【声明英語版】Statement: End the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the expulsion of Palestinians, and the siege of Gaza Strip

 

関西パレスチナ研究会では、2021年5月10日~21日に起きたイスラエルによるガザ地区への大規模攻撃という事態を受けて、緊急声明を出しました。その後、下記の通り、緊急声明の英語版も作成しました。

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Statement: End the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the expulsion of Palestinians, and the siege of Gaza Strip

 

Kansai Society for Palestine Studies

 24 May 2021

 

Kansai Society for Palestine Studies is strongly concerned about the on-going situation, in which many lives have been unjustifiably taken and the human rights of Palestinians continues to be repressed in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt: the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip) and Israeli territory. We are also concerned that many reports by media outlets and some commentators and political decision-makers characterize the current series of events as a “circle of violence” or a “clash” between two legitimate claims of Israel and Palestine. Many also attribute the cause of the events to “terrorism” by Hamas. We are concerned that those characterizations do not take the historical background into consideration, and therefore may further spread misunderstandings of the root cause of the situation.

 

The root cause of the situation is that, after the First World War, the imperial powers, including Japan, supported the Zionist movement while ignoring the right of self-determination of the indigenous Palestinians, against the background of anti-Semitism in Europe. Unjust treatment of Palestinians by the international community continues until today: the international community accepts only the settler-colonial state[i] of Israel as a member of the United Nations, and it has also allowed Israel to enjoy impunity for the oppression of human rights of Palestinians. As a result, Israel has been able to maintain its regime of segregation and exclusion, in which Israel dominates the oPt by dividing it by Jewish settlements, the separation wall, and military checkpoints while denying equal rights – including the right of refugees to return to their homes - to Palestinians. Some human rights organizations within and without Israel have finally recognized the Israeli regime as one of Apartheid, a crime against humanity[ii] – something Palestinians have pointed out for decades.

 

Israel was established on the violence of expelling indigenous Palestinians from their homes, and has been denying their existence as a nation. Although 73 years has passed since then, this violence still continues, as Israel continues to expel Palestinians from their homes through house demolitions and bombardments in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israeli territory. What Palestinians call “al-Nakba” (the catastrophe) is an on-going process that continues to the present. This violence is a result of the settler-colonialism of the Zionist movement and of Israel’s racist policies, both of which aim at eliminating indigenous Palestinians and transforming the land to “the homeland of the Jewish nation”.

 

One of the direct causes of the recent events was the threatened forced expulsion of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian resistance against that threat. The Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah who face the danger of forced expulsion are refugees, who lost their homes when Israel was established. They are victims of the state of Israel, who not only forcibly displaced them before, but also deny their right to return to their original homes. It is totally unjustifiable that the Israeli government attempts to expel them again, continuing al-Nakba. Moreover, the unilateral annexation by Israel of East Jerusalem in 1967 is invalid according to international law, and the eviction order is a violation of international humanitarian law, which prohibits the forced expulsion of residents under military occupation.

 

Gaza has been under complete siege in land, air and sea, since 2007 until today. The people of Gaza cannot freely travel to and from other parts of Palestine and abroad, and the export and import of goods is highly restricted. As a result, the Gazan economy is devastated. The people in Gaza are also prohibited from getting close to the boundaries with Israeli territory, and cannot farm those lands. This policy of siege is an extension of the military occupation and war crimes that Israel has inflicted on Palestinians, while ignoring the voice of the international community and violating international humanitarian law, which prohibits collective punishment of residents in occupied territory.

 

Two thirds of the Gaza population of two million are refugees who lost their homes at the establishment of Israel and their descendants. In addition, all people in Gaza, refugee and non-refugee alike, have been living in a humanitarian crisis, due to the lack of foods, medicines and energy resources. The entire population of Gaza has also endured massive attacks by Israeli forces in 2008-09, 2012 and 2014 since the beginning of the siege in 2007. Attacks against Gaza by Israeli forces between 10 May and 21 May 2021 also killed 242 Palestinians, according to media reports published on 21May. There is no safe place in Gaza, and the population (including 91,000 people who took refuge in 58 UNRWA schools and relatives’ houses during the attacks) spent days and nights in the fear that bombs and shells might fall upon them.

 

Although major air strikes and artillery bombardments against Gaza were halted on 21 May, Gaza remains under siege. Unless we hold Israel accountable for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the recent attacks, a similar tragedy is likely to happen again. In March 2021, the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced it would commence investigations into possible war crimes in the oPt committed after 13 June 2014. There is a possibility that this investigation will also cover the humanitarian crisis caused by the siege on Gaza, and the most recent attacks by Israeli forces. We believe that, as a major donor to the ICC, Japan bears responsibility for ensuring the investigation against war crimes in oPt is conducted. We call on the Japanese government to strengthen its efforts towards ensuring international law is respected in Palestine/Israel, including full cooperation with the ICC in its investigations. We also call on the Japanese government to demand that the Israeli government immediately ends the siege on Gaza, stops attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and al-Haram al-Sharif[iii], halts the confiscation of Palestinian land and houses, refrains from forced expulsion, and removes restrictions on the access of Palestinians to al-Haram al-Sharif.

 

Finally, we are concerned that some media reports and political decision-makers have been, under the cloak of neutrality, attempting to present the situation in Palestinian as a “clash of two equally legitimate claims”, and seek a “compromise” between them. The situation in Palestine is one of on-going colonialism. We must recall the resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly[iv], which recognized the right of peoples under colonial rule to struggle for their self-determination. Japan used to practice settler-colonialism in Northeast China, bringing about massive harm to Chinese people and destitute Japanese farmers who were sent by the Japanese government as settlers. Japan also has a history of colonizing Korean peninsula and imposing its nationality upon its people, and then unilaterally revoke those legal rights from Korean residents in Japan in the post-war era. Recalling this history, residents in Japan should not view that the Israeli state was established and internationally recognized in the context of anti-Semitism and colonialism, and that an apartheid regime has been formed in Palestine in the full view of the world, as “somebody else’s problem”. Therefore, we call on Japanese society to act towards full respect of the collective and individual rights of the Palestinian people.

 

Kansai Society for Palestine Studies is a group of researchers conducting Palestine/Israel studies, located mainly in the Kansai region of Japan.

 

 

 



[i] Settler-colonialism is a form of colonialism that seeks to create exclusively settler community by way of sending settlers from one country to another, then eliminating and segregating the indigenous people on that land, and denying their rightful claim to their lands. (See Patrick Wolf, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240Settler-colonial society, whether it establishes its own sovereignty or remains under the rule of its colonial master, inflicts immense damage on the indigenous community, and indigenous peoples in Palestine as well as in Americas, Australia, South Africa, have been struggling for recovery of their rights.

[ii] B’Tselem report, “Apartheid”, 12th January 2021, https://www.btselem.org/apartheid; Human Rights Watch report, “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”, 27th April 2021, https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution.

[iii] Al-Haram al-Sharim is a place of sanctuary for Muslims that contains the third Islamic holiest place of al-Aqsa Mosque, located inside the Old City in East Jerusalem. One of the immediate causes of the recent situation includes that the Israeli authority imposed severer restriction on the Palestinian access to al-Haram al-Sharif from April, about a month before the massive attacks on Gaza started.

[iv] See United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3314 in 1974, and 37/47 in 1982.