Following World Refugee Day, June 20th, 2013 the central issue to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continues to be the mass displacement of Palestinians. The creation of refugees, currently 6.8 million, and refusing their Right of Return is a main component of the ongoing Nakba. The violent uprooting of Palestinians from their homeland was waged in an evolving way from 1947 to the present. Forced population transfer is one of the gravest breaches of human rights, punishable as both a war crime and a crime against humanity. It is a term of international law that describes the ongoing Nakba. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court states: “[d]eportation or forcible transfer of population means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive acts” (see Joseph Schechla’s “Prohibition, Prosecution and Impunity for the Crime of Population Transfer” for a full history). United Nations Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities conducted a study in 1992 finding that a “[t]ransfer can be carried out en masse, or as ‘low-intensity transfers’ affecting a population gradually or incrementally.” Today, 66 percent of 11.2 million Palestinians worldwide are, or are descendants of, people who have been forcibly displaced. Sorrowfully, the proportion is increasing. Forced population transfer is an ideological and a structural problem targeting Palestinian communities on both ‘sides’ of the Green Line. Many Israeli laws and policies combining the worst features of colonization, institutionalized discrimination and belligerent occupation were developed and applied over the years in order to facilitate control of maximum land with minimum Palestinians. A new Handbook and five accompanying brochures produced by BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights seek to stymie forced population transfer and preliminarily focus on residents of West Bank Area C, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The resources advocate for using both the law and extralegal strategies of defense.
Posted on: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 02:47:16 +0000
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