Did Anybody Say Refugees?
The Palestinian refugees have always insisted on their right of return as asserted in the UN General Assembly Resolution 194. At the same time they have subscribed to the principle of negotiations with Israel in the framework of an international conference based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, the first of which also calls for a “fair solution to the problem of the refugees”.
The upcoming meeting in Annapolis, on the other hand, raises doubts. Is the objective really to arrive at a fair peace as demanded by the resolutions of the UN? At first, there were announcements that a negotiated solution was in the offing. Then Israel stepped up the pressure, was backed up by the Americans, and the promise for an agenda that would include timelines for an Israeli withdrawal and the declaration of a Palestinian state simply evaporated. What is expected now is a “non-paper” that will reiterate the principle of negotiations in vague terms and make reference to a host of frameworks that imply mutually contradictive principles, such as the road map, George Bush’s “vision”, the Arab Peace Initiative and the “principles of international law”.
It is not convincing to claim that we need to be in Annapolis simply because this will be a major political battle in the negotiating process. In order for this meeting, any meeting, to achieve substantial progress there are a couple of essential requirements – among them:
- some clear and positive signals from the Israelis, such as no new settlements, the removal of checkpoints, the release of prisoners, the ceasing of military attacks, and an end to the blockade of Gaza
- It has to be a full-fledged international conference, not a meeting that may or may not be repeated – a conference, at that, with full authority, the participation of all parties involved, and under the auspices of the international community and the UN, governed by the international resolutions and geared towards their implementation.
Clearly, none of these essential elements are in place. On the contrary, from the perspective of the Palestinians, and in particular the refugees, it looks very much like Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreed to this meeting in the hope to consolidate the promises that Israel received from the Bush administration in 2004: no return to the 1967 borders, annexation of the main settlements, no return even of a marginal number of refugees. On top of that, there are the gains that Israel has secured through the road map, which affirmed that Israel’s security is a precondition for engaging with any of the essential issues.
If those American guarantees for Israel and the Arab Peace Initiative – which calls for “a fair and agreed upon solution of the refugee issue” and not for the implementation of resolution 194 – are the essential starting points of the meeting, then the Palestinian refugees – outside and also within the occupied territories – have all reason to be wary of what may be the results of Annapolis. Those concerns are not helped by statements such as the one recently given by Mahmoud Abbas to the Israeli paper Maariv: “Nobody can force you to receive millions of refugees – but neither can you force millions of refugees to forego their rights.”
During preliminary discussions between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, it also emerged that the Israelis insist on the Palestinians recognizing Israel as a “Jewish State”. Obviously, this demand implies a head-on attack on the right of return: Should Israel be recognised as a Jewish state, the whole Palestinian struggle to liberate their land and return will have been an historical error. The implications are even more far-reaching: Should they agree, Palestinian negotiators will give implicit legitimacy to the racist treatment meted out to Israeli Arabs who by now represent 20 percent of the Israeli population; they might even justify their eventual expulsion from the country, with Jews from all over the world to take their place.
When the United Nations admitted Israel in 1949 this was conditional on the acceptance of resolutions 181 and 194. While resolution 181 [the General Assembly resolution for the partition of Palestine of November 29, 1947] guarantees equal rights for minorities in the two states emerging from the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine, resolution 194 calls for the return of the refugees to the homes they were expelled from by Israel. None of the two has ever been implemented by Israel, and hence, Olmert's new conditions are a clear attempt to compel Palestinians and Arabs to abrogate the framework of international law and abolish the right of return – a demand that Palestinians and Arabs of course reject.
It should come as no surprise then that the decision to participate in the Annapolis meeting has caused widespread opposition and public protest among Palestinians – protest that the Israeli hawks have immediately exploited to argue that Mahmoud Abbas’ leadership is too weak to deliver on anything he signs.
It is true that the negotiating delegation represents, formally speaking, the PLO, whether the members are Palestinians from within or outside the territories. Yet, to retain the support of the refugees it is of utmost importance to defend the right of return. Unfortunately, the refugees, for a number of reasons, have little cause to trust the negotiators:
- Some members of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, under the illusion that this may win them Israeli acceptance for a Palestinian state, have already hinted that concessions on the right of return may be possible (for example the delegation, lead by Yassir Abed Rabbo, that attended the Geneva talks)
- Mahmoud Abbas' statements on the right of return are at best ambiguous
- The PLO has shown indifference towards attempts to destroy refugee communities – be it by distributing the Palestinian refugees from Iraq as far afield as India and Brazil, the destruction of the Nahr Al-Bared Camp in Lebanon, or the siege of the camps in Gaza.
Not surprisingly then there are more and more calls to bring the negotiations back into the framework of the PLO. In order to truly represent the interests of the Palestinian people, the negotiators need to be elected or at least authorised by the Palestinian National Council, the only legitimate representation of the whole Palestinian people. To achieve this it is imperative to hold new elections for the Council, as it is the only Palestinian parliament representing the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, as well as all those residing outside Palestine.
Fifty-nine years have passed. Yet, for whoever will sit down at the negotiating table, the bottom line remains that the right of return can be no part of any bargain. There will be no solution unless the Palestinians reclaim their rights.
Dr. Suheil El-Natour is a Palestinian refugee living in Lebanon; he is director of the Human Development Center in Beirut.
