Palestinian Refugees This page intentionally left blank Palestinian Refugees Challenges of Repatriation and Development Edited by Rex Brynen and Roula El-Rifai International Development Research Centre Ottawa · Cairo · Dakar · Montevideo · Nairobi · New Delhi · Singapore Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd and the International Development Research Centre 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com International Development Research Centre PO Box 8500 Ottawa, ON KIG 3H9 Canada [email protected]/www.idrc.ca ISBN (e-book) 978–1–55250–231–0 In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan a division of St. Martin’s Press 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © International Development Research Centre 2007 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. ISBN 978 1 84511 311 7 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by T J International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Contents List of figures and tables vii List of contributors x Preface and acknowledgements xvi Glossary xix 1 Introduction: Refugee repatriation, development, 1 and the challenges of Palestinian state-building Rex Brynen and Roula El-Rifai 2 Statistical data on Palestinian refugees: what 14 we know and what we don’t Hasan Abu-Libdeh 3 Living in provisional normality: the living conditions of 29 Palestinian refugees in the host countries of the Middle East Jon Hanssen-Bauer and Laurie Blome Jacobsen 4 Social capital, transnational kinship and refugee 46 repatriation process: some elements for a Palestinian sociology of return Sari Hanafi 5 The return of Palestinian refugees and displaced 79 persons: the evolution of a European Union policy on the Middle East Peace Process Mick Dumper vi · Contents 6 Refugees, repatriation, and development: 102 some lessons from recent work Rex Brynen 7 Planning in support of negotiations: the refugee issue 121 Khalil Nijem 8 Infrastructure scenarios for refugees and 132 displaced persons Nick Krafft and Ann Elwan 9 Land and housing strategies for immigrant absorption: 163 lessons from the Israeli experience Rachelle Alterman 10 Israeli settlements and the Palestinian refugee question: 218 evaluating the prospects and implications of settlement evacuation in the West Bank and Gaza – a preliminary analysis Geoffrey Aronson and Jan de Jong Notes 229 Index 237 Figures and tables 3.1 Labour force participation rates 42 3.2 Number of household members in the labour force. 43 Camp refugees 7.1 Returnee housing programme, design for the 148 West Bank and Gaza 9.1 Housing production strategies: conceptual 185 policy spectrum 9.2 Housing consumption policies: de facto spectrum 186 of subsidies and approximate periods Tables 1.1 UNRWA-registered refugees (mid-2003) 7 2.1 Estimated Palestinian refugee population by country of residence, 1998 17 2.2 Schedule of censuses and sample surveys at PCBS 18 2.3 Percentage distribution of the Palestinian population in the OPT by refugee status and region, mid-2002 19 2.4 Percentage distribution of households in the OPT by size and refugee status, 2002 20 2.5 Percentage distribution of employed persons (15+ years) by status and occupation, 2002 21 2.6 Percentage distribution of persons (15+ years) by employment status and refugee status, 2002 22 viii · Figures and tables 2.7 Households by availability of durable goods and refugee status, 2002 23 2.8 Preferred solution of refugee issue for refugees in the OPT, by region and refugee status 24 2.9 Expected solution of refugee issue for refugees in the OPT, by region and refugee status 25 2.10 Preferred solution of refugee issue for refugees living outside the OPT, by region and refugee status 26 2.11 Expected solution of refugee issue for refugees living outside the OPT, by region and refugee status 27 3.1 Fafo surveys on Palestinian refugees in the Middle East 30 3.2 Fafo population projections 32 3.3 Summary of good and poor health and infrastructure outcomes 36 3.4 Percentage of women receiving pre-natal care by a skilled attendant (doctor, nurse, trained midwife) 37 3.5 Summary of good and poor maternal and child health outcomes 38 3.6 Summary of good and poor education outcomes 40 3.7 Summary of poverty rates among camp and gathering refugees 44 4.1 Financial contribution of the Palestinian diaspora 61 4.2 Scenarios taking into account only socio-economic factors 72 6.1 Costs of sample refugee absorption programme 117 8.1 Distribution of registered refugee population 135 8.2 Options for upgrading or new development of housing and infrastructure for refugees and displaced people 138 8.3 Estimated costs for on-site public and social infrastructure 142 8.4 Indicative costs for housing and land 144 8.5 Vacant expansion areas and public land in study locations 136 8.6 Available public land in the new town sites 148 8.7 Potential for accommodating new residents on public land in or near existing towns 149 Figures and tables ·ix 8.8 Potential for accommodating new residents on public land in new towns 150 8.9 Summary of illustrative infrastructure cost estimates for new residents in study areas 152 8.10 Illustrative cost estimates of infrastructure for new residents in study areas, including costs of upgrading existing water/wastewater infrastructure for existing residents 154 8.11 Illusrative cost estimates of infrastructure and housing for new residents in study areas 156 9.1 Major periods of immigration to Israel, by number of immigrants, existing population and GDP per capita 166 9.2 The evolution of public land policies as related to immigrant absorption 176 9.3 The outputs and outcomes of the housing strategies in key policy periods 212 Contributors Dr Hassan Abu-Libdeh Dr Hassan Abu-Libdeh served as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs with the Palestinian National Authority. An expert in socio- demographic statistics, Dr Abu-Libdeh was previously Founder and President of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS). He received his B.Sc. in Mathematics from Birzeit University in 1979, his M.Sc. in Mathematical Statistics from Stanford University (1981), his M.Sc. in Applied Statistics and a Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Cornell University (1988). He also served as a member of the Board of Governors and Deputy Managing Director of the Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction (PEC- DAR), a board member Al-Quds Open University, the Palestinian Economic Policy Research Institute, the Policy Research Initiative for Palestine, the Council for Higher Education, and the Higher Council for Children and Motherhood. He served as a member of the Central Election Commission (CEC), in charge of planning and implementing the first ever general and political elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (January 1996). He is currently a member of the Palestinian National Council (1996). Since the beginning of the peace process with the Madrid conference in 1991, he was appointed to several dele- gations to bilateral negotiations and multilateral working groups. Dr Rachelle Alterman Professor Rachelle Alterman is an urban planner and lawyer who holds the David Azrieli Chair in Town Planning/Architecture at the Contributors ·xi Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. She holds degrees in social science and city planning from the University of Manitoba, a Ph.D.in planning from the Technion, and a law degree from Tel-Aviv University. Dr Alterman is internationally known for her cross- country comparative research on planning law and property rights, urban and housing policy, and planning theory. She has published extensively in international academic journals and is the author of many books, among them Planning in the Face of Crisis: Land Use, Housing, and Mass Immigration in Israel (Routledge, 2002), and National- Level Planning in Democratic Countries, (Liverpool University Press, 2001). Dr Alterman has been invited as a visiting professor at leading American and Dutch graduate planning programmes and has served as consultant to the World Bank and the UNDP.Professor Alterman is in the process of founding the world’s first international academic association of Planning and Law. Geoffrey Aronson Geoffrey Aronson is Director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace in Washington, DC and Editor of the Foundation’s bi-monthly Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories. He is author of From Sideshow to Center Stage: US Policy towards Egypt and Israel (Lynne Rienner, 1986) and Israel, Palestinians and the Intifada: Creating Facts on the West Bank (Routledge, 1990) as well as numerous news- paper, magazine, and journal articles on a wide range of Middle East issues. He writes regularly in the USA, the Arab world, and for European publications, and has consulted for both the World Bank and the UN. Dr Rex Brynen Dr Rex Brynen is Professor of Political Science at McGill University in Canada. He is author, editor, or coeditor of eight books on Middle East politics including A Very Political Economy: Peacebuilding and Foreign Aid in the West Bank and Gaza (USIP Press, 2000) and Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon (Westview, 1990). Professor Brynen has served as a member of the Policy Staff of Foreign Affairs Canada, and as a consultant to the Canadian International Development Agency, the International Development Research Centre, and the World Bank.