BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee

176
Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (2006-2007)
Writing on the wall, ‘Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem, occupied West Bank, March 2007. © Anne
Paq/Activestills.
Excerpt from the Civitas Report
formal standing or a substantive
hearing. Ordinary refugees have
sent thousands of letters and
petitions to UNRWA and other
international organizations
insisting on their right of return
to homes and properties, but to
no avail. They have also joined
the organizations, institutions
and activities of the Arab national
movement, the PLO and Islamic
movements in order to liberate
their homeland and return to it.
The 1991 Madrid-Oslo peace process
provided, for the first time, direct
Palestinian representation through
the PLO. However, this came at a time when the latter’s democratic institutions and mechanisms for popular
participation had largely been destroyed. 77 Neither the negotiating parties nor their international sponsors consulted
Palestinian refugees and IDPs about their vision and ideas for a solution, as negotiations were conducted in secrecy. In
this context, refugees were generally seen as an “obstacle” to peace and a political problem; their opinions, perceptions
and needs were surveyed, quantified and classified in the hope that their demand for a just solution based on their
rights to return, restitution and compensation could be defused by means of humanitarian and development aid.
The fact that the Madrid-Oslo process nevertheless brought the refugee question back onto the Palestinian, Israeli
and international agenda, compounded by the lack of transparency of the political negotiations, gave rise in the
1990s to a new wave of refugee/IDP community mobilization in Israel, the OPT, and the diaspora. This broadbased
movement has demanded better political representation and democratization of the peacemaking process.
“Britain and the United States today, want to offer the Palestinians a partial and weak solution: a self-governing region in
the West Bank and Gaza provided that the Palestinians renounce three-quarters of their country to the Israeli occupation,
and three-quarters of their people who live in the diaspora and the Arab asylum countries. This is a great injustice and a
historical scandal for those who praise democracy, civilization and the human right of anyone to live in his country and his
house…. When the Palestinians realized the threat … to the right of return to their country, they started to form assemblies
and committees in the hope that they will support the rights of the Palestinian people, and that they will advocate based on
international legitimacy and laws, supported by the free people of this world, whether Muslims, nationalists, or others, to
stand in the face of the biggest crime in human history against the resisting Palestinian people.”
Participant, public meeting, Stavanger, Norway. Cited in Karma Nabulsi, “Palestinians Register: Laying Foundations and Setting Directions,”
Report of the Civitas Project, University of Oxford, August 2006, p. 217.
Popular refugee conferences were first launched among IDPs in Israel in 1991 in protest against their exclusion
from the refugee portfolio presented in the negotiations by the PLO. Similar conferences followed among refugees
in the OPT and in exile during the mid-1990s. These set out the basic principles, structures and mechanisms
of a popular campaign for refugee/IDP rights, with a focus on the right of return. Refugees emphasized that the
campaign should be led by a broad-based, non-sectarian and independent movement comprised of Palestinian
popular organizations and initiatives (both refugee and non-refugee) in the homeland and in exile to lobby and
advocate for the protection of Palestinian refugee rights and durable solutions based on international law as affirmed
in relevant UN resolutions. “It should be clear that popular refugee support for parties – elected or not, official or