Canada needs to end its unconditional support for Israel due to its apartheid-like treatment of Palestinians, says an Israeli peace activist coming to St. Albert this week.
Nobel Peace Prize nominee Jeff Halper is coming to Edmonton this week as part of a cross-country speaking tour on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He'll be staying in St. Albert while he's in the area.
Halper is a Jewish Israeli who lives in Jerusalem and has worked for decades to end the occupation of Palestine, said St. Albert resident Debbie Hubbard, who is part of the local organizing committee bringing him to the region.
"It's not often that we get the perspective of an Israeli and a Jewish person around what's happening there."
Halper will speak on the impact of Israel's policy of demolishing Palestinian homes in the occupied territories and the construction of settlements on those lands – both practices repeatedly condemned by the international community.
"It is against international law for an occupier – and East Jerusalem is occupied – to displace an occupied people," Hubbard said. Canada has signed treaties to uphold those laws.
"We have a responsibility when that (law) is being violated to speak out."
Demolishing peace
An anthropologist and co-ordinating director for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Halper has been active in the Israeli/Palestine peace movement for about 40 years and had twice toured Canada.
Israel has occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since the Six-Day War of 1967, Halper said. It has since demolished about 48,000 Palestinian homes and built about 200 settlements occupied by about 500,000 Israelis in those regions.
"It is one of the most painful and extensive and cruel parts of the occupation."
The Israeli government has used zoning regulations to effectively forbid Palestinians from building new homes in the occupied territories, Halper said – the lands have been zoned agricultural, and you're not supposed to build homes on farmland. But the government's land-use planning committee is made up of Israelis, and the government has let Israeli settlers build on these lands.
"It's zoning with a political agenda to it," he said.
"The zoning is used to prevent building rather than to bring order."
In Canada, the government has to compensate you if it demolishes your home, Halper said.
"In Israel, you don't get compensation, because you've built 'illegally.' "
These demolitions come with little warning and are often done early in the morning with the support of soldiers, said Hubbard, who investigated several demolitions in Palestine last winter as an international observer. Occupants are given as little as 15 minutes to evacuate before the bulldozer starts work.
These families lose their homes and often their livelihoods as a result, Hubbard continued. She spoke with one family whose home and workshop was destroyed, putting 25 people out of work. Another Bedouin family had the stable for their sheep and goats destroyed.
Path to peace?
Israel's demolitions and settlements have effectively turned Israel/Palestine into a single state, Halper said – a state where some 4.5 million Palestinians have no rights as citizens.
"It is an apartheid state, and that's not acceptable."
Halper said the Israel/Palestine conflict is one that disrupts the whole international community, and will require the pressure of that community if it is to end justly.
"Canada is complicit in this," he said, as it has unconditionally supported Israel in the past. He called on Canadians to pressure their government to press Israel to end its occupation.
Halper will speak at the University of Alberta's Edmonton Clinic Health Academy (Room 1-182) Friday and at the Southminster-Steinhauer United Church in Edmonton Saturday. The talks run from 7 to 9 p.m. and are free, with donations going towards the reconstruction of demolished Palestinian homes.
Call local organizer Dawn Waring at 780-975-4478 for details.
