West Belfast Sinn Féin Sinn Féin -- Building an Ireland of Equals

Day 5 of Bairbre de Brun visit to Gaza

Published: 28 February, 2009

General Strike in the West Bank and Gaza

A general strike has been called today all over the West Bank and Gaza because of the Israeli decision to evacuate 88 families from their home at Kfar-Selwan in East Jerusalem - a real threat to the Palestinian dream.

The Israelis must be fairly confident that they will get continued uncritical support even from the new US administration I feel so angry that they can announce this confiscation even after the appointment of George Mitchell, thus signalling their intention to resist any pressure or encouragement for a change of approach. I also wonder how I and the other MEPs who are here can make people in our own countries understand how critical it is to oppose the cutting to pieces of the West Bank and of East Jerusalem?

Do people in Ireland realise that while all eyes are on Gaza Israel is working in Jerusalem and the West Bank to cut off any prospect of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem at its capital? Does the West have any idea of the repercussions if hope of a viable Palestinian state is lost?

It is important that it was the PLO who decided on the general strike. If it gets a big response then this is a signal that Palestinians are united in the defence of East Jerusalem.

Talk of Palestinian Unity has come centre stage to our meetings following the news from Cairo. The 14 different Palestinian parties have decided, not yet to form a unity government but to move to dialogue on setting up such a consensus government and on resolving other issues such as elections and having one Palestinian security force.

We meet with Mustapha Barghouti of 'Democratic Initiative' who has just come back from Cairo and who explains the detail of the five committees that have been formed representing all 14 parties in order to address the range of issues that touch on Palestinian unity.

People in West Belfast will remember the time this Palestinian political figure had accepted an invitation to address a meeting in St Mary's College University during the West Belfast Festival. The Israeli government wouldn't let him travel and I remember to this day the strength of feeling in the hall as I chaired the discussion with him by video link.

Today he tells us some of the detail of what was agreed in Cairo by way of working towards unity among the Palestinians. He feels strongly that they can get nowhere with Israel or the western world while they are so divided amongst themselves, and it is hard to disagree.

Palestinian unity and moves towards a consensus government and towards elections is also a sizable part of our discussions with Abdullah Abdullah and Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Most of the discussion centres of course on Gaza, on the violations of international human rights standards and on the need for pressure in the European Parliament to ensure that Israel can't just get away with it with no sanction against them of any kind.

As we pose for photographs afterwards, Abdullah Abdullah tells me that his masters thesis in university was on a comparison between Lebanon and Ireland. It's a small world!

Travelling back towards Jerusalem we see that the General Strike has been a success - so successful in fact that there is no where open in Ramallah for us to eat. Shops are closed and people have really responded. Feelings clearly run very deep about East Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem we meet with UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs for the Occupied Palestinian Territory. There we have a presentation from Ray Dolphin that really brings home to us not only the vast challenge facing the people of Gaza after the recent Israeli bombings but also the particular affect that these bombings had on a population that had no safe places, no bomb shelters and nowhere to go as the border crossings are closed and they are not permitted to leave.

He also shows us the reality of the bleak humanitarian situation for many in the West Bank caused by a combination of checkpoints, trenches, road barriers, road gates, earth mounds and the now infamous Wall. He gives a very practical example of a farmer in Jayyus whose farm is on the other side of the wall. To get to his farm he will need a permit and few get such a permit. Even with a permit, once across the farmer will have to stay there for at least 8 hours rather than being able to come and go, and will have to be back by nightfall. If he has a medical emergency or an agricultural accident he will have to wait until the barrier is open again before he can get treatment and there are restrictions on what he can bring in by way of farm implements or pesticides.

He tells us the presentation is available on the website at www.ocha.opt.org. By doing an overlay of the various closures and barriers one on top of the other he shows us their cumulative effect. A row breaks out because several MEPs in the delegation want him to spell out clearly the political consequences of this and he says that as a UN worker this is not his function. To me the political message from what he says couldn't be starker. Unless all of this is reversed there can never be a viable Palestinian state.

Our last meeting of the day, back at the hotel, is with Israeli human rights organisations. Young, committed, Israeli human rights campaigners talk to us from three different NGOs; B'tselem The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Gisha the Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement and the Director for the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Physicians for Human Rights. They underline many of the messages we have heard already, and it is good to see their commitment to international human rights standards.

They set out for us a number of the breaches of international humanitarian law in the last few weeks, and questions to be asked about the behaviour and policy of the Israeli forces, including the deliberate targeting and killing of civilians and the denial of emergency medical aid to the injured. They make clear their remit as Israeli organisations is to look at the actions of the Israeli forces. They stress that in most cases it is important to look at the policy and not just at the actions of individual soldiers. By now this list has become familiar to many of us but it shocking nonetheless to hear it re-iterated. And as always, just when I think I have started to grasp the enormity of it all I hear some new detail that horrifies me even more. Amnesty International has already released a report and Human Rights Watch is due to release a number of reports on Gaza. If these do not provoke an outcry then we have truly lost our ability to feel outrage at the wanton disregard of human rights.

The young Israeli human rights campaigners stop short of calling for Israel to be investigated for war crimes but the story they tell leaves me in no doubt that this needs to happen.