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#MENA

Call for Action against the Israeli Annexation Plan of the West Bank

The decision of the Israel Government to annex large parts of the occupied Palestinian territory after the 1 July, which was endorsed by the American “Deal of the Century” is a significant violation of International law and must be unequivocally opposed and stopped by the international community and by individuals and groups around the world.

Image credit: Ryan Rodrick Beiler
  • 6 min
WILPF International Secretariat
15 July 2020

للغة العربية اضغط/ي هنا

The decision of the Israel Government to annex large parts of the occupied Palestinian territory after the 1 July, which was endorsed by the American “Deal of the Century” is a significant violation of International law and must be unequivocally opposed and stopped by the international community and by individuals and groups around the world.

Occupation, Colonial Policies and the Gendered Impact of Land Theft and Violence

This annexation is another episode in a systematic settler colonial policy that is built on violating the rights of the Palestinian people through maintaining an apartheid system that establishes land theft and violence. The Israeli policies that victimise and discriminate against the Palestinian people have a clear gendered impact as they isolate Palestinian women, impoverish them, limit their rights and freedoms and inhibit their participation in the public political, cultural, social and economic spheres. The Annexation has huge effects on women’s legal, social, educational, economic and political status, as well as their priorities, access to services especially for girls and women victims of gender-based violence, and their available options for resistance.

The annexation will further divide Palestinian lands and communities and push them into small isolated enclaves, completely separated by Israel and with no territorial connection to the outside world. It will further impact their access to resources and essential services like education and health and increase social and economic inequalities that perpetuate vulnerabilities and disadvantaged women. The expansion and the movement restriction will also disproportionately worsen the access to healthcare for women especially those pregnant or suffering from a chronic disease and deny GBV survivors access to psychological support and services.

The annexation will also replicate the two-tier system of legal discrimination that is currently in place in Jerusalem and inside Israel. This system institutionalises discrimination between citizens within a single territory, normalises injustice and inevitably increases grievances and violence and inhibits any possibility of just, equitable and lasting peace.

Settlers’ Violence

The expansion of settlements has always been accompanied by settlers’ violence and vandalism, in response to which, the Israeli police often will charge a Palestinian with provocation and abusing settlers, whilst settlers remain immune to prosecution. The complicity of the Israeli military and police and their role in sustaining settlers’ impunity play a central role in exacerbating the illegal acts against the Palestinian civilian population including women.

Settlers’ violence leave Palestinian women in fear of leaving their house alone as they could be a target of attacks. Soldier and settler violence, vandalism, and destruction of private property, including housing demolition, overburden women with increased financial and care responsibilities as well as a constant fear of losing their children for merely being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The annexation plan will, therefore, add further layers to the already-existing multi-layered structural discrimination against women. This will highly affect women’s positions and statuses in the society. Palestinian women suffer from unequal power dynamics and structures, and these will be topped up by other compounded layers of restrictions and limitations that would further isolate and marginalize them.

The Cost of Resistance

The Palestinian people have been left alone to resist racist settler colonial strategies that continue to be tolerated and go unchallenged by the international community. Their peaceful resistance comes at a very high cost that could be their lives, their houses and their freedom. They are denied the right to defend themselves and their land, their safety is compromised as a threat to Israel’s right to security, their right to peaceful protest has been penalised with targeted killing and reprisal against entire families and communities. The efforts to peacefully isolate Israel culturally and economically have been sanctioned and criminalised, and their attempts to oppose the annexation plan have been labelled as “rejectionism” in a trend to deny them the right to choose, to resist and to speak for themselves.

It is time for all of us to raise our voices in support of the Palestinian people, to oppose a racist colonial system that should have no place in this day and age.

We call on people everywhere to take up the fight against settler colonial policies as a fight for feminist peace, one that is tightly connected to the liberation of women from patriarchy and violence. We need to combat a trend of tolerance to Israeli violations of international law and the culture of unchallenged impunity enjoyed by perpetrators who should be brought to justice among those who are supporting them to continue the violations including individuals, corporations and lobbies.

People around the world must use their voices, their vote and their spaces to ensure that their governments go beyond condemnation and non-recognition of Annexation into taking concrete actions.

Here is what you can do:

A- Fight impunity and hold perpetrators accountable

Israel continues to hold the responsibility of the occupying power towards the Palestinian population under international humanitarian and human rights law as they have an effective control over all the 1967 occupied Palestinian territory. The Annexation will further perpetuate the serious existing human rights violations against the Palestinian people.

States must send a clear message to Israel as an occupying power, that their acts of terror and systematic violations of international law as well as settler colonial policies will have consequences, that the ongoing impunity will no longer be tolerated and that there is no place for Apartheid in our global order.

Accountability should combine economic sanctions, criminal investigation and compensation and remedy for victims.

Economic sanctions through the European Union should be imposed, including incremental restrictive measures, ban on arms trade, restrictions on individuals and companies involved in the settlements, and suspension of all security cooperation and free trade agreements with Israel. Business enterprises have a huge role in the expansion of illegal settlement and make a serious profit from it, this should be deterred and punished.

Criminal investigations of human rights violations should be initiated by states both through their national jurisdictions and internationally, this includes supporting the International Criminal Court investigation into Israeli war crimes and grave breaches of international law as well as other multilateral mechanisms. Such investigations must aim to prosecute perpetrators, remedy victims and should take a gender-sensitive and victim-centred approach, with the aim of restitution and ensuring remedies and compensations. The Security Council Resolution 2334 and the 2004 advisory opinion of International Court of Justice on the illegality of Israeli settlements, the need to dismantle them, to deconstruct the separation wall, and to compensate Palestinians for violations are good basis for such legal actions.

States and individuals must boycott products and services from the illegal Israeli settlements and should continue to support efforts by the UN to improve its database of companies involved in the settlement business.

B-  Mobilise to challenge a false narrative 

Israel will continue to shield illegal practices by spreading false narratives to erase a history of ethnic cleansing, human rights abuse and land theft. We must stand firmly with the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and self-determination and oppose a narrative that dehumanises them, delegitimises their struggle for freedom and reduces them to a mere security threat to Israel.

This unilateral annexation plan is an existential threat to the Palestinians. We should use the spaces available to us to call for an end to the Israeli occupation and the full recognition of the state of Palestine on the 1967 lines with a capital in East Jerusalem. We must also make these spaces available to Palestinians to speak instead of being spoken about, to bring their experiences and demands to every local, national and international fora. The voices of Palestinian women are particularly needed to promote an intersectional analysis of the cause and a gendered strategy to continue the struggle.

Finally, we must oppose efforts to silence Palestinian activists and their allies and stigmatise their peaceful work and freedom of expression.

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WILPF International Secretariat

WILPF International Secretariat, with offices in Geneva and New York, liaises with the International Board and the National Sections and Groups for the implementation of WILPF International Programme, resolutions and policies as adopted by the International Congress. Under the direction of the Secretary-General, the Secretariat also provides support in areas of advocacy, communications, and financial operations.

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Berit Aasen

Europe Alternate Regional Representative

Berit Aasen is a sociologist by training and has worked at the OsloMet Metropolitan University on Oslo. She has 40 years of experience in research and consultancy in development studies, including women, peace, and security, and in later years in asylum and refugee studies. Berit Aasen joined WILPF Norway five years ago. She is an alternate member of the National Board of WILPF Norway, and representing WILPF Norway in the UN Association of Norway, the Norwegian 1325 network and the Norwegian Women’s Lobby. Berit Aasen has been active in the WILPF European Liaison group and is committed to strengthening WILPF sections and membership both in Europe and relations across continents.

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Melissa Torres

VICE-PRESIDENT

Prior to being elected Vice-President, Melissa Torres was the WILPF US International Board Member from 2015 to 2018. Melissa joined WILPF in 2011 when she was selected as a Delegate to the Commission on the Status of Women as part of the WILPF US’ Practicum in Advocacy Programme at the United Nations, which she later led. She holds a PhD in Social Work and is a professor and Global Health Scholar at Baylor College of Medicine and research lead at BCM Anti-Human Trafficking Program. Of Mexican descent and a native of the US/Mexico border, Melissa is mostly concerned with the protection of displaced Latinxs in the Americas. Her work includes training, research, and service provision with the American Red Cross, the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Centre, and refugee resettlement programs in the U.S. Some of her goals as Vice-President are to highlight intersectionality and increase diversity by fostering inclusive spaces for mentorship and leadership. She also contributes to WILPF’s emerging work on the topic of displacement and migration.

Jamila Afghani

VICE-PRESIDENT

Jamila Afghani is the President of WILPF Afghanistan which she started in 2015. She is also an active member and founder of several organisations including the Noor Educational and Capacity Development Organisation (NECDO). Elected in 2018 as South Asia Regional Representative to WILPF’s International Board, WILPF benefits from Jamila’s work experience in education, migration, gender, including gender-based violence and democratic governance in post-conflict and transitional countries.

Sylvie Jacqueline Ndongmo

PRESIDENT

Sylvie Jacqueline NDONGMO is a human rights and peace leader with over 27 years experience including ten within WILPF. She has a multi-disciplinary background with a track record of multiple socio-economic development projects implemented to improve policies, practices and peace-oriented actions. Sylvie is the founder of WILPF Cameroon and was the Section’s president until 2022. She co-coordinated the African Working Group before her election as Africa Representative to WILPF’s International Board in 2018. A teacher by profession and an African Union Trainer in peace support operations, Sylvie has extensive experience advocating for the political and social rights of women in Africa and worldwide.

WILPF Afghanistan

In response to the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban and its targeted attacks on civil society members, WILPF Afghanistan issued several statements calling on the international community to stand in solidarity with Afghan people and ensure that their rights be upheld, including access to aid. The Section also published 100 Untold Stories of War and Peace, a compilation of true stories that highlight the effects of war and militarisation on the region. 

IPB Congress Barcelona

WILPF Germany (+Young WILPF network), WILPF Spain and MENA Regional Representative

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Demilitarisation

WILPF uses feminist analysis to argue that militarisation is a counter-productive and ill-conceived response to establishing security in the world. The more society becomes militarised, the more violence and injustice are likely to grow locally and worldwide.

Sixteen states are believed to have supplied weapons to Afghanistan from 2001 to 2020 with the US supplying 74 % of weapons, followed by Russia. Much of this equipment was left behind by the US military and is being used to inflate Taliban’s arsenal. WILPF is calling for better oversight on arms movement, for compensating affected Afghan people and for an end to all militarised systems.

Militarised masculinity

Mobilising men and boys around feminist peace has been one way of deconstructing and redefining masculinities. WILPF shares a feminist analysis on the links between militarism, masculinities, peace and security. We explore opportunities for strengthening activists’ action to build equal partnerships among women and men for gender equality.

WILPF has been working on challenging the prevailing notion of masculinity based on men’s physical and social superiority to, and dominance of, women in Afghanistan. It recognizes that these notions are not representative of all Afghan men, contrary to the publicly prevailing notion.

Feminist peace​

In WILPF’s view, any process towards establishing peace that has not been partly designed by women remains deficient. Beyond bringing perspectives that encapsulate the views of half of the society and unlike the men only designed processes, women’s true and meaningful participation allows the situation to improve.

In Afghanistan, WILPF has been demanding that women occupy the front seats at the negotiating tables. The experience of the past 20 has shown that women’s presence produces more sustainable solutions when they are empowered and enabled to play a role.