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July 2nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Press TV has conducted an interview with Hanin Salem, Islamic Human Rights Commission, to further discuss the issue. The following is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Your paper was very complex and it’s quite hard to grasp. I’m going to read what it was about here. Your paper showed how international conventions, major UN resolutions and relevant agreements that define who is a refugee have been used to irradiate the law of return.
Salem: Absolutely. After I researched most of the international conventions, growing up I’ve been used to hearing, you know, UN resolution 194 protects my right of return. And you know, as you’re growing up you’re thinking all these resolutions exist, all of these conventions exist, why am I still here? Why am I not home?
And you reach a logical point in your life where you’re thinking let me go over them, why don’t I go over them. Why are other people telling me what I should know?
Then I went through each convention, I started with the 1951 convention on the states of refugees; that wasn’t specifically made to define who is a Palestinian refugee but who is a refugee in general, and that’s very important because we need to understand international law, the principles that we get in international law, they ultimately come in a process of multilateral and bilateral treaties between states.
So to understand how they define a refugee in general, will give us an idea in the end how they define a Palestinian refugee and why we’re still not there.
So if we look at the 1951 convention on the status of refugees, what we find is that they define a refugee as someone who is unable or unwilling to return to his country of his former habitual residence, that’s a key point here, or that he held the nationality of that country.
That’s very interesting because when we talk about Palestinian refugees, we tend to focus always on, you know, refugees who are already living in Palestine when Palestine was occupied.
But then we have a question, what about students? I remember my mom’s uncle, he was studying in Egypt. He was not a “habitual resident” of Palestine at that time because they define by a specific time period. You need to be two years habitual resident, constant, like one year [after] one year. So, if you’ve been five years out, you wouldn’t fall under that statement.
Press TV: We can see that that worked for the Zionist … [regime]of Israel to ethnically cleanse. We know in ‘67 and all those times, all those students and all of those working abroad, they were just names crossed off. You’re not hearing houses were taken.
Salem: Definitely. Definitely.
Press TV: Do you hear in your research that these clauses, habitually resident, were put there maliciously or were they just an oversight?
Salem: I believe they were put there for a purpose, and the evidence for that is when I look at the most famous UNRWA definition used to define who is a refugee. Once again, they repeat you must have been a habitual resident in Palestine between a specific period to a specific period. It’s basically two years.
Why would UNRWA do such a thing? We always speak of UNRWA as defending the right of return for Palestinian refugees because if you fall under their umbrella, your children get the UNRWA refugee cards.
Something interesting that happened, I think a year ago UNRWA started to tell a number of refugees to give the UNRWA cards back; you’re not applicable to a UNRWA card.
Press TV: When did this start happening?
Salem: A year ago, I think it started in Jordan and other countries – and Lebanon. So that’s pretty interesting.
I’ve been a refugee for all this time. My children, you’ve recognized them as refugees because they’re my descendents. Suddenly you wake up and say, ‘not really’. If you actually look at their definitions, they’re not doing anything different or special; it’s obvious.
Press TV: So how does UNRWA explain this then?
Salem: This is what my research, a part of it, focused on — is that don’t just keep saying UNRWA protects their rights. In fact, UNRWA’s definition of who’s a Palestinian refugee can be used by international lawyers in the future to argue, and I talk about the near future, to argue that based on UNRWA’s definition, we can say that a Palestinian who does not fall under what is a Palestinian refugee to UNRWA shouldn’t be considered a Palestinian refugee and thus has no right to argue for a right of return.
Press TV: Can I ask something really silly? By their definition, if you’ve been in Lebanon for 60 years and you’re not habitually resident in Palestine, they could…
Salem: You could, perhaps. But they wouldn’t actually say that because they already gave them an UNRWA card which proves their status.
But my question is, what about the people who did not get those cards? -For example, let’s look at Iraq under the Saddam regime and beforehand. Iraq refused to allow UNRWA to take care of Palestinian refugees living in Iraq. The government was basically supporting them financially, offering them subsidies, housing and so forth…
Press TV: And they didn’t want UNRWA coming in…
Salem: Exactly. So what about those?
Now, there were 34,000 Palestinians who I believe were refugees because they did not leave their country out of will; they were kicked out of their country living in Iraq. Right now we only have after the fall of Saddam, 35,000 Palestinians living in Iraq.
The rest of them are basically in no-man’s land between Jordan, Syria and Iraq, and no one wants to take them. Where is UNRWA, I ask? Saddam is no longer here. Why aren’t you there helping them?
Press TV: That’s a great way to end this. Where is UNRWA and what have they done?
GMA/HGH
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