Ex-HRW country head slams blocking of report on Palestinian right of return

Amman: More than a week after he walked away from Human Rights Watch (HRW) over its blocking of a report on Palestinians’ right of return, the organisation’s former country director says he is still fuming over the lack of a transparent explanation.

The “right of return” remains one of the thorniest issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinian refugees demanding to return to lands they fled or were driven from during the creation of Israel in 1948.

Omar Shakir, the former HRW Israel and Palestine director, announced he was quitting his post in early February after a decision by the executive director to pull a report on the issue just ahead of its scheduled release for early December.

“The report finds that Israeli authorities’ longstanding policy denying Palestinian refugees the right of return, a fundamental right well-established in law, has caused serious harm and amounts to a crime against humanity,” Shakir told AFP in Amman.

Crimes against humanity can occur in peacetime and include torture, rape and discrimination, be it racial, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender-based, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court says.

They involve “a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”, it says.

“To this date, Human Rights Watch has not provided, in writing, any reason to justify this particular decision to pull the report,” Shakir said, adding that the organisation had instead “cited the concerns of senior staff” at the time.

Shakir said that after the story came into the public light, HRW said the report had been “paused to give them more time to conduct additional factual and legal analysis”.

He added that none of the concerns had been raised during the report’s review process and that consultations had happened “without transparency, without anything being put in writing”.

– ‘Pending further analysis’ –

When contacted by AFP, HRW referred to a statement it issued shortly after Shakir’s resignation, saying the report “raised complex and consequential issues”.

“In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards,” the statement said.

“For that reason, the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research. This process is ongoing.”

The Nakba — “catastrophe” in Arabic — saw the flight and expulsion of an estimated 760,000 Palestinian Arabs during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

With their descendants, around six million Palestinian refugees now live in the Israeli‑occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, according to the United Nations.

Palestinian refugees maintain their demand to return to the villages and cities they or their relatives left that are now inside Israel.

Israel is firmly opposed to this demand, which it sees as a demographic threat to its survival as a Jewish state.

Shakir resigned alongside his research colleague Milena Ansari, who together made up HRW’s entire team focused on Israel-Palestine.

Shakir said he believed several factors contributed to HRW’s decision to block the report.

The main issue, he said, was that “the organisation and its new leadership were concerned that this report would be seen as a call to eliminate the Jewishness of the Israeli state”.

“So, ultimately, this was not about the law or the facts. This was a decision motivated by concerns of how the organisation would be received when issuing this report,” he said.

– ‘Paradigm shift’ –

Shakir, who had been with HRW for more than a decade, said the decision “raised a very serious question about the new leadership”.

Proponents of the right of return point to UN Resolution 194, adopted in 1948, which states that refugees “wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date”.

It stipulates that compensation should be handed over to those choosing not to reclaim their property.

The most advanced negotiations aimed at settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict took place in Egypt’s Taba in 2001.

The parties discussed the possibility that Israel would acknowledge some responsibility for the Nakba and allow a limited number of refugees to return, as well as compensation, in exchange for dropping the demand for the right of return of all refugees.

“I hope the conversations around the right of return will help to bring about a paradigm shift,” Shakir said.

“Ultimately, there is no future in Israel-Palestine that doesn’t address the plight of refugees and recognise their fundamental rights, including their right to return to their homes.”