Party boss voices concern over contents of possible peace treaty

Daily Star correspondent

The prospects of a pan-Arab peace initiative based on Saudi Arabia’s recent overture toward Israel has fueled fears that a Middle East settlement would exclude the right of Palestinians to return to their native homeland, relocating them in their host countries.
Gebran Araiji, head of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, took these concerns to Bkirki, while other politicians slammed the prospect of settling Palestinians here as an explosive issue that would rekindle sectarian tensions.
After meeting Cardinal Nasrallah Butros Sfeir, Araiji, accompanied by a number of party officials, said the delegation had only one topic to discuss with the Maronite patriarch: the repatriation of Palestinians.
“On the eve of the Arab summit, it is necessary for all political and religious authorities as well as activists in political parties to address the issue of the return of Palestinians to Palestine,” Araiji said.
The right of return, upheld in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 of 1948, is “at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” he said.
“This is a legitimate right and the confrontation will continue until all the rights are restored to the Palestinians.”
He said that Sfeir agreed with him that the presence of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon was an “enormous national cause,” whose settlement would “provide internal political stability.”
Separately, the SSNP hosted a meeting with 11 Palestinian factions and refugee representatives from across the camps to discuss the settlement issue.
The meeting culminated in a statement that called on Arabs to resist “international pressures to settle Palestinians in a number of Arab countries,” and affirmed that the Palestinians themselves were at the forefront of opposition to such schemes.
It urged Arab leaders meeting in Beirut later in the month to adopt “a firm and unequivocal stand in support of the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland and to offer the (material) backing for their repatriation.”
Separately, Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, meeting under its chairman, Tyre MP Ali Khalil, also urged the Arab leaders to refrain from offering compromises to Israel, especially with regard to UN resolutions, including the right of return.
The National Coordination Committee said the settlement of Palestinian refugees, who are largely Muslims, would tip the fragile demographic balance in the country and “lead to a new strife, which Lebanon would not be able to withstand.”
“This is an alarming situation that requires the mobilization of all political forces to foil such schemes,” said the NCC, which comprises supporters of former army commander, General Michel Aoun, the National Liberal Party and the banned Lebanese Forces.
It also called for a ruling on the controversial 1994 naturalization decree, to determine whether those given the citizenship were entitled to it and did not include Palestinians.
At a weekend rally, Hizbullah’s Secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, said that Lebanon needed to pre-empt a looming scheme to settle Palestinians “before it becomes a fait accompli.”