One of the main unresolved issues throughout the negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis has always been the problem of the Palestinian refugees. The right of the Palestinian refugees to return to Israel is a subject the Palestinians are unwilling to waive. The question was also raised in the recent talks which took place between Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, and Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud ‘Abbas.
Over one million Arabs fled or were forced out of their homes in 1948 and 1967. Most of them – and their descendents – still live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria. Others are scattered around the world. In the four to six decades since then, their numbers have more than quadrupled due to natural growth.
Once a peace agreement is signed between the two sides, a massive influx of refugees is expected to return to the emergent Palestinian state. Some may even return to Israel, depending on the agreement.
Experts believe, however, that not all refugees and their families would want to return. They estimate the number who would as between several hundred thousand and a million-and-a-half. For a (future) state, with a population of 3.5 million citizens, absorbing this number of people is a very daunting task.
To rise to this challenge, the Palestinians may wish to consult countries with similar experiences. One such country is none other than Israel.
When Israel was established in 1948, it had a Jewish population of 650,000. A year and a half later, this had risen to one million – an astonishing increase of approximately 50%. Subsequent waves of immigration into Israel were as rapid as they were unexpected. When in the 1970s Jews were allowed out of the Soviet Union, 150,000 people immigrated to Israel. Another immigration wave in the 1990s boosted Israel’s population by almost one million people.
Israel’s absorption of over three million people in total has been accompanied by multiple setbacks–but also by significant triumphs. The Media Line explored some of these issues in interviews with experts on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.
Preplan!
In the early 1940s, the Jewish leadership in British mandatory Palestine began preparing for the establishment of Israel and the anticipated arrival of Jews from around the world.
"A sizeable group of experts from a range of fields – trade, industry, agriculture, water, etc. – convened to make plans," says Dr. Dvora Hacohen, author of Immigrants in Turmoil: Mass Immigration to Israel and Its Repercussions in the 1950s and After.
Specialists, not politicians, worked on the preplanning. They focused on two main issues: housing and employment.
"These were the fundamental challenges which needed to be overcome for the immigrants to survive," Hacohen explains.
However, the extensive preplanning had not materialized when the Jewish state was established in May 1948. And because war broke out immediately almost none of the plans were implemented.
Providing shelter for hundreds of thousands of new immigrants as the fragile new country fought a deadly war, proved extremely difficult. People were housed in evacuated British military bases and makeshift tents, recalls Hacohen. Despite all the preplanning, in the end "everything was improvised, with only the long term goals in mind."
Without foreign investment or loans, and struggling to win a drawn out war, Israel was on the verge of collapse. However, the mobilization of the local Jewish population in a joint effort partly helped to the absorption of the new comers.
Learning from past mistakes
In the late 1980s, political changes in the Soviet Union led to the immigration floodgates opening. Within a decade, almost one million people had left the Soviet Union and settled in Israel.
The figures below clearly illustrate the dramatic influence this mass immigration had on Israel’s demography at the time:
In early 1990, Israel’s Jewish population was 3.71 million. Just 10 years later, it had jumped to 4.87 million. The Russian immigrants who arrived during that decade counted for more than 20% of the Jewish population and over 15% of the entire population (Jewish and non-Jewish).
Yair Tzaban was minister of absorption between 1992 and 1996. Based on his experiences, Tzaban says the Palestinians should start preparing for the absorption of the refugees as early as possible.
"They should set up a special department with committees to handle the various issues. There is a very heavy planning element and they should try to learn from countries like Israel that faced immigration challenges," says Tzaban.
When asked to elaborate, the former minister began by discussing a problem faced by newcomers to Israel that would not actually present difficulties for the Palestinians: namely language.
"They won’t need language schools, which are usually a key feature in immigration absorption. The more serious issues at stake are housing and employment," Tzaban says.
Regarding housing, Tzaban thinks the solution is obvious. "West Bank communities must give up their tendency to build single-storey houses. They must plan on building multi-storey housing," Tzaban suggests.
Housing is also very closely related to the second major issue: employment. According to Tzaban, Israel suffered a lot in this area. The houses which the state helped new immigrants to buy were mainly in areas where employment was scarce.
"This is where the Palestinians can learn from our experience. I would suggest they start planning their industrial zones now. As for domestic transport, they should not make the same mistakes as Israel. They must start building railways straight away, so people can get to work," said Tzaban.
Tzaban also referred to the "considerable educational potential" of Palestinian society, and said the P.A. would have to create the tools to realize it.
"They will need to build universities, technological institutes, and of course primary and high schools," he says.
The Russian and Ethiopian case-studies
Altogether, Russian and Ethiopian immigrants make up almost half of all the immigrants to Israel since 1948. Both communities have a list of complaints relating to Israel’s approach to their absorption. Still, for the most part, these immigrants consider Israel their new home and are confident that in the long run their absorption will prove a success.
Kasahun Wanda, 34, emigrated from Ethiopia to Israel in 1989. Today, he is an activist in promoting Ethiopian immigrant rights in Israel. According to Kasahun, the main problems Ethiopian Jews faced when they reached Israel were education, employment, housing, and social integration.
Although the state provided Ethiopian immigrants with large grants for homes, they could only afford homes in the more-disadvantaged periphery of the country and in impoverished neighborhoods, Kasahun says. The weaker populations in these areas, coupled with unemployment, drug problems, and weaker education, all had negative effects on Ethiopian youth. Also, the parents’ inability to acquire new occupations and their problems in mastering the language diminished their status in their children’s eyes.
"Israeli society is not open enough yet to accept us fully. There are many signs of this. For example, some nightclubs refuse to admit Ethiopians. Some families pull their kids from schools with large concentrations of Ethiopian children," he explains.
Russian immigrants experienced much the same difficulties upon arrival, especially during the second – much larger – wave of Russian immigration in the 1990s.
"Israel had an agenda; it wanted to boost the periphery, so it provided us with housing there," says Dr. Eugene Tartakovsky, of the University of Tel Aviv.
Tartakovsky, himself a Russian immigrant, says the overwhelming number of immigrants who flooded Israel in the 90’s, was one explanation for the inadequate level of state economic support. Also, the quality of Hebrew classes was very low, and led to slow social and job integration.
"Nevertheless, it is obvious today that the absorption of the Russian immigrants is tremendously successful, economically speaking," says Tartakovsky.
"In Zionist terms, the success is less clear-cut, though. I am not so sure the Russians feel they are an integral part of the Israeli society. This feeling of not belonging worries Israeli society, which fears a double allegiance. Israel is aware that Russia is making tremendous efforts to bring these immigrants back."
Kasahun also admits that despite the difficulties and mistakes, the absorption of the Ethiopians can be regarded as "partial success".
"The Ethiopians came from a different culture with a different educational perspective, yet, within two decades they have managed to integrate into the workforce, the military, and the academic world," says Kasahun.
Preplanning is necessary, but…
The Palestinian Authority is very aware of the difficulties it will face once the refugees return. Planning Minister, Dr. Samir ‘Abdallah, expects 1-1.5 million will arrive once a peace agreement is signed.
"The existing cities [in the Palestinian Authority] can not absorb so many people. We will need to build new cities, villages, and neighborhoods for them. This should be accompanied with the necessary infrastructure, and jobs, industrial areas, schools, and hospitals. It needs an international effort to finance all this. Also, you need efficient planning," ‘Abdallah acknowledges.
We asked the minister if he had begun planning, to which he replied: "One must be wary even about considering practical solutions before the principles have been agreed."
‘Abdallah added that in order not to be overwhelmed with a massive wave of returning refugees, the Palestinian Authority will have to create a mechanism for bringing people over in stages, when the environment is ready to absorb them. He also said some of the returning refugees would no doubt settle in Israel itself, and demanded that Israel "bear its responsibility for what happened in the past and compensate the refugees."
The Planning Minister agreed that preplanning is needed and implied that international research institutes have begun lending a hand.
The Arc
The American RAND Corporation is one such institute. Perhaps the most ambitious research to date was conducted between 2002 and 2005 with RAND direction.
RAND’S Arc conceptualization treated the future Palestinian state as an urban space, with specific areas dedicated to livable, high-density housing capable of supporting the projected increase in population after the repatriation of the refugees.
The project envisioned a transportation system, along which people and goods would flow through the new state. The Arc would link Jenin in the northern West Bank with all major Palestinian cities including Gaza – by a corridor through Israel. Mass transportation stations would be built a few miles away from the current city centers, to which they would be connected by bus lines. The Arc planners envisioned the development of sustainable, commercial and residential areas around these transportation stations. The planners believed the Arc would not only provide thousands of jobs, but also labor mobility and national cohesion.
Some aspects of the plan, they said, could be launched even before an agreement was signed with Israel. But, the sketches remain in the drawer.
Dr. Muhammad Dajani, a Palestinian political scientist from Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, says he believes that even though preplanning is very important, the Palestinian leadership probably does not want to "build false hopes among the Palestinians." Once we see positive signs of progress toward an agreement between Israel, the Palestinians should start planning, he asserts.
Dajani describes the Palestinian refugees’ demands to return to their old homes and communities in both Israel and the Palestinian territories as "nostalgia for a past that is long gone." It is a different reality today, and in order to accommodate the returning Palestinians, the P.A. will have to build new cities and villages. Dajani also maintains that housing and facilities in many Jewish communities in the West Bank will have to change hands and be delivered to the Palestinians.
Returning to Israel itself is not a serious notion, Dajani says. Palestinians won’t want to live under Israel and become an Israeli citizen. "It isn’t realistic," he says. Like minister ‘Abdallah, Dajani thinks the return of the refugees should happen gradually, "or chaos will reign."
Despite the grave difficulties ahead, Planning Minister Samir ‘Abdallah is confident that “once the occupation ends the Palestinian economy will flourish.
"The occupation squeezed our economy to a level that we have no jobs and the investment and business climate is very bad.
"When we have our independent state, free to trade with the rest of the world, we will be able to use our full production capacity and absorb most of the unemployed.
"The task of constructing new cities and villages will itself create hundreds of thousands of jobs," concludes ‘Abdallah.