This is a guest post by Petra Marquardt-Bigman.

On Thursday, December 10, President Obama will deliver the Nobel Peace Prize Lecture in Oslo.  Prominent among the issues that the president may want to bring up is the failed quest for peace that began in Oslo back in 1993, when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators held a series of meetings in the Norwegian capital to formulate the accords that launched the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The feeling that it is time to give up on this process - and perhaps even on peace - is widespread, but claims that everything has been tried are not quite true.

Veteran Mideast expert Robert Malley has recently argued that after 16 years of U.S.-backed peacemaking efforts it was time to examine the question “what piece of the puzzle has been missing.” In several of his recent publications co-authored with Hussein Agha, the central argument was that a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would require “looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 - Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.”

If one adopts this perspective, it should arguably be considered a welcome coincidence that just two days before Obama’s award ceremony in Oslo, UNRWA, the agency that was set up to deal with the plight of Palestinian refugees, will mark its 60th anniversary. This hardly happy occasion provides an opportunity to ask if the quest for a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian talks can succeed without an acknowledgment of the crucial role played throughout the conflict by the Arab states that not only fought to prevent Israel’s establishment but also perpetuated the conflict by refusing to absorb Palestinian refugees.

The hypocrisy that has prevailed for decades and contributed considerably to prevent Mideast peace is rarely mentioned in the media. One of the few exceptions was a recent report in London’s Independent that highlighted “a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries.”

The report described the discrimination faced by Palestinians in Arab countries as comparable to the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe and noted that this deplorable situation could only contribute to an alarming radicalization that benefits Islamists and even al-Qa’ida. Daniel Kurtzer, a former US ambassador to both Israel and Egypt who also served as advisor to Obama, was quoted as acknowledging that the refugee question was not only “the most sensitive issue in the conflict”, but also one that “all American governments have resisted dealing with.”

It should be recalled in this context that in his widely praised speech in Cairo, President Obama expressed his conviction “that in order to move forward, we must say openly to each other the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors.” One of the things that are supposedly often said behind closed doors in the Middle East is that the millions of Palestinians who have been told for decades to hold out for a “Right of Return” to the homes their parents or grandparents left in 1948 will have to make do with a “return” to a future Palestinian state or alternatives like naturalization in their current country of residence.

Another issue that is too often mentioned only behind closed doors is the fact that the Arab-Israeli conflict resulted not only in hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees, but also in a roughly equal number of Jewish refugees who were forced to abandon their ancient communities in Arab countries. Indeed, when Obama spoke in Cairo, some Egyptian-born Jews hoped he would mention the fact that just like Palestinians, hundreds of thousands of Jews in Arab countries suffered displacement and dispossession.

Last but by no means least, there is the question what prevented Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas from responding to the proposals presented by Israel’s prime minister Ehud Olmert in September 2008. According to media reports, Olmert’s proposal envisaged a Palestinian state on an area equal to the pre-1967 territories controlled by Egypt and Jordan, including Gaza and 93.5 percent of the West Bank, with another 5.8 percent added through land swaps that would allow Israel to keep the main settlement blocs in exchange for land of equal size and quality and a “safe passage” corridor from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. The proposed solution for Jerusalem envisaged dividing sovereignty between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, while the Old City’s holy basin was to be placed under the authority of an international committee representing Israel, Palestine, the United States, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. With regard to the Palestinian refugees, Olmert reportedly offered to allow a symbolic number - about 3,000 people over a period of five years - to settle in Israel.

While Abbas failed to respond to Olmert’s proposals, he eventually indicated in an interview with the Washington Post last spring that the remaining gaps “were wide”;  however, recently he reportedly declared: “Olmert and I almost closed on everything. We almost reached an oral agreement on all issues.”

If this was indeed true, the current pessimism about the prospects for peace would seem to be unwarranted. Yet, the fate of the millions of Palestinians who claim refugee status would still need to be addressed, and it is time to acknowledge openly - not just behind closed doors - that this can only be accomplished if the Arab states that have condemned their Palestinian residents for decades to live as refugees stop pretending that they have no responsibility for creating - and resolving - this problem.