Right to self-determination, right to resist, right to return to one’s homeland, right to humanitarian aid free from blockades, are just some of the many rights that have been highlighted by the Palestinian struggle for recognition as a State and for life, livelihood and dignity of the citizens. Many questions stand significantly posed in the search for solutions: can we still have theocratic states in this day and age and context? What does negotiations mean in a situation where the scales are tilted on one side? Like Anatole France rightly said, “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”. Surely we do not want this notion of equality to inform negotiations initiated between two or perhaps more entities with different levels of power or powerlessness?
Given the conglomeration of issues and concerns that the Palestinian struggle today represents, anti-apartheid South African leader Nelson Mandela in fact styled the condition of the Palestinians as “the greatest moral issue of our time”. Any positions taken on this issue need not be looked at from the tinted glasses of immediate benefits for Goa through taking up the issue. One can safely say the issues thrown up by the situation of Palestine are both evocative and not evocative of Goa’s past. Each situation is unique. Goa’s past and present are unique, and so are Palestine’s, yet there are many a commonality.
The Palestinian struggle is significant and should hold a special meaning for Goans who are questioning the use, abuse and control of their resources and are abetted in doing so by Governments. It also embodies a challenge to understand the context specially when Catholics who comprise Goa’s large minority, and Bethlehem and Jerusalem are now visiting the Holy Land in large numbers. Will they only see the structures? Is that what tourism or a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is all about? Or will they understand the peoples of that place and the physical structures and the structures of governance there in the context of the realities there?
The recently concluded International Seminar of the World Peace Council on Solidarity with Palestinian People brought into some public focus the sufferings of the Palestinian people and their long standing demand for a Palestinian State. A noteworthy demand of the conclave was to stop the purchase of arms from Israel with a more specific call at the Open Session to ex-Chief Minister of Goa turned Defence Minister of India to take note. The issue was highlighted through press conferences, public rallies and an open session coinciding with the International Day for Solidarity with the Palestinian people, but it was by no means the first effort on the part of Goa or Goans to bring this issue in public gaze, though it may be the first to lay the emphasis with numbers. There are several organisations, Goans in Goa or abroad and people based in Goa who have systematically rallied in support of the Palestinian cause. To illustrate, David Albuquerque, a former leader of Goa’s Citizens for Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights, presently based in Australia, and part of “Australians for Palestine” has been a relentless campaigner for the rights of the Palestinian people. He has been particularly vociferous about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) Strategy of the Movement, while at the same time pointing out that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Credit goes to him for lighting in me the candle to look at the Palestinian issue in more depth. Ranjan Solomon is another avid supporter of the Palestinian cause and his intense involvement has even taken him into heartland Gaza in pursuance of peace talks. Businessman Mac Vaz has also been passionately popularising the screening of films that call on people’s conscience to cry halt to the indignities to Palestinians. Sr. Lisa Pires has been interrogating positions within the Catholic community itself on this issue for years now.
The Palestinian question has been debated in several educational institutions in Goa over the years. College students hailing from the rural areas have come up with an acclaimable suggestion to human rights commissions the world over to take a united stand against the violations of human rights in Palestine. The Palestinian struggle indeed challenges us to think out of the box. They have also avidly interrogated the notion of the Palestinian struggle as external, drawing the implications of an international order that sanctions a brand of nationalism that is dehumanising. Concerned children from a remote school at Avedem in Quepem were so touched by the injustice to their fellow Palestinian sisters and brothers at the checkpoints impeding their proper schooling, that they felt it necessary to enact the checkpoint impeding act at their school Assembly to highlight the plight to their fellow students in the search for solutions.
There is an impending challenge to the recent inductees into the World Peace Council to translate the commitments into the day to day realities of Goa and its transactions, as a part of the Indian Union and as a State in the Indian Union that signs up its own transactions. The need of the hour is to make sure that the parleys between Goa’s Agriculture Department for ‘Israeli’ agricultural expertise do not result in Israeli agricultural projects on Goa’s Government run farms. The need of the hour is to make sure that super speciality hospitals (in the name of public-private partnership) or any business projects in partnership with an Israeli defence major or for that matter business projects with Israeli firms or their subsidiaries, are just not on. As a matter of fact, Portugal has led the way by not renewing an agreement with an Israeli water company, due to effective lobbying by rights campaigners, as Filipe Fereira from the Portuguese Council for Peace and Co-operation was proud to say on Goan soil a few days ago.
(Albertina Almeida is a lawyer, human rights activist and an independent researcher.)
