The rights of the Palestinian people continue to be postponed
On November 29, 1947, Resolution No. 181 of the United Nations General Assembly approved the creation of a "Jewish State" and an "Arab State" in Palestine, with Jerusalem as a corpus separatum subject to a special international regime. Of this resolution, which was given before the departure of the British army after thirty years of "provisional" occupation, only one of the two planned states has been created so far, that of Israel, whose independence was proclaimed on May 14, 1948.
Thirty years later, in December 1977, the same UN body, by Resolution No. 32/40, defined November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, because of the importance of this date for the people of Palestine and as an opportunity for the international community to focus its attention on the fact that the question of Palestine has not yet been resolved.
On that day, November 29, each year, it is recalled that the question of Palestine is still unresolved and that the Palestinians have not yet been able to assert their right to self-determination without outside interference, their right to independence and national sovereignty, as well as the right to return to their homes and have their property restored.
On this date, both the UN and States and organizations are issuing special messages of solidarity with the Palestinian people, organizing meetings and events, disseminating publications and information material, among others.
The proposed solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and therefore the Arab-Israeli conflict, in line with the original idea of the United Nations in 1947, is known as the "two-state solution". This proposal has always consisted of dividing up the territory west of the Jordan River, where the former British mandate of Palestine was located), where it has generally been assumed that the State of Palestine would comprise the Gaza Strip, Cisjordania and East Jerusalem as its capital and which has been admitted by the international community.
The greatest progress in the implementation of the proposed two-state solution was made in 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed between the Government of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a historic event that sought to change the dynamics of violence into dialogue, seeking a permanent solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through two sovereign, democratic and independent states.
The Oslo Accords proposed the creation of an interim Palestinian self-government, called the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), transferring to it the powers and responsibilities over matters such as education, culture, health, social welfare, direct taxation, tourism and the establishment of a Palestinian police force in Cisjordania and Gaza Strip.
These agreements gave a period of five years to negotiate a permanent settlement, and, the Israeli government during that period would remain solely responsible for foreign affairs, national defense, international borders and crossing points with Egypt and Jordan, would retain responsibility for the security of Israeli settlements in Cisjordania and Gaza Strip and freedom of movement on the roads.
For their "historic contribution to the peace process in the Middle East by replacing war and hatred with cooperation," according to the Nobel Committee, the signatories of the Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat of the PLO, and for Israel, its Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, and its Prime Minister, Isaac Rabin, received the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize, although this did not advance the resolution of the conflict. On the contrary, the confrontations continued and violence escalated, reducing the spaces for moderate social forces in both societies and stagnating the proposal of two States.
In 2005, Israel began the construction of a wall in Cisjordania that extends for 723 kilometers and invades Palestinian territory, a fence that separates peasants from their land and families from their workplaces, educational and health centers. Although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague declared that such construction by Israel was illegal because it constituted a breach of Israel's obligations under international humanitarian law, this did not stop the initiative.
The construction of the wall facilitated the creation of new illegal Israeli settlements at the expense of the Palestinian population under occupation, since more than 80% of the wall is on Palestinian territory. The construction of new housing in the settlements on occupied territory definitively closes all possibility of dialogue, because the Israelis are not prepared to stop doing so and for the Palestinians it is an immovable condition for resuming negotiations.
In 2012, the General Assembly adopted Resolution No. 67/19, with 138 votes in favor, agreeing to the admission of Palestine as an observer state not a member of the Organization, raising its political status and trying to support the PNA as an interlocutor in the concert of nations, after intense Israeli bombardments in Gaza.
On December 23, 2016, the UN Security Council approved Resolution No. 2334 ratifying its support for the two-state solution and pronouncing itself on the Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, defining them as having no legal validity and "endangering the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders.
Currently in Cisjordania, the growing number of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory is an excellent excuse to increase the Israeli military presence, which is already disproportionate and a source of infinite advantages and privileges for these settlers, from which the Palestinian population is excluded: from access to water to advanced technology for cell phones, to permits to build, to establish a business or to move.
The Economist reported in a February 2017 article that the part of Cisjordania whose civilian and security administration is in Palestinian hands is only 18% of the territory (Zone A); 21% is under Palestinian civilian administration but under Israeli military jurisdiction (Zone B), while the remaining 61% is administered on a civilian and military basis by Israeli officials (Zone C). It is precisely this zone, which includes almost the entire Jordan Valley, and where Israeli settlers outnumber the Palestinian population, that Netanyahu proposes to annex.
Consequently, it is easy to conclude that there is no large and continuous territory under Palestinian administration in Cisjordania. What exist are urban islets with no connection between them other than by routes controlled by the Israeli army, without integrated economic activity, without flow of transport of passengers or merchandise under continuous Palestinian control ─siempre one has to pass through some police or customs checkpoint israelí─, without access to basic services... without real and effective Palestinian sovereignty.
Increasingly de facto rather than de jure, Israel has been assuming in practice that a high percentage of the Palestinian territories in Cisjordania is part of the State of Israel and intends to move from de facto to outright annexation. Pragmatism and short-termism acting illegally to have a condition of fait accompli even if it is not "politically correct" and is repudiated by the international community, based solely on its military force. Israel occupies a foreign territory that does not belong to it simply because it can.
Israel's de facto annexation of the occupied territories lifts the veil of "transitional occupation" and shows the true situation of the Palestinians. The promise of a Palestinian state alongside Israel has been used as a way to co-opt the Arab leadership, contain the Palestinian resistance and reassure the international community, but in practice it is increasingly clear that Israel's illegal actions make such a solution impossible.
At this moment the Palestinians have the worst of both worlds, because they lose the freedom to build their own country, but neither are their citizen's rights recognized by Israel. Israel has installed a system of control and exclusion in the occupied Cisjordania that includes the identification system, Israeli settlements, separate roads for Israeli and Palestinian citizens around many of these settlements, the barrier between Israelis and Palestinians, the exclusionary marriage law, the use of Palestinians as cheap labor, inequalities in infrastructure, and differences in legal rights, access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israeli residents in the occupied territories.
This system resembles in many ways the South African apartheid regime, and several elements of Israel's occupation constitute forms of colonialism and apartheid, contrary to international law. But in the case of the Israeli system it is worse than the South African one, because it is exclusive and seeks the expulsion of the Palestinian population.
In Cisjordania, Israeli settlers continue to be governed by Israeli laws, while a different military system is enacted to "regulate the civil, economic and legal affairs of the Palestinian inhabitants.
In this 2020, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, proposes a plan (which he called "the plan of the century") known as the "Peace for Prosperity" plan that contradicts the most fundamental principles of international law as well as all the agreed parameters for the peace process in the Middle East, the relevant UN resolutions, including Security Council Resolution No. 2334, thus wanting to formalize the current reality in the occupied Palestinian territory, ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people and without a proposal for a viable and legitimate solution to the conflict.
In view of the above, we humanists are clear that the issue of solidarity with the Palestinian people can no longer be discussed from the worn-out discourse of defense against terrorism, where immoral aggressions, extrajudicial executions and collateral damage are justified as a response to survival.
Apartheid is a system that offers two types of laws for two peoples or two ethnic groups living in the same land. Israeli apartheid prohibits a Palestinian from Jerusalem from living with his wife and family because they are from Ramallah, 10 miles away. She has no right to go to Jerusalem to be with him and if he moved to Ramallah he would lose his citizenship rights and therefore not only the right to have health insurance but also to live in Jerusalem, his hometown. In contrast, under Israeli law, a Jew from anywhere in the world has the right to obtain Israeli nationality as soon as he sets foot in Lod Airport (Tel Aviv) and to live wherever he wishes, whether in Israel or in the occupied areas of Jerusalem and Cisjordania, which is where the authorities often discourage him through subsidies and other facilities designed to encourage settlers to settle on land expropriated from Palestinians.
Israel must be denounced as a state that carries out permanent attacks against the physical and mental integrity, freedom and dignity of the Palestinians, subjecting them to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment in a condition of total impunity.
It is clear that Israel is not Netanyahu, but its co-government with the Israeli ultra-right has taken it upon itself to mortally damage its liberal democracy in order to entrench a racist, colonialist and oppressive apartheid regime that not only settles in the occupied territories of Gaza, Cisjordania and East Jerusalem, but also transcends its own society, creating first and second class citizens.
The International Humanist Party denounces the damage generated by the powerful Zionist lobby in the United States, often causing the loss of counterweights in order to prevent the Israeli military power from acting as it does, with total impunity, trampling on all the rights of the Palestinian people. A high percentage of Israeli society is aware of and struggles for a peaceful and democratic solution against Zionism and the anachronistic bet on building a Jewish confessional state.
Sooner or later the crimes of Israeli apartheid will be judged and the Palestinian people will be liberated, with equal political rights for all its inhabitants, regardless of their ethnic or religious origin.
It is clear that the Israeli government has made a decision and acted against the two-state solution and has opted for a broad system of apartheid. And in the process, it has reduced the idea of a Palestinian state to an absurd autonomous entity.
The time has come to abandon past illusions, to recognize that Oslo and its protocols have failed, and to decide that the brutal system of apartheid cannot continue. The international community must call for boycott and non-cooperation with the State of Israel and must sanction it and demand that it comply with its obligations under international law. The Palestinians will not be free and have economic prosperity until they rebel against the Israeli apartheid system and the international community must denounce and reject all illegal acts against the Palestinian people.
"We know very well that our freedom is incomplete
without the freedom of the Palestinians”.
Nelson Mandela.
International Coordination Team
Federation of Humanist Parties