Palestinian refugees fear their leadership's bid to become a member state at the UN will compromise their right of return, writes Graham Usher at the United Nations With less than a week to go before the United Nations General Assembly it is still not clear whether the Palestinian Authority (PA) will seek to become a fully-fledged UN member state or accept the lesser non-member UN observer state in those territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 war: Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Among the PA leadership the principle debate is whether to go for the first, second or both options, or abandon them in the face of an American veto, Israeli punishment and European ambivalence. Among ordinary Palestinians, especially the majority who live outside the occupied territories as refugees, another debate has taken hold: stoked by a legal opinion submitted by Guy Goodwin-Gill, an expert in international law at Oxford University. Goodwin-Gill flags two warnings about the PA's putative statehood bids. First, he asks, would the substitution of the Palestine Liberation Organisation by a State of Palestine at the UN weaken the former's status as the sole legitimate representative (SLR) of the Palestinian people wherever they reside? And, second, what would be the impact of this on the refugees' right of return to homes and properties in what was Mandate Palestine but is now Israel? The answer has created discord among Palestinians. Refugee activists have demanded "clarity" from the PA that any move to a member or observer state at the UN will not harm either the PLO status as SLR or Palestinian refugee rights. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has assured them it won't. The "PLO would continue to function [as SLR] until all Palestinian issues are resolved, including the case of the refugees. The PA is part of the PLO and not a separate body," he told Jordan's Al-Dustour, a country in which Palestinian refugees are a majority. Abbas' opinion is backed by a seven-page memo by the PLO-Palestine UN Mission, insisting with legal arguments that the PA's "September initiative" prejudices neither the PLO representative status nor the refugees' right of return. It has also been echoed by Frances Boyle and John Quigley, two experts in international law. Boyle helped draft the PLO's 1988 Declaration of Independence, the document that for the first time centred Palestinian self-determination as a state on the 1967 occupied territories. "The executive committee of the PLO in its capacity as the provisional government will continue to represent all Palestinians around the world when Palestine becomes a state. No one will be disenfranchised. The PLO will not lose its status", he says. In fact, adds Quigley, the rights of Palestinians everywhere will be strengthened by the UN move. "If Palestine were to become a (UN) member state... it would be able to pursue remedies at the diplomatic level as a state... It can also pursue prosecution of Israeli officials for war crimes, such as settlements, putting pressure on Israel on an issue that has been the principle obstacle to a peace settlement... Rather than posing a threat to refugees, the refugees will in fact be in a much stronger position." Quigley says the uncertainty among them is because it is "the PA who is putting the [UN] bid forward" rather than the PLO. It's this confusion that is the real crux of the debate, say Palestinian commentators. In theory, the PA is a "subsidiary" of the PLO. In practice, however, since the 1993 Oslo accords and especially the PA's establishment in 1994, it is the PLO that has become the subsidiary, transferring most of its departments, functions and personnel to PA areas inside the occupied territories. Abbas personifies the confusion: next week he will present the Palestinian UN bid as both chairperson of the PLO executive and PA president. But he has never been elected to the former position by any suffrage representing Palestinians outside the occupied territories. And as PA president, he represents only those Palestinians in the occupied territories, which, at four million, are less than half the Palestinian people. Even this representative status is doubtful. His tenure as president expired in 2010. And, absent new elections, the PA government that could have extended it was dissolved by him after the 2007 Palestinian civil war that divided the PA into an Abbas-led authority in the West Bank and a Hamas authority in Gaza. The Islamist Hamas movement had been the PA government prior to the dissolution, following their win in parliamentary elections in 2006. Hamas remains the de facto Palestinian authority in Gaza. It is not part of the PLO, does not recognise Abbas' legitimacy as PA president and has dismissed the UN move as a "political scam". Goodwin-Gill's warnings are thus less about whether a change from PLO observer to a Palestine member or observer state would harm Palestinian rights. All the legal arguments suggest it would not: it may even strengthen them. It is rather about under what authority does an unelected leadership -- confined to one part of the occupied territories -- have to change the status of Palestinian entities at the UN or anywhere else. Says Goodwin-Gill: "Does the PA have the power to move the issue of statehood ahead, and, if so, what are the origins and parameters of that power? Have the people of Palestine, through their representative, the PLO, granted such power? I recognise there is an urgent, pressing need for statehood, particularly in the face of the intransigence of other parties, but I am also concerned that the essentials of modern statehood -- democracy, representative government and accountability -- may be sidelined, if not sacrificed, perhaps to the long-term disadvantage of the people at large".
