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Fact Sheet: Palestinian Refugees & The Right of Return Under International Law
Palestinian refugees are Palestinians who were expelled from their homes and homeland by Israel during and after the state’s establishment in 1948.
Under international law, all refugees have a right to return to
areas from which they have fled or were forced, to receive compensation
for damages, and to either regain their properties or receive
compensation and support for voluntary resettlement. This right derives
from a number of sources, including customary international law, international humanitarian law governing rights of civilians during war, andhuman rights law. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 13(2) that "[e]veryone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and return to his own country."
In December 1948, following Israel's establishment based on the ethnic cleansing of approximately 750,000 Palestinians, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194, which states:
"refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date,
and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing
not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under
principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the
Governments or authorities responsible."
The right of return for Palestinian refugees has been affirmed repeatedly by the UN General Assembly, including through Resolution 3236, which "Reaffirms also the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return."
The Palestinian right of return has also been recognized by human rights organizations like Amnesty International, which issued a policy statement on the subject in 2001. It concluded:
“Amnesty International calls for Palestinians who fled or were
expelled from Israel, the West Bank or Gaza Strip, along with those of
their descendants who have maintained genuine links with the area, to be able to exercise their right to return.”
According to a statement issued by Human Rights Watch in 2000:
“HRW urges Israel to recognize the right to return for those Palestinians, and their descendants,
who fled from territory that is now within the State of Israel, and who
have maintained appropriate links with that territory. This is a right
that persists even when sovereignty over the territory is contested or has changed hands.”
The right of refugees to return to homes and lands they were expelled from is an individual right and cannot be unilaterally abrogated by third parties.
- An acrylic on canvas painting by Palestinian artist Irina Naji, named
Dream, displayed at an art exhibition in the West Bank city of Ramallah (2014 photo credit :AP/Nasser Nasser)
This piece by Egyptian artist Dai Abbas evokes symbols of solidarity
with Palestine, featuring a watermelon held up by a community of people.Dai Abbas
The keffiyeh explained: How this scarf became a Palestinian national symbol
By Zoe Sottile, CNN
Palestinians seen at a polling station in the West Bank town of Hebron in 2006.
Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images
2023 Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, three Palestinian college students were shot in Vermont, two of them while wearing keffiyehs, in a crime their families have said was “fueled by hate.”
Although keffiyehs are worn across the Middle East, in
recent decades they have come to be identified in particular as a symbol
of Palestinian identity and resistance. At pro-Palestinian protests
across the world amid the Israel-Hamas war, demonstrators have sported
the scarves around their necks or used them to cover their faces.
Palestinians pick olives during a ceremony marking the start of the
olive harvesting season last year in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza
Strip [File: Said Khatib/AFP]
‘Our hearts burn’: Gaza’s olive farmers say Israel war destroys harvest
Since the start of the Israeli offensive on October 7, farmers have been unable to access their farmland and crops.
The mother of two has worked as a farmer with her parents since her
childhood in the town of Abasan al-Kabira in southern Gaza, close to the
border with Israel. “My land has olive trees and greenhouses planted
with tomatoes and livestock,” she says.
She can no longer tend to those trees or tomatoes: The 40-year-old
was displaced with her family and is living in a United Nations-run
school in the centre of Khan Younis due to near-continuous Israeli
bombing since October 7.
“I have no idea what state they are in. I just want to reach my land to see what has become of it,” she says.
It’s a sentiment echoed by farmers across Gaza.
The months of October and November, when olives are harvested,
hold special significance for Palestinians, who consider the harvest a
national occasion that celebrates their relationship and connection with
the land.
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The olive tree has deep historical and cultural roots in Palestine, and
its branches have been associated with peace and prosperity for
centuries.
The art of Palestinian embroidery, or tatreez, is a decorative needle
and thread practice passed down through generations of Palestinian
women.
The art of embroidery in Palestine, practices, skills, knowledge and rituals
Inscribed in 2021 (16.COM) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
The art of traditional embroidery is widespread in
Palestine. Originally made and worn in rural areas, the practice is now
common in all of Palestine and among members of the diaspora. Women’s
village clothing usually consists of a long dress, trousers, a jacket, a
headdress and a veil. Each of these garments is embroidered with a
variety of symbols including birds, trees and flowers. The choice of
colours and designs indicates the woman’s regional identity and marital
and economic status. On the main garment, the loose-fitting dress called
a thob, the chest, sleeves and cuffs are covered with embroidery.
Embroidered, vertical panels run down the dress from the waist. The
embroidery is sewn with silk thread on wool, linen or cotton. Embroidery
is a social and intergenerational practice, as women gather in each
other’s homes to practise embroidery and sewing, often with their
daughters. Many women embroider as a hobby, and some produce and sell
embroidered pieces to supplement their family’s income, either on their
own or in collaboration with other women. These groups gather in each
other’s homes or in community centres, where they may also market their
work. The practice is transmitted from mother to daughter and through
formal training courses.
The Tatreez Institute (TI), also known as Tatreez & Tea, was founded by Wafa Ghnaim in 2016 to preserve, document, and research Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Jordanian embroidery, dress, and history in the United States.
Committed to safeguarding intangible cultural heritage and preventing cultural erasure, the TI stewards a growing collection of over 180 traditional dresses and headdresses, rescued from dumpsters, estates, households, and vintage shops worldwide.
Flag of Palestine, with a watermelon replacing the red triangleThis Palestine Watermelon flag evokes the spirit of joyful resistance
and steadfastness in the face of Israeli efforts to deny, thwart and
criminalize the national and political aspirations of the Palestinian
people. Fhartha
The flag of Palestine, colored in the Pan-Arab colors of red, green, white and black, had been banned in Israel in certain situations, leading to the locally-grown and similarly-colored watermelon taking its place in Palestinian
iconography as an alternative for decades. Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel banned the display of the Palestinian flag and its colors in the occupied Gaza Strip and the Wast Bank with the Israeli Army arresting anyone who displayed it.
In 1980, the IDF shut down an art gallery in Ramallah.
According to the exhibit organizer the IDF explained that the rules
forbade Palestinians from displaying red, green, black and white, and
watermelon is an example of art that violated the Israeli army's rules.... READ MORE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermelon_as_a_Palestinian_symbol
NPR: How watermelon imagery, a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians, spread around the world
Demonstrators shout slogans and hold up an image of
Handala, a symbol of Palestinian struggle, on Jan. 27 during a protest
in Madrid in support of Palestinians and to demand a cease-fire in the
Israel-Hamas war. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images
Who is Handala, the barefoot, spiky-haired boy who symbolizes Palestinian resistance?
RAMALLAH, West Bank — His hair is like a hedgehog, his feet are bare,
his clothes are rags and his back is to the world always. His name is
Handala.
A character created by Palestinian newspaper cartoonist Naji al-Ali in 1969 — two years after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — the boy known as Handala is a symbol of the Palestinian struggle and resistance to occupation to this day.
Who is Handala?
Handala is forever 10 years
old — the age that Ali was when his family was forced to move during the
mass displacement of Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was
formed. Palestinians and their supporters refer to that displacement as
the Nakba, or Arabic for "catastrophe."
Ali's refugee boy character shares his name with a resilient, bitter plant that grows in the Middle East called handal. It has deep roots and will always grow back even if it's weeded out.
"This character represents insurgency, refusal and struggle," says Egyptian columnist Nadi Hafez of al-Qabas newspaper,
where Ali worked for a long time. "And it satirizes the politics around
the Palestinian cause, or the politics of the Arab world, or indeed
international politics when it comes to the Palestinian cause."
Handala didn't turn his back to the reader until 1973, after the Yom
Kippur War, when a coalition of Arab countries led by Egypt and Syria
fought Israel in October of that year. At the time, there was a push by
countries including the U.S. for a settlement of the conflict. By
turning Handala's back to the world, Ali was expressing his rejection of
solutions from foreign nations imposed on Palestinians.... READ MORE https://www.npr.org/2024/02/06/1228097975/handala-naji-al-ali-cartoon-palestinian-symbol
Key- Universal Declaration of Human Rights & every refugee's inalienable right of return to original homes & lands
Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish was born in al-Birwa in Galilee, a
village that was occupied and later razed by the Israeli army. Because
they had missed the official Israeli census, Darwish and his family were
considered “internal refugees” or “present-absent aliens.” Darwish
lived for many years in exile in Beirut and Paris. He is the author of
over 30 books of poetry and eight books of prose, and earned the Lannan
Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation, the Lenin Peace
Prize, and the Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres Medal from France.
In the 1960s Darwish was imprisoned for reciting poetry and traveling
between villages without a permit. Considered a “resistance poet,” he
was placed under house arrest when his poem “Identity Card” was turned
into a protest song. After spending a year at a university of Moscow in
1970, Darwish worked at the newspaper Al-Ahram in Cairo. He subsequently lived in Beirut, where he edited the journal Palestinian Affairs from 1973 to 1982. In 1981 he founded and edited the journal Al-Karmel.
Darwish served from 1987 to 1993 on the executive committee of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization. In 1996 he was permitted to return
from exile to visit friends and family in Israel and Palestine.
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye commented on the poems in Unfortunately It Was Paradise:
“[T]he style here is quintessential Darwish—lyrical, imagistic,
plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant—and never anything
less than free—what he would dream for all his people.”
Mahmoud Darwish died in 2008 in Houston, Texas.
The Land and Love by Palestinian Ismail Shammout 1931-2006
Spring in Palestine by Ismail Shammout 1931-2006
Ismail Shammout was born in 1930 in Lydda –
Palestine. During the Nakba of 1948, he and his family were forced out
of their home during the assault of Jewish Zionist militant groups on
their town. A long march on foot allowed them to settle in the refugee
camps of Khan Younis in Gaza where he lived under very harsh conditions.
In 1950 he managed to travel to Cairo to study arts from where he later
earned a scholarship to study fine arts at the Accademia di Belle Arti
in Rome. After he finished his studies, he moved to Beirut in 1959 where
he married his fellow arts student from Cairo, the Palestinian artist
Tamim El-Akhal (born 1935). Both lived and worked in Beirut until 1983
then moved to Kuwait, then to Germany and finally to Amman in 1994.
Shammout died on July 3 rd 2006.
Shammout, who himself experienced expulsion and
refuge and accompanied later the birth of the Palestinian Revolution in
the 1960s, became since the very early days of his professional live
along with his partner Tamam El-Akhal the “artistic face” of the
Palestinian Freedom Struggle. He has been long recognized as Palestine’s
leading modernist painter. His experience of dispossession and the
memories of beloved Palestine, the dreams of return as well as the
dignity and pride of his people formed the soul of his entire art. The
simplicity of the themes and his outstanding artistic skills let his
works enjoy a widely spread popularity which significantly shaped modern
Palestinian Art. https://ismail-shammout.com/
Sliman Mansour is one of the most distinguished and renowned artists
in Palestine. His style embodies steadfastness in the face of a
relentless military occupation. His work — which has come to symbolize
the Palestinian national identity — has inspired generations of
Palestinians and international artists and activists alike.
Born
in 1947, Mansour spent his childhood around the verdant hills and fields
of Birzeit — where he was born — and later his adolescence in Bethlehem
and Jerusalem. These experiences left a significant mark on his work,
heightening a sense of gradual loss in Palestine, especially after the
occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem in 1967. His early experiences
also presented him with the symbols and images he would later use to
preserve and highlight Palestinian identity.
Using symbols derived
from Palestinian life, culture, history, and tradition, Mansour
uniquely illustrates Palestinians’ resolve and connection with their
land. His pieces epitomize art as a form of resistance. With orange
trees, he represents land lost in the Nakba of 1948. With olive trees,
he represents land occupied in 1967. With women wearing traditional
embroidered dresses, he represents Palestinian land and the Palestinian
revolution. With the landscape of Palestine and its stone terraces, he
represents the mark of Palestinian farmers on the land. With images of
Jerusalem and the glistening Dome of the Rock, he represents the
Palestinian homeland and the dream of return.
Sliman Mansour’s art
deftly reflects the hopes and realities of a people living under
occupation for the better part of a century. Since the early 1970s, he
has translated his experiences of isolation, displacement, community,
and rootedness using imagery and symbols that have contributed to
developing an iconography of the Palestinian struggle. Paintings such as
“Jamal al-Mahamel” (Camel of Hardships or Camel of Burdens) — with its
iconic porter whose heavy and precious load is the Jerusalem that all
Palestinians yearn for — were made into posters, cards, and stickers.
Such images were popularized in direct defiance of Israeli military
authorities, who frequently confiscated artwork and posters and closed
exhibitions and galleries. https://slimanmansour.com/about-the-artist-sliman-mansour/
An architectural marvel and a sacred Islamic site, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem signifies the religious and historical continuity of the
Palestinian identity in the face of shifting global landscapes.
Palestinian cuisineis rich and diverse, featuring dishes like musakhan, maqluba, falafel, hummus, and tabouli, all reflecting a blend of local ingredients, regional traditions, and cultural influences.
Olive oil, herbs, and spices like sumac and za'atar are staples in Palestinian cooking
The key is a poignant symbol of the right of return for Palestinian
refugees. It represents the homes left behind during the Nakba, and the
enduring hope of return to their ancestral homes and villages.
The testimony of Emad Moussa's grandmother Ghefreh is living proof of
Palestinian sumud [photo credit: Lucie Wimetz/TNA/Getty Images]
“History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce.”
Karl Marx coined the phrase to denote the
cyclical nature of history. When tragedies reoccur in the same context
they become a farcical spectacle, pointing not only to the cynical human
nature but also the poor imitation of past events.
My 94-year-old Palestinian grandmother,
Ghefreh, does not know Karl Marx, and I doubt she cares about
philosophy. But she understands that tragedies do recur and that history
can “often rhyme" — to quote Mark Twain.
"The tent
turned into a house in a refugee camp. The refugee camp turned into a
community, and that community into a whole society"
As a young Palestinian woman in 1948, my grandmother was expelled from her village and ended up as a refugee in Gaza. 75 years later, Ghefreh was displaced again to Rafah and then Nuseirat, only a few kilometres from her home in Gaza City.
The resemblance between two worlds
separated by seven decades has blurred and confused her timeline. Her
perception of reality has changed tragically, farcically even.
The loss of a home(land)
Ghefreh was born in a village called al-Sawafir
in the early 1930s. The village was based on the ancient Roman
name Shaffir, and it was located only a few kilometres from Ashdod, a
Palestinian city built upon the ancient Canaanite urban settlement with
the same name.
Al-Sawafir was ethnically cleansed early in 1948 during Operation Barak, a Haganah-led onslaught and part of Ben-Gurion’s Plan Dalet, the Zionist master plan to conquer all of Palestine
In her memories,
the hardships of being a villager were irrelevant, what resonated was
al-Sawafir’s olive trees, the affluent citrus orchards, and the
“coherent community that made it into a paradise.”
“A time of peaceful existence, until the European Jews came”, she would say with a sigh.
“We had no guns to defend ourselves. The
British — before leaving Palestine — made sure of that while pouring
weapons into the Jewish militias’ lap.”
I heard this from my grandfather, on the
other side of the family, and every one of his generation in our refugee
camp. It was not a sense of loss alone, but also betrayal.
My grandmother would add, “My father had a
rusty Ottoman pistol that he fired at wedding celebrations. Mother
would hide it in her clothes when the Brits came from the nearby camp in the village of Julis.”
From the direction of Julis — a village
allegedly named after Julius Caesar — the Haganah attacked al-Sawafir.
Ghefreh and her family ran from one village to another, joining the
masses of refugees in their search for safety. Behind them, the
advancing Jewish militias ran amok, destroying, ransacking, and
massacring Palestinian communities in the region.
She arrived at al-Majdal — the ancient
Canaanite town, Asqalan, Hebrewised to Ashkelon — a few days later,
holding but the key to her house and some food.
The Haganah besieged and bombed al-Majdal
for six months, forcing the ill-equipped and outnumbered Egyptian troops
who fortified there to retreat to the Gaza District. The masses of
refugees from nearby villages, alongside al-Majdal’s 11,000 residents, ended up in Gaza as refugees.
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