This is to present an EU funded project, entitled Civitas, which will run for eighteen months from 7 May, 2004. It will establish the precise types of civic structures and mechanisms needed by Palestinian refugees in the refugee camps and exile communities outside the West Bank and Gaza; these communities were excluded from the electoral and civic society processes under the Oslo arrangements in the mid 1990s. It is a needs assessment exercise to be carried out by the refugees themselves, through deliberative debate and consultation. This project “Foundations for Participation” was developed in collaboration with the European Commission of External Relations, through a series of reports and workshops run at Nuffield College, the European University Institute, and exile Palestinian communities over the last four years. It grew out the recommendations of a British Parliamentary Inquiry on Refugees, and its Report of 2000 (now in its third edition, 2004).

 

It is now understood that only an active involvement of the refugee community in the decision-making process, and the civic participation of Palestinian refugees in exile and in refugee camps, can positively contribute to achieving a negotiated settlement. This fact has been demonstrated in recent years’ events on the ground as well as in the negotiating rooms, all of which showed that the exclusion of the refugees inevitably leads to a breakdown in the process, and renders impossible the types of negotiations that are necessary to finding (and securing) a successful negotiated settlement. These communities had been excluded from participating in the peace process as an unintended consequence of their political and legal rights being reserved for “final status” resolution, according to the mechanisms of the Oslo peace process, within the frozen multilateral track. Their inclusion rectifies the outstanding part of the civic structure building exercise that took place during the elections and insitutional building 1995/6 in the West Bank and Gaza.

 

The project is large in scope, and takes in all large camps and exile communities of the Palestinian refugees in the Arab world and further afield. What role would these civic structures play, and how would they be established? The first benefits of these civic structures will be  to create channels and communications with their representatives and leadership, and in this manner contribute to the negotiations, facilitating the involvement of Palestinian refugees and exile communities in a constructive and focused mechanism of consultation. The basic steps require the creation of structures of communication and participation that would be appropriate and – most importantly – would be used by the communities themselves. Many artificially imposed structures and models imported by outside donors in other regions have not, in a wide range of cases, been designed by consulting the associations and groups and individuals that would be using them; this has vitiated their utility.

 

The overall aim of these structures will be to create a bridge between these critical tiers of society – uniting the local, particular and popular with the political, bureaucratic, and technical levels of national representation and international negotiations. The goal is instrumental as well as intrinsic: discussing and debating the issues that need to be addressed by the refugees in order to achieve a viable solution to their future can begin with the programme’s first phase, where they help design the civic structures they need in order to communicate their views. It will provide a crucial connection between these communities with the peace process, from which they are currently so alienated, and finally and most critically with their leadership. It is a central underpinning of this project that providing such practical mechanisms, opportunities to debate, argue, explain, listen, be heard, deliberate within communities and across them about the issues that most concern the refugees is crucial to obtaining compromise.

 

Part One: The Practical Mechanisms for Democratic Institutional Design

 

This project is facilitated by a small team, but the work itself will be carried out by the refugee communities themselves. This section will detail the precise steps that will be taken over the next 18 months in order that the structures are designed and chosen by the communities that will use them.

 

The overall Project is in two phases, the first of which will be carried out by Civitas. This stage determines the needs of the camps and communities by introducing three sets of questionnaires on civic structures and processes, which will be debated in the communities over the coming months of December 2004, and January 2005.

 

The three questions to be deliberated and discussed by the refugee communities are the following: what structures would you like in order to better communicate with your national representatives, the PLO? These structures can be chosen from the widest variety of civic processes – delegations, newspapers, visits, meeting rooms, and will include whatever the refugees feel would suit their situation and location. The second question is:  what are the issues you would like to raise with your representative (not what are their views on this issue – these are matters for the communities to raise directly with their representative). The final question is: what are the most important needs you have as a community?

 

Emerging out of these debates and discussions will be two reports. The first is a comprehesive report on the necessary structures asked for by the refugees, how the project was carried out, and the discussions that went into choosing the structures needed. This  Report will be for the benefit of the refugee communities, their national representatives, and for the wider academic and expert community involved in refugee studies and the Middle East Peace Process. The second report is written specifically for the international donor community, in order to assist in the implementation of the recommended civic structures and process, the end of Phase one (18 months) and as the initiation of Phase two. Phase two itself establishes the necessary civic structures for the Palestinian refugee communities outside of the West Bank and Gaza, in the host countries of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, and in the large refugee and exile communities elsewhere, which will have been designed with the consultation and participation of the communities themselves.

 

These deliberations will be done by the dissemination (in November 2004) and then debating (in December 04 and January 05) these sets of questions within the refugee communities. The answers will then be gathered and analysed, assessed, and recommendations made for implementation (initiation of Phase Two).

 

The first step of the project is a pilot study in the refugee camps, in July 2004, in order that the project familiarise themselves with the type of views on civic concerns, as well as the range of views, manners of phrasing and discussing of these views, from as wide a range of refugees as possible. These meetings will be recorded and notes will be taken in order to properly prepare the pilot study’s initial assessment for the Experts’ Meeting in September 2004. The Advisory Board will also help with expertise and advice on the early preparation for the pilot study, with suggested practical methodology for correct hearing of “feedback”, the methods to gather and interpret focus group’s understandings and views on the issues of their civic concerns, as well as pointing out the technical and practical constraints that might emerge. This feedback from the pilot study group’s initial meeting in a refugee camps will be essential in casting the questionnaires with the assistance of democracy, civil society, and refugee experts.

 

The primary task is the creation of a basic database over the first three months of the project where the team will compile key information on the size, structures, and organisation of the various refugee communities world-wide. They will need to establish and maintain communications and contacts with the grass-roots level civic leaders within and across the refugee camps and exile communities of all the host countries, as well as the large exile communities in order to allow them to start the process of electing and/or selecting representatives and participants for the Cyprus meeting in mid-October, 2004, where the draft questionnaires will be discussed with those with direct responsibility for the eventual management of the questionnaires in the camps.

 

The questionnaires will be constructed with the assistance of technical and academic experts. It will be based upon the initial pilot assessment, as well as the first database, and on the purposes and guidelines of the project. The meetings will help provide the rationale and principles for the questions that will be debated in the camps, and help draft an initial set of them. The meeting will also define the inclusiveness of the target groups as well as the final identification of participants and beneficiaries in the refugee exile communities.

 

After the meeting of experts at Oxford University in September 2004, the next stage will be the Cyprus Workshop for the members of the refugee communities from across the world. The draft questions will be presented, discussed, and fine-tuned at a three day meeting with the Project Staff, popular committee and grass-roots representatives, NGOs, and those from the camps who will be responsible for distributing and arranging for the questions to be debated within the refugee communities. This workshop will afford an opportunity to all those involved to participate in the questions’ final formulations. It facilitates a discussion that would allow for a complete appreciation of the project’s purpose as a whole by those invited. It will also provide the opportunity to discuss all possible understandings of the questionnaires, to suggest improvements to them, and to finalise the various means of dissemination of the sets of questionnaires over the eight weeks of debates in the camps. Sessions will facilitate discussion of the technical aspects of the forthcoming needs assessment exercise in the refugee camps and communities, as well as signal any possible technical difficulties that might arise. The project staff will contact those who attend the Cyprus workshop in order to get their feedback on the structuring of the questions and best procedures for the debates in the second half of October 2004, and the first two weeks of November 2004.

 

After the final assessment and feedback given by the experts and from the delegates, the project team will ensure the dissemination of the questions to the communities. This will be done through the delegates that attended the Cyprus workshop, and through other means, such as electronic means, and email, and post. The month-long deliberations in the camps will be enacted through a variety of public events: meetings, discussion groups, distribution of the questions throughout community centres and areas of common association, relying largely upon the grass-roots methods of debate and communication in that particular community, although some more formal meetings will be arranged at the beginning and the end of the two week long process.

 

The material gathered will be examined by a team of experts. This meeting will assess the material and the findings. Preparation of two reports will begin, both incorporating an evaluation and an assessment of the needs assessment of civic structures. The project team will initiate some meetings with the PLO in order to inform them on the results, and the implications of the second phase, and for incorporation of these processes into the peace process overall, that will be appearing in the two Reports. There will be a presentation of the report for implementation of Phase Two for the international donors, and a presentation of the full report to the international community and to the refugees themselves.

 

Part Two: The inclusion of the Refugees into the Peace Process – Understanding the Conflict

 

The second, indispensable, part of this project is the missing peace process on the refugee issue itself. Although all policy analysts agree that the most intractable problem of the Israel/Palestine dispute is the Palestinian refugee issue, actual conflict resolution methodology and practices have yet to be introduced to deal with it. The method used by the negotiators of the Oslo peace accords of 1993-2003 to deal with the refugee issue was simply to lay it aside, defining it as being too difficult to tackle up front. Yet it is now commonly accepted that an actual reverse of a peace process has taken place on the refugee issue. It is widely agreed by diplomats, policy experts, and academics that the question of the Palestinian refugees itself, as well as a practical means to resolve this issue, has become even more intractable during the ten years that it was put onto a multilateral track and frozen in its activity (1993-2003). This reversal of peace is widely understood to be the result of three factors: neglect, a growing ignorance of the issue of the refugees and their place in the conflict, and a hardening of positions on both sides, once the Oslo Accords failed to provide any progress towards a fair and comprehensive settlement.

 

A series of policy workshops will be convened over the next 18 months, involving the relevant actors from diplomatic, civic, and political communities, and will attempt to rectify this oversight. A number of best practice conflict resolution techniques will be introduced, involving truth and reconciliation approaches to conflict resolution, education, participation and consultation, and other methods that have proved successful in solving deep-rooted conflicts.

 

The central aim is to establish how to discuss the issue, to be developed by a multidisciplinary groups of experts in order to prepare and involve broader societies on both sides of the divide in this crucial process.

 

The most interested parties are currently unable to discuss almost any aspect of the refugee problem. It is perceived as impossible to solve and intractable; it is seen as closed; an unjust solution must be imposed even though this is understood to be a recipe that will immediately lead to more wars; no-one understands how to resolve it according to the Oslo Framework or Geneva Initiative; refugee rights are largely misunderstood as an existential death threat to the Jewish state by the ordinary Israeli.

 

Accordingly, the issue has been ignored and left to fester. All these factors have created additional obstacles towards resolving the question. Lessons from other conflicts where “core” issues are discussed and debated in workshops designed to assist in creating a language for peace is a necessary first step between Israeli and Palestinians. It will bring together historians, psychologists, media, conflict resolution experts and policy-makers in order to begin to map out the arguments that need to be aired, ascertain where the difficulties lie in discussing them, and practical ways to answer these obstacles. The importance of the role of the Holocaust in understanding the fears of Israelis, and of the Nakba of 1948 in the reality of the Palestinian experience need to be addressed in a constructive way.

 

The project will explore the notion of “two communities of suffering” in relation to a peace process and reconciliation. South Africa has proved a very successful example of where deep-rooted conflict and historic injustice can be addressed positively and constructively by truth and reconciliation processes. The workshops will develop educational packs and FAQs for both communities, drawn from the rigorous research of expert practioners who have engaged upon successful educating for peace projects world-wide, and the critical input of both Palestinians and Israelis.