Human rights in Palestine

The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas has caused worldwide divisions on the argument as to which side is right and which side is wrong. Most of the Western world and international media are obviously very sympathetic to the Israeli cause. The only global media that I have come across which expresses sympathy for the Palestinian cause is Al Jazeera.

I have therefore read very few articles and written arguments that have tried to give a balanced view of this conflict. A very insightful and powerful communication that has not received much attention is the recent resignation letter of Craig Mokhiber, the erstwhile director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights.  He writes: “I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it.”

He equates the current “successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians” to previous genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi and the Rohingya.

Mokhiber calls the death of thousands of Palestinian civilians as a textbook case of genocide. The most interesting part of his letter to me was when he outlined ten essential points for a UN-based position. He precedes his ten points statement with a rhetorical question:  “For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law?”

He also says that any discussion on the struggle between the Palestinians and the Israelis must be able to see beyond propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice, the courage to abandon fear and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace.

Here are his ten essential points:

1. Legitimate action: It is time to abandon the two-state solution and base the UN position on internal human rights and international law.

2. This conflict is not just over land or religion or between two warring parties.  The reality is conflict between a disproportionate powerful state which is colonizing, persecuting and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of ethnicity.

3. A state based on human rights must support the establishment of a single democratic secular state in all of historic Palestine with equal rights for Christians, Muslims and Jews and an end to apartheid across the land.

4. The UN must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid just as it did for South Africa in the 1970s up to the early 1990s.

5. The UN must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians living in occupied territories in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and across the globe.

6. There must be a call for a transitional justice process to document the truth and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators and redress for all victims and remedies for all documented injustices.

7. There is a need for the deployment of a well-researched and strongly mandated UN protection force with the sustained mandate to protect civilians thoughout the whole of Palestine.

8. The UN must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel’s massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and possibly beyond.

9. The UN must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in violation of Palestinian rights.

10. Solidarity: The UN must open its doors to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim and Christian human rights defenders who are in solidarity with the people in Palestine and their human rights and stop the flow of Israel lobbyists who advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid and immunity and smear human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.

Craig Mokhiber is the son of a Christian Lebanese who immigrated to the US in the early 1900s. He specialized in investigating human rights abuses. He served as an attorney with the United Nations Center for Human Rights in Geneva. He has spent more than three decades of service to the United Nations.

Another critical point in his letter is his manifestation that “… criticism of human rights violations is not anti-Semitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violation is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violation is anti-Buddhist or criticism of Indian violation is anti-Hindu.”

Mokhiber’s full letter is fairly long but it is worth reading for those who are interested not just in the struggle in Palestine but for those who are interested in the issue of human rights.

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