The Musical Intifadah - Music For Human Rights - Speech at Dutch Social Forum (NSF)

Mustafa Barghouthi, with a set of excellent slides showing maps and figures, stressed the urgency of the reality on the ground, and unmasked the realities behind ‘Olmert’s plan.’ Prof. Rima Hammami gave a brilliant analysis of the social survival mechanisms of the Palestinian people, under such extreme conditions. She also expressed her worries over how much more pressure these remarkable survival mechanisms can handle. Akiva Eldar, in his own words, played the ‘devil’s advocate’, in order to explain the way that many among the Israelis experience the political developments.

What follows here is the original text of the speech of Tariq Shadid, which was presented in a much looser form, due to time considerations. Shadid had been asked by the seminar organizers to focus on ‘Europe’s role’.

Europe’s Role

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for allowing me to use some of your time, and share some thoughts with you about the European role in current developments. But before we get to that, I would like to take you back a few years, to a time period associated with the name of the Norwegian capital, a name that will never anymore mean just ‘The Norwegian Capital’ to a Palestinian, namely Oslo.

When we entered the 21st century, the road from Oslo to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, which had started in 1993, had already proved to be a difficult one, and a string of stalemates had already given rise to talks in Taba, Sharm el Sheikh and Camp David, without result.

While the word “Peace Process” had already become shrouded in scepticism to most Middle Easterners, it was important, especially for the Israelis, that the European and American public stayed firm believers in the concept, because this had so far proved to provide a cover for Israel’s ongoing colonisation strategy.

While the world was dragged into becoming an audience to the soap opera of failed talks, which served mainly to create the impression that there was, at least, still a process of dialogue going on, Zionist settlement continued to encroach upon acre after acre of Palestinian lands. Since the ‘failed talks’ would have only been called ‘successful talks’ if they had resulted in further Palestinian capitulations, they also served as an important tool for laying the blame for the deadlocks on the Palestinian side.

This was never illustrated more clearly than when Yasser Arafat, Palestine’s national symbol, was not only attacked with a full-fledged smear campaign, crushing his international status as Nobel Prize winner and rendering him suspect of ‘aiding terrorist attacks’, but was also subjected to a humiliating siege in the Muqata, in order to make the total Israeli stranglehold on all Palestinians tangible and visible.

The ‘Peace Process’ mantra had been promoted so strongly, that even when Ariel Sharon ignited the Second Intifada, it still took more than a year before mass media began to change its program towards an admittance, of the failure of the Peace Process. Subsequently, Oslo was ‘declared dead’, only to be replaced by a ‘Road Map’, presented by the ‘Quartet.’ The mythological Phoenix resurrects itself from the ashes when it is burned, in quite a similar way.

Many people say: the Oslo process failed. Personally, I don’t believe Oslo ever failed. Oslo was one of the most successful examples of modern-day colonial strategy, and enabled Israel to acquire more land, and double its settlements, with less international disapproval, than in any other phase in Israel's occupation history.

While the world was kept busy watching the soap opera of images of Palestinian and Israeli spokesmen walking away from negotiating tables, Israeli illegal settlement expansion, expropriation of lands, and most importantly, a network of colonisation infrastructure consisting mainly of roads, settlements and fences, all continued, on illegally occupied and often on newly confiscated land. IN fact , this process continued at a higher pace after than before the Oslo agreements.

While there is extensive documentation available to corroborate these facts, the simplest equation proves this point more clearly than anything else, namely the fact that Israel doubled its settler population in occupied Palestinian land from 200,000 to 400,000 during the Oslo decade. In other words, while Palestinian officials were supposedly negotiating the return of illegally stolen lands, in order to create the basis for a viable Palestinian state, in reality, the Israeli’s only stepped up their land grab practices, instead of downgrading them, in violation of all international laws and agreements, including the Oslo accords themselves.

With the burial of Oslo, and its replacement by the Road Map mantra, supposedly drawn up by a Quartet consisting of Europe, the United Nations, the United States and Russia, a new phase in Israel’s master plan of colonization was initiated: the separation wall, termed Apartheid Wall by the Palestinians, because it separates peoples according to ethnic divides, in the name of the so-called “demographic factor”.

The Wall, cutting deep into Palestinian land, and constituting yet another phase of massive Israeli land theft from the Palestinian people, was condemned as illegal by a ruling from the International Court of Justice in 2004.

The bitter irony of Palestine’s recent history, is that the current situation of facts on the ground unilaterally violates not only a vast number of United Nations Resolutions, and international treaties like the 4^th Geneva convention, but the very same agreements that were signed in the last decade of the twentieth century, including Oslo.

The ‘Peace’ carrot that was dangled on a stick in front of everyone’s eyes in order to be able to execute phase after phase of Israel’s territorial expansion and colonisation plans, has now been removed, and replaced by “Unilateral Disengagement.” In some inexplicable way, Western media even managed to sell this announcement by Olmert’s Kadima party, as a positive development. Luckily, voices of reason are not entirely absent. Former American president Jimmy Carter, the man who managed to seal a peace deal between Egypt and Israel, wrote a piece a few days ago, entitled “Israel’s New Plan: a Land Grab.” I would advise everyone to read that, before starting to call me a radical

With all the above, I have tried to illustrate, that all diplomatic processes we have witnessed in the past decades, have only been ruled by the Israeli agenda. This is not something to marvel at: the unimaginable difference in political, military and economical strength between the two sides could barely have yielded any other results, UNLESS this difference is compensated for by an outside force that has the ability to exert pressure on behalf of the weaker party. This, until today, has still never been the case.

Speaking in terms of cultural ties, and ironically even in terms of resources, this outside force should normally have been the Arab League. However, the political reality we all know, is not determined by any other factor than simply that of military power. In this equation, especially when seen against the background of the history of the 20^th century, which features a successful, Machiavellian-styled division of the Arab world, the most logical choice becomes Europe, especially since the United States seem to have stopped even pretending to be honest brokers, but have been offering every subsequent Israeli government their full-fledged support.

As you may have noticed, in the above short outline of recent history, Europe seems to have been practically absent. However, in a way, the opposite is true.

Financially, Europe has been involved to a great extent. After the Oslo agreements, millions of dollars from Europe, but also from America, were pumped into the Palestinian Authority’s bank accounts, in order to provide it with the means of setting up a local authority and a police force. In the second Intifada however, roughly in the same period when Israel was waging a ferocious campaign against Arafat, a substantial proportion of what had been built with this foreign money, including an entire Dutch-financed and -built sea port, was bombed into smithereens by the Israeli army.

However, Europe’s political involvement in the past years seems, on the whole, to have been close to zero. Undoubtedly, some European diplomats and government officials held talks with Palestinian Authority spokespeople, especially during the Oslo era, and undoubtedly, Europe, as part of the Quartet, has payed its lip service to the Road Map they supposedly helped draw up.

But once the ‘Quartet’ had launched it’s ‘Road Map’, it virtually disappeared from the arena. The only outspoken member of the Quartet remained the US. Where were Europe’s efforts in trying to reinforce the proceedings as described in these documents?

How many diplomatic missions have we seen visiting Tel Aviv, in order to pressure the Israeli government to pursue the goals described in these agreements, like halting the building of new settlements, allowing the Palestinian Authority to exercise its administrative and social responsibilities, and refraining from land confiscation?
The cruel reality was, that the more Israel stepped up its aggression, and its colonisation efforts, such as when they commenced the building of the Apartheid Wall – the more absent the Europeans became.

Europe’s unification has, until now, proved to yield negative results for the Palestinians. In former times, especially countries like Spain and Greece would sometimes issue statements of solidarity for the Palestinians, or condemnations of Israeli aggressions. After the forming of the EU, the bureaucratic slowness of a vast apparatus that has to create consensus over issues before being able to issue a statement, has put the European Union in a state of apathy when it comes to Palestinian matters.

Now, unfortunately, the EU has decided to back up the US-Israeli strategy of besieging, starving and suffocating the Palestinian people into submission, as a punishment for electing Hamas into the PA government. I am hoping that other speakers on this forum will focus on the details of the dramatic situations ensuing from this siege, and the possible humanitarian disasters that await the Palestinians if this continues.

The main problem, in my opinion, and that’s why I began with that look back into the history of the past decades, is that I believe that many Europeans are still stuck in the mind-frame that was presented to them during the Oslo era. On the basis of the information that is presented to them through their biased media, this is even partly understandable.

Many Europeans do not realize, that when we talk about the West Bank today, we are not referring to the same area that existed when Rabin and Arafat shook hands. In fact, there is no more West Bank. To refer to that same geopolitical entity, of what remained of Western Palestine after the first massive Zionist land grab and ethnic cleansing of 1948, as an integral unity called the West Bank , would be to imply that this area can still be viewed as one contiguous area. In reality, not only its outer borders have changed drastically, due to the position of the Wall , which cuts deep chunks out of Palestinian land annexing them to Israel, but the cutting up into separated cantons of the inner parts of this region is also advancing rapidly.

To realize this, for the Europeans would mean to concede that it is Israel, not the Palestinians, who has violated all the accords in the worst possible way, namely by stealing land while negotiating about the return of land.

To be punishing the Hamas government, by cutting off its aid, after having allowed Israeli occupation forces to destroy all possibilities of economic sustenance, like the massive uprooting of hundreds of thousands of olive trees and destruction of other cultivated crops, the confiscation of cultivated land from its owners, and not allowing people to travel to their workplace, amounts to joining in the siege of the Palestinian people. Is this Europe’s response to a problem, that was created on European soil, and that has continued to victimize the Palestinian people ever since Israel has been allowed to exert its land hunger upon the region?

I have been very negative about Oslo, and I am not alone in that. Yet the one and important positive thing it has engraved forever in the hearts and minds of all the inhabitants of this planet, is the fact that almost everyone in this world, except a tiny minority of unfortunately very mighty people, now is firmly convinced the Palestinians have a right to full statehood.

Now that Israel has been allowed to create its accomplished facts on the ground, already rendering genuine statehood for the Palestinian people an utter impossibility, if they are unilaterally declared as borders, as has been announced by Olmert’s Kadima party ….

Are the Palestinians expected to simply discard their national aspirations, and accept the restrictions of Bantustan-self-governance, and look forward to a weak and impoverished life in the hugest human open air prisons ever documented in the history of mankind?

Is Israel attempting to cause a third wave of Palestinian refugees, by creating prison-like conditions for the people that make life so unbearable, or impossible, that they feel forced to leave merely in order to survive?
If the theory, that extreme situations give rise to extreme ideas, holds true, then isn’t Europe aiding in the breeding of violent resistance by participating in the blackmail of Palestinians of all ages, who are on the verge of being forced to reconsider their political choices in exchange for a loaf of bread?

Is this Europe’s reward for the Palestinian effort in conducting elections in a fair and democratic manner that impressed all international observers?

I was asked to give my opinion upon the European role in the Middle East. I wish that I would have had a more positive tale to tell about this subject. Unfortunately, I cannot but conclude that until now, this role has been dismal. This, however should not be considered as a dismissal, but as a frank evaluation, and an urgent invitation to do better.

The violence that we see in Palestine today, is directly interlinked with European history, and historical decisions made on European soil, backed up by various trends in policy in the years after, all amounting to factual support for Israel, and indirectly for Israeli expansionist policies.

To excuse oneself from responsibility, in the way that we have seen Europeans politicians do until now, does not improve Europe’s progressive and humanitarian image. All of us Europeans here, should decide to do something about this, and I believe you can all do this, by making sure the voice of reason is heard, by writing to your newspapers, calling in on radio and television programs, and, most importantly, by talking to the local representatives of your political parties.

Ask them, to explain to you, why Israel, the country in possession of the fourth strongest army in the world, in possession of over 200 nuclear warheads, and obviously engaged in a comprehensive and violent repression of the Palestinian people, needs to be protected so vigorously, and apparently at the cost of the Palestinian people.

If we don’t do something, Europe may start the 21^st century bearing not only the guilt complex for what happened to the Jewish people in the 20^th century, but adding to that, a newly acquired guilt complex, for its role in the continuing repression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. But why allow it to get that far? This does not have to be the outcome. There is still time to act, and speak up. International law, and numerous UN resolutions are all on our side. Boycott Israel, not Palestine!

Heather Wokusch: The Progressives Handbook