We Cannot Permit Israeli Injustice
March 30th, 1976 is a day remembered by Palestinians as Land Day. That day marked one of the first significant mass demonstrations by Palestinians of national unity and opposition to Israeli policies. The point of contention at the time was a recent formal declaration by the Israeli government that it would expropriate lands in the Galilee region for the purpose of settlement construction. Much of the land, approximately 2,000 hectares, was owned by Palestinians. When Palestinians demonstrated on March 30th, 1976, the Israeli government did not respond by reconsidering its decision. Instead, Israeli forces killed six unarmed protesters, injured about a hundred, and arrested hundreds more.
42 years later, on Friday, March 30th, 2018, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip joined the “Great March of Return.” This protest was planned to last through May 15th, a day known among Palestinians as the Nakba, or “catastrophe.” On that day, Palestinians annually commemorate the forced displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians during Israel’s War of Independence. The protest aimed to bring attention to the Israeli occupation and Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements and, above all, espoused Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homeland.
Although decades have passed since the first Land Day, the illegal seizure of Palestinian land remains a major issue today. Despite the passage last December of UN resolution 2334, which called upon Israel to halt its settlement activities in the occupied territories, the Israeli government still approved the construction of over 6,000 settlement homes since the start of 2018. Additionally, Israel has increased the rate of demolition of Palestinian homes and has passed legislation that will allow for the retroactive legalization of 53 settlements and outposts, effectively permitting the expropriation of 80 hectares of Palestinian land.
Meanwhile, Gazans remain living in what former British Prime Minister David Cameron famously referred to as “an open-air prison.” Roughly 70 percent of Gaza’s two-million-person population are formally recognized as refugees, and over half a million of those refugees live in refugee camps. In Gaza, access to electricity is limited to four hours per day and 97 percent of drinking water is contaminated. Since imposing an air, sea, and land blockade in 2007, Israel has, at different points, banned the import of chickens, chips, and chocolate and conducted calorie counts to determine the minimum supplies necessary to support the population of Gaza. In 2011, cables leaked by WikiLeaks cited Israeli diplomats expressing their desire to “keep Gaza’s economy on the brink of collapse.” Now, the general unemployment rate in Gaza is upwards of 40 percent, and the youth unemployment rate is near 60 percent.
In addition, brutal conflicts with Israel over the last ten years have left thousands of Palestinians dead and more wounded as well as unbridled destruction in their wakes. The past three military conflicts between Hamas and Israel— Operation Cast Lead (2008-9), Operation Pillar of Defense (2012), and Operation Protective Edge (2014)—have claimed the lives of 3,662 Palestinians, 2,308 of whom were civilians. By comparison, during the same operations, 91 Israelis were killed, 14 of whom were civilians.
Thus, on Land Day this year, Palestinians in Gaza had much to protest. However, they did not take to launching rockets to resist. As the man credited with inspiring this year’s protests, Ahmad Abu Artema, remarked, “It’s not necessary to resist the occupation with bullets. You can resist the occupation with dabke [a form of dance], or by just sitting there.” In Abu Artema’s view, peaceful protest can go much further in achieving Palestinians’ goals than armed struggle can. Israel does not “want to confront people. They want to be confronted by a rocket or a missile.”
Attempting to make Abu Artema’s hopes a reality, the protest’s coordinating committee called on protesters to remain “peaceful.” Hamas, the dominant political party in Gaza, released a statement on March 29th urging Palestinians “to effectively take part in the Great March of Return and remain peaceful to achieve the objective of this event.” Muhammad Shehada, a Palestinian journalist, wrote the morning of March 30th that Hamas “plans to deploy its security personnel in civil clothes amongst the protestors to prevent individual attempts to spoil the march with violence.” Furthermore, a spokesman for Fatah, the dominant political party in the West Bank, implored protesters to “preserve the [protest’s] peaceful character.”
On the day of March 30th, 30,000 Palestinians set up camp near Gaza’s border with Israel. Although some of the protesters strayed from the commitment to nonviolence, hurling rocks, tires, and even Molotov cocktails at IDF (Israeli Defense Force) soldiers, the vast majority were peaceful. Even with the violence of some protesters, no IDF officer was harmed. Nevertheless, IDF officers deemed it necessary to kill 18 Palestinians and wound potentially over 1,400 more, making March 30th the single bloodiest day in Gaza since the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Subsequently released footage of the protest depicted protesters being shot as they prayed and as they ran away from the border wall.
Condemnation from human rights organizations, the United Nations, and even the New York Times editorial board quickly followed. One of the most powerful responses was from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which released a statement demanding that soldiers “refuse to comply” with “orders to use live fire against unarmed civilians.” The organization emphasized that international law limits the use of live fire “to instances involving tangible and immediate mortal danger, and only in the absence of any other alternative.” While “the military is allowed to prevent” and even arrest protesters “for approaching the fence, damaging it, or attempting to cross it… firing live ammunition solely on these grounds is absolutely prohibited.”
Elizabeth Throssell, the UN human rights spokeswoman, later commented that the unjustified use of firearms by Israel may amount to the willful killing of civilians, which the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits. Her assessment of the events was that the protective gear worn by Israeli soldiers and the protection afforded them by their defensive positions “would have mitigated the risk” posed by the violence of the protesters “and should not have led to recourse to lethal force.”
According to the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, terrorism is “the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Given that the day after the protests the IDF tweeted, “everything was accurate and measured, we know where every bullet landed,” and that the IDF’s actions were a response to a mostly nonviolent protest rather than a military operation, we can rule out the idea that any dead Palestinian protesters can be categorized as “collateral damage.” After all, the fact that Israel deployed at least a hundred snipers, multiple tanks, and tear-gas-deploying drones to the border reveals their intention to, as Israel’s defense minister Avigdor Lieberman phrased it, “neutralize” the protesters. The Palestinians killed were, except for two armed militants, unarmed protesters. As Throssell and B’Tselem make clear, the risk posed by even the violent protesters was not nearly significant enough to justify the use of force. As a result, the IDF’s actions were illegal under international law. This is all to say that the IDF, breaking international law, killed 18 civilians and injured potentially over 1,400 more in an attempt to coerce protesters to stop demonstrating against Israeli policy. That sounds dangerously close to the definition of terrorism for me.
Yet, in response to international condemnation, the Israeli government has characterized its army’s actions as measured and justified. It has said that the soldiers’ actions were necessary in order to prevent any encroachments on Israel’s sovereignty, meaning the protesters had to be shot to be stopped from crossing the border.
But no one crossed the fence, and video shows protesters who demonstrated no clear intention to cross the fence being gunned down from afar. Still, Defense Minister Lieberman remarked that the IDF “did what had to be done” and that Israeli “troops deserve a commendation.”
[pullquote]Israel receives $3.8 billion a year from the U.S. There ought to be consequences for that paycheck if they continue perpetrating violence, bloodshed, destruction, and injustice.[/pullquote]
Some important questions worth considering now are: What message do Israel’s actions send to the Palestinians? If even the Palestinians’ peaceful protest of Israeli policy is met with violence, what incentive is there for Palestinians to refrain from violence of their own? Why should they be held to a different moral standard than Israelis?
[pullquote]If even the Palestinians’ peaceful protest of Israeli policy is met with violence, what incentive is there for Palestinians to refrain from violence of their own?[/pullquote]
The day of the protests, Kuwait proposed a resolution to the United Nations Security Council calling for an “independent and transparent investigation” into the violence. However, siding with the Israeli government, the U.S. rejected Kuwait’s resolution out of hand.
[pullquote]We must condemn Israel’s abuses and compel them to reform their actions and seriously negotiate with the Palestinian people. If we do not do so, the blood of every massacre will increasingly be on our hands.[/pullquote]
If the U.S. wants to be able to claim the mantle of the world’s most moral nation, we cannot allow one of our top allies to continue its violations of human rights and international law. Israel currently receives $3.8 billion a year in military assistance from the U.S. There ought to be consequences for that paycheck if they continue perpetrating violence, bloodshed, destruction, and injustice. It does not make sense to block an investigation into Israeli acts of aggression and killing unless there is something to cover up, which obviously there is here if the Israelis are to retain any semblance of moral defense for their actions. Rather than granting free gifts like moving our embassy to Jerusalem, we must condemn Israel’s abuses and compel them to reform their actions and seriously negotiate with the Palestinian people. If we do not do so, the blood of every massacre will increasingly be on our hands.
Conor Smyth ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at c.smyth@wustl.edu.