Nairobi, Kenya, January 2007
Political Statement and Call to Action on Palestine
Forty years after Israel's occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including
east Jerusalem, and almost 60 years after the Palestinian Nakba
(catastrophe) of 1948, the Palestinian people is at a critical juncture.
Global solidarity and support will be decisive in enabling the Palestinian
people’s struggle for freedom, justice and durable peace to prevail.
To date, official diplomacy has failed in enforcing scores of UN
resolutions and relevant principles of international law aimed at ending
Israel's occupation, colonization, displacement and dispossession of the
Palestinian people. US-led Middle East diplomacy, favoring military
intervention and unilateralism over respect for international law, is also
directly implicated in wars and occupation in Iraq and Lebanon, complicit
with Israel's colonial regime in Palestine, and actively encouraging
division and civil war in the region. Rather than being part of the
solution, the US and the entire Quartet--including the EU--have become
part of the problem in the region.
After intense efforts, transparent and democratic parliamentary elections
were held in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) with the fervent
backing of the US and the EU, both of which rejected the election results
that brought Hamas to “power,” an outcome that was not in line with their
plans for the region, particularly their attempt to “convince” the
Palestinians to accept limited self-rule in the OPT under the overall
control of Israeli military authorities. Subsequently, Israel, the US and
most European powers imposed a severe, inhumane regime of sanctions
against Palestinians under occupation. In the words of the UN Special
Rapporteur, Prof. John Dugard, sanctions were imposed on the occupied
rather than the occupier, the first time an occupied people has been so
treated.
Poverty, unemployment, de-development, and destabilization of vital
institutions providing health care, education and social services were
among the immediate results of this merciless blockade. This, coupled with
direct foreign intervention, encouraged dispute in the Palestinian
political system, undermining the ability for effective coping and
eventually triggering open conflict between the two leading Palestinian
political parties.
In the meanwhile, Israel has escalated with unprecedented impunity its
colonial siege of Palestinian Bantustans; killing of Palestinian
civilians, at least a third of whom are children; confiscation of
Palestinian land and water resources; construction of the apartheid Wall,
condemned as illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004; and
wanton destruction of Palestinian agricultural lands, infrastructure and
entire civilian neighborhoods. Furthermore, in 2006, the Israeli
government issued four times more tenders for housing units--in colonies
built on occupied Palestinian land--than in 2005. The recent massacre of
defenceless civilians in Beit Hanoun is only the latest episode in this
series of war crimes committed by the Israeli occupation force without
accountability or censure from the world. By preventing Archbishop Desmond
Tutu and the UN investigative commission headed by him from entering the
Gaza Strip, Israel, with ample complicity from the West, is repeating the
cover-up it got away with after its atrocities in the Jenin refugee camp
in 2002. This time, again, world governments chose to turn their heads
elsewhere, giving Israel the green light to continue with its criminal
policies whose main goal is to instigate a slow process of ethnic
cleansing of the OPT, which would achieve its historic objective of having
a “land without a people.”
In parallel, Israel’s recent, widely acknowledged defeat in Lebanon has
only pushed it further to the right, to the extent that an openly fascist
party like Avigdor Lieberman’s is now part of the government. Political
disenfranchisement of Palestinians inside Israel has deepened, and racial
discrimination against them in all vital domains--family reunification,
education, health, land ownership and job opportunities--has increased.
Home demolitions, crop destruction and forced displacement of entire
communities, mainly in the Naqab (Negev), have become the norm in Israel’s
treatment of its own Palestinian citizens.
Since the signature of the Oslo accords in 1993, many years of
“peace-making” that ignored the basic requirements of justice have passed
in vain, only helping the occupying power to literally cement its hold on
the occupied land. Still, Palestinian civil society has not lost hope in
achieving a just peace based on international law and universal human
rights, most primary among them the right to full equality of all humans
regardless of religion or ethnicity. Currently, as in past decades, the
most fundamental impediments preventing such a comprehensive and lasting
peace from being realized remain Israel’s continued occupation and
colonization of Arab lands; its denial of Palestinian refugee rights; its
persistent expulsion policies; and its system of racial discrimination
against its own indigenous Palestinian citizens. Palestinian civil society
representatives strongly believe that, without applying direct, effective
and consistent pressure on Israel to end its three-tiered oppression of
the Palestinian people, the international community will not genuinely
contribute to ending this age-old conflict and to bringing about a just
and enduring peace to the entire region.
Call to Action
Based on the above, Palestinian civil society overwhelmingly advocates
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (or BDS) against Israel, similar to the
international community’s measures against apartheid South Africa in the
past. Consumer boycotts of Israeli products; boycott of Israeli academic,
athletic and cultural events and institutions complicit in human rights
abuses; divestment from Israeli companies, as well as international
corporations involved in perpetuating injustice; and pressuring
governments to impose sanctions on Israel are all examples of effective,
morally sound, non-violent measures that ought to be initiated and
maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian
people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with
the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in
1967 and dismantling the Wall;
2. Ending its system of racial discrimination and recognizing the
fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, including
their right to full equality; and
3. Recognizing the right of Palestinian refugees, including Internally
Displaced Persons (IDPs), to return to their homes and properties, as
stipulated in UNGA resolution 194.
International civil society, in close coordination with Palestinian and
Arab civil society, has a critical role to play in bringing about justice
and peace to the Middle East. By adopting diverse, sustainable, and
context-sensitive, yet consistent, forms of BDS actions against Israel in
various fields, conscientious organizations and individuals can shoulder
their moral responsibility to end the Israeli system of colonialism and
racial discrimination, providing a genuine opportunity for reconciliation
and coexistence for everyone in the region, based on equality and mutual
respect for international law and fundamental human rights.
The Palestinian Delegation to the WSF-2007, Nairobi:
- Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) www.pngonet.net
- pngonet@pngo.net
- Ittijah – Union of Arab Community Based Organizations
www.ittijah.org - ittijah@ittijah.org
- Palestinian NGO Forum, Lebanon NISCVT@socialcare.org
- Acting Steering Committee, Palestinian BDS Campaign
- OPGAI-Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative
- The Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
- Arab Group for the Protection of Nature APN -
www.apnature.org - sanabel@go.com.jo
- Stop The Wall Campaign -
http://www.stopthewall.org/ , global@stopthewall.org
17/01/2007
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