Palestinians Deserve a Passport

This month I became a U.S. citizen, ending 75 years as a stateless Palestinian refugee. Most Palestinians aren’t as lucky, especially those who have sought citizenship in the Middle East.

Arab governments have denied these requests for years on the pretense that by doing so, they would implicitly be recognizing Israel’s statehood. This is a backward approach to a serious problem: That regional governments oppose what they consider Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian land doesn’t mean that Palestinians should be perpetual victims of an involuntary diaspora.

After being forced from their homes in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been failed by every possible ally. Our own brethren have decided that enduring turmoil is more important than building a new future for fellow Arabs. As a consequence, most Middle Eastern governments don’t want to deal with the “Palestinian problem.” Many of these policy makers know that if they were to endorse bolstered democratic rights for such refugees writ large, they would be inundated with an avalanche of other progressive requests. These countries’ citizens—as well as other international bodies—would doubtless demand additional human-rights and rule-of-law protections for themselves, which Arab capitals aren’t willing to give. The collective response has been to leave Palestinians without citizenship, unable to work and travel freely.

This has been the case across the Arab world. In Lebanon, Palestinians are restricted from working in as many as 39 professions and banned from owning property, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. In Syria it’s worse. Prior to the civil war in March 2011, Palestinian refugees had access to education, healthcare and business ownership. Yet when war erupted, they were forced to move again. Because Palestinians fell under the purview of UNRWA—not the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which actually has the authority to resettle refugees—they were given only limited migration options. Jordan has been the only Arab country to grant Palestinians citizenship, but the government’s treatment has been imperfect and occasionally inconsistent.

Such discrimination seems as if it will never end, rendered by governments who conceive of refugees as a burden. In truth, Palestinians offer economic and political benefits for their host and origin countries. Naturalized immigrants in the U.S. have been shown to increase productivity, wages and tax revenue and to create jobs for all Americans. Refugees in the U.S. are more likely to be entrepreneurs than natives are, generating small businesses that create 1.5 million jobs each year in the U.S. When they fully integrate as members of society, refugees also benefit their home countries by sharing social and economic skills they’ve learned since migrating.

I know this firsthand. My family and I fled to Syria when I was 3, and in the decades since I worked as a doctor in five countries, taking jobs others didn’t want to provide for my family. Now, at nearly 80, I have my first passport. Although I am grateful, my heart aches for other Palestinians without a home.

The Arab and Israeli governments need to end this cycle of suffering by giving my people citizenship. All Palestinians deserve the decency to rebuild their lives after 75 years of destruction, and no government should be able to withhold that human right.

Dr. Ektileh, a physician, lives in Indiana.