Palestinian Refugees And The Peace Process

The Palestinian refugee issue remains a central component of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This book explores the demographic and developmental challenges which the return of refugees to a future Palestinian state would generate.

In this clearly written and balanced volume, longtime Middle East expert Don Peretz examines the current conditions and future prospects of the Palestine refugees and the members of the Palestinian diaspora. He reviews their demographics, living conditions, political identity, and perspectives on the peace process, including the Gaza-Jericho plan. He explores a variety of proposed solutions, including repatriation, compensation, and resettlement.

After sketching the historical background and reviewing conflicting estimates of the amount of property involved, the volume investigates U.S. and UN settlement proposals developed--behind closed doors--in the 1950s and '60s, and explains how the peace process from Camp David I to Camp David II and beyond has actually hindered a settlement of property claims.

This edited volume explores Canada’s foreign policy relationship with the Palestinians and broader Middle East Peace Process (MEPP). Canada was intensively involved from 1992 to 2000 in peacebuilding as a mediator in the multilateral part of the MEPP, as chair of the Refugee Working Group, and sponsor of Track II negotiations. This all changed after a significant mid-2000s discursive and policy shift when Canada withdrew from the politics of Israel-Palestine peacebuilding and took a strong partisan stance in favour of Israel. Through 10 chapters by current and former government insiders and academics with extensive field experience, this unique edited volume offers insight into decades of evolution in Canadian policy toward the Palestinians, MEPP and the Middle East. It arrives at an important time when the international community is reconsidering how it views Israel’s entrenched occupation of the Palestinians, after three failed decades of United States-led efforts to find peace through a negotiated two-state model. Today, peace may never have appeared further away after the Trump Administration adopted policies directly contradictory to the MEPP. This proved a test to Canada’s own official policy toward Israel and Palestine, its longest running and most important region of engagement in the Middle East. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, guest edited by Jeremy Wildeman and Emma Swan.

This thesis focuses on the status of Palestinian refugees following final peace negotiations. The major conclusions of the thesis are that basic Palestinian refugee rights are not likely to be honored given the immense imbalance of power between Israel and the PLO; that the Palestinian refugee community will likely become a permanently marginalized outcast group in the Middle East; and that the probable result of this condition will be an increase in Palestinian political violence and terrorism against Israeli, American, and allied Arab interests. This is likely to be achieved through mobilization of former refugees by Islamic fundamentalist groups, capitalizing on the failure of the nationalist peace effort. These conclusions are reached through a close examination of the specific Palestinian refugee question and applying a general model of ethnonationalist collective action to the Palestinian question. The major policy conclusion for the United States is that to protect its own interests in the Middle East and reduce violence, the United States must treat seriously the rights of Palestinian refugees during regional peace negotiations. American and Israeli interests on this key issue are clearly divergent; they should be recognized as such and treated accordingly.

The repatriation of Palestinians is a highly topical issue, and a critical component of any future peace process for Israel/Palestine. Until now, the mechanics of repatriation have not been dealt with in detail. This book explores the notion that the Palestinian refugee case is exceptional through the comparative study of refugee repatriation, and asks: To what extent can the Palestinian case be said to be unique? Where are the divergences, the overlaps and points of similarity with other refugee situations? What lessons can be drawn from these comparisons? How can these lessons inform refugee organizations, the donor community and policy makers? The expert contributors examine the contextual and methodological field, reviewing the trends in forced migration and refugee studies as well as studying the historical and political background of UNHCR and the negotiations around the Palestinian refugee issue. Taking a comparative approach, the book incorporates case studies of specific refugee situations from around the world, revealing key issues in the formulation of repatriation programmes and highlighting lessons to be learnt.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: "-", University of Freiburg, language: English, abstract: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the greatest conflicts of our time, especially as no peace effort has proven to be really effective. From the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, the history of the Palestinians and the Israelis is defined by perpetual conflict with one another. Israelis and Palestinians are entangled with each other and alienated from one another in almost every imaginable way. From 1948 to 1973, Arabs and Israelis engaged in four great wars with heavy casualties on both sides. The United States of America has deployed enormous resources as peace broker in this conflict partly because of its special relationship to Israel and partly because of its economic and strategic interests in the Middle East. Successive American administrations have maintained the tradition of mediation, but the most genuine commitment was made by the Clinton administration, culminating in the signing of the Wye River Memorandum in 1998. This mediation effort notwithstanding, peace between the Israelis and Palestinians is still an imaginary luxury and violence remains the order of the day between the two peoples. The aim of this review paper is to analyze the lack of bold leadership on the part of the United States of America in brokering a lasting peace deal between Isrealis and Palestinians. This paper is divided into three parts and the first part retraces the history of the conflict from the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 to the Yom Kippur war of 1973. The second part examines the main issues of contention in the peace process, beginning with the United States' lack of neutrality, Israeli Security concerns, the refugee problem, the status quo of Jerusalem, the issue of the occupied territories and the Palestinian quest for self determination. The last part p