The focus of the Palestinian diaspora has shifted from the Middle East to Europe. Demonstration to mark Nakba Day in London in May 2022 (Photo: Alice Dixon Hickson CC BY SA 2.0)
About fifty percent of the Palestinian people now live outside of Palestine, but in fact do not share the decisions that are made about the fate of their people. How did it happen that the Palestinian diaspora, in whose womb the Palestinian national struggle was born and the organization for the liberation of Palestine, declined in size and lost its political power? What caused this change and what is the place of the diaspora in the Palestinian national struggle today?
Tarek Hamoud, a researcher writing his doctoral dissertation at the University of Exeter in England on Hamas and the Diaspora, published a very interesting analysis on the Al-Jazeera Research Institute’s website in April 2022, which has since been cited in various Palestinian forums.
The 1948 war led to the expulsion of about 80 percent of the Palestinian people from their lands. Although some moved to Gaza and the West Bank, most of them moved to neighboring Arab countries. Thus the Palestinian issue was born as an issue of refugees. In 1967, another 300,000 people were added to the list of deported Palestinians.
These two wars created the “Palestinian diaspora,” which now numbers about seven million people, more than half the people. The vast majority of refugees (about 75-70 percent) lived, at least until recently, in neighboring Arab countries – Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. It was the refugees and life outside the homeland that gave birth to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
The Oslo Accords changed the balance
But the Oslo Accords in 1993 changed the entire intra-Palestinian relationship and the vision on which the Palestinian national movement was based, Hamoud writes. The agreements allowed the PLO to operate in the territories that Israel occupied in 1967, and thus the Palestinian Authority was established a year later. This move, according to Hamoud, took the leadership of the national struggle from the Palestinian diaspora and it remained orphaned.
Hamoud points out that the diaspora does not fit into the two-state solution, on the basis of which the Oslo Accords were based. The two-state solution ignores the right of return and reconciles with the existence of the State of Israel on the lands of most Palestinian refugees.
According to Hamoud, the Oslo process was not accompanied by a thought on how to harness the Palestinian diaspora. The establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza has marginalized the national institutions that existed in the diaspora, including the National Fund and the Department of Refugee Affairs. Hamoud claims that this has created an absurd situation, in which the aspirations of the people of the Diaspora are completely different from the plans and aspirations of Palestinians living in the homeland under the Palestinian Authority.
According to the Civil Status Law published by the Palestinian Authority in 1999, every Palestinian who has reached the age of 16 and lives in the West Bank or Gaza is entitled to a Palestinian identity card. On the basis of this law, the PA issued passports and identity cards to residents of the West Bank and Gaza. This legal status created a new definition of who is a Palestinian, and helped push the diaspora even further.
A waiver of half of the Palestinian people. Signing of the Oslo Accords in the White House (Photo: Vince Musi / White House)
Hamoud argues that agreeing to the two-state principle meant relinquishing a significant portion of the Palestinian people, since the Palestinian national vision, born in the diaspora, was based on a return to all of historic Palestine. As long as the diaspora was at the center of the Palestinian national project, Hamoud writes, the Palestinian issue dealt “with the right of return and was a liberation project, not a project of building a state for part of the people at the expense of some lands.”
Hamoud, a member of the Palestinian diaspora living in London, actually asks whether, in retrospect, it would have been worth giving up half of the Palestinian people, for a “state project” that today seems stuck and will not materialize any time soon. The answer seems clear, even to those who are not Palestinians.
It all started in Madrid
According to Hamoud, the deviation from the original national project and the neglect of the Palestinian diaspora began at the 1991 Madrid Conference. Already at this conference – which was attended by Israel, the Palestinians, and countries such as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon that host the majority of Palestinian refugees – the discussion shifted from the right of return to the discussion of territorial conflict over the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.
This discourse, Hamoud argues, has intensified the Palestinian diaspora problem in two respects: it has given a seal to a project that clearly ignores the diaspora and deals with it as a local issue of the host countries, hence the local and local solution to it. But Hamoud mentions: The refugee problem is a national issue and not a question of a Palestinian minority in Lebanon or Syria.
According to Hamoud, the Hamas movement – in which he deals with his research writing – also unofficially supported leaving the scattered out of the game. It shows how Hamas was present and active in the three ring states – Jordan, Lebanon and Syria – but in all of them it refrained from politically organizing the Palestinian diaspora. She did not have an orderly political vision for them, and a quick look at her organizational structure shows that cases related to internal affairs, such as the issue of prisoners and Jerusalem, carry much greater weight than the issue of refugees and the right of return.
Palestinians leave Syria and Lebanon for Europe. Syrian refugee camp (Photo: Michel Ann Sernilia)
Hamoud notes that outside the PLO and Hamas, smaller Palestinian factions tried to form an alliance against the Oslo Accords and pretended to present an alternative to the diaspora. Of the Palestinian diaspora.
A clear example of the disconnect between the Palestinian political system and the diaspora is the Palestinian embassies around the world. Hamoud points out that they do not make real contact with the Palestinian diaspora in the countries in which they are located, and give a bureaucratic answer only to those with a Palestinian identity card, that is, to Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
The diaspora appeals to public opinion in the West
Simultaneously with this disconnect between the diaspora and the Palestinian national institutions, the diaspora began to form its own nature of action, Hamoud claims. From the moment the diaspora actually ceased to be part of the military struggle against Israel, it concentrated on action in the field of human rights and propaganda against Israel. The Boycott and Sanctions Campaign against Israel (BDS) is part of the campaign to delegitimize Israel, in which the Palestinian diaspora has played a significant role.
You may be interested
Because the campaign for human rights and for BDS appeals mainly to Western public opinion, this has shifted the weight of the Palestinian diaspora itself to the West – to Europe and America. This change was also due to the crises in the “Ring States”. More and more Palestinians have emigrated from these countries to Europe, and it is estimated that more Palestinians now live in Europe than in Syria and Lebanon combined.
This gap, between the diaspora and the Palestinian national institutions, is also reflected in their vision. While the key players in Palestine, the PLO and Hamas, promote the idea of a Palestinian state in the 1967 territories, the members of the Palestinian diaspora – by their very involvement in human rights issues, exposing Israel’s apartheid practices and supporting the BDS movements – are based on the right of return. One country.
The fight for BDS gives wide space to the scatter. Demonstration in Kreuzberg, Berlin, May 1, 2017 (Photo: Montecruz Foto, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The vision of the diaspora regarding one state, says Hamoud, actually fits in with the settlement project, which actually blocks the way to a two-state solution, and also with the Palestinians, citizens of the State of Israel, who also remained outside the political vision of the two states.
The affinity still exists
Despite all the gaps, Hamoud argues that there is still an affinity between the various groups living within Palestine and the scattered in everything related to “definitions of the overall Palestinian national interest.” According to Hamoud, the events of May 2021 are a clear example of the joint action of Palestinian organizations within Palestine along with the Diaspora, which has mobilized global public opinion, especially in Europe and America.
“The impasse of the process of political settlement within Palestine,” a cute headline, “along with the growing achievements of the civil struggle of the diaspora in the boycott areas and the de-legitimization of the occupation, have made the diaspora a space into which all parties can escape.”
The failure of the Oslo Accords and the state-building project have raised the profile of the diaspora, Hamud argues, but it does not seem to be enough to reorganize the diaspora and give it a defined political role. That is why Hamoud calls on the various parts of the Palestinian people to increase cooperation between them.
“The inability of the state project to include the interests of the entire Palestinian people – in a homeland that also includes the Palestinians of 1948 (citizens of Israel) and in the diaspora – is one of the main reasons why it was not found legitimate enough and reached a political deadlock,” Hamoud writes. “The diaspora has important human capital, which can change the balance of power of the struggle, but it does not receive much interest from activists, neither in the organization of the diaspora nor in meeting its needs, the central one being a democratic national representation that will guarantee the diaspora returns to the heart of the Palestinian national project.”
This concluding paragraph emphasizes the need to create a solution for all parts of the Palestinian people. However, the question of who can define a vision for dispersal and organization remains unanswered. It is clear to cute that the host countries are not capable of this. Hamoud seems to be hoping that Palestinian organizations, in recognition of their failure, will intensify the role of the diaspora. And although Hamoud does not call for the diaspora to organize itself, his article may provoke the dormant diaspora, and perhaps harness it for writing an orderly political vision.
Doreen Lazer writes on the project Horizon, Collaboration between the Van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, The forum For thinking Regional And the Alam Center. The project provides Hebrew readers with adapted content from media sites, magazines, research and information centers and academic journals in Arabic.