Title: 
EVICTION FROM JERUSALEM 
Restitution and Protection of Palestinian Rights 

Publisher:  
BADIL Resource Center, April 1999 (English & Arabic; 30 pages; US $10) 

BADIL Resource Center 
25 May 1999 
For Immediate Release 

One week after the Labor victory in the Israeli elections, there is ample – though still unofficial information about how Israeli and Palestinian negotiators intend to “solve” the question of Jerusalem, once the new Israeli government is formed and ready for the final status negotiations. Based on the plan designed by Labor MK Yossi Beilin and PA negotiator Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) already back in 1996, Jerusalem/Al-Quds is to become both the “eternal and undivided capital of Israel” and the “capital of the state of Palestine” by means of an administrative trick. New West Bank land is to be annexed to the city by Israel, which will then be declared the Palestinian capital by the PA.  

At the same time, the US government, eager to accord Israel sovereignty over Jerusalem and pressured by the “Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act” passed by Congress in 1995, seems unable even to wait for the conclusion of this Israeli-PA deal. Already now, while final status negotiations have not yet begun, US Ambassador Edward Walker has opened up a second residence in the condominium section of the new Hilton Hotel, located on the western border of the 1948 cease-fire line in Jerusalem.While this may be a satisfactory solution to the scores of distant designers of “models for Jerusalem”, the victims of this joint Israeli-PA public relations trick are all those Palestinian Jerusalemites who have been evicted by Israel from their lands and homes since 1948, both in the western and the 1967 occupied eastern parts of Jerusalem. The Beilin-Abu Mazen solution simply neglects their right to return and regain property in the city. 

EVICTION FROM JERUSALEM aims to detail the issues that need to be addressed, if the question of Jerusalem is to be tackled comprehensively, according to international law standards and resolutions, as well as principles of justice shared by the Palestinian people. The report describes how Palestinian rights have been abrogated cumulatively over the past fifty years, and in accordance with the standard principle of international law, underlines the fact that where rights have been abrogated, remedies must be implemented. Given Israel’s ongoing policy of ethnic cleansing in the city, what are at stake are both, restitution for past injustice and damage, along with the protection of the Palestinian people from new and current human rights violations. 
  
Encouraged by the recent beginnings of re-thinking on the question of Jerusalem, expressed in the re-iteration by the European Union of UN Resolution 181 and the international status of the city, we hope that this report will contribute to constructive debate and action towards an alternative solution based on justice and international law. 

CONTENT 

Introduction 

Part I: 
Eviction during Armed Conflict 
a) Impact of the 1948 War 
b) Impact of the 1967 War 

Part II: 
Eviction by Property Expropriation 
a) Between 1948 and 1967 
b) After 1967 

Part III: 
Eviction by Administrative and “Legal” Measures 
a) Revocation of Residency Rights 
b) Discrimination in Urban Planning 
c) Unequal Investment in Municipal Services 

Conclusion 
Endnotes 

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