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<font size="1"><a href="https://english.palinfo.com/articles/2020/5/12/Arabs-UN-must-move-to-protect-the-status-of-Palestinian-refugees">https://english.palinfo.com/articles/2020/5/12/Arabs-UN-must-move-to-protect-the-status-of-Palestinian-refugees</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Arabs, UN must move to protect the status of Palestinian refugees</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Ramzi Baroud - May 12, 2020<br></div>
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‘Heinous racism,’ is how the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human
Rights Monitor described a recent decision by Lebanese authorities to
bar Palestinian refugee expats from returning to Lebanon.<p>
Lebanon’s restrictions on its ever-diminishing population of Palestinian
refugees is nothing new. However, this event is particularly alarming
as it may be linked to a long-term official policy regarding the
residency status of Palestinian refugees in this Arab country.</p><p>
Many were taken aback by a recent Lebanese government’s order to its
embassy in the United Arab Emirates, instructing it to prevent
Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes in Lebanon.</p><p>
Tariq Hajjar, a legal advisor to the Euro-Med Monitor said in a
statement that “the circular includes heinous racial discrimination
against Palestinian refugees holding Lebanese travel documents.”</p><p>
Hajjar rightly insisted that “the holder of this document should receive similar treatment to the Lebanese citizen.”</p><p>
Indeed they should, as has been the practice for many years. Otherwise,
there is no other place where these refugees can possibly go,
considering that Lebanon has been their home for decades, starting in
1948 when Israel forcefully expelled nearly a million Palestinians from
their historic homeland.</p><p>
Refugees, regardless of their race, ethnicity or religion, should be
treated with respect and dignity, no matter the political complexity of
their host countries. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon cannot be made an
exception.</p><p>
Last April, the Palestinian Association for Human Rights called on the
United Nations to provide financial assistance to Lebanon’s Palestinian
refugees, indicating that due to the coronavirus pandemic, a whopping 90
percent of all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have lost their jobs.</p><p>
Under discriminatory Lebanese laws, Palestinian refugees are not allowed
to practice 72 types of jobs that are available to Lebanese nationals.
This is merely one of many other such restrictions. Thus, employed
Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (the vast majority of whom are now
unemployed) have been competing within a very limited work market.</p><p>
A large number of those refugees have been employed at the various
projects operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).</p><p>
Many of those who were lucky enough to receive university degrees opted
to leave the country altogether, mostly working in the teaching,
engineering, banking, and medical sectors in Arab Gulf countries.</p><p>
However, due to the coronavirus, the severe financial hardship suffered
by UNRWA and to new Lebanese government regulations, all doors are now
being shut in the face of Palestinian refugees.</p><p>
For thousands of those refugees, the only remaining option is sailing
the high seas in search for a better refugee status in Europe. Yet,
sadly, tens of thousands of those refugees are now living a miserable
life in European camps, or stranded in Turkey. Hundreds drowned while
undertaking these perilous journeys.</p><p>
According to a recent survey by the Lebanese Central Administration of
Statistics, conducted jointly with the Palestinian Central Bureau of
Statistics, only 175,000 (from nearly half a million) Palestinian
refugees still reside in Lebanon.</p><p>
That said, the Palestinian refugee tragedy in Lebanon is only a facet in
a much larger ailment that is unique to the Palestinian refugee
experience.</p><p>
Syria’s Palestinian refugees arrived in the country in waves, starting
with the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine during the ‘Nakba’, or
Catastrophe. Others fled the Golan Heights after the Israeli invasion in
1967. Many more fled Lebanon during the Israeli 1982 invasion.</p><p>
The relatively safe Syrian haven was ruptured during the ongoing Syria
war started in 2011. UNRWA’s mission, which allowed it to provide the
nearly half a million Palestinian refugees in Syria with direct support
was made nearly impossible because of the destructive war, and the fact
that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians either fled the country or
became internally displaced.</p><p>
The devastating impact of the Syrian war on Palestinian refugees was
almost an exact copy of what had transpired earlier during the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and the American invasion of Iraq in 2003.</p><p>
In the case of Iraq, where most of the country’s 35,000 thousand
refugees fled, the Palestinian refugee crisis was particularly
compounded. While Palestinians enjoyed a permanent residence status
(though no ownership rights) in Iraq before the war, they were still not
recognized as refugees as per international standards, since UNRWA does
not operate in Iraq. Post-2003 Iraqi governments exploited this fact to
the fullest, leading to the displacement of the country’s Palestinian
population.</p><p>
Since its advent, the US Administration of President Donald Trump has
waged a financial war on the Palestinians, including the cutting of all
aids to UNRWA. This infamous act has added layers of suffering to the
existing hardships of refugees.</p><p>
On May 5, UNRWA, somberly declared that it only has enough cash to sustain its operations until the end of the month.</p><p>
The truth is that, long before Trump targeted the UN agency, UNRWA has
functioned for over 70 years with an inherent vulnerability.</p><p>
UNRWA was established exclusively with a UN mandate that provided the
organization with a “separate and special status” to assist Palestinian
refugees.</p><p>
Arab governments, at the time, were keen for UNRWA to maintain this
‘special status’ based on their belief that lumping Palestinian refugees
with the burgeoning world refugee crisis (resulting mostly from War
World II) would downgrade the urgency of the Palestinian plight.</p><p>
However, while that logic may have applied successfully in the immediate
years following the ‘Nakba’, it proved costly in later years, as the
status and definition of what constitute a Palestinian refugee remained
historically linked to UNRWA’s scope of operations.</p><p>
This became clear during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, but,
especially, since the start of political upheavals and subsequent wars
in the Middle East in the last decade.</p><p>
This is precisely why the US and Israel are keen on dismantling UNRWA,
because, according to their logic, if UNRWA ceases to operate, the
Palestinian refugee ceases to exist with any status that makes him/her
unique.</p><p>
This precarious reality calls for an urgent and creative solution that
should be spearheaded by Arab countries, UN-registered NGOs, and friends
of Palestine everywhere.</p><p>
What is needed today is a UN-adopted formula that would allow the legal
status of Palestinian refugees under international law to remain active
regardless of UNRWA’s scope of operation, while providing Palestinian
refugees with the material and financial support required for them to
live with dignity until the Right of Return, in accordance to UN
Resolution 194 of 1948, is finally enforced.</p><p>
For the rights of Palestinian refugees to be maintained and for the
Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria scenarios not to be repeated, the Arab League
must work within the framework of international law – as determined by
the UN General Assembly – to safeguard the Palestinian refugees’ legal
status which is currently under an unprecedented attack.</p><p>
Palestinian refugees must not have to choose between forfeiting their
legal and unalienable right in their own homeland and accepting a life
of perpetual degradation and uncertainty.</p><p>
<em>- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine
Chronicle. He has authored a number of books on the Palestinian struggle
including ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’. Baroud has a Ph.D. in
Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident
Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies,
University of California Santa Barbara.</em></p></div></div>
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