Arab-Palestinian Refugees

What is a refugee? While no absolute linguistic consensus may exist, all definitions would include the words temporary and undesirable. The notion that all would wish to end their presumed displacement is taken as axiomatic. Not so for Palestinians, where the word refugee marks a critical part of their national identity.

The refugees' narrative, which became an integral part of the Palestinian national story line as a whole, was completely crystallized less than a year and a half after their "exile": They bore no responsibility whatsoever for their unfortunate fate; their own political processes and decisions, and those of their leaders, went unmentioned. In reality, the Arab states bore significant responsibility for the situation, having encouraged and facilitated the refugees' flight. But the ultimate villain in this narrative was none other than the United Nations, which had passed the November 1947 partition resolution that set in motion the chain of events leading to the Palestinian Arab catastrophe, or the Nakba; as such, it had to maintain the refugees until the state of affairs was resolved in their favor by complete and total repatriation and compensation.

The United States' policy of resettlement and reintegration, which once held such promise, is no longer addressed seriously while the intractable insistence on a "right of return" remains the ultimate obstacle to any durable solution.

Almost since its inception the international institution charged with aiding the refugees, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), has worked against their resettlement in Arab countries where Palestinians are located. One way UNRWA has done this has been by moving from refugee relief to an educational mission, devising its own expanded redefinitions of who a refugee is, and expanding its legal mandates to "protect" and represent refugees. As a result, the Palestinian clients of UNRWA have gradually taken over the organization and have undermined an international relief effort, created in naïve good faith but with the complicity of the UN General Assembly.

Over the years, from a temporary relief and works program, UNRWA has, by its own admission, proudly evolved into a broad social welfare organization for Palestinian society. It has also succeeded to such an extent that "there is little or no significant difference between the standard of living of refugees and non-refugees in the WBGS [West Bank and Gaza Strip], Jordan, or Syria."¹

Maintaining those standards of living in dynamic economic conditions, much in the manner of a government, is a primary concern of the organization.² Conversely, the international community, led by the United States and now the European Union, have adopted a strategy of increasing support for UNRWA and other Palestinian institutions such as the Palestinian Authority in the traditional effort to avoid instability and, since the 1990s, in an effort to shape Palestinian state-building.³ Another irony, however, is that UNRWA competes directly with the Palestinian Authority for international support.⁴

Early twentieth century Middle Eastern refugee crises have a dreadful familiarity for the modern reader: collapsing states and empires, the persecution of religious minorities, and the flight of hundreds of thousands. The origins of these refugee crises and the international responses are instructive; they are at once familiar but also highlight the artificial and unique aspects of the Palestinian situation, and offer valuable lessons that should be applied to the current Middle Eastern crises and the Palestinians alike. Among other things, they point to the dangers of institutionalization, both for the recipients and givers of aid, and above all the limits of internationalization; once the moral hazard of responsibility for refugees is spread too widely, this reduces the incentives for refugees and the international community to resolve the problem through political processes.

In the Ottoman Empire in general, providing what would today be called social welfare services, including to refugees, was the responsibility of individual religious communities. After the Tanzimat reorganization of the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman state and various waqfs or religious endowments were responsible for social welfare for Muslims. This became an especially important problem as the empire's European territories were lost and Muslims fled toward Anatolia...