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Civil Society and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Beneath the Hideous Veneer of "Security"
By Jennifer Loewenstein
09/23/07 "Counterpunch" -- -- On January 26th 1976 the United
Nations Security Council debated a resolution (S11940)
introduced by Jordan, Syria and Egypt that included all the
crucial wording of UNSC resolution 242. It accepted the right of
all states in the region to exist within secure and recognized
borders while re-emphasizing the inadmissibility of the
acquisition of territory by force. This resolution added for the
first time, however, what was missing from 242: recognition of
Palestinian national rights. The phrase "all states" was taken
to include a new Palestinian state in the occupied territories.
Israel was, of course, invited to attend the session but
refused, preferring instead to have a national tantrum that
included bombing Lebanon the same day, killing about 50 people
in all likelihood a typical "in your face" message to the UN
and the world. Unsurprisingly the US vetoed the resolution
causing the PLO, which was present at the session, to speak of
the "tyranny of the veto." As with similar resolutions since
this one, the overwhelming majority of the world's nations
supported it. The two nations that have consistently opposed
this and comparable resolutions were the United States and
Israel thereby establishing the well-known pattern of
rejectionism that persists to this day. As a result, resolutions
such as S11940 have vanished from the historical record despite
its significance in marking the first time a UN resolution
explicitly recognized the inalienable national rights of the
people of Palestine.
In the debate leading up to the vote on this resolution, one of
the participants remarked that the problem of Palestine is at
the heart of the Middle East conflict and must be resolved....We
are sorry that Israel stayed away from the debate and has
instead been [wreaking] havoc all over and hurling defiance
against the alleged bias of the United Nations. In truth it is
Israel which is maintaining, by the use of force, and [which]
wishes to be left alone to continue, its occupation of the
territories of its Arab neighbors. Persistence in this policy of
tone and diktat can only breed more violence, engender further
bitterness, and make ever more remote the prospect of the peace
and cooperation which the Israeli government professes to be
seeking and which all the peoples of the Middle East desire and
need. (M. Akhund; representative of Pakistan; in transcript of
debate following introduction of resolution. S/PV.1879 of 26
January 1976. UNISPAL home; See also: UN DPI multimedia: United
Nations. Thirty-first year; 1879th meeting.)
Reading these words, I was struck by a sense of déjà vu and had
to double check the source to certify that they were in fact
spoken 31 years ago. Unfortunately, however, although the
similarities with present day circumstances are remarkable, the
situation that we face vis a vis the Palestinian issue today is
far more serious.
Noam Chomsky's response to my upbeat description of last year's
UN's Conference in Geneva on the Inalienable Rights of the
Palestinian People was that if things did not soon improve on
the ground in the occupied Palestinian territories, the next
such conference "would be a wake." It was a sobering reminder of
just how dire the situation has become; how, in Chomsky's words
we are currently witnessing an event almost unprecedented in the
modern era: the systematic, deliberate and long-term destruction
of an entire nation.
As activists and representatives of civil society NGOs concerned
with what is happening in Israel-Palestine, we know the
importance of maintaining a realistic level of optimism; of
dogged persistence even in the face of what seem to be
insurmountable obstacles. I have not given up that hope, nor I
suspect-have any of you, which is why we are here today.
Nonetheless as important as solidarity work is for us and for
the continuation of efforts to effect change in the
circumstances facing millions of Palestinians in the territories
and beyond, none of us is deluded enough to believe that a Just
Peace is at hand. With every killing, every maiming, every act
of state-sponsored terror, every home demolition, every arrest,
every confiscation of property, resources and identity, every
closure, checkpoint, permit, roadblock, or concrete slab put
into place along the serpentine Wall that is devouring
Palestinian land in its path, Palestine is rendered increasingly
invisible, buried behind euphemisms and peace scams a
non-entity for non-persons whose continuation as one of the many
nations populating the globe today is seriously threatened.
(1) In trying to assess how we can put a stop to this
devastating dynamic I came up with three pre-conditions that are
necessary before we can even begin a process leading to a just
settlement. First and foremost is to demand an end to Israeli
crimes. These include, most significantly today, its bloody and
sadistic torture of Gaza, but also its continued territorial
expansion which it has no intention of ending, an end to
atrocities against the people of the West Bank and East
Jerusalem, recognition of the right of Palestinians to have free
elections meaning, in this case, the recognition of Hamas and
the establishment of dialogue with it and all other Palestinian
political factions regardless of whether or not we like them;
the release of Palestinian Parliamentarians taken hostage
beginning in the summer of 2006; the release of thousands of
prisoners and illegal detainees whose only "crime" was
resistance to an illegal occupation.
I should add here that on December 7th, 1987 the United Nations
General Assembly passed UN resolution 42/159 which, among other
things, authorized peoples living under occupation regimes the
right to resist. This is yet another piece of the historical
documentary record conveniently forgotten lest it be used to
support Palestinian and other just causes.
To reiterate: it is crucial that all of Israel's ongoing crimes
against the Palestinian nation cease; that we in civil society
and in world organizations such as the United Nations and the
European Union so allegedly concerned with the adherence to and
principles of international law take it upon ourselves to
enforce it or soon, with regard to Palestine, there will be
nothing left to talk about.
(2) The second pre-condition is that the Quartet, which includes
the United Nations and the European Union, publicly acknowledge
the international consensus as it has existed since January
26th, 1976 and was broadened by the 2002 Arab League Summit in
Beirut to include full normalization of relations, in return for
Israel's compliance with international law. As mentioned,
however, this consensus has been systematically and often
hysterically rejected by the US and Israel whereas virtually all
other concerned parties, including Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas,
have contrary to what the American media would have us
believe-explicitly accepted it.
(3) Finally, once the international consensus is acknowledged,
civil society activists and organizations must pressure European
Nations to have the courage to act independently of US policies,
as they can do in many important ways, instead of as one
activist put it-"toddling meekly behind the Boss and
participating in his crimes"(Noam Chomsky; private
correspondence). Actions taken by the UN and the EU among other
world organizations to ostracize and isolate the United States
and Israel rather than kowtow to them in servile obedience must
serve as the beginning of constructive change; of sending a
message to the world's only superpower and its principal client
that they may, by sheer military force, continue to get their
way, but that their actions will no longer be tolerated or
ignored.
It is bad enough that the United States and Israel together
behaves like neighborhood bullies dictating their whims to both
friends and enemies alike; but when their pious appeals to
freedom, democracy and justice are heard as tanks, heavy
artillery and warplanes devastate the lands and decimate the
civilian populations they have occupied it is long past the time
to censure their record-breaking violations of international law
and basic human morality.
With regard to Palestine, it is important to ask ourselves why
Hamas, which won power in free, fair and transparent democratic
elections has been deemed a criminal terrorist organization
whose carefully planned demise depends on the calculated
starvation and suffering deliberately imposed on the Gaza Strip,
50% of whose population is under age 25. We need to understand
that brutal, authoritarian regimes such as those in Egypt,
Jordan and Saudi Arabia are upheld as "moderate" and "friendly"
states by the US because their first priority is to the Master
and his whims.
By understanding this we are forced to confront the sudden
cynical embrace by both Israel and the US of Mahmoud Abbas and
his disturbing acquiescence in this embrace. Abbas' illegal
government-by-decree has agreed not only to avoid any dialogue
or attempts at reconciliation with Hamas; it has also accepted
in Orwellian fashion-the US/Israeli designation of Hamas as a
terrorist organization. Indeed Abbas himself while lauding the
values of freedom and democracy announced on Israeli television
that he would refuse to "conduct negotiations with murderers."
Surely his Israeli and American backers have satisfied their
immediate aims of making him an honorary Warrior on Terror.
Thus, with help from his foreign backers, Abbas' Fatah faction
has succeeded in splitting the Palestinian National Movement in
half making it easier still for the Israelis to continue to
destroy the economic, social, cultural and political fabric of
Palestine. Who are these people that they would sacrifice on the
altar of celebrity, power and corruption the historic struggle
and soul of Palestine? The path on which this cynical
triumvirate of power is moving leads inexorably to a fate none
of us here would seriously like to contemplate.
Last November I had the pleasure of returning to Gaza to visit
friends to whom I owe more than I can ever say. Yet the visit
called up the usual mixture of emotions that fill one's heart
with the beauty and anguish that is Gaza today. In the midst of
a lovely family gathering, of laughter, warmth and an uncanny
sense to me of belonging, the treacherous thundering guns of
"Operation Autumn Clouds" commenced in the north, in Beit Hanoun.
In the days that followed I visited the Shifa and Kamal Adwan
hospitals the ICU wards full of badly wounded civilians- and
the morgues on which the dead men, women and children lay
silently on cold, silver freezer trays.
What was more troubling to me than anything else was not the
absurdity and injustice of these deaths; the on-going brutality
and barbarism that a state has adopted under a hideous veneer of
"security needs." No, what bothered me most was the chilling
familiarity of the scenes: Jenin, Rafah, Gaza City, Khan Yunis,
Ramallah, Nablus, Beitunia, El-Bireh, Qalandia, Beit Sahour,
Hebron I can no longer remember which place bore which of these
unspeakable tragedies. All I know is that they show no sign of
ending and that, my friends, is why our messages here at this
conference must be urgently heeded.
Jennifer Loewenstein is the Associate Director of the Middle
East Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She
is a member of the board of the Israeli Coalition against House
Demolitions-USA branch, founder of the Madison-Rafah Sister City
Project and a freelance journalist. She can be reached at:
amadea311@earthlink.net
This essay is extracted from a speech given at the UN's
conference on Palestine this past Aug. 30th-31st.
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