(MintPress) – Israel stepped up attacks on Gaza this week, bringing the number of Palestinians killed to 16. After rockets landed just south of Tel Aviv, Israel’s most populous city, 30,000 IDF reservists were activated, signalling a possible invasion of the Gaza strip. The escalation in violence began after Israel assassinated Ahmad Jabari, Hamas military commander, earlier this week in an aerial strike. Israeli and Palestinian leaders have not engaged in direct peace negotiations since the 2007 Annapolis conference, a sign that the situation remains deadlocked and hostile. The long sought “two-state solution” appears to be an ever more distant reality.
Enter the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, a new approach to broadening the discussion of the issues by fostering a frank exchange of ideas by engaging international law. Prominent human rights activists, policy experts and jurists debated the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict in the final session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine last month. During the New York forum, participants discussed the entrenched occupation and growing apartheidization of Israeli rule, giving voice to a set of realities on the ground infrequently heard in mainstream discussions of the conflict.
Taking its name from the original Russell Tribunals held in Europe at the height of the Vietnam War, organizers hope that such a critical exchange will educate the public and create a unified international resistance to the status quo conditions of segregation, occupation and settler colonialism in the West Bank.
The festering Israel-Palestine conflict remains a major hindrance to regional stability and justice for the displaced Palestinian people whose number of refugees has swelled to a staggering 5 million people since 1948, according to the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA).
Unlike other forums that focus only on the details of the conflict, the Russell Tribunal has also shifted the conversation to a critique of U.S. foreign policy and the complicity of international institutions in failing to facilitate the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The U.S., Israel’s closest ally, is complicit in illegal settlement expansion and a politics of dispossession and occupation.
Broadening the discourse, giving voice to the voiceless
“We thought about how we could make the issue more mainstream, how to give voice to the voiceless,” said Frank Barat, one of the tribunal organizers in a MintPress statement.
Barat, a long-time human rights advocate based in the U.K., began organizing the forum in 2006 with the help of activists involved in previous human rights struggles. Some were involved in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. However, as Barat notes, the idea gained broader appeal in 2008 following Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.
“We sat around the table and said, ‘We have to do this now,’ because the world is finally paying attention.” The Israeli incursion in Gaza aimed at routing Hamas left 1,400 dead, most of whom were innocent civilians, according to reports by B’tselem and other independent human rights organizations.
The issue led to a selection of jurors who have served in prominent public roles as activists, members of parliament and university professors. Others, including Dr. Noam Chomsky, Cynthia McKinney and Alice Walker, officially endorsed the tribunals held in Barcelona, Cape Town, London and New York.
For some endorsees, like Desmond Tutu, the parallels to past human rights struggles are abundantly evident. Tutu rose to prominence as a key figure in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. After a 2002 visit to the Holy Land, Tutu said he was “very deeply distressed” by what he saw during his visit, adding that “it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.”
The official summation of the findings have yet to be released to the public. However, a summary of the jury deliberations shows that Israel has violated international laws, including, most importantly, “The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination as codified in Res. 1514 (XV) and 2625 (XXV), and recognized by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its decision on the wall.”
The politicization of juridical opinions
The scholarship and commitment to critically examining the issues often glossed over by mainstream media is a refreshing injection in an otherwise irrelevant debate based on hearsay and nationalism.
However, some scholars still believe that tribunals have unnecessarily “politicized,” what should be a critical, impartial discussion.
Dr. Amos Guiora, an Israeli-American professor of international law, cautions that tribunals and international courts tend to politicize discussions that should be a matter of careful legal consideration.
“With all the complexity of the issue, the international court of justice (ICJ) has the highest legitimacy. However, some courts meld politics with the law,” said Guiora in a MintPress statement.
Many are not convinced that tribunals are the way to advance the discussion, insisting that the only way to transform the conflict is to get the parties back to the negotiating table. After the PLO renounced violence in 1988, subsequent negotiations including the 1993 Oslo Accords indicated that a comprehensive settlement was within reach.
That hope was short lived. Decades later, with more than 500,000 Jewish settlers and counting in illegal West Bank settlements, the two-state solution remains a distant prospect.
Negotiations have been virtually fruitless, and many believe that it is time to exert more pressure on Israel, the U.S. and other complicit states in the international community in order to shift the power dynamic and push for a rights based approach to resolving the conflict.
Earlier efforts to mobilize the intellectual left were successful in shaping the discussion of other political conflicts. Consider, for example, the namesake of the current Russell Tribunals.
The original Russell Tribunals were organized by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell and his colleague, the French existential philosopher Jean Paul-Satre. The tribunal sought to critically examine the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, and the preceding era of French colonialism.
The groundbreaking event was held in 1966, bringing together 25 peace activists and prominent intellectuals to engage in the central issues of the Vietnam War in two separate sessions held in Stockholm and in Copenhagen.
While the event was largely ignored by the mainstream American press, the tribunals helped to galvanize public opposition to the war in Europe and among leftists, students and intellectuals in North America.
Similarly constructed, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine brought together an impressive lineup of scholars, activists and policy makers for four sessions held in Barcelona, Cape Town, London and New York, allowing large audiences to observe the proceedings. The final results will also be available for public viewing on the official event website.
Changing hearts and minds in the US
While the vast majority of the nations in the world supports a two-state solution to the decades old Israel-Palestine conflict, the conversation in the U.S., still the world’s military hegemon, has been monopolized by the hawkish pro-Israel lobby— a lobby that has lent support to illegal Israeli land confiscation, settlement expansion and a legal system of apartheid duality.
In a 2007 debate at Oxford University prominent academic Norman Finkelstein claimed that pro-Israel groups have successfully stifled debate about the conflict in the U.S.
Finkelstein, the often maligned professor, adds that in reality there remains relatively little dispute about the actual historical record from 1948 to the present among historians and scholars.
“The most striking thing when you look at the actual record on the conflict the historical record, the human rights record, the diplomatic record — The most striking thing is that when you look at the actual record how little controversy, how little dispute, how little disagreement there is among the experts and authorities,” said Finkelstein.
“Yet when you enter the arena of public debate, public discussion, the media, all of a sudden the Israel-Palestine conflict becomes so controversial. It’s as if nobody agrees on anything. It is my view that the vast preponderance of this alleged controversy is fabricated.”
Consider, for example, the public debate surrounding the 2006 Israeli incursion into Gaza. Israel had suffered attacks from Hamas Qassam rockets, thousands of which have landed in Israel threatening the safety and well-being of citizens.
However, the mission to supposedly rout terrorist networks in Gaza turned into a brutal collective attack on the territory’s 1.5 million residents. Reports states that 1,400 Palestinians were killed, approximately half of whom were confirmed to be civilians. Conversely 13 Israeli soldiers died, 10 by friendly fire.
The U.N. report concludes, “There is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.”
US complicity
This stifling of debate has translated into robust pro-Israel support among the American people. According to a Gallup opinion poll published in March, 71 percent of Americans held a favorable view of Israel. Conversely, the view of the Palestinian Authority was viewed mostly negatively, as a mere 19 percent held favorable views of Mahmoud Abbas’ government.
The results of the New York session have yet to be released. However, there is a high likelihood that the tribunal will find the U.S. to be complicit in Israeli crimes committed in the occupied territories.
The U.S. provides more than $3 billion in aid to Israel each year. While the U.S. Congress frequently conditions aid dollars upon compliance with U.S. objectives, Israel is not subject to such requirements.
In fact, annual aid allocations are used in part to fund the Israeli Defense Forces, an army that is used to occupy Palestinian territories. In a September speech. Israeli Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi opined on the U.S.-Israel relationship, saying,“We must preserve ties with the United States. I believe this is a security necessity.”
Ashkenazi continued to note that U.S. taxpayers actually contribute more to support the IDF than Israeli citizens.
Restarting negotiations
Regardless of the immediate impact, Russell Tribunal and other similar forums are important in shifting the discourse. “The public used to think that Palestine was occupying Israel. They at least know the basic facts now,” said Barat.
While the solution to the conflict does rely upon a political solution, leaders will only implement just solutions if pushed to do so by their constituencies and the international community. Moving forward, unilateral declarations of statehood at the U.N. ,while important in advancing the legitimacy of Palestinian institutions and recognition, will not suffice in bridging the chasm.
Palestinian leadership needs to work to build a cohesive unity government, including a pacified Hamas in order to demonstrate a willingness to negotiate in earnest with a unified peaceful political bloc.
Israel needs to overcome the internal schism between the two most powerful institutions in the state today: the military and the rabbinate. By freezing all settlement expansion and talking seriously about the future evacuation of major West Bank settlements, Israel can help to implement a set of final status negotiations over major contentious issues like refugees and the status of Jerusalem.
The prospect of the military evacuating settlements in not unprecedented given the unilateral disengagement from the Gaza strip in 2005.
The biggest change will have to come from the United States, a country that has blocked a reasonable political solution accepted by virtually every country on earth.
“Things are unlikely to change unless the American population becomes fully aware of the facts and moves on to become actively engaged in changing policies that are destructive for the region and in fact even at home,” says Dr. Noam Chomsky in a video testimonial supporting the tribunals.