June 27, 2004

International human shields and witnesses have raised serious questions about the wall that Israel is constructing across Palestinian lands, sometimes dividing villages and houses. The Israeli defence force claims this is to create greater security for Israel, but the volunteers have dispelled this myth

The web site for Grass Roots International Protection for the Palestinians (GIPP) uses the following quote from Dante: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.” Mainstream media in the West continues to maintain its alleged neutrality. This neutrality, in many ways, continues to relay images of Palestinians as undifferentiated masses, often grieving with weapons, contrasted sharply with images of Israelis as individuals with friends and family, unarmed and innocuous-looking.

Therefore, it came as a bit of a surprise to mainstream chattering classes in England and US that in a recent poll in the European Union, Israel was voted as the biggest danger to world peace. The second Palestinian Intifadah that started in 2000 has managed to create greater awareness regarding the inhuman conditions Palestinians have been forced to live in for generations. Within the West there are growing pockets of support for an end to Israeli occupation. One example is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a “movement of Palestinian and international activists working to raise awareness of the struggle for Palestinian freedom and an end to Israeli occupation.”

The ISM was started in August 2001 when civilian volunteers from mainly western nations travelled to the Occupied Territories and reported on, as well as protested against, the brutality of the occupation. ISM activists are volunteers who decide to participate in non-violent resistance to the occupation. At the same time, they work to increase awareness and knowledge about the Palestinian struggle, largely in their home countries. Members of ISM hail from all nationalities and religious backgrounds. There are also many people with Jewish background working with the ISM. One of the founders of ISM is Adam Shapiro, a New York Jew and the other is his wife, Huwaida Araf, a Palestinian Christian. They attempt to extend support and solidarity to the Palestinian cause without reducing the conflict to a simplistic war between religions.

ISM activists who go to the Occupied Territories team up with local activists, both Palestinian and Israeli, although the Israeli activists are increasingly facing repression from their own state. They bear witness to the injustices of the occupation and send back daily reports. In many instances, they act as defensive shields for the local Palestinian population. A well-known and tragic example is of the 23-year-old Rachel Corrie, an American member of the ISM who was run over by an Israeli bulldozer while standing in front of a Palestinian home in order to protest the demolitions. She was the first non-Palestinian peace activist to be killed in the Occupied Territories by the Israeli defence force since the second Intifadah started.

On March 16, 2003, Rachel was in the Al-Salam neighbourhood of Rafah, in southern Gaza, where she had been for seven weeks as a volunteer with the ISM. In an effort to save the family home of a Palestinian pharmacist about to be razed, she interposed herself between the house and the Israeli military bulldozer. Photographs of the encounter show her before the huge machine in a bright orange jacket, clearly visible. The massive machine rolled over her and then backed again. She thus shared the fate of some 2,300 Palestinians (the vast majority of them civilians) who were murdered by Israeli troops or settlers since the onset of the Palestinian uprising for freedom in September 2000.

Tom Hurndall, a British citizen, was shot by Israeli soldiers as he tried to shield an unarmed child from an Israeli defence force attack. Tom remained in comatose for many months before succumbing to his wound early this year. His mother, Jocelyn Hurndall, recently wrote in the Guardian: “As last year was drawing to a close, a phone call from the British Foreign Office informed me that, under interrogation, this soldier has confessed to shooting my son, knowing he was an unarmed civilian. He claimed that the shot was meant as a ‘deterrent’. From what? From rescuing children? Had he been so conditioned that an act of humanity could only inspire in him such a violent reaction? Is it surprising that Israel was voted the most dangerous threat to world peace in a recent European Union poll?”

She goes on to reflect, “It seems (that there is a) different value attached to life (that) depends on whether the victim happens to be Israeli, international or Palestinian. This has been exemplified recently by the reaction of the Israeli public to the shooting of an Israeli peace activist, fresh out of his three-year military police service, demonstrating against the illegal ‘security’ fence. Two days later, an announcement was made that a military police inquiry was to be held into the shooting. Questions were raised in the Knesset. This is in stark contrast to the six months of campaigning that it took for an inquiry to be launched into the shooting of Tom.”

Many of the international human shields and witnesses that have gone to Palestine with groups like ISM and GIPP have raised serious questions about the wall that Israel is constructing across Palestinian lands, sometimes dividing villages and houses. The Israeli defence force claims this is to create greater security for Israel. ISM/GIPP volunteers have been instrumental in dispelling this myth. When they come back from their visit to Palestine, they are often required to give presentations at public and community venues which include universities, town halls and churches. These volunteers come from a cross-section of the public, teachers, students, retirees (both men and women), in other words people from all age groups and backgrounds. They have been critical in raising awareness regarding the effects of the wall.

Ultimately, however, the most passionate activists in the western world have been Palestinians themselves. It has been 56 years since the creation of the state of Israel, in 1948, initiated a process of dispossession and occupation of the Palestinian people and their land. Some 700,000 Palestinians became refugees on their own land, which was carved up with the majority of the territory going to Israel and the rest divided up between Jordan and Egypt. Palestinians call this Nakba (the catastrophe). These refugees now had no right to return to their own homes which had become part of the state of Israel. Most of the refugees ended up in refugee camps on the West Bank, controlled by Jordan, and in the Gaza strip which was under Egyptian control. Many found refuge in Syria and Lebanon as well.

In the same year, 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (194) stating the right of the refugees to return to their homes in peace, or being paid compensation by Israel if they chose not to return. Israel has consistently refused to carry out the terms of the resolution. Hence, till today, the ‘right of return’ remains a fundamental cornerstone of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. In 1967, as a result of on-going hostilities with Egypt, but also as part of a larger plan to expand Israeli territory, Israel attacked and occupied the West Bank and Gaza strip. This sealed the fate of the largest concentration of Palestinians still living in the region. The Israeli occupation was recognized as illegal and condemned by the UN. However, there was no concerted effort in the western world to pressure Israel into a withdrawal, beyond the passing of successive resolutions in the UN.

The events of 1967, in many ways, defined and shaped what was to become a systematic policy of exclusion and repression by Israel towards the Palestinians. Israel started building ‘settlements’ in the Occupied Territories, which were inhabited by immigrant Jewish settlers brought over from different parts of the world. This was part of an official Israeli policy of encouraging Jewish immigration to the Occupied Territories. The treatment of Palestinians in the territories under Israeli occupation is well-documented; an overwhelmingly armed, Israeli military presence with systematic killing of civilians, destruction of homes and settlements, confinement and imprisonment. During this time, US military and financial support for Israel has been substantial and consistent, even though the injustice of the situation has been periodically admitted by the Israeli leadership, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres “We cannot keep three-and-a-half million Palestinians under siege without income, oppressed, poor, densely populated, near starvation”, on the ground there has only been an escalation in the scale and intensity of the repression.

Israel’s latest incursion in the refugee settlement of Rafah, a settlement which has been in existence since 1948 and the first expulsions, has once again left thousands of Palestinians homeless. Israel uses the rhetoric of ‘defence from terrorism’ to justify its attacks against civilians. The falsity of this claim, however, is immediately apparent when one observes the discrepancy between its armed-to-the-teeth and hardened military and rock-throwing children. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented the systematic violation of human rights by Israel in the Occupied Territories. Amnesty states that “Israel’s policy of destruction violates fundamental principles of international human rights and humanitarian law” and “in the past three-and-a-half years, the scale of the destruction has reached an unprecedented level.”

A stateless people, the Palestinian refugees are accorded special status by the UN. In 1948, the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) was established with the exclusive mandate of the relief of Palestinian refugees. The refugee status of Palestinians is also unique in the sense that, according to rules established by UNRWA, being a refugee is a condition which traverses generations. The children of Palestinian refugees since 1948 were born refugees and remain so to this day. This classification has been criticized as having condemned an entire generation of people to be seen as stateless. As a result, almost all Palestinians out of Palestine are in a permanent state of looking for a citizenship. This is a situation of great vulnerability and insecurity, which also subjects Palestinian refugees to exploitation and maltreatment by governments other than Israel. For example, Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, who have been living there since the wars in 1948 and 1967, over 30 years, are forbidden from owning property, not allowed to seek employment in over 70 professions and do not have complete freedom of movement outside the refugee camps.

Palestinian refugees in other countries face considerable discrimination because of their identity and political views. For example, the government of Canada, which officially recognizes the right of Palestinians to form an independent state and hence rejects Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, is in the process of deporting over a 100 Palestinians back to the refugee camps they came from. This comes after their application for asylum is rejected on various pretexts, ranging from their stories not being credible to lack of proper documentation. This policy is unfair and shows a callous disregard for the historic and present reality of the Palestinian people as well as the particularity of their refugee status. Activists protesting against this policy call it ‘re-deportation’ since most of these Palestinians will be sent back to refugee camps in either Lebanon or the Occupied Territories. This treatment also comes in the wake of an environment of official distrust of people of Arab or Muslim origin in the United States and Canada. Palestinians and other people of Arab origin are being universally associated with supporting or carrying out terrorist acts and are paying the price for the increasing paranoia of western governments.

At the same time, there has been a great deal of resistance against such unfair deportation policies. In Montreal, Canada, the Coalition Against the Deportation of Palestinian Refugees is a grass-roots group that is fighting to keep Palestinians from being deported back to refugee camps. This and other Canadian groups work together to oppose occupations both in Palestine and Iraq. This struggle is also part of a larger struggle in North America to gain more rights for refugees and asylum-seekers, specially those from Arab or Muslim countries whose cases for asylum are increasingly being rejected by both the US and Canadian governments. Migrants and refugees themselves are active participants in this movement, despite risks to their status and well-being, along with a solid base of other supporters.

There is also some Jewish support for the struggle of Palestinians, both as refugees seeking asylum and in calling an end to the occupation. In Israel itself, many hundreds of Israeli soldiers have refused to serve in the Occupied Territories. They have popularly come to be known as ‘refuseniks’. There are groups such as ‘Jews Against the Occupation’ and ‘Palestinian and Jewish Unity’ in North America whose efforts have helped to bring the Palestinian issue to the mainstream western public.

At this moment, such efforts in solidarity that cross the bounds of religion and nationality are extremely important and a positive sign of change. It is also a testament to the strength and perseverance of the Palestinian people that the hope and dream of an independent and free Palestine has consistently remained alive in the face of overwhelming odds.

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