Deadlocks · defusion
Lower the stakes of belonging
Take the practical cost out of the identity question: a recognised international status for stateless Palestinians now, and the option of holding two identities or citizenships in any settlement.
Citizenship is the key to almost every right, and only states hand it out, each for its own reasons; whoever falls between them falls out of the system. Many Palestinians have been in that gap for generations — refugees in Lebanon barred from property and professions, Jordanians of Palestinian origin who lost their nationality after 1988 (see 'Jordan is Palestine — the Palestinians already have their state.'), camp residents with no state at all. As long as belonging decides whether a family can work, travel or own a home, every symbolic question — return, recognition, the name of the state — carries those stakes too. Lowering them does not answer the symbolic questions; it lets them wait for negotiation instead of deciding people's lives in the meantime.
The deadlocks it addresses
Where it has been tried
- The Nansen passport (League of Nations, from 1922) — worked. The 'Nansen Certificate' was 'an international substitute for a passport' for stateless refugees — first Russians, then Armenians, Assyrians and others — giving them a legal existence without any state adopting them; its fees were a main source of the refugee office's income. By the Nobel Committee's account the Nansen Office gave 'material, legal, and financial help … to almost a million refugees', and fourteen countries adopted its 1933 Refugee Convention; it received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938. Its limits are part of the lesson: unstable financing, and 'the reluctance of member states of the League to permit League activities on behalf of persons who had previously been citizens of their countries'.
- The Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement (1998) — worked. The two governments 'recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose', and confirm 'that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland' (Constitutional Issues, para. 1(vi)). Whoever holds sovereignty must govern 'with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all the people in the diversity of their identities and traditions' (para. 1(v)). The sovereignty question stays open for a future vote; a person's citizenship no longer depends on its answer.
- The Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons (1954) — partly. It defines a stateless person as one 'not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law' and gives such people a legal status and rights in the states that are parties to it. But it 'shall not apply … to persons who are at present receiving from organs or agencies of the United Nations other than the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees protection or assistance so long as they are receiving such protection or assistance' (Art. 1(2)(i)) — today that means Palestinians registered with UNRWA. So the one treaty written for this gap does not reach the stateless Palestinians among them (many others hold Jordanian or other citizenship); a status for them would have to be built separately, or by narrowing that exception. The host states have also stayed outside both statelessness treaties: of the 99 parties to the 1954 convention and the 82 to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, none is Jordan, Lebanon, Syria or Egypt (nor the State of Palestine); Israel ratified the 1954 convention in 1958 and signed the 1961 one without ratifying (UN Treaty Collection, status pages). Human Rights Watch has urged Jordan to accede to both.
What you have to believe for it to work
- States would recognise an international status and the rights attached to it
- A status in the meantime would not be read as giving up the claim to return
These are the assumptions the future solution builder will let you set yourself.
What has to happen first
- A host or guarantor for the status (the UN or a group of states)
- Palestinian leaders willing to separate a status in the meantime from the final claims
How it can fail
- Attacked by one side as 'resettlement' that erases return, and by the other as a path to it
- Host states treat the status as permission to withdraw their own obligations
Sources
- UK Government, 'The Belfast Agreement' (summary page)
- Nobel Prize, 'Nansen International Office for Refugees — History' (1938 Peace Prize)
- The Agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations (Belfast / Good Friday Agreement), 10 April 1998 — full text, CAIN archive, Ulster University
- Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, New York, 28 September 1954 — certified text, UN Treaty Collection (Arts. 1(1), 1(2)(i))
- UN Treaty Collection, status of the 1954 and 1961 statelessness conventions (Chapter V.3 and V.4)