- The seventh meeting of the Quadripartite Committee on the 1967 Displaced Persons, scheduled to be held in Bethlehem on March 20, 1996,0 and then canceled by Israel in response to the Hamas bus bombings, has not convened until now; no progress has been made on this level since the sixth meeting held in Cairo in February 1996.  

- The Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs has failed so far to renew a regular work schedule - thus continuing the sluggish pace which characterized its work in 1995, when the Working Group met only once. In 1996, the Steering Committee met in Rome to discuss future prospects and one meeting on the technical level was held in Oslo on the issue of data on June 12-13. Neither meeting dealt with substantive issues; it seems that the Multilateral Working Group will remain unable to function and that only a serious move in the final status negotiations on the refugee question could bring about new momentum on this level. [Source: Salim Tamari, Multilateral Working Group on Refugee Affairs]