This House believes the Palestinians should give up their full right of return
Wednesday March 28 2007
MOTION REJECTED
by 18% to 82%
Speakers
Bassem Eid
Speaking for the motion
Bassem Eid is the Founder and Director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG), a non-partisan organization dedicated to exposing human rights violations and supporting a democratic and pluralistic Palestine. Through his work with PHRMG, Mr. Eid has been involved in exposing human rights violations by both the Israelis and Palestinians for more than a decade.
Mr. Eid is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1999 International Activist Award given by the Gleitsman Foundation in the USA, and has lived in refugee camps for decades.
Before founding PHRMG in 1996, he was a Senior Field Researcher for B'Tselem. B'Tselem is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories which aims to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, to combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and to help create a human rights culture in Israel. Mr. Eid became a prominent figure during the Intifada in his capacity as senior field researcher for the group. B'Tselem's reports were used by the media and international organizations, including the PLO, to highlight the human rights abuses committed by Israel.
During that time, Mr. Eid publicly condemned the widespread killing of collaborators, often for reasons unrelated to the Intifada. In 1995, following a report about the Palestinian Preventative Security Service, Mr. Eid was himself called a 'collaborator' for revealing the human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority.
Before working for B'Tselem, Mr. Eid was a journalist.
Ilan Pappe
Speaking against the motion
Dr. Ilan Pappe is Senior Lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University and the President of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies. Next year he will take up the History Chair at the University of Exeter in the UK.
As one of the founders of the 'New History' movement in Israel, Dr. Pappe has critically re-examined Zionism and the history of the state of Israel's birth. He has fought against the Israeli state's actions for over 40 years.
In 2005, Dr. Pappe supported a boycott on Israeli universities. He said there was a need to apply external pressure on Israel as the best means of ending the occupation.
Dr. Pappe has written numerous books including 'The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict', 'The Israel/Palestine Question', 'A History of Modern Palestine', 'Britain and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1947-1951', 'The Modern Middle East and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine'.
He edited 'Islam and Peace', 'Arab-Jewish Relations in Mandatory Palestine', 'Jordan: The Making of a PivotalState' with J. Nevo, 'History from Within: Politics and Ideas in the Middle East', with M. Maoz, 'Seven Ways to Peace' with Asad Ghanem and Sara Ozacky-Lazar, 'The Israel/Palestine Question' and 'Across the Wall: The Israeli/Palestinian Academic Dialogue Group Enemy' with Jamil Hilal.
He concentrated on Middle Eastern studies in high school and then served in intelligence in the army. He started teaching at Haifa University after completing his PhD from Oxford University in 1984.
Dr' Pappe was born in Haifa in 1954.
Yossi Beilin
Speaking for the motion
Dr. Yossi Beilin is currently a member of Knesset, Chairman of the Meretz-Yachad party and a leading proponent of the peace process with Israel's neighbors and especially the Palestinians.
A member of Knesset for eleven years, Dr. Beilin has held several ministerial positions in the governments of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak including Deputy Foreign Minister, Deputy Finance Minister, Minister of Economy and Planning, Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, Minister for Religious Affairs and Minister of Justice.
He initiated the secret channel of talks that resulted in the 1993 Oslo Accords, and subsequently in late 1995 concluded a 'non-paper' of guidelines for a permanent status peace agreement with Palestinian leader Abu Mazen. Dr. Beilin headed the Israeli delegation to the multilateral peace process working groups from 1992-95 and was a negotiator at the Taba talks with the Palestinians in January 2001. He created and led the public movement in Israel for a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon.
In July 2001, Dr. Beilin led a group of Israeli intellectuals and academics in signing a Joint Declaration with Palestinian peers, headed by Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, the first and only action of its kind since the start of the current crisis. In parallel, Dr. Beilin and Mr. Abed Rabbo, leading teams of Israeli and Palestinian experts, former officials and members of civil society, initiated talks aimed at reaching a detailed permanent status agreement. That effort culminated in the Geneva Accord, which was launched in Geneva, on 1st December 2003.
Dr. Beilin is the author of several books, including 'Israel: A Concise Political History', 'Touching Peace, The Manual for Leaving Lebanon', 'His Brother's Keeper', 'Manual for a Wounded Dove,' and 'The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Agreement, 1996-2004'.
Ali Abunimah
Speaking against the motion
Ali Abunimah is the son of Palestinian refugees and is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, an internet gateway about Palestine and the Palestine-Israeli conflict. He has also founded Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon. He is the author of 'One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse'.
Mr. Abunimah was born in the United States and grew up in Europe. His mother was born in a village near Jerusalem in an area that is now in Israel and his father was from a village near Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank. Mr. Abunimah travels often to the Middle East.
Mr. Abunimah speaks widely about Palestinian-Israeli issues and lecture s frequently at colleges in the United States. He has contributed to several books and has written articles for The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Jordan Times among other publications. He is a frequent guest on local, national and international radio and television..
He received his B.A. from Princeton University and his M.A. from the University of Chicago.
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