Tag: Haidar Eid

An open letter to Mr. Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa

Haider Eid | The Palestine Chronicle

10 September 2009

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment with both your attendance at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies – a racist organization by any standards – as well as the content of your speech at that forum.

I am a naturalised South African of Palestinian origin. I spent more than five years in Johannesburg, during which I earned a PhD from the University of Johannesburg and lectured at the-then Vista University in Soweto and Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg.

I would like to take issue with the manner in which you express your support for the two-state solution: “It is a solution that fulfils the aspirations of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two peoples, Israel and an independent, adjoining, and viable state of Palestine” (emphasis mine). Allow me, Mr. President, as a resident of Gaza, to express my shock with the fact that – only 8 months after the Gaza massacre, in which 1500 civilians, including 434 children, were brutally murdered – you still believe that there are two symmetrical sides. You even call it the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict!” Was that your belief in the 1970’s and 80’s; that there were “two-sides” to the South African “conflict”? Were there two equal parties, namely White and Black, with equal claim to the land and equal historical responsibility for the-then status quo? No doubt, this sounds like a bizarre interpretation of South African history and one which we Palestinians find equally astounding when applied to our history and our reality today.

Mr. President, these words of yours are even more disturbing, given your own involvement in the commendable struggle against the brutal, anti-human apartheid system and the notion of “independent homelands” which were based on the separation of human beings. Your struggle as Black South Africans, was morally superior to apartheid because it was inclusive where apartheid focused on separation; it was embracing where apartheid focused on division; it was life-affirming where apartheid was violent and murderous.

The South African anti-apartheid goal, adopted by anti-apartheid activists all around the world was unequivocal: the end of the racist system and ideology of apartheid. There could be no toenadering (rapprochement)with apartheid ideologues; no creation of homelands and puppet leaders: the system had to be dismantled in its entirety. Many South Africans supported by a sustained global anti-apartheid campaign, sacrificed their lives to bring down the Bantustansan euphemistically, called independent homelands by the apartheid regime. Mr. President, Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, the Mxenges, the Slovosac to mention but a few anti-apartheid heroes must have listened to the speech to the JBD and wondered what happened to the universal values and human rights espoused by the ANC.

Comrade Jacob (if I may),

I would like to brief you on the nature of the powerful party, i.e. Israel – with whom your post-apartheid government still, amazingly, maintains exceptional diplomatic and economic ties.

Unlike the new post-apartheid South Africa, which you helped to create, in the State of Israel all human beings are NOT equal. There are fundamental artificially created and selectively rewarded a level of of citizens in the state. Israel defines itself as a Jewish State. It, therefore, creates a bizarre distinction between “nationality” and “citizenship.” Almost 22% of the citizens of Israel are Palestinians who are excluded from such a definition. Israel thus, by definition is NOT the state of its citizens, but rather that of “The Jewish People”, most of whom, like the members of JBD whom you were addressing, have no birthright connection to it. The question which begs an answer is what the status of those Palestinian citizens in a Jewish state is? The answer is, as every single – to use a word you must abhor “non-white” South African knows: Racism.

The delegates at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish, but at the same time, South African citizens “enjoy full rights” in Israel, rights that apartheid Israel denies to us, the indigenous people of this land. They also call us “Israeli Arabs”, “Jerusalem residents”, “Arabs of the territories”, not to mention the refugees living in the Diaspora, whose mere mention always spoils any party, and whose right to return and compensation is sanctioned by International Law (UNGA resolution 194).

Israeli nationality, therefore, is non-existent. Instead, there is “Jewish Nationality”. To make such a bizarre term comprehensible, think of “White Nationality” as opposed to South African. In your speech before the JBD, you state very eloquently that “(m)uch as we are conscious of who we are culturally and otherwise, it must not take away the national identity, as we should be South Africans first”.

The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crimes of Apartheid, Article 2, Part 3, clearly defines apartheid as:

“[a]ny legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work… the right to education, the right to leave and return to their country the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence.”

This definition, in its entirety, clearly applies not only to the Palestinian people residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also those living in Israel itself. This is precisely the reason that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Territories, a fellow South African, John Dugard, concluded that “the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid appears to be violated by many practices”.

If you were born to Palestinian parents living in Israel – a fate you have been spared, Mr. President – you too would be denied the rights of “Jewish Nationality” and been forced to submit to institutionalized inferiority or choose to resist it.

Furthermore, ICSPCA (quoted above), Article 2, Part 4, makes it crystal clear that:

“[t]he term ‘the crime of apartheid’,’ shall apply to “any measures including legislative measure, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate measures and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups The expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof..”

Comrade Jacob, the word apartheid never appears once in your speech before the JBD! A listener would never know that you were speaking to an audience who actively support apartheid in another country.

Did you know that racist laws used to forbid Black property ownership in white areas in apartheid South Africa are in force in apartheid Israel? Indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel are not only prohibited from living on land owned by “Jewish institutions”, but are also not allowed by force of “law” to reside in any areas designated “Jewish” either.

I, myself, Mr. President, a resident of Gaza, like so many Palestinians, have legal title to my parents’ land in Israel, but have no “legal” right to it because my parents’ property, like that of millions of other Palestinians’, was taken away from us and given over to Jewish ownership. The facts are that Jews owned only 7% of Palestine before 1948; today 93% is considered “state land” and can only be owned by Jews or Israel.

This is only one example, Comrade Jacob, of the nature of the state your government deems “democratic”and “friendly” despite its past strategic ties with apartheid SA. In your presidential campaign, you were quoted singing “kill the Boer!” And yet, in your speech, you “unequivocally” condemn “all forms of violence from whatever quarter”, particularly where civilians are targeted!

I fail to understand this contradiction. Is this a reflection of the difference between comrade Jacob and President Zuma? Do you, as president, think that Palestinians have no right to resist their occupation and dispossession? You even equate our resistance with the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity committed by the Israeli Occupation forces in the West Bank and, in particular, in Gaza.

Is it too much, comrade Jacob, for us, representatives of Palestinian Civil Society organizations to ask your government to sever all diplomatic ties with apartheid Israel, and endorses not to say lead the growing global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel? Is that really too much to ask a democratic post-apartheid South Africa for?

Is this the embodiment of Fanon’s prophecy about the “Pitfalls of National (Racial?) Consciousness?” Is it because the Black Middle class which your government represents and which has taken power from the White Middle class is underdeveloped? Fanon, whom you must have read while on the run from the apartheid police, says that this national middle class “has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace.” Is this why you are prepared to kowtow to the South African Jewish community which “has been called one of the most tightly-knit in the world, overwhelmingly united in its support for Israel?”

Your government, Mr. President, turns a blind eye to the war crimes of its own citizens against Palestinians. The South African war criminal David Benjamin was allowed to freely move around South Africa and share his tactics of support and defence for the Israeli Occupation Forces in its recent onslaught against the Gaza Strip with impunity. There are seventy other South Africans that are known to have links with the destruction of the Israeli Occupation Forces who enjoy the same impunity. It is left to individuals and civil society organizations in South Africa to take action against these criminals that should rightly be the task of the government.

Your post-apartheid government, Mr. President, unashamedly, supports the two-state solution: one for Palestinians (Muslim and Christians), and one for Jews. In other words, you support the re-birth of Bantustans, albeit in the Middle East this time. The two-state solution is a racist solution, comrade Jacob. If you did not accept it for yourselves in South Africa, why force it on Palestinians instead of supporting us as we demand the right to our homeland every single inch of it?

Mr. President,

A politics based on narrow-minded, selfish pragmatism was rejected by all anti-apartheid forces, locally and internationally during the years of the anti-apartheid struggle. What was promoted, instead, was adherence to universal principles of equality and dignity.

I truly hope you will reconsider. I know that it is my constitutional right as a citizen of the New South Africa – which I am proud of – to address you directly. I do so to express my deep disagreement and dissatisfaction with your government’s Middle East policy and its continued support for the apartheid policies of the Israeli government, given that this support undermines and actively harms the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.

Sincerely,
Professor Haidar Eid
Gaza, Palestine

– Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. Dr. Eid is a founding member of the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and a member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Gaza 2009: the moment of truth

Haidar Eid | The Palestine Chronicle

8 May 2009

'Israel's fascist foreign minister is of the opinion that Gaza should've been nuked.'
'Israel's fascist foreign minister is of the opinion that Gaza should've been nuked.'

Gaza has returned to its pre-massacre state of siege, confronted with the usual, conspiratorial, “international” indifference after 22 long days and dark nights, during which its brave people were left alone to face one of the strongest armies in the world — an army that has hundreds of nuclear warheads, thousands of trigger-happy soldiers armed with Merkava tanks, F-16s, Apache helicopters, naval gunships and phosphorous bombs. Gaza now does not make news. It’s people die slowly, its children malnourished, its water contaminated, its nights dark, and yet it is deprived even of a word of sympathy from the likes of Ban Ki Moon and the president of “Change; Yes We Can.”

Israel could not have carried out its genocidal war, preceded and followed by a medieval, hermetic siege, without a green light from the international community. During the massacre, one Israeli soldier commented: “That’s what is so nice, supposedly, about Gaza: You see a person on a road, walking along a path. He doesn’t have to be with a weapon, you don’t have to identify him with anything and you can just shoot him.”

When apartheid Israel decided to attack the northern part of the Gaza Strip in late February, early March of 2008, we were threatened with a greater shoah (Holocaust) by the deputy minister of war, then, Matan Vilnaii. Around 164 Palestinians, including 64 children were killed. What was the reaction of the international community? Absolutely nothing. In fact, the EU decided to reward the oppressor by issuing declarations of intentions to upgrade their trade agreements with Israel, which, needless to say, served as a green light for the current atrocities. On Sunday 18 January, Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert, a war criminal by all standards, expressed his pleasure to six European leaders, over their “extraordinary support for the state of Israel and their concern about its security”. In retrospect, the upgrading of relations between the EU and Israel in early December 2008 was a green light for the larger Gaza massacre of 2009. In spite of the war crimes committed by the IOF, and in spite of the obvious fascist make-up of the current government, the EU will continue to strengthen bilateral relations with Tel Aviv.

Within this context, the anti-apartheid freedom fighter Ronnie Kasrils says:

What [Hendrik] Verwoerd [the architect of apartheid] admired too was the impunity with which Israel exercised state violence and terror to get its way, without hindrance from its Western allies, increasingly key among them the USA. What Verwoerd and his ilk came to admire in Israel.., was the way the Western powers permitted an imperialist Israel to use its unbridled military with impunity in expanding its territory and holding back the rising tide of Arab nationalism in its neighborhood.

March 2008 was, then, a rehearsal for Gaza 2009. Israel knew that it could go on committing war crimes fully equipped with an international conspiracy of silence. The international community did not react in March 2008: why would it do otherwise in 2009? That was the Israeli logic, and so it remains. Mind you, Israel’s fascist foreign minister is of the opinion that Gaza should’ve been nuked. No wonder Adolf Hitler once said: “What luck for rulers that men do not think!”

For those who accuse us of subscribing to conspiracy theories, we have this reminder: in 2004 the Israeli Professor Arnon Soffer, Head of the IOF’s National Defense College, and an advisor to Ariel Sharon, spelled out the desired results of Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza in an interview with the Jerusalem Post:

… when 1.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today,… The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day…If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist…Unilateral separation doesn’t guarantee “peace” – it guarantees a Zionist-Jewish state with an overwhelming majority of Jews…

Then, there is the view bluntly expressed in 2002 by Israel’s then chief of staff, General Moshe Yaalon, and which I think sums up the objective of the hermetic medieval siege and the massacre:

The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.

Now, this is a total dehumanization of the Palestinians of Gaza. And West Bankers, here is the message for you: you’d better accept your fate as cockroaches, ready to be crushed willingly under the boot of a zealot Israeli soldier, or else.

The resemblance of Israel’s campaign of tribalistic racist hate both to that of apartheid SA and to Hitler’s murderous regime has recently been articulated by Comrade Kasrils:

Certainly we South Africans can identify the pathological cause, fuelling the hate, of Israel’s political-military elite and public in general. Neither is this difficult for anyone acquainted with colonial history to understand the way in which deliberately cultivated race hate inculcates a justification for the most atrocious and inhumane actions against even defenseless civilians – women, children, the elderly amongst them. In fact was this not the pathological racist ideology that fuelled Hitler’s war lust and implementation of the Holocaust?

In actual fact, if there is something to learn from Gaza 2009, it is that the world was absolutely wrong to think that Nazism was defeated in 1945. Nazism has won because it has finally managed to Nazify the consciousness of its own victims! Just think about the soldiers’ T-shirts episodes. The courageous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has written that Israel today looks very much like Germany in 1933.

But now the urgent question is how to hold Israel accountable to international law and basic principles of human rights in order to forestall the imminent escalation? The most immediate and pressing questions within this context are: what the nature of international solidarity should be and how it can best support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

The South African apartheid regime came under repeated pressure from the international community and multilateral organizations such as the United Nations Security Council which passed countless resolutions against it because of its inhumane treatment of blacks. This gave much-needed succor to the oppressed, while we today are bereft of even this tiny comfort because the United States continues to use its veto to ensure that Israel escapes censure from the world body.

Grassroots opposition to a brutal apartheid finally forced the US and UK and other governments around the world to isolate apartheid South Africa. They would not have done so without the pressure exerted on them by their own people. Israel needs to be isolated in exactly the same way as apartheid South Africa. Today, there is a growing mass-based struggle inside Palestine, as well as other forms of struggle, exactly as there was inside apartheid South Africa. An intensified international solidarity movement with a common agenda can make the struggle for Palestine resonate in every country in the world, thus closing off the world to Israelis until they open the world to Palestinians. Our goal now, as civil society organizations, is to lift the deadly hermetic siege imposed on Gaza causing slow motion genocide; marching towards the six gates of the Gaza prison has been tried and must intensify. This is what many activists, Palestinian and international, are planning to do. Our BDS campaign modeled on the South African anti-apartheid global campaign is gaining momentum as a democratic movement based on the struggle for human rights and implementation of international law. Our struggle is NOT religious, nor ethnic, nor racial, but rather universalistic: one that guarantees the rehumanization of our people in the face of a genocidal machine run by what Moshe Dayan would have called “a mad dog.”

The Palestinians of Gaza have lost faith in the failed “peace process” and the two-state solution; hence, the desperate need for a new national program that can mobilize the masses; a program that is necessarily democratic in its nature; one that respects resistance in its different forms and, ultimately, guarantees peace with justice. The new, much-needed program, however, must make the necessary link between all Palestinian struggles: the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, Israel’s ethnically-based discrimination and rights violations of more than one million Palestinian citizens, as well as the 1948 externally displaced refugees.

What we are constantly told, is either accept Israeli occupation in its ugliest form — i.e. the ongoing presence of the apartheid wall, colonies, checkpoints, zigzag roads, color-coded number plates, house demolitions and security coordination supervised by a retired American general — or have a hermetic medieval siege imposed on us, but still die with dignity.

But, the lesson we learn from Gaza 2009, exactly like Sharpville 1960, is to harness all effort to fight the outcome of the Oslo Accords, and to form a United Front on a platform of resistance and reforms. This cannot be achieved without realizing that ministries, premierships, and presidencies in Gaza and Ramallah are a façade not unlike those inauthentic structures in the South African Independent Homelands. In a short story by SA writer, Najbuolu Ndebel, a young black woman comments on the generous offer given by the racist white government: “That’s how it is planned. That we be given a little of everything, and so prize the little we have that we forget about FREEDOM.”

This is exactly what Steve Biko, the hero of anti-apartheid struggle–who paid his life for the freedom of all South Africans– meant when he said:

Not only have the whites been guilty of being on the offensive, but by some skilful manoeuvres, they have managed to control the responses of the blacks to the provocation. Not only have they kicked the black, but they have also told him how to react to the kick. For a long time the black has been listening with patience to the advice he has been receiving on how best to respond to the kick. With painful slowness he is now beginning to show signs that it is his right and duty to respond to the kick in the way he sees fit.

And we, Palestinians, have decided to respond to the Zionist kick in the way we see fit. In Ndebel’s story quoted earlier, a black intellectual makes it clear that “[he’d] rather be a hungry dog that runs freely in the streets , than a fat, chained dog burdened with itself and the weight of the chain.” These examples used again and again in the anti-Apartheid literature sum up the lessons we learn from Gaza 2009. In a word it is resilience.

Archbishop Desmund Tutu of South Africa said, in a much quoted wisdom: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” And as I said in an earlier article, while IOF were bombing my neighborhood, the UN, EU, Arab League and the international community by and large have remained silent in the face of atrocities committed by Apartheid Israel. They are therefore on the side of Israel. Hundreds of dead corpses of children and women have failed to convince them to intervene.

We are, therefore, left with one option, an option that does not wait for the United Nations Security Council or Arab Summits: the option of people’s power, as we have been repeatedly saying. This remains the only power capable of counteracting the massive power imbalance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The horror of the racist apartheid regime in South Africa was challenged with a sustained campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions initiated in 1958 and given new urgency in 1960 after the Sharpeville Massacre. This campaign led ultimately to the collapse of white rule in 1994 and the establishment of a multi-racial, democratic state.

Similarly, the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions has been gathering momentum since 2005. Gaza 2009, like Sharpeville 1960, cannot be ignored: it demands a response from all who believe in a common humanity. Now is the time to boycott the apartheid Israeli state, to divest and to impose sanctions against it. This is the only way to ensure the creation of a secular, democratic state for all in historic Palestine regardless of race, sect and ethnicity. The Australian journalist John Pilger has this to say:

What happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out.

Gaza 2009, with mass mobilization and international solidarity, is, therefore, becoming the guiding torch, not only for the Palestinian people, but also for the Arab world, towards a new Middle East, one that is, unlike Condoleezza Rice’s ME, characterized by democracy and freedom. This is the least our resistance to religious exclusivism, xenophobia, and tribalistic world view should lead to.

– Based on a speech delivered via video link at a panel on “Promoting a Culture of Resistance” at the 4th Bil’in International Conference on Grassroots Popular Resistance.

– Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. Dr. Eid is a founding member of the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and a member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

The complicit silence continues

Haidar Eid | The Palestine Telegraph

1 May 2009

Millions of people looked forward to Barack Obama’s presidency with a sense of pride and hope. But Obama’s first 100 days have raised critical questions about the limits of what we can expect from a Democrat in the White House–and what it will take to get the change we want.

What do you think of Obama’s 100 days? And what does the left need to do now to move the struggle forward? We asked a group of writers and activists for their answers to these questions. This commentary is from Haidar Eid, a professor, a resident of Gaza City, and a leading activist in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel’s apartheid.

I NEVER had high expectations for Barack Obama, because he still represents the Democratic Party, which is a part of the American establishment. Obama’s victory in the presidential elections did not produce a change in the nature of American imperialism.

I think the difference between the Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. is similar to the difference between Likud and the Labor Party in Palestine.

I thought, even prior to his taking office, that Obama’s role would be to bring about a new fiction–or rather renew the of fiction–of a two-state solution in Palestine-Israel. That is, to breathe new life into the idea that one state for Jews and another state for Palestinians will bring peace to the region.

In essence, that isn’t different from what George W. Bush and, before him, Bill Clinton stood for. The only difference that I see is that the Bush administration saw the annihilation of the Palestinian resistance as part of what Bush called the “war on terror.” In his words, “You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

Because most of us belonging to Palestinian resistance and civil society organizations were not with George Bush, we were defined as terrorists–indeed, as all resistance to imperialism is throughout history.

The Bush administration enabled Israeli crimes in Palestine and Lebanon through financial, military and moral support. The first 100 days of Obama have witnessed the same thing. I don’t see any difference, in fact, between what Israel is committing in Palestine, and in particular in the Gaza Strip, and what the American military has been doing in Iraq.

I would expect Barack Obama, for example, to immediately withdraw American troops from Iraq. We know that this is not going to happen. He made it very clear that he is going to keep some 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Israel is still using Apache helicopters made in the U.S. Israel is still using F-16 jet fighters. Only yesterday, on April 18, there was an aerial strike on the neighborhood of Deir El Balah in the Gaza Strip.

Although the Bush administration allowed Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Barak to undermine the Annapolis meeting by focusing only on Israeli security, the same thing is happening with Barack Obama and George Mitchell, his envoy to the Middle East.

The point of reference in any negotiations or any statements made by the American administration about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel’s security. By doing that, Obama and his administration are effectively marginalizing the whole issue of Palestine, and unfortunately setting the stage for renewed Israeli assaults against a starving Gaza. Gaza has already been transformed into the largest concentration camp on Earth.

BARACK OBAMA visited one of the northern Israeli settlements in 2006, shortly before Israel attacked Lebanon and killed more than 1,200 people. Obama stayed for more than a week. Later, he made a visit to Ramallah, where he spent just 45 minutes with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas–afterward, he refused to attend a press conference with Abbas.

Then he visited the Israeli town of Sderot. He had a lot to say in sympathy with the Israelis of Sderot. Sderot was a Palestinian village before 1948, the people of which were ethnically cleansed. Of course, he never mentioned that–or said a single word of sympathy with the Palestinians of Gaza.

The Obama administration, including George Mitchell, are filled with nothing but empty rhetoric when it comes to addressing the illegal settlements policy of Israel in the West Bank. They know very well that Olmert, after the Annapolis meeting, immediately authorized a massive building program for new Jewish housing units in eastern Jerusalem and the expansion of other settlements in the West Bank.

This is a violation, of course, of the letter and the spirit of the so-called two-state solution, which I personally call the two-prison solution.

What we need from Obama is to show seriousness in dealing with the newly elected Israeli government, which is a fascist government and which proves that Israeli society by and large is lurching ever further rightward. It is what Israeli professor Israel Shahak has referred to as the Nazification of Israeli society.

Obama needs to adopt the same attitude toward Israel that the U.S. administration adopted toward apartheid South Africa at the end of the 1980s. In spite of the massacres, the war crimes and the crimes against humanity that have been committed in the Gaza Strip, there has been no serious condemnation of Israel issued from the White House.

On April 17, there was an incident in Bil’in, in which a Palestinian youngster was shot dead. On the same day, another Palestinian was shot dead in Hebron. That was at the same time Mitchell was visiting Tel Aviv.

But unfortunately, the complicit silence from Obama’s White House continues. This has accompanied the cutoff of medicine, food and fuel to a starving Gaza. Patients in need of dialysis and other urgent medical treatment are dying every single day. A majority of us here in Gaza are badly undernourished. But not a single word of condemnation from the Obama administration.

Every single person who is a little bit familiar with Middle East issues must realize now–and Barack Obama seems to be a smart guy–how cynical it is to wait until a two-state solution has been rendered impossible by Israeli colonization of the West Bank, by the looting and pillaging of Gaza, by the construction of the apartheid wall, and by the expansion of so-called Greater Jerusalem to say the time has come for peace.

Like every U.S. president since 1967, Obama has supported and is still supporting Israel in creating conditions that made the two-state solution impossible, impractical and unjust.

If Obama hopes to gain any credibility as a peacemaker, he needs to reverse the policies of George Bush and strongly oppose the policies of the fascist Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman.

He should take the lead of Venezuelan President Huge Chavez, with whom he shook hands in Trinidad. Venezuela and Bolivia both severed diplomatic ties with Israel after its assault on Gaza earlier this year. But so far, these first 100 days have been a great disappointment to us Palestinians.

THE WAY civil society organizations in the U.S. opposed apartheid South Africa and pressured their own government to sever its diplomatic with South Africa is the model that the U.S. left should now pursue with respect to Israel. Join hands with us in besieged Gaza and demand the immediate withdrawal of Israeli occupation forces from Gaza and the West Bank.

We must also demand that Israel abide by international humanitarian and human rights law, and refrain from imposing collective punishment on Palestinian civilians, as per numerous covenants of international law and United Nations resolutions.

We should demand that Israel release all detained Palestinian ministers, legislators and political prisoners. There are more than 12,000 Palestinian political prisoners. Because of the mainstream media coverage, I know that every single American knows the name of the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, but I don’t think many know the name of a single Palestinian prisoner among the thousands–which, by the way, includes hundreds of women and children.

We should demand the implementation of the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Israel’s apartheid wall–to cease building it and make reparations for any damage caused during its construction. We should also demand that the United Nations insure that Israel fulfills its obligations in terms of international law.

After the experience of the genocidal war against the civilians of Gaza, in which more than 1,500 Palestinians were killed, 90 percent of whom were civilians, including 443 children and 120 women, we need an international protection of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

This is an urgent task. We cannot wait. Every single day, we hear of people dying. Just yesterday, my own cousin, who is 42 years old and has been suffering from leukemia, was not given a permit for an Israeli, Egyptian or Jordanian hospital. She passed away yesterday, leaving seven children.

It is time for the American left to demand that Israeli generals, Israeli officers and Israeli soldiers be indicted for war crimes before the ICJ, for using phosphorous bombs against civilians and for other atrocities.

If Barack Obama wants to show his liberal world view and understanding of racism, I think he should sympathize with the suffering of Palestinians. He must realize it is time for us to have civic democracy in historic Palestine after the return of more than 6 million Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora in miserable conditions.

The kind of strategy and tactics used by the American left during 1970s and ’80s against apartheid South Africa are essential for pushing for these demands. Our allies are all oppressed people in the U.S. and around the world. When it comes to the U.S., this is a society that has suffered racism in the 20th century, that has many marginalized groups, but that is also multiethnic and multicultural.

The same tools that were used in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s in order to obtain rights for the African American community in the U.S. should be used to support the Palestinian cause. We need to approach churches, mosques and other kinds of associations to promote a culture of resistance.

We should demand the economic, political and cultural isolation of Israel. I know that this won’t happen immediately–exactly like in the case of white South Africans, who were welcomed in the U.S. for a long time. But through an international movement, they were eventually ostracized, especially in the realms of sports and culture.

Israel needs to feel that it is paying a price for its war crimes against Palestinians, especially during the Gaza massacre. The American left needs to understand this, to start changing its understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict–from a conflict over territory and Palestinian independence to a conflict about Palestinian liberation.

That is why the American left should adopt as its platform support for the one-state solution, support for equal rights and support for making Israel/Palestine into a state for all its citizens. The two-state solution means racism–the Bantustanization of Palestine.
I have had discussions with American liberals and leftists who still believe that a two-state solution is the only viable solution.

But the lessons we learned from Gaza 2009 are the same lessons we learned from Sharpeville 1960–that this struggle is a struggle for liberation, it’s a struggle for civic democracy, it’s a struggle for the transformation of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine into a true and real democracy, which ultimately means the return of Palestinian refugees.

This currently does not constitute a fundamental part of discourse on the American left. But this is essential for the transformation of Israel into a state for all of its citizens, regardless of race and religion.

Haidar Eid is a grassroots activist and professor based in the Gaza Strip

Shades of Checkpoint Charlie at Rafah crossing

Haidar Eid | Electronic Intifada

Palestinians wait to cross into Egypt at the Rafah Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip
Palestinians wait to cross into Egypt at the Rafah Crossing in the southern Gaza Strip

On Monday 30 June, Gaza was abuzz with the sudden announcement that Egypt would open Rafah Crossing — the only gateway for 1.5 million Palestinians who have been imprisoned here for almost two years — for three short days. Although I had good reasons to use the crossing to leave Gaza, I was unsure about pressing my luck to escape, if only for a short while. Past experience has made me graphically and painfully aware that thousands of my fellow Gazans would also try to capitalize on this very rare opportunity suddenly available to us.

On the one hand, I had also already asked my university to add my name to the list of academics who intended to travel to Egypt to further their studies as I had accepted an invitation to a conference — to be held at University of Brighton — in London in September. Moreover, I wanted to be with my wife who is in South Africa, and whom I have not seen for almost two years as a result of the siege. On the other hand, the story of failed attempts to leave Gaza through Rafah Crossing is an agonizingly familiar one to every family in Gaza.

Nevertheless, the temptation was too great and hope triumphed over experience. At 2pm, on Monday, I called the university’s public relations officer. I was told in two short sentences to be at the Rafah crossing at 2am on Tuesday morning. The reason for this strange departure hour was not explained and I did not question it. If one wants to leave Gaza after two years, one simply follows orders.

My mind went immediately to the myriad tasks that must be completed in preparation for a journey: money, packing, goodbyes, tickets — how would all this happen in less than 12 hours? I was not prepared at all and the banks were closed. I allowed myself 10 minutes to think about the steps I should take to ensure that I would be at Rafah Crossing — 40 kilometers from my home at the end of badly damaged and unlit roads at 2am the next morning.

I then remembered that the bank manager is my neighbor; when I called with my unusual request outside of normal banking hours, he was so helpful that getting the money I needed turned out to be the easiest step. I then called my niece to help me pack and prepare for my unexpected journey. Dozens of phone calls were made, but I did not call my wife because I did not want to raise her hopes only to have them dashed as has happened so many times during this siege of Gaza. I, myself, did not have high expectations but I wanted to try because in Gaza one never knows for sure. It could go either way.

I made another call to our public relations officer just to find out what I was supposed to do on arrival at the crossing. “Wait with the other academics,” was the answer. At around 11pm on Monday night, a colleague called to tell me to delay my departure until morning. His sources at the crossing had informed him that our names were not on the list sent to them by the Egyptians. He suggested I wait for more instructions in the morning. I did not sleep that night. In the morning, I got a call from another colleague, who was also leaving Gaza with me as he had to attend a conference in London. He suggested, on the advice of the public relations officer and another colleague who has contacts on the Palestinian side of the crossing, that we go to Rafah and wait for someone to help us enter the crossing because “our names are on the list.”

We left Gaza City at about noon and drove straight to Rafah. Our taxi was stopped by Palestinian policemen at a mobile checkpoint five kilometers before the crossing. We were asked to leave the taxi and wait along with other people. I was encouraged to see only a few people — perhaps the list was being used and we would be able to leave after all.

As it is almost impossible to go anywhere in Gaza without bumping into familiar faces, true to form, I immediately saw my cousin, whose wife has cancer, waving at me. He said he had been at this checkpoint since the night before! Needless to say, this was not good news. My colleague and I then called our friend who has contacts on the Palestinian side. He told us to wait there because one of the policemen at the checkpoint would be informed by his senior to allow us to walk to the crossing. That call never came.

Our contact himself then called to get our exact location because he was on his way to fetch us. What relief! Three hours later, we were still waiting and the mobile checkpoint was disbanded. We decided to drive to the crossing itself.

That is when reality hit us: tens of thousands of people were waiting there, children, old people, women, and worst of all, terminally ill people, all sitting under the baking hot sun of this semi-desert area. My heart sank! But we had to try our contact again — how could we not, when the crossing itself was so tantalizingly mere meters away now? And if we passed, what freedoms awaited us: bookshops, movies, theatre, chocolate, friends, fuel, food, fruits and of course, in my case, my long-suffering partner. Our contact gave us more hope by asking us to move closer to the electronic gate and ask a policeman named Bassam to let us in.

The next problem on this long journey was trying to reach the gate through the masses of people jealously guarding their spots on the way to the gate. Finally we got to the gate which is where we realized that it would not open for us. The authorities would not open to let a small group of academics through — list or no list — simply because the waiting crowd would surge through the gate en masse. In any event we never did find Bassam to open the gate for us.

But we waited. The heat became even worse, children cried, and the sick and the elderly sat desperately on the ground — they could no longer stand and would have to sit on the ground to wait for the gate to open. I decided to join them because it was clear that the wait would be a long one.

Worse news was to follow: our names were not on the list — and the crossing was, in fact, closed! We had to wait outside until somebody allowed us to go inside the Palestinian hall to spend the night there. I was so tired and felt ill. I was also desperate for a toilet as none had been made available to us for all these hours.

Next to me was an old woman talking on her cellphone about the pain she was in. Next to her was the family with seven daughters, all on their way to Jordan. Opposite me was an ambulance with a cancer patient — they had been waiting there for 12 hours. The place was so hot and sticky. After three hours I felt a sudden sharp pain in my stomach; I stood up to lean against the wall while yellow circles danced in front of me and a humming began in my ear. Then, everything went blank. I must have fainted. When I opened my eyes, people were giving me water, chocolate, cheese and asking me to eat and drink. Some pronounced it a diabetic episode, others were convinced it was low blood pressure. I was sure it was sunstroke. Whatever it was, I resolved to go back home right away.

On my return home, I was so relieved to see my bed — and my flat felt like Paradise! That night I wanted to cry; cry for myself, for my dignity; cry for the old woman sitting next to me; cry for my cousin’s wife; cry for the patient in the ambulance and for the 50,000 desperate people at the gates of Rafah Crossing.

The horror at the crossing continued after I left. Many people spent the entire night there, only to be told the following day that the crossing was still closed and that they should leave. It took me almost two days to feel physically better, but every single muscle of my body still hurts. I am angry and sad and do not have the words to express the depth of my feelings about this experience.

The situation that the tens of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children faced at the Rafah border crossing this week was inhumane and unconscionable. Nothing can justify this. Most rushed to Rafah Crossing in as short a time as I did with similar stories of frenzied activity and hope. More than 3,500 of them are terminally ill patients in urgent need of medical treatment in Egyptian hospitals. Others hold residency permits in other countries and have been trapped in Gaza for at least a year. Some are academics and students, traveling abroad to attend conferences or further their studies.

So, instead of giving them a chance to do these very ordinary things: go to a hospital, study, go to a conference or work, go back to other homes and other loved ones, the failure to open the Rafah Crossing, instead, increased their misery. Many of them spent three sleepless nights hoping to be allowed to cross into Egypt. Like me, many fainted, or suffered from dehydration and sun stroke. The failure to open Rafah Crossing reminded them of their imprisonment and their lack of human rights; it reminded them that they move at the whim of others and it reminded them that the siege of the Gaza Strip has still not been broken.

All the people who were at the Rafah border are civilians. Under the Geneva Conventions they are entitled to freedom of movement and protection from collective punishment.

During the Cold War, much was made of Checkpoint Charlie as the dividing line: we have a new Checkpoint Charlie today and it is called Rafah Crossing.

Haidar Eid is an Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at Al-Aqsa University-Palestine.