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Palestinian Watchdog

Bassem Eid monitors Palestinian violations against its own people.

T

ypically, one would think that a
58-year-old Palestinian born and
raised in a West Bank refugee camp
would be angry, but what makes Bassem
Eid different is the direction of his anger.
“It looks like we, the Palestinians, are
used to being sacrificed from 1948 to
today,” said the founder of the Jerusalem-
based Palestinian Human Rights
Monitoring Group and current chairman of
the Center for Near East Policy Research.
“The Palestinian leaders have sacrificed
us, the U.N. and UNRWA sacrificed us, the
Muslim leaders sacrificed us and, since
Oslo, our Palestinian leaders sacrificed us.
Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians lied to my
grandfather for 70 years; then they lied to
my father for 50 years; I’m going to stop
their lies.”
In the midst of a long world tour — he
said he’s been away for so long, his friends
have asked him if he’s still living in Israel
— Eid stopped to speak to a crowd of 50
on March 23 at Hadassah House in West
Bloomfield.
He spoke to the Jewish News about his
background, his thoughts on what’s wrong
with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process
and where it’s all going.
Growing up in Shuafat, a refugee camp
outside of East Jerusalem, he became a
senior field researcher for B’Tselem, the
Israeli Information Center for Human
Rights in the Occupied Territories.
Investigating human rights violations for
B’Tselem for two years (1994-96) after the
Oslo Accords, he noticed something.
“They decided after Oslo that they
weren’t going to be involved in the
Palestinian Authority violations, but would
continue focusing on the Israeli occupa-
tion violations,” he said. “Before the Oslo
Agreement, I had no contact with the

Harry Kirsbaum

Harry Kirsbaum | Contributing Writer

Bassem Eid speaks at Hadassah House

Palestinian leadership because they were in
Tunisia. But when they came to Ramallah,
they were under my eyes.”
And his eyes saw the P.A. violations
against its own people.
“When I got a lot of documentation,
I decided that this is the time to resign
because I impressed upon them to continue
to protect the rights of the same people,” he
said. “If B’Tselem is protecting them from
Israeli violations, I need to protect them
from P.A. violations.”
Eid founded the Palestinian Human
Rights Monitoring Group, which monitors
abuses committed by the P.A. and also deals
to some extent with Israel.
“I was aware that creating a human
rights organization under the Arafat regime
looked like suicide,” he said. Arafat had
him arrested, but he was released after only
25 hours when human rights organiza-
tions contacted then-U.S. Secretary of State

Warren Christopher to interfere.
“I don’t know him, never met him; but
when I was arrested, Christopher called
Arafat,” Eid said. “By telling Arafat, ‘You
have five minutes to release Bassem Eid,
and I want to hear his release on the news,’
that gave me a huge immunity, huge pro-
tection.”
He began appearing on media shows
around the world, including CNN, Sky
News, Fox News and the BBC, speaking
about human rights abuses and the com-
plex problem of peace in the Middle East.
“I don’t think that if we look at the politi-
cal map that this conflict is only related
to two parties, Israel and the Palestinian
Authority,” he said. “And that’s the problem
— that so many foreign fingers are involved
and each one has his own interest in the
conflict. The international community is
much more interested in managing the
Israeli conflict rather than to be involved in
its solution.

FOCUS ON ECONOMICS
“Hundreds of billions of dollars have been
spent by the international community on
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without suc-
ceeding to establish one job in the West
Bank or one job in the Gaza Strip,” he con-
tinued. “That’s because the international
community tried to keep a blind eye on
the issue of the economy. The international
community should put politics aside and
start working much more toward the econ-
omy of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
Eid lives in Jericho and has four children
ages 12-18 who live in East Jerusalem. He
says that peace will come to his children
via a three-state solution for two peoples,
worked out through business, not politics.
“While the international community
is calling for a two-state solution, we, the

Palestinians, are calling for a three-state
solution for two people,” he said. “Hamas
is fighting for its own Islamic emirate in
Gaza, and Abbas is fighting for his own
empire in the West Bank, and Israel looks
at it like this is the solution. Abbas doesn’t
want to make peace, neither with Hamas
nor Israel, because this is how Abbas can
continue surviving and receive at the end
of the month a $100 million check from the
donors to spend wherever he wants.”
He said Abbas is not interested in peace.
Like Arafat before him, he’s interested in
money.
“And he knows that if a Palestinian state
is established tomorrow, no $100 million
will come at the end of the month,” he said.
“Abbas is the Robert Mugabe of the Middle
East, and I don’t think anyone can stand up
to him. Even the Fatah movement is just
waiting for Abbas to pass away. This is the
only way to get rid of him. He will never
resign or retire.”
And Eid dispelled the notion of the
Palestinian right of return.
“The majority of the refugees don’t
believe the right of return will be applica-
ble,” he said. “I visited refugees in Lebanon,
Syria and Jordan. I didn’t see that people
really believed in the right of return.”
Palestinians want the same thing every-
one else wants for their family.
“Take a Palestinian refugee family from
a camp and settle them in a normal neigh-
borhood in a normal education system, and
treat them medically in a normal clinic. I
think that is all they want,” he said.
“It’s what we’ve been waiting for after
68 years. We remember the Arab leaders
in 1948 when they told us it’s going to be
short-term suffering to leave our homes but
a long-term benefit. We received exactly the
opposite.”

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