Sitting in Committee room G in the Houses of Parliament on 23rd
October from 6 to 7 .30 pm was a sobering affair. While hosted by the
All Party Parliamentary Group on Conflict Issues and chaired by Lord
Alderdice, the event’s speaker was Professor Padraig O’Malley who had
recently published The Two State Delusion which the New York Times
described as both “impressive and frustrating”. It is indeed impressive
in its observations.
Clear that Israel’s occupation is
brutal, O’Malley recounted that according to various sources “Israel has
cut down more than 800,000 Palestinian olive trees since 1967”, which,
O’Malley observes, is “the equivalent of razing all of the 24,000 trees
in New York City’s Central Park 33 times.”
Israel has cut down many succeeding
generations of Palestinians in limited but full bloom of their occupied
lives and others with their tiny feet already preoccupied with death and
suffering.
The topic for discussion was the
possibility of a two state solution, though probably not a possibility;
or, an Israeli controlled one state solution though probably not a
possibility either. The so-called; peace process between two ‘warring’
neighbours (one side with many stones, the other with one of the most
sophisticated militaries in the 21st century its weapons
routinely tested on the Palestinian population) namely Israel-Palestine,
has been in ill health since 1948 and is now in a deep coma.
The underwhelming analysis of the
speaker was that the “tit-for tat” invidious deeds perpetrated by both
sides lately were unhelpful and the mental health of both populations,
particularly Israel was deteriorating. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) on the rise, the historical anxiety of the Israeli population not
for us to comprehend.
The West Bank is ailing, Gaza completely
reliant on the UN and NGOs for aid has effectively no income and the
life line of tunnels now flooded by the unenlightened Egyptian regime
means this open air prison is in a desperate state. Pledges of monies
from various donors have not materialised and it would take a generation
to rebuild Gaza even if the pledges were expedited.
Hamas democratically elected would never
be recognised by Israel and now that Isis has allegedly infiltrated the
Gaza Strip another invasion of Gaza by Israel’s IDF is on the cards
which would reduce Gaza to rubble: rubble on top of rubble then. One was
reminded of the great Roman historian Tacitus’ statement when
describing the Roman Empire “Brigands of the world, they create
desolation and call it peace.” The desolation of the Gaza Strip is
almost total, the deteriorating mental health of both citizens in Gaza
and the West Bank negatively shaped by the Israeli occupation because of
their morphology of violence.
As evidenced by the World Health
organization (WHO) Report of 22 March to 1 April 2015: “scientific
literature is unequivocal on the negative effects of adversity (e.g.
trauma, loss, severe life stressors) on mental health and mental
disorder (Dohrenwend, B.P. 1998; Kessler et al. 2010). The facets of the
occupation … involve a sense of unpredictability and uncontrollability
in daily life that have been shown to have a detrimental impact on
mental health (Gallagher et al. 2014). Palestinians report experience of
chronic humiliation during the occupation (Giacaman et al. 2007), with
humiliation being shown to be associated with health (Giacaman et al.
2007) and mental health complaints (Kendleret al. 2003).” Professor
O’Malley reiterated this point of the intolerable and continuing
humiliation as a matter of policy by Israel was clearly associated with
mental health issues of many Palestinians, along with I would add with
co-morbid physical complaints.
A considerable Hamas presence in the
West Bank would not be tolerated by Israel we were told because if
missiles were to find a snug bunker there, the Israeli defence system
“Iron Dome” would be ineffective in intercepting missiles launched from
such short range. I was fast developing PTSD symptoms listening to this
stuff. Facts on the ground (meaning illegal settlement building) were,
though I repeat illegal in occupied Palestine, to stay and the
corpus-separatum that is Jerusalem would remain Israel’s capital even
though the international community has its embassies and diplomatic
corps in Tel Aviv the only internationally recognised capital of Israel.
Hamas does have a small presence in the West Bank and seeks, according
to credible sources, to aid West Bank inhabitants with medical supplies
and other scarce resources.
Leadership on both sides has been
reduced to (a requisite for national tempers and international
consumption and condemnation) name calling, and politicking, on one
beleaguered side, by the autocratic Abbas whose presidential mandate
long expired and on the illegal occupying side the land-grabbing
Netanyahu. The difference between the two is, one has subjugated and
expanded the Jewish state at the cost of incalculable human suffering
and loss, the other has been complicit in overseeing the dwindling
territory of historical Palestine, human rights abuses and the complete
loss of faith in the Palestinian Authority (PA) by the people and
particularly the young of the West Bank.
The name professor O’Malley cited as a
possible future Palestinian leader is the influential Marwan Barghouti.
Marwan Hasib Ibrahim Barghouti the prominent Palestinian
political figure, recognised by many as the Palestinian Nelson Mandela
was controversially convicted and imprisoned for murder by an Israeli
court having been regarded as the leader behind the first and second
intifada after becoming disillusioned with the now mythological peace
process. He was arrested by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in 2002 in
Ramallah. In truth Barghouti would find himself between a rock and a
hard place if he were ever allowed to leave prison, when according to
the NYT he told Al-Monitor that “if the two-state solution fails, the
substitute will not be a bi-national one-state solution, but a
persistent conflict that extends based on an existential crisis – one
that does not know any middle ground.”
Indeed O’Malley postulated that with the
Israeli created “facts on the ground” it would probably take a regional
war drawing the super powers in to direct confrontation that would,
could, bring both sides to their senses and create conditions for a
lasting peace. Lord Alderdice sadly suggested the geo-political conflict
had begun in 2014. This can only worsen an already precarious existence
for Palestinians. We were all aware that for the failed states, such as
Iraq, Syria, Libya, the implosion was underway and a sea of human
suffering was arriving on the shores of Europe if they were able to make
such a journey fraught with numerous dangers.
So Let me be clear here, at least are
facts from history not Israeli manipulated facts-on the ground. The 1948
Nakba saw the Israeli illegal land-grab where over 400 villages were
overrun or disembowelled and 85% of the Palestinian population an
estimated 750,000 became refugees as the establishment of an “Israeli
homeland” later to become the declared Jewish (apartheid) State was
procured by violence that continues to this day.
Jerusalem which according to the 1947 UN
Partition Plan for Palestine “was [and remains] a corpus separatum
(separated body)” would because of its holy sites come under UN General
Assembly Resolution 181 providing in part that “Independent
Arab and Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City
of Jerusalem … shall come into existence in Palestine two months after
the evacuation of the armed forces of the mandatory Power has been
completed but in any case not later than 1 October 1948″. This failed
due to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Resolution 194 was to establish a
“Conciliation Commission” to be inclusive of Resolution 181. This
failed. Further elaborations were to come but an Israeli fait accompli
was to seal Palestinians’ fate when Ben-Gurion’s “Jewish Jerusalem” was
to be seen as inseparable from the now State of Israel and corpus
separatum untenable along with Resolution 181. Israel had shown its
clenched fist and was not to extend with any sincerity a hand of peace
to the Palestinians then or now.
Because of the above and international
community connivance and negligence, Palestinians have endured decades
of persecution and an illegal occupation that has seen (to bring us up
to date) during the right wing tenure of Netanyahu Benjamin an increase
of illegal settlements numbering in the region of 100,000. The
religiously fanatical, mostly armed occupants, routinely harass or
murder their unsettled, upturned, Caterpillar bulldozed Palestinian
neighbours and are encouraged to-do so by the right wing religiously
fanatical Israelis.
One state or two who knows? But we of
conscience must continue in our protestations over the brutal treatment
of Palestinians since the Nakba of 1948.
We must in observing the truth recognise
that we also stand in protective governance of our own senses and the
moral, ethical, lawful actions that inform the world of the presence of
justice, if only in our hearts and minds so by this virtue and in
humility speak for those muted by horrific violence and persecution. A
violent history as that of Israel cannot be consigned as past, as these
unjust antecedents fester and metastasize into a nexus newly formed
brigands. Willing to be obviated of criminality and expiated from sin
whilst perpetrating some of the worst crimes against a defenceless
people is not to be tolerated.
I finish with a quote by Howard Zinn from A peoples History of the United States 1492-present:
“I don’t want to invent victories for peoples movement. But to think
history-writing must aim simply to recapitulate the failures that
dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless
cycle of defeat.”
Clive Hambidge is Human Development Director at Facilitate Global. Clive can be contacted by email: clive.hambidge@facilitateglobal.org
The original source of this article is Facilitate Global
Copyright © Clive Hambidge, Facilitate Global, 2015
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