“Israel does not want to put an end to the occupation,” said Latin Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah, “…Rather, [Israel] has taken a new position: there is no occupation, the entire land belongs to it.”
Latin Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah opened the 13th Annual Kairos Palestine International Conference by welcoming 180 participants to the Palestinian town of Beit Sahour and describing the Palestinian experience of Israeli apartheid. “All the land to Israel,” Sabbah said, “all Israelis and Palestinians, submitted to the same Israeli power, but not in the same way.” Palestinian resistance, he said, has now become “resistance to occupation and resistance to discrimination and apartheid.”
Sabbah also spoke frankly about the “evil…of division” within Palestine, “the struggle for power [and] corruption,” which he described as “another evil of the occupation.” He called on grassroots Palestinians and their religious and secular leaders “to have a unity of heart, a unity of vision and respect for one another.”
Kairos Palestine, the most extensive Palestinian Christian ecumenical movement, was born in 2009 with the publishing of A Moment of Truth: A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering. Its work has expanded through Global Kairos for Justice, a worldwide coalition.
In addition to the conference’s usual gathering of Christian leaders from around the world, a promising feature of this year’s gathering was the addition of secular Palestinian and Israeli NGOs. Keynote speakers included Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of B’Tselem-the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories; Sahar Francis, General Director of Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; and the Rev. Solomuzi Mabuza, a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa.
B’Tselem’s El-Ad rejected what he called “a two-regime world view,” the narrative of one democratic state inside of the Green Line and an Israeli occupation on the other side, which, he said, “is very much a part of the Israeli propaganda and also the way that many international stakeholders, especially in the Global North, like to continue thinking about the situation.”
El-Ad pointed to “three facts that one has to put aside to maintain [this] false narrative.” One, “How ridiculous it is,” he said, “to pretend [the occupation] is temporary.” Two, he pointed to Israel’s population transfer: “700,000 Jews living in settlements on the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), one in ten Jewish Israelis living on the other side.” Three, regarding Israel’s de jure and de facto annexations, El-Ad said the land between the river and the sea is “a single regime, a one-state reality.”
“When you put all these pieces together,” El-Ad asserted, “you end up with a regime that is based on group supremacy of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians in a structure embedded in the laws, policies, and practices of the regime…, namely, the textbook definition of apartheid.” El-Ad credited Palestine’s scholars and civil society for recognizing this reality many years ago.
Granting that “the situation is bleak and deteriorating,” El-Ad pointed to a significant development: “We now have this wall-to-wall consensus in the human rights community—Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations… coming together, in essence, to say, ‘the injustice that Palestinians are facing, the injustice that the world is mostly ignoring is this regime of apartheid that is applied by Israel against Palestinians.’”
In her address, Addameer’s Sahar Francis described the shrinking space in which Palestinian human rights and other Civil Society Organizations can report on Palestinian realities and criticize the State of Israel. Mondoweiss readers will recall that Addameer is one of the six human rights organizations declared by Israeli Defense Minister Gantz as terrorist.
In an email to this correspondent, Francis wrote, “It was important to highlight how the Israeli occupation authorities are misusing the anti-terror legislations to silence the civil society organizations, and affecting their work, especially because in the last decade or so we are succeeding in shifting the paradigm to apartheid and colonialism, and we are investing most of our efforts to seek accountability on the international level, especially in the ICC (International Criminal Court) and the human rights council.”
Lutheran Pastor Solomuzi Mabuza called the participants’ attention to this summer’s World Council of Churches General Assembly, held in Germany, where some of its leaders unsuccessfully sought to dissuade the assembly from using the term apartheid in its final statements. Mabuzza called on conference participants to pressure the World Council of Churches to follow through on its commitment to reading the many recent human rights reports and, as the final statement stated, “to follow up appropriately.” Mabuzaa added, “We know in South Africa that what you are going through is worse than apartheid.”
Rifat Kassis, General Director of Kairos Palestine, commented on the effectiveness of the conference. He pointed to its diversity of speakers. “The recent work of Kairos Palestine and its international coalition Global Kairos for Justice— especially our July publication, A Dossier on Israeli Apartheid—has opened the door for further collaboration with other faith-based and secular movements.”
A Declaration to the World: The People, the Church and Resisting the Occupation was issued following the conference and a subsequent meeting of Global Kairos for Justice. The document celebrates the growing recognition on the part of human rights and other organizations that Israel’s laws, policies, and practices meet the definition of apartheid in international law; describes the many realities that Palestinians face; re-affirms the commitment to the “practice of creative resistance grounded in the radical logic of Christ’s love; and invites people of all faiths and those of goodwill to join in responding to a list of 14 actions.
In his presentation, Kairos Palestine board member Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, pastor of Bethlehem’s Christmas Lutheran Church and organizer of Christ at the Checkpoint, told the gathering, “We stress that the conflict is not a religious conflict and that we are not against any religion, and we refuse to place religions and their followers in a position of conflict and hostility. The issue is humanitarian, and it is an issue of justice, righteousness, and the promotion of dignity and equality.” Isaac said, “We strive to live with everyone. Our calling is to love everyone. Therefore, believers of all faiths have an important role, and ‘religion’ must be a part of the solution.”
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Netanyahu’s Empty Offer of “Self-Rule” without Land for Palestinians is just another form of Apartheid (juancole.com)
“Netanyahu’s Empty Offer of Self-Rule without Land for Palestinians is just another form of Apartheid” Middle East Monitor, 12/24/2022.“A few days before the formation of his sixth government, Benjamin Netanyahu has defined his ceilings for the solution to the Palestinian issue: self-rule for the Palestinians & security & sovereignty for the Israelis. He did not mention Jerusalem, which has already been declared to be Israel’s ‘united eternal capital’, nor did he mention self-determination, as the Nation State law restricts this right between the River Jordan & the Mediterranean Sea to the ‘Jewish people’. This does not apply to the Palestinian refugees who are likely to increase in numbers after hints have been made about the return of a deportation policy & nationality revocation instead of decreasing through return & family reunification. “Self-rule, according to Netanyahu, has nothing to do with geography. It is a matter of ‘Palestinian demography’. Wherever there are gatherings of the Palestinian population, they can manage their own affairs, & their ‘affairs’ here are limited to services such as health, education & transportation, although Israel will continue to haunt them in their school curricula & classroom programmes, & in everything related to their public space.
“It is clear that the ‘King of Israel’ no longer pays much attention to the issue of security coordination with the Palestinian Authority, because if it does what it is required to do, it will have served itself & prolonged its survival, before serving Israel & providing security for its settlers. Netanyahu considers coordination as a given & in the interest of the PA as well as a necessity for its existence, so why should he worry about it? Why remind it of the need to adhere to its commitments & obligations?
Why would he constantly threaten it with woe and destruction if it does not adhere to its obligations?
(cont’d)
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Between the river & the sea, he believes that there is only one sovereignty, only one security & only one nation with the right to self-determination. The remaining basic functions of the PA, from the Israeli point of view, basically boil down to two things: the issue of Palestinian passports (after Israeli security approval, of course), so that Israel does not have to face the issue of the identity or nationality of five million Palestinians in the West Bank & Gaza Strip. And then to reduce the financial burdens & costs that may fall on the shoulders of the occupation authorities in the event that the PA collapses. Israel must be allowed to enjoy a comfortable, inexpensive, five star occupation that the international community & the Palestinian taxpayers pay for so that the PA continues to exist. Netanyahu is on the verge of saying let’s pay more attention to raising our profit rates due to the exclusive control that we impose on a multi-billion dollar market. “There is no independent or viable Palestinian state, but rather self-rule for the population without their land. All areas of the West Bank, according to this perception, turn into Area C territory, where sovereignty & security belong to Israel. Even the idea of separation from the Palestinians defended by some on the Israeli left out of concern for the ‘Jewishness & democracy of the state’ no longer appeals to Netanyahu, who previously announced his acceptance of the ‘two-state solution’ in his Bar-Ilan speech. “Separation does not require the demarcation of borders or recognition of a state & self-determination. The Palestinians are in their isolated areas & their isolated islands are controlled by gates, walls & military checkpoints. If security in its old forms fails to rein them in, then there is no problem entrusting the task to extremists like Itamar Ben-Gvir & Bezalel Smotrich. Nor is there a problem with arming the settlers, strengthening their militias, & placing the police & border guards under the authority of the most extreme far-right rabbis. “The double paradox revealed by the reactions to Netanyahu’s positions is, on the one hand, evident in the fact that the PA is still showing willingness to engage in negotiations…”