The Palestinian Refugee Problem: Conflicting Interpretations

Elia Zureik is professor of sociology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Since 1992, he has been a member of the Palestinian delegation to the Refugee Working Group of the multilateral track of the Middle East peace talks.

The circumstances surrounding the Palestinian refugee exodus during the 1948 and 1967 wars have always been a contentious issue, and this is reflected in published research, starting with a debate over the number of refugees, who was responsible for their dispersal, and the status of their living conditions. Ultimately, the debate was also reflected in the array of proposed solutions to the refugee problem. The last decade has seen an intellectual industry mushroom around the study of refugees generally, with several think tanks and research centres springing up in North America, Europe and the Middle East, some of which direct their attention specifically to the study of Palestinian refugees.

Origins

More ink has been spilled during the last half century in discussing the origins of the refugee problem than on any other aspect of the conflict, with each side presenting its version of history. The last few years have seen the issue crystallise around a number of positions. Although Palestinian scholars, the refugees themselves and a small contingent of Western scholars have highlighted the coerced nature of the 1948 refugee exodus, Israeli officials continue to reject any Israeli responsibility for the expulsion of Palestinians from what became Israel. Until a decade ago this stance was shared unanimously by Israeli intellectuals and academics, some of whom have lately begun to question the official version promoted by successive Israeli governments.

 

This questioning came about because of four factors. First, mounting evidence, enhanced by the availability of declassified official Israeli sources, confirmed Israel’s role in the expulsion of Palestinian refugees. Second, the success of the Zionist project of state-building brought about a degree of self-confidence that encouraged a limited number of Israeli intellectuals to engage in soul-searching and entertain criticism of their country’s conduct in the 1948 war. Third, the academic face of social science and historical research in Israel underwent significant change with the entry of a younger generation of scholars who were more receptive to critical theory and methodology and who, unlike the old guard, were not part of the established Orientalist school of historical research. Fourth, the Oslo agreement between the Palestinians and Israel put several issues on the table for final-status negotiations. It became apparent after many rounds of talks that the fate of the Palestinian refugees was central to resolving the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, prompting policymakers and academics to examine the various facets of the refugee problem.

 

Overall, however, Israeli and Palestinian official versions still present diametrically opposing views of what happened in 1948. The Palestinian position is reiterated in a paper put out by the Palestinian Authority,¹ and the official Israeli position is stated in a government background paper.² As expected, the Palestinian position puts the blame on Israel for creating the refugee problem, and the Israeli position attributes the creation of the problem to the Palestinians themselves and to Arab governments. Palestinian and Israeli versions also differ with regard to the number of refugees created in 1948. The Israeli government puts the figure at a maximum of 400,000, while the Palestinians cite a figure twice as large, around 800,000 to 900,000. The United Nations estimate is around 850,000, while Palestinian private sources cite a figure of between 750,000 and 800,000.³ Private Israeli sources, on the other hand, rely on the work of Moshe Efrat, whose calculations put the number of Palestinian refugees at around 600,000.⁴

 

A nuanced Israeli view of the 1948 events is presented by Benny Morris, who argues that the refugee problem “was born of war, not by design, Jewish or Arab”.⁵ Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israeli representative at talks on the refugee question, has referred to the “inherent immorality of the [1948] war” and, in words which echo Morris’s, noted that the country was “bisected not by design but by the sword”.⁶ This, however, should not be taken to mean that Morris subscribes to the Palestinian position regarding the refugees’ right of return to their homes. As was made abundantly clear in an interview which Morris granted to the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, he believes the Arabs started the 1948 war and have themselves to blame for the creation of the refugee problem.⁷ It is important to note that Morris expressed a similar view almost a decade ago.⁸ In contrast to Morris, another Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, provides a critical assessment of the Israeli historiography of the refugee exodus by noting that expulsion was a dominant feature of the Palestinian experience in 1947–8.⁹

 

The Palestinians, in contrast, hold Israel responsible for the consequences of the 1948 war. The ideological motivations, material losses and political consequences of what happened in 1948 are documented and analysed by Walid Khalidi and Nur Masalha.¹⁰ The Palestinian exodus is not seen as the outcome of random acts of violence against the Palestinian population, but is depicted as the fruition of a long-standing colonial attitude by the Zionist movement going back to the latter part of the nineteenth century and captured by the slogan, “A land without a people for a people without a land.”

Who Counts as a Refugee?

The Palestinians point out that there is also a dispute over the definition of who the 1948 refugees are, as was made clear in the statement of the Palestinian delegation to the first meeting of the Refugee Working Group of the Middle East peace talks, held in May 1992, Ottawa, Canada. The Palestinians include internal refugees within Israel itself who were displaced during the 1948 war and who remain displaced to this day in unrecognised villages. Their number in the mid-1980s was close to 150,000 and now stands at 250,000. Included in the definition of who is a refugee are those Palestinians who were outside Palestine when the 1948 war broke out but were prevented from returning to their homes, and those who did not register with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for one reason or another. To complicate matters further, UNRWA for administrative reasons does not preserve the refugee status of offspring born to Palestinian refugee women who marry non-refugees.

 

A related debate concerns the number of Palestinians displaced as a result of the 1967 war. The Palestinians point out that originally 400,000 Palestinians were rendered refugees in 1967, whose number now stands at close to one million. Official Israeli sources count only those Palestinians displaced in 1967, and not their descendants. Israel puts the number of 1967 refugees at 200,000.

 

Considering the various categories mentioned above, it is currently estimated that there are more than five million Palestinian refugees, constituting slightly more than 50 per cent of the Palestinian people as a whole. For more than half a century, the Palestinians have remained the largest single national group among the twenty million refugees worldwide.

Proposed Solutions

Various Israeli governments forwarded no less than twelve plans between the early 1950s and the early 1990s to resolve the refugee problem. Up to 1967 these plans focused on resettling Palestinian refugees in Arab countries. The only exception came when Israel, under pressure by the United States, briefly offered in 1949 to take back 100,000 Palestinian refugees. The offer was rejected by the Arab side and withdrawn by Israel.

 

After it captured the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel shifted its attention from neighbouring states to the occupied territories. It prepared several plans to resettle Palestinian refugees already in the territories in places outside the camps, or to turn the camps into permanent places of residence. Very little came of these plans, even though the Likud government appointed in the early 1980s a high-powered ministerial committee to come up with blueprints to resettle refugees in the West Bank and Gaza by dismantling the camps and building housing units in their place. In 1993, Shimon Peres included a chapter entitled “Ba’ayat ha-plitim” (The refugee problem) in his book Ha-Mizrah ha-tichon he-hadash (The new Middle East. Framework and processes: Towards an era of peace). Peres argued for a phased solution to the refugee problem, with Israel willing to take in some refugees on the basis of family reunification, while a substantial number of refugees would return to a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Right of Return

Palestinian Views

The Palestinian right of return remains the cornerstone of Palestinian and Arab approaches to the refugee issue. However, over the years there has been a significant shift in the articulation of the Palestinian position, from rejection of anything short of implementation of UN Resolution 194 (III) to acceptance of other modalities. In a series of articles in the 1990s, the historian Rashid Khalidi and Ziad Abu Zayyad, a minister in the Palestinian Authority’s government, altered the terms of the debate over the right of return.¹¹ The debate was no longer about whether the refugees should return to their 1948 homes. Rather, the focus now was on the following: securing an unhampered right of return for all refugees and displaced Palestinians to an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza; compensating the refugees and normalising the civil and human rights of non-returnees in neighbouring countries; granting all refugees Palestinian passports; and demanding that Israel allow a symbolic return of some refugees from the 1948 war and recognise that a historical injustice was done to the Palestinian people.

Israeli Views

Several authors have addressed the legal standing of UN Resolution 194 (III), and reached drastically different conclusions. On the Israeli side, one of the most prominent writers to reject the applicability of the resolution is Ruth Lapidoth.¹² Her argument rests on the notion that the right of return in international law is reserved for individuals who are or have been members of a nation-state. Since the Palestinians are not and have not been citizens of the state of Israel, the right of return has no legal force. Equally important in Lapidoth’s eyes is the claim that international law does not sanction the application of a law when it is seen to be prejudicial to the interests of the state in question. In the case of Resolution 194 (III), its application implies the return of millions of refugees, which would drastically alter the Jewish character of the state of Israel. Eyal Benvenisti and Eyal Zamir further point out that since the agreements between Israelis and Palestinians are premised on UN Resolutions 242 and 338, “the Israeli–Palestinian accords imply a territorial compromise in Palestine/Eretz Yisrael, and rejection of a general right to return or repossess property in Israel.”¹³

 

There is complete unanimity among Israeli writers concerning the inapplicability of the right of return for Palestinian refugees, even among those who are committed to peaceful negotiations. Shlomo Gazit, whose monograph on Palestinian refugees received a great deal of attention from commentators of various political shades, makes several points.¹⁴ First, under no circumstances should the Palestinians have a say in deciding who, if any, of the refugees should return to Israel proper. This is Israel’s prerogative, and it may want to exercise it on a very limited, humanitarian basis. Second, any right of return should be implemented in the West Bank and Gaza, and once the territories assume independent status, Israel has no right to prevent the Palestinians from having their own law of return. However, Gazit is adamant that such a return, which should first be directed towards those displaced by the 1967 war, must keep Israel’s security needs paramount. The absorptive capacity of the territories must be taken into account, so as not to create a destabilising effect through the uncontrolled mass return of refugees. Any new settlements built for the refugees must not infringe upon Jewish settlements and must not be close to the Green Line. Overall, the Palestinian entity must co-ordinate with Israel the modalities of the return of refugees and displaced people to the West Bank and Gaza.

Western Views

Following a more or less similar reasoning, Don Peretz focuses his attention on the nuances of the language contained in Resolution 194 (III), which stipulates not that the refugees have the automatic right to return, but that they “should be permitted” to return, implying here that the right of return is contingent on Israel’s agreement. Peretz goes over the same terrain as that covered by Lapidoth and others to argue that international law is premised on state sovereignty, which in this case is not likely to issue in a right of return for Palestinian refugees.¹⁵

 

Other writers, such as Donna Arzt and Karen Zughaib, have approached the issue of return partly from the perspective of natural law and international common law, and partly from the perspective of symmetry in the claims of Palestinians and Israelis. Drawing upon common and customary law, which is informed by criteria of kinship, extended residence in a territory over generations, family ties and tradition, Arzt and Zughaib consider the right of return to one’s home to be a fundamental right. They go on to point out that “regardless of whether Palestinians have a right to return to Israel, they have a right to return to Palestine”. The question then becomes, “What constitutes Palestine?” The answer rests with the progress of negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and in the shape of the agreement after completion of the final-status talks. The authors see symmetry in the logic of common and natural law to sanction Israel’s own Law of Return, since it permits entry of individuals who were not citizens of the state prior to their return.¹⁶

 

In subsequent work, Arzt suggests that Palestinians remaining in the Arab countries be given dual citizenship—that of the host society in which they reside and a Palestinian identity card which will ensure their protection by the Palestinian authority. She also proposes that such Palestinians should be duly compensated, that as many as one and a half million of them be allowed to return to the West Bank and Gaza by giving priority in the absorption process to the most vulnerable of the refugees in the host countries, and finally that a small number of between 50,000 and 100,000 be allowed to return to within the 1948 borders of Israel.¹⁷

 

A slightly different tack on the right of return is taken by Antonio Cassese, a former president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. He argues that the crucial development in favour of Palestinian rights came with the passage of UN General Assembly Resolution 3236 (XXIX) in 1974, which linked the right of return to the right of self-determination. Moreover, the resolution does not distinguish between the 1948 and 1967 refugees, addressing their right of return as that of a single group. For Cassese, this resolution is crucial because it moved the debate from the “individual’s ‘right of return’ to the Palestinian people’s right for self-determination”. Cassese submits that any formula to implement the right of return, via self-determination, must be part of a “package deal” between the Palestinians and Israelis in the context of the current peace talks. For it to be workable, it has to be implemented in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.¹⁸

 

Lex Takkenberg agrees that the right of return in general derives its legitimacy from customary international law, which as far as nation-states are concerned remains unbinding. Of the “three durable” solutions for refugeehood that have been advocated by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, voluntary repatriation remains the best solution, the other two being integration in host countries and resettlement in third countries.

 

Takkenberg disagrees with restricted interpretations that deem the right of return inapplicable to the Palestinian situation. Like Arzt and Zughaib, he finds the right of return relevant when interpreted to mean return to one’s own country or homeland. The right of return could thus be exercised in Palestine and not Israel. In other words, the right of return as a principle remains operative, although its territorial exercise will have to be defined.¹⁹

 

Finally, mention should be made of the positions of John Quigley and Kathleen Lawand. Quigley bases his interpretation of Resolution 194—namely, that it obliges Israel to admit the refugees back to their homes—on laws of nationality (i.e., obligations of states), human rights law and humanitarian law. Lawand, on the other hand, reaches a similar conclusion regarding Resolution 194, but bases her case on the argument of the “habitual residence” of the refugees in what used to be called Palestine but now is Israel, rather than on citizenship criteria.²⁰

Compensation

Several scholars, Palestinian, Israeli and others, have dealt with the issue of compensation. Essentially, the debate revolves around the following elements: How many should receive compensation? How should the size of the compensation be calculated? How should it be administered? And where should the money come from?

 

Compensation is of three types, indemnification (i.e., payment for suffering of non-material losses), restitution (payment for material losses), and reparation (payment between states as a result of damage incurred during war). The Arab side presents its case for compensation by stressing that it should be based on the calculation of individual losses, that each refugee claimant is entitled to receive the true value of losses incurred, and that these losses should reflect both material and non-material harm. This is the approach adopted by Sami Hadawi, who with the aid of an economist calculates the value of Palestinian lost property, movable and immovable, plus the cost of lost career opportunities and psychological damage incurred, to be around $147 billion at 1984 prices. If the compensation is confined to covering property losses only, Hadawi estimates the claim to be for $92 billion.²¹ Rashid Khalidi suggests a payment of $40 billion, calculated on the basis of $20,000 for each of the two million refugees registered with UNRWA at his time of writing.²²

 

Israeli writers insist on the following: that payment should be based on need rather than the true value of lost property; that it should be collective and not individual in nature; that an international body should be entrusted with administering the compensation; that UNRWA should be phased out with the payment of compensation; that Israel should not be the main contributor to the compensation fund, but should be part of an international effort to raise the necessary money; and that funds should be channelled in such a way as to create jobs, build houses and infrastructure and revive the regional economies of the Middle East.

 

Ruth Klinov works on the assumption that one million refugees will return to the territories between 2000 and 2005. By using UNRWA spending on education, health, housing, and so forth, she comes up with a figure of $20,000 per refugee head of household, which according to her would add up to a total compensation package of $2.56 billion. She further suggests that compensation should be staggered over a period of between ten and twenty years to ensure that money is not “squandered” on consumption or spent by the host governments.²³ Gazit is the only Israeli writer who suggests that Israel should play a major role in the payment of compensation, and that it should think of diverting to compensate the refugees some of the $5 billion to $10 billion reparations it received from (the former East) Germany following German reunification in 1989/90. Germany may be eager to pay these reparations and be seen to rehabilitate Palestinian refugees as part of helping to resolve the Middle East conflict.

 

The issue of Jewish losses in Arab countries is raised by Gazit and Peretz. Gazit does not think it should be linked to the 1948 refugee issue, but Peretz suggests it be included in the compensation calculations. Peretz also argues that if Israel vacates the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, it should be compensated for their cost by the Palestinian state. The Palestinian position on compensation for Jewish losses in Arab countries was made clear by the head of the Palestinian delegation to the second Refugee Working Group meeting in Ottawa. At the time (November 1992), Muhammad Hallaj argued that it is the relevant Arab governments who should bear responsibility for compensating Jewish emigrants from Arab countries, and not the Palestinian refugees.

The Arab States

The position of Arab governments with regard to possible solutions to the refugee problem is unclear, with the exception of Jordan and Lebanon. There is no doubt that when the time comes, Arab states, which have hosted large numbers of refugees for more than half a century, will submit their own bills for having shouldered some of the responsibility. In a recent paper, it is estimated that Jordan contributes around $300 million annually from its own budget to the refugees it hosts.²⁴ Jordan, which accords Palestinian refugees full citizenship, is primarily concerned with facilitating the return of those displaced in 1967, whose fate is being discussed in the context of the Quadripartite Committee comprising Palestinians, Israelis, Jordanians and Egyptians.

 

The reaction of Lebanon to the presence of Palestinian refugees in its midst has been most vocal. It is widely agreed that the Palestinians in Lebanon are the most vulnerable group of Palestinian refugees. The attitude of the Lebanese government was spelled out in a series of statements by top officials. The gist of the Lebanese position is that Palestinian refugees must be fully repatriated, if not to their original homes, then to third countries. This position is reflected in a survey of one thousand Lebanese carried out by Hilal Khashan. Around three-quarters of those surveyed rejected resettlement of the Palestinians in Lebanon, and this sentiment held true across Lebanon’s confessional lines.²⁵

 

A moderate solution to the Palestinian refugee predicament in Lebanon has been offered by Nawaf Salam, a Lebanese lawyer. His argument rests on granting the Palestinians in Lebanon certain specific civil and social rights, provided they hold a Palestinian citizenship accorded to them by a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Under this proposal, Palestinians would not be allowed to vote, run for political office, or hold public-sector jobs in Lebanon. They would also be prohibited from investing in sectors of the economy with direct bearing upon national security and from owning communications media. They would be allowed to seek employment opportunities and have freedom of movement, as long as there were reciprocal arrangements with the Palestinian state so that Lebanese nationals could enjoy similar rights in areas under Palestinian jurisdiction.²⁶

What the Refugees Think

There are no systematic studies of refugees’ views regarding possible solutions. The picture that emerges from a series of small-scale surveys reflects the regional distribution of the refugees. In Lebanon, for example, the first preference of Palestinian refugees is to be allowed to go back to their homes within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. Should this prove impossible, many would like to stay in Lebanon as long as their rights are normalised and protected by issuing them with Palestinian identity cards. Fewer expressed the desire to settle in the West Bank or Gaza.²⁷

 

In studying the attitudes of Palestinian refugees in Jordan, it was discovered that 77 per cent were willing to live in the West Bank. This desire is guided by matters of “principle” and not by any hostility to Jordan. Only 6 per cent of those surveyed rated the situation in Jordan as bad enough to make them want to leave.²⁸ This finding is confirmed by another Jordanian survey in which 95 per cent of camp refugees said they believed Jordanian–Palestinian relations were good, with a similar proportion endorsing closer relations between Jordan and a future Palestinian state.²⁹

 

There are very few systematic studies of the attitudes of refugees in the West Bank and Gaza to possible solutions. A study carried out in May 1995 by the Centre for Palestine Research and Studies in Nablus asked a randomly selected sample of 1,271 refugee and non-refugee respondents aged eighteen years and above from the West Bank (856) and Gaza (415) their views on the future of the camps. Forty-seven per cent said the camps should remain where they are but with an improvement in living conditions. Close to 20 per cent preferred to keep the camps as they are. Twenty-five per cent suggested moving camp residents to other localities. Around 6 per cent had no opinion on the subject. It is significant that almost three-quarters of the sample, and this includes refugee respondents as well, preferred to keep the camps where they are, with the majority calling for an improvement in their conditions.

 

In June 1995, the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre polled 1,397 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza on various issues pertaining to the performance of the Palestine National Authority. The survey included the following question: “Do you agree to giving up the 1948 lands in return for a final solution stipulating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem as its capital (the 1967 borders)?” Of the sample, 31 per cent answered in the affirmative and 60 per cent in the negative, with the remaining 8 per cent undecided. There were hardly any differences between the West Bank and Gaza on this score, although there were differences reflecting age and political affiliation. Forty-one per cent of Fatah supporters said yes, as opposed to only 17 per cent of Hamas supporters. When the responses are broken down by age, it is significant that the younger generation reacted more negatively to the question than the older one. Fully two-thirds of those born after 1967 opposed forfeiting the 1948 lands for the sake of an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital, as compared to 55 per cent of those born before 1967. The youngest group in the sample, those between fifteen and eighteen years of age, expressed the greatest opposition to relinquishing claims to the 1948 lands. Around 70 per cent of them opposed the proposition, 26 per cent approved it, and the remaining 4 per cent had no opinion.

Coda

The last two rounds of negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, in July 2000 at Camp David and in December 2000 at Taba in Egypt, brought the refugee issue to the fore but did not result in any agreement between the two sides. Yet press coverage of the meetings, and subsequent analysis of the causes of failure and of who was to blame, showed some signs of departure from the past. This was truer with regard to several final-status issues such as settlements, Jerusalem and borders, than with regard to the refugees. Even so, reports about what had taken place during these meetings put in sharper relief the Israeli position on the refugees, and revealed a more compromising if complex Palestinian position.

 

In an interview with Benny Morris published in June 2002, Ehud Barak, who was Israeli prime minister during the Camp David and Taba talks, and who headed the Israeli delegation at the first meeting, stressed that for Israel, the issue of refugees was “existential”. He could not “allow even one refugee back on the basis of the ‘right of return’”. Moreover, he continued, Israel “cannot accept historical responsibility for the creation of the [refugee] problem”.³⁰

 

Robert Malley, who participated in the negotiations as an adviser to the then US president, Bill Clinton, and Hussein Agha, an adviser to the Palestinian leadership, rejected Israeli claims that the Palestinians had adopted an uncompromising stance on the refugee issue. Although the Palestinian position may not have been clearly articulated, it did take into account Israel’s population anxieties. This sensitivity to Israeli fears continued to be evinced after the talks. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat himself, in an article in the New York Times in February 2002, called for “creative solutions to the right of return while respecting Israel’s demographic concerns”.³¹ What the Palestinians were looking for, according to Malley and Agha, and what Clinton and the Israelis were either unwilling to, or could not, provide, was a solution to the refugee problem that would acknowledge the Palestinian right of return, in line with UN Resolution 194, without jeopardising Israel’s position as a Jewish state.

 

As the second intifada progressed, with mounting casualties on both sides, the debate over the fate of the Palestinian refugees was overshadowed by the desperate situation faced by all Palestinians in the occupied territories as a result of successive military incursions by Israel in 2002. In Israel itself, the “transfer” debate began to gather momentum, with the political right, including members of the Knesset and ministers in Ariel Sharon’s government, openly advocating the expulsion of Palestinians across the borders to neighbouring countries. The increasing public “respectability” in Israel of the transfer proposal is ominous from the Palestinian viewpoint and does not bode well for any humane solution to the plight of the refugees.

Endnotes

1. Palestinian Authority, Palestinian Refugees and the Right of Return (Jerusalem: Ministry of Information, 1995).

 

2. Government of Israel, The Refugee Issue: A Background Paper (Jerusalem: Government Press Office, 1994).

 

3. Elia Zureik, Palestinian Refugees and the Peace Process (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1996).

 

4. Moshe Efrat, The Palestinian Refugees: The Dynamics of Economic Integration in Their Host Countries [in Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Israel International Institute for Applied Economic Policy Review, 1993).

 

5. Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 286.

 

6. Shlomo Ben-Ami, “Opening Remarks” (official presentation by the Israeli delegation to the Refugee Working Group of the Middle East peace talks, Ottawa, Canada, 11 November 2024).

 

7. Benny Morris, “ ‘The Arabs Are Responsible’: Post-Zionist Historian Benny Morris Clarifies His Thesis” (in Hebrew), interview with Yediot Ahronot, 23 November 2001.

 

8. Benny Morris, “Transfer tsiyoni” (Zionist transfer), Svivot 31 (1993), pp. 67–75.

 

9. Ilan Pappé, “Were They Expelled? The History, Historiography and Relevance of the Palestinian Refugee Problem”, in The Palestinian Exodus 1948–1998, ed. Ghada Karma and Eugene Cotran (Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1999).

 

10. Walid Khalidi, ed., All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer” in Zionist Political Thought, 1882–1948 (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992).

 

11. Rashid Khalidi, “Observations on the Palestinian Right of Return”, in The Palestinian Right of Return: Two Views, Occasional Paper No. 6 (Cambridge, Mass.: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1990), and “Toward a Solution”, in Palestinian Refugees: Their Problem and Future (Washington, D.C.: Centre for Policy Analysis on Palestine, 1994); Ziad Abu Zayyad, “The Palestinian Right of Return: A Realistic Approach”, Palestine‑Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture 2 (1994), pp. 274–8.

 

12. Ruth Lapidoth, “The Right of Return in International Law, with Special Reference to the Palestinian Refugees”, Israel Yearbook of Human Rights 6, no. 1 (1986), pp. 65–70.

 

13. Eyal Benvenisti and Eyal Zamir, “Private Claims to Property Losses in the Future Israeli–Palestinian Settlement”, American Journal of International Law 89, no. 2 (1995), pp. 240–340.

 

14. Shlomo Gazit, The Palestinian Refugee Problem [in Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, 1994).

 

15. Don Peretz, Palestinian Refugees and the Middle East Peace Process (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute for Peace Press, 1993).

 

16. Donna Arzt and Karen Zughaib, “Return of the Negotiated Lands: The Likelihood and Legality of a Population Transfer between Israel and a Future Palestinian State”, New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 24, no. 4 (1993), pp. 1399–513.

 

17. Donna Arzt, “Negotiating the Last Taboo: Palestinian Refugees”, Jordan Times, 12 July 1995.

 

18. Antonio Cassese, “Some Legal Observations on the Palestinian Right to Self-Determination”, Oxford International Review 4, no. 1 (1993), pp. 10–13.

 

19. Lex Takkenberg, The Status of Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 1998).

 

20. John Quigley, “Displaced Palestinians and a Right of Return”, Harvard International Law Journal 39, no. 1 (1998), pp. 171–229; Kathleen Lawand, “The Right to Return of Palestinians in International Law”, International Journal of Refugee Law 8, no. 4 (1996), pp. 532–68.

 

21. Sami Hadawi and Atef Kubursi, Palestinian Rights and Losses in 1948 (London: Saqi Books, 1988).

 

22. Khalidi, “Toward a Solution”.

 

23. Ruth Klinov, “Reparations and Resettlement of Palestinian Refugees” (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1995, mimeographed).

 

24. Abdel Tayseer Jaber, “The Situation of Palestinian Refugees in Jordan” (Amman, Jordan, 1996, mimeographed).

 

25. Hilal Khashan, “Palestinian Resettlement in Lebanon: Behind the Debate”, in Palestinian Refugees: Background Papers (Montreal, Quebec: Centre d’études arabes pour le dévelopment, 1995).

 

26. Nawaf A. Salam, “Between Repatriation and Resettlement: Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon”, Journal of Palestine Studies 24, no. 1 (1993), pp. 18–27.

 

27. See Hussein Sha’aban, “What Do the Palestinians Say?” (in Arabic), Majallat al-dirasat al-filastiniyy, no. 19 (1994), pp. 177–95; and Basma Kodmani-Darwish, The Palestinian Question: A Fragmented Solution for a Dispersed People [in French] (PhD. thesis, Institute d’études politique, Paris, 1994).

 

28. Kodmani-Darwish, The Palestinian Question.

 

29. Jaber, “Situation of Palestinian Refugees”.

 

30. See Benny Morris, “Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak)”, New York Review of Books, 13 June 2002, pp. 42–5.

 

31. Cited in Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, “Camp David and After: An Exchange (2. A Reply to Ehud Barak)”, New York Review of Books, 13 June 2002, pp. 46–9.