Catholic Humanitarian Assistance for Palestinian Refugees: The Franciscan Casa Nova during the 1948 War

Abstract

The issue of the Palestinian refugees represents one of themost complex unresolved problems in contemporary global history. The situation originatedwhen the war for Palestine was unleashed following the United Nations resolution of November 29, 1947 that provided for the partitioning of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The battles between the Arab League and Israeli armies, and Tsahal’s expulsions of populations of in the conquered villages and cities precipitated the flight of about 750,000 Palestinian refugees, who poured into the closest available Arab villages within the State of Israel itself, so constituting an internally displaced people. Part of the Palestinian refugee population then transited to the United States, Latin America, Europe, and other continents. Twenty years later, the June 1967War saw Israel defeat Egypt and annex East Jerusalem, the territory to the west of the river Jordan (the so-called “West Bank”, previously under the control of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan), the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights. These new acts of war caused the flight of another 300,000 Palestinians. Today, the United Nations agency created in 1949 to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinian refugees—the United Nations Relief andWorks Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA)—registers 5 million Palestinian refugees. Historically, the request to recognize the right of return for the Palestinian refugees has constituted one of the principal themes on which the two fronts have taken up positions around opposing interpretations and narratives. The Israeli government’s refusal to recognize the right to return for refugees for reasons of security and on the grounds of its interpretation of the PalestineWar as a Zionist war of defense against theArab attack of May 15, 1948, has determined the absence of a solution. At the same time, Palestinian identity post-1948 has been redefined around the experience of refugee camps, and the national liberationmovement has given the refugee question a position of central importance and has invested the refugee camps with the symbolism of lieux de mémoire, the liberation of Palestine, and resistance to the Israeli occupation.