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Award ceremony 2009: acceptance speech Al-Haq
It is an honour to receive this prestigious award; an award honouring resistance to oppression and brutality. I want to thank the Geuzen Resistance Foundation for bestowing this great privilege on Al-Haq and B’Tselem.
It is not the first time that our respective organisations have been honoured together for our work defending Palestinian human rights. Twenty years ago, Al-Haq and B'Tselem were jointly awarded the Carter-Menil Human Rights Award in Atlanta, Georgia. That came in the midst of the first Palestinian intifada. During this period, no fewer than eight of Al-Haq's fieldworkers were under administrative detention at one time, including our current General Director, imprisoned by Israel without charge or trial and subject to torture and ill-treatment in the harsh conditions of the Negev desert.
In spite of everything, those individuals and their organisation have never given up the struggle towards the evolution of a culture of human rights in Palestine. The unflinching belief in the principles of human rights has never wavered, despite the fact that over twenty years after the first intifada, over forty years after the beginning of the occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and over sixty years after the Palestinian Nakba, Al-Haq continues to lose far more battles in the human rights arena than it wins. Our staff of dedicated human rights defenders remain exposed to arbitrary detention, intimidation, movement restrictions and draconian travel bans imposed by the Israeli authorities. The human rights situation for Palestinians has in many respects reached an unprecedented nadir. But the refusal to give up on something one believes in is engrained in the philosophy of Al-Haq, and is indeed the very essence of resistance.
This award means a great deal to Al-Haq, not because of the recognition it has given us, but because of the meaning behind the award. When the Geuzen fought against German occupation and oppression, they were outmanned and outgunned, but stood firm in the face of the occupation, because they believed in their right to be free.
It is this belief that guides Al-Haq in its work to promote and protect the rights of the Palestinian people in their struggle to realise their right to self-determination. We accept this award on behalf of the pioneering lawyers who founded Al-Haq in the 1970's out of a belief in an alternative to the brutal reality of occupation that had unfolded around them. We accept it on behalf of our fieldworkers who are tirelessly documenting rights violations as we speak. We accept it on behalf of all our staff and partners from the four corners of the world who have worked relentlessly over the past 30 years in the struggle for truth and justice. We accept it on behalf of the entire Palestinian human rights community. We accept it on behalf of those human rights defenders in the room today who have stood up to defend our defenders. We accept it on behalf of all those champions of resistance around the world who have dedicated themselves to resisting dictatorship, discrimination and foreign domination, particularly those who have given their lives in the process.
From its inception, Al-Haq has stood firm behind the principles of international law as the basis for any solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. After the Oslo Accords, we were alone in criticising the agreement which marginalised international law for the sake of political negotiations. Fifteen-years later, we have unfortunately been proven correct. International law is not just a set of principles which should be used when politicians feel it expedient to do so. Throughout our work, Al-Haq strives towards the transition of international legal principles from theory to practice.
Today our challenge to ensure that transition on the ground is even more difficult, especially after the silence that met the recent attacks on the Gaza Strip. As history as taught us, there is no richer soil for the cultivation of oppression than silence.
And while Al-Haq has succeeded in raising the Palestinian society's awareness of their rights, even this achievement faces difficult questions by concerned individuals and activists. The lay person is sceptical of how feasible adherence to human rights principles can be in the Palestinian case. The unfortunate reality to date is that the Palestinian population as a whole faces ongoing, widespread and systematic repression, manifested through infringements on all walks of civilian life by the Israeli occupying authorities. The inaction of the international community in the face of the Gaza onslaught means, for many, that international law is a collection of ornamental phrases inscribed on paper, which they hear, but never see.
To compound the problems which the Israeli occupation, the root of the conflict in our region, continues to present us with, we have faced growing challenges on the domestic Palestinian front. In line with the conviction of our belief in the need to protect human rights, regardless of the identity of the perpetrators of human rights violations, Al-Haq has never shied away from the challenges created internally in the West Bank and Gaza. We continue to exert pressure to ensure that international human rights standards are introduced into Palestinian legislation and we fight to maintain an independent Palestinian judiciary and adherence to the rule of law.
Our principled positions have made not only the Israeli occupying authorities unhappy with us, but also the Palestinian authorities, particularly in the wake of a recent report on the use of torture by both the de facto Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the de facto Hamas authority in the Gaza Strip.
Yet, the more we are attacked the more we feel we are making a difference. The fact that I stand before you today to accept this award is testament to that, and to the gravity of the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Long-term security and peace for all peoples is unattainable if any one of those peoples is denied the right to determine its own political destiny and decide its representatives, to freely pursue its economic, social and cultural development, to freely dispose of its own natural resources and to exercise control and move freely in its own territory. Israel's denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination has been comprehensive. It has violated the territorial integrity of the Palestinian territory through its unlawful annexation of East Jerusalem, through its illegal construction of the Annexation Wall in the West Bank, through its colonial settlement policy and its discriminatory appropriation of land and water resources.
After over 40 years of an occupation that has shown a clear intent to gradually but relentlessly shrink the Palestinian territory and reduce the number of Palestinians on the land by whatever means necessary, the occupation can not be separated from its policies. Al-Haq does not seek a kinder, gentler occupation; we seek an end to the occupation.
However, the occupation will not end on its own. It will take courage and political will on the part of the international community to pressure Israel to change its policies. Rewarding Israel with upgrades in economic relations and sourcing aid for Gaza from Israel such that the occupier can profit from the very destruction it wrought is inappropriate to the point of being absurd, and only serves to consolidate rather than confront the Israeli occupation.
The international community simply needs to do more. This is why Al-Haq has launched a case in the UK against the UK government for failing to fulfill its obligations under international as well as domestic UK law.
We also hope that The Netherlands, the home of international accountability, will soon become the site of accountability for Israeli international crimes. For it is only when Israel stops enjoying impunity for those crimes that justice can prevail and that there will there be any incentive for an end to the occupation.
Thank you again for this honour.
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