Checkpoint: Only BDS Can End The Nakba
Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency
On May 15, Palestinians across the world commemorated Nakba Day. Far from being a celebration, it marks the anniversary of the formation of the State of Israel, the forced exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral lands and the beginning of over 70 years of oppression. Professor Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, has said “What has happened in Palestine over the last century has to be understood as a war waged on the Palestinians”.
When Israel came into existence in 1948 it was conceived as a Jewish ethnostate, mandating the ethnic cleansing of most of the Palestinian Arab population from territory that would become the State of Israel. Thus, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, over 11,000 Palestinians were killed and over 750,000 were forced to flee. Today, Palestinian refugees number around 5 million, living in refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan.
This is the history that Palestinians reflect on during the anniversary of the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe”.
However, the Nakba is an ongoing, rather than historical, process. Over the years Israel has continued to consolidate its control over historic Palestine, far beyond the borders of the 1947 UN partition plan. The occupied West Bank is under de facto military rule by the Israeli Defence Forces, who regularly murder and intimidate the Palestinian population while encouraging the building of Israeli settlements in breach of International Law.
Israel-Palestine Conflict Deaths, Sept. 2009 - Sept. 2019
The Israeli Government withdrew their Armed Forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but their blockage of the small coastal enclave has essentially turned Gaza into the world’s largest concentration camp. Aid supplies are tightly controlled, essential infrastructure such as hospitals and water treatment plants are regularly bombed, and protests on the border are met with merciless sniper fire.
During the ‘Great March of Return’ protests from 2018 to 2019, the victims of Israeli snipers included children, and clearly marked journalists and medical personnel.
Although 138 countries across the world have recognized the State of Palestine, and Palestine holds observer status at the UN, 2020 is shaping up to be one of the bleakest years in Palestinian history since the Nakba began 72 years ago. Ostensibly as a response to the COVID19 pandemic sweeping the globe, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’ Blue and White Party have put aside their differences to form a unity government in Israel.
After three General Elections, the coalition has allowed Netanyahu to embark on his fifth term as Prime Minister of the Knesset. More importantly, it has allowed the Government to announce plans to begin the annexation of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank as soon as July.
The fact that these settlements exist, let alone plans to annex them into the Israeli State, is a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Beyond the legal ramifications of such a move, however, are the impacts on the possibility of the two-state solution. Losing the land currently occupied by Israeli settlers would leave a future Palestinian State as a fragmented collection of scattered and incohesive enclaves dotted around their former territory, impossible to govern effectively or even at all.
Israel is destroying the two-state solution with no intention of switching to the less popular one-state solution: a single state governing all of historic Palestine with equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Palestinians are also facing a challenge in the form of Donald Trump’s presidency of the USA. Like a schoolteacher playing favourites in the classroom, Trump has never even pretended to exert any measure of impartiality in his handling of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He has moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a city claimed as a capital by both states. Trump has cut aid funding for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. He has recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, an occupied Syrian territory. Also, his State Department has flouted international law by supporting the illegal settlements in the West Bank.
Trump’s peace plan for the region, announced in two parts in June 2019 and January 2020, was put together without any input from Palestinian authorities, and it shows. Under the plan, Palestinian losses include Jerusalem as a capital, the right to have any armed forces, the right to contest Israeli annexations, and the right to take legal action under international law against Israel. It’s no wonder that Netanyahu has described Trump as “The greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House”.
With politicians, more often than not, unwilling to take decisive action against Israel for its war crimes, what can the average citizen do to help the plight of the Palestinians? One answer is to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. BDS is aimed at increasing pressure on Israel in every aspect of society to encourage a conciliatory approach to the conflict. The movement takes much of its inspiration from the Boycott movement against Apartheid South Africa, which succeeded in bringing about the end of that racist regime.
Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky has gone further in his comparison of the two scenarios, emphasizing the importance of bringing America into line with the majority of the international community. According to him, South Africa only caved to international pressure on Apartheid when the US withdrew its support. In the same way, he has said, “Israel will of course do whatever it can as long as the U.S. authorizes it. As soon as the U.S. tells it no, that’s the end”.
Every country must play its part in making Israel a pariah nation until they recognize the sovereign right of the Palestinians to statehood. Trade must be sanctioned, foreign investment must be pulled out, produce must be boycotted and cultural ties must be cut. But the efforts of the international community will be in vain if American society does not throw itself behind the BDS movement en masse.
As long as America is willing to support Israel, the Israelis will never have cause to stop their war crimes and reach a real peace with the Palestinians. In other words the Nakba, the catastrophe, will never end.