30 years after Sabra and Shatila, what is the state of Palestinian refugees?

Sunday, Sept. 16, marks the 30^th year since Lebanese Christian Phalangists, under the approving eye of then-Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, launched a three-day, massive assault on the Palestinian refugees living in the Lebanese refugee camps Sabra and Shatila.

Officially, no one has ever been able to arrive at an exact number of dead, though figures range from the 1,000 corpses buried in a mass grave by the International Committee of the Red Cross to at least 3,500. Many people were buried beneath of the rubble of demolished homes and buildings and hundreds were rounded up and carried away on trucks, never to return, according to Dr. Laurie King-Irani, who has conducted research into this massacre.

 That same month, the United Nations Security Council condemned the massacre with Resolution 521, which was followed in December by a General Assembly resolution qualifying the massacre as an "act of genocide." 

Yet the perpetrators of one of the most heinous acts in modern history have never been brought to justice. An internal Israeli investigation called the Kahan Commission – which was political and not judicial – found Sharon to be indirectly but personally responsible. He resigned as defense minister but retained a government cabinet position. He served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006. 

It is tragic to realize that Palestinian refugees are no better off today, 30 years after this horrific massacre; and, in fact, the US Congress may consider an amendment to the 2013 foreign appropriations bill by Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, that would redefine and reclassify the more than 6 million Palestinian refugees around the world. Kirk claims that Palestinian refugee numbers are ‘artificially inflated’ because they include the descendants of those people who were actually displaced in 1948 and 1967.

The truth is that the descendants of all refugee groups are treated equally under international law, which stipulate that if the head of the family is a refugee, his descendants are as well.

At 40 percent of the world’s refugees, Palestinians make up the largest and longest-lasting refugee group in the world; and now Sen. Kirk, supported by various pro-Israel organizations, is trying to change that status for his own political gain.

In addition to the threat posed by Kirk’s amendment – which could stop aid and services to hundreds of thousands of people – Palestinian refugees around the world have suffer poverty, illness and unemployment to a greater extent than their non-refugee counterparts. At the end of 2011, the unemployment rate for West Bank refugees was 27 percent, five percentage points higher than for others. And a new United Nations report said that Gaza will be unlivable within the next eight years, if the siege is not lifted.

Palestinians living in refugee camps face imminent incursions by the Israeli Occupation Forces, such as what happened in Jenin in 2002 and in Gaza during the winter of 2008/2009, when Israel unleashed a three-week assault that killed more than 1,400 people. Refugees make up more than 70 percent of the Gaza population. In early September, three Palestinian children living in a refugee camp in Syria were killed and dozens wounded in the violence perpetrated upon the innocent civilian population by the regime of Bashar Al Assad. Unfortunately, they are not the first refugee fatalities nor will the likely be the last as long as President Assad continues his reign of terror. 

It is a tragedy that more than 64 years after the Nakba, millions of Palestinians are still displaced and living in camps. The right of return is an individual right guaranteed under international law. We must continue to work to bring justice to the Palestinian people and to assert that we will not stop until the occupation ends and all Palestinians can live with peace, justice and dignity in their homeland, Palestine.