BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee

Politics and the Question of Palestinian Refugees and IDPs
not – and for any negotiating team, will depend on their respect for democracy, national and human rights.” 78
The renaissance of community mobilization resulted in the establishment of the Association for the Defence of the
Rights of the Internally Displaced in Israel (ADRID) in 1995, and in the re-activation of old and the formation
of new refugee grass-roots organizations, unions (such as the Union of Youth Activity Centers) and professional
organizations (such as Badil) in the OPT. This mobilization led to the organization of strategy debates, public
awareness-raising campaigns and protests. The PLO (including the Department for Refugee Affairs, Popular
Service Committees, and the Palestinian National Council), the Palestinian Authority’s Legislative Council and
members of Palestinian unions, political parties and national institutions were lobbied to join the campaign.
Community-based right of return initiatives in Palestine connected with similar initiatives in exile, and recruited
professional support among the academia and media. More recently, refugee rights initiatives were launched in
Lebanon, Syria, Europe and North America in 2000. Global networks, among them the Palestine Right of Return
Coalition, organized their first co-ordinated activities, including annual commemorations of the Nakba, both
within Palestine and abroad. By the time the Camp David summit was convened by the United States in 2000
to negotiate a final peace agreement between Israel and the PLO, including a solution to the Palestinian refugee
question, community organizing had built a Palestinian constituency demanding the right to return. This call
could no longer be dismissed by Palestinian negotiators or ignored by the international community.
Excerpt from the Civitas Report
“The right of return is under significant threat at this stage because of the decline of the institutions of the PLO, the retreat of
the priorities of the struggle, and the international pressures that aim to harm the right of return. We are therefore obliged, as
refugees, to make our voice heard to preserve the right to return to our country, specifically to 1948 territory, and not just to
the 1967 territory as is suggested now.”
Participant, Preparatory Workshop, Homs (‘A’idee) camp, Syria. Cited in Karma Nabulsi, “Palestinians Register: Laying Foundations and
Setting Directions,” Report of the Civitas Project, University of Oxford, August 2006, p. 208.
5.4.2 Civil Society Initiatives
As refugee and IDP community mobilization continued to grow throughout the second Palestinian intifada, most
Palestinian civil society organizations in the OPT adopted the agenda of the refugee rights campaign, and several
unofficial proposals for non-rights-based solutions to the Palestinian refugee question (the Nusseibeh-Ayalon Plan
and the Geneva Initiative, for instance) were publicly rejected.
The exposure of Jewish Israeli society to renewed armed conflict with the Palestinian people, together with public
debate about the failure of the peace negotiations, triggered new interest in the events of 1948 and the Palestinian
refugee question. This led, for the first time in decades, to a number of small but persistent Jewish Israeli organizations
(such as Zochrot) tackling Israel’s responsibility for the Palestinian Nakba in 1948, and advocating for a rights-based
solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees and IDPs.
The 2001 recommendations of a British Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils’ Commission of Inquiry
into Refugee Choice, 79 which included the need to bring Palestinians in exile back into the Palestinian body
politic in order to boost successful peacemaking, received the support of the European Commission, and
resulted in a Palestinian-led research project hosted by the University of Oxford. Between 2004 and 2006,
the Civitas project organized dozens of community meetings among Palestinians in exile worldwide, and
recorded the concerns, needs and suggestions raised in the process. The final project report presents the voices
of refugees in exile on the topic of the right to return, as well as their recommendations for improving access
to social, economic, civil and political rights, including political participation and representation through the
PLO, and protection and assistance provided by host states and the United Nations. 80
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