The Palestine Papers
"We can't refer to the past"
Israel refuses to take responsibility for creating the Palestinian refugee
crisis.
Laila Al-Arian Last Modified: 24 Jan 2011 19:41 GMT
Nearly six million Palestinian refugees live in countries around the world [EPA]
It's a core issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that dates back to
Israel's creation: the forced expulsion in 1948 of hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians from their homes by Israeli soldiers and Jewish paramilitary
groups. But The Palestine Papers show that far from resolving this thorny
problem, Israeli negotiators refused to even acknowledge their responsibility
in creating the world's largest refugee population.
Some of the most contentious meetings between Israeli and Palestinian
negotiators involved the "refugee file". On several occasions, Israeli
officials insisted that negotiators should move forward and forget "the past",
even as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to languish in refugee
camps under abysmal conditions. As talks on refugees progressed during the
Annapolis process, Israeli negotiators were aided by the US and French
officials, who took their side on the issue of responsibility.
On March 24, 2008, Tzipi Livni, the then-Israeli foreign minister, said Israel
alone should not bear the cost of financial compensation for Palestinian
refugees in any final peace agreement. "Compensating refugees is an
international matter," she told Palestinian negotiators, "and that is why
reference to responsibility would be wrong. [The reason for this is] because it
was a problem for all Arab states, then it became a Palestinian Israeli
conflict, with the Arabs on the sidelines asking for a resolution".
Livni went on to say that Israelis, too, should be compensated.
Livni: "What about the people who suffered from terror attacks, are you
going to apologise?"
Saeb Erekat [PA chief negotiator]: "We do. We condemn each one."
Livni: "People suffer during war. People suffer with their lives. They die.
We can relate both of us to the suffering."
By August 31, 2008, these converging ideas on "suffering" were included in an
offer conveyed by Ehud Olmert, the then-Israeli prime minister, to Mahmoud
Abbas, the Palestinian president. It was delivered orally and without a
traceable paper; and it was appallingly vague, diluting even the most basic
refugee rights. The Palestinian Authority (PA) later summarised the offer in an
internal confidential memo:
Refugees
* Israel would acknowledge the suffering of but not responsibility
for Palestinian refugees (language is in the preamble). In parallel, there
must also be a mention of Israeli (or Jewish) suffering.
* Israel would take in 1,000 refugees per year for a period of 5 years
on "humanitarian" grounds. In addition, programmes of "family reunification"
would continue.
* Israel would contribute to the compensation of the refugees through
the mechanism and based on suffering.
* Not clear what the heads of damage for compensation would be, just
that there would be no acknowledgement of responsibility for the refugees, and
that compensation, and not restitution or return (apart from the 5,000), would
be the only remedy.
Two weeks later, on September 14, 2008, lawyers from the Negotiation Support
Unit of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) supplied Abbas with
detailed questions for Olmert, which subsequently went unanswered:
* What does it mean to acknowledge the suffering of refugees, without
reference to responsibility? How is that different from acknowledging the
suffering of people as a result of, say, a natural disaster? How do you propose
to deal with the issue of responsibility?
* If you recognise suffering, why do you refuse to deal with
compensation for non-material damages?
* Why is the suffering of Israelis relevant to the refugee issue?
As Livni attempted to minimise the scope of Palestinian suffering caused by
Israel's creation and colonisation of Palestinian land, she also suggested that
Palestinians close the book on their grievances once and for all, telling PLO
negotiator Ahmed Qurei: "I feel like we can't refer to the past". To which
Qurei replied: "I do not want to go back to the past to become its slave but to
pave the way for the future."
Related
"I never said the Diaspora will vote"
The Palestinian Authority proposed that only a handful of the nearly 6 million
Palestinian refugees be allowed to return.
Amira Howeidy: PA relinquished right of return
Palestinian negotiators are engaged in talks that they know have ceded almost
every Palestinian right.
Ali Abunimah: Jordan, PLO clash on refugee issue
The PLO appears to be vigorously defending its right to solely decide on the
refugee issue with Israel.
Three months earlier, on June 21, 2008, Livni had once again tried to deflect
blame and to draw moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians. "Instead
of responsibility we can talk of suffering of both our people," she said. "By
the way on responsibility whose responsibility is it for keeping them in the
camps? The Arab world! Responsibility is not just about the war, but what
happened after. For creating false hope. [We need to address also] the Jewish
refugees. Maybe as part of the international fund."
Erekat's reply: "But we never caused anything to the Jews. This will not be in
an agreement."
In a US-Palestinian bilateral meeting on July 16 of that year, Condoleezza
Rice, the then-US secretary of state, echoed Livni's sentiment, telling
Palestinians that the responsibility is not Israel's alone, and that, anyway,
they need to move on.
Condoleezza Rice: "If you want to talk about responsibility it is the
responsibility of the international community, not Israel. They created Israel."
[Zeinah Salahi (of the PLO's Negotiation Support Unit) argues that Israeli
actions post-statehood are clearly their responsibility. This is dismissed by
Rice.]
Rice: Responsibility is a loaded term. [Notes the example of reparations
for slavery in the US.] I've always objected to it. It's not forward looking.
Would I personally be better off? I don't know. But I do support affirmative
action. [
] Bad things happen to people all around the world all the time. You
need to look forward.
Sensing that the US involvement in the refugee argument was not productive and
its stance far from objective, on August 14, Erekat said American mediators
should be excluded from this particular discussion:
Erekat: Recognition of responsibility is a bilateral issue. I don't want
the Americans to be involved in this.
Tal Becker [senior adviser to Livni]: Our respective narratives cannot be
reconciled. You think you are the victims. We think we are the victims.
But French officials held a similar view to the Americans. According to an
email by PLO legal adviser Ziyad Clot summarising a meeting with a French
delegation, then-foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said "since Israel was
created under the auspices of the UN, the International Community must pay". A
Palestinian representative then suggested "the Brits have a major
responsibility in the creation of the issue", a statement that apparently went
over well with the visitors. "The French loved it," the email states.
Bernard Koucher also asked about "the status of the discussion between Israeli
and Palestinian leaderships on that issue, his view being that it is the most
difficult problem".
Indeed, many people would agree with that assessment. But without an
acknowledgment or apology from Israel on the refugee crisis, it's an issue
that's unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
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