Who will benefit from Gaza Recontruction?
The last days have seen Palestine on the stage again in the international arena. At least three events are worth mentioning and discussing.
First, lately, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon visited Israel and Gaza and, for the first time during his second mandate, as far as I can remember, he criticized Israel in an unprecedented way. Ban remarked that Gaza is the “shame of the international community”, that no report or document could have prepared him to see the overall and astonishing destruction of the Strip after the 50- day long attack and, most importantly, he recalled the root causes of Palestinian anger: that is, the 7-year long blockade which prevented and prevents Palestinians to live a normal and decent life. Many of you might consider these statements obvious or even useless, but they are not if contextualized. Palestine has not heard a word of comprehension or has never seen Israel criticized that way by a Chief UN Officer. These statements indicate a slight change in the international community. Additionally, Ban said that the raids of the Al Aqsa compound by Israelis and extremist Jews make things worse and are clear provocations to the Muslim part of the Palestinian population that has seen its freedom of religion hampered during the last 50 years (clashes at Al Aqsa have taken place the last days and the Israeli police intervened with sound grenades and tear gases).
In a joint conference with Bibi Netanyahu, Ban also condemned the settlements plans declared by the Government lately (after, I want to recall you, the biggest land grab in Palestine and the illegal occupation of several homes in Silwan, near Jerusalem), which are clearly illegal under international law.
Ban’s visit to Gaza comes after a conference held in Cairo on Sunday, where international donors met in order to discuss the amount of money to give to the PA to rebuild the Gaza Strip and its infrastructures and the manner in which the materials could arrive in the Strip. Even if the PA asked for 4 billions dollars, the donors accorded it 5.4 billions dollars, Qatar being the main donor. Moreover, Israel has decided to softly lift the siege and allow exports of dates, sweet potatoes and fish from Gaza to the West Bank and allow “movement” from Gaza to the West Bank. Whether this latter measure will be implemented or not is still to be seen, what I can argue is that little is changed: Israel is maintaining the status quo, as it has stated, and it has no willingness or interest in changing the situation.
What comes to my mind after this conference is: who’s going to really benefit from this money? The Palestinians? Well, in a certain way yes, if we don’t consider that they are still constantly under the threat of being bombed again as they were in 2009 and 2012. The real winner here is Israel: indeed, the materials can be imported only from Israel. In the end, the largest amount of that money will be injected in their economy and not in the Palestinian one and not at all in the Gazan one, if there is any. Additionally, the reconstruction would keep Hamas occupied for quite a while.
During the conference, Egypt also proposed to resume the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which aims at normalizing the relations between all the Arab countries and Israel, at implementing Resolution 194 on Palestinian refugees, at establishing borders and ending the occupation, rejected by the Israeli governments. This move shows that Egypt is not willing to do whatever Israel wants as the latter might have thought, given the measures the new government had taken towards Gaza.
In addition to that, yesterday the British Parliament voted a non- binding motion that recognizes the Palestinian State: 274 voted in its favor and 12 against and the vote has seen many Conservative supporters of Israel voting for it and declaring that this vote represents a shift in the British public opinion and a growing anger against Israeli policies towards the Palestinians. Even if this vote won’t change British governmental policy towards Israel, it is clear that things are changing and that Israel can’t just behave as it pleases without consequences, on a diplomatic and moral plan, when not political. This vote comes after the Swedish one and France has declared that it could do the same. The catalyst has been the violent attack in Gaza and these two moves can trigger similar ones in the whole Europe. The path is still long, full of obstacles and slow but things that wouldn’t have happened few years ago are happening now and slowly we could assist to major political actions in the next decades. Unfortunately, I still remain highly pessimistic on a real improvement of the situation in Palestine and I still argue that occupation must end NOW and when I say NOW I mean NOW, because the lives of real persons are at stake!
Of course, in Israel, the vote has not been welcomed: as happened with the Swedish vote, officials argued that a Palestinian State can rise only through negotiations (which means when Israel will want to recognize Palestine as a State, which means never because they’ll find always a good reason not to do that); that the vote has any legal value (well, neither the Balfour Declaration had any legal value because it was signed by Britain well before the latter was entrusted with the administration of Palestine, so it had any legal entitlement on that territory, but here we are the State of Israel was founded) and it will make things worts for Palestinians. Also leftist Israelis criticized the British Parliament, by saying that this will only make extremist rightists angry and will play their game: so the message is, support the occupation, support harassments, killings, bombings and do whatever the rightists want you to do and wait until Israel will change its opinion. There is a clear madness in all that. Clearly.
As written by Noam Sheizaf:
“When it comes to the occupation, there is not much difference between the Right and most of the Israeli Left. Both sides agree on the need to deal with the Palestinians through military force; both agree on the settlements (make no mistake – the disagreement is about their location, on what makes “a legitimate” settlement, and not on the principle of settling occupied land); both view Palestinian diplomacy as a threat. And most importantly — both see the diplomatic process as a constant attempt to form an Israeli consensus and then shove it down the Palestinians’ throat. This is exactly what MK Bar’s letter was all about.”
Even if it won’t change things in the short-term period, these events send encouraging signs of change, at least in the public opinion (that has always been pro- Israel and has seen Palestinians are the illegitimate inhabitants of that piece of earth and has associated them with Islamic terrorists).
In the end, though, I think that the future of Palestine and the Palestinians is in the hand of the Palestinians themselves: only they can be the vectors of change and in order to do that they have to be as much united as possible and reconstruct their society and their national and collective identity. But this is another issue.
Sources:
http://972mag.com/easing-the-siege-on-gaza-but-only-on-our-terms/97599/
http://972mag.com/labour-mps-vote-yes-on-palestinian-statehood/97604/
http://972mag.com/worlds-delayed-reaction-to-gaza-war-kicks-in/97678/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/14/ban-ki-moon-visits-gaza-views-destruction-of-un-school
From Abbas’s speech at the UNGA to the Palestinian theatre: you can occupy our land but not our free spirits.
Since the last post, at least three things happened in and for Palestine that are worth mentioning. First, Friday 26 September, Mahmoud Abbas gave his speech at the UN General Assembly, where he submitted an application of full UN membership to the Security Council, he called for a resolution to be adopted by the Security Council establishing a deadline for the end of the Israeli occupation and for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestine, he accused Israel of having committed and committing war crimes and where he recalled the responsibility of the international community towards Palestinians. All the speech raised the harsh criticism and opposition of both Israel and the US, unsurprisingly I’d say, given that they are also above and out of the law.
What is interesting, though, is that one week later, on friday 3 October, the new elected Swedish Prime Minister (Stefan Loefven) recognized the State of Palestine. A move which caused the immediate negative reaction of Israel, which summoned the Swedish ambassador to protest against the decision and to express the disappointment of Israel. He also added that this move will not improve the relations between Israel and Palestine, but instead will worsen them. As if the relations between the two State were good. Additionally, the Israel’s ministry’s deputy director general for Europe, Aviv Shir-On, remarked that the recognition made by the Swedish government will give the Palestinians the illusion of being able to reach their statehood unilaterally and without negotiations with Israel, a rhetoric on which Israel, the US and the EU insist since a long time. Hey guys, wake up! First, Palestine has been recognized as a State in 2012 by a UN GA Resolution. Secondly, a State is the product of national aspirations and self-determination, not of negotiations and agreement.
If this is Palestine in the international community, from within the borders the situation is far from being just a matter of diplomacy and discussions. Last week, settlers took over 7 homes in the Palestinian village of Silwan in East Jerusalem. Seven families are now homeless, again, and the settlers’ policy continues on and on without punishment, being protected by the Israeli government and the inaction and passivity of the international community. This practice is not only illegal under international law, but, even more serious, it forms part of the Israeli colonial policy which aims at transforming Palestinian landscape and at colonizing as much land as possible, in order to jeopardize any possible overall control of the land by Palestinians. During the years, there will be no more contiguity between a city, a village, a town and the other. There will be little bantustans, where the PA will have little, if any, authority. All this is happening with a complete and dangerous impunity, to which we have absolutely put an end.
Despite that, attending a conference held by Haim Yacobi (an Israeli architect), I found out that more and more Arab Israelis (who are they you may wonder. Well they are the so-called ’48 Palestinians, that is the Palestinians who managed to remain in Palestine when the State of Israel was created. They hold an Israeli citizenship, though they do not enjoy the same social, political and civil rights of the Israeli citizens) are moving to West Jerusalem (the Israeli part of Jerusalem, even if Israel annexed even the Eastern part of the city in 1967). It is estimated that more than 2000 Arab Israelis are going to live in the richest neighborhoods of the city, such as French Hill, even if the life there is difficult. What bothered me during the difference is that, even if the speaker was assuming that Jerusalem is a colonized city, that the Israeli policies are discrimanitary against the Arabs, in a way which resembles South African apartheid, he didn’t pay attention to terms (which are of fundamental importance) and didn’t explain why Arabs are leaving the Eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Firstly, he used terms such as Jewish neighborhoods and Jews to describe Israelis and Israeli neighborhoods and defined the Arab Israelis as Palestinians, therefore giving the idea that Palestinians in general can go to live to Jerusalem and that the problems between the two communities are religious. Religion has nothing to do with the Palestinian conflict and this is clear to any critical person. Secondly, Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank can’t absolutely live in Jerusalem and they can barely cross the frontier with Israel. They need to apply for a permit to go in Israel (and Jerusalem is its illegal capital), that is more than often denied. Thirdly, the Arab Israelis moving to the Western neighborhoods have their good reasons to do that: the Eastern part of the city is not served by the public transportation, there’s only a hospital, water supply is intermittent and garbage is not collected from the streets. Practical reasons lead these people to move and it’s not an attempt to decolonize Jerusalem as he wanted to affirm.
Another conference attracted my attention the same week and it was about the Palestinian theatre, a cultural manifestation more and more present and active in the West Bank. There are many theatres in Palestine today and they’re doing a great job in terms of performance (if you have the chance to see a Palestinian play, just go there! The quality of the script and of the actors is stunning. They use allegories, humour, irony, simple but effective scenographies and they talk to your heart), in terms of building and enforcing national identity and in terms of relief to kids and young people, living under constant fear and stress. The audience was constituted mainly by leftist people, already educated on the Palestinian question, though it is always surprising to realize how stupid people can be. Given that in Palestine actors do not enjoy the support and the respect of the society (because acting is not providing money), one lady argued that theatre, in the end, is not part of the Arab culture and so neither of the Palestinian one. By that, she wanted to assume that theatre and art are Western prerogatives and not something inherent to any people on earth. Hopefully, a well prepared and educated Palestinian actor (of Yes Theatre in Al Khalil-Hebron) answered her that the Arab theatre has more than 2000 years and that the Palestinian one has several centuries on its shoulders. Then, another person of the public asked in what ways theatre does contribute to fight the occupation. One of the theatre’s director answered her that theatre helps people in their daily life through the improvisation techniques they teach and because there children and young guys and girls can be free to express themselves. I would add that culture is one of the most powerful tool we have to fight the occupation. They can occupy our land, our homes and they can uproot our trees, but they can’t occupy our minds, our souls, our hearts. By making art, we show that life goes on and whatever they do to us, we will not let them preventing us from living life in all its forms, art included.
wedonthaveacountry 