The hard truth is, their return is far from likely. In what may be the endgame of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, Sami Bin-Said’s future and that of 4 million other Palestinian refugees scattered across the Arab world stand as an enormous obstacle, a problem that could prove even more intractable than the division of Jerusalem. The refugees’ homes were seized or destroyed long ago; many of their villages have been razed. Even the most dovish Israelis reject a return of Palestinian refugees as demographic suicide for the Jewish state. Yet no Palestinian, least of all Yasir Arafat, has tried to prepare the refugees for a deal in which their dreams are bargained away.
Enter Bill Clinton. With less than three weeks left as president, Clinton last week urged Arafat and Israeli leader Ehud Barak to shave the final layer of padding from their bargaining positions and meet in Washington for a last burst of negotiation. In his proposal, obtained by NEWSWEEK, the president urges Palestinians to accept the principle that “there is no specific right of return to Israel itself,” but that refugees can immigrate to the new state of Palestine or choose other alternatives. The Palestinians would get sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, which is holy to both sides, but Israel would retain the Western wall, Judaism’s most sacred site. Clinton presented his ideas verbally in a meeting with Israelis and Pal- estinians. (The text of Israeli minutes of the meeting are available on the Web at NEWSWEEK.MSNBC.com.)
Both sides had reservations about the proposals. Barak, in an interview with NEWSWEEK, objected to turning over the Temple Mount to Palestinian sovereignty. Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath described the refugee section as “very hard to swallow.” Yet Clinton also made clear that his proposals have an expiration date: “These are the ideas of the President,” say the Israeli notes from the Dec. 23 meeting. “If they are not accepted, they are not just off the table; they go with the President as he leaves office.”
As Arafat struggled to formulate a response to Clinton that wouldn’t be taken as a rejection–but perhaps also wouldn’t commit him to concessions–the refugees made their own views clear. Many called the proposal a sellout, and they denounced Arafat and vowed that anything he agreed to was not binding on them. Palestinian radicals sent their own message: bombs in Tel Aviv and Gaza, which killed two and wounded 14 other Israelis, snapped what had been a lull in three months of fighting. Barak abruptly canceled a summit with Arafat in Egypt, but Clinton’s proposal remained on the table. The Israeli prime minister later told NEWSWEEK that he was ready to negotiate on the basis of Clinton’s framework, but he would never allow Palestinians the right to return to Israel. Israel’s leading peaceniks concurred: “I’m afraid that if Arafat doesn’t concede on the matter of Palestinian refugees, we’ll face a collapse of the process,” said Yossi Sarid, head of the left-wing Meretz Party and the leading voice of Israel’s peace camp.
Bin-Said makes the opposite point: if there is no return to pre-1948 Palestine, there should be no peace. His grandfather fled Beersheba in 1948 after hearing rumors that Jews were massacring Palestinians in adjacent towns. The family packed its possessions overnight and made the trip to Gaza on horses and donkeys. About 700,000 other Palestinians left or were forced out of their homeland that year, in what Palestinians call the naqba–Arabic for catastrophe. Many of these people, including Bin-Said’s family, retain the rusted keys and faded deeds to the property they left behind. “They had no guns to protect themselves; all they could do was run,” Bin-Said says. Decades later, when Palestinian guerrillas took up arms against Israel, Bin-Said’s father helped found a PLO militia in Gaza, a crime that landed him in an Israeli jail for 14 years. Because refugees have suffered more than other Palestinians, Bin-Said says, they cannot accept a compromise that hurts mostly them: “No Palestinian leader can sign an agreement that prevents us from going back to our land.”
That is Arafat’s dilemma: to forge a peace deal and risk angering millions of his constituents, or to remain a revolutionary to the end. Some leading Israelis suspect Arafat may not want to haggle for something less than his people dream of only to become the leader of a small, militarily hobbled mini-state. If he goes to the peace table based on Clinton’s proposal, he would get 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank and Gaza, and an additional 1 to 3 percent of land from inside Israel as compensation for West Bank areas where Jewish settlers would remain. Barak told NEWSWEEK that he can’t “penetrate the soul of Arafat,” but warned that “he will be responsible in the eyes of his people and history.”
Clinton proposed several options to help the Palestinian refugees: they could remain where they are and receive compensation, move to the new state of Palestine, emigrate elsewhere or file for Israeli citizenship. But Israel alone would decide which Palestinians it will allow to return, if at all. “The Israeli side could not accept any reference to the ROR [right of return] that would imply a right to immigrate to Israel in defiance of Israel’s sovereign policy,” Clinton’s proposal said.
Refugees have been at the front line of Israeli-Palestinian confrontations, both in politics and on the killing fields. Bin-Said’s brother Baha is one of them. An officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Service, Baha Bin-Said stole into a Jewish settlement not far from Maghazi in late November and killed two Israelis before being shot dead.
Three weeks later his wife gave birth to a boy, a fourth-generation refugee who will know his father only through stories. The boy was given his father’s name, Baha Bin-Said, to honor the shahid, Arabic for martyr. If Israelis and Palestinians reach a peace deal, international aid could change the face of Baha’s community. If not, he will grow up in the same squalor his parents and grandparents knew. Either way, Maghazi camp will likely remain his home, Arafat may or may not be his leader and his dreams will remain focused on a fabled little plot of land across the fence.
