Israel and the palestinian refugees: returning to square one
Ron Ben Efrat
Furthermore, these talks on the final agreement were meant to reveal Israel's intentions regarding proposed solutions to the crucial questions of Palestinian refugees, Jewish settlements, and Jerusalem. It was also hoped that the remaining 4,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel would finally be released.
But the Labor Party, spared us the suspense. Under preelection pressure to appease rightwing Israeli voters, Labor publicized its version of the outline of the final agreement foolishly, and not taking into consideration that the rightwing Likud might win, Labor revealed that there is not much to negotiate beyond the two Oslo agreement. In doing this, Labor shot itself in the foot; now its supporters and allies in the peace process, including the Palestinian Authority, cannot moan that "had Labor won, things would be different".
Let us take a look at what Labor was willing to offer: On the question of Palestinian refilgees and the right of return: Clear cut: no right of return. Negotiations only on the fate of Palestinians who became refugees in the 1967 war and fled from the West Bank to Jordan. Labor's solution for the 1948 refugees is citizenship in their countries of refuge.
On the question of settlements: Most settlements (90%) will remain under Israeli sovereighty.
On the question of Jerusalem: both the eastern and the western sections of the city will remain Israel's undivided capital.
I would like to concentrate on the lessdiscussed subject of the Palestinian refugees . Here we have one of the most unique stories in history. After their expulsion from Palestine in 1948 and their concentration in refugee camps in the neighboring Arab countries, Palestinians refused to give up their UNRWA-allotted refugee cards and resettle as citizens of their host countries. This was not in order to safeguard the meagre food rations that they were receiving from UNRWA, but to hold on to their only hope of ever returning home to Palestine As long as they, their children and their grandchildren were considered refugees, their return could be guaranteed. The minute they seek citizenship in a host country, their case as refugees would be dropped. That is why their camps, schools, and hospitals were all named after their old villages and towns in Palestine. The United Nations estimates that in September 1949 there were 726,000 Palestinian refugees outside the armistice lines. While Israel claimed to have no responsibility towards them, that the burden of their solution lies on the Arab countries, these people bonded together with the hope of return.
In 1968 the modern PLO emerged, offering the Palestinians a national program to bind their aspirations together and to turn their tragedy from that of a humanitarian problem into a national political problem in need of a solution.
This was exactly the aspect which Israel fought (and is still fighting). For a refugee problem is one thing, but a national movement is another. From then on, the PLO was Israel's target Its leaders were hunted and assassinated abroad and its members were arrested in the Occupied Territories. By crushing the PLO, Israel thought it could eliminate the Palestinian demand for justice and selfdetermination. For almost three decades a fateful battle has continued, culminating in the 1987 popular uprising the Intifada. A Palestinian victory, in a form of a Palestinian state with the right of return, would mean that Israel would have to admit the historic sin that it inflicted on the Palestinians. Israel is still unwilling to do this, even after the so called peace process, and this is why there is no difference between Labor and Likud.
The Israeli (Zionist) side had a decisive victory on September 13 1993 Yasser Arafat, head of the PLO acknowledged Israel's right to exist without acknowledging the Palestinian right to self-determination and the right of return. In one stroke of the pen, and one famous handshake, he not only accepted Israel's version of historic truth but betrayed the people, the real heroes, whose cause he supposedly represented for so long - those people who held on to their refugee cards for 44 years (19481993).
Now Israel could publicly define the conflict as it always has: not as a conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinian people as a whole, but as a conflict between Israel and 2 million Palestinians residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Under the MadridOslo concept, the fate of the 4 million Palestinian refugees who have been displaced and dispossessed for 48 years has been transformed. Once considered the numberone national problem, recognized internationally, and the reason for the creation of the PLO, the refugees have become a mere humanitarian issue, to be solved by the Arab states or left to the mercy of immigration offices around the world.
Unfortunately, Oslo is not a solution, it leads not to statehood, but to a reorganization of the occupation. According to the Oslo concept of the New Middle East, Israel will normalize its relations with all the neighboring Arab states and advance in the economic conquest of their markets. The Palestinians, meanwhile, will be forced to accept a Bantustan solution for onethird of its people, who are still regarded as a "surplus population".
Likud's victory reveals the wretched gamble taken by Arafat and his close advisors. They went as far as agreeing to crucial segments of the Palestinian Charter to appease Israeli public opinion and to safeguard Labor's victory in the election. These concessions to Israel further weakened the Palestinian claim by portraying the Palestinians, and not the Israelis, as the aggressors in this conflict. The tragic lesson learned from Arafat's betrayal is that Palestinians must continue to raise their refugee cards high, that the world will acknowledge that the problem is far from being solved.
