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United Nations headquarters in New York
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| By israelinsider staff March 11, 2007 |
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The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has demanded that Israel allow all Palestinian refugees to return to their property in Israel and to ensure that the organizations responsible for distributing property, such as the Jewish National Fund, not discriminate against the Arab population, Haaretz reported.
The UN Committee made this recommendation, as well as a number of others, in its concluding observations released on Friday.
The report also advised "the state party [to] ensure that the definition of Israel as a Jewish nation state does not result in any systematic distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent or national or ethnic origin."
It is not clear what, according to the Committee, would charatcterize Israel as a Jewish State if it implemented this recommendation.
The committee sees to it that countries abide by the provisions of the UN's International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination. Israel has been a signatory to the convention since the late 1970s, but it has not submitted a report to the convention for nine years.
A number of human rights organizations spoke before the committee, in order to protest the official Israeli position, including Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel; B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories; and Ittijah, the Union of Arab Community Based Organizations in Israel.
The Palestinian refugees, unlike any other historical example, have remained refugees since the establishment of Israel over 50 years ago, due to the international community's failure to absorb them.
The UN defines Palestinian refugees as those who personally lost their homes, as well as all their descendents -- including grandchildren -- regardless of where they live. This definition is not used for any refugee group other than the Palestinians. |
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