Press Releases

Israelis, Palestinians, international experts meeting in Haifa on developing model for rights-based solution to refugee issue

For Immediate Release

No. (E/24/04)

24 June 2004


BADIL’s fourth Expert Forum for a Rights-based Approach to the Palestinian Refugee Question well be in Haifa, Israel 1-4 July.  The forum brings together Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organizations, legal experts and representatives of diplomatic missions to discuss “Rights-based Durable Solutions for Palestinian Refugees—Ways Forward”.

 

Seminars in Ghent, Belgium; Geneva, Switzerland and Cairo, Egypt over the past year have looked at international law, restitution and protection in finding lasting solutions for Palestinian refugees.

 

The Haifa seminar will sum up the findings of previous seminars and formulate follow-up recommendations with a view to developing an alternative model for solutions to the refugee issue and for a just peace between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians.  Such a durable solution must be built on a recognition of basic human rights, including the right of return; Israeli admission of responsibility for the forced displacement and dispossession of the Palestinian people and implementation of remedies such as restitution and compensation for losses in accord with international law and best practice.   

 

BADIL takes a rights-based view of the Palestinian refugee issue and has sponsored these seminars to foster an understanding of its approach; build a network of experts on various aspects of the refugee issue; encourage research on Palestinian rights and enhance the understanding of and support for a rights-based approach among policymakers, politicians, the media and Palestinians themselves. 

 

The Haifa seminar will include a theatrical presentation “Memory” by author and actor Salman Natour and a public screening of a joint Israeli-Palestinian film, Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, Part 3:  To the North at al-Midan Theater, 2 Khouri St., Haifa at 19:30, 4 July.  The public is welcome to the film screening, admission free. The complete four and a half hour film follows the virtual line of the 1947 plan for the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states as laid out in United Nations Resolution 181. 

 

The Emil Touma Institute for Israeli and Palestinian Studies (ETI), Haifa and the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID), Nazareth are hosting the conference.

 


For further information on the Haifa conference, contact:

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem

Telefax: 00972-2-27-47-346 or [email protected]