The Palestinian refugee issue consists of a chronic denial of state security to the people wherever they are, and a lack of international protection to its stateless condition[1]. As such, the Palestinians are one of the longest-standing refugee populations in the world, with approximately two in five world’s refugees being Palestinian, who furthermore have fled the Palestinian territories (at no particular time since 1948), or are internally displaced, and are confronted with a stateless identity[2]. Furthermore, through their massive displacement they, of course, constitute the oldest refugee community in the Middle East since the WWII[3], whereby the refugees have found new [second-class] homes in the neighboring Arab countries.

For example, a large number of Palestinians fled to Lebanon, whereby more than 50 per cent of the registered 455,000 refugees still live in the UNRWA[4] (since 1949[5]) camps which were set up at the time[6], whereby most of these camps suffer from poverty, unemployment, overcrowding etc.[7]. This indicates that the Palestinian refugees within the domestic realm of Lebanon do not enjoy the same political, social, legal and civic rights as the Lebanese nationals do[8]. As such, there is a wide gap between the life-possibilities of the refugees and the Lebanese nationals, which furthermore reflects the secondary-class feature of the stateless Palestinians in a host land[9].

Though these circumstances are disturbing, the point here is principally that the Palestinians no matter where they exactly reside [were it Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, or for that matter the Occupied Palestinian Territories], they do not enjoy rights of equity, which in the realm of the international community, especially as a nation which is still territorially linked to the Occupied Territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, on a first glance should have. [Even in the light of the UNRWA-registered Palestinian refugees, they have the right to additional international protection of their human rights and needs[10], but which foregoes the main point made here]. Therefore, the most fundamental question on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the one on the rights to the territory of Mandate Palestine and the Palestinian refugees, who at the time, and all the years that followed, were forced to leave their homes and their lands[11].

Yet, it is not as simple as that, especially since the issue has been left unsettled in the sixty-year long aftermath of the successful establishment of the Israeli State. As such, it becomes apparent, that where the Palestinians would claim a right of return [supposed that the Palestinians have a historic recognized right to consider Palestine as their state], in historical context, it would disclaim the Jewish right of return to Israel[12]. As such, the arguments in order to disconnect the Palestinian people to the Palestinian land(s) vary in following degrees: firstly, that the Palestinians are and never were the people with recognized rights to Palestine; additionally, that they did not flee the country, but that they left the Palestinian territories by own will; thirdly, the Palestinians forfeited their land through the Arab war against victorious Israel; and finally, that the Jews are the natives, and historically the owners, of the land of Palestine, and that as such, the Palestinians cannot overrule such claim on statehood[13]. Initially, such competing claims were initiated by the British inconsistent rule during its Mandate, whereby such Mandate was to safeguard the Palestinian territory for Palestinian benefit, but while they were contributing to the efforts of the Belfour Declaration to build a Jewish state[14]. This is the starting-point of the conflict and all the wrong events that subsequently followed, especially when considering that the legal nationals of Mandate Palestine were the Palestinians, who were holding a Palestinian passport![15], which of course negates the argument stated above, as if the Palestinians did not have a recognized right to the Palestinian land, prior to the birth of the Jewish state.

However, implications to a possible legal solution [to the refugee issue] consist of, firstly, the fact that international law does not provide these, or that Israel uses the same principles to defend their own right of return, and secondly, that the issue raised is not necessarily about the Palestinian existing right of return, but whether or not such return can be realized without negatively effecting the existence of the Jewish state[16]. Be this is as it may, it should not imply a future without an [legal] end, or settlement, to this issue or the conflict in general. A legal framework to offer solutions to the refugee problem is therefore preferable as necessary; because what other [peaceful] options remain open there?

Helena Uzelac