In a world of Hypocrites: The Palestinian View of the Russia-Ukraine War
ABSTRACT
The article delves deeply into the double standards shown by Western countries, which respond partially to Ukraine, Palestine, and other Middle Eastern and war-trodden countries. This piece will also brief you about the real issue behind the Israel-Palestine conflict in a way that is understandable to the layman without trying to manipulate the actions and reactions of the countries, its myths and realities, the important role Palestine plays in the international scene, and the status of the state according to international laws and resolutions.
INTRODUCTION
With the Russian-led invasion of Ukraine increasing in scale and casualties, the world has witnessed the hypocritical sides of politicians, world leaders, and nations. As soon as Russia started the invasion of Ukraine, many Western countries came forward to help the trembling nation by imposing a package of the toughest sanctions on Russia and providing the Ukrainian army with military equipment and weapons. It must be a good step to defend the invaded country, but it should also be noted that war never ends; it flourishes more. In order to abstain from war, one has to attend diplomatic talks rather than provide arms to fuel the war. It must also be noted that Ukraine is not the only country invaded by another country claiming its land. So far, many countries like Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Kashmir, Palestine, and maybe more are struggling with illegal occupation by other countries. Since 1967, when Israel claimed Palestinian land, the citizens have faced brutality and an identity crisis. So far, these countries have become “war grounds”. Even after so many years of struggling and protesting for their rights, the Palestinians got no support from Western countries. Talking about Palestinian rights seems like a crime to many Europeans. When Ukrainians put on their arms and were given military training to defend their country, which is a good step for a common cause, the whole world applauded them for their heroism,” which is categorized as self-defense,” but what if the same thing happened to Palestinian people and they also put on arms and weapons to defend themselves? They would be branded as terrorists,” and this is where genocide and hypocrisy work at their best. The occupation of Palestine is not something new. The world is so used to the misery of the Palestinian people that they don’t even want to address them and their rights. In a nation where hundreds of children and citizens are killed on a daily basis, nobody is concerned about the humanitarian crisis or international law. This clearly shows that the world is still not over from genocide and Islamophobia. It’s getting worse by the day.
Source: ALJAZEERA
Myths and realities of Israel-Palestine conflict: A candid cover
One of the biggest myths about the Israel-Palestine conflict is that it’s been going on for centuries. This is all about ancient religious history. In fact, while religion is involved, the conflict is mostly about two groups of people who claim the same land. And it really only goes back about a century, to the early 1900s. Back then, the region along the eastern Mediterranean that we now call Israel-Palestine had been under Ottoman rule for centuries. It was religiously diverse, including mostly Muslims and Christians but also a small number of Jews, who lived generally in peace. And it was changing in two important ways. First, more people in the region were developing a sense of being not just ethnic Arabs but Palestinians, a distinct national identity. At the same time, not so far away in Europe, more Jews were joining a movement called Zionism, which said that Judaism was not just a religion but a nationality, one that deserved a nation of its own. And after centuries of persecution, many believed a Jewish state was their only hope of safety. And they saw their historic homeland in the Middle East as their best hope for establishing it.
In the first decades of the 20th century, tens of thousands of Europeans used to move there. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the British and French empires carved up the Middle East, with the British taking control of a region called the British Mandate for Palestine. At first, the British allowed Jewish immigration. But as more arrived, settling into farming communes, the tension between Jews and Arabs grew. Both sides committed acts of violence. By the 1930s, the British had begun limiting Jewish immigration. In response, Israeli militias formed to fight both the local Arabs and British rule.
Then came the Holocaust, leading many more Jews to flee Europe for British Palestine and galvanizing much of the world in support of a Jewish state. In 1947, as sectarian violence between Arabs and Jews there grew, the United Nations approved a plan to divide British Palestine into two separate states: one for Jews, Israel, and one for Arabs, Palestine. The city of Jerusalem, where Jews, Muslims, and Christians all have holy sites, was to become a special International zone. The plan was meant to give Jews a state, establish Palestinian independence, and end the sectarian violence that the British no longer controlled. The Jews accepted the plan and declared independence as Israel. However, Arabs thought the region of the UN plan was more European colonialism trying to steal their land. Many of the Arab States, which had recently won independence themselves, declared war on Israel in an effort to establish a unified Arab Palestine where all of British Palestine had been. The new state of Israel won the war. But in the process, they pushed well past their borders under the UN plan, taking the Western half of Jerusalem and much of the land that was to have been part of Palestine. They also expelled huge numbers of Palestinians from their homes, creating a massive refugee population whose descendants today number about 7 million. At the end of the war, Israel controlled all of the territories except for Gaza, which Egypt controlled, and the West Bank, named because it’s west of the Jordan River, which Jordan controlled. This was the beginning of the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict. During this period, many Jews in Arab-majority countries flooded or were expelled, arriving in Israel. Then something happened that transformed the conflict. In 1967, Israel and the neighboring Arab States fought another war.
When it ended, Israel had seized the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank from Jordan, and both Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. Israel was now occupying the Palestinian territories, including all of Jerusalem and its holy sites. This left Israel responsible for governing the Palestinians, a people it had fought for decades. In 1978, Israel and Egypt signed the U.S.-brokered Camp David Accords, and shortly after that, Israel gave Sanai back to Egypt as part of a peace treaty. At the time, this was hugely controversial in the Arab world. Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat, was assassinated in part because of outrage against it. But it marked the beginning of the end of the wider Arab-Israeli conflict over the next few decades. The other Arab States gradually made peace with Israel, even if they never signed formal peace treaties. But Israel’s military was still occupying the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and this was when the conflict became an Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, which was formed in 1960 to seek a Palestinian state, fought against Israel, including through acts of terrorism. Initially, the PLO claimed all of what had been British Palestine, meaning it wanted to end the state of Israel entirely. Fighting between Israel and the PLO went on for years, including a 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon to kick the group out of Beirut. The PLO later said it would accept dividing the land between Israel and Palestine, but the conflict continued.
As all of this was happening, something dramatic was changing in the Israel-occupied Palestinian territories: Israelis were moving in. These people are called settlers, and they made their homes in the West Bank and Gaza whether Palestinians wanted them or not. Some moved for religious reasons, some because they went to claim the land for Israel, and some just because housing is cheap and often subsidized by the Israeli government. Some settlements are cities with thousands of people; others are small communities deep into the west bank. Soldiers follow the settlers to guard them, and the growing settlements force Palestinians off of their land and divide communities. In the short term, they make the occupation much more painful for Palestinians. In the long term, by dividing Palestinian land, they make it much more difficult for the Palestinians to ever have an independent state. Today, several hundred thousand settlers are in an occupied territory, even though the international community considers them illegal. By the late 1980s, Palestinian frustration had exploded into the Intifada, which is the Arabic word for the uprising. It began with mostly protests and boycotts but soon became violent, and Israel responded with heavy force. A couple of hundred Israelis and over a thousand Palestinians died in the First Intifada. Around the same time, a group of Palestinians in Gaza, who consider the PLO too secular and too compromise-minded, created Hamas, a violent extremist group dedicated to Israel’s destruction.
By the early 1990s, it was clear that Israelis and Palestinians had to make peace, and leaders from both sides signed the Oslo Accords. This is meant to be the big, first step towards Israel maybe someday withdrawing from the Palestinian territories and allowing an independent Palestine. The Oslo Accords established the Palestinian Authority, allowing Palestinians a little bit of freedom to govern themselves in certain areas. Hardliners on both sides opposed the Oslo Accords. Members of Hamas launched suicide bombings to try to sabotage the process. The Israeli right protested peace talks, with ralliers calling prime minister Yitzhak Rabin a traitor and a Nazi. Not long after Rabin signs the second round of the Oslo accords, a far-right Israeli shoots him to death in Tel Aviv. This violence showed how the extremists on both sides can use violence to derail peace and keep a permanent conflict going as they seek the other side’s total destruction. That’s a dynamic that’s been around ever since. Negotiations meant to hammer out the final details of peace drag on for years, and a big Camp David summit in 2008 comes up empty. Palestinians come to believe that peace isn’t coming and rise up in a Second Intifada, this one much more violent than the first. By the time it wound down a few years later, about 1,000 Israelis and 3200 Palestinians had died. The second intifada really changed the contract. Israelis become much more skeptical that Palestinians will ever accept peace or that it’s even worth trying. Israeli politics shifted right, and the country built walls and checkpoints to control Palestinians’ movements. They’re not really trying to resolve the conflict anymore; they're just managing it. The Palestinians feel like negotiating didn’t work and violence didn’t work; they’re stuck under an ever-growing occupation with no future as a people. That year, Israel withdrew from Gaza. Hamas gained power but split from the Palestinian Authority in a short civil war, dividing Gaza from the West Bank. Israel puts Gaza under a suffocating blockade, and unemployment rises to 40%. The state of the conflict today is relatively new, and it’s unbearable for Palestinians. In the West Bank, more and more settlements are smothering Palestinians, who often respond with protest and sometimes with violence. The majority just want normal lives. In Gaza, Hamas and other violent groups have periodic wars with Israel. The fighting overwhelmingly kills Palestinians, including lots of civilians. In Israel itself, most people have become apathetic. For the most part, the occupation keeps the conflict relatively removed from their daily lives, with moments of brief but horrible violence. There is little political will for peace.
The double standards of the Western World
Politicians and diplomats across the world raced each other to condemn Russia’s aggression and call on everyone to put their support behind Ukraine’s “resistance forces”. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid defined the “Russian attack on Ukraine” as “a serious violation of the international order”. “Israel condemns that attack and is ready and prepared to offer humanitarian assistance to Ukrainian citizens,” he said. “Israel is a country that has experienced wars, and war is not the way to resolve conflicts.” Thousands of Israelis also took to the streets in Tel Aviv “for Ukraine”. And as they marched with Ukrainian flags in hand and chanted “Free Ukraine”, Palestinian residents of the city watched on, speechless. Obviously, this kind of kindness and concern for humanitarian crises and international law were never shown to Palestinians suffering for years in Israel itself.
News organizations published positive, even inspiring stories about Ukrainians making Molotov cocktails to attack Russian soldiers. The international media, of course, never praised Palestinians for making Molotov cocktails and throwing them at Israeli settlers and their uniformed protectors, who try to forcibly push them out of their homes, neighborhoods, and villages. When Ukrainians do it against the Russian occupier, it is heroism. When Palestinians do it against the Israeli occupier, it is only terror.
And all these realizations were not unique to Palestinians. Many Afghans, Yemenis, Ethiopians, Iraqis, Syrians, Libyans, Somalis, Kashmiris, and others who have been at the receiving end of colonial and imperial violence and oppression have come to similar realizations as they watched the crisis in Ukraine unfold.
In addition to sending military equipment and weapons to support the Ukrainian army, Britain also supported the Ukrainian President’s position, who called on all volunteers willing to fight alongside his forces to come to Ukraine to defend it.
On February 26, just two days into the Russian invasion, Paul Massaro, a senior policy adviser at the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, tweeted: “I’m racking my brain for a historical parallel to the courage and fighting spirit of the Ukrainians and coming up empty. How many people have ever stood their ground against an aggressor like this? It’s legendary.”
Mr. Massaro forgot about the Palestinians, who have been courageously standing their ground against an aggressor for 73 years. The world cannot think of a “historical parallel” only because it views their struggle not as resistance but as “terrorism”.
Western countries sought to advance a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Russia’s actions despite knowing full well that Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, would veto it. “Russia can veto this resolution, but it cannot veto our voices,” said the US ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. “Russia cannot veto the UN Charter. And Russia will not veto accountability.” When the inevitable Russian veto came down, Western diplomats emphasized how it highlighted Russia’s isolation. Indeed, Russia was Isolated. Just as the United States has been each time it cast the lone UNSC veto on over 40 resolutions condemning Israel’s violations of international law and abuses against Palestinians. The US also decided to rejoin the United Nations Human Rights Council at this moment. It left the UNHRC several years ago because it opposed the council’s efforts to hold Israel to account. Meanwhile, countries have called on the International Criminal Court to act on Russia’s invasion—the same court whose prosecutor the United States sanctioned for investigating war crimes committed in Palestine.
Even boycott and divestment efforts are being heralded by the West. Liquor stores in Canada and some states in the US are selling Russian vodka. The Metropolitan Opera said it would no longer engage with performers who support Putin. Within two days of the invasion, Russia was kicked out of Eurovision. It has also been suspended from premier international soccer leagues like FIFA and UEFA. Russian ballets are being canceled. However, no such actions were ever taken by these countries for the Palestinian cause.
The double standards don’t stop with nonviolent efforts. In Ukraine, the West is actively supporting armed resistance by both shipping weapons and glorifying their use. In Palestine, the West is sending weapons too—to an Israeli government practicing apartheid. It seems the main reason Westerners were quick to jump to defend the human rights of Ukrainians while they ignored the human rights of Palestinians and so many others is that they see some of them as less human than others.
International law and Palestine’s status on the international scene
It is well known that the use of force and the threat of force against the territorial integrity and political independence of other countries are prohibited by Paragraph 4—Article 2 of the United Nations Charter. The only exception that allows states to use military force is Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which states: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.” Russia’s attack on Ukraine is an organized and declared invasion that does not come within the scope of legitimate self-defense, and since Russia is the party that started the attack, its behavior is contrary to international law.
Regarding Palestine, if we want to look at the issue according to the facts and rules of international law, the territories occupied by Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967 are accepted as occupied lands according to international law. This matter has been emphasized repeatedly by the United Nations, starting with Security Council Resolution 242 and not ending in Resolution 2334, also issued by the Security Council at the end of the Obama administration’s presidency in 2016, which decided at the time that the United States would not use the right of veto against this resolution. Therefore, when Israel, as the occupying power in those lands, attacks the Palestinians, their property, and threatens their lives, whether in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip, this gives them the right to defend themselves according to Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.
After the events of Sheikh Jarrah and the subsequent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, the British government and Australia put the political wing of Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations in a clear denial of the right of the Palestinians to defend themselves.
International law considers all countries equally, regardless of their political weight, geographic area, economy, and population. Palestine, although it did not gain its independence as a state and is still under Israeli occupation, still meets all the criteria of a state according to the Montevideo Convention of 1933, which defines four main requirements: 1) a permanent population; 2) a defined territory; 3) a government; and 4) the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Palestine possesses all these criteria and has obtained the status of an observer member in the United Nations, in addition to its membership in many international organizations and institutions such as UNESCO, Interpol, and the International Criminal Court, in a step that enhances its presence and entity on the international scene.
Therefore, Palestine in the balance of international law must be viewed as the same as Ukraine, and just as international law guarantees the Ukrainians the right to defend themselves against the Russian invasion, it must guarantee the Palestinians their right to defend themselves against the Israeli occupation. Stop the policy of double standards and stop branding the Palestinian resistance with terrorism by respecting UN General Assembly Resolution 3236/1974, which gave the Palestinians the right to restore their rights by all legitimate means.
CONCLUSION
It is visible that, despite what Palestinians have been experiencing in their homeland, international law does exist and indeed functions. States do have the capacity and the will to take action when a people invades the land of another. It shows that sanctions can be used swiftly and efficiently against aggressors and that sanctioning a country for its international law violations is not necessarily a racist action. It shows that civilian casualties are not just numbers but actual living, breathing people who genuinely matter. And it also witnessed that politicians, analysts, and even the very own oppressors and occupiers agree that armed resistance to occupation is not “terrorism” but a right. Nearly 2,000 Palestinian students with Israeli citizenship are now stranded in Ukraine and forced to make a choice between their education and safety as Ukraine’s universities refuse to allow their students to continue their studies abroad via Zoom under the threat of repeating the academic year if they leave. The rightful outpouring of support for Ukraine taught that the West can condemn occupation when it wants to.
Overnight, international law seemed to matter again. The idea that territory could not be taken by force was suddenly an international norm worth defending. To be clear, the international community should hold human rights abusers and law violators to account, and the swift action against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrates unequivocally that such action is possible when governments have the political courage to do so. But not doing so when our allies are the oppressors or when the victims look different than us has significant costs, most directly for people like the Palestinians and others with a generally darker complexion and eyes, but also for the world at large. When international law is enforced only when it suits powerful nations to enforce it and ignored when it suits powerful nations to ignore it, then international law does not exist as anything other than an instrument of power. If we want there to be an international norm against aggression, colonization, and the acquisition of land by force, we can’t keep making exceptions for our friends when they violate it. When we do such things—and we have done so consistently in Israel, for example—we make it clear that there is no rules-based international order; there is only the rule of power.
REFERENCES
Mohammed Rafik Mhawesh (March 6, 2022), What the war in Ukraine taught us, Palestinians, is ALJAZEERA.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/6/what-the-war-in-ukraine-thought-us-palestinians
MOHAMMAD AL-KASSIM (March 2, 2022), Palestinians say war in Ukraine will hurt their cause, according to The Jerusalem Post.
https://www.jpost.com/international/article-699069
Yaakov Lappin (March 11, 2022), Palestinian terror factions could'seek escalation’ for fear of losing limelight to the Russia-Ukraine war.
https://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/jns/palestinian-terror-factions-could-seek-escalation-for-fear-of-losing-limelight-to-russia-ukraine-war/article_32750fb7-cd72-5f87-b418-8af652aefac2.html
Yousef Munayyer (March 4, 2022), On Watching Ukraine Through Palestinian Eyes, THE NATION
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/ukraine-palestine-occupation/
This article was originally published at The Global Outlook, on April 6, 2022