News,
articles and documents from the Holy Land
Issue No. 96 - Saturday, 1 September 2001
Dear Friends, Brothers
and Sisters,
During the last invasion of Beit Jala, our Patriarch was in a pastoral
visit in some of our parishes in Jordan, and when he returned back today
morning he decided soon to undertake a solidarity visit to Beit Jala this
afternoon in which we visited first of all our Seminary where he met the
director Fr. Maroun Lahham and the priests staff and all the major and minor
Seminarians who passed through very difficult moments during the last days.
Then we visited several directlly affected places such as the Lutheran Church
where we met with Pastor Jadallah Shehadeh who told us the story of the
occupation of the Church premises and Orphanage. We met also the children who
were kept hostages inside for more than 18 hours by the Israeli Soldiers who
were inside and in the top of the building before evacuating it under the
international pressure. What astonished me was that the Israeli Army spokesman
Sharon Levi denied that they entered the church compound and he added at the
Israeli Arabic Radio that the soldiers never entered any church because we
respect the Holy Places and we know the sensibility of such places. I really
wonder if he can still deny that after the whole world saw what happened
there?!
We visited also the nearby mosque, which was also affected by several bullets,
almost all the windows are broken. We saw also the place were the Palestinian
security man was killed during that battle, he is 23 years old from Gaza and
was buried in Beit Jala because they couldn’t send his body to his Family in
Gaza because of the complete separation between the West Bank and Gaza strip.
We visited the Orthodox club which was also occupied and we saw the
damaged the soldiers left behind them. We cannot speak but about vandalism.
The saddest images we saw were two completely burned houses of our
parish people which were shelled by missiles from Gilo. Imagine that you enter
your house and smell the smoke of the fire which burned all your properties,
memories, clothes and even religious objects such as crosses, icons and
statues. Then you have to hear the stories of these people who almost lost
everything and say Al-Hamdu Lihhah (Thanks God) that we are safe and sane at
least. We will still hope that one day this terrible situation will finish.
Even if these people are tired and exhausted but we didn’t feel that they will
surrender, at the contrary they say we will stay firm in our homes and land
because where we can go. This is to say that all the Israeli news and rumors in
the Israeli newspapers of Jerusalem Post and Yodo’ot Ahronot about Christians
who were happy that the Israeli Army occupied Beit Jala, all these rumors are
false and another tentative to show the Christians as tired and not attached to
their national rights because they are weak or afraid and want to flee they
country and immigrate. These rumors are fabricated only to create division
between Moslems and Christians who are brothers and Sisters and citizens in
this country since more than 14 centuries and integral part of the Palestinian
people.
At the end we visited the house of Dr. Manauel Hassassian, vice
president of Bethlehem University, which was also shelled with a targeted
missile. We saw this the rest of this huge missile where you can clearly read
that it is made in the United States. It is clear for everybody that the
Strongest Army in the Region (IDF) is using the most sophisticated weapons made
in the United States and given as a gift from the American Tax payers to the
State of Israel in order to be used against the Civilian Palestinian People.
Therefore, we have to thank the American People and the American Administration
for these precious gifts, but at the same time, we hold them responsible and
partners in the Israeli aggression against our people.
We continued our visit to Beit Shour but we couldn’t visit everything
and all the affected and damaged houses since more than 50 houses were hardly
affected during the 50 hours of occupation in Beit Jala. We hope that this will
be the end of the tragedy of the people of this beautiful but suffering City. Otherwise,
we will have to tell you more in our next Olive Branches because we will never
lose hope or surrender until the occupation is completely over.
You will find also in today’s Olive Branch some more details about Beit
Jala with other documents:
1)
Statement about the recent events in Palestine in
particular in the Beit Jala and Bethlehem area, written by Toine van Teeffelen from the
Arab Educational Institute. It is a complete description about what happened during
this week with an interesting analysis of all these important events.
2)
Mr. Ghassan Andoni, from the Palestinian
Centre for Rapprochement Between People will give us some more about “Beit Jala lessons”.
3)
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi is attending the World
Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, and gave a very
interesting and complete briefing about “Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and
Related Intolerances”. This is a very strong appeal in the name of a whole
nation in which she summarize the sufferings of the Palestinian people since
the beginning of this conflict until now hoping that tomorrow will be
different.
4)
If you don’t know all the story of the
Palestinian people we send you the last 22 points document which tells you “What
to know?”
Of course, we cannot tell you in 10 pages what our people lived in 100
years… but we will continue to tell you the truth until Justice, Peace &
Reconciliation will prevail.
With our best wishes from Jerusalem Fr. Raed
Abusahlia
Statement about the recent events in Palestine
in particular in the Beit Jala and Bethlehem area
by Toine van Teeffelen
from the Arab Educational Institute
This last week
the people of Beit Jala, Aida camp and the Bethlehem area at large lived a
tremendously difficult period. Like in other directly occupied places in the
West Bank (parts of Hebron) and Gaza (areas of Rafah), the invasion and
physical occupation of half of the Beit Jala area brought back the worst
nightmares of war. A high-tech invasion involving tanks and Apache helicopters
overpowered people in the middle of the night. Soldiers took over houses using
them to fire at Palestinian targets; families were treated with disrespect;
churches and mosques occupied; properties damaged or stolen; food shortages not
met; inhabitants not allowed to leave their houses. At any moment, people were
afraid what would happen next. Normal life was put to a complete halt. In the
larger area of Bethlehem, civilians were not able to go to their work while
schools and other educational institutions, just opened for the new school
year, remained closed as well. A main question Palestinians kept asking
themselves was: How can such gross and indiscriminate violence be justified as
retaliation for the sporadic shooting incidents against Gilo, a Jerusalem
suburb built in the 1970s upon Beit Jala lands and an illegal settlement
according to international agreements?
After our
Institute reopened we conducted discussions among our staff, volunteers, youth
groups and board members. Besides the relief we felt that the Israeli army had
withdrawn from Beit Jala, the participants also expressed their frustration
that another invaded area in Rafah in the Gaza Strip remained occupied by the
Israeli army. Also, Israeli tanks are still surrounding Beit Jala and Aida camp
from three directions (Har Gilo on the west, Bir Ona on the north, and
Al-Khader on the south), and seem poised to invade the area once again.
We reached the
following conclusions:
- A primary challenge for the
Palestinians in general, and the Bethlehem area in particular, is to stay
on the land despite the impossible conditions created by Israel. While
some local inhabitants voiced despair, we also heard many persons around
us saying that the Israeli “pressure war” against the Palestinians only
reinforced their own determination not to leave the country. It remains a
major task of an educational institute like ours to instill among
Palestinian youth and educators love for their country. From the outside
world we ask help to protect our people, properties and lands, and to
improve the economic situation which is now so bad that many Palestinian
youth are considering to leave.
- In explaining the reason for the
withdrawal from Beit Jala, Israeli spokespersons this week emphasized that
Beit Jala is a “Christian town.” Besides the fact that the town is in fact
religiously mixed (Islamic-Christian), and that the neighboring Aida camp
and its surroundings are predominantly Moslem, we totally reject the
suggestion that Christian Palestinians are somehow politically different
from Moslem Palestinians. It has been a traditional weapon of occupiers
here and elsewhere to impose artificial political divisions on a conquered
population.Moreover, as put by one participant, “bullets and mortars do
not distinguish between Moslems and Christians.”AEI stresses the need for
Palestinian national unity while maintaining respect for cultural and religious
differences, and for the basic human freedom of individual expression.
- The central fact of Palestinian life
in the West Bank, East-Jerusalem and Gaza is occupation. The Oslo process
may have brought some limited areas of Palestinian administration in the
West Bank and Gaza, this development cannot take away the main issue that
Palestine is presently one large prison, with road blockades everywhere;
an economic siege; settlements and settlement expansion; the ongoing
demolition of houses, properties and trees; water restrictions, and
Israeli-dominated border controls. The recent assassination of political
and military leaders has decisively changed the popular mood among
Palestinians. That mood can be briefly summarized in the following manner:
If the international community does not intervene and grant the
Palestinians their internationally recognized national rights, security
and need for protection, there is no room for condemning Palestinian
“violence” - as if the violence of an occupation can be put on the same
par as the violence of those who resist occupation and want to maintain
their human dignity. As an institute with an educational mission we see it
as our task to redefine and broaden the scope of resistance and develop
alternative forms especially through the word and the pen (computer),
bringing out human stories of life under occupation.
Arab Educational
Institute
September 1,
2001
Beit Jala lessons
Written by: Ghassan Andoni
While all are concerned about the
continuity of violent clashes and hostilities in the Palestinian occupied
territories, the Israeli retreat from Beit Jala provides an excellent model for
a solution. It combined, the readiness to immediately reverse Israeli hostile
actions, an intensive international intervention, and indirect negotiations
between both sides.
The main obstacle hindering the ability
to end hostilities and resume negotiations is the mythical stand of the Israeli
Prime-Minster. In more clear terms he is demanding a unilateral ceasefire from
the Palestinian side without any counter actions from the Israeli side. In
other words he demands surrender. Yet, he stands short of forwarding any
political proposal for future negotiations. Such stand is a clear cover up for
his long standing interest in a continued and open conflict that will pave the
way for an ultimate military solution to the problem.
The concerns that Mr. Sharon has are more
related to preparing the ground for a wide consensus in Israel and a less
interested International community. In conducting his plan, he consistently
initiates extreme tactical military means to test the level of tolerance his
coalition partners and the International community exercise. So far he was
successful. Beit Jala was one example in which he failed.
The major deficiency in Mitchell’s report
is the afterwards assigned time frame. Standing short of considering settlement
activities and the siege imposed on the Palestinian population as hostile
activities to be seized immediately, provided the bases for a gradual fading of
international efforts. Exactly what Sharon is looking for.
It is of an extreme importance that the
international community indicates to Sharon, in the clearest possible way, the
red lines beyond which his usage of military power becomes war crimes to which
the international community will not stay silent. Failing to do so, will only
encourage Sharon to escalate his hostilities to a level that will remind us all
of his bloody history. By then it will be too late.
World
Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Xenophobia, and Related Intolerances
Address by Hanan Ashrawi
Durban, South Africa
August 28, 2001
Sisters and Brothers,
From Jerusalem, from the heart of Palestine, a land besieged, and repeatedly
violated by a most brutal Israeli military occupation, I have come to join you
today. From the midst of the people of Palestine, a tortured nation, guilty
only of an unwavering commitment to freedom, dignity, and independence, I have
come to join you today. From the depths of unredeemed history, I have come to
join you today. I represent a narrative of exclusion, denial, racism, and
national victimization, but I also come with a message of hope, redemption, and
historical vindication embodied in the spirit and the will of a people that has
refused to succumb to all forces of oppression, violence, cruelty, and
injustice.
In convening this conference, you are the authentic embodiment of courage in
withstanding the forces of domination, subjugation, and enslavement. We stand
together today to launch a truly global mission of empowerment and solidarity,
to give voice to the silenced, to give a reality to the invisible, to give
recognition to the denied, and to give credence to the victimized.
In times of adversity, and during the darkest nights of the soul, we look to
you for affirmation and action as an antidote to the failure of established
power systems, including governments a failure characterized by
self-interest, power politics, absence of will, and impotence. I take this
opportunity to recognize before you those valiant men and women who had left
the comfort of their homes in Europe and the US and joined us in Palestine to
provide popular protection, a human shield in the face of Israeli abuses, violence,
and violations against the Palestinian people.
I come to you today with a heavy heart leaving behind a nation in captivity
held hostage to an ongoing Nakba [catastrophe], as the most intricate and
pervasive expression of persistent colonialism, apartheid, racism, and
victimization.
More than half a century ago [53 years], the Palestinians as a people were
slated for national obliteration, cast outside the course of history, their
identity denied, and their very human cultural and historical reality suppressed.
We became victims of the myth of a land without a people for people without a
land whereby the West sought to assuage its guilt over its horrendous
anti-Semitism by the total victimization of a whole nation. Zionism sought
to implement its agenda of exclusivity by usurping not only the lands and
rights of the Palestinians, but also by confiscating their utterance and
distorting their historical narrative.
In 1948, we became subject to a grave historical injustice manifested in a dual
victimization: on the one hand, the injustice of dispossession,
dispersion, and exile forcibly enacted on the population that has come to be
known as the refugee question that currently encompasses more than 5 million
Palestinians. On the other hand, those that remained were subject to the
systematic oppression and brutality of an inhuman occupation that robbed them
of all their rights and liberties including their national identity on their
own land.
The creation of the state of Israel was no heroic and legendary accomplishment
as depicted by the version of history propagated by the conquerors. It is
time to lift the veil, to examine the facts themselves, and to come to grips
with the horrific price paid by an innocent nation for the mere fact of its
existence as well as for the greed and moral blindness of others. The days of
denial must come to an end. The Palestinian people deserve their day in
the sun as an equal among nations, and as a tribute to the human will that
cannot be broken. As a Palestinian, as a woman, and on behalf of my people, I
stand before you today to lay claim to my/to our humanity. From the
non-existent Palestinians (there is not such thing as Palestinians; they never
existed (Golda Meir, 1969) we have undergone a metamorphosis willfully inflicted
upon us by Israeli-imposed diction and policies that have variously depicted us
as two-legged vermin, cockroaches, beasts walking on two legs, a people that
have to be exterminated unless they are resigned to live as slaves,
grasshoppers to be crushed, crocodiles, and vipers. [A comprehensive list with
representative samples is available]
Such a systematic and racist dehumanization was also accompanied by policies of
violent expulsion. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here
to neighboring countries, not one village, not one tribe should be left (Joseph
Weitz, 1940).
There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. If
it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the
Palestinian Arabs (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1939).
Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the
wishes of the native population. It is important to speak Hebrew, but it is
even more important to be able to shoot or else I am through at playing with
colonizing (Vladimir Jabotinsky, 1939).
We must do everything to insure they never return. The old will die and the
young will forget. However, for those that remained in spite of all of
Israels military coercion and attempts at forced expulsion, other (and equally
sinister) plans were in the making: We shall reduce the Arab population to a
community of woodcutters and waiters. (David Ben Gurion).
To the rest of the world, we were reduced to the Aristotelian dualism of pity
and fear the pitiful refugees, of the fearful terrorists. But never were
we perceived or addressed in the fullness of our humanity.
The Palestinians today continue to be subject to multiple forms and expressions
of racism, exclusion, oppression, colonialism, apartheid, and national denial.
Our right to self-determination, hence sovereignty and statehood, has been
withheld by force and made subject to the approval of our oppressor. The
refugee populations, mostly stateless people, are bereft of the rudimentary
civil, human, political, and national rights, left at the mercy of host
countries that view them either as a demographic threat, or as unwelcome
guests. While Israel has legislated a law of return to bring in Jews from all
over the world into historical Palestine, it persists in rejecting the
Palestinian refugees Right of Return and in refusing to abide by UN res. 194, a
legal commitment which the international community was supposed to guarantee
and implement.
The Palestinians who remained in what has become Israel are experiencing in
their historical homeland the worst system of apartheid, exclusion, and racial
discrimination--their towns and cities either taken over entirely, or turned
into ghettos and enclaves as the non-Jewish population of Israel. Many continue
to be displaced persons in their own land, witnesses to the destruction of
their villages. Over 500 villages were razed in the original ethnic
cleansing campaign that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel. Those
of us who came under Israeli occupation in 1967 have languished in the West
Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip under a unique combination of military
occupation, settler colonization, and systematic oppression.
Rarely has the human mind devised such varied, diverse, and comprehensive means
of wholesale brutalization and persecution. Since 1967, Palestinian land
has been expropriated at an increasing pace, while whole Jewish populations
have been brought in, in a calculated scheme of settler colonization.
Throughout the land, an artificial and colonial grid of infrastructure was
superimposed on our authentic reality to create a spurious settler
superstructure as a means of Israeli demographic, geographic, and
extraterritorial incursions into Palestine. So-called bypass roads for the
exclusive use of the illegal Jewish settler population, tear through the heart
of Palestinian land, to bypass Palestinian realities and create a unique form
of racism. In the meantime, settler vigilantes habitually unleash the full
force of their extremism and violence, carrying out campaigns of terror
against defenseless Palestinian families and villages. Israel’s state terrorism
is implemented by both military and settler perpetrators with political
duplicity and legal impunity.
Another unique manifestation of Israeli racism is the blatant and sinister
policy of demographic engineering. To maintain the Jewish character, or the
purity of the state of Israel, the Palestinians have been depicted and dealt
with as a demographic threat. Proposed remedies included calls for forced birth
control and population management, to transfer and expulsion of whole
communities, to the racist and punitive unilateral separation scheme currently
being advocated.
In Jerusalem, land expropriation, ID confiscations, home demolitions,
withholding of building permits, and the importation of settler colonies within
and around the city have become constant elements of Israel’s demographic
engineering through ethnic cleansing.
Jerusalem is also under siege in an attempt to isolate it from its Palestinian
context and environment, and to extricate it from the heart of Palestine, as
the center of political, cultural, economic, social, and educational activity
and as the future capital of our state. Such Israeli unilateral measures seek
to consolidate Israel’s illegal annexation of occupied Jerusalem, and to impose
a Jewish exclusivity on a Palestinian city that has always been pluralistic and
tolerant. Onslaughts on Christian and Islamic holy sites and activities while
banning Palestinian worshipers from reaching their holy places of worship
betray a willful policy of intolerance and a violation of the right and freedom
to worship.
A state of siege has been imposed not only on the West Bank and Gaza, but also
within these territories, to transform each village, town, and city into an
isolated prison thereby destroying every aspect of human life, including
economic, educational, health, and social cohesiveness in an attempt to sever
every fiber of the fabric of normal life. Israeli occupation troops using
tanks, helicopter gunships, F-16s, military barges, and checkpoints not only
render a whole Palestinian population captive in 64 isolated bantustans, they
also use the full force of their military power against a vulnerable and
defenseless people. Daily, they shell Palestinian homes, assassinate
Palestinian activists and leaders, destroy crops and fields, indulge in
cold-blooded murder of children and other innocents while implementing a policy
of deliberate humiliation and suffocation at every checkpoint.
The Israeli occupation has also hijacked the concept of security rendering it
applicable only to Israelis while depriving the Palestinians of every aspect of
personal, political, legal, territorial, historical, cultural, economic, and
even human security. As a blanket cover for its systematic abuses, Israel has
also abused the essence of the concept, exploiting it for the sake of
eradicating any mention of the occupation, and claiming the illogical right to
have a secure or even a safe and pleasant military occupation that is in itself
the very antithesis of peace, security, and human rights.
As the world watches, Israel has succeeded in evolving and imposing another
grand deception in the form of an official spin that not only dehumanizes and demonizes
the Palestinians, but also as an attempt at blaming the victim and
resuscitating labels that represent us as subhuman species, and genetically
violent terrorists, hence undeserving of any human treatment. At best, a
false symmetry is manufactured between occupier and occupied, oppressor and
oppressed, (as in the call on both sides to stop the violence) serving to
eradicate the full horror of the occupation while depriving the victims of
their right to resist. Given the disequilibrium of power, the American
insistence on a bilateral solution only serves to give Israel license to
exploit the asymmetry of power and to pursue its policies of subjugating a
whole nation and imposing a unilateral and unjust solution.
The Israeli solution is firmly imbedded in the tainted mentality of occupation
as license to dictate by force of arms illegal and punitive realities that
would further exacerbate the conflict and the suffering of the Palestinian
people. Refusal to intervene by the US and the international community as a
whole has given Israel a free hand to continue to act with impunity and
immunity as a country above the law and beyond accountability, while the
Palestinians continue to be deprived of protection of the law and the minimal
imperatives of moral and human decency. We continue to plead for a global rule
of law that would check the aggression of the powerful, and eliminate the
ongoing dehumanization of the Palestinian people. Such absence of will and
abrogation of responsibility on the part of the international community has not
only perpetuated the Nakba and prolonged the suffering and victimization of the
Palestinian people, but has also served to undermine the quest and chances for
peace throughout the region.
When we joined the peace process launched in Madrid in 1991, we did so as an
act of will, as a commitment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict with the
aim of ending the occupation of 22% of historical Palestine and the
establishment of our independent state on the territory occupied by Israel in
1967. As victims, we rose above the pain of the moment and reached out to our
occupiers to wrench the course of history away from inevitable conflict,
towards reconciliation based on justice and parity. Buttressed by the
confidence of the peoples will to endure and resist oppression, as manifested
in the Intifada of 1987, we offered Israel and the world a unique opportunity
to legitimize a daring pursuit of peace, and to gain a constituency for an
equitable resolution.
Unfortunately, the peace process became a punitive process manipulated by
Israel to pursue its policies of expansion, ethnic cleansing, colonialism, and
subjugation of the weaker side by force. It further served as a guise to
rationalize the separation of the people from the land and to fragment both the
people and the land, transforming the occupied Palestinian territories into a
series of isolated reservations or Bantustans while maintaining full Israeli
hegemony and direct control. While seeking to bestow retroactive legitimacy on
illegal Israeli settlements, and on Israel’s annexation of Jerusalem by force,
it also sought to negate the Palestinian refugees right of return thereby
denying the very essence of peace and destroying its foundations.
The so-called generous offer of Barak has been exposed for the sham that it is
an occupiers version of what’s good for the natives, based only on what’s good
for Israel, thus ensuring further conflict and instability rather than
cementing a fair and durable solution. Having been historically the victims of
war and conflict, we found ourselves the victims of a flawed and unjust peace
process.
Sharons incursion into the Haram Al-Sharif on September 28, 2000, was only the
calculated spark that ignited a powder keg already in place as a result of the
inequities of the process itself. The use of live ammunition and lethal force
against the unarmed Palestinian protestors unleashed horrific forces of
hostility, racism, and orchestrated violence against the captive Palestinian
people. The continued intensification of these measures sends an ominous and
stark message of brutality and is symptomatic of the regression to
fundamentalist Zionism witnessed in the bloodbaths of the 1940s. By claiming
that this is the continuation of Israel’s War of Independence, Sharon is
sending a message to the Palestinian people and to the whole world that the
national eradication and the ethnic cleansing of the 1948 Nakba are still in
process.
The current Israeli government represents the most lethal combination of extremist
right-wing political ideology, religious fundamentalism and zealotry, and
unbridled forces of militarism with a deceptive veneer of the civilized face of
the Labor party. Sharon is the same army general who had committed crimes
against humanity in such atrocities as the Qibya massacre of 1953, the
cleansing of Gaza in 1973, the invasion of Lebanon and the massacres of Sabra
and Shatilla of 1982. Intent on pursuing this bloody path and on repeating the
mistakes of history, Sharon has not learned that no amount of brutality,
cruelty, or violence can break the will of a people determined to gain its
freedom, dignity,
and independence. He shows no signs of drawing the right historical conclusions
that colonialism is by nature a temporary form of enslavement, and that a
people colonized cannot be brought to their knees by the colonizers stifling
measures of subjugation and containment.
Sisters and brothers, I appeal to you today, to restore the absent Palestinians
to the agenda of humanity, to validate our reality and rights, to recognize and
alleviate the pain and suffering of this tortured nation, and to give
recognition to the Palestinian narrative long denied. You are the only source
of empowerment for a people who feel abandoned and disempowered, but who have
never lost faith in human solidarity and a shared vision of emancipation.
I appeal to you, as I have often done to governments and global fora, not to
adopt the stance of cowardly neutrality, for in the struggle against
oppression, injustice, racism, intolerance, colonialism, and exclusion, there
can be NO neutrality. We are all called upon to take sides on behalf of the
victim, the disenfranchised, and the oppressed, and to stem the tide of evil
and prevent the forces of darkness from prevailing. Here, there is no US veto
to deprive us of protection and our rights, nor is there censorship or
blackmail to intimidate governments ruled by self-interest.
Let this meeting radiate the pure light of the human spirit that can never be
dimmed or contained. Our path to the future must be based on the
redemption of history and the past, free of the shackles of inherited
inequities. Our legacy to the future must be based on the rectification of
the painful legacies of the past.
Sisters and brothers,
Never
before has an occupation army imposed such a total and suffocating siege on a
captive civilian population, then proceeded to shell their homes, bomb their
infrastructure, assassinate their activists and leaders, destroy their crops
and trees, murder their civilians at will, steal their lands, and then demand
that they acquiesce like lambs to the slaughter. Never before have the victims
been denied the right to articulate, and gain recognition for, the horrendous
atrocities being committed against them as a matter of policy, but were rather
blamed and punished for the fact of their victimization.
On behalf of the Palestinian people I appeal to you to have the courage to
intervene, to ensure that the oppressor is held accountable and the victim is
protected, to enact those principles and values that not only protect lives but
that also imbue life with the human qualities that make it worth living.
Despite our overwhelming pain, we have not surrendered to the forces of
occupation, colonization, racism, and dehumanization nor have we adopted their
moral distortions. I ask you also not to succumb, but to maintain and enhance
the struggle for dignity, equality, freedom, and justice as an act of
collective affirmation on behalf of humanity as a whole.
Did you know?
1 - THAT, when the Palestine Problem was created by Britain in 1917, more than
90% of the population of Palestine were Arabs, and that there were at that time
no more than 56,000 Jews in Palestine?
2 - THAT, more than half of the Jews living in Palestine at that time were
recent immigrants, who had come to Palestine in the preceding decades in order
to escape persecution in Europe?... And that less than 5% of the population of
Palestine were native Palestinian Jews?
3 - THAT, the Arabs of Palestine at that time owned 97.5% of the land, while
Jews (native Palestinians and recent immigrants together) owned only 2.5% of
the land?
4 - THAT, during the thirty years of British occupation and rule, the Zionists
were able to purchase only 3.5% of the land of Palestine, in spite of the
encouragement of the British Government?... And that much of this land was
transferred to Zionist bodies by the British Government directly, and was not
sold by Arab owners?
5 - THAT, therefore, when British passed the Palestine Problem to the United
Nations in 1947, Zionists owned no more than 6% of the total land area of
Palestine?
6 - THAT, notwithstanding these facts, the General Assembly of the United
Nations recommended that a "Jewish State" be established in
Palestine?... And that the Assembly granted that proposed "State"
about 54% of the total area of the country?
7 - THAT, Israel immediately occupied (and still occupies) 80.48% of the total
land area of Palestine?
8 - THAT, this territorial expansion took place, for the most part, before 15
May 1948: i.e., before the formal end of the British forces from Palestine,
before the entry of Arab armies to protect Palestinian Arabs, and before the
Arab-Israeli war?
9 - THAT, the 1947 recommendation of the General Assembly in favor of the
creation of a "Jewish State" was outside the competence of the
Assembly under the Charter of the United Nations?
10 - THAT, all attempts by the Arab States and other Asian countries to have
the Assembly submit ³the question of constitutionality" of its
recommendation to the International Court of Justice for an "advisory
opinion" by the Court were rejected or ignored by the Assembly?
11 - THAT, when the Assembly began to experience "second thoughts"
over the matter and convened for its second special session in 1948, it failed
to reaffirm the 1947 recommendation for the partition of Palestine-thus
destroying whatever dubious legality that recommendation for the establishment
of a "Jewish State" had had?
12 - THAT, that original 1947 recommendation to create a "Jewish
State" in Palestine was approved, at the first vote, only by European,
American and Australian States...for every Asian State, and every African State
(with the exception of the Union of South Africa) voted against it?...And that,
when the vote was cast in plenary session on 29 November 1947, urgent American
pressures (which a member of the Truman cabinet described as "bordering
onto scandal") had succeeded in prevailing only upon one African country
(Liberia), both of which had special vulnerability to American pressures, to
abandon their declared opposition?...And that, in other words, the "Jewish
State" was planted at the point-of-intersection of Asia and Africa without
the free approval of any Middle Eastern, Asian or African country except that
Union of South Africa, itself ruled by an alien minority?
13 - THAT, Israel remained, ever since its inception, a total stranger in the
emerging world of Afro-Asia; and that Israel has been refused admission to any
inter-state conference of Asian, African, Afro-Asian, or Non-Aligned States
ever held?
14 - THAT, since the General Armistice Agreements were signed in 1949, Israel
has maintained an aggressive policy of waging military attacks across the
Armistice Demarcation Lines, repeatedly invading the territories of the
neighboring Arab States...And that Israel has been duly rebuked, censured, or
condemned for these military attacks by the Security Council of the General
Assembly of the United Nations on eleven occasions-five times by the Security
Council and six times by the General Assembly?
15 - THAT, no other country in the world, whether member of the United Nations
or non-member, has been so frequently condemned by the United Nations?
16 - THAT, no Arab State has ever been condemned by any organ of the United
Nations for military attacks upon Israel?
17 - THAT, besides expelling the bulk of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, and
besides constantly attacking the neighboring Arab States, Israel has also consistently
harassed the United Nations observers and other personnel stationed along the
Armistice Demarcation Lines: It has assassinated the first United Nations
Mediator and his military aide; it has detained some truce observers; it has
militarily occupied and illegally searched the Headquarters of United Nations
personnel; and it has boycotted meetings of the Mixed Armistice Commissions?...
18 - THAT, Israel has additionally imposed a system of apartheid upon the Arabs
who stayed in their homeland? More than 90% of these Arabs live in
"security zones;" they alone live under martial law, restricting
their freedom to travel from village to village or from town to town; their
children are denied equal opportunities for education; and they are denied decent
opportunities for work, and the right to receive "equal pay for equal
work?"
19 - THAT, notwithstanding the foregoing facts, Israel has always been, and
still is, widely portrayed in the Western press as the "bastion of
democracy" and the "champion of peace" in the Middle East?
20 - THAT, the Western Powers have persisted in declaring their determination
to ensure a so-called "arms balance" in the area, as between Israel,
on the one hand, and the one-hundred million inhabitants of the thirteen Arab States,
on the other hand?... And this unilateral Western doctrine of so-called
"arms balance" is no more reasonable than the suggestion that, in the
Cuba-U.S.A conflict, there should be "arms balance" as between Cuba
and the United States... or that the whole Continent of Africa should not be
allowed to acquire more arms than South Africa... or that Mainland
China should not be permitted to have more arms than Taiwan... or that the
military allowed to acquire more arms than South Africa... and that only thus
can peace be safeguarded in the Western Hemisphere, in Africa, in Asia, or in
Europe?...
21 THAT, Israel allots 85% of the water resources in the occupied territories
for Jews and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the
territories? For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is given to about 500
settlers, while 15% must be divided among Hebron's 120,000 Palestinians?
22 THAT, The United States awards Israel $3 billion in aid each year, more
than to any other country in the world: US aid to Israel exceeds the aid the US
grants to the whole sub-Sahara Africa?
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that this newsletter is not an official newsletter of the Latin Patriarchate
of Jerusalem; * Only the documents signed by the
Patriarch himself, express an official position, but all the other news,
articles and documents express the personal opinion of their authors; * I remain the only responsible of the
presentation and the editorials of this newsletter, which is wanted to be a
simple instrument of information without any pretension; * We don’t side with anybody, we only
side with the truth, and strive for human rights, justice, peace and
reconciliation for everybody as usual. Thank you for your understanding & Best wishes from Jerusalem Fr. Raed Abusahlia |