The Right of Return and Compensation
Workshop on the Issue of Compensation for Palestinian
Refugees By Dr. Yves Besson
former Director of UNRWA Operations
(West Bank, Jerusalem (199O-92), and former Special
Adviser to the Commissioner-General of UNRWA (1993-95)
University of Fribourg
Introducing such a sensitive topic at our meeting
is not an easy task.Since Madrid and oslo, several
books, studies and papers on the subjecthave been
published by various circles - Israeli, Palestinian
and others.For the most part, they are interesting
not only because they restate thewell-known totally
antagonistic Arab or Israeli positions (and they partly
do that), but also because they sometimes make policyrecommendations
or suggestions which, albeit cautious, indicatedirections
or areas in which some mutually acceptable convergence
is notpossible to imagine. Among all the papers and
studies I have had the opportunity to read, I could
mention those of the Israeli
International Institute for Applied Economic Policy
Review, the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, the College
of Law of Syracuse University or various Canadian
official or academic papers. This list is far from
exhaustive as I am certainly not aware of everything
published on the subject.
My task today is not to present a summary or a synthesis
of global reflexion on the subject. It is not my purpose
and could not be done in half an hour. Nor am I going
to try to list what could be acceptable and what not
for the parties involved - it is up to them to discuss
that. I would just like to think 'aloud' and examine
the two notions included in the title: return and
compensation. Both words have, in the course of time,
acquired a kind of sacred, absolute meaning (what
some parties in the RWG have called myths or taboos)
and their implementation, some day, has constantly
been seen by one of the parties as a sacred obligation
while the other party has always considered that such
an implementation would be abomination. These two
words have set in motion a kind of infernal dialectic
in which one side is adamant, involving the force
of the law, to imprison the other, while the other
inevitably sees in these two words, the acceptance
of some kind of absolute historical guilt, historical
responsibility bound to lead in the end to its own
demise and destruction. That is why I suggest reviewing
the situation and looking at what could be done with
these two concepts in the search for a solution.
How they could be used to launch reflexion on what
kind of basicprinciples they involve, which could
guide a process, bring some new ideas on the refugee
issue; a process in the process, so to say. I assume
that we all know about UN Resolution 194, the history
of subsequent UN resolutions and the International
Law arguments pertaining to the subject. I will not
elaborate once more on historical or legal aspects
because at this early stage there is no point in revisiting
a very well-known historical debate or exchanging
legal arguments; everybody knows that in law almost
every point of view can be defended since most lawyers
have two hands !
The Return
Palestinians consider the refugee issue as the heart
of their conflict with Israel, the centre of their
collective memory, the focal point of their modern
political life and the core of their present identity
as a people. The nakba of 1948-49 has been integrated
in the perception they have of themselves as a people
of the region and as a collective member of the human
community. In fact, every Palestinian living today
outside the boundaries of what was former Palestine,
since he is prevented from settling down in this land
to which he deeply feels that he belongs, considers
himself as a refugee. This might not correspond to
the different subtle legal definitions of a refugee
but it is a fact and we have to concentrate on facts,
and how they are perceived. The refugee problem is
seen by all the Palestinians as the very essence of
the conflict and any solution which does not directly
address it is therefore inconceivable. The RWG delegation
which visited refugee camps in Lebanon in 1994 experienced
this point very vividly.
On the other side, it has been equally as inconceivable
for the Israelis, since the beginning, to agree to
the return of Palestinians to their land, even in
the context of a peaceful settlement. To accept this
concept of return in favour of the Palestinians, as
they understand it, would be in total contradiction
with the Zionist ideology, would undermine the Jewish
character of the State and would completely oppose
the essential raison d'etre of the Zionist project
and its implementation in the course of a long and
traumatic history. The Israeli view is only to contribute
possibly to permanently settling the refugees by integrating
them in the host Arab countries. As for compensation,
Israel has declared itself ready to envisage this
as long as Jews from Arab countries are also compensated
for their properties and losses.
In the peace process started in Madrid and Oslo,
the refugee issue (one of the three final status issues
slated for bilateral negotiations) is the one which
received the least attention in terms of strategic
vision and study. In the Israeli opinion it is apparently
met with almost total indifference. Could it be a
false indifference ? Absolute sacralization of the
issue on the Palestinian side is met with totally
unconcerned indifference on the Israeli side: which
could well confirm that this issue is at the core
of the problem.
So where do we go from
here?
Plainly speaking, I would like to state that there
will be no hope for a solution, given the fact that
the positions are so antagonistic, unless the Palestinians
somehow transcend this central reference point in
the perception they have of their national memory
and identity, and unless the Israelis accept revisiting
their past (as some Israeli historians have been doing
over the last 10 - 15 years). In so doing, the Israelis
might accept some sort of responsibility for what
happened in 1948-49, and consequently accept opening
the files on the subject without preconditions and
without restarting the historical debate on who did
what. It is not impossible to imagine that, with the
two positions being so rigidly anchored in a certain
vision of a tragic past, and with both being, in a
way, prisoners of the same static perception of their
history, memory and a completely stiffened discourse,
bridges could be built towards progressively dismantling
both perceptions.
This is neither the time nor the place to go into
detail about future negotiations on the subject. However,
what we could attempt to do is to try to imagine in
very general terms what might be a framework for negotiations
and how and from where to start. I think it should
start with some brainstorming on the concept of return.
But before discussing this concept, I would like to
signal one immediate danger which could imperil and
even destroy the whole process.
We are familiar with the constantly reaffirmed Israeli
position of preferring bilateral negotiations. The
signature of peace agreements with Egypt, then with
Jordan illustrates this preference. Although, in some
instances, this bilateral approach has produced results,
even with the Palestinians, such an approach to the
refugee issue would, in my opinion, be very counterproductive.
Indeed, trying to solve this issue by dealing separately
with each host country, negotiating according to its
own national interest, would deprive the Palestinians
of the possibility of bringing to the negotiation
table what, as we have seen, is at the core of their
perception of the conflict.
The risk does exist that, as is often the case in
such situations, implementation of the policy thus
adopted bilaterally by a host country may well be
set in motion before any negotiations on governing
principles, the latter depending then on the concretization
of the former. In fact, the present weakness of the
Palestinian side means that this risk is not inconceivable.
This would result in a situation where the key object
of negotiation for the Palestinians could be preempted,
bypassed by a bilateral approach between Israel and
specific host countries who would completely dilute
the question.
The Palestinian refugee question is no doubt a global
regional issue but for reasons easy to understand
it has to be discussed first between the Israelis
and the Palestinians. Some satisfaction and guarantees
must be given to the Palestinian side while some reassurance
and guarantees should be agreed upon in favour of
the Israeli side. These guarantees must be defined
in common by the two parties and they could be found
by first working together towards the definition of
a content for the concept of return. This common task
of discussing the concept of return together and defining
a mutually acceptable political meaning for the word
would allow Israel to demonstrate some understanding
and to accept the view that what happened to the Palestinians
in 1948-49 represented a terribly traumatic experience
which first requires recognition. The problem has
no doubt multiple legal, social and economic aspects
but they can be left to the experts. What is of primary
importance, as a prerequisite, seems to me to be the
recognition of the very high sensitivity to injustice
which exists among Arabs in general and Palestinians
in particular, and consequently some initial recognition
of the importance of the emotional-psychological dimension
of the Palestinian refugee of 1948. Constant Palestinian
insistence on UN Resolution 194 is a good indication
of this importance.
As was the case for the Oslo document, the diplomatic
tool of a Declaration of Principles on the refugee
issue (Shlomo Gazit's idea) could be useful. It could
be used to draw a framework, guidelines, successive
steps along which the negotiations would develop.
It would be mainly useful to set up a mutually acceptable
definition of the two concepts of return and compensation
, thus 'disentangling' them from their highly symbolic
and rigid interpretation and desacralizing in a way
the various mutually exclusive interpretations and
finalities which have been given to them by both parties
during the last fifty years. How to interpret the
notion of return ? There can be physical return, lega
return, political return, social return, etc.
Such a DOP on the refugee issue would provide some
satisfaction to the Palestinians' long quest for recognition
of the injustice done to them in 1948 and reassure
Israel that the Jewish character of the State will
not be jeopardized. Later on it would also permit
discussion of the many technical aspects of the problem
under the umbrella of a set of principles agreed upon
bilaterally, while technical solutions would necessitate
the involvement of several other parties, host countries
and the international community.
It seems to me that what has been desperately lacking
in the work of the RWG since 1992 is precisely such
an umbrella of agreed semantic-political principles
(i.e. what means what) and this very absence has made
the humanitarian or economic development efforts of
the Group sometimes look pathetically inappropriate
or ineffective. I will not give a list of all the
technical aspects I mentioned before as I presume
we can imagine them perfectly; some of them have already
been dealt with in various scholarly works. Humanitarian
efforts in the field of family reunification, for
example, in the absence precisely of any agreed set
of political principles, have only produced meagre
results compared to the size of the refugee problem
and in view of the considerable investment in time
and money by the international community.
I would like to raise
one final point, given my time limit.
While the Palestinians have constantly approached
the issue as (as Elia Zureik has noted) a communitarian
one, considering first and foremost the identity of
the group to qualify as Palestinian nationals (and
such a policy is necessary for nation and state building
as the Zionist project has shown!), the Israeli side
has strictly adhered to the political liberalism model
concerning the Palestinians, that is, as it was done
in the RWG, examining individual rights as opposed
to collective ones (see Family Reunification). We
are all familiar with the legal arguments and justification
of such a policy and we know that it mainly aims at
safeguarding the sovereignty of the State. Nevertheless,
it does not seem unthinkable to me that, in drafting
a DOP on the refugee issue, Israel might accept making
some room for a communitarian approach, on the model
of its own Law of Return, while the Palestinians,
in reciprocity, would accept that the implementation
of this DOP be done according to the liberal individualist
model. I am aware that the path would be very narrow!
Such a procedure could be a way to overcome or bypass
the so-called myths and taboos.
Compensation
Evidently, the treatment of this concept will strongly
depend on the solutions agreed upon concerning the
notion of return. But the technicalities surrounding
this question could enjoy some margin of manoeuvre,
some margin of independence, especially because they
will involve the host countries and the international
community for obvious financial reasons. But I think
there should be, precisely because of the existence
of a certain margin of manoeuvre, no exclusivity on
the subject regarding for instance discussing losses
encountered by the Jews when they left some Arab countries
to go to Israel in the Fifties. Even if this notion
of 'exchange' of populations defended for so long
by Israel on the question of Palestinian refugees
does not sustain, in my opinion, a thorough analysis
and cannot be legally defended, it has a psychological-political
dimension which the Palestinians and the Arab countries
cannot ignore. And, finally, for the Palestinians
this question of compensation for the Jews is a question
to be dealt with between Israel and the Arab countries
involved, not themselves!
Conclusion
The words 'myths and taboos' were seen and heard during
the RWG's activity to qualify the concepts of return
and compensation. Rigid and quasi-sacred reference
to them on one side and the equally rigid and sacred
rejection by the other should be avoided. Myths are
useful because they help perceiving and describing
a certain reality, maybe an imagined one but in this
instance the perception is much more relevant for
our purpose than reality itself, at least at the beginning
of a process which should first lead the two parties
to accept the perception of the other in order to
be able together, further down the road, to amend
the reality and perhaps build a new common one. As
for taboos, destroying them unilaterally and abruptly
means applying moral violence which can only fuel
more physical violence and desperation. Taboos are
best described, accepted and integrated when they
take the long and twisting road of thefairytale. At
the end of the road, the two parties will have to
recognizethat they have both nourished imagined representations
for too long--thepast for one of them and the future
for the other.
I hope I have presented a few useful remarks on this
subject. Thank you. |