Gaza youth activist to join Resistance conference

Green Left Weekly’s Patrick Harrison spoke to Shamikh Badra, the youth and students coordinator for the Palestinian People Party in Gaza Strip. Badra will speak at Resistance’s Time of Revolution conference in Adelaide, over July 20-22.

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What is the daily experience of living in the Gaza Strip?

The occupying power continues to impose its blockade on the Gaza Strip and to target Palestinian civilians by assassinations, air strikes and artillery shelling. It is persisting with its war of aggression on Gaza of three years ago, which resulted in the massive destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques and the thousands of martyrs and wounded.

In total, 1419 Palestinians were killed in this war. Eighty three percent of the dead — the overwhelming majority — were civilians, the so-called “protected persons” of international humanitarian law.

A further 5300 were injured and public and private property throughout the Gaza Strip was extensively targeted and destroyed.

The single most brutal event in the history of the occupation was characterised by systematic violations of international law. Its aftermath has been characterised by pervasive impunity.

The consequences of impunity are evident in the fact that the entire Gaza Strip continues to be subject to an illegal closure. For many years, 1.7 million people have been collectively punished and cut off from the outside world.

Impunity, and the international community’s failure to prevent this ongoing crime, has resulted in the distinct possibility that the closure will become institutionalized.

We live in the Gaza Strip, that there is not enough water, electricity, fuel and medicine. It is really [a kind of] genocide not recorded before in the history of humanity.

Do you think the Oslo peace process has failed? Can the United Nations bid for Palestinian statehood change the situation?

Of course, the Oslo peace process has failed. The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions. It frantically continues to intensify the building of settlements on the territory of the state of Palestine.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails.

This policy constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions.

The occupation is racing against time to redraw the borders on our land according to what it wants and to impose a fait accompli on the ground that changes the realities and undermines the realistic potential for the existence of the state of Palestine.

Palestinians are asking for international recognition of their state on the 1967 borders, including East Jerusalem, as stipulated in international resolutions. They also seek admission to the United Nations as a full member.

The establishment of a Palestinian state was a promise made to the Palestinian people by the international community. The fulfillment [of this promise] is long overdue.

The right of the Palestinian people to an independent, sovereign state has awaited implementation for 64 years. It is a debt owed by the international community to the Palestinian people.

While UN admission and recognition will not physically remove Israeli forces from occupied Palestinian territory, Palestinians believe this is a crucial step that will contribute to the inevitable end of occupation and the realisation of Palestinian rights. It will realign the political process and discourse with international law and lay to rest any questions on the issue of Palestinian statehood.

International recognition and UN membership bring Palestinians closer to freedom by consecrating the two-state solution, which is the internationally-agreed formula for peace in the region. They strengthen the possibility of reaching a just and lasting peace based on the internationally endorsed terms of reference for resolving the conflict. They affirm respect for relevant UN resolutions, including Security Council Resolution 24.

Why should people in western countries like Australia take action for Palestine?

The right to self determination of the Palestinian people, like that of all peoples, is an inalienable right that is not up for negotiation.

The establishment of a sovereign and viable Palestinian state is a debt owed by the international community to the Palestinian people that is long-overdue. This right has awaited implementation for nearly seven decades.

This is a natural, historical, and legal right for the Palestinian people. Statehood and its declaration is also a sovereign right of all nations, as stipulated in international law.

Additionally, the UN has repeatedly asserted Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

For decades, Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights of freedom, equality, and self-determination through ethnic cleansing, colonisation, racial discrimination, and military occupation.

Despite abundant condemnation of Israeli policies by the UN, other international bodies, and preeminent human rights organisations, the world community has failed to hold Israel accountable and enforce compliance with basic principles of law. Israel’s crimes have continued with impunity.

In view of this continued failure, we cooperate with international progressive and democratic movements and parties that support the rights of the Palestinian people.
We struggle alongside other movements that seek to achieve liberation, peace, democracy and socialism in order to preserve world peace and to protect human rights and the environment.

I would like to confirm the importance of the promotion of the common struggle against imperialism and its policies which endanger global peace to risk, and which only serves the economic and military interests of the United States of America and its allies. We need the solidarity of the socialist and progressive forces in the world, with all the people who are struggling in order to obtain their legitimate right to freedom, independence and prosperity.

Is the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) changing the situation between Israel and Palestine?

The global movement for a campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights was initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005, and is coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), established in 2007.

BDS is a strategy that allows people of conscience to play an effective role in the Palestinian struggle for justice.

On July 9, 2005, a year after the International Court of Justice’s historic advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel’s Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), a clear majority of Palestinian civil society called upon their counterparts and people of conscience all over the world to launch broad boycotts, implement divestment initiatives, and to demand sanctions against Israel until Palestinian rights are recognised in full compliance with international law.

The BDS campaign is shaped by a rights-based approach and highlights the three broad sections of the Palestinian people: the refugees, those under military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinians in Israel.

The call urges various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantling the Wall,

2. Recognising the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

More than 170 Palestinian political parties, organisations, trade unions and movements, endorsed the BDS call. The signatories represent the refugees, Palestinians in the OPT, and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Can the capitalist system solve the problems of the Arab world that led to the uprisings of 2011?

Capitalism cannot solve the problems of the Arab world. The massive expansion of poverty and the dramatic increase in unemployment reveal the aggressiveness of the capitalist system and its aim to devalue the price of labour power and destroy productive forces in a mass way in order to salvage its profitability in the conditions of the crisis.

People in Arab world must recognise the fact that real change can come only with the overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism. Our era is the era of transition from capitalism to socialism.

The youth’s future is not with capitalism. Socialism is the future. Only socialism can create the conditions for the eradication of wars, unemployment, hunger, misery, illiteracy, the uncertainty of hundreds of millions of people and the destruction of the environment. Only socialism creates the conditions for development according to the contemporary needs of the workers.

The overthrow of capitalism and the construction of socialism constitute an imperative need for the peoples. I would like to salute the growing popular struggles against imperialism, capitalist exploitation and oppression in all over the world.