BADIL

The name of Kafr Bir’im is well-known in the context of Palestinian displacement. This Palestinian Christian village is located 4 km south of the Lebanese-Israel/Palestine border. In mid-November 1948, two weeks after Israeli forces occupied the village, residents were ordered to leave with a promise from Israeli officials that the people of Kafr Bir’im would be able to return to their homes within two weeks. Fifty-seven years later they remain in forced exile.

Palestinian refugees may be one of the longest-standing refugee cases in the world today; they are also one of the most documented group of refugees. Recent years have seen the digitization of housing and property records held by the United Nations. But there remains a gap in documentation – registration of those records still held by refugees themselves.

In this working paper, refugee law expert Michael Kagan develops the idea of conflicting rights as a means of addressing Israeli objections to Palestinian refugee return. Rather than explore Palestinian arguments for the right of return, this paper starts from the assumption that the right of return exists and must be accepted by Israel in order to reach a just peace that complies with international law.

Since 1995 Jewish organizations have been leading an aggressive restitution campaign to reclaim dormant assets belonging to Jewish victims of the Nazi regime in Europe. In 1997 the same issue was raised in Israel but it has not been pursued with similar ferocity nor success.

In November 2004 BADIL Resource Center organized a study tour of Cyprus for Palestinian refugee activists (See Majdal 24, December 2004). During the visit participants met with Ms. Titina Loizidou, a tour guide and displaced person from the northern Cyprus port town of Kyrenia. After the division of the island in 1974 Ms. Loizidou became active in a movement called ‘Women Walk Home’ which held regular demonstrations calling for a united Cyprus, return home and human rights for all.