75 years later, Israel Blocking Palestinian
Refugees’ Return
‘Nakba’ Anniversary Highlights Continued Israeli Repression
By Omar Shakir
From the morgues of Cairo to the cells of Guantanamo, I’ve seen a lot of
anguish and cruelty in my human rights work over the years. But often more than
blood spilled, it’s the lives stunted, solely because of a person’s identity,
that hits the hardest.
I had one such moment visiting a Palestinian
refugee camp in Lebanon several years ago. Meeting kids who, through no
fault of their own, were effectively condemned to lifelong refugee status, like
their parents and grandparents before them, because they are Palestinian, shook
me.
May 15 marks the 75th anniversary of Nakba Day, commemorating the more than
700,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes, and the more
than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed in the events surrounding the
establishment of Israel in 1948. As the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq
wrote, “the legacy of the Nakba events is that about two-thirds of the
Palestinian people became refugees,” while Israel “imposed a system of
institutionalized racial discrimination over Palestinians who remained on the
land.” Today, there are
more than 5.9 million Palestinian refugees, including the descendants of
those who fled or were expelled.
Get Our Free Newsletter
Israeli authorities have, pursuant to discriminatory laws, blocked
those refugees and their descendants from returning to Israel and the
Occupied Palestinian Territory. Meanwhile, Israeli law entitles Jewish citizens
of other countries to settle in Israel or West Bank settlements and become
citizens. That means a Jewish citizen of any country who has never been to
Israel can move there and automatically gain citizenship, while a Palestinian
expelled from his home in what became Israel and languishing for more than 70
years in a refugee camp, cannot.
This reality reflects the long-standing Israeli policy to maintain the
domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians, one element of its
crime against humanity of apartheid.
International human rights law guarantees refugees and exiles the right to
enter the territory they are from, even where sovereignty is contested or has
changed hands, and reside in areas where they or their families once lived and
have maintained links to. Like
refugees in other contexts, such as
Rohingya refugees expelled from Myanmar, Palestinians should have the
freedom to choose among the options of returning to reside in the areas where
they or their families are from, local integration, or third-country
resettlement.
No matter how many years pass, recognizing and honoring the right of
Palestinian refugees to
return to their homeland should remain central to the discussion of the
future in Israel and Palestine.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director, Middle East and North Africa
Division