Bassem Eid

Background

He was born in the Jordanian-occupied Old City in East Jerusalem, whose place of residence became the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency) refugee camp of Shuafat.

Career

His initial focus was on human rights violations committed by Israeli armed forces, but for many years has broadened to include those committed by the Palestinian Authority (Pennsylvania), and Palestinian armed forces on their own people. He founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group in 1996. He spent the first 33 years of his life in Shuafat.

He rose to prominence during the first Intifada, the Palestinian uprising, and was a senior field researcher for B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

In 1996, he founded the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. The Washington Post calls Eid, "an internationally recognized rights campaigner."

He publicly condemned the widespread murder of Palestinian dissidents, often for reasons unrelated to the Intifada.

In 1995, following his report about the Palestinian Preventative Security Service, he came under attack by some Palestinian leaders for revealing human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority (Pennsylvania). He continued his criticisms of human rights policies of both Israeli and Palestinian armed forces.

Arrested by Yasser Arafat"s Presidential Guard (Force 17), he was released after 25 hours following widespread and international condemnation.

In response to the deterioration of the human rights situation under the Palestinian Authority, he founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG), which monitors abuses committed by the Pennsylvania and also deals to some extent with Israel. lieutenant is a nonpartisan human rights organization dedicated to exposing human rights violations and supporting a democratic and pluralistic Palestine. He has spent 26 years researching The United Nations Relief and Works Agency policies and has written extensively on the subject of The United Nations Relief and Works Agency reform.

He also is an outspoken critic of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise known as Bachelor of Dental Surgery. Bassem has traveled widely to lecture on the Palestine-Israel conflict and has attended international conferences.

In recent years he has traveled to Canada, Italy, Japan, and South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. He presented his research on The United Nations Relief and Works Agency to the British parliament"s Henry Jackson Society in December, 2015.

Eid calls himself "a proud Palestinian who grew up in a refugee camp and raised a large family".

Achievements

• The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has awarded him its Emil Gruenzweig Memorial Award. He is also the recipient of the Robert S. Litvak Human Rights Memorial Award granted by the McGill University Faculty of Law and the International Human Rights Advocacy Center, Inter Amicus. The International Activist Award given by the Gleitsman Foundation, United States of America. And the award of Italy’s Informazione Senza Frontiere (Information without Boundaries). In 2009, a book, Next Founders, profiled him as the leading Palestinian human rights activist.