Present absentees are Arab

internally displaced persons An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced displacement, forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the Refugee#Definitions ...

(IDPs) who fled or were expelled from their homes in

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

during the

1947–1949 Palestine war The 1948 Palestine war was fought in the territory of what had been, at the start of the war, British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. During the war, the British withdrew from Palestine, Zionism, Zionist forces conquered territory and established ...

but remained within the area that became the state of

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. In 1950, 46,000 out of the 156,000

Israeli Arab The Arab citizens of Israel form the country's largest ethnic minority. Their community mainly consists of former Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, Mandatory Palestine citizens (and their descendants) who continued to inhabit the territory ...

s in Israel were considered present absentees. According to 2015 estimates from Palestinian NGO

BADIL BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights is an independent, human rights non-profit organization committed to protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons. BADIL was establish ...

, there are 384,200 IDPs in Israel and 334,600 IDPs in the

Palestinian territories The occupied Palestinian territories, also referred to as the Palestinian territories, consist of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip—two regions of the former Mandate for Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine ...

. IDPs are not permitted to live in the homes they formerly lived in, even if they were in the same area as their home, the property still exists, and they can show that they own it. They are regarded as absent by the Israeli government because they were absent from their homes on a particular day, even if they did not intend to leave them for more than a few days, and even if they left involuntarily. The community carries out an annual March of Return to their former villages.

IDPs in Israel

If the definition is restricted to those displaced in the 1948 war and its immediate aftermath and their descendants, some 274,000

Arab citizens of Israel The Arab citizens of Israel form the country's largest ethnic minority. Their community mainly consists of former Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, Mandatory Palestine citizens (and their descendants) who continued to inhabit the territory ...

– or one in four in Israel – are

internally displaced An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee. I ...

. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated in 2007 that 150,000–420,000 internally displaced persons were living in Israel. The vast majority are Muslim (90%) and some 10% are Christian. There are no

Druze The Druze ( ; , ' or ', , '), who Endonym and exonym, call themselves al-Muwaḥḥidūn (), are an Arabs, Arab Eastern esotericism, esoteric Religious denomination, religious group from West Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic ...

among them "since no Druze village was destroyed in the 1948 war and no Druze left their settlements permanently." Organizations defending the rights of

also generally include the 110,000

Bedouin The Bedouin, Beduin, or Bedu ( ; , singular ) are pastorally nomadic Arab tribes who have historically inhabited the desert regions in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, the Levant, and Mesopotamia (Iraq). The Bedouin originated in the Sy ...

forced to move in a closed area under military rule in the

Negev The Negev ( ; ) or Naqab (), is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The region's largest city and administrative capital is Beersheba (pop. ), in the north. At its southern end is the Gulf of Aqaba and the resort town, resort city ...

in 1949 in their estimates of internally displaced Palestinians. Other internally displaced persons included in these counts are those who were displaced by ongoing home demolitions enacted against unlicensed structures or in unrecognized villages. Estimates based on this broader definition place the total population of IDPs at anywhere between 250,000 and 420,000 people.

Present absentees

In 1950, the

United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA, pronounced ) is a UN agency that supports the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's mandate encompasses Palestinians who fle ...

(UNRWA) estimated that 46,000 of the 156,000 PalestiniansThe Internally Displaced Refugees
who remained inside the borders demarcated as Israel by the

1949 Armistice Agreements The 1949 Armistice Agreements were signed between Israel and Egypt,Palestinian refugees Palestinian refugees are citizens of Mandatory Palestine, and their descendants, who fled or were expelled from their country, village or house over the course of the 1948 Palestine war and during the 1967 Six-Day War. Most Palestinian refug ...

, the homes and properties of internally displaced Palestinians were placed under the control of a government body, the Custodian of Absentees' Property via legislation that includes the ''1948 Emergency Regulation Concerning Absentee Property'' (a temporary measure) and the ''1950 Absentee Property Law''. Unlike Palestinian refugees, the internally displaced Palestinians and others who remained inside what became

were made citizens by the

Citizenship Law Nationality law is the law of a sovereign state, and of each of its jurisdictions, that defines the legal manner in which a national identity is acquired and how it may be lost. In international law, the legal means to acquire nationality and for ...

of July 1952. That same year Israel requested that UNRWA transfer responsibility for registering and caring for internally displaced persons to Israel and basic humanitarian assistance was provided to the internally displaced for a time. Military administrative rule (1948–1966) restricted the movement of

, and it combined with the Absentees' Property Laws to prevent internally displaced citizens from physically returning to their properties to reclaim their homes. According to the Absentees' Property Laws, "absentees" are non-Jewish residents of Palestine who had left their usual places of residence for any place inside or outside the country after the adoption of the partition of Palestine resolution by the UN. Under these laws, "absentee" property owners were required to prove their "presence" in order to gain recognition of their ownership rights by the Israeli government. However, all ownership rights of "absentees" belong to the government-appointed Custodian of Absentee Property, and any person including the "absentee" owner himself found occupying, building, or being "present" on such properties would be violating the law and risk expulsion and demolition. Some villagers like those of

Ghassibiya Al-Ghabisiyya was a Palestinians, Palestinian Arab village in northern Mandatory Palestine, Palestine, 16 km north-east of Acre, Israel, Acre in present-day Israel. It was depopulated by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Palestinian e ...

, Bir'im and

Iqrit Iqrit ( or إقرث, ''Iqrith;'' sometimes romanized as ''Ikret'') was a Palestinian Christian village, located northeast of Acre, in the western Galilee.Hadawi, Sami. ''Bitter Harvest: Palestine between 1914-1979.'' Revised edition. New York: ...

made petitions to the Israeli High Court to have their property rights recognized which were upheld in the 1950s, but they were physically prevented from reclaiming their properties by military administrative authorities who refused to abide by the court rulings and declared the villages closed military zones. Because most internally displaced Arab citizens of Israel were counted as absent, even though present inside the Israeli state, they are also commonly referred to as ''present absentees''.

Present-day

Today the internally displaced Bedouins and their descendants live in 39–46 unrecognized villages in the

and the

Galilee Galilee (; ; ; ) is a region located in northern Israel and southern Lebanon consisting of two parts: the Upper Galilee (, ; , ) and the Lower Galilee (, ; , ). ''Galilee'' encompasses the area north of the Mount Carmel-Mount Gilboa ridge and ...

, while the remaining internally displaced Arab citizens live in some 80 towns and villages in the

such as Ein Hawd. There is also the village of Ein Rafa near

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. Half of the populations in the two largest Arab towns in Israel,

Nazareth Nazareth is the largest Cities in Israel, city in the Northern District (Israel), Northern District of Israel. In its population was . Known as "the Arab capital of Israel", Nazareth serves as a cultural, political, religious, economic and ...

and

Umm al-Fahm Umm al-Fahm ( , ''Umm al-Faḥm''; ''Um el-Faḥem'') is a city located northwest of Jenin in the Haifa District of Israel. In its population was , nearly all of whom are Palestinian citizens of Israel. The city is situated on the Umm al-Fahm ...

, are made up of internally displaced persons from neighbouring towns and villages destroyed in 1948.

IDPs in Palestine

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated in July 2015 that there are at least 263,500 IDPs in Occupied Palestine.

Research on the internal refugees

A few books focus on Arab internal refugees in Israel and internally displaced Palestinians across the Green Line. In 1991, Israeli writer and peace activist

David Grossman David Grossman (; born January 25, 1954) is an Israeli author. His books have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 2018, he was awarded the Israel Prize for literature. Biography David Grossman was born in Jerusalem. He is the eld ...

conducted several interviews with

Palestinian citizens of Israel The Arab citizens of Israel form the country's largest ethnic minority. Their community mainly consists of former Palestinian Citizenship Order 1925, Mandatory Palestine citizens (and their descendants) who continued to inhabit the territory ...

. These were published in a book called in . The English version was titled ''Sleeping on a Wire: Conversations with Palestinians in Israel''. As

Nur Masalha Nur ad-Din Masalha (, ; born 4 January 1957) is a Palestinian writer, historian, and academic. His work focuses on the history, politics, and theology of Palestine, including themes such as the Palestinian Nakba, Zionism, and liberation theolog ...

puts it in his introduction: "Acquiring the paradoxical title of present absentees, the internally displaced had their property and homes taken by the state, making them refugees and exiles within their own homeland."Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the Internal Refugees, edited by Nur Masalha (London: Zed Books 2005). The book uses oral history and interviews with internal refugees to examine Palestinian identity and memory, indigenous rights, international protection, the right of return, and a just solution in Palestine/Israel.

References

Bibliography

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