In the period of negotiations of the Middle East Peace Process, the Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils have convened an All Party Commission of Enquiry (henceforth the 'JPMEC Commission') to the Middle East in September. They will conduct an enquiry into possible resolution of the Palestinian refugee situation, which has remained unresolved for over 50 years. In support of the search for a comprehensive peace settlement, the Members of Parliament will compile a report that reflects the views of the relevant actors to such a settlement: the refugee communities; the governments that have hosted them over the last 50 years; the international agencies that have sought to protect them; and the academics and experts in the areas of international refugee law and refugee studies who will brief the Commission on the legal and historical context.

They will be guided by two main principles, the first being derived form the historical and legal responsibility acknowledged by the international community towards those suffering in the continuing crisis. FCO Minister Peter Hain captured this sentiment, and articulated the first of the principles during a recent debate on the refugees in the House of Commons in November 1999:

Those involved should know that Britain acknowledges that the European Union and the United States especially have a responsibility to contribute to a solution of the refugee issue, as does Israel. Indeed, it is more than a responsibility - a moral and political duty is on us all. The Palestinian refugees are some of the most serious casualties of a post-second world war history largely shaped by - and many respects won by - the West. It is time for the world to redeem the debt owed to the Palestinians and by doing so, to create a lasting peace by which the security of all in the Middle East, especially Israel's is guaranteed.

Second, the JPMEC Commission will also be guided by the principle of refugee preference. In order to establish refugee preference the Commission will travel to the region to seek the views of representatives of the refugee communities.

Background to the Refugee Crisis

After the First World War, Palestine had a population of approximately 700,000 out of which 56,000 (8 per cent of the total) were Jewish. A proportion of this latter category were indigenous, Arab Jews. As a result of the persecution of the Jews in Western Europe, the next 30 years witnessed a struggle for land in Palestine right up to the 1948 war which saw the establishment of the State of Israel. This era saw the Palestinian Arab population desperately seeking to assert their promised right to sovereignty (as defined by the League of Nations and the British Mandate), in the face of British resistance, and in the midst of the growing strength of the massive influx of Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazi rise to power.

From the end of 1947 through the outbreak of hostilities in May 1948, the creation of the State of Israel and at the time of the cease-fire, as many as 800,000 Palestinians were exiled from their homes and sought refuge mostly in neighbouring Arab countries, staying close to the borders of Palestine. In 1951, the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine estimated that approximately 80 per cent of the newly founded State of Israel was established on abandoned refugee land. Some estimates by experts have put the total percentage of Palestinian refugee owned property held by Israel at over 90 per cent.

During the hostilities of 1967, Israel succeeded in occupying the remainder of Palestine, in the process expelling an additional 186,000 Palestinians. Many Palestinian refugees were even uprooted for a second time and fled the West Bank and Gaza Strip for neighbouring states.

Since 1950, the refugee land in Israel has been regulated by the Absentee Property Law that authorized the Israeli Land Development Authority to lease the land for small agricultural settlements. In recent years legislation has been initiated in Israel, which aims to finally sell the property to the private sector.

The Legal Sources of Palestinian Refugee Rights in International Law

One of the most striking aspects of the Palestinian refugee situation is the scale of the catastrophe. Present statistics of the Palestinian refugee population currently estimates them as two thirds of the worldwide Palestinian population. It was in the wake of the first wave of refugees, starting in the months before the 1948 Arab/Israeli war (moderately estimated at 350,000 people), that the central principle of the refugee right of return was set down in UN resolution 194. UNGA resolution 194 was and remains the guiding principle on which policy of the international community towards a durable and just solution to the status and future of the refugees, and its implementation has been consistently affirmed as the central tenet to a comprehensive settlement by the Security Council and the General Assembly. The resolution in part reads:

(The General Assembly)… resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of, or damage to, property which under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible.

These refugees have been legally defined by UNRWA, the N agency which was established in the wake of the catastrophe to assist the refugees as the following:

(Palestine refugee) shall mean any person whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period of 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.

The continuing relevance of UN Resolution 194, with its principle of the refugees' right of return as its central tenet lies in its direct and unambiguous solution to the tragedy of the refugees which was created by the course of the 1948 war. The resolution encapsulates the rights of individual refugees to have their homes, their nationality and their properties restored to them.

According to the second clause of paragraph 11 of Resolution 194, the formula has four components: repatriation, resettlement, economic and social rehabilitation and compensation. The JPMEC Commission will seek to elicit the views of refugees about how they practically envision their rights being enacted; with particular attention to final status negotiations. They will investigate these four components in light of the traditional arguments against their immediate implementation, seeking to outline available mechanisms and guidelines for possible solutions.

Guidelines for the Commission of Enquiry

The overall guidelines for the report will be the status and rights of the refugees as they exist in international law, combined with an attempt to establish how refugee communities themselves envisage these rights might be implemented during negotiations. The Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils have always sought to support the effort for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East by promoting universal respect of human rights as the solid underpinning of any peace agreement. Accordingly, this enquiry will seek to reflect the various options for a resolution to the refugee problem, and will look at mechanisms through which Palestinian refugees can participate in this decision-making.

The intention of the final report, which will emerge from the Commission's findings, will be to outline the range of options against the set of legal rights, which currently form the basis of international consensus on the framework for a settlement of the Palestinian problem. The relevant UN Resolutions and principles of international law include the following sets of texts: UN Resolution 194 (1948), Statute of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (1950), Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), and its Protocol (1967), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). In particular, the right of return has been established as the consensus of the International Community by being reconfirmed by the General Assembly over 100 times since 1948, and thus provides a valuable starting point.

The JPMEC Commission will be approaching the enquiry on the premise that the individual rights of refugees under international law are not affected by changes in sovereignty, the longevity of their exile or the dispersal of refugees throughout the world; nor can they be negotiated away by states party to a peace settlement; accordingly the Commission will be guided by the principle of Palestinian self-determination. The dangers of ignoring these basic premises have been highlighted by the refugees themselves, who have expressed an urgent concern about this in several recent authoritative documents and appeals.

Consultation with Refugee Communities

A prime goal of the enquiry will be to give Palestinian refugee communities the opportunity to articulate the options that they feel will sufficiently exercise their rights and which need to be considered as part of the final status negotiations. Any solutions that attempt to resolve the question of Palestinian refugees will have to satisfy the basic concerns of the communities themselves. In light of the lack of international protection that has existed for civil, economic, and political rights of Palestinian refugees over the past 50 years, the JPMEC Commission regards refugee preference as critical to a successful solution to the refugee question. The role of the international community with regard to the Palestinian refugees since 1948 has been largely restricted to one of assistance through the role of UNRWA rather than the protection and restoration of refugee rights. This report will focus specifically on those rights and the options open to implement these rights.

Procedural Guidelines for the Commission

In order to complete the enquiry into Palestinian rights, the Commission will pursue the following procedural guidelines. Stage One will be obtaining evidence from a wide range of refugee sources, at both institutional and individual levels. Before travelling to the Middle East, the JPMEC Commission will be inviting written evidence to be submitted to its Secretariat in London. This material will form the basis of discussions, and for the questions that the Commission will be putting to Palestinians and officials in the field (see introduction). Stage Two will be the Commission's trip to the region, where questions will be directed at the relevant witnesses, and when formal depositions by groups and by individuals will be gathered in both oral and written forms. Stage Three will be one of assessment and analysis. The Secretariat, aided by international lawyers and other experts, will begin to process, rank, and analyze the evidence gathered in August and September (as outlined above). The Commission has asked it Secretariat to seek the assistance of experts to brief its members, who will be asking for written and oral submissions. To this effect, a two-day meeting will be held at Oxford University, where consultations and briefings will help the Commission in verifying and analysing the material submitted to it. The meetings will also assist in the preparation and structuring of the Report itself, which will be written by the Commission after this event. The final stage (Stage Four) will be to bring the findings of the JPMEC Commission's report to the relevant actors to the peace process: the Palestinian National Authority and the Israeli government. The Commission and its Secretariat will seek a wide dissemination of the Report and its findings at this stage, to European and National Parliaments, and the various European ministries.

The Role of the International Community

The JPMEC Commission is embarking on this project with a view to a revitalization of the debate in the UK and Europe surrounding the Palestinian refugees, and the issue of their position under international law. Refugees have expressed legitimate fears that, over the course of negotiations in recent years, their individual rights (specifically the right of return), have been gravely undermined by the interim arrangements agreed. This view is supported by the fact that since 1993 the US has abstained on UN resolution 194, giving the impression that the refugee situation should be resolved through negotiations between the parties, regardless of their rights.

As politicians and members of a Parliament that has strong traditional expertise and links with the Middle East (particularly with Palestine), the members of the Commission feel well placed to provide the relevant actors to the peace process with a fresh look at the main issues relating to Palestinian refugees.

Conclusion

The overall purpose of the enquiry is to investigate possible ways in which refugees' rights under international law might be exercised in the context of final status negotiations. At the outset of this enquiry the JPMEC Commission is conscious of the scale, complexity and sensitivity of the situation facing the 3.6 million Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the world; they believe that the role of international mechanisms and legal frameworks will be crucial in providing the tools for achieving a last and just solution.

The Commission is setting out with an understanding that the Palestinian refugee crisis, which has lasted for over 50 years, is the key problem as yet unaddressed by all parties to the conflict. Equally, they understand that for any chance of a peaceful solution to be negotiated by the relevant parties, and for such a solution to obtain adherence by those parties, this outstanding matter must be tackled in all its aspects. The JPMEC Commission undertakes to seek both positive and creative proposals, which will be grounded in international law and appropriate democratic mechanisms, in order to provide a source for future discussions on this most urgent issue in the Middle East peace process.

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