Aid, Solidarity, and the Search for Accountability

By Leah Hunt-Hendrix


MIFTAH, July 28, 2010

For the past two days, in the halls of Birzeit University, against the backdrop of the hills of Ramallah, students from around the world have convened to discuss strategies to hold Israel accountable. On this campus, which was the site of many of the early moments of the first intifada, the conference, run by Right to Education is giving hope that a new uprising, a non-violent, energetic, tenacious campaign, is gaining momentum.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice declared the building of the separation wall between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) illegal. Construction, however, continued unabated. A year later, members of Palestinian civil society put out a call for Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS), to hold Israel accountable until it complies with international law. The movement has been endorsed by over 170 Palestinian parties, organizations, and trade unions, and is essentially a call from the civil society of Palestine to the civil society of the world to join in solidarity, to stand up in our capacity as citizens and consumers, as individuals and communities, against the violations of the rights of Palestinians.

Indeed, Israel continues to break many international laws and surprise the public with its ongoing aggression: the building of settlements in the OPT is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention; the Goldstone Report declared that Israel’s operations in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead amounted to war crimes; the International Committee of the Red Cross has condemned the siege of Gaza; and many around the world have been shocked at the violence Israel displayed against the members aboard the humanitarian Freedom Flotilla. Amidst all these declarations of discontent, which nevertheless fail to amount to any concrete action, Palestinian civil society activists are saying: Enough is enough. Israel must be held accountable.

When one considers the word "accountability," a host of connotations emerges, such as accounting, counting, numbering and enumerating. Despite the fact that, until the present BDS campaign, little has been done to keep Israel accountable, there are many other kinds of counting and accounting going on in this conflict. Finances and budgets, and all the accoutrements of economic plans, are significant actors in this drama. The website WhoProfits.org aims to expose how Israeli and international companies benefit from the occupation, from the construction of infrastructure, through control of the population and economic exploitation. It investigates the position of the settlements and the economic benefits they provide. BDS is a way of engaging with the economics of the occupation, a non-violent way to expose and punish all those who benefit from the abuse of human rights.

A central aspect of the BDS message is that, in a world as interconnected and integrated as ours is, this conflict is not simply local, isolated to an argument between Israelis and Palestinians. With our global economy and webs of commerce and technology, many of us are complicit in the crimes that are perpetrated against Palestinians. It is therefore, the responsibility of individuals and communities globally to examine the ways in which their actions facilitate this conflict. BDS is thus an attempt to hold, not only Israel, but the international community accountable as well.

But advocates for BDS have an even more penetrating point to make: It is not only the explicit cases of profiting from private contracts and construction that are important to expose. It is crucial to examine ways in which the entire structure of aid and development in the OPT also works subtly to facilitate the occupation. Activists articulate frustration with the fact that the international community treats the situation here as if it were the effect of a natural disaster. "Palestine was not hit by a tsunami" one presenter at the Right to Education conference said. We don’t need food; we need rights. Because of legal and physical restrictions on trade – how the delays at the borders make exports inefficient and uncompetitive, for example - a huge portion of the Palestinian economy comes from foreign aid. But what are the effects of this economy of aid? What are the webs of accountability to which it gives rise?


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