On World Refugee Day MPPM reaffirms the rights of Palestinian refugees

On the occasion of the World Refugee Day, which on 20 June is marked throughout the world on the initiative of the UN, MPPM expresses its particular concern about the threats that the policy of the United States government imposes on the fate of Palestinian refugees. At the same time, MPPM draws attention to the centrality of the refugee question in the current international situation and expresses its solidarity with refugees throughout the world and in particular with the millions of refugees in the Middle East.

The plight of the millions of refugees requires us to search for the deep causes of their situation. Particularly in the case of the Middle East, they are inextricably linked to the action of the Western powers that, in order to maintain their hegemony in the region, have fomented and continue to support wars of interference and destruction such as those in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen .

In this context, the Palestinian refugees deserve particular mention: this is the oldest unresolved refugee case in the world today — it has persisted for more than 70 years! —, encompassing a very large community.

It cannot be repeated often enough that Israel is entirely to blame for the existence of the Palestinian refugee problem, the origin of which is the crime of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of Palestine with the aim of ensuring Jewish predominance in the territories where the Israeli State was established. In a premeditated and well-organized manner, even before and after the foundation of Israel (May 1948), Zionist forces destroyed 531 villages and emptied 11 urban areas of their inhabitants, expelling more than 750,000 Palestinians. They were joined by a new wave of displaced persons and refugees as a result of Israel's occupation of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 war. As a result, of the approximately 12 million Palestinians in the world today, approximately 7.25 million are refugees according to internationally adopted criteria.

As early as 11 December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 194 III, establishing the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Likewise, UN Security Council Resolution 237 of 14 June 1967 called on Israel to facilitate the return of the displaced persons. But many decades later, Israel continues to violate international law and refuse to enforce the right  to return to their homes of the Palestinians it has expelled.

This World Refugee Day comes at an extremely serious time for the future of the Palestinian people as a whole and for the refugees in particular.
UNRWA, the UN agency created in 1950 to assist Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, is under fire. UNRWA provides indispensable aid to the approximately 5.3 million refugees it registers, including 711 schools attended by more than half a million pupils and 143 health centers with 8.5 million users a year, in addition to food aid vital for many.

The US government, which has historically been UNRWA's biggest funder, has decided to end its annual contribution to the agency, thereby depriving it of a third of its budget. At the same time, Donald Trump's administration, contrary to international law, wants to revise the definition of Palestinian refugees and force host countries to accept them as their nationals, which would create serious internal problems for these countries with unpredictable consequences.

The USA wants to strip millions of Palestinians of their refugee status and abolish UNRWA to wipe out living proof of the crime of ethnic cleansing commited by Israel. By making the refugees “disappear”, it is denying Israel's obligation to guarantee their right to return, as it is obliged to do by UN resolutions.

This outrageous initiative fits into a broader anti-Palestinian course of action followed by the USA since Trump took office. In full alignment with the most reactionary sectors of Israel, measures such as the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the transfer of the US embassy there, the closure of the Palestinian diplomatic representation in Washington, the cuttting of funding for the Palestinian Authority, the recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, where Israel now intends to build new settlements, and the implicit acceptance of the future formal annexation of the West Bank, in whole or in part, already constitute the practical application of the so-called “deal of the century”.

MPPM reaffirms that, in this situation which directly puts into question the credibility of the UN and International Law and the two-State solution, repeatedly reaffirmed by the international community and also defended by Portugal, the Portuguese government must proceed accordingly and energetically, in its bilateral and multilateral relations, drawing all the consequences of Israel's failure to respect human rights, international law and international humanitarian law.

MPPM welcomes the positive step taken by Portugal with the reinforcement of its contribution to the UNRWA budget, by decision of the Assembly of the Republic [Parliament], and underlines the need for the Portuguese Government to continue and deepen the step taken by Parliament — since the refugee issue is only one part, albeit inseparable, of asserting the imprescriptible national rights of the Palestinian people — by recognizing the State of Palestine within the borders of 4 June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

MPPM expresses its solidarity with the refugees, victims of situations they did not create and deserving of help and support for integration, and denounces the interference and aggression of Western powers and their allies in the Middle East countries as the central cause of the new stream of refugees, calling for respect for the integrity and independence of the countries of the region and for the rights of their peoples.

20 June 2019

The National Directorate of MPPM