27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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'We are all Palestinians'
A year of Intifada has injected life into an international solidarity movement that joins the Palestinians in opposing Israeli aggression. Omayma Abdel-Latif reports
To most Israelis, Durban was "just like the dark days of the past," as described by an Israeli editor at the daily Haaretz. This dark "past" is in fact the time when the Palestinian question was the common ground for most solidarity and popular movements, whatever their political hue.
Durban was a watershed in the process of regaining this "past," which had been lost for a decade due to what Palestinian human rights activist Marwan Bishara describes as "the ambiguity brought about by the Oslo accords." In Durban, for the first time in years, an international consensus emerged against "a racist apartheid state," as the communiqué issued by almost 3,000 NGOs described Israel -- which they also accused of "systematic perpetration of racist crimes including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing." One Haaretz commentator spoke of how Israel had "lost the power of the street in Durban."
"Palestine," says Bishara, "emerged as the question that touches the very heart of racism and discrimination in the 20th century." But Palestine is not just another case of discrimination and racism, Bishara told Al-Ahram Weekly; "it is one of the oldest -- and probably the last -- colonial cases at the beginning of the 21st century. Getting rid of the Israeli occupation is a necessary step to looking into other cases of racism beyond colonialism."
In Durban and elsewhere around the world, the stage was set for the emergence of an international movement that supports Palestinian rights. A year of live TV coverage of Israeli brutality against Palestinian civilians has changed the picture. Israel's policies are no longer above criticism. The picture that is emerging is one of solidarity with the Palestinian plight following a long period of complete apathy. The Intifada, many observers feel, has played a fundamental role in shaping this international solidarity movement. The Intifada, explained Bishara, clarified what was ambiguous to activists involved in civil society work around the world. "We feared that the work of decades was going to be lost with the Oslo war process, but I think we retrieved this support through both the Intifada and the events of Durban," he added.
Signs of this renewed international support have been particularly clear during the past six months. First, there was the campaign in Belgium to indict Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres of 1982. In Denmark, human rights activists demanded that the newly appointed Israeli ambassador to Helsinki be tried for his personal involvement in the brutal torture of Palestinian prisoners. On the ground, other forms of support are being put in place. The International Campaign for the Protection of the Palestinian People, a Paris-based organisation, is committed to "actual solidarity" and sends international activists to clash-points, where they organise non-violent protests -- in their view, the only way to protect Palestinian civilians. Earlier this month, the committee forwarded to French President Jacques Chirac a letter from several East Jerusalem residents, whose homes in north-east Jerusalem were to be demolished by the Israeli authorities. The letter urged Chirac to intervene and prevent the displacement of tens of families.
The committee has received many letters of complaint from Palestinian villagers and students. A delegation visited the territories twice, in June and August; its members went to villages targeted by Israeli army, and protested the destruction of houses, the confiscation of land and the expansion of settlements. They also helped remove roadblocks and oppose the closure of Orient House. The committee is planning a demonstration in Paris to commemorate the Intifada's first anniversary, so that "all the French organisations working to serve the Palestinian cause may renew their commitment to side with the Palestinian people," according to a statement issued earlier this week.
In Britain, awareness of the Palestinian plight has been manifest in the statements made by officials like Clare Short, minister of international development, who in a recent interview with the Spectator spoke of the need to end "the unbearable sufferings of the Palestinians." The letters to the editor section of some mainstream British papers urged that US policy on the Palestinian question should be revised, and that "we in the West should feel what [life] is like for a decent ordinary Iraqi or Palestinian." Ironically perhaps, sympathy with the Palestinian plight has increased since the 11 September attack on the US. Christopher J Walker from London wrote in a letter published on 12 September in the Independent: "Israel is a democracy for sure, but only after having dispossessed most of the native Palestinians from their lands and homes, and having planted Zionist colonies right across Palestine."
Angela Zelter of the UK-based Women In Black movement agrees that the Intifada has done much to raise European awareness of the Palestinians' plight. Zelter campaigned for activists to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem last August, when Israel was clamping down on Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem, most notably by closing Orient House. The presence of an international human shield separating the Israeli soldiers from Palestinian civilians made headlines the next day, drawing the Western world more closely into events in the territories. "We stayed with families, some of whom were women and children on their own, knowing that our presence would not stop the shelling; but at least we were sharing it with them," Zelter told the Weekly in a telephone interview from Ramallah.
Some Western media reports have described Women in Black's mission as requesting that the Palestinians refrain from violence, but Zelter insists this is not the case: "In fact, if you think about it, most Palestinians are engaged in non-violent resistance all the time. Only a minority have access to arms. The Palestinians are very badly treated by the Israelis, but the Israelis will not show this when an international is there -- instead, they try to put on the face of democracy," she added.
Zelter places part of the blame for Palestinian suffering on the Western media, which, she says, do not provide it with sufficient coverage. She says most journalists covering the events in the occupied territories lack the courage to do real investigative reporting about the plight of the Palestinians. "They are not taking the risks we are taking, to go into the closed places and find out what is happening," she explained. She believes press coverage is very skewed toward the Israeli perspective because most foreign correspondents are, in her own words, "not willing to find out what the occupation actually means for ordinary Palestinians."
But it is precisely this point that has led Zelter to believe it is necessary for more internationals to take up permanent residence in the occupied territories. She hopes at least 200 will be able to act as a monitoring force. Asked whether the current events in the US would postpone such efforts, Zelter insisted that the attack, and the US's possible response, merely made her plans more necessary -- so that "the Palestinian issue does not get swept under the carpet of fighting terrorism." The committee of the International Campaign for the Protection of the Palestinian People is also going ahead with the demonstration in Paris, "to honour the Palestinian victims of Israeli atrocities during the past year."
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