Showing posts with label Palestinian Rights. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 1, 2024

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

About BADIL

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights is an independent, human rights non-profit organization committed to defend and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons. Our vision, mission, programs and relationships are defined by our Palestinian identity and the principles of international humanitarian and human rights law. We seek to advance the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people on this basis.

Established in 1998, BADIL is registered with the Palestinian Ministry of Interior; legally owned by a General Assembly and administered by 9 elected Board members. BADIL holds special consultative status with UN since 2006. BADIL believes that the only feasible and durable solution is one that is based on rights and justice; derived from international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law, the principles of justice, and the best practices of states. BADIL is unique in its comprehensive approach and legal analysis which is not restricted to a particular period of time or to a specific geographic location. BADIL’s work falls within four specialized units: Legal & International Advocacy, Research & Documentation, and Community Mobilization. https://badil.org/about

Protection Gap for Palestinian Refugees

A protection gap exists for Palestinian refugees worldwide due to the misinterpretation and misguided application of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the inability of the UNCCP to carry out its mandate thereby making it an essentially defunct organ, and the circumscribed mandate of UNRWA, which limits its work to humanitarian activities. In particular, the key role of the UNCCP and its termination has not been adequately considered by either UNHCR or any judicial authority with regard to what international protection obligations are owed Palestinian refugees. Until this issue is properly analyzed and corrected, Palestinian refugees will continue to receive lesser protection than they were guaranteed by the international community.

Handbooks | Research | Al-Majdal | Statements

Handbooks

Research

Al-Majdal

Palestinian Refugees: Multiple Displacements and the Issue of Protection (Issue No.59, March 2017).

Statements

Palestinian Refugee Right of Return

To this day, the Israeli colonial-apartheid regime has denied the Palestinian people the right of return, a right repeatedly affirmed by the international community, primarily through the adoption of racist laws that regulate citizenship and residency as well as property and land ownership. Israel’s denial of the right of return directly breaches international law, which compels states to make remedies for wrongful acts committed and guarantee non-recurrence of said acts, and constitutes a violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination, which without the right of return for Palestinian refugees and IDPs would be incomplete. The international community must exert pressure on Israel to recognize the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and to implement it, starting with the revocation of all legislation and policies in place that deny return of all those displaced, followed by taking positive steps to facilitate the repatriation of all those displaced

Research | Al-Majdal Articles | Legal Interventions | Survey of Palestinian Refugees and IDPs

Research

Al-Majdal Articles

United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA)

Originally established by UN Resolution 302 of 1949 to carry out direct relief and works programs for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA’s mandate has been repeatedly renewed in light of the ongoing Palestinian refugee question. It’s short-term but renewable mandate and the absence of mechanisms to address the natural growth of the Palestinian refugee population since its establishment, together with the predominately voluntary funding system which is adversely susceptible to world politics, have resulted in a chronic funding crisis for the Agency and decreases in the quality and quantity of services provided to refugees. It is the responsibility of the international community to ensure the provision of humanitarian assistance and rights-based protections to Palestinian refugees and to act with immediate effect to resolve the funding crisis. Financing the essential programs run by UNRWA to ensure basic human rights must be made a mandatory obligation of the international community.

Research

Statement

Key outside the Aida refugee camp, Palestine

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Parenting peace & justice

Palestine Sunbird: The national bird of Palestine THE LOVELY PLANET ( Image: Sakhr Abdullah )

Mike Hanini Odetalla: "Once, when I was a child, my grandfather (ay) berated me for disturbing a bird's nest, asking me how I would feel if someone came and destroyed my home... AND yet, the Zionist Jews destroy Palestinian homes on a daily basis and in the process they destroy lives, and leave life long scars...

I WONDER where in the HELL are those Jewish Grandfathers and what lessons are they imparting on their own children/grandchildren with their complicit silence???"

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin?

Sunday, March 9, 2014

My letter to the Washington Post RE Israel demolishes Palestinian houses in vital Jordan Valley

The Long Journey of Palestine Refugee Women

RE Israel demolishes Palestinian houses in vital Jordan Valley
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israel-demolishes-palestinian-houses-in-vital-jordan-valley/2014/03/08/2d80f960-9da2-11e3-878c-65222df220eb_story.html?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads

Dear Editor,

At least you are headlining news today, of Israel demolishing Palestinian homes, for the Israel-Palestine conflict with all its many negative ramifications needs to end- and it will not end if Americans do not know about and do not understand the very real plight of the Palestinians.

Day in and day out for more than sixty years now Israel has been pushing Palestinians into forced exile. Israel obsessed with being "Jewish" wants the land but not the native non-Jewish population of that land. This situation is crazy and cruel. It empowers religious extremism and bigotry rather than respect for universal basic human rights and the rule of fair and just laws.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
A UN Committee Expresses Concern over Recent Developments in Occupied Jerusalem... The committee said that Israel also continues to construct settlements in East Jerusalem, in violation of international law and in defiance of the international community's repeated calls for ending such illegal acts.

Israeli Settlers Brutally Assault Three Young Palestinians near Ramallah

Plea to the Pope... Ash Wednesday Letter To Pope Francis: Speak Out Against Targeting of Palestinian Children

Just because it isn't happening here doesn't mean it isn't happening...

Official: Israel refused to let Palestinian refugees in Syria return

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never tires of inventing new hoops through which he insists Palestinians jump. As he acknowledged a few weeks back, it's all part of a cynical game that he plays in an effort to kill the chances for peace....

The Palestinian national soccer team, a source of pride for many, has been under attack by the Israeli state.

Hanan Ashrawi: "Today, 20 years after Baruch Goldstein cut down so many innocent lives in a burst of hateful rage, the poisonous anti-Arab racism that turned him into a mass murderer is alive and well in Israel."

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to:

Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries
The Office of International Religious Freedom
( http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/ )

Refugees and the Right of Return
We call for a just solution to our refugee issue in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194. Our position on refugees is also included and supported in the Arab Peace Initiative (API), which calls for “a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.” A just solution to the refugee issue must address two aspects: the right of return and reparations.

Refugees, Borders & Jerusalem
"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world."Eleanor Roosevelt

More than sixty years ago, back in 1949, the Application of Israel for admission to membership in the United Nations (A/818) clearly pointed out that Israel was directly contravening "the previous recommendations of the United Nations in at least three important respects: in its attitude on the problem of Arab refugees, on the delimitation of its territorial boundaries, and on the question of Jerusalem." http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/85255e950050831085255e95004fa9c3/1db943e43c280a26052565fa004d8174?OpenDocument

Thousands of Palestinians trapped in Syria camp 'slowly dying'

What message do we send?

A World Not Ours: Filmed over more than 20 years by multiple generations of the same family, A World Not Ours is more than just a family portrait; it is an attempt to record what is being forgotten, and mark what should not be erased from collective memory.

A day at the Aida Camp Normal life can never be normal when it is lived under brutal military occupation, writes Kholoud Al-Ajarma from the Aida Refugee Camp in the Occupied West Bank

History writing that aims at damage control

Ralph M Coury: "...The fact is that the “heresy” of which Shavit speaks was a main current in Zionist speculations from the outset. The new settlers, Theodor Herzl (the founder of the Zionist movement) writes in his diary in 1895, should “gently” expropriate the natives’ property and “try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. The property-owners will come over to our side. But the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. Let the owners of immovable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.” (The Complete Diaries, NY, 1960, vol 1, P88.) "

It’s important for people to know how far the Palestinians have come to put an end to the conflict with Israel.

The Palestinian Refugee's Right of Return: No issue is more emblematic of the 20th century Palestinian experience than the plight of the approximately seven million Palestinian refugees.

Reflections By An ARAB JEW by Ella Habiba Shohat "When my grandmother first encountered Israeli society in the '50s, she was convinced that the people who looked, spoke and ate so differently--the European Jews--were actually European Christians. Jewishness for her generation was inextricably associated with Middle Easterness. My grandmother, who still lives in Israel and still communicates largely in Arabic, had to be taught to speak of "us" as Jews and "them" as Arabs. For Middle Easterners, the operating distinction had always been "Muslim," "Jew," and "Christian," not Arab versus Jew. The assumption was that "Arabness" referred to a common shared culture and language, albeit with religious differences."

UNITED NATIONS: Give Peace a Chance... The year 2014 has been proclaimed the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People... “The objective of the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is to promote solidarity with the Palestinian people as a central theme, contributing to international awareness of (a) core themes regarding the question of Palestine, as prioritized by the Committee, (b) obstacles to the ongoing peace process, particularly those requiring urgent action such as settlements, Jerusalem, the blockade of Gaza and the humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territory and; (c) mobilization of global action towards the achievement of a comprehensive, just and lasting solution of the question of Palestine in accordance with international law and the relevant resolutions of the United Nations.”

History of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, was the result of the experience of the Second World War. With the end of that war, and the creation of the United Nations, the international community vowed never again to allow atrocities like those of that conflict happen again. World leaders decided to complement the UN Charter with a road map to guarantee the rights of every individual everywhere. The document they considered, and which would later become the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was taken up at the first session of the General Assembly in 1946. " http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/history.shtml

U.N. Resolution 194 from 1948 Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;

The Arab Peace Initiative

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Live by the Golden Rule

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

My letter to the NYTimes RE Closing In on Basic Mideast Principles editorial & The B.D.S. Threat By Roger Cohen & Israel’s Big Question by Thomas L. Friedman

The Palestinian Village of Ein Kerem near Al Quds (Jerusalem) Circa 1944...This village was ethnically cleansed of its indigenous native Palestinian Arabs in 1948... photo from facebook wall of Mike Hanini Odetalla

RE: Closing In on Basic Mideast Principles editorial & The B.D.S. Threat By Roger Cohen & Israel’s Big Question by Thomas L. Friedman
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/opinion/closing-in-on-basic-mideast-principles.html?ref=international
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/opinion/cohen-the-bds-threat.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/opinion/friedman-israels-big-question.html?ref=international

Dear Editor,

Are details regarding current negotiations to end the Israel-Palestine conflict leaking out, or are some people generating calculated guesses aimed at influencing public opinion, as well as the talks themselves... Both Thomas L. Friedman and Roger Cohen use the podium of your pages to argue for an Israel obsessed about Jewishness. I think that is an imprisoning past that we Americans would be wise not to perpetuate: Tax payers should not be funding religious scholars and schemes and violations of international law as well as the insidious institutionalized bigotry and injustice necessary to sustain Israel's ongoing quest to be exclusively Jewish.

A fully secular two state solution to end the Israel-Palestine conflict is the best way forward. In 1948 United Nations Mediator Count Folke Bernadotte wisely pointed out that "It would be an offence against the principles of justice if those innocent victims [Palestine refugees] could not return to their homes while [Jewish] immigrants flowed into Palestine to take their place." ( http://unispal.un.org/pdfs/AC1SR207.pdf page 4, halfway down )

In 1949, the Application of Israel for admission to membership in the United Nations (A/818) clearly states "The State of Israel, in its present form, directly contravened the previous recommendations of the United Nations in at least three important respects: in its attitude on the problem of Arab refugees, on the delimitation of its territorial boundaries, and on the question of Jerusalem.

The United Nations had certainly not intended that the Jewish State should rid itself of its Arab citizens. On the contrary, section C of part I of the Assembly's 1947 resolution had explicitly provided guarantees of minority rights in each of the two States. For example, it had prohibited the expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish State except for public purposes, and then only upon payment of full compensation. Yet the fact was that 90 per cent of the Arab population of Israel had been driven outside its boundaries by military operations, had been forced to seek refuge in neighbouring Arab territories, had been reduced to misery and destitution, and had been prevented by Israel from returning to their homes. Their homes and property had been seized and were being used by thousands of European Jewish immigrants." http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/85255e950050831085255e95004fa9c3/1db943e43c280a26052565fa004d8174?OpenDocument

Zionists then and Zionists now want the world to believe that Israel's "Jewishness" is more important than respecting property rights as well as universal basic human rights including but not limited to the Palestinian refugees right to return... keep in mind the fact that The United Nations had certainly not intended that the Jewish State should rid itself of its Arab citizens.

This week while Friedman & Cohen were essentially asking Americans to be obsessed about keeping Israel "Jewish", Israeli Jews referred to as "settlers" (as if Palestine is the Wild West in the olden days, long before international law ) attacked Palestinian orchards cutting down 150 olive trees in the Bethlehem-area village of al-Khader . Also this week Israeli forces destroyed the only water pipe serving a Palestinian community in the Jordan Valley and please note The number of Palestinian structures demolished by the Israeli authorities in the Jordan Valley in 2013 more than doubled, from 192 in 2012 to 393 in 2013.

Islamists are thriving on the continuation of the Israel-Palestine conflict. These are increasingly dangerous times for everyone in the region. Negotiations to end the Israel-Palestine conflict need to be the path to a just and lasting peace with the rule of fair and just laws galvanizing security and compassion for all human beings regardless of supposed religion- not a perpetuation of the cruelty, crimes and craziness created by the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict.

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES
Dr. Zogby: This Time Must Be Different

Jordan's King urges Arab, Islamic organisations to serve nation’s causes in US... peace efforts should lead to the two-state solution based on international resolutions and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which, he said, was a historical turning point.

Reflections By An ARAB JEW by Ella Habiba Shohat " When my grandmother first encountered Israeli society in the '50s, she was convinced that the people who looked, spoke and ate so differently--the European Jews--were actually European Christians. Jewishness for her generation was inextricably associated with Middle Easterness. My grandmother, who still lives in Israel and still communicates largely in Arabic, had to be taught to speak of "us" as Jews and "them" as Arabs. For Middle Easterners, the operating distinction had always been "Muslim," "Jew," and "Christian," not Arab versus Jew. The assumption was that "Arabness" referred to a common shared culture and language, albeit with religious differences."

Ziad Asali : The Road to the Arab Civil State

Children of the occupation: growing up in Palestine

ISRAELI DEMOLITIONS OF PALESTINIAN PROPERTY IN THE JORDAN VALLEY, 2013... UNITED NATIONS OCHA MAP

Free to Fund Palestine ... a Growing Gardens for Palestine poem by Anne Selden Annab

UNITED NATIONS: Give Peace a Chance... The year 2014 has been proclaimed the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People

Palestinian Refugees (1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

UN Resolution 194 from 1948 : The refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible

The Arab Peace Initiative

Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties, the council:

1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.

2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm:

I- Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the June 4, 1967 lines as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.

II- Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

III- The acceptance of the establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

3. Consequently, the Arab countries affirm the following:

I- Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all the states of the region.

II- Establish normal relations with Israel in the context of this comprehensive peace.

John Kerry defends US foreign policy “The reason we’re so devoted to finding a solution is simple: Because the benefits of success and the dangers of failure are enormous for the United States, for the world, for the region and, most importantly of all, for the Israeli and Palestinian people,” US secretary of state John Kerry at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

EU warns Israel, Palestinians of the cost of peace failure

Analysis: Why Palestinian leadership is right to engage in peace talks

Ziad Asali of ATFP: Why Palestinians are puzzled by the 'Jewish state' demand... Netanyahu's demand for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state bizarrely inserts Palestinians into the 'Who is a Jew' debate

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Article 1

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

Live by the Golden Rule

Monday, November 25, 2013

Destruction and Appropriation of Palestinian Heritage .... Palestine & UNESCO Protecting heritage and reasserting sovereignty : The first installment of a two-part policy brief from Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

The Palestinian flag is raised alongside the UNESCO flag for the
first time, at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron in Dec. 2011.
(Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)

PART 1

Palestine & UNESCO: Protecting heritage and reasserting sovereignty

PART 2

Palestine & UNESCO: The national duty to protect cultural heritage

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=647681

Destruction and Appropriation of Palestinian Heritage

For almost a century, Palestinian cultural heritage located in what is today Palestine and Israel has been subjected to destruction and appropriation by different administrations. Since 1967, Israel has damaged and destroyed historical, cultural, religious and natural sites throughout the OPT. Immediately after the occupation, Israeli authorities razed the Moroccan Quarter in the old city of Jerusalem and seized historical and religious buildings, such as the Palestine Archaeological Museum (now known as the Rockefeller Museum).

Since its illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, which is not recognized by any other country, Israel has subjected the city's cultural heritage to its national legislation. Ongoing archaeological projects include the "City of David" park, located in East Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood. In October 2011, the Israeli High Court ignored Israel’s obligations under UNESCO treaties and protocols and deemed the archaeological works as consistent with Israel's domestic law.

An equally shocking example is the Simon Wiesenthal Center's construction of the Museum of Tolerance in West Jerusalem, which entailed excavations at the ancient Mamilla Cemetery with hundreds of exhumations of graves and remains. Dating from the 7th century, the cemetery was designated as an antiquities site in 1944 by the British Mandate authorities. The excavations continue in violation of Israel’s obligations under the 1972 UNESCO’s World Natural and Cultural Heritage Convention and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The US Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a petition to U.N. bodies and the Swiss government on behalf of Palestinian descendants of those buried at the Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem.

In the West Bank, Israeli military operations in the Old City of Nablus in 2002 resulted in extensive damage of cultural heritage, including structures dating to the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman eras. Some have argued that the 2002 Israeli military attack of the Church of the Nativity was a war crime. Israel has, in addition, used archaeology as a pretext to forcibly transfer Palestinian residents, demolish villages and gain territorial control over Palestinian land to further its illegal settlement project and exploit the OPT’s natural resources.

There is a strong argument that each of these cases violates Israel's legal obligations as a party to the 1954 Hague Convention and its First Protocol, as well as its obligations under other international laws. Even the US State Department 2009 religious freedom report notes the discriminatory nature of Israel's policy in protecting and funding only Jewish holy sites while neglecting many Muslim and Christian sites, many of which are "threatened by property developers and municipalities." However, to date, Israel's legal obligations have not been enforced.

READ ARTICLE IN FULL

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=647681

A Palestinian holds his national flag in front of the Nativity Church in
Bethlehem, Palestine's first listed World Heritage Site. (Ammar Awad)

Palestine & UNESCO: Protecting heritage and reasserting sovereignty

By Al-Shabaka

The first installment of a two-part policy brief from Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

Al-Shabaka is an independent non-profit organization whose mission is to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law.

The policy brief is co-authored by Valentina Azarov and Nidal Sliman.

Overview

Palestine gained membership of UNESCO in 2011 but its representatives have not yet made best use of this new status due in part to pressure by Israel and the United States. Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nidal Sliman and Guest Author Valentina Azarov review the value of UNESCO in the quest to fulfill Palestinian rights and to apply the relevant international law instruments to the case of Palestine.

They make a compelling argument that Palestine can gain significant practical advantages from its UNESCO membership, including reasserting sovereignty over its land and sea and obliging third states to hold Israel accountable for its obligations.

Why UNESCO Membership Is Important...READ MORE

PART 1

Palestine & UNESCO: Protecting heritage and reasserting sovereignty

PART 2

Palestine & UNESCO: The national duty to protect cultural heritage

Monday, November 18, 2013

Poll: Oslo brought 'political normalization' but no benefits

(MaanImages/File)

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=648624

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) – A majority of respondents to an opinion poll conducted by al-Quds Open University believe that the 1994 Oslo Accord will not help establish a sovereign Palestinian state.

A majority of 74.1 percent of the respondents believe Oslo created “political normalization” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but the Palestinians gained nothing in return.

Similarly, 77.4 percent of the respondents say the agreement will not enable the Palestinians to establish a sovereign state.

Furthermore, 83.3 percent of the respondents believe that settlement construction increased “unprecedentedly” in the Palestinian territory as a result of the Oslo Accord.

Meanwhile, 83.1 percent say that the agreement enabled the Israeli side to continue to strengthen the Jewish presence in Jerusalem and gradually change the city to a pure Jewish property.

The plight of Palestinian refugees, who were forcibly displaced, was also negatively affected by the Oslo Accord, according to a majority of 78.3 percent of the respondents who believe the agreement marginalized and undermined the refugees’ plight.

Consequently, 55 percent of the respondents believe the best choice the Palestinian leadership can do is to amend the Oslo agreement so as to make it closer to recognition of Palestinian rights.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Dr Zogby: Focus on Palestinians’ Rights

http://www.aaiusa.org/dr-zogby/entry/focus-on-palestinians-rights/

Focus on Palestinians’ Rights

Monday October 28, 2013

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators are meeting in the latest chapter of the decades-long saga of on-again, off-again peace talks. With no leaks, and even less optimism, there is only speculation about how the talks are going or whether any agreement is even possible.

Here in the US, supporters of the Palestinians are engaged in a sometimes heated but rather pointless debate as to what the "deal" should include or whether no deal is the best outcome – since that result, some say, would lead inevitably to a one-state solution.

However, that entire discussion is unedifying, a waste of energy and an evasion of responsibility.
I do not mean that the outcome doesn’t matter. But everyone should acknowledge that the ultimate resolution of the conflict will not depend on that debate. Instead of exhausting ourselves arguing about what we can’t control, we should be focused on what we can do – shine a light on the daily injustices visited upon Palestinians, and mobilize support for those whose human rights are being abused.

There are human rights groups in Israel and Palestine that are engaged in this effort. They are documenting cases of land confiscation and home demolitions; cases of prisoners held without charges or trial; instances where vigilante gangs of settlers have desecrated mosques, cut down olive trees and beaten or killed Palestinian youngsters; and recording incidents in which the military has used collective punishment or excessive force or humiliated Palestinian civilians. The victims of these illegal and immoral behaviors deserve our attention. Their cases should be taken up. Their names need to be known. They should be supported until the injustice ends.

In 1977 I and others formed the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC). Because no then-existing human rights group would adopt Palestinian cases, we took it upon ourselves to look into individual cases of Palestinians who had been tortured, had had their homes demolished, had been detained for prolonged periods without charges or who had been expelled from their homeland.

Back then, in the US discussion about the conflict Israelis were understood to be full human beings, but Palestinians were not known. Americans knew Israelis as real people who had hopes and fears. Palestinians, on the other hand, were an abstraction with whom few Americans could identify.

And so Palestinians were presented either in negative stereotypes, or merely as a problem to be solved. We hoped to remedy this by putting a human face on the Palestinian people.

Many of the Arab-American and Palestine support groups that existed back then were engaged, as many are now, in endless arguments about issues over which they had no control: which "political line" was the most correct or what should be the form of governance for the future Palestinian state.

And back then, much of the American liberal left was largely silent on Palestinian issues. Those who were engaged focused their efforts on setting up "dialogues" in the hope of promoting reconciliation between Arabs and Jews.

When the PHRC came into existence, we were denounced by both groups. On the one hand we were told that we had "sold out" because we ignored ideological debates and weren’t "pure" enough. But the peace groups kept us at arms-length, too, saying that by challenging Israel’s behavior we made Jewish groups defensive and uncomfortable, thereby frustrating the effort to create a “no fault” dialogue.

After 36 years, the situation is much the same today. The debate over one or two states rages in some quarters, while liberals who by now have embraced the notion of a two-state solution continue to shy away from any controversy and refuse to address Palestinian human rights. The former effort is wasted time and energy. The latter is an abdication of morality. Meanwhile Palestinians are still unknown, and their rights are still being violated.

As long as Palestinians are not known, discourse about the issue in the US will remain hopelessly one-sided. When Israeli humanity is presented as confronting the Palestinian "problem" you can guess who wins. If Americans can't see or identify with the Palestinians who lost their homes and lands, who were humiliated in front of their children at checkpoints, or who were abused and denied basic rights as prisoners, then all they will care about is how to insure security for Israelis.

To correct this situation, what is required is an embrace of justice and human rights, or as one of my early mentors, Dr Israel Shahak (founder of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights) put it "to fight for equal rights for every human being".

Whether there will be one state or two states will be decided, if it even can be, by the negotiators. But meanwhile, what of the victims? Who will speak for them? Who will give those who suffer the hope that their cries for justice will be heard? And who will inform the US public that it is not only Israeli humanity that is threatened by the absence of peace? In fact, Palestinians have paid, and continue to pay, an enormous price.

Recognition of this reality is a key ingredient in the search for a just peace, because only when Palestinians are known and their rights are fully recognized will the US feel the need to press for balanced peace that recognizes the rights and needs of all.

Washington Watch Archives »

Friday, September 13, 2013

"The lesson, I think, is this: the Holy Land holds histories that, with time, can be taught to coexist. My mother’s is one of them. As she navigates her own, inner peace process, I hope that one day, in her lifetime, it leads home."

On Yom Kippur, Remember My Palestinian Mother

by Samer Badawi Sep 10, 2013 1:00 PM EDT

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/10/on-yom-kippur-remember-my-palestinian-mother.html

This year, September 13 marks the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords. It is also Yom Kippur. On this holiest day of the Jewish calendar—a day of atonement—I hope my Jewish friends will remember my Palestinian mother.

Her story begins with an injury. In 1948, when she was four, my mother’s forearm was stripped to flesh by a tipped kettle. Cooled and dried, the wound scarred smooth as tanned leather. And in my first memory, I am a toddler kneading that taut skin, easing my colic into sleep.

It was a kind of sacrament, I now think. In gentle touches, my mother and I learned: Hurt, eventually, heralds healing. But what becomes of wounds that won’t heal?

That question weighs heavy on my mother’s mind this week, as she and I recall two decades of failed U.S. attempts to help end the Palestinian-Israeli conflict—a conflict that has defined all but four years of my mother’s life.

She was still in her 40s when Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands on the White House lawn. But two decades on, as she approaches her 70s, my mother is beginning to reckon with the possibility that she will live out her life in exile.

She is not alone, of course.

My mother is part of the last generation of Palestinians born before 1948, when the creation of Israel displaced three-fourths of the Holy Land’s indigenous population.

That inescapable tragedy—displacing one people to shelter another—is the unhealed wound that sustains the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Like any wound, it must eventually be exposed. And if it is to truly heal, Palestinians and Israelis must make of the scar a source of succor, not fear.

After all, my mother, like others of her generation, is no threat—not to those who know and love her and certainly not to an entire nation. For Christmas, she knits Bethlehem-themed ornaments and sells them at church bazaars. She stands at a plastic table, this woman from the Holy Land, and regales wide-eyed American children with tales of day trips to the Sea of Galilee.

That life of more than six decades ago is too far-gone, though. Like any person with more years lived than left, my mother is too wise to inveigh against the inevitabilities of time. Instead, like millions of her generation who remember a land before loss, what she really wants is something more elemental.

She wants the right to access those memories, on her own terms, as she looks back on a life in waning.

But to revisit them, like any person should have the right to do, my mother needs permission—not from the quixotically named Palestinian Authority, but from Israel. That cruel reality, more than any other in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, adds enduring insult to injury.

Still, my mother and I maintain hope that she can return someday, without the indignities of interrogation. Much of that hope, it must be said, derives from the Jewish experience. After all, what nation knows better the injustice of depriving a people of their history?

Some months ago, I gave a lift to an Israeli author whose grandfather’s signature is affixed to Israel’s declaration of independence. In the trunk of my car, where he had just put his suitcase, there was a box sealed well before my years and, in my mother’s scrawl, labeled: “History.”

My Israeli friend asked about the contents. But I couldn’t answer. Whenever I asked my mother what her History held, she demurred, saying only: “Keep it in a cool, dry place.”

I understood why when I opened it myself. In that box, I found hundreds of faded, yellowing photographs—my mother’s history, hidden all those years in sepia stills.

The author's mother and grandmother in Bethlehem. (Courtesy of Samer Badawi)

There she was—tomboyish and slight—beside her mother, who was stitching. And there were Solomon’s Pools, where my grandfather drowned.

These were the Holy Land’s apocrypha, I thought, subsumed for so long by another’s narrative. They told us: Ours was a land without a people. Ours was a desert, and they made it bloom.

But history, the images showed, had been sullied. They showed my mother, laughing on a terraced hill, land stitched with olive trees. They showed the vine, made famous not by wine, but by my grandmother’s stuffed grape leaves.

The lesson, I think, is this: the Holy Land holds histories that, with time, can be taught to coexist. My mother’s is one of them. As she navigates her own, inner peace process, I hope that one day, in her lifetime, it leads home.

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"The lesson, I think, is this: the Holy Land holds histories that, with time, can be taught to coexist. My mother’s is one of them. As she navigates her own, inner peace process, I hope that one day, in her lifetime, it leads home."

On Yom Kippur, Remember My Palestinian Mother