Palestinian Refugee Negotiations: From Madrid to Oslo II

Salim Tamari

Institute For Palestine Studies

June 1996

Contents

Publisher's Note

Introduction: Issues Past and Present

1. The Scope of Negotiations

2. Family Reunification: Problems and Prospects

3. Family Reunification: Policy Aspects

4. Displaced Persons: Interim Solutions

5. Directing Negotiations: Peron's Vision Paper

6. Aid to Refugees: The Bristol Report

7. Final Status Issues in Negotiations

8. Highlights of a Strategy: Difficult Choices for the Palestinian Negotiator

Postscript

Appendix 1: Glossary of Terms

Appendix 2: The Interim Agreement and Guidelines for Returnees

Endnotes

Publisher's Note

This paper was prepared as part of the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) Final Status Issues project. The project combines research, documentation, and policy seminars with the aim of raising awareness of and contributing to the peace process on key final status issues. The IPS thanks the Diana Tamari-Sabbagh Foundation and the Ford Foundation for their assistance.

Salim Tamari is director of the Institute for Jerusalem Studies and associate professor of sociology at Birzeit University. He is also coordinator of the Refugee Working Group for the Palestinian Team at the multilateral negotiations, as well as a member of the Quadripartite Committee on Displaced Persons.

 

Introduction: Issues Past and Present

Reviewing the work of the Conciliation Commission for Palestine, established by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 to deliberate on the status of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, one is reminded of how little has changed in the debate over the predicament of Palestinian refugees after nearly a half-century of dispossession. ₁ The themes of the Commission's deliberations, which began with the Beirut and Lausanne Conferences in March and April 1949, included problems of repatriation, resettlement, socioeconomic rehabilitation of refugees, assessment of lost Arab property in Israel, and the "Reunion of Broken Families." ₂ These issues are still central concerns of the refugee meetings that have been generated by the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991. However, the establishment of the Refugee Working Group (RWG) in the Arab-Israeli multilateral peace negotiations in 1992 and of the Continuing Committee for Displaced Persons in March 1995--although ostensibly addressing the same issues raised in Beirut and Lausanne almost fifty years ago--occur under drastically different circumstances. The Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles (DOP) and the Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty, as well as those components of the Camp David Agreement that deal with displaced persons, have cast the old issues in a new light.

  What are the new circumstances that distinguish current talks from the refugee meetings of the late 1940s and early 1950s? Foremost is the recasting of the Palestinians as a people whose cause is no longer an exclusively Arab and Islamic one, as was the case in the aftermath of the 1948 war, but an international cause with concrete territorial claims to a land and (for most) sovereignty. More specifically, the Palestinian refugee issue--no longer exclusively defined as a humanitarian issue, as it was after 1948--has been recast as part of the agenda of restoring the right of Palestinian self-determination.

  This is a mixed blessing. First, while earlier international deliberations on Palestinian issues focused more or less exclusively on refugees, today both bilateral and multilateral forums deal with refugees as part of a "package" of Palestinian demands. Refugees now are seen as part of a complex set of issues that includes residencies, family reunification, problems of absorption, compensation, and so on. In other words, the refugee issue has been diluted into the various themes of Palestinian national reconstruction.

  Second, solving the refugee problem is fast becoming part of the new dichotomy within Palestinian politics between the contingencies of state-building on the one hand and the demands of the diaspora for representation and repatriation on the other. The return of refugees is dealt with not primarily as the culmination of decades of yearning for a fulfillment of dreams, but as part of a series of compromises between the absorptive capacities of the Palestinian economy and the ability of Palestinian negotiators to wrest concessions from Israeli bureaucratic and political forces opposed to refugee repatriation.

  Third, the refugee issue is encountering formidable resistance from Israeli decisionmakers. While some Israelis seem to be embarking on the realization that a Palestinian state within 1967 boundaries is an inevitable outcome of the negotiations, at the same time they are singling out the return of refugees for a barrage of ideological and political objections. In the media and in direct negotiations over displaced persons, the return of Palestinian refugees is now being portrayed as a security issue within Israel and as a prelude to a subtle scheme for undermining the Jewish character of the state, even when it entails the return of refugees to the areas under exclusive Palestinian control.

  That these objections are being raised now with such heightened intensity is precisely because the possibility and probability of return are part of the modalities of the negotiations, both in the DOP and in the deliberations of the Quadripartite Committee for Displaced Persons (QPCDP). One should also regard these objections as being directed, at least in part, to a domestic Israeli audience, with the Labor Party attempting to demonstrate a hard-line stance on the refugee question to potential centrist and right-wing voters. For this reason, actual negotiating positions may be more flexible, especially when discussed on a bilateral basis out of the limelight.

  The distinction made at the Madrid Peace Conference between bilateral negotiations and regional (or multilateral) negotiations was intended to create complementarity between the concrete problems that only Israel and the Arab parties can negotiate directly and those global issues to which outside parties can contribute or from which they can benefit. It was assumed that the multilaterals would create avenues toward regional cooperation that would improve the atmosphere of negotiations and facilitate bilateral agreements. In an essay on the multilaterals, Joel Peters offered the following interpretation:

  While the bilateral talks would address the political issues of territorial withdrawal, border demarcation, security arrangements and political rights of the Palestinians, the multilaterals would provide a forum for the participants to address a range of non-political issues extending across national boundaries, the resolution of which is essential for the promotion of long-term regional development and security. Whereas the bilaterals would deal with the problems inherited from the past, the multilaterals would focus on the future shape of the Middle East. ₃

The Palestinians, as the weaker party, viewed this distinction differently. They saw in the multilaterals an arena where they could compensate for their limited options in bilateral negotiations with Israel by seeking alliances in the region and Europe. This became apparent during the January 1991 deliberations of the Moscow Steering Committee, where the modus operandi of the multilaterals were established. The Syrians and Lebanese boycotted these meetings, linking their participation in regional talks to Israeli bilateral concessions on the Golan Heights and south Lebanon.

  For their part, the Palestinians--confined as they were to the negotiating tasks of the transitional period--insisted that a final status element be added. They saw in the introduction of the RWG a "political" dimension unavailable in the four other groups (environment, water, economic development, and disarmament). First, it sent a signal to Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon that they had not been forgotten in the protracted interim negotiations. This in turn would lend much-needed legitimacy to the impending signing of an Israeli-Palestinian accord, which was bound to be seen as too conciliatory by diaspora Palestinians without a refugee component. Second, it introduced an element of final status negotiations to supplement the issue of displaced persons that was bound to dominate talks on refugees.

  This at any rate was the intention, although, as we shall see, the results were quite different. It was precisely this Palestinian vision that led the Israelis, obsessed with preventing any hint of a Palestinian right of return, to resist the inclusion of the RWG in Moscow as one of the multilateral committees and later to diffuse its program once they were prevailed upon to accept it.

  Ultimately, this aspect of the refugee issue became clearer with the signing of the DOP in September 1993. According to the DOP, the status of Palestinian refugees was one of three contentious issues (including Jerusalem and Israeli settlements) left to the final status negotiations set to begin in mid-1996. However, unlike the other two issues, the procedural aspect of dealing with refugees was reversed. The establishment of the RWG in the multilateral negotiations with a mandate to deal with the status of refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria--as well as in the West Bank and Gaza--preceded the establishment of the Committee on Displaced Persons (the Continuing Committee) from the 1967 war.

  Of all the committees at the multilateral level, the RWG provided the Palestinians with the best opportunity to define the mandate in their favor. However, the ambiguity of that mandate, as well as the consensual nature of decision making, ensured that this tilt was never translated into a practical advantage.

 

1.  The Scope of Negotiations

Between May 1992 and December 1995, seven plenary meetings of the RWG took place. These sessions were held in Ottawa in May and November 1992; Oslo in May 1993; Tunis in October 1993; Cairo in May 1994; Antalya (Turkey) in December 1994; and Geneva in December 1995. ₄ Additional "Intersessional" meetings (see Appendix 1) were held to discuss specialized themes as a prelude to plenary sessions. The shift from periodic to annual plenary meetings reflected a widely held view in the multilaterals that Intersessional (in part because of their smaller size) were more effective in advancing the issues discussed. ₅ Another six meetings of the QPCDP, established by the Oslo accords, were also convened. The QPCDP meetings, held in Amman, Beersheba, Cairo, Gaza City, Amman, and Haifa, will be discussed separately. From the beginning, several issues were raised concerning the composition of the RWG and the scope of its deliberations.

Representation

The first battle to take place in the RWG was over who would represent the Palestinians. Although the terms of the Madrid Conference were seen by the Israelis as excluding delegates from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the diaspora, and Jerusalem, the first two meetings in Ottawa were dominated by bickering over the leadership of the Palestinian team by diaspora figures (headed first by Elias Sanbar and then by Muhammad Hallaj, a member of the Palestine National Council [PNC]). In each case, the Palestinian team was denied separate representation, and it had to appear under the umbrella of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation. The first RWG meeting was boycotted by the Israelis, and the second one ended with a stalemate over Palestinian representation. This issue was not resolved until the Cairo meeting in May 1994, which came after the PLO became the direct negotiator with Israel and after the signing of the DOP.

Defining the RWG's Mandate

During the second plenary (Ottawa, November 1992), the Israeli delegation raised theissue of including Jewish and other refugees in RWG deliberations. The U.S. delegation to the Lisbon Steering Committee (May 1992) also attempted to widen the scope of the RWG to include non-Palestinian refugees, such as Kurds and Armenians. In particular, the Israelis saw this as an opportunity to treat the Palestinian refugee problem in the context of a population exchange and suggested that Arab refugees from Palestine had been replaced by the influx of Jewish refugees from North Africa, Yemen, Iraq, and other Arab countries. ₆ This position was based on a 1948 claim of quid pro quo made by David Ben-Gurion:

When the Arab states are ready to conclude a peace treaty with Israel the question of refugees will come up for constructive solution as part of the general settlement, and with due regard to our counter-claims in respect of the destruction of Jewish life and property . . . ₇

From the point of view of the Palestinian and other Arab delegations, this was seen not as a humanitarian gesture but as an attempt to fragment the focus of the committee, the mandate of which had already been established by the Moscow Steering Committee.

  The Palestinian delegation countered the notion of "population exchange" by stressing three points about Jewish immigrants to Israel. First, they argued that Jews from Arab countries had come voluntarily to Israel, while the Palestinians had been forcibly expelled from their homes. Second, Palestinians had taken refuge in host countries (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan) different from those from which Jews had emigrated to Israel (primarily Iraq, Morocco, and Yemen). Third, Arab countries, at least in theory (and in the case of Morocco, in fact), have proclaimed the right of their Jewish citizens to return. ₈ Consequently, the Palestinians maintained that the compensation, repatriation, and return of Jewish immigrants now in Israel should be raised bilaterally with their respective Arab countries of origin, just as the Palestinians would raise these issues bilaterally with Israel during final status negotiations.

Humanitarian Aid Versus Political Rights

The debate over the nature of the negotiations was based on whether the RWG would focus on humanitarian aid aimed at integrating the refugees into the social structures of their host countries or on their political right to return to Palestine. The resulting format was a compromise proposing seven themes. The conditions of refugees in the occupied territories and host countries would be addressed "without prejudicing the final-status deliberations of refugees." This proviso became an essential component of the gavel holder's (see Appendix 1) summary of each plenary meeting. Likewise, the Palestinians insisted on including in each of their opening statements a reference to UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948 highlighting the refugees' right of return. However, in the gavel's summary records, these specific statements were always diluted as a general reference to "relevant UN resolutions on refugees."

  Of the seven themes, later reduced to six, only one--family reunification-- dealt concretely with a political dimension of refugee dispersion. The other five addressed issues of community development and refugee living conditions. Each interested Western country (and in the case of the European Union [EU], bloc of countries) "shepherded" one of these six themes: Norway adopted databases; the United States, human resources development/job creation; Italy, public health; Sweden, child welfare; the European Union, economic and social infrastructure; and France, family reunification.

  It soon became apparent that family reunification was too explosive to be dealt with as a neutral issue of ameliorating the status of refugees. It generated heated discussions over issues of dispersal, military laws of residency, and control of the size of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza.

  In the course of our analysis, we shall focus on three documents that have affected the course of the multilateral negotiations. The first concerns the debate on the unexpectedly contentious issues of family reunification. The second is a Canadian proposal for breaking the deadlock in the negotiations (the "Vision Paper"). The third is the European Union's plan to link refugee aid to creating options for integrating refugees into their Arab host countries.

 

2.  Family Reunification: Problems and Prospects

After six rounds of RWG meetings and two Intersessionals on family reunification (in Tunis and Paris), some limited progress was achieved. ₉ The main achievement was an agreement by all parties on the need to adopt clear criteria, definitions, and procedures for processing family reunification applications in accordance with the recommendations made in the Bajolet Report, named after the head of the French delegation which was a "shepherd" on the status of broken families. The Israeli government also agreed to raise the ceiling of the annual quota for family reunification admissions from 1,000 to 2,000 cases. However, these numbers should be seen in historical perspective: During twenty-seven years of military control, the Israeli Civil Administration in the occupied territories approved less than one-fifth of the total applications. ₁₀

  Many Israelis, influenced by the right-wing press, have come to fear (unnecessarily, I believe) these limited agreements as facilitating a "right of return through the back door."

  Many issues remain unresolved in the RWG. The main problems have to do with the actual implementation on the ground of principles agreed on and maintaining the momentum which began in the Oslo and Tunis RWG meetings. The Palestinians, among others, took the position that the quota announced in Oslo (2,000 cases annually) was far below the expectations raised by the 1993 DOP and the May 1994 Palestinian-Israeli Interim Agreement.

Problems Facing Applicants

Despite the agreement in principle to admit 2,000 family reunification cases (or 6,000 persons, whichever is higher) annually, definitions of eligibility, application procedures, and the details of implementation remain unclear.

  In February 1994, representatives of a coalition of eight human rights organizations met with the International Law Department of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and other officials. This meeting resulted in an additional agreement regarding the processing of family reunification requests. This agreement extended an earlier arrangement, approved by the Israeli High Court, allowing "illegal" visitors to be "legalized," including spouses and children who entered the occupied territories during the 1993 summer visitation period. The main procedural items that were addressed in this additional agreement were:

• Retroactive payments for periods lived "illegally" in the West Bank and Gaza would no longer be demanded.
• Reasons for refusing a family reunification request had to be provided in writing.
• Visitors included in the High Court agreement who first entered Israel and then the territories would receive the same entitlement as those who entered the territories directly: that is, six-month renewable visitor permits and benefits.
• When a request for permanent residency or visitor's permit extension would be submitted from among a group approved by the High Court, the entitlement would be determined by documentation presented by the applicant attesting to date of entry into the territories. In the absence of such documentation, it would be determined by information found in the computers of the Israeli Civil Administration.
• A person would be considered married from the day of the signing of the marriage contract (in accordance with Islamic law). The date of the marriage ceremony, a social and not a legal aspect of Islamic marriage, would be irrelevant in determining entitlement under family reunification agreements.
• All visitors with six-month permits would be allowed to leave and return to the territories without having to pay a re-entry fee.
• If a request for family reunification was not reviewed because of quota fulfillment, the applicant would no longer have to pay another fee for the subsequent year of review.

• The Israeli Civil Administration committed itself to publish the procedures and guidelines concerning family reunification requests. ₁₁

Hundreds of violations of these main points by the Civil Administration were reported to Palestinian and Israeli civil rights activists and lawyers during 1994 and 1995. Most violations fell into two categories: a refusal to extend visitors' permits or grant entry permits guaranteed under the agreements; and a lack of response to family reunification requests within three months, with delays of up to a year or more in some cases.

  Other categories of violations included: the demand for retroactive fees to be paid in order to arrange residency status; refusal to provide a written reason for rejection of family reunification requests; refusal to provide medical services to minor children covered under the agreement; refusal to return money deposited as a guarantee; and bureaucratic problems in receiving final approval for family reunification at the end of the year-long trial period. In addition, the Civil Administration has yet to publish the procedures for family reunification requests as promised. ₁₂

Reunification in the Autonomous Areas

After the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza and Jericho on 17 May 1994, a bipartite Palestinian-Israeli committee was established to coordinate work on family reunification. Upon the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, it transpired that the Israeli Civil Administration there had destroyed all family reunification application files that had been submitted in recent years. When the bipartite committee protested, it was told that since authority now lay with the PA, there was no need to review old applications.

  Subsequently, the PA has invited the public, through the local press, to submit applications for family reunification. In accordance with the Cairo Agreement of May 1994 (Annex 2, Article L: 15-16), cases submitted by Palestinian residents will go first to the PA and then to the Israeli side for further processing. It is not yet clear how these arrangements will be implemented on the ground, but this will prove to be a major test of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation under the Interim Agreement.

  In October 1994, the Palestinian negotiating team surveyed family reunification applications from the West Bank, including Jericho. Of 820 cases, it was discovered that: 48 percent, mostly male spouses who submitted their applications between 1992 and 1994, were rejected by Israeli authorities; a large number were not accepted by Israel, presumably because they did not fulfill application criteria; there was a considerable number of foreign (non-Palestinian) female spouses among the rejections; 32 percent of the applications (302 cases), most submitted by spouses in 1992-1993, had not received answers as of this writing; and 118 cases (about 14 percent) were approved, although most have not yet received their identity cards (even though many had received their approval in early 1993). ₁₃

  On balance, it is expected that many of the problems concerning liaison mismanagement will be superseded by the new committee established to implement the terms of the Oslo II Agreement (see Appendix 2).

Unresolved Issues

A number of important family reunification issues remain unresolved:

Criteria. There is still an urgent need to clarify the procedural aspects of family reunification. These include clear guidelines as to who is entitled to apply, the method of application, and public monitoring of applications.

Transparency. Many of the guidelines on transparency proposed in the Bajolet Report that have been adopted by the RWG have not been implemented. This is due partly to the absence of clear instructions to District Offices of the Israeli Civil Administration (which still follow a large variety of procedural rules) and possibly to the Civil Administration's lack of adoption of such guidelines in the first place.

Quotas. Although there is a declared annual quota of 2,000 family reunification cases, the Civil Administration has not been announcing the number of acceptances and rejections on a periodic basis. Therefore, there is no direct way of verifying whether the quota has been met.

Time limitations. In most cases, applicants are not receiving responses to their applications within the three-month period agreed upon by the RWG. In a large number of cases, the response time has taken over a year.

Appeals. The procedures for appealing rejected cases are not transparent, and there is no accountability. Members of appeal boards are not known and not accessible to the applicants or their lawyers. Rejected applicants in most instances have to resubmit new applications instead of appealing rejected ones.

"Illegal" residents. Since the end of 1994, the Israeli Civil Administration has resorted to threats of deportation against hundreds of people, mostly spouses and their children, who have overstayed their visiting permits. These threats were temporarily suspended following legal intervention. It is essential that the regularization agreement which covers spouses who entered the country during 1992 and 1993 be extended to the period after 31 August 1993. In general, spouses and children of legal residents of the occupied territories should not be subject to the quota.

Status of family reunification applications in Palestinian areas. Procedures for processing applications within the Gaza-Jericho area should be clarified in light of articles in the 1994 Cairo Agreement (Annex 2, Article L: 15-16) covering the status of family members applying for reunion with their kin.

 

3.  Family Reunification: Policy Aspects

Problems of definition occupied the entire February 1994 Intersessional meeting in Tunis, and maximalist (Palestinian) and minimalist (Israeli) definitions of "the family" were at the heart of the conflict. While Palestinians wanted the definition to refer to the sociological extended family, Israelis sought to limit it to the husband, wife, and minor children (the nuclear family).

  A number of Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups in Jerusalem submitted to the Intersessional meeting a memorandum that studied the implications of this issue. Their findings are summarized in a position paper drafted by Advocate Eliahu Abram of the Israeli Association for Civil Rights. ₁₄ The issue of family reunification, the memorandum holds, goes beyond the issue of refugees and indeed subsumes it. It rests on the right of married people to reunite with their nonresident spouses. According to the document, the most disruptive feature of Israeli policies on dispersed families is that they do not recognize, in principle, the right of spouses to reunite with their spouses or children with their parents; moreover, family members who leave temporarily to work or study abroad are regularly denied residency if they overstay their exit permits.

  The report also notes that the Israeli authorities have used family reunification as a bargaining instrument in the negotiations over refugees in the transitional period. (One might mention that this is the only issue on which there was progress in the bilateral negotiations in the RWG.) Moreover, it states, family reunification is a right recognized by a number of international conventions (Article 74 of the Geneva Convention, Helsinki Final Act of 1974). It is also incorporated in the immigration legislation of most states and therefore should not be subject to political bargaining. Finally, Abram declares that the right of immediate family members to family reunification should not be subject to quota restrictions.

Questions of Definition

Abram's report also calls for the recognition of two categories of family members for family reunification: immediate family members of a legal resident and other members of the extended family, who either lack a nuclear family or are otherwise dependent on the resident and his immediate family. While people in both categories are entitled to apply for family reunification, Abram distinguishes between them as far as policies are concerned:

[I]mmediate family members are entitled by their objective status alone to family reunification. The decision in their case need not be subject to discretionary procedures; it should be quick and clear-cut, giving effect to a prima facie right to live together and subject only to such requirements for documentary proof of genuine family relationships as are common to the immigration regulations of democratic countries. ₁₅

One should also take into account here the specific Arab-Islamic environment in which the dispersal of Palestinian refugees took place: namely, one that is typified by the prevalence of a shared residence by related families and a unified extended household economy.

  The report concludes with the irony that Palestinian expatriates returning to their homeland have fewer rights than foreign emigrants applying for citizenship in a new country of choice:

While the Palestinian residents of the occupied territories have not acquired an independent citizenship, neither are they alien residents with the option to return to a previous homeland or domicile in order to be reunited there with dependent parents or other relatives. The anomalous position of Palestinians under prolonged occupation, disrupting at times the natural development of the family, should not be ignored. Their right to be unified with family members should approximate state practice with respect to citizens. ₁₆

Procedural Reform of Current Schemes

The Abram Report makes specific procedural proposals for reforming the family reunification system during the transitional period.

  First, Abram recommends that all the immediate or dependent family members who have currently been present in the territories should be allowed to apply for family reunification while there and be entitled to positive and rapid processing of their applications without being required to leave first. In connection, it should be noted that the French delegate reported that Israel had undertaken to assure "regularization for Palestinians already present in the territories." This commitment has not yet been put into effect; in fact, current policy flatly contradicts this commitment. Immediate family members who entered the territories after August 1992 have been denied the opportunity to apply for family reunification while remaining in the territories, and Israeli officials continue to threaten them with expulsion.

  Second, Abram advises that immediate family members be allowed to visit the territories and to apply for family reunification during their visits. They should not be required to leave pending an answer to their application. Except during the summer months, Israel currently denies most applications of immediate family members for visitors' permits. Under present policy, family reunification cannot be requested during the visit. The French delegate reported Israel's commitment to process family reunification applications within three months, which is the normal duration of a visitor's permit. It should be possible, therefore, for a visiting family member to apply for reunification upon arrival and to receive an answer to the application prior to the expiration of the visitor's permit. In any case, there is no reason to refuse an extension of the visitor's permit until a final answer is given concerning family reunification.

  Third, the report calls for steps to enable a legal resident of the territories temporarily residing abroad with his family members (who are not legal residents) to apply for family reunification while still abroad. Furthermore, the report notes, it should be made clear that the resident's temporary sojourn abroad will not be interpreted as evidence of intent to transfer his domicile away from the territories and will not prejudice the family reunification request in any way. Although the Bajolet Report indicates that Israeli authorities have announced their intention to adopt this measure, the report's language is somewhat opaque ("files may be transmitted by a person not residing in the Territories provided his guarantor has resident status"). No known steps have been taken to inform Palestinians about procedures for applying from abroad.

  Fourth, Abram recommends that full and specific reasons be provided by the authorities for rejecting a family reunification application. Giving notice of the grounds of rejection to the applicant (as distinguished from explanations to the Palestinian authorities) fulfills a well-established principle of natural justice. Only in this way can the applicant hope to challenge the deprivation of his or her right to family unity or to correct any factual errors on which the denial may be based.

  Finally, a last procedural point in the report concerns bureaucratic and political sensitivities. It is not essential that every person entitled to family reunification be granted immediate permanent resident status. The underlying humanitarian problem--family members need to live together--can be solved by granting any form of renewable temporary residency status during an interim period. Such an approach also may allay the reluctance to accept change and fears of prejudicing the outcome of a final settlement. ₁₇

Policy Implications for Refugee Families

Although the Abram Report's analysis of procedures affecting family reunification schemes in the RWG was intended to address the existing situation of dismembered families, the policy implications for refugee families in the context of current negotiations on displaced persons are immense. These implications were underscored by the February 1994 Intersessional meeting of the RWG on family rights and reunification, where--despite Israeli opposition--a consensus among a group of jurists and social scientists emerged on the relationship between the changing role of the Palestinian family and its rights under Israeli rule.

   The group of experts reached agreement on the following points: (1) the decline of the Palestinian extended family as a residential unit has not entailed the loss of its extended ("joint") features; (2) the extent of Palestinian and Arab children's dependency on their parents has gone beyond the legal definition of maturation and should be taken into account when family reunification applications are made; and (3) the policy of willfully separating families by creating bureaucratic obstacles to unification of spouses and their children has seriously undermined the social fabric of Palestinian society. ₁₈

  Given the role of wide kinship networks in the functioning of Palestinian society, any agreement over family reunification is bound to involve larger numbers of individuals being allowed to reunite with their family members. A nuclear definition of the family, on the other hand, would focus reunification on the spouse and the younger children of dispersed families. It was this Western notion of the family that Israel had originally advocated--though purely for the purposes of setting a low ceiling on the admission of displaced persons and refugees. Even after subsequently admitting that the Palestinian family was not the exact equivalent of the Western nuclear prototype, the Israelis changed tactics by restricting the implementation of previously agreed-upon quotas.

 

4.  Displaced Persons: Interim Solutions

In line with the distinctions made during the Madrid Peace Conference, the Oslo accords established a four-party ("Quadripartite") committee consisting of representatives of Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinians to deal with the issue of 1967 refugees, referred to as "displaced persons." Article XII of the Oslo accords stipulated that this quadripartite committee would

decide by agreement on the modalities of admission of persons displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, together with the necessary measures to prevent disruption and disorder. ₁₉

After the conclusion of the Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty, the Quadripartite Committee for Displaced Persons met at the ministerial level in March 1995 in Amman and decided to meet periodically at the level of a Technical Committee and quarterly at the ministerial level to deliberate on recommendations raised by the Technical Committee. Its frame of reference was comprised of Article 12 of the DOP, the Jordanian-Israeli agreement, and those clauses of the Camp David Accords dealing with displaced persons.

  The inclusion of the 1994 Jordanian-Israeli Treaty in the frame of reference was meant to signal Jordan's explicit agreement to join in discussions on 1967 displaced persons--which until then had been based on a bilateral agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. The Camp David Accords, on the other hand, contain a stronger reference to the repatriation of displaced persons, with a time frame spanning the transitional period of self-rule (five years). No such time frame was included in the DOP.

  The Committee has met six times since the beginning of 1995 in Amman, Beersheba, Cairo, Gaza, Amman, and Haifa. At the spring 1995 session in Beersheba, the QPCDP adopted an agenda revolving around three items: (1) the definition of displaced persons; (2) their numbers; and (3) the modalities of repatriation ("admission" in the language of the DOP). However, the Israelis rejected an attempt to add a time frame to the agenda.

  Subsequent meetings of the Technical Committee were consumed by major differences over the definition of "displaced persons." Israel's initial position, set forth in a memo dated (significantly) 5 June 1995, regarded as displaced persons those Palestinians "who were residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and were displaced as a result of the fighting." ₂₀ As a "humanitarian gesture," the Israeli government had allowed some Palestinians to return through the offices of the Red Cross after 2 July 1967. Between 1967 and 1994, some 88,000 persons were admitted under the family reunification scheme. ₂₁

  But this minimalist definition of displaced--with the emphasis on the words "as a result of the fighting"--was totally unacceptable to the Palestinians and the two Arab parties. They maintained that the terminology should read "as a result of the war," so as to include not just those who left during the six days of fighting, but also those who had left before and were unable to return afterwards as a consequence of the fighting. They also regarded the Israeli terminology as contrary to the terms of the DOP, which refers (in Article 12) to "persons displaced from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967." Both the Jordanian and Palestinian delegations suggested the following alternative definition:

Displaced Persons are those individuals and their families and descendants who left their homes in the West Bank and Gaza, or were unable to return to their homes, as a consequence of the 1967 war. ₂₂

In attempting to resolve the question of defining "who is a displaced person," the Committee divided displaced persons into three categories: (1) Palestinians who were out of the West Bank and Gaza on the eve of the 1967 war and were recorded in the population registries of Jordan and the Gaza Strip (this group includes students, businessmen, workers, etc. who could not come back to their homes because of the Israeli occupation); (2) citizens of the West Bank and Gaza who were displaced during or in the aftermath of the war; and (3) those who left the occupied territories after the census of September 1967 and were prevented by the Israelis from returning. (Most people in this last category are so-called "late-comers," people whose exit permits were not renewed, and deportees.) ₂₃

  The Israelis objected to the first and third groups being considered "displaced persons." They also objected to the inclusion of the words "families" and "descendants" in the definition. Because it was impossible to proceed on the issue of modalities of return without an agreement on definitions, the delegates decided to recognize a consensus regarding the second category (those who lost their homes as a result of the war) and to proceed to the issues of numbers and modalities, while continuing the debates over the other two categories of displaced persons.

Shift in the Terms of Debate

With the signing of the Oslo accords and the convening of the QPCDP, the terms of debate on refugees began to shift. The most tangible effect of this shift was the marginalization of the multilateral committee on refugees. The year 1995 was the first one since the peace negotiations began when no meeting for the RWG was scheduled. And both the Americans and the Canadians (sponsor and gavel of the refugee talks, respectively) replaced the heads of their delegations with lesser known civil servants.

  Within the Arab world, the October 1994 Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty signalled an era of normalization in which collective Arab pressure on Israel on the issue of refugees was reduced. By definition, the Quadripartite Committee excluded the Europeans and North Americans--in effect, limiting the refugee issue to a regional context.

  The Israeli press began to treat the talks on displaced persons as if they were the main refugee negotiations, warning that acceptance of repatriation for 1967 displaced persons would serve as a prelude for the return of the 1948 refugees. Shlomo Gazit, after he was appointed special advisor to the Israeli team in the multilateral talks, expressed the view that the Israeli delegation to the bilateral talks should insist that Israeli redeployment plans be conditioned on the PA working for

the liquidation of the refugee question inside the Gaza Strip, the abolition of the formal status of refugees, the removal of UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency] from the district and suspension of aid to UNRWA, and the dismantling of refugee camps and the removal of their population to permanent housing schemes. ₂₄

At the heart of the debate over modalities of displaced person admission is the degree of PA control over border crossings and the granting of residency permits to Palestinians returning from exile. Israeli negotiators claimed, though not officially, that Israel would relax these controls once assured that security matters were under control in PA territories and once economic growth in the Palestinian economy allowed for higher absorption of expatriates. The Palestinians, for their part, have insisted that this latter point should be an internal matter for the PA and that Israel has no right to control the number of Palestinians admitted on the basis of security considerations.

  A possible turning point occurred with the signing of the Interim Agreement on Self-Government (Oslo II). The changes brought about by this agreement are discussed below, in section 5, but the shift in focus over refugees occurred within a more general questioning of the role of the multilaterals, as the "peace process" moved from regional issues to bilateral Jordanian-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It was at this point that the Canadians attempted to break the deadlock by proposing new guidelines for the negotiations on refugees.

Oslo II and Changes in the Status of Returning Palestinians

The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (Oslo II), signed in Washington on 28 September 1995, contains several new items on the status of residency and family reunification that are likely to lead, once Palestinian authority is established in the rest of the West Bank, to important modifications in the status of returning Palestinians. The Interim Agreement establishes guidelines regarding residency for a number of categories of returning Palestinians who had so far been denied entry. It also contains new provisions for work and study permits and the registration of children. The details of these new guidelines are discussed in Appendix 2.

  Among the highlights of the new provisions are:

Gaining residency for expatriates through the electoral law. This applies to those Palestinians who currently live in the occupied territories but who do not have residency there. If they can prove that they have lived in Palestine in the last three or four years (depending on age), they will be given residency papers in conjunction with their voter registration (Elections Protocol, Annex II).

Family reunification. The guidelines here give priority to investors and spouses of residents, as well as to an undefined category of "humanitarian cases." Little progress has been made with regard to the previous guidelines under Israeli military administration (Protocol on Civil Affairs, Annex III, Appendix 1, Article 28).

Children under sixteen. Children who live abroad (or in Palestine), who are under sixteen years of age and have at least one parent who is a resident, are now given residency without the need for prior Israeli approval. These terms, however, conflict with the guidelines of the current Israeli Civil Administration which, since 1994, have defined children as those under eighteen years (Article 28, Items 12 and 13).

Displaced persons who have "lost residencies." Perhaps the most important provision in the new agreement refers to the establishment of a joint committee to solve the issue of expired residencies (Article 28). No procedures have been stipulated yet for the mandate of this joint committee. While the Interim Agreement addresses to some extent the situation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, it seems that Jerusalem Arabs will continue to exist in a gray area. However, because some clauses (on "latecomers" and electoral registers) do involve Jerusalem residents, it is expected that Jerusalemites will also benefit from the procedural changes.

The clauses in the Interim Agreement contain several improvements for the current status of residency that so far have been denied to Palestinian applicants, particularly for spouses and children. They establish important avenues for the regularization of residency for those who have been living "illegally" with their families--mostly as their visitors' permits have become overextended--through the voter registration procedures. The Interim Agreement also empowers the Palestinian Authority to grant work, study, and visitors' permits and to extend these permits up to the status of residency.

  But the bulk of these improvements, particularly those pertaining to family reunification, are still dependent on prior clearance with the Israeli authorities. And, as long as Israel maintains the 2,000-case annual quota on these permits, most of these changes will be severely limited in their effect.

 

5.  Directing Negotiations: Peron's Vision Paper

In March 1995, the Canadian gavel holder of the RWG followed up on an initiative of the U.S. delegation and circulated a document whose purpose was to break the deadlock reached in the negotiations. This paper contains the most ambitious, and probably the most controversial, positions put forth by the team, headed by Marc Peron, in its attempt to draw up guidelines for future RWG work. It attempts, following the July 1994 Steering Committee meeting in Tabarka, Tunis, to project a strategic vision for refugees over the next ten years.

  The "Vision Paper" (VP), as it has become known, had further significance in that it was based on consultations with regional parties, and it anticipated that the American and Russian cosponsors would assume the coordination and management of this vision, with particular attention to funding projects involved in the implementation of its recommendations. ₂₅

  Much of the difficulty associated with the VP and its possible implementation has to do with the consensual framework required for reaching decisions in the multilaterals. The controversy began with the definition of the "vision" itself:

a new Middle East . . . [in which] our vision is a future without refugees . . . in which no one displaced by the Arab-Israeli conflict (or their descendants) considers themselves to be a refugee.

The VP envisions the replacement of "statelessness by identity, poverty by development, camps by neighborhoods, precariousness by normality" (2.2, emphasis added). The assumption of "normality" and the achievement of civil rights for Palestinian refugees, without including their political aspirations, has always generated Arab and Palestinian fears of putting the cart before the horse.

  In order to allay these fears, the Vision Paper insists that refugees must be provided "with options from which they can make a free and informed choice." These include an open discussion of issues like "the right of return" and compensation, as well as "the possibility of some Palestinians being resettled (although not necessarily naturalized)--with full economic and civil rights--in the countries of current asylum" (3.1.5).

RWG Achievements?

The Vision Paper then attempts to delineate the main achievements of the Refugee Working Group to date. Those include: defining the scope of the refugee problem, undertaken by the Norwegian shepherd in collaboration with UNRWA; mobilizing resources for improving refugee living standards and promoting socioeconomic development, undertaken by the United States, Italy, Sweden, and the EU; and designing humanitarian schemes, such as improving family reunification procedures, undertaken by the French shepherd.

  On the issue of defining the scope of the refugee problem (through data and qualitative studies), the Norwegian shepherd and UNRWA have produced a number of useful surveys and studies (including the FAFO study and the ongoing demographic survey). ₂₆ But none of these has actually answered any of the critical questions raised in the RWG on the numbers and categories of refugees and their preferences regarding future options. In fact, most of these studies have avoided entering this rocky terrain precisely because of the sensitivity of the issues involved. FAFO's current difficulties in getting basic data of this sort for the forthcoming Jordanian survey (not to mention similar attempts for Syria and Lebanon) indicate the inherent limitations of such studies. On the other hand, independent surveys that have been made outside the scope of the multilaterals (such as Najeh Jarrar's PASSIA survey of West Bank refugees' opinions of their future and Suhail Natour's survey of the legal status of Palestinians in Lebanon ₂₇ ) have achieved considerable clarity on these issues precisely because they are not hampered by being part of the "peace process."

  As for the mobilization of resources, it should be pointed out that many of the projects mentioned in the Vision Paper are projects of general aid to Palestinian development only partly aimed at refugees. Without diminishing the importance for refugees of funding such development projects, many of them were announced simultaneously in the five working sessions of the multilaterals and should not be seen as exclusively, or even primarily, "refugee" projects; in fact, it would help the refugees' standard of living--both in Palestine and in Arab host countries--if these development schemes were seen (and implemented) as integrated economic projects for populations at large.

  Additionally, it is well known that the French vision of family reunification is far from being implemented and that concrete achievements--namely, the raising of the ceiling of family reunification cases from 1,000 to 2,000 after three years of intensive negotiations--are quite unsatisfactory. Indeed, many of the procedural improvements for the schemes approved by the RWG, including Israel, are far from being implemented. It would have been more helpful if the VP had made some reference to these limitations and failures in order to surmount them in future deliberations.

Future Directions

The Vision Paper suggests concrete steps to breach the impasse reached in the RWG's work. On the issue of mobilizing resources, it suggests the following approaches:

• Projects should visibly and effectively demonstrate to refugee populations the benefits of the peace process. (It is not clear how exactly this will be done in Lebanon and Syria.)
• The practical needs of refugees outside the West Bank and Gaza, particularly in Syria and Lebanon, should be stressed. (One suspects that until Syria becomes involved in the multilaterals, this is going to be very difficult.) The RWG delegation that visited refugee camps in Lebanon in 1994 was confronted with substantial hostility, partly due to the negative attitudes expressed in the Lebanese press and government circles.
• "Concrete projects need to be sensitive to, and endeavor to advance, the refugees' aspirations to live in dignity with a sense of identity" (4.6). This "concreteness" is too abstract: It is not clear what it means. To avoid being labeled as fluff, it should be pointed out what sorts of projects are needed to translate these aspirations into reality.

On the issue of "conceptualization and definition of the refugee problem" (4.7), the Vision Paper refers to what it calls the "breaking down of taboos." These "taboos" are addressed directly in two particular items, both dealing with final status issues. First, the VP calls for the implementation of surveys among refugee communities in order to provide "objective and subjective assessments of intentions and preferences with regard to final status" issues. The surveys are to include questions on the "right of return" and "the admission of displaced persons to Palestinian territories" (4.10.2).

  This "taboo" was counterbalanced by breaking another taboo, one usually raised by the Israeli side: namely, those issues involving the integration of Palestinian refugees in Arab host countries. To achieve this objective, the VP advocates studies on questions of naturalization, resettlement, and long-term residency in host countries, with the aim of "informing [sic] how present refugee camps could be integrated into the surrounding communities" and the "comparative examination of immigration requirements regarding Palestinian refugees in countries outside the region" (4.10.5).

  Given the volatile atmosphere surrounding these two sets of issues (which, for simplicity, can be broadly divided into repatriation and resettlement), it would have been more feasible to raise them as two political options within a single package precluding a final status resolution of the refugee question. From the Palestinian side, as well as from the perspective of most Arab states, resettlement cannot be meaningfully considered unless it is paired with the option of repatriation.

  The VP further makes five concrete proposals which, if implemented, would be likely to make a qualitative difference in the work of the RWG:

Refugee statistics. Conducting a comprehensive census of refugee communities to provide "basic data on the numbers, living conditions, citizenship and employment status, links to family/ property in Israel and the territories," and so on (4.10.1).

Absorptive capacity. Assessment of the absorptive capacity of the West Bank and Gaza for returning Palestinians (4.10.3).

UNRWA's future. Assessment of the implications and consequences of the transfer of UNRWA services to the PA (4.10.4). This is a problematic clause, since the PA seems to be reconsidering its earlier position on the transfer of UNRWA functions.

Family reunification claims. Provision of a database on the pool of potential claimants to family reunification schemes. The Vision Paper suggests that ". . . in the context of final-status arrangements. . . comprehensive peace may be associated with significant increases in the level of family reunification" (4.10.6). Here the authors seem to be hinting that because Israel has been opposed to any substantial repatriation of refugees to their homes--both in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza--then an expansion of family reunification schemes may provide a way out of this dilemma.

Compensation files. The VP calls for preparatory work on claims, valuation of claims, adjudication, "modes of balancing claims," and "the advantages and disadvantages of individual versus collective claims" (4.10.7). It also calls for conducting comparative studies of compensation schemes that might be relevant to the Palestinian case.

This suggestion might have clarified an important issue: Compensation is often (falsely) seen as a final status issue. There is no reason why compensation claims should not be considered for victims of the 1967 war in the context of the work of the Quadripartite Committee as part of the agenda of its Technical Committee. Similarly, claims of compensation often are discussed in the current literature (particularly in recent reports in the Arab press) as an alternative to the right of return. There is nothing in the various UN resolutions (including General Assembly Resolution 194) that treats compensation claims as an alternative to repatriation of refugees.

A Major Flaw

Perhaps the major flaw in the Canadian Vision Paper is the absence of clear mechanisms to implement its ideas, just as no mechanism exists for carrying out principles agreed upon during the six meetings of the multilaterals. This limitation is related to the procedural consensualism that has so far paralyzed the work of the multilaterals. Only matters that receive the agreement of all parties to the conflict receive the RWG stamp of approval. This is why the final statement issued by each of the multilateral meetings has so far reflected the lowest common denominator of a collective consensus. It is ironic that the limitation imposed by consensualism is seen by the VP as a major source of strength in the multilaterals (4.18), because--from the perspective of the European Union--the presence of a number of Western nations with which Israel has vested commercial and other interests tends to create an atmosphere that supplements bilateral negotiations. This is equally true of substantive issues dealing with refugees, such as upgrading family reunification procedures, whose limited achievements reflect the balance of forces on the ground.

  How does the Vision Paper deal with the constraint of procedural consensualism? Two approaches and a monitoring mechanism are suggested. The first suggestion is referred to as "enhanced dialogue" in which "flexibility and informality be utilized in dealing with sensitive problems" in order to minimize public constraints (4.12). The second approach is to open second-track negotiations in order to supplement or complement formal negotiations: Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), media, and academic communities would be involved in these parallel, secret or informal discussions. This mechanism is also suggested as a means of bringing Syria and Lebanon into participating in RWG work (4.14).

  This latter "solution" is problematic. It attempts to break the deadlock in one of the multilaterals (here the RWG) in the same way with which the deadlock in official Palestinian negotiations in Washington, D.C. was dealt--through bypassing them with top-secret, back-channel talks. But the part cannot be treated in the same manner as the whole. Furthermore, the context here is different. The issue of refugees in Israeli eyes has become--or rather has been upgraded to--the bˆte noire of the transitional period. In Israeli political discourse, any concession on the refugee issue has become tantamount to threatening the future security of Israeli citizens and the demographic raison d'etre of the Jewish state. Israeli collective fears of the refugee question have been used by the Israeli negotiating team to preempt rational discussion of this matter. Second-track and informal dialogue may be helpful in dealing with final status issues, where ideological obfuscation and intransigence may be defused. They will be less useful, however, in settling transitional issues of residencies, family reunification, and return of displaced persons, where agreements have been reached on principles but not on the modalities of their implementation.

  If one accepts the procedural distinction between final status and transitional issues, then the main strength of the Vision Paper can be found in the range of monitoring mechanisms it suggests for ensuring the implementation of decisions (4.15). A monitoring role for the RWG is suggested in three areas: (1) family reunification procedures; (2) implementation of decisions by the Quadripartite Committee on displaced persons; and (3) implementation of decisions pertaining to refugees in the final status negotiations. A fourth suggested role for the RWG is to help the PA to deal with the consequences of devolving UNRWA operations in the West Bank and Gaza.

 

6.  Aid to Refugees: The Bristol Report

In the course of the RWG's seven meetings, a noticeable trend has emerged in which the political themes surrounding the refugee issue (UN resolutions, right of return) have been supplanted by programs of assistance to refugees. This has occurred gradually and has been reinforced by fund-raising efforts in the multilaterals relating to the six areas of assistance to Palestinians (see section 2). The Palestinians (and several Arab states) acquiesced to this process as a kind of quid pro quo enabling them to get humanitarian aid to improve the conditions of refugee livelihood "without prejudice to the final-status agreements on the political future of refugees"--a statement that was reiterated at each plenary.

  Muhammad Hallaj, former head of the Palestinian RWG team, described this equation as a "corruption of the process" of resolving the refugee issue. The bulk of refugee negotiations, he stated,

has centered on ways to assist the refugees rather than on confronting the issue of displacement and statelessness which makes the refugee question the volatile issue that it has been for more than forty years. ₂₈

The insistence on the application of UN resolutions has become marginalized by making it a Palestinian and Arab concern rather than an international component of the RWG. The negotiations, Hallaj concludes,

[have] corrupted the process by denying the moral and legal standards accepted by the international community for more than four decades. By shelving the United Nations resolutions, it put the future of Palestinian refugees at the mercy of the balance of power and confined refugee rights to what Israel is willing to concede. ₂₉

This imbalance can be clearly observed in the position adopted by the European Union, the shepherd of economic development programs for refugees and arguably the bloc with the most autonomy from American and Israeli positions on the future of refugees. The July 1994 "Bristol Report," as it became known, is the most comprehensive document issued by any group in the RWG on the status of refugees. It also underlies both the assumptions and, to some extent, the intentions of the main shepherds in the refugee negotiations. For that reason, the document will be examined in some detail. ₃₀

Assumptions

The Bristol Report is based on four assumptions: (1) refugee aid in Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) should transcend the legal status of refugees; (2) improvements in the living conditions of refugees in host countries do not invalidate their legal status, nor do they "prejudice their right to return to their homes or receive compensation for their losses"; (3) no single framework of assistance is suitable for all refugees, given the diversity of their status and living conditions; and (4) those refugees who are most vulnerable (presumably those in Lebanon) are not being served by the current aid programs (see page 4 of the report).

  The first of these assumptions is the most controversial. The second assumption is intended, in part, to prepare the way for changes in the character of aid provided in the autonomous regions of the West Bank and Gaza. The focus here is the inappropriateness of aid to refugees exclusively where "assistance should transcend legal status and concentrate on socio-economic development and rehabilitation for the whole area." This assumption became increasingly important because aid packages to refugee areas (particularly in Gaza) cannot be implemented without substantial coordination with municipal and regional bodies responsible for the "resident" (nonrefugee) population. For example, in matters of infrastructure, such as sewage, electricity grids, and road networks, it is virtually impossible to serve refugee camps or refugee areas only, without linking these systems to existing or projected grids for neighboring, "nonrefugee" areas. In other forms of development, such as the extension of health services and schools, it is possible to gear aid to refugee populations, but more feasible and efficient to integrate such efforts with similar services to other residents. The issue of integrating aid to refugees and nonrefugees has become increasingly pertinent as the Palestinian Authority begins to plan development aid in highly congested areas in the territories coming under its control.

  However, to claim that such aid shall not prejudice the future status of refugees (as often has been stated in the multilateral negotiations) is easier said than done. Refugees with improved social and economic status are likely to move out of camps, migrate to other countries, and in general abandon their political commitment to their right of return or compensation. Those who remain in camps inside Palestine tend to be the urban poor, and in recent years, conditions in the camps have increasingly come to resemble those in "normal" urban slums.

  While Palestinian strategy in this regard has been to support aid packages to refugees that will improve the conditions of daily life (with the exception of housing aid, which was seen as promoting resettlement), such support was always conditional on progress in the political sphere in the direction of solving the refugees' legitimate aspirations. Because these forms of aid are discussed in the context of the political forums of the multilateral talks, it is essential that these political conditions be raised now, concurrent with any planning for economic assistance. The following political conditions are relevant here: enhancing procedures for family reunification; expediting the application of refugees who lost their residencies in the occupied territories; and implementing those terms in the Oslo accords that call for the relocation of displaced persons to the autonomous regions. Unless progress occurs in these spheres, the second assumption in the EU report, which refers to the nonprejudicing of refugee rights, will become a formula for camouflaging schemes of refugee relocation and resettlement without satisfying their needs or aspirations.

Problems of Definition

In discussing the social, economic, and legal interaction between Palestinian refugees and the host communities, the Bristol Report refers to refugees as "urban poor" (pp. 8-10). The report sometimes tends to extrapolate, incorrectly, from the refugee situation in Lebanon and Syria to the situation in Jordan and the occupied territories. In the latter case, the report fails to distinguish between camp refugees and those Palestinians of higher socioeconomic standing outside the camps who are highly integrated into their host communities. Claims that a refugee has no chance of becoming a mayor or head of the chamber of commerce in the West Bank (p. 8) are therefore factually incorrect; in fact, the FAFO study has demonstrated that the standards of living of noncamp refugees are on a par with, and sometimes surpass, those of resident nonrefugees. In urban areas such as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, al-Bireh, and Ramallah, there is almost total integration between noncamp refugees and residents (leaving aside variables of exclusion such as class and religion, which also operate within resident communities). Thus, if one accepts these premises, the nonintegration of refugees into host communities becomes a factor of social status, not of refugee affiliation.

  The UNRWA definition of refugee status ("those persons whose normal residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the conflict") is contested by the Bristol Report for two reasons. The definition excludes those refugees who did not register with UNRWA as refugees, those who lost their registration as a result of their changed status (particularly in Lebanon), and thousands of rural refugees in Gaza and the West Bank who lost their land and sources of livelihood but who did not lose their residence. This last category also includes people who lost access to coastal markets and work sites in pre-1948 Palestine. At the same time, the report finds the UNRWA definition wasteful insofar as it includes many refugees who otherwise do not need the assistance and who maintain registration cards to maintain their status as refugees.

  The Bristol Report's discussion is somewhat pedantic and takes UNRWA refugee criteria out of context: The UNRWA definition was meant as a working definition for purposes of establishing assistance procedures, not for determining the status of refugees. Nevertheless, the discussion is fruitful because it forces one to look for a more comprehensive definition of refugee status that can deal (negatively or positively) with the following categories:

Descendants of refugees. How many generations and to what degree of relationship?

Border villages. Loss of land only or loss of livelihood?

Loss of livelihood. To what extent does loss of livelihood in the 1948 war impute a refugee status to the victim?

Absent/Present. There are tens of thousands of refugees inside Israel who lost their properties and residencies while remaining in and becoming citizens of Israel. What is their status?

Documentation. What are the necessary minimal documents needed to establish a refugee's claims for properties, losses, and compensation?

The bulk of the Bristol Report's critical edge is directed at what it calls "status-centered assistance" (pp. 23f.). For administrative reasons, refugee aid continues to be governed by perceptions prevalent at the time UNRWA was established in the 1950s. Because of the agency's centralization of planning, administration, and control, assistance programs are standardized and do not take into account regional variations, which are substantial even within the same country of residence. Also, NGO aid was well meaning in the 1980s but is economically unsustainable, probably because of the lack of expertise and the excessive factional considerations governing Palestinian NGO assistance. Much of this aid is described as

shots of morphine [in which] the self-reliance programs proved to be an unmitigated disaster and a haunting example of the dangers of over-enthusiastic embracing of projects without due attention to their validity, usefulness and sustainability. (p. 26)

Moreover, because of the multiplicity of aid organizations in recent years (even before the intifada), there is currently a lack of coordination, whether sectoral or regional, to situate the various aid programs in an overall plan; this has been due in part to the dictates of international aid agencies concerning how money should be spent (echoes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). And finally, because of the changing status of the refugees, particularly because of the move toward the establishment of autonomy, the report puts forth the view that status-centered assistance (aid governed by the old UNRWA definition of refugee) should be replaced by needs-centered aid, which is governed by the notion of vulnerability.

  In general, while much of the report's critique is accurate, it tends to overgeneralize and sound "holier-than-thou" when discussing the role of UNRWA and local NGOs. One can accuse the authors of being guilty of the same sin for which they criticize the aid programs--that is, being too generalized and not taking into account the specificities of each region and sector of operation.

  While the report is correct in pointing to the need for changing the older basis for providing aid, it ignores the political implications of adopting a non-legalistic definition of "refugee." This approach is, after all, the one adopted by many international NGOs and certain European governments when they call for treating the refugee issue from the perspective of integrating them into host countries without addressing their political status. With all its shortcomings, the UNRWA definition continues to capture a combination of need (though outmoded) with the basic requirements of a political resolution of refugee status, while taking into account refugee aspirations.

Needs and Priorities

In its section dealing with action priorities, the Bristol Report achieves a degree of specificity that is lacking in its discussion of modes of assistance and "status-centered aid." The report suggests a number of initiatives that are constructive and fruitful. For example, in the occupied territories (the report optimistically calls them the "former OTs"), as well as in host countries, the authors call for a consensus of host governments, UNRWA, and national and international NGOs on priorities for setting up assistance. Given the emerging conflict between international and Palestinian NGOs, such a consensus might be desirable, but it is far from easy to achieve.

  The report also suggests a "Basic Human Rights Strategy" to deal with the structural, socioeconomic vulnerability of the poorest Palestinian refugees, targeting both refugee and host communities (p. 37). It specifies the components of this approach as physical infrastructure, health, and vocational training.

  The report addresses the issue of refugee resistance to integration within the context of their reactions to improved housing conditions and the possibility of movement to more "permanent" habitats. The following observation is made for refugee camps in Syria:

[T]he improvement of the material conditions of the camp has been equated with resettlement (tawteen). However there is increasing evidence that the latest generation of Palestinians does not regard better housing as a surrender of its identity. In al-Nairab camp in Syria, a housing project proposal was denounced by Palestinian political groups as an indication of permanent settlement. Nevertheless 100% of the refugees registered to obtain a new shelter. (p. 39)

The evidence for this observation is not given, but it conforms to similar observations made by Jarrar in the Nablus study referred to above. Jarrar indicates that camp refugees are far more flexible in their attitudes toward issues that concern improvement of shelter and living amenities than the political rhetoric against resettlement may imply. On the other hand, the reader should be wary about the above case study's conclusions concerning the refugees' willingness to scale down their political demands, based on an assumption that all refugees have pragmatic attitudes toward housing.

  In this respect, the EU study presents, as the most common indicator of improved material status, the tendency of refugees to move out of the camps altogether--a solution that is available to refugees in Palestine and Jordan but seldom in Lebanon and Syria. The report points out that the most difficult situation faced by Palestinian refugees exists in Lebanon, where housing, work, and amenities are acutely lacking. The Bristol Report quotes a recent survey (carried out by Qutaishat and Mahmoud in 1993), which says that 75 percent of refugee families in Lebanon have been displaced more than once and 19 percent displaced more than three times during the civil war. An UNRWA survey (unquoted) indicates that 50.4 percent of displaced families are living in the Sidon area and 28.1 percent are living in the Beirut area.

Refugees and the New Palestinian Authority

Anticipating the current debate between the World Bank (and donor agencies) and the PA, the Bristol Report stresses the need for transparency and accountability.

Coupled with the need for accountability of donor assistance is the ongoing necessity of constant monitoring and evaluation of projects. This monitoring will not only produce more detailed information of benefit to external funding sources but will also provide the authorities with an indication of project progress, enabling them to identify problems of project implementation at an early stage. (p. 62)

The report consequently recommends that new special units be formed to perform these monitoring functions. One significant omission in the EU report is the absence of any substantial discussion of the future of refugees in the context of the current political settlement. The section on "Repatriation, Resettlement, and Restitution" (p. 133) focuses on the history of the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) and on Israeli offers in 1949 to absorb 100,000 refugees. Here, one would have expected some assessment of more immediate relevance. For example, information would have been useful concerning: (1) the number and needs of Palestinian refugees who are likely to be repatriated in preparation for convening the Quadripartite Commission on displaced persons; (2) the absorptive capacity of the autonomous areas under the PA in the next five or ten years in terms of housing and employment for returning refugees; or (3) the current debate in Lebanon about resettlement versus repatriation of Palestinian refugees, and the de facto expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians from Lebanon, leading to further "voluntary" migration.

  On these and similar impending issues in the final status negotiations, the European Union has opted not to take a position. For this reason, the analysis of refugee aid without tackling the explosive political conditions that surround the daily existence of refugees in host countries tends to reinforce Hallaj's fears, quoted above, about the role of aid packages in marginalizing and possibly excluding the political issues relevant to the future of the Palestinian refugees.

 

7.  Final Status Issues in Negotiations

Of the three final status issues slated for bilateral negotiations in May 1996 (refugees, Jerusalem, and settlements), the question of refugees has received the least attention in terms of strategic vision. In many ways, it is also the hardest to resolve, given Israeli intransigence on this issue and Palestinian inability to impose conditions on their interlocutors. By contrast, the issues of Jerusalem and settlements have given rise to a certain number of futuristic scenarios and even a modicum of agreement. No such debate has surrounded the issue of refugees, and yet the legitimacy of the Israeli-Palestinian agreement in the eyes of the Palestinian diaspora rests to a large extent on the PA's ability to ensure the return of expatriate Palestinians to their country.

  As final status negotiations approach, among the issues that are likely to gain in importance are the linkage between bilateral and multilateral tracks (refugees and displaced persons), the question of compensation or return, the impact on the refugee negotiations of the Jerusalem negotiations, and the status of the camps.

Linkages between Bilateral and Multilateral Issues

More accurately, the linkage involves the likely impact of the agreements concluded in the negotiations over the 1967 displaced persons upon the final status negotiations over the 1948 refugees. There are currently over one million displaced persons (from 1967), if we include those people who lost their residencies as a result of Israeli administrative measures. The 1948 refugees and their descendants number over 2.5 million. But there is some overlap here, because at least 30 percent of displaced persons are second-time refugees from the 1948 war.

  Obviously, not all of these refugees will relocate to Palestine, even if the opportunity were available. A number of factors will determine how many will return, including agreed-upon quotas, the absorptive capacity of the Palestinian economy, and the attractiveness of the new regime compared to the relative security or insecurity of Palestinians in their current host countries.

  In the transitional period (lasting five years from the signing of the DOP), it would be to the Palestinians' advantage to separate the issue of displaced persons from that of 1948 refugees. First, separation would preempt claims that the settlement of displaced persons in the West Bank and Gaza is part of a final package, thereby precluding their further claims to rights inside Israel. This is particularly relevant to the status of displaced persons who are also 1948 refugees. Second, because the issue of displaced persons is discussed in the context of the Quadripartite Committee, a purely Arab-Israeli committee, Palestinians would derive greater benefit from the participation of the international community (in particular UN organizations), with the multilaterals continuing to work on solutions for the 1948 refugees. Third, the QPCDP has been discussing the status of persons who lost their residency or permanent IDs but who are technically neither refugees nor "displaced persons," which include deportees. Besides, it would only overload the work of the final status negotiations if these categories were transferred to the final status negotiating committee.

  There is nevertheless a certain degree of linkage that is bound to merge the work of the two sets of negotiations. These linkages include the manner in which earlier returnees are absorbed, procedures for applications for return, and claims for compensation made by 1967 and 1948 refugees.

Compensation or Return?

The debate over compensation versus return is a false dichotomy that is often raised in the negotiations. It is clear from a 1961 UNCCP Report that two modes of compensation were being considered: one for returning refugees and one for nonreturning refugees. ₃₁ The Palestinians have taken a principled, but static, position on the question of return. In the multilateral negotiations, the Palestinian delegation has always insisted that General Assembly Resolution 194 forms the basis of all political solutions to the refugee problem. The Israelis, in turn, have been systematic in their rejection of any mention of Resolution 194 or other specific resolutions in the summary statements. In 1995, the United States withheld, for the first time since the resolution was adopted, its annual re-commitment to 194. What does this mean?

  As final status negotiations loom on the horizon, immense diplomatic pressure will start building on the Palestinians to abandon their insistence on the right of return. The Israelis have made it clear that they will not support any categorical "right of return" for the Palestinians--either to Israel itself or to the West Bank and Gaza. ₃₂ It is inconceivable that any Palestinian authority can yield to such pressure and retain its legitimacy in the eyes of its constituents, in particular Palestinians in the diaspora. On the other hand, it is clear that Palestinian negotiators simply cannot go to the final status talks armed only with abstract commitments to UN resolutions. Concessions at the practical level are bound to be made if at least some justice is to be realized for 1948 refugees.

  One of the most succinct proposals for a final status position on this question was made by Rashid Khalidi in his essay, "Toward a Solution." ₃₃ Khalidi suggests a negotiated solution for resolving the claims of refugees based on five conditions:

• Israel's acknowledgment of its moral accountability for the creation of the Palestine refugee problem, including a commitment to educate younger Israelis about this recognition.
• Israel's acceptance, in principle, of the right of Palestinians and their descendants to return to their homes. The Palestinians, in exchange, would recognize that this right cannot be exercised inside 1948 boundaries but in the state of Palestine. As part of these mutual concessions, Israel should take into its territory several tens of thousands of refugees, particularly those who have family members living inside Israel.
• A distinction between reparations (for those not allowed to return) and compensation (for those who lost property in 1948). ₃₄ Khalidi suggests a figure of between $92 and $147 billion for property losses (1984 figures, based on Kubursi and Hadawi's assessment) and $40 billion in reparations, based on an estimate of $20,000 per person for 2 million people.
• The right of Palestinian exiles to return to the future Palestinian state or (implicitly) to the areas under PA control.
• The ability of Palestinians who opt to remain in Jordan to choose between full citizenship rights and "limited rights" as citizens of the Palestinian component of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation. Palestinians in Lebanon would be offered the choice of repatriation to the Palestinian state, return to the Galilee and acquisition of Palestinian citizenship, or permanent residency in Lebanon.

It is obvious that Khalidi is proposing a package deal that will have to be negotiated simultaneously with the governments of Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. While Khalidi's proposal is both original and practical (in the operational sense), I would differ with him on two crucial points. First, the right of return to areas under PA control should not be conditional on, or even linked to, the realization of claims to compensation or repatriation; it should be a separate act of sovereignty. In particular, Palestinians should not enter into negotiations with Israel in which the right of return to a mini-Palestine would be bartered against the right of return to Israel itself. Second, reparations to Jews who lost their homes in their Arab countries of origin should be a bilateral issue between Israel and the respective Arab states, not one in which the Palestinians would be embroiled as a party.

  Furthermore, I would add, given the complexity of assessing individual claims for lost properties of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, two separate forms of reparations should be made. The first would be collective compensation, to be negotiated by the Palestinian authorities on behalf of Palestinian refugees in general; such collective compensation would be used to rebuild the infrastructure of the Palestinian state--which will be, in part, the "state of the returnees." The second form would be based on individual claims to be negotiated between Israel and representatives of the refugees. Because many of these refugees are not the subjects (or even future citizens) of the Palestinian state, the PA would not be a direct party to this second set of negotiations. The 1950 UNCCP Report discussed as precedents compensation arrangements applied in World Wars I and II and to the Indo-Pakistani conflict of 1947. ₃₅

Jerusalem

The status of Jerusalem was inadvertently linked to the refugee issue as a result of several moves by the Israeli government and the Jerusalem Municipal Council (under Mayor Ehud Olmert) in ways that were seen as preempting final status negotiations. In June 1995, Israel attempted to restrict the residency conditions of Jerusalem Palestinians living outside municipal zones by withdrawing access to health and national insurance services for Jerusalemites unable to establish actual residence within city boundaries. Furthermore, family reunification schemes available to West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, however limited, are virtually denied to Jerusalem Arabs. A Jerusalem census, planned for October 1995, was seen as a prelude to striking from the population rolls Palestinians who hold Jerusalem residencies and had been driven out of the city to northern suburbs by building restrictions and local taxes.

  This was followed by a campaign to close Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem that were described as being affiliated with the PA. In August 1995, the Health Council, the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics, and the National Broadcasting Authority (TV and Radio) were closed down by police order. Proceedings also started against Orient House, the Palestinian negotiating team's headquarters. These attempts were later rescinded on the condition that Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem publicly disavow their connections with the PA.

  Responding to this campaign to shut down Palestinian institutions, Faisal Husseini reminded an Israeli audience on 25 May 1995 that 70 percent of West Jerusalem property belonged to Palestinian Arab refugees from Talbieh, Lifta, Katamon, Baqa'a, and other suburbs and villages that later formed the bulk of Israeli West Jerusalem. ₃₆ Meron Benvenisti, former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, confirmed that many of the homes in which Jewish West Jerusalemites live belonged to Arabs before 1948. The 1967 census found that about 10,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem (16 percent of the population at the time) had been born in the western part of the city. ₃₇ With their descendants, these 1948 refugees constitute today over a quarter of the population of Arab Jerusalem. They continue to be treated as "absentees" with regard to their West Jerusalem property, while the few Jews who had property in the eastern part of the city before 1948 have been allowed to establish their rights to that property. ₃₈

  The 1995 confrontations over residency rights and uneven access to property claims brought home the need for a clearer Palestinian strategy toward Jerusalem. The cornerstone of this strategy should be that the postponement of the Jerusalem issue to final status negotiations should not allow Israelis to make major demographic and zoning (settlement) changes to ensure Jewish hegemony over Arab sections of the city. In other words, the status quo in Jerusalem should be preserved in such a way as to ensure the survival of Palestinian institutions and the national integrity of the Arab population in the transitional period.

  With the onset of final status negotiations, Palestinians should realize that the frequent repetition of an objective--"Arab Jerusalem is the capital of the future Palestinian state"--is no substitute for a strategy that can bring about such an objective. Such a strategy should take into consideration the following points:

• In negotiating issues of residency rights and family reunification, the Palestinians should insist that East Jerusalem be seen as a regional extension of the West Bank.
• In negotiating the modalities of admission of displaced persons, the Palestinians should insist that East Jerusalem Arab residents who were displaced during the war be included as an essential part of the West Bank and Gaza refugees from the 1967 war.
• Compensation for Arab properties and material losses in West Jerusalem, part of the corpus separatum in the UN partition plan of 1947, should be raised. The UNCCP has already established the aggregate inventory of these claims.
• The right of return to lost homes and properties in West Jerusalem should be raised on par with Jewish claims to (and actual expropriation of) homes and properties in Arab Jerusalem, Silwan, Atarot (Qalandia), and the Jewish quarter of the Old City.
• Jewish settlement in Arab Jerusalem (Ramat Eshkol, Ramot, Neve Ya'aqov) should be treated in the same manner as the status of Israeli colonial settlement in the West Bank and Gaza.

Finally, the fact that Israelis today appear more intransigent on the issue of Jerusalem, elevating it to nonnegotiable status, is itself a strategy of psychological intimidation. The claim of nonnegotiability is itself a violation of the Oslo accords. The rights of West Jerusalem Palestinian refugees should have high priority on the Palestinian agenda for final status negotiations, because it combines two of the three postponed items in a single category.

The Status of Refugee Camps

A distinction should be made between refugee camps in Arab host countries (particularly Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan) and those in Palestine. For many years, there was a widespread--and mistaken--belief among Palestinians that improvements in living conditions among camp refugees would weaken the will of refugees to fight for their historic rights.

  The practical consequence of this view (particularly in Lebanon) was large-scale individual migration to the West (Canada, Scandinavia, and the United States were the main recipients of these emigrants). Today, the Palestinians have adopted the view that refugees in host country camps should be entitled to improve their living standards and to enjoy the amenities and privileges accorded to permanent residents of those countries. Jordan is at the opposite end of the spectrum from Lebanon in this regard, with refugees receiving all the legal benefits of citizens. Syria has adopted an intermediate position, with refugees having full access to employment, health, and educational opportunities but no political rights.

  Within the areas that came under the control of the PA in 1994, particularly in Gaza, infrastructural planning has incorporated urban refugee camps within schemes that served the city as a whole (sewage systems, electricity, etc.). This is often necessitated by logistic and technical considerations, but it also reflects the PA's position not to consider the juridical status of refugee camps until final status disposition of the refugee issue is resolved. In the meantime, programs for health, job training, education, and research among refugees almost invariably are extended to the nonrefugee population in the surrounding areas.

  In general, social class mobility has been a critical factor in restructuring the lives of refugee camp residents in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, and Jordan (but not Lebanon), with those refugees who become successful moving out of the camps and integrating into the local communities where they live. But this has been a matter of individual choice, not one imposed on the refugee population. By contrast, Israel has made several efforts to relocate families from refugee camps in Gaza City to Rafah and Khan Yunis, as well as from the Gaza district to Jericho. ₃₉ More recently, the Ministry of Displaced Persons in Lebanon made an unsuccessful bid to relocate refugees from Beirut to the Shuf Mountains. The only scheme for housing development for Palestinian refugees approved unanimously by the RWG was a U.S. grant to rebuild destroyed shelters in Sabra and Shatilla (Beirut), but this scheme was never approved by the Lebanese government.

  Within the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of refugee camps should be subject to a mutual Israeli-Palestinian agreement on their status and should be acceptable to the refugees themselves; it should not be part of a trade-off for an Israeli offer to expand the "quota" of returning refugees. In Arab host countries, the liquidation of the refugee camps should be subject to the regularization of refugees' legal and civil status in those countries, and only after the refugees themselves are given the options of repatriation or resettlement. In all these cases, the refugee population should be party to these agreements.

 

8.  Highlights of a Strategy: Difficult Choices for the Palestinian Negotiator

The issues raised in section 7 above may be recast as negotiating strategies. As final status negotiations begin, one can expect a hardening of positions on both sides, dictated on the Israeli side by electoral considerations and by widespread resistance to the notion of Palestinian return, and on the Palestinian side by attempts to buttress President Yasir Arafat's legitimacy in the eyes of diaspora Palestinians by showing that he has not forgotten the refugees.

  An important strategic consideration for any Palestinian negotiator is that repeated reference to UN resolutions on Palestinian refugees, particularly General Assembly Resolution 194 (1948) and Security Council Resolution 237 (1967), is futile, even though they do constitute the proper international legal framework in which these issues should be addressed. Repetition, as in a magical refrain, will not have the desired effect. The consensual nature of both the multilateral negotiations and the final status talks requires a tactical approach that re-examines these resolutions and makes them operational.

  Concern about the attitudes and reactions of diaspora Palestinians is not only a question of political expediency, but a deeply rooted matter of public consciousness, a yearning for a uniting of dispersed Palestinian families everywhere. Palestinian negotiators, however, operate under constraints that dictate that issues of principle and ideological predisposition be tempered by what is realizable and obtainable.

  There are three main constraints facing Palestinian negotiators. First, since the borders between Israel and Palestine are more likely to be "porous" than hermetically sealed (except for periods of terror attacks or crisis), Israeli negotiators are likely to slow down the return of large numbers of Palestinians to PA areas on the grounds that it might either destabilize the Palestinian Authority economically or create a large pool of illegal laborers infiltrating to Israel. Second, the possible return of a large number of refugees within the next three years is going to create major pressure on the existing (underdeveloped) infrastructure of the Palestinian economy; indeed, one of the major challenges for the PA will be to create the necessary institutional structures (ministries and agencies of absorption), as well as to generate sufficient economic growth to absorb large numbers of returning Palestinians. Third, relations with Arab host countries, and the status of Palestinians in these countries, are likely to be deeply affected by rising expectations among Palestinians to return. Among possible destabilizing outcomes are: (1) pressure (Libya, Lebanon) on Palestinian refugees to "go home" before the conditions for a return have matured; (2) host country moves to force Palestinians to make a decisive choice between resettlement and naturalization in the host country or return to Palestine before the conditions for such a choice have matured; and (3) refusal of Arab host countries to accept dual "nationality" for Palestinians who chose to remain while acquiring Palestinian permanent residency.

  Palestinian negotiators must therefore take into account both Arab and Israeli constraints, while attempting to respond to rising expectations for return on the part of tens of thousands of refugees. A public campaign, based on a clearly delineated policy, should be launched. This would assure the Israelis that Palestinian refugee return, according to a phased plan, is in their ultimate interest, since it would stabilize the PA and defuse the volatile political conditions of Palestinians in diaspora camps.

  On the basis of the analysis in section 7, I would propose the following themes as constituting a viable Palestinian strategy toward the refugee negotiations:

Residency and returning Palestinians. The modalities of Oslo II on residency and the realities resulting from the 1996 election of the Palestinian Council have created a new situation pertaining to Palestinian residen- cy/citizenship requirements. The PA should now begin negotiations for granting residency to all returning Palestinians who chose Palestinian citizenship. Priority should be given to displaced persons. Israeli involvement in the granting of Palestinian citizenship should be restricted to narrowly defined issues of security: Demographic arguments in the guise of security concerns should not be acceptable. To facilitate the absorption of returning Palestinians and to insure their proper economic and social integration, a Ministry of Absorption for Returnees should be established. Transitional arrangements should be negotiated with host countries for the protection of those Palestinians who choose to acquire Palestinian nationality but who opt to stay in their host countries. In general, the right of return to Palestine should be a collective right, though its exercise should be voluntary and based on individual choice. ₄₀

Separation of the two tracks. Until the status of displaced persons is resolved in a satisfactory manner, the negotiating track dealing with the future of displaced persons (the Quadripartite Committee) should be kept separate from both the RWG (in the multilaterals) and the bilateral negotiating teams dealing with 1948 refugees.

The status of refugees in Arab countries. The PLO should push for the granting of full residency rights (but not citizenship) for all Palestinian refugees residing in Lebanon and Syria, as well as in other Arab countries. This includes the right to employment, legal protection from harassment, and the freedom of physical mobility, including travel outside the country and return to it. Individual naturalization should be by choice, but collective naturalization should be subject to final status agreements, which will include the right of return or compensation. Palestinians should strive to abolish Arab League statutes which prevent Arab citizens from holding dual Arab citizenship.

The right of return to Israel and compensation. In return for Arab and Palestinian acceptance to absorb the bulk of Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, and Arab host countries, Israel should absorb a limited number of refugees. Proper compensation should be paid to all refugees who choose to return, as well as to those who choose to be naturalized in their host countries. Donna Arzt has made the cogent suggestion that it would be in Israel's basic interest to admit a modest number of Palestinians inside the Green Line since it could then make stronger claims for similar absorptions on the part of host Arab countries and the Palestinian Authority.

A fund for compensating Palestinian refugees should be established to which the world community will be requested to contribute, and Israel should be a major contributor to this fund. Israeli claims for compensating or repatriating Jewish refugees from the Arab countries should be negotiated bilaterally with the respective Arab states. The Palestinian negotiators should not get involved in "package deals" based on the notion of a "population exchange."-

Compensation should be paid on two levels, through a collective fund to be vested with the PA in order to develop its own infrastructure and facilities destined to aid the absorption of returning refugees and through a family fund that would pay restitution to refugees on the basis of individual claims.

UNRWA and refugee camps. UNRWA should continue to administer refugee camps in Arab host countries, as well as in PA areas. UNRWA operations should be liquidated gradually, after the status of Palestinian camp residents is resolved through exercising their right to return or compensation. UNRWA operations in the West Bank and Gaza will be then gradually transferred to the PA. A special committee should be established to assess the rights and claims of property owners on whose land camps were established. A special fund would be established to aid the public sector in host countries to integrate UNRWA staff in the respective service sectors where they were employed. Finally, the PA should negotiate the transfer of UNRWA archives in Vienna and Amman to a newly established state archives administration.

Bilateralism and final status. Who will represent Palestinian refugees resident in Arab host countries? It is quite likely that Israel will attempt to negotiate the future status of these refugees bilaterally with the respective Arab states. The Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty, for example, already contains clauses concerning the bilateral resolution of refugee problems. The Palestinians, on the other hand, will make claims to represent refugees in Arab countries, as well as those in PA areas. It will be more appropriate for the PLO, and not the PA, to represent the refugees, since the PLO is the appropriate body acting on behalf of the diaspora.

Jerusalem refugees and displaced persons. The status of Jerusalem refugees requires special attention because the fate of the Holy City will be negotiated separately in final status talks. Displaced persons who decide to return to their homes should be given Jerusalem residency if their families originated from Jerusalem before the war of 1967. Compensation for lost properties in West Jerusalem should be subject to the same procedures that apply to other 1948 refugees. If Israeli negotiators insist on special privileges for Jewish residents in East Jerusalem colonies (e.g., Ramot, Gilo), then Palestinian negotiators should insist on the unimpeded return to previously Arab neighborhoods in West Jerusalem (e.g., Katamon, Talbieh, Lifta).

One alternative vision is to make the whole of Jerusalem open to both Israeli and Palestinian residency, subject obviously to certain administrative and zoning requirements, but those should not be based on discrimination according to nationality.

 

Postscript

This essay was completed before the Likud's ascension to power and the formation of the Netanyahu government in June 1996.

  Of the three major themes that confront the Palestinians in the final status negotiations, the fate of refugees is the least likely to be affected by the Likud victory. The reason for that, in my estimation, is not because Netanyahu's right wing coalition will be more accommodating, but because Labor was basically unyielding on the issue of refugees and displaced persons.

  On the questions of both Jerusalem and settlements there was, and continues to be, a basic divergence in the broad views of Labor and Likud. These divergences seem to emanate from the willingness of both Peres and the late Prime Minister Rabin to consider the possibility of statehood for the Palestinians and Netanyahu's refusal to concede sovereignty. On the issue of refugees, however, there seems to be a consensus among both Likud and Labor to reject any substantive concessions toward the Palestinians. One would have thought that Labor would distinguish between the refugees of 1948 and displaced persons of 1967 insofar as the latter would return only to the West Bank and Gaza. But the course of negotiations, as discussed above, shows that Labor was as inflexible on the issue of displaced persons as it was on refugees. This was apparent in public pronouncements during the 1996 electoral campaign. While concessions on Jerusalem and settlements were themes in which the Right accused Labor of having betrayed the national trust, no such accusations were made on the theme of refugees.

  There is an ideological explanation for this attitude. In Israel, there is a general fear of Palestinian Arabs making claims to their losses in 1948. Since a substantial share of urban Jewish areas are built on refugee property and an even larger number of rural settlements were established on the lands of destroyed Palestinian villages, Israelis of all persuasions fear that even minor concessions with regard to refugee claims would lead to a general questioning of Jewish rights in Eretz Yisrael. Some Israeli authors, such as Gazit, distinguish between refugee rights in the West Bank and Gaza and claims made on properties within Israel proper. But such distinctions are not widely shared. Many believe that once Israel begins to admit refugees to PA areas (i.e., to the West Bank and Gaza), a Pandora's box of historic claims and rights would follow. At the heart of this argument is the moral issue of legitimacy of the Israeli state, which successive peace agreements do not seem to have resolved.

  An indicator of the shared consensus between Right and Left in Israel was the continuity in the team appointed by Labor following its electoral victory in 1992. Unlike the changes made in the bilateral teams called upon to negotiate the transfer of authority to the Palestinians, the teams that negotiated multilateral issues, particularly refugees, remained basically the same. It is still too early to tell if there will be such a continuity with the Netanyahu appointments. One can, however, gain insight into the new government's attitude toward refugees from its guidelines presented to the Knesset on 17 June 1996: ". . . the government will oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state or any foreign sovereignty West of the Jordan River, and will oppose the right of return' of Arab populations to any part of the land of Israel West of the River Jordan." Presumably, the "right of return" here refers to both displaced persons and refugees, but that remains to be seen.

  It is my belief that the issue of refugees in the coming period will be further marginalized and neglected by Israeli negotiators, until the time when it becomes an explosive and destabilizing issue in relations between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as between the PA and the Palestinian diaspora. I hope I will be proven wrong.

 

Appendix 1.  Glossary of Terms

Bajolet Report

Guidelines for enhancing the procedures for family reunification in the occupied territories made in accordance with the recommendations of Bernard Bajolet, the head of the French delegation (shepherd) to the Refugee Working Group. The main features of this report stress the need for transparency in the procedures for family reunification schemes and monitoring mechanisms for measuring progress made in implementing these procedures.

Cosponsors

Russia and the United States are the cosponsors of the multilateral negotiations, according to the terms set in the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference. They convene the Steering Committee and plenary sessions of the multilaterals.

Displaced Persons

Displaced persons are exiles from the West Bank and Gaza who lost their homes during, and as a consequence of, the 1967 war. Several meetings of the Quadripartite Committee on Displaced Persons were taken up by the issue of defining who is included in the designation "displaced person."

Gavel Holders

Gavel holders (or gavels) are the heads of the five working groups of the multilateral negotiations. They set the agenda of each plenary in consultation with the cosponsors along the guidelines provided in the Steering Committee. Canada is the "gavel" of the Refugee Working Group. Between 1992 and 1995, Marc Peron, an official with the Department of External Affairs and author of the Vision Paper on refugees, served as Canadian gavel holder of the Refugee Working Group.

Intersessionals

Technical meetings convened by the multilateral negotiations between plenary sessions. The Refugee Working Group has had a number of Intersessionals to discuss the six themes of the refugee committee. Those included Intersession- als on the definition of the family (Tunis, 1994), refugee research and data bases (Oslo, 1993-94), and family reunification (Paris, 1994).

Late-Comers

Translation of the Hebrew term for Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza who lost their residency in the period 1967-95 while travelling outside the country. The Israeli Military Administration has a policy of canceling the residency of citizens who stay abroad for more than three years. There are more than 120,000 such cases, and they are being negotiated in the Quadripartite Committee on Displaced Persons.

Multilateral Negotiations

Established in 1991 by the Madrid Peace Conference to supplement the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab (Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan) bilateral negotiations. Over forty nations and international organizations are involved in the multilaterals. They include five working groups covering disarmament, water, environment, economic development, and refugees. Syria and Lebanon have boycotted the multilaterals from the beginning. The agendas of the multilaterals are determined in a Steering Committee convened by the co-sponsors.

Oslo II

The Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip which was signed in Washington on 28 September 1995. The document contains significant guidelines for establishing residency for returning Palestinians (see Appendix 2).

Quadripartite Committee on Displaced Persons (QPCDP)

The Quadripartite Committee was established by the terms of the September 1993 Oslo Accord (DOP) to discuss "modalities for the admission of 1967 displaced persons to the West Bank and Gaza." It is made up of delegates from Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and Palestine. The QPCDP met for the first time in Amman in March 1995, meeting every three months at the ministerial level and monthly as a technical committee of experts.

Refugee

The term "refugee" designates Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948 in the areas that later became the state of Israel. UNRWA defines Palestinian refugees as those permanent residents of Mandatory Palestine in the years 1946-48 who lost their homes and became exiles from the territories over which Israel established control in the war of 1948. There were attempts made in the Refugee Working Group to include in the term "refugees" Jewish refugees to Israel and other refugee minorities in the Middle East (Kurds, Southern Lebanese, etc.), but those were not accepted by the plenary of the Refugee Working Group.

Refugee Working Group (RWG)

One of the five multilateral negotiations in which over forty states and international organizations discuss the issue of Palestinian refugees and their future in the Middle East peace process. There are six regional parties to the RWG: Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinians. Both Syria and Lebanon have boycotted the RWG. The RWG has met six times (in Moscow, Ottawa [twice], Oslo, Tunis, Antalya, and Cairo). Canada is the gavel holder of the RWG.

Shepherd

Shepherds are the heads of subcommittees in the multilateral negotiations. The Refugee Working Group has six shepherds: France-- family reunification; Norway--databases; United States--human resource development and job creation; Italy--public health; Sweden --child welfare; and the European Union--economic development and social infrastructure.

Vision Paper

A paper presented to the Refugee Working Group by Marc Peron, Canadian head of the Committee from 1992-95, to break the deadlock reached by negotiations over refugees. The paper attempts to open for debate what it calls "taboos," such as the "right of return" and "resettlement of refugees."

 

Appendix 2.  The Interim Agreement and Residency Guidelines for Returnees

The Oslo II Agreement, signed on 28 September 1995, contains several guidelines for dealing with a number of categories of Palestinians who seek to establish (or re-establish) their residency. In the following sections, I will present and critically discuss each of these categories.

A. Gaining Residency in Palestine through the Electoral Law

In the Protocol Concerning Elections (Annex II--Right to Vote), Article G stipulates inter alia:

Any person who (1) will be at least 40 years old on January 1, 1996 and can provide satisfactory evidence that he or she has actually lived in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip continuously, except for short absences, for at least 3 years immediately prior to the date of the signing of this agreement; or (2) will be less than 40 years old on January 1, 1996 and can provide satisfactory evidence that he or she actually lived in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip continuously, except for short absences, for at least 4 years immediately prior to the signing of this agreement,

SHALL be entitled, notwithstanding that he or she was not previously entered in the Population Register, to be entered in the Population Register and to receive the appropriate identity card. The Palestinian Authority and Israel, through the CAC [Civilian Affairs Committee], shall together invite applications to be so entered in the Population Reg- ister. Such applications shall be submitted prior to the date of the elections to the Civil Administration or the relevant joint Israeli-Palestinian liaison body as appropriate and shall be dealt with by the Civil Administration or by both sides of such joint liaison body on an expedited basis to assist the process of registration (pp. 110-11, English Edition).

This clause permits the admission into residency of all adult Palestinians who have been living recently in the West Bank and Gaza. It is not conditioned on Israeli prior approval as in the items below. The only restriction is for people who are deprived of the right to vote by criminal proceedings (but only for the duration of the sentence) and the mentally handicapped. In all cases, the court references are to Palestinian courts and not to Israeli military courts (Article K). However, it seems that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem without residency papers will not benefit from this clause. To benefit from this clause, Palestinians should register before the elections. The paragraphs above do not indicate what will happen to those people wishing to register to vote after elections.

B. Gaining Permanent Residency in Palestine

The Protocol on Civil Affairs, Annex III, Appendix 1, Article 28 (Population Registry and Documentation) states, inter alia:

[Item 11] To reflect the spirit of the peace process, the Palestinian side has the right, with the prior approval of Israel, to grant permanent residency in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to

• a. investors, for the purpose of encouraging investment;
• b. spouses and children of Palestinian residents; and
• c. other persons, for humanitarian reasons, in order to promote and upgrade family reunification. (p. 161, English Edition)

This clause does not contribute any changes to the existing situation, unless it is the intention of the Israeli government to raise the quota on family reunification (currently 2,000 families or 6,000 persons per annum). In fact, the terms of the agreement might make it more difficult for categories (b) and (c) to gain residency since their applications now have to go through two sets of bureaucracies (a Palestinian and Israeli one). Neither does the clause improve the situation in terms of accountability and transparency for family reunification applicants--as continuously demanded during the negotiations.

C. Children Who Are Currently Denied Residency

Items 12 and 13 in the same article refer to children:

The Palestinian side shall have the right to register in the population registry all persons who were born abroad or in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, if under the age of sixteen years and either of their parents is a resident of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

This item constitutes a significant improvement over the current situation. Unlike the previous item (family reunification for adults), it does not require the prior approval of the Israeli authorities and seems to be absolute. However, it does conflict with the recent definition of the Israeli Civil Administration (1994), which defined children for purposes of family reunification as being those under eighteen, not sixteen.

D. Visiting Rights and Work Permits Issued to Palestinians (and Others) Living Abroad and Wishing to Visit Palestine

Persons from countries not having diplomatic relations with Israel who visit the Gaza Strip and the West Bank shall be required to obtain a special visitor's permit to be issued by the Palestinian side and cleared by Israel. Requests for such permits shall be filed by any relative or acquaintance of the visitor, who is a resident, through the Palestinian side, or by the Palestinian side itself (Article 28, Item A).

This item registers some improvement over existing procedures, but final clearance is still in the hands of the Israelis. Visitation rights are no longer confined to the summer months or to people who are the immediate family members of the inviting Palestinian. As in the current situation, the permit is valid for three months, and it can be renewed for a further four months by the Palestinian side without the approval of the Israeli side (a notification is sufficient).

The clause also grants the PA powers to issue work and study permits, to be cleared by the Israelis, and also the right to grant permanent residency to employees who have been granted temporary (one year) work permits (Article 28, Item 13).

Visitors who come from countries having diplomatic relations with Israel (Item 14) are subject to the same regulations except that they can visit the Palestinian territories by obtaining an Israeli visa. No internal sponsorship is necessary for those visitors.

Item 15 stipulates that the Palestinian side "shall ensure that visitors . . . shall not overstay the duration of their entry permit." It does not, however, indicate what happens if this item is violated.

E. Lost Residencies ("Late-Comers")

For the first time in twenty-eight years, a joint committee is set up to deliberate the issue of "late-comers"--that is, Palestinians who lost their residencies in the West Bank and Gaza because they exceeded the three-year limit (or one-year limit if they left from Tel Aviv airport) imposed by the Israelis for return to the territories. There are currently over 90,000 persons in this category.

Article 28 in Annex III (Population Registry and Documentation) states that "a joint committee will be established to solve the reissuance of identity cards to those residents who have lost their identity cards" (Item 3). The weakness of this clause is that it does not clarify the procedures involved, nor does it elucidate the authority of this joint committee. Nevertheless, it does indicate that at last the issue be addressed jointly. Again, it is also not clear if Jerusalem residents will benefit from this clause.

 

---

Endnotes

Note 1: The author would like to thank Don Peretz and Rex Brynen for their detailed and helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay; Elia Zureik and Elias Sanbar for their insights on negotiating strategy; Jamal Zaqqout, Usama Halabi, and Eliahu Abram for their remarks on issues of residency and family reunification; and Linda Butler and members of the research committee of the Institute for Palestine Studies for their helpful feedback on the draft. Back.

Note 2: For a detailed review of the work of the UN Conciliation Commission on Palestine, see Rony Gabbay, A Political Study of the Arab-Jewish Conflict: The Arab Refugee Problem (Paris: Librarie Minard, 1959), pp. 237-312. See also David P. Forsythe, United Nations Peacemaking: The Conciliation Commission for Palestine (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972). Back.

Note 3: Joel Peters, Building Bridges: The Arab-Israeli Multilateral Talks (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1994), p. 3. Back.

Note 4: The Moscow Steering Committee, which launched the multilaterals in 1992, was retroactively renumbered as RWG I; hence, subsequent meetings of the RWG were renumbered, making eight sessions by the opening of the final status negotiations in May 1996. Back.

Note 5: I am grateful to Rex Brynen for this observation. Back.

Note 6: The clearest presentation of this position is contained in "The Refugee Issue: A Background Paper," State of Israel, Government Press Office, October 1994, pp. 18-20. Back.

Note 7: Ibid., p. 5. Back.

Note 8: "Memo from the Palestinian Delegation on the Notion of Exchange of Population (Internal)," Ottawa, 11 November 1995. Back.

Note 9: The analysis of family reunification in this section is based on "Status of Family Reunification Issues: Achievements and Problems," a report submitted by the Palestinian Delegation to the RWG Intersessional Meeting on Family Reunification, Paris, 15 November 1994. The report was prepared with the help of eight Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups based in Jerusalem. Back. href="#txt1"> Back. Note 10: Elia Zureik cites the figure 15 percent for approved applications for the years 1967-88. See Zureik, "Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return," paper presented to the United Nations International NGO Meeting on the Question of Palestine, Vienna, 29 August 1995. Back.

Note 11: "Status of Family Reunification Issues," p. 3. Back.

Note 12: Ibid. Back.

Note 13: "Status of Family Reunification Procedures in Territories under PNA Control," memo submitted by Walid Zaqqout to the RWG Intersessional Meeting in Paris, 15 November 1994. Back.

Note 14: Eliahu Abram, "Problems of Definition of the Palestinian Family, and Its Implications for Family Reunification Schemes," an unpublished report submitted to the Group on Family Reunification and Residency Rights, Jerusalem, February 1994. Back.

Note 15: Ibid., p. 6. Back.

Note 16: Ibid. Back.

Note 17: Ibid., pp 9-11. Back.

Note 18: These points were made in interventions by three social scientists who presented position papers on family rights at the Tunis Intersessional in February 1994. The experts present included Professor Sonia Dayan from the University of Paris VII. I have relied on my notes of their lectures to make the preceding summary. Back.

Note 19: Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, Article XII, September 1993. Back.

Note 20: "Memo on Displaced Persons," issued by the Autonomy Division, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, QPCDP Meeting, Cairo, 5 June 1995. The date of this memorandum was not lost on participants. Back.

Note 21: Ibid., p. 4. Shlomo Gazit, "The Palestinian Refugee Question," Israel-Palestinian Final Status Issues, Study No. 2, Jaffe Centre for Strategic Studies, provides the following figures: 66,099 persons returned to the West Bank; 18,671 persons returned to the Gaza Strip; and 3,000 visitors (entirely women), who overstayed their permits, were allowed to return and were given permanent residency. The period covered by Gazit (1968 to June 1994) differs slightly from that covered in the Israel Foreign Ministry Memo (n. 20). Back.

Note 22: "Memo on the Definition of Displaced Persons," presented by the Jordanian and Palestinian delegations to the QPCDP, Gaza, 16 August 1995. Back.

Note 23: See "Memo on Definition of Displaced Persons," submitted by the Palestinian delegation to the QPCDP, Cairo, 5 July 1995. Back.

Note 24: Gazit, pp. 90-91. Back.

Note 25: "A Vision Paper of the New Middle East: A Perspective from the Refugee Working Group," Ottawa, 17 March 1995, 1.2 and 1.3 (third draft). Back.

Note 26: Marianne Heiberg and Geir vensen, Palestinian Society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions (Oslo: FAFO, 1993). See also Lena Endresen and Geir vensen, The Potential of UNRWA Data for Research on Palestinian Refugees (Oslo: FAFO, 1994). Back.

Note 27: Najeh Jarrar, The Palestinian Refugees: Background Study (n.p., PASSIA, May 1994); Suhail Natour, The Conditions of Palestinians in Lebanon [in Arabic] (Beirut: Dar al-Taqqadum al-Arabi, 1993). Back.

Note 28: Muhammad Hallaj, "The Refugee Question and the Peace Process," in Palestinian Refugees: Their Problem and Future (Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, October 1994), p. 12. Back.

Note 29: Ibid., p. 13. Back.

Note 30: "Assistance to Refugees in the Middle East," prepared for the European Union by the Office for International Policy Services and the Refugee Studies Programme at Oxford University, July 1994 (final draft). The report was formally presented to the RWG at its meeting in Antalya (Turkey) in December 1994. Back.

Note 31: "Compensation to Returning Refugees," memo prepared by the Legal Advisor to the Economic Survey Mission, November 1949; UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, "The Question of Compensation," document A/AC.25/w.81/Rev. 2, 2 October 1951. Back.

Note 32: See Gazit; Israel Government Press Office, "The Refugee Issue" (n. 6). Back.

Note 33: Rashid Khalidi, "Toward a Solution," in Palestinian Refugees: Their Problem and Future (Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, October 1994), pp. 24-25. Back.

Note 34: Ibid., p. 24. Back.

Note 35: Conciliation Commission Report, Annex I, "Historical Precedents for the Restitution of Property or Payment of Compensation to Refugees," document A/AC.25/w.81/Rev.2, March 1951. Back.

Note 36: Al-Quds, 25 May 1995. Back.

Note 37: Meron Benvenisti, "Solving the Problem of Arab Property in West Jerusalem Through Compensating Citizens as Part of a Permanent Settlement," Ha'Aretz, 1 June 1995. Back.

Note 38: Ibid. Back.

Note 39: See Norma Masriyyeh, "The Re-Settlement of the Palestinian Refugees of the Gaza Strip," unpublished doctoral thesis, Department of Politics, University of Leeds, May 1994, for a discussion of these schemes. Back.

Note 40: I thank Elias Sanbar for this formulation. Back.