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Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November
9, 2006
The Palestinian Struggle 30 Years After
UN Sanctions Against Apartheid
Between
Resistance and Deception
By JAMAL JUMA
The Israeli regime unleashes racist
brutality that by far outstands the crimes of the previous apartheid
regime in South Africa. It imprisons an entire people behind
ghetto walls, kills them and submits them to an economic blockade
that has brought communities to the verge of starvation. Yet,
while exactly 30 years ago the UN General Assembly called for
comprehensive sanctions against apartheid in South Africa, Palestinians
are reminded on a daily basis that the Zionist Occupation can
still count on the blindness of the world to its atrocities and
crimes. Until when?
In Beit Hanoun, Palestinian
women have set another symbol of our resistance. And while Palestinians
acknowledge their sacrifice, the rest of the world seems oblivious
to the latest crimes in Gaza despite video cameras capturing
the siege. In the hellish prison the Strip has been turned into--even
more since "disengagement" took place and after
days of large-scale murder and destruction, sixty men had taken
refuge in a mosque. The women gathered to save the lives of their
fathers, brothers, sons and comrades and marched towards the
mosque as Occupation Forces threatened to demolish it over the
men. They continued marching as the Occupation opened fire, murdering
two and leaving dozens injured. They prevented an even bigger
massacre as the men escaped the siege of the mosque. However,
the Occupation has taken the lives of at least 60 people in just
the last week.
Similarly, in the West Bank
farmers are putting their lives at stake, confronting the occupants
at the gates that seal Palestinians in and in the fields isolated
by the Apartheid Wall. The annual harvest of olives forms a major
source of income for agricultural communities and workers and
they continue to be steadfast to their lands.
Only two weeks ago, Palestinians
from across the West Bank and isolated parts of Jerusalem challenged
their ghettoization by climbing over the Apartheid Wall in order
to enter the city. Ladders and broken streetlights were deployed
as people overcame the 8-metre high cement walls to break the
siege and isolation of the Palestinian capital.
In the meanwhile Palestinian
political elites are paralyzed by the arrests, choking sanctions
and the never-ending internal disputes. Ten months after the
January elections, no effective political leadership has emerged.
Today Mahmoud Abbas has de facto usurped the government while
Hamas unable to untie their hands, keep watching and defending
power over a structure which they had never before granted legitimacy.
Hamas clearly has no cards to overcome the impasse. However after
7 months of sanctions and a prolonged strike of the public sector
one key feature has emerged: Palestinians are able to cope without
the Oslo apparatus that gives salaries to 160,000 families. Ironically,
it is now when no major Palestinian political force opposes the
Palestinian National Authority that it has proven itself to be
superfluous for Palestinians, politically and economically.
We can continue the charade
of "governments" imposed by the Occupation and the
international community, whether they are "presidential"
or "national unity" governments. We can surrender even
the right to democracy and self-determination of the structures
and leadership of our struggle to Apartheid Israel and its allies
and continue to cheer Bantu kings approved by them to administer
inside the ghetto walls. Or we can see the redundancy of such
structures and move to a transition period that would elapse
between a possible end to the PNA and the moment Israel is forced
to take up again its responsibilities of the administration of
all the land it occupies.
The Week against the Apartheid
Wall (9th 16th of November)--that mobilizes this year for
the fourth time people in Palestine and in 25 countries from
across the world--reminds us about the people on the ground that
are continuing the struggle, about men and women that have no
other choice but to continue their resistance through existence.
It is time for them to take the lead.
Exactly 30 years ago, on November
9th, 1976 the UN General Assembly proclaimed "that any collaboration
with the racist regime of South Africa constitutes a hostile
act against the oppressed people of South Africa and a contemptuous
defiance of the United Nations and the international community"
and passed a package of comprehensive sanctions against the apartheid
regime in South Africa.
Today, Palestinians die in
scores, the ghetto walls encircle communities and international
law is violated daily by a regime whose means and aims go far
beyond apartheid in South Africa. The creation of Israel brought
about the world's largest refugee population which today are
still prevented from returning to their homes. Life for Palestinians
within the Israeli regime includes house demolitions and calls
for transfer via the Occupation ministers of "strategic
threats"--or in other words the racist demographic engineering
necessary to ensure Jewish numerical majority. The West Bank
Bantustans turn into hermetically sealed ghettos while missiles
rain down upon Gaza.
Yet, the international community
maintains its silence.
No call for sanctions or even
an end to preferential agreements comes from the UN. Even the
decision of the International Court of Justice to dismantle the
Wall and not to render any aid or assistance to the situation
created by it is ridiculed by global powers and the international
community at large. Instead of clear pressure on Israel to stop
and dismantle the Wall, the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan prides
himself by claiming to set up a "register" to list
the damages. Palestinians are supposed to be grateful that yet
another UN office is staffed in Vienna with an "independent"
board accountable uniquely to the Secretary General who himself
behaves as any puppet of the US administration.
Yes, Palestinians do want those
who have stolen their land and lives to pay a price for it. Yet,
without a clear commitment from the UN to ensure the Wall is
stopped and torn down, the register is too little, too late.
Palestine and its people are not for sale. Compensation before
the Wall falls is not an option.
Further, the register as it is proposed grossly belittles the
damages of the Wall, completely neglecting the wider socio-political
effects. The Wall is not only about dunums of land and numbers
of house demolitions or even the cutting of access to educational
or health facilities. The Wall means the ghettoization of an
entire population, the destruction of an economy, a society,
communities and lives. However, even the sort of "humanitarian
accounting" proposed in the relaxed confines of Viennese
diplomacy is not done with the necessary decency or with at least
a clear outcome in sight. Quantification, and thus potential
damage restitution after the fall of the wall, is carefully avoided.
Also shunned is any consultation
or involvement of the affected population in the process. Our
voices have not been heard and even in the future the only task
we have is to fill in forms to satisfy UN bureaucracy. This is
the same machinery that runs the registers of the Palestinian
refugees for almost 60 years and is happy to continue doing so
for the 60 years to come.
As Palestinians we know that
we need to document the crimes and destruction made against us
but we have learned as well that it is not the UN that we can
rely upon. We are thus calling for a national register based
upon a collective effort of Palestinian and international civil
society and grassroots organizations; a true effort to document
and to denounce the devastation the Zionist project of colonization,
apartheid and expulsion brought via the Apartheid Wall. A register
that is managed by the Palestinian people going hand in hand
with the genuine struggle to tear down the Wall with an end to
apartheid, racism and occupation in Palestine.
We believe that the tables
will turn. The first signs that the people and civil society
organizations--not just from Palestine, but also across the world--are
waking up to the realities are clear. Collaboration and complicity
with the Occupation is targeted by popular actions and measures.
Trade unions, churches and various social and political groups
and organizations are joining efforts to isolate apartheid Israel.
Not a day passes that somebody somewhere in the world takes action.
This movement needs to be cultivated, strengthened and grow.
Jamal Juma is Coordinator of the Palestinian grassroots
Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign www.stopthewall.org
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