The American Stance on the Palestinian Refugees

Asmahan Shareeh*

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The adoption by American President George Bush of the Israeli No-s, especially regarding the withdrawal to the 1967 borders, and refusal of the return of Palestinian refugees to areas within the Green Line, represents a historic change in US foreign policy; transforming Washington from a principal mediator in attempts to reach a settlement and a patron of the peace process into a political partner of Tel Aviv.

The US ex-Foreign Secretary, Henry Kissinger, claims that this American stance on the issue of Palestinian refugees “seeks to fill a gap between the Palestinian and Israeli positions; through pushing toward Sharon’s dropping of Israel’s official request for annulment of the right of return of Palestinian refugees, in return for an American promise to use US influence such that this right would be restricted to a return to the lands within the Palestinian state. In announcing the end of the right of return, America will also have contributed to the efforts to free the negotiations from their restraints. Where American policy also seeks to break the deadlock arising from the principle of right of return of Palestinian refugees. And as there has not been, and will not be (most probably) a Palestinian leader capable of abandoning the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the land they consider their homeland. And there will be no Israeli leader capable of requesting anything less than just such a submission, because a wholesale return of Palestinian refugees would be akin to a destruction of the Jewish state. Hence through implementing the spirit of the understanding shown by Bush to Sharon, it will be imperative to preserve this long-term relationship with the United States”.

It would be useful here to remind of the American strategy in regard to the Palestinian issue. We find that it stands on the basis, which Kissinger has promoted; that in essence: it is a class of intractable problem to which a solution is not to hand, and it seems that it will be several generations before reaching some sort of solution; either because of its old roots, or its sheer complexity, or the depth it is rooted in civilisation, which means it would be idiotic and rash that such a powerful state as the United States would burn its fingers in order to resolve such a type of problem, because it could never achieve a final solution whatever it did. Let alone the divisions this would provoke within America itself, and so it suffices to contain the flying sparks of this problem.

Hence the American plan in regard to the Palestinian issue is one of containment, and not solution, whilst affirming Israel as the premier ally. In this context, Bush’s latest promises to Sharon are a logical result of the reality of the American position on the issue of Palestine generally, and the Palestinian refugees specifically, as there are many clues and precursors to this position. We find that international efforts, led by the American administration, spent in finding a solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees, continue the attempts to supplant laws and international norms, and General Assembly Resolution No. 194 (11/12/1948), because of the Israeli request to preserve the demographics in which there is a Jewish majority, and complete control of the possessions of the Palestinian refugees.

The American view of how to resolve the problem of Palestinian refugees was clearly advertised through the book “The Palestinians from Refugees to Citizens”. When the US foreign affairs committee, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, appointed a study group, with the mission of studying the complex aspects of the Palestinian issue, and present recommendations in that regard, considering that the Oslo agreement was a new beginning in the direction of a comprehensive settlement. A professor from the University of Syracuse, Donna Y. Arzt, led the study group, which focussed its efforts on what it considered the most complicated and difficult issue in the Middle East conflict – the issue of the Palestinian refugees.

The outcome was a book titled; “The Palestinians from Refugees to Citizens”, published by the US foreign affairs committee in 1997. This book contained the American vision for a solution of the problem of Palestinian refugees, which can be summarised as follows:

“If we want an agreeable and lasting solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, then this solution must include granting citizenship to the Palestinian refugees in all parts of the Middle East. This conflict will not end, until the Palestinian refugees gain citizenship; as this means they will become no more than a bargaining chip in the agenda of both parties to the conflict. This must be “mutually” accepted by both the Israelis and the Palestinians.  This acceptance can only be achieved if the status of the Palestinian and his mentality as a refugee is changed, and he is absorbed within a permanent regional plan based on the return of a limited number of refugees to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the integration of the Palestinian refugees into the Syrian, Jordanian, and Lebanese societies, in which they live, and the resettlement of Palestinian families in other countries of the Middle East and Western states. Compensation must also be paid to the Palestinians who do not return to their lands for the possessions they have lost there, and they should also be allowed to carry dual nationality, that is the Palestinian nationality and that of the country in which they reside”.

This view of a solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees smacks of utter ignorance or to ignore by choice the reality of the Palestinian problem and the nature of the Palestinian psyche. Which is something that is understood by anyone educated on the Palestinian issue. The issue to the Palestinian refugees is not just that of an abode and citizenship, but a belonging rooted to the Palestinian land; it is an issue of a people and their homeland, not that of a group of refugees requiring “humanitarian” solutions.

In the historical background, the American stance towards the Palestinians, the native inhabitants of Palestine, was exactly in step with the Zionist position. For in 1939, the American president Franklin Roosevelt announced a plan to expel hundred of thousands of Palestinians and resettle them in Iraq. This was to be financed by a fund, a third paid for by the Jews, a third from the British government, and the remaining third from the American government.

On 16 February 1950, George McGee, the US foreign secretary at the time, in front of the senate foreign affairs committee, expressed his worry about the presence of the Palestinian refugees, and the future of American interests in the Middle East, in saying: “Losing this political point to the Soviet Union will be a major disaster, and on the basis of this background, our interest in the Palestinian refugees, partially built on humanitarian considerations, has additional imperative, so long as the refugee problem remains unsolved. Achieving a political settlement in Palestine will be delayed… and the refugees will continue to play a natural focus for communist elements and agitators, which we cannot ignore. The state of the Palestinians whose discontent is increasing, not only threatens the security of Israel or the Arab states, but the security of the entire Arab region.

Henceforth, American policy hinged on the following principles:

1. Abandoning the idea of return, except for a small number of refugees.
2. Integration of the vast majority of Palestinians, and restricting their issue to an economic one, tying it to economic and agricultural development of the Arab region.
3. Proposing joint projects carried out together by the Arab states and Israel… through financial aid packages from abroad.

1975 saw an important development in the issue, when the 30th meeting of the UN General Assembly, in 10 November of that year, issued Resolution No. 3376, through which a committee was formed, whose task was to prepare an programme for implementation, with the goal of empowering the Palestinian people to exercise their recognised rights, at the forefront the right of return, proposing that this take place in two phases:

The first called for the unconditional and immediate return of those who were displaced as a result of the June 1967 war.

The second applied to the return of those who had been forced to leave since the start of the conflict up to 1967, where the UN in cooperation with the relevant countries, and the PLO would take the necessary steps allowing them to return their homes and possessions, as for those who chose not to return, they would be paid a fair and just compensation.

This committee presented its report to the Security Council and it was discussed in June 1976, to which the majority agreed, except that America used its veto, as it has accustomed us in the majority of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and so the proposal failed. Its fate was no better in the four times it was again brought before the Security Council in the period 1976-80.

With the Madrid Conference, the refugees committee in the multilateral round began the first of its meetings in Ottawa (Canada). The Egyptian negotiator sought to establish a frame of reference and route map based on the articles of international law, the UN Charter, the International Declaration of Human Rights, and the two International Conventions related to civil and political rights, and relevant UN resolutions (Security Council Resolutions 242 and 383, and General Assembly Resolutions, especially Resolution 194 of 1948).

In terms of the American position, it was in line with the Israeli proposals, but sought to disguise this bias in symbolic frames. Of these was the adherence to the understanding that the refugees commission in the multilateral negotiations was only a place where humanitarian issues were treated, on the basis that political matters, and the study of return and compensation or resettlement was properly addressed in the bilateral talks. The American position also sought to drive the efforts of the committee towards the following points:

The need to establish a database of displaced persons because of the Arab Israeli conflict. Information about the Jews “expelled” from the Arab countries, and the Lebanese citizens suffering in the last years, the Syrian Druze, and other people displaced by the conflict.

A study of how the international and regional organisations could discharge their role in improving the living conditions of the refugees without affecting the final outcome of the lasting and comprehensive settlement.

It is apparent from these proposals that the United States has striven to muddy the waters on the issue of the Palestinian refugees while drowning it into a wider pool where there was no distinction between the victims of the recurring Israeli aggression, rather cramming the Jews from Arab countries into the formula with the object of bartering them for the Palestinian refugees, which was something whose threads became clear later, when Israel proposed the possessions of Arab Jews who migrated to Israel in return for the possessions of the refugees, so as to wriggle out of the question of compensation.

This was more or less the precursor to the consideration of the terms of reference for the issue of Palestinian refugees as restricted to Security Council Resolutions 242, 338. This was confirmed, when the United States abstained, for the first time since 1948, from voting in favour of Resolution 194, which signalled a significant change in American policy towards the issue of Palestinian refugees; this provoked anxiety in the Arab World, and Israeli contentment, and precipitated Palestinian worries over American intentions. In later developments, it was very clear, that the American measure of acceptability of any Palestinian leader was dependent on how far he was prepared to go in giving up the right of return (2).

In the aftermath of the second Gulf war – and the placing of sanctions on Iraq – news spread about the possibility that the United States was willing to strike a deal with Iraq, in which Iraq would resettle the Palestinian refugees in return for a lifting of the sanctions. With the entry of the peace process into dire straits in 2001 on the Palestinian pathway, there were renewed expectations of a (US, Israeli, French) project not opposed by the Vatican to resettle the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. In return Lebanon would receive generous financial aid. Although there was no confirmation or otherwise of this information on the part of the United States, this caused immediate and angry reaction from Lebanon, particularly in Shiite and Christian circles, which saw in the resettlement of the Palestinians there, an upset to the delicate ethnic balance of Lebanon. In this context, western news agencies talked of a US and Israeli plan to resettle the Palestinian refugees in the places where they presently reside. Leaked information talked of a letter sent by American president, Bill Clinton, to Lebanese premier Emile Lahoud, concentrating on the need to find a solution to the problem of refugees in Lebanon through resettlement, because the area of Palestinian self-government was not big enough to absorb all the Palestinians of the Diaspora.

The letter was said to contain financial enticements for allowing the resettlement deal to be struck, where Clinton used signals that Washington, the World Bank, Britain, and some Gulf states would help pay off Lebanon’s piling debts. The alleged letter came at the time of news regarding an American-French project being prepared in utmost secrecy, which aimed to establish residential concentrations in the area of Al-Tuffah district and East of Sidon sufficient for all the Palestinians.

In 1953 and up to 1955, there was a famous project, known as the Johnson Plan, when the Americans were trying to find avenues of work for 110 thousand Palestinians in the Jordan Rift valley, through water projects, which they considered would lead to their settlement and create productive projects for them, so cancelling their status as Palestinians, and so that they would become citizens of these areas. This project was – of course - rejected by the Palestinians at the time, and was dropped.

There was - also – a project known as Eisenhower’s Plan, and because of it, a massive problem arose which sent tremors throughout the entire region. Whether manifested by the events in Jordan, Iraq, or Lebanon in 1957-58, but there was also the element of Palestinian rejection of the Eisenhower Plan, especially the popular rejection, which was particularly potent. So what seemed to be huge international resolutions, took the form of resettlement projects after Palestine was occupied, its people expelled as refugees and forgotten, at a time when there was no Palestinian national movement, and the West looked for opportunities to settle the refugees, but only for these to be resisted by the Palestinian people, and rejected.

The famous Kissinger Plan that called for resettlement in Lebanon, and the transfer – perhaps – of some Lebanese to outside Lebanon.

Reagan inaugurated his policy on the Middle East during a Q & A session in the first press conference after his election, when he answered to the question over the “illegality” of settlements in the occupied territories, by responding that in his opinion settlement was “not illegal”.

The principal preconditions of the Madrid conference were those of Yitzhak Shamir: in terms of distancing the UN, marginalising the role of the two patrons, and ratifying direct bilateral negotiation, discounting the PLO as non grata, and not allowing independent representation of the Palestinians, the simultaneity of negotiations on multiple fronts, and turning the refugee issue over to a multilateral committee thus diluting “Israel’s” responsibility.

In summary, international efforts led by the American administration to find a solution to the refugee problem, still continue to supersede laws and international norms, and General Assembly resolution 194 (11/12/1948), fundamentally because of the Israeli request to preserve Jewish demographic superiority and the complete control over the possessions of the Palestinian refugees.

* The Women’s Committee in Support of the Palestinian Right of Return – Jermana Camp

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