Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace | Page 25

Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace More than five million Palestinian refugees are registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA. Most of them currently reside in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.lii Palestinians refugees from the 1967 War are not registered with UNRWA. Some Palestinians were internally displaced around 1948 within what is now Israel and made Israeli citizens, but Israeli law has not allowed them to return to their homes and lands. Other Palestinians, some of whom were already refugees, have been internally displaced within the occupied Palestinian territory since 1967. liii Table 2: Palestinians, Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) Millions, as of end 2014 Total Palestinians Refugees From 1949 From 1967 From other conflicts IDP in West Bank IDP within Israel 12.1 8.0 6.1 1.1 0.8 0.34 0.38 Source: http://www.unrwa.org/who-we-are. Accessed 19 September 2015. The parties involved have never reached agreement on any of the proposals for resolving the plight of Palestinian refugees, including compensation, repatriation to homes and lands in what is now Israel, and resettlement to third countries. All these options have been broached, but none has been adopted. Complicating the situation, the two United Nations agencies that support Palestinian refugees are overwhelmed and underfunded.liv Any durable peace agreement is likely to remain elusive as long as the historic claims and contemporary realities of Palestinian refugees remain unaddressed. Settlements Since 1967 Israelis have created numerous settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza) with 547,000 settlers as of the end of 2013.lv Israeli settlements are illegal under international humanitarian law (the Fourth Geneva Convention, article 49), which prohibits occupying powers from colonizing, exploiting natural resources or building infrastructure for their own use. There is a good reason for this prohibition, as the settlements endanger the lives of civilian populations, both the occupied and those settling in occupied territory. Many observers, including the study team and some Israeli officials, see the settlements as precluding the creation of a viable Palestinian state in what are now the OPT. The locations of the settlements and their infrastructure—highways, checkpoints, and the separation wall—thwart travel between Palestinian population centers in different parcels of Area A, described above. For instance, the Tent of Nations farm, owned by a Christian Palestinian family whose deed to the hilltop tract of land goes back over a century, has been surrounded by five settlements. It has been fighting in the courts for 12 years against the efforts of the 24