PALESTINE: UN assembly applauds Israeli war criminal

September 21, 2005
Issue 

Jamal Juma, Jerusalem

Twenty-three years ago, on September 17-19, 1982, at least 2000 Palestinians in the Beruit refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila were brutally massacred under the guidance of then Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon. Today this war criminal is the prime minister of Israel and at the invitation of the UN addressed the 60th anniversary session of its General Assembly. He received the applause of the "international community" for the illegal Israeli occupation's latest move — the Gaza "disengagement".

This miraculous transformation from Saul to Paul is Israel's new PR strategy, a disingenuous narrative of "peace" shamelessly repeated by the international corporate media and Western governments.

Against this invitation and in remembrance of Sabra and Shatila, Palestinians across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have staged massive demonstrations in front of the UN offices and the apartheid wall.

United in their determination to resist the contining massacres and expulsions of their people, Palestinians continue after the facade of disengagement to struggle against the continuing Zionist colonisation, confiscation and occupation of their land.

The UN might be willing to forget the Israeli occupation's crimes, shun implementing countless resolutions and overlook the realities being carved out on the ground, but Palestinians are not. They understand the colonial and expansionist agenda behind "disengagement".

In Gaza, amidst the celebrations that popular resistance compelled the occupiers that withdrawal was necessary, Palestinians are well aware that the Gaza Strip remains the world's largest open-air prison. Gaza refugees want to end their existence in refugee camps (with or without Israeli occupation forces guarding them) and go home. Instead, "disengagement" aims to subdue the resistance in Gaza by turning it toward intra-Palestinian disputes.

Israel has mounted an enormous propaganda drive to ensure the world's distraction from the construction of an apartheid wall that steals 47% of the West Bank and leads to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their capital city, Jerusalem.

With the global media and international agencies such as the UN willing accomplices, the sham of "disengagement" passes off without a moment of attention upon the brutal crimes that Israel carries out. As Israeli "justice" minister Tzipi Livni's stated: "We must take advantage of the exceptional situation that has presented itself to strengthen the settlement blocs."

Sharon began his career of butchery in 1952 when, as a commander of the Zionist army, he oversaw the slaughter of 69 Palestinian villagers in Qibya. He holds responsibility for the massacre in Sabra and Shatila and stands as a mastermind of the occupation's settlement policies in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Today he completes the project of the apartheid wall prepared by his predecessors.

Rewarding Sharon with an address to the UN General Assembly (which once condemned Zionism as a form of racism), instead of trying him for his old and new war crimes, smacks of the most stinging hypocrisy and shameless disregard for international law.

Instead of expelling Israel from the UN for its perpetual violations of the UN's founding charter, or its continual disregard for Security Council resolutions, the "international community" offers a sickening array of congratulations towards Israel.

The occupiers' daily violations of international law and Israel's complete refusal to accept the decision of the International Court of Justice to tear down the apartheid wall are downgraded by the "international community" to minor details.

Today the US-dominated UN wants "not pressure, but time" for Sharon — the necessary time to complete the construction of the apartheid wall and the complete Judeaisation of Jerusalem.

The argument that celebrating bantustans as "concessions" to the indigenous people and embracing the racist settler regime with further funding and international recognition would have ended apartheid in South Africa is as preposterous as today's discourse which favours applause to the Zionist version of apartheid.

Once again people all over the world have understood that the only way to support the Palestinian struggle for justice and an end to the occupation is the international isolation of the oppressive and racist regime — economically, politically and culturally. It is against the Palestinian struggle and its growing solidarity movement that the UN chooses to invite Sharon to address the General Assembly.

In this context, it becomes crucial for the Zionists and their apologists to co-opt the Palestinian Authority so as to legitimise the Israeli moves. The PA is asked to ensure an end to resistance against the occupation, construction of the apartheid wall and military attacks, and to negotiate on the status of the splintered, disjointed and walled-in ghettos located on 12% of pre-1947 Palestine.

The PA is asked to provide the logistic and economic administration to the benefit of the occupation and global capital which can cream off the profits of Palestinians transported from their ghettos to new industrial production zones. However, the Palestinian people and its popular movements are not interested in signing their surrender to life in open-air prisons.

Sharon's speech at the UN was aimed at catalysing a feeling that those who oppose life in ghettos, ethnic cleansing, expulsion and the occupation in Palestine are ungrateful extremists. Yet the grassroots resistance all over the West Bank and Gaza will continue to lead the way forward for the Palestinian struggle and its global supporters.

[Jamal Juma is coordinator of the Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign. For more information visit <http://www.stopthewall.org>.]

From Green Left Weekly, September 21, 2005.
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