Samih Farsoun - Panel on Palestinian Refugees and the Peace Process (1994)

Halim Barakat: What is perplexing and ironic about the topic of the present conference is the notion that perhaps we are now witnessing another sudden reversal of this process of transformation. Has the peace agreement, which deferred negotiations of all major issues and Until later— of a later time. Has this agreement in its own ways transformed Palestinians back into refugees whose fate is to be discussed and negotiated on their behalf at a later period? Have we reached a stage where the fate of the Palestinians will become a question mark, a contentious topic, a subject matter to be discussed and rediscussed to no avail, or will they finally liberate themselves of the shackles of history? Will they be able to make a fresh start? Would they finally be able to put an end to their dispossession and exile and start to shape their own destiny? I hope the present conference would provide some answers.

Hisham Sharabi: You're welcome.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you, Halim. Next is the welcoming remarks of Professor Sharabi. I'm sure he's known to all of you, so he doesn't need a major introduction. He is professor of European intellectual history and Omar Al-Mukhtar Professor of Arab Culture at Georgetown University. He's also the chairperson of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. One of his former students, however, didn't learn very much about the Middle East. He's President Bill Clinton. Professor Sharabi is also editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies for the last 22 years and author of numerous books, almost 16. 16 of them, a founder of a number of Arab-American organizations, including the Jerusalem Fund, the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, the Arab Cultural Foundation, and the Aleph Gallery in Georgetown business district area. It is my pleasure to introduce Professor Sharabi.

Hisham Sharabi: Thank you, Ali. A lasting and just peace in Palestine will be achieved only when a lasting and just settlement of the basic problems of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been reached. These include the problems of Jerusalem, the settlements, international borders, and the problem of refugees. According to the most recent estimates, The number of refugees and displaced Palestinians is now a little over 4 million. A document on the global distribution of estimated and projected numbers of the Palestinian people is available on the— at the registration desk. Since November— excuse me, since December 1948, the United Nations has affirmed in a series of resolutions the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and property or to a full and just compensation. The first of these resolutions, General Assembly Resolution Number 194 of December 11th, 1948, states the following, quote, that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for the loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made— should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible. End quotation. Last month, Madeleine Albright, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, made a very strange declaration on this subject. She said that The United States favors the, quote-unquote, amendment of previous General Assembly resolutions on Palestine. The reason she offered was that some of these resolutions contain stipulations that might, quote, prejudice, unquote, negotiations in the terminal Only familiarity. Only familiarity with Clinton's administration's grotesque eagerness to do Israel's every bidding could provide some clue to this kind of reasoning. Superpower manipulation. Realpolitik, denial of mutuality, circumvention of the basic values of equity and fairness may before too long force the so-called peace process to a celebratory conclusion at the White House. But this will not lead to a real peace, and a phony peace will surely lead to renewed violence and bloodshed.

Halim Barakat: Any hope?

Hisham Sharabi: Any hope for a genuine end to enmity and hate ultimately resides on the human level in the reaching of a just settlement of the refugee problem. Our hope is that our deliberations this morning will open up this sensitive subject and will contribute to the start of an open and honest discussion of all its aspects. In the months and weeks to come, the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine will address other central issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict and will make public the findings and proceedings of its center meetings, quarterly symposia, and its annual conference. The next symposium will take place on November 29th here in this auditorium and will focus on the crucial issue of the coming Palestinian elections and its significance for a lasting peace in Palestine. Thank you.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you. Thank you, Professor Sharabi. The panelists today are 4. You see them sitting before you, and the order that they will speak is as follows, and I will introduce each one of them in turn. First, we will have Marc Ellis, who will speak on historic and moral responsibility regarding the Palestinian refugees and in the area. The second will be Mohamed Hallaj, who is executive director of the Center for Policy Analysis. The third speaker will be Dawn Peretz on property and reparation rights. And finally, we will hear Professor Rashid Khalidi on a just solution to the refugee problem. First is Marc Ellis. Professor Ellis is director of the Justice and Peace Program at Maryknoll School of Theology and is also professor of religion, culture, and society studies at Maryknoll. He has written 8 books, including Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation and another one entitled Ending Auschwitz. Marc Ellis is currently senior fellow for comparative religion at Harvard University. Please welcome Professor Ellis.

Marc Ellis: Thank you. My essay is titled The Palestinian Refugees and the End of Auschwitz. In October 1948, Judah Magnus, the first chancellor of Hebrew University, wrote to the editor of Commentary, reiterating his longstanding desire to maintain a unified Palestine as a binational state, now translated with the birth of the State of Israel as a, quote, United States of Palestine, that is, a confederation of 2 independent states, one Jewish, the other Arab.

Don Peretz: Amen.

Marc Ellis: In describing this confederation, Magnus suggested a Jewish and Palestinian Arab political union characterized by a common foreign policy, joint defense, a federal court system, and Jerusalem as a common capital. He concluded his letter with the question of Arab refugees. Quote, there are many facets to the problem. military, political, humanitarian. But it seems to me that any attempt to meet so vast a human situation except from the moral point of view will lead us into a morass. If the Palestinian Arabs left their homesteads, quote, voluntarily under the impact of Arab propaganda and in a veritable panic, one may not forget that the most potent argument in this propaganda was the fear of a repetition of the atrocities at Deir Yassin, where the Jewish authorities were unable or unwilling to prevent the act or punish the guilty. It is unfortunate that the very men who could point to the tragedy of Jewish displaced persons as the chief argument for mass immigration into Palestine should now be ready to help create an additional category of displaced persons. in the Holy Land.

Mohamed Hallaj: End of quote.

Marc Ellis: Magnus's journal entry on October 22nd, 1948, just 5 days before his death, reiterates his concern about Palestinian Arab refugees when he recalls his earlier threat to withdraw as the chair of the Joint Distribution Middle East Advisory Committee because of its lack of attention to this new and vast problem. In his letter of resignation, Magnus wrote, quote, How can I continue to be officially associated with a relief organization which can pass by so easily so great and urgent a relief problem? It was an opportunity of stretching out the helping hand of a Jewish brother to thousands in distress in the same way the JDC has appealed to others to do for Jews in distress. Magnus was hardly alone in his concern. Martin Buber, a friend of Magnus and a binationalist as well, addressed Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion on the moral character of the State of Israel with reference to the Arab refugees in March 1949. Calling on Ben-Gurion to serve the Jewish people as a model of morality, Buber spoke forcefully. The possibility existed for the government, and perhaps it still does now, for doing a great moral act. The government could have taken the initiative of calling an international interfaith congress with the cooperation of our people and the neighboring peoples, a congress which would have been unprecedented. Were we not refugees in the diaspora? Yet at the same time that Buber argued for action on refugees, he betrayed a naïveté and a paternalism that plagued then and plagues today Jewish progressive thought. In a November 1956 essay titled Instead of Polemics, Buber maintained both Jewish innocence and culpability, a desire for innocence and Realpolitik, which was in turn generous, triumphant, and irritating. Here Buber writes about the initial impulse of settlement and the responsibility of the state vis-à-vis Arab refugees. In the period of settlement, which in effect was a conquest of peaceful means, The finest people among us did not pretend to remain guiltless and unsullied in our national struggle for survival.

Rashid Khalidi: Mm-hmm.

Marc Ellis: Inasmuch as we came here to ensure a place for our future generations, we were perforce reducing the space for future generations of the Arab nation. Yet our intention was to sin no more than was absolutely necessary in the endeavor to obtain our objective. It was incumbent upon us to seek the maximum degree of justice compatible with the exigencies of life. Since that hour passed and nothing was done in the direction of justice, the ground was prepared for the Arab refugee problem and thus for an enormous increase in our objective guilt.

Mohamed Hallaj: End of quote.

Marc Ellis: In response to this evolving situation, Buber established categories of morality revolving around the realization of Jewish goals and ideals. Quote, some of us declare a moral principle and demand its realization. That realization would force us to accept not only the cessation of immigration, but also the deportation of Jews in their hour of need. As opposed to them, some of us do not appear in public as innocent men before sinners. They do not propose purely principled behavior to the people, and they do not demand that the people obey pure principles. They wish to repair what can be repaired under the given circumstances, and no less than that.

Speaker 8: Thank you.

Marc Ellis: End of quote. Buber applied this theory to the refugee situation, calling for a settlement program that was well-founded and limited, one that made clear, quote, how many refugees it was possible to settle, what kinds, where, and how. Now, reference to these writings, policies, and contradictions of Judah Magnus and Martin Buber may seem, with the passing years, and especially in light of the recent agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization to the historical— to be historical curiosities. Yet seen in the context of the historic Israeli state policy toward Palestinian refugees and in the context of Jewish progressive reaction and celebration of the Declaration of Principles, which hardly mentioned the refugee situation at all, Magnus and Buber reflect both the limitation of Jewish dissent And how far the discussion has narrowed over the years. Having lost their dream of a unified Palestine, Magnus and Buber struggled toward a confederation that would institute as a constitutional guarantee political and social parity among Jew and Arab in Israel-Palestine. Palestine Arab refugees were to be reintegrated into an evolving political and cultural union which as a process embraced new realities as a challenge to build a common future. This union accepted and sought to repair the division of Palestine symbolized by the masses of Palestinian Arab refugees. For Magnus and Buber, the refugees bore political, historic, moral, and religious force. Both argued for the immigration of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust in Europe. Both were keenly aware that the creation of the State of Israel ostensibly to solve the Jewish diaspora and refugee problem, was creating a new diaspora and refugee problem, and that this new problematic at the hands of Jewish power threatened the morality and safety of a fragile and controversial Jewish state. From the beginning, Israeli state policy saw the refugee problem quite differently. As summarized by Fred Currie in his book, The Arab-Israeli Dilemma, Israel's basic contentions have been and remain the following: the Arabs alone caused the problem, and their alone is the responsibility for resolving it; the Arab governments deliberately used the refugees for political ends, as a weapon against Israel; the Arab world is sufficiently large and rich in resources to absorb all of the refugees easily; the refugees would be happier if they settled in Arab countries where they would be with their own people. And finally, Israel is unable to accept repatriation because of the lack of space, the continued existence of a state of war with the Arabs, and the serious social, political, and security consequences which would arise for her. This is the Israeli state policy. Interestingly, the legitimate heirs to the moral and religious vision of Magnus and Buber, the Jewish progressive consensus represented by Michael Lerner and his journal Tikkun, in a sense reaffirm Israeli state policy toward Palestinian refugees by virtually ignoring the binational aspect of Israel-Palestine and by leaving unmentioned the refugees which symbolize and make real that binationalism. Just 45 years after the writings of Magnus and Buber, Tikkun celebrates as a Jewish victory the beginnings of the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza And the recognition of a truncated, separate, demilitarized, and closely observed Palestinian entity as a Jewish recognition of Palestinian nationalism. For tikkun commentators, the creation of Israel is essentially pure, stained primarily by the occupation beginning in 1967. The national rights of the Palestinians are redressed by the withdrawal of that occupation and the signed document which limits Palestinian grievances to the post-1967 arena. The reintegration, one might say the recreation of Palestine, is a forgotten dream, or if broached, an unspeakable nightmare. The diaspora and refugee question, which after all comprises millions of Palestinians, is caught here in the progressive consensus, a presence which is best made invisible lest it become A realized nightmare. Still, even within this limited framework, Michael Lerner recognizes the long-term costs of expulsion and occupation in the course of Jewish history. In his new book, Lerner writes, hopefully, many of the concerns about torture and occupation will seem like ancient history to a future generation. Yet just as the issues raised by the conquest of the United States from the Indians and the building of the United States through slavery imposed on Africans remains central to our understanding of contemporary reality, so it is likely that decades from now Israelis will be dealing with the issues of affirmative action, reparations, and other measures to clean up the mess created by the occupation and the original expulsion of Palestinians. Future generations will wonder how it was possible that Jews living in the late 20th century, themselves the victims of racism and demeaning of the other, could possibly have allowed the distortions in Judaism and in Jewish practice that are now the daily reality of life in Israel and that are justified in the United States.

Halim Barakat: End of quote.

Marc Ellis: Like Buber, Lerner operates on an idealistic and practical basis, critiquing and supporting the creation and extension of the Israeli state. The dominant concern is Jewish, how Jewish behavior affects Jewish understandings and history. The Palestinians are secondary actors which Jews must transcend, defeat, cater to, lift up, and define. For many Jewish progressives, the creation of a Palestinian state is in essence a Jewish accomplishment which sets the Jewish people back on the right path. Yet the triumph is best illustrated through, in Amos Oz's terminology, a divorce rather than a marriage. Complete separation with only a distant and formal relationship. Though Lerner essentially agrees with Oz in argument and language, his warnings suggest a different problematic and a different solution, one in which the Palestinian refugees play a central role. Though we might reject the trajectory, Lerner's analysis points toward the mutual healing of Jewish and Palestinian history by repairing as much as possible And in a new constellation, the original division. And this can only be done by welcoming back in a structured and orderly way the people who were the original victims of this tragic history. The welcome involves persons, institutions, and geography. Palestinians become equal partners with Jews throughout what was once historic Palestine. By opening Jaffa and Ramallah, Jerusalem and Nazareth to Palestinian refugees, the Palestinian diaspora and refugee problem truly comes to an end rather than being finalized in a refugee camp or in a ghettoized Palestinian entity. Here we return to the question which Magnus and Buber wrestled with in the 1930s and '40s, whether or not a Jewish state in Palestine was necessary or even desirable to accomplish the goals of homeland Zionism. That is, the revival of Jewish culture, religiosity, language, social experiments, and institutional life. Along with Magnus and Buber, Hannah Arendt felt that the creation of a Jewish state would mean, among other things, the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs and the extension of Jewish-Israeli state power. Both aspects would actually hinder the accomplishment of these Zionist goals. Arendt asked the practical question: of whether pure force could suffice to protect these goals, and the moral question of whether pursuit of power, with the resultant dislocation and death, would not undermine the goals themselves. Could social experiments like the kibbutz, or intellectual endeavors like Hebrew University, maintain their efficacy if they were created and maintained through policies of expulsion, expropriation, discrimination, torture, and murder. We know now that the kibbutz movement and Hebrew University were in fact built with the coming of the Jewish state and upon the dispossession of Palestinian Arab population. That is, progressive Jews and progressive socialist and intellectual endeavors were at the same time part of the Palestinian catastrophe. Precisely because these thinkers, theories, and institutions embraced a Jewish history and a Jewish future built upon or without an indigenous Palestinian Arab population. This serves as a warning of a premature celebration with regard to recent events in Israel-Palestine. The hope for healing of Jewish and world history which the kibbutz movement and Hebrew University were to be integral parts of Is still distant. Could we say with any confidence that the Jewish people are closer to a healing today of the Holocaust experience than they were at the close of World War II? Though integration and affluence have increased tremendously among Jews throughout the world, there is a sense of isolation, anger, even a desire for retribution which was almost unheard of among Jews in the first decade after the Holocaust. The question is thus posed: has Jewish empowerment, especially in the State of Israel, which has expanded through expropriation of Palestinian Arab property and the continual creation of more refugees— has this empowerment brought the healing that many Jews spoke about and hoped for? Does the present agreement, with its refusal to share Jerusalem The ghettoized nature of Palestinian population zones and the unwillingness to discuss the return of pre-1967 refugees. Does this bring about a true healing or a settlement of the victor and the defeated which attempts to banish the deeper questions of history: struggle, culpability, reconciliation, justice, and embrace? The way forward, of course, is to face these questions of history as a way of infusing the political process with depth and substance. Contemporary Jewish progressive religious thinkers, by reclaiming a buried Jewish tradition of binationalist thought, can deepen their own perspectives and push the process beyond a superficial peace into the realm of justice. Yet justice carries the danger of critical reflection on the history we as Jews Yes. We will have to face, as Jews, the reality that Israel, in its creation and expansion, caused what we Jews historically have suffered: a refugee population and a diaspora. Israel has not ended Auschwitz for the Jewish people, and Auschwitz has become part of the Palestinian catastrophe. Could it be that the reversal of the Palestinian catastrophe might signal the end of Auschwitz for the Jewish people?

Speaker 8: Yes.

Marc Ellis: Ending Auschwitz, that is the physical and psychological reintegration of the Jewish people into a secure and interdependent world, is possible if the movement toward peace in Israel-Palestine becomes a movement toward justice. It means an end to isolation and anger, an end to Jewish ghetto mentality, And even the moral bravado which often elevates our suffering as a bulwark against external and internal criticism. Though Jews speak often about the normalization of the Jewish condition, one wonders if we as a people will accept that normalization, a normalization that might come to fruition in the recreation of Israel-Palestine. Jewish leadership, including Jewish progressives, have invested so much in the continuing of Auschwitz, in our sense of being pursued and threatened, that Auschwitz has become central to our sensibility as Jews. The Palestinian refugees returning home trigger that Auschwitz mentality. But what if the return turned out to be the opposite? That Israel-Palestine embraced a normal, interdependent, even compassionate and energetic path. Could Jews and Palestinians embarking on a new path threaten the identity and the status that comes with continuing Auschwitz? Clearly, that choice is before us now, embodied in those who were victims at the beginning. The question is, do we as Jews have the courage to end what was thrust upon us So horribly and which we continue at such a cost.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you, Professor Ellis. Next speaker is Mohamed Hallaj, who will speak on the refugee question and the peace talks. Dr. Hallaj is currently the executive director of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. He formerly was vice president for academic affairs at Birzeit University and had taught also at the University of Jordan and at Jacksonville University in Florida. He has many, many publications and continues to write. Especially in Middle East international. One of his works came up in the early '80s when the Likud government of Israel was basically saying that Jordan is Palestine and that they are against the creation of 2 Palestinian states. That book, co-authored with Sheila Ryan, is called Palestine Is.

Halim Barakat: Palestine Is.

Samih Farsoun: But Not in Jordan. It was published by the Association of Arab American University Graduates Press. And many other chapters that I don't have time to list are his works. Please welcome Mohamed Hallaj.

Marc Ellis: Thank you.

Mohamed Hallaj: Thank you very much, Samir. If I may, I would like to begin— just make a couple of brief statements in my capacity not as a panelist, but the director of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine. One of them is I want to convey to you the sincere regrets of Salim Tamari, who was not able to be here. Salim continues to be involved in the peace talks. He has been a member of the Palestinian delegation to the multilateral talks on refugees from the beginning. And he— I think he's supposed to be in Amman today for talks with the Jordanians regarding issues dealing with the refugee question. And I think he's going to be in Amman tomorrow. And that was the reason why he was not able to be here, and I'm filling in for him. The second point I wanted to say is that I want to acknowledge the diligent work and the intelligent work of our staff who made the preparations for this symposium. In particular, I would want to thank a tireless volunteer worker.

Hisham Sharabi: Who is that?

Mohamed Hallaj: Ms. Nancy Ghosh, who is a graduate student at Georgetown University, is interning with the center now, and she contributed much to the preparation of the material, like the fact sheet, which has been distributed to you. I hope that this time would not be deducted from my time as a panelist, because now I will speak as a panelist.

Hisham Sharabi: Thank you.

Mohamed Hallaj: My assignment is to speak about the refugee question and the peace talks. It will be essentially factual presentation. I will try to the best of my ability to— and speaking of the best of my ability, maybe I should say that I prepared these notes at 4 o'clock this morning. I just returned from a trip to Palestine last night.

Halim Barakat: Thank you.

Mohamed Hallaj: And that was the time I had to work on this. At any rate, if I can decipher my notes, I'll be all right. I would like to just to brief you, in effect, on what has been happening in the peace talks regarding the refugee question, how the current peace process, the Madrid peace process, dealt with the refugee question, with some opinion and evaluation and analysis. But basically a factual presentation regarding how the peace— how the refugee question is being dealt with in the peace talks. Of course, the refugee question and the way the international community had dealt with the refugee question did not really start with the Madrid peace process. There is a background to the subject of how the Palestinian refugee problem is being dealt with as a part of an effort to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. There have been numerous resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations which deal with the refugee issue, and it is part of the background of the peacemaking effort that we have now. It is— so we're not starting from point zero. On this question. There are international positions on the question of refugees, and they include— Dr. Sharabi spoke briefly on some of them, like General Assembly Resolution 194, which is, of course, the original and most basic and a continuing United Nations position on the question of Palestinian refugees. And UN Resolution 194 of 1948, of course, Which, of course, is the one which recognizes the right of Palestinian refugees to return, and for those who do not choose to return, to be compensated for their losses. There's also Security Council Resolution 242, which is supposed to be the framework for the current peace process. It also says something about the refugee situation. Among its provisions, one which It speaks of a just solution of the Palestinian refugee problem as a basis for making peace between Israel and the Arabs. Of course, it's a question of what is a just solution. But the refugee problem and its just resolution are a part of Resolution 242, which is the basis for the current peace process. Another one— and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to verify and check, but if my memory serves me right, Security Council Resolution 273, also of 1967, which requires the right— which recognizes the right of those who were displaced in recent conflict, in other words, in the 1967 war, to return. So there is that provision. And also there are numerous resolutions passed by the United Nations over the years which do not recognize the validity of Israeli expulsions and deportations of Palestinians and calling for the right to immediate return to their homes. So there is a number of UN resolutions dealing with this issue. And as I said, we're not starting from scratch when we talk about how the refugee problem is to be dealt with. The Madrid process Which, as I said before, as you know, made the Security Council 242 and 338 as the basic framework for the negotiations. A decision was made early on to include the refugee question as one of the main clusters of issues to be dealt with by the peace talks.

Marc Ellis: And—

Mohamed Hallaj: A working group on refugees was created as one of the 5 multilateral groups dealing with various regional issues relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict, such as the one on water and one on the environment, one on disarmament issues, one on economic questions, economic development. So the working group on refugees is one of the 5 main— Groups. Avenues for dealing in the multilateral negotiations with the question of Palestinian refugees. The Working Group on Refugees, which has been since Madrid the main avenue for discussing issues related to the refugee question and dealing with it, has, I think, something like 35 participants in it. In addition to Israelis and Palestinians, several Arab states are members of the group and a number of European states as well as Japan, Canada. And Canada has been the chairing this particular group and in effect supervising its functioning and its operation, organizing the meetings and keeping the records and so forth. And it's known as a gavel for this group. It is the country that is chairing these talks, even though not all talks of this group were held in Canada. But Canada is continually the gavel and is responsible for chairing these talks. There have been 5 meetings that I know of so far, 5 plenary sessions for the Working Group on Refugees since the Madrid Peace Conference. The first 2 were held in Ottawa in 1992. I think the first one was in May and the second one in November 1992. And these are the 2 meetings that I have personally attended as a member of the Palestinian delegation. I have not attended any since then, since I left the delegation in the spring of '93. So there were 2 in Canada in '92. And then there was one in Geneva in 1993. There were 2 in 1993. The 3rd one— meeting was held in Oslo, and the 4th was held in Tunis. This year, the 5th meeting took place in Cairo, and I believe that the 6th is coming up in December, is scheduled to convene in December in Turkey. So the group has been meeting in plenary session at this rate that I mentioned. And in between these meetings, the plenary session, there have been a number of meetings known as intersessional, less formal meetings to deal more with technical questions relating to the work of the group. So, basically, what I'm trying to do here is give a general idea of the vehicle or the instrument that the peace process process had devised to deal with the question of refugees. The Israelis boycotted the first 1.5 sessions. They boycotted the first session. The first session was held before the Israeli elections when Likud was still in power in Israel, and they took the position that they would not participate in any negotiations in which the Palestinian delegation included people from outside. That the Israeli government would only deal with people from the occupied territories. And since our delegation to the multilateral group on refugees was sort of half and half— half of us were from the occupied territories, half from outside— the Israelis chose not to show up. The second session, they boycotted the first half of the session, and they came in the second half. So that's why I said they boycotted one and a half sessions.

Speaker 8: Right.

Mohamed Hallaj: The Syrians and the Lebanese have not been participating, even though they're members. They were invited to be members of the group for the reason that Syria had taken the position from the beginning that Syria would not and Lebanon would not participate in the multilateral negotiations unless tangible progress progress is made in the bilateral negotiations. To them, that was the acid test for seriousness of the operation. And so they wanted to wait on achievements in the bilateral negotiations before they would be involved in the multilaterals. And so they have not been participating. The United Nations was subsequently added. It was not at first represented. But there were demands, particularly from the Palestinians' side, that UNRWA has been, for example, such an important participant in the life of the refugees, and it ought to have a presence. So they finally agreed to bring in a United Nations delegation consisting of someone from the Secretariat and someone from UNDP and someone from UNRWA. So UN has been represented. Now, a few words about positions of the parties, of the main parties. What have the various parties been trying to achieve within this framework of dealing with the refugee question? First, Palestinian and Arab positions. Palestinians and other Arabs represented in the group have taken the position from the very beginning, which they have always taken on the question of refugees, one, that the question of Palestine refugees is essentially a political national question, not just a humanitarian question. It has a humanitarian aspect, sure, but it is basically a political national question. This is the question of a displaced nation. It is not a question of a bunch of poor people who need to be helped. This is basically one of the basic tenets of the Palestinian and Arab position, and it was conveyed in no uncertain terms during the negotiations. Two, another element in the Palestinian and Arab position has been that Palestinian refugees are not just those who are designated by UNRWA as refugees. The Palestinians and other Arab representatives in the negotiations took the position from the beginning that when we talk about Arab refugees within the context of Arab-Israeli peace, talks, we are talking about all Palestinians who have been displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. They don't have to be camp presidents. They don't have to be poor people. They can be wealthy businessmen, professional people living in palaces in London. But as long as they are made homeless and stateless as a result of Israeli policy, then they're part of the general issue of Palestinian refugees. So, So this is another element of the Palestinian Arab position. Finally, the third main element in the Palestinian Arab position has been and continues to be that a solution, a just solution and a fair solution to the Arab refugee— Palestinian refugee problem should be based on existing UN resolutions, particularly General Assembly Resolution 194, which gives the refugees the right of return and compensation for those who do not choose to return. So these 3 elements in essence comprise generally the Palestinian and Arab positions in the negotiations. Israeli position, the familiar one— I think Marc gave in his presentation the essential elements of this— that Israel is not responsible for the refugee question, it's none of our business, that it was the fault of the Arabs that this issue came about.

Marc Ellis: Right.

Mohamed Hallaj: That they injected the story of Jews from Arab countries and made it— you know, that this is essentially a population exchange thing. Jews from Arab countries came to Israel. Arabs from Palestine went somewhere else. So we have a situation of population exchange rather than a displaced— a question of displaced population. And they also took the position that the Working Group on Refugees, that the negotiations should focus on rendering assistance to Palestinian refugees with the view essentially of resettlement of these refugee populations wherever they may be, that basically this was the orientation and the thrust of the Israeli position. I have 2 minutes? You deducted the issues well.

Marc Ellis: Yes.

Mohamed Hallaj: Third parties other than Israelis and the Arabs. Of course, took positions which sort of filled the gap range between these 2 positions, with mostly, I would say, closer to the Palestinian position. In other words, most of the other participants in the refugee group have accepted the idea that the question of Palestinian refugees is a political question, that the General Assembly and the Security Council resolutions dealing with them are not irrelevant. They are part— they should be taken into consideration.

Hisham Sharabi: And consideration.

Mohamed Hallaj: the question of the refugees, the question of the refugees, In fact, during the first meeting of the Working Group on Refugees, this position was written into the proceedings of the meeting as part of the consensus of the group, although there was dissent from it, mostly from the U.S. position. But generally, Third World parties, they accept the view that this is a political issue, not just a humanitarian issue. And so, in that sense, I say that most of them fall closer in this range of positions to a Palestinian-Arab position. The most important and most obvious deviation is the U.S. position. The U.S. delegation, even though it did not really fight the view that this is a political issue and that UN Resolution 194 for and the right of return are a part of the so-called international legitimacy in dealing with this issue. But they tended to take the view, which they gradually— my impression is sort of they stamped it on the whole proceedings— is that let's not politicize these talks and let's not raise political issues. Let's concentrate on, quote-unquote, practical measures to assist refugees— in other words, dealing with assistance to refugees and not focus so much on their political rights and political solution. And I'm afraid that the negotiations have veered in this direction that was sort of demanded by the United States delegation and by Israel. And most of the work has been on that— within that area of looking at ways of assisting refugees Rather than confronting the issue of displacement and statelessness of these people and dealing with it. From the beginning, an agenda was agreed on, which included mostly issues that would come under the main general heading of rendering assistance to refugees in the field of human resource development and job creation, child welfare, healthcare, database, studying the situation.

Hisham Sharabi: Right.

Mohamed Hallaj: situation of living conditions of refugees and so forth. And this has been most of the agenda and most of the work. There is another item on the agenda which has been discussed continually, and that is the question of family reunification, which is a very small part of the total refugee issue. Here we're dealing about Palestinian families that have been disrupted for one reason or another, mostly through Israeli deportation. Right. Of members of the family, and that has been one of the most controversial and hotly debated issues in the talks. The Israelis were adamant about the need to focus on the question of refugee assistance, and they have been very, very difficult to deal with even on this very, very small part of the refugee issue, namely the question of family reunification. Because it entails return of some Palestinians back to their homeland, something which bothers Israelis a lot. So I would say the agenda has over the years, as the group met and discussed, have veered gradually in the direction of what Israel, with the backing of the United States delegation, want, and that is to focus on the nonpolitical, on the humanitarian aspects of the problem. Now, there has been some— by the way, one— before I leave that, one important point I wanted to make is that, unfortunately, zero minutes.

Hisham Sharabi: Sorry.

Mohamed Hallaj: Sorry. I want to read to you something from— to indicate how the political aspect of the issue, which to my way of thinking is the make-it-or-break-it thing in the resolution of the refugee question, how it's being shelved and made almost totally irrelevant in the talks within the context of the refugee group, even though no one can deny that this is a political issue, essentially, that this is a political issue, a national question and that its resolution has to be a political resolution based on what has been agreed on internationally regarding right of return, how this been shelved and made almost totally irrelevant. I'm quoting here, the Palestinian delegation and Arab delegations reiterated their position. Note first that the demand for the right of return is no longer an international position. It's an Arab demand only, which is inaccurate, by the way. It's never been that in the United Nations. It's never been that in the Working Group on Refugees. There's always broad support for the position from other countries, from European countries and others, that this is a political question. Now it is diminished to the degree of an Arab demand rather than international position. It says, the Palestinian delegation and Arab delegations reiterated their position that the work of the group should be built upon existing UN resolutions pertaining to Palestinian refugees. So it has been reduced to simply an Arab demand. Parties to the Refugee Working Group concurred that projects aimed at improving living conditions for refugees should not prejudice final status agreements on the political future of Palestinian refugees in the host countries. Others asserted that we should avoid becoming a political arena and search for direct and realistic results to assist Palestinian refugees. In other words, there was no longer a consensus or anything valid or legitimate, nothing that has any legal or Or moral weight. It's— everybody has a different point of view, and here is what we're doing. So I think this is an effort, a successful effort, mostly on the part of the U.S. delegation, which fought very hard for this. I was once told point-blank by someone of the American delegation that, look, we understand your concerns and your position, and we voted for it every year in the UN for the right of return, but if you raise it here in any practical way demanding implementation, We will oppose you. I mean, it was that clear. There was no ambiguity about it. However, I don't want to present such a totally gloomy picture. There have been some achievements in the talks on refugees since the process began. But I'm afraid that they're so out of balance with the failures of the process that they're hardly worth mentioning. Let me just mention very briefly. specifics. For example, there have been some progress made on the question of family reunification. Israel finally was prevailed upon to accept increasing the number of applications for family reunification that it is willing to approve. I think now the limit has become like 6,000 persons per year, which I must say doesn't really solve the problem of family reunification, let alone the total refugee situation, because the natural increase of population probably means that every year we have more rather than less divided families. But at any rate, compared with previous situations, there has been some improvement in the sense that Israel agreed to increase the number of applications for family reunifications that we approve. There's been some improvement on what they call the transparency issue, because one of the demands of the Palestinian delegation in the talks has been that Israel deals, in effect, in secret, as if it were nobody's business, how they handle family reunification applications, on what basis they approve one application and reject another, who can apply and what the process is and so forth. So a demand for transparency of how Israel deals with this issue. There's been some improvement in the sense that Israel agreed to introduce greater transparency. But it's not enough. Transparency in the process of how it deals with family reunification, although I understand that this has not been implemented on the ground in reality. But in principle, it accepted. It has accepted to shorten the period where applicants have to wait for an answer. And it accepted, in principle, that decisions have to be announced, because people never knew who— how many applications they accepted, how many they rejected, whose applications, and so forth. So, at least there have been some, a little bit of movement. But as I said, the failures, in my view, way overshadow the achievements that they're barely worth, hardly worth mentioning. For example, the process has so far failed, and it still hasn't done that, to deal with most of the refugees, refugees of 1948, 1967, the deportees and what they call latecomers. This is a new invention.

Halim Barakat: Right.

Mohamed Hallaj: We're talking here about tens of thousands of people who have become refugees in more recent times for accidental reasons— for example, students going to study abroad and failing to keep their permits valid. These are residents in the occupied territories, and yet they lost their residence over the years for one reason or another, or a person who was sick or went to visit a family in Venezuela and failed to renew their permit.

Halim Barakat: Right.

Mohamed Hallaj: And I can confirm it. Tens of thousands of people have become refugees for reasons like this. They call them latecomers. None of these peoples have been dealt with. The only group of refugees that have been dealt with, as I said, is the very small sector of family reunification. The DOP came to rescue, hopefully, this failure, in the sense that the DOP at least had a provision that those who were displaced in the 1967 wars, that their return will be negotiated between— a 4-party committee was to be established, according to the DOP, consisting of representatives, Palestinian representatives, Israeli, Jordanian, and Egyptians, to talk about the return of those who were displaced in '67. Now, this is a significant group.

Samih Farsoun: Yes.

Mohamed Hallaj: Of refugees. And if— and this is to be done during the interim period, by the way. This is not to wait for the final status talks. The '67 displaced people, possibly between 500,000 and 700,000 people— I don't think anybody knows exactly how many, but we are talking about a significant-size community— these, according to the DOP, their return is to be discussed As soon as possible during the interim period. As far as I know, nothing happened yet. There has not been any meetings yet of this 4-member committee that is supposed to negotiate the return of displaced people. And, of course, the second way in which the DOP theoretically may rescue this process of failing to grapple with the refugee issue, by putting the question of Palestinian refugees And it's in a fundamental way, including 1948 refugees, on the agenda for the final status talks. Now, technically, theoretically, these could be big breakthroughs. If the 4-member committee in fact begins to meet and begins to function in a proper way to implement the return of those who were displaced in '67, that would be significant progress. And if, when the time comes, Israel negotiates— accepts to negotiate in good faith during the ultimate status talks the fate of the Palestinian refugees of 1948, it could be significant. However, and this is my conclusion, everything I've seen so far is not encouraging. The way I've seen Israel, like pulling teeth, trying to get the minutest concession from them in terms of their position on refugees, I find not very encouraging.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you.

Mohamed Hallaj: for the future. And also statements I keep hearing today about Israel's future intentions on the refugees are not encouraging. For example, Mr. Rabin and other Israeli officials have said repeatedly, to calm down Israeli public opinion, that, look, don't get excited. Of course we accepted in the DOP to negotiate Jerusalem and refugees, but that doesn't mean we're going to make any concessions, so don't worry.

Marc Ellis: Thank you.

Mohamed Hallaj: Thank you.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you, Mohamed. The 3rd speaker is Professor Don Peretz. He's professor of political science at SUNY Binghamton, State University of New York at Binghamton, and author of a large number of articles and at least 12 books. His earliest His first is entitled Israel and Palestinian Arabs, published in 1955. And his latest is Palestinians, Refugees, and the Middle East Process— Peace Process, in 1993. In between, he also has one book on the West Bank history, society, and politics and economics, in 1986. Professor Peretz will speak on property and reparation rights.

Marc Ellis: Thank you.

Speaker 8: Doug.

Don Peretz: In a sense, my comments are a follow-up on Dr. Halaj's, in that what I'm dealing with is one of the key substantive issues in the conflict. The question of compensation to Palestinian Arabs for property left in Israel The question arose even before the end of the First Arab-Israeli War in 1947-48. Actually, it was first raised by the UN mediator, Count Bernadotte, in his recommendations to the United Nations, where he proposed payment of adequate compensation for the property of those refugees choosing not to return to their homes. And these proposals received international backing by virtue of The famous UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which incorporated, with slight modifications, most of Bernadotte's recommendations, including payment of compensation. Much attention was given to this issue, the issue of compensation, during the first decade of efforts to resolve the problem. Compensation was then regarded as an integral component of the refugee issue, and proposals shifted back and forth between proposals for either repatriation to Israel or resettlement with payment of compensation. And actually, when the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine, which was entrusted with the task of resolving this conflict, became bogged down or stalemated in its efforts as a result of either Israeli or Arab intransigence, it shifted all of its attention to the issue of compensation. The Conciliation Commission was never actually terminated. It just faded away with very few accomplishments. What it did achieve was related to a number of technical matters of compensation and identification and evaluation of Palestinian property left in Israel. But once the Conciliation Commission disappeared from active participation in the peace process, the issue of compensation also seemed to recede from view. Since the 1950s, little attention has been given to the question, and it's not been among the major issues discussed in the recent peace negotiations. Little attention has been given it in the recent bilateral or multilateral discussions that are part of the Madrid process. Thank you. Or in the subsequent bilateral negotiations between Israel and the PLO. While it may seem an obvious issue in the peace process, parties to the conflict have been very wary about dealing with compensation. And among the reasons for this caution are, one, the dimensions of the problem, and two, the complicated legal and political ramifications. First, I'd like to discuss the dimensions of the problem. I suppose very few people are aware of the extent of abandoned property that Israel acquired as a result of the 1948 war, or the value of that property. According to the Conciliation Commission, which, basing its estimates on the statistics of the former mandatory government, over 80% of Israel's total area of some approximately 20,000 square kilometers. Over 80% represented abandoned Arab lands, although there was a great deal of ambiguity about the status of much of that land. For example, most of the Negev, which constitutes about half the area of Israel, until 1948 was occupied by nomad tribes whose ownership wasn't clearly defined. During the mandate, tribal rights to the Negev land were never challenged, although actual title to the Negev domain was considered government-owned land. It was presumed to be government-owned land, but the government never actually implemented taking over the land. Therefore, the status of these— about half the area was ambiguous, because it wasn't possible to assume with certainty that that they were part of government or state domain, or whether they were actual tribal property. Under the partition plan, the Negev was allocated to Israel, and Israel automatically presumed that nearly all Negev lands were state domain. Thus, the Negev lands acquired from the Mandatory government were presumed to belong to the new State of Israel. Actually, only a little more than a quarter of all Arab abandoned land was cultivable. 3 quarters were classified as submarginal or semi-desert, and these were mostly in the Negev. The total amount of cultivable land, land that was useful for agriculture, that Israel acquired from the refugees was well over a million acres, which was the equivalent of about 2.5 times the total amount of Jewish-owned land.

Marc Ellis: That's right.

Don Peretz: In Palestine at the end of the mandate. Total amount of Jewish land, all Jewish land owned, was about 8.5%, approximately 8.5% of the total area of Palestine. Perhaps more convincing than these kind of global figures, which— to indicate the importance of formerly Arab-owned property in Israel, are the following data compiled from reports Of the Israeli custodian of absentee property. Of the 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on former Arab property. In 1954, more than a third of Israel's Jewish population lived on Arab absentee property, and nearly a third of the new Jewish immigrants were settled in urban areas abandoned by the Arabs. The Palestinian Arabs left whole cities like Jaffa, Akko, Lydda, Ramla, Beit She'an, Majdal, a total of 388 towns and villages and large parts of 94 other cities and towns containing nearly a quarter of all of the buildings in Israel at that time. 10,000 shops, businesses, And stores were left in Jewish hands. At the end of the mandate, about half the citrus holdings, which were then one of the country's largest foreign currency earners, had belonged to Arab owners. Fruit from Arab citrus groves provided about 10% of the government's foreign currency earnings from exports in 1951. Well, these figures give some indication of the extent And the importance of Arab property, which was— which will have to be taken into account in the compensation issue. The relative economic importance of this property was probably largest between 1948 and 1953, during the era of greatest Jewish immigration and need of resources for absorbing new immigrants. It's questionable whether Israel would have been able to bring in so many new immigrants so rapidly Had it not been for the use of this abandoned Arab property. One of the most difficult and controversial problems has been evaluation of Palestinian Arab property. A committee of experts on compensation attached to the refugee office of the Conciliation Commission attempted to provide a kind of global estimate of the value of this property. That is, An overall estimate calculated, one, on the worth of movable property. Movable property would include industrial equipment, commercial stocks, vehicles, household effects, agricultural equipment, crops, livestock, in addition to landed property, the value of land and urban property. The value of all of this property taken over by Israel was estimated by the U.N. UN at that time at 120,000— 120 million 1947 pounds sterling, which would be roughly somewhere around $2 billion US 1990 dollars. It should be noted that these are figures which the Conciliation Commission emphasized were valuations that were approximate, rough figures. Neither the Arab states nor Palestinian economists have ever accepted the UN's estimates of the value of this property, believing that they were far too low. The Arab delegations at the commission's— the UN commission's 1951 Paris conference presented a figure that was nearly 20 times the estimate of the UN experts.

Rashid Khalidi: Wow.

Don Peretz: In other words, the— The Arab estimate was over $35 billion, 1990 US dollars. In addition to compensation for Palestinian-owned property, the Arab delegations also claimed that refugees who did not return to Israel should also receive a certain proportion of the value of public property, such as roads, railway lines, ports, airfields. And the value of the land. And other such facilities. Dr. Youssef Sayegh published in 1966 an estimate that was somewhere about halfway between the Conciliation Commission estimate and that of the Arab League. Another Arab economist, Palestinian economist, who's dealt with this issue, Sami Haddawi, who was a former mandatory official and also worked with The Conciliation Commission estimated the value of all this property at about 6 times the UN figure. However, when he added what's called human capital, that is, losses due to loss of life, careers, suffering, and so forth, the total rose to over $25 billion, 1990 US dollars. Well, These figures give you some idea of the estimate of the dimensions, of the dimensions of the compensation issue. As we see, property left in Israel by Palestinian refugees was so extensive it provided a considerable proportion of the economic foundation upon which the state was built. Although, as we see, there are no precise figures for the value of this property. How much? Estimates range as high as 10 times the annual military and economic aid that Israel receives from the United States, or the amount is larger than the gross national product of several Middle Eastern governments. Among the difficult and complicated issues surrounding the question of compensation are One, identification of that property that formerly belonged to the refugees. 2, identifying the owners. 3, the relationship between current values and— that is, values today and values of 1948. 4, who is going to be responsible for paying this compensation? 5, what form is compensation going to take? Will it be cash, some other form of payment? What is the status of Israeli counterclaims? To what extent will resolution of this compensation issue balance off other, say, political, territorial, or moral claims in the conflict?

Rashid Khalidi: Thank you.

Don Peretz: Since 1948, '47, the problem has become much more complicated than it was originally because property that was then abandoned became increasingly difficult to identify and evaluate. Since that period when most Arab property was absorbed into Israel's economy, it's been transformed often beyond recognition In many cases, it's passed through several successive owners or Israeli government agencies, has been reclassified and reclassified under a variety of Israeli laws. Much land that was once agricultural has become urban. In many cases where there were Palestinian-owned farms, orchards, or orange groves, now there are high-rise Jewish apartment or office buildings.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you.

Don Peretz: Movable property such as vehicles, household goods, farm animals, personal property has long since disappeared without any record of its disposition. How is this property to be identified and evaluated? Should compensation be based on 1947 or 1997 values? Persons who owned much of this property in Mandatory Palestine, or their heirs, Today would often be difficult to locate, and settlement of individual claims would be complicated because of fragmentation of families over the past 2 and a half generations. When the issue first was raised, Israel claimed, as we heard from previous speakers, that it was not responsible for the war or the flight of the refugees, and it also presented counterclaims For destruction of— and the loss of Jewish property during the First Arab-Israeli War. Now, although Israel may forego its own property claims, it's quite certain at this point that no Israeli government is likely to accept responsibility for the war or for the flight of the refugees. Furthermore, one of the strongest lobbying groups in Israel There's an organization called the World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, which has received quasi-official status and funding from the Jewish Agency. This organization has pressured the government to present counterclaims for Jewish property abandoned in Arab countries, which some of their representatives claim to be 5 times the value of Arab property left in Israel. While Jewish claims against countries such as Libya or Morocco may not be considered valid in the settlement of the 1948 war because those countries weren't belligerents, an argument probably could be made that claims should be considered for Jewish property in Iraq, Egypt, and Syria, countries that did participate in the war. In 1951, the Prime Minister Charette He laid out qualifications. He said that Israel would waive its requirements that refugee property be compensated for only as part of a general peace agreement. However, he insisted that Israel's contributions had to be paid into not individual payments, but into a UN fund for reintegrating the refugees in Arab countries, and there would have to be conclusive evidence that Israel's payment would be spent on resettlement of all the refugees outside of Israel. The Arab position has emphasized that compensation is an individual right of the refugees personally, or to their beneficiaries, that they should be able to exercise this right without any limitations of time or space, to establish any relationship between Israel's financial capabilities And its obligations to pay would be tantamount to pure and simple confiscation of the property of Arab refugees. To restrict this right or to make payment of compensation dependent on the financial capacity of Israel would be to make this right an illusion and to make Israel a present of the refugees' property. The Arab states, the Arab governments have said that because of the international Communities responsible, that is the UN's role in the establishment of Israel, it, the international community, has an obligation. And Israel, while incapable of payment or insolvent, then if Israel is incapable or insolvent, then the UN has, so to speak, taken upon itself this obligation because of its role in the establishment Well, in addition to many of the controversial political difficulties involved in the question of compensation, there are a number of objective technical problems. For example, many— some people say most of the— some experts say most of the original records of land registration during the mandate were either destroyed during the 1948 war or otherwise missing. Some records that were microfilmed and taken to England were later found to be illegible. Much of the land in Palestine was never registered under the Palestinian— Palestine government's Land Settlement Act that identified property according to a cadastral survey. Therefore, a large part of land ownership in Palestine was registered under the old Ottoman system.

Marc Ellis: Yes.

Don Peretz: Which identified land parcels according to boundaries fixed without any reference to a survey. Often land entered in the register of deeds which could not be identified with— were unable to be identified with parcels on the land to which they purported to refer. Many land transactions occurred outside the land registry office. And title deeds were often not recorded. These are some of the technical problems involved in dealing with the problem of compensation. Well, given the political and technical complications that I've presented, it's little wonder that the compensation issue has so far been avoided. Even if agreement were reached on political issues, the problem of compensation would likely continue long after many other controversial issues are resolved. No doubt international arbitration is going to be required to assist in settlement of the compensation issue. When the issue is faced, it's going to be evident that it's inextricably linked with resettlement, with economic development, and with the problem of Jewish settlements in the forthcoming Palestinian state. The amounts of money involved, as we see, are so large that no single country is going to be able to cope with compensation. Probably an international pool for financial— for financing compensation will have to be established to provide the necessary funds or to raise the necessary funds. And countries that contribute to this pool would logically be the most likely participants in a committee to arbitrate claims, to distribute payments, and to administer other aspects of the compensation issue. Other questions that probably will arise are, should the— say, the $2.5 billion pledged by international donors in 1993 for the 5-year rehabilitation program of Palestine be considered as part of compensation payment? Should the small loans advanced to individual entrepreneurs by UNRWA and its so-called income generation program become part of the process? Might the several billion dollars invested by Israel in the West Bank and its Gaza settlements and infrastructure be taken into consideration? Obviously, the compensation issue can't be resolved or even considered except as part of a larger settlement, since its final solution— its final resolution will depend on, one, where the refugees are going to be settled, what happens to Arab Jerusalem, where the boundaries between Israel and the Palestinian state or entity are located? And what happens to Jewish settler property in the territory that ultimately becomes part of the Palestinian state?

Samih Farsoun: Thank you, Don. Thank you, Don. The 4th and final speaker is Professor Rashid Khalidi. Rashid Khalidi is associate professor of Modern Middle Eastern history at University of Chicago and director of the Middle East Center there as well. He is also currently, in 1994, the president of MESA, or Middle East Studies Association. He is author of numerous articles and several books. The first is British Policy Towards Syria and Palestine Between 1906 and 19. A second important book was a study of the decision-making of the PLO for exit from Beirut during the 1982 war. It is entitled Under Siege: PLO Decision-Making During the 1982 War. And his last book is edited and is entitled The Origins of Arab Nationalism. Please welcome Professor Khalidi. Thank you.

Rashid Khalidi: Thank you, Samir. It was a little bit daunting to look at the program when I finally received it last week and to find out that I had been advertised as speaking about the solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees. I was even more daunted when I was told this morning that I had 15 minutes in which to give you the solution. I only wish I could provide the solution to this problem. I don't have any such presumption. What I propose to do here this morning is simply to set forth a few elements of what I think might be a fair or a just or at least an attainable solution. Before I go any further, let me make absolutely clear what I mean when I speak of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee I will not be talking this morning about absolute justice, which I believe is usually unattainable in this world. I wish I could talk about that. That would be very easy. What I instead will be referring to is a nebulous concept, which I suppose might be termed attainable justice, or justice within the realm of the possible. This is going to be, as you'll see as I lay out some of my ideas. This is something that's going to be far more than the present constellation of forces will allow for. But it is premised on the assumption that it is unrealistic to expect that the entire world can be turned upside down in order for absolute justice to be achieved, however desirable that might be by some criteria. In other words, I'm going to be talking about justice within the limits of what is attainable, although obviously honorable people People will disagree about what is realistically attainable in current circumstances or in future circumstances. Let me start by saying that in my opinion, the refugee issue cannot be addressed as many other issues have been dealt with in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations to date. In much of what has been done so far, again, in my opinion, history has simply been tossed out of the window. And efforts to achieve a solution of a given problem have begun as if the 2 sides are operating on a tabula rasa, as if there was no past that had to be dealt for— accounted for and dealt with. This obviously grieves me as a historian, but I don't think it works. To take a random example, after 27 years in which Israel exerted intensive efforts to destroy as much as possible of the internal and external Palestinian infrastructure through air, land, and sea attacks on institutions, through assassinations in Lebanon and elsewhere, through invasions, Lebanon in particular, and through— inside the occupied territories, through imprisonment and exile of leaders and militants, through assassinations, and through a process of attrition of the entire society and the economy. After all of this, Israel has recently handed over responsibility for governance in Jericho and in the Gaza Strip and in certain administrative spheres in other parts of the West Bank to a Palestinian authority. At the same time, we have heard Israeli officials retaining for themselves and liberally exercising the right to sneer publicly at Palestinians because they've been so slow to create a functioning infrastructure. This is what I mean by throwing history out the window. There is no infrastructure. And there has been very little progress towards creating an infrastructure, and one of the major reasons is that the last couple of decades have seen really quite gargantuan efforts at destroying what there was of infrastructure. In my opinion, on the refugee issue, there can be no such cavalier treatment of history. Every year, as far as history is concerned, there's a growing body of impeccable scholarship which establishes the actual course of events.

Halim Barakat: Thank you.

Rashid Khalidi: Events in the creation of what is called the refugee problem. Incidentally, much of the best of this scholarship is by Israelis. It is not, however, only because the facts are becoming more and more commonly known that history must be an element in this solution. I think rather it's because this issue is so central to the national narrative and to the self-view of the Palestinian people that any approach which tries to sweep history under the rug is not going to succeed. The Palestinians might put up with humiliating and unequal agreements based on ignoring history in the economic sphere. They might do so in the area of security. They might do so in other domains. So far they seem to be putting up with such agreements. But I think it's hard to visualize the Palestinians standing for an attempt to pretend that the refugee issue does not have specific roots and therefore trying to solve it on such a basis. I think that this means that whenever negotiations reached— reach the much-fabled long-distance final status talks, they're sort of like a Never Neverland, they keep receding into the future. If we ever get to final status talks, that is, Israel is going to have to take some kind of responsibility for its conduct in the past and is going to have to accept that the deliberate actions of the state's founding fathers played the major role in making about half of the Palestinian population refugees between 1947 and 1949. Anybody who has any political sense is going to know that this is not going to be something easy for any Israeli leader to do, particularly since some of the current leaders of Israel can be counted among these founding fathers, among them obviously Prime Minister Rabin, who personally played a major role in turning several thousand Palestinians from Ramla and Lid into refugees.

Don Peretz: Israelis—

Rashid Khalidi: to complicate the issue, Israelis are going to be asked to accept a proposition which in effect means, if fully understood, that their country was born in some form of original sin in 1948, to borrow somebody else's expression. As if this were not hard enough, moreover, such a proposition flies in the face of decades of internal socialization and decades of public and diplomatic denial of any responsibility by the Israeli state. We've heard some elements of this from previous speakers. And these efforts, as we can imagine, have powerfully shaped the Israeli national consciousness on this issue, not to speak of public opinion elsewhere in this country in particular. We've seen in other contexts exactly how hard it can be for public opinion to accept these kinds of wrenching, painful propositions, especially when they relate to national foundation myths. Indeed, in my opinion, it's going to be hard for Israeli leaders to take any responsibility for this question, since doing so may be seen as opening a Pandora's box and entailing unlimited liability for undoing this injustice. I think this is what is really at the back of a lot of Israeli leaders' minds, not some responsibility, but unlimited Liability. Unlimited liability, that is to say complete responsibility, accepting unlimited liability for this problem will inevitably be seen as the first step towards the wholesale return of all Palestinians once made refugees to their original homes. This would obviously lead to the dissolution of the demographic balance favorable to Israel which was created by the events of 1948, in fact which was one of the major objectives of the 1948 war. And this I think most Israelis would regard as tantamount to national suicide. I would think that it is an unacceptable statement for me to say that this is politically unacceptable for any conceivable Israeli government. And as a result, I would argue, to seriously demand Israeli acceptance of unlimited liability for this question means to argue against the possibility of any real solution to this issue. It may have something to do with absolute justice.

Mohamed Hallaj: Right.

Rashid Khalidi: But it is, in my opinion, in real terms, to say, we really don't want to discuss a solution to this issue. There is unlimited liability. Israel must accept complete responsibility. It's all up to Israel. This is, to my way of thinking, an argument against the possibility of a solution. Now, some people would go further than this. Some people would say you cannot expect an Israeli government to accept any responsibility for what was done in 1948.

Mohamed Hallaj: Yes.

Rashid Khalidi: —to the Palestinian refugees, and that in any case, if a relatively equitable solution can be worked out, it doesn't matter whether or not Israel atones for its actions. I disagree with this proposition for 2 reasons. And the first is the most important. The first is that real reconciliation, real healing can only begin when these kinds of steps have been taken. I would argue that the fact that no such steps have yet been taken is part of the reason that in spite of all of the euphoria and in spite of all of the ceremonies, no true reconciliation process has yet started in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I think that it's time to move away from this absurdly narrow focus on Palestinian-Israeli things for a minute and look at those cases where there have been significant steps of this sort. Look at German-Jewish relations. Look at Korean-Japanese relations. Look at black-white relations in South Africa. In all of these areas, you can see how true it is. It is not the reparations. The amount of money that was paid by Germany to individual Jewish survivors or to the State of Israel in 1983 Deutschmarks is in the hundreds of billions of Deutschmarks. It's not these reparations. It's not the apologies or the compensation. That the Japanese government has now agreed to pay to Korean slave laborers or Korean women who were taken off to be so-called comfort women. Important though these things are, it's not the trials of secret police commanders in South Africa. Important though all of these specific steps have been, which have made possible the building of bridges over chasms which many people probably never thought would be crossed, it is rather that there has been some sincere acceptance of some responsibility for wrongs done in the past, however limited, however qualified this acceptance may have been, and no matter how unsatisfactory this acceptance was to some. Now, I was flying out of Ben Gurion Airport a couple weeks ago on a Lufthansa plane full of Israelis— there wasn't a single seat on the plane— when I realized that I was witnessing a scene that would have probably seemed inconceivable in the wake of the Holocaust. And that this little scene, Lufthansa planes packed with Israelis going to Frankfurt, represented an example of at least the beginnings of a real reconciliation even though in the German-Jewish case obviously the crimes committed by the Nazis were unforgivable, were unpardonable. I would argue that we are still very far from such a beginning even of a Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation. This is the first reason why I think the argument I put forward is wrong and that you We cannot say Israel need not accept any responsibility. The second reason why we're going to have to follow the hard path of acceptance of responsibility is a much more prosaic reason. In my opinion, and this may not be a very popular opinion, it is inconceivable that most refugees or their descendants will be allowed to exercise their inalienable right of return to their original homes In what is now Israel for the foreseeable future or perhaps ever. This being the case, and even were there to be the most generous compensation and reparations for the losses involved, it is absolutely essential— this being the case, since this is the case, it is absolutely essential, leaving aside compensation, leaving aside reparations, that the existential hurt done to the majority of the Palestinians people, or about half of the Palestinian people, be acknowledged by those who did that hurt or by their successors in power. This is mainly, I understand, a symbolic response to a real, to a material grievance. But I would argue that in a situation where in most cases there can be no fundamental redress of that grievance beyond the possibility of compensation or reparations, the symbolic response is all the more important. Given that in some sense the war is over, given that in a real sense Israel is clearly the victor, at least of the Palestinian-Israeli war, one might expect a little more generosity on this and other issues than we have seen so far. But politics is not that way, and clearly even this symbolic response will not come easily. We've heard the Israeli position from at least 2 of the speakers today. I would say that Because of the kind of things I've been talking about, it is absolutely essential that the concept not just of compensation but of reparations be established as a basic element of the solution. The UN General Assembly resolution that everybody's referred to does not talk about reparations. It simply talks about compensation. According to this resolution, as people have said, Palestinians made refugees in 1948 have the right to return to their homes or to be compensated for their property should they choose not to return, and everybody Whether they return or not, has the right to compensation for property lost or damaged. In the Palestinian view, and in my own reading of international law of these resolutions, that is an inalienable right. The only limitation placed on it in this General Assembly resolution was that these people, should they return, must be willing to live in peace with their neighbors. That's law. That's theory. That's principle. In practice today, however, That right is limited by other factors. In fact, these are the most important factors. I would compare the refugees and their descendants, of which technically I am one, to people forced to flee their homes by a flood, which has permanently inundated their original communities, and who, of course, have a right to return, but a right which they simply cannot exercise by reason of force majeure. Now, I'm going to argue later on that a number of refugees And I'll specify the kinds of conditions I would think of. Could and still should be allowed to return to their homes. But for most Palestinians, whether we like it or not, it is as if these homes and villages have been submerged forever. And indeed, in most cases, these villages do not exist anymore. They've been obliterated. Completely new settlements, completely new villages exist in their place. There is, of course, one vital difference between the two cases. Unlike a flood, the state of Israel is not a force of nature, although it sometimes may have seemed like one to people unfortunate enough to find themselves in its path. Because it is not a force of nature, the state of Israel can and must be held responsible for its actions. This is why, in my opinion, the term reparations is so important, for it denotes clearly that there is some responsibility, and it indicates that this is not simply compensation granted by some Yeah. ...international body, as would be the case for unfortunate victims of a flood. Given all of the above, what can people who were made refugees in 1948 and their descendants look forward to? I have some very gloomy conclusions for you, but these are only elements of a solution which, in my opinion, embodies at least a modicum of what may be called attainable justice. It's not very— Encouraging stuff. And I have 5 points if I'm given enough time to get through this. The first of them, as I've already said, is that there must be some symbolic recognition by Israel of the hurt that was done to the Palestinians who were made refugees in 1948. The whole Israeli position is based on a lie. The whole Israeli position has simply got to be changed. It is unconscionable and unacceptable. And as long as it continues, The war will not be over and there will not be peace and there will never be reconciliation. It's as simple as that. The Arab countries will have long since made peace with Israel, are in the process now of and will soon have completed the making of peace with Israel. But the Palestinian-Israeli conflict will not be solved until and unless this position changes. This is going to be essential if the bitter pill of the loss of most of the Palestinian homeland is finally to be swallowed by the Palestinians. Palestinians, and if the page is finally going to be turned on the injustice that was done to, in particular, the refugees. This is going to have to include but go beyond mere statements by politicians. And in my opinion, it has to extend to the very powerful means of socialization under the direct control of the Israeli state, like any state, things like history textbooks in the schools, things like indoctrination within the military, and so on. Along the lines, very much I think along the lines of what Japan has finally done many decades after the fact with regard to its relations with Korea, with China, and with some other parts of Asia. Not just statements by officials, but also a serious reexamination of the kind of distortions and deceit as far as the record of Japanese imperialism, which has to my way of thinking been an exemplary case of a very difficult turnaround by very proud people and enabled the beginnings of a turning of an ugly page in relations between Japan and some of its neighbors. That's the first point. Secondly, it must be accepted that all Palestinian refugees and their descendants have the right to return to their homes in principle, although it is also going to have to be accepted that in practice force majeure is Yes. Is going to prevent most of them from being able to exercise this right, whether this is a result of Israel's refusal to allow them to go back or a result simply of the disappearance of their homes and villages many decades ago. The UN resolution says return to their homes. It doesn't say return to their homelands or their homeland. It says return to their homes. In most cases, those homes simply do not exist. In exercise of this right, even though we're— in my opinion, are going to have to accept that most people Will not be able to exercise it. At least some Palestinians, in my opinion, should be allowed to return to what is now Israel, even if this is done under the guise of family reunification, which might make it easier for Israeli politicians and Israeli public opinion to swallow. For people, for example, whose home villages still exist in the Galilee, for people who still have family living there, and there are many divided families in between—

Halim Barakat: Abu Jahl.

Rashid Khalidi: Abu Jahl Shemali camp and Tire and the villages in the Galilee. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of families which actually have members on both sides of the border. Even if it is done on the basis that these people have to be willing to become citizens of the State of Israel with all that entails, and even if this means a regulated entry of only a few thousand people or tens of thousands of people over many, many years. Now Israel has offered once before in the conciliation talks in '49 to accept family reunification for up to 100,000 Palestinian refugees. In my opinion, there's no earthly reason why today an Israel which is at peace with its neighbors or will soon be at peace with its Arab neighbors, a country which bestrides the region like an economic and strategic colossus, cannot make such a simple gesture. It's particularly galling for Palestinians who may be suffering persecution as close to their ancestral homes as South Lebanon that they cannot return to Palestine. Palestine while Jewish victims of persecution from much farther afield are welcome. It's lucky that people in Lebanon can't read— Palestinians in Lebanon can't read the New York Times this morning. A piece about people from India being welcomed in Kiryat Arba as Israelis. A third element in reparations for all those who will not be allowed to return, the vast majority, and compensation for those who lost property In 1948 is also essential. Given that most refugees will not be allowed to return, in my opinion, the sums involved are going to be very large indeed. My reading of the Hedaywi-Qubrasi analysis is an even larger sum than Professor Peretz came up with, tens of billions of dollars in 1994 dollars. But in any case, we're talking about very large sums of money. Even if one uses an entirely different approach and talks about $20,000 $1 million per person for an arbitrarily chosen figure of 2 million eligible refugees. The number of eligible refugees can't possibly be 4 million. There are only 5 million Palestinians and nobody ever claimed that more than half of the Palestinian population became refugees. So how do we get to 4 million refugees and descendants? That's impossible. We're talking 2, 3, 2.5 million refugees. Even if you use the approach I'm suggesting, we're talking about a figure of $40 billion. Now that may seem like a lot of money and it It is a lot of money. But I think we should recall that it amounts to a little more than a decade— a little more than a decade worth of US aid to Israel. Over a period of time, it is not that much money. I would add here myself, just a personal comment, that if compensation for property lost as a result of this conflict is the basis for part of these reparations, as it was for a part of the German reparations to individual Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and to the State of Israel, then in my opinion, there's no reason why Jews who left or were forced to leave Arab countries in and after 1948 shouldn't argue that they have a perfectly legitimate claim. And I don't see any reason why this should not be resolved as well. I would warn obviously against an attempt to simply claim that we're talking about population exchange, which is outrageous. It's outrageous in terms of Zionism. These are people who are going up to Zion, who are going in the right direction, whereas the Palestinians are being expelled from their homeland, but it is outrageous for other reasons. Nevertheless, the principle, if applied in one case, should, in my opinion, also be applied in the other case with all the differences involved.

Mohamed Hallaj: Yes.

Rashid Khalidi: That's the third element. The fourth element is the least controversial, and this is the right to live in the Palestinian state-to-be, whenever it comes into being, to carry that state's passport. Now, this is a right which is already putatively extended to all Palestinians by the 1988 Declaration of Independence, which has still not really come into force in the West Bank and Gaza. This, as you perhaps know, stated that the state of Palestine was the state of all the Palestinians. The right to live in this state will obviously necessarily be restricted in practical terms by the new country's economic absorptive capacity, which echoes of the mandate period phrase. This is obviously limited, but it could be increased and obviously should be increased by determined efforts by the Palestinian public and private sectors. Whether such efforts will be exerted, in my opinion, will be one of the great tests of the Palestinian Authority. And in my opinion, it should be a primary concern of Palestinians in holding this authority responsible and holding it to account for its actions. I was going to talk about a comparison here between This and the situation of Israel in the wake of the '48 war. I'll skip it in the interest of finishing in time. Finally, there remain 2 groups who, in my opinion, whose situation, in my opinion, requires special attention. These are Palestinian refugees in Jordan and those in Lebanon. And some points of what I say about the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon apply as well to those in Syria. Each of these 2 groups has special requirements. If this problem is to be resolved in terms of attainable justice. Palestinian refugees in Jordan, beyond any of those who choose to return to the areas under control of the Palestinian Authority today or to the Palestinian state tomorrow, and beyond any reparations they may receive, deserve, in my opinion, a final and equitable resolution of their legal status. In my opinion, this can only come about as a result of a constitutional arrangement freely arrived at between democratically elected governments in Jordan and Palestine. One solution which has been talked about, which might be envisaged in Jordan, would involve most Palestinians remaining in Jordan with a choice of either full rights of citizenship as Jordanians or alternatively somewhat more limited rights as citizens of the Palestinian component of some Jordanian-Palestinian confederation to be established if that is what the 2 peoples decide they want. Now, such an arrangement, or any other arrangement which is acceptable to a majority of both Palestinians and Jordanians, will hopefully be possible in the not too distant future.

Mohamed Hallaj: Thank you.

Rashid Khalidi: I have to say with sadness that this can take place only when the resolution of vital questions, of serious questions at issue between the 2 peoples, has been raised from its current degrading level, which in my opinion is something about the level of the school playground wherein we witness the political leaders on both sides in effect poking one another in the eye in a tit-for-tat manner like children instead of addressing problems deliberately, calmly, and rationally. Once we have gotten above the common level of inter-Arab discourse, which is where this relationship unfortunately is, in other words, once people are talking in a statesmanlike fashion and once we are talking about serious matters in a serious way, can this issue be resolved. Unfortunately, It cannot be resolved in the present climate. As far as— and in my opinion, it's not going to be that difficult to resolve once these conditions obtain, once you have democratically elected governments which talk about these things seriously, quietly, responsibly.

Mohamed Hallaj: Lebanon.

Rashid Khalidi: As far as Lebanon is concerned, a resolution of the status of the Palestinians there is extremely urgent because of the suffering that they're undergoing now and because this is something which impacts directly on the internal equilibrium of Lebanon itself, and particularly because it is now up at near the top of the internal Lebanese political agenda once again. In Lebanon, there is simply no option for a constitutional arrangement such as might be envisaged in Jordan since there is simply no likelihood of Lebanon granting most Palestinians full rights of citizenship. This is an option which is unacceptable to all of Lebanon's major political forces, and it's probably also unacceptable to most of the Palestinians in Lebanon. If all the other things that I've talked about, all the other provisions I've talked about— compensation, reparations, return of a small number of people and so on— if all of these things come into force, some Palestinians in Lebanon and some perhaps in Syria may leave for the Palestinian state with their newly acquired rights to do so. A few others may choose to return to their original home villages in Galilee as Israeli citizens if that is allowed. And if that's allowed?

Halim Barakat: Yes.

Rashid Khalidi: And many will undoubtedly use their new Palestinian passports to travel abroad, as they do today, in search of work. But unfortunately, a large number, perhaps most of the people in Lebanon and Syria, will probably have to stay where they are, at least for an indeterminate period. I would argue that the status of those people who live in Lebanon is in absolutely urgent need of revision. This will at the very least have to involve their receiving Palestinian passports and nationality, They're receiving some kind of permanent resident status, which is not something at the whim of the authorities, and they're receiving certain kinds of rights in Lebanon. This is not going to be an easy thing to achieve, and it's going to involve long and difficult negotiations. Compared to the plight of virtually all other Palestinian communities, that of those in Lebanon is perhaps the cruelest of all. These people sacrificed prodigiously for the Palestinian cause since the 1960s. They have lived in harsh conditions between '48 and '68 and again in the years since 1982. And they have fewer possibilities of integration into the host society than do Palestinians in Jordan or Syria where they have very great possibilities of integration, socially at least and economically. While important aspects of this problem are going to have to be resolved in negotiations with Israel and via Israel's accepting some share of its responsibility for for a solution. In a significant sense, from this moment, from now, before final status, before anything else, this is a problem for the Palestinians and the Lebanese to solve. It is going to be yet another test of the performance of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO as to whether it shoulders its responsibility to represent all the Palestinian people as it claims to do, or— and begins a serious negotiation of this matter with the Lebanese government, or alternatively Whether in effect it shrivels into becoming nothing more than the bargaining agent only for the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In conclusion, all I can say is that there's obviously no solution, simple solution certainly, and I would argue perhaps no absolutely just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue. The elements that I've put forward, modest, unsatisfactory though they may seem to to almost everybody here. They're not very satisfactory to me. As limited and as miserable as they are, they're going to be exceedingly hard to achieve. Doing this is going to require on the Palestinian side a level of concentration on this issue and a level of seriousness which have rarely been exhibited in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations so far, in my opinion, and I was associated with them until a year and a half ago. It can only take place, in my opinion also, with the passing of the current phase of Israeli tutelage over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, currently partially occupied and partially liberated. This is the interim period which I think might better be called an Israeli mandate over what is left of Palestine with Yitzhak Rabin in the role of Sir Herbert Samuel as High Commissioner. If you read the New York Times again this morning, the Israeli position on elections gives you an indication of the sort of Sir Herbert Samuel-like position that Danny Rothschild took. You cannot have these parties and you may have these parties and we won't allow those parties to run in elections. This has to pass before this issue can really be seriously negotiated. Together with Jerusalem, together with the issue of settlements in the occupied territories, the refugee issue is the big remaining issue between Palestinians and Israelis. Negotiating a solution based on what I've called attainable justice will mean that the conflict is finally over, finally resolved. And in my opinion, this can cannot be done on the unequal basis which has obtained so far in these negotiations and which has resulted in interim agreements which, by and large, are neither fair nor equitable. Obviously, it's the balance of forces which has brought us to where we are, and obviously, it's the balance of forces which has determined much of this outcome. But a permanent settlement, which is, after all, what 242 talks about, real peace, lasting peace, a just peace, is going to have to be based on more than the overwhelming strength of one side and the weakness of another. That is something which— that is to say, a just and lasting peace— is something which both sides, and not just one, is going to have to be willing to sacrifice for. And it is something which will require of the Palestinian side in particular a level of performance which has been lacking in the past. But I would argue that a just resolution of the refugee issue which is after all the issue at the heart of the Palestine question and at the heart of this conflict, will require no less than this. Thank you very much.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you, Rashid. We have heard 4 excellent papers addressing the question of the Palestinian refugee, their current problem and their future. We have some short time for questions and answers. If you'd like, please come down to the microphone, identify yourself, and address the particular person you wish the question to be answered. Professor Segal.

Jerome Segal: Yeah, Jerome Segal. Rashid, when you were summing up, you talked about refugees, settlements, and Jerusalem being sort of the 3 big issues. It occurs to me that one way of getting at least some better purchase on the refugee question is to link it maybe more closely with the issue of settlements. And there are 2 dimensions that strike me. If you have 100,000 Or more Israelis in the West Bank, and you just made an estimate of the value of per person the housing stock, let's say one took, say, $20,000 a person, then one's talking about $2 billion right there, and that becomes something that might figure into this. The second part of the dimension is what you were saying about the Israeli offer in '48, to bring back 100,000 people. And I think that that's a very important thing to continue to build on and remind Israelis historically that that was put on the table by earlier Israeli governments. That also, it seems to me, can be linked to the issue of the settlements with the Palestinian position being that not all of the settlers in fact have to leave. The key question is whether or not they're willing to live as foreign residents within a Palestinian state. And so there's this sort of possibility of some symmetry with respect to Palestinians who would be coming back, and maybe an open question as to whether or not initially they would be Palestinian citizens living inside of Israel, people who have dual citizenship, or ultimately if they wanted to have Israeli citizenship. But there's something there on both of these accounts, it seems to me, Thank you.

Samih Farsoun: Please.

Rashid Khalidi: Well, I'd just say 2 things.

Jerome Segal: As Dr.

Rashid Khalidi: Hillel pointed out, in addition to the question of 1948 refugees, there's also the question of 1967 displaced persons. And to make this all the more complicated, in addition to refugee populations outside of Palestine, a very large proportion of them are Palestinian refugees. A large portion of the population of the West Bank and the majority of the population of the Gaza Strip, as most of you know, are 1948 refugees. So I think it should be taken into account that there is a very large stock of extremely attractive mountaintop housing all over the West Bank, which if the settlement issue is resolved in one fashion, might involve some of these people leaving and some of this property being potentially available. It'll be very interesting I'm interested to see how Israel proceeds because I can easily see Israel demanding compensation for any property which for whatever reason is left behind. But there's not going to be a lot of space and you have a huge line of people in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip already lacking housing whose ability to build has been limited or completely prohibited over the past 27 years and who could use this. I brought up the issue of the 100,000, the offer of 100,000 100,000 in 1949 for just that reason. It should be put back on the table. Obviously, an offer put on the table in 1949 and withdrawn since then has no validity, but it is worth mentioning simply because at one time responsible Israeli leaders were willing to at least contemplate such a possibility. At a time when the population of Israel is 5.4 million, even though 20% of that population or 19% of that population is Arab, one might imagine that such a number or a smaller number would not be inconceivable or should not be inconceivable for Israelis today.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you. Please identify yourself.

Ahmed Adin Ahmed: Ahmed Adin Ahmed, Minaret of Freedom Institute. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. My question is to Professor Peretz. You explained the differences between the Israeli side and the Palestinian side on how compensation should be handled, whether it would go individually to the people who were dispossessed or whether it would go collectively for their resettlement of refugees in Arab countries. I wanted to know whether the counterclaims suffer from a similar dispute. That is to say, that if any compensation were to be paid to Jewish Arabs, that it would be— from the Palestinian point of view, would have to go to them individually, while from the Israeli point of view, it should go to Israel for the continuing resettlement of Jewish immigrants.

Don Peretz: I don't think the discussions have gotten that far as to whether Jews from Arab countries, or say from Iraq or Egypt or Syria, would be compensated individually or in global compensation. So far it's just been discussed as a general principle by Israelis. I don't think it's been raised at all, as far as I know, by any of the Arab countries, although some Arab countries, Iraq, In particular, has invited Jews who left earlier to come back.

Ahmed Adin Ahmed: A general principle in the sense that it would apply both ways, in both cases?

Don Peretz: I don't think it has been discussed that way.

Samih Farsoun: Okay. Thank you. One last question, because we need to close at noon. Please, identify yourself.

Rashid Khalidi: My name is Mohamed Awais. I'm one of the refugees to Lebanon. But I noticed that all of our speakers failed to mention the Palestinian refugees inside Israel, the ones who come from villages like Tarshiha, like Meker, like Mashir, Akka, the ones who were transplanted inside Israel itself, where their villages are still— few houses are left, but they were transported into different villages like Meker. I think, Dr. Rashid, do you have anything?

Mohamed Hallaj: Yes.

Rashid Khalidi: What do you have to say about that? It's a whole other issue. There's not just an issue of homes, there's also an issue of property. And I don't know what party could open that issue up. The PLO has in effect abandoned responsibility for negotiating for that portion of the Palestinian people who are now citizens of the state of Israel. And I'm afraid it's going to have to be an issue, given that the Palestinian Authority has abandoned its responsibility to say anything about that. It's going to have to be an issue for Palestinians who are citizens of the state of Israel to open, not just their homes, but more importantly, the property that was confiscated from them in '48, '49, and '50, people who are still citizens of the state but who have, I think most importantly, lost a lot of property.

Don Peretz: Comment on that? The official Israeli position is that Compensation is available. A law was passed making compensation available to these Palestinians who were moved from one part of Israel to another. However, the rate of compensation was considered inadequate, unfair, and by and large most Palestinians who were in that category refused to accept it. As a matter of fact, there are 2 cases In which villagers from the villages on the Lebanese border, Ikrit and Bahram, have until today pressed their claims in the courts for return to their villages. And at one time the courts, early on, I guess it was 1949 or 1950, the court overrode the decision of the military government and said that the villagers had a right to return to their villages. And that's the basis of the But the military destroyed all the houses in the village and refused to comply with the order of the Supreme Court. So the issue is still an open issue in Israel.

Samih Farsoun: Thank you. We have less than 1 minute left. So, Peter Bechtold. Peter Bechtold for Professor Ellis. I very much appreciate your papers, indeed all 4 of them.

Rashid Khalidi: I understand there's There's a major debate raging within the American Jewish community about the peace process as it is taking place. Is there also debate within the American Jewish community on the refugee issues and compensation or reparations? And if so, what are the percentages of people who are taking what position?

Speaker 8: Well, I think the discussion in the Jewish community is not a deep discussion. That is, it's a discussion about— between the progressives and the conservatives, progressives claiming a victory in terms of retaining Israeli innocence by withdrawing from the occupation, and conservatives saying that this will threaten the security of the state of Israel. And this is where I would also get to a point that Rashid—

Don Peretz: I'm sorry.

Speaker 8: Brought up about demanding full admittance of the wrong done to Palestinians. He's talking from obviously a Palestinian perspective and a political perspective, and I respect that. But this relates to your question. Unless Jews and unless the Jewish community admits finally that what we did, whatever perspective, takes on it, whether it was absolutely necessary from a Jewish perspective or unnecessary, regardless, that what we did was wrong. Unless we admit that, there's no future for us as a people. I believe that it will ultimately be admitted, but we have to press the issue not simply on political grounds, But because the discussion that we have in our community about Jewish history and a Jewish future cannot have any depth unless we realize that the other whom we have displaced is intimate to our history and our future. This is why, from a Jewish perspective, the return of Palestinians is absolutely essential. It's right from a Palestinian perspective.

Marc Ellis: From a Jewish perspective.

Jerome Segal: Thank you.

Speaker 8: It's absolutely necessary. Therefore, the discussion in the Jewish community, including the discussion in tikkun, is not a deep discussion about our future. It is an attempt to avoid the central issue of our time. That is, that what was done to us, we have done to Palestinians. When we finally admit that, And admit it in a practical sense as well, that is, welcome those whom we have displaced back, then we will have a discussion which is of depth. Until then, no. So the discussion that's going on now is mostly either a discussion about how we're going to lose everything or a sense of congratulations for allowing A truncated, ghettoized, demilitarized Palestinian entity to exist. Thank you.