Speech by Ms Rihab Charida, Palm Sunday 2007

There are many reasons why we are gathered here today in unity. One of them is our commitment to peace. Among other things, we are here to say that we will not accept a world without it. As long as there is an absence of peace in Palestine or Iraq, or anywhere else in the world, we will continue to gather and to protest and we will not tire and we will not give in to the terror of imperial power.

Ms Rihab Charida, UTS Students Association

But let us also be clear about what we mean by peace, because words like 'peace', 'democracy' and 'freedom' have been colonised by the world super powers of the day.

By peace we mean justice. Peace without justice is a peace we have no interest in. We will not accept a fake peace dressed up in pretty colours and slogans. As Martin Luther King said, "peace is not the absence of violence, rather it is the presence of justice".

So now to the question of peace in Palestine.

I did want to talk about the military occupation in parts of Palestine, but decided against it because anybody can see that military occupation is immoral, unjustifiable and unacceptable.

Most people already know that military occupation, whether in Palestine or Iraq, is not carried out to protect the security of the aggressor.

Most people already know that military occupation is an activity carried out by a colonial army to achieve colonial ends.

Anybody can see that a 9-metre high wall is divisive, destroys and separates Palestinian communities and imprisons whole towns and villages. It is not hard for anybody to see that a 9-metre high wall has no place in Palestine or anywhere else in the world for that matter.

Anybody can see that having to pass through military checkpoints to go about one's daily life is not only criminal but also devastating for the people that it has been imposed on.

Many people have died at military checkpoints simply because they could not pass, when they were in need of medical attention. Many people are detained or denied passage at checkpoints preventing them from reaching their universities, workplaces, or wherever it is they had set out to go to. Not to mention the humiliation of waiting and the strip searches - which even effects children and recently even a 70 year-old Jewish woman who herself is a holocaust survivor, who was travelling through the West Bank in her support for the Palestinian people's struggle.

Most people by now believe that the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza should end because it is plain to see that it is unjust, destructive and criminal.

What I would like to speak about is the atrocities that took place in Palestine before the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began 40 years ago. Not only because of the massive scale in which they occurred, but also because the effects of these crimes are still with us today.

What I would like to speak about are the mass crimes that took place in 1948 when over 70% of the entire Palestinian population was expelled to make way for the creation of Israel.

Over 400 towns and villages were completely destroyed and over 750,000 Palestinians were dispossessed. They crossed borders by foot into neighbouring Arab countries and began to fill the refugee camps that were then newly built by the UN.

This year those same camps turn 59 years old and have given birth to five generations of refugees - refugees that are not only stateless, but also without legal rights or documents - 59 years and five generations of no rights, no privileges, no hope.

The vast majority of Palestinians who live in these camps come from peasant backgrounds, who for generations lived off the earth of their villages. They have been cut off from their land with which they share a very strong connection, and made to live in suffocating over-populated concrete camps.

These Palestinians have rightly been dubbed "the forgotten refugees", for they have slipped of the political agenda, out of the news and even off the map of the world.

Many of these Palestinians can see their lands from the borders of their host countries.

Today many people talk about a possible solution for the conflict between the Israeli state/army and the Palestinian people. Many people talk about going back to the green line, as though when we were there things were rosy. What does the green line mean to a Palestinian refugee living in a camp in Lebanon? What will this green line solution bring to a person whose whole history has been swallowed up by Israel? Israel, and the US and all of the world powers for the matter, can draw as many lines they want and they can paint each one of them a different colour and give each one of them a different name. But let us be clear when we talk about the green line solution or the two state solution that this is a solution that totally ignores the rights of over 5 million Palestinian refugees.

When we speak about solutions and the Palestinian refugee problem - which by the way, the Palestinian refugees are the largest group of refugees in the world and for the longest period - if we do speak about this issue, many people hide behind arguments such as, "it is too unrealistic", "its solution is unimaginable" and of course, "Israel is a reality".

Palestinians giving up on their right to return is what is most unimaginable, what is most unrealistic.

Israel is a reality. Five million Palestinian refugees living in unliveable refugee camps is also a reality. In fact the reality of Israel created the reality of refugeehood for the Palestinian people.

Salman Abu-Sitta after his extensive research into the this specific issue of return for Palestinian refugees concluded that this right is not only sacred and legal, but is also possible. Most of the villages that were destroyed in 1948 are still uninhabited 59 years later. I visited my village in 2004 and saw only stones of what were once our homes bundled together in a mass. I saw that the land that my ancestors tended with their own hands that remained there unattended began to shrivel and dry in our absence. I could not make any sense of the fact that our village lies there uninhabited while my cousins live in a refugee camp in Lebanon, which is at most a three-hour drive away.

Finally I would like to address the peace talks that have taken place between the Israeli state and a number of so-called Palestinian representatives.

History tells us that negotiations dictated by the strong will only ever serve the strong. The Right of Return has slipped off the agenda of the peace talks all together. Most Israeli Prime Ministers have made it very clear that they will not even consider talks unless Palestinians give up entirely this right to return. In 2000 when the late Arafat took part in the Camp David II talks, a statement was sent to him by the Popular Organizations of the Refugee Camps in the West Bank - the statement affirmed:

"That the negotiators should not bother returning if they bring anything less than the right of return. 'We are going home - home to Palestine. Our olive trees and our oranges await us. We will not accept anything less no matter who signs the next of the infinite agreements".

For the Palestinian people the road to peace is via return. There can be no peace without justice and there can be no justice without return.

Long live the struggle for return!

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Last Modified: Tuesday, 10-Apr-2007 16:42:11 EST
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