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Saturday, June 20, 2009

 

On the Occasion of World Refugee Day


Displacement from Ramle, 1948.
http://www.badil.org/Publications/Press/2009/press508-09.htm
Statistics released by UN agencies on the occasion of the 2009 World Refugee Day testify to the fact that Palestinian refugees are the largest and longest standing refugee population world wide. They lack access to just solutions and reparations, including return, because Israel and western governments continue to deny or belittle the scope of the problem and make no effort to respect and implement relevant international law and best practice.

According to a forthcoming Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons for the years 2007-2008 produced by Badil, at least 7.6 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced since 1948 as a consequence of Israel's systematic policies and practices of colonization, occupation and apartheid. That figure represents 71 percent of the entire worldwide population of 10.6 million Palestinians. Only 28.7 percent of all Palestinians have never been displaced from their homes. (click here for information pdf)

The great majority of the displaced (6.2 million people - 81.5 percent) are Palestinian refugees of 1948 (the Nakba), who were ethnically cleansed in order to make space for the state of Israel and their descendants. This figure includes 4.7 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations (UNRWA) at the end of 2008. The second major group (940,000 – 12.5%) are Palestinian refugees of 1967, who were displaced during the 1967 Arab-Israel war and their descendants.

More attention and concern should be given to the phenomenon of forced displacement of Palestinians because it is ongoing.

Steadily growing populations of internally displaced Palestinians (IDPs) are the result of ongoing forced displacement in Israel (approximately 335,000 IDPs since 1948) and the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1967 (approximately 120,000 IDPs since 1967). Badil's Survey identifies a set of distinct, systematic and widespread Israeli policies and practices which induce ongoing forced displacement among the indigenous Palestinian population, including deportation and revocation of residency rights, house demolition, land confiscation, construction and expansion of Jewish-only settlements, closure and segregation, as well as threats to life and physical safety as a result of military operations and harassment by racist Jewish non-state actors. Israeli governments implement these policies and practices in order to change the demographic composition of certain areas (“Judaization”) and the entire country for the purpose of colonization.

Data about the scope of ongoing forced displacement of Palestinians is illustrative and indicative, because there is no singular institution or agency mandated and resourced to ensure systematic and sustained monitoring and documentation. The total number of persons displaced in 2007 – 2008 is unknown. UN agencies, however, confirm that 100,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in the occupied Gaza Strip at during Israel's military operation at the end of the year; that 198 communities in the OPT currently face forced displacement; and that 60,000 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem are at risk of having their home demolished by Israel.

The Palestinian refugee question has remained unresolved and forced displacement continues, because Western governments and international organizations have been complicit in Israel's illegal policy and practice of population transfer and have failed to protect the Palestinian people. Indicators of the severe gaps existing in the protection of Palestinian refugees and IDPs are seen in the recent crises in Iraq - where thousands of Palestinian refugees became stranded on the Jordanian/Syrian and Iraqi borders, Lebanon - where 27,000 Palestinians refugees of the Naher al-Bared camp are still waiting to return to their 2007 destroyed camp, and Gaza - where over 1,400 Palestinians were killed and 100,000 displaced, most of them 1948 refugees).

On this World Refugees Day, Badil calls upon all those concerned with justice, human rights and peace to:

Challenge Israel's racist notion of the “Jewish state” and immediately halt its practices of displacement, dispossession and colonization;

Strengthen the global Campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) in order to ensure that Israel other states become accountable to international law and respect their obligations;

Improve the mechanism of international protection so that all Palestinians receive effective protection from, during and after forced displacement, including the right to return as part of durable solutions and reparation;

Ensure that the Palestinian refugee question is treated in accordance with international law and UN resolutions in future peace negotiations, including return and reparation.

Friday, June 05, 2009

 

More Comments

In response to some idiotic Zionist diversionary post how partioning Palestine was any different than the partition of Pakistan and India

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/05/obama-israel-cairo-speech

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 1:26pm (about 8 hours ago)

I'd be more than happy too talk about the partition:

Partition was seen by the Palestinians as imposing unilateral and intolerable sacrifices on themselves . . . The area of the Jewish state according to the UN plan would actually be larger than that of the proposed Palestinian state (5,500 square miles as compared with 4,500 square miles) at a time when the Jews constituted no more than 35 percent of the population and owned less than 7 percent of the land. Within the proposed Jewish state, Jewish land ownership did not in fact exceed 600 square miles out of the total area of 5,500 square miles. Nearly all the citrus land (equally divided in ownership between Jews and Palestinians), 80 percent of the cereal land (entirely Palestinian-owned), and 40 percent of Palestinian industry would fall within the borders of the proposed Jewish state. Jaffa, the Palestinian state's major port on the Mediterranean, would be altogether cut off from its hinterland, and Gaza would lose its traditional links with the wheatlands of the Negev.

Hundreds of villages would be separated from communal fields and pastures. The Palestinian state would lose direct access both to the Red Sea and to Syria. The economic union between the two states, on which partition had been postulated, was know beforehand to be impracticable. The patchwork of subunits into which partition would divide the country bore little relationship to the human and social realities on the ground.

Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948.Washington DC: Institute For Palestine Studies, 1991.

In response to Berchmans
05 Jun 09, 3:07pm (about 7 hours ago)

umkahlil
.
## What effrontery. To insist that Palestinians recognize the "right" of of European and American Jews to dispossess them. Like these, who forgot to put their make-up on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxt9HwfPwPo ##
.
The link was horrific. Shocking...I hope this is not what young Israelis in general are like ..I hope they were completely drunk and not like that when they get back into uniform. They really think they are about to die. WTF? They seem to live in a parallel world...WTF is the news there like? No wonder so many Israelis come to CIF ! :)
B


The maker of the video writes:

As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/max-blumenthal-feeling-the-hate-in-jerusalem-on-eve-of-obamas-cairo-address.html

But really, no more shocking than destroying more than five hundred villages and ethnically cleansing more than half of those who became refugees before any Arab army entered Palestine . . . no more shocking than Petra's pretty, polished propaganda. No more shocking than the hysterical rants of those here who divert from the issue, no more shocking than the majority of Israelis who sneer at Obama's very own words:

"Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail."

No more shocking than denying those people who were born in Palestine and their descendents from stepping foot in their homeland. No more shocking than demonising an entire group. Why do you think a tiny faction of Palestinians engage in violence? Because it is inherent in our nature? Or because of the massive injustice that has been perpetuated on Palestinians? I am not Hamas; I am not Fatah; I am the daughter of a man who had to leave Ramallah in 1951 because his economic prospects were next to nil after Palestine had been truncated in 1948. I would take a bullet before I would acknowledge the "right" of Israel to exist. I am not an extremist. I have the God given right to move freely in the land from which my father and ancestors came, and I will never renounce that right.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 5:14pm (about 5 hours ago)

Another Palestinian protesting the theft of his land killed today:
The slain Palestinian was identified as Yousef Aqel Sadiq Srour, 36, who was shot in the chest with live fire, according to medics at the scene.

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=38333

And par for the course, the Israelis fired on an ambulance:
A Palestinian ambulance was also fired upon, injuring one of its medics, witnesses said.
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=38333

In response to Zionist diversion:

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 6:13pm (about 4 hours ago)

I did not say my father was a refugee, but he was a victim of the truncation of his land. Jaffa was a place where many people from Ramallah did business. Once again, the Palestinians are not responsible for what happened to the Jews in Iraq. Many reject the title "refugee," as they were "proud Zionists" who came of their own free will. This is documented in "Hitching A Ride on A Magic Carpet." There were also black ops on the part of the Zionists facilitating the exodus from Iraq. There is no moral equivalence here, but we know that marching orders of Zionists are to mention Jewish refugeees every time Palestine's refugeees are mentioned. This is a bill that came up in the US Congress. Zionism is the root cause of the problem. All else is diversion.

Further Zionists attempts to divert and dissemble and claim that the Palestinians opposed to partition were Nazis (I'm not including their comments):

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 6:44pm (about 3 hours ago)

Petra,

Your claim "and starting in the mid-1920s, the development of the land, exclusively due to Jewish immigrants' efforts (as all historical sources agree) attracted a lot of Arab immigrants" is disgraceful. Any fool can check out the photographs at Palestineremembered.com to disprove your disingenous and egregious denial of the Palestinian presence on the land. And anyone may leaf through the photos of numerous books including Before Their Diaspora by Walid Khalidi to see the Palestinian farmers, potters, businessmen, etc. who were thriving prior to the European Jewish immigration. We were not primitives, but had a well developed agrarian and cosmopolitan society.

The Mufti is another diversion; the term Nakba isn't employed because the truncation of Palestine was considered a picnic by Palestinians.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 7:20pm (about 3 hours ago)
I never claimed that my father was a refugee; for the second time a Zionist says I claimed something I didn't say in order to discredit me. Then you make some claim about my father, whom you know nothing about.

And if the Zionists did so well with the land, why don't you read Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks. He does a great job of claiming how the hills around Ramallah were decimated by the people who claim to love the land so much.

You continue to go out of your way to deny Palestinians rights on their own lands. It's really rich that a German immigrant calls me an extremist for insisting that Palestinians have the right to live on their own land. You are the extremist, Petra, bringing up other situations in order to justify Israel's continuing oppression of Palestinians.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 7:34pm (about 2 hours ago)

Typical Zionist tactic, Petra, throwing up a lot of bs in order to mislead.

I said Palestine was an agrarian and cosmopolitan society; where do I mention the fellahin?
I didn't say anything about the Mufti other than throwing him up is another Zionist diversionary tactic, and I didn't say anything about Jews in Arab lands, which has nothing to do with Palestinians, other than some left of their own accord and some left because of Zionist black op operations.

And Petra, destroying hundreds of villages is wrong. And ethnically cleansing a civilian population is wrong. And trying to justify it is also wrong.

Let me quote Salman Abu Sitta's words to Gershon Baskin:

The Palestinians, and most of the world with them, are determined to pursue justice, eradicate racism and Apartheid. Just as South Africa did. They have no intention of disappearing.
Baskin, true friendship should go to the Israelis to help shake them off their collective amnesia about what they have done and are doing to the Palestinians and to advise them that their salvation lies in shedding racism fully and forever. They have to amend their ways, reverse ethnic cleansing and make reparations.

For it is clear that the history of Jews will ultimately be marked indelibly, and above all other historical events, by what they have done in Palestine.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 8:13pm (about 2 hours ago)
http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story420.html

It's hypocritical for Zionist apologists to hold Palestinians responsible for the actions of one man, considering the alliance made between the Stern Gang and Nazis.
And this really has nothing to do with the ongoing oppression of the Palestinians.

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 8:19pm (about 2 hours ago)

Dr. Abu Sitta has a very pragmatic approach.

The Right of Return is Feasible.

http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2005/06/dr-salman-abu-sitta-right-of-return-is.html

And no, Ehad, Palestinians did not immigrate to Palestine and steal the land and dispossess the people; we were there; Jewish immigrants from all over the world did this. And there are no excuses for what the Zionists did to Palestine and what they continue to do.
I

 

Comment

Comment left on the Zionist's post on CIF

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 12:50pm (1 minute ago)

Palestinians are not responsible for Jews who either emigrated from Arab countries or were forced out. Zionism is.

What effrontery. To insist that Palestinians recognize the "right" of of European and American Jews to dispossess them. Like these, who forgot to put their make-up on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxt9HwfPwPo

umkahlil
05 Jun 09, 4:29pm (18 minutes ago)

The maker of the video writes:

As a resident of Jerusalem, I can say that the people represented in this video are not members of a fringe group or simply drunk college kids. These people reflect the sentiments shared by many people in this country and this city. These people and their families are the core of the opposition to meaningful peace between Israel and her neighbors. This is what Obama is up against.

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/06/max-blumenthal-feeling-the-hate-in-jerusalem-on-eve-of-obamas-cairo-address.html

But really, no more shocking than destroying more than five hundred villages and ethnically cleansing more than half of those who became refugees before any Arab army entered Palestine . . . no more shocking than Petra's pretty, polished propaganda. No more shocking than the hysterical rants of those here who divert from the issue, no more shocking than the majority of Israelis who sneer at Obama's very own words:

"Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail."

No more shocking than denying those people who were born in Palestine and their descendents from stepping foot in their homeland. No more shocking than demonising an entire group. Why do you think a tiny faction of Palestinians engage in violence? Because it is inherent in our nature? Or because of the massive injustice that has been perpetuated on Palestinians? I am not Hamas; I am not Fatah; I am the daughter of a man who had to leave Ramallah in 1951 because his economic prospects were next to nil after Palestine had been truncated in 1948. I would take a bullet before I would acknowledge the "right" of Israel to exist. I am not an extremist. I have the God given right to move freely in the land from which my father and ancestors came, and I will never renounce that right.

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