Movimiento por la Paz

On May 15th, the Arab community commemorated the 60th anniversary of the Nakba ( the "catastrophe"), which recalls the exodus of Palestinian refugees after the creation of the state of Israel, on May 14th, 1948. A sad day of remembrance for more than four and a half million Palestinian refugees that today, 60 years later, dream of returning to their homes.

The declaration of independence of the State of Israel, the afternoon of May 14 th, 1948, marked the outbreak of a war in which the armies of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq invaded the newly created Hebrew state. The armed conflict would last for 15 months after which the Israeli army remained reinforced after concluding armistice with their opponents and achieving a 25% more territory than anticipated in the Partition Plan for Palestine established by the United Nations.

But beyond the damage and deaths caused by the conflict, the military confrontation marked the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forced to leave their homeland to seek a home in another country. Leaving aside the many interpretations on the causes of this fact –some of them attributed the exodus to calls from Arab leaders to the Palestinians to flee before the outbreak of war, others to the rejection of the Arab population of the Partition Plan of Palestine; other, to the pressure of Jewish authorities to eliminate the Arab presence in the Palestinian-Israeli state- reality shows that approximately 700,000 people were forced to flee their homes.

The troubled history of the region, which would be sprinkled over the following decades by new armed conflicts, such as the Six-Day War in 1967, in which some 300,000 additional people were forced to take refuge, would only exacerbate the magnitude of the tragedy involving the continued displacement of people fleeing the climate of violence that was lived in the region.

Today, international organizations and especially the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) estimate at about four million and a half the number of Palestinian refugees established in different countries in the region. However, this figure should be added to all those who, by not receiving the assistance of the UNRWA, are not counted, but they represent Palestinian refugee population. Thus, according to the more ambitious estimations the total number of Palestinian refugees could reach nine million.

Quantitative questions left aside, the international community in general (and especially the Arab world), and the Middle East region, particularly, face the issue of Palestinian refugees as one of the biggest challenges when it comes to promoting a fairer and more peaceful international society. And this, for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, because the situation faced by the Palestinian refugee population is characterized by the absence of dignity, the precariousness and the lack of expectations. Indeed, the UNRWA provides education, health care, humanitarian aid and social services in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But these are basic services within the work of an agency that, despite the "perennial" character of its performance, was born with a provisional nature which still holds. Moreover, the agency's mandate is limited: it is limited to the field of humanitarian action, and can not offer representation to refugees or provide the essential legal protection that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is providing to other refugees.

Secondly, because the standards of living of Palestinian refugees don’t allow their free development. Taking the example of Lebanon, the Palestinian refugee population is prohibited from working in more than 70 professions, does not have any representation, and does not enjoy social or economic rights. All this takes place in a difficult political context in which the Palestinian people is seen as a serious threat to the fragile balance of power in the country of cedars, as we have already seen.

And finally, because the issue of Palestinian refugees combine two issues of relevance. On the one hand, the right of each and every one of the refugees to return to their places of origin, as set out in numerous legal documents (for example, in art. 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in art. 12 of the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights), as well as in Resolution 194 (III) of the United Nations General Assembly, which "resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with its neighbours, should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date"(paragraph 11).

On the other hand, due to the importance of the refugee issue in an eventual peace negotiation in the context of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There is no doubt that any solution to the conflict must collect a reliable and lasting resolution to the refugee problem.

Therefore, taking the 60 anniversary of the "catastrophe" as a stimulus to lay the foundations for a genuine and sustainable solution to the refugee issue, the Movement for Peace -MPDL- claims from governments and international organizations to carry out the necessary policies and efforts needed to launch initiatives aimed at ending the structural situation of violence prevailing in the region.

A kind of violence whose victims are millions of Palestinian refugees. Four generations of people who, day after day, wait for the world to decide their fate once and for all. It is time that the international community heal a wound, the Palestinian refugees’ wound, which slowly bled us all.