This International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Dr Linda Harms-Smith, Professor Emeritus in Social Work, and Dr Krinesha George Messif, a lecturer in criminology, question whether solidarity can be effectively demonstrated in the setting of a continual, growing war.

The horror of what it means to be living as a Palestinian under siege of brutal occupation started with the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Britain’s commitment to provide Jewish people with a home, later formalised as a British Mandate in 1922. This imperialist action ignored the promise by the British High Commissioner in Egypt that Palestine would be part of an independent Arab area. The mandate was seen as a strategic annexation for Zionist settlers to occupy the area alongside the Suez Canal, an important route for reaching India.

The rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany and during World War 2 saw a period of large-scale Jewish immigration, especially from Eastern Europe, as people fled racist and antisemitic persecution, and sought refuge in Palestine. The increasing intensity of wars that ensued reached a climax after Britain handed over the “Palestinian problem” in 1947 to the United Nations, which made the Partition Resolution, dividing Israel into an Arab and a Jewish state. This failed to be implemented and “Zionist policy was to occupy, during the period of withdrawal, as much territory as possible ... beyond the boundaries assigned to the Jewish State by the partition resolution”.

Israel, with approximately one-third of the total population owning 6% of the land, declared independence, leading to the Nakba (the catastrophe), the large-scale, violent expulsion of up to 750 000 Palestinians from their homes and territory, and up to 500 towns and villages depopulated by the Israeli military. This is referred to as “rupture” in Palestinian history, and the shattering of the Palestinian national being.

The UN General Assembly called for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People in 1977, and almost 50 years later, the question of Palestine remains unresolved. Since the first Nakba, and over the past few decades, a day in the life of a Palestinian living under occupation is an unimaginable trauma: going to sleep, not knowing if the sunrise will be seen the next morning; a lack of resources; land seizures; checkpoints and restricted movement; and an air, sea and land blockade.

However, this conflict has morphed into the new ongoing horror of what has been defined by the International Court of Justice as a “plausible case of genocide”. On 7 October, Hamas attacked Israel, killing nearly 1 200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. These actions cannot be condoned, but neither can Israel’s retaliation and brutal determination to “eliminate the enemy”, aimed at eradicating the Palestine population. According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, as of October 2024, more than 41 000 Palestinians had been killed and, according to Israeli sources, more than 1 200 Israelis and foreign nationals had been killed.

Since then, the UN has recorded war crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians, stating that reports had been received of the following: “…torture, sexual assault and rape, amid atrocious inhumane conditions, with at least 53 Palestinians dying as a result in 10 months. Countless testimonies by men and women speak of detainees in cage-like enclosures, tied to beds blindfolded and in diapers, stripped naked, deprived of adequate healthcare, food, water and sleep, electrocutions including on their genitals... victims spoke of loud music played until their ears bled, attacks by dogs, waterboarding, suspension from ceilings, and severe sexual and gender-based violence. Allegations of gang-rape of a Palestinian detainee, now shockingly supported by voices in the Israeli political establishment and society, provide irrefutable evidence that the moral compass is lost.”

While the suffering continues, more than two million people in Gaza are struggling to find resources and safety, and most rely on international aid. Over 90% of the population of Gaza (1.9 million Palestinians) are forcibly displaced, 50% of them being children.

As the world stood with South Africa during the racist brutalisation of the apartheid era, we plead for the same solidarity with Palestine. We echo the words of Nelson Mandela, who declared, “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” May this International Day of Solidarity with the People of Palestine bring increased consciousness of the root causes of the conflict, a renewed expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people and a commitment to activism for peace. We also hope and pray for a transformed world wherein true peace lies in justice and equality, not in walls and weaponry. Let the world envision a future where Palestinian and Israeli children grow up in harmony.

‘If I Must Die’

By Refaat Alareer (killed on 6 December 2023 in an Israeli airstrike, along with his brother, his brother’s son, his sister and her three children)

If I must die, you must live

to tell my story, to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth, and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh, not even to himself

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die, let it bring hope

let it be a tale

References

Amnesty International. 17 July 2024. Palestine Under Siege. https://www.amnesty.org.au/palestine-under-siege-amnesty-groups-resource/

Haddad, M.O. 2020. Colonising Palestine. Contemporary Arab Affairs, 13(2), 100-120 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48599847

Human Rights Watch 2024. “Hopeless, Starving, and Besieged” Israel’s Forced Displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/11/14/hopeless-starving-and-besieged/israels-forced-displacement-palestinians-gaza

Levene, M. 1992. The Balfour Declaration: A Case of Mistaken Identity, The English Historical Review 107(422), 54-77,  https://www.jstor.org/stable/575676

Mathew, W. M. 2013. The Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate, 1917–1923: British Imperialist Imperatives, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 40:3, 231-250, DOI: 10.1080/13530194.2013.791133

Pappe, I.  2022 [2004]. A History of Modern Palestine (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://assets.cambridge.org/97811084/15446/frontmatter/9781108415446_frontmatter.pdf

Renton, J. 2007. The Zionist Masquerade: The Birth of the Anglo-Zionist Alliance, 1914 – 1918. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sabbagh-Khoury, Areej (2023). Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the

Making of the Palestinian Nakba. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-1-5036-3629-3.

United Nations 2024. International day of solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 November. https://www.un.org/en/observances/international-day-of-solidarity-with-the-palestinian-people/background

United Nations. 2024. One year of unimaginable suffering since the 7 October attack. Office of the High Commission for Humanitarian affairs. https://www.unocha.org/news/one-year-unimaginable-suffering-7-october-attack

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not represent the official stance or policies of the University of Pretoria.