The Palestinian Refugee Problem

The Search for a Resolution

Rex Brynen, Roula El-Rifai, Rex Brynen, Roula El-Rifai

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781849648202
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Paix et développement mondial

In this unique volume, leading analysts from the Red Cross, Middle East Institute and Refugee Affairs - many of whom have been actively involved in past negotiations on this issue - provide an overview of the key dimensions of the Palestinian refugee problem. Mindful of the sensitive and contested nature of the subject, none offers a single solution. Instead, each contribution summarises and synthesises the existing scholarly and governmental work on the topic. Each paper develops an array of policy options for resolving various aspects of the refugee issue. From moral acknowledgements of the plight of refugees, to host countries, repatriation and reparations, each policy analysis is written to provide a broad menu of choices rather than a single narrow set of recommendations. No other work on the Palestinian refugee issue has undertaken such a task. The Palestinian Refugee Problem: The Search for a Resolution is likely to be a pre-eminent reference and analytical work on the topic for many years to come.

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Research, Policy and Negotiations and Resolving the Palestinian Refugee Problem

Rex Brynen and Roula El-Rifai

Four core assumptions about the Palestinian refugee issue underpin much of what this book is about. First, as editors, we believe that the refugee issue will not somehow go away. The forced displacement and continued involuntary exile of the Palestinian people is a core element of Palestinian identity, a source of continuing injustice and a key component of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Achievement of a just and lasting Israeli–Palestinian peace will require that the issue be resolved. Second, we hold the view that if peace is ever to be achieved in the coming decades, it will be achieved through negotiations and will likely be based on some version of a two-state paradigm. Third, we consider that negotiations are facilitated by making policy-relevant research and analysis available to all of the key stakeholders, so as to inform the positions which they adopt and the choices that they make. Fourth – and closely related to the third point – we would also suggest that the sustainability of an agreement is likely to be enhanced if it is based on solid principles, good data, productive understanding, adequate resources and appropriate mechanisms. The key purpose of this volume, therefore, is to advance the prospects for an eventual resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by offering a thorough analysis of the various issues and challenges that any future negotiations on the refugee issue will face.

That being said, there are a great many things that this volume does not assume. We certainly do not assume that successful permanent status negotiations are likely to happen any time soon. On the contrary, we tend to be rather pessimistic on that score, given a combination of Palestinian political divisions, a hardening of Israeli positions, rapidly-changing conditions on the ground, an uncertain regional environment and faltering diplomatic leadership from the international community.

We also do not assume that the negotiating frameworks and approaches that have been adopted in the past will necessarily be those that will be used in the future. Local, regional and even international circumstances are constantly changing. Achieving peace through a single agreement that resolves all permanent status issues may no longer be feasible, although partial, interim and transitional deals would contain (as the early Oslo era demonstrated) dangers all of their own. The two-state paradigm might itself even need to undergo some reconceptualization, especially as continued Israeli occupation and settlement of the Palestinian territories creates new obstacles to peace.

Despite this, we believe that the concept of a ‘one-state’ solution would pose great challenges. If the two sides have been unable thus far to settle their differences on the basis of political separation, it is hard to imagine how some form of unification would be easier – especially given the fundamental attachment of the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews to preserving Israel as a Jewish state and the commitment of most Palestinians to achieving a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. We also believe it is unlikely that the future of the Palestinian territories can be resolved through some sort of political condominium with Jordan, as some right-wing Israeli commentators have suggested. Permanent occupation within a system that continues to deny Palestinians basic political rights is also not viable in the long term,¹ but for the time being, it seems to be tolerated by Israelis and the international community alike.

Indeed, it is the tragic combination outlined above – a refugee issue that will continue to be of importance, coupled with an uncertain political future in which diplomatic prospects seem dim – that gives rise to the contents and approach of this volume. In the chapters that follow, expert contributors have been asked to address each of the major aspects of the refugee issue. The topics covered include designing appropriate implementation mechanisms; the future role of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in implementing an agreement; questions of return, repatriation and residency; the attitudes of host countries; refugee compensation/reparations; the question of claims by Jewish refugees; absorption and development; moral acknowledgement and other ‘intangibles’; managing refugee expectations; and end of claims. Contributors are not offering one single diagnosis or set of recommendations. Rather, they explore the interests and concerns of all sides, synthesize earlier and ongoing research, and suggest a broad menu of possible policy options. Our hope is to provide analysis that will be of lasting value, flexible enough to remain relevant despite future changes of actors, circumstances and negotiating frameworks.

Research and Negotiations on the Refugee Issue, 1991–2012

The value of offering an overview and synthesis of key policy issues and policy-relevant research is heightened by the particular way in which the work of scholars and non-governmental institutions on the refugee issue has – and has not – affected negotiating processes in the past.

Prior to the start of the peace process in the early 1990s, research on resolution of the refugee issue was rather limited.² The various political sensitivities and taboos associated with the issue also limited the ways in which it was addressed. The historical narratives of the two sides stood in stark opposition to each other. Palestinian refugee advocates emphasized rights, grievances and historical injustices, but tended to pay much less attention to questions of negotiation approaches, trade-offs and mechanisms. Few Israeli scholars addressed the refugee issue at all, although the work of Israeli revisionist historians did begin to cast new light on the degree of forced displacement that had taken place from 1947–49.³ Very few Israeli policymakers gave the issue much thought – it was, in many ways, the issue they hoped would go away.

This situation began to slowly change during the mid-1990s, in part because of the onset of the Middle East Peace Process itself at Madrid in 1991 and the research interest this attracted.⁴ Some work was also encouraged, both officially and unofficially, through the Refugee Working Group (RWG) of the multilateral component of that peace process. In its 1995 ‘vision paper’ for the Group, the Canadian Gavel of the RWG called upon the international community to support more policy research on the issue that would ‘aim at providing the kind of mutually-accepted, objective and policy-relevant data required to inform negotiating processes, underwrite political decisions and define solutions, support the implementation of existing agreements, and facilitate the conclusion of future understandings.’ It also called for efforts to ‘promote additional mechanisms for encouraging dialogue, identifying, developing and testing options, and generating political scenarios’ that would harness the energies and insights of ‘civil societies of the region, the NGO, media and academic communities.’ The paper suggested that ‘Such energetic activity in support of the peace process – and the various models, scenarios, initiatives and formulations that it has generated – should be encouraged, circulated, and, where useful and appropriate, built upon.’⁵ Although the Refugee Working Group would slowly wind down its activities in the latter half of the 1990s, Canadian engagement on the refugee issue would continue for more than a decade thereafter.

With the support of the RWG, Norway, and other governments, the Norwegian social science research institution Fafo began work in the 1990s on an ambitious series of studies on refugee living conditions and related issues, work that has continued up until the present day.⁶ Through the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada supported the ‘Ottawa process’, a broad array of unofficial conferences, workshops, and informal, track-two discussions between Israelis and Palestinians to encourage research and support negotiations.⁷ IDRC also supported a variety of research projects undertaken by Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and international scholars, and NGOs. This period also saw the establishment, also with IDRC support, of the Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet (PRRN), an internet-based project that features a website, blog and daily email newsletter on refugee research and policy.⁸

With support from IDRC, the UK, the European Union and other donors, Chatham House also launched an extended series of meetings on the regional dimensions of the refugee issue.⁹ This ‘Minster Lovell Process’ (named after the small Oxfordshire village where many of the meetings took place) facilitated off-the-record Palestinian–Arab dialogue on a series of sensitive refugee-related issues, often with the participation of both scholars and a small number of international diplomats.

Starting in 1999 (and extending through until 2003), the World Bank undertook almost a dozen major studies that examined various economic dimensions of the refugee issue, with particular attention to the costs of refugee camp improvements, and the costs and policy modalities of refugee repatriation. These studies – undertaken with full cooperation from Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, and with tacit approval from Israel – were never formally published, but findings were shared with the major parties. Some summary information on some of the key findings was also published elsewhere.¹⁰

Within Israel a small but growing number of academics began to work on policy-relevant aspects of the refugee issue. The Economic Cooperation Foundation (some of whose senior members had been involved in the 1993 Oslo negotiations that led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority) played a critical role, especially when Yossi Beilin and others took up positions with the Labor-led government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak (1999–2001).¹¹ On the Palestinian side, international donors helped to finance the establishment of the Negotiations Support Unit (NSU) to strengthen Palestinian policy analysis capacities, including those related to the refugee issue.¹² Refugee advocacy groups – most notably the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, established in 1998 – produced detailed analyses of refugee conditions and legal assessments of their rights, and lobbied Palestinian negotiators to pursue a rights-based approach in negotiations.¹³

Such efforts dramatically increased the quality and quantity of available research on refugees. Considerable work was done (albeit, often at the last minute) in the run-up to the Camp David negotiations in July 2000. At Camp David itself, however, the negotiators rarely got beyond opening declaratory positions and clashing narratives on the refugee issue.¹⁴ Indeed, Palestinian negotiator Akram Hanieh would later call the refugee committee ‘the greatest failure of the summit.’¹⁵

Far more detailed and substantial negotiations – including the exchange of detailed drafts, as well as an Israeli ‘non-paper’ that attempted to develop a compromise position – took place at the Taba negotiations in January 2001.¹⁶ Those permanent status negotiations failed, however, amid the violence of the Second Intifada, the collapse of the Barak government, and the February 2001 election of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister of Israel. How much progress was achieved at Taba is contested. Some Israeli commentators have suggested that the Israeli refugee negotiating team had been too willing to make compromises, and that their positions did not fully enjoy government support. Similarly, some Palestinians also criticized their side for being too flexible. In an unofficial meeting held in Europe later that same year, the former refugee negotiators on both sides expressed the view that they had made real progress, and that (in the broader context of a peace agreement) agreement on the r...