To talk about Palestine and defend the rights of the Palestinians is to step into a minefield: the whole world can stand against you. This situation can be tougher for non-Arabs who challenge the policies of their governments to honourably defend the human rights of Palestinians in ways that sometimes dwarf all Arab efforts made in this regard and make Arabs blush.
I attended a conference on “Human Rights in Palestine”, held from September 11 to 13 in Australia. The conference, organised by National Australian University, focused on economic, social and cultural rights in occupied Palestinian territories.
Richard Folk, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, delivered the inaugural speech. Folk started by reminding those present of the human rights of Palestinians. He ended the speech by talking of the cultural rights of Palestinians. He reminded everyone of a poem by the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
Titled “History, always remember that I am an Arab”, the poem tells the story of the struggle of the Palestinians and the righteousness of their cause. The poem talks about the legitimate nature of defending oneself, one’s country, and one’s national identity. It talks about these issues in a world where survival is for the strongest and a culture of theft outrivals everything else against the background of the Balfour Declaration, which is still safeguarded by the British official’s conspiring international descendants.
The fire alarm rang aloud on the evening of the inauguration of the conference. When the audience rushed outside, they discovered that it was not rung randomly. The conference organiser, an Australian advocate of Palestinian human rights, said she was always faced with similar situations when she organised conferences to defend the Palestinian cause.
I met the conference organiser on the second day of the event. She said a virus had made the main display equipment of the conference break down. This meant that speeches by several professors from different academic backgrounds, universities and rights organisations would not be displayed.
The organiser, however, had an alternative display device ready so that the show, or more accurately, the struggle, could go on.
When the Head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition arrived to deliver his speech about the suffering of the Palestinian people, the fire alarm rang aloud again. This time, however, it was accompanied by a voice, which declared that it was a rehearsal for a real emergency situation.
The question that arose then was, should alarms ring at any time? It was a conspiracy decried by a large number of professors around me.
The introduction by the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition talked about Israeli confiscation of Palestinian lands and construction of Israeli settlements in place of houses for Palestinians. He said there could be no homeland for the Palestinian people as a whole when there is no home for individual Palestinians.
Attempts to disrupt the conference were not confined to the conference ground. One of those present stood up one day and said Australian newspapers were against the conference. He quoted a headline from one of the newspapers, which said: “Israel lashes out at opposition conference that adds nothing to the National Australian University”.
The newspaper even accused the organisers of the conference of taking sides and squandering public funds. It said the conference harmed the reputation of the university and its academics.
The organising professor, however, reacted in a courageous and daring manner. “We do not read tabloid newspapers,” she replied.
I got the impression that the aforementioned headline was given by a small newspaper. But I found out later that the news was published by one of Australia’s largest and oldest newspapers, The Australian.
I started to understand the matter even better when I found out that the controversial piece was published in the opinion page. Certainly, this was a point of view aiming to prevent all types of support going to the conference and tighten the noose around the other point of view, expressed in the rights argument presented during the conference, a long time after rights were usurped in the corridors of politics manipulated by Balfour and his descendants.
Palestine was called, in the language of the conference speakers, the occupied Palestinian territories. I, however, liked to call it occupied Palestine. Israel was called Israel, but I insist on call this country the “occupying entity”. We need to stick to this name.
Palestine is an occupied land, even if it evolves into a state through any process of humiliating swap under the land-for-peace formula. The question is: which land are we talking about here?
The Palestinians were denied the right to use their lands despite all the concessions they offered in the painful Oslo Accords, which were driven by ideological motivations that aimed to boost the occupation through a religious argument that sought to spread Judaisation and settlement building. This is a struggle in which religion is used to serve the expansionist projects of the occupation regime on Arab lands in the West Bank, which is being quickly Judaised now.
The conference was held at an important time. It was when peace negotiations were being resumed at the international level. Despite the fact that the organisers of the conference made great efforts to invite to it a host of senior figures, the usurping of Palestinian rights was still something that was taken for granted even at the level of conferences, seminars, academic arguments and non-governmental organisations.
Away from the conference, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian Human Rights delivered an important lecture. The lecture was titled “Palestinian-Israeli peace talks … why now?”
He said there was no indication yet that the negotiations would be successful. This was perhaps why Folk used the aforementioned question as a title for his lecture. The title of the lecture was particularly important after the Arab Spring. The Spring was not so promising, in fact.
Several questions arise as the UN General Assembly meeting is on. What is the importance of the UN as far as all these violations are concerned? How effective are reports about Israeli violations made by people like Folk under the UN system dominated by lobbies. What about our membership and our funding as independent countries that have their own decisions and views?
