Two workshops conducted by the SHAML Diaspora and Refugee Studies Center in March 1996 examined historical plans of refugee resettlement and compensation, i.e. approaches to the solution of the Palestinian refugee question traditionally favored by the opponents of the right of return. 

Israeli Resettlement Plans 1949 - 1972 
From the early 1950s on, Israel pursued the twin aims of resettling Palestinian refugees in Arab countries far from the Israeli borders and of preventing their return across the 1948 borders of Israel. This was in order to use the abandoned refugee property for the absorption of Jewish immigrants and to establish a stable Jewish majority in the new state. The key Israeli slogan coined at that time was “if you can’t solve it [the refugee problem], dissolve it”, i.e. to disperse the Palestinian refugees by means of resettlement and economic projects which would eventually lead to their integration into the economics of the host countries. This Israeli policy was based both on the deep Israeli fear of refugee return, and on the political calculation that once the refugee problem was removed from the heart of the Palestinian question, the conflict could be solved. 
Refugees at that time believed that they would return to their abandoned homes and between 1948 and 1956 thousands actually returned by “infiltrating” across the Israeli borders, Israel, trying to stop “infiltrators”, developed a policy of retaliation. According to Beni Morris, 3,000 - 5,000 refugees were killed while trying to cross the borders into Israel. Israeli operations against refugee camps in the border areas were intended to push the refugees farther away, while the destruction of 400 - 450 Palestinian villages inside Israel aimed to eradicate the very notion of return. 
The refugee question was the major diplomatic headache for Israel, mainly in its relations to the United States and the UN, which was then handling Israel’s request for membership. Following UN resolution 194, passed on 11/12/1948, Israel made a counterproposal, which suggested the repatriation of 100,000 refugees. This proposal, however, was never followed up. 
From the early 1950s, Israel conducted a series of secret negotiations on resettlement schemes. The plans had the support of the US and, for a short time, of two Arab regimes: the Syrian dictator Hussni Za’im accepted a plan to resettle 300,000 refugees in Syria and in 1952 Jamal Abdel Nasser considered the resettlement of refugees in al Arish. Nasser was forced to discard the plan after heavy protest and riots among the refugees in Gaza, and Hussni Za’im’s regime lasted only four months - too short to allow the implementation of his plans. 
Israeli plans for refugee resettlement via economic integration in the Arab states pursued between 1949 - 1953 were combined with the notion of compensation: compensation for lost lands should serve to cover the cost of resettlement via a special fund to which the United States, Israel and the UN would contribute. In 1953, Israel estimated the total value of refugee property at US $ 350 million and offered to pay US $ 100 million. The Israeli estimate was confirmed by the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, but heavily criticized by Palestinian/Arab experts and governments and rejected by the refugees. By the late 1950s, the issue of compensation had disappeared from the Israeli agenda. 
The Israeli “Libya Project” (1952 - 1958) combined the notion of resettling Palestinian refugees in Libya with a plan to “transfer” (i.e. expel) the Palestinians who had remained in Israel. Israeli and Jewish National Fund delegates were sent to Libya, where they tried to buy agricultural lands from Italian settlers. The end came in 1958 with the sudden revelation of the plan by an Israeli journalist while Israeli representatives were in Italy to buy Libyan land: the plan was stopped. Following the failure of the “Libya Project”, additional efforts for refugee resettlement in the interior of the Arab world continued in cooperation with US oil companies (“employment projects”) and UNRWA. All these plans of the 1950s - approximately ten discussed by Israel, UNRWA and US - failed mainly due to their total rejection by the refugees and the Arab governments. 

In 1967, only two weeks after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Israeli government headed by prime minister Levi Eshkol met to discuss the handling of the refugees in these areas. Again, resettlement, especially in the Sinai, was raised. There was, however, not one distinct strategy, but rather “supermarket of ideas”: 

- total refusal of refugee integration in Israeli controlled areas for “security reasons” (Levi Eshkol); 

- selective refugee integration in the 1967 occupied lands: model villages of refugees in the Jordan valley, resettlement of refugees in remote West Bank areas and in Palestinian urban centers (Yigal Allon); 

- massive refugee integration in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: dismantling of refugee camps, housing and employment projects (in cooperation with UNRWA); 

Policy statements made by Israeli officials in the post-Oslo era have not broken with the past: Shimon Peres, in his famous book “The New Middle East”, repeats the old (and conclusively refuted) version of the refugee question; the number of refugees listed (600,000) is too low; he claims that they fled due to orders issued by Arab leaders; and he calls the demand for the right of return a maximalist and unacceptable position. Yossi Beilin stated - following a meeting of the Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs in Tunis in 1993 that “it is well known to everybody that the 1948 refugees will not return”. 

The context of the refugee question on the Palestinian side, on the other hand, has changed significantly in the course of time. The Palestinian question was transformed from a pure humanitarian refugee issue to a national one. Palestinian negotiators of today have to deal not only with Israel, but also with the Arab states whose stand has changed drastically since the 1950s and 1960s. Also the Palestinian conception of “return” is undergoing changes: originally they were for return only and unwilling to discuss other options, such as compensation. “Return” was perceived in the past as the return to 1948 Palestine, today “return” to the 1967 occupied lands is considered important and an option by significant sectors of the Palestinian leadership and people. 
Given the present scenario, Palestinians need more than one strategy and various options: if return to 1948 Palestine is the exclusive aim, then there is no need to discuss compensation. If, however, we think that “return” to the 1967 occupied lands is a viable compromise, then we need a sound proposal for compensation. We should understand refugees demands guided by immediate practicality and develop strategies that are in their interest. We need to distinguish between the positions of the various actors involved: Israel on the one hand, and UNRWA on the other. The latter reflects the stand of the international community and is more flexible and open for change when pressured. [Source: Dr. Nur Masalha, research fellow at London University; Dr. Norma Masriyeh, Bethlehem University; February 24, 1996] 

Palestinian Refugee Compensation in the Light of the Present Political Situation 
The issue of compensation - just like the rest of the refugee question - were excluded from the DOP, because of the large gap between the positions of the two parties, its huge dimension and the technical complications involved. 
The Palestinian/Arab position still holds that Israel has obligations deriving from its responsibility for the refugee problem. Israel continues to disclaim all responsibility (despite the critical findings of a new generation of Israeli researchers). In contrast to the case of post-war Germany, there is at present no international pressure on Israel, so that payment of compensation will depend solely on whether the Israeli government is willing to do so. 
Until now, all of the technical questions have been approached only theoretically. The legal status of much of the refugee property is unclear due to overlapping and only partially completed, systems of land registration found in Palestine until 1948. Therefore, we still lack a sound basis for the evaluation of refugee property, both immovable and movable. Estimates of its value vary from a low of US $ 10 billion to a high of US $ 100 billion, i.e. equal to the GNP of some countries in the region. Also the UN resolutions are ambiguous on this point; they do not specify, how property ownership should be determined, who will pay (Israel alone or Israel in conjunction with Arab States and the international community) and whether compensation should be made in form of a global payment (to the Palestinian Authority/State) or as individual payments to the dispossessed. Israel has traditionally favored global payment and Israel will no doubt raise counterclaims for the Jewish property lost in the Arab countries. The lobby for these Jewish claims is powerful in Israel and in the United States. Their estimate is that the value of the property left by Jews in Arab countries is higher than the value of Palestinian property left behind by the refugees. 
Although the participants in this workshop differed in their opinion about the desirability of global compensation payments to the PA, all of them agreed that compensation must include individual payments to the dispossessed persons and their descendants. This because only individual compensation can meet the refugee demand for repatriation of past injustice. The matter of Palestinian refugee compensation must be separated completely from Jewish claims against Arab states. This case should be solved by means of individual Jewish claims submitted to the Arab states. 
Several participants asserted that the establishment of a Palestinian Refugee Lobby remains the central task, because only a mobilized refugee community can effect the balance of forces and the political options for the solution of the refugee question. [Source: roundtable with Don Peretz, March 8, 1996]