The Minster Lovell Process: Stage Two

Palestinian Refugees in the Search for Middle East Peace

About the Minster Lovell Process >>

Project Stage Two: May 2002 to December 2004

The second phase of the project was designed to build upon the foundations laid during the first phase. With the Oslo Process now in abeyance and in the context of renewed confrontation, the second phase of the project sought to address the Arab, regional dimension of the Palestinian refugee question and problems arising from the omission of refugee representatives, and Arab host country nationals from negotiations on the refugee issue.

The operating assumption underpinning the project was that the refugee issue is a regional problem, affecting a number of stakeholders, including Arab host governments, the refugee communities around the region, as well as Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Yet since the signing of the Oslo Accords, the refugee issue has been identified as one of the final status issues for negotiation between only two of the parties directly affected by the issue, namely Israel and the leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which de facto means the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. The inherent flaw in this approach is that an agreement reached between only two of the parties concerned, without consultation with and feedback from other parties, would be unlikely to win the acceptance of the latter. If rejected by the parties excluded from negotiations, the chances of implementing an agreement reached in bilateral negotiations would be marginal at best.

Project Objectives

Engaging Arab parties, including refugees themselves, in discussions with international specialists about the refugee issue and its regional dimensions so helping to defray anxieties and tensions, by demonstrating awareness of their relevance and showing international interest and concern.
To provide a way out of the zero-sum thinking which has come to dominate perceptions of negotiations on a series of separate and isolated bilateral tracks, fuelling suspicion and competition among Arab parties, and cornering them into adopting ever more rejectionist positions.
To approach the refugee issue as a regional problem, rather than a series of separate subnational problems, so opening the way for a regional approach to resolving the issue in due course, with all the benefits that could entail in terms of regional economic and social interactions. Given that distances between different population centres in the region are quite small, in the context of a more peaceful future, interactions between communities will have their own dynamic, rendering irrelevant or unsustainable any prior attempt to forcibly move or confine people permanently to one or another locality.
In the expectation that peace in general and resolution of the refugee issue in particular, requires compromises on all sides and thus, by necessity, participation of all sides, the project will serve to prepare the ground for this to be possible. It will do this by, uniquely, bringing into play those hitherto excluded from negotiations and opening the way for new perspectives on the issue to develop.

Project Activity

27-28 April 2002 - Consultation Workshop: 'The Middle East Crisis', (Minster Lovell)
Aide Memoire / Agenda
7-8 Sept 2002 - Consultation Workshop: 'Refugees and Host Countries in International Law', (Minster Lovell)
Report / Agenda
10-22 Oct 2002 - Consultation Meetings in Lebanon and Syria
2-15 Feb 2003 - Consultation Meetings in Lebanon and Syria
14-16 March 2003 - Regional Consultation Workshop: 'Palestinian Refugees: Regional Perspectives', (Cyprus)
3-4 May 2003 - Consultation Workshop: 'The Refugee Issue in the Quest for Peace', (Minster Lovell)
Aide Memoire / Agenda
Summer 2003 - Consultation Meetings in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan
6-8 Oct 2003 - Stocktaking Meeting: 'The Palestinian Refugee Issue', (Cyprus)
Aide Memoire / Agenda
21-31 Jan 2004 - Consultations in Lebanon and Syria
19-20 April 2004 - Consultation Workshop: 'Regional Developments Affecting the Middle East peace Prospects, Refugees and Priorities for the Donor Community', (Minster Lovell)
Aide Memoire / Agenda
23-27 June 2004 - Consultations with Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem
3-4 July 2004 - Consultations with officials, refugees, donors and refugee advocacy groups in Jordan
5-8 Sept 2004 - Attended Al-Awda/Aidun Conference on Refugees (Damascus)
Consultations in Syria
16-18 Oct 2004 - Consultation Workshop: 'The Palestinian Refugee Issue', (Cyprus)
Aide Memoire / Agenda

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