“Open letter of support from the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign”

Dear Ontario branch of the Canadian Union of Public Employees,

On behalf of the 54 popular committees struggling every day against the Wall that imprisons us in our cities and villages, the Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign thanks you for your vote to join the global movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

In these times, where occupations are given such names as « Operation Freedom » and our ghettoization behind 8-meter high walls is marketed as « disengagement », your decision to uphold human rights through concrete action stands out as courageous. We know that you will face many attacks for your coherence, but this cannot detract from the reasoned, principled stands expressed in your resolution. Some will tell you that you have no moral right to boycott Israel. Allow us to ask them, who has the moral right to close their eyes in front of crimes of occupation and apartheid, continuing « business as usual » ?

The Palestinian Call for the isolation of Israel comes at a time when the Occupation is completing its Apartheid Wall that runs around our cities and villages, calling this delimitation of our ghettos « final borders ». Daily land theft, home demolitions and assassinations, impending expulsion for over 12 communities stuck between settlements, the Wall and the Green Line, the « Judaization » of Jerusalem and the isolation of 120,000 Palestinians residents from the holy city are all part of the daily reality for Palestinians in the West Bank. On the other hand, Israeli apartheid ensures that settlers can steal our land and water with no laws to restrain them. Separate road systems ensure freeways for Jewish settlers over Israeli-controlled tunnels for Palestinians to funnel us between our ghettos.

For 58 years, our people residing inside Israel have been pushed to become Israelis with second class citizenship or to vanish. They are suffering from institutionalised state racism through a myriad of regulations and laws and suffer from a continuous drive (also often in the form of legislation) to expel them from their homeland. To mention only two of the latest such policies : the Judaization of the Galilee and the Naqab (Negev) proceeds in full force, with Jewish Israelis receiving monetary and social incentives to move to those areas, while local Palestinian residents are often banned from water, sewage system and health care access, and a May 14th decision by the Israeli High Court validated the racist « family reunification » law which actually bars family reunification between Palestinians from the territories occupied in ’67 and from Israel. Last but not least, 6 million of our people are refugees scattered over the world.

Despite all this, Palestinians have been extending offers for peace and promoting dialogue with the Occupying power. Over 10 years after the Oslo Accords, we know that the time we offered for « negotiations » was used by Israel to intensify the colonization and settlement of our lands. It was an « agreement » used to prepare the Bantustans shaped by the Apartheid Wall which clearly runs along the lines of the areas declared in 1994 as under the administrative control of the Palestinian Authority - a successive loss of land from the British Mandate Period through the 1948 and 1967 Occupations to now. It is at this point that 170 Palestinian civil society organizations have gathered around the Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

Our struggle is just, and backed by hundreds of UN Resolutions as well as the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which reminded the world of its obligation not to render any aid or assistance to the Wall or the situation created by it. When South Africa was condemned by the ICJ, the international community reacted by isolating the apartheid regime. We ask for the same principled steadfastness now.

Instead, your government, like many others, has continued its support for the colonial apartheid regime built on our lands. Your tax money, your institutions and their « business as usual » have facilitated the crimes against us. On Imwas lands, one of our villages ethnically cleansed in 1967, « Canada Park » was built for the relaxation of the colonizers over the ruins of our history. Recently, your government stood at the forefront of support for the Israeli « starvation policy » against our people, and imposed sanctions on us for having exercised open and fair elections. It was your motion that has encouraged us and people struggling for Human Rights and Justice all over the world to look to Canada again as an example of leading the way.

Fifty-eight years of failed resolutions and lip service by governments and their institutions have taught us that we need to turn to the people to enact a change by breaking international complicity with our oppression. The endorsements our Call gathered in the first year since it was issued fill all Palestinians deprived of their livelihoods and homes with hope. The British National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education (NATFHE) passed a boycott motion just one day after CUPE’s decision. Protestant churches all over the world have passed divestment resolutions, consumer boycotts are spreading, Israeli representatives face protests all over the world, governmental parties from India to Norway are calling for boycott and sanctions. Entire cities are campaigning for divestment. The world has woken up and starts to restore the values of Human Rights.

Steps toward an effective movement in support of Palestinian and human rights, like the resolution passed by you, are deeply appreciated by our people. We are thus encouraging you to implement the motion without hesitation, holding on to the precepts of Justice, Human Rights and International Law.

Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

Jamal Juma’
(Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign - coordinator)
global@stopthewall.org
http://www.stopthewall.org/
phone : +972-522550212