BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee

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Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (2006-2007)
Since the beginning of the construction of the Wall in the OPT in 2002, Israel has advanced plans to impose a
unilateral solution to the conflict, including the status and borders of a Palestinian state. 45 Such measures prejudice
not only a negotiated settlement of the conflict, but also the rights of Palestinian refugees and IDPs.
5.3.3 The Quartet
Israeli Arguments against Return and the Rights-based Approach
Israel’s primary problem with a rights-based approach is that it would lead to an unacceptable political outcome. The return of
Palestinian refugees would negate Israel’s raison d’état as a Jewish state. Israel would no longer be able to guarantee a permanent
Jewish demographic majority; it would have to return and share the land, and enshrine equality as a basic principle of law. Arguments
about security (e.g., physical, psychological, material, cultural, etc.) and the state’s capacity to absorb the refugees (e.g., physical
space, material resources, etc.) are raised by Israel in order to prevent the application of a rights-based approach to the Palestinian
refugee question.
Israel’s arguments raise fundamental questions. Should Israel, as a democracy, grant equal rights to all of its citizens? And would
this include Palestinian refugees who were displaced from villages and towns that are now part of Israel? If so, can Israel deviate
from these legal obligations on the basis of public order and/or security? UN human rights committees have addressed each of
these questions, both in general and specific terms (see also Chapter Four).
The committee overseeing the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CERD) recently
recommended that Israel incorporate the “prohibition of racial discrimination and the principle of equality” as “general norms of high
status in [Israeli] domestic law.” 46 A number of committees have also recommended legislative reforms that would allow Palestinian
refugees to resume domicile in Israel and repossess or receive compensation for their properties. 47 Some of these committees have
also called upon Arab states to respect the basic rights of refugees until durable solutions can be realized.
More generally, the committee overseeing the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) has concluded that
all refugees and displaced persons “have the right freely to return to their homes of origin under conditions of safety in cases of
massive displacement due to foreign military, non-military and/or ethnic conflicts” and in situations where individuals are displaced
“on the basis of ethnic criteria.” 48 According to the Committee overseeing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR), the return of a person to “his/her own country” is not limited to nationals in a formal sense and would include “nationals
of a country who have there been stripped of their nationality in violation of international law, and of individuals whose country
of nationality has been incorporated in or transferred to another national entity, whose nationality is being denied them”, as well
as those born outside the country. 49 The Committee also concluded that the ICCPR applies to situations of mass displacement
and “implies prohibition of enforced population transfers or mass expulsions to other countries.” 50 In 1999 it narrowed the range
of possible interpretations of what might constitute permissible grounds for depriving persons of their right to return by ruling that
“there are few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable”; and that a
state “must not, by stripping a person of nationality or by expelling an individual to a third country, arbitrarily prevent this person
from returning to his or her own country.” 51
Some Israeli arguments against the return of Palestinian refugees raise important questions about space and natural resources
available for absorbing returning refugees. These are practical questions that are being tackled in the context of refugee return
worldwide; but they are often raised by Israel in order to evade debate, given that Israel has absorbed more than one million
Jewish immigrants since 1990 alone. Independent research findings suggest that approximately 78% of the Jewish population
today occupies 15% of the land of Israel, and that Palestinian villages depopulated in 1948 whose land has become part of new
Israeli urban infrastructure account for less than 10% of the total number of the villages from which Palestinian refugees originate. 52
More rights-based research about development and planning in the Israeli context could provide useful answers and guidelines for
repatriation, especially since refugee return is not so much about restoring the past as it is about building a future.
The “Performance-based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
reflects the official position of the Quartet (composed of the United States, European Union, Russia and
the United Nations). Its declared goal is the creation through peaceful negotiations of an independent,
sovereign and viable Palestinian state living in peace and security with Israel. The Road Map includes three
phases which, if implemented, would have put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2005. 53 In 2006,
the Quartet reiterated that a permanent solution could be reached only through the realization of the goal
of two democratic states: Israel and Palestine. 54 There was, however, no significant diplomatic process based
on the Road Map in 2006.