MPPM demands the respect of refugees' rights

On the World Refugee Day, designated by the United Nations to fall on June 20th, MPPM expresses its solidarity with refugees from all over the world, whatever their origin and the cause of their situation, and in particular with Palestinian refugees, the largest and oldest refugee community in the world.

In the Middle East, refugees number in the millions, illustrating - like the thousands of deaths that have transformed the Mediterranean into a giant cemetery - the devastating effects of interference by the Western powers in their attempt to retain control over a region of strategic importance for global hegemony. The cases of Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen are a sad demonstration of this.

The most recent sinking off the coast of Greece of a ship carrying hundreds of migrants, in which 78 deaths have already been confirmed - although the fact that 500 people are missing raises fears of a tragedy on a larger scale - dramatically calls into question the Fortress-Europe policy in which all European governments are complicit. And it should not go unnoticed that they have recourse to Israel's war industry for the surveillance of their maritime borders using equipment 'field-tested', in other words against the Palestinians.

In this context, particular reference should be made to the case of the Palestinian refugees, living testimony to the crime on which the State of Israel is based: the premeditated campaign of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population which, in 1947-1948, preceded and accompanied the founding of Israel.

Carried out first by Zionist militias, under the complacent or collaborating eye of the British Mandate authorities, and then by the Israeli armed forces, this monstrous crime (which Palestinians rightly call the Nakba, the catastrophe) resulted in the expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians.

To these have been added the 400,000 to 450,000 displaced persons and refugees as a result of the 1967 war, during which Israel completed its occupation of the whole of historic Palestine, and the several hundred thousand Palestinians uprooted in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza by Israeli policies including settlement expansion, the building of the Wall, house demolitions, revocation of residency rights and forced displacement.

Out of an estimated 14 million Palestinians today, these refugees and their descendants number over nine million, most of them in Palestine itself and in neighbouring countries. UNRWA estimates that half of the 1967 refugees had already been 1948 refugees. The conflict in Syria forced many of these refugees into a third displacement, and the number of Palestinians in that situation is estimated at almost 600,000.

As early as 11 December 1948 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 III establishing the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and on 14 June 1967 UN Security Council Resolution 237 called on Israel to facilitate the return of displaced persons.

For 75 years, Israel has ignored with impunity, in the face of the passivity of the international community, the right to return of the Palestinian refugees it created, which is all the more shocking as since 1950 Israel has applied the so-called "law of return", which guarantees Israeli citizenship and the right to settle in the country to any Jew from anywhere in the world. The Jewish colonisation of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 (West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem) continues at a galloping pace, further intensified by the current Israeli government, the most right-wing in the history of the country.

The State of Israel, based on the crime of ethnic cleansing, has also institutionalised since its foundation a system of ethnic discrimination (in which it has granted to one part of the population of the Palestinian territory, the Jews, the rights that it denies to the other part, the Palestinians) that forms an effective regime of apartheid, as denounced in particular by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

UNRWA is vital for the survival of Palestinian refugees

Millions of Palestinian refugees depend for their survival on UNRWA, the UN agency established in 1949 to assist Palestinian refugees in the Middle East. UNRWA, whose budget depends mainly on voluntary contributions from States, has been suffering from cuts in these contributions, notably from Western countries, foremost among them the United States and the United Kingdom, traditionally the biggest donors. This reduction in funding is already having a severe impact on the services provided by UNRWA to the refugees who depend on them.

At a meeting at the UN in early June it was stated that UNRWA, unless immediate funding is made available, will run out of money by September, with real consequences for almost six million refugees. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini has called for $75 million to maintain food supplies to over one million people in the Gaza Strip and $30 million for food and cash assistance to 600,000 refugees.

The frequent attacks on UNRWA fully coincide with Israel's aim of abolishing it and changing the status of the refugees, thereby "extinguishing" the question of the refugees, for which it bears full responsibility, and therefore its solution, which it has systematically refused. Defending UNRWA and increasing its funding is therefore not only vital for the survival of the refugees but also essential to prevent concealment of the crime behind it and Israel's refusal to comply with international law.

The drama of the refugees requires fundamental solutions

Just as the drama of the refugees in the Middle East will not be resolved without resolving the problems which gave rise to it, namely the interference of the Western powers and their regional allies and the chaos they have caused, so the question of the Palestinian refugees requires a fundamental solution.

The so-called two-state solution - Israel and Palestine - existing side by side, which Western countries claim to defend, is dangerously close to being unviable, if not already so.

The MPPM considers that the Government and the Portuguese State must abandon their position of unacceptable muteness and immobilism, which only favours the Israeli aggressor, and resolutely commit themselves, as prescribed by the constitutional text, to the search for an adequate solution to the question of Palestine.

Whatever the short-term developments - and they do not bode well - the solution will always involve the recognition of the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people to a free homeland in which Palestinians enjoy full rights, and it is only within this framework that a just solution to the refugee question can be found, based on the right of return and just compensation, in accordance with General Assembly Resolution 194 III and other relevant United Nations resolutions.

The MPPM reaffirms to the refugees and to all the Palestinian people its unfailing solidarity until the victory of their just cause.

20th June 2023

The National Directorate of MPPM