The Markaz Review:

By Selma Dabbagh

What Restitution?

Between 1948 and 1967, the Palestinian struggle was commonly referred to in the West as “the Arab refugee problem,” as though it were nothing more and nothing less than a question of humanitarian aid and resettlement programs, required for an amorphous group of people in the region. UNWRA was then, as it is now, almost 80 years later, the lifeline of support for around 750,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced by the Nakba of 1948, with 325,000 joining their ranks in the Naksa of 1967.

The past 15 years have seen a staggering rise in the number of refugees and forcibly displaced persons globally, with 123.2 million people having been displaced (1 in every 67 people) by the end of 2024, a figure that includes 42.7 million refugees displaced across borders. Back in 2003, Al-Awda, The Palestinian Right to Return Coalition, reported that “one in three refugees worldwide is Palestinian.” This is probably no longer the case, not because the number of Palestinian refugees globally is lower (it is estimated now that there are 5.9 million who are eligible for UNWRA services alone), but because the global picture in general has become mind-blowingly worse.

When it comes to negotiations over Palestine, however, several decades of refugee rights have been shunted aside. During the Oslo peace process, they were relegated to final status negotiations, dealt with pragmatically and then abandoned. While some fine reports and studies were prepared for the negotiations, these never got off the ground. The “issue” of millions of lives, their rights, losses, and aspirations have been kicked into the long grass. The cramped and insalubrious conditions in the 58 camps in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and neighboring Arab states, where nearly six million Palestinians eke out a precarious existence, have deteriorated year by year. The vulnerability of Palestinian refugees is as pronounced as the intransigence in resolving their fate.

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