How many more refugee schools would be in seized in the Occupied Palestine Territories and converted into detention and interrogation centers? Under which pretext would this policy be masked; security, democracy or human rights? And what of those who spend billions of dollars to maintain this status quo? How will they be judged by history?

All these questions require candid answers after Israel’s Occupation Forces entered a girls’ school in the Askar refugee camp in the West Bank in August 2004 and converted it into an interrogation and detention centre. This was not the first time and would, of course, not be the last.

During Operation Defensive Shield (March – April 2002) at least 10 schools were similarly occupied. Some of these operated by UNRWA for Palestinian refugee children included a girls’ school in Tulkarem and a boys’ school in Amari camp in the West Bank.

Israel’s military operations against refugee schools are by nature loathsome exercises. They are generally attended by the same brutality that is inflicted on other sections of Palestinian society. This conduct cannot be understood in isolation from the wider conflict of which the refugee issue is central. Throughout the last four years it resulted in the shooting and maiming of children in their classrooms. UNRWA has recorded and regularly protested against this criminal activity.

On 7 September 2004 a 10-year old girl, Raghda Adnan Al-Assar, was struck in the head by Israeli fire while sitting at her desk in UNRWA’s Elementary Girl’s School in Khan Younis camp. She has since undergone major surgery in the European Gaza Hospital.

Three months ago, on June 1, an Israeli tank opened fire on the Tel Es-Sultan district of Rafah. Several shots hit the UNRWA’s Al-Umariye Elementary Boys’ School building. Two ten-year old boys were injured.

Last year, in March, 12-year old Hoda Darwish was hit in the head by a bullet fired from an Israeli observation post on the outskirts of Khan Younis. The bullet punctured her skull and left her blind. Since September 2000, 132 Palestinian students were killed and 2,500 injured on their way to or from school.

According to Palestinian Ministry of Education reports, 850 schools were temporarily closed and 185 were shelled and fired upon by Israeli soldiers during the same period. After last month’s shooting of Hoda Darwish. UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Peter Hansen complained: “The kind of live firing into refugee camps that is so indiscriminate that it makes classrooms dangerous for 10-year old children is totally unacceptable. UNRWA will protest this violation of the sanctity of its school in the strongest possible terms to the Israeli authorities.”

The tragic irony of all this is that the European Union, which condemns Russia for its human rights abuses in Chechnya has turned a blind eye on abuses here in Palestine, right at its southern backdoor. Russia, meanwhile, has rushed into the hands of the Israeli regime seeking its help in the so-called war on terror, disregarding the suffering of Palestinian children at the hands of their occupiers. Apart from the fraudulence, this human suffering could be avoided if the same rules were applied to all peoples? In that case the abuse of children in northern Ossetia would be viewed as heinous as it is in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

International Actors

Not all heads of government and international workers are prepared to continuously bury their heads in the sand. At the opening session of the United Nations African Meeting in Support of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki emphasized the question of Palestine must be kept under constant review and not displaced by attention to other matters. He warned that despite predictions that it would take a long time for Palestinians to achieve liberation, "we dare not suffer from fatigue".

To many observers, the settlement enterprise in the Occupied Territories has created a system of legally sanctioned separation based on discriminations that has no parallel anywhere since the South African apartheid regime. Prof. John Dugard, the UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Palestinian territories has no doubt about the scale of abuses in Palestine. In a report to the UN General Assembly disseminated among the member countries ahead of the General Assembly’s 59th session he wrote there is "an apartheid regime" in the territories "worse than the one that existed in South Africa."

Comparing his personal experience of South African apartheid with the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Dugard concluded the pass laws which had determined the right of Africans to move and reside in so-called white areas were prototypes of the special permits required by Palestinians to live in their own homes in the "seam zone", to reach their farm land and to visit family living elsewhere. South African laws, he added, were brutal but administered uniformly. Israeli pass laws, Dugard noted, are administered in an arbitrary manner.

In the current climate, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General, Peter Hansen, said that more and more donors questioned the feasibility of continuing assistance to the Occupied Territory and considered the situation was a lost cause. The humanitarian community could not keep pace with Israeli destruction. Even so, he appealed to the donor community to continue its contributions.

A Failed Enterprise

It may seem that the Palestinians are taking two steps backwards for every one forward. This is a perception that is however fundamentally flawed, especially when seen in the broader context of the conflict. Five decades ago the Zionists did not recognize the existence of the Palestinian people. Let alone their rights to an independent state. Today, all the myths about ‘a land without a people’ have been thrown overboard. While they are not prepared to grant them full independence, the colonial settlers have recognized, albeit grudgingly the Palestinians as a people. Having made this about turn they still seek to retain the status of colonial masters by establishing a system of indirect rule over the Palestinians, without addressing the core issues of the conflict.

In the Oslo Accords it seemed the deal was done. A Palestinian National Authority was set up and supported by 13 security agencies with 30,000 members to police the 3 million inhabitants of the WBGS - an average of 1 police to every 50 citizens - the highest ratio in the world.

By themselves, guns and boots have never succeeded in resolving complex political problems such as those created by settler colonialism. Palestine is no exception. This became all too evident when the parties met at Camp David in July 2000. The multi-layered security apparatus introduced by Oslo had no answers to the problem of the refugees, for example. Yasser Arafat knew that not even his signature could legitimize the permanent exile of two-thirds of the Palestinian people. Hence, it was his refusal to sign on that occasion more than any other factor that led to his imprisonment in Ramallah.

Even with its military dominance over all of historic Palestine, Israel has failed to realize the Zionist dream of an exclusive Jewish state. The continued presence of 4.7 million Palestinians on their land has turned the dream into a living nightmare. Unfortunately, the Israeli leadership cannot envisage a world without Zionism, free of prejudice, hegemony, and privilege. Like Tolstoy’s character Prince Andre, they believe the only way to overcome their dilemma is to wage war and make it so hellish and brutal that distaste for its reality will finally so disgust the public and its leaders as to produce a sufficient movement for permanent peace.

Operating from the premise that the means justify the ends, they continue to violate the basic principles of customary international law and use of weapons and tactics that inflict unnecessary suffering, death and destruction. They abandon the principle of discrimination between combatants and non-combatants and disregard the sanctity of protected places. Their use of excessive and disproportionate military force against the Palestinians indicates the destructive ends that are being pursued. Had the principle of humanity been observed, pregnant women would not be forced to give birth to still born babies at check-points nor would ambulances and emergency workers be attacked while in service.

In the West Bank and Gaza the Occupier has long discarded internationally recognized rules of engagement such as necessity, discrimination, proportionality and humanity. Despite scores of protestations from UNRWA the practice of transforming schools into detention facilities without military necessity has continued unabated. It beggars the question, therefore, why should the fifth largest conventional army in the world with its 200 nuclear warheads and annual budget of $5 billion find it necessary to commandeer elementary schools?!

Israel’s increasing attacks on UNRWA facilities, have underscored the urgent need for immediate international protection for the Palestinian refugees. This can take a number of forms beginning with monitors and ending with sanctions and war tribunals. Much to its credit, the UN Commission for Human Rights has time and again appealed to the General Assembly to recommend to the UN Security Council, through the Economic and Social Council, the adoption of the measures against Israel under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, including sanctions and international armed intervention to end Israel's threat to peace and acts of aggression (CHR Res. No. 1984/1 A/B; 20 February 1984). Since 1976 the Commission has maintained the view that Israel's military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, constitutes a threat to international peace and security.
 
Protection for the Palestinian refugees does not require a single new UN resolution. Neither does it require the signing of new human rights conventions or reform of international law. There are ample provisions in the various bodies of law to protect civilian lives and cultural property. All that is required is the moral courage and political will by the community of nations to uphold the rule of law.

Without decisive action in Palestine it would be absolutely farcical for any member state of the UN to contemplate individual or collective action against Sudan. Failure to act here and now can only be construed as political appeasement and complicity to deny assistance to a people’s quest for freedom and independence.