Two dynamic NGOs from Palestine and Israel visited Cape Town these past two weeks to learn more about our land distribution and land restitution issues, i.e. District Six, the healing of memory center, the Quaker center, etc.. Their mission is to lobby towards the return of Palestinian refugees (some 5 million+) and to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Mission aside, what was absolutely astounding to me was their mutual collaboration on resolving this issue of refugees, and the fact that they lived and workshopped together in the same guest house, knocking their heads together to strategized on a proposal to present to the Israeli government!
BADIL, based in Bethlehem, (www.badil.org) is an independent, community-based non-profit organization mandated to defend and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Their vision, missions, programs and relationships are defined by their Palestinian identity and the principles of international law, in particular international human rights law. BADIL seeks to advance the individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people on this basis. The BADIL Resource Center, established in January 1998, is registered with the Palestinian Authority and legally owned by the refugee community represented by a General Assembly composed of activists in Palestinian national institutions and refugee community organizations.
It was a pleasure to meet these highly educated and well travelled Muslim and Christian Palestinians, some being Israeli citizens.
The Jewish organization, ZACHROT, is an NGO located in Tel Aviv, whose goal is to introduce the Palestinian Nakba to the Israeli-Jewish public, to express the Nakba in Hebrew, and to enable a place for the Nakba in the language and in the environment. This is in order to promote an alternative memory to the hegemonic Zionist memory. The Nakba is a disaster of the Palestinian people: the destruction of their villages and cities, the killings, the expulsions, the erasure of Palestinian culture. But the Nakba, Zachrot believes is the story of the Jews who live in Israel, who enjoy the privileges of being the ‘winners’. Founded in 2002, one of the basic assumptions of ZACHROT’s work is that the Nakba is the ‘ground zero’ of the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Awareness and recognition of the Nakba by Jewish-Israeli people, and taking responsibility, by Israelis, for this tragedy, are essential to ending the struggle and starting a process of reconciliation between the people of Palestine-Israel.
It is Zochrot’s ambition to recreate the Nakba in Hebrew – in other words, to enable a space where the Nakba can be spoken of or written about in the Hebrew language. For this purpose, a website was created (http://zochrot.org/en) that includes a database of all the Palestinian villages that were destroyed since 1948 and the names of the Israeli localities that were built on their lands. There are also specific maps of the destroyed villages and different details about each of them. Zochrot has also organized encounters between Palestinian refugees and the Israelis who live on their lands. During the encounters, the Different narratives of 1948 are shared and there is an attempt to discuss opportunities for creating a space that would enable the needs of both sides to be met.
Now, if ever there was a model for creating a restorative democracy based on sharing ideas, understanding history, respecting the humanity of the other, and making commitments to amend injustices, this is it – a microcosm of how conflict can turn transformative and caring. Was this not South Africa’s experience in the end, also?
Oh, and these 17 wonderful professionals from different walks of life found the South African experience, and its turn of history, the most moving of any experiences they witnessed in other countries, so they told me, and the most relevant to their own apartheid world back home.
And back home….Jewish settlements increased in 2011, as did Palestinian displacements, according to the UNOCHA’s Monthly Humanitarian Monitor (December 2011):
“2011 was characterized by a lack of respect for IHL and IHR. Israeli settlement activity accelerated, with an almost 20% increase in new ‘starts’ for housing units, compared to 2010. Almost 1,100 Palestinians were forcibly displaced as a result of the demolition of over 620 structures. Two thirds of all Palestinian casualties in WB occurred in the context of attacks by Israeli settlers or during clashes with Israeli forces at demonstrations protesting settlement takeover of land. As in past years, restricted access to land in the vicinity of settlements, along with Israeli settler violence, were among the key factors undermining the olive harvest. In Gaza, 1/3 of essential drugs and 20% medical supplies are at zero stock.”
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