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
V. Displaced Persons: Interim Solutions for the Refugee Problem
In line with distinctions made in the Madrid Peace
Conference, the Oslo Agreement provided for resolving
the issue of 1967 refugees (referred to as 'displaced
persons') in the context of a four-party committee
representing Jordan, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinians.
Article XII of the Oslo Accords stipulated that the
Quadripartite 'continuing committee...will decide
by agreement on the modalities of admission of persons
displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967,
together with the necessary measures to prevent disruption
and disorder'.
The Quadripartite Continual Committee (QP) met at
the ministerial level in Amman on March 1995 after
the conclusion of the Israeli- Jordanian Peace Treaty
and decided to meet periodically at the level of experts
(Technical Committee) and quarterly at the ministerial
level to deliberate on recommendations raised by the
TC. Its frame of reference was the DOP (article 12),
the Jordanian- Israeli Peace Agreement, and those
clauses of the Camp David Accords that dealt with
displaced persons. The inclusion of the Jordanian-Israeli
Peace Agreement was meant to signal Jordan's agreement
to join the QP committee--which so far was a bilateral
agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. The
Camp David Accords, on the other hand contained a
stronger reference to the repatriation of DPs, with
a time-frame that spans the transitional period of
self-rule, i.e. five years. No such time-frame was
included in the DOP.
The Committee met six times since the beginning
of 1995 (Amman, Beer-Sheva, Cairo, Gaza, Amman, and
Haifa). In the spring of 1995, at the Beer-Sheva meeting,
it adopted an agenda revolving around four items:
- Definition of Displaced Persons
- Their Numbers
- Modalities of repatriation ('admission' in the
language of the DOP)
The attempt to add a time-frame to the agenda, was
rejected by the Israelis and subsequent meetings of
the TC were consumed by major differences on what
constitutes a definition of 'displaced persons'. The
differences revolved about which categories of Palestinians
were displaced by the 1967 war.
The Israeli position on displaced persons initially
was to regard as displaced, in a memo issued on June
5th, 1995, those Palestinians 'who were residents
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and were displaced
as a result of the fighting'. They noted that as a
'humanitarian gesture' the Israeli government allowed
Palestinians to return through the offices of the
Red cross, after July 2nd 1967. Since then 88,000
persons were admitted within the Family Reunification
scheme in the period between 1967 and 1994.
But this minimalist definition of displaced, with
the stress on the words "as a result of the fighting"
in contrast to "as a result of the war"
was totally unacceptable to the Palestinians and the
two Arab parties. They regarded the terminology also
as contrary to the terms of the DOP which refers (in
article 12) to 'persons displaced from the West Bank
and Gaza Strip in 1967'.
Both the Jordanian and Palestinian delegations suggested
the following alternative definition:
"Displaced Persons are those individuals and
their families and descendants who left their homes
in the West Bank and Gaza, or were unable to return
to their homes, as a consequence of the 1967 war."
In attempting to resolve the question of definition
of 'who is a displaced person?' the committee divided
the categories of displaced persons into three groupings:
- Those Palestinians who were out of the West Bank
and Gaza on the eve of the War, and who were registered
in the population registry of Jordan and the Gaza
Strip. Those include students, businessmen, workers,
etc. who could not come back to their homes due
to Israeli occupation.
- Those citizens of the West Bank and Gaza who were
displaced during or in the aftermath of the war.
- Those who left the occupied territories after
the census of September 1967 and were prevented
from coming back by the Israelis. Most people into
this categories belong to the so-called 'latecomers'
(people whose exit permit was not renewed), and
deportees.
The Israeli objected to groupings 1 and 3 as constituting
'displaced persons'. They also objected to the inclusion
of the words 'families' and 'descendants' to the definition.
Since it was impossible to proceed on the issue of
modalities of return without agreement on definition,
the meeting decided to establish consensus on category
2 (ie those who lost their homes as a result of the
war), and to proceed to the issues of numbers and
modalities, while continuing the debates on the other
two categories of displaced persons.
Shift in the Terms of Debate
With the onset of the Oslo Accords and the convening
of the committee on displaced persons (QPCDP) the
terms of debate on refugees began to shift. The most
tangible effect of this shift was the marginalization
of the multi-lateral committee on refugees. 1995 was
the first year in the peace negotiations when no meeting
for the refugee group was scheduled. Both the Americans
and the Canadians (sponsor and head of the refugee
talks respectively) replaced the heads of their delegations
in charge of refugees, with less known civil servants.
Within the Arab World the Jordanian-Israeli Peace
Treaty signalled an era of normalization in which
collective Arab pressure on Israel on the issue of
refugees was receded. By its very nature the quadripartite
committee excluded the Europeans, the Arab states,
and the North Americans, in effect transforming the
refugee issue into a regional context.
The Israelis press began to treat the talks on displaced
persons as if they were the refugee talks itself,
with warning that acceptance of repatriation for 1967
refugees signalled a prelude for the return of 1948
refugee. Shlomo Gazit, now appointed as a special
advisor to the Israeli side in the multilateral talks,
expressed the view that the Israeli delegation to
the bilateral talks should insist that an Israeli
condition for redeployment in favour of the PNA should
include "the liquidation of the refugee question
inside the Gaza Strip, the abolition of the formal
status of refugees, the removal of UNRWA from the
district and suspension of aid to UNRWA, and the dismantling
of refugee camps and the removal of their population
to permanent housing schemes".
At the heart of the debate over modalities of admission
of DPs is the degree of control to be exercised by
the PNA over the issues of border crossings and the
granting of residency permits to returning Palestinians
from their exile. Israeli negotiators claim, though
not officially, that these controls will be relaxed
from the Israeli side once they are assured that security
matters are under control in PNA territories, and
once economic growth in the Palestinian economy allow
for higher absorption of expatriates. The Palestinians
have insisted that this latter point should be an
internal matter for the PNA, and that Israelis have
no right to control the number of Palestinians who
are admitted under the guise of security considerations.
A possible turning point occurred with the signing
of the Interim Agreement on Self-Government (Oslo
2) on September 28th, 1995. The changes brought about
by this agreement are discussed in section VI. below.
But the shift in focus over refugees occurred within
a more general questioning of the role of the multilaterals
as the 'peace process' had moved from a regional issue
to bilateral talks between Jordan and Israel, and
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It was at this point
that the Canadians attempted to break the deadlock
by proposing new guidelines for the negotiations on
refugees.
|
