The Friends School for Boys in Al-Bireh, near Ramallah, was abuzz this Saturday (June 16, 2011) with community organizers and young Palestinian activists, as well as a sprinkling of older residents, all of whom were attending a conference regarding the much talked about September bid for recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN.
The idea of this daylong conference of panels was for it to be an opportunity to learn what it actually entails, procedurally, to go to the UN, what are the possible outcomes and effects, and ask questions to the panelists presenting. The conference was hosted by Muwatin, The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy, at the bequest of and with logistical organization by youth activists who felt there has been too much lofty talk and not enough information, and who wanted to learn, as well as initiate conversation about what September could actually mean for the future of Palestine and Palestinians.
The conference was indeed all of these things; however, it was also something bigger. The attendees came from all over the Occupied West Bank and 1948 Palestine. Ramallah locals were undoubtedly present, but what was unmistakable and emphasized most by the activists were the amount and importance of people that had come from outside Ramallah, from Jenin, Tulkaram, Qalqilya, Nablus, Hebron, Yaffa, Haifa, and other cities. It was networking, activist style, and what was more evident is how thirsty people were for it all.
After everyone had been slowly gathered and scooted out of the coffee, cookies, and registration area outside, seats started to fill in the gymnasium and the panels begun. The day was split into four panels: the opening panel, the legal panel, the political panel, and the economic panel – with a lunch break halfway through. I will not detail to great extent all of the panels equally, but instead try to give you a picture of the conversations and reactions they provoked.
The opening panel consisted of two presentations, one on the political geography of Palestine by Daoud Hamouda and the other on the background and structure of the UN by Yara Jlajil. Hamouda’s talk focused on the current reality of Judaization projects throughout historic Palestine – specifically, the Galilee, the Triangle, the West Bank, and the Negev. Hamouda discussed strategies by the Israeli government to cut, for example, the Galilee’s 53% Arab population down to 38% by building universities, factories, and other ‘enticements’ to encourage more of the Jewish population to move North. He of course discussed the constant demolition of homes and destruction of Bedouin villages in the Negev desert, as well as the ‘aggressive urbanization’ in East Jerusalem. However, perhaps his most striking example with the crowd was a small town in the Salfeet district, whose residents in order to travel from their town to the city of Salfeet itself (a 20 minute drive), are forced due to the Israeli Occupation’s roadblocks, bypass roads, and settlements to leave their district, go to the north and do a loop through up to 3 other districts in order to come back to a city in the same district of their own town. The 20 minute drive is now 6 hours long. Hamouda described this as part and parcel of a ‘divide and conquer’ approach, an understanding which garnered a sort of collective agreeing head nod from the activists and other attendees; the goal being to make everyone so involved in regional issues of movement that it becomes difficult to ascertain the national picture and circumstance.
The second half of the opening panel was a description of the organizational structure and procedural guidelines of the UN, including the ability of the General Assembly to override a US or other Security Council member’s veto. Yara Jlajil explained the move for recognition of statehood at the UN as having the potential to promote the Palestinian issue in a legal manner, with one possible, of many, result being raising the current entity observer status at the UN to that of the non-member permanent observer one of the Vatican or Switzerland pre-2002, allowing opportunity for legal maneuvers not currently available to the PLO seat. Jlajil’s overview and layout of a few possible outcomes opened the door for the legal panel, at which point the conference took a turn from basic information to analysis, opinion, strategy, and objection from attendees.
The legal panel, as well as the two which followed, were moderated by one of the youth organizers. Each panelist spoke for about 10 minutes, followed by questions from the moderator, and then questions from the crowd. Like most things in Palestine, even the legal is discussed and understood in as much as it can be used for the national ambition of liberation. Kameel Mansour, Khalil Kraja, and Mazin Al-Masri’s opinions on the September mood varied, but one thing they all seemed to settle on was that even if recognition of statehood was achieved, it would not translate to liberation of the land. Dr. Mansour clarified further that being a member at the UN is not one in the same as being a member in the international state system, hinting at the political reality of state relations in global affairs. That said, he also did not write off the September move, even with a veto, he saw it as beneficial to request and register the vote. Kraja held a similar stance, viewing September as a beginning and not an end, and brought up a phrase that would continue to come up throughout the day – “changing the rules of the game.” Al-Masri’s assessment, on the other hand, was more critical in that he was open in admitting what everyone thinking already knew – recognition won’t change anything on the ground, it would be the advertisement of a state under occupation. He described a state that would be nothing more than a group of institutions and autonomous governments, emphasizing the difference between autonomy, authority, and sovereignty. Al-Masri also interjected the issue of refugees and seemed confident that effects to come out of September recognition for refugees and their right of return would be overwhelmingly negative.
The role of the PLO in the case of state recognition was also a significant point of focus, and one which sparked a significant array of responses and emotion from the crowd. One scenario posited was that the PLO would remain a point of reference for the Palestinian people
(مرج للشعب الفلسطيني), which was quickly challenged with: “will they continue to represent the refugees?” A question protested by multiple attendees who contested that they have even been doing that as of the past 2 decades, let alone what will come with a state. It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to “what will become of resistance?”
When a 15 year old girl from Jenin rose in the Q&A and said that she was ready to resist, to throw a stone, even if she knew it would be the last stone she would ever throw, the last thing she would ever do in her life, because she would never give up on Palestine, a large portion of the crowd erupted in applause. A friend sitting next to me shook his head in disappointed disapproval; another man rose and insisted that whatever political path was chosen had to be coupled with armed resistance; a girl in response to that man instead pointed to the March 15th End to the Division movement as a success story. Khalil Kraja ran with her alternative, pointing to the results of March 15th, to which the crowd, including many of the March 15th activists, responded to by looking at each other and asking “what results?” with the agreement between Fatah and Hamas still a mystery and not implemented in any form people can see or understand.
The lunch break and conversations that followed had a lot to do with people’s voices, in more ways than one. Voices in terms of representation – who was speaking for who and who wasn’t, voices in terms of volume – hushed tones and others raised in anger, and voices in terms of access to each other – invitations to visit and thanks for honesty and sharing.
The momentum of questions and challenges from attendees after the legal panel tripled after the political panel which followed. Twenty or so people lined up behind the microphones, myself included, some to go off on a diatribe, some to ask a simple question, others to do both. Issues of transparency in the PA arose and panelists Azmi Shuaibi and Khalil Shaheen challenging some of those who were demanding more that the pressure to end the occupation has to come from the people. More than one person rose to complicate this premise during the Q&A with one girl rising to exclaim “we don’t know how to reach the stick that hits us from the occupation when we’re too busy trying to deal with the stick that hits us here in the Manara (Ramallah’s main roundabout and center of town).” Others pushed the refugee issue again, some turned their attention to ’48 Palestine and its ‘forgotten’ Palestinians, while others returned to a common topic – one vs. two states. To the latter, Shuaibi responded that the people had to be the ones to decide if two states was something they would accept, but it wasn’t for any one group or individual to stand up and impose a one state solution as the only one that could work for Palestinians, to which many returned again to the issue of transparency and representation. Suffice it to say was a plethora of opinion and side conversation stirring.
Though there was no break between the political and economic panel, many people stepped out, as the general mood was a need for a bit of fresh air. Some of the attendees, who the organizers had helped pay for buses to transport them, had to leave as the conference was running over its planned schedule. For those who remained, the economic panel was a bit of a cool down period and a shift from some of the strategizing and theory of past panelists to one of numbers and reality and effect of the occupation on the livelihoods of Palestinians in the West Bank and those living under siege in Gaza.
It’s obvious that for many here, September is less about change on the ground than it is a moment of truth for the status quo. The youth here are working to build a movement in a structure that does not fit in to the highly rigid mode of past movements in Palestinian resistance. They are eager and they are reaching out to each other, talking to each other, and most importantly, doing it rather openly.
I don’t mean this “openly” in the sense that there is no strategic secrecy or privacy in planning or between activists. However, Saturday’s conference, initially posted as a private event on Facebook, quickly became public by a decision of the organizers. It was open to the public, and as an attendee mentioned to me, “we know there are mukhabarat (intelligence) here, and we don’t care. I’m fed up. I’m going to listen, but I’m going to leave here and call people too.”
The talking that is happening openly is an attempt to cultivate a culture of conversation, a culture long-present among Palestinians, but one that has not been harvested in some time. September or no September, people are talking and activists here are going to keep encouraging them to do so, banking on a moment when they can take that talk and emotion and collectively mobilize their communities.