Tag: 1948 Palestine

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By Neta Golan

Anyone familiar with Israeli politics, was not surprised that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert did not acknowledge Israel’s occupation in his speech at Annapolis. What was surprising was, that, short of mentioning the “R” word- refugees, Olmert acknowledged the Palestinian refugee problem.

Referring to the Palestinians Olmert stated: “your people, too, have suffered for many years; and there are some who still suffer. Many Palestinians have been living for decades in camps, disconnected from the environment in which they grew up, wallowing in poverty, in neglect, alienation, bitterness, and a deep, unrelenting sense of humiliation.”

Olmert’s characterization of the refugees is partiall. Poverty, neglect and alienation are only one component of the refugee experience. There are other components, such as community, pride, generosity,and perseverance. This one-dimensional characterization suits Olmert’s conception of a solution, it casts refugees as objects that will be acted upon (once again), rather than subjects who can genuinely participate in finding a solution. A recent article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz Daily titled “Refugees and Jerusalem: A question of money” Sheds light on the workings behind Olmert’s statements.

According to Israeli Historian Benny Morris “In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah [the pre-state defense force that was to become the IDF] were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves.” Yet Olmert presented the refugee issue as a humanitarian problem, not unlike one caused by a natural disaster, saying that “Israel will be part of an international mechanism that will assist in finding a solution to this problem”.

The solution Olmert suggests is: “an international effort, in which we (Israel) will participate, to assist these Palestinians in finding a proper framework for their future, in the Palestinian state that will be established in the territories agreed upon between us.” The suggestion that the refugees do not have the choice to return to the lands from which they were expelled but instead “return” to a future Palestinian state, is contrary to international humanitarian law, and to UN resolution 194 that “Resolves that the 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”. Despite this, U.S President George Bush promised Ariel Sharon in a letter on the 14Th of April 2004: “…an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.” The promises were subsequently ratified by both the United States House and Senate. Olmert referred to this letter in his Annapolis statement as a departure point for the negotiations.

According to Ha’aretz The Aix Group, “a semi-official political-economic backchannel” AIX group members, who include Israeli, Palestinian and International economic experts, academics, members of economic organizations, and officials from international institutions, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, submitted a document to the Israeli team preparing Olmert’s Annapolis statement.

The document opens with a declaration of principles that “an agreed and just long-term solution to the problem of the 1948 refugees must be based on the relevant United Nations resolutions, including General Assembly Resolution 194″ but then nullifies that statement by saying that: “while recognizing that a literal application of this Resolution is no longer possible given the substantial changes on the ground”. The document then describes an arrangement that would substitute the U.N. resolution which they have deemed no longer applicable. As stated, “The parties would agree that the measures recommended in the paper implement Resolution 194.”

The reference to “substantial changes on the ground” as an obstacle that render the UN resolution inapplicable, perpetuate the myth that physical or material obstacles render return impossible. According to Salman Abu Sitta an expert on the Palestinian refugee issue “90% of the village sites are still vacant, 7% are partially built-over, and only 3% are totally built over in Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem.” A hint to what the real obstacle may be lies in Ha’aretz corespondent Akiva Eldar’s statement “The Aix Group is convinced that if bold steps are not taken in the right direction, the vision of one state for two peoples, based on joint citizenship and equality before the law, will be placed on the agenda.”

The group suggests an international committee of experts would determine what constituted “fair and full” compensation for property claims. They estimate that the total cost of these claims will be between $15 billion and $30 billion.” According to Ha’aretz this and more money can be attained in a period spread out over 10 years and with extensive, generous international aid. In It’s proposal The group suggests that in cases in which “fair and full compensation” is offered “restitution” (the right of return) will not be considered. This formulation turns the basic principle set in the UN Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons on end. The principles clearly notes that restitution is the primary remedy and compensation only comes into play if refugees themselves choose compensation or if restitution is factually not possible as determined by an independent tribunal. They suggest that refugees will be sponsored financially to relocate to countries that would chose to accept them or be rehabilitated in their current county of residence. They also suggest that a fund be created from which every refugee receive 4000$ each for what the group calls refugeehood.

Under international humanitarian law the rights of refugees to return to their homes like all human rights it is invaluable and cannot be bought. Under Israel and Bush’s “solution” Palestinian refugee families which had been expelled from what is now Israel would be consigned to return, not to their homes, but to small, non-contiguous parts of less than 22% of their original homeland. Jews from anywhere in the world, on the other hand,would be free to “return” to more than 78% of historic Palestine, frequently to live on land seized from those same Palestinian refugees. Such clear discrimination against Palestinian refugees and privileging of Jews from anywhere in the world illustrates clearly that these proposals would further an separate but unequal solution that cannot result in peace.

By: Richard Becker

Palestinian right of return still a fundamental demand

The struggle in Palestine can be complex and confusing even for the closest of observers.

Like all great struggles, it has had many twists and turns, and will have many more. But the root cause of the conflict— the forcible expulsion of a people from their homeland—is neither ambiguous nor confusing. Sixty years ago, this is precisely what happened to the Palestinians in “The Catastrophe,” known as “Al-Nakba” in Arabic.

Al-Nakba, one of the key events in modern Middle Eastern history, began on Nov. 29, 1947. That day, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 to partition the British Mandate (colony) of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The United Nations made this decisive step without consulting the Palestinian Arabs, who at the time comprised two-thirds of the population.

Most of the Jewish population was made up of settlers who had arrived in the previous three decades, mainly from Europe. More than 100,000 were survivors of the Nazi genocide.

While the U.S. and British imperialists had done little before or during World War II to aid the Jewish victims of fascism, they used the horrors of Hitler’s death camps to rally support for the establishment of the state of Israel after the war.

The Palestinians—who had had nothing to do with European anti-Semitism or genocide—were not consulted before the U.N. vote. There was no plebiscite or vote of the people. If there had been, the outcome would not have been in doubt: One unitary state would have been the overwhelming choice. The U.N. vote was an illegitimate act and a violation of the Palestinians’ right of self-determination.

The two-thirds majority required to pass Resolution 181 was only achieved through intense U.S. pressure. The vote ended up 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions. The Truman administration leaned heavily on its neocolonies and client states, particularly the Philippines, Liberia, Haiti and Thailand, all of which initially opposed the resolution.

Without those four votes, the resolution would have failed. For narrow and short-term interests, the Soviet Union voted for the resolution. This represented a betrayal of the Arab anti-colonial struggle and one that did great harm to the socialist cause in the region. Later, the Soviet Union would become a major ally of the Arab national liberation movement.

The forced displacement of a people

The U.N. vote led to celebration among the Zionists, the settler movement working to create an exclusively Jewish state in Palestine. Despite owning just six percent of the land, Resolution 181 awarded them 56 percent of Palestine. On the Palestinian side, there was anger and rebellion. As all parties knew ahead of time, partition meant war.

Fighting broke out immediately.

In January 1948, the better-armed Zionist military forces began to carry out “Plan Dalet.” The point of the plan was to terrorize and drive out the Palestinian population. Before Plan Dalet, Palestinian villagers left their homes during battles, but typically went only as far as the next village.

On April 9, 1948, a Zionist paramilitary organization, the Irgun, massacred the entire village of Deir Yassin, raising “Plan Dalet” to a new level of brutality. When the dust had cleared, more than 200 Palestinian children, women and men lay dead. The massacre was meant as a warning to all Palestinians.

While the Jewish Agency formally “condemned” the Deir Yassin massacre, on the same day it incorporated the Irgun paramilitary into the official military Joint Command.

Twelve days after Deir Yassin, Zionist forces launched a lethal attack on the Palestinian areas of the mixed city of Haifa. They rolled barrel bombs filled with gasoline and dynamite down narrow alleys in the heavily populated city while mortar shells pounded the Arab neighborhoods from overhead. Nearly the entire Arab population fled.

Within a week, similar tactics led 77,000 of 80,000 Palestinians to flee the port city of Jaffa.

By May 15, 1948, when Israel’s independence was proclaimed, 300,000 Palestinians were living and dying in abominable conditions of exile in Lebanon, Gaza, Syria and the Jordan Valley. By the end of that year, the number of dispossessed Palestinians had grown to 750,000.

In the 1948 war, Israel, with its superior economic and military resources and support from the Western powers, conquered 78 percent of Palestine. The Israeli military strategy was to not only conquer land, but also to drive out as much of the Palestinian population as possible from that land.

Nearly 80 percent of the Arab population was forcibly “transferred” to make way for the new Israeli state. Their farms, workplaces and homes were stolen, forming an indispensable foundation for the new Israeli economy and state.

In the 1967 “Six-Day War,” Israel seized the remainder of historic Palestine: the West Bank and Gaza. This created 300,000 more refugees, many of whom were second-time exiles, having already fled the Israelis 19 years earlier.

None of those driven out in 1948 and 1967, nor their descendants, now numbering more than six million, have ever been allowed to come back or been compensated for their loss. This injustice remains despite U.N. Resolution 194, passed in December 1948, stating unequivocally that all refugees must be allowed to return and have their homes, lands and other property restored to them. The U.S. and Israeli governments have ignored the U.N. resolution for more than half a century.

While forcibly preventing the return of any exiled Palestinians, the new Israeli state proclaimed that any person living anywhere in the world who had proof of one Jewish grandparent, regardless of whether they or their family ever stepped foot in the Middle East, had the “right of return” to Israel. Those “returning” would be granted immediately citizenship in the new exclusivist state.

Right of return remains key demand

Six decades after Al-Nakba, the right of return remains a key issue despite the Israeli and U.S. leaders’ constant efforts to dismiss it.

It is obvious why the cause remains so vital for Palestinians. If a people are deprived of their land, their very existence as a people is threatened. Defending the right of return is a key element in the struggle to maintain the unity of the Palestinian people between those who remain inside historic Palestine and those families that have been illegally expelled.

Israeli opposition to Palestinian return is not really because there is “no room” for the Palestinians in Palestine, as Zionist ideologues often claim. That argument is blatantly racist. Palestinian demographer Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta has pointed out that most of the more than 500 demolished Palestinian towns and villages remain unoccupied today. They were destroyed and their residents driven away for mainly political purposes—the creation of an exclusivist state.

Nor is this some long-resolved issue buried in the sands of time. Hundreds of thousands of people forcibly exiled in 1948 and 1967 are alive today. Many hold among their dearest possessions the keys to their homes in Palestine. Some of those houses, particularly in the demolished villages, were bulldozed into the ground. Many others, however, especially in cities like Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem and elsewhere were expropriated and turned over to Israeli settlers, who live in them to this day.

Today, 46 percent of the six million Palestinian refugees reside inside historic Palestine, the 1948 borders of Israel, or the West Bank and Gaza. Another 42 percent live within 100 miles of its borders, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. (Roane Carey, ed., The New Intifada, Versa, 2001)

Put another way, nearly nine out of 10 Palestinian refugees could be home in the time in takes many people in this country to commute to work.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian families live in extreme poverty in 59 refugee camps, with no prospect of a better future. For them, the right of return is not abstract or academic, but an issue that speaks to their very survival. The situation is especially dire in the camps of Lebanon and Gaza, which are home to more than one million people.

The return of the exiled Palestinians would not mean, as is commonly claimed by the supporters of Israel, that the Jewish population would be forced to leave.

But it would mean that Israel could not continue as an apartheid-style state, with special rights for one group, serving the interests of imperialism in a key strategic region of the world.

This goes to the heart of why Israeli and U.S. ruling circles so adamantly oppose the Palestinian right of return. It also speaks to the need for all people who stand for justice and self-determination to defend the right of return as a fundamental democratic right.