Refugees | The American Task Force on Palestine

Exploding the myths: UNRWA, UNHCR and the Palestine refugees
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
(Opinion) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- As Palestinian leaders prepare to seek UN recognition of statehood in September, there is increasing talk in the US, Israel and elsewhere of disbanding the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the UN Relief and Works Agency, and handing responsibility for Palestinian refugees to the UN High Commission for Refugees. Some argue UNHCR would resettle the refugees, robbing them of their right to return to their homes.

Let the suffering end
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Ghassan Khatib - (Blog) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am

Palestinians, especially prisoners' families, are following with a great deal of interest (and sometimes jealousy) the relatively successful public relations and media campaign by family and friends to obtain the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. When hearing the sincere expressions and words of his family, especially his father and mother, many Palestinians can easily identify with them. They wonder, though, whether his mother understands that in the same instant, thousands of Palestinian mothers are having the same feelings.

Faulty strategic calculations
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Yossi Alpher - (Blog) June 27, 2011 - 12:00am

If I were Gilad Shalit's father, I would do everything he is doing, and more if possible, to persuade the Netanyahu government to meet Hamas' demands for a prisoner exchange and obtain Gilad's release. If I were Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, I would refuse the deal for fear of the consequences of releasing so many truly vile terrorists back into society.

Jordan Valley families left homeless
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Ma'an News Agency
(Analysis) June 23, 2011 - 12:00am

"The big soldier wouldn’t speak to me. He just said ‘This is my job, sit down and shut up’," the newly homeless Ralia Darraghmeh, a diabetes sufferer in her sixties said of the one of the crew who had come to demolish her home Tuesday morning. She was sitting alone, crying in Khirbet Yarza, a tiny Bedouin hamlet, as her tin home was taken down by order of Israel's Civil Administration, which governs planning and permit issuing in the 60 percent of the West Bank categorized as Area C under the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Fighting for the right to return
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Al-Ahram
by Mohsen Saleh - (Opinion) June 23, 2011 - 12:00am

When 12-year-old Imad saw his mother preparing some sandwiches for the 15 May march to the southern Lebanese borders with Palestine, he wondered what the food was for. "Will we have the time to eat it," he asked. "Aren't we going to the borders of Palestine to fight the Israelis?" The message this child and his peers conveyed gave the event another dimension, for these marches of return to the borders with Palestine, occupied in 1948 and becoming Israel, have turned into landmarks in the Palestinian approach to the right of the Palestinians to return to their homeland.

Israelis and Palestinians have equal right to a home
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Opinion) June 20, 2011 - 12:00am

I'm going to try to put something into words, something that I've felt with precision for a very long time, but something which, I've found, words tend only to obscure, not to illuminate. Like most attempts at this, it probably won't work. But here goes. People need a home. People need to know where they come from. People need a place where they feel they belong, a place where, for reasons which may elude all understanding, they feel profoundly and uniquely rooted. A part of things, rather than simply and permanently apart.

The UN bid: A historic opportunity
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Jeff Halper - (Opinion) June 20, 2011 - 12:00am

No one knows the precise plans of the Palestinian Authority (PA) vis-a-vis September: Will President Mahmoud Abbas declare a Palestinian state within recognized borders and ask that it be admitted as a full member of the UN - or not? Perhaps Abbas himself does not know. Now political leaders often make decisions alone or in consultation with a small group of advisers. As in so many matters political, however, the Palestinian leadership finds itself in a unique situation.

Jewish leftists need to have the Talk
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Haaretz
by Bradley Burston - (Blog) June 16, 2011 - 12:00am

These days, it's a little too easy for Jewish Leftists to avoid having the Talk. The Talk, an open-minded consideration of the Palestinian right of return, might well be divisive, corrosive, just one further blow at a time of Israeli – and world Jewish - apathy and depression and paralysis. It's certainly more comfortable to let the issue run in the background, as many groups on the left have done, either coming down at one stroke on one side or the other, as if the issue were not breathtakingly complex, or, alternatively, deciding not to decide.

A brown-haired young man
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Arab News
by Uri Avnery - (Opinion) June 13, 2011 - 12:00am

My hero of the year (for now) is a young brown-haired Palestinian refugee living in Syria called Hassan Hijazi.

Defend our borders, but make a gesture
ATFP World Press Roundup Article from Bitterlemons
by Yossi Alpher - (Editorial) June 13, 2011 - 12:00am

The Arab revolutionary wave has already touched the Palestinian issue in more ways than one. The transitional military regime in Egypt has granted Hamas in Gaza greater legitimacy, opened the Rafah crossing and pressed for a Palestinian unity government. Fairly modest demonstrations and exploitation of social media by youth in Ramallah and Gaza clearly exerted additional pressure on the Palestinian leadership to reconcile.

Video: Inside ATFP Gala 2013

Photo Gallery: ATFP Gala 2013

Recent News