The Palestinian team, headed by Elia Zureik and Dr. Salim Tamari/Ramallah, is a poorly staffed team functioning practically without budget and without legal advisors. Previous meetings with the Israeli team to the talks on refugees were conducted without results, mainly due to the rejectionist Israeli position. 

The first meeting in the “post agreement era” gave rise to new hopes and expectations. However, no major breakthrough was achieved: 
- the Israeli delegation reiterated its government’s policy regarding family reunification already 
  announced in August 1993 (see below) 
- an earlier, informal Israeli offer to immediately grant 10,000 family reunifications was withdrawn. 
The major achievement can be seen in the fact that for the first time discussions were constructive, and that the Working Group could agree on its future agenda and procedures. The Refugee Working Group will deal with issues not covered by other teams in the bilateral and multilateral negotiations, i.e. with “lost IDs” and family reunification. 

1. Lost IDs: refers to Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories who held Israeli identity cards in the past, but whose IDs were declared invalid by the Israeli authorities for various reasons (e.g. prolonged absence due to studies or work abroad, Israeli travel document was not renewed, etc.). Jordan has documented 54,000 cases (89,000 persons) of such Palestinians who crossed the bridge to Jordan and then were refused re-entry to the West Bank. This number does not include Palestinians who left from the Israeli airport or through the border to Egypt. As for now, the Palestinian delegation demands a list of all these cases from the Israeli negotiators, because only the Israeli authorities possess complete documentation. 
2. Family Reunification: The main working paper, a document setting guidelines and principles for the future negotiations presented by Mr. Bajolet, a representative of the French foreign ministry, was largely accepted. 
Yossi Beilin and Yossi Hadass, heads of the Israeli team, expressed their verbal agreement to: 
- Transparency: Israel will handle applications for family reunification according to clearly defined criteria and procedures; 
- Processing period of applications will be shortened: Applicants will receive a positive or negative answer within no more than three months. (Presently applicants have to wait for up to one year); 
- Lists of approved and rejected applications will be published; 
- No geographic separation: The summary report of the Tunis meeting, a binding document states: “family reunification applies to whatever the place of origin and the status of the applicant”. This has been interpreted by the Palestinian delegation as an Israeli agreement in principle to include Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in future decisions regarding family reunification. 
One the other hand, the Israeli team explicitly refused: 
- Palestinian representation in the commission handling applications for family reunification; 
- The establishment of a joint Israeli-Palestinian appeal committee. 
Future meetings will have to deal with questions such as: how to transform these Israeli promises into binding decisions? How to follow up with implementation of these decisions? Who will be eligible for family reunification?