BADIL Resource center - Palestinian Refugee Participation

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The general public provides the best guarantee for effective implementation of peace agreements. Public participation strengthens democratic principles and structures, expands the range of solutions to complex issues, lends greater legitimacy to agreements, and contributes to a durable peace.

Public Participation in Peacemaking

Participation can take various forms: the public may be represented in negotiations by political parties and/or other organized sectors of civil society. Consultative mechanisms may be established to allow the public to voice its concerns, demands, and visions for a durable peace. Individuals may also directly participate in peacemaking, providing the opportunity to both formulate and implement agreements to resolve conflict. International involvement should strengthen and compliment public initiatives rather than displace local ownership of the process or shift agenda away from the priorities articulated by civil society.

Experience shows that political negotiators are often reluctant to create space for public involvement in the peacemaking process. Peace agreements negotiated without adequate public participation may be a trigger for further disagreements rather than reconciliation. Mechanisms for participation do not just materialize. People have to make them happen. There are many useful examples of public involvement in peacemaking processes around the world. These include Mali, South Africa, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, Mozambique and Papua New Guinea. These experiences suggest that public participation strengthens the durability of a negotiated peace.

In Guatemala, for example, refugees did not wait for peace, they helped to forge it. Camp refugees organized themselves into commissions under which refugee leaders directly negotiated the terms of a solution to their plight. These included a public guarantee of their security; assurance of the right to return to their lands; the right to organize and freely associate; guarantees that they would be subject to civilian and not military authority; and the right to return under supervision of international observers. Refugee women subsequently organized themselves around their common objective to return and negotiate adequate conditions for their families.

Exclusion from the Middle East Peace Process

For decades the Palestinian people have been denied the basic right to participate in key decisions concerning the future of Palestine. They have been talked about, argued over and decided for but rarely included. Likewise, the Middle East Peace Process that began in the 1990s has provided few opportunities for public participation. The secret Oslo negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the subsequent talks over interim arrangements, final status talks at Camp David and Taba, the Road Map, and the most recent Bush-Sharon understandings, all failed to provide scope for public participation.

This peacemaking process also shifted from an agenda articulated by civil society to one that was subject to regional and international political pressures. This is particularly evident in relation to the question of Palestinian refugees and displaced persons. Refugees were more often than not considered as objects of humanitarian assistance rather than individuals with rights and as legitimate actors in the peacemaking process. They were assessed, surveyed, quantified, classified, but few policymakers, diplomats and commentators bothered to ask and listen to the refugees themselves about how they envision a solution to their plight.

The relocation of part of the political infrastructure of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to establish the Palestinian Authority further weakened indigenous democratic mechanisms that had already suffered a series of profound shocks in Lebanon in the 1980s, Jordan in the 1970s and 1990s, and in the first Gulf War in 1990/91. The move separated the PLO from the largest part of its constituency, refugees who live in exile. The Palestinian Authority is only responsible for Palestinians currently residing in 1967 occupied Palestine. International support for civil society neglected Palestinians outside these areas administered by the Palestinian Authority.

Refugee Self-Organization

Exclusion of Palestinian refugees and IDPs from the peacemaking process combined with demands for better representation from their own leadership, gave rise to initiatives of political self-organization among refugee community in 1967 occupied Palestine, inside Israel, and in exile. These initiatives were as much an expression of concern about the exclusion of refugee rights as they were about about the popular demand for better representation and democratization of the peacemaking process.

Popular refugee conferences inside 1948 Palestine/Israel, followed by similar conferences across the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid 1990s set out the basic principles, structures, and mechanisms of a popular campaign for refugee rights. Refugees emphasized that the campaign should be a broad-based, non-sectarian, independent movement comprised of Palestinian popular organizations and initiatives (refugee and non-refugee) in the homeland and in exile to pressure and lobby for the protection of Palestinian refugee rights and durable solutions based on international law as affirmed in relevant UN resolutions.

Self-organization provides a means to take back the space that had been usurped from the refugees, among others, in shaping the contours of a negotiated peace. The refugee campaign provides a popular mechanism for the struggle for legitimate national rights, democracy, and civil and human rights. It is a means to assert their right to have rights. The campaign structures do not aim to replace the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Rather, they provide a mechanism for refugees to make their voices heard, including the demand for a solution that is both democratic and consistent with the rule of law.

Related BADIL Publications:

Participating in Peace

Owning the Process

Based on a report by the British Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils, An Enquiry into Palestinian Refugees. The Commission visited areas where the majority of Palestinian refugees reside in the Middle East to ask them how they envision a solution to their plight.
Via Labour Middle East Council (LMEC)
Download the entire report

Public Participation in Peacemaking, Principles to Guide Policy and Practice. These principles were prepared by Conciliation Resources.
Via Conciliation Resources (CR)

Refugee Statements

A compilation of statements, petitions and recommendations issued by Palestinian refugees covering the period from mid-1995s to the present. Also includes a selection of statements issued during the 1950s. read more>