JARAMANA, Syria -- His property documents from prewar Palestine mean everything to Salim Abdullah, though the paper is limp with age and the official ink is fading.
"I am looking at my land," he said Tuesday, gazing at a sheaf of tax receipts and ownership certificates his late father gave him. The papers, some dating to 1936, embody his hopes of returning to what is now Israel, to the wheat farm and olive orchard near Safad he last saw as a 6-year-old in 1948.Such hopes are among the most difficult issues to be addressed by Palestinian negotiators and their Israeli counterparts trying to work out a final settlement of the central Mideast confrontation. The on-again, off-again peace process in Israel is being watched closely -- and with some trepidation -- by the thousands of Palestinians in neighboring Syria, from refugee camp dwellers like Abdullah to militant politicians.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has indicated some refugees may receive compensation, but he has been firm that they will only be allowed to return to areas designated part of a Palestinian state. That is very unlikely to include areas such as Safad that Palestinians left in the 1948 war that created Israel.
Most of the more than 400,000 Palestinians in Syria either fled in 1948 or are the descendants of those who did. Ahmed Jibril, the fiery leader of the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, says their hopes are unlikely to be realized in the negotiations.
Jibril accuses Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat of conceding too much in the Oslo process -- securing the release of too few Palestinian political prisoners and accepting too little in Israeli troop and settler withdrawals. Palestinian and Israeli negotiators have pledged Oslo will culminate next September in a final agreement that is to address refugees; the borders of a Palestinian state; and the status of Jerusalem, which both Palestinians and Israelis claim as their capital.
"Now in the final settlement, the most crucial and important questions will be negotiated, and they will suffer the same fate as those negotiated in the Oslo accords," Jibril says.
Maher El Taher, whose Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine rivals Jibril's group but is equally opposed to Arafat, says: "We feel the Palestinian situation is very difficult, very difficult. We will try to prevent Arafat from making more concessions by creating pressure from the Palestinian community."
For Abdullah, the issue is about going home.
"We pray to God the day will come when we return to our country," he says.
Though the camp is five decades old, no one has bothered to cover the cinderblock houses and shops with plaster or paint. A few grape arbors and bright laundry flapping from rooftop lines provide the only relief from the gray of Jaramana's narrow lanes.