BADIL

BADIL: What has led B'tselem to take on thisissue of the Palestinian refugee question and the right of return?
Yael Stein: Formally speaking, the issue of refugees is outside our mandate because our mandate is restricted to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. When the final status negotiations started we thought that it would be impossible not to deal with the final status issues because an agreement will be signed on them and these issues have a human rights dimension.

Dr. Randa Farah is a Research Associate based at the Refugee Studies Center (RSC), University of Oxford.

Most of her writing and research pivots around forced displacement, exile, nationalism and children living with the effects of prolonged conflict. Dr. Farah has conducted several seminars on diasporas and refugees in different academic institutions, and was involved in developing and teaching a short course on Palestinian refugees and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the University of Oxford. Her current research and interest are of a comparative nature, mainly, in Africa (South Africa and Western Sahara), Cypriot refugees and Latin America, primarily Guatemala.

The issue of international protection for the Palestinian people in the 1967 occupied territories, including Palestinian refugees who comprise over 50% of the population in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip, has continued to be a focal point of refugee mobilization and lobbying. Under international law, all refugees have the right to international protection to ensure access to the full panoply of basic human rights including those associated with durable solutions - i.e., right of return, restitution and compensation - as affirmed in international law. International protection is particularly crucial for refugees when host states are unable or unwilling to protect the rights of refugees.

The Mitchell Committee recommendations, which were released in mid-May 2001, include an immediate and unconditional cessation of violence, immediate resumption of security cooperation, a meaningful cooling-off period to be followed by confidence building measures and a resumption of political negotiations. Unlike other UN and international reports issued since September 2000, the Mitchell Committee does not call for an investigation of Israeli violations of international law nor does it call for the deployment of international protection forces.

The redeployment of Israeli military forces, moreover, is connected to the termination of the intifada, resumption of security cooperation and a cooling-off period. While the Mitchell committee does recommend that Israel "freeze all settlement activity, including the 'natural growth of settlements'", the parameters of such a settlement freeze remain undefined, and it seems up to the
parties to decide, or in reality, up to Israel to impose.

Revocation of Jerusalem ID Cards: According to information released by the Israeli Interior Ministry, 818 Palestinian Jerusalemites had their residency rights restored in 2000 as compared to 183 Palestinians in 1999. In the first three months
of 2001, some 100 Palestinians from Jerusalem regained their residency rights. (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2 April 2001) While the policy of Jerusalem ID card revocation was altered in October 1999, over the five-year period that the more restrictive policy was in place more than 3,000 Palestinians had their residency rights in Jerusalem revoked by Israeli authorities. Over the course of more than three decades of Israeli occupation, it is estimated that some 6,300 Palestinian Jerusalemites had their residency rights revoked with an additional 30,000 others who lost their residency rights because they were not registered in Israel's first census of eastern
Jerusalem after the 1967 occupation of the city.