Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. Coming up in this episode, I speak with Dr. Mesa Almustafa about the urgent need to include Palestinians in the international refugee protection regime. The Gaza Strip is now a graveyard for thousands of children.
Speaker: UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, says that more children have now been killed in Gaza than in all other conflicts since 2019. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Gaza's population are refugees, they are not included in the United Nations International Refugee Protection regime.
Speaker: My guest today is Dr. Mesa Almustafa, lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on the forcibly displaced and the politics of marginalization that govern their lives in the Middle East and in diaspora. Thanks very much for joining me today, Mesa.
Speaker: Palestinian refugees around the world. Their statelessness is one of the longest refugee crises around the world and it goes back to the year 1948 when more than 750 ,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced outside their homeland in Palestine as the result of establishing the State of Israel.
Speaker: Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker: This was around 70 % of the total Palestinian population at the time. So according to the United Nation Relief and Working Agency for Palestinian Refugees, ANOVA, Palestinian refugees are people who normal place of residence between the 1946 and May
Speaker: 1948 was Palestine and who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict. So today there are more than 5 million Palestinian refugees eligible to receive Anurwa services and one third of them live in refugee camps in the areas of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Speaker: including area of East Jerusalem. So many of those Palestinian refugees who fled their wars in 1948 were actually subject to another wave of displacement in 1967 after the Arab -Israel wars, which is known in Arabic as al -Nexa, which ended by having Israel occupying the areas of West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, in addition to some parts of Syria and Egypt.
Speaker: So this is a very brief historical background around the areas they came from and why they were forcefully displaced in the first place. Now, Palestinians were excluded from the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Why was that? To answer this question, I need to go back and revisit the history of the United Nation intervention in the Palestinian statelessness.
Speaker: So the first United Nation involvement in the Palestinian refugee crisis came through the appointment of Kant Perdott as the United Nation mediator by the end of May 1948.
Speaker: His mission report called for the return of Palestinian refugees. The recommendations were rejected by Israelis, and actually he was himself assassinated by a Jewish militia in September 1948. By late December 1948, the United Nations issued Resolution 194, in which it recognizes some of the
Speaker: recommendations and called for peaceful return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and compensation for those who did not want to return. So this resolution has been accepted by the United Nations and it's actually very clear about the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Speaker: And in fact, after that, the United Nations subjected the Palestinian refugees to a separate United Nations regime of assistance and relief that was mainly presented by the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East, which we know as ANURWA.
Speaker: But the problem with the Anurwa, that its mandate was mainly operational. It did not talk about providing protection for Palestinian refugees. But because they were subjected to the mandate of Anurwa, when the Convention of Status of Refugees and then the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR were established, the Palestinian refugees were excluded from the convention and from mandate
Speaker: due to the assumption that they were already subjected to another United Nations mandate, which was the honor war. But those who decided about this exclusion neglected the fact that honor war had no mandate of protection and left the Palestinians subjected to an operational mandate of aid and humanitarian assistance, whereas their protection was left to be handled
Speaker: by the host governments that they received those Palestinian refugees. And the problem is that most of these governments in the neighboring countries were not signatories of the convention about the protection of refugees, which meant that Palestinian refugees, since the beginning of their statelessness, were never protected or included in the protection regime of refugees around the world.
Speaker: So what are the consequences for Palestinians that they're covered by this different body and they're not covered by the UNHCR? What are the consequences in their day to day lives? By being subjected to the Anurwa, they were able to receive emergency assistance in the area where Anurwa is operating, which is Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. But the protection of their human rights, dignity,
Speaker: and protection as refugees were left to those governments where they've been received. So the lack of protection is number one. Number two, which is very important, they miss the work of the international agency that is the only agency that is able to facilitate a durable solution for their statelessness, which is the UNHCR. And by missing the work of the UNHCR,
Speaker: towards adorable solution for them, the right of return, Palestinian refugees had no agency that can represent them when we talk about finding adorable solution and ending their statelessness. Moving up to the present day, what has Israel said about its intentions for the people in Gaza who survive the bombardment?
Speaker: Wow. What we are witnessing at the moment and what the Israeli government is doing at the moment is continuing a big plan of ethnic cleansing of Palestinian refugees and Palestinians who are living in Gaza. So those who will be lucky to survive the continuous bombardment of Gaza Strip will be subject to cut off
Speaker: water, food, fuel, no access to health care services, and they've been subjected to forced displacement because their living conditions in the area they used to live in, Gaza, became impossible. So the Israeli officials did not actually hide their plans
Speaker: to get rid of those who will survive the bombardment that we heard in the latest weeks, many calls from different Israeli officials, and some of them are already ministers in the current Israeli government. Many of them are talking about creating a new Nakba, which is the force displacement of 1948, creating
Speaker: Grazanekba, 2023. Others talked about making sure that the Israeli army will make Gaza flat, empty of its inhabitants. And things reached the stage where another minister talked about using a nuclear weapon against Gaza, new Gaza, totally, and get rid of all these Palestinians. So we are just talking about a genocidal ethnic cleansing process taken place by
Speaker: in Gaza performed by the Israeli army. If Palestinians are once again displaced, is there any body to speak up for what happens to them? That's a major problem and the Palestinian refugees in Gaza, if they are going to be forcibly displaced outside Gaza Strip
Speaker: they will have a very problematic legal situation because they will be refugees who've been falsely displaced from an occupied territory. And actually the forces that pushed them outside this territory are the occupiers themselves, which is Israel. So if they are forced to go outside Gaza Strip, they will have no way to be represented in any international future efforts for
Speaker: finding a durable solution for them. This is on one hand. On the second hand, those countries who are subject to a different kind of pressure by the Israelis and Americans to receive those potential forcefully displaced refugees, which are Egypt and Jordan, are clearly repeating their rejection to receive those refugees.
Speaker: Egypt is using security concerns. Jordan is talking about their concerns that what will happen for people from Gaza will happen for people in West Bank, which will be a huge issue for them. So we will end up having a new population of forcefully displaced people who are already refugees with no chance for them to be represented and will have also this legal
Speaker: dilemma that they've been pushed outside an occupied territory rather than their original community. So it's going to be so complicated and so difficult. And in the absence of the UNHCR, it will be so difficult for the international community to facilitate or coordinate any genuine attempt to end the displacement of those refugees. And that will actually take us to another level of vulnerability for those people.
Speaker: Is there pressure worldwide or coming from the UN to say that Palestinians should be brought under the protection of the UNHCR? Not that much because of their statelessness. So from your point of view and from your research, then that's the best possible next step. Yes, with the consideration that the Palestinian refugees will have the chance to
Speaker: have the say about the best durable solution for their statelessness, which is the right of return.
Speaker: Thank you so much for speaking with me today, Mesa. Thank you for having me. I've been speaking with Dr. Mesa Al -Mustafa, lecturer at the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. You can read her November 1st article, Gaza's Graveyard for Children, why Palestinians must be included in the international refugee protection regime in the conversation.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
