Introduction This Introduction Paper is the first of a ten-paper series on Forced Population Transfer: The Case of Palestine. This Series of working papers constitutes a digestible overview of the forced displacement of Palestinians as a historic, yet ongoing process, which detrimentally affects the daily life of Palestinians and threatens their national existence. The Series will utilize an inclusive interpretation of the human rights-based approach, emphasizing that obligations under international law must supersede political considerations. Outlining the nuances and the broader implications of forced population transfer requires careful scrutiny of Israeli policies aimed at forcibly transferring Palestinians, and their role in the overall system of oppression in Palestine. This Introduction Paper will clarify and define the fundamental terms, timeframes and processes embedded in the overall endeavor of forced population transfer of Palestinians. Successive Working Papers will delve deeper into specific Israeli policies of forced population transfer and their mechanisms. The concept of forced population transfer – and recognition of the need to tackle its inherent injustice – is by no means a new phenomenon, nor is it unique to Palestine. Concerted efforts to colonize foreign soil have underpinned displacement for millennia, and the “unacceptability of the acquisition of territory by force and the often concomitant practice of population transfer”1 was identified by the Persian Emperor, Cyrus the Great, and subsequently codified in the Cyrus Cylinder in 539 B.C. - the first known human rights charter. Almost two thousand years later, during the Christian epoch, European powers employed population transfer as a means of conquest, with pertinent examples including the Anglo-Saxon displacement of indigenous Celtic peoples, and the Spanish Inquisition forcing the transfer of religious minorities from their homes in the early 16th century. Through the late 19th and early 20th century, criticism of forced population displacement and transfer was expressed through a number of declarations and international treaties, though it was not until the atrocities performed 1 Schechla, Joeseph. Prohibition, Prosecution and Impunity for the Crime of Population Transfer,Al-Majdal 2013, available at: http://www.badil.org/en/al-majdal/item/1764-art4. 5