| Review of: | The future for Palestinian refugees: toward equity and peace by Michael Dumper |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Shahira Samy |
| Reviewed in: | International Affairs |
| Date accepted online: | 10/04/2008 |
| Published in print: | Volume 83, Issue 06, Pages 1193-1234 |
Book Reviews: Middle East and North Africa
Tackling the Palestinian refugee issue is a tricky matter. How does one walk the thin line between acknowledging it as a unique case at the core of an intractable conflict, while at the same time refuting this very uniqueness by recognizing its receptive capacity to lessons learnt from best international practice? Drawing on global experiences, Michael Dumper offers a fresh approach to a field in which exceptionalism is often emphasized, an emphasis that shuts the door to benefiting from trends developing across the globe.
Here, the author revisits the issue of the 'right of return' of Palestinian refugees in the very broad sense of the term, encompassing all future prospects for the displaced population, amounting to approximately 70 per cent of the Palestinian people. Dumper's search for equity and peace is accomplished by broadening the spectrum, fleshing out premises of the international protection regime and how they may inform the Palestinian case excluded from it. But Dumper's endeavour does not end here. Throughout the book he unpacks the various rounds of the Middle East peace process, highlighting how poorly it incorporates international trends. Recognizing the challenges of dealing with the displaced in the contours of a conflict, the study in fact hovers between treading the intricacies of the regime of durable solutions on the one hand, and conflict studies on the other.
Accordingly, Dumper's book may be read from two angles. A perspective on how the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) practice and principles are applied globally is offered. Hence, themes such as repatriation, resettlement, lead agencies and local integration are presented as they are perceived in UNHCR handbooks and practised worldwide. Applicability of those themes to the Palestinian case is then tested, acknowledging its specifity.
The second part of the book explores modes of redress, albeit from a different approach. The two last chapters leave aside the international protection regime and present the refugee problem primarily as a conflict element calling for a remedy. Discussion of reparations-although with a very limited definition confining it to property restitution and compensation-is followed by how and if truth, reconciliation and justice can be operationalized.
Some of the author's proposals do not offer his overall analysis its due. This is the case, for example, with the restitution/compensation proposals which he delineates in just over a page, and some other conciliatory measures that appear to be slightly too general. Notwithstanding, Dumper offers a rich and thought-provoking concluding chapter synthesizing and refining his findings to an exploration of how they may apply to the topical debate among Palestinians regarding the one state versus two state options.
Despite his balanced dose of realism in terms of what is feasible and what is not, scepticism about the current condition of the conflict and the peace process, he nevertheless upholds an optimistic tune. In all of the international practice he looked at throughout modern history, there has never been a victimized group totally crushed by an unfavourable balance of power, nor is longevity synonymous with loss or defeat. As the book reaches its closing lines, the ball is in the court of civil society.