Suchergebnisse

This article uses the July 1999 conference on refugee compensation, the second in a series of workshops initiated by Canada and known collectively as the Ottawa process, to map out the major issues of compensation, highlighting the gaps between the Palestinian and Israeli sides. The conclusion examines some conceptual differences between the sides and implications of the Ottawa process itself concerning a resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue.

Three-quarters of the Palestinian people are displaced. Approximately one in three refugees worldwide is Palestinian, More than half are displaced outside the borders of their historic homeland. Adapted from the source document.

The internment of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Israeli-run prisoner of war camps is a relatively little known episode in the 1948 war. This article begins to piece together the story from the dual perspective of the former civilian internees and of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Aside from the day-to-day treatment of the internees, ICRC reports focused on the legal and humanitarian implications of civilian internment and on Israel's resort to forced labor to support its war effort. Most of the 5,000 or so Palestinian civilians held in four official camps were reduced to conditions described by one ICRC official as "slavery" and then expelled from the country at the end of the war. Notwithstanding their shortcoming, the ICRC records constitute an important contribution to the story of these prisoners and also expose the organization's ineffectiveness—absent a legal framework as well as enforcement mechanisms beyond moral persuasion, the ICRC could do little to intervene on behalf of the internees.