Transitional Justice and the Right of Return of the Palestinian Refugees

2007 ◽  
pp. 141-157
Author(s):  
Yoav Peled ◽  
Nadim N. Rouhana
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
The Right

Memories for the Return? Remembering the Nakba by the First Generation of Palestinian Refugees in Syria

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anaheed Al-Hardan
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Oslo Accords ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Way

The 1948 Nakba has, in light of the 1993 Oslo Accords and Palestinian refugee activists' mobilisation around the right of return, taken on a new-found centrality and importance in Palestinian refugee communities. Closely-related to this, members of the ‘Generation of Palestine’, the only individuals who can recollect Nakba memories, have come to be seen as the guardians of memories that are eventually to reclaim the homeland. These historical, social and political realities are deeply rooted in the ways in which the few remaining members of the generation of Palestine recollect 1948. Moreover, as members of communities that were destroyed in Palestine, and whose common and temporal and spatial frameworks were non-linearly constituted anew in Syria, one of the multiples meanings of the Nakba today can be found in the way the refugee communities perceive and define this generation.

Unfulfilled Promise: Palestinian Family Reunification and the Right of Return

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-39
Author(s):  
Nabila El-Ahmed ◽  
Nadia Abu-Zahra
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Family Reunification ◽  
The State ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Successor State ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Right

This article argues that Israel substituted the Palestinian refugees' internationally recognized right of return with a family reunification program during its maneuvering over admission at the United Nations following the creation of the state in May 1948. Israel was granted UN membership in 1949 on the understanding that it would have to comply with legal international requirements to ensure the return of a substantial number of the 750,000 Palestinians dispossessed in the process of establishing the Zionist state, as well as citizenship there as a successor state. However, once the coveted UN membership had been obtained, and armistice agreements signed with neighboring countries, Israel parlayed this commitment into the much vaguer family reunification program, which it proceeded to apply with Kafkaesque absurdity over the next fifty years. As a result, Palestinians made refugees first in 1948, and later in 1967, continue to be deprived of their legally recognized right to return to their homes and their homeland, and the family reunification program remains the unfulfilled promise of the early years of Israeli statehood.

Chronology

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Paul Karolyi
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
Pull Out ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S

This is part 138 of a chronology begun by the Journal of Palestine Studies in Spring 1984, and covers events from 16 May to 15 August 2018 on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories and in the diplomatic sphere, regionally and internationally. This quarter saw the start of the ongoing months-long Great March of Return, a protest demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their homes in Israel. These peaceful, large-scale protests along Gaza's border were met with stunning violence from Israeli forces. The bloodiest day, which fell on the day of the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the U.S. embassy's move to Jerusalem, and the day before the seventieth anniversary of the Nakba, saw fifty-eight Palestinians dead at the hands of Israeli troops. The U.S. and Israel successfully blocked a formal investigation into these killings, in spite of multiple requests from U.N. members. As well, U.S. president Trump announced his decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, after which tension and military attacks and counterattacks between Israel and Iranian forces in Syria mounted.

scholarly journals Humanitarian Dilemmas for the Palestinian Refugees & the Question of Return

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lina Smoum
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
The Right ◽  
Palestinian Population ◽  
Palestinian Nationalism ◽  
Refugee Experience

This paper examines the situation of Palestinian refugees who have been living in Arab host countries as a result of the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. Although their right of return was recognized by the UN Commission on Human Rights, 7 million refugees and 450,000 internally displaced Palestinians continue to live under unfavourable conditions, constituting about seventy percent of the entire Palestinian population worldwide (10.1 million) (BADIL, n.d, para1). During the refugee experience, Palestinians have suffered from all kinds of human rights violations in different countries. However, they considered the denial of their right of return as the most significant source of grievance. The right of return has become a major political goal and mobilizing influence of Palestinian nationalism. In this paper, I will use Iraq as a case study to demonstrate the continued instability and discrimination that Palestinians face in host countries and difficulties for stable settlement in exile. The experience of Palestinian refugees in Iraq between 1948 and 2008 indicates that even in countries where Palestinian refugees had seemingly favourable conditions, changes in political climate and their lack of citizenship rights make life in exile a perilous experience. Recognizing the issue of return as a legal and political matter, I will argue in this paper that based on the Palestinian refugees’ experience in various Arab host countries, securing the right of return should also be seen as a viable humanitarian solution. In the case of Palestinian refugees from and in Iraq, the right of return should be considered an emergency measure.

scholarly journals GRASS-ROOTS COMMEMORATIONS: REMEMBERING THE LAND IN THE CAMPS OF LEBANON

2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laleh Khalili
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
The Political ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
The Right

The Oslo negotiations——and the specter of a Palestinian renunciation of the right of return——greatly increased the insecurities of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. The new uncertainties in turn triggered the emergence in the refugee camps of commemorative practices different from those previously sponsored by the Palestinian leadership. The new forms of commemoration, centered on the villages left behind in Palestine in 1948 and including popular ethnographies, memory museums, naming practices, and history-telling using new technologies, have become implicit vehicles of opposition and a means of asserting the refugees' membership in the Palestinian polity. Beyond reflecting nostalgia for a lost world, the practices have become the basis of the political identity of the younger generations and the motivation for their political mobilization.

UNRWA and the Refugees: A Difficult but Lasting Marriage

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jalal Al Husseini
Keyword(s):  
Community Participation ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Political Constraints ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
International Donor ◽  
Donor States ◽  
The Right

Over the last sixty years, UNRWA's relationship to the Palestinian refugees it serves has undergone profound changes. Faced with the difficult task of adapting a humanitarian regime to a highly politicized environment, the agency has had to thread its way through the diverse and sometimes conflicting expectations of the international donor states, the Arab host countries, and the refugees themselves, who from the start were deeply suspicious of UNRWA's mandate as inimical to the right of return. Against this background, the article traces the evolution of the agency's role from service and relief provider to virtual mouthpiece for the refugees on the international stage and, on an administrative level, from a disciplinary regime to emphasis on community participation and finally to the embrace of a developmental agenda. Although UNRWA's presence, originally seen as temporary, seems likely to endure, the article argues that financial and political constraints are likely to thwart its new agenda.

Palestinian Refugee Compensation and Israeli Counterclaims for Jewish Property in Arab Countries

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Fischbach
Keyword(s):  
Arab World ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
Compensation Claims ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
International Fund ◽  
The Right

Unlike its demands for Holocaust reparations, Israel's compensation claims for properties that Jews left behind in the Arab world have aimed not to provide individual financial reparations, but rather to counter and offset Palestinian refugees' claims for restitution and the right of return. In U.S.-sponsored negotiations in 2000, Israel announced it would drop its counterclaim policy and agreed with the Palestinians that individual compensation would be paid out to all sides from an international fund. More recently, however, a new counterclaim strategy has emerged, based not on financial reparations, but rather on an argument that a fair population and property exchange occurred in 1948. By pursuing this strategy, Israel and international Jewish organizations risk exacerbating tensions between European Jews who have received Holocaust reparations, and Arab Jews angry that their claims are held hostage to diplomatic expediency.

B1. PALESTINIAN CENTER FOR POLICY AND SURVEY RESEARCH, PRESS RELEASE ON REFUGEE VIEWS ON THE SETTLEMENT OF THE REFUGEE ISSUE, RAMALLAH, 18 JULY 2003 (EXCERPTS).

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 160-162
Keyword(s):  
Sample Size ◽  
Survey Research ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Press Release ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
The Press ◽  
Permanent Settlement ◽  
The Right ◽  
Socioeconomic Data

The following data come from three surveys conducted among Palestinian refugees in theWest Bank and Gaza (January 2003), Jordan (May 2003), and Lebanon (June 2003). The sample size was 4,506, distributed among the three areas almost equally (about 1,500 interviews in each area). Earlier Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) surveys cited in the press release found that ““the overwhelming majority of the refugees (more than 95 percent) insist on maintaining the ‘‘right of return’’ as a sacred right that can never be given up.““ On this basis, the press release states that the goal of the new surveys was to find out ““how refugees would behave once they have obtained that right and how they would react under various likely conditions and circumstances of the permanent settlement.”” More specifically, the surveys (the questionnaire for which was prepared with PLO and PA bodies concerned with negotiations and refugee affairs) aimed at finding out refugee preferences in a permanent settlement and at making estimates, for planning purposes, of how many refugees might opt to live in the Palestinian state. In addition to the sections on refugee views and preferences (the press release summaries of which are reproduced below), the survey data also covered socioeconomic data. The final results and analysis of the surveys are expected to be available toward the end of the year; the full press release can be obtained from the PCPSR Web site at www.pcpsr.org.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document