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。
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/10.1080/14623520601056240）Settler-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.
