CAMERON SMITH
<Contributor>
Having read with interest the piece on the most recent reincarnation of the Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza within the last edition of Obiter Dicta, I wanted to refute the claims made that Israel is a state where basic liberty is protected, religious freedom is fundamental, and the rule of law is paramount.
The claims I make do not arise out of any moral judgement, nor do I rely upon archaic senses of historical or theological entitlement. They are drawn purely from an interpretation of international law which states that the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs), have been, for many decades, under an illegal occupation.
The 2004 Advisory Opinion supplied by the International Court of Justice – the highest authority upon customary international law – held that Israel cannot legally justify its continued occupation of the Palestinian territories and is obliged therefore to instigate an immediate withdrawal. This stance has been affirmed in respect of authoritative interpretations of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Equally numerous Security Council Resolutions and both the United Nations General Assembly and ICRC study on customary international humanitarian law have all reached similar conclusions.
Despite this compelling evidence, the Israeli government continues to claim the non-applicability of international law in relation to the OPTs. The continued promulgation of this repetitious contradictory rhetoric achieves nothing other than suggesting that Israel does not recognise Conventions that form the cornerstone of most other civilised societies’ foreign policy.
Eight years on, it remains the case that not only is Israel still initiating flagrant breaches and violations of international law; it has taken tangible actions to repress Palestinians and instigate measures to establish its presence on a permanent basis. Whilst the Jewish settlers have benefited from luxury apartment blocks, urban infrastructure and exclusive access to religious sites revered by Muslims and Jews alike, there have been no such benefits to the Palestinians.
Furthermore, non-Jewish inhabitants categorically are not bestowed with the full range of basic civil and political rights afforded to Jewish settlers. There can be no other reason for such a policy other to achieve the domination of the Palestinian inhabitants in the OPTs. Unfortunately, and this assertion is not made whimsically, the resultant situation in the OPTs dredges up memories of the worst days of Apartheid South Africa. The Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute define apartheid as being constituted in the following ways.
First, there needs to be two racial groups involved in a conflict. While neither Jews nor Palestinians can be accurately described as separate races, in today’s world we have moved away from defining race based on the colour of one’s skin. Rather, race can be categorised as people who maintain separate religious and national identities ensuring their entitlement to be considered as a distinct entity.
Second, it is a requirement that inhuman acts need to have been committed against one group by the other. In this regard Israel has perpetrated, in the years of its occupation, numerous violations of customary international law that would bring their acts under this definition.
The forcible division of the territory and its population into separate enclaves and the denial of the right to freely occupy and move around within the OPTs can be characterised as such an act. In addition, Palestinians are denied the right to nationality within their own territory. For the many thousands of Arabs who fled the region during the 1967 war, the absence of an Arab state has ensured that they remain stateless with no realistic right of return. This has created a situation where the vast majority of the refugees and successive generations have to suffer in refugee camps in surrounding Arab states.
Israel’s domineering presence within the OPTs infringes all aspects of daily life and limits economic, social and political opportunities. Furthermore, there is no tangible system that allows Palestinians the opportunities to speak out about their predicament. Imposed are rules endorsed by the Supreme Court of Israel that place onerous requirements upon newspapers and other forms of mass media to obtain licences and require they undergo stringent censorship before they can be authorized for publication.
Since the Occupation began in 1967, thousands of Palestinians have been and continue to be killed in the OPTs by Israeli military forces, many for speaking out and demonstrating against the illegal occupation. As was the case in South Africa, a prominent method by which this number has been constituted is the excessive use of force against civilian protestors in the OPTs. Israel has also made frequent use of extrajudicial killing, torture and other forms of inhuman and degrading treatment in order to repress the Palestinian right of protest in a supposedly democratic region.
This brief list of violations is not intended to be exhaustive; there is a multitude of Israeli practices that come under the definition of inhuman acts. Clearly however it can be seen that the domination of the Palestinians constitutes a breach of the prohibition of apartheid. On this basis there can be no other explanation than declaring that they pursue a policy that seeks racial repression – exactly the goal that was achieved in the recent history of South Africa.
This has major implications for any resolution to the conflict that has lasted, in its current embodiment, for almost a century. While Hamas are an obstacle to the creation of a meaningful peace in the Middle East, they are not the “main obstacle.” First prize in this competition goes to Israel and its obtuse insistence in the continued violation and ignorance of international law.
While Canada may be characterised as a state where basic liberty is protected, religious freedom is fundamental, and the rule of law is paramount, the same cannot be attributed to Israel. In this regard most Canadians would refute any analogies being drawn with the state of Israel. If it were indeed true, I think most would pack their bags and leave. Unfortunately for Palestinians such an option is not available, much less the chance to come back if they change their mind.