The Last Exile

Big story out of Lebanon, other than Hezbollah, concerns the status of Palestinian refugees – specifically those Palestinian refugees who arrived in the 70’s as a result of the Jordanians expelling Palestinians during the Black September uprising. While these Palestinians are numbered among the ‘total’ Palestinian refugee count maintained by the UNWRA these people are completely ID-less. The most basic necessities are denied not only to those refugees but by extension to their descendents.

There was discussion in Lebanon on whether or not to issue a limited kind of Lebanese issued identification (but not citizenship) to what is commonly referred as non-id Palestinian refugees in order for them to receive health care, education or even travel outside of Lebanon. This Lebanon Daily Star report goes into more depth on their plight.

As far as the world is concerned, Saeed Mohammad Hammo technically does not exist. But as he recounts his life as a Palestinian refugee in Lebanon, his story is very much real. Hammo, 61, is among an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 so-called “non-ID Palestinians” in Lebanon who are considered illegal aliens and who have lived in legal limbo, many of them for decades. They have no freedom of movement, no right to work and no access to medical services or education.

And their plight, due to be discussed on Monday during a brief visit to Lebanon by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, is passed on to their children and grandchildren. “These are people who are very much alive but at the same time they are not recognized as such,” said Souheil al-Natour, a Beirut-based Palestinian analyst. “How can you consider a physically living person as non-existent? “This is a complete negation of humanitarian principles.”

Lebanon recognizes as refugees only Palestinians who fled here following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) lists nearly 400,000 of them. But Lebanese and Palestinian officials say the number of refugees actually resident in Lebanon may be as low as 250,000 as UNRWA does not strike off its figures Palestinians who move to other countries.

The majority of the non-ID Palestinians came to Lebanon in the 1970s following the events known as Black September, when Jordan kicked out the Palestine Liberation Organization and thousands of Palestinian fighters. As such, they are not considered refugees by Lebanese authorities and have no official status. “Non-ID Palestinians live in harsh conditions and are deprived of some of the most important and basic human rights,” said Mireille Chiha, of the Danish Refugee Council office in Beirut. “They have no freedom of movement, can’t purchase a car or motorbike and they don’t benefit from the services of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees,” she added. “Even within the refugee camps, they are referred to as the ‘ghareeb’ or foreigner. “So the [non-ID Palestinians] face additional hardships than those already faced by other refugees.”

The issue of the non-ID Palestinians has grown in prominence since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 Civil War, as many of them have begun having children and grandchildren, who have inherited their status. Ali Mahmoud Ahmad Abu Ali, 62, arrived in Beirut in 1973 when he was a member of the PLO. He has since settled as a refugee and married twice in Lebanon. His six children have inherited his shadowy legal status and do not exist on paper. “I am exhausted from this life of perpetual hardship,” said Hammo, 61, who arrived in Lebanon in 1970 and has three children between the ages of five and eight. “I live off of handouts and sneak out of the camp when I can to earn $10 a day picking fruit,” he said. “I just want mercy for my children, nothing else.”

This man’s plight is beyond pathetic but what is even more intolerable is the cavalier treatment his plight – and by extension – the plight of literally thousands of other Palestinians just like him. Well, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas visited Beirut yesterday and met with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman. So did Abbas show the slightest concern or exhibit the slightest effort to end ‘his’ people’s misery? The Lebanese Daily Star:

BEIRUT: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stressed Monday Lebanon’s full authority and sovereignty over all Palestinian refugees camps while underscoring that the refugees’ presence was temporary, until a comprehensive peace solution was reached. “There are no legions under the command of the Palestinian authority in refugee camps and we would cooperate with the Lebanese state to the extent the latter allows, since the camps are Lebanese territories upon which the Palestinians live; thus Lebanon has full sovereignty over them,” Abbas said Monday, following his meeting with President Michel Sleiman. “The status of Palestinian refugees will remain unchanged until a comprehensive, final solution is reached” with Israel,” Abbas added.

So Hammo, your Fatah/PLO/PA Chairman has spoken, and the bottomline is; your SOL. This needless suffering is why we should put the whole ‘peace process’ on hold and talk refugees – Now.

The big story in Palestinian politics is that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced he would not seek re-election in January. Now there are rumours that the delayed elections scheduled for this January (which should have been held last January), will be post-poned and Abbas will continue to run the Palestinian Authority until the next election. The common wisdom contends Abbas announcement of his ‘impending’ retirement is that it is merely a rouse to garner support for his leadership and to pressure the international community into forcing Israeli concessions – specifically maneuvering the US into taking a hard-line with Israel.

One of the ways the ‘Mid-East’ psyche deals with the successes of the Israeli state is to attribute every Israeli success to outside forces – usually American. This makes a certain amount of sense from the Palestinian perspective but it ignores one of the realities of the Israeli-American relationship which is that the Americans cannot afford to cut the Israelis loose and lose all influence. An Israel unencumbered to American interests is free to pursue relationships with countries which could potentially conflict or thwart international American interests.

The oddity of Abbas’ current position – a complete Israeli settlement freeze in exchange before sitting down to continue negotiations with the Israelis is a complete 360 degree turn and cannot be entirely explained as a result of a change in Israeli administrations. Even Arafat never demanded a complete settlement freeze prior to negotiations. Besides the Palestinian Authority has negotiated agreements with Bibi the last time he was Prime Minister; so why not now? I am not so sure about the ‘common wisdom’ given the Fatah convention held last August which is the only material change I can see. Abbas now has to answer and appease a very hard line Fatah central committee who blame Abbas for mismanaging the Fatah-Hamas divide and are pushing for a US-Israeli estrangement given Obama alleged sympathies for the Palestinians.

The majority of those elected to the Central Committee are serious old style PLO hardliners and with US President Obama unable to squeeze a complete settlement freeze from the Israelis; Abbas is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can neither move forward or regroup as he has no base of support outside of Ramallah. He has never been an overtly popular leader who it is now rumoured cannot risk venturing outside of his inner circle in Ramallah in recent years owing to ’security considerations’ – and the risk isn’t what the Israelis will do but what his own people will do if given the opportunity to get their hands on him.

Threatening to resign works in Abbas’ favour in distinct ways. He shows the Central Committee hardliners he has the full support of the international community which is important as it is directly tied to the Fatah purse, and subsequently, he gets a little breathing room from the demands of the Central Committee. He also gets to post-pone elections which could potentially see an increase in Hamas’ West Bank support.

Lately, I have been doing a great deal of pondering the Middle East peace process. I admit I get a certain amount of perverse pleasure watching diplomats twist and tie themselves up like pretzels depending on who their intended audience is but it occurs to me we need a better word than ‘peace process’ to describe the state of Israeli-Arab relations or we will never get to the end of the so-called peace process. In fact, it’s not really a peace process but a ‘war process’. Abet a low level conflict, which now and then sparks into a wider and more deadly confrontation. There is a temporary ‘cease-fire’ with Hamas in the Gaza Strip which means a ‘lull’ in the fighting and not that the war is over. Not only are the Palestinians busy fighting a war against Israel but are at war with themselves; hence – the West Bank/Gaza Strip divide.

First step – ignore both the Israelis and Palestinians. Each has their positions and both sides have offered as much as they can afford to give without risking civil war within their own societies. Their respective positions reflect the current realities of how things stand on the ground – as in today and both positions are intractable. So what needs to be done is change the realities on the ground which can most fully influence those ‘intractable’ positions towards change or compromise. So the next step is to settle the Palestinian Refugee issue before anything else – including resolving the so-called ‘settlements’ issue in the Disputed Territories. Firstly, Palestinians living in the West Bank have been enjoying an economic prosperity the likes of which they have not enjoyed for years. Secondly, while the ‘settlements’ represent not only Israeli-Jewish homes but provide a livelihood to Palestinians from contracting and construction as while a thousand other little spin-off industries. No one is going hungry and the taxes raised from a working population keeps the Palestinian Authority’s coffers full. It’s all good people.

Secondly, the beauty of settling the Palestinian Refugee issue is that a solution to the crisis requires neither the consent of the Israeli or Palestinian leadership to resolve it but the world needs to recognize – neither the Israeli or Palestinian society can afford to adsorb and settle an influx of 4.5+ million people in this small physical area and in a region which is often stricken by drought. There is no possible way the infrastructure of either societies can handle providing the most basic human needs of 4 million plus people. Certainly, if nothing else, there is not enough water to provide for the most basic daily water needs of an influx of almost 4 million plus people.

While I recognize the Palestinian leadership will be outraged the bald-faced truth is that the Palestinian leadership has not done one damn thing to lessen or ease conditions for Palestinians condemned to live in refugee camps throughout the Arab world. And yes, I do mean ‘condemned’ and furthermore, the conditions are so often truly horrendous I wouldn’t let an animal live like let alone a fellow human being. Time to bring the big guns out turns them on onward the Arab world.

There is no Palestinian leader, alive or dead, who has enough political capital or cache with the Palestinian people to make a single or slightest concession on the so-called Right of Return at the negotiating table with the Israelis. The central rationale for the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization was to enforce, by hock, by crook, and the blood of every last Jew in the world (if necessary) to assert the alleged right of Palestinians to return to the former British Palestine Mandate.

There really is one way to test the feasibility of settling the Palestinian refugee without either the consent of the Israelis or Palestinian Authority; hold a referendum within the refugee camps and let the people decide. If this Forward article correctly reads the pulse of the Palestinian refugees correctly; pushing for full citizenship rights or resettlement to a neutral third country could be the way forward. For all those who vote full citizenship rights or resettlement; let the Obama Administration take up their cause and bring out the big guns to negotiate with the various Arab governments to make full citizenship rights a fact or find a third neutral country for resettlement. For those who vote to languish indefinitely in the camps for umpteen generations in squalor – let them.