UNRWA AND THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES:
A HISTORY WITHIN HISTORY
Riccardo Bocco (Guest Editor)
*
Riccardo Bocco is a professor of Political Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and
Development Studies, University of Geneva.
1
See Michael Chiller Glaus, Tackling the Intractable. Palestinian Refugees and the Search for Middle East Peace,
Bern, Peter Lang, 2007, 352.
2
See Dominique Vidal and Joseph Algazy, Le pêché originel d’Israël. L’expulsion des Palestiniens revisitée par les
‘nouveaux historiens’ israéliens, Paris, Editions de l’Atelier, 1998.
3
See the contribution of J. Peters and O. Gal in this volume.
4
Interpreted by the refugees as a legitimization of their right of return, paragraph 11 of this resolution resolves
that: “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be
permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property
of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international
law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or the authorities responsible”. See UNGA res.
194 (III), December 1948.
Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 28, Nos 2 & 3 ß UNHCR [2010]. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
DOI:10.1093/rsq/hdq001
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It is difficult to conceive a sustainable, long-lasting solution to the Palestinian–
Israeli conflict without examining the refugee issue and identifying a just solution to it for both sides. Over time, and beside its emotional dimensions, the
refugee issue has been increasingly regarded as a “problem” for the Israeli and the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)/Palestinian Authority (PA) leaderships,
who have generally taken uncompromising positions. The international stakeholders have been unable to suggest compromises acceptable to the parties concerned. In a recent work, M. Chiller Glaus reviews in detail the juridical debates
and the political proposals of the last twenty years and concludes that “there will
be no Israeli-Palestinian Peace agreement if the question of refugees remains
unresolved, and the question of Palestinian refugees will not be resolved without
the concrete prospect for an overall Israeli-Palestinian agreement”.1
Sometimes depicted as “the original sin” of the Israeli State,2 the displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinian civilians during the 1948 war contradicts
the Zionist myth of the right to “a land without people for a people without a
land”. Yet, for the Israeli population, the possible return of masses of Palestinian
refugees is disconcerting as they view any such return as analogous to the effacement of Israel’s Jewish character.3 Denying, ignoring or sweeping the refugee
issue under the rug, therefore, has been the main approach of most Israeli governments since 1948.
On the Palestinian side, and during the secret Oslo talks, the Fatah leadership accepted not to include United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)
Resolution 194 of 19484 in the Declaration of Principles, signed in
230 Riccardo Bocco
1. UNRWA
1.1. Ambiguities and strengths of the Agency’s mandate
The literature on UNRWA is relatively abundant. Besides the internal UNRWA
reports, which contain important material on the evolution of the Agency’s
activities, as well as numerous evaluation and policy reports focusing on specific
aspects of its work, one can find few analyses within social science research that
5
See the contribution of M. Dumper in this volume.
6
R. Khalidi, “Truth, justice and reconciliation: Elements of a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue”, in Gh.
Karmi and E. Cottran (eds.), The Palestinian Exodus, 1948-1998, London, Ithaca Press, 1999, 239.
7
See UNRWA, UNRWA figures as of 31 December 2008, Public Information Office, Gaza, March 2009.
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September 1993, as a basis for negotiating a final peace agreement with the
Israeli government. This decision sparked resentment and opposition among a
majority of Palestinian refugees worldwide, who felt their right to return to their
original homeland and/or their right to compensation had been betrayed.
Although the Palestinian leadership has become progressively aware of the
impossibility of return for millions of refugees, it has been seeking “principled”
solutions related to at least a partial acknowledgement of responsibility by
Israel.5
As Rashid Khalidi has pointed out, “[a] combination of factors has prevented the negotiating process to be successful, including: callous pragmatism of
US policy-makers, a balance of forces massively favourable to Israel (whose
leaders would prefer to ignore both history and international legitimacy) and
profound weaknesses in Palestinian negotiating performance from Oslo
onwards”.6
Since the early 1990s, the United States of America and the European
Union, in particular, have been advocating a realpolitik approach to the
Palestinian refugee issue and have been pushing the Israeli and the Palestinian
leadership to reach “hard compromises”. While still awaiting positive developments, international donors have continued funding the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is
commemorating its 60th anniversary in 2009 and is presently assisting nearly
4,700,000 people in the Near East.7
This introduction aims to provide a background to the contributions
included in this special issue. In the first part, some short historical information
on UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees helps to outline a number of characteristics of the two main actors under consideration. In the second part, some
present challenges facing UNRWA and relevant future research topics are
grouped in transversal themes that take into account the relationships between
UNRWA and its clients.
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
8
Among the most important works, is worthwhile to mention: Edward Buehrig, The United Nations and the
Palestinian Refugees, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1971, a work that has privileged a legal and
international relations perspective. Milton Viorst, Reaching for the Olive Branch: UNRWA and Peace in the
Middle East, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1989 and “Palestinian Refugees and non-Refugees in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”, Special Issue of Journal of Refugee Studies, 2(1) 1989, both published on
the 40th anniversary of the Agency. Benjamin N. Schiff, Refugees into the Third Generation. UN Aid to the
Palestinians, Syracuse University Press, 1995, which is to date probably the most thorough account of
UNRWA in a political economy perspective. Finally, the more recent work of Robert Bowker (Palestinian
Refugees. Mythology, Identity and the Search for Peace, Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003) is a very
interesting account of the Agency by a former Australian ambassador in the Middle East and senior official
of UNRWA in Gaza and Jerusalem.
9
UNGA res. 302 (IV), 8 Dec. 1949, para. 7.
10
While the AFSC, the Quakers’ organization, had been active mainly in Gaza, the ICRC and the LRCS had
been catering to the needs of the displaced in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
11
The term “reintegration” was meant to include both the notions of “repatriation” and “resettlement”.
12
For an example of refugees residing outside UNRWA’s areas of operation, see the contribution of O. Al Abed
in this volume on the critical situation of the Palestinians in Egypt.
13
On the evolution of UNRWA’s mandate, see the contribution of L. Bartholomeusz in this volume.
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have focused on UNRWA.8 In this section, the main features of the Agency’s
mandate, role, and functioning are summarized.
UNRWA was created in the aftermath of the 1948 war and its mandate, as
specified by UNGA Resolution 302(IV) of 8 December 1949, was twofold: to
carry out, in collaboration with local governments, the direct relief and works
programmes as recommended by the Economic Survey Mission and to consult
with interested Near Eastern governments concerning measures to be taken in
preparation for the cessation of international assistance for relief and works
projects.9
UNRWA became operational in May 1950 and was created primarily to
pursue emergency relief that had been carried out until December 1949 by the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the League of the Red Cross
Societies (LRCS) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC);10 it was
also tasked with the implementation of public works programmes aimed at the
economic reintegration11 of Palestine refugees. The Agency has since become the
only international organization set up to face a specific refugee problem in a
specific geographical area (Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon). In
principle, all other cases of forced migration are handled by the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), including Palestine refugees residing outside the UNRWA’s five areas of operation.12
However, the Agency’s mandate13 has been characterized from the beginning by a number of ambiguities related to the objectives of its donors and the
possible impact of its operations, that is, the refugees’ resettlement outside historic Palestine. This has cast doubts on the willingness of the international
community to implement UNGA Resolution 194, which was considered by
the Palestinian refugees as a guarantee of their right of return and/or compensation. By dissociating politics from humanitarian aid in the early 1950s and
through its Works programmes, UNRWA began implementing resettlement
231
232 Riccardo Bocco
14
Headed by G. Clapp, former director of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Economic Survey Mission
(ESM) never envisaged studying plans of repatriation because of their political character. The ESM recommendations are also a good example of the economic development approach fostered by the United States in
the early 1950s and the attempt to transfer to the Middle East a successful model applied in the mid-West of
the United States. See also the pioneering work of Paul W.T. Kingston (Britain and the Politics of
Modernization in the Middle East 1945-1958, Cambridge University Press, 1996) detailing the diverging
development strategies pursued by the British and the (American) Point IV administration in the Middle
East during the 1950s.
15
During the 1950s and part of the Cold War era, the main interest of Western donor countries through
UNRWA’s socio-economic assistance was to insure political stability in the region and to prevent the spread
of communist ideology among refugee communities.
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strategies, the scope of which was humanitarian (rather than political) but with
political consequences.
Furthermore, UNRWA has not been responsible for the search for a durable
solution, as this task was officially devolved to the United Nations Conciliation
Commission for Palestine. Officially a non-political organization, UNRWA
has been deeply involved in a highly politicized context from the beginning.
Though in its practical endeavours UNRWA has been solution-oriented, “finding solutions” could conflict with its stated objectives. What made and makes
UNRWA’s actions in the region successful are their ambiguities and the Agency’s
capacity to manage these ambiguities at the same time. Three examples – (a)
implementation of its mandate, (b) finances, and (c) duration – help to explain
the situation.
(a) The Agency was never provided with a specific statute or charter other
than the recommendations outlined in the Economic Survey Mission’s
Report.14 In the same vein, the UNGA has offered little guidance concerning the evolution of UNRWA’s mandate.15 On the one hand, this
has proven problematic because the Agency’s top management has had
to take critical decisions due to the changing environment in which it
operates. On the other hand, the Agency’s broad mandate has led to
positive adaptation and innovation.
. After the political opposition to the implementation of its large-scale
work programmes in the mid-1950s, UNRWA turned to the provision of “essential services” (primary health care, relief, and social services) and focused on education. This concentration of activities on
human development also contributed indirectly to the protection of
Palestine refugees and their legitimate cause, without jeopardizing the
right to return. From the 1960s onwards, education has become the
largest single programme in terms of investment, funding, and personnel involved. The works (development) programmes resumed in a
different manner only in the second half of the 1980s, mainly in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
. Though UNRWA, unlike UNHCR, does not have a clearly stated
protection mandate, it has taken a number of initiatives in this direction. This was particularly the case with the creation of Refugee
Affairs’ Officers during the first Intifada in the West Bank and
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
16
The contribution of B. Goddard in this volume gives a historical perspective and a comparative juridical
analysis of UNHCR and UNRWA’s mandates. The contributions of M. Kagan and N. Morris point at
future perspectives for the Agency’s role in refugee protection.
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Gaza. Besides the ethical position of its management, this example
demonstrates the possibility for the Agency to interpret its
mandate from a protection perspective within delicate political
contexts.16
(b) The funding system is another factor showing the fragility and the
dependency of the Agency. The funding, in fact, is guaranteed only by
the voluntary contributions of donor countries. This means that the lack
of a self-generated financial base or a United Nations assessment-based
contribution system has historically set limits to UNRWA’s initiatives,
activities, and autonomy from donor countries’ political interests. Yet, at
the same time, constant fluctuations in financial support clearly show the
(in)coherence of donor policies in different periods and at several levels
(importance of bilateral versus multilateral cooperation; changing of
political stands according to realpolitik or sticking to positions of principle; shifting international political alliances during and after the Cold
War). In this sense, the financial crisis of the second half of the 1990s has
not been a new episode in the history of UNRWA but rather a recurrent
one. As a consequence, the Agency has had to develop communication
skills to market its mission and to secure funding.
Though UNRWA has often been successful in fundraising, the 1990s
proved particularly difficult. Notwithstanding the initial euphoria for
the peace process and its progressive setbacks (both processes potentially
favourable for fundraising), the post-Cold War period has been characterized by an increased need for humanitarian assistance in different
regions of the planet and, at the same time, the triumph of neoliberal
policies that have set serious limits on the public expenditures of donor
countries.
(c) A final paradox is the fact that UNRWA is considered to be temporary
but its mandate has been renewed every three years and the Agency has
now been in existence for more than half a century. One can certainly
argue that the precariousness of UNRWA’s funding system or the ambiguities of its mandate are basically linked to the fact that the Agency was
meant to be dissolved within a few years after its establishment. In this
sense, by successfully serving a steadily growing Palestine refugee community, UNRWA has become both a hopeful sign that a just settlement
of the refugee issue based on international law is possible and the symbol
of the failure of the international community to solve the Palestine
question.
233
234 Riccardo Bocco
1.2. The “ Blue State” : UNRWA as a post-colonial globalized
bureaucracy
17
See: UNRWA, UNRWA figures as of 31 December 2008, Public Information Office, Gaza, March 2009.
18
On the domestic level and to face economic hardship, the government was bound to negotiate a new ‘social
pact’ with its subjects to avoid political unrest. Actually, in the early 1990s, the external rent derived from
international aid (Arab and Western) and Jordanian migrant workers’ remittances had seriously dried up.
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If we look at the Agency’s personnel and activities, the figures are impressive.17
At the end of the first decade of the new century, UNRWA employs almost
30,000 people, caters to the needs of almost 4,700,000 registered refugees, and
provides services in fifty-eight camps scattered in its five fields of operation. The
Agency runs 689 schools and 10 vocational and technical training centres,
attended by almost half a million students, with an educational staff of more
than 21,200. One-hundred and thirty-eight Primary Health Care Facilities
administered by almost 4,200 medical staff received more than 9.5 million
patient visits in 2008. In the Relief and Social Services’ sector, 700 staff members
assist more than 257,000 special hardship cases (6 per cent of total registered
refugees) and supervise sixty-five Women’s Programme Centres and thirty-seven
Community Rehabilitation Centres. The Microfinance and Microenterprise
Department has awarded (since 1991–92) more than 165,000 loans with a
cumulative value of almost 182 million US dollars.
The figures above reveal the quasi-state function of UNRWA constituting a
parallel public service provider (to alleviate the financial burden on host countries) and a “non-territorial administration” without coercive power, which has
to achieve its objectives mainly through mediation. Nonetheless, the role and
activities of the Agency – often labelled the “Blue State” (because of the United
Nations flag) – at times have cast doubt on the legitimacy of UNRWA’s presence
in some host countries, including Jordan in the late 1960s and early 1970s and
Lebanon from the late 1970s.
The example of the Hashemite Kingdom during the 1990s sheds light on
how UNRWA can become trapped in a situation of potential hostility towards its
role by part of the population of a host country. Starting from 1989, the
Jordanian government engaged in political liberalization, driven largely by the
structural adjustment programme imposed by the Bretton Wood’s institutions.
The economic hardship of the country was aggravated by the government’s
stance during the 1990–91 Gulf War and the influx of almost 300,000 returnees,
the majority of whom were Jordanian passport holders of Palestinian origin,18
along with an approximately similar number of Iraqi asylum-seekers.
After the civil war of the early 1970s and during the 1980s, the country
managed to attain a certain level of political and economic stability. Besides
infrastructure development, the government was able to expand public employment and favour its allies in the private sector. The urban centres – where a
majority of the Jordanian population of Palestinian origin resided – were the
main beneficiaries of state resource allocation. However, this policy was partly to
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
19
This literally means a “swap of national home and/or national belonging” and the end of irredentism for the
Jordanians of Palestinian origin. The “ethno-national” question was but one face of the coin. The other was
the emergence of new forms of social inequalities and divisions, mainly produced by the externally fostered
economic reforms and cutting across geographical areas of residence in the Kingdom, political ideologies and
affiliations.
20
Furthermore, Jordan has hosted and hosts important groups of the Palestinian elite. Socially speaking,
intermarriage between Jordanians and Palestinians has become a widespread practice; politically, most
Jordanians of Palestinian origin have been socialized in the kingdom; economically, they have shared in
the country’s system.
21
For the political domestic changes in Jordan during the 1990s, the resurgence of the Transjordanian
nationalist movement and the effects of the Peace process, see: A. Abou Odeh, Jordanians, Palestinians
and the Hashemite Kingdom in the Middle East Peace Process, Washington, United States Institute of Peace
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the detriment of the rural areas of the kingdom, whose inhabitants – the traditional “Transjordanian” backbone of the monarchy – did not fully benefit from
the period of socio-economic development.
During the 1990s, two main processes influenced each other. On the
one side, internal political liberalization policies took shape with the signing
of a new “National Charter”, the lifting of Martial Law, the reintroduction
of parliamentary elections and of political parties, as well as the proliferation
of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). On the other side, the Peace
Process led to the Aqaba Treaty of 1994 and to hopes for a peace dividend as
well as to increased interaction among Israeli and Palestinian elites. Most importantly, the Peace Process reawakened some of the “old ghosts”, in particular the
view that a possible peace option would lead to the final resettlement of
Palestinian refugees in the kingdom.
Political liberalization and the Peace Process influenced each other both at
the domestic and international levels. Successive periods of stalemate in the peace
negotiations fostered the growth of an “anti-normalization front”, signalling a
situation of “cold peace” – peace between the elites but not yet between societies.
The fear of a Watan al-badil19 option for the Palestinians of the Kingdom
stimulated the re-emergence of a Transjordanian nationalist project.
In the Hashemite Kingdom, most Palestinian refugees have a Jordanian
passport. They are part of a complex Palestinian exile community. Less than
20 per cent of UNRWA-registered refugees are camp residents and, during the
1970–80s, many refugees experienced socio-economic development. Though a
debate has raged over discrimination towards Jordanians of Palestinian origin,
they constituted one-half of the kingdom’s middle class.20 Notwithstanding the
financial difficulties of UNRWA and the cuts in a number of sectors, the Agency
still represented a form of welfare state for most registered refugees and for the
less economically favoured among them, in particular, in the 1990s. This was in
marked contrast with the situation of the less privileged fringes of Jordanian
society, who were suffering from structural adjustment programmes. UNRWA’s
continued assistance began to be interpreted as a bias of international donor
support for one sector of the host country population. This presumed bias was
used by Transjordanian nationalists to support anti-regime propaganda, to
oppose the Peace Process, and to fuel anti-Palestinian feelings.21
235
236 Riccardo Bocco
Press, 1999; R. Storaci, Le dinamiche palestinesi nella politica giordana. Prospettive per la stabilità di un Pivotal
State, Roma, Centro Militare di Studi Strategici, 2002; A. Susser, Jordan. Case-study of a Pivotal State,
Washington, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2002.
22
See the contribution of R. Farah in this volume.
23
R. Bowker, 2003, op. cit., 2.
24
During the first two decades of its existence, an important number of the Agency’s international staff were
former military and colonial administrations’ civil servants, mainly from the UK and the United States. For
several decades, UNRWA’s bureaucratic culture has been shaped in relative isolation from the other United
Nations sister organizations, the most notable exception being the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) whose cooperation
with UNRWA in the education and health sectors dates to the late 1950s. The last decade has witnessed
important changes, in particular in terms of staff secondment from other United Nations agencies, the
UNHCR seemingly playing a pivotal role for the replacement of a number of directors at the field and HQ
levels. During the mandate of the present Commissioner-General, Karin Abu Zayd, and under increased
pressure from a number of international donors, UNRWA has been innovative, exploring new forms of
management and external collaborations in its different sectors of activity.
25
It is important to remember that UNRWA Headquarters were originally based in Beirut then split between
Amman and Vienna after the beginning of the Lebanese civil war. In 1996, following the start of the
Palestinian autonomy in Gaza, the then new Commissioner-General, Peter Hansen, decided to relocate
the Vienna offices back to the region. It is during this move that the Agency “lost” most of its professional
old staff. Currently, the headquarters is divided between Amman, Gaza and Jerusalem.
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If we turn to UNRWA staff, more than 99 per cent of the personnel have
historically been recruited among Palestinian refugees and host country
nationals. This has often been considered an advantage for the Agency, in comparison with other humanitarian organizations, in that the efficiency and efficacy
of its assistance in times of crisis can partly be explained by the intimate relationships between its civil servants and the beneficiary population. In this sense,
UNRWA also represents a microcosm of Palestinian society; the Agency’s
archives are considered to be part of Palestinian national heritage and an extremely important historical resource. The history of UNRWA and the history of
Palestinian refugees are, thus, inseparable: the latter is an indispensable element
in understanding the former and vice versa.22 As R. Bowker has suggested, “[t]he
political mythologies and memories of Palestinian refugees in which UNRWA is
deeply embedded [. . .] are central elements in Palestinian politics. Palestinian
refugees, whose education and health services are provided by UNRWA, are not
merely recipients of international aid. Viewed in terms of the historical conflict
between Palestinians and Israelis, the relationship of the refugees to UNRWA has
been instrumental in forging their sense of identity as refugees, their claims for
justice, and their perceptions of the roles and responsibilities of other parties
relevant to their situation and aspirations”.23
Finally, one cannot overlook the fact that, for many decades, UNRWA’s top
management posts have been filled by internationals (most often of North
American or European origin), whose professional experience has been grounded
in the diplomatic, development, humanitarian, or human rights fields.24 From
the late 1960s until the mid-1990s, a stable group of long-time international
employees headed the Agency, with a high level of bureaucratic centralization.25
Some observers have been tempted to portray UNRWA as a colonial administration, but such critics forget that having international managers has been an
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
2. Palestinian Refugees26
2.1. Defining and counting refugees
In looking at who is a Palestinian refugee, there is no definitive response.
The definition and the number of Palestinian refugees can differ according to
the approach (administrative, juridical, political) used to define Palestinian refugees and also according to the social context of interaction between Palestinians
(registered refugees or not) and others and the actors defining them.
UNRWA, particularly at the beginning of its mandate, lacked a fixed definition; this changed mainly due to a need to delimit the number of relief
recipients. When the Agency began its activities, it inherited a legacy of inflated
registration: the United Nations Economic Survey Mission recorded approximately 720,000 people, while the number of recipients on the ration rolls of the
United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees (UNRPR) surpassed 950,000. It is
the 1952 definition that has become the accepted one and has remained virtually
unchanged: “a Palestine refugee shall mean any person whose normal place of
residence was Palestine during the period June 1, 1946 to May 15, 1948, and
who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict”.27
Some remarks should be noted. Firstly, those refugees who were “not in
need” or who fled outside the UNRWA areas of operation were not registered.
Secondly, the descendants of original registered refugees inherited UNRWA’s
administrative title independently of the fact that they may have obtained a
nationality and/or left the Agency’s fields of operation. Thirdly, UNRWA inherited (from its predecessors and prevailing host country policies at the time) some
degree of gender discrimination in the implementation of its definition; a registered refugee woman marrying a non-refugee, for example, would lose her
26
The term “Palestine” in the acronym of the United Nations Agency refers to the areas formerly under British
Mandate (also known as “historic Palestine”), which included the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the
territories that became the State of Israel. Until 1952, UNRWA catered also to the needs of the Jewish
communities displaced during the 1948 war. In this paper, the term “Palestinian refugees” mainly refers to
the Arab population of Palestine displaced during the 1948 conflict.
27
For full details of eligibility instructions, see in the Appendixes to this volume: UNRWA. Consolidated
Eligibility and Registration Instructions (CERI), 2006. See also: L. Takkenberg, The Status of Palestinian
Refugees in International Law, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998, ch. 2.
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essential way of preserving the Agency’s independence from undue influence by
different Palestinian political factions. Once again, in the past two decades, the
Agency has been able to turn this possible source of ambiguity into a positive
force. Starting at the end of the 1980s and, in particular, after the beginning of
the Peace Process, an increasing number of Palestinian staff have been promoted
to higher ranks, in view of preparing the hand-over of the Agency’s administrative responsibilities. On the other side, an increasing number of junior international staff members have been seconded to UNRWA through cooperation
agreements in its different fields of operation.
237
238 Riccardo Bocco
28
See: UNRWA, UNRWA figures as of 31 December 2008, Public Information Office, Gaza, March 2009.
29
See: S. Tamari, Palestinian Refugee Negotiations. From Madrid to Oslo II, Washington, Institute of Palestine
Studies, 1996; and PLO, The Palestinian Refugees Factfile, Jerusalem/Ramallah, Department of Refugee
Affairs, April 2000. It should also be noted that, in Arabic, Palestinians refer to the 1948 refugees and
their descendants as laji’un, while the term nazihûn is used for the 1967 displaced along with their descendants. In the latter case, the two categories can overlap because an important number of refugees were
displaced a second time during the 1967 war.
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status (although she could reclaim it in the event of divorce or widowhood)
whereas a refugee man marrying a non-refugee would retain his status.
It is important to emphasize that the UNRWA definition of a Palestine
refugee is an administrative one and does not translate directly into recognition
by international law. Furthermore, a tacit understanding seems to prevail:
UNRWA’s continued existence (and the associated Palestine refugee status) is
directly linked to the realization of a permanent resolution to the Palestine
refugee issue.
In terms of current figures (and according to the UNRWA definition),
registered refugees total nearly 4,700,000 people from three generations. As
for their geographical distribution, nearly 42 per cent live in Jordan, 23 per
cent in Gaza, 16 per cent in the West Bank, 9 per cent in Lebanon, and 10 per
cent in Syria. An average of slightly less than 30 per cent of the registered
refugees are camp residents – the most important exceptions being Lebanon
and Gaza with 53 and 46 per cent, respectively.28 Gaza is also the field in
which registered refugees constitute more than 70 per cent of the total resident
Palestinian population, while in Jordan their number accounts for almost
one-third of the Hashemite Kingdom population.
However, the administrative definition of a Palestinian refugee adopted by
UNRWA does not correspond with the political definition of Palestinian refugees and displaced Palestinians. It differs, for example, with the definition noted
in the statement of the Palestinian delegation at the first meeting of the Refugee
Working Group, held in Canada in May 1992, and also in official PLO
publications.29 Different definitions generate different figures. According to
the UNRWA definition, less than 50 per cent of an estimated 10.5 million
Palestinians worldwide are refugees while, according to a political definition,
their number is closer to two-thirds of the total. Whether defined administratively or politically, the refugees nevertheless constitute the bulk of the
Palestinian diaspora. If we consider the social definition (self-definition) of
most Palestinians, the figure could be even higher.
The issue of definition is central to the peace negotiations because of
its political consequences, in terms of demography and in relation to UNGA
Resolution 194. However, the reality of Palestinian refugees today cannot be read
exclusively in juridical terms; their socio-political and symbolic relevance goes
well beyond. They have both been symbols of the Palestinian plight and among
the main craftsmen of the Palestinian National Movement (PNM).
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
239
2.2. The Refugees as a symbol and as victims of the quest for Palestinian
independence: from the Nakba to the Oslo Process30
30
Many relevant scientific contributions on the Palestinian refugee issue, written by Palestinian, Israeli and
international researchers, can be found in Journal of Palestine Studies (Washington) and Etudes Palestiniennes
(Paris) published by the Institute of Palestine Studies (IPS). See also: Elia Zureik, Palestinian Refugees and the
Peace Process, Washington, IPS, 1996; and Salim Tamari and Elia Zureik (eds.), Reinterpreting the Historical
Record: The Uses of Palestinian Refugee Archives for Social Science Research and Policy Analysis, Jerusalem,
Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 2001. Some of the published and most of the unpublished literature related to
the refugee negotiations is available on the Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet, also known as FOFOGNET
(http://prrn.mcgill.ca/uptodate/uptopdate_fofognet.htm) (last visited 20th September 2009), originally
established to link members of a Canadian academic advisory group to the gavel-holder of the Refugee
Working Group of the multilateral Middle East Peace Process in the early 1990s.
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If we look at the regional context, in the wake of the First World War and the
dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the creation of new states under the British
and French Mandate cut across socio-political formations and prevented the
implementation of pan-Arab national aspirations. Palestinians were the sole
group that was not endowed with a territorial state at the time of independence.
While, from the late 1940s onwards, most Arab-independent states worked to
forge new national identities (sometimes in competition with pan-Arab political
ideals), the Palestinians progressively built up their national movement in
exile. In other words, while in most Arab countries state-building preceded
nation-building, it happened the other way round for the Palestinians and, in
this context, refugees played a key-role. Without embarking upon a larger analysis of the PNM, it is important to recall the indirect contribution of UNRWA
to its development and some of the attempts of the PNM to make use of the
Agency through the refugees. In this sense, one can wonder how an operational
agency can manage to avoid identifying with the cause of those it serves. For
UNRWA, the issue has been made even more delicate by virtue of the fact that
most of its personnel are recruited from among the refugee population itself.
After the Nakba, most registered refugees and, in particular, camp residents
were Palestinians of rural origins (peasants and Bedouins). Through its humanitarian aid and relief activities, UNRWA offered the space and the means to
reconstitute in exile the fabric of Palestinian society, its networks of solidarity,
and, in part, its traditional local authorities (mukhtars and village shaykhs). In the
1950s, many Palestinian political activists were teachers who directly and indirectly used UNRWA schools to mould a new generation of young refugees. With
the creation of the PLO in 1964, the context of UNRWA’s action became
marked by the existence of an explicit national project, the objectives of which
were confined not only to the implementation of the right of return but also to
the liberation of Palestine, the institutionalization of a national identity, and the
creation of an independent state.
Starting in the second half of the 1960s, UNRWA was even more clearly
targeted, both as the symbol of the refusal of refugee resettlement and as a space
for the reproduction of a specific Palestinian identity. The PLO tried to use
UNRWA infrastructure and services, as much as possible, to strengthen the
240 Riccardo Bocco
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ideological and material support for the PNM among refugees. Predictably, this
caused problems for UNRWA, creating conflicts within the Agency and with
host countries. In most cases, refugee camps became operational bases for political activism and, in some cases like Lebanon, camps and schools were also used
as paramilitary bases.
Official relations between the PLO and UNRWA were established only in
1975, after formal recognition of the PLO by the UNGA. These changes led to
increased legitimacy for the PLO as the representative and protector of refugees,
locally, regionally, and internationally. From the mid-1970s onwards, the PLO
tried to use UNRWA for its own purposes – to influence educational policies and
professional training in particular – but with limited success. The PLO’s success
remained limited even after it helped the Agency to fundraise among Arab
donors, especially after the Baghdad Summit of 1978 and the creation of the
Joint Jordanian Palestinian Fund (JPPC) the initial assistance of which targeted
non-refugee populations. Beginning in 1986, in Gaza, UNRWA became a privileged instrument for the PLO’s “steadfastness strategy”. The funds received by
UNRWA through the JJPC were mainly used to develop infrastructure in the
camps and to offer local employment, partly as a way of curtailing the Palestinian
workforce’s dependence on the Israeli labour market. Notwithstanding episodes
of collusion between the Agency and the PLO in fundraising, UNRWA was able
to keep its distance from the PLO’s influence. This clearly signalled that
decision-making in UNRWA was firmly in the hands of its (international) top
management and indirectly controlled by its (Western) donors.
In the wake of the 1990–91 Gulf War, the Palestinians were denied an
official independent representation at the Madrid Peace Conference. Their leadership was weakened by the loss of the financial support traditionally granted by
the Arab states and by the loss of migrant worker remittances from the Gulf.
Although the PLO had managed to build up a Unified Command in the
Occupied Territories, the Intifada did not seem to be bearing fruits. It was in
a highly unbalanced power relationship that the Palestinian leadership secretly
negotiated the Oslo Accords.
Following the signature of the “Declaration of Principles” in Washington
DC (September 1993) and the “Gaza and Jericho first” Accords in Cairo (May
1994), Y. Arafat officially entered the Autonomous Territories in July 1994,
marking the presence of a new Palestinian National Authority. Endowed with
one element of statehood, for the past fourteen years, the Palestinians have not
yet been able to reach a final agreement on the precise size of the territory and
the population over which their National Authority can exert its power. The
Interim Agreement of September 1995 was meant to define the calendar and the
conditions of Palestinian autonomy. However, the size and boundaries of
Palestinian territory and the question regarding who is entitled to become citizens of any new state are still key questions awaiting answers.
In the wake of the peace agreements, several splits began to materialize
among Palestinians, especially among residents in the West Bank and Gaza.
The most visible of these splits have been those between the “Palestinian of
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
2.3. The political representation of the refugees: a key issue at stake
After the Oslo Agreements, the perception that the Palestinian Authority was too
strongly involved in a process of statebuilding and less worried about negotiating
the implementation of UNGA Resolution 194 mobilized the refugees. The
project of Palestinian national construction built in exile and in the diaspora
seemed endangered by the peace process. Hypotheses related to a gradual transfer
of refugee assistance programmes from UNRWA to the PA were strongly
opposed by several refugee camp committees who feared losing their right of
return. With the “autonomous areas” becoming equivalent to those of other host
31
See Nigel Roberts, “Hard lessons from Oslo: foreign aid and the mistakes of the 1990s” , M. Keating, A. Le
More and R. Lowe (eds.), Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground, London, Royal Institute of International
Affairs, 2005, 17–26.
32
For a more recent analysis of the issue, see: Benoı̂t Challand, “Les mutations du leadership palestinien (19932007)”, A contrario, 5(2) 2008, 52–75.
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the interior” and the “returnees” or, more dramatically, between the detractors of
the Oslo Accords (the Islamic movements and their allies) on the one side, and
the PA and Fatah on the other side. The peace process not only signalled a clear
danger for national unity but it also led to a vicious cycle of escalation of violence
and massive counter-measures (both from outside and inside Palestinian society).
In the 1990s, the “land for peace” deal shifted progressively towards a “security
for peace deal”. For the average Palestinian, peace has meant a new situation of
latent fight: the old enemy has not disappeared from daily life; movement
remains strictly controlled; and land confiscation and house demolitions
continue.
By mid-2000, real per capita GNP of the Palestinian national economy
had declined by 20 per cent since the beginning of the Oslo process, despite
over 3 billion US dollars in foreign aid. Per capita consumption had declined
by 15 per cent, reflecting increased poverty, and core unemployment rates
had tripled. A functioning Palestinian national economy continued to be a
dream, insofar as the Paris Agreement of 1994 had consolidated Palestinian
dependence on Israel.31
The refugees in the Autonomous Territories quickly found themselves in a
critical situation and were drawn to take radical positions. The Oslo Accords had
created a division among 1948 and 1967 refugees by seemingly limiting the right
of return. Palestinians as a stateless nation began to witness the formation of
nationless state. In trying to organize across borders and to obtain fair political
representation, most refugee communities felt deeply frustrated, disenchanted,
and anxious over their future. Refugees feared becoming second-class citizens,
since priority had been given to the returnees (a’idûn) or to those complying with
the regime’s project.32 Refugees also felt that the PA, preoccupied with statebuilding, was possibly too eager to compromise in a final status negotiation.
Because of their experience, they were not confident that the international
community would or could support their cause.
241
242 Riccardo Bocco
33
For Palestinians in the diaspora, being the holder of another citizenship may be conflicting. After Black
September, in Jordan there has been a tacit agreement that Palestinians would not raise the issue of
representation.
34
Beside detailed mechanisms for rehabilitating and compensating refugees aimed at rendering return less
attractive, the agreement stipulated no official limitation for immigration in Palestine but no refugee return
to Israel. See: http://www.mideastweb.org/beilinabumazen1.htm.
35
BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights was officially established in January
1998. See: http://www.badil.org (last visited 15th September 2009).
36
See in particular the contributions of Susan Akram and Ingrid Gassner Jaradat in Naseer Aruri (ed.), The
Palestinian Refugees. The Right of Return, London, Pluto Press, 2001.
37
Al ‘Awda. The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, founded in April 2000 in New York has several branches
in North America, Europe and Palestine with a network of related associations. See: http://www.al-awda.org
(last visited 15th September 2009).
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countries, UNRWA developed official relationships with the PA although they
were mostly limited to technical cooperation.
The question of refugee representation has not been included in UNRWA’s
mandate. It is a problematic issue because of its sensitivity at different levels,
both inside and outside the West Bank and Gaza. Inside, it is problematic
because it questions the role and legitimacy of independent NGOs or PA institutions. Outside, it is problematic because it can clash with the domestic affairs
of Arab host countries33 and with the official role of the PLO as well. In all cases,
raising the issue can also be perceived as an intrusion by Western donors or
regional stakeholders.
It was during the 1990s (following the Abu Mazen and Beilin proposal of
1995 which included a solution to the refugee issue)34 that the BADIL Resource
Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, a NGO based in
Bethlehem, began focusing on a rights-based approach to the refugee question.35
BADIL began questioning the representative role of the PA in negotiating the
future of the refugees and their right of return in particular. The BADIL stance
and initiatives quickly spread outside the West Bank and Gaza, to the region and
beyond.36 Second- and third-generation descendants of 1948 refugees and
Palestinian residents in North America were instrumental in federating local
associations around the world to create al-‘Awda (“the return” in Arabic), a
new NGO lobbying and advocating for Palestinian refugee rights.37
The Camp David Summit of July 2000, chaired by President Clinton and
hosting the Israeli and Palestinian delegations (headed respectively by E. Barak
and Y. Arafat), probably constitute a watershed in the refugee negotiations. The
secret Stockholm talks of the spring of the same year had not born fruit and the
PA was reluctant to engage in final status negotiations, but Clinton was
approaching the end of his mandate. The summit took place amidst strong
pressure from Palestinians at home and from refugee organizations worldwide.
Arafat tried unsuccessfully to negotiate Israeli recognition of the right of return
and acknowledgement of (partial) responsibility for having created the problem.
The talks failed but accelerated the pace of bilateral negotiations which, following the Clinton Parameters of December 2000, reached a promising peak in
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
38
Jalal Al-Husseini and Riccardo Bocco, “Les négociations israélo-palestiniennes de juillet 2000 à Camp
David : reflets du Processus d’Oslo”, Relations Internationales, no. 136, hiver 2008, 51–72.
39
Besides the regular OCHA reports available on the website of the United Nations Agency (http://www
.ochaopt.org) (last visited 16th September 2009), see: UNCTAD, The Palestinian War-Torn Economy: Aid,
Development and State Formation, Geneva, UNCTAD/GDS/APP, 2006.
40
See the Report of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process: Alvaro De
Soto, End of Mission Report, May 2007; Anne Le More, International Assistance to the Palestinian After Oslo.
Political Guilt, Wasted Money, London, Routledge, 2008; and Riccardo Bocco et Wassila Mansouri, “Aide
internationale et processus de paix : le cas palestinien (1994–2006)”, in : R. Bocco and D. Meier (eds.), La
Palestine et les conflits du Moyen-Orient, special issue of A contrario, 5(2) 2008, 6–22.
41
M. Chiller Glaus (2007, op. cit.) gives a thourough account of all the plans: from the Abu Sitta’s and the
Citizenship/Residency Approach, to the Geneva Initiative, including the H. Agha and R. Malley proposal for
return into swapped areas, the Y. Peled and N. Rouhana’s transitional justice approach, the Gush Shalom or
the Ayalon-Nusseibeh’s proposal, and the bi-national State project. See also the contribution of M. Dumper
in this volume.
42
Concerning the recent evolutions of the Palestinian internal debate on the right of return, see: Jalal AlHusseini, “Visions palestiniennes du Droit au retour sept ans après le début de la seconde Intifada (20002007)”, R. Bocco & D. Meier (eds.), La Palestine et les conflits du Moyen-Orient, special issue of A contrario,
5(2) 2008, 37–51.
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Taba in January 2001.38 Though the Second Intifada had already erupted by late
September 2000, the Taba meetings signify the closest point at which the negotiators of both parties came to a political solution to date. The election of Ariel
Sharon as Prime Minister and the stance of the new United States President
subsequently ushered in a new era.
Since the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada, the living conditions of the
Palestinian civilian population (refugees included) have been steadily deteriorating at all levels. This period saw the death of Arafat in 2004, the victory of
Hamas in the 2006 elections (followed by an international boycott), and the
seizure of power by the Islamic Resistance Movement in Gaza in 2007, which
marked a fatal breakdown of national unity with the Fatah.39 UNRWA as well as
many other humanitarian organizations operating in the Autonomous Territories
has become hostages of the situation, playing the role of fig leaves, and hiding
the reality of the situation from international decision-makers incapable of finding an adequate political answer to the conflict.40
The ongoing crisis began in the fall of 2000, with peaks of violence and
temporary truces as well as second-track negotiations, each of them including
proposals on the refugee issue.41 Academics, policy makers and local and international political figures have strived to develop proposals to resolve the
decades-long conflict. What has characterized most shadow negotiations has
been the absence of refugee representatives with legitimate mandates from
their communities, in particular those living in the Gaza and West Bank
camps.42
In fact, official representatives of Palestinian refugees have rarely been
involved in the negotiations concerning their future status. During the Oslo
years and thereafter, the PLO/PA leadership has often seemed to perceive
them more as obstacles and threats rather than as potential key partners or
actors with insight crucial to the debate and negotiations. Altering this approach
could have helped counter the sense of distrust and opposition felt by many
243
244 Riccardo Bocco
Palestinian refugees and, instead, garnered their support paving the way to new
dynamics of participatory negotiations. This oversight has received greater attention, and a recent research project addresses the need for participation and
political representation of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and in
the diaspora.43
During the last mandate of Commissioner-General Peter Hansen and following
the Geneva conference recommendations of June 2004,44 UNRWA implemented several important reforms.45 The Organizational Development Process
has contributed to management transformations, with a particular focus on
decentralization, accountability, efficiency, and efficacy in the implementation
of strategic objectives. In parallel, new forms of evaluation and knowledge management have been adopted with the aim of improving data gathering to better
support planning processes.46
While underlying its role in advocating and providing for the development
and humanitarian needs of the Palestinian refugees, and expressing the will of
strengthening partnership and increasing participation, in the forward to the new
“Medium Term Strategy for 2010–15”, the Commissioner-General Karen Abu
Zayd has reaffirmed “[the Agency’s] commitment to meeting the human development aspirations of refugees, with particular emphasis on the most vulnerable
[. . .] the principal instruments will remain its programs of basic education,
primary health care, social safety-net, infrastructure improvement and
microfinance”.47
Three main challenges seem to be key areas of interaction not only between
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees but also of primary concern for host and
donor countries and for multilateral and bilateral cooperation agencies.
3.1. Education
As outlined above, education historically became the main sector of UNRWA
activity, both in terms of funds allocated and personnel involved. As a form of
non-political human development (and in contrast to the work programmes of
the 1950s), education has been a major operational compromise. On top of that,
43
See Karma Nabulsi, Palestinian Registers: Laying Foundations and Setting Directions. Report of the Civitas
Project, Oxford, Nuffield College, 2006.
44
On 7–8 June, 2004, under the auspices of the Swiss government UNRWA organized in Geneva a conference
titled “Meeting the Humanitarian Needs of Palestine Refugees in the Near East: Building partnership in
support of UNRWA”. The conference gathered up to 120 international donor countries and largely contributed to setting the agenda for the Agency’s 2005–2009 Medium Term Plan (http://www.un.org/unrwa/
genevaconference/select.html) (last visited 17th September 2009) .
45
See UNRWA, Medium Term Plan 2005–2009, Public Information Office, UNRWA Headquarters.
46
See the contribution of R. Terbeck in this volume.
47
UNRWA, Medium Term Strategy 2010–2015, Public Information Office, UNRWA Headquarters.
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3. Challenges for UNRWA and the registered refugees
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
48
See the contribution of D. Chatty in this volume on refugee youth.
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a young population constitutes most beneficiaries of UNRWA’s assistance: 50
per cent of the registered refugees are below 25 years of age.48
The schooling provided by UNRWA has been largely constructed on a
Western, secular, liberal model, instituted to produce well-socialized, compliant
future subject-citizens for a modern state. The Agency is not a State, however;
rather, it acts on behalf of the United Nations, operates in host countries and
receives funding from international donors. It is both an insider and an outsider,
staffed at the local level by refugees and managed at the highest levels by international staff. The practice of teachers is embedded in their local experience: they
themselves are refugees and share the same experiences of most pupils’ parents.
Once again, as a service provider for education, UNRWA faces a peculiar situation since a plurality of actors is involved in shaping the schooling of refugee
children.
In relation to its educational content, the UNRWA system was set up in
coordination with the UNESCO and structured around the curricula adopted by
host countries. The elementary programmes, for example, are rather close to a
Western-style, secular education and a continuation of the Turkish and British
state schools of pre-1948 Palestine, although with better resources and extended
to a wider public. Control over the educational curricula of UNRWA’s schools
has been a key issue for host countries and for Israel in the Occupied Territories.
In the heyday of nationalist propaganda, UNRWA schools were targeted by the
PLO as a place to instil a national tradition in refugee children. In this sense,
UNRWA has been often under pressure since mass public schooling is largely a
process of nation-building and tends to inspire loyalty to an existing system of
state authority.
While the PA has already begun to build its own educational system, it
could be important to reconsider the centrality of UNRWA schools in the
framework of a future resumption of the peace process. With due respect to
the national curricula of host countries, UNRWA schools could do more to
foster a culture of peace and reconciliation.
For years, UNRWA schools were well reputed, on the basis of the high
quality services it provided. In the past decade, however, the situation has been
deteriorating. Due to a shortage of buildings, most UNRWA schools operate on
a double shift basis both for children and teachers, classrooms are overcrowded,
and the means to renovate buildings and furniture are unavailable. Furthermore,
teachers lack employment security with most new teachers receiving only
one-year contracts. The situation, which is partly a by-product of the Agency’s
financial crisis, can have serious consequences.
First, education no longer seems to offer redemption in political terms.
Partly because the Oslo Process has left refugees in limbo until final status
negotiations are reached, the widespread Palestinian nationalist fervour among
UNRWA teachers from the 1960s to the 1980s has been progressively fading
245
246 Riccardo Bocco
3.2. Development
A vision of development, now outdated, is inscribed in the very acronym of the
Agency. The “W” of UNRWA, which stands for “works”, refers to the large- and
small-scale development projects, mainly in agriculture, that the Agency was
mandated to implement in the 1950s. The development approach of the time
was backed by a modernist ideology where, among others, the objectives of
economic growth were sustained by the belief that economic progress was conducive to social and political stability. The project of transferring the experience
of the Tennessee Valley Authority to the Near East was very much appealing to
Western donors. Presented as technical, it was opposed locally due to its political
consequences. Though development approaches have become more sophisticated
with time, most international donors consider the equation between economic
growth and political stability a key to a successful peace process.
In the late 1950s, UNRWA abandoned its works programmes but, from the
early 1960s to the late 1980s, it maintained and developed an approach of relief
and social welfare. The Agency coordinated its endeavours with the technical
assistance of UNESCO and the World Health Organization (WHO) for the
education and health programmes, but evaded the debate with other United
Nations Agencies on development policies and strategies. Within a context of
social welfare, UNRWA has shown a significant capacity to deliver high-level
services in health care and education. Though not necessarily motivated by
competition with those of the host countries, UNRWA services have been
viewed as having a better reputation for a long period of time.
49
See the contribution of M. Rosenfeld in this volume.
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away and, in many cases, even silenced. Schools and youth clubs in refugee
camps have often been the target of Islamist activists. In the West Bank and
Gaza, moreover, the Intifada al-Aqsa has damaged the infrastructure and seriously disrupted the annual school calendars for most pupils.
Second, education has not only helped forge national consciousness; it has
also helped the formation of a professional middle class in Palestine and in the
region. Estimates for the 1960s and 1970s indicate that almost one-third of the
male labour force in Palestine was working in the Gulf. This was tremendously
important for improving living standards under occupation and in the refugee
camps. Today, however, education no longer seems to aid in social and economic
development as the local and regional labour markets no longer offer the opportunities as were offered in the 1960s, 1970s, and even 1980s. Many now question the value of investing in years of education. Fed by a poor local labour
market, emigration tends to become an imagined outlet with success stories of
family members abroad who “made it” despite not being formally educated.
Therefore, there is a strong need to adapt education to the changing economic
situation at the beginning of this new century.49
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
50
See the contributions of Jalal al-Husseini and R. Bocco in this volume.
51
See the contribution of T. Rempel in this volume.
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Paradoxically, the “routinization” of UNRWA’s welfare activities, combined
with the economic realities of the situation of long-term refugees, has often
produced a de facto resettlement/rehabilitation/reintegration process. This is
true for many refugees in Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza. While
many may face discrimination, lack a sense of local identity, or feel existentially
estranged, most have found an economic space in the countries where they live.50
The kind of vocational training provided by UNRWA has corresponded to
the demand of the Gulf labour market. Likewise, starting from the mid-1980s,
the kind of training the Agency provided was no more competitive (for skilled
and semi-skilled labourers) than cheaper Asian labour force. Vocational training
did not seem anymore appropriate for self-employment in economies dominated
by small and micro-enterprises.
By the late 1980s, with the beginning of the first Intifada, UNRWA reintroduced development planning in new ways through the Expanded Programme
of Assistance (EPA) and the Extraordinary Measures for Lebanon and the
Occupied Territories (EMlOT), mainly consisting of new infrastructure projects
and income-generating activities for alleviating poverty. The Peace
Implementation Program (PIP), set up in 1994 in the wake of the beginning
of the peace process, was of a similar nature. Concentrating 90 per cent of its
resources in the West Bank and Gaza, it was mainly focused on school construction and repair, camp infrastructure improvement, and loans to improve refugee
self-sufficiency. This gave UNRWA a role in economic development for
Palestinian refugees.
Starting in the mid-1980s, development programmes have gained greater
acceptance by the refugees (in the West Bank and Gaza in particular) and are not
necessarily perceived as a direct threat to the implementation of the right of
return. A clear distinction between socio-economic rehabilitation (ta’hı̂l) and
resettlement (tawtı̂n) has developed within these refugee communities. This
attitude has been officially backed by the PLO. While this distinction is recognized in Jordan, however, refugee communities seem less convinced that donor
countries make this distinction in their economic approach to a peace process.
Finally, it is important to note that UNRWA has altered its approach to
development as well as its ideologies repeatedly over the past sixty years. From
“top-down” modernist approaches implemented in the 1950s (through the
works programmes in agricultural development), to “human development”
objectives in the 1960s and 1970s realized through education and from social
and participatory approaches in the 1980s (integrating human rights principles
during the Intifada), to the objective of “empowering refugees” (through
income-generating projects, micro-finance and micro-credit programmes), the
history of UNRWA is a full story of relief, humanitarian, and development
experiences.51
247
248 Riccardo Bocco
3.3. Camps, demography, and urban planning
52
See the contribution of H. Rueff and A. Viaro in this volume.
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UNRWA provides services to ten camps in Jordan, nineteen in the West Bank
and eight in the Gaza Strip, twelve in Lebanon, and nine in Syria. Most camps
are close to major towns or have become part of them. Though the size and the
number of residents in camps may vary from a few thousand people to almost
100,000, most refugee camps are characterized by a high population density.
Furthermore, it is not unusual to find among camp dwellers non-registered
refugees (be they Palestinians or nationals of other countries) who have similarly
poor living standards.
Historically, the number of people who have been living in camps has been
about 25–30 per cent of the total number of Palestinian registered refugees, the
most notable exception being in Gaza and Lebanon. The contemporary location
or topography of camps does not correspond necessarily to the original ones. In
fact, many camps built unofficially after 1948 were abandoned and others were
created. Due to the 1967 war, some camps were abandoned and new emergency
camps were set up.
Sociologically, they often resemble urban neighbourhoods or rural villages
that have transformed into small towns, and they show dynamics typical of urban
relationships. Not all camp dwellers or their descendants have been living in the
camps since their creation. Because leaving the camps has never entailed a loss of
refugee status, mobility between the inside of the camps and the communities
outside them has always been prevalent. This means that, for over four generations
of registered refugees, the experience of living in a camp has been shared by far
more people than the average officially recognized figure of camp residents would
suggest. The personal narratives and popular memory of refugees are not only a
reservoir for oral history; they also allow social change to be traced and the related
perceptions among refugees to be analysed. Multiple links – of social and economic nature – exist between camp refugees and their immediate environment,
given the porous camp borders. The role of the camp in the imagery of Palestinian
nationalism has brought them politically centre-stage.
Like UNRWA, in principle, the camps have been considered “temporary”.
Symbolically, they represent the plight of the Palestinian people and their rights.
Refugees do not own land in the camps, but they can use it under the supervision
of UNRWA. Refugees are generally owners of the houses they built on camp
land. In general, a camp is a piece of land given by the host country, to host
refugees who can build upon it after receiving written authorization from
UNRWA. But, in many cases (in Jordan, Lebanon, and the West Bank in particular), original camp land was also privately owned. Ten years after the 1948
war, huts replaced tents in the camps. The structure of public spaces was often
altered, invaded by housing units, generally in response to overcrowding.
Population density has also contributed to shape or reshape the settings of private
and public spaces and social interactions.52
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
4. Research perspectives on the refugees and the peace
negotiations
Two main research trends in social sciences which have been developing in the
past decade are necessary to better grasp the evolving socio-economic situation of
the Palestinian refugees and to rethink the past while building on both Israeli and
Palestinian perspectives on ending the conflict.
4.1. The sociology of return
UNRWA is expected to have an intimate knowledge of its beneficiaries and to
provide its services uniformly throughout its geographical fields of operation,
while constantly taking into account the conditions of each field. The Palestinian
refugees constitute a collective group from UNRWA’s administrative perspective
but, from a sociological point of view, fifty years of exile and three generations of
refugees have engendered different experiences of “refugee-ness”, different attitudes of adaptation to changing political contexts and economic opportunities.
The pace of change has even accelerated in the post-Cold War era, with the
effects of what has been labelled globalization in terms of new logics of economic
networks, mobility, and communication patterns.
53
The European Union had already begun to use this terminology at the beginning of the Oslo Process. See
European Commission Shepherd of the Social and Economic Infrastructure Development Theme, Report to
the Refugee Working Group of the Middle East Peace Process (“Bristol Report”), Oxford, Office for International
Policy Services and Refugee Studies Centre, 1994.
54
See the contribution of S. Hanafi and Ph. Misselwitz in this volume.
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For a number of donor countries, the future vision of refugee camps located
in urban contexts has been that of poor urban neighbourhoods where economic
aid needed to target the improvement of living standards.53 Due to overcrowding, it is not unusual that the refugees demand that UNRWA rent additional
land in order to expand camp borders without endangering their right of return.
In the West Bank, for example, the Camp Councils elected during the spring of
1997 were mandated by the refugee population to work both for their right of
return and to improve living conditions in camps.
The legal and political settlement of the camp question has been another
part of the peace negotiations in the Oslo years, certainly a more internal one for
the PA and the host countries’ governments but nonetheless a crucial one for the
socio-economic future of the camp dwellers. From the early 2000s and with
increased funding from international donors, the camps’ rehabilitation issue has
been reintroduced into the Palestinian internal debate and accelerated in the
past few years. This development partly followed the Geneva conference of
2004, since when international donors (the European Union in particular)
have advocated for programmes on camp infrastructure improvement to be
relaunched.54
249
250 Riccardo Bocco
55
A. Monsutti, “Afghan Migratory Strategies and the Three Solutions to the Refugee Problem”, Refugee Survey
Quarterly 27(1), 2008, 58–73; and “Itinérances transnationales: un éclairage sur les réseaux migratoires
afghans”, Critique Internationale no. 44, 2009, 83–104.
56
G. Chatelard, “Un système en reconfiguration. L’émigration des Irakiens de la guerre du Golfe à la guerre
d’Irak (1990-2003)”, in H. Jaber et F. Métral (dir.), Mondes en mouvements. Migrants et migrations au MoyenOrient au tournant du XXIème siècle, Beyrouth, Ifpo, 2005, 113–55 ; and G. Chatelard & K. Doraı̈, “La
présence irakienne en Syrie et en Jordanie. Dynamiques sociales et spatiales, et modes de gestion par les pays
d’accueil”, Maghreb-Machrek, no. 199, 2009, 43–60.
57
See Sari Hanafi, Entre deux mondes: les hommes d’affaires palestiniens de la diaspora et la construction de l’entité
palestinienne, Le Caire, CEDEJ, 1997; and Are Hovdenak, Jon Pedersen, Dag H. Tuastad & Elia Zureik,
Constructing Order: Palestinian Adaptations to Refugee Life, Oslo, FAFO, Report No. 236, 1997.
58
See Julie Peteet, “Problematizing a Palestinian Diaspora”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol 39,
2007, 627–46; Helena Lindholm-Schulz. The Palestinian Diaspora. Formation of Identities and Politics of
Homeland, London, Routledge, 2003; and K. Nabulsi, op. cit.
59
S. Hanafi, “The Sociology of Return: Palestinian Social Capital, Transnational Kinship and the Refugee
Repatriation Process”, in E. Benvenisti, Ch. Gans, S. Hanafi (eds.), Israel and the Palestinian Refugees, Berlin,
Springer, 2007; and S. Hanafi (ed.), Crossing Borders, Shifting Boundaries, Cairo, The American University in
Cairo Press, Cairo Papers in Social Science, 29(1), 2008.
60
See J. Al-Husseini and A. Signoles, “Construction nationale, territorialité et diasporisation: le cas
palestinien”, Maghreb-Machrek, no. 199, 2009, 23–42; S. Hanafi, “La diaspora palestinienne à l’heure de
l’Intifada. Droit au retour et logiques de réseaux”, in A. Dieckhoff and R. Leveau (eds.), Israéliens et
Palestiniens: la guerre en partage, Paris, Balland, 2003, 259–81.
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The Palestinian refugee question has generally been framed by juridical
perspectives and political debates around the possible policy options for peacebuilding scenarios. Through international comparisons, the juridical studies have
helped put the Palestinian case in perspective but have often discarded or overlooked the sociological, local, and transnational evolving reality of the refugees.
As recent anthropological studies on Afghani55 and Iraqi56 migrants and refugees
have shown, there is a need to re-conceptualize the vision of forced migration
and its classical juridical solutions. By taking into account the socio-economic
transnational networks of (forced) migrants, their resilience and their capacity to
adapt to new environments, different strategies of mobility have become the rule
rather than the exception.
The specificities and potential role of the Palestinian diaspora were already
the object of some studies in the 1990s57 and have attracted the attention of
a number of researchers more recently.58 However, while Palestinian migrants
and refugees have largely enjoyed mobility in the Middle East and outside the
region, their circulation in historic Palestine has been limited or prevented
by Israel inside its own borders and in the occupied territories of the West
Bank and Gaza.
Though, in this sense, parallels between the Palestinian case on the one side
and the Afghani and Iraqi case on the other side are limited, other studies
conducted in the past decade59 show how Palestinian refugees in the diaspora
have been rethinking their relationships to the original homeland, how new
discourses and practices of nation and territory, and new symbolic meanings
attached to the right of return in particular have emerged.60
UNRWA and the Palestinian refugees
251
4.2. Dealing with the past
61
See Rex Brynen, The Past as Prelude? Negotiating the Palestinian Refugee Issue, London, Chatham House,
Briefing Paper MEP/PR BP 08/01, June 2008.
62
In chronological order, it seems worthwhile to mention J. Ginat and B. Perkins (eds.), The Palestinian
Refugees: Old Problems, New Solutions, Brighton, Sussex Academic Press, 2001; A. M. Lesch and I. S.
Lustick (eds.), Exile and Return: Predicaments of Palestinian and Jews, Philadelphia, PA, University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2005; M. Dumper (ed.), Palestinian Refugee Repatriation: Global Perspectives, London,
Routledge, 2006; R. Brynen and R. Rifa’i (eds.), The Absorption of Palestinian Refugees, London, I. B. Tauris,
2006; M. Dumper, The future for Palestinian Refugees. Toward Equity and Peace, Boulder, Lynne Rienner,
2007; E. Benvenisti, Ch. Gans, S. Hanafi (eds.), Israel and the Palestinian Refugees, Berlin, Springer, 2007.
63
Morocco and its ‘Equity and Conciliation Commission’ set up after the accession to the throne by
Mohammad VI seems to be quite an exception in the Arab world. In the Algerian case, the Reconciliation
Law promulgated by President Bouteflika seems to be a rather “imposed” policy of reconciliation.
64
See for example D. S. Halpérin (ed.), To live together: Shaping New Attitudes to Peace through Education. Paris
and Geneva, UNESCO and IBE, 1997; S. Adwan and D. Bar-On, Histoire de l’Autre, Paris, Liana Levi &
Bethlehem, Peace Research Institute in the Middle East, 2003.
65
J. Hilal and I. Pappé (eds.), Parlare con il nemico. Narrazioni palestinesi e israeliane a confronto, Torino, Bollati
Boringhieri, 2003; D. E. Zammit, H. al Treiki and I. Pappé (eds.), Human Rights and the Forgotten
Histories of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, special issue of the Mediterranean Journal of Human Rights,
vol. 8, no. 2, 2004; E. Kaufman, W. Salem and J. Verhoeven (eds.), Bridging the Divide: Peacebuilding in the
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Boulder, Lynne Rienner, 2006; P. Scham, W. Salem and B. Pogrund (eds.), Shared
Histories: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue, Walnut Creek (USA), Left Coast Press, 2005; R. Rotberg (ed.),
Israeli and Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double Helix, Bloomington, Indiana University Press,
2006; R. Dudai, “A model for Dealing with the Past in the Israeli-Palestinian Context”, The International
Journal of Transitional Justice, 1, 2007, 249–67.
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As asked in the title of a recent contribution61 on the Palestinian refugee issue
negotiations: should dealing with the past be the prelude for reaching durable
peace agreements?
During the past ten years a number of works have tried, in a policy perspective or in a more fundamental research approach, to look at the internal
dynamics of both Palestinian and Israeli societies, sometimes in a comparative
perspective, concerning the big questions of exile and return, equity and peace, as
perceived by local and international actors.62
Among the strategies of conflict resolution that developed in the 1980s
and the 1990s, the transitional justice approaches, through the development of
different forms of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (drawing in particular
from the Latin American and South-African experiences) have had interesting
impacts and applications worldwide. Though the Middle East in general has
seemed immune from such experiences,63 one should not underestimate the
impact of various initiatives conducted in Israel and Palestine during the past
fifteen years, sometimes initiated under the auspices of the “People to People”
projects of the Oslo process. Most of these initiatives, and the studies elaborated
on them, not only consider that the role of education should be central in shaping
new attitudes to the “other” and therefore essential for building peace,64 but that
the refugee issue is also and most often at the core of the debates and of the
projects,65 which explore the potential of grassroot approaches.
The two research trends briefly sketched above point to the centrality of
(refugee) societies’ analysis not only for understanding changes at the local,
national, and international levels but also for rethinking policy options and
252 Riccardo Bocco
66
See Baruch Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline of Israeliness, State, Society and the Military, Berkeley,
University of California Press, 2001.
67
See William Ossipow (ed.), Israël et l’Autre, Genève, Editions Labor & Fides, 2005, 10–2.
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peace scenarios. During the last two decades, many decision-makers have paid lip
service to the jargon of participation but most often have disregarded the local
actors, whose support could have actually made the difference for the success in
the implementation of many programmes. In this sense, the Palestinian refugees,
and more largely the Israeli and Palestinian societies, with their hopes and dreams
for peace and justice seem to have been betrayed by their own political
representatives.
As time goes by, finding a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict seems
to be increasingly difficult, insofar as both partners to a possible peace seem to be
ever more entrenched in their self-perceptions as victims. Although the
Holocaust and the Nakba cannot be compared in terms of intentions of the
perpetrators and in terms of effects on the victims (the genocide in particular),
both events have played a crucial role in shaping the Jewish-Israeli and the
Palestinian collective identities in the twentieth century.
Yet solving one of the oldest Middle East conflicts could be a real blow
against the enemies of peace in both camps, against those actors and movements
who have been advocating violence as the mean to assert their rights. Peace will
have its own risks too in the region, and could be a destabilizing factor for those
authoritarian regimes that have been manipulating the Palestinian cause to justify
repressive policies at home. It could be destabilizing also for Israel, whose population has been accustomed to uniting against a common threat from the
outside. It is important to consider how the role of the Israeli Defense Forces,
their social, national, and economic role in the advent of peace should be considered66 and how the past can be examined as well. Should social amnesia and
juridical amnesty prevail to confront what Israelis and Palestinians have done to
one another? Durable peace requires a number of hard compromises – on the
refugees’ right of return, among others – but such compromises cannot simply
be imposed. Beyond the role played by international law and external stakeholders, the most serious guarantees for a peacebuilding process and for a
long-lasting legitimacy of the Israeli State and its future Palestinian counterpart
can likely only be given by their societies, made participative actors in the
negotiations about their fate.
Finally, as a number of contributions in this volume show, the critical role of
researchers and intellectuals may continue to play a modest but fundamental role
in deconstructing the walls of misunderstanding, the ‘red lines’ and the taboos
laid in negotiations by public opinions and political decision-makers. As William
Ossipow correctly points out in a recent essay, understanding means trying to
reconstruct the history, grasping the relationship with the ‘other’, and exploring
and analysing the context of the interface with the other. Understanding also
means recognizing the complexity and ambiguity of each situation, as they are
inherently hybrid.67