LONDON: Twenty years ago on Tuesday a terrible massacre was unfolding in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut. Some of us lost friends there, some relatives, but all Palestinians come together annually to commemorate those who died, as well as the thousands killed at the Tal al-Za’atar camp in 1976 and the many massacres that made us refugees in 1948 — such as Deir Yassin, Abu Shusha, Tantura, Eilaboun, and Husnaynia.

How many Palestinians became refugees, and where are they now? The story of the Palestinian refugees is not simply unknown, it is concealed.

Palestinians make up more than one-third of the world’s refugee population, and they are also one of the oldest of refugee groups. There are now around five million refugees. They form the majority of the Palestinian people (just over two-thirds) and include refugees from the 1948 war as well as the six-day war of 1967, which created another half million.

So there are several different generations and types of refugees, some scattered in the 59 UN-registered camps throughout the West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. However, most of the families who registered with the UN after 1948 (now 3.8 million) don’t even live in the camps, and many refugees never registered at all. Others live in the rest of the Arab world, from Baghdad to Cairo; some, more recently, in Europe and in America; many are Israeli citizens, living in unrecognised villages close to their original homes inside Israel.

The creation of the refugee crisis can largely be attributed to the dramatic events which live on in the Palestinian memory as the Nakbah (Catastrophe): the fragmentation and devastation of Palestinian society which attended the creation of Israel in 1948. The Palestinian villages in the Galilee and elsewhere were demolished by the authorities of the new state once the original inhabitants were driven out or fled during the fighting.

The members of this largely peasant society found themselves confined to refugee camps, where many remain. They were the main target for the expulsion policy of the emerging Israeli state: a policy consistently denied in Israeli history books, in spite of all evidence to the contrary (in particular, the archivally based work of the “new” Israeli historians, such as Professors Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe). The denial arises partly from the controversial nature of such ethnic cleansing. But it was also conditioned by fears of what a recognition of accountability for the expulsion would involve. Thus generations of Israelis have grown up not knowing that the Jewish majority in their state was based on the expulsion of another people. The Zionist myth was of pioneering forebears claiming “A Land Without People for a People Without Land”.

The international community at the time believed the UN had a special responsibility to Palestinian refugees, given that their predicament was a direct result of the UN decision to partition Palestine. But the UN resolution that dealt with the urgent refugee crisis, General Assembly resolution 194 of 1948, has yet to be implemented: Israel refuses to do so.

Every Palestinian refugee today knows this resolution, calling for the return to their homes of those who wish to do so, as well as compensation. They also remember the British colonial role in their tragedy, as one British parliamentary commission of inquiry which travelled to the region’s refugee camps recently discovered.

The UN was more successful in establishing an institution to tackle the humanitarian crisis of the refugees. In 1950 the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) began the operations which it still carries out to this day. But its mandate is limited: it cannot provide anything other than minimal relief; it cannot provide representation for the refugees; and it cannot offer the vital legal protection that the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offers to all other refugee populations.

No one thought the crisis would last for so long, that the refugees would not be allowed to return. The political organisation of the camps in the mid-60s — Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and others — emerged as a result of the despair at these failings. Although Palestinians every year heard the international community and Arab states insisting on the refugees’ right of return, nothing was done. Renowned internationally only for the 70s aeroplane hijackings, the Palestinian movement worked in the camps organising unions, creating hospitals and employment, and co-ordinating with other national liberation movements, such as Swapo and the ANC.

By 1970, the Palestinian political groups had merged into the Palestine Liberation Organisation, forming a government in exile and establishing diplomatic relations across the world. Its national council is made up of representatives from the parties, unions and different exile constituencies , as well as those inside the occupied territories. Much of the regional conflict of the 70s and 80s was the result not just of Israel’s attempt to crush this political infrastructure, but of the Arab states’ attempts to control the Palestinians’ political independence.

In different periods, the weight of the Palestinian national movement has rested more in the occupied territories or with the exile movement. But whatever the shifting balance, the Palestinians’ strength always resides inside the refugee camps themselves, be they in Gaza and the West Bank, south Lebanon or Amman. It is also where, should anyone desire to discover it, one finds the will of the Palestinian people.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.