The Declaration of Principles (DOP), signed by Israel and the PLO
in Washington in 1993, allows for a discussion of the Palestinian
refugee issue on two levels. The 1967 refugees are being discussed
now through a quadripartite committee composed of the Palestinians,
Egyptians, Israelis and Jordanians. The 1948 refugees are supposed
to be discussed during the final status talks between the
Palestinians and Israelis, i.e., after Palestinian elections are
held and Israeli forces are withdrawn from the Occupied Palestinian
Territories (OPT). There are serious problems on both levels.
After meeting for close to four years, the Refugee Working Group
(RWG), one of the five multilateral working groups set up under the
aus¬pices of the Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, is able
to show precious little by way of concrete results with regard to
family reunification, not to mention tackling the larger issue of
the right of return. This is due, in large measure, to Israel's
position which initially opposed this group's agenda and proceeded
to boycott its first two meetings.
Israeli Approaches
Throughout its history, Israel has adopted three interrelated
approaches to the refugee issue. First, pretending indecisiveness
and temporizing when called upon to respond to proposals bearing
upon the return of Palestine refugees, in particular the
application of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194
(III), which calls for allowing the return of Palestine refugees to
their homeland and payment of compensation for those not wishing to
go back. Second, creating facts on the ground which Israel used to
confront external pressure from the international community and at
the same time to nullify any decisions not to its liking. This
strategy, which is a continuation of the Zionist movement's
approach since the pre-1948 peri¬od to the Palestine question
generally, remains the most enduring feature of Israeli policies
towards the Palestinians. Third, adopting bureaucratic procedures
which obfuscate, if not complicate, the discussion of the issue and
impede the implementation of any agreed-upon procedure.
Underpinning these features are three arguments regularly used by
Israel. The first is the argument of security extensively used to
justify bar¬ring the return of the refugees to both Israel and
the OPT. The second is the old argument of demography, which Israel
has always invoked to justify the prevention of Palestine refugees
returning to their 1948 homes on the ground that this would
threaten the Jewish character of the state. The third is the legal
argument Israel and its supporters use to contend that the right of
return, as stipulated in United Nations General Assembly Resolution
194 (III), does not apply to the Palestinian case.
Except for an offer made by Israel in 1948, under pressure from the
U.S.A. to take back 100,000 of the 1948 refugees, no such overtures
have been made by Israel since then. The offer, at the time, was
rejected by the Arabs for its low ceiling and subsequently
withdrawn by Israel. For near¬ly 50 years, Israel has
consistently refused even to deal with the 1948 refugee issue
except in the context of an overall settlement of the Arab-Israeli
con¬flict, which it knew full well was a distant objective at
that time. It is thus not surprising to find that Israel has
succeeded in placing the 1948 refugee issue at the bottom of the
OOP agenda, leaving it to the final status talks.
As for the payment of any compensation to the 1948 refugees, Israel
has linked its acquiescence to various conditions. For example, in
1949-1950, Israel claimed that the payment of compensation should
not be calculated individually, but on a global basis, with a lump
sum of money to be raised internationally and administered by an
international organization in order to resettle the refugees in the
host countries. This remains Israel's position to this day. Later
on, by the middle of the 1950s, Israel linked compensa¬tion to
the end of the Arab boycott, conclusion of comprehensive peace with
the Arab governments, and compensation for Jews from Arab
coun¬tries who settled in Israel. As we all know now, and knew
then, these were remote possibilities at the time and they were
used by Israel as a pretext for creating facts on the ground
through confiscation of Palestinian property and the bringing in of
new immigrants. This pattern continues even now, though Israel has
signed a peace agreement with the Palestinians, and its
relationship with many Arab countries is on the way to
normalization.
A favorite Israeli negotiating tactic is to obfuscate the issue by
segment¬ing the Palestinian refugees into numerous categories,
and then subjecting them to conflicting bureaucratic criteria, in
order to hamper their return. The following categories have been
used by the Israelis, implicitly and explicitly, in their dealings
with the refugee issue.
Categories of Refugees
First, there are the 1948 refugees about whose number there is
disagree¬ment. Israel is unlikely to allow their return to any
part of the so-called Green Line. From Israel's point of view,
United Nations Resolution 194 (III), pertaining to the return of
these refugees, is null and void. Israel based its arguments on the
fact that the Madrid Conference was not convened under United
Nations auspices. The preamble referred only to Resolutions 242 and
338 pertaining to the 1967 and 1973 wars, respectively.
A second category is the 1967 refugees, which Israel calls
"displaced" persons. Here again there is a serious controversy
about their number. The Palestinians estimate there are now close
to 800,000 such refugees, while Israel officially refers to
200,000. (In addition to adopting a lower figure for the 1967
refugees to begin with, it would seem Israel excludes refugee
descendants, second-time refugees and refugees from Jerusalem and
Gaza.)
Regarding the 1967 refugees, these are further divided into three
main categories, in terms of who qualifies for readmission under
the family reunification scheme, the only basis on which Israel
has, so far, admitted a limited number of displaced people as a
result of the 1967 war. In this con¬text, it should be
mentioned that only members of the immediate nuclear family are
considered by Israel as eligible to apply for reunification.
Indeed, a major point of contention during the multilateral
negotiations of the RWG centered around the definition of the
family. The Israelis contend that by family they mean solely the
nuclear family, that is to say husband, wife and children, knowing
full well that in Arab society the family implies much more than
this, for it includes members of the extended family. It is worth
noting that the Israeli definition of family reunification as it
applies to its own Jewish immigrants under the Israeli Law of
Return includes not only the nuclear family, but grandparents and
grandchildren, in other words extending the definition over three
generations.
A second category is those who are admitted at the discretion of
the Israeli authorities. Finally, there is a third major category.
The so-called "late comers," most of whom are in Jordan and whose
number is esti¬mated at between 80,000 to 120,000. These are
people who lost their resi¬dency permits because of technical
reasons such as being outside the ter¬ritories in 1967 when
the war broke out, or those who exceeded their peri¬od of stay
outside the territories on account of work, study, etc., without
periodic renewal of their permit, and were prevented from returning
to their homes…
According to Palestinian sources, from 1967-1987, 85,163
applications for family reunion were presented by the Palestinians
to the Israeli author¬ities, 12,814 of which (i.e., 15
percent) were approved by Israel; and between 1987 and 1989, 3,266
applications for family reunification were submitted, of which 695
(i.e., 20 percent) were approved. Between 1968 and 1994, Israeli
sources note a much larger figure of around 88,000 peo¬ple who
were allowed into the West Bank on a humanitarian basis under the
family reunification scheme. Excluding the 20,000 which were
admitted as members of the Palestinian police force and their
dependents, most of whom went to Gaza, in all likelihood, the
figure includes the 14,000 Israel admitted back immediately after
the 1967 war between June and August 31, 1967, and an additional
2,000 to 3,000 which were admitted between September 1967 and June
30,1968.
If, however, we accept this figure of 88,000 and pro-rate it over a
25¬year period, then Israel allowed, on the average, 3,500
people to return per year. If this is the rate with which Israel
intends to operate, then it may take 50 years to allow the return
of the minimum number of 200,000 dis¬placed people according
to Israeli calculations, and more than a century to absorb the
estimated Arab figure of 800,000. Since August 1994, as a result of
discussions in the multilateral negotiations, Israel promised to
entertain the return of 2,000 cases per year. So far, it claims it
has admitted close to 80 percent of this number, which amounts to
around 6,000 persons. If cal¬culations are made on the basis
of 6,000 per year, then it would take 30 years to bring back the
original 200,000 refugees which Israel purports to be the number of
displaced Palestinians in 1967. In the absence of clear monitoring
procedures and transparency of the procedures of refugee admission,
it is difficult to verify the progress of these admissions, which
are minuscule by any standards. However, this helps give an idea
about the nature of the problems the refugee issue is likely to
encounter in the com¬ing months of negotiations.
Conflicting Positions
As for the 1948 refugees, whose fate according to the Oslo
agreement is supposed to be dealt with in the final status talks,
there are no indications that Israel is prepared to allow the
return of any Palestine refugee from 1948 to Israel proper. There
is off-the-record talk that under certain condi¬tions, Israel
may allow the return of between 50,000-75,000 refugees (a very
small percentage of the close to 2.7 million Palestine refugees
registered with UNRWA, United Nations Relief and Works Agency), for
symbolic reasons to placate international public opinion. However,
this remains a remote possibility, for allowing the return of some
minute number of refugees is construed by Israel as an admission of
guilt regarding their exo¬dus in 1948 for which, officially,
Israel is responsible. Some analysts, such as Shlomo Gazit, suggest
that as a final gesture of ending the century-long conflict with
the Palestinians, Israel should agree to either issue a statement
or be party to an international body, such as the General Assembly
at the United Nations, which would pass a resolution to replace
Resolution 194 (III) to acknowledge the human suffering of the
Palestine refugees. This, however, is not supposed to be considered
as an admission of culpability, the intent being merely to address
the psychological and moral aspects of the refugee issue.
In other words, in the best of circumstances the Israeli position
is unlike¬ly to represent anything remotely close to the
Palestinian position, or even that of other Arabs. At the end of
the day, Israel will allow several thou¬sand Palestine
refugees from the 1967 war to return by stretching their entry over
a protracted period of time. Israel will focus primarily on the
residents of the territories prior to 1967 and not those who were
refugees from 1948 and found themselves second-time refugees as a
result of the 1967 war, nor those who left the territories during
the interim period for visits, marriage, work, study or any other
reason.
While the Palestinians, supported by other governments, continue to
refer to U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), as of December
1993, the Americans, and before them the Israelis all along, have
treated this res¬olution as irrelevant to the settling of the
refugee issue in the current frame¬work of the peace talks. In
an interview in the newspaper Ha'aretz in July, 1994, Yossi Beilin,
then Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister, referred to Resolution 194
as only "symbolically significant," for Israel and also for the
Arabs, including the Palestinians. In other words, the main task
now is how to dress up, or better dress down, Resolution 194 (III)
in order to dilute it, and eventually remove it from the U.N.
record.
The Palestinian position so far has been characterized by
political, eco¬nomic and organizational weaknesses, as well as
lack of coordination with other Arab governments, and the absence
of concrete and comprehensive plans to absorb returning refugees,
whether of 1948 or 1967. An honest and open debate on the refugee
issue within the Palestine refugee communities is imperative. This
should involve a free, independent plebiscite to determine how many
refugees would actually want to exercise their right of return and
how many would want to remain where they are provided their safety
and fair treatment in their new environment are assured. At
minimum, the Palestinian National Authority should institute its
own law of return and cit¬izenship laws. A failure to resolve
the refugee issue satisfactorily guarantees the protraction of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict into its second century.
The ideas in this article were originally presented at the United
Nations International NGO Meeting/European NGO Symposium on the
Question of Palestine, August 29 to September 1, 1995.