Viva Palestina: our convoy to Gaza

George Galloway | Counter Punch

10 June 2009

“Where is the ummah; where is this Arab world they tell us about in school.”

Those words will forever remain etched on my brain. They were spoken by a 10 year old girl in a bombed out ruin in Gaza in March. She had lost her almost her entire family in the 22-day Israeli bombardment earlier this year. The second time she spoke, it was to the back of my head. I had to turn away; what answer could you give her?

While Hugo Chavez expelled the Israeli ambassador to Venezuela, the leaders of the Arab League, with a handful of exceptions, spent those murderous weeks in December and January scarcely summoning even the synthetic indignation that has so often attended previous bloody episodes in the Palestinian tragedy.

But that was not so of public opinion, not only in the Muslim world, but mobilized on the streets of Western capitals. In Britain, over 100,000 people took to the streets and night after night we blockaded the Israeli embassy. Above all, the Gaza onslaught produced in the US an unprecedented outpouring. There have, for sure, been protests before, but this has turned out to be more than an ephemeral release of impotent rage. Something is changing.

That has become more and more apparent to me over the last two months as I’ve spoken on Palestine at packed meetings and fundraisers across the US. The opinion polls in January showed a plurality of Americans against the Israeli onslaught. It may not have been a surprise to those of us who witnessed Ariel Sharon’s leveling of Beirut in the late summer of 1982, but the sight of white phosphorous – which forms a gaseous cloud – being used against civilians in Gaza stunned the senses of millions or people who had up to that point been led to believe that it was somehow the Palestinians who were occupying Israeli land rather than the other way round.

Seasoned activists in the Palestinian cause confirm that there is now a window of opportunity to take this case beyond the ghetto and into the mainstream of political life – in the US and in Britain, which between them bear the heaviest responsibility for the suffering in Palestine: the US as the cashier for Israeli colonization; Britain, as the author of the tragedy in 1917, when a leader of one people, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour (an anti-Semite), gave to the purported leaders of another people, the Zionist movement, the land belonging to a third people, the Palestinians. And all without asking any of the people, which even by the standards of British imperialism is quite a triumph.

How then to bring to the cause of Palestine the kind of political movement that helped shatter apartheid, between the hammer of the ANC resistance and the anvil of international solidarity? This is the question that has led to me flitting backwards and forwards across the Atlantic, between lectures and fundraisers here, and the unfolding of an extraordinary political crisis at home. It was the question we asked ourselves as we marched past the Israeli embassy on those cold days in January.

The demonstrations were important. Anyone who doubts that should listen to those living under siege whose capacity to resist was strengthened every time they saw those protests on Al Jazeera and Press TV. But they were not enough, nor were the speeches, though they too have their place. It is actions that speak louder than words. That’s why on January 10 I announced at the big London demonstration that I would be leading a convoy of humanitarian aid from Britain to Gaza.

We decided to head off just five weeks later and to go through a difficult route – down to Spain, cross to Morocco and then driving across the Maghreb. We hoped to take a dozen or so vehicles. In the end, we left Hyde Park on February14 with 107 vehicles, 255 people and around $2 million of aid. Some 23 days and 5,500 miles later we entered Gaza. And now, we’re doing it all again, this time from the US.

On July 4, the Vietnam vet Ron Kovic, myself and hundreds of US citizens will fly out from JFK to Cairo where we will form up a convoy of hundreds of vehicles carrying medical aid and head into Gaza. We will be in Egypt exactly one month to the day from when President Obama delivered his historic speech offering a new and more egalitarian relationship between the US and the Muslim world. And that speech makes it all the more imperative that anyone and everyone gets on board this convoy.

For Obama’s speech, like his election campaign and presidency, can be looked at two ways. There were the expressions of general support for Israel and continuity in foreign policy which it would be naïve not to expect from any US president. How easy it would be to slump into the cynical and knowing snorting that has been such an unappealing trait of too much of the left for far too long. Because at the same time, his skilful appeal for a more respectful East-West dialogue opens up many roads for friends of Palestine and the Arab cause. If you doubt that, look at the frenzied reaction of the Israeli right who, in their usual understated way, are likening opposition to the settlement program to genocidal murder.

Our case is that Obama is right to identify that if the US wants to drain the swamp of hatred against it, then it needs a radical change in policy. The road he marked out in Cairo points in the right direction. But he stopped short. Literally. The road leads a couple of hundred dusty desert miles further from the Nile Delta, across the Sinai and to the Rafah crossing into Gaza. Hence the convoy, whose aims are manifold.

First, it is to take much-needed aid to a people subsisting under siege. We are a link in the supply chain that others who have sent delegations to Gaza have also helped establish.

Second, it is to take people – lots of American people. No one should underestimate the impact that will have on the Palestinian people. It was emphasized by our hosts in March that the presence of so many Britishers was even more valuable than the aid we brought. It meant hundreds of people going back as ambassadors for Palestine in towns and cities across the country. For the people of the Gaza Strip it was proof positive, in front of their very eyes, that they had not been forgotten.

Third, it is to contribute to the mighty process of changing US public opinion on this issue. And where public opinion changes, public policy follows – even if the mechanism is complex and difficult. The eight dark years of the Bush era saw, in effect, the criminalization of solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Whole organization, Muslim and Arab, were closed down, their leaders disappeared and deported or imprisoned, witness the appalling trial and verdict of the Holy Land Foundation organizers. This convoy is about ending that. We want a cross-section of US society, including prominent figures, to take part and demonstrate that this is no longer a no go area; that Palestine is the issue and nobody is going to turn us around.

In Gaza, Ron Kovic will hand over wheelchairs to Palestinian amputees. That’s the image the world’s media will carry. Let the rabid supporters of the Netanyahu-Lieberman regime raise their voices against that. That’s a public relations battle we should relish.

There’s no point passively bewailing what this presidency might be failing to do. If we make an impact in July and beyond, it can help shift the balance, throwing the die-hard defenders of Israeli aggression on the defensive and making it more politically attractive for President Obama to move further down the dusty road.

In a sense George W Bush had an excuse for the mayhem he unleashed: he was a complete and utter imbecile. Barack Obama does not have that excuse. He’s highly intelligent and cultured. He met the sorely missed Edward Said. He doesn’t just know who the President of Pakistan is, he can pronounce the name of the country.

If the new sentiment for Palestine in this country is roused and made politically effective, there will be no excuse for anyone not to do the right thing.

Go to www.vivapalestina-us.org for information on the US to Gaza convoy

Join the convoy, Donate to the convoy, or Endorse the convoy

George Galloway is the Respect Party Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow.

No peace from Netanyahu

Laila El-Haddad | The Guardian

16 June 2009

“Eight nos, but nothing new.” This is the reaction I hear over and over again from Palestinian refugees here in Lebanon’s Wavel Refugee Camp, where four generations wait to return to the homeland from which they were brutally evicted over 60 years ago, in response to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s so-called landmark policy speech.

This is from those who even bothered to listen.

The US and Europe saw his speech as a move towards recognising two states (while dismissing the right of return, a divided Jerusalem and an end to settlements, and the list goes on) and thus some sort of advance towards peace; others suggested it was a step backward.

Both analyses are flawed. One confuses a call for a Palestinian ghetto as a call for a sovereign, viable Palestinian state. The other is based on the assumption that progress was made over the past (few) decades vis a vis Palestinian statehood.

The speech was full of rosy conjectures. The word “peace” was repeated 45 times.

Tellingly, the word occupation was not mentioned once. Neither, for that matter, was international law. Or freedom – except in the context of facilitating some freedom of movement only after Palestinians give up their rights to move freely.

“Peace has always been our people’s most ardent desire,” he explained, citing three “immense” challenges that stood in the way (the Iranian threat, the economic crisis and the advancement of peace).

In fact, it is an illegal, draconian and malicious occupation that has stifled peace and continues to pose the biggest threat to Israel’s security.

In his speech, Netanyahu called for negotiations without preconditions while simultaneously imposing the conditions that would make a just and viable peace impossible: an undivided Jerusalem, no right of return, no sovereignty, continued settlement expansion.

The demands to recognise Israel as a Jewish state annuls the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from which they were systemically and violently expelled in 1948 in what is now Israel – a right enshrined in international law and at the heart of the Palestinian struggle.

Such a state would promote, subsidise and allow Jewish-only immigration and rights as it does now while denying native inhabitants this same right.

Nations are quick to dismiss the Palestinian right of return, but equally quick to facilitate the return of Darfur, Kosovan, or East Timor refugees in recent years.

This demand also consolidates Israel’s discriminatory policies, and would dismiss in one fell swoop the rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel, who make up 20% of the population. It is effectively saying: we have the right to discriminate against you, to take any measures we deem necessary in order to sustain the Jewish majority. Such measures have already been suggested in the Knesset, like a loyalty oath, even population transfer.

Then there is talk of the illegal settlements. New settlements aren’t the issue. Who needs new settlements if Israeli loophole policies in recent years have provided ample room for expansion?

Currently the illegal annexation barrier, together with settlement-related infrastructure (including settler-only roads, army bases, closed military zones and more than 600 checkpoints) consume 38% of the West Bank, annexing land and livelihoods, dividing villages, towns, and families from one another and tearing apart the very fabric of Palestinian social and economic life.

So, we have not moved forward. But we are certainly a step backwards from the heyday of Oslo, some might say. The fact is, during the Oslo years from 1993 to 2000, four under Netanyahu’s reign, the Israeli settler population expanded by 71%.

Such policies are already being implemented in Jerusalem, where land theft and demolitions continue daily, and where Palestinian Christian and Muslim residents are subject to draconian laws that would strip them of their residency rights there if they fail to renew their ID cards regularly.

Netanyahu’s vision of a Palestinian states is bereft of the very factors that make a state sovereign: effective control over land, sky, and sea, among other things. But this should come as no surprise. Israel’s longstanding policy has been one of repackaging the occupation and postponing viable Palestinian statehood indefinitely by rendering it impossible.

It is a goal summed up by the late Israeli sociologist, Baruch Kimmerling, as politicide: a gradual but systematic attempt to cause their annihilation as an independent political and social entity. In tune with this policy, nowhere in Oslo is there mention of a Palestinian state, only limited self-rule. Netanyahu’s own Likud party’s charter flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Neither is Hamas the issue, with whom Netanyahu foreswore talks. It has not even elected prior to 2006. It did not even exist before 1987. But it enjoys broad support among Palestinians; it was rightfully elected in free and fair elections encouraged and unhindered by the US and Israel respectively; and it is deeply entrenched within society; it is a reality with which Israel must come to grips.

And long before Hamas, Israel was similarly destroying civilian infrastructure, assassinating Palestinians, closing borders, de-developing the economy and sowing lawlessness and chaos in Gaza; all punishment for not being “co-operative” enough; “moderate” enough; tame enough.

All of this, of course, is leaving aside the 1.5 million human beings consigned to a life of living death by Israel and its allies – and by allies I also mean the Arab world. Closed in on all sides, deliberately deprived of the most basics rights of life.

Even after the so-called disengagement from Gaza, the landmark event that supposedly reigned freedom unto Gaza and its people, Israel continued to maintain effective control over Gaza’s borders, her air, sea, sky, even the population registry; and continued to impose a longstanding siege. This despite warnings from experts about the dire consequences that would ensue by not guaranteeing movement and access to people and goods. Gaza faced poverty and unemployment unprecedented in 40 years since Israel’s occupation as a result.

But by Netanyahu’s estimates, this is peace. Gaza is the model – the vision – for what a so-called Palestinian state would look like. In his article for Comment is free, Progress in the Peace Process, Jeremy Sharon said that if the Palestinian national movement is to make any progress, its “maximalist demands may have to be walked back”.

The trouble is, Sharon’s maximalist demands are another’s minimalism: Palestinians have already conceded 78% of their historic homeland in favour of the two-state land for peace deal (I am a proponent of a one-state solution, with equal rights for all, as are increasingly many others).

Netanyahu talked idyllically of a peace in which a tourism-driven economy would draw millions to Nazareth and Bethlehem. He forgot to mention the caveat that tourists would first have to face an apartheid barrier twice the size of the Berlin wall, navigate a Kafkaesque matrix of Israeli administrative control and, if they carry the wrong colour ID, scale sewers if they desire to visit a family member across the way in East Jerusalem.

Israeli human rights organizations to the EU: use Association Council meeting to stop settlements and open Gaza

B’Tselem

15 June 2009

On the occasion of the 9th EU-Israel Association Council on June 15 2009, three prominent Israeli human rights organizations call upon the EU to link the upgrade of EU-Israel relations to respect for human rights and the rule of law.

In their letter to the EU Foreign Ministers, the organizations emphasized that the shared values of democracy and the rule of law stand at the heart of the EU-Israel relationship. These values must be given tangible expression, both in the bilateral relationship as well as in diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Specifically, both Israel and the EU must demonstrate concrete steps to promote and respect human rights and international humanitarian law.

The three organizations, therefore call upon the EU to use the Association Council meeting to explicitly link the upgrade process to Israeli demonstration of tangible improvements in human rights and international humanitarian law in the Occupied Territories, including:

  • An immediate halt to all construction in the settlements and any other permanent changes in occupied territory;
  • An immediate end to the closure of the Gaza Strip;
  • Cessation of house demolitions;
  • Initiation of a criminal investigation into every allegation of torture or ill-treatment of Palestinians in Israeli interrogations;
  • Impartial accountability mechanisms for human rights violations, including those committed during the most recent offensive in Gaza;
  • Full cooperation with the UN Fact-finding mission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone.

According to the organizations, the Association Council meeting is a crucial opportunity for the EU to play a key role in the promotion of a process that will offer peace, dignity and security to both Israelis and Palestinians.

Patricipating orgazniations: HaMoked, Center for the Defence of the Individual, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and B’Tselem,: the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

Steadfastness and solidarity at the Rafah border

16 June 2009

Under pressure from the Egyptian army and the police, the International Movement to Open the Rafah Border ( IMORB), is maintaining their camp at the Rafah Border. The group is growing; now 26 people from France, USA, Germany, Egypt, Belgium, and Sweden.

Yesterday, our Italian friend left us for his job in Italy, but a German woman, Alona, married to a Palestinian from Rafah, joined us with her six children, aged 2 to 12. She wants to return to live with her husband and other three children in Gaza. After Egyptian authorities denied her entrance, she said, “I am coming from Germany and I don’t wish to go back to sleep in El Arish. I come here and I only want one thing: to go to Gaza.” By phone, her husband asked his family to join the IMORB camp.

This morning we were joined by a Palestinian refugee, Mohammad, a PFLP (Palestinian Front for Liberation of Palestine) activist who spent 24 years in Israeli prison and has been living in Belgium. Mohammad’s daughter, a diabetic student in Gaza, is now in need of insulin. “Since June 8, the Egyptian authority has denied my exodus from Egypt. I heard about your camp and I decided to come and stay with you. The rumor says the border will be open Wednesday [6/17] so I will stay and wait.”

Nine Swedish Palestinians, including four children, have also joined the border camp.

Since we set up camp two days ago (6/13) Egyptian police and intelligence agents have been visiting us periodically. Each night Colonel Mohammad speaks to us, but allows us to stay, after first threatening to expel us by force.

When he came to us last night he showed more tolerance and ordered the toilets, adjoining the cafeteria, opened, which had been closed by General Khalil Harb to pressure us to leave.

This morning policemen came and asked us to put down the tents. We explained that we need the tents for the children to take their naps later. They pressured us no more on this issue.

After yesterday morning’s visit, General Harb, came after midnight and said, “this is a closed military zone, and your presence here is unacceptable. We will use any means necessary to remove you.”

In spite of all this pressure, the IMORB persists. They stated, “we will leave only when the border will be opened.”

Our presence is reinforced by support from the Egyptian population, some of whom have brought us blankets, mattresses and other supplies. This morning an unknown man brought us fresh bread. Then a child brought some fooul, a traditional breakfast meal, that was most delicious.

Yesterday evening a policeman came to us wearing a Palestinian kifeyeh around his neck and offered us some chai.

All these demonstrations of support help us to persist in spite of the precarious situation, what Alona calls a “five star hotel.”

Village sues Canada companies cashing in on occupation

Deborah Guterman | Electronic Intifada

11 June 2009

The small Palestinian village of Bilin will face-off this month against two Canadian corporations accused of aiding and abetting the colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Bilin has charged Green Park International and Green Mount International with illegally constructing residential buildings and other settlement infrastructure on village territory, and marketing such structures to the civilian population of the State of Israel. The condominiums in question are located in a settlement neighborhood known as Matityahu East.

Still in its preliminary phase, the lawsuit sheds light on the shady pairing of corporate interest with Israeli expansionist ambition. Representing the village of Bilin, the Bilin Village Council headed by Ahmed Issa Abdallah Yassin seeks to hold the companies accountable for violations of international law.

The lawsuit, filed by Canadian attorney Mark Arnold in 2008, accuses Israel of “severing” village land from Palestinian control, and transferring territorial control to Israeli planning councils. The rights to develop the territory were then sold to the Green Park companies.

Arnold is optimistic. “Certainly the Canadian law and the Quebec law appears to be on the side of Bilin, and against the side of the defendants,” he said.

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits an occupying power from relocating part of its civilian population to the territory it has occupied. A violation of this principle is deemed a crime of war under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Insofar as Green Park International and Green Mount International constructed the buildings meant to house Israelis within the occupied West Bank, the corporations are considered complicit in the commission of this war crime.

According to Emily Schaeffer, an Israeli attorney representing the Village of Bilin, both the articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute have been incorporated into Canadian federal law under the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Statute.

“The Canadian statute specifically makes aiding and abetting a country in committing those crimes a crime,” she said. “This is the essential article that ties the [actions of] corporations to government responsibilities.”

A court of last resort

The Bilin case is one of a growing number of civil and criminal motions filed abroad that attempt to hold Israel and its corporate agents responsible for breaches of international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

However, according to Schaeffer, this increased tendency reveals the failure of the Israeli court system to protect Palestinian rights.

“The truth is that Israel is not willing to implement all of international humanitarian law and the laws on occupation on the occupied [Palestinian] territories,” she said. “We’ve made some headway, we haven’t gone far enough, and that’s why we’re in Canada.”

The question of the legality of the settlements has been brought to the Israeli high court on multiple occasions. However, the courts have repeatedly refused to rule on this issue. Instead, the courts deem this concern political in nature and thus outside the jurisdiction of the justice system.

Green Park International and Green Mount International have motioned to dismiss the suit. They claim that Canada is not the appropriate forum in which to try the case. Instead, the defendants contend that the suit should be heard in Israel as it is the country where the activity in question has taken place.

“Our opponents want us to go to Israel,” said Arnold. “We say — and the Israeli courts have said — that issues of this type are not justiciable [in Israel]. In other words, no justice can be given by the Israeli courts on these types of issues. The Israeli courts see them as being politically-based as opposed to legal issues.”

The Canadian scene

In the run-up to the preliminary hearings, Mohammed Khatib of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall, and Schaeffer will tour 11 Canadian cities. The speaking tour is part of a civil society campaign to mobilize support for the embattled village. A spokesperson for the Coalition for the Bilin Tour, who wishes to remain anonymous, emphasized the need to hold corporations accountable for affronts to human rights.

“As members of the community, it is our duty to curb the power of large multinational corporations. We need to tell them, ‘There are limits to your quest to seek profits,'” she said in French.

Schaeffer highlighted the importance for concerned individuals to show solidarity with Bilin.

Speaking of the highly controversial nature of the lawsuit in question, she said, “The judge in this case needs to feel that it’s okay to rule in favor of the village — that there’s not going to be a major backlash. And that judge also needs to feel supported in making a decision that might very well influence Canadian foreign policy with Israel.

“I think the role of civil society is to say, we’re with you on this, we want this to happen.”

Bilin is seeking a permanent injunction against the Canadian corporations. In addition, if successful, the Green Park companies will be ordered to destroy the buildings they have already constructed and pay two million dollars each in punitive damages to the village.

However, it is doubtful that such orders will ever be implemented by Israeli authorities. In order for the ruling to be enforced, the defendants will have to petition the Israeli high court to accept the Canadian decision.

Bilin is located four kilometers east of the green line (the 1949 armistice line that marks the boundary between Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967) and is adjacent to Modiin Illit, a large settlement bloc that sits on territory confiscated from Bilin and the neighboring Palestinian villages of Nilin, Kharbata, Deir Qadis and Saffa. Since 2005, the residents of this agricultural community have been leading a nonviolent struggle against the construction of Israel’s wall in the West Bank on village land.

Ostensibly built to protect the existing residents of the settlement bloc, the route of the wall was drawn to incorporate the future construction of Matityahu East located just east of Modiin Illit. The wall appropriates an additional 450 acres, which accounts for 60 percent of Bilin’s land.

In 2007, the Israeli high court deemed the route of the wall in Bilin illegal, and ordered the Israeli military to move it closer to the edge of the settlement boundary.

To date, the military has yet to implement the high court’s decision.

Deborah Guterman is a member of Young Jews for Social Justice, a collective of Montreal Jews who take action on racism, injustice in the Middle East and inequality in their communities.