Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The Power of Saying No

Articolo di un certo Halper, vile scribacchino che probabilmente trama
sotto la protezione di un ombrello antisemita.
The Power of Saying No
By Jeff Halper
As the new Hamas government is sworn into power in the Palestinian
Authority, we might ask: What would bring a people, the most secular of
Arab populations with little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote
Hamas? Mere protest at Fatah ineffectualness in negotiations and internal
corruption doesn’t go far enough. While warning Hamas that their vote did
not constitute a mandate for imposing an Iran-like theocracy on Palestine,
the Palestinians took the only option left to a powerless people when all
other avenues of redress have been closed to them: non-cooperation. 
Gandhi put it best: “How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply
refuse to do the master’s bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to
atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience.
Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has
failed in getting me to do what he wanted done. Non-cooperation is
directed not against the Governors, but against the system they
administer. The roots of non- cooperation lie not in hatred but in
justice.” 
Non-cooperation, perhaps the most powerful means of non-violent
resistance, arises in situations when the oppressed have no other avenues
to achieve their freedom and their rights. Since it is the international
community, the US, Israel and, yes, Fatah, who have closed all avenues of
redress to the Palestinians, they carry the “blame” for the rise of Hamas.
It is to them that the message of the Palestinian electorate is aimed: “To
hell with all of you!” 
To hell with the international community that closed off Palestinians’
appeal to international law and human rights conventions. Had only the
Fourth Geneva Convention been applied, Israel could never have constructed
its Occupation in the first place. International law defines an occupation
as a temporary military situation that can only be resolved through
negotiations. Therefore an Occupying Power such as Israel is prohibited
from taking any unilateral action that makes its control permanent.
Besides its military bases, every single element of Israel’s Occupation is
patently illegal: settlements and the construction of a massive system of
Israel-only highways that link the West Bank settlements to Israel proper;
the extension of Israel’s legal and planning system into occupied
Palestinian areas; the plunder of Palestinian water and other resources
for Israeli use; house demolitions and the expropriation of Palestinian
lands; the intentional impoverishment of the local population; military
attacks on civilian populations — to name but a few. Even when Israel’s
construction of the “Separation Barrier” was ruled illegal by the
International Court of Justice in the Hague and its ruling ratified by the
General Assembly, nothing was done to stop it. 
To hell with the United States that closed off negotiations as an avenue
for redressing Palestinian rights and for enabling Israel to make its
Occupation permanent. At the very start of the Oslo “peace process,” at
Israel’s urging, the US reclassified the Palestinian areas from “occupied”
to “disputed,” thus removing international law as the basis of
negotiations and pulling the rug out from under the Palestinians. Had
international law been respected, the Occupation would have ended under
the weight of its own illegality. But once power became the only basis of
negotiations, Israel easily overwhelmed the Palestinians. Until today
Palestinians have nothing to look for in negotiations. With the Americans
supporting Israeli unilateralism, with the US veto neutralizing the UN as
an effective avenue of redress, and with European passivity, they have
been cut adrift.
To hell with Israel that has closed off even the possibility of a viable
Palestinian state by expanding into Palestinian areas. The world ignored
the Palestinians’ “generous offer” to Israel: recognition within the 1967
borders in return for a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories. Or
in other words, an Israel on 78% of historic Palestine with the
Palestinians - today a majority in the country - accepting a state only on
22%. Israel is now posed, with American support and international
complicity, to make its Occupation permanent and reduce the Palestinians
to a prison-state truncated into five “cantons” all controlled by Israel.
No borders, no freedom of movement, no water, no viable economy, no
Jerusalem, no possibility of offering a hopeful future to the traumatized,
brutalized, undereducated, unskilled, impoverished Palestinian youth. 
And to hell with Fatah that, in addition to enabling corruption, did not
effectively pursue the Palestinians’ national agenda of
self-determination. The Palestinian Authority ran its affairs removed from
the people, failing to provide material and moral support to victims of
Israeli attacks and policies of house demolitions. Most Palestinians did
not vote Hamas (only 44% did), so the door was not closed on Fatah which,
most Palestinians seem to hope, will learn its lesson from this setback. 
Indeed, the vote for Hamas was not a closing of the door at all, but a
rational, intentional and powerful statement of non-cooperation in a
political process that is only leading to Palestinian imprisonment. Hamas,
if anything, stands for steadfastness, sumud, the refusal to submit. This
conflict is too destabilizing to the entire global system to let fester,
the Palestinians are saying. You can all impose upon us an apartheid
system, blame us for the violence while ignoring Israeli State Terror,
pursue your programs of American Empire or your notions of a “clash of
civilizations,” we the Palestinians will not submit. We will not
cooperate. We will not play your rigged game. In the end, for all your
power, you will come to us to sue for peace. And then we will be ready for
a just peace that respects the rights of all the peoples of the region,
including the Israelis. But you will not beat us. 
As an Israeli Jew who sees how the Occupation has eroded the moral
foundations of my society and, indeed, my entire people, and as a resident
of Israel-Palestine who knows that my fate is intricately intertwined with
that of the Palestinians, I pray that such an end will come sooner rather
than later. 
Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions (ICAHD)
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little history of religious fundamentalism, to vote Hamas?
Come mostra chiaramente questa domanda.
-Stefano