I thank members of the committee for having me here. It is important for members of the Israeli peace movement to be able to present our position abroad and to get support from the international community. This type of forum is very important for us.
We are now in a new political situation which is often not appreciated. Israel's policy since 1967, particularly since 1977 when the Begin Government was elected and Sharon was appointed head of the ministerial committee on settlements, which put him in a position of being the architect of the settlement enterprise, Israel's policy has been to create facts on the ground that prejudice any kind of negotiations. In other words, it would make Israel's occupation permanent and foreclose the establishment of any viable Palestinian state. For 26 or 27 years, Sharon, in complicity with the Labour Party when it was in power, including the years of Oslo, proceeded in a very vigorous and aggressive way to expand Israel's permanent settlements, infrastructure and now the construction of this massive security barrier of a wall plus electronic fences. This is intended to make the Israeli presence permanent.
Israel denies that it has an occupation. In other words, it refuses to accept the fourth Geneva Convention or any international laws that apply to occupation. Its position is that there is no occupation because this is its country, the entire country from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, therefore, one cannot occupy one's own country. Israel has never recognised the Palestinians as claimants to the land under the pretext that the Palestinians never had an independent state of their own, even though a Palestinian state was declared by the United Nations in 1947.
Israel also denies the basic principle of international law which prohibits the acquisition of territory by force. A basic principle of international law is the inadmissibility of acquiring territory by force. Israel denies the basic principle that in the 21st century we cannot go out and conquer anymore. Its policy of creating facts is designed to make its presence permanent, because it does not have an occupation, in other words, to take the whole issue of Israeli control and annexation of the West Bank out of the political realm and out of negotiations and make it an accepted fact on the ground while at the same time foreclosing the establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
Israel needs a Palestinian state. Even though Israel claims the entire country, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan river, and it has de facto made it one country through the establishment of a massive settlement and infrastructure network, it cannot take the next step and make it one country because there are approximately four million Palestinians that Israel cannot digest. If it made it one country and gave the Palestinians citizenship — after all, Israel claims to be the only democracy in the Middle East — Israel would cease to be a Jewish state because half the population of the country is Palestinian. If, on the other hand, Israel made it one country and did not give the Palestinians citizenship, it would be outright apartheid. Even in a world of George Bush, it is not easy to sell apartheid.
The trick for Israel is how to keep control of the entire country while getting rid of the Palestinian population. They cannot transfer them physically out of the country yet, although that is discussed openly in the Israeli Parliament and media. There is a policy of what we call the "quiet transfer", of administratively forcing the Palestinian middle classes in particular out of the country. There is that type of policy but they cannot really transfer them out. What they have to do, therefore, is try to create a mini-state or bantustan, like in South Africa, which leaves them in control of the country but locks the Palestinians into a state where they are off the Israelis' hands but at the same time are confined, dependent and unable to exercise the right of self determination.
The policy for years has been to create facts on the ground and make them a reality. The watershed was last month with the meeting between Sharon and Bush in Washington, which was later supported by Blair, in which the United States essentially said that it accepted those facts on the ground as political realities. We now have new parameters for negotiations. Rather than negotiating the status of the Occupied Territories, the 22% of the country in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza that was conquered by Israel in 1967, the United States now recognises the demographic realities and, therefore, will not require Israel to withdraw to the 1967 borders. Essentially, the United States recognises Israel's major settlement blocks, so that has been taken out of the negotiations. In a sense all we are left with, and this is a major turning point in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, is the Palestinians negotiating how big their bantustan prison state will be. Will 40% or 60% of the West Bank be left to them after the settlement blocks have been removed? In many ways, Sharon feels he has won, that this conflict is over and that there is no further possibility of negotiating a viable Palestinian state.
For the international community, this means the prospect of seeing the emergence of a new apartheid situation on the southern border of Europe. This is not on the southern tip of Africa. On the southern border of Europe a new apartheid situation is emerging before our eyes. It is not like apartheid or an emerging apartheid. It is an apartheid system in which an entire people is being imprisoned in a non-viable so-called state of four or five islands with no viable economy.
In many ways one might say that a Palestinian bantustan is worse than a South African bantustan. In South Africa, the concept of the bantustan was that the black Africans would be confined there but they would be a cheap labour force that would come into South Africa to work. In this case, the Palestinians are imprisoned in their bantustan but they are not allowed into Israel to work. Israel has a cheaper labour force, which is foreign workers being imported from China, Thailand, the Philippines, Romania and west Africa, so it does not need the Palestinians.
We are, therefore, faced with a situation where the Palestinians are being imprisoned in a tiny mini-state on approximately 10% to 15% of the country with no viable economy, no border with an Arab country, no control over its water, no control over Jerusalem which is the heart of the Palestinian economy, no freedom of movement, no ability to bring the refugees back because there is no economic infrastructure and no ability to meet the future needs of their people. Approximately half the Palestinian population is under the age of 18 years. They have tremendous national responsibilities but no territory, no coherent economy and no ability to develop. They are locked into a prison state.
One of the elements of this permanent occupation that really concerns us is the wall that is being built. The reason Amnesty International invited me to come here is partly because the Irish company CRH, a major cement company, has a 25% stake in the Israeli cement concrete monopoly. Not only is Ireland in a sense complicit, even though the Irish Government's policy has been good and progressive on the conflict, in allowing its companies to engage in these kinds of illegal practices but certain Irish companies must also be called to account.
I will give the committee an idea of the dimensions of the wall. Simply talking about a wall or fence is abstract and hard to grasp. I brought some pictures of it for the committee. In the populated Palestinian areas, this is a wall of concrete that is 26 feet or eight metres high. It completely surrounds Palestinian communities. The important thing about the wall, which is illustrated in one of the pictures, is that it does not separate Israelis from Palestinians. We claim that the wall is not a security barrier. It does not separate Israelis from Palestinians but Palestinians from each other. The wall is built so deeply into Palestinian territory, sometimes more than 20 kilometres inside the territory, that Israelis do not even see it. Approximately 300,000 Palestinians are permanently trapped in islands, enclaves and corridors between the 1967 line, the green line that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories, and the wall. A civilian population that is not a terrorist population, has never been accused of anything and is composed of non-combatants in every sense of the term is virtually being imprisoned by this massive wall.
The wall in Kalkilya completely surrounds Palestinian cities and a population of approximately 70,000 people. There is one gate that is manned by Israeli soldiers and it is closed on the Jewish sabbath, in the evenings and by whim. Sometimes these gates are supervised by sergeants in the army. They are closed as forms of collective punishment and if there is a security alert. In other words, they introduce an entirely arbitrary element into Palestinian lives. They have no idea if they will be able to get home or get in and out of the city.
In other parts of the country between the Palestinian populated areas there is a massive fence. It is an electronic fence, approximately three metres high, with sensors that detect movement and automatic machine guns that fire. It is patrolled by a breed of killer dogs imported from Holland. There are army patrols, ditches and surveillance cameras. This is located not only along the length of the West Bank but deep inside the West Bank.
The legal and human rights issue is not the building of the wall and the fence. We do not believe it is a good idea but if Israel had built this facility along the border or green line, there would not have been a problem with it. Israel would not have been brought before the International Court of Justice in the Hague. The problem is the route, which is invasive, oppresses the Palestinians and amounts to annexation which is against international law. Palestinians are imprisoned in ghettos, islands, enclaves and cells which are located especially around Jerusalem. They suffer humiliation as people have to climb over walls if they can. The wall is tearing apart a community fabric. It is not on a border, it goes through the middle of communities separating families. A husband has a West Bank identification, a wife has a Jerusalem identification, which separates their family completely. Children have to be taken out of schools and the wall interferes with businesses and so on.
The demolition of houses is of special concern to us. There are hundreds of Palestinian homes in the line of the wall that have been demolished or are threatened with demolition. We are talking about a massive barrier which is absolutely illegal in international law. It is illegal on two main bases. First, acquiring territory by force is inadmissible as a principle of international law. The wall annexes de facto around 60% of the land in the West Bank. By creating these facts on the ground and translating them into political facts accepted by the US, Israel is unilaterally annexing territory that it conquered. The fourth Geneva Convention, which deals with occupation, states that an occupation is by definition a temporary situation that can only be resolved through political negotiations. As soon as land is taken out of political negotiations and is unilaterally annexed, the convention is violated.
The other principal violated by Israel with its wall or fence, the settlements and other elements of its occupation, is the principle of proportionality. International law and the fourth Geneva Convention recognise that a country has a right to defend itself. A country is even permitted by international law to have an occupation. That happens in war. The issue is that the land can be held until political negotiations take place. The occupation is not allowed to become permanent, the creation of facts on the ground is not allowed. It is illegal under international law to move a population into an occupied area, to build settlements, to deport the local population. It is illegal even to use the resources of an occupied territory. For example, Israel gets approximately one third of its water from the occupied territories. That is an illegal exploitation of resources of an occupied territory. It is illegal to hinder the freedom of movement of a population either internally, or entering and exiting the country. On the contrary, an occupying power is enjoined to ensure the well-being of the population under its control.
I want to make a point as an Israeli and as a Jew. There is a very strong Jewish element to the fourth Geneva Convention. It was approved by the UN in 1949 on the basis of the Jewish experience in the Holocaust, in which the Jews were a defenceless, unprotected civilian non-combatant population, living under a hostile Nazi occupation. We know the results of that. Had the fourth Geneva Convention been adopted in 1939 and had the international community sought its application, the entire Holocaust could have been avoided. This is not an academic, legalistic type of argument. The fourth Geneva Convention has tremendous impact on the ground to protect civilian populations. That is the case here. On the one hand, international law permits Israel to do what it must do to protect itself by what is called military necessity. Israel is permitted to build a road to a military base in the West Bank if there is a direct and immediate military necessity to do so. That necessity includes controlling the West Bank until the political negotiations are finished, or defending its own population against terrorism. That is legitimate. However, military necessity has to be immediate and palpable. Security can not be used to create permanent facts on the ground.
In addition, there is a principle of proportionality. The military necessity has to be balanced with the well being of the civilian population under its control. For the sake of protecting one's own people, one cannot grossly violate the human rights of the people under one's control who are defenceless. They have no army, no police force, no government and no way of protecting themselves. Tens of thousands of acres of land have been unilaterally annexed and expropriated, more than half a million olive and fruit trees have been uprooted since 1967, a scorched earth has been created, the Palestinian population has been prevented from reaching and developing sources of livelihood. Their water has been taken and they are essentially being starved. The Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories is being kept alive by international aid agencies. There is no economy, 70% of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live on under $2 a day. According to research in John Hopkins University, 30% of the children under the age of five in Gaza suffer from malnutrition. That is not justified by military necessity. One can not build a wall and carry out policies that create those conditions on the grounds of military necessity.
Israel is responsible for the well-being of the Palestinians and the international community is also responsible. That is why this forum is relevant. Human rights and international law are universal. We hear the line that this is an internal dispute, an internal problem and the international community should butt out as it has no business. This line does not work anymore. Every violation of human rights is a concern of the entire international community. As part of the Israeli peace community, we call on members of the international community such as those present here today to help us achieve a just peace in the Middle East based on human rights. In addition to the road map, which exists and which is not being enforced, is another road map. That road map is human rights and international law. If we apply the international laws that exist today, including the fourth Geneva Convention which is signed by Israel and the US, with no new laws, no new political programme, no new discussions, the occupation would collapse by its own weight of illegality. The international community has therefore got a particular responsibility.
What brought me to Ireland was the involvement of companies like CRH in constructing the wall. Other Irish companies have been involved in manufacturing military hardware that is used by Israel. This all creates a situation, on the one hand, of complicity if one acts and, on the other hand, of accepting responsibility as a responsible member of the international community to try to intervene to prevent these violations of international law.
Of all the countries of Europe, and probably of the world, Ireland has probably the most progressive and constructive approach to the Middle East conflict. If the other countries even approached the Irish Government's position, we would all be in a much better position. We are seeking to ensure that the principled policy of the Irish Government towards a just peace in the Middle East is followed by actions as well and especially to try to prevent the emergence of a new apartheid situation in the world.