Palestinian Refugees

The major losers in this war were the Arab Palestinians, 700,000 of whom were displaced during fighting and reduced to refugee status. On Israel’s side, the argument is that they left voluntarily, yet the Israelis never allowed them back, in violation of international law.

A debate has arisen as to whether the Palestinians left of their own accord, were encouraged to leave by the Arab states who were waging war with Israel, were purposefully driven out by the Israelis, or were simply fleeing violence, as is the case with most civilian populations caught in the midst of war. The issue is highly divisive since different interpretations of what took place serve to legitimize divergent understandings of the conflict. The Israeli claim suggests that the mass exodus of Palestinians was a purposeful strategy of a hostile population and was based on statements by Arab leaders that the civilian population should move out to allow Arab armies to enter and defeat the Jews. Some Palestinians, Arabs, and researchers in Israel support the position that the advancing Jewish forces sought to purge the territory of as many Palestinians as possible. Many among the civilian population feared acts of extreme violence, as evidenced by the Deir Yasin Massacre in 1948, in which approximately 256 Palestinians, men, women, and children, were slaughtered by the LHY. Other repressive actions and policies by Jewish forces were designed to intimidate Palestinians in order to create a climate of terror and thus force these groups to flee.

The Palestinian refugees of 1948 lived, to the shame of Arab states, in the squalor of segregated camps guarded with suspicion by the governments that hosted them. These refugee camps were set up in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, as well as in the Gaza Strip, which was administered by Egypt. Generations of Palestinians were brought up in these squalid camps under conditions of significant deprivation. As refugees, their residence in these communities was understood to be temporary, and their collective hope was directed toward returning to their homeland. In fact, they were ghettoized. Jordan was the only Arab state that absorbed Palestinian refugees into its population, many of whom are now second- and third- generation Jordanians. However, in 1970, Jordan feared the growing political power and autonomy of the refugee camps and the emergence of Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a formidable political and military challenge to the Hashemite monarchy, and unleashed its army against these communities, killing 3,000 to 15,000 Palestinians. This event is known by Palestinians as “Black September.”

A similar situation developed in Lebanon in 1982 when the PLO challenged the national government and ignited a civil war that lasted with varying degrees of intensity for two decades, dividing the nation, and ultimately resulting in the death ofover 170,000 Lebanese.

From 1949 until 1969, the United Nations defined all non-Israeli Palestinians as legal refugees. Characterization changed with General Assembly Resolution 2535 (1969), which recognized Palestinians for the first time as a people with a national identity and collective rights. However, Palestinians still retain a special status in refugee law and fall partially outside the protection of the 1951 convention. The recognition of Palestinian national identity was strengthened in 1974 when the United Nations granted observer status to the PLO and invited PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to address the General Assembly as if he were a head of state.

Although armistice agreements were signed in 1949, legally the state of war persisted and the absence of peace treaties contributed to four subsequent Arab-Israeli wars from 1956 to 1982: the Suez War (1956), the Six-Day War (1967), the October/Yom Kippur War (1973), and the War in Lebanon (1982).

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