Will Arabs Displaced From Arab Countries Have A Right Of Return?

Since 2003 an estimated four million Iraqis have fled their homes, the largest exodus since Israel’s creation in 1948. Deepening violence and sectarian strife have led to the internal displacement of many Iraqis and have driven others out of the country, largely to Syria and Jordan, but also to Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey and the Gulf.
New York Times, For Refugees, a Frustrating Feeling of Permanence, July 20, 2011


So what is going to happen to all of these Muslim refugees?


Will their home countries take them back eventually--after all, don't these people have a right of return no less than what they claim the Arabs who left then-Palestine have. Besides, these days, when the Arabs talk about the right of return to Israel, generally they are not talking about refugees--they are talking about the children and grandchildren of refugees, for whom there is no real claim.

But unlike them, we are talking today about actual refugees--Palestinian Arabs, Iraqis, Tunisians, Libyans and Syrians--whose claim should be much stronger.

However, there is still something standing in way:

Syria and Jordan are not signatories to the international refugee convention, the key legal document defining who is a refugee, their rights and legal obligations of states, yet by the end of 2010 they were two of the top five major countries in the world hosting refugees.

There are approximately 300,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria since the Iraq war, of whome 52,000 have been resettled and more than 22,000 have left for more than a dozen countries. Meanwhile Jordan plays host to approximately 2million Palestinian Arabs.

Somehow, I don't think those Arabs who want to return to their countries of origin are going to give up their hope so easily--an article from 2009 discusses the persistent connection that Muslims feel towards Spain:

some "Andalusian" families still preserved keys to houses they left behind four centuries ago

It will be interesting how the Arab refugee problem works out.

Technorati Tag: Jordan and Syria.