Speech prepared by Paula Abrams-Hourani on the occasion of the
International Day of Action against War and Occupation in Middle East,
Vienna, September 30th, 2006
As most of you know, the groups I represent, Women in Black (Vienna), and the Jewish Voice for a Just Peace (Austria) have concentrated most of their actions and focus on the occupation of Palestinian land, that is, Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which have been suffering under the Israeli military occupation for almost 40 years.
When I decided to speak to this gathering I asked a family member living in Gaza what she would consider the important points to be made in this short statement. She works for a Palestinian women's NGO and traveled recently, almost an impossibility for Palestinians, to the West Bank to collect her young child and spending most of the time waiting at checkpoints.
When I received her list I thought to myself:
Should I mention the Apartheid Wall - the Wall of Annexation - in the West Bank, which has separated Palestinians from Palestinians, from their lands and livelihood, which has annexed huge areas to illegal Jewish settlements, which has imprisoned Palestinians and strangled their society bit by bit? This Wall has shut Palestinians in ghettos - making ghost towns out of their cities - at the beginning of the 21st century and without world condemnation. Should I talk about the hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, which the World Bank is now proposing to fund, making possible a permanent state of apartheid in the West Bank, among other things permanent roads for Jews only?
Or should I mention the Wall people do NOT write or speak about, the invisible Wall on the northern and eastern borders of the Gaza Strip (Erez and Karny)? This Wall has been sanctioned by the silence of the world community for years, not even talked about, unlike the Apartheid Wall in the West Bank, which was condemned by a ruling of the International Court of Justice in 2004. The Gazan Wall prevents Palestinians from entering or exiting the Strip, including medical patients and students, hinders completely the import and export of goods, the import of medication, fuel, food supplies, all of which affect the health of everyone living in this open-air prison? The invisible wall which prevents Palestinians from visiting each other if they happen to be refugees and still have the permission to enter the Strip. Only recently a Palestinian artist from Gaza, who was invited to Styrian Autumn Festival, was forbidden to leave Gaza to take part in this event. On Tuesday of this week the United Nations human rights envoy, John Dugard, stated that Gaza is a prison for Palestinians where life is intolerable, appalling and tragic and the Jewish state appears to have thrown away the key.
Should I mention the closure for months of the Rafah crossing point, which prevents Palestinians from exiting or entering the Gaza Strip; this crossing point, supposedly operated by the EU but totally controlled by the Israeli army? The Rafah closure, which has caused harm and occasionally death to aged and sick people and pregnant women needing treatment outside the Strip because the medical treatment inside Gaza was insufficient? This means treatment such as chemotherapy for cancer, dialysis for kidney disease, and for many other illnesses. This closure forced thousands of people during the summer of 2005, before the Palestinian elections, to wait in the boiling sun, stranded, because they could not return to their homes in Gaza. This year, thousands of people were waiting desperately at Rafah, waiting for permission to leave for various reasons, health, business, university studies. They suffered humiliation, were crushed in the crowds, piled on cars and trucks, waiting for hours and days, pictures one cannot forget if one sees them in the media.
What about the electricity problem in Gaza, which is still making it impossible for people to have lights in their apartments when it gets dark because the Israeli army destroyed the plant which produced it months ago?
Should I speak about the water problem in Gaza and the West Bank? Those who cannot afford to purchase bottled water, and we must remember that all purchases in the OccupiedTerritories benefit the occupying power, Israel, have been forced to drink salty water for years, leading to one of the highest rates of kidney disease in the world. The Gaza Strip, as well as the West Bank, has a population of more than 50% of children under 18 years of age, I might add, so we can imagine how their health is affected. Or the sewage problem, the open gutters, the garbage piled in the streets because of the breakdown of the infrastructure and lack of money to pay for social services?
Then, too, there has been the destruction of cities, homes, businesses, streets, bridges, universities, schools. What about the targeting of Palestinian civilians? There have been many articles in media abroad - not here in Austria - about the killing, wounding and maiming of children in the Gaza Strip in recent weeks, when the world was looking at the War in Lebanon. The Independent newspaper in Great Britain had a cover story called "The Forgotten People". A courageous journalist, John Pilger, wrote an article a few months ago, "The War against Children". 45 children in Gaza were killed in approximately 5 weeks in the so-called Operation Summer Rain, not to mention approximately 250 adults, many more have been wounded and maimed, some of them handicapped for life? We need only mention the massacre on the GazaBeach of the Ghalia family where 9 of 10 family members were killed, the surviving member, a young girl of approximately 12 years of age. This happened before the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken prisoner by Palestinians.
About two weeks ago, there was yet another bank robbery by the Israeli army in the West Bank, of approximately 1.440,000 U.S. dollars, simply stolen from foreign exchange shops and banks. I say "another" because some years ago, the Israeli army stole some millions of dollars from banks in the West Bank; this money was simply taken from the accounts of individuals. This, too, was not mentioned in the media in the West except for a very few newspapers.
Should I mention the targeted assassinations of those whom Israel defines as suspected terrorists, assassinations which have cost the lives of countless, innocent people?
What about the fact that there are approximately 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners, many of them under administrative detention, languishing in Israeli jails. Unlike the soldier Gilad Shalit no one knows their names. Could this have an underlying racism, that is, that we in the West give more importance to some lives than others? When we know that there are now approximately 450 children under 18 years of age among these detainees and prisoners, that since 1967 thousands upon thousands of Palestinian children have been arrested, many tortured and detained in Israeli prisons without the benefit of being able to see their parents, we in the western democracies must say that these figures are shocking. But as they are hardly ever talked about we are not bothered very much by them. Certainly the media does not mention them.
Should I talk about the failure of the Western and Arab countries, the deceptions and manipulations, to end the occupation? About the fact that world governments have largely kept silent concerning the unheard of right which Israel allows itself to arrest elected representatives and officials of the Palestinian Government? The fact that the democratic Palestinian elections held in January 2006, praised by so many, were used to allow hunger, desperation and collective punishment of the entire Palestinian people by the use of a total boycott and blockade.
Should I mention that there has never been total honesty in talking about the peace process, indeed, that there has never been a real peace process with negotiations by EQUAL partners? The Oslo Treaty, largely brokered by the United States, certainly not an impartial participant, simply allowed more and more theft of Palestinian land and led to loss of jobs, poverty, violence, desperation, death? This so-called peace process has now virtually been frozen. Everyone is concentrating on whether or not Hamas will recognize Israel, never thinking about whether Israel will recognize Palestinian rights and self-determination, forgetting that Israel was unwilling to negotiate with the PLO and Arafat, who had recognized Israel’s right to exist. It is obvious that Israel does not want peace but only more land. In actual fact, it is stealing the entire land of Palestine, bit by bit. To anyone who takes the time and trouble to read alternative news sites this is clear.
Should I state that the world has been complicit with the Israeli occupation? No matter which or how many war crimes have been committed by Israel, and we have seen them clearly in recent weeks, there have never been sanctions, punishment, never a "no" to contravention of international law, the ignoring of United Nations resolutions. Never a real "no" to the building of illegal Jewish settlements, the Wall, never a "no" to the wanton killing or beatings of Palestinians nor their children by the Israeli army or Jewish settlers, never a "no" to the beatings and shooting of unarmed Palestinian, Israeli or international peace activists. There was not enough courage by the United Nations or its Secretary-General to insist on a proper investigation of the destruction and killings in the Jenin refugee camp in 2002, not even when one of their own staff members was left to die in the street?
Should it be said that the EU has not made demands of Israel for the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure in 2002 by the Israeli army, paid for by the EU with taxpayers’ money in the amount of millions. (And the world will pay again for the damages suffered in Lebanon and inflicted by the Israeli Air Force, not to mention the oil catastrophe from the Israeli bombing of oil tanks in the Mediterranean.)
I will close here with a last comment:
Unless the Israeli occupation is protested against over and over again, with boycott and sanctions against it, unless the Palestinians obtain real self-determination, independence and their freedom this inhuman situation will continue to be the cause of war, violence and instability in the region and indeed, in the world. To all of us who care about all of the peoples in this region and their future, we must do everything we can, by protests and lobbying of our elected politicians, to take a real stand to implement peace in the Middle East. This means more than a demonstration every few months. It takes consistent and continuous work, it takes courage and commitment. But this is essential now because peace in the Middle East affects us all.