al majdal Issue No. 41 (Spring/Summer 2009) quarterly magazine of BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights The State of Israel must be held accountable to its legal obligations. Impunity for its massive and systematic violations of international law and treating it as an exception above the law of nations must be ended. Only thus can justice and dignity be restored to the Palestinian people, and lasting, comprehensive peace be established in the Middle East. (From “United Against Apartheid, Colonialism and Occupation: Dignity and Justice for the Palestinian People” Palestinian Civil Society Strategic Position Paper for the 2009 Durban Review Conference) Litigating Palestine Holding Israel Accountable in the Courtroom al-Majdal (Spring/Summer 2009) 1 BADIL takes a rights-based approach to the Palestinian al-Majdal is a quarterly magazine of refugee issue through research, advocacy, and support BADIL Resource Center that aims to raise of community participation in the search for durable solutions. public awareness and support for a just solution to Palestinian residency and refugee issues. BADIL was established in 1998 to support the development of a popular refugee lobby for Palestinian refugee and internally displaced rights and is registered as a non-profit Electronic copies are available online at: organization with the Palestinian Authority. www.badil.org/al-Majdal/al-Madjal.htm Annual Subscription: 25€ (4 issues) Published by BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine Tel/Fax: 972-2-274-7346 Email: [email protected] Web: www.badil.org ISSN 1726-7277 Editor Hazem Jamjoum Editorial Team Reem Mazzawi, Mohammad Jaradat, Nidal al-Azza, Ingrid Jaradat Gassner Layout & Design Atallah Salem, Badil Wael al-Azzeh, al-Ayyam Advisory Board Abdelfattah Abu Srour (Palestine) Acknowledgments Diana Buttu (Palestine) Jalal Al Husseini (Switzerland) Badil thanks Susan Akram, Grietje Baars, Daniel Machover, Toufic Haddad, and Jon Elmer for their help Arjan El Fassed (Netherlands) in putting together this issue of al-Majdal. Randa Farah (Canada) Usama Halabi (Palestine) Front Cover: Image by Nidal El-Khairy Back Cover: Graffiti by Banksy on Jerusalem Road, Jeff Handmaker (Netherlands) Bethlehem Zaha Hassan (United States) Salem Hawash (Palestine) Production and Printing: al-Ayyam Isabelle Humphries (United Kingdom) BADIL welcomes comments, criticism, and suggestions Scott Leckie (Australia) for al-Majdal. Please send all correspondence to the editor at [email protected]. Karine Mac Allister (Quebec) Terry Rempel (Canada) The views expressed by independent writers in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of Shahira Samy (Egypt) BADIL Resource Center. Joseph Schechla (Egypt) 2 al-Majdal (Spring/Summer 2009) Contents Editorial Holding Israel Accountable – Yes We Can .............................................................................................................2 Commentary In Search of a Courtroom: Who Will Try Israeli Perpetrators? by Reem Mazawi & Hazem Jamjoum .....................................................................................................................4 Main Feature: Palestine in the Courtroom Legal Mechanisms of the Council of Europe and the EU by Bill Bowring .......................................................................................................................................................8 Seeking to Uphold Third State Responsibility: The case of Al-Haq v. UK by John Reynolds ....................................................................................................................................................12 Civil Tort Claims in US Courts by Susan Akram and Yasmine Gado ........................................................................................................................17 The Jewish National Fund: Possibilities of a Legal Challenge by Karen Pennington and Joseph Schechla ............................................................................................................25 Bil’in vs. Green Park in a Canadian Court by Deborah Guterman ............................................................................................................................................31 Reviews Writing the Disappearing of Palestine by Jonathan Cook ...................................................................................................................................................34 Book Review: Disappearing Palestine by Marcy Newman ..................................................................................................................................................37 Film Review: Waltz With Bashir by Ryvka Bar Zohar ................................................................................................................................................41 Documents Forced Internal Displacement throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory Letter to the UN Secretary General’s Representative on Internally Displaced Persons ........................................46 Eliminating Racial Discrimination Against Palestinians Means Joining the Movement Against Israel's Apartheid Badil Statement on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination ......................................48 As UN Blocks Palestine-Related Side Events at Durban Review Conference: Palestinian Civil Society Launches “Israel Review Conference” in Geneva on the Eve of Durban Review .........49 Israel Review Conference comes to a Close as Durban Review Conference Begins .............................................50 Badil Resource Center Organizes Exchange between South Africa Trade Unionists and Palestinian Civic Leaders .................................................................................50 Badil Oral Statement to the Durban Review Conference .......................................................................................51 BADIL announces winners of 2009 Al-Awda Award, Launches Nakba-61 Commemoration Activities Across the West Bank .............................................................................................................................52 Palestinian National Nakba Commemoration Committee Statement on the 61st Year of the Palestinian Nakba ..............................................................................................54 As Israel Prepares Laws to Deepen its Discrimination, the World Must hold Israeli Racism to Account ............55 BDS Campaign Update.........................................................................................................................................56 Editorial Holding Israel Accountable - Yes We Can Over 300 people participated in the Israel Review Conference, Geneva, April 2009 (©BADIL) For more on the Israel Review Conference visit: http://www.israelreview. bdsmovement.net or many civil society actors involved in struggles against racial discrimination, the 2001 World Conference against Racism in Durban, South Africa seemed to be a turning point. Blacks, Dalits, Indigenous nations of the Americas, Roma, FPalestinians, and other racialized communities carried each others’ banners and took up each others’ cries for a world without racism and apartheid. There was ample reason to hope that global civil society had achieved a victory in the quest for redress after centuries of racist oppression. The civil society consensus emerging from Durban crystallized around a set of clear demands: vapid verbal condemnations of racism were not sufficient; perpetrators and benefactor states of racism and colonialism needed to make structural changes and pay reparations for their actions in accordance with international law. But the states implicated were not interested in taking any meaningful responsibility. They responded with a Zionist-led offensive that used the groundswell of support for the Palestinian cause to smear the conference as an “anti-Semitic hate-fest.” This phrase was picked up and disseminated by Western states and their corporate media machines, attempting to turn Durban into a four- letter word. Two days after the conference, the 9/11 attacks in the United States took place, and the world’s attention shifted to the “war on terror.” Any attempt to challenge the powerful myth-making about the Durban Conference became futile. In addition to increasing U.S. and Israeli impunity, the years that followed the Durban Conference were marked by growing international solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. This globalization of this solidarity with the Palestinian cause developed increasingly sophisticated networks and strategies, within the framework of the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel until it complies with international law. A prominent feature of the BDS campaign is its role in connecting local community struggles against oppression in different parts of the world with the movement against Israel’s apartheid regime. 2 al-Majdal (Spring/Summer 2009) Editorial Many activists hoped that another World Conference Against Racism scheduled to take place in Geneva in April 2009 – the Durban Review Conference (DRC) - would provide the forum for organizing and advancing upon the work done during and since the first conference. But Israel and its Western allies responded by working diplomatically to mobilize a state-level boycott of the DRC, which was eventually heeded by ten states including the U.S. and