Dr. Gandhi in the Holy Land
Am Johal | 31.08.2004 12:57 | Anti-racism | Repression | Social Struggles | London | World
Ramallah – The firetruck at the edge of the football
pitch was being used to spray water on the gathering
crowd. It was hot in midday Ramallah, but there were
a few vendors from Rukab’s ice cream milling about in
traditional clothes. Women were walking down the
hillside towards the political rally with pictures of
the dead. The Palestinians were waving the national
flag as the loudspeakers were blaring Arabic music in
anticipation of Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson. In the
world’s longest running international relations chess
match known as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Dr.
Gandhi’s visit left a ripple. He told the
Palestinians not to respond to Israeli aggression and
to set their own agenda. The night before he had
quoted Napoleon saying, “the general who holds the
initiative wins the war.”
As Dr. Arun Gandhi took to the stage with the Mufti of
Jerusalem, a representative from the Greek Orthodox
Church and others from the Palestinian Authority and
human rights organizations behind him, the audience
had reached over 5,000. He came with a message of
non-violence, as he had done the night before at the
Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, and told the
crowd, “Freedom is our birthright.”
The crowd had arrived on buses from the villages
throughout the West Bank in support of the prisoner’s
hunger strike for better conditions that was closing
in on its second week. Earlier in the month,
activists had marched through the West Bank from Jenin
to Jerusalem in a Freedom March.
Dr. Gandhi, head of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for
Nonviolence in the United States, told the crowd that
in this Holy Land where Moses, Jesus and Mohammed
roamed, Jews and Arabs needed to learn to live
together and that they should learn from South Africa
and India.
Gandhi spoke about how his grandfather had been
politicized by the 1919 massacre in Amritsar, India
when General Dyer’s British troops fired into a
protesting crowd and killed over 300 people. General
Dyer had ordered medical personnel not to treat the
injured for 72 hours. Non-British people were ordered
by troops to crawl on the sidewalks and were whipped
publicly. Mohandas Gandhi later said, “We cannot do
to the British, what they did to us. Let us liberate
them from their colonialism.”
Mahatmi Gandhi had originally been invited to
Palestine in 1931 when stories of his non-violent
methods in resisting the British had reached the
Middle East.
Dr. Gandhi told the crowd that they should not protest
violently, that they needed to be better than their
oppressors if they wanted to establish real change.
Instead they needed to channel their anger into a
popular non-violent struggle that had long term
objectives.
He cited further examples of non-violent resistance
such as when the protesting German spouses of Jewish
prisoners won the release of their partners from a
Berlin prison after the Nazi troops refused to fire on
them. He also gave a Norwegian example of how
teachers had refused to implement the Nazi curriculum.
Dr. Gandhi’s visit came as South African law professor
John Dugard, the special rapporteur for the United
Nations on the situation of human rights in the
Palestinian Territories wrote in a report to the UN
General Assembly that there is “an apartheid regime”in
the territories “worse than the one that existed in
South Africa.”
This was also the week that Israel announced 1,500 new
housing units in West Bank settlements despite all the
talk of the Gaza withdrawal. With the US led Roadmap
to Peace dead in its tracks, the facts on the ground
shifting towards Israeli expansionism in the West Bank
and all the supporting infrastructure that it entails,
over 4,000 dead Palestinians and Israelis since the
outbreak of violence in October 2000, some believe
there is a vacuum building in how to respond
effectively to the Occupation.
After the assassination of Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin
and Abdel Rantisi earlier this year, Israel has
continued to beat down violent forces in the
territories and expand its holdings in Jerusalem and
the West Bank. The ground has shifted so far from
even the Camp David Accords that Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and his Likud faction is openly engaged in a
land grab with tacit US support. Despite the recent
International Court of Justice decision condemning
Israel’s construction of the Separation Wall, and the
Supreme Court’s decision to reroute part of the wall
which runs through Palestinian territory, there is
still wide ranging and legitimate evidence to suggest
that Israel has effectively annexed the southern West
Bank south of Jerusalem, is expanding its territory in
Jerusalem and has engaged in further land confiscation
through methods including home demolitions, taking
over territory for bypass roads, new settlement
construction and infrastructure development to service
the expansion.
In the name of upholding Israeli security, they have
solidified the Occupation on the ground through the
use of bombs, tanks, bulldozers, movement
restrictions, construction of the Separation Wall and
through coercive methods of information gathering from
collaborators.
It came as a surprise to many this week when Attorney
General Menachem Mazuz, responding to the fallout from
the International Court of Justice decision on the
Separation Wall, recommended that Israel consider
adopting the Fourth Geneva Convention which outlines
responsibilities under international law for an
Occupying power of a civilian population under its
control. If Israel proceeded with the Attorney
General’s recommendation, there would be greater
enforcement mechanisms for violations of international
human rights law and humanitarian law. Israel still
contends that it is not an Occupying force because the
international community never officially recognized
Egyptian and Jordanian rule over the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank and as such, is not violating any
international agreements it has signed on to.
Dr. Gandhi spoke often of the civil rights movement in
the United States and the Apartheid system in South
Africa in the context of the 37 year Israeli
Occupation. Dr.Gandhi’s own father spent fifteen
years in jails in South Africa fighting against
apartheid.
“The first intifada was a better success because it
involved the whole Palestinian population and it
brought the masses to the streets,” said Mohammed
Alatar, leader of the US group Palestinians for Peace
and Democracy and one of the organizers of Dr.Gandhi’s
trip with East Jerusalem principal Terry Boulata and
another Ramallah based peace group formed after the
International Court of Justice decision regarding the
Separation Wall at The Hague.
The night before, a person in the audience at the
Ambassador Hotel welcomed Dr. Gandhi’s message and
said, “When you combine the power of popular
non-violent resistance with the enforcement of
international law, it can be very effective in
bringing about change.”
pitch was being used to spray water on the gathering
crowd. It was hot in midday Ramallah, but there were
a few vendors from Rukab’s ice cream milling about in
traditional clothes. Women were walking down the
hillside towards the political rally with pictures of
the dead. The Palestinians were waving the national
flag as the loudspeakers were blaring Arabic music in
anticipation of Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson. In the
world’s longest running international relations chess
match known as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Dr.
Gandhi’s visit left a ripple. He told the
Palestinians not to respond to Israeli aggression and
to set their own agenda. The night before he had
quoted Napoleon saying, “the general who holds the
initiative wins the war.”
As Dr. Arun Gandhi took to the stage with the Mufti of
Jerusalem, a representative from the Greek Orthodox
Church and others from the Palestinian Authority and
human rights organizations behind him, the audience
had reached over 5,000. He came with a message of
non-violence, as he had done the night before at the
Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, and told the
crowd, “Freedom is our birthright.”
The crowd had arrived on buses from the villages
throughout the West Bank in support of the prisoner’s
hunger strike for better conditions that was closing
in on its second week. Earlier in the month,
activists had marched through the West Bank from Jenin
to Jerusalem in a Freedom March.
Dr. Gandhi, head of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for
Nonviolence in the United States, told the crowd that
in this Holy Land where Moses, Jesus and Mohammed
roamed, Jews and Arabs needed to learn to live
together and that they should learn from South Africa
and India.
Gandhi spoke about how his grandfather had been
politicized by the 1919 massacre in Amritsar, India
when General Dyer’s British troops fired into a
protesting crowd and killed over 300 people. General
Dyer had ordered medical personnel not to treat the
injured for 72 hours. Non-British people were ordered
by troops to crawl on the sidewalks and were whipped
publicly. Mohandas Gandhi later said, “We cannot do
to the British, what they did to us. Let us liberate
them from their colonialism.”
Mahatmi Gandhi had originally been invited to
Palestine in 1931 when stories of his non-violent
methods in resisting the British had reached the
Middle East.
Dr. Gandhi told the crowd that they should not protest
violently, that they needed to be better than their
oppressors if they wanted to establish real change.
Instead they needed to channel their anger into a
popular non-violent struggle that had long term
objectives.
He cited further examples of non-violent resistance
such as when the protesting German spouses of Jewish
prisoners won the release of their partners from a
Berlin prison after the Nazi troops refused to fire on
them. He also gave a Norwegian example of how
teachers had refused to implement the Nazi curriculum.
Dr. Gandhi’s visit came as South African law professor
John Dugard, the special rapporteur for the United
Nations on the situation of human rights in the
Palestinian Territories wrote in a report to the UN
General Assembly that there is “an apartheid regime”in
the territories “worse than the one that existed in
South Africa.”
This was also the week that Israel announced 1,500 new
housing units in West Bank settlements despite all the
talk of the Gaza withdrawal. With the US led Roadmap
to Peace dead in its tracks, the facts on the ground
shifting towards Israeli expansionism in the West Bank
and all the supporting infrastructure that it entails,
over 4,000 dead Palestinians and Israelis since the
outbreak of violence in October 2000, some believe
there is a vacuum building in how to respond
effectively to the Occupation.
After the assassination of Hamas leaders Sheikh Yassin
and Abdel Rantisi earlier this year, Israel has
continued to beat down violent forces in the
territories and expand its holdings in Jerusalem and
the West Bank. The ground has shifted so far from
even the Camp David Accords that Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon and his Likud faction is openly engaged in a
land grab with tacit US support. Despite the recent
International Court of Justice decision condemning
Israel’s construction of the Separation Wall, and the
Supreme Court’s decision to reroute part of the wall
which runs through Palestinian territory, there is
still wide ranging and legitimate evidence to suggest
that Israel has effectively annexed the southern West
Bank south of Jerusalem, is expanding its territory in
Jerusalem and has engaged in further land confiscation
through methods including home demolitions, taking
over territory for bypass roads, new settlement
construction and infrastructure development to service
the expansion.
In the name of upholding Israeli security, they have
solidified the Occupation on the ground through the
use of bombs, tanks, bulldozers, movement
restrictions, construction of the Separation Wall and
through coercive methods of information gathering from
collaborators.
It came as a surprise to many this week when Attorney
General Menachem Mazuz, responding to the fallout from
the International Court of Justice decision on the
Separation Wall, recommended that Israel consider
adopting the Fourth Geneva Convention which outlines
responsibilities under international law for an
Occupying power of a civilian population under its
control. If Israel proceeded with the Attorney
General’s recommendation, there would be greater
enforcement mechanisms for violations of international
human rights law and humanitarian law. Israel still
contends that it is not an Occupying force because the
international community never officially recognized
Egyptian and Jordanian rule over the Gaza Strip and
the West Bank and as such, is not violating any
international agreements it has signed on to.
Dr. Gandhi spoke often of the civil rights movement in
the United States and the Apartheid system in South
Africa in the context of the 37 year Israeli
Occupation. Dr.Gandhi’s own father spent fifteen
years in jails in South Africa fighting against
apartheid.
“The first intifada was a better success because it
involved the whole Palestinian population and it
brought the masses to the streets,” said Mohammed
Alatar, leader of the US group Palestinians for Peace
and Democracy and one of the organizers of Dr.Gandhi’s
trip with East Jerusalem principal Terry Boulata and
another Ramallah based peace group formed after the
International Court of Justice decision regarding the
Separation Wall at The Hague.
The night before, a person in the audience at the
Ambassador Hotel welcomed Dr. Gandhi’s message and
said, “When you combine the power of popular
non-violent resistance with the enforcement of
international law, it can be very effective in
bringing about change.”
Am Johal
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
Consider what's required to wear the label: "Pro-Palestinian."
31.08.2004 13:22
You must refer to those who send such children on suicide/mass murder missions as "political leaders or, even better, as spiritual leaders. Call them militants if you must, but never terrorists.
To be thought of as pro-Palestinian, you must cite the plight of the Palestinian refugees as a key motivation for violence, ignoring the fact that there would have been no refugees had Israel's Arab neighbors not launched a war to destroy the tiny Jewish state immediately upon its birth. Indeed, Arabs who chose to stay in Israel are today Israeli citizens, as are their children, enjoying more freedoms than do the citizens of neighboring Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia or even Jordan. Disregard all this if you want to be seen as someone who cares about Palestinians.
Supporters of Palestinians must point to the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank as another root cause of violence. Avoid mentioning that it was a second Arab war against Israel that led to the seizure of those territories which, at that time, were not called Palestinian territories. Gaza was administered by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan and no one demanded that they be turned them over to Palestinian sovereignty. The Israelis captured the Sinai as well. That territory, several times larger than all of Israel, was returned to Egypt in exchange for a piece of paper promising peace. Forget these awkward details.
To burnish your pro-Palestinian credentials, even as you rail against the Israeli occupation, say nothing positive about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to end that occupation entirely in Gaza and to withdraw Israeli troops and settlements from 85 percent of the West Bank. In Orwellian fashion, insist that Mr. Sharon is giving up those lands as part of a land grab.
While it is true that at Camp David in 2000, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered about 95% of the West Bank and Gaza, Yassir Arafat turned that offer down and initiated several years of terrorist attacks. Even so, Mr. Sharon has said he's willing to consider further withdrawal, to discuss permanent borders, though he won't negotiate with those dispatching terrorists.
Dismiss all that as irrelevant -- if you want to be described as someone who sympathizes with the Palestinians. Also, continue to insist that Israelis eventually must agree to a right to return - that they must let millions of Palestinians settle not just in an independent Palestinian state next to Israel but in Israel itself.
Promote this idea even if you're savvy enough to know it can never happen, just as Hindus can never re-settle in what is today Muslim Pakistan, just as Greek Christians can never re-settle in what is today Muslim Turkey, just as the million Jews forced to flee from Arab countries after World War II can never return to what were, for centuries, their homes.
In fact, Israelis with roots in Arab countries today comprise about half of Israel's population. They may understand better than anyone else that a Palestinian right to return would mean the end of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people, that Jews would become a minority in what would no longer be the world's only predominately Jewish state. And that's a frightening thought because, sadly, few minorities living in the 22 Arab countries and the more than 50 predominately Muslim nations enjoy anything approaching freedom and equality.
Such freedom and equality may be achieved in Iraq in the years ahead -- though not if the dictators of Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia can help it, and not if the Palestinian political and spiritual leaders who supported Saddam Hussein and who now oppose the American occupation have anything to do with it.
Nor should Friends of Palestine plan for the opportunities that the Israeli withdrawals will present.
Don't even think about the Israeli homes that will be turned over to Palestinian families, the hotels that could be built along the Mediterranean. Forget about foreign investors, new hospitals and schools. And certainly don't talk about cooperation with Israel. On the contrary, shrug when Hamas terrorists bomb the checkpoints through which Gazans pass on their way to work in Israeli factories. But should the Israelis respond by closing those checkpoints, complain vehemently that the Israelis are cutting off the livelihood of Palestinian workers.
The United Nations is very pro-Palestinian. That's why UN experts are not hard at work drafting a plan to give Palestinians more say over who governs them. Arafat was elected Palestinian leader? He ran exactly one time in 35 years and in that election he was opposed by a woman whose name few can recall and who hadn't a ghost of a chance. Surely, that's as much democracy as any reasonable person could desire for Palestinians.
Perhaps someday people will look back in astonishment on all this. Perhaps someday the term pro-Palestinian will be redefined to include those who would urge Palestinians to seek compromise and peaceful co-existence with their neighbors, build a real economy, and discourage their children from suicide, murder and mutilation. Right now, however, these are wildly radical notions.
Clifford D. May
breaking news
31.08.2004 14:18
At least 12 people have been killed in simultaneous explosions on two buses in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, Israeli medical sources say.
More than 80 people were injured - some of them seriously - in the blasts, which wrecked both buses.
Soon after the two explosions, Israel radio and television reported that there had been a third blast in Beersheba, but this was later found to have been a false alarm.
Among the dead is believed to be Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mohandas 'Mahatma' Ghandi. Dr Ghandi was in the region on a speaking tour.
rep