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Palestinian refugees, longtime pawns in regional and international struggles, have recently become a factor in American politics, as well.
An attempt by the U.S. Senate to define who exactly can be counted as a Palestinian refugee has pitted congressional Republicans and some Israel advocates against the Obama administration. The measure, an amendment to the defense spending bill presented by Illinois Republican Senator Mark Kirk, would require the State Department to report how many of the Palestinians served by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency were personally displaced in the 1948 war. Although the version that was finally approved was watered down significantly, both sides believe it could eventually force the United States to make a concrete determination on the number of Palestinian refugees, which now ranges from 30,000, according to the minimalist approach, to 5 million, as official U.N. numbers suggest.
Beneath the political posturing lies the core question of defining the status of Palestinian refugees. A unique set of circumstances has allowed Palestinians to pass on their refugee status generation to generation, making for a rare, albeit not unheard of, case of a refugee problem that is growing in numbers instead of shrinking.
"At the root of this story is a dividing line between European and non-European refugees," said G. Daniel Cohen, a professor of history at Rice University who has written extensively on refugee issues. "The Palestinians," he added, "were the first test case for this division after World War II."
Ih the debate, which took center stage in May, each side clings to historical precedents supporting its claim.
For those who believe that refugee status should be given only to Palestinians who were personally displaced during the 1948 war, which led to the creation of the State of Israel, there are two key precedents: the plight of more than 12 million German refugees who were forced out of their countries of residence in postwar Europe, and the case of Indian and Pakistani refugees who were displaced following the partition of India in 1947. In both cases, refugees were resettled in their countries of residence without passing down the status to the next generations.
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