Laila Al-Arian / Al Jazeera & Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition – 2011-01-24 23:36:40
http://english.aljazeera.net/palestinepapers/2011/01/2011124123324887267.html
PA Selling Short the Refugees
BOURJ EL BARAJNEH (January 24, 2011) — At the Bourj el Barajneh refugee camp in southern Beirut, a centre for the elderly serves as an oasis from the overcrowded, filthy conditions outside its metal doors. On a recent Thursday morning, a group of men and women in their 60s and 70s gathered around a table to color and draw pictures, while others solved crossword puzzles.
One woman sitting in the corner focused intently as she embroidered a traditional Palestinian dress. The Active Ageing House in the refugee camp is a place where they can pass time, socialise and share meals.
They are known as the “Children of the Nakba” — a generation of Palestinians that witnessed, and survived, the forced expulsion and violence in 1948 committed by Zionist paramilitaries on behalf of the nascent state of Israel.
They each have a story about how they or their parents managed to escape their homeland over 60 years ago — and their wounds are still raw.
Some six million Palestinian refugees are scattered around the world, including more than 400,000 in Lebanon. Here, they are deprived of basic rights, not permitted to buy or sell property, and are banned from more than 70 job categories. Mired in abject poverty, they are dependent on an increasingly incapable United Nations agency for aid.
A “Symbolic Number” of Returnees
The Palestine Papers show that Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiators were prepared to make major concessions on the refugees’ right of return: on the numbers potentially allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel; on whether refugees would be able to vote on any peace agreement; and on how many would be able to settle in a future Palestinian state.
In an email Ziyad Clot, a legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators on the refugee file, writes, “President [Mahmoud] Abbas offered an extremely low proposal for the number of returnees to Israel a few weeks only after the start of the process.”
The papers also reveal that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed that 1,000 Palestinian refugees be allowed to return annually to Israel over a period of five years — totaling just 5,000, a tiny fraction of those displaced after Israel’s creation.
On January 15, 2010, Erekat told US diplomat David Hale that the Palestinians offered Israel the return of “a symbolic number” of refugees.
According to the documents, not only did Palestinian officials offer a low figure of returnees, the chief negotiator of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, said that refugees would not have voting rights on a possible peace deal with Israel.
Notes of a meeting on March 23, 2007, between Erekat and then-Belgian foreign minister Karel De Gucht, reveal that Erekat said, “I never said the Diaspora will vote. It’s not going to happen. The referendum will be for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can’t do it in Lebanon. Can’t do it in Jordan.”
While Erekat conceded the rights of Palestinian refugees to determine their own fate, during such meetings Israeli negotiators made clear their vision for the refugees.
In a negotiation meeting on January 27, 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, told her Palestinian counterparts, “Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national rights for all.”
Erekat seemed to buy into this idea. In a meeting with US diplomats, including Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, on October 21, 2009, Erekat said, “Palestinians will need to know that five million refugees will not go back. The number will be agreed as one of the options. Also the number returning to their own state will depend on annual absorption capacity”.
So even a future Palestinian state could not accommodate the millions of displaced who would want to settle there.
Al Jazeera spoke with three dozen refugees in the Burj al-Barajneh camp, from ages 16 to 88, and they all expressed the same sentiment: They want to return to their native homeland, and to have a say in any final settlement between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel.
Shafiqa Shalan, 60, who was born in Burj al-Barjnah, said she would not agree to being settled in Palestine. “What’s the difference?†she said. “We’re refugees in Lebanon and we would be refugees in the West Bank. So we might as well stay here. I would not consider it my home. My homeland is the village where my parents were expelled.”
That sentiment was echoed among younger residents of the camp. Ruwaida Al-Daher, 47, who was also born in Bourj el Barajneh, said, “We ask for the right of return because he who has no country has no dignity. We live like dogs here. But I would still oppose going to the West Bank or Gaza. Why would I go back to any place but my hometown?”
Al-Daher said she would not want to become a Lebanese citizen if that were offered to her under any peace deal — and that Palestinian negotiators had no mandate to make concessions on her behalf.
“The right of return is a personal right. It’s sacred,” she said. “No one can cancel it or take it away.”
In an email Ziyad Clot, a legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators on the refugee file, writes, “President [Mahmoud] Abbas offered an extremely low proposal for the number of returnees to Israel a few weeks only after the start of the process.”
The papers also reveal that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert proposed that 1,000 Palestinian refugees be allowed to return annually to Israel over a period of five years — totaling just 5,000, a tiny fraction of those displaced after Israel’s creation.
On January 15, 2010, Erekat told US diplomat David Hale that the Palestinians offered Israel the return of “a symbolic number” of refugees.
According to the documents, not only did Palestinian officials offer a low figure of returnees, the chief negotiator of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, said that refugees would not have voting rights on a possible peace deal with Israel.
Notes of a meeting on March 23, 2007, between Erekat and then-Belgian foreign minister Karel De Gucht, reveal that Erekat said, “I never said the Diaspora will vote. It’s not going to happen. The referendum will be for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Can’t do it in Lebanon. Can’t do it in Jordan.”
While Erekat conceded the rights of Palestinian refugees to determine their own fate, during such meetings Israeli negotiators made clear their vision for the refugees.
In a negotiation meeting on January 27, 2008, then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, told her Palestinian counterparts, “Your state will be the answer to all Palestinians including refugees. Putting an end to claims means fulfilling national rights for all.”
Erekat seemed to buy into this idea. In a meeting with US diplomats, including Special Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, on October 21, 2009, Erekat said, “Palestinians will need to know that five million refugees will not go back. The number will be agreed as one of the options. Also the number returning to their own state will depend on annual absorption capacity.”
So even a future Palestinian state could not accommodate the millions of displaced who would want to settle there.
“We’re Going to Die Here”
Al Jazeera spoke with three dozen refugees in the Burj al-Barajneh camp, from ages 16 to 88, and they all expressed the same sentiment: They want to return to their native homeland, and to have a say in any final settlement between the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Israel.
Shafiqa Shalan, 60, who was born in Burj al-Barjnah, said she would not agree to being settled in Palestine. “What’s the difference?” she said. “We’re refugees in Lebanon and we would be refugees in the West Bank. So we might as well stay here. I would not consider it my home. My homeland is the village where my parents were expelled.”
That sentiment was echoed among younger residents of the camp. Ruwaida Al-Daher, 47, who was also born in Bourj el Barajneh, said, “We ask for the right of return because he who has no country has no dignity. We live like dogs here. But I would still oppose going to the West Bank or Gaza. Why would I go back to any place but my hometown?”
Al-Daher said she would not want to become a Lebanese citizen if that were offered to her under any peace deal — and that Palestinian negotiators had no mandate to make concessions on her behalf.
“The right of return is a personal right. It’s sacred,” she said. “No one can cancel it or take it away.”
Hussam Assairy, a 22-year-old who works as a mechanic in the camp, said he would move to his grandparents’ hometown of Haifa if given the chance.
“I would rather live in the camp,” he said, “than to become a Lebanese citizen and give up my Palestinian nationality”. As for voting on any future deal, he said, “Every Palestinian should be able to vote. Palestine is not just for those living there. It’s ours too.”
“It’s ours more than there’s,” Sara Ghannoum, 20, interjected. “They’re able to live there, while we’re deprived of that.”
For the refugees at Bourj el Barajneh, returning to their hometowns is the only conceivable option.
“I am willing to walk to Palestine, to my country,” says 76-year-old Kamel Shraydeh. “I think about this day and night, because as the saying goes, ‘The one who walks in a strange land gets lost.'” All these decades later, Lebanon remains a foreign place he cannot call home.
Despite these dreams, many have resigned themselves to a life spent in the camps. Over breakfast at the elderly center, a group of women reflected on their decades in Bourj el Barajneh.
“We were born here and we grew old here,” said Asiya al-Ali, 65. “And we’re going to die here,” Sha’alan added with resignation.
Even so, throughout the camp, refugees cling to hope that someday their situation will change — and there are signs that they place that hope in their leadership, which has shown that it’s willing to compromise the right of return.
Filling them with hope are posters on the crumbling walls bearing the image of a smiling PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and the words: “Firm on Principles.”
Al-Awda Condemns Betrayal by
Unelected Palestinian leadership
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
(January 24, 2011) — Palestinians around the world and all their supporters watched in shock, but not total surprise as secret documents, “The Palestine Papers”, detailing carefully the years of so called peace negotiations were released by the news network Al-Jazeera during the last few days.
While Palestinians are struggling to win back their rights to their homes and lands, some in the unelected leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) were making offers to give away these rights.
The documents show that they were willing to give up the rights of seven million Palestinians living in forced exile to return to their homes and lands. They were willing to cede Palestinian control over most of East Jerusalem as well as nearly all the land on the West Bank on which the major Israeli settlements around Jerusalem were illegally built. Even the major Muslim holy site the al-Aqsa mosque, Harm al’Sharif, was open to “creative” solution.
Long before these revelations, Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, its members, supporters and people of conscience in the US and around the world were already deeply suspicious of the maneuvering against the Palestinian people that Saeb Erekat, Ahmad Qurei and others demonstrated during these secret negotiations over the past many years.
The Palestine Papers released by Al-Jazeerah confirm our people’s worst fears. What the PA officials committed is a grave breach of duty and a betrayal of their own people.
The chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and sitting PA president Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, whose term has long expired, bears full responsibility. We demand his immediate resignation or removal from office. A self-appointed puppet leadership beholden only to its US and Israeli occupation masters cannot be allowed to stand. It does not represent the aspirations of the Palestinian people, the vast majority of whom are living in forced exile.
Al-Awda reiterates that a just and lasting peace can only be achieved with the return of all Palestinians to their original homes, towns, and villages, with full restitution of all of their confiscated and destroyed property, and compensation.
The Palestinian people, regardless of their religious affiliation, are indigenous to Palestine. Therefore, they are entitled to live anywhere in their homeland Palestine which encompasses present-day ‘Israel’, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
No agreement, negotiations or parties which purport to trade away these rights or any other inalienable rights can have any legal basis and cannot bind or compel the Palestinian people to end the struggle for the fulfillment of all of their rights.
The current PA/PLO leadership has proven to be both untrustworthy and unworthy. We call on all peace-loving people around the world to condemn this unelected unrepresentative leadership. We also call on leaders who support the Palestinian cause to boycott this leadership until it is removed and replaced with legitimately elected representatives.
It’s time for the Palestinians to take charge of their own destiny and be represented by those who can bring justice to their cause and not and not serve the illegitimate racist aspirations of their enemies.
Until Return.
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC) is a not for profit tax-exempt educational and charitable 501(c)(3) organization as defined by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the United States of America.
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