Available Now

BADIL Hebrew Language Information Packet/The Right of Return

(E/24/03)

BADIL Resource Center
13 May 2003
For Immediate Release

Including:

1. Main Reader, ‘Palestinian Refugees:’ overview of the issue and demands of Palestinian refugees; law and principles guiding solutions to refugee problems; answers to frequently asked questions; obstacles to be tackled by a law- and rights-based solution (24 pages);
2. Legal Brief, ‘Palestinian Refugees and their Right of Return, an International Law Analysis’ (16 pages);
3. Executive Summary, ‘The Right of Return:’ Report of the Joint British Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Refugee Choice (28 pages; translation from the English original published in London, March 2002);
4. Readers’ feedback sheet and background information about BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights.

The BADIL Hebrew-language Information Packet is available for NIS 30.

0. For postal orders inside Israel, please send a check to Andalus Publishers, PO Box 53036, Tel Aviv 61530 (andalus@andalus.co.il).
1. If you are interested in additional information and discussion of the BADIL Information Packet, please contact Zochrot (Eitan, tel. 056-314229);
2. Your feedback and comments are welcome. Please send them to BADIL at: info@badil.org.

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Background: Why this BADIL Initiative?

Palestinian refugees consider their massive displacement and dispossession since 1948 as the single, most important root-cause of the conflict with the Zionist movement and Israel. Recognition and implementation of the right of return, restitution and compensation in accordance with international law and UN Resolution 194 is seen as the only appropriate remedy and the key to Palestinian-Israeli reconciliation and peace. Israeli politicians, media and Jewish-Israeli society at large deny the existence and legitimacy of this Palestinian demand, which is perceived as a political scheme aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state.

BADIL’s decision to publish this Hebrew-language Information Packet reflects our firm belief that a rational and constructive Palestinian-Israeli debate about Palestinian refugees’ right of return is a necessity and overdue. This, because the right of return as an individual right of millions of Palestinian refugees is here to stay. It can neither be relinquished by the Palestinian leadership nor cancelled by force. It can, however, be tackled based on international law and human rights conventions, which have guided solutions to complex refugee issues in many other parts of the world, and on the basis of UN resolutions applicable to the particular case of Palestine/Israel, especially UN Resolution 194.

BADIL’s Information Packet addressed to the Jewish-Israeli public aims to clarify the universal standards and principles that have guided implementation of refugee return, housing and property restitution and compensation elsewhere in the world. We hold that abidance with these standards and principles by the Jewish-Israeli society will not only open the door for a solution of the protracted Palestinian refugee question, but also for the normalization of Jewish-Israeli existence in the region. Moreover, the BADIL Packet aims to show that Palestinian refugees are not ‘irrational’ people demanding to restore a lost past at the expense of a present denied, but people who – if engaged on the basis of their right of return – are ready and able to contribute to reconciliation and the building of a just and durable peace in Israel/Palestine.

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