"The EU is sponsoring Israel's occupation"

Swedish Public Prosecutor Hans Ihrman recently decided not to press charges against Ali Esbati, chairman of the Young Left movement, for the financial contribution he made to the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), a group that since the summer has been on the EU’s list of terrorist organisations. The Public Prosecutor justified his decision by saying that the contribution was small (EUR 434) and the issue of intent unclear. As for Ali Esbati, he regretted the decision not to charge him. His reason for making the contribution was to clarify the difference between humanitarian aid and support to terrorists, between freedom movements and terrorist organisations, in a court of law. A court case would have put the public spotlight on the political arguments for and against a tightening of the legislation. Is this at all consistent with the UN Declaration on Human Rights and applicable international law?

There is another, more compelling way of looking at the complex problem of aid versus terrorism versus international law. The violence in the Middle East claims not only human victims. The Israelis are systematically destroying Palestinian property and infrastructure, buildings; fruit farms, arable land, roads, public institutions, schools, etc. This destruction did not start with the Al-Aqsa Intifada but has been going on ever since the occupation began more than 35 years ago. The Intifada did, however, mark a dramatic escalation in the violence. Between September 2000 and December 2001, more than USD 300 million of damage to Palestinian infrastructure, agriculture and public and private buildings was inflicted. In the three months from March to May this year alone, Israeli damage amounted to USD 340 million.

Who is paying for this?

You and other European tax-payers. In May, it was estimated that the Israelis had destroyed EU-funded projects worth EUR 33.6 million since the outbreak of the Intifada. Recently, the EU Commission pledged a further EUR 29 million in emergency humanitarian aid to help “Palestinian reform”, particularly within its legal system.

Furthermore, the occupied Palestinian territories receive more aid than any other place on Earth. Nowhere does the international community show greater commitment. The region is crawling with aid-donors and help organisations. This is a direct result of the so-called peace process, which began with the signing of the Oslo Declaration in 1993. In October of that year, 42 donor countries gathered at one of the conferences convened by the United States, and adopted the largest aid programme in history. According to the World Bank, the international aid community has paid out USD 4.4 billion to the occupied territories.

This aid is unique insofar as it is not justified by the level of poverty in the area but by political motivation. The purpose, as the Swedish Government has established in concurrence with its donor colleagues, is two-fold: to support peaceful development in the region, and to support the establishment of a democratic Palestinian society based on the rule of law.

As long as the peace process was still going on, everything was hunky-dory, at least from the donor countries’ point of view. For them, their aid efforts were a sign that the peace process was rolling along nicely. For aid workers and the authorities on the ground – to say nothing of the Palestinians themselves – developments appeared in a different light and were considerably more worrying.

On the one han, more and more settlements were springing up. During the peace process (1993-2000), the number of settlers on the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem) rose by more than 100 per cent. Using a set of sophisticated bureaucratic and legal techniques – including the manipulative use of 19th century Ottoman land laws, declaring land as “abandoned property”, military sequestration, compulsory expropriation by the government and state subsidies to private land acquisition on the “free” market – Israel now controls more than half the West Bank. The Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem concludes in its report, Land Grab, that:

“The drastic changes Israel has made to the West Bank map prevent any establishment of an independent, robust Palestinian state as part of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.”

In other words, the exact opposite of the objective expressed in the peace process and by the international aid community.

On the other hand, Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian authority hardly meets the requirements one associates with a democratic society based on the rule of law. On the contrary, bureaucracy, inefficiency, nepotism and corruption meant that the homecoming leadership did not live up to the great expectations of the Palestinian people living in the occupied territories. More and more of them saw the peace process as a new, refined form of occupation and saw themselves as caught between the occupying forces of Israel, on the one hand, who continued to build settlements, exclusive motorways, checkpoints, etc., and a Palestinian authority, on the other, which wasted most of its scarce resources on hunting down dissidents among its own people.

According to a report compiled by the World Bank this spring (Fifteen Months), the ongoing Intifada came as “a shock to the donor system”. If one regards the peace process as the status quo – a natural thing for the donor system to do since it is so integrated in it that being without it would be unthinkable – the Intifada does constitute “a shock”, the cause of all evil, including the destruction of the enormous worth invested in the region by the donor system since the beginning of the peace process.

If one on the other hand – as the vast majority of Palestinians and well-informed commentators do – regard the Intifada as a reaction not against the peace process but against the occupation, the outcome is different. Uprising is the normal reaction to occupation. Occupation embodies the abnormal, the uncivilised, the destructive. The responsibility for violence lies first and foremost at the occupant’s door. In no way is this condoning suicide bombers and terrorism but is merely a reminder that international law also includes the right of those occupied to try and liberate themselves. International law also involves – as Catherine Bertini, the UN Secretary-General’s personal humanitarian envoy, pointed out in a report from the region in August this year – the occupant accepting responsibility during the occupation for the well-being of those occupied, including adequate food and medicine provision.

According to Bertini, more and more voices are to be heard within the donor system questioning the fact that aid, that was originally intended to contribute to peaceful development within the region and to the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state built on the rule of law, is now being used to finance Emergency Aid efforts to help confined and defenceless Palestinians, for whom the occupying Israeli forces by rights are supposed to provide – while at the same time Israeli fighter planes, tanks and bulldozers level aid-financed infrastructure projects with the ground or vandalise them beyond recognition. These include: the airport and harbour in Gaza, the Office of Statistics in Ramallah, the Peace Centre in Bethlehem…

International development cooperation has been turned into occupation sponsoring.

The situation is, in truth, absurd. American tax-payers are pumping in aid, in the form of guns, etc., with which the Israelis shoot aid projects paid for by European tax-payers to pieces. In the occupied territories, it seems the donor system is at war with itself.

Amid the reign of terror that currently prevails in Israel, it seems that more and more people espy a terrorist in every Palestinian. Increasingly, people are advocating “definitive” solutions, including ethnic cleansing. Confidence and trust are equally shattered on the Palestinian side. There are more and more calls for an armed struggle.

What can the international community do?

Aid is needed, but is not enough. International aid must be accompanied by clear political demands and measures so as not to prolong the crisis (the occupation and the ensuing violence), the solution to which it was supposed to conduce. The occupied Palestinians’ need for protection is paramount and must be safeguard as soon as possible with the help of UN-commanded international troops. Furthermore, a considerably more active diplomacy from the EU and its member states is also required. The free-trade agreement between Israel and the EU should be reviewed bearing in mind the daily violation of human rights and international law caused by Israel’s policy of continued occupation. Boycotts and sanctions are other pressure mechanisms that can be employed.

But action is needed now. In light of what Ariel Sharon bears responsibility for in the past, who knows what he is capable of should the occupied territories be overshadowed in the media by an American attack on Iraq.

It is not Ali Esbati and the Young Left who should be brought to justice, accused of aiding terrorists in contravention of international law. It is you and I, tax-paying European citizens.