Photos: On al-Nakba, using art to mourn the past” and present

Al-Nakba, Arabic for “The Catastrophe,” refers to the violent destruction of much of Palestinian society in 1948 that turned more than half of the Palestinian Arab population into refugees and established a Jewish demographic majority in the territory of the State of Israel declared on May 14, 1948.

The same day celebrated by Israelis as their founding national holiday is marked by Palestinians as a day of remembrance of the more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children driven from their homes or who fled in fear of their lives.

In December 1949, the international community established the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Its mission was to provide temporary housing, jobs and public works projects for Palestinians who were either internally displaced or sought refuge in neighboring states.  

U.N.-administered camps were never intended to serve as a long-term solution to the refugee crisis. The United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 passed Resolution 194, which decreed that “the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors 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.” That resolution, reaffirmed every year since its adoption, has never been implemented.

Palestinian refugees also anticipated a swift return. Upon fleeing, many refugees had locked their doors and taken their house keys with them — intending to return once the violence had ceased. But those homes were confiscated by the Israeli state, and their owners forbidden from returning to reclaim their property.

Sixty-six years on, Palestinian refugees still cling to their keys as a declaration of their intent to return, the keys passed from generation to generation as a symbolic patrimony.

Today, negotiations with Israel are conducted by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose roots lie in the armed Fedayeen units formed among the refugees in the 1950s. Palestinian armed groups – a number of which resorted to attacks on Israeli civilians – and the armies of neighboring Arab states have proven to be no match for Israel’s vastly superior, U.S.-equipped military.

In 1967, Israel successfully thwarted a coordinated attack by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, and in the process took control of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. That left Palestinian refugee populations in those areas living under Israeli occupation.

Two generations of Palestinians have been born into life under occupation, under the sovereign rule of a state of which they are not citizens. The Israeli military restricts movement, access to natural resources, including land and water; and conducts raids and arrests even in areas ostensibly under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Although Gaza is, today, under the control of the Palestinian Hamas movement, Israel retains sovereign control over its borders, airspace and access to resources – and has, since 2007, imposed an economic siege on the territory with the cooperation of Egypt. Close to two thirds of the population of Gaza are registered refugees.

Since their emergence in 1948, Palestinian refugee camps have transformed from tent cities to concrete urban ghettos on the outskirts of the cities of the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring Arab countries. And while there’s no central agency that tracks the number of all Palestinian refugees, UNRWA estimated that in 2008 there were 4.6 million refugees and displaced persons (the count includes their descendants) from the 1948 war still in need of assistance.

Taking into account registered and unregistered refugees and displaced persons (including their descendants) from both the 1948 and 1967 wars, BADIL, a Palestinian refugee advocacy organization based in the West Bank estimated in 2008 that the number was closer to 7.1 million.

Today, the fate of Palestinian refugees remains in limbo: Designated as a “final status” issue in negotiations between Israel and the PLO, the Palestinian side remains unwilling to relinquish the right of return established by U.N. resolution 194, while the Israelis refuse to recognize it for fear that implementing it could dilute Israel’s Jewish ethnic majority. The vast gulf between the parties on the refugee issue remains the elephant in the room of the stalled peace process.