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Negotiating the Palestinian Refugee Issue The Past as Prelude? briefing paper The Past as Prelude? Negotiating the Palestinian Refugee Issue Rex Brynen Middle East Programme | June 2008 | MEP/PR BP 08/01 Summary points The question of Palestinian refugees has long been one of the most difficult issues in dispute in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. With the onset of renewed peace talks following the Annapolis summit of November 2007, it is once again an issue that the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators must address. The two sides are in a worse position to resolve the issue than they were during the last rounds of permanent status negotiations in 2000–01. The political weakness of the Israeli and Palestinian governments is compounded by heightened mistrust between the two societies, as well as by a hardening of Israeli public attitudes against even the symbolic return of any refugees to Israeli territory. There is now a substantial accumulated body of work on the Palestinian refugee issue to guide and inform negotiators and policy-makers. This includes past official negotiations among the key parties, wider discussions among regional states and the international donor community, unofficial and Track II initiatives and a considerable body of technical analysis. www.chathamhouse.org.uk CH Palestine - Brynen.qxp:Layout 1 20/6/08 11:22 Page 2 The Past as Prelude? page 2 The challenge of the Palestinian return of 1948 refugees to Israeli territory. In the occu- refugee issue pied Palestinian territory, political divisions have made With the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the government of President Mahmoud Abbas reluc- approximately 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven tant to abandon its public commitment to the right of from their homes to seek refuge in the neighbouring return, both as a matter of principle and for fear that it Arab territories. The properties that they left behind would be attacked by its Hamas rivals as having given were seized by the nascent Jewish state. A further in to Israeli pressure. 300,000 were displaced by Israel’s 1967 occupation of These challenges, however, should not blind one to the the West Bank and Gaza. Today, more than 4.5 million broader progress that has been made. With the onset of refugees and their descendants are registered with the renewed Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations following United Nations Relief and Works Agency in the West the Annapolis Conference of November 2007, the parties Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon (UNRWA 2007). are undoubtedly further apart than they were at the Hundreds of thousands of others live elsewhere in the previous permanent status negotiations at Taba in Palestinian diaspora. January 2001 – but perhaps still closer than they were The question of refugees is one of the most difficult when the peace process began in Madrid a decade earlier. and sensitive issues in the Palestinian-Israeli peace This briefing paper provides a descriptive overview process. For Palestinians and Israelis alike, it touches of official refugee discussions since the opening of the upon deeply held historical narratives and even exis- Arab-Israeli peace process in Madrid in 1991. It tential issues: the partition of Palestine and the addresses the evolution of the Refugee Working Group; establishment of the state of Israel; the forced displace- the Quadripartite Committee on displaced persons; the ment and refugee experience of the Palestinian people; Camp David negotiations of July 2000; the Clinton the Palestinian ‘right of return’ and Israel’s ‘demo- Parameters of December 2000; and the Taba negotia- graphic security’. Palestinians demand that Israel tions of January 2001. It also briefly touches upon acknowledge a moral responsibility for the refugees’ issues of donor coordination and economic planning in flight, while most Israelis assert Arab culpability for the support of a refugee agreement, as well as the contribu- events of 1948. Israelis stress the need to assure the tion of various so-called ‘Track II’ research and Jewish character of the state by barring the return of dialogue projects during this same period. (Muslim and Christian) Palestinian refugees, a stance The passage of time, and changes in diplomatic that the Palestinians view as both discriminatory and a personnel and political leadership, mean that this past violation of internationally recognized refugee rights. record is not always fully known, even by those now For these reasons, the refugee question proved directly involved in the current peace talks. particularly problematic throughout the Madrid and Consequently, there is value in offering an overview of Oslo eras, and during permanent status negotiations at what has taken place in the past, in an effort to facilitate Camp David in the US, Taba in Egypt and elsewhere. future negotiations and agreement. Since then, moreover, public attitudes seem to have hardened, while the political leadership on both sides is The Refugee Working Group (1991–97) weak, and unwilling or unable to publicly articulate The Refugee Working Group (RWG) was established in compromise positions. In Israel, the collapse of the 1991–92 as one of the five multilateral working groups Oslo process and eruption of the intifada heightened (refugees, water, environment, regional economic Jewish concerns about the existing Palestinian minority development, arms control and regional security) of the in the country, and stiffened opposition to even a token Madrid peace process.1 Canada was assigned the ‘gavel’ 1 Peters 1996; Kaye 2001. www.chathamhouse.org.uk CH Palestine - Brynen.qxp:Layout 1 20/6/08 11:22 Page 3 The Past as Prelude? page 3 of the group. Participation was open to any interested Periodically, there have been proposals to reacti- state. As with other multilateral working groups, Syria vate the multilateral track of the peace process – and Lebanon did not participate. Israel, the although to date there have been no real steps in this Palestinians and Jordan did, as did many other regional direction. Despite this, Canada has continued to use states and other members of the broader international the RWG ‘chapeau’ to encourage a range of research, community. dialogue, technical and other projects aimed at both The RWG subsequently met in eight plenary sessions addressing the immediate needs of the refugees and between 1992 and 1995. It also met in various other enhancing the prospects for eventually achieving a smaller ‘intersessional’ activities undertaken either by negotiated, mutually acceptable resolution of the the gavel or by the various thematic ‘shepherds’ refugee issue. assigned with the group. These themes (and the corre- sponding shepherds) were databases (Norway), family The Oslo Agreement (1993) and reunification (France), human resource development the Quadripartite Committee (1995–97) (US), job creation and vocational training (US), public While the 1993 Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of health (Italy), child welfare (Sweden) and economic and Principles (‘Oslo Agreement’) postponed discussion of social infrastructure (the European Union). Later in the the (1948) refugee issue until eventual permanent process, Switzerland was given special responsibility status negotiations, it did have more immediate provi- for the ‘human dimension’ in the RWG and other sions regarding those Palestinians displaced from the working groups. West Bank and Gaza because of the June 1967 Arab- Because of its open character and broad-based Israeli War. Specifically, echoing Article A.1.e of the membership, it was difficult for the RWG to address 1978 Egyptian-Israeli Camp David Accords, it called for sensitive political issues.2 Instead, the Palestinians immediate negotiations between Israel, the tended to make broad declarative statements of Palestinians, Jordan and Egypt on the ‘modalities of Palestinian refugee rights, while Israel sought to direct admission of persons displaced from the West Bank the RWG into less political or apolitical efforts aimed at and Gaza in 1967’. improving refugee conditions. The RWG did have some Subsequently, a Continuing (or ‘Quadripartite’) positive effect in focusing attention on refugee condi- Committee was established to discuss these issues. tions, mobilizing some additional resources to address The Committee first met in Amman in May 1995; such conditions, and fostering a number of useful of subsequent meetings were held in Beersheba, Cairo, research and data-collection projects. It also helped Gaza, Amman and Haifa. Work within the Committee encourage an undertaking by Israel to slightly (and was slow, with major differences over the definition of temporarily) liberalize its family reunification a ‘displaced person’ and hence the number of poten- processes. tial returnees. Moreover, Israel seemed unwilling to The RWG, like the multilateral track as a whole, also use the meetings to reach agreement on the issue of proved very vulnerable to disruptions in the broader displaced persons, preferring to address this in the Middle East peace process. In 1997, the Arab League called context of eventual negotiations on the broader for a boycott of the multilaterals in protest over Israeli refugee issue. By 1997, deterioration in the peace policies, although lower-level work by the RWG process saw work in the Committee grind to a virtual continued. This work ended, however, with the eruption of halt. By 2000, the quadripartite mechanism had been the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000, which overshadowed by the onset of permanent status nego- led to a suspension of all multilateral track activities. tiations. 2 Brynen and Tansley 1995; Tamari 1996; Brynen 1997. www.chathamhouse.org.uk CH Palestine - Brynen.qxp:Layout 1 20/6/08 11:22 Page 4 The Past as Prelude? page 4 The Beilin-Abu Mazen Understandings about key aspects of the refugee issue. This is particu- (1995) larly true of the issue of refugee compensation, an issue In 1995, Yossi Beilin and Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) on which IDRC has sponsored considerable research, led a series of informal and unofficial meetings including a major comparative ‘lessons learned’ exer- intended to sketch the possible parameters of a cise by the International Organization for Migration.
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