Izzat Rishak of Hamas told the Arab paper Filistin, “The Palestinian refugees have the right to return to the houses from which they were expelled in 1948... As long as there is one Palestinian refugee who has not returned to his village, the resistance will continue.”
Zakariya El-Ara of the Palestinian Authority expressed similar sentiments. The PA believes refugees should be resettled in the villages they lived in prior to 1948, he said. The refugee problem is at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict, he stated.
An estimated 10 million Arabs claim descent from a resident of pre-state Israel. The Jewish population of Israel is approximately 5.73 million.
When Israel declared independence in 1948, surrounding Arab countries launched an attack in an attempt to obliterate the fledgling Jewish state. An estimated 700,000 Arab residents of what is now Israel fled during the fighting, while many Jews fled from their homes in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, areas which were overrun by Egypt and Jordan.
Over the next several years, an estimated one million Jewish refugees fled to Israel from Arab Muslim countries. While the Jewish refugees were resettled in Israel, Arabs who fled prestate Israel were not granted citizenship in the Arab countries to which they fled, but instead were forced to live in camps, and in some cases were not permitted to work or own property.
The United Nations has taken responsibility for Arabs who fled Israel and for their descendents. Unlike refugees from all other parts of the world, Arabs who fled Israel pass along their UN refugee status to children, grandchildren, and all subsequent generations born outside Israel. In addition, the UN considered Arabs to be “Palestinian refugees” if they resided in pre-state Israel for even two years prior to fleeing the country.
The UN has established a special agency, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), to deal specifically with Arabs descended from those who fled Israel, while all other refugees worldwide are helped via the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced Friday that the US will donate $60 million to UNRWA for the upcoming year. The US gave $267 million to UNRWA in 2009, and is expected to give a total of at least $225 million in 2010.
From AFP:
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) chief Antonio Guterres announced on Friday the body has referred 100,000 Iraqi refugees in the Middle East for resettlement in third countries since 2007."100,000 submissions of Iraqi refugees is a tremendous achievement. Many have been living in limbo for years," he said at the start of a three-day visit to Syria, which says it hosts one million refugees, mostly from Iraq.Of the 100,000 submissions of Iraqi refugees over the past three years, 52,173 people left the Middle East up to May 2010, the UNHCR said in a statement. In 2007, 3,500 Iraqis departed for third countries from the region."Lengthy security checks and the time it has taken for state processing mechanisms to be established have led to considerable delays in the departure of refugees to their new homes," it said.Guterres called on countries "to facilitate the speedy departure of refugees they have accepted for resettlement."The acceptance rate by resettlement countries of UNHCR?s referrals now stands at 80 percent, of which nearly 76 percent have been accepted by the United States, the UNHCR said.The UN agency said that around 1.8 million Iraqis are currently seeking refuge in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey.
Refugees complained during lunch with the High Commissioner of extremely harsh conditions in the desert. Al Hassakeh has suffered from a drought during the past four years. In addition to the shortage of water, refugees said they could not sleep at night for fear of being bitten by deadly scorpions and poisonous snakes.
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