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    Categories: 2020

A view from Jerusalem: Azerbaijan occupies the homes of 360 thousand Armenian refugees, and Armenia – 250 thousand Azerbaijani

Arminfo, Armenia
June 2 2020

ArmInfo. It can be safely said that without taking into account the refugee aspect, all attempts to resolve the Karabakh conflict seem to be incomplete. If we are  talking about occupation, then today, according to the UN, Azerbaijan  is occupying the homes of 360 thousand Armenian refugees, and Armenia  – 250 thousand of Azerbaijani ones. An Israeli public figure,  publicist Avigdor Eskin, expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.

<Thus, during the conflict of the late eighties and early nineties,  hundreds of thousands of people lost their homes and shelters. This  situation is completely different from the one when one side holds  the territory of the other. All negotiations come down to the  boundaries of retreat. While consideration of the topic of refugees  reveals completely different ratios, suggesting a rather different  balance. And why are humanitarian problems due to war less weighty  than territorial ones? They give a new picture of the relationship  between deprivation and suffering>, he stressed.

Eskin recalled that the negotiation process between Armenia and  Azerbaijan after the war lasts more than a quarter century.  Negotiations, however, did not bring peace to the peoples of the  region. The main discussion framework is the schedule and measure of  the retreat of the Armenian army from its current positions in favor  of establishing Azerbaijan's sovereignty there. At a certain stage,  Yerevan agreed to give the adjacent five regions, leaving itself  strategically the most important two regions and Artsakh itself.   However, a compromise has not been reached to this day.

According to Eskin, international conflict resolution documents are  usually based on UN Security Council resolutions. Particularly often  a reference is made to the resolution 822 of November 12, 1993. The  formulations approved in this document are often used by Baku to  manifest its own position. Meanwhile, any simple analysis of  negotiation documents of all past years between Azerbaijan and  Armenia, demonstrates that the lion's share of the time was devoted  to discussing territorial disputes and security issues. At the same  time, in his opinion, the answer is still hanging in the air to the  question of whether it is possible to resolve the conflict fairly if,  in addition to territorial and military aspects, it has also  humanitarian one.

''The continued retention with the help of the Armenian army of the  territories that were part of Soviet Azerbaijan before the war, is  called occupation by Baku, and has become a common topic of  discussion.  However, is a territorial dispute the only and main  topic? Is the fate of disadvantaged and tragically homeless people  not a significant topic?>, Eskin wondered.

<Usually the matter concerns the rights and needs of Baku. Moreover,  limiting everything only to the issue of territory and security, the  current stalemate in the negotiations may become a chronic one. But  if you look at the problem more broadly and take into account the  factor of human suffering as a result of the war, a place opens up  for creative diplomatic efforts. A just resolution of the conflict  frozen a quarter century ago cannot be reduced to the formalism of  the borders of the Soviet period. The settlement should begin by  taking into account the human factor, which we tend to forget about,  "concluded Eskin. 

Jhanna Virabian: