Executive Summary
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BADIL) has produced the Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) since 2002. This edition of the Survey, Volume IX, focuses on Palestinian refugees and IDPs in the period between 2016-2018, unless stated otherwise.
In the three years since the last survey, the Palestinian people have experienced an ever more repressive and limited space within which to collectively demand and exercise their national and individual rights. This has been characterized principally by the rapid advancement of Israeli annexation policies in the West Bank, underpinned by ever more repressive apartheid policies throughout Mandatory Palestine, and coupled with renewed attacks on the rights of Palestinian refugees, particularly in the delegitimization of UNRWA. It is in this context that BADIL elected to focus this survey particularly on the most crucial, yet most marginalized issue to the question of Palestine: the right of return and specifically the practicalities of realizing and implementing return. In so doing, BADIL aims to provide essential data and analysis that may pave the way for renewed national and international political discourse on the right of return and its implementation in the case of Palestine.
As in the previous surveys, BADIL embarked on a thematic field study targeting the perceptions of the Palestinian population, as highlighted by the questionnaire in Chapter 5. This particular study is unique to previous survey studies on three counts. Firstly, the questionnaire in this edition of the Survey was widened to include the perceptions of IDPs, in deference to the thematic issue selected. Second, the study focused on the perceptions of Palestinian refugee and IDP youth, specifically those between the ages of 18-29. In previous editions of the Survey, Palestinian refugees of varying ages were sampled. And finally, in addition to performing the traditional data collection method - manual completion of a written questionnaire by multiple field research teams - an online questionnaire was also utilized.
Though the Palestinian right of return has been affirmed by the international community since the very early days of the Nakba, claimed by Arab States and sought by the Palestinian people and their political factions, putting return into practice has not been conceptualized in a tangible way. As such, one could also argue that the selected topic, practicalities of return, introduces a uniqueness all its own, as, to our knowledge, this is the first (but hopefully not the last) study of its kind. The study was developed in order to observe and understand the answers of Palestinian refugee and IDP youth to the often undiscussed question: the Palestinian right of return and their belief in such right is practical and realizable. It is an issue which has been consistently complicated by false narratives driven by geo-politics, power dynamics, and ineffective political strategies to realize return. Producing and promoting this alleged complexity has not been a mere reflection of the absence of political will, it has also been employed to prevent practical and tangible discussions on return from materializing.
Therefore, Chapter 4 of this edition of the Survey sets the question of return within its legal and historical context, before Chapter 5 explores the youth’s responses to a multitude of questions designed to shed light on and encourage further exploration of the feasibility, practicality, process and politics of Palestinian return. Critically, this questionnaire is not a referendum on the right of return, but rather should be perceived as a tool for raising awareness and encouraging dialogue on the principles and practicalities of return. First, among Palestinians themselves, in the face of an absent official Palestinian return discourse, and second, internationally, in the face of Israeli and western allegations that return is impractical, impossible and a hostile, anti-Semitic act. To that end, the questionnaire results should serve as a reminder to the international community that, after 71 years of Ongoing Nakba, return remains both essential and critical to a just and durable resolution to the question of Palestine. The summary of the findings of Chapter 5 are explored below.
Chapter 1 of the Survey sets the historic scene for the state of affairs in which Palestinians find themselves today, having experienced four major episodes of mass forced displacement, in addition to the Israeli policies of ‘silent’ transfer that achieve ongoing forced displacement in reduced and less visible numbers. Supplementing the historic overview, which encompasses the period from the occupation by the British in 1917 to today, Chapter 1 explores a number of current political developments that have destructively impacted the situation in Palestine specifically and in the Arab region in general. The current political climate in which Palestinian refugees and IDPs find themselves has been heavily determined by the recent actions of the United States of America under the Trump Administration, including the defunding of UNRWA and efforts to abolish the Agency, recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and the so-called Deal of the Century. Compounded by the stagnant peace process, and no serious counter-interventions from the European community or Arab states, the question of Palestine has been reduced to a purely humanitarian-economic issue, devoid of and often in direct contradiction with legal norms and practices.
The population size, distribution and demographic characteristics of the Palestinian refugee and IDP population are, to the greatest extent possible, contained primarily in Chapter 2 (with some country-specific data in Chapter 4); noting there is no single authoritative source for the global Palestinian refugee and IDP population. Estimates of the current size of Palestinian refugee and IDP population and their socio-economic situation are based on best available data, which, if existing, is uneven and shifting. This is due primarily to the absence of a comprehensive registration system, reoccurring forced displacement, and the lack of a uniform application of what constitutes a refugee within internationally accepted definitions to the Palestinian situation. Regardless, the chapter provides this information, and includes a section detailing the estimation process. The summary of the findings from Chapter 2 are explored below.
Chapter 3 proffers the overall legal international protection framework and as it pertains specifically to those displaced, in addition to its application, or lack thereof, to Palestinian refugees and IDPs. The chapter highlights the role of UNHCR and human rights instruments in refugee protection, as well as consideration of IDP protection frameworks. Fundamentally, the chapter explores the exclusion of Palestinian displaced persons from both the general international frameworks and the protective components of the separate legal framework devised for Palestinians, observing particularly that this situation has resulted in a protection gap that has hitherto been unaddressed by the international community. This chapter ends by highlighting the protections and issues faced by Palestinians in a number of specific host countries– the majority of Arab states, including Turkey, and prominent western countries; deficiencies which serve to compound the existing protection gap Palestinians face.
As mentioned, the right of return is then contextualized within its legal and historic framework in Chapter 4. Noting first and foremost that the right of return is a basic human right to which all persons are entitled under international human rights law (IHRL), this chapter highlights that Palestinian refugees and IDPs find themselves in a peculiar position, as additionally they legally qualify as both refugees and/or IDPs and victims of gross and serious violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and IHRL, many amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity under International Criminal Law (ICL). On the one hand, this is precisely where the gap in international protection for Palestinians is particularly serious – since there is currently no international or national agency expressly mandated to promote and implement durable solutions for them. On the other hand, it is often overlooked that displaced Palestinians are also entitled to reparations for the international wrongs that resulted in their forcible displacement, including their displacement itself. In other words, Palestinians are entitled to the right to return because of and independently of their status as refugees/IDPs. To that end, while the international community has recognized the specific right of Palestinians to return, the inherently weak existing measures have woefully failed to provide protection or durable solutions. The chapter concludes with a brief historic overview of Palestinian civil society and grassroots initiatives to defend, promote and exercise the right of return.