Following the British withdrawal from Palestine in 1948 the newly declared State of Israel was accepted into the United Nations on condition that it accept the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees. (Admission of Israel to membership in the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 of May 11, 1949 ) This requires Israel to comply with General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 11, 1948 to which Israel agreed. Since then the world has watched warily, the inevitable outcome of a blatant and continuous ‘land grab’ of Palestinian ancestral homelands. Despite repeated international efforts, no provision has been made to repatriate the 80,000 Palestinians made homeless following Israeli occupation of disputed territories after the subsequent Arab/Israeli war of 1967. The continuous, illegal appropriation of land by a policy of Settlement building in the West Bank (proclaimed illegal by the United Nations) is accelerating. This is an effective method used by colonial powers world wide as a means of ousting indigenous populations to disavow them of land and property rights. Despite global condemnation and UN censure there has been no attempt to sanction Israel
The annual Palestine Land Day March 30th commemorates events in 1976 when Palestinians held marches and general strikes in response to the Israeli governments plan to expropriate lands in Galilee. Riots erupted and were suppressed by the Israeli Defense Forces and police. Six Arab citizens were killed with around a hundred injured. More than forty years later the protests continue. In March 2018 Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and live ammunition killing 18 Palestinians and injuring more than 1,500..
Freedom is always bought at a price and too often in blood, for power is never relinquished voluntarily by those who wield it. Requests are never enough, demands are ineffective, only a refusal to comply with systems and regimes designed to crush the human spirit can change the dynamic. When the slow fuse of civil disobedience is ignored for decades a militant response becomes the last resort.
Mahatma Ghandi’s warning that the right to self defence is imperative should be heeded. He demonstrated his ethic of non violence not in passivity but as an active opposition force through civil disobedience. Ghandi helped recruit Indian soldiers in WW1, when asked whether violence was ever appropriate he stated that ‘we should have the ability to defend ourselves, that is, the ability to bear arms and to use them‘…. ‘But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence’
Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for what today would be classified as terrorism, resorted to violence in an effort to overthrow the oppressive South African regime and paid the price. In a week which marks the passing of Winnie Mandikizela – Mandela, his wife of 38 years, we have a stark reminder of how even the most courageous and determined freedom fighters are irrevocably scarred by continuous humiliation, turning in desperation at times to violence. Winnie Mandela endured repeated imprisonment, torture and separation from her children and her people for refusing to submit to a vicious system of apartheid during her husbands 27 years of incarceration. Her controversial actions did little to dim the light of Mandela but sadly diminished her role as Mother of the Nation.
In response to the militant stance of the Black Power movement following the Watts riots of 1965, Martin Luther King Jnr famously said: ‘A riot is the language of the unheard’. He wrote: Cowardice asks the question – is it safe? Expediency asks the question – is it politic?
Vanity asks the question – is it popular?
But conscience asks the question – is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position
that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.
Violence is an ultimate response to intransigence and the unwillingness to share power equitably. We do not have a Ghandi, a King or a Mandela in these troubled times. It would be expedient for Israel to acknowledge that for the Palestinian question ever to be resolved there must be a restoration of nationhood and land. As the occupying force, Israel holds the power position, it is therefore incumbent upon them to initiate change in what has become a war of attrition. Far from being diminished they would then be acting in accordance with the tenets of the religion which guides them.
See: Jerusalem – A pocket history for Trump
Jimmy Carter unveils truth about Israel (2009)