4M Palestinians Refugees Remembered on International Refugee Day

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Tuesday June 20, 2006 14:27

by Ali H.

The fate of Palestinian refugee communities scattered around the Middle East remains at the heart of the conflict

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees fled or were driven from their homes during the Israeli-Arab wars in 1948 and 1967. A UN exhibition on the lives of Palestinian refugee children marks World Refugee Day on 20 June 2006.

In 2000, a special UN General Assembly Resolution was unanimously adopted which designated 20 June every year as World Refugee Day. The date was chosen as an expression of solidarity with Africa, to coincide with Africa Refugee Day, which is celebrated on 20 June in several countries.

"Arthur C. Helton: As I noted before, the Palestinian refugee question can be seen as a political negotiation—a contract which could be bought out. It is hard to know what are the specific hopes and dreams of these millions of individuals. But the political framework has become clearer over time. Palestinian refugees are hostage to a political solution which at this moment must seem remote. But the issues will be presented squarely when a final settlement is discussed. I believe that there will compensation offered in lieu of taking advantage of the right of return of Palestinian refugees. There will be some return. But substantial sums are likely to be made available by Western nations to both governments in the region and individuals in order to secure a settlement. The technical mechanism to accomplish this outcome would have to be established as part of a peace settlement."

http://www.cfr.org/publication/4637/world_refugee_day.html

“It was the experience of exile that forged the Jews and the Palestinians both”, writes Bradley Burston. “We are who we are, in no small part, because of the hardships, longings and insecurities conferred by displacement from home… For the Jews, the insecurity manifests itself as fear, fear of being annihilated, fear of being cast out by force. For the Palestinians, the insecurity finds expression in humiliation and profound loss of honour, that stretches over the decades that the State of Israel has existed… We are, all of us, Jew and Palestinian, victims of our refugee mentality, the one we cannot shake, that makes us into villain and victim both.”

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=%...sID=2

Haitham Sabbah poses a bold question with regards to a recent poll which states that the majority of Israelis want their government to help Palestinians emigrate out of Israel.

“So the question now is not if the Palestinians Refugees will ever return, but if the existing Palestinians will stay? The answer is, yes, they will stay. No matter what the majority of Israelis want, the 1948 Nakba will never happen again. They will only vanish if you manage to kill them all, but even then, Palestinians will return.”

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2006/05/15/this-week-...nues/

"Holocaust Revisionism is a crime in many places. Denying the reality of the Holocaust, or even quibbling about its details as established by the official Zionist historians, can land you in jail. Why isn’t there a crime of Nakba Revisionism?

The Nakba is the forced exodus of Palestinians from their homeland caused by violence and threats of violence by Jews who were, in effect, clearing land for the new state of Israel (an idea that may have come from Stalin). As part of the general mythology of Israel, the fact of the Nakba was almost entirely hidden from Official Western History until relatively recently. There is now absolutely no doubt that it occurred, and no excuse for claiming that it didn’t occur. Anyone who claims that the birth of Israel was without sin, or says something like “a land without people for a people without land”, is a Nakba Revisionist. "

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

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4M Palestinians Refugees Remembered on International Refugee Day