13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
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Where Durban ends
To gain momentum and garner support, the movement for Palestinian liberation must ride the wave of international solidarity. Marwan Bishara* comments
Three thousand NGO delegates from around the world considered their conference in Durban a success. Most of the Western media, however, characterised it as a missed opportunity, if not an outright failure. The discrepancy between the two evaluations lies not in the deliberations of the conference but rather in its coverage by the Western media.
After over a year of preparation and seven long days of discussions, NGO delegates in 44 regional and interest- based caucuses adopted the NGO forum Declaration, focusing on numerous issues facing the world today. Among the topics addressed were the treatment of refugees and immigrants, anti-Semitism, the caste system in India, slavery in Africa, and the impact of racism on HIV/AIDS and other healthcare issues. Of the hundreds of paragraphs adopted in the final declaration, only very few addressed the question of Israel/Palestine.
Yet foreign journalists in Durban persisted in their coverage of Palestinian-Israeli bickering outside the conference halls. One British journalist expressed her frustration with her paper's insistence that she provide yet another update on Palestinian-Israeli shouting matches. An ecumenical delegate lost her temper at an American journalist who ignored all the other issues and interrogated her 50- member delegation relentlessly about Israel.
Well prepared and better organised than pro-Israeli NGOs, the Palestinian NGO delegates were able to coordinate their campaign outside the conference with the Durban social forum and the Landless Peoples' movement in South Africa. Their efforts culminated in a demonstration of 30,000 to 40,000 people (not 12,000, as reported) who carried the People's Manifesto to the official conference. The media, however, brushed over this Palestinian public relations success in its haste to present the conference as a failure.
Meanwhile, beneath the tents that dotted Durban's football stadium, delegates passionately discussed hundreds of racism-related subjects into the late hours of the night. Naturally, much blame was apportioned to the northern countries, not only by delegates from disadvantaged countries, but also by representatives of Western human rights groups and other NGOs. There was no less hostility, however, toward the likes of India, China, and Nigeria.
Solidarity with Palestine, as with the African National Congress in past decades, was a rallying issue of consensus. Israel's occupation and colonial treatment of the Palestinians was referred to as racist. The South African NGOs network delegation, which had visited the occupied territories in July, described the situation there as a new, perhaps worse, form of apartheid.
Israel, indeed, was isolated at the conference. Even the Israeli press has admitted the country's failure to take such unofficial forums seriously. Only 12 pro-Israeli Jewish organisations participated, for Israel assumed it could continue to depend on the US and certain European countries to insure it remains inviolable at international forums. This assumption proved valid at the official World Conference Against Racism (WCAR): Israel walked out with the American delegation. At the NGO forum, however, pro-Israeli delegates who insisted that criticism of Israel be labeled anti-Semitic had to walk out alone, as all the caucuses voted against their cynical use of anti-Semitism in protecting the Sharon government.
The Bush administration intended to come to Israel's rescue long before the conference, as evidenced by its decision to send a low-level delegation to Durban. It vowed not to tolerate criticism of its junior ally, and refused any equation of Zionism with racism. But Zionism was not being equated with racism at the conference. That parallel had been dropped from the draft document developed during the last of a series of consultations in Geneva prior to the conference. Other phrases that criticised Israel where put in brackets, underlining the lack of agreement. Moreover, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat acquiesced to the prompting of political leader and civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson, and promised that the question of Zionism would not be invoked at the WCAR.
The US, however, had topics other than Israel on its mind. The White House merely used the Israeli excuse to turn its back on America's obligations at the WCAR, and ignore demands that it make explicit apologies and reparations for slavery, cancel debt and increase aid. The Bush administration was not, and never will be, in the mood to discuss such issues, let alone at an international conference under UN auspices. The administration, then, derailed the conference rather than take responsibility for America's racist record. The conservative right wing of the Republican Party would have exploded if the administration had been obliged to apologise for slavery and commit to future repatriations at an international UN-sponsored forum, for any compromise, no matter how insignificant, could have translated into a victory for the civil rights movement and a Democratic Party gain.
The White House under Bush cannot contemplate that possibility. Constantly reminded that he lost the vote despite his technical victory in the presidential elections, Bush needs all the local support he can get. Pleasing Israel's friends in the US could also help garner more support for his administration in Congress and in the next elections. Technically, this was a successful manoeuvre, especially since it killed three birds with one walkout.
Prior to and during the conference, Israel's influential friends lobbied African countries to drop the Palestinian issue at the official and NGO conferences, offering in exchange to help them raise the question of reparations, hence creating a conflict of interest between the two issues. Certain African states, including the South African government, were tempted by the offer, especially when they considered the alternative: torpedoing the conference all together.
The trick worked in limited circles, and was adopted by the media. Because the Palestinian issue received so much attention, it was considered -- erroneously -- as inflicting a net loss on African issues and other important topics. At the NGO forum, no such hierarchy of issues was tolerated. But the media coverage insisted that a conflict of interest existed, and the US exasperated the issue when it walked out on the third day of the official conference, claiming that offensive language had been used with reference to Israel. Why, then, does it not walk out of the UN, where similar language is commonly used in accurate descriptions of Israel's colonialist practices?
Unfortunately, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson refused to receive and endorse the NGO Forum Declaration and Program of Action, which she was to transmit to the WCAR. She criticised language used to characterise Israel. But, while some delegates preferred other terms to genocide, and generally favoured more careful wording in the final declaration, they did not want to distance themselves entirely from such a consensual document. Nor should Robinson have rejected the result of a democratic and transparent process.
The success of the NGO conference in Durban is primarily a victory for international civil society. Coming together in South Africa is only the first step toward a new international agenda emanating from civil society organisations and popular movements in an interdependent world were the global is gaining increasing precedence over the local. Durban has refocused attention on this emerging "glo-cal" reality, and connected local causes of discrimination and racism in a new international movement made up of individuals struggling for a better world.
If the Palestinian cause is to gain momentum and international support, it must pick up where Durban has left off, and relocate from the back door of the White House to the centre of American and international solidarity and human rights activism. Already, preparations are underway to strategise with the Dalits, the anti-apartheid, the civil rights, and the human rights movements. Only international popular pressure can convince the United States to allow for a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As South Africans, with their Palestinian brethren, shouted Amandla Palestine, a new anti-apartheid movement in Palestine was taking off.
* The writer is author of Palestine-Israel: Peace or Apartheid, ZED Press, London
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