BADIL

(Cyprus 6-10/10/2000)
Badil Resource Center and the Trans-ArabResearch Institute (TARI) convened, in coordination with 'Aidoun Group - Lebanon, the Right of Return Coalition in Europe, and in consultation with 'Aidoun Group - Syria, the Society for the Defense of the Internally Displaced, the Committee for the Right of Return in Jordan and other organizations, committees and groups active in the field of the defense of the Palestinian Right of Return in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, North America and Europe a meeting in Cyprus between 6-10 October 2000 with the following aims:

UN Commission on Human Rights
In mid-October, after three weeks of Israeliaggression in the occupied territories, the 53 member UN Commission on Human Rights, the primary human rights body in the United Nations, met in a special session, the fifth in its history(previous special sessions were held on the situation in East Timor, the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda), to discuss the current situation in Palestine, based on a request by the Permanent Representative of Algeria on behalf of the Council of Arab Permanent Representatives Members of the League of Arab States on 3 October. 47 out of 53 members of the Commission supported convening of the special session.

For more than two months Palestinian and international organizations have been calling for international protection of the Palestinian people, with particular attention to especially vulnerable sectors like the refugees, the Palestinian community in eastern Jerusalem, and Palestinians in remote areas of the West Bank living in areas near Israeli settlements. As of press time, discussions regarding the deployment of a UN force were continuing in the Security Council with draft resolutions submitted by the Non- Aligned movement and by France.

(CESCR)
Session: November-December 2000
During the last two weeks in November, the UN Committee on the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Israel is a signatory met in Geneva to consider the reports of the countries scheduled for review regarding implementation of the Covenant. Numerous local and international NGOs, including BADIL, submitted briefs to the Committee relative to the social, economic and cultural rights of the Palestinian people.   Israel issued a note verbale on 3 November stating that it's second periodic report, including issues referred to and information requested by the Committee in its Concluding Observations date 4 December 1998, would be ready for submission no later than March 2001. The report was scheduled for submission to the November-December session, including material on the occupied territories not included in the first report. While Israel did not BADIL's report to the Committtee focused exclusively on the rights of Palestinian refugees, 1967 displaced Palestinians and internally displaced Palestinians. The submission is part of BADIL's new legal project related to refugee rights.

The "Right of Return"
1. The Committee should conclude that Israel'sland confiscation laws as implemented - i.e., as selectively applied against Palestinian landowners only to deprive them of their landwithout being equally applied to deprive similarly situated Jewish landowners, in addition to the complete failure to provide due process guarantees for the Palestinian landowners or fair  market value rates of compensation for property so confiscated - inside the 1949 "Green Line," and in particular the Absentees' Property laws, are illegal under international law because they are framed and implemented in a way that discriminates on the basis of racial, ethnic, religious or political criteria (to work exclusively in favor of Jews and exclusively against the interests of Palestinian Arabs), which prima facie violates the ICESCR.