Article74 Magazine

A year and a half ago, at the time of the opening of the Madrid Conference and the first rounds of the Washington negotiations, we wrote in ARTICLE 74 that the content of the Palestinian self-rule in the Occupied Territories will ultimately depend on the answer of the question: “Who will hold the key to the bridges across the Jordan river”. In other words, who will have the power to decide about residency rights, including family reunification, in the Palestinian autonomy: the Israeli administration or the Palestinian administration? Autonomy without the right to decide on residency issues is not autonomy, but the continuation of occupation in a new disguise. 

The new Israeli-Palestinian Agreement does in fact include a very important and positive paragraph referring to the issue of Palestinian residency, i.e. the decision in principle to bring back the refugees who left the country during and immediately after the 1967 War. We should remember that this article in the Agreement does not represent a new Israeli compromise, but one which was already included by the Egyptians in the Camp David Accords and signed by Israel at that time. In any case, if this article will be implemented, a step towards justice will be taken for hundreds of thousands of persons who have been denied the right to live in their homeland. However, unless these refugees’ close relatives are also granted family reunification, we will be confronted with a new huge problem of family reunification. 
Already, Israeli spokespersons are busy making statements saying that nothing has been agreed upon regarding the return of refugees, and that certainly it will not be a matter of hundreds of thousands of returnees. 

Even, if there will be an attempt to bring back the refugees of 1967, a major problem will remain unresolved: who will decide about the right of relatives living outside the Occupied Territories to reunite with their families inside the autonomous Palestinian territory? 
According to Chairman Yasser Arafat’s latest statement, the key to the borders will be in Palestinian hands. If this is the case, the huge problem of family reunification and residency rights which concerns tens of thousands of Palestinians will finally find a positive solution. However, according to various Israeli sources, the right to enter the Occupied Territories, including the territories under Palestinian autonomy, will remain subject to an ISRAELI DECISION. If so, we will have to give new impetus to a mass campaign on the local and international level demanding the right of residency and family reunification. 

Without the basic right to change the cruel policy applied by Israel during the last 26 years, which has denied Palestinian residents and their families residency in their own country, autonomy will remain a fiction, a new form of occupation. In that sense, the question of “Who will hold the keys to the borders” still remains a key question.