Articles |

Dec 24

Shadow over Bethlehem

Writing for The Times recently, Michael Gove lashed out at the seasonal focus on contemporary Bethlehem’s plight under Israeli occupation. “Demonising” Israel, apparently, has become as festive as “eggnog lattes”.

Gove is at least partly correct. Christmas is an obvious opportunity for Bethlehem’s residents and their supporters to raise awareness. Gove mentioned the latest work done by graffiti artist Banksy, but the Palestine Solidarity Campaign also recently held a concert in London, while the Amos Trust has a downloadable pack for use in churches around the country. Read more

Dec 8

Christian Palestinians

Until recently, a large proportion of Christians in the West were unaware that Christian Palestinians even existed. While there may now be an increased awareness of the body of Christ in Palestine, when not being ignored (unintentionally or otherwise) by the majority, our Palestinian brothers and sisters are often either co-opted for anti-Islam propaganda or looked on as a community to be pitied.

Christian Palestinians undoubtedly need our support and solidarity. From the shattering of their society with the expulsions of 1948 to the land theft and occupation-induced economic collapse in the West Bank today, many believers have despaired of finding freedom in their homeland and chosen emigration. Read more

Nov 30

Boycott: the backlash

In the UK, the Boycott campaign was launched by PSC six years ago. However, it has been attempts at a boycott of Israeli academic institutions that has really raised the profile of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) — and also provoked a fierce counter-movement.

Various bodies, like BICOM (Britain and Israel Communications & Research
Centre: http://www.stoptheboycott.org) and Engage (engageonline.org.uk), have
set up issue-specific websites; while the former may have deeper pockets,
Engage has proved to be more of a rallying point for the anti-boycotters. Their website includes voluminous attacks on the boycott and plenty of articles condemning what they perceive as an anti-Semitic singling-out of Israel. Read more

Nov 20

The Peace Paradigm

At the core of much of the discussions scheduled to take place in Annapolis later this month will be ‘rights’: human rights, refugee rights, the right to access holy sites, the right to live in peace and security. But when it comes to negotiating peace in Palestine/Israel there is a significant problem with the framework embraced by the majority of statesmen and analysts.

From the United Nations to the UK government, from the EU to Washington, everyone is agreed that some rights are not just sacrosanct in theory, but also in practice. While lip service is paid to Palestinian ‘rights’ of self-determination, three core Israeli rights are always assumed. Read more

Nov 15

A real peace process?

US support for Israel is public knowledge. The enormous military and economic aid figures are well known, as are the dozens of vetoed UN security council resolutions and “No” votes in the general assembly. The regular votes on Capitol Hill in solidarity with Israel and condemning “Palestinian terrorism” are not secret.

Somehow, however, journalists and analysts continue to maintain the fiction that the US-driven “peace process” is a sincere attempt at securing a just solution to the conflict in Palestine/Israel. The most that is ever acknowledged is that in the “Arab world” the US has a problem in perception as an “honest broker”; the weightiest criticism, incredibly, is that Washington is not doing enough. Read more

Nov 13

The one-state reality

A few weeks ago, the Oxford University Union held a debate on the “one-state solution” in Palestine/Israel. Before the speakers had even taken to the floor, however, the event was the focus of an intense controversy, over allegations that the Union organizers had buckled under pressure to cancel Norman Finkelstein’s appearance. Ghada Karmi, Ilan Pappe, and Avi Shlaim — all scheduled to speak on the opposite side of the floor to Finkelstein — pulled out in solidarity. [1] Read more

Nov 7

Facts on the ground

When Israeli politicians and diplomats leave for Annapolis later this month, they will be taking with them many more bargaining chips than the last time they participated in the peace charade. In fact, with every passing year of the occupation, Israel acquires a greater stockpile of ready-to-make “painful concessions”, from settler “outposts” and town-sized colonies, to Jewish-only roads and the Separation Wall.

Israel’s policy of creating “facts on the ground” in the Occupied Territories since 1967 has often been based on the assumption that should the state eventually be forced into some kind of negotiated “compromise”, the more land that has already been colonised then the more crumbs there are to toss from the table. The policy also exemplifies Israel’s strategic essence: more land, fewer Arabs. Read more

Oct 19

The moderate blindfold

We’ve had Live 8 and Live Earth, and this week, albeit on a smaller scale, we almost had One Million Voices. Organised by the OneVoice group, the declared aim was to bring together Palestinians and Israelis in simultaneous events in Tel Aviv, Jericho, London, Washington and Ottawa to voice support for the “moderates” and call for a negotiated two-state solution.

The plans fell through, amid bitter claim and counter-claim, as artists lined up for the Jericho event cancelled, and the Tel Aviv concert followed suit. This followed grassroots pressure by Palestinians who objected to what they see as yet another attempt to promote a false peace that fails to address the structural injustices driving the conflict. Read more

Oct 12

Christians in Palestine are more fearful

The murder last weekend of Rami Ayyad, the manager of the Bible Society bookshop in the Gaza Strip, is a shocking event. It is also another warning of the extent of the disintegration of Palestinian society, and the plight of the beleaguered Christian Palestinians.

Most reports placed Mr Ayyad’s death in the context of Palestinian Muslim-Christian relations, noting that in the Gaza Strip there are 3000 Christians out of a population of about 1.5 million. There was cross-society condemnation, from the ruling Hamas government to smaller political factions. Read more

Oct 12

Nonviolent resistance a means, not the end

In a recent article on the openDemocracy website, the rewritten Palestinian Authority policy document that replaced “muqawama” (resistance) with “popular struggle” was hailed as having “the potential to dramatically transform a conflict whose just resolution has continually eluded diplomats and militants.” [1] The writer Maria Stephan may be admired for her optimism about the possibility of large-scale mobilization in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) for a program of nonviolent resistance, but there is a twofold failure of contextualization that compromises her analysis. Read more