50 years of Palestinian catastrophe
By Jennifer Thompson
SYDNEY — Around 150 people gathered on May 15 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian dispossession by Israel. The seminar, organised by the University of Technology Friends of Palestine club, began with two minutes silence in memory of all those who have fallen resisting the occupation.
The seminar was addressed by Sydney University's Semitic studies associate professor, Ahmad Shboul; Clive Kessler from the sociology department at the University of NSW; Palestinian negotiator, Professor Salim Tamari from Birzeit University in the West Bank (who spoke via phone hook-up); Ephraim Nimni from UNSW, representing the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom; and Macquarie University's Michael Humphrey.
There were significant differences over Palestinian and Israeli "national rights", Israel's national ideology of Zionism and the solution to the conflict. All speakers agreed that Israel should: withdraw from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza; remove the settlements illegally established in the occupied territories; and allow the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Nimni described the Israeli peace movement's boycott of all settlements' produce, now also taken up by the European Union, and suggested the same project for Australian activists.
Both Tamari and Nimni described an editorial in Ha'aretz, one of Israel's major dailies, which examined the anniversary from the Palestinian point of view and urged moves to a real settlement. Participants in the discussion expressed anger at the lack of practical actions to counter Israel's unrelenting aggression.