By: Sude Guvendik, Staff Writer
Content warning: mentions of violence and genocide.
In an effort to provide historical, legal, and humanitarian context to the ongoing crisis in Gaza, the Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies (CCMS) at SFU co-organized an online Teach-In event titled “Decolonise Palestine Teach-In: The Legalities and Illegalities of the Occupation of Palestine.”
The event was co-hosted by the Third World Approaches to International Law Review, Racialized Academics & Advocates Centering Equity and Solidarity, and the Social Justice Centre at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. It featured a panel of world-leading experts on Palestine, like Nimmi Gowrinathan, the founder and director of sexual violence initiative for the Colin Powell Center for Global and Civic Leadership, and Dania Majid, the co-founder and president of the Arab-Canadian Lawyers Association. Together, the panellists delved into the complexities of the situation.
Maya Mikdashi cautioned against viewing the crisis from a settler timeframe. “One of the challenges when adhering to a settler notion of time is deciding where to commence. Anyone who starts their analysis on October 7 is inevitably operating within the settler epistemology of time and temporality,” she said.
Noura Erakat began by scrutinizing the legal frameworks used to justify land dispossession and the seizure of Palestinian property. Laws like the Absentees Property Law and Man Acquisition Law, enacted in the early 1950s, played pivotal roles in merging vast areas of land under Israeli control, undermining the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
The Nakba, which translates to “catastrophe” in Arabic, was a pivotal event in Palestinian history that resulted in the widespread displacement and dispossession of Palestinians. The Nakba occurred primarily due to the founding of Israel and the actions taken to secure a Jewish-majority state.
Between 1947 and 1949, a staggering 750,000 Palestinians, from their population of 1.9 million, were forcibly uprooted from their homes and pushed beyond the borders of the newly formed state of Israel. This involved confiscating over 78% of historic Palestinian land, the systematic destruction of around 530 Palestinian cities, and over 70 massacres creating a loss of over 15,000 Palestinian lives. The Nakba was a complex outcome of historical, political, and social forces that shaped the region. It left a deep and enduring mark on the Palestinian people, defining their ongoing struggle for justice and the right to return to their homeland.
The systematic application of these laws resulted in an overwhelming 93% of land in Israel coming under their state Jewish national ownership, a vital aspect of the broader strategy of achieving Israeli territorial domination.
Rana Barakat highlighted the continued influence of Zionist organizations, which have been deeply involved in colonizing Palestine since well before the establishment of the state of “Israel.” These organizations, acting as semi-governmental units, continue to shape settlement policies and maintain a system of segregation between Israelis and Palestinians.
Various administrative mechanisms, laws, and frameworks were identified as instrumental in perpetuating this division. Local authorities and towns in Israel, primarily categorized as either Jewish or Palestinian, were effectively preserving the separation. The Teach-In emphasized the need to engage with these complex historical and legal aspects to understand the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the apartheid regime. Adel Iskander from SFU CCMS highlighted the media’s obsession with presentism. “The frame keeps shifting to another present or future present, so the temporalities of the present are shifting, depending on who happens to be seen conveniently as the victim.”
During the event, presenters made thought-provoking comments that highlighted similarities between Israel’s land policies and the international legal framework that deals with apartheid. The Convention for the Prohibition of Apartheid was referenced to highlight that one of the severe violations under this convention is the denial of the right to nationality and entry to one’s own land. The convention defines apartheid as a crime against humanity and outlines various acts, including land-related policies, that can constitute apartheid when they are committed with the intent of maintaining ethnic domination.
The Teach-In also discussed the 2018 “Marches of Return” in Gaza, describing them as non-violent demonstrations aimed at asserting the right to return and lifting the Gaza siege. These marches represented a form of civil disobedience. The “Israeli” land regime, where 93% of lands are controlled by the Israeli state and quasi-governmental Jewish institutions, effectively excludes Palestinian citizens of Israel from accessing these lands.
The event also touched on how the Israeli land regime restricts Palestinian movement. Israeli legislation excludes the Indigenous Palestinian population from settlers’ land, including areas in the West Bank and Gaza, but it does not prevent settlers from encroaching upon the remaining 7% of land owned by Palestinians inside Israel.
One panellist ended the conversation by noting, “I think there is some really urgent kind of conversation that has to be had about the nature of the complicity of the Palestinian authority with the Israeli apartheid regime. How there’s a layer of a capitalist class that is incorporated into that.”
