Boycotting Israel: Quaker action is justified
Stuart Yates affirms the boycott
Meeting for Sufferings’ decision to boycott goods made by Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories is welcome and the least we should do in view of Israel’s continuing oppression. The West Bank is divided into three areas. The Palestinian Authority has limited powers over Areas A and B, thirty-nine per cent of the total land, but even here ultimate power is wielded by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF): ‘IDF soldiers raided the International Solidarity Movement’s Ramallah office Wednesday for the second time this week, confiscating computers, T-shirts and bracelets engraved with the word “Palestine”.’ (Haaretz, Feb 2010) Ramallah is in Area A, theoretically autonomous. Sixty-one per cent of Area C, the only contiguous area, is wholly under military rule. Settlement enlargement is specifically approved by successive Israeli governments who have defied for over thirty years UN Security Council Resolution 465, March 1980, passed unanimously, requiring them to ‘dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem’.
Nor is Israel the beacon of democratic fairness portrayed by some. The Citizenship and Entry into Israel Act, 2003 (deliberately renewed each year) means that Israelis who marry a Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, Jordanian or Iraqi have to choose: leave Israel to live with their spouse or live separately. Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation (under the Geneva Convention, Israel has responsibility for all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza) face worse discrimination under this law. Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem may not be unified with their Palestinian spouse who originates from Gaza, the West Bank or abroad. A Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem cannot live there with a spouse who comes from, say, Ramallah. In this and other ways, Israel carries out the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem.
Only marriages conducted under the Abrahamic faiths are allowed in Israel – there is no civil marriage provision. Orthodox Jews may marry only other Orthodox Jews. In 1977, Israel took in sixty-six Vietnamese boat people and another three hundred up to 1979, the first time Israel had accepted non-Jewish refugees. The two hundred or so remaining in Israel are Buddhist or Confucians, so cannot, in Israel, marry others of the same faith. Operations Moses (1984) and Solomon (1991) airlifted Jews exercising their Right of Return from Ethiopia and Sudan to Israel. They were segregated by the authorities with no access to higher education. The Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews campaigned for decades for equal treatment, including demonstrations, lobbying the Knesset to change Israel’s Equal Opportunity law and court action to force Israel to honour agreements for Ethiopian Jews. Israel welcomes non-Jews to work in Israel – on work permits that need annual renewal. Very few non-Jews are granted citizenship. Israel’s anti-Arab stance shows in one way the population is counted. There are ‘Jews and others’, which include non-Arab Christians, and the ‘Arab population’, which includes Arab Christians. Christians are sorted into sheep and goats according to ethnicity. These are some examples of discrimination in Israel and Israeli-occupied territory.
Security Council Resolution 465 required all states ‘not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connexion with settlements in the occupied territories’. Having ignored this requirement for decades, the time is overdue to take nonviolent action to persuade Israel that conforming to internationally agreed behaviour is in Israel’s own interests. Should not Quakers support the wishes of the UN, which said settlements ‘constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East’?
