FRANCIS BOYLE
Boyle, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, served as legal advisor to the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace negotiations from 1991 to 1993. He said today: “The Palestinians have a very strong case they should take to the UN and the World Court. Everything that they are asking for — and then some — is contained in UN Resolution 181 and Resolution 194, both of which Israel accepted as a condition for its joining the UN. If Israel continues to refuse to let the refugees go home, or to share Jerusalem, Israel jeopardizes its position in the international community and its UN membership.”

Director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, Lubin (who has just returned from the Mideast) said today: “If over 100,000 people from Russia could immigrate to Israel last year, then the time has come for the Palestinian children from the refugee camps to be allowed back to their rightful homes. Even if the Palestinians get 90 percent of the West Bank, we should bear in mind that that’s just 22 percent of historic Palestine.”
More Information
More Information

ALI ABUNIMAH
Vice president of the Arab American Action Network, Abunimah just returned from the Mideast. He said today: “Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s definition of a ‘successful’ summit appears to be one where the Palestinian side gives up on all the fundamental issues — ending the illegal Israeli occupation of east Jerusalem, allowing refugees to return to their homes and recover their property, removing the Israeli settlements from the occupied territories, and real political independence and freedom for the Palestinian people…. Palestinians living in the occupied territories have seen increased poverty and joblessness, widespread abuses of human rights, and ever more Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers. Palestinian refugees, especially those in Lebanon, are increasingly fearful that the United States and Israel will try to impose a solution which ignores the refugees’ fundamental right to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled, or creates a ‘state’ over which Israel retains control and authority.”
More Information

ROGER NORMAND
Policy director with the Center for Economic and Social Rights, Normand said today: “Arafat clearly cannot go back to his own people without Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem. Arafat is reluctant to go down in history as the first Arab leader to legitimize Israeli occupation…especially so soon after Hezbollah’s victory in south Lebanon…. The United States is brokering a deal to abandon the rights of Palestinian refugees soon after going to war supposedly to protect the rights of Kosovo’s refugees. The right of over 4 million Palestinian refugees to return to their homes is affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet their inalienable rights are on sale at Camp David, for a bribe of $20 billion.”
More Information
More Information

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167