Humanity For Displaced by War

Ms. Kloie Picot, Journalist, Crossing Boarder Lines, Canada

Greeting to Mr. Douglas Mattern President of AWC, Dr Hong President of AWC, AWC members, delegates and honored guests.

It is written on the Taijimen website, When there are no human rights, there is no peace.??

The topic I would like to speak on is one that for decades has been on the top of the list regarding western foreign policy, and certainly commands an immense amount of media attention. It is one of controversy, and contention. It stirs strong emotions and severe opinions. It is a concern over which wars have been waged, thousands of lives have been lost, and millions have been displaced.

This parcel of land and its claims of ownership, both divine and practical, is one of the most discussed and debated in the world. For decades now, yes decades, there has been summit after summit, peace negotiation upon peace negotiation. The leaders of this land and those who have tried to negotiate peace accords, and human rights, have been awarded the Nobel Peace prize. And yet today in 2010, there is no comprehensive peace. It is a land that digs at the heart, soul and psyche of the western way of life.??It is the cultural and religious cradle of Middle Eastern and western civilization.

Indeed this is a land people who have been denied a viable homeland, shunted and marched off to refugee camps, both internally and externally since 1948. A people who have been subjected to gross human rights violations, and until 1993 denied passports where even calling yourself by your national name or flying your national flag was enough to get your arrested and held for years in detention. A people, who whenever they demand their human rights, are called terrorists and vilified in the mainstream press, a people sealed behind a fence. A separation for security reasons fence,??which centimeter-by-centimeter, year-after-year steals more land. It is a strip of land in one of the world's most densely populated areas with 1.5 million people sealed in by fences, walls and a powerful navy. This land is where the citizens, in the words of the former President of Ireland , and human rights advocate, Mary Robinson says, and I quote, Their whole civilization has been destroyed, I'm not exaggerating. This is a shocking violation of so many human rights, it's almost unbelievable that the world doesn't care while this is happening." Where contact with the world is at the whim of an occupation army. Where in the last war bombs and white phosphorus rained down upon them. Yet when they protest or fight back they are arrested tortured and called terrorist?? I am here before you to speak of the Palestinians. Or as I have often referred to them as PAWNS OF PEACE.

According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), 2007(1)

Today, some 300,000 Palestinian refugees reside in Lebanon . In Syria 156,000 in the camps and 17,000 in the outlaying gatherings. In Jordan 3,043,877. In the global Palestinian Diaspora millions.

Most are people and their descendants who were expelled from or otherwise fled their homes and lands nearly 60 years ago during the events surrounding the creation of the state of Israel and the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. They constitute one of the world's most long-established refugee populations and they remain in a form of limbo. They have virtually no prospect in the foreseeable future of being allowed to return to their lands and homes located primarily in what is now Israel, and to a much smaller extent in the Israeli-Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), even though they have a well-established right to return under international law.

In the time allotted to speak here today I could not even scratch the surface of this polarizing topic, and I am not here to do that, there are many politicians, philosophers, human rights workers, politicians who are doing that all the in article after article. What I can offer you here today is a short talk on my own personal experiences of living both in Israel proper and under Israeli Occupation in the Occupied Palestinian territories.

I have personally spent 6 years in the region, beginning in 1993 until 2003. For 3 years I lived in the Arab, Christian, Jewish and Armenian quarters of Jerusalem 's Old. For one year in the Jewish settlement of Efrat. For 18 months in Nablus in the Occupied Palestinian territories. In Gaza for 3 months.

In 1993, while living in the old city of Jerusalem I met Arab Israelis shopkeepers who were forced to close down their shops due to the 1 st intifada. Their reaction and those of the workers were, I have 5 kids I need to feed. We want to work, we want peace. And I believe this sentiment is still echoed today.

In 2003 while teaching documentary filmmaking at An Najah University in Nablus, I worked side by side with the youth who were fighting for the right to go to school. In the 6 months I spent teaching, one of my students was killed by tank on his way to the university, another was shot and killed while reporting for the University radio station during a clash between Palestinian youth and IDF soldiers in tanks. While I was filming a clash for my movie SHOTS THAT BIND ??Palestinian photojournalist, a fellow journalist and cameraman for AP was shot in the head. When the army investigated, its response was as usual, there were gunmen in the area and we were responding. At the checkpoints I saw soldiers beating up taxi drivers, humiliating elders. As a teacher in the university I am aware of and visited the homes of students whose computers were stolen, destroyed, who were arrested just before their final examinations. The right to education is somehow a terrorist weapon?

It is unimaginable for anyone who has not lived under oppression and occupation to know how it feels. For people living in Israel they cannot imagine it, I was once held at a checkpoint, while settlers whizzed by, guns pointed, calling me a Nazi. To be repeatedly denied their human rights, vilified, tortured, humiliated at checkpoints, (in fact due to the Jewish holiday this week, the whole of the west bank in lock down, which means you can not visit your mother on the other side of the road because there will be an IDF tank there blocking your way. On one trip I took with my Journalist students we had been invited to a conference in Ramallah, just 30 KM from Nablus. It took us 12 hours to reach our destination. On my way back it took me 24 hours.

My experience tells me this, that the Palestinians, the vast majority of Palestinians and Arab countries want peace. Peace brings economic and social stability, peace takes away the power and sway radical fundamentalist preachers have over the population, and contrary to what has been (though there is a bit of a change recently) reported in main stream press, Palestinians mothers and fathers, like all mothers and fathers in our world want to provide for and feed their children, not see them become human time bombs.

Two weeks ago, the Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu embarrassed the Obama administration when during a visit by Vice President Joseph Biden to try to kick start stalled peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, Israel announced plans for 1600 new Jewish homes in East Jerusalem, the part of the city Palestinians claim as the capital of a future state. Now if Israel were seriously looking for peace this is one step in the wrong direction.

I believe it is essential that we speak out and carry human rights advocacy to the whole world. That Taiwan stops their arms exchange and trade with Israel. That we work together and see to it that nations and states adhere to the human rights standards for all, not only for those them deem economically advantageous for their own well-being. That all human beings live in dignity and have the right to education, freedom of movement, freedom to make an honest living, to marry whom they want and actually live with them.

In closing I would like to reiterate, When there are no human rights, there is no peace.??So I say, Israel stop the occupation, stop building Jewish settlements, stop human rights violations, stop preventing married couples living together, and start being a partner in peace. The world would be very grateful and its citizens happier because of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East !

Thank you for your time.