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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 February 2000 Issue No. 467
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Special Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Return as distant as ever
By Dina EzzatAfter a long wait Cairo is to host an Arab-Israeli meeting on displaced Palestinians -- those forced to vacate their homeland due to the 1967 Israeli aggression.
The one-day meeting is scheduled for 6 February and will be attended by the Egyptian, Jordanian and Israeli foreign ministers and by Nabil Shaath, Palestinian Authority minister of planning.
The Sharm Al-Sheikh accord stipulated that the meeting should have been convened last October, though this proved impractical in the face of Israeli procrastination. The Arab parties subsequently met in Gaza, in October, to coordinate their positions.
This four-way mechanism to discuss the future of the displaced was agreed upon according to the 1993 Palestinian-Israeli Declaration of Principles. Its objective is to get the Palestinians and Israelis, with the help of Egypt and Jordan, to coordinate with concerned international and regional organisations on locating all the displaced and work on repatriating them.
The four way committee was never very effective. Israel has systematically refused to cooperate using the pretext that the issue of the displaced overlaps with the issue of the refugees, forced out from Palestine in 1948, tabled for negotiations in the final status talks. Israeli officials have been quoted on several occasions as excluding the possibility of repatriating either refugees or the displaced.
The participation of Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy in the 6 February talks should not, then, automatically lead to assumptions that progress will be made and it could well be the case that his participation in the meeting will be the sole concession Israel will make.
Israel has been telling Arab officials that irrespective of earlier agreements it would prefer to deal with the issues of the displaced and of the refugees as a single package to be handled by the Israeli prime minister. It is Barak who is in charge of final-status talks. Arab countries, understandably, refuse the Israeli position, insisting that Israel abide by its commitment to deal with the displaced as a part of the interim phase.
No particular resolutions are expected to emerge from the meeting though it is widely anticipated that the final joint communiqué will give the go ahead for a meeting, at expert level, of the displaced committee with a view to formulating a future plan of action.
The last ministerial meeting of the four-way committee was held in Jordan in 1996, the same year as the last meeting at expert level.
