Palestinians of the West Bank village Bil’in recently launched a lawsuit against two Canadian corporations involved in building settlements on Occupied Palestinian Territories, illegal under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Filed last July to Quebec Superior Court against Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc., the suit seeks, inter alia, an injunction from the court to stop further construction.
The plaintiffs’ argument is based on international law, which Israel claims a unique right to violate and ignore by playing the card of Jews’ uniqueness, as my last piece (of August 19th) outlined.
As a result to Israel’s ongoing failure to abide by international law, and in front of the international community’s failure – to date – to bring Israel under the rule of law, the resolutions and conventions are often dismissed as worth no more than ink and paper. Palestinian Arabs are often thought to be in a situation of either surrender or radicalisation.
No doubt, if leaders and governments were to be relied on, it might be true. Coming to mind is the US ongoing veto in the UN Security Council preventing UN resolutions related to Israel from being acted on.
Moreover, although leaders constantly declare the settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territories as being the “biggest obstacles to peace” – Nicolas Sarkozy said so in his most recent trip to Israel – these are rather empty talks.
But do ordinary people not have a responsibility to act, and if they have, would their actions make a difference? If the conventional, straightforward ways are not acted on, then creative thinking, combined with a serious commitment, and armed with international law, might well be an option to try out before declaring the mission impossible. Professor Norman Finkelstein is a vocal critic of Israel’s policy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories who believes it is most efficient to stick by international law and mobilise around it. “We can’t wait for others to enforce the resolutions or to enforce the advisory opinion of the World Court,” he says. “We have to organize around that opinion ourselves and create an enforcement mechanism.”
In this context fits the Bil’in initiative, which is an attempt to enforce an internationally undisputed right of the Palestinians. “It is a good case,” Finkelstein believes. “It has possibilities for success if people organize around it.”
Because, once upon a time, even the Jewish state was no more than a General Assembly resolution (Partition Resolution 181) – or ink on paper. “The Zionist movement organised and mobilised around that resolution,” Finkelstein argues. “That’s what gave it force; that’s what gave it power. We have to do the same.”
A hope-springing phenomenon is the fact that criticism of Israel’s violation of the law is becoming the mainstream opinion in Europe and North America. Increasingly, influential people lend their names to this slogan. Polls show that even American Jews distance themselves from Israel, or, in Finkelstein’s words, a “breakup of American Zionism” is underway.
The environment might thus be set for a public movement to be launched in a bid to pressurise the US government — the world’s most powerful regime — towards taking a more decisive stance vis-à-vis Israel and bring the state under the rule of law.
The US government is in a position to impose sanctions on Israel if the latter acts in a way that opposes US interests. “When Israel was selling arms to the Chinese a couple of years ago,” Finkelstein recalls, “the Bush administration came down very hard on them.”
However, as its constant veto at the UN Security Council shows, the US government remains indifferent as long as Israel does not harm US fundamental interests. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, US interests were never really at stake, or so it seems.
Leaving aside the existing divergence between the two schools of thought on the question of “Who calls the shots—America or Israel” when there is a conflict of interests between the two powers, Professors Mearsheimer and Walt conveyed that America’s blind support for Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians is harmful to US interests, one obvious reason being the increase of the terrorism threat.
In the eyes of US decision-makers, however, terrorism fulfils the quite useful purpose of legitimising US illegal policies. “Terrorism serves the same purpose as communism used to serve,” Finkelstein says.
“It’s an excuse for increasing the military budget, for going into a country, and for repressing and suppressing civil liberties in the US.”
Mearsheimer and Walt’s book, The Israel Lobby And US Foreign Policy, of which the publication by a leading American publisher hints at some cracks in the “Zionist propaganda wall”, accounts for a significant contribution in the field. It should stimulate the US public to take action and to force its government towards withdrawing its blind support for Israel.
The international community is on a race against time. Responsibilities therefore need being divided and energies strategically invested. Because on the ground, the issue at stake is not how favourable the public opinion is for justice, but rather how that opinion is translated into action.
Asma Hanif is a Brussels-based writer
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