First, the refugee issue needs to be placed at the centre of the process from where it has mysteriously disappeared. Next, all those involved in resolving the conflict must have the public courage to confront the Israeli denial of the expulsion and ethnic cleansing at the heart of the Palestinian refugee question. This remains the single largest stumbling block towards a lasting peace between both peoples.
One result is that the refugees have been excluded from the process that was to determine their very fate, which can only create more intransigence and despair. How can we go forward in this procedure? Very simply. Through the introduction of some well-established democratic principles: liberty, participation, fairness, representation, elections and citizenship. You can't make a peace without the people concerned. Yet none of the players presently responsible for the peace process in the Middle East seems willing to adopt democratic principles when dealing with the refugee question.
Nearly 10 years ago at Oslo, the need was said to be for a technical solution that left out principle. Today, it is said a deal must involve declaring the final numbers of returning refugees in advance, deciding on their behalf - and against what international law, human decency, and democratic principle would dictate. The Oslo framework, which has failed us utterly, relied on just such a minimalist business deal. So let us be honest. There are no instant deals. There are, however, well-used processes to guide us and a fair solution at the end for both peoples, a lasting peace.
It is a profound failing of political imagination to believe that democracy is a dangerous tool when confronting the issue of five million Palestinian refugees. The refugees outside the occupied Palestinian territories were excluded from the democratic mechanisms of the 1995 elections that benefited those inside them.
Connecting the entire refugee community to issues that concern them so they can participate in shaping their destiny is the only way forward. Whatever compromises that will surely be considered can only be made by the people themselves, as these concern their basic rights - which every refugee is aware of.
No leadership can do this on their behalf. We must ensure the political inclusion of the Palestinian refugees outside the occupied Palestinian territories and strengthen the damaged links between the PLO and all the constituencies it represents outside the West Bank and Gaza.
We must also begin to address the root causes of the conflict. Those who live in a genuinely democratic society can learn the truth about both their past and present in schoolbooks, newspapers and television programmes. This shapes who you are and defines how you deal with your neighbours, enemies,friends. Israelis are almost entirely ignorant of what really happened in 1948: the expulsion of the Palestinians and the creation of the refugees.
Mechanisms that would encourage the Israeli people to learn about their own past, and the role played by the Jewish military forces during the Nakbah (the Catastrophe, as it is known by Palestinians) are essential - not as a means of retribution or blame but as a measure of restitution and reconciliation, as the beginning of a concrete process of peace and mutual recognition.
We can all look to South Africa for a practical model, and to the work of truth and reconciliation commissions all over the world. Facing the past as a way out of the present impasse has proved successful with deep-rooted conflicts. The image of two communities of suffering is central to this process, for the role of the Holocaust in the memory and actions of the people of the state of Israel is essential for understanding their attitude towards the refugees.
The right of return of Palestinians, and the Israeli fears that this raises, must be tackled through these methods with determination and clarity of purpose. In democratic life people rely on their own civic spirit for answers rather than looking only to their leaders. For it is citizens who maintain the state. Local associations can provide templates for our bankrupted policy experts, as they alone have demonstrated the civic courage to confront the hard issues.
In Israel, for example, Jeff Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions and his colleagues attempt to prevent more refugees being created, as every day homes in the West Bank and Gaza are being bulldozed. The imaginative contribution from charities in the refugee camps all over the region provides realistic blueprints as well. Badil, the rights-based organisation in Bethlehem, is constructing practical scenarios on return, some acquired from a recent trip to Bosnia and the successful legal cases of repatriation there.
Public and practical gestures towards Palestinian refugees, both humanitarian and civic, are not simply a palliative while the real business of secret negotiations goes on behind closed doors. They are of immeasurable value, no matter where they come from, or how wide the chasm that currently divides our two peoples. What is indispensable about these gestures is that they connect us all in the precise steps that lead forward, towards hope, towards our common future.
· Karma Nabulsi is a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. Professor Ilan Pappé is senior lecturer in politics at Haifa University and academic director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva. He is the author of The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1951.