Reports Roundup (March 9)

[Image from jadaliyya.com] [Image from jadaliyya.com]

Reports Roundup (March 9)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following list is a compilation of the reports, statements, and other materials featured on the Jadaliyya Reports Page this past week.]

NGO Conference Calls for Regional Human Rights Reform The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights reports on the result of a February NGO seminar focused on strategy for human rights reform throughout the Arab world.  

Month-by-Month Summary of Developments in Syria (Updated) International Crisis Group issues a monthly "Crisis Watch" report on Syria. These briefs are compiled here, showing the progression of the Syrian conflict.

Concern Over Arrest of Human Rights Defender Zainab Al-Khawaja Front Line Defenders condemns the arrest and detenion of Bahraini activist Zainab Al-Khawaja, who was arrested on February 27 during a peaceful sit-in in front of the Royal Palace in Al Qudaybiyah, and whose appeal on another similar charge was subsequently denied. 

Doctors Without Borders: Humanitarian Aid Cannot Be Co-Opted into Somalia Stabilization Program Doctors Without Borders warns against discussions in the UN Security Council that could result in the humanitarian assistance being integrated into the broader military campaign against opponents of the Somali government. 

The Turkel Report: A Preliminary Analysis A group of human rights organizations urge the international community to demand Israeli compliance with the recommendations of the Turkel Committee, a group established in June 2010 to investigate the legality of the Israeli maritime blockade in Gaza. 

Letter Concerning the UAE "Blacklisting" of Dr. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen The Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association addresses the Minister of Foreign Affairs of UAE with their concerns over the Dr. Ulrichsen`s denial of entry to the UAE, where he was to present his paper, “Bahrain’s Uprising: Domestic Implications and Regional International Perspectives,” at a scholarly conference. 

Open Letter from Family of Jailed Palestinian Cartoonist Mohammed Saba`na The Committee to Protect Journalists provides an update on the status of Mohammed Abdel Ghani Saba`na, a Palestinian cartoonist arrested on February 16, but whose detention has now been extended twice. Following the update is a letter from Saba`na`s family appealing for assistance from the international community in securing their son`s release. 

Call for Urgent Action: Jordanian Held Incommunicado in Saudi Arabia Amnesty International calls for international pressure on the Saudi government for the release of Khalid al-Natour, a Jordanian citizen and member of the Herak political reform movement, who was arrested in December 2012 without reason in Saudi Arabia. 

Brooklyn College, BDS, and Palestinian Rights In light of the debate over a BDS event held at Brooklyn College last month, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel addresses two common criticisms of the BDS movement: first, that BDS does not take a position on a one or two state solution, and really just seeks to destroy Israel; and second, that BDS targets Israeli academics and is thus against academic freedom, and worse, is racist.

Concern Over Barring of International Observers from Trial Against Peaceful Activists in UAE The Alkarama Foundation reports on the refusal to allow representatives from their organization and Amnesty International from observing the trial of ninety-four activists accused of establishing an organization seeking to oppose the UAE system and seize power.

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412