U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 2001 - Gaza

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) registered 824,622 refugees in the Gaza Strip and 583,009 in the West Bank in 2000. After Jordan, the largest number of UNRWA-registered refugees lived in the Gaza Strip (22 percent), followed by the West Bank (15.6 percent). In the West Bank, only 27 percent of the registered refugees lived in camps. In the Gaza Strip, on the other hand, 56 percent of registered Palestinian refugees lived in eight refugee camps. Palestinian refugees comprise about 50 percent of the population in the Occupied Territories.

Israeli Excessive Use of Force

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict erupted in the worst violence in recent memory just weeks after Israel and the Palestinians failed to reach a final peace agreement at Camp David in July. A visit by the right-wing Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon, to the Jerusalem site known to Palestinians as the Haram Al Sharif and to the Israelis as the Temple Mount – the religious site coveted by both Palestinians and Israelis – sparked the violence which resulted in more than 350 deaths, overwhelmingly Palestinian, by year's end. The number of Palestinians injured was in the thousands.

Based on field investigations conducted in October 2000 and February 2001, respectively, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) both found a pattern in which the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) regularly resorted to indiscriminate and excessive lethal force to quell Palestinian demonstrations.

While the IDF said that it only fired on Palestinians when the lives of its troops were threatened, UNCHR reported that all available evidence pointed to the contrary. According to UNCHR, members of the IDF in most cases held positions behind concrete bunkers, where they were well protected from attacks by Palestinians throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, and even from sporadic Palestinian gunfire. UNCHR also said the absence of IDF deaths or serious injuries seriously called into question Israeli claims that its soldiers were only acting in self defense. In cases where Palestinian gunfire was a factor, HRW reported that the IDF in many cases indiscriminately fired on demonstrators rather than at the source of the threat. Both HRW and UNCHR also reported a pattern of IDF disregard for and targeting of Palestinian medical personnel.

UNCHR also criticized the IDF for its choice of ammunition. The IDF's rubber-coated bullets, unlike soft rubber bullets used in places such as Northern Ireland, are metal bullets with a thin rubber coating, capable of inflicting lethal damage. Moreover, the IDF's live ammunition included high-velocity bullets that splinter on impact, causing maximum damage to the person hit.

Both UNCHR and HRW also criticized the IDF for violating its own rules of engagement and internationally accepted norms of policing. Many of the Palestinian deaths and injuries were the result of wounds to the head and upper body, suggesting intent to cause serious injury rather than to restrain unruly or violent demonstrators. Of the Palestinians killed between October 2000 and February 2001, 27 percent were under 18 years old. About half of all Palestinians injured were under age 18. Palestinian refugees reportedly suffered disproportionately, their camps in the Gaza Strip and West Bank often becoming the flashpoints for violence.

Although UNCHR found that the Palestinian Authority (PA) could have done more to restrain violent Palestinian demonstrators, it maintained that "the insistence of the IDF that the Palestinian demonstrators, humiliated by years of military occupation which has become part of their culture and upbringing, have been organized and orchestrated by the PA either shows an ignorance of history or a cynical disregard for the overwhelming weight of the evidence."

Failed Negotiations

In accordance with the September 1999 Sharm El-Sheikh Memorandum, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) resumed "final status" negotiations on a permanent resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in March 2000. Final status talks were intended to resolve the thornier issues that remain outstanding between the two sides, including the status of refugees, Israeli settlements, Jerusalem, final borders, and water rights.

Despite the wide gap between the two parties in the working-level talks held during the spring of 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton invited Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat to a summit at Camp David in July, hoping to break the deadlock. However, the Camp David Summit failed to produce a final peace agreement.

At Camp David, Prime Minister Barak reportedly agreed to cede to Palestinian control some 90 to 95 percent of the West Bank. Israel proposed annexing the remainder, including areas with the largest concentration of Jewish settlements and areas that Israel deemed vital to its security. Although Israel did not accept responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, it reportedly agreed to the return to Israel of small numbers of Palestinian refugees with family members. Israel reportedly proposed setting up an international fund to compensate most Palestinian refugees, who would be permanently settled in their host countries, Palestine, or in other countries.

Although the degree to which Palestinian negotiators agreed with these proposals remained unclear, the final status of Arab East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 war, was billed as the deal-breaker at Camp David. While President Arafat insisted on Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Barak reportedly offered the Palestinians only limited control over Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city.

Amidst daily violence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, President Clinton in December made a last-ditch effort to reach a peace agreement during his presidency, calling on Palestinians to relinquish the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in Israel in exchange for Palestinian sovereignty over most Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, and control over the Haram Al Sharif/Temple Mount. Prime Minister Barak accepted the broad outlines of President Clinton's proposal, but President Arafat did not.

Although many Western commentators characterized the Clinton deal as the best that Palestinians could ever hope for, most Palestinians saw the proposal in a quite different light. Witnessing the return of refugees and the restitution of property as the centerpiece of the West's policy in Kosovo and Bosnia, Palestinian refugees wondered why these principles did not apply to them. For their part, Israelis argued that allowing Palestinian refugees to return would amount to "national suicide," saying that it would irrevocably alter the Jewish character of Israel.

There were other Palestinian objections. Although the Clinton peace deal promised as much as 95 percent of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians, the deal nevertheless would have divided the West Bank into two separate cantons to make way for Israeli bypass roads to Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, where Israel would have maintained a substantial military presence for at least several years. Parts of Arab East Jerusalem also would have remained islands separated from the rest of Palestine by what would become Israeli territory. Even the actual percentage of West Bank land that would become part of Palestine was in dispute because of questions regarding the methodology used to calculate what territory actually constituted the West Bank.

With daily violent exchanges continuing and what appeared to be an irreconcilable impasse at the negotiating table, both sides began to write the obituary for the peace process begun seven years earlier in Oslo.

Population Zones

Israel continued to control most of the land in the West Bank and a substantial portion of the Gaza Strip in 2000, but delegated to the PA varying degrees of control over the areas where Palestinian populations lived. This patchwork, created by Oslo II, established three zones: Zone A, consisting of large Palestinian population centers where the PA is responsible for security and civil authority; Zone B, made up of other Palestinian residential areas, mostly villages, where Palestinian police are allowed to operate but where Israel maintains overall control over security; and Zone C, consisting of Israeli settlements, strategic military sites in the Jordan Valley, and large tracts of sparsely populated rural land where the IDF maintains complete authority.

During January and March 2000, respectively, Israel completed the second and third land transfers agreed to under the Sharm El-Sheik Memorandum, signed in September 1999. With the second land transfer, Israel ceded an additional three percent of the West Bank from Zone C to Zone B and two percent from Zone B to Zone A. In the third land transfer, Israel passed one percent of the West Bank from Zone C to Zone A and 5 percent from Zone B to Zone A, bringing 41 percent of the West Bank under full or partial Palestinian control – 17 percent in Zone A and 24 percent in Zone B. Israel did not give any indication during 2000 of when or if it would complete the final land transfer mandated by Oslo II.

At the end of 2000, 59 percent of the territory of the West Bank and 20 percent of the territory of the Gaza Strip were in Zone C, where the IDF maintained complete authority. Moreover, rather than receiving contiguous pieces of land, Palestinian territory consists of more than 200 separate enclaves surrounded by military checkpoints and bisected by a network of bypass roads (350 meters wide for security reasons) that connect settlements, which Palestinians require special permits to use.

Settlements

Since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Agreement, the number of Jewish settlements in the West Bank has increased from about 150 to more than 180, with about 185,000 residents. The building of settlements accelerated under the prime ministership of Ehud Barak and continued during the Al Aqsa Intifada, the name Palestinians give to the Palestinian uprising that began in September. At the end of 2000, some 380,000 Israeli settlers lived in the Occupied Territories as a whole; of these, about 180,000 lived in the East Jerusalem area.

Over the years, settlers have committed numerous acts of violence against Palestinians and destroyed Palestinian property, often with impunity, leading to widespread anger among Palestinians. Settlements served as a flashpoint for violence in 2000; violent acts perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians and by Palestinians against settlers increased dramatically during the last three months of the year.

Although Israel maintains that the status of Jewish settlements is a political issue to be decided in negotiations, the settlements violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring segments of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies. In its March 16, 2001 report on human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, UNCHR reaffirmed that settlements constitute "a major violation of international humanitarian law" and identified the settlements as a primary cause of many human rights violations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Travel Restrictions

During 2000, the Israeli authorities maintained their general closure of the Occupied Territories – in place since 1989 with respect to the Gaza Strip, and 1993 for the West Bank – preventing most Palestinians from traveling into Israel or East Jerusalem from the West Bank or Gaza Strip without specific travel permits. Israel often denies applicants permits without providing an explanation, and does not allow effective means of appeal.

With the advent of the Al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000, Israel imposed the most severe restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since it first occupied them in 1967, according to the UN Special Coordinator for the Occupied Territories (UNSCO).

During 2000, Israel imposed 88 days of "tightened closure" (compared with 15 the previous year), almost all from October through the end of the year. During periods of tightened closure, Israel completely blocks access to its territory and East Jerusalem from all or parts of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Israeli authorities also revoke all Palestinian permits for travel to Israel. Israel imposes tightened closures during holidays, elections, in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, and in response to changing security conditions.

In addition to its general closure and periods of heightened closure, Israel also imposed 81 days of "internal closure" during 2000. Internal closures prevent Palestinians from traveling between villages and towns in the Occupied Territories, including within the areas under PA jurisdiction. Essentially, commerce, higher educational activities, and much health care cease during internal closures. During periods of internal closure in 2000, only Israeli military personnel and Israeli settlers were permitted to use main roads in the West Bank. Israeli forces also regularly blocked north-south travel in the Gaza Strip. Internal closures were often imposed to divert Palestinian traffic away from Israeli settlements.

Beginning in October, Israel also sealed off certain villages and areas in the West Bank and Gaza, in some cases for weeks at a time. Israeli forces also imposed a curfew on Palestinians in the areas under Israeli military control in Hebron, only permitting Palestinians to leave their homes for several hours each week, while Israeli settlers in Hebron were free to come and go at will. Beginning on December 10, Israel banned the use of private cars transporting Palestinian males without accompanying women in areas under partial or full Israeli control.

Between October and the end of the year, Israel also intermittently closed air traffic to and from Gaza International Airport and border crossings between Jordan and the West Bank and Egypt and the Gaza Strip. On October 6, Israel also closed a free-passage route across Israel connecting the southern West Bank to the Gaza Strip that had been set up in November 1999.

Israeli closures had a devastating impact on the economy (see Palestinian Economy below), health care, education, and other aspects of life in the Occupied Territories. Restrictions on movement prevented Palestinians from receiving medical care, in some cases resulting in preventable deaths. Israeli forces reportedly delayed or denied at least 94 ambulances permission to cross check points between late September and year's end. Despite the upsurge in violence, some Palestinian hospitals reported a decline in admissions during October and November, suggesting that Israeli restrictions prevented Palestinians in need of medical attention from reaching the hospital.

Israeli travel restrictions also hampered UNRWA's work by seriously curtailing the movement of UNRWA personnel and humanitarian assistance. In December, UNRWA's Commissioner General, Peter Hansen, blamed the Israeli government for obstructing UNRWA's work, saying that UNRWA was running out of food, medicine, building materials, and other supplies as a result of Israeli travel restrictions.

Palestinians often do not travel abroad for fear of being denied re-entry to the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. Israeli authorities do not permit adult Palestinian males traveling to Jordan to return less than nine months after leaving, yet generally forbid them to return permanently if they spend more than three years abroad. The Israeli authorities require all Palestinians residing in the areas under Israeli control to obtain travel permits before traveling to other countries.

Demolition of Palestinian Homes and Property

During 2000, Israeli authorities reportedly destroyed 223 Palestinian-owned buildings in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, rendering hundreds of Palestinians homeless. Authorities carried out an increasing number Palestinian home and property demolitions during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, in many cases to ensure the security of Jewish settlements.

In October, Israeli tanks and bulldozers demolished two residential buildings with 32 apartments at the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip and bulldozed other Palestinian property, including greenhouses, orchards, and agricultural fields around several Israeli settlements.

Based on various reports, the U.S. Committee for Refugees (USCR) estimated that more than 17,000 Palestinians have been rendered homeless through Israeli housing demolitions between 1987 and the end of 2000. Although the Israeli government argued that its actions before the Al-Aqsa Intifada were the result of a building policy that is applied equally to Arabs and Jews, Amnesty International reported that Israeli officials enforce the rules in a discriminatory manner, strictly denying construction permits for Palestinian homes while allowing the construction of Israeli settlements to proceed.

Refugee Status

UN General Assembly resolutions that define the nature of the Palestinian refugee problem and solutions for Palestinian refugees – most adopted prior to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention – create a unique treatment for Palestinian refugees that differs from the approach found in the UN Refugee Convention.

The key General Assembly resolution, Res. 194, provides only two solutions: repatriation for those refugees "wishing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors," or compensation for those choosing not to return. In Resolution 302 (IV), the UN General Assembly created UNRWA and assigned to it the task of caring for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA defined Palestinian refugees as persons who resided in Palestine two years prior to the outbreak of hostilities in 1948, who lost their homes and livelihoods as a result of that war.

When the UN adopted the Refugee Convention and established the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), it excluded those who fell within the UNRWA mandate from being covered under UNHCR's mandate. In effect, this has meant that UNHCR does not concern itself with (or count) Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, or the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although it assists Palestinian refugees outside the UNRWA-mandate area. The unintended effect has been that Palestinian refugees have enjoyed fewer protections than other refugees because UNRWA only has a mandate to provide Palestinian refugees with humanitarian assistance, and, unlike UNHCR, does not have a specific protection mandate.

During 2000, however, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, and some independent refugee experts argued that the fact that many Palestinian refugees lack effective protection should trigger the applicability of the UN Refugee Convention to Palestinians in the UNRWA mandate area.

These organizations and individuals cite Article 1D of the Refugee Convention, which effectively states that whenever protection or assistance for Palestinian refugees has ceased for any reason before their situation is resolved in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions, they shall "be entitled to the benefits of this Convention."

Proponents of this view contend that UNHCR should have begun to exercise its protection mandate for Palestinian refugees long ago, when it became clear that the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, which was entrusted with a protection mandate for Palestinians, was unable to carry out its protection responsibilities.

While the issue of UNHCR responsibility for Palestinian refugees raises many questions – not least, regarding what durable solutions would apply to Palestinians were UNHCR to become involved – the consequences of not having an agency dedicated to the protection of Palestinians were evident during 2000 in the Occupied Territories. The UN Commission on Human Rights reported that refugees residing in camps in the Gaza Strip and West Bank endured hardships exceeding those of the general Palestinian population, and that UNRWA staff felt unable to raise issues of a protective nature with the Israeli authorities.

Durable Solutions

The Oslo accords carefully distinguished between those refugees who fled Palestine in 1948 and their descendants, and those persons displaced by the 1967 war, mostly from the West Bank to Jordan, which, at the time, claimed sovereignty on both sides of the Jordan River.

This distinction, while arguably useful politically, is based on a misnomer, in USCR's view: the West Bank Palestinians who fled to the east bank of the Jordan River were indeed internally displaced in 1967; their status, however, should have changed from "displaced" to "refugee" when King Hussein rescinded Jordan's claims of sovereignty over the West Bank in 1988. The distinction was maintained, however, to distinguish between those refugees whose goal was return to Israel itself (the 1948 refugees) and those who were seeking to return only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank or Gaza Strip (the 1967 displaced).

Although the PLO and Israel resumed negotiations on issues related to the 1967 displaced early in 2000, the parties could not agree on who should be considered for return to the Occupied Territories, much less the modalities for their actual return.

The gap in the parties' positions on the 1948 refugees remained even wider. The Arabs insisted on the "right of return" as proclaimed in UN Resolution 194, with its choice of either repatriation or compensation for those refugees not wishing to repatriate.

While the Israeli negotiators reportedly agreed to the return of small numbers of refugees to Israel-proper under the rubric of family reunification, Israel continued to reject UN Resolution 194 as a basis for discussion, saying that the "right of return" is incompatible with Israel's right to self-determination. Israel also insists that any discussion of compensation be based on the principle of reciprocity, taking into account Jews who were expelled from Arab countries as a result of the establishment of the State of Israel.

Nevertheless, three UN human rights treaty committees have found key aspects of Israel's nationality, citizenship, and land legislation – which effectively bar Palestinian refugees from exercising their right of return – to be incompatible with the rights codified in relevant human rights conventions.

Palestinian Economy

Studies by the UNSCO, UNCHR, and the World Bank conducted in late 2000 and early 2001 all pointed to the devastating impact of Palestinian-Israeli fighting on the Palestinian economy, mostly resulting from Israeli closures.

Beginning in October, Israeli closures of the West Bank and Gaza Strip prevented some 100,000 Palestinian workers from reaching their jobs in Israel, thereby depriving them of their income, according to UNSCO. The closure instantly raised the unemployment rate from 11 to 30 percent in the Occupied Territories. By year's end, Palestinian unemployment was estimated at 40 percent.

Closure of the West Bank and Gaza also resulted in a 22 percent decline in Palestinian exports in October and November, compared with exports for the same months in 1999. The decline in exports and cutoff in income to Palestinians who previously worked in Israel also had substantial negative repercussions for non-export businesses in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

In sum, Israeli closures and other restrictive measures resulted in a significant increase in economic hardship for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The World Bank estimated that poverty rates in the Gaza Strip and West Bank rose by 50 percent between October and early 2001. UNCHR and UNRWA reported that Israeli closures had a particularly devastating impact on Palestinian refugees, who already suffered from high rates of poverty before the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

UNRWA's Precarious Finances

UNRWA's precarious financial situation improved little in 2000. Since 1993, UNRWA has struggled to serve a growing refugee population with a roughly constant annual budget. The cumulative effect, UNRWA reported, has been to reduce the average annual expenditure per refugee by 45 percent, from about $110 in 1992 to about $60 in 2000, not accounting for inflation. Since 1993, a string of annual budget deficits forced UNRWA to institute several rounds of austerity measures, which remained in place in 2000.

The unrest in the Gaza Strip and West Bank placed additional pressure on UNRWA's resources. By year's end, UNRWA was providing cash and food assistance to some 220,000 refugee families rendered destitute because of the economic impact of Israeli closure of the Occupied Territories. Although UNRWA received $41.5 million in funding from emergency appeals issued in October and November, the extra money did not significantly improve UNRWA's overall financial situation.

Relief and Development

Despite its weakened financial position and the strains of operating amidst the unrest during the last months of 2000, UNRWA continued to assist refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the year.

Even prior to the upsurge in Palestinian-Israeli hostilities, UNRWA assisted vulnerable refugees unable to meet their basic needs. Families without a male adult medically fit to work or other means of support were eligible for special hardship assistance – primarily food.

After Lebanon, the Gaza Strip continued to have the second highest percentage of refugees enrolled in UNRWA's special hardship program as of June 2000 (8.6 percent of the Gaza's refugee population), reflecting the poor socio-economic conditions and job opportunities there.

Some 4.8 percent of the West Bank's refugee population were registered with UNRWA as special hardship cases. UNRWA also worked to rehabilitate substandard housing for vulnerable refugee families, although the needs far outstripped its resources.

During UNRWA's 1999-2000 reporting year, the Gaza Strip refugee population grew by 3.3 percent, a growth rate second only to Palestinian refugees in Jordan. The increase reflects a relatively high birth rate and a continuing influx of refugee families to the Gaza Strip.

Growth of the Gaza Strip's refugee population remained evident in school registration, which for the 1999-2000 school year rose 6 percent from the previous year. The Gaza Strip had the highest classroom occupancy rate in any of UNRWA's fields of operation, with an average of 50 students per class. Almost three-quarters of UNRWA's schools in the Gaza Strip operate on double shifts. Israeli travel restrictions in late 2000 prevented many Palestinian children from attending school for days at a time.