Palestinians, UN & UNRWA "Refugees" -- Who is a Palestinian refugee?

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Why Palestinians Still Live in Refugee Camps -- good question August 14, 2005 by Alex Safian

• Why do Palestinians in Gaza still live in refugee camps? Did the Israelis force Palestinians to stay in the squalid, overcrowded camps?

Palestinians still live in refugee camps, even when the camps are in Palestinian Authority controlled areas, because the PLO opposes and prevents refugee resettlement. As the PLO slogan goes, A Palestinian refugee never moves out of his camp except to return home (ie, to Israel).

[. . . . ] Israel even started a heavily subsidized “build-your-own-home” program for Palestinian refugees. [. . . . details of the Israeli program and what happened]

It’s not surprising that the PLO vehemently opposed this program – after all, former residents of a refugee camp, now living in a nice home in a new neighborhood, would have a stake in supporting peace and opposing violence, exactly the opposite of the PLO’s strategy.

What is perhaps surprising is that the United Nations also opposed the program, and passed harsh resolutions demanding that Israel remove the Palestinians from their new homes and return them to the squalid camps. For example, UN General Assembly Resolution 31/15 of Nov. 23, 1976: [. . . . ]

Similarly, UNGA Resolution 34/52 of November 23, 1979 declared that: [. . . . ]

Perhaps thanks to this support from the UN, the PLO began threatening to kill any refugee who would move out of the camps. After a few such attacks, the build-your-own-home program died, and that is why there are still Palestinians refugee camps in Gaza.

• How does the UN define just who qualifies as a Palestinian refugee? And are the UN’s figures for the number of Palestinian refugees accurate?

The UN’s figures are notoriously inaccurate, first of all because of the organization’s curious definition of who qualifies to be considered a Palestinian refugee. According to the UNRWA website:

Under UNRWA's operational definition, Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict. UNRWA's services are available to all those living in its area of operations who meet this definition, who are registered with the Agency and who need assistance. UNRWA's definition of a refugee also covers the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948. The number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than four million in 2002, and continues to rise due to natural population growth. (emphasis added)

There are serious problems with considering descendants of refugees to be refugees themselves. [. . . . ]

In addition, the UN definition contradicts international law, under which descendants of refugees are not considered to be refugees. [. . . . ]

There is no room under this definition for a descendant of a refugee to be considered a refugee. The UN got around this problem by creating a loophole – the usual refugee conventions do not apply to people receiving aid from UNRWA (and only Palestinians receive aid from UNRWA).

• Whatever the definition, are the UN figures for the number of Palestinian refugees accurate?

No, as the UN itself has admitted. For example, in the Report of the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East – 1 July 1997 - 30 June 1998, the UN concedes that:

UNRWA registration figures are based on information voluntarily supplied by refugees primarily for the purpose of obtaining access to Agency services, and hence cannot be considered statistically valid demographic data; the number of registered refugees present in the Agency's area of operations is almost certainly less that the population recorded.

Since the refugee figures are based on “voluntarily supplied” information given for the purpose of obtaining services, such as financial aid and food rations, there is obvious incentive for people to falsely claim to be refugees to get services to which they are not entitled. Especially since, as previously stated, refugees don’t actually have to live in refugee camps.

There is also incentive never to report deaths of people considered to be refugees – since the rations for the deceased would be discontinued.

The results are predictable: sacks of rice and flour with the UNRWA logo are resold everyday by merchants in Arab marketplaces in, for example, Jerusalem and Gaza.

There is more under these subheadings:

• Do most of Gaza’s residents live in refugee camps?

• Is Gaza “the most densely populated place in the world”?

Check the table of population densities at the end of the article. Surprising.

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