I believe that we are talking about a real Nakba that hit us and is still having its impact on the Palestinian people while we lack any read or deep understanding of this calamity and without even setting a strategy to confront it and this Nakba is the settlements which is the basic dilemma that faces us; settlements are the opposite of independence and contradicts with the state and with the Palestinian national presence. We are in fact talking about colonialist settlement which is a classical colonialist phenomenon, and let me add that this is the sole case in the world these days; this phenomenon has the following components:
1- confiscation and seizure of lands;
2- Building of settlements on the lands;
3- transfer of the citizens of the occupying force to the occupied territories;
4- Build up of life system separate from the life system of the indigenous people living in the occupied territories.
Finally, let me add a new component which is the wall that aims to annex vast areas of land from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, especially in East Jerusalem and its surroundings in a clear harmony with the existing settlements, meaning that the issue of the wall cannot be separated or detached from the Israeli settlements colonialism of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
The events and measures happening in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 1967 constitute a clear violation of the International Law and the Hague Conventions of 1907 and the Geneva Fourth Convention and the Law of Rome and the International Criminal Court Law which considers this a war crime. Moreover, there are several UN Security Council Resolutions (around 28 resolutions) which confirms the applicability of the Geneva Fourth Convention on Occupied Palestinian Territories, including Jerusalem, along with some of the resolutions that deal with the issue of the settlements and the UN General Assembly extraordinary term resolutions that are usually held as a reaction to the US veto in the Security Council.
I also believe that the legal ruling issued by the International Court of Justice at The Hague has been the most important development in the UN since the Partition Plan of Palestine. the UN General Assembly resolution was the most important legal ruling in terms of the depth, clarity and comprehensiveness of the ruling, and such an important resolution has not been issued ever in contemporary history but unfortunately, the Palestinian side has failed in making use of this ruling and there was mere absence of clear strategy to confront this matter.
The core of the Israeli tactic in this area was basically to sabotage the legal grounds of any action to confront the colonialist settlement and this is the problem of the Palestinian negotiator who accepted to lower the ceiling and who accepted to change the legal grounds and attempted to deal with the issue on political grounds instead of insisting on dealing with it from a legal perspective. For example, there were unilateral measures and these are illegal according to the international law but what happened later is that the status quo and the unilateral measures were accepted although they were illegal.
What is needed in this context is a gradual aware return to the basic lines of defense and most important is to cling to the legal grounds and basis in dealing with matters. We cannot implement this without having an effective and international acceptable government to be part of the international system.
The general idea for the Palestinian politicians, for example Nasser al-Qidwa, was that along with the peace process and the progress on the political track, there was the idea that settlements will halt, but the position that should have been adopted is that no political progress will be achieved if we don’t start with halt of settlements because the settlements contradict with the peace process and that fact that Israel continued with settlements expansion is clear proof that Israel is not ready to move forward in the peace process. Israel says we have to recognize it and at the same it colonizes our lands; this is illogical and unacceptable.
I believe that there is no hope in any serious political solution without a complete halt of settlement activities in Palestine and let me add that settlements have doubled since Oslo Accords and the number of settlers also doubled in Palestine. Can we imagine a peace process that leads to the doubling of the number of settlers who constitute the basic element in the settlement process which contradicts with an independent Palestinian state.
We need a clear comprehensive Palestinian program at all levels and at the official and popular and grassroots levels where all political forces, and NGOs participate and where we can see that every Palestinian woman and man become part of this struggle because without this, there wont be Palestinian national presence. Among the ideas posed for the struggle in the future is to legislate the Geneva Fourth Convention at the Palestinian Legislative Council so that the PA becomes committed to abide by its articles which also means that we will stop any contribution in building the settlements.
It is impossible to keep things moving in this arbitrary and chaotic manner. The Palestinian laborer did build the major part of the settlements and we have not seen any reaction to define the Palestinian internal relations on this matter. Therefore, the PLC is demanded to exert an effort to set up the legal agenda to prevent such actions.
Our Ministry of Education and schools and universities need to raise awareness and reinforce the meaning and definition of the legal ruling of the International Court of Justice so that we can build our society on the basis of respecting the law and this can also help us in our national struggle against the wall and the settlements.
The issue at hand is not only to remember colonialism from time to time. The issue is far bigger than this. We need to head towards a comprehensive program to maintain our national presence and to maintain the possibilities of achieving peace at a later stage.
Thank you
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