70 years ago today, the UN General Assembly passed Resn 194 (III) which resolved that, "the refugees [from Palestine] wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date & unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispa… >
> "& that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible." 70 yrs ago! Note that >
> this Palestinian #RightOfReturn was not made conditional on the attainment of a peace treaty or any other political development. It was proclaimed as absolute, for all refugees "wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours." In the 70 years since, >
> successive govts in Israel, "Labour", "Likud", and other, have all refused to allow implementn of the #RightOfReturn but have instead hounded the Palestinian refugees wherever they've been, & especially whenever they even started to talk about their #RightOfReturn. >
> So what happened to the 750,000 Palestinians expelled from their ancestral homeland in 1947-48? Their initial situation in the places they found themselves was extremely dire. "Relief" projects for the refugee gatherings were makeshift. >
> In Dec 1949, the UN created a special relief agency for them, now called @UNRWA. Refugees who (a) were located in the five "fields" where UNRWA operated and (b) could demonstrate their neediness were allowed to register for UNRWA aid. Pls note that >
> a large # of refugees did not meet both those criteria. So when @UNRWA presents a count of "registered" refugees this is not the whole number of Palestinian people entitled to the #RightOfReturn. Here's basic info from UNRWA: unrwa.org/where-we-work
> It tells us that today there are 5.26 million *registered* Palestinian refugees in these 5 fields. (Btw the map on that page is crap, since it seems to show that Golan is Israeli not, as is the case, Syrian!) If you click on #Gaza, you see that > unrwa.org/where-we-work/…
> (in the current version of that page) UNRWA says Gaza has 1.3 million registered refugees in its populatn of 1.9 (more like 2.0) million. But anyway, a v. large concentration of registered refugees ( + many not "registered") within a small patch of land. That's why >
> Gaza has *always* been the key crucible of Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian resistance to Israel's settler colonialism. Back in the decade after 1948, that was where key Fateh founders Yasser Arafat, Salah Khalaf, Khalil Wazir came of age as young revolutionaries. >
> Then, in 1987, #Gaza was the birthplace of #Hamas. It has always also had noticeable presence of other Palestinian resistance/liberatn orgs. To the east & south, Gaza is completely hemmed in by "Israel". To the west, it has a short border with Egypt but >
> the part of Egypt it abuts, Northern Sinai, is mainly desert, & 100's of miles distant from any of Egypt's large cities. Plus ever since the Egt-Israel peace treaty of 1979 all governmts of Egt have worked closely with Israel to control Gaza. >
> Last March, numerous civil-society & political orgs in #Gaza started organizing very creative forms of mass action, esp along the frontier with Israel (which is *not* a border btw) to draw attention to the Palestinians' #RightOfReturn. This >
> campaign, called the #GreatMarchOfReturn, has continued ever since, with actions usually on Fridays. The reaction of the Israeli military has been extremely violent. Check out this report from UNOCHA: ochaopt.org/content/more-c…
> Btw I should have specified above that the #GreatMarchOfReturn has been creative, mass *nonviolent* action. But the Israeli military responded by *killing 171 participants in first 7 months & injuring a staggering 24,362.* >
> Anyway, today being the 70th anniv of UN Resn 194 is a good day to study the situation of Palestinian refugees wherever they are-- and to brainstorm on how they can finally get to exercise their long-denied #RightToReturn. In general, the "Palestinian Authority" has not >
> given any priority to winning implementation of the #RightToReturn. The RTR had been central to Palestinian nationalists of the founding generations of Fateh, PFLP, PLO, etc. But in the mid-1970s members of that generation were ageing & getting tired & started to signal >
> that they could accept a Palestinian "state" on just a part of historic (Mandate-era) Palestine, alongside Israel, & they might be ready to fudge the issue of the "Return" of refugees. But here we are, 40-plus years after that shift & >
> what that generation (now represented only by the extremely geriatric PA Pres. Abu Mazen) has achieved has been only a sort of completely Israel-controlled & Israel-dependent "Judenrat" status for the PA in Ramallah. >
> & they completely lost sight of any thought about the #RightToReturn. Meanwhile, in Syria, Lebanon, & elsewhere the Palestinian refugees remain *stateless*, which leaves them extremely vulnerable to host-nation policies/politics. In Jordan, the large # of registered & >
> unregistered Palestinian refugees have a Jordanian passport/ID, but remain under strict government control & devoid of even the few political rights that "East Bank" Jordanians have. >
> In the West Bank (including occupied E. Jerusalem) & Gaza, Palestinian refugees & non-refugees have the "right" to PA-issued ID cards and passports. But these are almost worthless, esp in Gaza (from which people can't travel at all.) >
> Altogether, the policies of Israel, the Arab states, and Israel's international backers have between them succeeded in fragmenting the Palestinian population & esp its key refugee component into tiny, strictly segregated different parts which makes organizing any national >
> action or movement extremely challenging. Still, the dream of exercising the #RightToReturn as guaranteed by the UNGA back in 1948 lives on; and still, it is a key mobilizing issue in all Palestinian resistance to Israel's continuing project of settler colonialism.
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