US State Dept may have created 5 million Palestinian refugees
By: Josh Rogin |
May 28, 2012 |
THE NATION
The US government considers the descendants of Palestinian refugees
to be refugees, a State Department official told The Cable, and another
top State Department official wrote in a letter to Congress that there
are now 5 million Palestinian refugees.
The two new policy
statements come in the midst of a fight over whether the US will start
separating, at least on paper, Palestinians who fled what is now Israel
in 1948 and 1967 from their descendants.
The Senate Appropriations
Committee has approved unanimously an amendment to the fiscal 2013
State Department and foreign operations appropriations bill that
requires the State Department to report on how many of the 5 million
Palestinians currently receiving assistance from the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) are actually
people who were physically displaced from their homes in Israel or the
occupied territories, and how many are merely descendants of original
refugees.
The amendment, as passed, was watered down by Sen.
Patrick Leahy (D-VT) from a version proposed by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL)
that would have required more in-depth reporting on how many UNRWA aid
recipients are now living in the West Bank, Gaza, and other countries
such as Jordan. An even earlier version of the bill would have made it
US policy that Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, and those who
are citizens of countries like Jordan are not, in fact, "refugees."
The State Department objected strongly to the Kirk amendment, claiming
that any US determination of the number or status of refugees was
unhelpful and destabilizing and that refugee determinations are a
final-status issue that must be negotiated between the Israelis and the
Palestinians.
"This proposed amendment would be viewed around the
world as the United States acting to prejudge and determine the outcome
of this sensitive issue," Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides wrote
Thursday in a letter to Leahy. "United States policy has been consistent
for decades, in both Republican and Democratic administrations - final
status issues can and must only be resolved between Israelis and
Palestinians in direct negotiations. The Department of State cannot
support legislation which would force the United States to make a public
judgment on the number and status of Palestinian refugees."
"This
action would damage confidence between the parties at a particularly
fragile time, undercut our ability to act as a mediator and peace
facilitator, and generate very strong negative reaction from the
Palestinians and our allies in the region, particularly Jordan," Nides
wrote.
But later down in the letter, Nides states, "UNRWA
provides essential services for approximately five million refugees,
including education for over 485,000 school children, primary health
care in 138 clinics, and social services for the most Vulnerable,
particularly in Lebanon and Gaza." (Emphasis added.)
To experts
and congressional officials following the issue, that declaration was
remarkable because it was the first time the State Department had placed
a number - 5 million - on the number of Palestinian refugees.
"The
Nides letter could be considered a change in US policy with
consideration to refugees because it states clearly that 5 million
people served by UNRWA are refugees," one senior GOP Senate aide told
The Cable. "For the Obama administration to stake out a position
emphatically endorsing the rights of 5 million Palestinian refugees is
by itself prejudging the outcome of final- status issues."
Steve
Rosen, a long time senior AIPAC official who now is the Washington
director of the Middle East Forum, said that by calling all 5 million
UNRWA aid recipients "refugees," the State Department is saying that all
the Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and the nearly 2 million who
are citizens of Jordan have some claim to the "right of return" to
Israel, even though Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have all stated
clearly that a two-state solution would mean that the bulk of the 5
million Palestinian "refugees" would end up living in the West Bank or
Gaza, not Israel.
President Barack Obama said in June 2011, "A
lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a
Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of
Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people." In January, 2008,
while a presidential candidate, Obama said, "The right of return [to
Israel] is something that is not an option in a literal sense."
At
the heart of the issue is what constitutes a "refugee." The entire
thrust of the Kirk amendment was to challenge UNRWA's definition, which
includes the descendants of refugees - children, grandchildren, and so
on. That has resulted in the number of Palestinian "refugees"
skyrocketing from 750,000 in 1950 to the 5 million figure has been
quoted by Nides.
An analysis by the academic journal Refugee
Survey Quarterly projected that if that definition remains intact, there
will be 11 million Palestinian refugees by 2040 and 20 million by 2060.
In a new statement given to The Cable, a State Department
spokesman said that the US government does, in fact, agree with UNRWA
that descendants of refugees are also refugees.
"Both the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations
Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)
generally recognise descendants of refugees as refugees," State
Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told The Cable. "For purposes of
their operations, the US govt supports this guiding principle. This
approach is not unique to the Palestinian context."
Ventrell
pointed out that the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
also recognises descendants of refugees as refugees in several cases,
including but not limited to the Burmese refugee population in Thailand,
the Bhutanese refugee population in Nepal, the Afghan population in
Pakistan, and the Somali population seeking refuge in neighbouring
countries. UNHCR by default only considers the minor children of
refugees to have refugee status but often makes exceptions to include
latter generations. Regardless, the State Department's new statement
could have wide-ranging implications. "How many generations does it
go?" asked Rosen. "I'm Jewish, and as a grandchild of several refugees,
could I make a claim on all these countries? Where does it end? Someday
all life on Earth will be a Palestinian refugee."
The Cable asked
the State Department whether descendants of refugees get refugee status
for endless generations and whether Nides's mention of the 5 million
Palestinian refugees was an intentional shift in US policy, but we
haven't gotten a response. The State Department statements also appear
to conflict with the United States Law on Derivative Refugee Status,
which allows spouses and children of refugees to apply for derivative
status as refugees, but specifically declares that grandchildren are
ineligible for derivative refugee status. In other words, US law doesn't
permit descendants of refugees to get refugee status inside the United
States.
Some regional experts see Kirk's amendment as a ploy to
cut some of the $250 million in US funding for UNRWA and bolster
Israel's position by negating rights of Palestinians that would
otherwise be determined in negotiations.
Leila Hilal, co-director
of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, told The
Cable that to honestly determine which Palestinians remain refugees, one
would have to wade into a long, complicated legal and factual analysis
about which Palestinians in the region have adequate national protection
that would end their refugee status.
"The rights of return and
property restitution do not depend on refugee status," she said.
"Ultimately, however, this congressional move is a political stunt
intended to preempt final-status outcomes - and a rather cheap one at
that."
UPDATE: A State Department official confirms that yes, the
descendants of refugees are still refugees for numerous generations
until they return home or are resettled in a third country. The official
also argued that Nides' reference to UNRWA serving 5 million "refugees"
was also accurate.
"The number of people on UNRWA's rolls isn't
and shouldn't be a secret," the official said. "The Kirk amendment,
based on commentary surrounding it, is meant to set a stage for the US
to intervene now with the determination that 2nd and 3rd generation
descendants have no claims and in fact aren't even Palestinians. Our
interest is to avoid that. We are not predetermining numbers that the
parties themselves must ultimately agree on. Nor can UNWRA."
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