The results are potentially significant, since Israel's
refusal to consider the idea of allowing a mass influx of refugees
and their descendants -- who total around four million -- is a
major obstacle to a peace deal.
Palestinians have long demanded the right of return for those
who fled or were forced to flee when the Jewish state was created
in 1948.
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research is
polling refugees in the Occupied Territories as well as those in
Jordan and Lebanon. The results are due out next month.
"Within the context of a negotiated outcome, the number of
refugees who would want to go back would be small," the center's
director Khalil Shikaki said late on Wednesday.
"A small number of refugees would go to Israel based on the
(results of the) survey. The idea that million of refugees would
be knocking at Israel's door is fantasy," he told Reuters on the
sidelines of an Ottawa conference discussing various aspects of
the refugee problem.
Shikaki said most of the refugees would opt for a state of
their own, be it a new Palestinian state or an Arab state such as
Jordan, which is home to many refugees and their descendants.
Shikaki declined to reveal the exact number of refugees who
had indicated they would return to Israel if allowed to do so
under a final peace deal.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) says the prospect of
million of refugees arriving would be "a recipe of destruction"
for his country, which has a population of 5.8 million.
The current U.S. "road map" peace plan does not refer to a
specific Palestinian right of return but calls instead for "a fair
and realistic solution to the refugee issue" in the third and
final phase of the plan, which aims at the creation of a
Palestinian state by 2005.
"There would still be a large number who would opt to go to
(an independent) Palestine," Shikaki said.
For the past 10 years Canada has been in the chair of a
international working group looking at ways of tackling the
refugee issue.
A senior Foreign Affairs official closely involved with the
group said there was little chance of a mass return of refugees to
Israel.
"Refugees as a rule do not make silly decisions about their
future...I think there is a deep need on the Palestinian side to
have some people go back, but I also believe the fears that
millions and millions will choose to do so are heavily
exaggerated," he told Reuters.
"People have been away for a very long time and the last three
years of violence has changed all sorts of attitudes as to what is
really feasible," he said.
Well over 1,000 Israelis and Palestinians have died in a
32-month-old uprising for Palestinian statehood.
