BADIL Interview:with Yael Stein
BADIL: What has led B'tselem to take on
thisissue of the Palestinian refugee question and the right of
return?
Yael Stein: Formally speaking, the issue of
refugees is outside our mandate because our mandate is restricted
to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. When
the final status negotiations started we thought that it would be
impossible not to deal with the final status issues because an
agreement will be signed on them and these issues have a human
rights dimension.
YS: It was more than a year ago, maybe even two years ago. We decided that the issue of the mandate is really too formal and we should not stick to it. Refugees are part of the conflict and it would not be proper to distinguish between the refugees of 1967 and 1948. So we thought we should write a position paper on this issue. As an Israeli human rights organization we must have input especially if you consider how the discussion is going.
BADIL: From which angle are you
approaching the issue?
YS: We focus only on the human rights perspective.
We are aware of the fact that the human rights perspective can be
limited
sometimes and that it cannot give an answer to all the questions.
But what struck me most when I started to get into the issue of the
right of return is that you can hardly find anybody who looks at
this issue from a human rights perspective. The issue is so
political.
The Israelis look at the right of return as a Palestinian political goal and not as legitimate human rights claim, but rather as some political goal. I think there is no other issue where the legal interpretation is so strongly based on the political position of the writer. And the Palestinians also use it as a political tool; they do not push the human rights agenda of it.
It is our purpose to show that it is not a political question, but that it is human rights issue - at least that there is a strong human rights dimension in this issue. We are not dealing with crazy people who want to throw the Israelis out of the country and the Israelis want to throw out the Palestinians. It is a recognized human rights issue all over the world. Of course there are specific questions involved in the Palestinian refugee case. I don't know of another people in the world that has been displaced for so long and in such large numbers.
BADIL: What are your references and
standards specifically?
YS: There is the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and the
practice of the High Commissioner on Refugees. There is a problem
with Palestinian refugees in the sense that Palestinian refugees
are not part of the international refugee regime and UNHCR, but we
are trying to conclude from UNHCR's practice, the practice that
should be applied to Palestinian refugees. We are trying to check
what happened to other refugee populations in the world - and then
there are of course the UN resolutions, humanitarian law of course,
and state succession laws.
BADIL: So what are the most difficult
and challenging questions that come up when the right of return is
tackled by an Israeli human rights organization?
YS: I must say that I personally don't feel that Ideal
with this issue differently because I am Israeli. I might be more
aware of the problems of marketing the issue. It is almost
impossible to market. The main problem is not the legal questions,
although there are some, but the main question is that, ok, there
is a right of return but how do we implement it? I mean that the
Israelis who live in the places of the refugees have been living
there for fifty years, they have grandchildren, and you cannot just
say they can go away and vacate the place for the refugees. They
have rights too, so we have a situation of conflicting rights here.
This is where we are at this point.
BADIL: Do you have any ideas about how you will go about marketing and raising this issue?
YS: Not precisely. I know that it will be more difficult to market than any of the other issues we have dealt with, it is a real bomb. And we will have to pay a lot of attention to marketing, something we haven't done yet. Other than that, we will go about it as usual. We will publish a report, we will have a press conference, and people will be very angry. I don't see any other option. I don't see that we can leave it in our office drawers just because it is too difficult. It will be important to choose the proper timing.
BADIL: Do you have an idea when the
report will be finished?
YS: I hope in six months. I still don't have the bottom
line. I still don't know how we should deal concretely with the
question of implementation. Of course there is an easy option. We
could just say there is a right of return and it is not our problem
what to do about this. But then, on the other hand, the fact that
there is a rights violation does not necessarily mean that the
reversal of this violation is the only remedy.
There are other solutions under international law.So the question of implementation remains the main problem. At the same time, I feel it is important to state that there is a right of return, to state that and to have it acknowledged by the people and the Israeli government. To acknowledge that we did something wrong and that now we have to see how to solve it, and that we will participate in this solution.
BADIL: What would you consider a success inthe case of this report?
YS: We expect that we will contribute to
the debate.
If it initiates a serious debate about it, this would be a success
in my eyes. If nobody relates to it seriously it would be
failure.
BADIL: How do you see
the Palestinian work on the right of return, especially
publications issued by Palestinian organizations?
YS: From the material I have seen I can say it is really
good. But I haven't seen anything on the question of
implementation. Maybe I overlooked it or just couldn't find it, but
I haven't seen anything on the question of implementation. I think
that for the Israeli public this is the most important thing,
because the Israeli public is so frightened. I am not trying to
justify them, I am just describing the situation. The right of
return is really threatening to Israeli society so they speak about
the Jewish right to self-determination and the Jewish character of
the Israeli state.
I think these issues should be addressed. I think it would calm Israelis if they really understand what we are speaking about. The fear of five million Palestinians just flooding into Israel is so great and there is nobody to tell them that, first of all, we are talking here about a right that not all Palestinian refugees might wish to exercise and that you would be able to stay in your homes. So I really think the issue of implementation must be addressed and I haven't seen any reference to that.
BADIL: We have this impression that at
least among the Israeli negotiators who stayed with the
negotiations until the end, there was a realization that an
agreement on the refugee question could not be marketed on the
Palestinian side if it violated too obviously international
principles and UN Resolution 194.
YS: Yes, this is an important point that will be raisedin
our report. Because the issue of the refugees is an
individual human rights issue it can't be negotiated away in
political negotiations. Refugees must have a choice and they must
be part of the decision. It can't be that Arafat and Sharon will be
sitting together and closing an agreement and say, "well, there is
a right of return and we will let one hundred people return to
Israel, 5,000 will stay in Jordan, and 300,000 will stay somewhere
else." I mean this cannot happen.
It is a human rights issue. It is an issue of individual human
rights that people must decide by themselves. It cannot be that an
agreement is closed behind their backs. While I am not saying that
the refugees themselves will forget their rights, but I am
saying
that because people are so tired now after these nine months,
especially the Palestinians, but also the Israelis, that they might
feel it is a good time now to close something, to find an
arrangement