Article74 Magazine

Of the major three themes that confront the Palestinians in the final status negotiations, the fate of the refugees is the least likely to be effected by the Likud victory. The other two fundamental issues - Jerusalem and settlements - continue to be matters of some dispute between Labor and Likud, although there is a broad consensus between the two main political blocs in Israel here as well. The divergences that do exist emanate from the seeming 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.  
However, on the issue of refugees, there seems to be a consensus among both Likud and  Labor to reject any substantive concessions towards the Palestinians. One would have thought that Labor would have made a distinction between refugees of 1948 and displaced persons of 1967 since the later would return only to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But the course of the negotiations showed that Labor was as inflexible on the issue of displaced persons as they were on refugees. Israeli political strategists, such as Shlomo Gazit, would distinguish between restoring rights of refugees in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 from claims made on properties inside the green line. But many Israeli strategists are afraid that if Israel begins to admit refugees to the PNA areas (i.e. to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip), it would open the door to a deluge of historic claims and rights. The Israeli political establishment, in both its Likud and Labor wings, is still reluctant to open this ”pandora’s box,” which touches upon the issue of the moral legitimacy of the Israeli state, which the successive peace agreements do not seem to have resolved ...  

I would suggest that in the coming period the issue of refugees will be further marginalized and neglected by the Israeli negotiators until it becomes an explosive and destabilizing issue in the relations between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as between the PNA and the Palestinian diaspora. I hope I will be proven wrong.  

[Salim Tamari director of the Institute of Jerusalem Studies, delegate to the Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs; these are excerpts from the postscript to his essay, “The Future of Refugees in the Final Status Negotiations”, published by IPS/Beirut-Washington, forthcoming.]