Return, Resettlement, Repatriation:
The Future of Palestinian Refugees in the Peace Negotiations
Source: FOFOGNET Digest, 22 April 1996
by Salim Tamari, Institute
of Jerusalem Studies
Final Status Strategic Studies
Institute for Palestine Studies
Beirut, Washington, and Jerusalem
February 1996
Return, Resettlement, Repatriation The
Future of Palestinian Refugees in the Peace Negotiations
Reviewing the work of the Conciliation Commission
for Palestine, established by the UN General Assembly
in 1949 to deliberate the status of Palestinian Refugees
from the 1948 war, one is reminded how little has
changed in the debate over the predicament of Palestinian
refugees in the span of half a century of dispossession.
The themes of the Commission's deliberations, which
began with the Lausanne Consultations in May 1949,
were: problems of repatriation, resettlement, social
and economic rehabilitation of refugees, assessment
of lost Arab property in Israel, and the 'Reunion
of Broken Families'. These issues are still central
concerns surrounding the refugee meetings that were
generated by the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991.
Nevertheless the establishment of the Refugee Working
Group in the Arab-Israeli multi-lateral peace negotiations
in 1992, and the Continuing Committee for Displaced
Persons in March of 1995-- although ostensibly addressing
the same issues raised in Lausanne-- occur in a drastically
changed circumstances. The Palestinian Israeli Declaration
of Principles, the Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty,
as well as those components in the Camp David Agreement
that deal with displaced persons, have cast the old
issues in a new light.
What are these changed circumstances that set them
apart from the refugee meetings of the 1940s and 50s?
Uppermost is the recasting of the status of the Palestinians
as a people whose cause has now become not exclusively
an Arab and Islamic one as it was in the aftermath
of the 1948 war, but an international cause with concrete
territorial claim to a land and (for most) sovereignty.
The Palestinian refugee issue is now recast not as
an exclusively humanitarian issue as it was in the
40s, but as part of a conception of restoring the
right of self-determination for the Palestinian people.
This is a mixed blessing, because while the earlier
deliberations in international assemblies on the Palestinians
focussed more or less exclusively on refugees, today
addressing Palestinian claims both in bilateral and
multilateral forums deals with refugees as part of
a 'package' of Palestinian demands in which refugees
are seen as part of a complex set of issues that include
residencies, family reunification, problems of absorption,
compensation, and so on. That is, the issue of refugees
has been diluted into the various themes of Palestinian
national reconstruction.
Secondly, the issue of solving the problem of refugees
is fast becoming part of the new dichotomy within
Palestinian politics between the contingencies of
state building, and the demands of the diaspora for
representation and repatriation. Returning refugees
are dealt with not primarily as the culmination of
decades of yearning and dream fulfilment, but as part
of a series of compromises between the absorptive
capacities of the Palestinian economy and the ability
of the Palestinian negotiators to wrest concessions
from Israeli bureaucratic and political objections
to their repatriation.
Thirdly, the issue of refugees is encountering formidable
forms of resistance from Israeli decision-makers.
While the Israelis seem to be embarking on new realization
that the Palestinian state, with 1967 boundaries,
is an inevitable outcome of the negotiations, they
are singling the return of refugees to a barrage of
ideological and political objections, both at the
public level in the press and media, and at a more
direct levels in the negotiations over displaced persons.
The return of Palestinian refugees is now being portrayed
as a security issue within Israel, and as a prelude
to a subtle scheme of undermining the Jewish character
of the state, even when it entails the return of refugees
to the areas under Palestinian control only.
That these objections are being raised now, with
such heightened intensity, is precisely because the
possibility and probability of return are part of
the modalities of the negotiations, both in the DOP
and in the deliberations of the Quadripartite committee
for displaced persons.
One should also regard these objections, in part
at least, as being addressed to a home audience in
Israel, with the Labour party attempting to demonstrate
a tough line stance to potential centrist and right
wing voters on the question of refugees. For this
reason actual negotiating parameters may demonstrate
a more flexible approach, especially when held away
from the limelight and bilaterally.
I. Final Status Resolution?
The distinction made in the Madrid Peace Conference
between bilateral negotiations and regional (multilateral)
negotiations was meant to create complementarity between
the practical concrete problems that only Israel and
the Arab parties can negotiate directly, and those
global issues that outside interested parties can
contribute to, or benefit from. It was assumed that
the multilaterals would create regional forms of cooperation
that would facilitate the atmosphere of negotiations
and cement bilateral agreements. In an essay on the
multilaterals Joel Peters made the following interpretation:
While the bilateral talks would address the political
issues of territorial withdrawal, border demarcation,
security arrangements and political rights of the
Palestinians, the multilaterals would provide a forum
for the participants to address a range of non-political
issues extending across national boundaries, the resolution
of which is essential for the promotion of long-term
regional development and security. Whereas the bilaterals
would deal with the problems inherited from the past,
the multilaterals would focus on the future shape
of the Middle East.
The Palestinians, being the weaker party saw this
distinction differently. They saw in the multilaterals
an arena where they could compensate for their limited
options on the ground by seeking alliances in the
region and in Europe to offset their limited options
in bilateral negotiations with Israel. This became
apparent in the deliberations of the Moscow steering
committee meeting, in January 1992, where the modus
operandi of the multilaterals were established. There
the Syrians and Lebanese boycotted the meetings because
they hinged any progress in the regional talks on
progress in Israeli bilateral concessions on the Golan
and South Lebanon.
The Palestinians--confined as they were with the
negotiating tasks of the transitional period--insisted
that an element of final status issues be added. They
saw in the introduction of the refugee working group
a 'political' dimension--not available in the other
four groups (environment, water, economic development,
and disarmament). It was 'political' in the double
sense:
* It sent a signal to Palestinian refugees in Jordan,
Syria and Lebanon that they were not forgotten in
the protracted negotiations of the transitional period.
This would give a much needed legitimacy to the impending
signing of an Israeli- Palestinian Accord which was
bound to be seen as too conciliatory by Palestinians
in the diaspora if a refugee component is missing
from it.
* It also introduced an element of final status
negotiations to supplement the negotiations over displaced
persons which was bound to dominate talks over refugees.
This at any rate was the intention, although as
we shall they the results were quite different. It
was precisely this vision on the part of the Palestinians
that led the Israelis, obsessed as they were with
any hint about a Palestinian Right of Return to resist
its inclusion in Moscow, and later to diffuse its
program once they were prevailed upon to accept it.
Ultimately this aspect of the refugees became clearer
with the signing of the Declaration of Principles
in September of 1993. The status of Palestinian refugees,
it will be recalled was one of the three contentious
issues that were left to the final status negotiations
to begin in mid-1996. But unlike the other two themes
Jerusalem and settlement, the procedural aspects of
dealing with refugees was reversed. The establishment
of the Refugee Working Group in the multi-lateral
negotiations with a mandate to deal with the status
of refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria--in addition
to those in the West Bank and Gaza--preceded the establishment
of the committee on displaced persons (the Continuing
Committee) from the 1967 war.
Of all the committees in the multilaterals it was
the Working Group on Refugees (RWG) where the Palestinians
had the upper hand in defining the mandate of the
group in their favour. But the ambiguity of that mandate--as
we shall see--and the consensual nature of decision-making
ensured that this tilt was never translated into a
practical advantage.
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