Bassem Eid
| Bassem Eid | |
|---|---|
| Born |
5 February 1958 East Jerusalem |
| Known for | founder, Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group |
Bassem Eid (born 5 February 1958) is an analyst for Israeli TV and radio and has an extensive career as a Palestinian human rights activist. His initial focus was on human rights violations committed by Israeli armed forces, but for many years has broadened his research to include human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), and the Palestinian armed forces on their own people. He founded the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group in 1996, although it ceased operations in 2011. He now works as a political analyst for Israeli TV and radio.
He was born in the Jordanian-ruled Old City in East Jerusalem, whose place of residence became the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee camp of Shuafat. 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. He formally ended his work at the group in October 2010. In 2011, the group closed. Since 2003 he has worked as a political analyst for Israeli TV and since 2009 he has worked as a commentator on Palestinian politics for Israeli Radio (Reshet Bet). In 2016, he became the chairman of The Center for Near East Policy Research, an Israeli advocacy group that produces documentaries critical of the UNRWA, foreign aid to Palestinians and the right of return.
In 1997 The Washington Post called 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 (PA). He continued his criticisms of human rights policies of both Israeli and Palestinian armed forces. 1996 he was arrested by Yasser Arafat's Presidential Guard (Force 17) and denounced as an Israeli agent. He was released after 25 hours following widespread and international condemnation.
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