Palestinian refugees doubt peace talks mean return home (News Feature)

By Weedah Hamzah Sep 2, 2010, 17:36 GMT

Beirut - Palestinian refugees living in camps across Lebanon viewed with suspicion the launch of yet another round of direct Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, doubting it would allow them to return back home after decades of hardships and exile.

'We lost hope a long time in this peace process, it is a waste of time,' said Fatima Fakhani, a resident of the Mar Elias camp in Beirut.

Around her, in the unpainted small room with a tin roof, scores of refugees gathered to watch the beginning of the talks transmitted live from Washington on a small television set. The room was silent, and their faces expressed hopelessness.

'It is a shame that our leaders are participating in such negotiations. I call these 'surrenderists talks,' because we, the Palestinians, reject them totally,' said Ahmed Fakih another refugees.

Suheil Natour, a Palestinian analyst and the author of a book on the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, stressed that the refugees have lost faith in any settlement that would secure their return home.

About 400,000 Palestinian refugees reside in miserable conditions in Lebanon since they were forced from their homes after the 1948 creation of the state of Israel.

The Palestinian leadership signed an agreement with Israel after previous rounds of talks in Oslo in 1993, but no settlement was then reached on the Palestinian refugees' right to return home.

'How can we start peace talks and the building of Israeli settlements is still continuing on Palestinian territory?' asked Natour.

'The construction of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands spell the end of the peace talks. The settlements must be halted and continuing them will signal the end of the peace process,' he said.

Natour was referring to hints from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a 10-month freeze on settlement construction might be lifted when it expires on September 26.

'The negotiations will be another round of failure, they failed before they started. How can there be negotiations without an Israeli decision to halt settlements on our lands,' said Ahmed Abu Rudeina.

Abbas insisted for months that he would only agree to direct talks if Israel imposed a complete settlement freeze, a demand he finally dropped last month.

On his part, a Hamas spokesman in Beirut told the German Press Agency dpa in an interview that the negotiations 'are a waste of time, they will not lead to any results.'

'The American administration is in a critical position. They want to prove that they are able to bring peace to the region, but they cannot,' Ousama Hamdan told dpa.

Hamas has declared publicly that it is opposed to these talks. It urged the people not to support the talks and not to participate in anything that might benefit this endeavor. Hamas took that decision when Abbas decided to accept the negotiations and their Israeli preconditions.

Hamdan stressed that Israel 'is not serious about peace in the region, that is why the choice of the resistance is the best solution.'

The Islamist Hamas movement vowed on Thursday to press a campaign of attacks against Israelis, hours ahead of the relaunch of direct peace talks in Washington.

Hamdan said that the arrest of scores of the movement's members in the occupied West Bank would not prevent it from following up on two shooting attacks in 24 hours that killed four Israeli settlers this week

'The heroic resistance operations in the West Bank will continue and these measures will not succeed in weakening the resistance,' he said.