The remarkable bravery of refugees on Nakba day was the first act of a Palestinian summer.

It was the moment for which we had all been holding our breath for decades – for 63 years to be precise. Palestinians everywhere watched the unfolding scene transfixed and awed. The camera followed the movements of a small group of people advancing from the mass of protesters. They were carefully making their way down a hill towards the high fence that closed off the mined field separating Syria from its own occupied territory of the Golan that borders historic Palestine, now Israel.
 

They were mostly young Palestinians, drawn from the 470,000-plus refugee community in Syria: from Yarmouk refugee camp inside Damascus, from Khan el-Sheikh camp outside it, from Deraa and Homs refugee camps in the south, from Palestinian gatherings all over the country.

Slowly, and in spite of the shouted warnings from the villagers from Majdal Shams about the lethal landmines installed by the Israeli military right up to the fence, these remarkable ordinary young people – Palestinian refugees – began to both climb and push at the fence. We were going home.

It was a profoundly revolutionary moment, for these hundreds of young people entering Majdal Shams last Sunday made public the private heart of every Palestinian citizen, who has lived each day since 1948 in the emergency crisis of a catastrophe. Waiting, and struggling, and organising for only two things: liberation and return.

What made this moment and others like it across the region so radical in gesture, democratic in purpose, and universal in intent? It brought the entire world suddenly face to face with the intimate and immediate in the very human struggle for freedom of each Palestinian, whether refugee or not. Sixty-three years ago the entire body politic of the people of Palestine was violently destroyed and dispersed. All Palestinians, whether refugee or not, share that terrible history – it is what unites us.

This is the shared experience we commemorate every year on Nakba Day: the year-long expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that began in 1947 and continued straight through 1948 into the terrible snowstorm winters of 1949, creating what is now the world's largest refugee population.

On Sunday, this moment of return was enacted simultaneously in Haifa and among Palestinians displaced inside Israel, on the borders of Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Gaza, in the West Bank near the Qalandia refugee camp – wherever the more than 7 million stateless Palestinian refugees now live, very near their original villages and towns. Just out of sight, over the hill, across the border.

This basic injustice has yet to be addressed by any of the schemes currently on the table to solve the Palestinian issue. For this is not about the reconciliation of political parties, the search for a state or the establishment of two, negotiations or the lack of them, the enfranchisement of a third of our people over the disenfranchisement of the rest.

Indeed, what happened on Sunday was not the plan of Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Authority prime minister, nor that of Fatah or Hamas; it most certainly wasn't the American, European or Israeli plan for dealing with the Palestinian people. Like the rest of the Arab people who have taken their fate into their own hands – and in doing so provided lessons and models in the meaning of democracy and citizenship to the rest of the world for years to come – the Palestinians have demonstrated, quite perfectly and with great courage, what it is to be fully human, and how to hold on to one's humanity in spite of more than six decades of violent oppression.

Activists living in Majdal Shams had not been expecting them, and were completely surprised to see the dozens of buses pull up on the other side of the valley. Organised largely on the phone and internet, many of these young Palestinian refugees, mostly university students, didn't even know each other.

They certainly didn't know what was about to happen to them. Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at the protesters, who were armed only with the deeds to their property, or ageing photographs of their parents' farms. One young man carried his grandmother in his arms.

Qais Abu Alheija (from Houd, Haifa district), Bashar Ali Shahabi (from Lubya, Tiberias district), Samer Khartabeel (from the town of Tiberias), Abadah Zaghmout (from the village of Safsaf, Haifa district – an effort to save his life at the clinic of Golan for Development in Majdal Shams failed): all died on Sunday in the Golan, walking home. The Palestinian spring has certainly arrived: this is just the beginning, and summer is on its way.

 

 

The simultaneous marches Sunday by thousands of Palestinian refugees who approached, and in places breached, the Israeli borders, causing Israeli troops to open fire and kill over a dozen refugees, have been treated by Israel as an existential threat – which is exactly what this is.
 

The fact that the grandchildren of the original Palestinian refugees made this symbolic gesture on the anniversary of the dismemberment of Palestine and the creation of Israel in 1948 should worry the Israelis deeply, because it speaks volumes about the state of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict today.

The symbolism of what happened Sunday is terrifying for Israelis, in fact far more terrifying than any military threat that Israel has ever faced, because it reflects three cardinal realities that mean only trouble for Israel. The first is that the element of time is working against the Zionist strategy of creating a powerful Israeli state that can either intimidate the Palestinians into forgetting about their right to return to their homes in Israel, or simply generating hopelessness among the refugees that ultimately makes them give up their quest for repatriation or restitution. Time since 1948 has only turned the original 750,000 Palestinian refugees into 4.5 million refugees today whose attachment to their land, home and rights is stronger than ever.

In this respect, Israelis who take a moment to reflect on the meaning of what happened Sunday should see in the acts of the Palestinians a compressed historical image of the Jews’ own epic determination to return to their ancestral homeland in Palestine, after thousands of years of exile. The combination of historical memory, nationalist identity, and political activism is stronger than any military means that can be used to regain one’s national rights – as the Israelis should know from their own experiences and their own national struggle.

The second reality is that Palestinians are exploring new means of resisting Israel and its denial of Palestinian refugee rights, including nonviolent resistance through peaceful marches to the borders of Israel. The specter of refugees walking to the borders of Israel from four different points – in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza – is a nightmare for Israel for what it portends for the future. If the Palestinians organize such nonviolent marches and other protests skillfully – which is more than likely – they will create situations that the Israelis will not be able to control. I would expect, for example, coordinated nonviolent protests that see all Palestinians mobilize simultaneously against Israel in the very near future.

Here is what I would look for in the months ahead. Palestinian refugees will continue to march peacefully to the borders of Israel from all directions; Palestinians living under Israeli occupation or siege in the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem would undertake their own nonviolent protests; Palestinians who are Israeli citizens would march peacefully in solidarity inside Israel; and, Palestinians around the world would march peacefully to Israeli embassies and consulates. All of them would carry Palestinian flags and chant nationalist songs. Israelis everywhere in the world would be besieged by hundreds of thousands of peaceful Palestinian protesters who collectively make the point that they have not forgotten or forfeited their rights for a redress of grievance and an end to their refugee status. Most of the world would almost certainly support such peaceful protests, forcing Israel to respond to the legitimate rights of the Palestinians through means other than shooting and killing them.

The third point that should worry Israelis is that the Palestinians themselves have started the process of reuniting their political leadership in the form of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation and the reconstitution and revitalization of the institutions of the Palestine Liberation Organization. This will create a unified Palestinian national leadership that represents all Palestinians in the world, and that is likely to commit to nonviolent protests as the most effective means of continuing the struggle against Israel and Zionism – until a fair political resolution to the conflict is achieved, based on the existing Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 that remains on the table.

This development could be bolstered by the political transformations now taking place across the Arab world, where more democratic, representative and legitimate Arab governments are certain to reflect their public opinions that would want to show solidarity with and support for the Palestinian struggle, especially a nonviolent struggle.

We may be on the verge of a historic shift in Palestinian tactics in fighting the Israeli threat, whereby coordinated nonviolent resistance will both neutralize the military might that Israel now enjoys and force Israelis to consider a more realistic and credible political response that would allow for a negotiated end to the conflict that satisfies both sides’ national aspirations and legal rights.

The Israelis are worried, and they should be – because they just saw in the Palestinians’ fortitude a mirror image of the same Jewish determination to struggle over generations and ultimately to achieve their national rights in their ancestral homeland.

 

 

The landmark reconciliation agreement unveiled in Cairo between the Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas should be a cause for celebration, albeit tempered by some skepticism.
 

The statements delivered on the momentous occasion, the ostensible end to years of stalemate and division, have sounded all of the right notes. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says the reconciliation will turn the page on a phase of ugly discord, while Hamas’ Khaled Mashaal is pledging to do anything it takes to translate the agreement into facts on the ground.
 

In fact, such statements by Palestinian politicians, who regularly promise to work for the greater good of the Palestinian people, have been made before, in different contexts. But with the Cairo agreement, there is now reason for observers and others to watch carefully what happens next.

Palestinian leaders must prove wrong the many skeptics, and demonstrate the maturity and responsibility needed to move the reconciliation from the realm of photo opportunity to one of political reality.

The track record of the Palestinians has seen them miss a score of opportunities to press forward with their announced campaign of achieving national sovereignty. They have experienced bitter and bloody factional infighting that has resulted in a depressing list of human casualties on both sides, while delaying the prospects of peace, and a Palestinian state. Needless to say, the internal divisions have given Israel a prize in the form of a pretext that it has repeated ad infinitum: There is no Palestinian partner for peace.

According to Palestinian leaders, all of the lost opportunities can now be considered a thing of the past. It might be easy to be cynical about the achievement in Cairo, but the reconciliation announcement did come in the wake of the momentous changes under way in the Arab world, led by Egypt.

Perhaps the Arab revolutions have caught the attention of the Palestinians, who might end their history of being pulled in different directions by regional and international powers, and finally translate their dreams of statehood into reality. These divisions and external alliances have been detrimental to both the Palestinians and their backers, it should be noted.

While the reconciliation represents a major achievement, the pressure is naturally on the Palestinians to deliver, in the form of presidential and parliamentary elections within a year, to cement the rapprochement.

But another test will come sooner, when the United Nations General Assembly holds its annual meeting in September. The Palestinians must now capitalize on the recent international support for achieving statehood, a dream that has seemed impossible to achieve amid the grinding Fatah-Hamas stalemate.

In the run-up to the meetings in New York, the world will be watching to see whether the Palestinians can continue moving toward unity, and will have scant patience for any acts that derail their momentum generated in Cairo.

 

 

Lebanon hands out and renews hundreds of thousands of work permits every year to people from Africa, Asia and other Arab countries. But until now, only a handful has been given to the country’s large Palestinian refugee population.

Six months ago, the Lebanese government was internationally applauded for passing legislation granting the Palestinian population the right to work. But real changes remain to be seen.

On Feb. 22, the caretaker labor minister, Boutros Harb, signed a decree on carrying out the August 2010 labor law amendments. Final approval by the Shura Council, the country’s highest court, is now awaited. Meanwhile, questions about the potential effectiveness of the legislation and the employment situation of the refugees linger.

“What we have now is, we have a legal framework, we have a technical framework,” said Nada al-Nashif, the regional director of the International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations. “These are logistical parts of the equation. “Now of course you have to overcome lots of mistrust, a lack of confidence, lots of fears imbedded in the system through a rather negative experience over the years, for the Palestinian population especially.”

The Palestinian refugee population, variously estimated at 260,000 to 400,000, has long had a tense relationship with its Lebanese hosts. Palestinian militias exacerbated the country’s civil war, and many Lebanese have feared that broader rights for the refugees could lead to their naturalization, complicating the country’s already delicate sectarian balance of political power. As a result, Palestinians have faced institutionalized and non-institutionalized discrimination while remaining wary and skeptical of their Lebanese counterparts.

Under the labor law amendments about to go into effect, Palestinians will be able to acquire work permits more easily, a change seen as pivotal to easing the historically conflicted relationship.

A December 2010 study released by the American University of Beirut found that only 37 percent of working age Palestinians in Lebanon were employed. The same study — which the university says is the largest socioeconomic survey of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon in the past decade — also shed light on the poverty of their population, showing that Palestinian refugees spent on average just $170 per month.

“It’s not that the Palestinians don’t want to work — it’s that they have become increasingly discouraged,” said Ms. Nashif, the U.N. agency regional director. She was commenting on the legal barriers that until now have cornered most Palestinians, if they work at all, into menial jobs, often in the informal underground economy.

The amendments are the first move to legalize the working status of Palestinians since the first refugees arrived, fleeing the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

“The whole point of the Palestinians not being able to work here was that you couldn’t work in Palestine as a Lebanese,” Ms. Nashif said. “That’s fine, but they don’t have a country, so it’s a bit moot at this point.”

Apart from the issue of reciprocity, the 62-year delay in establishing work rights for Palestinians has reflected the often uneasy relationship between the refugees and the Lebanese government. More recently, the six-month delay between the passing of the amendments and their implementation has been a result of Lebanon’s ongoing political crisis and an attempt to smooth out some of the details.

But with a solidly established pattern of Palestinians finding employment in the informal sector of the economy, a newly acquired right to get work permits more easily may have limited practical consequences.

“It doesn’t interest the Palestinian worker and it doesn’t interest the employer — because employers are interested in Palestinians because they are a black market,” said Sari Hanafi, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut.

The change, Mr. Hanafi said, “will have a tiny impact.”

Even with the legal reform, Palestinians will continue to be barred from working in syndicated professions, including as medicine, law and engineering.

“Unless the liberal professions are addressed,” Mr. Hanafi said, “this law doesn’t have any impact.”

The inability to work in Lebanon, meanwhile, has also limited migrant work opportunities.

“If we want to apply outside, the first thing they ask for is the experience — and we can’t get the experience because we can’t work,” said Rasha Shehadeh, a 26-year-old Palestinian from a Beirut refugee camp who received a degree in nursing several years ago. “I’m stuck because I can’t work outside, because I don’t have the experience and because I’m Palestinian, so my papers won’t be processed.”

Despite experiencing major shortages as Lebanese nurses are lured by higher wages abroad, nursing remains a syndicated profession in Lebanon and therefore is off limits to Palestinians.

Still, while carrying out reforms may not be a cure-all for the economic hardships facing Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, the action still signals a shift in the way the Lebanese government views the community.

“The symbolism of the decision, when the Parliament passed the amendments in August, should not be underestimated,” said Salvatore Lombardo, the director of Lebanese affairs for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides assistance to Palestinian refugees across the region. “This is the first time that we have had a national debate in the Parliament about Palestinians’ rights in Lebanon.”

For Palestinians in Lebanon, work rights, however important, are only one step toward greater freedoms. Many issues — like the right to own land — have yet to be resolved.

“While I fully recognize the importance of these amendments,” Mr. Lombardo said, “more needs to be done in the coming months to improve the conditions for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.”

 

Palestinian refugees may become a political vanguard

 

In 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative offered to Israel the scenario of a comprehensive regional peace agreement in exchange for “a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in conformity with [General Assembly] Resolution 194.” A further clause was aimed at reassuring the host countries’ concerns, by endorsing “the rejection of all forms of Palestinian [permanent settlement, or tawtin], which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries.”

Almost 10 years later, the long-standing issue of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return, enshrined in international law since 1949, remains unresolved. The recent release of the “Palestine papers” has, if anything, confirmed the lack of any serious plan that would bring justice to four generations of displacement and statelessness.

For the last 60 years and more, Palestinian refugees have been held hostage by two inflexible standpoints. On the one hand, Israel has adamantly refused to be held accountable for the tragedy of the refugee crisis, the Nakba, and is only ready to accommodate, on historical Palestine, a symbolic number of first-generation refugees. On the other hand, many host countries (with the exception of Jordan, where Palestinians have access to citizenship rights but are subject to more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion) have endorsed the claim that tawtin and even tatwir (or development) would constitute a de-facto assimilation of the refugee populations and, eventually, undermine their right of return.

In this context, Palestinian refugees face a paradox. They need to keep alive their identity and specificity as refugees (representing the quintessence of the Palestinian question), thereby normatively performing the role of the marginal subject, living in a condition of “permanent temporariness.” At the same time, they are urged to find ways to exit their economic, political and social marginality, to take into their hands their present and future predicaments.

With few exceptions, academic scholarship has also predominantly embraced a dichotomic understanding, where “return” is opposed to “integration.” Pragmatists consider a full implementation of the right of return utopian (for example the Nusseibeh-Ayalon formula of 2002), while radical ideologues like Joseph Massad see any compromise on the forms and numbers of return as an attempt to nullify its political dimension by reducing it to a mere humanitarian question.

These polarized debates ignore not only refugees’ realities on the ground, but also, and more importantly, their diverse and creative strategies for reconciling “return” with “integration.” Whoever has conducted research among refugees in recent times cannot but clearly sense how refugees are increasingly partaking simultaneously in two identities and discourses – that of return and that of participation here and now. This could be seen as a reaction to the progressive abandonment of the refugee issue by the Palestinian Authority and the marginalization of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a site for the national claims of all Palestinians.

The diversity of the various locations of displacement cannot and should not, of course, be ignored. But all refugees across gender, generation and location share that return is an individual, inalienable right that cannot be negotiated or dismissed from above. This sacred principle does not, however, contrast with individual and collective strategies of economic and political survival from below.

In order to keep alive and politically visible the refugee’s tragedy and “the right of return,” Palestinian refugees are urged to integrate (but not assimilate) and are producing narratives, which see “integration” and “return” as compatible and desirable. In fact, a recurrent narrative is that the more politically, economically and socially integrated refugees are, the more they are likely to achieve the social and political capital critical to creatively mobilize for the right of return.

It could be said that Palestinian refugees are trying to think in terms of a post-national form of integration (not the classic top-down tawtin), one that should allow them to achieve rights and entitlements where they live, but without giving up their individual right of return and their membership claims in a Palestinian nation.

On the ground, this means differentiating between tawtin from above and tatwir and integration from below. The latter include bettering one’s own living conditions and enacting survival strategies, among them self-urbanization, self-political representation, and also, more importantly, access to social, civil and even political rights in the countries where they reside.

By formulating new political strategies that reconcile integration (or citizenship) with return, Palestinian refugees may challenge both the state of denial and abandonment in which they have been left by their national representatives, but also the deeply-rooted, exclusionary nature of their host states’ conceptions of citizenship. In this sense, Palestinian refugees may become a political vanguard, forcing us to rethink new political spaces and structures for the future Palestinian state.

 

Ruba Salih is a researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. This commentary first appeared at bitterlemons-api.org, an online newsletter.