BADIL

Badil Statement, 2 October 2009 – The recommendations of the UN fact finding mission to the Gaza Strip headed by Judge Richard Goldstone represented a golden opportunity for the Human Rights Council, the Security Council, the General Assembly, and all member states – particularly the United States and the European Union – to exercise their moral and legal obligations to hold Israel accountable for its crimes committed during its 2008-2009 war against Gaza. Yet the official Palestinian position calling for the postponement of the vote to endorse the report's recommendations now hamstrings these opportunities. In so doing, it has undermined the principle of international legitimacy as a basis to resolve the Palestinian issue and prevents the Palestinian victims of this assault from achieving redress.

1. Scope of Palestinian Displacement 2008
The Palestinian refugee and IDP population described here comprises the total estimated number of Palestinians and their descendants whose “country of origin” is the former Palestine (now divided into Israel and the OPT), who have been displaced within or outside the borders of this area, and who do not have access to voluntary durable solutions and/or reparation, including the right to return to their homes of origin and the right to repossess their properties.

Joint written statement submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Twelfth Session
14 September - 2 October 2009

Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law

Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 60/147 of 16 December 2005

UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN SUPPORT OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

INTERNATIONAL COORDINATING NETWORK ON PALESTINE

European Parliament, Brussels

August 30-31 2007

Realizing the inalienable rights of the Palestinian People:

60 years is enough! End the dispossession; bring the refugees home!

 1947

January: London Round Table Conference reopens.
February: British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin proposes variant of Morrison-Grady federal plan at London Conference and to Jewish Agency. Arab delegates and Jewish Agency reject proposal.
Bevin announces British submission of Palestine problem to United Nations.
 

Accountability Must Replace Impunity for Acts of Forced Displacement in Israel/Palestine

On this World Refugee Day, BADIL and COHRE announce here the results of proceedings before the UN Human Rights Council Complaints Procedure, in which international justice has failed petitioners seeking due restitution of land, housing and property. In so doing, BADIL and COHRE reaffirm that accountability must replace impunity - also in the case of Israel and the Palestinian people, in particular Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

We fought apartheid; we see no reason to celebrate it in Israel now!

We, South Africans who faced the might of unjust and brutal Apartheid machinery in South Africa and fought against it with all our strength, with the objective to live in a just, democratic society, refuse today to celebrate the existence of an apartheid state in the Middle East. While Israel and its apologists around the world will, with pomp and ceremony, loudly proclaim the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel this month, we who have lived with and struggled against oppression and colonialism will, instead, remember 6 decades of catastrophe for the Palestinian people. 60 years ago, 750,000 Palestinians were brutally expelled from their homeland, suffering persecution, massacres, and torture. They and their descendants remain refugees. This is no reason to celebrate.