Abstract
The scholarly literature on the Palestine Arab refugee problem and UNRWA is vast but deeply uneven and highly politicized. Despite many thousands of published items, only it may be argued that only a handful are truly scholarly works or display penetrating insights. Moreover, despite countless diplomatic and political histories of the period, refugee relief—as opposed to the real or putative origins of the refugee crisis—plays only a small role in the narrative.1 And yet refugee relief, in the form of UNRWA, has become one of the primary engines of both continued international involvement and modern Palestinian identity.
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Notes
For example, J. C. Hurewitz’s fundamental, The Struggle for Palestine (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), treats the questions of UNRPR and UNRWA in less than three paragraphs (see pages 321 and 326). A recent book on Palestinian refugees in Egypt only mentions UNRPR or AFSC in passing.
See Oroub El-Abed, Unprotected: Palestinians in Egypt since 1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2009).
Marta Rieker, “Uses of Refugee Archives for Research and Policy Analysis. Reinterpreting the Historical Record,” in The Use of Palestinian Refugee Archives for Social Science Research and Policy Analysis, ed. S. Tamari, and E. Zureik (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 2001), 11–23.
Michael R. Fischbach, Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
Channing B. Richardson, “The United Nations and Arab Refugee Relief, 1948–1950; a Case Study in International Organization and Administration” (doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1951).
Channing B. Richardson, “The United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees,” International Organization 4, no. 1 (1950): 44–54.
Channing B. Richardson, “The Refugee Problem,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 24, no. 4 (1952): 43–50.
Don Peretz, “Israel and the Arab Refugees” (doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1955).
Don Peretz, “Vignettes — Bits and Pieces,” in Paths to the Middle East: Ten Scholars Look Back, ed. T. Naff (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 231–261.
Don Peretz, The Rights of the Palestinians (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1974);
Don Peretz, The West Bank: History, Politics, Society, and Economy (Boulder: Westview, 1986);
Don Peretz, Palestinians, Refugees, and the Middle East Peace Process (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1993).
Don Peretz, Israel and the Palestine Arabs (Washington, DC: Middle East Institute, 1958).
Roni E. Gabbay, A Political Study of theArab-jewish Conflict. The Arab Refugee Problem (A Case Study) (Paris: Libraire Minard, 1959).
David P. Forsythe, “UNRWA, the Palestine Refugees, and World Politics: 1949–1969,” International Organization 25 (1971): 26–45.
Amos Perlmutter, “Patrons in the Babylonian Captivity of Clients: UNRWA and World Politics,” International Organization 25, no. 2 (1971): 306–308.
David P. Forsythe, “Further on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency: Refugees from Objectivity: Comment,” International Organization 25 (1971): 950–952.
David P. Forsythe, United Nations Peacemaking: the Conciliation Commission for Palestine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
See also J. C. Hurewitz, “The United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine: Establishment and Definition of Functions,” International Organization 7, no. 4 (1953): 482–497.
Edward H. Buehrig, The UN and the Palestinian Refugees: a Study in Nonterritorial Administration (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971).
Benjamin N. Schiff, Refugees unto the Third Generation: UN Aid to Palestinians (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995).
Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Efraim Karsh, “Benny Morris and the Reign of Error,” Middle East Quarterly 4 (1999): 15–28;
Efraim Karsh, Fabricating lsraeli History: the “New Historians” (London: Frank Cass, 2000).
See also Shabtai Teveth, “The Palestine Arab Refugee Problem and its Origins,” Middle East Studies 26, no. 2 (1990): 214–249.
See Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 1–9,
and Benny Morris, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).
Benny Morris, “The Historiography of Deir Yassin,” Journal of Israeli History 24, no. 1 (2005): 79–107.
See generally Yoav Gelber, “The History of Zionist Historiography, From Apologetics to Denial,” in Making Israel, ed. Benny Morris (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), 47–80;
Joseph Heller, “Alternative Narratives and Collective Memories: Israel’s New Historians and the Use of Historical Context,” Middle Eastern Studies 42, no. 4 (2006): 571–586;
Anita Shapira, “Historiography and Politics: The Debate of the New Historians,” History and Memory 7, no. 1 (1995): 9–40;
Amos Perlmutter, “The Post-Zionist war against Israel,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 1, no. 2 (2000): 93–112.
Compare Assaf Likhovski, “Post-Post-Zionist Historiography,” Israel Studies 15, no. 2 (2010): 1–23.
For example, Ilan Pappé, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947–1951 (London: I.B. Taurus, 1992);
Avi Shlaim, The Politics of Partition: King Abdullah, the Zionists, and Palestine, 1921–1951 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990).
Walid Khalidi, From Haven to Conquest; Readings in Zionism and the Palestine Problem until 1948 (Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971);
Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992);
Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, ed. The Transformation of Palestine: Essays on the Origin and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1971).
Walid Khalidi, “Plan Dalet: Master Plan for the Conquest of Palestine,” Journal of Palestine Studies 18, no. 1 (1988): 4–33.
D. Tal, War in Palestine, 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy (London: Routledge, 2004), 87–88;
Yoav Gelber, Palestine, 1948: War, Escape and the Emergence of the Palestinian Refugee Problem (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006), 303–306.
Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006);
Rosemary M. Esber, Under the Cover of War: the Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians (Alexandria, Virginia: Arabicus Books & Media, 2008);
Oren Yiftachel, Ethnocracy: Land and Identity Politics in Israel/Palestine (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
Compare Mordechai Bar-On, “Cleansing History of its Content: Some Critical Comments on Ilan Pappé’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” Journal of Israeli History 27, no. 2 (2008): 269–275.
Timothy Mitchell, “The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science,” in The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, ed. David L. Szanton (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002), 91, 94.
For example, William B. Quandt, Paul Jabber, and Ann Mosely Lesch, The Politics of Palestinian Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973);
Muhammad Y. Muslih, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988);
Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
For example, Kurt René Radley, “The Palestinian Refugees: The Right to Return in International Law,” American Journal of International Law 72 (1978): 586–614;
Donna Arzt and Karen Zughaib, “Return to the Negotiated Lands: The Likelihood and Legality of a Population Transfer between Israel and a Future Palestinian State,” New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 24 (1991–92): 1399–1513;
John B. Quigley, “Repatriation of the Displaced Arabs of Palestine: The Legal Requirement as Seen from the United Nations,” Moritz College of Law, Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper Series 60, 2006.
For example, Rita Giacaman, Harry S. Shannon, Hana Saab, Neil Arya, and Will Boyce, “Individual and Collective Exposure to Political Violence: Palestinian Adolescents Coping with Conflict,” European Journal of Public Health 17, no. 4 (2007): 361–368.
See Sari Hanafi and Linda Tabar, The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite: Donors, International Organizations, and Local NGOs (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 2005).
Michael Kagan, “The (Relative) Decline of Palestinian Exceptionalism and its Consequences for Refugee Studies in the Middle East,” Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 4 (2009): 417–438;
Ruben Zaiotti, “Dealing with Non-Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East: Policies and Practices in an Uncertain Environment,” International Journal of Refugee Law 18 (2006): 333–353.
Lance Bartholomeusz, “The Mandate of UNRWA at Sixty,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 28, no. 2–3 (2009): 452–474.
For example, Rex Brynen and Roula El-Rifai, eds., Palestinian Refugees: Challenges of Repatriation and Development (London: I.B. Taurus, 2007). In contrast, Howard Adelman, noted that the original recommendations by United Nations Mediator Folke Bernadotte on the return of refugees included an important qualification: “The vast majority of the refugees may no longer have homes to return to and their resettlement in the State of Israel presents an economic and social problem of great complexity. Whether the refugees are resettled in the State of Israel or in one or another of the Arab States, a major question to be faced is that of placing them in an environment in which they can find employment and a means of livelihood. But in any case their unconditional right to make a free choice should be fully respected.” He argued that the Bernadotte’s murder “lent great support to his report” and noted the conditional language in the final text of U.N. Resolution 194 III makes the humanitarian assertion that refugees ought to be permitted to be repatriated. It does not demand this.
See Howard Adelman, “Home and Homeland: The Bequest of Count Folk Bernadotte,” in Palestinian and Israeli Environmental Narratives, ed. Stuart Schoenfeld (Toronto: Ontario, Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, 2005), 213–219.
For example, Randa Farah, “UNRWA: Through the Eyes of its Refugee Employees in Jordan,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 28, no.14 (2009): 392;
Dominique Vidal and Joseph Algazy, Le péché originel d’Israël: l’expulsion des Palestiniens revisitée par les “nouveaux historiens” israéliens (Paris: Edition de l’Atelier, 1998);
Ricardo Bocco, “UNRWA and the Palestinian Refugees: A History within History,” Refugee Survey Quarterly 28, nos. 2–3 (2009): 229–252.
For example, Arlene Kushner, “UNRWA, The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, A Report,” Jerusalem: Israel Resource News Agency, 2003; Arlene Kushner, “The UN’s Palestinian Refugee Problem,” Azure 22 (2005): 57–77; Arlene Kushner “UNRWA, Overview and Policies,” Jerusalem: Center for Near East Policy Research, 2008.
For example, James G. Lindsay, Fixing UNRWA: Repairing the UN’s Troubled System of Aid to Palestinian Refugees (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2009).
Salim Tamari, and Elia Zureik, eds., The Use of Palestinian Refugee Archives for Social Science Research and Policy Analysis (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 2001).
Julie M. Peteet, “AFSC Refugee Archives on Palestine, 1948–50,” in The Use of Palestinian Refugee Archives for Social Science Research and Policy Analysis, eds. Salim Tamari and Elia Zureik (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 2001), 109–128.
Julie M. Peteet, Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005): 57–61.
Nancy Gallagher, Quakers in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: the Dilemmas of NGO Humanitarian Activism (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2007).
Ilana Feldman, “Difficult Distinctions: Refugee Law, Humanitarian Practice, and Political Identification in Gaza,” Cultural Anthropology 22, no. 1 (2007): 129–169.
Ilana Feldman, “The Quaker Way: Ethical Labor and Humanitarian Relief,” American Ethnologist 34, no. 4 (2007): 689–705.
Clarence Pickett, For More than Bread, an Autobiographical Account of Twenty-two Years’ Work with the American Friends Service Committee (Boston: Little, 1953);
Walter Kahoe, Clarence Pickett, a Memoir (Privately printed, 1966);
Elmore Jackson, Middle East Mission, The Story of a Major Bid for Peace in the Time of Nasser and Ben Gurion (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1983);
William H. Wriggins, Picking up the Pieces from Portugal to Palestine: Quaker Refugee Relief in World War II, A Memoir (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2004).
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© 2013 Asaf Romirowsky and Alexander H. Joffe
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Romirowsky, A., Joffe, A.H. (2013). Studying the Palestine Arab Refugee Problem. In: Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378170_2
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