PRESS RELEASE

Released @ 6:00 GTM 15 December 1997

International Conference

Human Rights and the Final Status Issues

Gaza City, Palestine

12 to 15 December 1997

Concluding Remarks

The International Conference, convened by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights under the title Human Rights and the Final Status Negotiations, provided an opportunity for human rights experts from over 20 countries to consider legal and human rights aspects of the Final Status Negotiations. The conference welcomed the Palestinian Authority’s support for this initiative as an encouraging signal of the authority’s commitment to human rights and the Rule of Law.

After three days of deliberations in Gaza City, the participants adopted the following concluding remarks:

First, the conference strongly condemned Israel’s failure to honour its commitments under international law and the Oslo Agreement. In particular, the conference cited continuing settlement activity, ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, restrictions on movement between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and the closure policy as especially egregious examples of Israel’s failure to observe international law.

Second, the conference stressed the significance of international law as the proper framework

for achieving a just, fair, and durable peace. No mutual security can be achieved without the fulfilment of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian People, through self-determination and statehood, with Jerusalem as its capital.

Third, the conference observed that under international law, the Palestinian population throughout the occupied territories remain under the protection of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention. The conference called upon the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to take positive steps, including the convening of an expert meeting, to ensure strict observance of that convention in the occupied territories.

Fourth, the conference recommended that Palestine should avail itself of appropriate opportunities to involve the International Court of Justice in order to get clarification of its legal status in general and the recognition of its statehood in particular. The conference noted in this regard that 137 states have already recognised Palestine which gives Palestine sufficient basis to apply for UN membership.

Fifth, the conference called for an immediate cessation of all Israeli settlement activity. The participants of the conference underlined that the continuing settlement policy of the Israeli government, including settlements in East Jerusalem, violates international law, and has no legal impact whatsoever on the outcome of the final status negotiations.

Finally, the conference called upon the European Union to avail itself of its bilateral treaty instruments in order to prevent Israel from obstructing Palestinian trade with the European Union. The conference noted that implementing Israeli privileges under the European Union- Israel agreement is, in the current circumstances of continuing Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinian people, incompatible with the human rights provisions of that agreement