June 5, 2007 marks the 40th anniversary of the start of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. That war was an episode of significant physical violence, in which some 16,000 people lost their lives, and hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes. The June 1967 war also brought under the control of the Israeli military considerable stretches of land—in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza, in Egypt's Sinai region, and in Syria's Golan. The populations of those areas thenceforth had to live under the rule of a foreign military occupation force.
Rule by foreign military occupation is an affront to the ideals of democracy and human dignity, including the idea that governments gain their legitimacy primarily from the consent of the governed. It is also a clear example of administrative violence, which is wielded by the (completely unaccountable) occupation authorities against the 3.5 million indigenous residents of the occupied areas, denying their ability to exercise their normal human rights and severely limiting the ability of their communities to flourish.
In Sinai, foreign occupation rule ended with the implementation of the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, under which Israel withdrew completely from Egyptian territory in return for a full peace and the demilitarization of most of Sinai. But in the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan, the indigenous residents of these areas have continued to live under occupation to this day. In addition, over the course of this 40-year-long occupation, successive governments in Israel have systematically settled some 400,000 Israeli civilians in the occupied areas of the West Bank, and some 17,000 in Golan, in clear infringement of international law. Israeli governments have given considerable support to these settlers, including through the expropriation of Palestinian (or in Golan, Syrian) land and other resources, the provision of subsidies to the settlers, the creation of a discriminatory system of Israelis-only highways in the West Bank, and the erection of the large barrier that snakes through the West Bank, cutting Palestinian communities off from each other or from their own lands and stifling the possibility of normal economic life or livelihoods for most Palestinians.
In 1993, the Oslo Accords ushered in a few years of limited self-rule for some of the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. But in 2002, in the context of further rounds of violence, Israeli tanks went back into the 'self-rule' areas, and Israeli tanks and planes destroyed many of the institutions through which the Palestinians had exercised their self-rule. More recently, in autumn 2005, the Israeli government withdrew the Israeli troops and settlers who had been in the Gaza Strip. But it still exercised tight control over all movements of people and goods into Gaza; and it has continued to undertake some very lethal military operations against Gaza—and also against locations in the West Bank. Meanwhile, Palestinian militants have continued to launch home-made rockets from northern Gaza into Israel. Those militants, and the others who have sent suicide/homicide bombers into Israel, have inflicted numerous casualties and sown fear amongst Israelis.
In 2007, the international community still considers that Israel carries all the normal responsibilities of an occupying power in Gaza—as in the West Bank and Golan.
Under the laws of war as codified in international treaties and conventions, rule by military occupation is considered only a temporary condition that comes into existence as a result of the ebb and flow of armies across national boundaries; and it comes to an end as soon as a final peace agreement is concluded between the governments concerned. It confers no "rights" of permanent occupation or ownership. In 1949 the existing laws regulating the actions of a military occupying power were codified into the Fourth Geneva Convention. It stresses, among other things, the responsibility of the occupying power for the wellbeing of the residents of the occupied areas, and a clear prohibition against the occupying power implanting any of its own civilian population into the occupied areas. Since rule by military occupation constitutes a continuous infringement on the rights of the residents of occupied territories, the international community judges—quite rightly-- that military occupations should be as short-lived as possible, and all the parties involved should be encouraged to move as quickly as possible into a situation of final peace.
In the case of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan, that still has not happened. In the mid-1990s there were some serious negotiations over final peace agreements on both the Palestinian-Israeli and the Syrian-Israeli tracks, and considerable progress was made in delineating what a final peace would look like in both areas. But no final peace was concluded, and those negotiations were put on hold at the end of 2000. Thus, 40 years after the people of these territories came under military occupation, they still live under the burden of occupation, and no end to it is yet in sight. Maintaining the occupation, and the associated situation of no-peace, has also imposed significant costs on Israeli society, forcing young Israelis to spend lengthy periods in the military, diverting resources from investment in human welfare to investment in the military, and maintaining feelings of encirclement, distrust, and fear.
One beacon of hope through these years, however, has been the rich experience that many Israelis and Palestinians have gained in the field of nonviolent organizing. Palestinian communities and non-governmental groups have organized lengthy tax boycotts, sit-ins, nonviolent demonstrations and numerous other activities to raise awareness of the harms of occupation and of the ‘apartheid barrier’. Israeli NGOs have organized vigils, anti-occupation marches and demonstrations, and systematic projects to monitor and document the rights abuses committed by the occupation authorities and by other parties (both Israeli and Palestinian.) Activists on both sides have given strong support to the diplomacy of peacemaking, and have held out a compelling vision of the human community as one of brotherhood/sisterhood, equality, and mutual support rather than one of divisions, violence, hatred, and fear.
We at the Global Network for Nonviolence (GNN) applaud all those efforts by the Israeli and Palestinian nonviolence activists. We also invite people and human-rights and pro-peace organizations around the world to make plans to mark June 5, 2007 as a special day to:
* learn more about the situation of all the peoples still living under the yoke of unresolved conflicts in the Arab-Israeli arena;
* decry the violence inherent in war, armed conflict, and military occupation rule;
* learn more about and support all those people and organizations in the affected communities who are using active, nonviolent means to try to bring an end to the occupations of the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan; and
* urge all the governments of the world to work tirelessly for the achievement of final peace agreements between Israel and all its Arab neighbors based on the solid principles of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, human equality, and human dignity.
40 years of military occupation: It's enough!