Don’t let COVID blind you to injustice unfolding before us

Palestinians and supporters mark Nakba Day as Israel annexes more land, says Greg Barns

SEVENTY-TWO years after the Palestinians were driven off their ancient land to make way for the modern state of Israel, a new nightmare is emerging.

May 15 is Nakba Day, when people around the world who care for justice reflect on the events of 1948, but this year they will be protesting against the Israeli Government’s illegal annexation of more Palestinian land — a new Nakba.

While here in Australia we have turned our minds and our vision inwards as we battle the virus, perhaps we might consider the plight of a people whose lives and destiny are immeasurably worse than ours will ever be in this land.

Benjamin Netanyahu, charged with serious criminal offences but newly installed as prime minister for another term after three inconclusive elections, is planning to annex vast swathes of the West Bank, which the Palestinians rightly view as their land and which would be the heartland of a Palestinian state. He is being supported by the Trump administration, which is essentially a hardline Zionist machine rubber-stamping every outrage committed by the Netanyahu Government.

As Josef Federman wrote in the Washington Post on Friday: “Surrounded by a team of pro-settlement advisers, Trump delivered diplomatic gifts that Netanyahu never could have imagined under previous administrations.”

So what would annexation of the West Bank, which the Israelis captured in the 1967 war, mean for Palestinians? Fawaz Turki, a victim of the Israeli aggression in 1948, has written annexation would be a move that “effectively aims at wresting from Palestinians their dream of ever becoming an independent people freely determining their own destiny in their own state — and doom them to perpetual subjugation under the rule of the gun of an apartheid state”. This is an eloquent and accurate summary of the new Nakba.

Like leaders across the world, Mr Netanyahu is using the cover of COVID to trample on the human rights of an already oppressed group. He sees a world distracted, and a White House run by a group of individuals who, even by the low standards set by previous US administrations, is the most ardent fan of snubbing international law.

The attempt to annex the West Bank would be illegal. But of course Mr Netanyahu and his Government care nothing for international law, unless it suits them.

A growing group of UK politicians and civil servants is signing up to a powerful letter calling on Boris Johnson’s

Tory government to oppose the annexation. It includes Chris Patten, former conservative minister; Michael Jay, the former permanent under secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Edward Davey, the leader of Liberal Democrats; and former secretary of state for international development, Andrew Mitchell.

The letter sets out the law concerning annexation of territory in a crystal-clear fashion: “Annexation of occupied territory violates several UN Security Council Resolutions, including UNSCR 242 and 2334. It is a

mortal blow to chances of peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on any viable two-state solution.” The joint statement by the UK Government, together with France, Germany, Italy and Spain, on September 12 last year could not have been clearer. Unilateral annexation of any part of the West Bank would be “a serious breach of international law”. And then this blunt but correct statement: “The acquisition of territory through war is prohibited.”

Last week this columnist, along with Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees from the

University of Sydney and other Australians, sent a letter from the newly formed Australian Council for Free and Fair Speech to Foreign Minister Marise Payne noting: “Despite the unqualified support for Israel’s actions by the United States, the overriding global consensus in relation to Israel’s contraventions of international law and grave breaches of human rights conventions, indicates just how seriously these actions are considered. We trust that Australia will use its voice as a defender of a rules-based order, to speak out firmly and unequivocally against Israel’s actions in relation to the lives of Palestinians and a future Palestinian state.”

Australian politicians, with brave and notable exceptions such as former foreign minister Bob Carr and former Labor MP Melissa Parke, have been guilty of supporting illegal acts by the Israeli state, and saying nothing when it is clearly obvious there is an apartheid system operating in that nation. Surely there must be some bottom line where even those who are forgiving of Israel’s aggression say enough is enough?

Meanwhile the daily struggle for life goes on for the Palestinian people, 72 years after “expulsion, murder and, to date, permanent dislocation of more than a million Palestinians”, as Marc Lamont Hill, an American academic fired by CNN in 2018 for daring to criticise Israel, puts it. Do not let preoccupation with COVID blind you to the injustice before your eyes.

This week Tasmanian Friends for Palestine will host a Nakba Day event. Check the Facebook page for details.

Hobart barrister Greg Barns is a human rights lawyer who advised Liberal federal and state governments.