PRESS RELEASE

DAY 2 eleased @ 13 December 1997

PALESTINIAN CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON

“HUMAN RIGHTS AND FINAL STATUS ISSUES”

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights held the second day of its International Conference on “Human Rights and Final Status Issues” on Saturday, December 13 at Rashad Shawa Cultural Center in the Gaza Strip.

The Opening Session featured Amin Makki-Madani, Representative of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights; Hannu Halinen, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories, UN Office – Geneva; and Jamal Sourani, Ex-Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Makki-Madani began his presentation by reading a letter addressed to conference participants by the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Mary Robinson. He then recounted a number of the UN resolutions on the books pertaining to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that helped provide an international law framework for the day’s further discussions.

Halinen asserted that conflicts need to be prevented before they even begin because they result in violations of human rights. It is time for the international community to take conflict prevention seriously. In line with this, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has asserted that “human rights are a key element in peace-making.” Halinen voiced his concern over the closure imposed on Palestinians after terrorist acts as this punitive measure amounts to collective punishment. The ongoing confiscation of Palestinian land despite the peace process is also a cause for alarm. To advance the peace process in the face of ongoing torture and ill-treatment requires increased people-to-people contact.

Sourani, in mild understatement, rhetorically asked the audience how it could expect the Israelis to bide by international law when in fact they abide by the Torah, the rifle, and two bullets. Netanyahu and the Likud believe that what cannot be accomplished by diplomacy should be accomplished by force of arms. Without a Palestinian state the Israelis will have neither peace nor security. In a frank admission of the widespread wrongdoing faced by Palestinians, Sourani asserted that Palestinians have spent 50 years without an identity and even in the Arab world have been killed and expelled.

Two further sessions were held on the second day of the conference. The first session, entitled “The Palestinian Right to Self-Determination,” chaired by Anis Fawzi Al Qasem, began with a talk by Francis Boyle, “The Admission of the State of Palestine to Participation in the Activities of the UN.” Boyle suggested the Palestinians sue the Israelis in the World Court for genocide in order to demonstrate “this undeniable fact before the entire world.” He said, “what the Nazis did to the Jews…is identical to what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians.” Article II of the Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts with intent to destroy a national or religious group.” The filing of such an application would be a severe blow to the reputation of Israel. Boyle believes the Palestinian people can get a fair hearing in the World

Court. “We could even sue the US,” he said, “for aiding and abetting genocide. The Palestinian people have nothing to lose and everything to gain from suing Israel.”

Hans Koechler, the president of the International Progress Organization, Vienna, gave a talk entitled, “Palestinian Self-Determination: The Basis of Peace in the Middle East.” Sovereignty always lies with the inhabitants of the country; it cannot be granted or withheld, but it is an inherent right. The General Assembly of the UN has no authority to divest any area of the world of its sovereignty. The rights of the Palestinian people are “inalienable” — they are natural rights that cannot be taken away. Oslo does not take into account Palestinian

sovereignty or self-determination; it merely deals with a political framework, and confers only a limited self-rule. The EU would be a better broker than the US. A state in Palestine will be a decisive factor in ensuring “a lasting peace,” he said, and the failure of such a state will plunge the region into further turmoil. An opportunity will be missed, he warned, if the EU contents itself with blindly adhering to an American-led strategy.

Uri Davis, from the New School for Social Research, USA, gave a talk entitled “The Right to Self-Determination Versus Colonial Settlement.”

Citing the example of South Africa he said many parallels can be drawn between the two liberation struggles. For one, they both combat a racist and colonial force. The PLO can learn from the ANC, especially in how the ANC continually insisted on self-determination as a given in any negotiations. He further counselled that a key to Palestinian self-determination is further democratization. As for settlements, he said, there is no question that they are illegal. He questioned the strategy of “dismantling” settlements, however, and instead suggested that the Arab owners of the territory have the option of being compensated.

Christine Bell, the Director of the Center for International and Human Rights Law in Belfast, Northern Ireland, drew parallels between Palestine and Ireland. In her talk, “Internal and External Self-Determination and the Question for Palestinian Statehood,” she said that a comparison between Palestine and, in contrast to South Africa, “the less successful ‘peace process’” of Ireland, would be beneficial.

There are key similarities, she said, as in both territories, “the same people are in power who have always been in power” and also in both “colonial domination is at work.” She then made the point that the peace process documents exclude any mention of Palestinian self determination. International law is crippled by a lack of clarity, she said. Furthermore, we should see self-determination “not as an end but as an ongoing process.”

Catriona Drew, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, gave a talk entitled, “Palestinian Self-Determination: Decolonization in a Secessionist Era,” in which she outlined three obstacles to Palestinian self-determination. The first is legal, the second political, and the third, the Oslo treaty itself. Legally, she said, the documentation exists to justify Palestinian self-determination. The problem is that such international resolutions go unenforced.

Furthermore, it must be realized that the basis of self-determination is inextricably linked to the process of decolonization. Autonomy itself is hostile to the idea of self-determination. History has shown that the more a people are given “internal self-determination,” the weaker their claim for “external self-determination”; that is, autonomy weakens the Palestinian state’s claim to self-determination. Once it is argued, Drew stated, that self-determination depends on decolonization, autonomy will never be sufficient. Drew then claimed that the concept of self-determination has two components, procedural and substantive.

Self-determination as a procedural right means Palestinians must have the right to free choice; the substance of self-determination, however– as in territory — is what gives self determination as a proceduralright meaning.

Tierry Le Roy, a lawyer and member of Conseil d’Etat, Paris, talked about “Israeli Settlement and Palestinian Statehood.” He argued that the presence of settlements is an obstacle to Palestinian sovereignty.

Settlers, he said, rarely act on a purely private basis, but are supported by a government policy. He then concluded that whatever the Israeli settlements are to become in the final status — dismantled, annexed to Israel, or transferred to the territory of Palestine — they are to be negotiated with the Palestinian state in an international treaty with Israel.

Jaume Saura, a Professor of International Law at Barcelona University, Spain, then discussed “Criteria for the Establishment of the Palestinian State.” He prefaced his list of criteria by saying that Israel must respect the economic rights of any Palestinian State; and that such a

state must be democratic and non-discriminatory — unlike the state of Israel which discriminates not just against Muslim Palestinians, but against Armenians and Christian Palestinians as well. He then talked about citizenship criteria, suggesting that Palestinians living abroad be able to be both a citizen of Palestine and of whatever country in which they may be living. Furthermore, citizenship should be conferred automatically to all Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. People working in the Territories, and people outside Palestine, should also be allowed to apply for citizenship. As for Jerusalem, in addition to the usual proposal of partitioning the city, an alternative would be to keep the city united but a capital for both the Palestinian and Israeli state. People who lived in Jerusalem would have dual citizenship with either Israel or Palestine.

The second session, on “Economic Relations and Economic Development,” was chaired by Stig Glent-Madsen, Board Chairman of Dan Church Aid, Judge at the Danish High Court, and lecturer at the University of Arhus, Denmark. The first speaker, Samir Barghouti, Director of the Arab Center for Agricultural Development and Deputy Director of the Arab Economists’ Association, was prevented from attending the conference because Israel deemed him a security threat. In his absence his paper was read for him. His presentation was entitled, “Economic Relations between Palestine and Israel and the Future of Economic Development in Palestine.” In the paper, Barghouti contended that since the signing of the Oslo agreement the economic fortunes of the Palestinians have deteriorated while the condition of the Israeli economy has improved significantly.

Aisling Byrne, an economic researcher at the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center spoke on “Economic Relations and the Prospect for Economic Development.” Byrne depicted an economy that has drastically deteriorated since mid 1994. The Israeli closure policy has cost the Palestinian economy four to six million dollars for every day it was in effect. Byrne asserted that the economic conditions for Palestinians are now so grim that many of them are now more concerned with struggling for their own survival, or at most against the policies of their own regime, and have little energy left to direct against the ongoing Israeli occupation.

Zoheir Sabbagh, a lecturer at Al Quds Open University in Ramallah spoke on “The Prospect for Economic Development in Palestine.” Sabbagh asserted that whatever one thinks of Israel’s claims to the land the fact remains that an economic relationship has developed between Palestinians and Israelis in the last 30 years. Israel’s colonial plan has involved a set agenda that has resulted in the exploitation of Palestinian land and labor. Today, the Israeli plan for racial segregation has won the support of both the Zionist left and right. Israel has chosen to pursue a policy of apartheid in seeking a final outcome to its conflict with the Palestinians. Through this apartheid policy Israel will set aside territory with municipal independence while forcing overall Palestinian subordination through a pass system,

electric fence, bypass roads, colonial settlements, and limited Palestinian enclaves. In conclusion, Sabbagh asserted that Palestinians need to de-link from Israel and establish Palestinian sovereignty without the preconditions demanded by Israel. Otherwise, the development of underdevelopment will occur.

Rhys Johnson, a human rights activist affiliated with the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, LAW, spoke on “Human Rights and Economic Development.” Johnson asserted that in the four years since the signing of the Oslo agreement the human rights conditions have been bad and the prospects for the future are worse. He maintained that the PA must do more to change the very conceptualization of the peace talks. Just as people have a human right to self-determination so too do they have an economic right to develop themselves and the land around them. Unfortunately, these economic rights are being thwarted due to the failure of the PA to challenge the presumptions of the Israelis in imposing closure. Johnson returned a number of times to the theme of PA human rights violations and corruption, but insisted that conference participants must not have their attention diverted from the bigger picture of Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

Miloon Kothari, Co-Director of the Center on Housing Rights and Eviction (COHRE) delivered a presentation entitled, “The Peace Process and the Palestinian Right to Housing and Land: An International Perspective.”

Kothari declared that the right to housing is a right clearly established by international law. The right to housing features components such as the right to: gain security of tenure, not be dispossessed, resettle if living in dangerous conditions, civil services, clean water, a clean environment, control over resources, and quality in all of the above. The situation in Palestine grossly violates this right to housing according to Kothari.