International Mobilization and Lobbying the UN

BADIL Exploratory Trip:

In late April and early May 2001, representatives of BADIL and partners traveled to Geneva for exploratory consultations and discussions about how to effectively and efficiently advance Palestinian refugee rights in various UN and international fora. During meetingswith numerous organizations including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM),

 the UN Claims Commission, and the World Council of Churches issues of mandate were examined, potential roles within a rights-based framework for durable solutions for Palestinian refugees (i.e., Resolution 194) were discussed, and various legal and political obstacles and lobbying strategies were considered.

 BADIL and international law professor Susan Akram, a BADIL partner, also submitted reports on Palestinian refugees to the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the treatymonitoring body for the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Committee was meeting in Geneva in special session to review Israel's compliance with the Covenant in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In its previous report on Israel's compliance with the Covenant, the Committee drew special attention to Israel's Covenant violations concerning Palestinian refugees and internally displaced Palestinians, particularly with regard to discriminatory legislation that aims to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning to their homeland and being restituted of their property.

British Commission of Enquiry: In March 2001, the Joint British Parliamentary Middle East Councils Commission of Enquiry on Palestinian Refugees that traveled to the region in September 2000 (See al- Majdal, Issue No. 7), issued its report on Palestinian refugee choice. The 200-page report is based upon hearings conducted by the Commission in refugee  communities in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan,  Lebanon and Syria concerning Palestinian preferences with regard to durable solutions based on internationally recognized rights (i.e., right of return, self-determination, and the principle of free choice).

The report, dedicated to the children at Miya Miya refugee camp in Sidon and the dreams they shared as well as to the lost dreams of  the children of Tal al-Za'tar camp, 1976, and of Sabra and Shatila camps, 1982, includes a preface by Professor Richard Falk, historical background, main findings of the refugees' testimony, general remarks and analysis, recommendations by the Commission of Enquiry, and information on the establishment of the Commission of Enquiry as well as annexes containing transcripts of the hearings and other supporting documents.

In the preface, American professor Richard Falk writes, "The clarity of international law and morality, as pertaining to Palestinian refugees, is beyond any serious question. It needs to be appreciated that the obstacles to implementation are exclusively political - the resistance of Israel, and the unwillingness of the international community, especially the Western liberal democracies, to exert significant pressure in support of these Palestinian refugee rights."

 Given the intensity and the unity of refugees insistence on implementation of the right of return, the preface warns that it would be "a severe mistake of history, with potentially serious repercussions … [to] negotiate a solution that ignores the underlying claims of the wide community of Palestinian refugees." "How to overcome [the depth of Israeli resistance]," notes Falk, "is a challenge that should haunt the political imagination of all those genuinely committed to finding a just and sustainable reconciliation between Israel and Palestine."

The bulk of the report includes the collection of testimonies from refugees in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. These testimonies are summarized under several main themes, which surfaced during the hearings conducted by the Commission. The themes include the refugee issue as the core of the conflict between Arabs/ Palestinians and Israel; the fact that refugees felt excluded from the Oslo process; the issue of representativeness; the profound identification and attachment of Palestinian refugees to the land and their self-identification with it as a people; the British role in creating the refugee problem and Israeli and international responsibility; and, the importance of UNRWA as the basic defender of the minimal rights of refugees and the threat of UNRWA being undermined.

The main theme that the Commission of Enquiry discovered, however, was the remarkable cohesion and consistency among refugees. "Certain positions that could be seen to divide the refugees, since they involved a possible enhancement of their personal interests over other groups of refugees," notes the report, "were confronted outright by the refugees themselves." Refugees in all areas emphasized that the right of return must apply to all refugees, regardless of their physical, financial position or location. "The main principle is that all Palestinians want this resolution to be implemented," stated Khalid al-Azza, "that is the resolution of the right of refugees to return and to compensation for the 52 years passed since they left their land, houses, and factories."

The report, prepared by the Labor Middle East Council, Conservative Middle East Council, and the Liberal Democrat Middle East Council will be presented to Israel, the PLO, European governments and the European Union to remind the international community of its responsibility to establish a mechanism appropriate for the implementation of refugee choice. Chat Live with Beautiful Single European Girls on Live without registration for online chatting to make new friends.

War crimes: In June two complaints were filed in Belgian against Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon holding him responsible for the 1982 massacre of several thousand Palestinian refugees in the camps of Sabra and Shatila in Beirut Lebanon. For more on the massacre see, al-Majdal, Issue No. 9 According the Belgian daily le Soir (2 June 2001), the first suit was filed by an ad hoc committee composed of Palestinians, Lebanese, Moroccans and Belgian citizens in Brussels on 2 June 2001 under Belgian law concerning grave violations of international humanitarian law. For the time being, the case against Ariel Sharon is being studied by the Belgian judicial authorities, which must determine whether the suit is admissible under the terms of the Belgian law.

Roughly two weeks later (18 June 2001), a second complaint was filed in Brussels by three lawyers - Luc Walleyn, Michael Verhaeghe, and Chibli Mallat - on behalf of 28 plaintiffs and witnesses, all survivors of the Sabra/Shatila massacres. The complaint is filed against Ariel Sharon, Amos Yaron and any Israeli or Lebanese person responsible for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that happened between the 16th and 18th of September, including the killing, torture, rape and "disappearance" of from 1000 to 3500 civilians - children and women as well as men, Lebanese as well as Palestinians. The complaint is based on customary international law, including jus cogens, and Belgian law.

(Press Release issued by lawyers for the plaintiffs, 22 June 2001) The Belgian law under which these complaints are filed, introduced in 1993 and modified in 1999, is based on the legal concept of universal jurisdictionand states explicitly that immunity attached to a person's official status does not prevent application of the current law. In other words, the law sets aside limitations of time, citizenship and status.

Most recently the law was used to try several Rwandans in connection with the 1994 genocide in the central African country. In a press release concerning the second complaint, the lawyers for the plaintiffs, all of whom lost close family members, note that "It is worth remembering that Israel invoked universal customary law when it tried Eichman for war crimes, and this case, and that of Demjanjuk in the US, and others, are cited at length in the complaint."

In late June, Human Rights Watch (HRW) also called for a criminal investigation into Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's role in the Sabra and Shatila massacre. "There is abundant evidence that war crimes and crimes against humanity were committed on a wide scale in the Sabra and Shatila massacre, but to date, not a single individual has been brought to justice," noted Hanny Megally, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch.

Human Rights Watch further noted that while the findings and conclusions of Israel's own commission of inquiry (Kahan Commission) were "authoritative interms of investigation and documentation of the facts surrounding the massacre," it could not "substitute for proceedings in a criminal court in Israel or elsewhere that will bring to justice those responsible for the killing of hundreds of innocent civilians."

HRW also called upon the Lebanese government to institute a similar investigation concerning the responsibility of Lebanese officials.
The call by Human Rights Watch for a criminal investigation of Israeli and Lebanese officials came in advance of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Washington, DC in late June.

 "[T]he United States had a substantial interest in the case," stated HRW, "because the Israeli occupation of West Beirut followed written US  ssurances that Palestinians remaining there would be safe, as part of an arrangement that saw the evacuation of [PLO] forces." (HRW Press Release, 23 June 2001) The focus on criminal responsibility for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila was further heightened by a BBC documentary on the massacre broadcast in June