Global Overview 2015: People internally displaced by conflict and violence - Protracted displacement in Occupied Palestine

A deliberate deadlock

IDMC estimates that there were at least 275,000 IDPs in occupied Palestine as of December 2014. All but a few were living in protracted displacement. They include at least 133,000 people forced to flee their homes by the recurrent hostilities in the Gaza Strip, and at least 142,000 in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, displaced as a result of wide-ranging Israeli policies and practices linked to the 1967 occupation. These estimates should not be understood as reflecting the full scale of displacement, because no cumulative and confirmed figures are available.

NGOs and observers continue to document and respond to violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, which constitute major triggers of displacement. The underlying causes of the abuses, however, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general remain largely unaddressed, because Israel has taken the position that neither international human rights law nor the fourth Geneva Convention are applicable in the territories it occupies. As such, it fails to recognise its international obligations to prevent the displacement of Palestinians, and when it takes place to ensure durable solutions to their plight.

Instead, all Israeli governments since 1967 have displaced Palestinians while expanding their country's territorial control, in support of the colonisation of what Israelis see as part of their ancestral homeland. Israel's Supreme Court and the military legal corps have promoted and expanded settlements in the West Bank through restrictive and discriminatory regulations and policies.

These regulate all aspects of Palestinian life despite being illegal under international law. Palestinians have been excluded from planning schemes and land registration has been frozen since 1968, leaving most residents vulnerable to expropriation and evictions, the revocation of residency rights, housing demolitions, military incursions, the illegal expansion of settlements and settler violence.

The internal displacement of Palestinians results from these policies and practices, by virtue of which Israel has changed the physical character and demographic composition of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. This means that Palestinian communities have not only been displaced by Israel's destruction of their homes and livelihood structures, but also by forced evictions since 1967. The same policies expose IDPs to a set of coercive measures linked to settlement expansion and "closed military areas" that prevent them from making a voluntary and informed choice in terms of durable solutions.

In other words, returns are not allowed and locations to which people are forcibly displaced are dictated by Israel, because Palestinians have been left with no means of taking decisions about planning, construction and zoning.

In a context where the Israeli authorities are perpetrating forced displacement and are unwilling to respond to its consequences, the international humanitarian community struggles to deliver emergency aid, let alone make progress towards ending protracted displacement by helping IDPs achieve durable solutions.

In the Gaza Strip, the majority of those living in protracted internal displacement are also protracted refugees. The extent and severity of the damage and destruction wrought by Israel's frequent military operations is the principal cause of protracted displacement. In August 2014, at least 16,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged during operation Protective Edge. The majority of IDPs return to their homes once a ceasefire is in place, but Israel's seven-year economic blockade of the territory makes effective reconstruction all but impossible.

The only building materials allowed into the Gaza Strip since 2007 are designated for international organisations and are subject to a complex and lengthy approval process. Based on the current operating capacity of the only crossing points for the transfer of goods, it would take around 20 years to import the aggregates required to complete housing reconstruction.^[177] This effectively means that the number of people living in protracted displacement in the Gaza Strip grows continuously, and faster than reconstruction is able to take place.

Palestine's IDPs will only be able to achieve durable solutions to their displacement if a political solution to the 47-year-old occupation is found, the economic blockade of the Gaza Strip is lifted and the culture of impunity for human rights violations ended.

177. Gaza Shelter Cluster in NRC, The Rebuilding of Gaza will take 20 years, 11 September 2014, available at: http://www.nrc.no/?did=9183563