Summary
Secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists from the end of 1970, succeeding Seán MacBride, and the Geneva correspondent who steered the West Bank group’s affiliation as Al-Haq (Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization, PDF p.46, p.49).
Details
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A former British Labour minister whose political career was stymied after MI5 briefed against him as a security risk to Harold Wilson (PDF p.48).
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He held settlements illegal — “To me the Israeli settlements are the touchstone of Israeli intentions” — and publicly supported Palestinian self-determination and PLO inclusion in negotiations, pressing a reluctant Executive Committee to recognise Palestinian rights (PDF p.48-49).
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He anticipated the Committee would expect the Israeli section’s comments on the West Bank application, pursued a meeting between the group and Justice Haim Cohn, and found the group’s proposed company scheme “extremely complicated” (PDF p.50-52).
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In October 1979 he reported the ICJ Executive Committee’s approval of affiliation, and in November handed the registration documents to the PLO representation in Geneva with an unattributed courtesy note the LSM correspondents were not informed of (Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization, PDF p.55-56).
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In January 1980 he visited, signed the ICJ-LSM agreement with Nidal Taha, secured private seed funding, and interviewed Prime Minister Begin; his UN speech, selectively reported in Israel, led to the censor’s refusal of its Arabic translation and the ICJ Review’s “Palestine: Torture in the Occupied Territories” correction (PDF p.56-58).
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He sat through all of Shehadeh’s UN Special Committee sessions in May 1980, told him the testimony would gather dust, suggested the book, and reviewed its manuscript line by line; his preface stressed that the territory’s entire legislation was unpublished (PDF p.62, p.67).
Related pages
Al-Haq: A Global History of the First Palestinian Human Rights Organization, International Commission of Jurists, Al-Haq Nidal Taha