Spotlight
On The Palestinian Struggle: New Pressure To Relinquish Rights
By Jamal Juma’
30 March, 2007
Stopthewall.org
Palestinians
in our homeland and the diaspora remember the 30th of May as Land Day.
On this day in 1976, six Palestinians were killed and a hundred injured
by Israeli forces as Palestinians went on strike against a massive land
confiscation scheme in the Galilee. Land theft and colonization continues
in the Galilee, Naqab and the West Bank until today.
More than 30 years later,
we will again be out on the streets and in the fields confronting the
Occupation. Over 20 protests and demonstrations will unite the people
in villages and cities across the West Bank in a week of continuous
mobilization, while Palestinians on the other side of the Green Line
will hold protests against the ongoing racism and colonization of their
lands. But is the world willing to see our protests and the reality
on the ground?
In the West Bank, including
Jerusalem, the Israeli Apartheid Wall, settlements and their road systems
are de facto confiscating over half of our land and most of our water
resources and agricultural fields. Israeli apartheid is creating something
worse than Bantustans: Palestinian residential areas surrounded by 8-meter
high cement walls and sealed by gates, checkpoints and terminals.
Never have Israeli crimes
been so evident and well-known all over the world. To dozens of UN resolutions
has been added the decision of the International Court of Justice calling
for the Wall to be dismantled. Violations of human rights and international
conventions are reported daily. Lately, high level officials and envoys
from the UN, the US and European states have to line up if they are
to receive appointments with the Fatah-wing of the new Palestinian authority
“government”. By now, they should be well aware of our ghettoization
as well.
Diplomacy of the unipolar
world focuses on Palestine, but with what purpose? The US-Israeli axis
toed by Europe has never been willing to allow any of our rights to
be implemented. Thus, skepticism shrouds whether the hectic diplomatic
agenda in Ramallah is aimed at furthering our rights or justice in the
region.
Rather than any concern for
the Palestinian people, US elites are increasingly bound up in a discourse
of “negotiation” in response to new realities. Iraq and
Afghanistan have turned into veritable quagmires for the “alliance
of the willing”. Moreover, the mounting body tolls and expenses
and never-ending scandals of corruption, outright lies and torture have
convinced more and more countries to withdraw their troops. Oil profits
are definitely flowing from Iraq but at the same time, the sectarian
divides fuelled by the US turn against them as resistance movements.
The lost occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan have put the US in the
Middle East in the hands of Iran and Saudi Arabia, respectively the
Shia and the Sunni regional powers.
While some still push to
drive the madness further and to attack Iran, others look for diplomatic
solutions. It is not only voices from the region that have suggested
a move on Palestine as a pre-condition to get the US out of the Middle
Eastern trouble; the home-made White House Baker report has stated the
same. Our homeland and people have become the political card which is
expected to save global imperialism from drowning in the Middle East.
If the US were willing to
force Israel to grant us our rights, it would not require the current
intense schedule of meetings. Our rights are internationally recognized
and detailed; it only needs that the step be taken to implement them.
The diplomatic traffic aims at finding a solution that appeases the
Arab world and international public opinion without demanding anything
from Israel. The question is how to coax the Arab world into normalization
with Israel while bypassing our claims for our land and the right of
our refugees to return to our homes. Not surprisingly, renowned experts
of Middle East negotiations surface in the discussions as the neo-con
strategy shows signs of strain. Baker’s able “multilateral”
policy that shaped a 34-member alliance in the first gulf war has definitely
given greater benefit to US hegemony than the current US policy. At
the same time, another expert of normalization between Israel and the
Arab world, Jimmy Carter, has joined the debate with his controversial
book on Palestine.
US policy might slowly move
from the stick to the carrot again, but the final aims of control over
the Arab world and support for the Zionist agenda to continue its racist
control over all of Palestine are beyond doubt. Pressure on the upcoming
Arab summit has thus far been unsuccessfull in taking out the Right
of Return from the Arab Peace Initiative. Now, efforts are being made
to arrange direct meetings between Israel and leading Arab states. A
new Camp David, a new “peace” between Israel and the Arab
world on the back of our rights, is sought.
In the meanwhile, the newly
formed Palestinian government has to be integrated into these plans
to ensure it underwrites the formula. The ongoing sanctions against
the Palestinian people represent the backdrop of international pressure
and such efforts.
In this situation, it is
neither Palestinians nor those in the Arab world that strive for justice
and self-determination that need a deal. The ongoing resistance in Palestine
and Iraq is the unpredictable factor that might change the cards on
the table. It is time to underline the principles of our struggle and
the baselines for peace and justice: the end of the occupation, equality
for all of our people within our homeland, the right of return to their
homes for our refugees, Jerusalem, home to hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians and cultural and economic center of Palestine as our capital,
are integral parts of our right to self-determination. It is only when
diplomacy is forced to see and change the reality on the ground in Palestine
and accepts the pillars of our struggle, human rights and international
law that justice comes closer.
The demonstrations and protests
all over Palestine for Land Day are thus yet another call to our leadership
and the wider region that they at least second, if not lead, the steadfastness
and resistance of the people. Approximately 97 villages in the West
Bank are completely isolated and slated for destruction or ethnic cleansing
and some 4,500 houses are under demolition order to make space for Israeli
colonization. Dispossessed farmers watch industrial estates growing
on their land in a system designed to exploit and control. Six out of
ten Palestinians live below the poverty line. Yet the calls that lead
the demonstrations do not ask for food or survival. It is the calls
for dignity and rights – the full implementation of our rights
– that brings the people onto the streets. Another popular Intifada
is inevitably building up as long as our rights are ignored and our
future confiscated.
Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid
Wall Campaign – www.stopthewall.org
Click
here to comment
on this article