Syria's SANA News Agency reports that tomorrow Damascus will play host to an international conference on the Palestinian ‘right of return’.
According to SANA, the conference will aim to the solidify the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland as a condition without exception, refusing any moves to nationalize Palestinian refugees in their host states. The summit also reportedly hopes to formulate a message to the international community to promote balance on the Palestinian issue and to bring and end to the settlement of Palestinian land.
Since 1948, the issue has been at the center of all talks on the Palestinian-Israeli issue, often being a sought precondition for any peace deal. The “right of return” was first stipulated at the end of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war in the often disputed article 11 of UN Resolution 194.
Syria's choice to host the conference speaks to the centrality of the Palestinian issue to Syria's political posturing. While hosting over 400, 000 Palestinian refugees itself, Syria can only benefit from increasing international awareness of this issue – regardless of how practical the policy actual is – as a form of strategic leverage in any future negotiations with Israel. Realistically speaking, what actually constitutes the ‘right of return’ will need to be defined before attempting to integrate it into any new peace settlement.
