“Matter out of place”
Humanitarianism and the construction of national identities: the cases of Palestinian and Sahrawi refugees
Author: Leticia Álvarez Álvarez
Supervisor: Dr. Anna Baral, PhD, Uppsala University May 2021
This thesis is submitted for obtaining the Master’s Degree in International Humanitarian Action and Conflict. By submitting the thesis, the author certifies that the text is from his/her hand, does not include the work of someone else unless clearly indicated, and that the thesis has been produced in accordance with proper academic practices.
2
I. ABSTRACT
This thesis examines the tension between humanitarianism and nationalism by focusing on the Sahrawi and Palestinian refugee cases. These cases represent a challenge to both nationalism, which presupposes national identity as being congruent with the established political borders and rooted within their limits, and the claim of neutrality, as not favoring any side in an armed conflict or dispute and bearing no national allegiance.
Firstly, Palestinians and Sahrawis, while claiming a nation without land, have created a national identity in up-rootedness, and express political fights that are nurtured by the very humanitarianism. Secondly, the refugee camp, as a humanitarian product, has been accused of depoliticizing and reducing life to mere survival, and I will explore how it has paradoxically become a hyper-politicized space providing the grounds for national identities and national claims to develop. For Palestinians and Sahrawis, I will argue, humanitarian interventions are in fact the very reason for politicized identities to arise.
Keywords:
Refugeehood, humanitarianism, nationalism, neutrality, Palestine, Western Sahara, refugee camp
3 II. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ICJ – International Court of Justice
MSF – Médecins Sans Frontières
MINURSO – United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara
PLO – Palestinian Liberation Front
POLISARIO – Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al-Hamra and Wadi Dahab
SADR – Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic
UNGA – United Nations General Assembly
UNHCR – United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNRWA – United Nations Relief Agency and Works for Palestinian Refugees
4 TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. ABSTRACT ... 2
II. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ... 3
1. Introduction ... 5
1.2. Relevance to the field ... 6
1.3. Methodology ... 6
1.4. Limitations ... 8
1.5. Thesis outline ... 8
2. Theoretical background ... 9
2.1. Nationalism ... 9
2.2. Mobility Studies ... 11
2.3. Identity ... 12
2.4. Refugeehood ... 13
2.5. New localities: The refugee camp as a permanent experience ... 14
2.6. Humanitarianism ... 15
3. Palestine & Western Sahara: A comparative approach ... 17
3.1. Humanitarian crises follow colonial trails ... 17
3.2. Up-rootedness as a flag: nationalism and refugeehood ... 19
3.2.1. Palestine: exile made nation... 21
3.2.2. Western Sahara – a nation in exile ... 22
4. Stretching borders: humanitarianism, neutrality and (de)politicization .... 24
4.1. Neutrality ... 24
4.1.1. Humanitarianism made ad hoc: UNRWA ... 24
4.1.2. The building of the Sahrawi nation: “a humanitarian state” ... 27
4.2. (De)politicization ... 28
4.3. The humanitarian intervention as a national signifier ... 30
5. Conclusion ... 32
6. Bibliography ... 34
5 1. Introduction
This thesis challenges the humanitarian claim of “bearing no national allegiance” (Dromi, 2019) by showing how humanitarian interventions are indeed deeply embedded in the national logic and maintain a paradoxical relationship with it. It will do so by focusing on the cases of Saharawi and Palestinians, whose national identities are peculiarly intersected with the condition of refugeehood and thus with the absence, or the distance, from a homeland.
Nationalist ideologies, as they first developed in Europe (Eriksen, 2010), are based on the concept of the nation-state, which presupposes that ethnic, religious, and political borders naturally coincide with the territorial ones (Herzog, 2009). However, when borders were set in the Near East and North Africa, as a result of decolonization processes, they did not reflect the complexities of an extremely heterogeneous region.
These new nation-states were challenged with the creation of their own national identity, and to create it, they relied mostly on religion (Kuramaswamy, 2006). The case of Palestinians and Sahrawis differ, however, as they have national and territorial aspirations in which Islam, despite holding an important position, is not the main element in their identity construction.
Palestinian and Sahrawi national identities, this thesis will argue, are profoundly interwoven with humanitarian action. For humanitarianism, the will to “transcend borders” is embedded in the belief that nations are the root of the issues humanitarianism aims to solve (Dromi, 2019). Moreover, humanitarian organizations are the most prominent NGOs providing relief to refugees whose vulnerability is rooted in the national logic in which they don’t fit, as their identity is not attached to any nation-state (Herzog, 2009). In providing help, humanitarian NGOs comply with the humanitarian principles, regardless of boundaries, politics, or cultural specificities, thus submitting to a sense of universal and primordial humanity. While this claim has been accused of depersonalizing refugees by erasing their individual and collective identities, the logic of a depoliticized and neutral humanitarian morality is at odds with the empirical experience of groups such as those on which this thesis is focused. For Palestinians and Sahrawis, I will argue, humanitarian interventions are in fact the very reason for politicized identities to arise:
their condition of refugeehood thus challenges both classical ideas of nationalism (since Palestinian and Sahrawi nationalisms arise without a land/country to be rooted in), and the humanitarian ideal of neutrality.
6 1.1.Research questions
- In which terms has the condition of refugeehood shaped the definition of national identity of the Palestinian and Sahrawi people?
- How has humanitarian action affected the national identity construction processes for both?
- In such contexts, can humanitarianism’s claims of neutrality and “bearing no national allegiance” remain valid?
- Are the accusations verted on humanitarian action of silencing the political biographies of the recipients applicable to the Sahrawi and Palestinian cases?
1.2.Relevance to the field
The refugee question has been one of the milestones in the history of relief aid, refugees being one of the main target populations for humanitarian interventions. On the other hand, humanitarian agencies are constantly under scrutiny, both for their ethics in terms of their compliance with humanitarian principles, and for the consequences of the implementation of their projects. The long-term impact a humanitarian intervention can have is extremely relevant, as it affects different domains, not only in developmental terms but also on political and identity levels that can have unintended consequences.
Moreover, humanitarianism cannot pretend to be “depoliticized” or “bearing no national allegiance” when humanitarian interventions usually engage in conflict settings rooted and engaged with the imaginary of the nation. Given these premises, my thesis offers an analysis of the role of humanitarian aid with the processes of national identity construction and nation-building, and the unintended effects and challenges this engagement poses for the humanitarian principles.
1.3.Methodology
This thesis will aim at providing answers to the research questions by using two different qualitative methodologies. Firstly, the literature review will provide an understanding of the concepts, theories relevant to the subject and already produced material. Through the theoretical framework, I will explore the interaction between concepts such as identity, refugeehood, and nationalism through the lenses of postcolonial theory. The literature review provides a critical analysis of the already produced material and creates the basis of the following analysis. Secondly, this thesis will use a
7 comparative approach to deepen into the case studies of Palestinian and Sahrawi questions. In both cases, it will show how refugeehood as a prolonged or permanent experience shapes the identities of the two populations, together with humanitarian interventions.
The research design is based on a review of interdisciplinary literature, coherently with the interdisciplinary nature of studies of humanitarianism. Firstly, scholarship on nationalism and mobility (Anderson, 2019; Friese and Mezzadra, 2010; Glick Schiller, 2007; Papastergiadis, 2005; Sheller and Urry, 2006; Wimmer and Schiller, 2002) points at how the nation-state paradigm has traditionally represented the privileged unit of analysis for social sciences and to the challenges its rigidity has posed when regarding the study of uprooted and displaced populations. Literature on identity formation (Bilge 2018; Friese and Mezzadra, 2010; Golubović, 2010; Kebede 2010, Kumaraswamy, 2006) will help me to locate the different theories relevant to this subject. This literature points mainly at trends claiming identity as being bond to a nation-state and others that affirm it goes beyond spatial rootedness. Literature on refugeehood and forced migration (Colson, 2003; Malkki, 1992, 1995, 1996, 2002; Owens, 2009) will allow me to problematize the figure of the refugee and the refugee camp, as a humanitarian intervention. In the past two decades, anthropology of humanitarianism (Herzog, 2009; Fassin, 2011; Redfield, 2006) has tackled fundamental issues about the applicability of the humanitarian principles and the tension between humanitarianism and nations, thus it will be relevant for me to analyze the humanitarian intervention in such politicized conflict-settings such as the ones this thesis is devoted to.
Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and the impossibility to conduct fieldwork, this thesis remains based on secondary sources. Nevertheless, it takes on the analysis of ethnographic research conducted by anthropologists in the Palestinian territories and/or with the Palestinian diaspora (Gabiam, 2006; Hammer, 2005; Feldman, 2008; Farah, 2008), and Western Sahara and the refugee camps in Algeria (Wilson, 2012; Cozza, 2003;
San Martin, 2007, 2010). Moreover, surveys and reports such as the ones carried out by Badil (the Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights) and UNRWA have been analyzed to acquire a general view on the magnitude of the phenomenon of forced displacement and diaspora.
8 1.4.Limitations
Time and reach are among the main limitations and restrictions in the completion of this thesis. The issue tackled in this thesis is extremely complex both chronologically and geographically. Being protracted crises and as the events at the time of writing show, the humanitarian intervention (and humanitarian crisis) has been ongoing during the more than 70 years that the Palestinian refugee question remains unresolved, and more than 40 in the Sahrawi one. The complexity of the humanitarian intervention, especially in the Palestinian case, stems both from the timeline of the conflict and the different geographical settings in which humanitarianism has met Palestinians. Thus, this thesis will focus on certain elements that have remained a constant throughout both case studies.
On the other hand, as mentioned, due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent impossibility of ethnographic fieldwork, research material is limited to academic papers and humanitarian agencies reports. Moreover, the number of academic papers and relief agencies reports regarding the Sahrawi question is surprisingly (or not) much less numerous compared to the literature around the Palestinian question, which also opens lines for reflection on the visibility of both conflicts.
1.5.Thesis outline
This thesis is structured around five main chapters. After this first introductory chapter, I will move on to the theoretical framework regarding mobility studies, identity construction, refugeehood, and the controversial relationship between humanitarianism and nationalism. The third chapter provides a comparative historical background and focuses on the role of refugeehood in the construction of national identity of both peoples.
The fourth chapter conducts the comparative analysis on humanitarianism in terms of neutrality in the Sahrawi and Palestinian questions. The fifth and last chapter will fold the thesis with the final reflections and answers to the research questions.
9 2. Theoretical background
In order to prepare my comparative analysis, in this chapter I will dive into the core concepts of the thesis: identity, refugeehood, humanitarianism, and nationalism through the lenses of postcolonial theory.
2.1.Nationalism
At the same time that the nation has represented for a long time the privileged unit of analysis for social sciences, nationalism, as “the ideology of the modern nation-state”
(Eriksen 2010:118) is key to understanding issues such as the decolonization processes and the subsequent configuration of the international map and migratory policies. Taken as such, nationalism is based on the idea of the configuration of the modern world as being comprised by autonomous, united, and ethnically homogenous societies, embodied in the nation-states, separated from other units by virtually natural borders, and representing the basic unit for social and comparative research (Gellner in Eriksen, 2010;
Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002). Gellner (see Malkki, 1992) compares the international political map to a Modigliani painting where the nation-states are flat surfaces distinctively separated from each other, without any ambiguity or overlap.
According to Anderson (1983), nation-states are a social construct where the nation becomes an “imagined community” of members who, despite the fact that they will never personally know most of their fellow members, keep in their minds the mental image of their affinity and belonging to the same supra-structure. Gellner stresses the ethnic homogeneity of nationalism: the nation or “imagined community” should be congruent and submitted to the political boundaries (1983). This argument infers there is a link between ethnicity and the state. Nationalism, through the use of ethnic symbols, intends to stimulate reflection on one’s own cultural distinctiveness and thus create a feeling of nationhood, enabling people to talk about their culture as though it was a constant (Eriksen, 2010). As we will see in the next chapter, the Palestinian and Sahrawi cases challenge these premises.
Moreover, according to the metaphor of the nation-state as a corporeal being, the territorial borders, symbolized by the outer skin, regulate the movements of people and have become an essential reference to national identity (Khosravi, 2007). In fact, they draw the line between the “us” (members of the nation), and “them” (the outsiders). This
10 is especially relevant when the access to rights is restricted to the members of that community: borders are the limits to which citizenship and rights are circumscribed. In this logic, the refugee, the undocumented, and the transnational migrant are configured as a disturbing element in the conventional “identity between man and citizen”
(Agamben, 1996:24-25 in Friese and Mezzadra, 2010:304).
The rigidity of the nation-state analysis framework has been challenged by many factors. First, the advent of globalization transformed it in a fluid and complex “network of networks” (Eriksen, 2010:206) and diminished its power through the rise of transnational corporations and supranational organizations. Globalization and the new technologies facilitated the circulation of cultural and material goods and services and increased mobility and migration (Friese and Mezzadra, 2010; Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002). Secondly, the polyethnic component of many societies raised questions on the feasibility and success of the implementation of such a homogenously conceived paradigm. This issue is especially visible in the post-colonial state-building processes which either lacked a pre-colonial state or “imagined community” before colonization that could be revived, or those whose societies had a strong multi-ethnic component (Eriksen, 2010).
Nevertheless, decolonization, according to some scholars, could be compatible with certain kinds of nationalism and territorialism (Anderson, 2019). Leela Gandhi recalls how numerous decolonization processes have paradoxically resorted to nationalism to define themselves through its vocabulary in opposition to the colonial European powers (1998). Some of the nationalist movements relied on a nascent concept of national membership, often one that had been either received from or imposed by the colonizing country, or one that is indigenously developed, yet through the use of conceptual tools gained from the colonizing country such as the education of indigenous elites by institutions in the métropole (Schaffer, 2007). An example is the négritude movement, that glorified the African culture and which was developed by intellectuals, originally from several French colonies, in Paris who had never been to Africa. In this line, Frantz Fanon applauded nationalism for its essential role in the healing process of the psychological wounds inflicted by colonialism, which reduced the colonized subject to an invisible, barely human existence (see Gandhi, 1998), unheard, and unseen.
11 2.2. Mobility Studies
The rise and naturalization of the nation-state model permeated academia in the social studies through what has been defined as “methodological nationalism” (Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002). Scholars have analyzed and criticized the methodological nationalism paradigm in two main aspects. Firstly, the deep naturalization of a world divided in autonomous nation-states has made us regard global interconnections as problematic (Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002) and fueled the understanding of certain kinds of human movements as a “problem” to be solved (Anderson, 2019). Secondly, this theoretical framework essentializes natives and foreigners, differentiating them as socially, essentially, and culturally distinct, homogenizing their complexities by inserting them in two static categories (Glick Schiller, 2007). Other authors, such as Malkki (1996;
1995), have heatedly opposed this Manichean structure that spills over the study of forced displacement, as it will be discussed in following sections.
As previously mentioned, academia had traditionally marginalized migration due to its deep internalization of the “metaphysical sedentarism” that, in words of Malkki, carries “an expectation of roots, of a stable, territorialized existence” (1992:29). In the context of forced displacement and refugeehood, Malkki criticizes how the naturalization of the nation-state paradigm is reproduced by anthropology and refugee studies, when presenting a paradigmatic “refugee experience” going through different fixed stages: the threat that triggers the decision to flee; the migration route; the permanence in the refugee camp; the permanent relocation to the host country; the subsequent integration; and the transformations in behavior produced by this process (1995).
The critique of this framework has allowed the study of de-territorialization, by focusing on migration, diasporas, and transnational citizenship. This new approach focuses on the migrant subjectivity and identity and it has taken over the analysis and formulation of the acts of “homing” and “re-grounding” of displaced populations. These processes can be defined as the act of reconfiguring and recreating the place of arrival into a new “home”, both figuratively and imaginatively. This can be done by assembling materials carried from home such as textures, colors, scents, souvenirs, or anything relevant to the displaced when remembering the place of origin (Sheller and Urry, 2006), something which will be considered in the following paragraphs.
12 2.3.Identity
The essentialist theories tie belonging and identification in terms of adherence to a nation-state and to the notion of a socio-cultural bonding of people to a territory (Friese and Mezzadra, 2010). In the same line, according to Malkki, “people are often thought of, and think of themselves as being rooted in place and as deriving their identity from that rootedness” (1992:27). On the other hand, the analysis of identity construction in uprooted settings can no longer be grounded to the concept of territory, as it no longer applies. Papastergiadis stresses the need of regarding spatial belonging also from a diasporic perspective (2005), extremely relevant in the cases analyzed in this thesis, being Palestinians and Sahrawis largely diasporic populations.
In a different perspective, constructionist theories view the national identities as a human product of imagination (Anderson, 1983) and a historical construction (Foucault, 1980 in Kebede, 2010). Malkki follows this view stressing that the social world is not confined to a particular place or limited to territorial boundaries (1995). Instead, it is the relations among people which act as a grounding element, and not just the physical rooting of a person and a group to a particular territory (Warner, 1994).
In this context, ethnicity may be essential in defining identity in displacement. Bilge understands ethnicity as a cultural identifier and communicative process, arguing that in absence of defined or concrete borders, the emergence, preservation, and continuity of identity depends on communication (2018). Culture, as a social construct, survives because it is communicated within the group, generation after generation, unifying and forging the group’s identity and supporting its survival (ibid).
Importantly for the aim of this thesis is the existence of “common historical events, political struggles or a common fate” which play an essential role in the emergence of ethnic identity (Bilge, 2018:228). The existence of a shared tragedy does not establish identity by itself, but it necessitates communication, and the way the struggle or tragedy is communicated is what establishes, shapes, and maintains the identity and the connections between the past, the present, and the future (Bilge, 2010).
This is especially visible in the Palestinian and Sahrawi diasporas, where communication of the culture and the tragedy of the loss of the nation has been essential
13 in maintaining the question visible within the generations born in exile, as I will discuss later.
2.4.Refugeehood
The legal definition of the refugee status by the Geneva Convention applies “to any person who[,]…owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it” (see Malkki, 1995:502). As evident in the quote, the political meaning of this definition is deeply embedded in the hegemonic national logic discussed in the previous sections. Refugees, then, are the result of the divergence between territory and identity, and of the assumption that all peoples must be protected by a state (Herzog, 2009). According to Malkki, this conception of society as a territorially based organism assumes that being uprooted from the national community implies necessarily to lose one’s identity, culture, and traditions (1995).
The definition of refugee, and what this status entails, has been object of thorough analysis by authors interested in the way mobility and displacement play out in the postcolonial world. Redfield and Agamben coincide in the notion of refugee as someone deprived of agency and limited to zoë, defined as “bare life” (Redfield, 2005:340).
According to them, the refugee’s limited existence resembles to that of an animal without speech and political freedom, confined within the boundaries of the refugee camp (Owens, 2009). Following the same argument, Davis and Isakjee use Mbembe’s account of “necropolitics”, originally conceived to capture colonial violence, to describe new forms of social existence related to refugees. Refugees would endure such extreme living conditions that they would become “living dead” or “in a state of injury’ (see Davis and Isakjee, 2018:214). Krzyżanowska states that quite often, refugees are believed to live in
“a condition of social limbo, passively waiting for return” (2013:22).
The above description of the refugee agrees on a person who has been extremely diminished, weakened, and stripped from sociality and agency. Appadurai links this state of losing the ability to exist beyond survival to the permanence in the long-term refugee
14 camp (1996). Yet, the camp as a long-term or permanent experience also acquires new meanings and sets the foundations for the recreation and revival of the homeland.
2.5.New localities: The refugee camp as a permanent experience
The end of World War II witnessed the emergence of the refugee camp as a standardized technology of power in the management of mass displacement. This management was a bureaucratic and administrative process that reached all levels: from medical and hygienic programs, accumulation of documentation of the inhabitants of the camp, the control of their movements, to the law enforcement, inter alia (Malkki, 1995).
The refugee camp is originally structured as a temporary solution to an emergency or crisis that should be dismantled when the crisis that originated the displacement in the first place is resolved. However, the issue arises when crisis becomes context, rather than an “an isolated period of time in which lives are shattered” (Vigh, 2008:5), and thus a routinized experience, translated into a permanent state of refugeehood in a temporary- conceived structure.
Due to the protracted staying, the refugee camp ends up taking upon itself meanings of the “grief of the lost home” (see Colson, 2005:9), belonging, and “re-grounding”
(Sheller and Urry, 2006:21). The process of de-territorialization developed as an important field of analysis in postcolonial academia, in a time where more and more people, chronically displaced, are categorized or identify themselves with “de- territorialized homelands”. Such people find their homelands in the absence of the territorial one, “through memories and claims on places that they can or will no longer corporeally inhabit” (Malkki, 1992:24). In relation to this, Krzyżanowska introduces the notion of “mediated locality” as “feeling territorialized in a place that acts as a symbolic representation of another site, to which individuals or groups feel attached” (2013:21).
The nature of the refugee camp as a temporary solution to a temporary emergency is deeply challenged by crisis as a prolonged or permanent experience, where social life needs to be made sense of despite the crisis. The camp and the elements that constitute the past are essential to creating life in exile, becoming stable references for refugees inhabiting these structures, as crisis usually destabilizes the way one has constituted and constructed oneself as part of larger entities. The camp remains the bridge to the lost homeland, where the myth of exile is recreated. It does not only maintain but also
15 reinforces the emotional bond generation after generation and acts as a living reminder of the lost motherland, a connection between the space of origin and exile (Colson, 2003) and provides new ways of political expression, while keeping the question of the return alive in the coming generations.
Either as a “de-territorialized homeland”, where life can be made sense of or as a
“warehouse” where inhabitants are subjected to a “minimal existence”, the nature of the camp is responsibility of humanitarian agencies, as it is planned and administered by the humanitarian system (Appadurai, 1996).
2.6.Humanitarianism
The humanitarian discourse on the refugee issue has been traditionally constructed on the impartial and neutral assistance of victims of forced displacement throughout the world, according to which, aid must be provided solely on the basis on need and without favoring any side in an armed conflict or dispute (ECHO, 2021). It stems from the concept of humanity understood as the collective of human beings as equal members of a moral community, where every human life is of equal value (Fassin, 2011). Because of this, saving lives becomes an ethical question that transcends borders, according to the humanitarian logic. In a similar fashion, humanitarianism has adopted as imperative the assistance of all victims of conflict, regardless their political, ideological, or religious affiliations (Herzog, 2009). In doing so, it theoretically opposes the differences established by paradigms that stress distinctions between human beings, among which is nationalism (Fassin, 2007), embodied in borders.
The nature of the relationship between humanitarianism and nations is extremely paradoxical for different reasons. Firstly, humanitarianism embraces the idea of a borderless space (Redfield, 2005). This is embedded in its belief, as already mentioned, that usually nations are the root causes of the problems humanitarian agencies try to solve (Dromi, 2019). On the other hand, although proclaiming the equivalence of all lives, humanitarian agencies have been heavily criticized for discriminating local staff from expats (Fassin, 2011), usually and paradoxically, on the basis of their very nationality.
Secondly, the postwar formulation of international rights drew the possibility of superseding the national order, allowing to imagine a world truly beyond nations, in the
16 terms of internationalism and universal values (Malkki, 1995). Paradoxically, however, the international organizations manage refugee populations in a way not to undermine the framework on which the nation-state rests as the very idea of a refugee, by belonging neither here or there, challenges the presupposed link between citizen, nation, and state.
In order to contain, in words of Mary Douglas, this “matter out of place” (see Malkki, 1992), the three main solutions are repatriation, integration in the society to which they have escaped, or relocation to a third country. In this process, the idea of nation/state/territory is deeply embedded. Refugees must either return “home” or be naturalized in another place (Owens, 2009).
Thirdly, humanitarian organizations are central to the management of forced displaced populations. As previously mentioned, they do so solely on the basis of needs regardless national or political affiliation or any other distinction. According to some authors, this causes the essentialization of the victim by creating a paradigmatic recipient of humanitarian aid (Fassin, 2011). The recipients must be purely human and defined by their need of assistance, stripped from a historical biography and lacking any kind of national attachment, as if they were “ahistorical universal human subjects” (Malkki, 1996:377). This is especially visible in the refugee camp as the emergency humanitarian response, conceived as a depoliticized place where recipients see their biological needs met, but are also expected not to make any political demands (Turner, 2015).
The notion of a universal refugee, deprived of political speech and national affiliations, is contradicted by the Sahrawi and Palestinian experiences. Both peoples have resorted to humanitarian assistance, exemplified in the refugee camp, to recreate their national identity and to reinforce their political demands. This apparent paradox will be addressed in the following chapters.
17 3. Palestine & Western Sahara: A comparative approach
3.1.Humanitarian crises follow colonial trails
After the World War I and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the British Mandate assumed power over the historical region of Palestine and acknowledged through the Balfour Declaration in 1917 its support to Zionist immigration to Palestine.
This was met with a wave of protests and general resistance among the native Palestinian population. While religious figures were essential in mobilizing the resistance movements, they did so resorting to Pan-Arabism (Khalidi, 1997), an anti-colonial, national, and secular movement motivated not only by the need for national independence but also by the fact of sharing language, set of traditions, and history with other Arab nations (Schaffer, 2007).
At this point in history, the Saharan region located in north-west Africa inhabited by a hassanophone population that would later be known as Sahrawis had been delineated as a Spanish colony for about half a century. Both Sahrawis in West Africa and Arabs in Palestine contested foreign rule, and, in the Palestinian case, the Zionist maneuvers.
Hence, the Arabs revolted against British domination for three years 1936-1939 (Khalidi, 1997). On the Sahrawi front, the resistance to foreign rule came later, although signs of tensions were visible before. In 1973 the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia al- Hamra and Wadi Dahab (Polisario), rose and initiated guerrilla warfare against the Spanish rule (Mundy, 2007). These waves of resistance, even if chronologically apart, managed to draw successfully European responses. Facing both internal and external pressure, Europeans resorted to diplomatic resolutions to both conflicts.
In the advent of the Arab revolt, the British Mandate favored Arab demands to restrict Jewish immigration and land purchases. However, the following World War II and the genocide of Jews impacted the future of Palestinians. The British turned to the newly created United Nations: the Partition Plan for Palestine issued in 1947 in the 181 Resolution recommended the foundation of independent Arab and Jewish states. Britain terminated its mandate one day after the Provisional State Council in Tel Aviv issued the Proclamation of Independence of the Israeli state in 1948, which would be known in the Palestinian imaginary as the Nakba or “Catastrophe” to describe the forced displacement of more than half of the members of the Palestinian society and its dismemberment (Gabiam, 2016:9).
18 Few years after the Partition Plan that set the stage for future conflicts around the right of Palestinians to independence and territorial integrity, similar rights were claimed in the Western Sahara region. In 1965, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution pressuring Spain to withdraw its colonial domination over Western Sahara and recognizing its right to self-determination. However, though hesitantly and meanwhile dealing with rival claims on the territory from Morocco and Mauritania, Spain finally gave in UN pressure and accepted UN demands in 1974 to hold a referendum on independence and completed its withdrawal of the territory in 1976, one day before Polisario founded the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
Morocco and Mauritania’s claims on the land where rejected by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) (see Wilson, 2012:3). However, regardless of this verdict, both countries annexed part of the territory in 1975; Mauritania would withdraw in 1979 after Polisario’s insurgency, while Morocco annexed its part and constructed a militarized sand wall, often referred to as “the berm”, that consequently and effectively partitioned the territory between areas under its control and those under the authority of SADR (on the Eastern side of the “berm”). The SADR’s governmental apparatus doesn’t reside paradoxically within its territories in Western Sahara, but in the Algerian town of Tindouf under the auspices of the Algerian state, who has hosted until this very day the SADR’s headquarters and the displaced population caused by the Moroccan annexation, residing in refugee camps (Mundy, 2007).
This brief summary shows how, despite geographic and historical specificities, both cases central to this thesis went through a similar post-colonial process of dispossession, losing their land and having their people forced to exile: as Palestinians had lost the land mandated to them by the international community to Israel, so did the Sahrawis to Morocco. Moreover, the immediate outcome of these occupations is shared by both conflicts: as a result of the territorial losses undergone and the expulsion of its inhabitants, the epithet of refugees populations applies irrefutably to both Sahrawis and Palestinians . In fact, the war following the establishment of the Israeli state, in the period of 1948-1949, caused the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians who sought refuge in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. This number was increased by the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel occupied the remaining Palestine: the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The current 5.55 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants residing in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are registered by
19 the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). However, the total number of Palestinian forcibly displaced persons worldwide is estimated to be 8.7 million (Badil, 2018). In the case of Sahrawi refugees, numbers remain unknown and contested, but humanitarian agencies estimate that around 173,600 people are residing in the Tindouf camps (UNHCR, 2018). Polisario has authority over the areas located in Western Sahara (on the east of the ‘sand berm’) and the refugee camps in Algerian territory. The population residing in exile stands in contrast to the annexed population, who lives under Moroccan jurisdiction. According to UN estimations, the number of Sahrawis residing under Morocco’s control could be more numerous than those living in exile (Wilson, 2012).
The differences between the Sahrawi and Palestinian diasporas stem both from the magnitude and the geographic scale of the displacement. Whereas Palestinians became a people scattered and dispersed among different host countries, Sahrawis found refuge in a delimited space: the Algerian desert around the town of Tindouf. The conflict remained active and violent between Sahrawis and Morocco until 1991, when a ceasefire was brokered by the UN between Morocco and Polisario. From that moment onwards, the United Nations Mission for a Referendum in Western Sahara (Minurso) has led the conflict resolution efforts. The calling of a referendum could have opened a way to enact the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people (Mundy, 2006), however, it never happened.
These conflicts generated extremely harsh living conditions for both the refugee camps’ residents of both populations, who, until this day, remain to a great extent highly dependent on humanitarian aid with meager prospects of improvement, as both populations face political stalemates.
3.2.Up-rootedness as a flag: nationalism and refugeehood
If territorial markers of modern-nation states are meant to distinguish citizens from
“foreigners” and to foster “national belonging” within their territories, as I have explored in the previous chapter, the Sahrawi and Palestinian experiences challenge this view as they have engaged in national identity construction in the absence of territorial sovereignty. What is interesting is that prior to colonialism, the native communities in these regions displayed a range of different forms of organization, residing in nomadic and tribal communities (Mundy, 2006) that defy the basis of the territorial expression of
20 identity, so central to the discourse of sovereign statehood. However, they resorted to the language of nationalism to define belonging and thus challenging those same colonial powers were statehood was born.
The direction of the refugee trajectories had a determining role in the shaping of the political activism and identity construction processes of these peoples and has been a thoroughly analyzed subject within academia. Whereas some scholars locate the incipient identities previous to the conflicts that led to massive displacement, others identify the resistance to the occupier force as the trigger of the national identity formation.
In the case of Palestinians, some scholars such as Khalidi (1997) and Said (see Hammer, 2005) oppose the view of a national identity solely originated from the opposition to the external aggression. Khalidi identifies the 1917-1923 period as the formative years. The author, drawing from Anderson’s “imagined community”, affirms
“the Arab residents of the country increasingly started to ‘imagine’ themselves as part of a single community” (see Hammer, 2005:32). Some recognize other patterns in this process such as the rise of Arab nationalism as a main factor in this construction. Nakhleh (see Hammer, 2005) argues that an Arab identity was already present, stemming from Palestinians’ common language whereas the territorial component of their identity group started as a reaction to the loss of the land in 1948 and the specificity of the Palestinian experience produced their differentiation from the rest of the Arabs.
In the case of Sahrawis, a similar pattern in research was developed. Suarez identifies three trends within literature: one that stressed ethnic distinctiveness rooted in history and in Sahrawi’s nature as a nomadic people with tribal structures; one that emphasizes Sahrawi identity as an extension of the anti-colonial struggle; and finally an instrumentalist approach that claims that the Saharawi identity was “crafted” as a means of political power, namely by Polisario (2016:12).
21 3.2.1. Palestine: exile made nation
During the decolonization processes that gave rise to the current Arab nation- states, Palestinians were the only ones not endowed with a territorial state at the time of the independence. If the rise of these polyethnic new states already confronted the traditional perception on nationalism that presupposes ethnic homogeneity delimited by established borders (Glick Schiller and Wimmer, 2002), the case of the Palestinians is especially relevant in questioning this approach.
Whereas the neighboring countries started from the 1940s their state-building processes and did so before nation-building (or identity building), Palestinians did quite the opposite: they forged a national identity in absence of a state. However, the traditional nationalistic view on territorial grounds can be partially applicable to Palestinians, whose identity, even if created and fueled by exile, maintained its foundations on a land claim, the motherland, with specific geographic features and borders. The Right to Return represents this tension: it is the demand that has remained present along generations who still long for return, even if the youngest have never seen the actual Palestine. The idea of “return” as a national claim shows there is a territorially based homeland.
The case of Palestine also challenges the traditional assertion of theorists of modern nationalism such as Ernest Gellner (1983) and Benedict Anderson (1983) who, as seen in chapter 2, allege that the official narratives propagated by the state are the ones that shape national development, assuming there exists a territorial coincidence of borders and the state with the nation. Paradoxically, Palestinians have developed a sense of nationhood as members belonging to the same territorial unit, namely the historic Palestine. Some of them, those residing in the remaining Palestinian Territories (Gaza and the West Bank) have managed to build national institutions that don’t coincide with the territorial borders on which their territorial claim lies, i.e. the whole of Palestine, nowadays under Israeli’s jurisdiction. The role of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) is very relevant in understanding this process. The PLO emerged in 1964, founded by children of the exile (Shabaneh, 2010) and acted as an umbrella under which the different factions, often competing among each other, of the resistance movements generally coalesced and became a national representative institution for the Palestinian people within Palestine and the diaspora. The PLO developed infrastructure in the fields of economy, social welfare or health, which made it emerge as a quasi-state (Farah, 2008).
22 However, it was not the only actor that was considered to act as such: UNRWA, a UN relief organization created ad hoc to respond to the humanitarian emergency, was created to respond to the massive displacement of the Palestinian population and it operates in the neighboring countries hosting Palestinian refugees and the occupied territories. It became a public service provider and even a “non-territorial administration without coercive power” (Bocco, 2010:234). The facilities and services provided by the Agency united Palestinians in the absence of a state and promoted the sense of “imagined community” among refugees (Shabaneh, 2018). As I have shown in previous sections, humanitarian organizations have traditionally vindicated the supersession of the national order in favor of internationalism and universal values while, at the same time, managing refugee populations in a way not to undermine the nation-state paradigm. My argument is therefore that this tense and paradoxical relationship between humanitarianism and nations is especially evident when analyzing the nature of UNRWA as a humanitarian services provider. While, even if unintendedly, UNRWA has provided the grounds for Palestinian nationalism to grow, it has followed its mandate which clearly supports the permanent resettlement in the host country as the only feasible solution to the Palestinian question, as it will be further analyzed in chapter 4.
3.2.2. Western Sahara – a nation in exile
Spanish “pacification” of tribes in 1934 and the instauration of an effective colonial power intensified in the 1950s the sedentarization of an originally nomadic people with tribal structures and caused a number of migration movements where Sahrawis were dispersed in southern Morocco. For certain scholars, Sahrawi nationalism predates the Moroccan annexation: these authors locate it in the 1960s, identifying it as an anti-colonial movement against the Spanish colonial rule that along with the increasing urbanization (see Wilson, 2012) provided the grounds for an “imagined community”
whose members recognized themselves as a colonized people. In the same line, Castellino and Domínguez-Redondo locate the emergence of a national identity as a result of colonialism: the very term “Sahrawi” derives from the Spanish Sahara and wouldn’t have existed before the mid-twentieth century (2013). In this process, the emergence of an educated political leadership (some of whom had attended Moroccan universities) was extremely relevant. All these factors resulted in the constitution of the Polisario in 1973.
The annexation of 1975 that led to thousands of Sahrawi refugees seeking exile in Algeria sedimented this incipient national identity adding a new dimension to it. The crisis of
23 annexation and the displacement of thousands of refugees to Algeria created the space for a new political identity that extended the horizons for the Sahrawi nationalism by creating the Sahrawi citizen, where refugeehood, embodied in the Tindouf refugee camps, had an essential role.
Both the meaning and structure of the refugee camps were connected to a series of traditional narratives that stemmed from the spatial organization of the nomadic camps;
these were run mainly by women, as men were usually in the battlefield. The mythical narrative of the old raids was re-inscribed in the incipient nationalist imaginary symbolizing Sahrawi resistance against domination and eased the integration of the dramatic circumstances of the exile into a new historical chapter, built around the idea of the Sahrawi nation as threatened and violated by colonial powers. The environment where the refugee camps were set was extremely hostile and its resources scant. In such a deprived milieu, everything had to be done from scratch (San Martin, 2010). The refugee camps, then, gave a new space for a new historical narrative that was based on the desire of an independent nation-state, with a future-oriented vision. Moreover, they have become a unique phenomenon in the world of forced migration: although they are completely dependent on international humanitarian aid, they are entirely self- administered (Mundy, 2007) as I will further explain in chapter 4.
As in the Palestinian case, this draws lines for reflection on humanitarianism involvement in national issues as supporting, even if unintendedly, state-building and nationalism, and challenges the feasibility of its principle of neutrality and its capacity to maintain itself independent from the national logic. Thus, it is to these challenges and paradoxes that the next chapter is devoted.
24 4. Stretching borders: humanitarianism, neutrality and (de)politicization
In the previous chapter, I have shown how the Palestinian and Sahrawi experiences challenge the traditional conceptions of nationalist ideologies, at the same time as problematizing the assumption that the only feasible solution for refugees is the permanent resettlement in the host society and the subsequent integration in it. I have also described the extreme politicization of both contexts object of this thesis, where processes of identity construction intersect with colonialism and decolonial processes.
What is the role of humanitarianism in these contexts? I have already suggested how humanitarian aid and relief agencies play a determining role in supporting these populations. Given the high politicization of these contexts, I will argue in this chapter, the principle of neutrality is questionable. At the same time, and for the same reason, the Sahrawi and Palestinian experiences also challenge the critiques verted on humanitarianism when it is accused of reducing refugees to speechless figures and passive agents.
The following two sections are devoted to the concepts of neutrality and de- politicization. Firstly, I will analyze the limitations on the scope of neutrality. In the Palestinian case, I will delimit the research to UNRWA, being the backbone of the refugee experience of the Palestinian, both chronologically and geographically. Secondly, I will engage with the notion of de-politicization through the examples of Sahrawis and Palestinians. I will question the accusations on humanitarianism, arguing that relief aid has supported, rather than silenced, the emergence of political voices and narratives.
Finally, I will fold the section by stressing the role of the refugee camp, as a humanitarian instrument, in their national struggle.
4.1.Neutrality
4.1.1. Humanitarianism made ad hoc: UNRWA
Palestinians have always held a special status within the humanitarian landscape, and are in fact excluded from many of the main bodies of post-war humanitarianism, such as the 1951 Convention and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
This is also because Arab host countries refused that Palestinian refugees fell into the generic category of refugees, as this would dissipate the will to find a political solution to the refugees’ right to return. Palestinians have found themselves in a tension between
25 being recognized as refugees and accepting to resettle permanently, thus benefiting from international protections and assistance, or being recognized as Palestinian nationals, therefore distinct in their needs and rights (Feldman, 2007).
On December 8, 1949, the UNGA passed Resolution 302 (IV) that established the creation of UNRWA as a temporary humanitarian agency with the mission of responding to the substantial exodus living within the UNRWA area of operations: Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria (Feldman, 2008). Its mandate was twofold: to collaborate with host governments in the provision of relief aid and to consult with the local governments concerning measures to be taken to prepare for the cessation of the humanitarian assistance and works (Shabaneh, 2010). This would theoretically happen without prejudice to the provisions of the paragraph 11 of the UNGA Resolution 194 that acknowledged the Right to Return and the rights of compensation to those choosing not to return for the losses and damages caused by the establishment of the state of Israel.
Although the meaning of assistance in the mandate was never truly defined, during the first decades after its foundation, the services provided by UNRWA included rations, clothing, education, housing, and healthcare. After the political opposition faced in the 1950s to the plan of implementing large-scale developmental programs, UNRWA turned into the provision of solely humanitarian aid or “essential services” (Bocco, 2010).
Nowadays, UNRWA provides primarily education and healthcare, along with sanitation and certain social services (UNRWA, 2021)
Since its very inception, the Agency has faced certain contradictions and ambiguities that stem from two main factors:
a) UNRWA was originally conceived as temporary and its mandate renewed every three years, as it was meant to be dissolved within a few years after its foundation.
However, after more than 70 years operating, it symbolizes the failure of the international community to solve the Palestinian question.
b) The funding system shows the fragility of the agency: it depends solely on voluntary contributions of donor countries, which has set limits to UNRWA’s initiatives and has jeopardized its autonomy from donor’s political interests (Bocco, 2010).
26 The independence of the agency has been remarkably questioned regarding the refugees’ resettlement outside historic Palestine. As it will be discussed later, this issue has casted doubts on the willingness of the International Community to implement UNGA resolution 194, which was a guarantee for Palestinians of their Right to Return.
Officially a non-political organization, UNRWA has been involved in an extremely politicized context since its origins. Permanent resettlement of Palestinian refugees in the host countries has been considered a non-negotiable condition by the State of Israel, who has refused to consider any return according to the provision of the resolution 194, and as “the magic solution” likely to solve the Palestinian refugee issue by Western stakeholders (Al Husseini and Bocco, 2010:142). These policies are reflected on the funding side, being UNRWA mostly funded by UN member states and the European Union (90,04% of the funding) (UNRWA, 2021). Furthermore, the Agency has been considered a “peace servicing” factor in the Near East (Al Husseini and Bocco, 2010), accrued by the implementation of developmental programs which aimed at fulfilling the part of its mandate to encourage refugees to become self-sufficient (Shabaneh, 2010). Furthermore, UNRWA itself has openly and publicly acknowledged its role as a pacifying actor in the region as it became evident when the Trump administration decided to curtail its yearly donation of $300 million in 2017. The Agency, then, accused Trump of “jeopardizing stability and safety, and opportunities for a peaceful, just, and durable future” (UNRWA USA National Committee, 2019:4).
The difficulties in carrying out such a massive resettlement stemmed from both political considerations and structural constraints (Feldman, 2008). On the one hand, refugees, being originally skeptical towards the Agency’s mandate, resisted plans to reintegrate them into host societies, as in the early years after the Nakba they assumed the Resolution 194 would be shortly implemented. Witnessing the political impasse, those
“realistic” expectations had turned into hopes, but nonetheless unwavering hopes. This resistance was shared by the host countries and enhanced by the limits of the capacity of these states to absorb populations that were supposed to be just “temporary” residents (Farah, 2008).
The humanitarian experience, according to Feldman, always entails contestation between the structure of the aid system and the desires and demands of recipients (2017).
27 After the immediate crisis of dispossession where Palestinians’ concerns were to meet their most basic needs, by the 1960s, observers commented on the widely shared
“ideology against any kind of individual solution to the refugee problem. The problem has to be solved for everybody and at the same time, or for nobody at all. Nobody should be paid off by compensation or individual settlement” (see Feldman, 2008: 502).
In these lines, we find a translation of the paradoxical nature of UNRWA. By the provision of relief assistance to Palestinian refugees in the aftermath of the Nakba and its response to the acute humanitarian crisis, UNRWA provided the grounds for Palestinians to refocus on the definition of their political and national demands regarding the Right to Return. The witnessing of the reiterated violation of Resolution 194, the stagnation of their refugee situation, and UNRWA’s attempts to implement long-term projects resulted in a growing skepticism towards the Agency. Palestinians inferred through UNRWA’s ongoing presence a limitless continuation of their stay in the host countries and even a permanent resettlement, which accrued their resistance and fueled the strengthening of their national demands.
4.1.2. The building of the Sahrawi nation: “a humanitarian state”
Although lacking a UN agency to respond to the humanitarian emergency of the mass displacement that the Moroccan annexation caused, the Sahrawis have been supplied with humanitarian assistance since their displacement, especially by international agencies such as UNHCR and the World Food Program, the European Union and a large number of European NGOs (Cozza, 2003).
Nonetheless, what makes the Sahrawi case exceptional is that, unlike many other refugee situations multi and non-governmental organizations do not play a direct role in the management of the camp, nor in the implementation of relief projects or the distribution of aid. SADR has controlled the resources provided by other states, but also managed all humanitarian goods and services directed to the refugee camps. In this context, the Sahrawi Red Crescent has been essential in gathering international humanitarian resources and putting them at the service of the Front since the very beginning. It was the first official “Sahrawi” organization, established in 1975 and a foundation of the future state in exile (Cozza, 2003). Humanitarian agencies must work through the Sahrawi Red Crescent or the relevant SADR ministry (Mundy, 2007), and
28 the very same recipients play an active role in aid distribution. For example, beyond securing bare survival, humanitarian organizations also supported education and medical services in the camps; however, they were not established by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Oxfam, but by the Sahrawis themselves (Herz, 2013). They are organized in committees charged with education, health/sanitation, justice or food provision, and every member is assigned to one of these committees to carry out the daily tasks of camp management (Mundy, 2007).
The SADR, born out of a humanitarian emergency, has built itself without other wealth than the lives of the refugees, the internationally recognized right to self- determination, and with the resources spontaneously made available by international organizations and NGOs. It remains constantly dependent upon the support of the international system of humanitarian assistance (OXFAM, 2020) which, indeed has, albeit unintendedly, supported the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’s claims and legitimized it as a rightful actor. Through aid provision that is solely managed by SADR’s ministries and the Sahrawi Red Crescent, humanitarian organizations recognize, even if silently, the legitimacy of the Sahrawi governmental institutions.
4.2.(De) politicization
The Palestinian and Sahrawi cases challenge the belief that humanitarian processes disempower refugees and reduces them to “speechless figures” (Malkki, 1996) or “bare life” (Redfield, 2005), as it has been discussed in chapter 2.
Palestinian refugees, like Arab host states, have been historically concerned that the refugee camps keep the appearance natural to their temporariness. In that sense, the conditions of the refugees’ daily lives articulate both the desire to return home and their forced displacement (Feldman, 2008) reaffirming their commitment to the Right to Return. In fact, they have actively resisted improvement efforts to the extent of organizing strikes in Lebanon and Syria to protest UNRWA’s efforts to improve camp conditions, as they feared they would lead to permanent resettlement (Gabiam, 2016). This happened both in the host countries as in Gaza, where refugees expressed concerns “about maintaining the camps as visible symbols of displacement” (Feldman, 2008:508).
Similarly, resistance to improvements have been recorded in the Tindouf camps.
Humanitarian organizations noticed that the older generations were extremely wary of
29 interventions that could be seen as anchoring their presence in the camps, as they still hope to return soon (Oxfam, 2015).
The accusations verted on humanitarianism as depoliticizing refugees and detaching them from a political an historical biography have solid grounds. We cannot ignore how the efforts of humanitarian agencies to improve the conditions in the camps are rooted in the desire to pacify the camp residents, as it was made evident in UNRWA’s declarations acknowledging its role as a key factor in the stability of the region (UNRWA USA National Committee, 2019). These improvement efforts that were to dissuade refugees from their Right to Return had, paradoxically, the opposite effect. As I have shown so far, they were met with resistance both by Palestinians and Sahrawis. My argument is therefore that the camp, originally conceived as a humanitarian structure and therefore detached from ideological associations, is transformed into an unintended hyper- politicized lieu. Moreover, the camp is the basis of an identity that has been in place for more than 70 years and which has configured and constructed a new wave of nationalism that resulted in the emergence of resistance groups (Colson, 2003). The example of Yarmouk camp that Gabiam (2016) discusses is especially relevant in this line. He defines it as a political space where demonstrations and marches by refugees were held over events connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
On the Saharan side, humanitarian aid workers have defined Sahrawi refugees as one of the most politically aware populations in the world. This politicization of the refugee was made possible through the Sahrawis’ own participation in the “symbolic systems of national liberation (Polisario) and state-formation (the SADR)” (Mundy, 2007:285).
However, this politicization stems from the permanence in a temporary-conceived structure with meager prospects of reaching a political solution and the lack of future prospects for the youth, namely from the condition of refugeeness itself. The permanent stay and dependence on humanitarian aid has paradoxically crafted a more political refugee youth who instead of “passively waiting for the return”, as depicted in literature, has come to question the validity of the peaceful approach that Polisario holds since 1991.
This stance became critical in the congress of the Union for Sahrawi students, where voices raised asking to reconsider the option of armed combat, given the lack of political solutions (Oxfam, 2015).
30 According to Farah (2008), the political realities have often compelled Palestinians to hold a defensive posture by battling to preserve, remember, and reconstruct what has been and keeps been erased. In order to do so, Palestinians have transformed humanitarian objects into national iconography. One example, is the ration cards issued by the Agency, that became a memento which Feldman defines as “both a token of identity and a practical tool for living” (2008:510). For Palestinians, humanitarian documents, even if they were envisioned as merely identification of individual beneficiaries eligible to receive UNRWA’s support and despite the discomfort caused by their necessity for them, had become the most vital form of documented visibility that corroborated and symbolized the collective experience of loss (ibid, 2008).
The humanitarian intervention, materialized in the ration card and the refugee camp, acquired a status such as the old keys of the homes in Palestine that refugees keep. These keys represent the grief of the lost home but also the hope of return and the claim to their properties. According to Feldman, living in a camp is the way to “authentically embody the experience of being Palestinian” (2008:509).
4.3.The humanitarian intervention as a national signifier
SADR acted as a buffer between the external actors and the refugees, which reinforced a “Sahrawi political identity as opposed to humanitarian status as refugees”
(Farah, 2008:82). Moreover, the refugee camps became the soil where to embark on state- building and civil institutions. They provided the grounds to experiment with the political representation and participation of the citizens of the future state by administering the camps as state provinces or wilayas. They were named after the provinces of the future state: al-Ayun, Smara, al-Dakhla, Awsard, and a smaller camp under the name of “27 February” that commemorates the date of the founding of the republic. Under the wilayas, we can find the districts, or dairas, where the popular committees are located and formed by every refugee older than 16 years old (Mundy, 2007).
The camp has arisen as a unifying fabric that holds identity and national aspirations.
In the case of Palestinians, the camps have been accustomed to recreate both communities and places of origin. After 1948, many Palestinians fled together, family members and former neighbors, settling down in proximity. The camp acquired the familiarity of the places left behind and were commonly named after them (Krzyżanowska, 2013), and
31 provided the grounds for a continuation of the social life in the pre-exilic form, where individual stories are essential for the collective memory (Colson, 2003).
In both cases, the camp, by retaining the names of the cities and villages of the lost motherland and acting as a representation of life in pre-exilic form, becomes the bridge between the lost nation and those born in exile by providing them with the national references in absence of the actual land. The refugee camp, as a humanitarian intervention, has had a different impact on the two cases. In the Sahrawi case, it works as a future-oriented projection: the flow of humanitarian aid and the support of the relief agencies has provided the resources necessary to experiment the Sahrawis’ future state and to construct their national identity. For Palestinians, who didn’t have the freedom to manage the aid and were themselves administered by a relief agency, humanitarian aid supported the remembrance of the loss while keeping alive the Right to Return along the new generations.
