Roundtable meeting: The Arab Center for Law and Policy

The Forced Migration and Refugee Unit at Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies organized on Tuesday, 28 April 2011, a roundtable meeting; in which Dr. Yousef Jabareen; the director of the Arab Center for Law and Policy, presented the core focus of center as one of the Arab’s in Israel attempts to defy the Israeli discourse. The absence of the Palestinian representation at both governmental and academic levels; was the main driving force that encouraged the founders of the (Arab center for Law and Policy) to institutionalize their efforts to plan for the future of Arabs in Israeli.  

Dr. Jabbareen explained that the center concentrates on three major programs; education, local governance, and establishing a database covers different aspects about Arabs in Israel.

He highlighted that the center bases its discourse referring to actual cases the minorities experience all over the world. The center in developing this discourse also referred to the declaration of the UN General Assembly about indigenous people, especially the issue of land, self-determination, and enhancement of political participation.

Dr. Jabareen presented his discourse on the participatory equity, which aims at achieving real civil, national and economical equity for Arabs in Israel. He emphasized that this equity in a society with multi-national and multi-cultural groups is based on three major dimensions: public domain, internal domain, and historical domain, and these domains associated to many other sub-domains influence the lives of Arabs in Israel.  

By the end of discussion, Dr. Jabareen expressed his willingness to cooperate with the relevant Palestinian institutions in West Bank and Gaza Strip.