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On April 5th, the Alliance and many other organizations protest the killings of unarmed protesters in the Gaza Strip. Video below courtesy of Skip Schiel.
Palestinians evacuate mortally wounded Palestinian journalist Yasser Murtaja, 31, during clashes with Israeli troops at the Israel-Gaza border\ IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA/ REUTERS
Grassroots International joins our partners in Palestine and people of conscience around the world in condemning the recent killings and ongoing brutal attacks on unarmed Palestinian protesters by the Israeli military.
Land Day
Land Day has been commemorated by Palestinians since March 30, 1976, the day when Israeli military killed six Palestinian youth protesting peacefully in Galilee against Israel’s policy of removing Palestinians from their historical lands to make way for Jewish-only settlements.
The peaceful protests on this year’s Land Day mark the beginning of a planned six-weeks of popular mobilizations, leading up to the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day on May 15th. Nakba means catastrophe, which is how the Palestinians refer to the period surrounding 1948 when over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes leading up to, during, and after the war after the state of Israel was officially created. Accounting for internally displaced people within Israel, Palestinian refugees now total more than two thirds of the entire Palestinian population.
Protests, rallies and marches, known as the “Great March of Return” are taking place across occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank as well as within Israel, and solidarity marches are being organized around the globe.
Pre-determined Israeli Military Response
The extreme violence appears to be deliberate, according to Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem and other reports. An Israeli military spokesperson said in a tweet, which has since been deleted, “nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured. We know where every bullet landed.” Along with tanks and drones, the Israeli forces deployed 100 snipers to the Palestinian border.
Palestinians were shot for simply approaching the fence and the arbitrary restricted access zone near the fence.
There is considerable concern that the violence is only going to increase as Israeli authorities show no signs of backing down from their military response or abiding by their international legal obligations.
Conditions in Gaza
The Gaza protests emerged out of a humanitarian crisis resulting from multiple bombings and the siege, which has blocked movement of people and vital goods.
According to a January report of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugee (UNRWA):
--97 percent of Gaza water is unfit for human consumption.
--45 percent of medicines are absent from the warehouses of the Gaza Ministry of Health, along with 28 percent of needed medical equipment.
--50 percent of Palestinian children need psychological counseling.
--Only 54 percent of requested medical transfers to outside hospitals in 2017 were approved—the lowest since 2006.
--44 percent of the adult Gaza population is unemployed. Among youth, it’s 62 percent and among those with disabilities, it’s 90 percent.
--65 percent of families live in poverty (95 percent among fishermen) and more than 72 percent don’t have enough food.
--Of the total population of 1.9 million Palestinians living in Gaza, 1.3 million (approximately 70%) are refugees, displaced from their original villages by Israel.
Palestinian Demands
“Palestinians in the Gaza Strip don’t have a lot of choices; we are cornered. We either risk our lives to take a stand or we slowly die while we wait for our rights,” explained Abu Ratima, one of the participants in the march.
According to the largest coalition of Palestinian civil society groups, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, the key goal of the marches is to “uphold the fundamental right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and land, and for an end to Israel’s policy of ethnic cleansing.”
In addition to calling for independent, international investigation into the violence, the BDS National Committee is also calling on the global community to enact accountability measures against Israel, including a military embargo on Israel, much like the embargo that was imposed upon apartheid South Africa.
US Role and Responsibility
Appallingly, the US blocked a recent resolution in the UN Security Council, which would have called for an independent investigation into the Palestinian deaths in Gaza on Land Day. The US continues to support Israel with a $38 billion in a military aid package. In addition, President Trump’s reckless announcement to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem flies in the face of a vision of a just peace for the people of the region.
Take Action
Grassroots International continues to stand in solidarity with our Palestinian partners as they take courageous action for rights to land, water, food sovereignty, self-determination, and other fundamental human rights.
Please join us and take action to demand an independent investigation, respect for internationally recognized refugee rights, safety for demonstrators, and an end to US military aid to Israel. Thank you.
On March 22 The Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine marked the 25th annual World Water Day with a Stand Out for Water Justice in downtown Boston followed by a forum, ‘The Arc of Water Injustice from Palestine to Standing Rock.’
The UN had designated March 22 as World Water Day back in 1993. In the years since then various UN bodies have declared water as a human right which “should be treated as a social & cultural good, and not primarily as an economic good,” in the words of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The UN General Assembly formally recognized water as a human right in 2010.
While these lofty pronouncements were being drafted, a very different neoliberal reality was unfolding on the ground, as large corporations turned water into a commodity to be bought and sold for a profit. In indigenous lands around the globe water resources were being plundered and polluted, with devastating consequences for traditional ways of living and the environment. The ongoing seizure and diversion of water to drive indigenous peoples from their land has been a tool of colonial domination from the Americas to Palestine and beyond.
The contradiction between UN rhetoric that water is a common good and the neoliberal drive to make water a commodity exploited by the powerful is particularly glaring every three years, when the World Water Council hosts a giant World Water Forum attended by well over 10,000 government ministers, multilateral corporations, international bodies like the World Bank, development organizations and water industry businesses hawking their wares.
This year, from March 18 – 23, the Eighth World Water Forum took place in Brasilia, Brazil. Simultaneously, an Alternative World Water Forum was taking place in Brasilia, with the theme “water is a right, not a commodity.” It sought to bring together organizations and social movements from all over the world that struggle for water justice and in defense of water as an elementary right to life.
Our forum stood in solidarity with this effort, and focused on the threat to indigenous water resources in Palestine, North America and Latin America.
The first presentation was made by Nidal al Azraq, a Palestinian who grew up in Aida refugee camp in the West Bank and is now the executive director of Boston-based 1for3.org. He used the example of the West Bank village of Walaja to show how the seizure of water resources by Israel, along with the building of Israel’s Apartheid Wall across village land, served as weapons of ethnic cleansing.
The second presenter was Yasir Kaheil, a hydrologist from the Gaza Strip who worked at the Palestine Water Authority before coming to live in the United States. He described the water catastrophe facing Gaza and repeated efforts to deal with it that were all either destroyed by Israeli military attacks or abandoned for political reasons.
The discussion then switched continents, as Grassroots International executive director Chung-Wha Hong spoke about efforts made by its partner groups in Brazil and Honduras to confront mining interests that appropriated and polluted huge amounts of water, and to stop the building of giant hydroelectric dams that displaced indigenous communities. The courage required to take on massive corporate power became tragically clear when the indigenous human rights and environmental activist Berta Caceres was murdered in March 2016 while leading the battle against Honduras’ biggest hydroelectric dam.
Next, Dorotea Manuela, a coordinator of Boston’s Color of Water Project, did not mince words when she described the close relationship between race and water access in Boston, and the impact of colonialism on her native Puerto Rico. She outlined how ‘shock doctrine’ – the term coined by Naomi Klein – was playing out in post hurricane Puerto Rico, including in the provision of water resources.
The final presenter was Mark Kenneth Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota poet and educator who had been a non-violent direct action coordinator at Standing Rock. He talked about the campaign of Standing Rock Water Protectors and surveyed Lakota efforts to use treaty rights to prevent the building of dams and other ruinous water projects that destroyed indigenous homes, livelihoods and culture.
In the far-ranging discussion that followed, participants spoke of the importance of learning from each other’s struggles, of recognizing what they had in common, and of striving to build genuine multiracial solidarity movements here in the United States.
Nancy Murray
Dorotea Manuela of Boston's Color of Water Project listens as Mark Kenneth Tilsen describes the Lakota struggle to protect water resources.
Grassroots International executive director Chung-Wha Hong talks about water struggles in Latin America. Photo credit: Justin C. McIntosh