In Palestine and among the working and oppressed peoples around the globe, May 15 is marked as Nakba Day. It is the Day of Catastrophe, the day on which an entity known as the State of Israel was declared and imposed on Palestinian territory by Zionist gangsters which used the Security Council of the United Nations to achieve its aim.[1]

On Nakba Day, Palestinians throughout occupied Palestine and the refugee camps of the region, and Palestinians throughout the world reassert their right to return to the lands and homes of which they have been stripped by Israel. Supported by the Obama Administration in the U.S. and the Harper dictatorship in Canada, Israel continues to refuse to acknowledge any right of return for Palestinians.

Far from receding into the past, the events of the Nakba and the Palestinians' determination to overturn the genocidal verdict of the imperialist powers concerning their continued existence as a people continue to stir world opinion. During the 60th commemoration of the Nakba in 2008 and since, for example, Palestinians have taken to massing as close as possible to the truce lines between Israel, Lebanon and Syria. Typically the monopoly media in the U.S. and Canada, report these confrontations as "riots," giving sympathetic details about Israeli army casualties. But the world's peoples are by no stretch of the imagination ready to dismiss the entirely just struggle and sacred national aspirations of the Palestinian people.

In Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Palestinians this year are marking Nakba Day amid an unprecedented mobilization of support for hunger strikes which started in March and were transformed into a mass hunger strike in mid-April by more than 2,000 of their brothers, sisters, fathers, uncles and aunts who have been held without charge for years at a stretch under "administrative detention" in Israeli prisons. (See articles in this issue of TML.)

Israel was the creation of a handful of Great Powers following the Second World War. One of them, the United States, was rising at the time and two of them, Great Britain and France, were nearing collapse. Although Canada was not a "great power" it attached itself to the rising star of the U.S.

On Palestine and a number of other matters, these Great Powers used the permanent seats they occupied on the Security Council of a newly-minted United Nations to rewrite some parts and disappear other parts of customary international and humanitarian law and on this basis establish the post-war arrangements and give their own meaning to the right of nations to self-determination. The artificial, externally-imposed and consciously anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab character of the so-called "State of Israel" ushered into existence by this bloc actually continued and further developed a "Creation story," originally cooked up during the First World War by the British imperialists in cahoots with French colonialists, for something called the "Jewish national home."

This notion of a "Jewish national home" was a cover story for the British and French colonialists' bid to exploit the collapse of Russian influence on the diplomacy of the Ottoman imperial court. The notion itself was first put forward in a letter dated November 3, 1917 from British Colonial Secretary Arthur Balfour to Baron Edmund Rothschild subsequently dubbed the Balfour Declaration -- which the Palestinian national movement labels "the First Nakba." At that time, the Rothschilds' pan-European banking system was bankrolling the armaments manufacturers on both sides of the Great War on terms premised on the "balance of power" that existed at the outbreak of the war. At this time too, however, on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russia was in a state of collapse and no longer in a position to help hold in check the forces of rebellion roiling whatever remained of the eastern Ottoman empire. In its Arab regions, the Ottoman empire was an entity whose four centuries of cruelty had "dried men's eyes with rage," as the Palestinian historian Sami Hadawi would later write. It was with the view of filling this vacuum and denying that rebellion its victorious culmination that Balfour wrote his imperialist paymaster that His Majesty's Government would "look with favour" on the creation of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine.

The Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian peoples who rose up in rebellion at the time were victimized by a ruthless secret diplomacy managed from London and Paris, rigged up with various Arab sellout "leaders." For example, nothing was ever said explicitly about whether Balfour's reference to a "Jewish national home" meant support for a Zionist state. That omission enabled any compromised Arab parties to these dirty deals to complain later that they "didn't know." Similarly, Balfour gave no hint of the agreement forged a year earlier by British and French diplomats Mark Sykes and Jules Picot respectively on behalf of their governments, to carve up the territory of the "Greater Syria" portion of the Ottoman empire at the end of the Great War. France would grab Syria and Lebanon while Britain would capture Palestine including Jerusalem. Despite the secrecy of the deals, it eventually became known that the foreign ministry in France was in correspondence with a number of prominent Arab leaders about the outlines of this scheme.

The eventual robbers' deal struck among the Great Powers presented in the form of the Balfour Declaration was given the patina of "international law" in 1919-1920 by being incorporated into the League of Nations Covenant -- the founding document of that body. The Rothschild banking system proceeded to finance one of the first mass human smuggling schemes of modern times, providing 1,001 props and back doors to facilitate the movement to Palestine over the next 15-18 years of tens of thousands of Jews mostly from the war-ravaged zones of the former Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in eastern and southeastern Europe. The profits from such human smuggling were assured by the fact that such emigration undertaken without official British authorization was banned under the "Mandate" London was granted over Palestine by the League of Nations. Meanwhile, as Balfour himself later admitted, the strategic common interests of the Rothschilds and the British Empire greatly outweighed any humanitarian concerns about the injustice being done to the Palestinian Arabs as a result of propping-up this Zionist emigration scheme. These interests centred on retaining British imperial control over the Suez Canal -- whose construction and operation the Rothschilds had financed -- by preparing conditions for giving rise to a European "Palestine" statelet positioned at the closest available proximity to the Canal.

In the discussions at Versailles to formally end the First World War, the United States opposed the Anglo-French bid to extend their colonial system into the eastern reaches of the former Ottoman Empire. However, they did not publicly oppose the "Jewish national home" idea. They wanted only to block its being accepted and used to ramify the stealthy assertion of Anglo-French colonial stewardship over Greater Syria. To this end, the U.S. unofficially supported the organization and despatch of the so-called "King-Crane Commission" to travel the region and take evidence from Palestinian and other Arabs of the region, rejecting any further colonial interference in their struggles to assert their right to national self-determination. This was the point at which Canada entered the picture as a yes-man to Great Powers' scheme and so began its role as an enemy of the Palestinians' aspirations for national independence.

Since the end of the Second World War, Canadian governments have rendered into an art form how to feign complete innocence about their own active connivance in Uncle Sam's imperialist schemes. While Canada's perfidy as regards its nefarious role in U.S. schemes to exterminate the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and North Vietnam has been well-documented, the Palestinian chapter of this sordid catalogue is less well-known.

Although Canada participated in the Great War as part of the British empire, after the war it took a pro-U.S. position against Anglo-French schemes for setting up mandates in Greater Syria with a League of Nations' stamp of approval. At the final Imperial War Conference held in London among the colonial governments of the British empire in December 1918, a month before the launch of the treaty discussions at Versailles, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden proposed that the League of Nations mandate for Palestine go to the U.S., not Great Britain. British Prime Minister Lloyd George nonetheless succeeded in derailing any discussion of the notion "on the record" of the Conference.[2]

Nonetheless, following the second world war, the last Mackenzie King administration (1944-48) was instrumental in bringing that entire development to fruition. Regardless of disagreements over this question or that, no Canadian government since -- St. Laurent, Diefenbaker, Pearson, Trudeau, Mulroney, Chretien, Martin or Harper -- has repudiated, questioned or soft-pedalled the upholding of Israel as the Jewish State. The Zionist theory of Israel as the national home of all Jewish people around the globe operates implicitly and explicitly as a program for destroying the collective existence and peoplehood of the Palestinians, i.e., a program of genocide against them. No Canadian government has ever taken issue with this position, either.[3]

This brings us to present day when, this May 15, the Harper dictatorship will mark not Nakba Day, but rather the 64th anniversary of the declaration of the State of Israel as a Jewish State.

Canadians do not agree with their government being a partner to the genocide of the Palestinians. That places this issue on the agenda of all the forces fighting for justice and the rights of all.

Notes

1. The catastrophe ("Al Nakba") made refugees of over 800,000 Palestinians, who were uprooted from their land and homes by marauding Zionist terror gangs and the British-trained soldiers and British officers of the "Haganah" army. International law recognizes the entitlement of these original refugees -- and the continued entitlement as well of their more than six million descendants alive today -- to a right of return to their lands and homes. International law further acknowledges a right of return for the 350,000 Palestinians displaced by the Israeli army in the June 1967 war. A large number of this latter group of refugees inhabit the Gaza Strip today, a region so besieged by the Israeli Occupation as to be known worldwide as "the world's largest open-air prison camp."

Zionist terror gangs served as the army's cat's-paw and advance force in 1947-48, doing the dirty work of throwing Palestinian Arabs down wells, poisoning water supplies with cholera and other deadly agents, and even rounding up Palestinian village women and children for Nazi SS-style execution, as at Deir Yassin in April 1948. Leaders of these gangs like Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir eventually went on to become Prime Ministers of the State of Israel, who insisted the Zionist aim was righteous and justified such fascist means.

The doctrine known among Zionists as the "Iron Wall," justifying the use of terrorism against unarmed Palestinian civilians, was worked out in the 1920s by Vladimir Jabotinsky, a displaced Russo-Polish intellectual influenced by the model of the Italian fascist squadristi of the Mussolini regime. His secretary (who died in April 2012 aged 102) was the father of the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

2. David Lloyd-George, War Memoirs of David Lloyd George (Gollancz, 1933), Vol. 2.

3. Whether in bilateral relations with Tel Aviv, in relations with the Palestinian National Authority, or in diplomatic activity at the United Nations, Canadian governments have left no stone unturned when it comes to bolstering the State of Israel at Palestinians' expense, regardless of whether the Palestinians live inside Israel, or the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, or were pushed into Jordan and southern Lebanon as the result of earlier episodes of Zionist aggression. Not only have Canadian governments defended a so-called Israeli right of self-defence, but they have participated and continue to participate in a wide range of Israeli state terrorist activities. These activities include everything from providing training personnel for the Presidential Guard of the Palestine Authority -- a body run by a three-star Pentagon general which, under the pretext of protecting Palestinian President Abbas from "threats," operates mostly to crush or attack Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation -- to formal lecture programs and advice given to top Israeli military commanders. One such lecture series is given annually by Canadian Liberal MP Irwin Cotler. On various occasions during the 1980s and 1990s, Canadian passports have been forged and used for numerous terrorist and espionage operations of the Israeli Mossad in Jordan, Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. At the end of May 2010, the Harper government provided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting Canada en route to meeting U.S. President Obama, with highly-secure military command and control communications facilities for participating directly in the murderous Israeli commando raid on a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, carrying humanitarian aid to the Israeli-besieged Gaza Strip -- an attack in which nine Turkish citizens were killed. Later in the fall of that same year, in the wake of the massive international public outcry against the Mavi Marmara massacre, the Parliament buildings in Ottawa were handed over to the so-called Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism. That body staged an outrageous series of so-called "hearings" intended to prepare public opinion for legislation that would treat all criticism of the conduct of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic hate crimes.

Israel's Buffoon: The UN Nakba

On May 15, 1948 the unilateral proclamation of the State of Israel which erupted into the brutal Palestinian Nakba or Catastrophe was also catastrophic for United Nations (UN) ringing the death knell for its stature and authority.

Like medieval kings, the US and Israel employed the UN to be its fool running around with a cap o' bells and sceptre (rendered useless by US veto) beginning with the 1947 Resolution 181, passed on 29 November by members (under coercion) recommending the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states which was understandably rejected by Palestine but accepted by Israel as a step toward its Zionist expansionist goal for the full realisation of a Jewish Eretz Israel.

Ironically, on 30 November 1947 Menachem Begin, head of the terrorist gang, Irgun, brazenly announced the Zionists' immutable dogma, "The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognised... Jerusalem was and forever will be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever."

Disregarding Begin's rant, apart from having no mandate to approve or enforce the partition, "the United Nations had no business offering the nation of one people to the people of many nations. Its General Assembly had neither the legal nor the legislative powers to impose such a resolution or to convey title of a territory; Articles 10, 11 and 14 of the UN Charter bestows the right on the General Assembly merely to recommend resolutions."[1]

The Nakba marks the onset of Israel's systematic ethnic cleansing strategy with the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and the forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian civilians fleeing Haganah, Irgun and Lehi units that carried out the savage and systematic military offensives codenamed Plan Dalet.

"Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

"Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state."[2]

Forced to leave their cherished lands, the Palestinian exodus dispersed to 58 squalid refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank as well as in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. All 4.9 million Palestinian refugees come under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA). Its provision of health, education and humanitarian aid is vastly inadequate to the needs of the camps' three generations of desperate people.

UNRWA is funded mainly by the USA, the EU Commission, UK and Germany. This cabal of collaborators which has ignored Palestinian human and political rights since 1948, are in fact, the camps' prison guards perpetuating the normalisation of the Israeli occupation thus relieving Israel of its obligation to honour the Palestinian right of return set down in Resolution 194 (December 1948) of which Article 11 reads;

"(The General Assembly) Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible."

Israel dismissed Resolution 194, then flagrantly legislated in 1950 The Law of Return that gives all Jews the right to emigrate to and settle in Israel (aliyah) and obtain citizenship. Billions of dollars are spent promoting aliyah, the zenith of Zionism, and spent establishing 200 illegal colonies for over 500,000 illegal, mainly thuggish, colonists on occupied Palestinian land protected by the nuclear might of the Israeli military.

Within days after Palestine's failed bid to have its right to membership of the UN passed in September 2011, Israel insolently announced a further 1100 units to be built in the Gilo colony, and weeks later announced the future expansion of 50,000 illegal Israeli houses in Palestinian East Jerusalem. In April 2012, another three colony outposts, Bruchin, Rechelim and Sansana were approved flying in the face of Palestine's prime condition for resuming the 'peace process' -- that Israel stops colony expansion.

The end of November 2011, saw Israel's houseboy, the Leader of the Free World and Honest Peace Broker, spit out his dummy summarily withdrawing the US and funding from UNESCO because it approved Palestinian membership in its organisation thereby jeopardising thousands of UNESCO's humanitarian projects.

Since 1948, there have been over 105 General Assembly UN resolutions and over 224 Security Council resolutions passed against Israel in relation to Palestine, Lebanon and Syria condemning or deploring Israel for deportations of Palestinians, for refusal to cooperate with the UN, for assassinations, for killing Palestinian students, for denying human rights of Palestinians, for raids on Gaza, for Israel's use of resources from occupied territories, for failure to abide by the Geneva Conventions, for repeated military interventions in Lebanon and Syria, reiterating Israel's claim to Jerusalem is null and void, calling on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories, to comply with UN decisions, reaffirming the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people," including the right to national sovereignty and the right of return...to name a few.

Eight years ago, the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on the matter of the Israeli Annexation/Apartheid Wall that 'Israel is under an obligation to terminate its breaches of international law; it is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated, and to repeal or render ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto, in accordance with paragraph 151 of this Opinion."

To this day, brave Palestinians demonstrate and struggle against the relentless encroachment of the Annexation Wall on their lands.

In 2009, Resolution 1860 calling for the full cessation of war between Israel and Hamas was passed on the 9th January -- TWO WEEKS after the war began with 200 Palestinians slaughtered on the first day. Ignoring the resolution Israel leisurely prolonged its Operation Cast Lead against unarmed and trapped Gazan families with another 9 days of hellish attacks. It ended the war a discreet two days before Obama's inauguration.

In March 2012, Michael Mandel, law professor at Canada's York University stridently criticised the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to refuse jurisdiction over Gaza war crimes:

"It's disgraceful but not surprising that the ICC has dismissed Palestine's complaint against Israel. It sat on the complaint for over three years, always proudly announcing that it was investigating it to give the appearance of impartiality. Meanwhile the ICC jumped to attention in less than three weeks when the US government, which is not a signatory to the treaty, wanted to go to war against Libya, justifying Western aggression with bogus charges against the Libyan regime...Ocampo [ICC prosecutor] and company have been busy putting Africa on trial for crimes aided, abetted and exploited by the rich countries, while the US government killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Afghans, and Israel has been committing Nuremberg's 'supreme international crime' of aggression against the Palestinians for 45 years."

Also on May 10, the Electronic Intifada reported that UNRWA's Commissioner General Filippo Grandi's appeal "to the Israeli government to find an acceptable solution, noting that the [more than 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners] hunger strikers' demands are generally related to the basic rights of prisoners, as stipulated in the Geneva Conventions" was hastily removed from UNRWA's website.

Israel's impunity to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, its 64-year defiance of UN resolutions amplify the UN's lethal incompetence. 187 member nations (not including Israel's quislings and human rights hypocrites; USA, UK, Australia, Germany, France), are too gutless or subservient or self-serving to protect and enforce the international laws for which they are legally obligated;

International human rights law lays down obligations which States are bound to respect. By becoming parties to international treaties, States assume obligations and duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfil human rights. The obligation to respect means that States must refrain from interfering with or curtailing the enjoyment of human rights. The obligation to protect requires States to protect individuals and groups against human rights abuses. The obligation to fulfil means that States must take positive action to facilitate the enjoyment of basic human rights.

The 64 years of the uninterrupted Palestinian Nakba with its sweeping scale of tragic suffering challenges the UN's moral and political credibility and its very existence as Israel's buffoon.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement) team in the second round of the Aceh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving with United Nations Mission in East Timor and United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor from 1999-2001.

1. Adel Safty, Might Over Right: How the Zionists Took Over Palestine, 2009.
2. Plan Dalet, March 10, 1948.

Heroic Palestinian Hunger Strikers Win Concessions on Unjust Detention and Ill-Treatment of Prisoners

As the Palestinian and world's people prepare to mark the Nakba once again without a resolution of the crimes committed against the Palestinian people, Israel was forced to submit to some of the just demands being made by the Palestinian political prisoners in its jails who launched a mass hunger strike almost one month ago on April 17. What began as an action of some 1,600 prisoners had grown to 2,500 out of the 4,600 total prisoners in Israeli jails.

TML salutes the great sacrifices and indomitable courage of the Palestinian people, especially the thousands of political prisoners in Israel's jails, who despite difficult circumstances continue to find the ways and means to prevail over the Occupier.

Qadura Fares, Head of Palestinian Prisoners' Society, announced on May 14, the eve of the commemoration of the Nakba, that an agreement between the Prisoners' Committee and Israeli Prisons' administration had been signed at Ashkelon Prison, in the presence of the representative of the Egyptian government which brokered the deal. News agencies report that some of the major concessions made by the Israeli authorities include:

- An end to the solitary confinement of all prisoners over the next 72 hours, including Hassan Salameh, Ibrahim Hamed and Abdulla al-Barghouthi.

- Allowing the parents of Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to visit their children in Israeli jails.

- An end to the Shalit Law which was imposed after Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas in Gaza Strip in 2006. (The Shalit Law is a form of collective punishment that restricted prisoners' access to families and to educational materials as retaliation for Shalit's five-year captivity in Gaza. Shalit was freed in October 2011 in a prisoner swap agreement.)

- To provide a list of accusations to those held under "administrative detention" (held without charge or trial based on "security reasons") or release them at the end of their term.

Ofir Gendelman, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened that the deal will only hold if all prisoners end their hunger strikes within 72 hours, agencies report.

The deal has also been agreed to by those prisoners who have been on long-term hunger strikes that started prior to April 17. Palestinian Prisoners' Society lawyer Jawad Bulous met these six hunger-strikers for several hours late Monday. Thaer Halahla, Bilal Diab, Jaafar Izz Addin, Omar Shalal, Mahmoud Sirsik and Hasan Safadi all agreed to end their hunger strikes and be transferred to a civilian hospital in Israel for treatment, he said. Egyptian officials and prisoner representatives from Hamas and Islamic Jihad also witnessed the deal, Bulous told Ma'an News.

The father of Thaer Halahla, 33, told Ma'an his son telephoned him to tell him he agreed to the deal in exchange for release at the end of his current administrative detention term on June 5.

Meanwhile, Bilal Diab, 27, phoned his mother to tell her he will be freed at the end of his term on August 17, and had stopped his strike.

Jaafar Izz Addin, who held a 54-day hunger strike, informed his family he will stop the strike in exchange for release at the end of his detention term on July 20.

Omar Shalal spent 69 days on hunger strike and Hasan Safadi refused food for 71 days.

Mahmoud Sirsik, a footballer from Gaza who refused food for 59 days, will also be released, but Bulous said the date had yet to be clarified.

A sign that a deal was forthcoming took place on Sunday, when Israeli authorities finally permitted Bilal Diab, on hunger strike for 78 days, to make a five-minute call to his family for the first time. Diab's brother told media that his brother spoke with a strong voice, confirming that he would continue his hunger strike "until achieving freedom or martyrdom." He conveyed Bilal's thanks to all the Palestinian people for their support of the prisoners' cause. Bilal had recently sent his will to his family. "We will have victory, but only through martyrdom or immediate release -- not any partial solution," Bilal wrote. "On the 75th day of my hunger strike, I am still determined, patient and focused," he wrote.

Thaer Halahleh, also on hunger strike for 78 days, in anticipation of his possible death, wrote a letter addressed to his daughter who was born two weeks after he was imprisoned 23 months ago and whom he has never seen. The letter said in part:

"When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no reason other than their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence."

"You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity."

Background to the Massive Palestinian Hunger Strike

The mass open-ended hunger strike was launched April 17, 2012 when some 1,600 Palestinian prisoners joined those who were already on hunger strike and hundreds more joined every week, reaching a peak of some 2,500 prisoners on hunger strike. As of the day the hunger strikes were called off, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahla had been on strike for 78 days, with four other long-term hunger strikers going without food for 54-71 days. All are in critical condition. According to Physicians for Human Rights, there is no previous recorded case of anyone surviving without food or supplements for more than 75 days.

On May 7, the International Committee for the Red Cross warned that the six long-term hunger strikers were in "imminent danger of dying" and called on Israel to transfer them to hospital. The World Health Organization on May 4 called on Israel to provide adequate medical care to prisoners in ill health, to transfer prisoners requiring treatment to hospital, to enable family visits, and not to provide medical treatment without the consent of prisoners.

Addameer, the Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, reports that as during hunger strikes in the past, the Israeli Prison Services (IPS) escalated its punishment of hunger striking prisoners in an effort to undermine the campaign. This included raids by IPS special forces; confiscation of personal belongings; transfers from one prison to another; placement in solitary confinement; fines of up to $130 per day; and denial of visits from family members and their lawyers. Prisoners also had their water and electricity supply cut off.

Addameer reports that abuse of prisoners also took the form of forced treatment, citing the case of Hassan Safadi. On May 3, he was held down by prison guards and forcefully given treatment by a prison doctor via an injection in his arm, a violation of the principles of medical ethics and the guidelines of the World Medical Association and the Israeli Medical Association. Hassan also recounted having refused water for several days until he was moved to Ramleh Prison medical clinic. Upon his arrival, he was beaten by prison guards and the prison doctor refused to record the injuries sustained from the attack.

According to Addameer, as of May 1 there were 4,635 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 308 on administrative detention, seven women, 218 children and some two dozen members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).

B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, informs that "Administrative detention is detention without charge or trial that is authorized by administrative order rather than by judicial decree. Under international law, it is allowed under certain circumstances. However, because of the serious injury to due-process rights inherent in this measure and the obvious danger of its abuse, international law has placed rigid restrictions on its application. [...] Israel's use of administrative detention blatantly violates these restrictions. [...] Over the years, Israel has administratively detained thousands of Palestinians for prolonged periods of time [...]."

Shawan Jabarin, General Director of Al-Haq, an independent non-governmental Palestinian human rights organization based in Ramallah, in a May 13 item for the UAE's The National, points out:

"In March of this year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination called for Israel to end its policy of administrative detention, declaring it to be discriminatory and in violation of international law. The European Parliament resolution of September 4, 2008 made the same demand and urged Israel to ensure that the minimum standards of detention be respected. Both the UN Human Rights Committee and the Committee Against Torture have declared that prolonged administrative detention constitutes ill-treatment that exposes the detainee to torture and other violations of human rights."

On May 3, in the context of the mass hunger strike of Palestinian political prisoners, the Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organisations issued a series of demands in which it:

- calls on the European Union, in particular the EU Parliament, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to immediately intervene with Israel in order to save the lives of Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh and demand that they be released from administrative detention;

- demands that all hunger strikers have unrestricted access to independent doctors and adequate medical care;

- demands that the Member States of the United Nations urgently put pressure on Israel to end its policy of arbitrary detention and to abide by the standard rules for the treatment of prisoners adopted in 1955, which set out what is generally accepted as decent principle and practice in the treatment of prisoners;

- calls on the European Parliament to dispatch a parliamentary fact-finding mission that includes members of its Subcommittee on Human Rights to investigate the conditions of detention of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 reports that about 750,000 Palestinians, including 23,000 women and 25,000 children have been detained in Israeli jails since 1967. That figure represents 20 per cent of the total population in the occupied territories or 40 per cent of the male inhabitants in those lands, Falk states.

Traveling Below the Western Radar

- Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur for
Palestinian Human Rights, May 3, 2012 -

Nightly protest in Nablus for the Palestinian prisoners, May 3, 2012. (Activestills)

Can anyone doubt that if there were more than 1300 hunger strikers in any country in the world other than Palestine, the media in the West would be obsessed with the story? It would be featured day after day, and reported on from all angles, including the severe medical risks associated with such a lengthy refusal to take food. At this time two Palestinians who were the first to start this current wave of resistance, Thaer Halaheh and Bilal Diab, entering their 64th day without food, are reported by the prisoner protection association, Addameer, and the NGO, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, to be in critical condition with their lives hanging in the balance. Despite this dramatic state of affairs there is scant attention in Europe, and literally none in North America.

In contrast, consider the attention that the Western media has devoted to a lone blind Chinese human rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, who managed to escape from house arrest in Beijing a few days ago and find a safe haven at the U.S. Embassy. This is an important international incident, to be sure, but is it truly so much more significant than the Palestinian story as to explain the total neglect of the extraordinary exploits of these thousands of Palestinians who are sacrificing their bodies, quite possibly their lives, to nonviolently protest severe mistreatment in the Israeli prison system. Except among their countrymen, and to some extent the region, these many thousand Palestinian prisoners have been languishing within an opaque black box ever since 1967, are denied protection, exist without rights, and cope as best they can without even the acknowledgement of their plight.

There is another comparison to be made. Recall the outpouring of concern and sympathy throughout the West for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured on the Gaza border and held captive by Palestinians for five years. A powerful global campaign for his release on humanitarian grounds was organized, and received constant reinforcement in the media. World leaders pleaded for his release, and Israeli commanding officers even told IDF fighting forces during the massive attacks on Gaza at the end of 2008 that killed more than 1450 Palestinians that their real mission was to free Shalit or at least hold accountable the entire civilian population of Gaza. When Shalit was finally released in a prisoner exchange a few months ago there was a brief celebration that abruptly ended when, much to the disappointment of the Israeli establishment, Shalit reported good treatment during captivity. Shalit's father went further, saying if he was a Palestinian he would have tried to capture Israeli soldiers. Not surprisingly, Shalit, instead of being revered as an Israeli hero, has quietly disappeared from public view.

Hunger striker Khader Adnan (centre) participates in action in support of the Palestinian prisoners in Nablus, May 3, 2012. (Activestills)

This current wave of hunger strikes started on April 17, Palestinian Prisoners' Day, and was directly inspired by the recently completed long and heroic hunger strikes of Khader Adnan (66 days) and Hana Shalabi (43 days) both of whom protested against the combination of administrative detention and abusive arrest and interrogation procedures. It should be understood that administrative detention is validated by secret evidence and allows Israel to imprison Palestinians for six months at a time without bringing any criminal charges, with terms renewable as they expire. Hana Shalabi was among those released in the prisoner exchange, but then barely recovering from her prior detention period, was rearrested in a night arrest raid, and sentenced once again to a term of confinement for four months. Or consider the experience of Thaer Halahla, eight times subject to administrative detention for a total of six and a half years.

Both Mr. Adnan and Ms. Shalabi were released by deals negotiated at a time when their physical survival seemed in doubt, making death seem imminent. Israel apparently did not want to risk a third Intifada resulting as a reaction to such martyrdom. At the same time Israel, as usual, did not want to seem to be retreating, or draw into question its reliance on administrative detention and imprisonment. Israel has refused, until the present, to examine the grievances that gave rise to these hunger strikes.

Hunger striker Hana Shalabi inside the solidarity tent in
Gaza City, May 7, 2012.

In Hana Shalabi's case her release was coupled with a punitive deportation order, which cruelly confines her to Gaza for the next three years, away from her family and the familiar surroundings of her home village of Burqin near Jenin in the West Bank. There are some indications that Ms. Shalabi was not fully informed about the deportation feature of her release, and was manipulated by prison authorities and the lawyer representing her interests. The current hunger strikers have been offered similar conditional releases, but have so far steadfastly refused to resume eating if it led to deportation or exile.

At this time it is unclear how Israel will respond. There is a fierce struggle of wills between the strikers and the prison authorities, between those with the hard power of domination and those with the soft power of moral and spiritual courage. The torment of these striking prisoners is not only a consequence of their refusal to accept food until certain conditions are met. Israeli prison guards and authorities are intensifying the torments of hunger. There are numerous reports that the strikers are being subjected to belittling harassment and a variety of punishments, including solitary confinement, confiscation of personal belongings, denial of family visits, denial of examination by humanitarian organizations, and a hardhearted refusals to transfer medically threatened strikers to civilian hospitals where they could receive the kinds of medical treatment their critical conditions require.

The Israeli response to the hunger strikes is shocking, but hardly surprising, within the wider setting of the occupation. Instead of heeding the moral appeal implicit in such extreme forms of resistance, there are widespread reliable reports of punitive responses by Israeli prison authorities. Hunger strikers have been placed in solitary confinement, held in shackles despite their weakened conditions, denied family visits, had personal belongings confiscated, were subjected to harassing comments by guards intended to demoralize.

Israeli media has generally taken a cynical attitude toward the strikes, suggesting that these hunger strikers are publicity seeking, aiming to receive "a get out of jail free" card, and deserve no empathy even if their life is in jeopardy because they voluntarily gave up food by their own free will, and hence Israeli prison authorities have no responsibility for their fate. Some news reports in Israel have speculated about whether if one or more hunger strikers dies in prison it will spark an uprising among the Palestinians, but this is less an expression of concern or a willingness to look at the substantive issues than it is a source of worry about future stability.

Broader issues are also at stake. When in the past Palestinians resorted to violent forms of resistance they were branded by the West as terrorists, their deeds were covered to bring out sensationalist aspects, but when Palestinians resort to nonviolent forms of resistance, whether hunger strikes or BDS [Boycotts, Divestment, Sanctions] or an Intifada, their actions fall mainly on deaf ears and blind eyes, or worse, there is a concerted propaganda spin to depict the particular tactic of nonviolent resistance as somehow illegitimate, either as a cheap trick to gain sympathy or as a dirty trick to destroy the state of Israel.

All the while, Israel's annexationist plans move ahead, with settlements expanding, and now recently, with settler outposts, formerly illegal even under Israeli law, in the process of being retroactively legalized. Such moves signal once and for all that the Netanyahu leadership exhibits not an iota of good faith when it continues to tell the world that it is dedicated to negotiating a peace treaty with the Palestinians. It is a pity that the Palestinian Authority has not yet had the diplomatic composure to call it quits when it comes to heeding the calls of the Quartet for a resumption of direct talks. It is long past time to crumble the bridge to nowhere.

That rock star of liberal pontificators, Thomas Friedman, has for years been preaching nonviolence to the Palestinians, implying that Israel as a democratic country with a strong moral sensitivity would yield in the face of such a principled challenge. Yet when something as remarkable as this massive expression of a Palestinian commitment to nonviolent resistance in the form of this open-ended hunger strike, dubbed 'the war of empty stomachs,' takes place, Friedman along with his liberal brothers is stony silent, and the news sections of the newspaper of the New York Times are unable to find even an inch of space to report on these dramatic protests against Israel's use of administrative detention and abusive treatment during arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment. Shame on you, Mr. Friedman!

Robert Malley, another influential liberal voice who had been a Middle East advisor to Bill Clinton when he was president, while more constrained than Friedman, suggests that any sustained display of Palestinian nonviolence if met with Israeli violence would be an embarrassment for Washington. Malley insists that if the Palestinians were to take to the streets in the spirit of Tahrir Square, and Israelis responded violently, as the Netanyahu government certainly would, it "would put the United States in an acute dilemma about how to react to Israel's reaction."

The dilemma depicted by Malley derives from Obama's constant encouragement of the democratic aspirations of a people who he has repeatedly said deserve their own state on the one side and the unconditional alignment with Israel on the other. Only a confirmed liberal would call this a genuine dilemma, as any informed and objective observer would know that the U.S. Government would readily accept, as it has repeatedly done in the past, an Israeli claim that force was needed to maintain public order. In this manner, Palestinian nonviolence would be disregarded, and the super-alliance of these two partners in crime once more reaffirmed.

Let there be no mistake about the moral and spiritual background of the challenge being mounted by these Palestinians. Undertaking an open ended hunger strike is an inherently brave act that is fraught with risks and uncertainties, and is only undertaken as an expression of extreme frustration or acute deprivation. It is not an act undertaken lightly or as a stunt. For anyone who has attempted to express protest in this manner, and I have for short periods during my decade of opposition to the Vietnam War, it is both scary and physically taxing even for a day or so, but to maintain the discipline and strength of will to sustain such a strike for weeks at a time requires a rare combination of courage and resolve. Only specially endowed individuals can adopt such a tactic. For a hunger strike to be done on such a scale of collective action not only underscores the horrible ordeal of the Palestinians that has been all but erased from the political consciousness of the West in the hot aftermath of the Arab Spring.

The world has long refused to take notice of Palestinian one-sided efforts over the years to reach a peaceful outcome of their conflict with Israel. It is helpful to recall that in 1988 the PLO officially accepted Israel within 1967 borders, a huge territorial concession, leaving the Palestinians with only 22% of historical Palestine on which to establish an independent and sovereign state. In recent years, the main tactics of Palestinian opposition to the occupation, including on the part of Hamas, has been to turn away from violence, adhering to a diplomacy and practice that looked toward long-term peaceful coexistence between two peoples.

Israel has not taken note of either development, and has instead continuously thrown sand in Palestinian eyes. The official Israeli response to Palestinian moves toward political restraint and away from violence have been to embark upon a program of feverish settlement expansion, extensive targeted killing, reliance on excessive retaliatory violence, as well as an intensifying oppressiveness that gave rise to these hunger strikes. One dimension of this oppressiveness is the 50 percent increase in the number of Palestinians held under administrative detention during of the last year, along with an officially mandated worsening of conditions throughout its prison system.

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