Disaster versus Disaster?
The clash of arms has drowned the voices of those who struggle to have
the crisis addressed through diplomatic confrontation. Both fronts blame the
adversary. It is a sterile dialectical exercise to try to hide the inability to
hear those different from one’s own, running the risk of discovering that
reason is not just on one side.
L’Osservatore
Romano
This
statement was part of a recent article in L’Osservatore Romano, the
Italian-language daily newspaper that echoes the views of the Vatican. During
the same week that the article came out, His Beatitude Michel Sabbah,
Latin-rite Roman Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, declared that the two-year
Intifada pitting Israelis against Palestinians had been a disaster for both
peoples. He lamented the increased rate of emigration from the Holy Land, and
surmised that the small numbers of indigenous Christians remaining behind were
those who were firmly committed to a calling to live in the Holy Land. The kernel
of both statements demonstrated the volatility of the situation on the ground
as much as how far it had deteriorated in the past two years, or one year, or
three months, or even three weeks!
A couple
of weeks earlier, an Interfaith Declaration was issued by ‘Clergymen for
Peace’, a newly-constituted movement comprising Jewish, Christian, Druze and
Muslim religious leaders in Jerusalem who ‘cry out in the name of our one God,
to recognise one another, children of Abraham, as created in God’s image’. Explaining
that the ‘task of religious leaders is to engage our own people in
self-reflection and point the way to a better future for our children and
ourselves’, the declaration made a series of recommendations that applied mutatis mutandis both to Israelis and Palestinians.
v
We condemn all acts of violence and human rights
violations, seeing as they contradict God’s will for humanity. The suffering of
Israelis and Palestinians must stop. An attack against any human being is an
attack against God.
v
We call upon Israelis and Palestinians to recognise
each other’s humanity, deep roots in this land and suffering. We must find the
courage to break the cycle of violence and human rights violations. Each act of
violence being committed by either side elicits further violence.
v
We call for energising the vision of peace through
negotiations, based on international legitimacy and respect for international
law and the shared ethics of our religious traditions, thus fulfilling the
national aspirations of two peoples and ensuring the human right to live free
from occupation and fear.
v
We draw from the wisdom of our faiths to accept the
particularity of each of our traditions while respecting one’s right to be
different. Our Houses of worship must remain open and unharmed. Any desecration
of our sanctuaries is a desecration of God’s presence in this world. Even more
important than those sanctuaries built of stone are the sanctuaries that God
has implanted within each and every human being.
v
We agree to act as a living bridge between despair
and hope and re-ignite the peace process, acting as mediators where possible
and as agents of faith and instruments of love where it seems possible. We will
collectively and individually employ all of our influence in every conceivable
way to realise a vision that goes beyond the cessation of hostilities and looks
forward to the day when our peoples will be a mutual blessing to each other. We
will meet among ourselves and engage our peoples and leaders.
Earlier in
the week, the British agency Oxfam had issued its Briefing Paper 28 for
September 2002. Entitled ‘Forgotten Villages: Struggling to survive closure in the West Bank’,
the aid agency painted a grim picture of the realities facing Palestinians
day-in-day out in the villages dotted across the West Bank and Gaza. It spoke
of its deep concern ‘about the appalling toll being paid by the civilian
population on both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict’. ‘Oxfam’, it
mentioned, ‘is committed to the impartial applicability of international
humanitarian and human rights law, especially the right of all civilians to
protection from violence. We believe that a just solution to the current
conflict must be based on existing UN Security Council resolutions, which call
for an end to the Israeli occupation of lands held since 1967, and the right of
both Israel and a future Palestinian state to live within secure borders. The
recent escalation of the conflict has created a serious humanitarian crisis for
the Palestinian population living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. All parties
to the conflict must take immediate steps to prevent this humanitarian crisis
from turning into a full-blown humanitarian disaster, by supporting the
long-term livelihoods of the poorest and most vulnerable in the area’.
Oxfam
expressed its profound consternation and concern about ‘the Israeli
government’s policy of closure which finds thousands of rural households in the
West Bank on the brink of destitution. Away from the media spotlight, the
families of farmers, unemployed labourers and small businessmen in these often
neglected Palestinian villages have run out of savings and sold off land and
livestock’. It added that the closures, curfews, restrictions on the freedom of
movement as well as new travel permit systems and the 350-kilometre security
fence being built by Israel constitute collective punishment and are illegal
under international law. It went on to say that Oxfam had witnessed the rapid
erosion of support networks in local communities that provide a range of
services and social protection such as credit, loans and food. Furthermore, the
loss of cohesion in the household and wider community had exposed more women
and children to violence and discrimination. Restrictions on movement have
distorted supply and demand in the economy to such an extent that harvests were
rotting in the fields whilst some market places remained empty. Health and
water were now, for many households, either too expensive or simply not
available. There was an increase in malnutrition, chronic health problems,
welfare dependency and psychological stress.
Clearly
addressing both sides in this collective disaster, Oxfam suggested remedial
steps to salvage the situation:
§
Water tankers to be allowed to reach the rural
population, particularly in areas without networked water systems.
§
The Israel Defence Forces to remove, or at the very
least regulate, checkpoints to allow trading, farming and other enterprises
that sustain peoples’ livelihoods. In particular, there is an urgent need to allow
farmers to reach both their land and markets during the imminent olive harvest.
§
Ambulances and health workers to be allowed to move
freely between villages and cities, and villagers allowed travelling to towns
for specialist health treatment.
§
The PA to ensure the protection of Israeli citizens.
It should condemn and seek to prevent the activities of suicide bombers and
prosecute all parties engaging in illegal activities against civilians,
including attacks against settlers.
§
The PA to guarantee that donor funds will be used
transparently and effectively for the alleviation of poverty.
§
The International Community to intensify diplomatic
efforts to bring an end to this conflict and maintain pressure on all parties
to halt the spiralling violence against civilians and uphold international
humanitarian law with regard to their protection.
§
The International Community to intensify diplomatic
pressure on the Government of Israel to ease closure, and on both the
Government of Israel and the PA to comply with the other recommendations listed
above.
§
International donors and local and international aid
agencies to provide appropriate humanitarian assistance that supports and
strengthens existing coping strategies. They should work with local communities
to prioritise the protection and rebuilding of productive assets and credit
networks.
This
description by Oxfam of the unfolding realities on the ground in many
Palestinian towns and villages, and the concomitant set of recommendations
applicable to both parties, reminded me also of the formidable - and
oft-dangerous - work undertaken by a number of Jerusalem-based faith-centred
organisations such as the International Christian Committee (NECC-ICC). The ICC
is an arm of the Department on Service to Palestinian Refugees, and its
Executive Secretary Ramzi Zananiri has been working hand-in-glove with
international aid agencies and church-related organisations to provide
humanitarian assistance to Palestinian villages and towns across the West Bank.
On 2 October 2002, his latest circular informed his networks that a convoy of
relief supplies was heading for Nablus (in the northern West Bank). He wrote that ‘this is another convoy
to another forgotten area from the agenda of politicians, who do not experience
the daily agonising misery represented in ‘Occupation’ that attempts to
dehumanise the Palestinian image’.
So where
do we go from here? Do we just describe the situation as one disaster versus
another, where hapless victims on both sides are paying a bloody price for a
conflict that the politicians could solve tomorrow - if they so decided?
An article
that appeared last summer in the English-language Jerusalem Post daily
newspaper reported that a US scientist posited that transcendental meditation
could well be the answer to the Middle East crisis. Dr John Hagelin, a quantum
physicist, had explained at a conference that if a tiny fraction of Israelis
and Palestinians ‘regularly practised transcendental meditation techniques in a
group, the wave effect of calm will eventually halt terrorism’. The scientist
had added that the technique, known as invincible defence technology, ‘applied
cutting-edge discoveries in quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and human
consciousness that diffuse stress, effectively disarming aggressors’. Hagelin
claimed that a similar technique was already producing results in the dispute
over Kashmir.
I am not
readily convinced that quantum physics and transcendental meditation are the
answers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! However, I remain very much
convinced that the present dire situation cannot be allowed to continue
unchecked. Deaths, injuries, misery, suffering, penury, suspicion, bitterness
and hopelessness have occupied the ‘reality frames’ of Israelis and
Palestinians in different ways. But what is equally worrisome is the scale of
the humanitarian crisis that is being visited upon large cross-sections of the
Palestinian population across the West Bank and Gaza.
What
Israelis and Palestinians need now is a cessation of all forms of abusive
violence - whether physical, structural, institutional - so that peaceful
negotiations could resume forthwith between both parties. Violence cannot lead
to the realisation of all Palestinian aspirations for statehood, just as
counter-violence cannot lead to the realisation of all Israeli aspirations for
security. There already exists a whole plethora of recommendations from
different governments, organisations and individuals that purport to show the
way toward a peaceful resolution of this conflict. So I believe that the Oxfam
recommendations could prove to be another such starting point. They would
include the implementation by Israel of all previous UN Security Council
resolutions leading to its withdrawal from occupied territories and the establishment
of a Palestinian state that would be democratic, representative of all strands
of opinion in a pluralistic society, free from corruption as much as nepotism,
intolerance and bigotry, and live side-by-side with Israel in peace and
security. Israel, on the other side, needs to provide the conditions for such a
reality to emerge - through its withdrawal from occupied territories - so that
Palestinians can regain their dignity and become masters of their own futures.
If both parties cannot succeed in achieving those goals, it becomes imperative
to have a third-party mediation that is followed by an international presence
on the ground with the mandate and authority to monitor the situation and
report any violations of agreed agreements between two erstwhile bellicose
neighbours.
This is
one equation for the realisation of a just solution to this conflict, and it is
also the only future I can envisage in order to extricate the whole region from
further disasters - one disaster versus the other!
©
harry-bvH @ 3 October 2002