descendants of the original 1948 war refugees as refugees themselves. According to UNRWA estimates, which defined the refugees as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict,” there were 750,000 such persons.[ii]
Today, UNRWA claims to serve 5.7 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the Middle East, and to employ 28,000 people in this service, almost all of whom are themselves Palestinian.[iii]
There was, in fact, an early, albeit limited, attempt at such a “return” after the 1948 war. Joseph Alpher and Khalil Shikaki, writing in 1999 on behalf of the Joint Working Group on Israeli Palestinian Relations, a project of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, declared:
“The principal known Israeli initiative took place in the summer of 1949. Under pressure from the United States, and in view of Arab refusal (at the Lausanne Conference) to discuss agreed borders until the refugee issue had been resolved, the Ben Gurion government agreed to absorb 100,000 refugees. This number would have included some 35,000 refugees whose return had already been negotiated and was underway. Israel's decision was made conditional upon Arab agreement, at Lausanne, to a comprehensive peace, including resettlement of the remaining refugees in Arab countries. Discussion within the Israeli government at the time also touched upon the possibility of absorbing a larger number of refugees, on condition that the Gaza Strip (with some of its refugee population) would be transferred from Egyptian to Israeli control, thereby improving Israel's military security situation vis-a-vis Egypt. Ultimately the Arabs rejected the Israeli offer, after which Israel retracted it.”[iv]
Absentees’ Property Law
This failure to make more progress on the refugee issue was further complicated by the Absentees’ Property Law of 1950 that disenfranchised both absentee owners of property (buildings, businesses and agricultural land) and resident Palestinians who’d owned land or businesses if they fled Israeli-held territory in the period of time roughly equivalent to the War of Independence, virtually treating refugees as enemy combatants who had forfeited their rights. Such properties fell to an appointed Israeli Custodian. This law has been condemned even by some Jewish progressives.[v]
Over the years there have been disputes concerning initial responsibility for the refugee crisis – each side basically blaming the other (and it certainly is true that Arab armies and militias invaded the nascent Jewish state after Israel declared its independence on May 14/15, 1948, not the other way around, though fighting between Jews and Arabs in land assigned to the projected Palestinian state occurred earlier) – but that’s almost quibbling in light of the real issue facing Israelis today, which is demographic. If all Palestinian refugees return, including descendants of the original refugees, whether by right, voluntarily, or under pressure from the Muslim Arab ummah to reclaim parts of the abode of Islam, Israel will cease to be a Jewish state. The “right of return” will predictably be followed by a demand for “power sharing” within Israel itself, then “majority rule.” There is precedent for this and everyone reading this little essay knows what it is. Given this insight, the argument over “right of return” is really political, not moral. It is the consequence of any large-scale return that concerns Israel, irrespective of the legitimacy that the Arab world and many who are sympathetic to the Palestinian plight see in the “right of return” claim.
This essay was adapted from a longer piece that is posted on the resources page of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (www.spme.org)
[i]https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/C758572B78D1CD0085256BCF0077E51A
[ii] “Palestine Refugees,” United Nations Relief and Words Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, undated and unsigned, found at https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees on Dec. 16, 2020.
[iii] “UN Agency for Palestine Refugees runs out of money as Covid-19 spreads,” Nov. 10, 2020, unsigned, found at https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/11/1077332
[iv] “Concept Paper: The Palestinian Refugee Problem and the Right of Return,” Middle East Policy Council, Volume VI, 1999, No. 3, by Joseph Alpher and Khalil Shikaki, found at https://mepc.org/journal/concept-paper-palestinian-refugee-problem-and-right-return
[v] “Why we need to speak about the Absentee Propery Law,” Jewish News, via The Times of Israel, July 5, 2020, Anna Roiser, found at https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-we-need-to-speak-about-the-absentee-property-law/