Two days before Israel’s latest criminal attack on the Gaza Strip, I wrote a piece in which I tried to explain what exactly Gazans, in particular, and Palestinians in general, are demanding from the international community. I argued that as we embark on our long walk to freedom, we have come to the conclusion that we can no longer rely on governments; that only civil society is able to mobilize to demand the implementation of international law and put an end to Israel’s unprecedented impunity. Our inspiration is the anti-apartheid movement. The intervention of civil society was effective in the late 1980s against the apartheid regime of White South Africa, and it can do the same thing in support of a just peace in Palestine.
Nothing can really force Israel to abide by international law except people of conscience and international civil society. I also argued that without the intervention of the international community which was effective against apartheid in South Africa, Israel will continue its war crimes and crimes against humanity. And that is exactly what happened two days later when apartheid Israel launched a massive attack violating—as it did in 2009, 2012 and 2014–an undeclared ceasefire with the resistance groups in Gaza brokered by Egypt.
In fact, we, In Gaza, are no longer interested in the sterile opposition to normalization initiated by the Camp David Treaty and the Oslo Accords and solidified by the Gulf Sheikhdoms, but rather in formulating the kind of response that could actually defeat the multi-tiered system of Zionist oppression, i.e., occupation, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. The moment the entire international community, i.e. civil society and governments, decides to act the same way it did against the apartheid system of White South Africa, Israel would succumb to the voice of reason represented by the 2005 BDS call issued by more than 170 Civil Society organizations and endorsed by almost all influential political forces of the political spectrum in historic Palestine and the Diaspora.
The urgent question, then, is how long the world will tolerate Israel’s blatant constitutional racism? We know for a fact that it took the international community thirty years to heed the call made by the oppressed of South Africa.
The latest BDS success are, in fact, what we have been calling for since 2005. But we, residents of Gaza, have been unable to fathom how it is that, despite the policy of ethnic cleansing and the latest war crimes committed against the residents of Gaza by Israel and all the war crimes documented by major human rights organizations and despite its policy of colonization and apartheid, some reputable companies and international institutions still have a policy of “business as usual” with Israel!
Hasn’t it become crystal clear, after all these years and thousands of reports by main-stream HR orgs— that millions of Palestinians are denied the full right to education, free movement, work, health… etc. We are deprived of a normal life because of more than 600 Israeli checkpoints, the medieval siege of Gaza, and the apartheid-like discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens in Israel. To put it bluntly, we are discriminated against because we are not born to Jewish mothers the same way Africans of South Africa were considered sub-human for the mere fact that they were born to black parents.
Thousands of Palestinians are in Israeli dungeons often without trial or sentenced by military courts. All credible international human rights and humanitarian organizations have detailed how the Israeli military deliberately targets Palestinian students and schools including UN schools. Shouldn’t academics and researchers be familiar with those reports?!
We believe that it is our right to expect people of conscience to join us in our struggle against Israeli apartheid by boycotting this intransigent, racist and militarized Israeli regime and the institutions that keep it thriving! We, Palestinians, are an oppressed people without a state. We increasingly rely on international law and solidarity for our very survival.
What we want is the implementation of international law; putting an end to the Israeli military occupation of Arab lands occupied in 1967, fighting against the policy of colonization and apartheid as practiced by Israel against the indigenous population of Palestine of 1948, and the return of Palestinian refugees who were ethnically cleaned in 1948. Now, is that a call for the end of the state of Israel?! Was the boycott of apartheid meant to end South Africa as a country, or to end racism in its ugliest from?
Israel is a settler colonialist, Apartheid state and the methods –or tools of struggle– used against Apartheid South Africa can be used as a model in our struggle against Apartheid Israel. Transforming of Israel from an ethno-religious Apartheid state into a democracy should be the objective of every single person believing in liberal democracy in general.
With pressure imposed by the international community through a BDS campaign a la the Anti-Apartheid Campaign which brought Apartheid South Africa to an end, we believe that Israel itself can be pressured to end its multi-tiered system of oppression. What we urgently need is a military embargo on Israel in order to put an end to the ongoing blood bath taking place in Gaza.
The BDS campaign is intended to lead to satisfying the democratic rights of the Palestinian people in its three components. We strongly believe that the struggles of the Palestinian people whether in 1948 or in 1967, that is to say the WB and GS, and even in the Diaspora are inseparable. That is why we believe that the alternative, which is rights-based, to Oslo’s façade of “peace” based on normalization, can provide ALL Palestinians with a solution that guarantees peace with justice, namely the right of return and equality. Only then can Gaza be transformed from a concentration camp surrounded by happy-trigger soldiers and snipers to a beautiful coastal enclave open for citizens of the world to visit and enjoy its rich, ancient and multi-cultural history the same way people are enjoying the beaches and natural reserves of multi-racial South Africa.
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