Guest post by TONY HARRIS
— cross-posted from his blog, Watermelon.
In March last year, 35 prominent Jewish Australians signed
a petition renouncing
their automatic right of return to Israel, labelling such a right a “racist
privilege” while Palestinians, ethnically cleansed from Israel in 1948, are
denied their rights of return under international law.
This goes to the heart of the
problem of finding a solution to the Israel-Palestine
conflict. Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world, and
constitute the most protracted and long-term refugee problem — around seven
million of the 11 million Palestinians are refugees, five million living in
refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and elsewhere,
under the supervision of the UN agency set up in 1951 specifically to deal with
this population: the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
The Australian Greens pride themselves on determined and
principled defence of the rights of refugees. Greens politicians and activists
can rightly take credit for focusing attention on the inconvenient truths of
the rights of asylum seekers under international law, and in the process,
helping to shift Australian public opinion over the appalling abuse of rights
under current Federal Government asylum seeker policies. The Greens’ national website gives prominence to
the fact that asylum seekers are not illegal, citing the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. Palestinian refugees, who in May marched
on the border with Israel during the annual Nakba
commemoration, were not illegal either. Yet 14 paid for this right with their
lives, shot by Israeli troops, in an extreme version of a Tony Abbott, “turn
back the boats” exercise.
The right of return is the other side of the coin of seeking
asylum. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights expresses
this in a single sentence: “Everyone has the right to leave any country,
including his own, and return to his country”. This is reinforced under the
International Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination
and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Alongside this is
the even more explicit Palestinian “right of return” under United Nations
General Assembly resolution 194
of 1948, which was accepted by the new Israeli state as a
condition of its entry into the UN. This resolution states that Palestinian “refugees
wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should
be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation
should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss or
damage to property.”
The Australian Greens
position
There is an emerging strategy by the Greens’ national
parliamentary leadership, following on from the national furore over support in
the Greens for the BDS campaign against Israel, to try and present a “small
target” over the Israel-Palestine conflict. This has involved a limited “cherry-picking”
from Greens national
policy, focusing solely on the question of the “two-state
solution” and by extension, support for the Palestinian Authority’s UN bid for
recognition of a Palestinian state. But the Greens also have a policy on the “right
of return” and the national leadership is bound to assert it. It calls for: “a
just and practical negotiated settlement of the claims of the Palestinian
refugees that provides compensation for those who are unable to return to their
country of origin, Israel or Palestine”.
The insertion of the term “practical negotiated settlement”,
is an example of the usual caveat that finds its way into a political party
platform but does not absolve the Australian Greens from interpreting this
provision in line with international law. As has been pointed out above, this
is less equivocal. Any “negotiated practical” outcomes cannot bargain away the
right of return, and the alternative of compensation has to be offered as an
option. In terms of who is defined as a refugee under international law, a
guide is provided by the UNRWA definition: persons living in Palestine from the
1 June 1946 to 15 may 1948 together with “descendants of fathers fulfilling
this definition”.
In this context there also needs to be a refutation of any
notion of “trade-off” between Palestinian refugees and those Jews who moved to
Israel from the Middle East and North Africa after 1948. While of these Jews
were drawn to the new Israeli state, and others encouraged to do so by Zionist
activists, there is no doubt that many were forced to flee from Arab states in
the aftermath of the foundation of the state of Israel. The forced transfer of
populations, whether Palestinians or Middle Eastern Jews, would today rightly
be described as crimes against humanity under the Fourth Geneva
Convention. One crime cannot be traded against another and
the right of return of Palestinians is not diminished by the unwillingness or
inability of Israeli Mizrahis to
return to their countries of origin. Their right to do this, and be offered the
option of compensation, is valid in its own right. It needs to be put onto the
Arab states, especially in the context of the human-rights based Arab revolution,
that they have responsibilities in this regard no less than Israeli responsibilities
towards Palestinian refugees. Similarly, the willingness or otherwise of Arab
states to grant proper settlement and citizenship rights to post-1948
Palestinian asylum seekers does not negate the Palestinian right of return.
In confronting this issue, then, the Australian Greens would
be well advised to take up Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign reminder
that it was “the economy, stupid”. For the Australian Greens approach to
the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict “it’s the right of return, stupid”. This
has consequences for the other part of the Greens’ Israel-Palestine policy: the
two-state solution.
The right of return
and the two-state solution
A right of return by Palestinians confined to just the 22
percent of historic Palestine, with nothing more than a token right of return
to Israel, will not be acceptable to them or comply substantially with
international law. This means that Israel will potentially have to absorb a
considerable Palestinian population, substantially altering its demographics.
On the other side of the fence any Palestinian state is likely to contain a
sizeable number of Israeli Jews. The need to resolve the illegality, and
land-grabbing, of the West Bank Jewish settlements aside, there are likely to
be a considerable number of Israeli Jews remaining, perhaps being offered
Palestinian citizenship. Indeed there is a strong argument that the settlements
have effectively killed off a two-state solution, guaranteeing a bi-national
state as the only effective resolution to the conflict.
Further, a Palestinian state on 22 percent of Palestine will
not be economically viable and combined with a degree of Israeli dependence on
the Palestinians, as a labour source, is likely to see the two states
economically integrated. This of course would bring to the fore cross-border
class tensions between a dominant Israeli, and subordinate Palestinian,
capitalism on the one hand and potentially common class interests of
Palestinian and Israeli workers and economically marginalised on the other.
All this begs the question why not just cut to the chase and
have a bi-national state (which this writer supports), which is increasingly
likely to end up as the default position. Nonetheless, a two-state solution may
give a much sought-after national identity to both Israeli and Palestinian
peoples in resolving the conflict, but will inevitably encompass a bi-ethnic,
cross-border, political, economic and social reality.
The Greens’ political
problem
Many in the Australian Greens have been focusing on the
search for a “static”, electorally acceptable policy, which will keep the
pro-Israel foreign policy and political establishments off their backs, and
keep at bay their bête noire and staunchest critic, Federal MP
Michael “Yankee Doodle” Danby (as Wikileaks reveals, he has communicated regularly with
the US Embassy). The unfolding of the Arab revolution and the associated
Palestinian resistance will at best render this strategy irrelevant. A good
example of this was the debate over the BDS in the Senate in July where
the Greens’ sole response, assertion of a two-state solution, ignored the then
unfolding drama of the blocking of the Gaza peace flotilla. In this context the
Greens need to engage with the unfolding dynamics on the ground.
The right of return as a core Palestinian demand has been
restored with the recent developments within the Palestinian resistance, which
lay emphasis on a human rights-based approach (see extensive discussion of
these developments by various commentators on Al Jazeera,
at The Electronic Intifada, and
elsewhere). This is typified by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign,
which has shifted focus from the final geopolitical outcome of the
Israel-Palestine conflict to the immediate reality of Israel’s violation of
international law and human rights norms as regards the occupation, the right
of return, and discrimination against Arab-Israelis. This is in the context of
a shift in the nature of Palestinian resistance from armed struggle to wider
civil resistance, with non-violent actions such as the BDS and protests against
the separation wall. These civil resistance techniques are not new to
Palestinians; this kind of action has been brutally suppressed down the years
under both Israeli and British colonial administrations. But they are being re-energised
through the rights-based resistance and the wider Arab revolution, as well as
through growing international support in such activities as the BDS and Gaza peace
flotillas.
This rights-based civil resistance represents a “bottom up”
approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict, emphasising that Israel has
here-and-now obligations under international law, which do not wait upon a
final political settlement. This is an alternative to the bankrupt “top down”
approach taken by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in recent years,
under pressure from the Western powers, which has been exposed by the
publication of the Palestine Papers. It
is also an alternative to the static and authoritarian policies of Hamas in
Gaza and come from frustration at the inability of Hamas and Fatah to resolve
differences and give democratic and accountable political leadership to the
Palestinian resistance. The Fatah-led bid at the UN for the recognition of
a Palestinian state (problematic though it is for many Palestinians) is in
large measure a response to this groundswell and to the wider Arab revolution
to which it is linked. There is also great potential for links to growing
Israeli opposition to the policies of the right-wing Netanyahu government,
through the universalities of a rights-based agenda, notwithstanding
difficulties in such areas as debates over the BDS and issues like the
Palestinian right of return.
The political outcome of the Israel-Palestine conflict will
need to involve two peoples sharing the one land. And there is also a wider
historical symmetry between the Jewish and Arabic peoples as the common victims
of Western imperialism and racism, an important narrative that is largely
absent from the debate. There is a lay-line of human suffering that runs
through the death camps of the Holocaust and the demolished Arab villages of
the Nakba; a timeline of Western imperialism and racism that extends from World
War One, and its aftermath in both Europe and the Middle East, to the West’s
backing of the “solution” of the Israeli colonial project. But since 1948 it
has been the Palestinian people who have been expected to pay the price of this
imperialism and racism. Palestinians, including refugees, have shown their
determination not to pay this price.
Many in the Australian Greens have become frustrated with
this situation, and the perceived excessive dominance of the issue in recent
party debate. But it is history that has placed the Israel-Palestine conflict,
and the Middle East generally, at the centre of world politics. The Greens must
decide whether to be relevant in this issue, and engage dynamically with the
Palestinians in their struggle, the wider Arab revolution of which it is part,
and with the developing opposition within Israel. This struggle will intensify in
the medium term as Israel, the US and their allies reject the UN Palestinian
bid. Following through with support of the bid and its rejection will
confront the Greens with the need to engage further with these dynamics on the
ground. This would inevitably bring the Greens into further conflict with
the pro-Israeli
stance of Australia’s foreign policy establishment. The Greens must
avoid the temptation to adopt a static, small-target approach for reasons of
electoral safety, and follow through, showing the same determination as in the
asylum seeker debate, and confronting the inconvenient truths of the conflict,
such as the Palestinian right of return.
