Suchergebnisse

Too many memories? Difficulties of diaspora? Or lapses in memory? The spring of 1998 marked the passage of fifty years of nakba, the historic Palestinian "catastrophe." Israel celebrated the season as an anniversary, commemorating the fifty elapsed years of its statehood. The short-lived "peace process" initiated in the preliminary if protracted negotiations in Madrid in 1990, which were abruptly concluded in their displacement to Oslo, was once again "stalled." Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced plans to expand the boundaries of West Jerusalem, in a move clearly designed to add to the pressures on Arab East Jerusalem and predetermine the "final status" talks of the process by decisively altering both the topography and the demography of greater Jerusalem. And the Israeli Supreme Court referred the highly controversial issue of the legalized torture of Palestinian prisoners back to the Knesset for further determination. What had happened to the "human rights," and their universal declaration, that were also being commemorated in the year 1998, in celebration of the passage in 1948 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights? According to Article 5 of the Declaration, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." And under the terms of Article 13, "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Additionally, according to Article 15, first, "Everyone has the right to a nationality," and second, "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality." What then was happening in Palestine, to the Palestinians, in the spring of 1998 when these anniversaries came up?