Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2002, pages 48-50

Special Report

 

U.N. Conference on Palestinians Emphasizes Activism to “End the Occupation”

 

By Sr. Elaine Kelley

The United Nations convened the first international conference on Palestine in four years at its New York headquarters Sept. 23 and 24, drawing over 400 participants from non-governmental organizations in 40 countries. Sponsored by the U.N.’s Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People and the Division for Palestinian Rights, the United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People marked a transition from the U.N.’s focus on Israeli/Palestinian dialogue to a more activist stance apparent in the conference theme of “End the Occupation.”

The first U.N.-sponsored conference on Palestine, held in Geneva in 1982, was followed by the establishment of the International Coordinating Committee of NGOs on the Question of Palestine. The ICCP, consisting of five regional committees (North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa), functioned as a centralized communications office for 1,200 NGOs worldwide.

The ICCP’s first director was Kathy Bergen, national coordinator of the Middle East Peace Education Program for the American Friends Service Committee and a steering committee member of the U.N. conference. The ICCP operated for a decade, Bergen said, but the North American Coordinating Committee began to fall apart in 1993 for lack of a common vision and goals following Oslo, and internal divisions over the accord. When the ICCP ran out of money, Bergen said, the office was closed. For a while a group of volunteers attempted to continue, she added, but there have been no North American conferences since 1998.

With the turn of events culminating in the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000 and the worsening political crisis, Bergen and others set in motion the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, a national effort of civil and human rights groups, Arab-American and faith-based organizations, and Jewish groups opposing the Israeli occupation. It was this campaign that gave impetus to an international conference to again provide NGOs worldwide the opportunity to regroup, network, and implement action-based strategies to end the occupation.

In an atmosphere of urgency, and with a slight twist of irony, the conference’s opening session ran concurrent with Security Council discussion on the continuing violence in Ramallah and debate on attacking Iraq. Also occurring simultaneously were the U.N. Department of Public Information’s International Peace Day and a press conference held by Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the subject of U.N. reform. Annan’s opening comments reverberated in the chambers of the world body when he asserted, “From my understanding, there is a strong link between the reform of the United Nations and the situation now in Palestine.”

Also in a related action, on the conference’s second day the Security Council passed Resolution 1435 “reaffirming” its past resolutions (242, 338 and others), “condemning all violence against civilians,” reiterating its “grave concerns” and demanding, but stopping short of implementing, an immediate end to Israel’s military attacks on civilians.

U.N. involvement in the Palestine question and the significance of the conference are best understood by looking at the competing cultures within the U.N. over what should happen in the Middle East—one represented by the U.S. and its Israel-shielding position on the Security Council, and the other by the General Assembly with its myriad of resolutions condemning the Israeli occupation and human rights violations.

Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s U.N., pinpointed in her presentation the issues of “international law and the framework of human rights as the basis for saying the occupation must end.” Underscoring the institution’s role in the context of international law, Bennis stated that she “refused to give up on the U.N.,” which needed to be rebuilt and democratized to become a world institution truly reflecting its mission of peace. She characterized the purpose of the conference as remaking and involving the U.N. in the international campaign to end the occupation, thereby making that goal a reality.

Speakers covered a range of issues, all centered on the occupation and actions to bring about its end. Israeli peace activist groups had a particularly strong presence at the conference.

Jeff Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, expounded on Israel’s success in making the occupation invisible by removing it completely from the political discussion. Since Israel lays “exclusive claim to the entire country from the Jordan to the Mediterranean,” he explained, the Jewish state reasons that it cannot “occupy itself.”

Israel conceals the “true nature of the occupation,” Halper continued, while selling Barak’s “generous offer” as a “far-reaching concession.” The Sharon government, moreover, has been able to convince the U.S. that the conflict comes under the framework of “a war against terrorism.” Halper argued for making the occupation visible by re-framing the political discussion to focus on Israel’s “illegal and immoral occupation,” a “viable Palestinian state” and a “just solution to the refugee problem.”

Israel has used charges of “anti-Semitism,” Halper said, to restrain Christians in particular from voicing legitimate criticism—a tactic that has created “a bubble around Israel that makes it immune to international pressures.” An alternative to falling into this trap, he suggested, would be to “adopt the language of human rights,” thereby “holding Israel accountable to existing international law.”

Yehudit Harel of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom spoke of the growing peace movement within Israel and its need to be protected from the Sharon government. The peace coalition, she said, is demanding immediate withdrawal from Palestinian areas, the dismantling of settlements, and acceptance of the Arab League peace proposal which calls for Israel’s retreat to pre-1967 borders in return for recognition of Israel. According to Harel, there is “a rising progressive trend in Israel” calling for implementation of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 and a U.N.-sponsored international peacekeeping force for the immediate protection of the Palestinian people.

Terry Greenblatt, director of Bat Shalom, a national feminist grassroots organization in Israel, reported that the organization along with its Palestinian counterpart, the Jerusalem Center for Women, had made presentations before the U.N. Security Council and the U.S. Congress, and had submitted a proposal to the Quartet reiterating the call for an end to the occupation and an immediate peacekeeping presence for protection of Palestinian civilians. The work before the Israeli peace movement, she said, requires the “willingness to take personal, professional or physical risks in the name of our politics and our ideology as the settler minority in Israel is willing to sacrifice for theirs.”

Many peace activists, Greenblatt observed, “are still convinced that we can end the occupation from the comfort of our meeting halls or from behind a computer screen.” She called for a more “active resistance,” pointing to the “pioneering International Solidarity Movement” which places internationals alongside Palestinians on the ground as an unarmed, civilian peacekeeping force in the absence of U.N. Blue Helmets.

The urgent need for an international protection force for the Palestinians was the subject of a number of presentations. Since the U.S. has used its veto to block all Security Council attempts to implement a U.N. peacekeeping force in Palestine, Bennis suggested the possibility of one country or a group of countries establishing their own protection force under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter. She envisioned internationals “coming to the borders of the territories, various borders, and sitting there with the cameras of the world, such as Al-Jazeera and BBC, waiting until there is a change of heart.”

The Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement was repeatedly lauded for providing leadership and a model of courage with its campaign to place internationals on the ground in the absence of a U.N. protection force. Conference speakers representing ISM included Huwaida Arraf, co-founder and organizer of ISM in Ramallah; Ghassan Andoni of the Rapproachment Center for Dialog and Understanding in Beit Sahour (Bethlehem area); and Adam Shapiro in Washington, DC. “Palestinians are calling out to the international community,” Arraf said, describing ISM as a nonviolent, direct action peace movement founded and directed by Palestinians and with a large and growing following in the U.S. and Europe. “When internationals demonstrate alongside Palestinians in a nonviolent manner,” the ISM co-founder stated, “a violent reaction from the [Israeli] army is less likely.

“To kill an international would be a public relations disaster for [Israel],” Arraf pointed out, adding that international activism of this type increases local media coverage. “Your media outlets are interested in what YOU do,” she stated.

Participants in ISM campaigns have been shot, arrested, beaten and deported. While the number of internationals present inside Israel and in the West Bank is unknown, Israel has singled out the organization for harassment, attempting to intercept and prevent ISM activists entering the country.

Among approximately 15 worldwide Christian faith-based organizations present at the conference were the Presbyterian Church (USA), American Friends Service Committee, World Vision, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Friends of Sabeel-North America, Mennonite Central Committee, General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, and Lutheran World Federation.

Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, a Palestinian from Kuffer-Yassif, Galilee, who is the new moderator of the 2.5 million member Presbyterian Church (USA), gave a presentation on the role of the churches in ending the occupation. Abu-Akel announced he would utilized his speaking time “to lift the voice of the Palestinian Christians through the Jerusalem Sabeel Document,” referring to a set of principles for a just peace in Palestine/Israel as formulated by Palestinian Anglican Rev. Canon Naim Ateek, founder and president of Sabeel, a Jerusalem-based ecumenical center for Palestinian liberation theology.

The conference program included four plenary sessions with 26 presenters. Among the other speakers were: Kieran Prendergast, under-secretary-general for political affairs and representative of the U.N. secretary-general; Nasser Al-Kidwa, permanent observer of Palestine to the United Nations; Gabi Baramki, president of the Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace; Richard Falk, Princeton University professor of international law and practice and a member of the Commission on Human Rights; Ziad Asali, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; and Nadia Hijab, co-chair of the U.N. conference steering committee and organizer of the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation.

What emerged from the conference was a strong consensus to push for a U.N.-authorized international protection force and to work against any U.S. Security Council veto that would obstruct that protection, while continuing to support and participate in the international citizens movement to protect Palestinians living under occupation. The plan of action includes ongoing public education strategies, work within the U.N. and the International Court of Justice, and the establishment of an International Citizens’ Commission to investigate Israeli violations of international law, the U.N. Charter, U.N. resolutions and the Geneva Convention.

The NGO Declaration and Plan of Action and other conference documents are available online at the U.N. Web site: .

Sr. Elaine Kelley is administrative officer of Friends of Sabeel-North America.

SIDEBAR

 

More Conference Notes

The first session of The United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People was devoted to “The daily face of occupation.” Gabi Baramki, president of the Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace in Ramallah, described the past two years as a “reign of terror” of which the world seems oblivious. Every city in the West Bank, he said, is scarred by uprooted trees, destroyed homes and government offices, the carcasses of cars run over by tanks, and trenches dug across roads. Curfews have become the norm. Even when a curfew is temporarily lifted, Baramki said, Palestinians still are suffocated by the more than 260 roadblocks now distributed all over the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians now call them “choke points,” he said.

As president of the Rapprochement Center in Beit Sahour, Ghassan Andoni has spent years engaging in dialogue with Israelis. He now feels that much more is needed, he said, specifically a peace movement in Israel, and active, civil-based resistance to the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. Such resistance should attack the tools of occupation that control Palestinian lives and expand the Israeli presence. Challenging the curfews, roadblocks and checkpoints through civil disobedience would transfer the problem from Palestinians to the occupying power and make the occupation more costly for Israel.

Journalist Lamis Andoni told conference attendees that coverage of Israel’s recent destruction of the Palestinian Authority compound in Ramallah and the Palestinians’ massive peaceful, curfew-breaking demonstrations in response was absent in the U.S. media because it does not fit the script America superimposes on the conflict. According to that script, he said, Arafat is to blame for everything and, therefore, regime change would liberate Palestinians from their leadership. Andoni acknowledged that Palestinians want to reform the Palestinian Authority. However, he said, they are not ready to let the U.S. interfere with that process. Washington’s view that Palestinian violence is the main problem delegitimizes the right to resist occupation and criminalizes all Palestinians everywhere, Andoni argued, adding that the Western tendency to blame extremists on both sides obfuscates the reality of occupation and apartheid. Our task, he concluded, is to challenge the superimposed script.

Jeff Halper, co-ordinator of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, said the bulldozer has become the symbol of Israel and should be on the nation’s flag. Its message for Palestinians is “you have no place here in this country or on the face of the earth.” The wall that Israel is building to separate the West Bank from Israel is longer, higher, and more fortified than was the Berlin Wall, Halper pointed out. Israel’s new wall, he said, should be made a symbol of domination and oppression, an emblem of an apartheid system made permanent.

Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton, described it as ironic that Palestine, as a mandated territory, became colonized, and that the United Nations today is called upon to take its own resolutions seriously with respect to Iraq when it has consistently failed to do so for resolutions demanding action of Israel. Given the failure of the U.N. and Israel to exercise their responsibilities, Falk suggested two courses of action: the formation of an independent international commission to investigate Israeli violations of international law, U.N. resolutions, and the Geneva Convention; and urging the General Assembly to seek an advisory opinion from the International Criminal Court regarding the illegality of Israel’s occupation.

While the goal is to end the occupation, the conference was unanimous that the immediate task is international protection for Palestinians. Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, suggested appealing once again to the Security Council. When that fails because of the U.S. veto, the issue should be taken to the General Assembly under the Uniting for Peace Resolution, a U.S. initiative instituted in 1950 to get around the Soviet veto in order to go to war in Korea. The General Assembly would be asked to supply funding and personnel for an international interposition (buffer) and protection force as a first step to ending the occupation. It would also protect Israeli civilians from acts of violence.

—Jane Adas

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