Photo: Active Stills. Palestinian worshippers trying to reach Jerusalem in Ramadan.
In the 2007 publication “Hollow Land“, Eyal Weizman, the Israeli-born, London-based architect, reconceptualized geopolitics in the Occupied Territories. The political space created by Israeli apartheid is a web of total domination and control over Palestinians. The architecture and urban planning inside the territories demonstrate a late-modern colonial occupation. Israel owns the subterranean aquifers beneath Gaza and the West Bank, controls the airspace above, and has weaved a web of Israeli only settlements, highways, and security perimeters throughout the West Bank, while turning Gaza into an open-air prison.
According to Weizman, the natural and built features of the landscape function as weapons and ammunition for the conflict. The Occupied Territories have become a series of layers and territories, each manipulated by the Israeli authorities. Borders are porous for Israelis but solid for Palestinians. Checkpoints are a source of humiliation.
Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, recently delivered his report to the General Assembly.
He cited continued “abuse of international humanitarian law” associated with the “separation wall”, “children fatalities due to Israeli use of excessive force” to quell nonviolent demonstrations, and abuses at border crossings.
As the scale of the global financial crisis becomes clearer and its repercussions are felt in every corner of the world, the extent to which entire societies will suffer will depend partly on the quality of their governance systems. Those countries with governments that enjoy the respect and confidence of their citizens are likely to weather the stresses more easily than countries where politicians are viewed with disdain.
I suspect the Middle East, and its Arab countries in particular, will be hard hit by the crisis, for several reasons. The main one is that during the past 35 years since the oil boom of the early 1970s, most Arab countries have not risen to the challenge of responsible governance by developing economies based on productive industries and other economic sectors.
For Israel, the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war was all about questions. What mistakes were made, and who made them? What could be done to restore the Israeli military’s “deterrence” after a widely perceived defeat? In general, what lessons could be learned from the confrontation with Hizbullah in order that next time, there would be no question of failure?
Unfortunately, it seems that entirely the wrong kinds of conclusions are being reached, at least in the military hierarchy and among the policy shaping thinktanks. On Friday, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper published comments made by Israeli general Gadi Eisenkot, head of the army’s northern command. Eisenkot took the opportunity to share the principles shaping plans for a future war.
Hundreds of tunnels under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt are keeping many of the Palestinian territory’s 1.5 million impoverished residents supplied with food and fuel.
Photo: Anne Paq. Palestinian worshipers trying to reach Jerusalem during Ramadan.
The strategic value of international solidarity with the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, refugees in the Diaspora and Palestinians in Israel raises some fundamental questions. The most immediate and urgent are: what the nature of international solidarity should be and how it can best support the Palestinian struggle for self-determination?
International solidarity needs, first and foremost, to address the ways in which colonial Zionism has followed and continues to follow the Bantustanization policy of apartheid South Africa. There is also an imperative to address the severe damage that the Oslo Accords have caused to the Palestinian struggle, given the degree of confusion that these accords have created in the international arena.
Artists Against Apartheid in Montreal captured in photo and video, an incredible cultural event which united many celebrated artists as part of the global campaign against Israeli apartheid through an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions on the Israeli government.
