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Sept. 28, 2012
Status issues resurface
Jewish refugee recognition is back on the agenda.
MICHAEL FRIEDSON THE MEDIA LINE
A conference in Jerusalem held Sept. 9 and 10 has restarted a conversation about the rights of 850,000 Jewish refugees forced from Arab countries between 1948 and 1951 who are certified as refugees by the United Nations.
Organized by the Israeli government and World Jewish Congress (WJC), the recent gathering signaled an effort that is being seen as broaching a new issue by some and derided by others for adding fuel to a process already hostile to the point of stagnation. Organizers insist that the key component of the campaign, however, is not meant to insert another non-starter for Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to wrangle over. Instead, it’s to discuss an issue of redress that is well established by international law and backed by a resolution of the United States Congress. The hope is that both sides will be given equal consideration when discussing issues related to the region’s refugees.
Dan Diker, secretary general of WJC, explained the approach. “It’s time for the Jewish people to assert rights-based diplomacy; to learn from the Arabs and Palestinians who, for the past 25 years, we’ve helped to assert their rights.” Rather than being seen as a new matter, Diker said that the conversation around Jewish refugees from Arab lands should more correctly be viewed as “dusting-off the cobwebs, greasing the wheels and re-energizing a 64-year-old issue,” one which remains unresolved.
Israel Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon opened the conference with Diker and Dr. Lea Nass, Israel’s deputy minister for senior citizens, reviewing what has been and is being done around the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Other speakers included chairperson of the International Council of Jewish Parliamentarians and Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein, international legal scholar Prof. Ruth Lapidoth, British MP Robert Halfon, deputy minister MK Gila Gamliel, chairman of WJC-Israel and MK Shai Hermesh, chairman of Israel’s National Student Union Itzik Shmuli and others.
Prof. Irwin Cotler, a human rights attorney, member of the Canadian Parliament, and former justice minister and attorney general of Canada, explained at the conference that Arab nations that rejected the 1947 UN resolution partitioning Palestine into Arab and Jewish states ended up launching two wars of aggression: one against the nascent state of Israel and the other against their own Jewish nationals. These governments effectively helped to create two, not one, set of refugees: Palestinians and Jews from Arab lands. Referring to it as “double rejectionism” – Arab rejection of the Jewish state and of their own Jewish citizens – Cotler explained that the purpose of this new restarted campaign is to “rectify historic injustice.”
As to why the Palestinian refugee issue has resonated with the global public and the Jewish refugee issue has not, conference speakers suggested it was because Jews were successfully absorbed by the state of Israel and, therefore, less visible, while Palestinian refugees were kept stateless in camps inside the host nations, for the most part. All of the nations that took in Palestinian refugees, with the exception of Jordan, denied basic rights to the refugees, who many claim have been used as political fodder instead of being afforded the treatment to which a refugee population is entitled.
Beyond educating the public about the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, the campaign has the goal of instituting a legal requirement that all references to refugees in the area include both Palestinians and Jews. A 2008 resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives serves as a cornerstone of the legal and political effort the attendees at this conference seek to energize.
H. Res. 185, sponsored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), asserts that “the United States government supports the position that, as an integral part of any comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace, the issue of refugees from the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf must be resolved in a manner that includes recognition of the legitimate rights of and losses incurred by all refugees displaced from Arab countries, including Jews, Christians and other groups.”
Nevertheless, few, if any, references to Jewish refugees from Arab lands have been asserted in the face of the virtually automatic demand from Palestinian negotiators on the subject, whether in the context of efforts by the Quartet (international sponsors of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, including the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia) or between American diplomats and the two parties. This, despite the suggestion of president Bill Clinton during the course of the 2000 Camp David negotiations that when an agreement is reached, a fund should be created to compensate both Arab and Jewish refugees.
Nadler sounded a cynically optimistic note when he told the gathering that there has been “hostile reaction” to the campaign by Arab media, which, according to the congressman, is a “positive” step. “They recognized it,” he said. “That’s good.”
When asked whether the U.S. administration’s full support for the issue was in the cards, Nadler suggested that, although little time remains in the current Congress, he believes that greater support will be forthcoming when his bill is re-submitted in the next session.
The next step in the campaign is taking place in New York, where the United Nations is meeting in session. The plan is to remind UN delegates of the determination by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 1957 that, “Jews fleeing from Arab countries were refugees within the mandate of the UNHCR.” As well, delegates will be reminded that the UN act most often cited by the pro-Palestinian community, Security Council Resolution 242, calls for a “just settlement of the refugee problem” absent any distinction between Arab and Jewish refugees.
As Diker explained, it’s time to reverse the “lack of discourse in the international community.”
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