Memorandum submitted by BADIL Resource
Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
BACKGROUND AND
FOCUS
The below evidence is submitted on behalf of
the members of BADIL Resource Center, an independent Palestinian
NGO based in Bethlehem, occupied West Bank.
BADIL was established based on the recommendations
of a series of public conferences held by Palestinian refugee
and IDP community organizations in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza
between 1991-96. BADIL is owned by a General Assembly composed
of some 50 persons actively involved in Palestinian refugee community
development and advocacy for Palestinian refugee rights in the
occupied West Bank. Its work is directed by an elected Board.
The organization works in the fields of refugee community capacity
building, research and advocacy for rights-based protection and
durable solutions for Palestinian refugees. It networks and cooperates
with a variety of organizations of Palestinian refugee communities
in exile in the wider Middle East, as well as in Europe and the
Americas.
BADIL has consultative status with UN ECOSOC,
a partnership agreement with UNHCR, and cooperates with UNRWA
on a regular basis. BADIL is a member of the International Council
of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), the Habitat International Coalition
(HIC), and an affiliate of the Child Rights Information Network
(CRIN) registered in the U.K. It is also a member of numerous
Palestinian NGO Coalitions, among them the global Palestine Right-of-Return
Coalition and the Occupied Palestinian and Syrian Golan Heights
Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI) in the OPT.
Based on the assumption that not many local
Palestinian civil society organizations will submit evidence,
we felt that we should convey to your Committee an assessment
of the current situation in the OPT from a local perspective.
Thus, while our evidence is guided by the findings
of numerous recent studies and reports issued by local and international
actors experts in the fields of emergency response, humanitarian
and development assistance and human rights in the OPT, in particular
the reports of the World Bank, UNCTAD (TD/B/53/2, 19 July 2006),
the UN Assistant Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs and Coordinator
of Emergency Aid, Jan Egeland, and the UN Special Rapporteur on
the Situation of Human Rights in the OPT, John Dugard (A/HRC/2/5,
5 September 2006), we have tried to avoid repetition of facts
and figures presented there. We have rather decided to present
to the Committee a summary assessment of the impact of the recent
events on development in the OPT based on the particular experience
and perspective of a local Palestinian NGO.
We enclose with our evidence a recent study
prepared by BADIL and the Norwegian Refugee Council's Internal
Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) on forced displacement of
Palestinians caused by Israel's Wall and its Associated Regime
of movement restrictions in occupied East Jerusalem.[93]
We kindly ask the Committee to give attention to this report which
includes information and recommendations relevant to your mission.
CRISIS, POVERTY
AND DEVELOPMENT
IN THE
OPT—A LOCAL
PERSPECTIVE
1. We are aware of the fact that the International
Development Committee is particularly interested in learning more
about: (1) the implications of the Hamas election victory; (2)
its impact on poverty/the humanitarian situation; (3) how development
can be best achieved in this context; and, (4) how effective has
been the response of the UK to the new reality in the OPT. At
the same time, we hold strongly that these particular questions
should be examined in the broader political and historical context
of events that have shaped the development of Palestinian society
in the OPT.
The build-up of the current political and economic
crisis and poverty in the OPT
2. The context of Palestinian society in
the OPT has been determined mainly by the almost 40 year old occupation
and colonization (settlement) by Israel; and, by a situation where
the majority of the Palestinian people has remained in forced
exile for almost 60 years (ie Palestinian refugees) and is denied
both access to the OPT and return to their places of origin now
located in Israel. It is a context in which some 70% of the Palestinian
people worldwide, and close to 50% of the Palestinians in the
OPT, are refugees and displaced persons. Military occupation and
the expanding network of Jewish settlements in the OPT have also
been the major obstacle to sustainable development of Palestinian
society in the OPT since 1967.
3. Agreements signed between Israel and
PLO in the framework of the "Oslo peace process" in
the 1990s failed to end occupation and colonization of the OPT—the
number of Jewish settlers rather doubled in this period. The economic
(Paris) agreements signed in this period increased dependency
on Israel, while Israel—in 1994—began systematic restriction
of movement of Palestinian persons and goods inside the OPT and
between the OPT and Israel.
4. In this period, some economic development
in the OPT occurred—despite the extremely unfavorable conditions—mainly
because international donors took on responsibility for development
aid, thus relieving the occupying power from a task it had had
little interest in performing.
5. Donor aid, and the lack of transparency
of negotiations, agreements and transactions conducted with the
Palestinian Authority in this period, however, also nurtured clientalism
and corruption among those close to economic and political power.
This phenomenon, strongly criticized by the Palestinian public
and the international community, triggered tighter financial control
of and efforts for the introduction of good-governance standards
among the Palestinian Authority, but the problem was never really
resolved.
6. Palestinian society has not witnessed
development, but rather de-development on a massive scale since
the collapse of the Oslo process and subsequent violence in 2000.
Israel's military operations in the OPT since 2000 have resulted
in massive destruction of private and public infrastructure and
resources, even tighter restriction of movement of Palestinian
persons and goods, and have left almost 4,000 Palestinians—mainly
civilians—dead, while thousands more have been injured or
detained. In this context, Palestinian poverty sky-rocketed, and
international development aid gave place to humanitarian and emergency
aid and has maintained this format ever since.
7. Throughout the "Oslo Process"
of the 1990s, large sectors of the Palestinian public and civil
society had criticized the international community and the Palestinian
leadership for the lack of respect and enforcement of international
law and standards during the bi-lateral negotiations with Israel.
Public criticism turned into despair and alienation when the international
community (United Nations, Quartet, EU, ao) failed to even enforce
the standards of international humanitarian law in response to
Israel's disproportionate military force employed and war crimes
committed in the OPT after September 2000.
The 2006 Palestinian PLC Elections and International
Sanctions
8. By 2006, the international community
had also failed to act upon the advisory opinion of the International
Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel's Wall and its Associated Regime,
and Palestinian society in the OPT had lost confidence in the
political will of the international community to enforce basic
standards of international law in the conflict with the Israeli
occupation. Palestinians had also lost confidence in the Fatah-led
Palestinian Authority to effectively protect them and cater for
their needs.
9. Palestinian society had, however, not
yet lost confidence in its body politics and was committed to
bring about some change by means of democratic elections, which—for
the first time and with international support—were to include
almost the whole spectrum of the political forces active in the
OPT. It is important to remind here of the fact that in the months
and weeks leading up to the 2006 PLC elections, Palestinians did
not receive an indication from the international community that
a vote for Hamas would not be respected or result in sanctions.
10. In January 2006, Palestinian society
in the OPT thus joined forces, succeeded to conduct exemplary
fair and democratic elections under occupation and elected the
list of Hamas which promised to work for reform and change. Hamas'
victory in these elections can best be explained as a result of
two factors: a) the particular (and new) Palestinian election
system in which each person cast a vote for a national party list
and a local list of individual candidates—a system that
enabled voters to hold their local leaders to account—and,
b) the fact that the Palestinian public concluded that reform
of the Palestinian political system in the OPT requires a change
of leadership after more than 10 years of Fatah rule.
11. The Hamas victory came as a surprise
to all, including the victorious party itself which had hoped
for nothing more than a strong opposition role in the P.A. parliament.
The immediate impact of the Hamas victory was a vigorous Palestinian
public debate about how to balance between Hamas' social and political
program derived from Islam and the needs and priorities of Palestinian
society in the OPT which favors a separation between religion
and government. This Palestinian public debate was cut off and
silenced by the response of the international community.
12. The decision by the majority of western
states, donors to the P.A., to respond with economic and diplomatic
sanctions hit Palestinian society by surprise and caused deep
indignation. Unlike in the case of Israel whose decision to withhold
(not for the first time) tax refunds as a punitive measure was
no surprise, Palestinian society as a whole expected that western
states, whose model of democracy they had endorsed, would respect
and accept the outcome of their democratic elections. Palestinians
felt—and still feel—strongly humiliated, because everybody
realized that we had, irrespective of previous disappointments,
naively and wrongly considered the international community as
an ally our the quest for self-determination.
13. Palestinian society in the OPT did not
plunge into yet deeper poverty as a result of the Hamas election
victory, but rather as a result of the sanctions subsequently
imposed by western states, including the EU and the U.K. As it
appears today, these sanctions were the result of political pressure
exerted by the United States and Israel, and no serious effort
was made in advance to study their likely consequences for the
social and economic fabric of Palestinian society in the OPT.
14. Thus, and in summary, the international
community has failed Palestinians in the OPT not only by not upholding
its own standards of international law and democratic process;
it has also plunged Palestinian society into an unprecedented
political, economic and humanitarian crisis and poverty, which
now threaten our society's very foundations. Western states, including
the European Union and the U.K., have thus accomplished what 40
years of Israeli occupation have failed to achieve.
The International Response to the Crisis and Perspectives
of Development
15. In light of the existential crisis caused
by the international sanctions regime, the Quartet's temporary
international mechanism for Palestinian basic needs (TIM) is an
utterly in-effective and even counterproductive response: financial
support provided via TIM is far too late and too little; it has
raised false hopes for salaries among Palestinians who have thus
delayed and lost opportunities for effective coping; the mechanism
destroys the remnants of transparency and due process found in
the P.A. political and economic system; it does not address the
needs of the economically vital Palestinian private sector; and,
it further undermines the institutions of the Palestinian "state-in-the-making"
built with the help of international development aid in the past.
16. We would like to alert the Committee
to the fact that development is not possible in the current context
which is characterized by:
(a) the rapid disintegration of the P.A.
and the Palestinian political and economic system in the OPT;
(b) economic and social strangulation of
Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip which—despite all
unfounded international optimism in the past—has remained
occupied territory with its population de facto imprisoned;
(c) the de facto demise of the proposed
two-state solution by Israel whose measures on the ground rapidly
destroy the land-, resource-, and demographic basis of a Palestinian
state in the OPT. In particular, we would like to draw the Committee's
attention to the fact that the Israeli government has abandoned
its plans for unilateral withdrawal ("convergence")
from parts of the West Bank so that no further withdrawals can
be expected. Moreover, the Israeli/Jewish settler movement has
launched a renewed and concerted effort at settlement expansion
in the OPT (See, for example, the recent report of Peace Now on
the expansion of so-called illegal outposts during Israel's war
in Lebanon). This, while at the same time Israel continues construction
of its Wall in the occupied West Bank. The result is an absurd
scenario where Israel both annexes de facto Palestinian land to
the West of the Wall and displaces Palestinians living there,
while Jewish settlement to the East of Wall continues to grown
and expand;
(d) the rapid decline of support among the
Palestinian public and civil society for a two-state solution
which is no longer perceived as feasible. A recent JMCC public
opinion poll, for example, showed that 46% of the Palestinians
in the OPT currently support a two-state solution, while 30% favor
a one-state solution for Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in historical
Palestine. (7% favour a large Palestinian state in all of historical
Palestine, while 3% support an Islamic state in Palestine; see:
JMCC Poll no. 60, September 2006.)
How can development be achieved?
17. In the specific context of the OPT political
and military factors cause on-going de-development while no substantive
political process is in place for conflict resolution. In this
context, development assistance cannot support political solutions
to the conflict, because a serious effort for political solutions
must yet be put in place.
18. A serious international effort at conflict
resolution must tackle the root causes of this protracted conflict
(occupation and the question of the refugees) and address the
illegal situation created by Israel in the OPT in the course of
its 40-years' long occupation as analyzed in the 2004 ICJ advisory
opinion. It must be be based squarely on relevant international
law, including IHL and IHRL, and include effective mechanisms
of enforcement and third party arbitration.
19. Development assistance could support
such serious effort at conflict resolution, if programs were carefully
designed to meet the standards of a rights-based approach and
would encourage Israel's compliance with its obligations under
international law and UN resolutions. Such development assistance
would avoid by all means assistance measures and programs which
facilitate maintenance of the existing illegal situation by Israel,
and it would contribute to strengthening procedures and institutions
of Palestinian economic independence and self-determination.
20. We would like to alert the Committee
to the fact that current diplomatic efforts, whether launched
by the Quartet, the International Crisis Group,or other well-meaning
actors, do not meet the requirements of a serious effort at conflict
resolution. In fact, 60 years of experience with international
efforts at conflict resolution have taught Palestinians that the
international community lacks the political will for such intervention.
21. While the Palestinian people as a whole,
and Palestinian society in the OPT, will thus have no choice but
to build on our resilience and to prevail, the Committee should
be aware of the fact that the price for the lack of effective
intervention today will be costly in the future, in terms of innocent
human lives, regional stability, the relationship between western
states and people and states in the region, and in terms of the
standing of international law and order as a whole. The price
will also be high in terms of future international investment
in emergency and humanitarian aid for poverty alleviation, Wall/"barrier"
mitigation, crisis management and amelioration, all of which may
treat some symptoms but not the root causes of this protracted
conflict.
October 2006
93 Displaced by the Wall: Pilot Study on Forced
Displacement caused by the construction of the West Bank Wall
and its Associated Regime in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,
September 2006. Not printed. Back
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