United Nations NGO Meeting Calls Upon UN to Protect Palestinians

By Donald Betz

"Palestine Now" was the theme of the three-day United Nations Eighth International Meeting for Non-Governmental Organizations on the Question of Palestine, hosted by the Austrian government in the sprawling Vienna International Center. The 250 organizations formally participating in the late August deliberations represented every continent and sought to press the international community to address the question of Palestine and the continuing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza with the same vigor used to counter the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

"The reality is that Palestine remains occupied."

The conference opened to the impassioned comments of Professor Guido de Marco of Malta, who has served for the past year as the president of the General Assembly. De Marco sent ripples of distress through the Israeli establishment after he visited the occupied Palestinian territories last year by speaking frankly on the inhumane conditions prevailing in the camps, schools and hospitals. The thunderous, sustained applause following his Vienna statement confirmed its relevance.

Other major speakers included Radwan Abu-Ayyash, the former chairman of the Union of Palestinian Jurists and a recently released detainee; General Mattityahu Peled, Chairman of the Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace; Haim Baram, a noted Israeli journalist and a founder of the Peace Party Sheli in Israel; Gabi Baramki, Acting President of Bir Zeit University; and Nabeel Shaath, businessman and chairman of the Political Committee of the Palestine National Council.

Conference sessions and workshops focused on the protection of Palestinians under occupation and detailed problems of Palestinians in Kuwait. Proposals from the workshops included broad-based support for the reunification of Palestinian families strategy articulated by Law in the Service of Man of Ramallah, major campaigns in North America to block some $10 billion in loan guarantees from the United States to Israel for the resettlement of Russian Jews, and new efforts to work effectively with the media, especially in Europe.

The plight of children was reviewed in detail, with new coalitions of organizations formed to publicize abuses and to assist children directly. A recent study by the Maqdes Center for Strategic Studies in East Jerusalem confirmed that the death rate among Palestinian children in the occupied territories is higher than in Israel, Syria and Jordan and that 225,000 children are expected to die in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip by the turn of the century. The death rate in the occupied territories is 70 per 1,000, while in Israel it is 10.7 per 1,000. The high death rate is attributed to the conspicuous lack of health care services.

Land, Water and Settlement Issues

The critical issues of land, water and settlements received attention from several workshops and in plenary sessions. The NGOs decided to encourage research, mapping and documentation of Israeli measures to confiscate Palestinian land and to construct settlements which encroach on Palestinian land. Further, broad educational efforts will raise public awareness of the significance of the settlements to the Palestinian people and to the peace process so that pressure can be exerted from multiple quarters on Israel to halt land confiscation and the settlement process.

The final declaration focused on the responsibility of the United Nations to provide "immediate and sustained protection for the Palestinians under occupation" by means of "a UN force to protect the Palestinian nation and to stop Israel's attempts to destroy it. " For the first time, delegates also called attention to the "legal and political discrimination " experienced by Palestinian Arabs living in Israel.

Kuwait's policy of forcibly relocating more than 300,000 Palestinians and of subjecting the remaining 50,000 Palestinians still there to an uncertain fate was condemned as collective punishment. The NGOs promised to monitor Kuwait's treatment of Palestinians and to publicize any transgressions.

The Israeli government denied several invited speakers and resource persons the right to leave the occupied territories to participate in the annual United Nations conclave. This was not the first time such action had been taken by Israel against UN-invited speakers, and the action was predictably denounced by NGO and UN representatives alike. One speaker captured the tenor of the deliberations.

"Last year the international community was moved to historic cooperation in order to oppose collectively the occupation of Kuwait. Is the occupation of Palestine any less illegal or immoral? The reality is that Palestine remains occupied, and Palestinians struggle to secure their fundamental human rights through the intifada now in its 44th month.

"This is the eighth year of the NGO network and its cooperation with the United Nations on the question of Palestine. It is difficult, even painful, to listen to the global promotion of an alleged peace process that reduces the United Nations to a silent note-taker at ceremonial meetings and Palestinians to second-class participants whose representatives must be selected and approved by others. The elusive peace that this "process" is attempting to achieve rests squarely on the question of Palestine. Without Palestinians and their chosen representatives, there is no peace at the end of such a process, but only disillusion, despair and bitterness fueling another cycle of violence. Such a process is bankrupt before it begins.

"For Palestinians, international silence, public silence, our silence are co-conspirators in the occupation. Non-governmental organizations are an integral element of the international protection the men, women and children of Palestine need and deserve. The NGO network, in continuing association with the United Nations, can serve as a global conscience on the question of Palestine."

The meeting ended with renewed resolve by NGOs to redouble their efforts, each in their own country, to raise these issues and to protect Palestinians as best they could, at this historic moment of great challenge and great opportunity. NGO networking continues to be coordinated from the International Coordinating Committee (ICCP) office in Geneva.

Professor Donald Betz of Northeastern State University is chairman of the International Coordinating Committee on the Question of Palestine. The American Educational Trust, publisher of this magazine, is a member of the North American Committee of non-Governmental Organizations on the Question of Palestine accredited to the United Nations.