Independent examines other side to Palestinian refugee issue

Independent examines other side to Palestinian refugee issue

The Independent supplement, ‘Independent Life’ recently ran an unusual cover story on Palestinian refugees. ‘No way home: The tragedy of the Palestinian diaspora’ offered a rare insight into the predicament of Palestinian refugees, living not in the West Bank or Gaza, but in the Arab world. The detailed report by Judith Miller and David Samuels exposed the often appalling treatment meted out to an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians by their Arab hosts over the last sixty years, particularly in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Kuwait. The picture painted is one of exclusion, discrimination, degradation, and expulsion at the hands of the same governments who publicly condemn Israel for its conduct regarding the Palestinians.

Far from supporting Israel’s policies, the report focuses on exposing the ‘cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries.’ It accuses Arab countries of treating Palestinians ‘as unwanted guests or as tools to be used in pursuing wider political interests – but rarely as fully-fledged members of society.’

Key examples of discrimination by Arab regimes against Palestinians in the report include:

•    250,000 Palestinians expelled from Kuwait following Yasser Arafat’s support for Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War in 1991

•    Tens of thousands of Palestinians dispossessed following the second Iraq war in 2003

•    Palestinians in Lebanon in ‘catastrophic’ situation and stripped of the right to own property and banned from 20 professions

•    Palestinians in Syria denied the right to vote, stand for political office or purchase farmland

These facts are very rarely discussed in the British media, with coverage of Palestinian refugees almost exclusively focusing on Israel’s responsibility. The authors of this report predict that there would be a different reaction if Israel was carrying out such discrimination: ‘One can only imagine the outrage that the world community would rightly visit upon Israel if Israeli Arabs were subject to the vile discriminatory laws applied to Palestinians living in Arab countries.’

Not only does the special report draw attention to Arab mistreatment of Palestinians, but it also questions the UN’s very classification of most Palestinians as refugees. ‘The inclusion of the descendants of Palestinian refugees as refugees in UNRWA's mandate has no parallel in international humanitarian law and is responsible for the growth of the official numbers of Palestinian refugees in foreign countries from 711,000 to 4.6 million during decades when the number of ageing refugees from the 1948 Israeli war of independence in was in fact declining.’ In this way, it is argued, it is ‘easy for [Arab] host countries to flout their obligations under international law.’

Furthermore, the report questions why, after 60 years and billions of dollars in foreign aid, ‘not one refugee camp in the West Bank or Gaza has been replaced by modern housing’, implying that the Palestinian Authority bear some responsibility for the squalid living conditions endured by Palestinians under its authority.

Clearly, the question of refugees is central to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and this is reflected by regular attention in media reporting. However, very rarely is the torch shone on the Arab role in the perpetuation and worsening of the Palestinian predicament, making this report in The Independent as necessary as it is noteworthy.