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Since
1977, on the 29th November of each year, the International
community has affirmed its solidarity with the Palestinian people. It is the
date on which the UN Assembly had adopted the resolution on the partition of
Palestine in 1947, which gave the 70% Palestinian population (at the time) 47%
of the land of Palestine, while in the other 53% of the land the state of Israel
was established.
After
more than 50 years of struggle, the ‘facts on the ground’ look like this:
The
Israeli government is building the Apartheid Wall, which annexes 47% of the West
Bank, isolating communities into bantustans, enclaves and ‘military zones’. The
Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza strip, including almost 1.5
million refugees, will be living on only 12% of historic Palestine.
And the
annexation of Palestinian land continues quietly and unabated. In the last week
of November 2005, the Israeli government has issued several tenders for the
illegal expansion of three large West Bank settlements (Ma’ale Adumim, Adam, and
Ariel), illegal according to international law and in contravention of Israel’s
obligations under the Road Map.
The
Israeli journalist Amira Hass reports that “according to the facts on the
ground, the [Palestinian] “state” will apparently be comprised of three enclaves
cut off from one another inside the West Bank
- in addition to the Gazan enclave,
and with no guarantee the [illegal Israeli] settlements inside the enclave will
be dismantled. The "separation fence" has been described as "temporary," but it
is a wall with hefty fortifications taking up a lot of land, and it has already
scarred the Tul Karm-Qalqiliyah area, the most prosperous Palestinian farmland,
thus sabotaging one of the cornerstones of Palestinian economic security.
“The
massive construction in Jerusalem and its environs, from Bethlehem to Ramallah,
and the Dead Sea to Modi'in, has already ruled out any Palestinian urban,
industrial or cultural development worthy of the name in the area of East
Jerusalem. The southern enclave of the West Bank, from Hebron to Bethlehem, will
be cut off from the central enclave of the Ramallah area by an ocean of
manicured Israeli settlements, tunnel roads and highways. The northern enclave,
from Jenin to Nablus, will be cut off from the center by the massive settlement
bloc of Ariel-Eli-Shiloh.”
In the
face of these ‘facts on the ground’, and looking at the Two-State solution,
could a Palestinian state (including Gaza and a bantustaned West Bank) be viable
according to the ‘Road Map’? And please, where should the almost two-and-a-half
million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria go? Nobody is
demanding that all refugees go back to Palestine; in any way this would
physically not be possible for insufficient space. But while the 8500 illegal
Israeli settles who where removed from the Gaza strip in September 2005 were
compensated with hundreds of thousands of US Dollars (USD 150’000-400’000 per
family) and were given a bonus of USD 30’000 if they would [illegally!] resettle
in the West Bank, none of the Palestinian refugees within Palestine/Israel, nor
outside of it has received any compensation so far. In additon to the annual
USD 2.8 billion aid, Israel has requested USD 2.2 billion from the US to pay for
the Gaza pullout.
The
Palestinian refugees in countries such as Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon
continue to suffer; more so because a solution to their plight seems further
than ever from being resolved, while the Malaysian rakyat and the world
community at large believe that the problem is being resolved, as reported by
the international mass media.
We at
MSRI are confronted more and more with the utter despair and desolation felt by
the Palestinian refugees, particularly the young people, in the camps in
Lebanon, where the fourth generation of refugees is growing up, and – if we do
nothing – the fifth and sixth generations will remain and raise their children
as refugees. They see no escape, no solution, and increasingly now dwindling
support due to a misinformed public.
MSRI’s
Sponsorship Programme for Palestinian Children in Refugee Camps in Lebanon
emphasizes the relationship between the sponsored child and their Malaysian
sponsors by way of exchanging letters and photographs. In addition to the money
of the sponsorship which is just a drop of water on a hot stone to keep the
children in school, this relationship with their sponsors opens up their
“refugee camp prison” a bit and is their proof that they have not been entirely
forsaken and forgotten.
We,
the people of Malaysia , have to reaffirm our solidarity with the Palestinians
now.
Harold
Pinter in his Nobel Price Lecture 2005 says: “
“I believe
that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce
intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the
real
truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon
us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope
of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.”
The
Palestinians need our ‘fierce intellectual determination as citizens’ to
continue to support them until a just solution has been found, which will enable
them to lead a live in dignity, not crammed into unhygienic camps, without any
human, social and political rights, without hope for adequate education, health
care, employment, and all other rights and entitlements that we Malaysians take
for granted.
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