Israel's internally displaced by Greta Zeender
During the war between the new state of Israel and neighboring Arab nations in 1948-49 some 600-700,000 Arabs who had lived in the British mandate of Palestine were driven from or fled the region and became refugees. A further 46-48,000 Arab villagers were displaced within Israel and they and their descendants now number 150-200,000 people. About 70,000 Bedouin, many of whom were displaced in 1949 in the south of Israel, are also counted as internally displaced by organisations defending the rights of Arab citizens of Israel. The Druze community was spared displacement. Some 90% of the internally displaced people were Muslim. Meanwhile, during the period 1947-50, Israel absorbed approximately 600,000 Jewish refugees.
UN General Assembly Resolution 194 (A/RES/194(III)) affirmed in December 1948 that "refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible." Over half a century later those people displaced from their villages in Israel and resettled in other towns are still hoping to return home.
Under Israeli land law, particularly the Absentee Property Law of 1950, land abandoned in 1948 has become state land. From 1945 to 1966 the areas in which 90% of Israeli Arabs lived were placed under military administration, limiting their inhabitants' freedom of movement. Israel began renting land to the displaced in 1949 with priority given to poor villagers who had surrendered to the Israeli army. Israel hoped that by renting land where the displaced had resettled they would discourage hopes of return. While in some cases the displaced rented land without problems in many cases they faced opposition from their Jewish neighbours. Others declined the chance to rent, fearing that to do so would jeopardise their claim to their own land.
While many displaced still possessed land titles, this was not the case with the Bedouin who traditionally had not registered their property with the British or Ottoman authorities. A series of Israeli laws formalised the confiscation of Bedouin land. Many Bedouin in the south of the country were ordered to move into a closed area where they remained under military administration until 1966. Many are now settled in 'unrecognised villages', communities declared illegal by the National Planning and Building Law of 1965, receiving no municipal services and subject to the constant risk of demolition.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Israeli government planned and built seven new towns for the Bedouin. According to advocates for the Bedouin community, the Bedouin have not been sufficiently involved in their planning and there has been insufficient consideration paid to their lifestyle and traditions. Compensation received in exchange for giving up their land and building a new house in the towns is viewed as too low. While the towns built for the Bedouin community offer better access to health and education services than is available in the traditional Bedouin settlements, the quality and level of services are inferior to those in adjacent Jewish towns.
Most of those displaced in 1948 and their families live, like the rest of the Arab population in Israel, in Arab towns with little or no Jewish population, where they have usually set up their own separate neighbourhood or in 'mixed' Arab-Jewish towns. Many live in the most impoverished and overcrowded neighbourhoods of these towns.
Many displaced have appealed to Israeli courts against land confiscation but the process is slow and the level of compensation often not considered sufficient by the recipients. Supreme Court decisions to allow the former inhabitants of Kafar Bir'em, Ikrit and others to return to their villages have not been acted upon.
Greta Zeender is Information Officer (Middle East & Africa) at the Global IDP Project, Geneva. Email: greta.zeender@nrc.ch
Reports on internal displacement in 30 countries (including the Israel report of which this is a summary) can be accessed at www.db.idpproject.org/Sites/idpSurvey.nsf/wCountries/
Arab Israeli organisations campaigning on behalf of the internally displaced and residents of unrecognised villages include Adalah (www.adalah.org), The Association of Forty (www.assoc40.org), the Galilee Society (www.gal-soc.org) and the Arab Association for Human Rights (www.arabhra.org)