Renewed Peace Talks and Lebanon's Palestinian Refugees - Analysis (Lebanon‪)‬

When Israeli and Palestinian leaders meet again for direct talks on September 14, they will be diving into the heart of the Israel-Palestine conflict's key challenges. This means analysts and pundits are scrambling to brush up on all the conflict's main sticking points, including the five permanent status issues. These are: Jerusalem, borders, water, settlements and refugees. Among them, it is certainly the Palestinian refugee question that will prove the most intractable. The fate of the 1948 refugees is the most difficult to solve because the traditional convictions of each side are both mutually exclusive and integral to their identities. Palestinian refugees aspire to return to their place of origin, while Israel would lose its majority Jewish status should 4.7 million Sunni Muslim refugees flood into the country. While Palestinian refugees hope to see their 'right to return' recognized, Israeli nationalism sees that hope as an existential threat.