Pity Versus Rights’ Recognition: Rejection of the Victim Label by Palestinian Refugees

Abstract

The international conception of the “victim” has evolved over the last 50 years, with an increasing focus placed on providing restorative justice following mass human rights violations. Recent efforts emphasize psychological care treating trauma and symbolic gestures recognizing harm done. The Palestinians’ position as victims gained international attention during the Second Intifada. Images of little boys throwing stones at army tanks flooded the media, while teams of psychologists arrived in the West Bank to provide care for the “traumatized” Palestinian population. There was hope that the new international awareness of the victimization of the Palestinian people would correspond to the delivery of justice. However, it quickly became clear that international pity was not necessarily a precursor to international action. This article discusses understandings of “justice” and “victim status” among refugee communities in the West Bank and Jordan. In preliminary interviews, many refugees equated justice with the right of return, defining the right as more about choice than any specific piece of land. This emphasis on choice was tied to a repeated and explicit frustration with the “victimhood life.” While older generations tended to continue to focus on the crimes suffered by the Palestinian community, younger generations of refugees tended to more emphatically reject their “victim role.” Both groups complained of a lack of agency, noting the restrictions placed on them by Israel and their exclusion from decision-making by UNRWA and the PA. Most interviewees noted the inadequacy of moral support and symbolic gestures if not tied to material redress in the form of real changes to the current social structure and called for political pressure, empowerment and inclusion from the international system. Refugee testimony highlights the disconnect between local and global agendas. When an individual is designated a refugee, they are often reduced to Giorgio Agamben’s “bare life,” an existence marked by a condition of pre-political absolute victimhood that “exists in tension with the attempts to produce political beings found in the struggles of individuals.” Humanitarian agencies, as well as the international media, often depoliticize and homogenize the refugee category, treating them as passive recipients of aid in need only of humanitarian assistance, rather than as individuals with unique histories and the right to redress and the need for advocacy. Palestinian refugees feel this objectification more strongly than refugees under UNHCR’s care, as UNRWA lacks a specific, legal protection mandate. While UNRWA has begun to expand its protection role in recent years, their work remains limited, legally and conceptually. Acknowledgment of the harm the victim has undergone and recognition of their place as a rights-bearing subject are two very different things. It is possible to pity a victim for the pain they have suffered but to continue to view them only as an object in need of charity and direction. The refugees’ frustration with their passive role vis-a-vis UNRWA and their continued perception as victims reminds of their position as civil and political rights-bearing subjects with legitimate claims to justice, autonomy and representation. The article concludes by discussing the possibilities presented by a continued expansion of UNRWA’s protection role, particularly in terms of international protection, in order to respond and address the refugees’ frustration with their current “victimhood” life.