[wvns] How Many Palestinian Refugees?
7.5 Million Palestinian refugees and IDPs:
In need of a rights-based solution
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
Bethlehem, Palestine
www.badil.org
At the end of 2006, the Palestinian population worldwide was estimated
to be over 10.1 million. 70% of them (nearly 7.5 million) were
refugees and internally displaced persons. Six million Palestinians
have been refugees since 1948, and approximately one million since 1967.
Approximately 450,000 Palestinians are internally displaced persons in
Israel and the OPT, while the legal status of some 400,000 additional
Palestinians is unclear. The majority of the latter have likely been
forcibly displaced from or within the occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip since 1967 as a result of Israeli policies. More than two thirds
of the Palestinian refugees live in exile, in particular in Arab
countries surrounding Palestine (Jordan, Syria and Lebanon), and
approximately 20% of them live in UNRWA-serviced refugee camps.
These data are released on World Refugee Day by BADIL Resource Center
based on systematic review and analysis of available sources,
including the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). Since
1948, no agency has comprehensively registered displaced Palestinians.
However, data provided are considered the best estimates as indicative
figures.
As the largest and longest unresolved refugee case in the world
approaches its 60th year, Badil calls upon all parties to the conflict
to adopt a rights-based approach to the search for durable solutions.
In particular, Badil calls upon Israel, the United States and the
European Union to recognize the rights of Palestinian refugees and
IDPs to return to their homes of origin, property restitution and
compensation for losses and damages incurred.
Since 1948, negotiations over the Palestinian refugee issue have
failed to put international law at the center of the search for
durable solutions. So-called "practical and realistic" solutions based
on the unequal balance of power between the parties has instead been
the chosen framework, leaving little space for respect for the rights
of refugees and IDPs. Addressing and resolving the issue of
Palestinian refugees and IDPs in accordance with international law is,
however, central to building a just and lasting peace.
The lack of a rights-based approach has left Palestinian refugees and
IDPs particularly vulnerable to renewed displacement and has created a
climate of impunity. In the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) and
Israel, displacement of Palestinians continues as a result of Israel's
quest for control over a maximum amount of land with a minimum number
of Palestinian people. The lack of effective protection leaves
Palestinian refugees vulnerable to discrimination, persecution and
renewed forced displacement also in their current host countries. In
Iraq, for instance, many are stranded on border areas or live without
access to protection. Thousands more have been displaced during
Israel's war on Lebanon in the summer of 2006 and the current conflict
in the Nahr el Bared camp.
Despite ongoing displacement, no national and international response
has been developed to prevent, protect from and respond to the forced
displacement of Palestinians. Badil believes that international
organizations, in particular the United Nations, need to urgently
develop a response to the ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians
in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Israel's
government and officials responsible for population transfers (ethnic
cleansing) must be held accountable.
For additional data and information, see:
PCBS press release, World Refugee Day: http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/
Recommended for reading:
NAKBA: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory
Edited by Ahmad H. Sa'idi and Lila Abu-Lughod
See: www.colunbia.edu/cu/cup/catalog/data/978023113/9780231135788.HTM
===
Poll: 10% of Palestinian children have lasting malnutrition effects
By The Associated Press
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/847548.html
About 10 percent of Palestinian children suffer permanent effects from
malnutrition, according to a survey published Wednesday, a result of
widespread poverty in the West Bank and Gaza.
The root cause is poverty, according to Khaled Abu Khaled, who
directed the study for the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
He said the numbers are up slightly over the past two years.
"One obvious effect of malnutrition is stunted growth among children,
which has increased about three percent in the last two years," he
said.
"This is a chronic chronic. Even with interventions, the rates don't
go down fast," he said.
Other surveys have shown that about half of the Palestinians are
living in poverty.
Six years of violence between Palestinians and Israelis have crippled
economic growth in the West Bank and Gaza. A year of international aid
sanctions following an election victory by the Islamic Hamas and its
takeover of the Palestinian government has intensified the hardships.
The findings were based on a survey conducted in November and December
covering 13,238 residents of the West Bank and Gaza, according to a
statement. It found that 13.2 percent of the children of Gaza suffer
stunted growth, compared to 7.9 percent in the West Bank.
While incidents of stunted growth were up slightly, Abu Khaled noted a
decrease in cases of extremely low body weight - another common
symptom of acute malnutrition. He said the children of northern Gaza
were most likely to suffer stunted growth as well as low birth weight.
The survey showed that 17 percent of the Palestinian population is
made up of children under the age of five, and 46 percent are under
15.
===
Cementing Israeli Apartheid:
The Role Of World Bank
By Jamal Juma
Left Turn
Through the violent occupation of Iraq, the US is
laying the foundations to further open the economy of
the Middle East for their corporate interests.
Countries once protected by oil revenues are lining up
to sign bilateral agreements leading to a Middle East
Free Trade Agreement. MEFTA would impose free market
policies that have enslaved other regions of the
global south to global capital. In Palestine, the
World Bank has played a key role in facilitating the
cooperation of global capital and occupation.
In Palestine, international powers are eager to
implement plans to use the apartheid apparatus of the
Israeli occupation—particularly the infrastructure
created by the Apartheid Wall—for the establishment of
industrial zones, guaranteeing economic dependency and
exploitation of Palestinian communities on top of the
occupation control.
The Apartheid Wall is a devastating extension and
acceleration of occupation policies, designed to annex
nearly half of West Bank lands and imprison the
remaining population within 12 percent of historical
Palestine. The Wall to date has destroyed thousands of
dunums (4 dunums are equivalent to one acre) of land,
uprooted olive trees, displaced families and
communities, and separated Palestinians from their
land and other Palestinians. Despite the 2004
International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision, which
took up the Palestinian call that the Wall must be
torn down and affected communities compensated—the
construction of the Wall has only accelerated in the
last year.
Legitimizing occupation
Global bodies have only increased their support for
the Wall and occupation policies over the last year.
The G-8 controlled World Bank has outlined the
framework for this policy in their most recent report
on Palestine published in December of 2004, Stagnation
or Revival: Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian
Economic Prospects.
In the report, the World Bank adopts the occupation's
strategically misleading terminology for the Wall,
referring to it and its connected infrastructure as a
"security fence" or "separation barrier." This move by
the World Bank seeks to legitimize the confiscation of
Palestinian lands and obscures the reality on the
ground in which 80 percent of the Wall's destructive
path deviates from the 1967 Armistice Line, separating
Palestinians from other Palestinians, their capital
Jerusalem, land, and essential sources of livelihood.
The World Bank's vision of "economic development"
evades any discussion of the illegality of the Wall,
the occupation, and the right of return for
Palestinian refugees. To the contrary it takes Israeli
"facts on the ground" as given scenarios and lays the
foundations for the economic sustainability of the
Palestinian ghettos created by the Wall. The World
Bank thinks they can circumvent ICJ concerns if it is
justified as a humanitarian project.
Central to the vision of the World Bank for a thriving
and successful Palestinian "state" is the development
of an export-orientated economy in which Palestinian
dispossessed farmers are exploited as cheap labor and
dominated by markets and free trade. Israeli and World
Bank interests merge to destroy local forms of trade,
sustainable patterns of agricultural production, and
existing social structures.
Agriculture, traditionally the core sector of the
Palestinian economy, is barely mentioned in the
report, presumably because the World Bank realizes
that Palestinians will be left with no land. The only
mention of a future for agriculture in areas of Gaza
focus on the use of land for export-oriented
production, not local sustainability and consumption.
Industrial zones
Central to World Bank proposals are the construction
of massive industrial zones to be financed by the
World Bank and other donors and controlled by the
Israeli Occupation. These are envisaged as forming the
basis of economic "development" built on Palestinian
land around the Wall. Previous initiatives in the Gaza
Strip are being used as the "catalyst" and model for
the way in which Palestinians imprisoned by the Wall
can be put to work in industrial zones.
International Financing Institutions are proposing a
series of new or revitalized industrial zones. Primary
among these are the "Green Line" zones which would be
located in areas close to or on the Green Line,
including sites close to Jenin, Tarkumiya and Rafah
which already have backing with several European and
US firms. The gates built on the 20 percent of the
Wall that fall on the Green Line are integral to World
Bank plans as the existing gates will facilitate their
ability to fund high-tech checkpoints for the
transport of goods and control of people with fewer
legal barriers stemming from the ICJ decision. Further
industrial parks are planned in "Seam Zones" in
Palestinian land isolated behind the Apartheid Wall
and the Green Line. Given that 80 percent of the Wall
deviates from the Green Line, there is scope for
various projects on isolated land confiscated by the
Israeli Occupation.
One location highlighted in the Bank's report is the
so-called Tulkarm Peace Park where construction is
already underway. Construction has involved using
around 600 dunums of land from the villages of Irtah
and Farun that have been confiscated by the Wall.
The industrial zones are designed to serve the needs
of the industry markets of Israel, whether by doing
the most environmentally destructive production in
Palestinian areas or by providing cheap labor.
Additionally these zones would benefit the Israeli
Occupation abroad where goods "Made in Palestine" have
more favorable trade conditions in international
markets.
And while the Israeli Occupation plans to stop issuing
work permits in 2008 cutting about 30,000 Palestinian
jobs (adding to the potential labor force in
industrial zones), the World Bank as part of the
overall economic plan encourages the issuing of some
permits so the Occupation economy can further profit
from Palestinians.
Imprisoned labor
Through the Apartheid Wall, the occupation and
international financing institutions aim to cement
several realities into the future of Palestinian
people. Primary among these is the long-term
sustainability of the ghettoization of Palestinians.
This post-Wall vision includes complete control over
Palestinian movement. The report proposes high-tech
military gates and checkpoints, through which
Palestinians and exports can be conveniently
transported and controlled. This will be supplemented
with a "transfer system" of walled roads and tunnels
to funnel Palestinian workers to their jobs, while
simultaneously denying them access to their land
around them that lies outside the Bantustans created
by the Wall.
The World Bank places these conditions of imprisonment
within a scenario of exploitation of the workers who
will be channeled through the Occupation control
system. Sweatshops will be one of the only
possibilities for earning a living for the
Palestinians left in the disparate Bantustans
throughout the West Bank. The World Bank states:
"In an improved operating environment, Palestinian
entrepreneurs and foreign investors will look for
well-serviced industrial land and supporting
infrastructure. They will also seek a regulatory
regime with a minimum of `red tape' and with clear
procedures for conducting business. Industrial Estates
(IEs), particularly those on the border between
Palestinian and Israeli territory, can fulfill this
need and thereby play an important role in supporting
export based growth."
The "red tape" which the World Bank refers to can be
presumed to mean trade unions, a minimum wage, good
working conditions, environmental protection and other
workers' rights that will be more flexible than the
ones in the "developed" world. The World Bank
explicitly states that current wages of Palestinians
are too high for the region and "compromise the
international competitiveness" even though wages
compromise only a quarter of the average in Israel. On
top of a military occupation and forced expulsion,
Palestinians are to be subjects of an economic
colonialism common throughout the Southern hemisphere
for inflicting poverty and misery.
Aiding displacement
The governments of the G-8 have shown vivid interest
in this project of displacement, imprisonment, and
oppression of Palestinian communities under the
pretense of development and humanitarian aid. In
breach of the ICJ ruling, the US has already
contributed $50 million to construct gates within
these prisons to "help" serve the needs of
Palestinians. Perhaps even more disturbing is the
normalization of such brutal schemes within the
programs of donors (such as USAID), who implement
politically motivated projects under the rubric of
humanitarian assistance.
The World Bank, alongside the US and significant
portions of the international community, are using the
Palestinian Authority (PA) as an institution through
which these policies can be implemented and an
"attractive environment for investors" created. The PA
is given the role of prison guard, preventing the
Palestinian people from defending their lands and
rights. The responsibility of the PA towards the
Palestinian people necessitates that it stands up
against these projects—not by "modifying" or "only
partially backing" them, but by completely opposing
them.
Right to exist
The industrial zones and Bantustans are not new ideas;
they are reminiscent of the economic models of racial
capital promoted by apartheid South Africa in
Bantustans like the Ciskei and Bophuthatswana. They
reflect the World Bank's conscious choice to support
the needs and vision of the Occupation which entails
the destruction of the Palestinian nation. While
espousing the politics of free markets and free trade,
the World Bank is not interested in the creation of a
free people. Quite the opposite—its interests are best
served by keeping Palestinians in economic
enslavement.
The failure of the international community and
financial institutions to work towards the
implementation of the ICJ decision to tear down the
Wall and to ensure the respect of Palestinian rights
has come at an enormous human cost. And yet, against
this bleak and overwhelming reality, Palestinian
communities are actively defending their right to
exist. Palestinians are implementing the ICJ decision
with their own hands, where in villages like Bil`in,
the Wall's cement foundations were physically
dismantled in active resistance.
Villages are mobilizing regular demonstrations against
the construction of the Wall in the midst of violent
reprisals by the Occupation Forces and continue to
direct their protest beyond these imprisoned
boundaries, towards the international community at
large. As history illustrates repeatedly, attempted
pacification of resistance to Occupation will always
be thwarted by a people's unrelenting will for
self-determination.
Now more than ever it is crucial that movements step
up efforts to isolate the Israeli Apartheid and
support Palestinians in their struggle for their land.
It is important to be prepared to resist new assaults
masked in the guise of "development" and "aid" and
stand behind the uncompromising demands of a
Palestinian led movement—not for comfortable ghettos
or colorful walls but liberation and justice.
Jamal Juma' is Campaign Coordinator for the Grassroots
Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (www.stopthewall.org).
*********************************************************************
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