How Israel Can Solve the Problem of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon

By Stephen J. Sosebee

In their current form, the Oslo accords suffer from a number of obvious weaknesses that make efforts for a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute increasingly difficult, given the seeming diminution of the goodwill from Israel's current Labor government as Israel's 1996 elections approach. Perhaps the greatest weakness of the Declaration of Principles signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization concerns the status of the Palestinian refugees who were forced from or fled their homes in the wars of 1948 and 1967. Although there will be no lasting peace in the Middle East as long as there are stateless Palestinians living in refugee camps, the Oslo agreement does not solve this problem.

On March 7, the foreign ministers of Israel, Egypt and Jordan and Nabil Shaath of the Palestinian National Authority met in Amman to discuss this issue of Palestinian refugees. The Arab delegations were united and consistent in their calls for a swift return of all 1967 refugees, with an immediate return of 1,000 refugees as a first step and an important confidence-building measure. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres vetoed the proposal, calling for a slower and more gradual approach.

The government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin opposes outright the return of the "displaced persons" from 1948, and expresses willingness to consider only a token return of 1967 "displaced persons" to the West Bank and Gaza. Israel contends that there are only 200,000 Palestinian refugees from 1967, a number which clearly does not include their children. The Palestinians put the number at 800,000, while the United Nations estimates that there are 700,000 1967 refugees from Palestine. Since the original total of refugees from the war of 1948 was estimated conservatively at 750,000, they and their descendants clearly number over a million more.

The Likud government of Menachem Begin agreed in the 1978 Camp David accords with Egypt to return all the 1967 refugees unequivocally. However, the current Likud stand is even less flexible than that of the Rabin government. "If we want to go on living in this country, a solution to the refugee problem must be found elsewhere," wrote Likud Knesset member Ariel Sharon recently. "Even if it goes against the Camp David accords." The right in Israel has attacked the Labor government for even talking about the refugee issue.

Yet, talk is cheap and the March 7th meeting ended without any progress other than agreeing to form a permanent committee to deal with the refugee issue both on a ministerial level and through a team of technocrats, who are to meet every three weeks. For those languishing in the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, this falls far short of addressing even their basic rights. "We are not optimistic that there is anything for us in this peace agreement," explains Ahmed Mustafa in Ein el-Hilwa camp in southern Lebanon. "Israel did not spend the last 45 years attacking us to let us return to Palestine."

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon find their status increasingly tenuous.

Israelis may not want over a million Palestinian refugees to return to Haifa, Jaffa and the more than 400 Arab villages they have since destroyed within Israel's Green Line, but the Israeli government cannot continue to act as if the solution to the refugee problem exists outside of Palestine. Just as Rabin found that "force, might and beatings" could not solve the intifada, he now must understand that Palestinian refugees cannot simply be settled involuntarily in neighboring Arab states.

Palestinian National Authority leaders, too, will find it is not possible to move forward politically in negotiations while ignoring their brethren in the refugee camps. Nor can Lebanon or Syria be expected to absorb within their borders all of the refugees they took in many years ago, but who still consider themselves Palestinians.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon find their status increasingly tenuous. In April 1994, Lebanese Foreign Minister Faris Boueiz proposed to "redistribute" outside of Lebanon the more than 400,000 refugees who have not taken Lebanese citizenship. Under his proposal, 20 percent would go to an already overpopulated Gaza or Jericho; another 25 percent would join kin wherever they might be; and the remaining should be given priority by any country with space for immigrants. Under no circumstances would Lebanon give those 400,000 Palestinians the type of citizenship they enjoy in Jordan.

Palestinian refugees languish in Lebanon as unwelcome guests. They are not permitted to work and as aliens have few rights or protections under the law. What protection they had came from the PLO prior to the Israeli invasion of 1982. Since then they have been massacred and attacked. "We do not feel safe here," complains Umm Mahmoud, who lost four sons defending the Shatila camp from the Shi'i Amal militia in 1988. "Anytime they can come and kill us. For them, a Palestinian is a dog."

"Palestinians here are not permitted to rebuild the refugee camps destroyed in the wars," says Adnan Mohmamed of UNRWA in Sidon. "We cannot expand in the existing refugee camps, which are too small, and we cannot establish new camps to house the people displaced during the many wars."

Homeless Palestinians

As a result, there are tens of thousands of homeless Palestinians in Lebanon. Gaza Hospital, for example, was once a proud PLO facility treating the bustling Palestinian refugee populations and poor Lebanese for free in Beirut. It is now a shelter for dozens of homeless families who have no other source of shelter following the years of civil war.

There is no war currently in Beirut and the Palestinian refugee camps are seen as the main obstacles to the rebuilding of that shattered city. Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri recently told a Palestinian delegation that they and their camps would eventually have to be removed as part of Beirut's beautification plans. "Beirut can again be the cultural and commercial center of the Arab world," says a Christian businessman. "But only if the Palestinians return to their homeland first."

Since the PLO focused most of its limited resources and political weight on the occupied and autonomous territories, an air of deep despair has collectively taken root among Palestinians in Lebanon. Where once the PLO was strong enough to challenge any domestic adversary in Lebanon, the majority of Palestinians now look at all of the Lebanese and Palestinian factions with distrust and skepticism. "We cannot say proudly that our leaders have done anything but neglect our situation," says an unemployed father in Shatila. "As Palestinians, we want to participate in the political process, but there are no leaders or parties we can trust or embrace." Even those few in Lebanon who agree with the peace process as a starting point for their eventual return to Palestine are finding it increasingly difficult to discern any positive indications that the Oslo accords eventually will bring them a brighter future.

"We have been sold out by our own leadership," says Bashir Ahmed in Shatila camp. "Arafat is behaving both as a prostitute for the Israelis and a dictator to his own people. Is that what we struggled for? Did I raise revolutionary children to fight for autonomy in Gaza?"

The need to address the national and political status of more then 400,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon within the Oslo Accord framework is a key to long-term peace in the Middle East. Though cynics claim it is too early in negotiations to tackle this complex and emotional issue, it is not hard to see that there is a rather simple and fair solution to two major obstacles that threaten to derail the accords.

There are tens of thousands of new homes in the West Bank in the form of illegal Israeli settlements. While Rabin may not yet be strong enough to remove the settlers against their will, there is no question that eventually he will have to if he is sincere about achieving a long-term peaceful settlement with the Palestinians. Moving Jewish settlers back to Israel and resettling Palestinians refugees from Lebanon into the settlements would solve both the problem of illegal settlements and of the return of Palestinians refugees not to Jaffa or Haifa, inside Israel's Green Line, but to the West Bank and Gaza inside Palestine. This would not only solve two issues at once, it would also lead to the lasting and real peace that is a necessity for Israel's economic integration into the Middle East.

Ignoring the plight of the Palestinian refugees, especially in Lebanon, and continuing to permit armed settlers to live illegally on stolen Arab land, will only make the path to peace a bloody and ultimately impossible one. Moving the Palestinian refugees into the West Bank settlements will provide war-torn Lebanon with a chance to rebuild without having to deal with an oppressed and militant refugee population. Palestine, with a unified population within its national borders, can begin a new era of state building with confidence. And, not least, Israel will have a peace agreement that will last beyond the rule of Palestinian National Authority President Yasser Arafat.

Stephen J. Sosebee, a free-lance journalist, divides his time between the U.S. and Israel/Palestine.