“Israel-Palestine, we are interrelated; we are one entity. To say there are two states is silly; there’s only one state between the river and the sea. And that is the state of Israel. It controls everything, and it treats Arabs and Jews differently,” said Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian-American attorney specialising in international law.

Kuttab said Israel’s obligation to vaccinate Palestinians is clear under international law. “The matter is not open to interpretation.”

Not only does the Geneva Convention dictate that the occupying power is responsible for the health and well-being of the occupied, the treaty – which is the bedrock of international law – specifically spells out an obligation to prevent the spread of pandemics.

“To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the occupying power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the co-operation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory,” the convention says, “with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”

Oslo Accords

Moreover, Kuttab details three major flaws in using the Oslo Accords as a justification for Israel’s vaccination policies:

• International law trumps Oslo, and Israel’s obligations as the occupying power cannot be signed away by the Palestinian Authority
• Israel is in constant violation of the Oslo Accords
• The infrastructure needed to import, distribute and administer the vaccine in the Palestinian territory is under stringent Israeli control

“For Israel, Oslo is like an alibi,” Kuttab said. “To some degree, the Palestinian Authority allows them to do that because it is desperate to pretend it is a state; it’s not a state. The PA wants to pretend that they have authority; they don’t have authority. They only have authority to the extent that allows them to have it.”

“It’s meaningless. Israel is still the occupying power, and it’s still responsible,” Kuttab told MEE. “It’s like you can’t just say this labourer agreed to accept less than minimum wage and agreed to have his children work despite the laws against child labour. It’s illegal.”

Kuttab said Israel uses Oslo to escape its responsibilities as an occupying power without living up to its own commitments in the accords.

“Equally important is that in order to take care of the health needs of your people, you need to have international agreements with the World Health Organization; you need to have access to orders through which they can import and export; you need to be able to build facilities and all these things that Palestinians can’t do,” Kuttab said.

Discriminatory systems

Kuttab said Israel is risking its own citizens by refusing to vaccinate Palestinians. “If you allow half the population under your control – millions and millions of people – to go around unvaccinated, it’s going to affect you, sooner or later.”

JUNE 16, 2020

Published first in Arab Centre, Washington, DC

Jonathan Kuttab

Few know exactly how the Israeli annexation of certain territories in the occupied West Bank will take place, but it is safe to make some observations based on past experience. In all likelihood, legislation will be passed in the Knesset extending Israeli law and administration to certain areas shown in some attached map. Existing legislation allows such an act to be carried out by an Israeli government administratively and with little fanfare. It is solely the political implications of the action that would necessitate Knesset action, and only by a simple majority. However, reversing the process (that is, ceding land) would require the approval of a supermajority of votes in the Knesset, or 80 out of 120 members.

At a minimum, annexation—or extending Israeli law and administration to parts of the Jordan Valley—will require that Israel update, change, adapt, or reaffirm decrees, laws, and military orders that, since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank, have governed how the occupying power administers the territory and its inhabitants. Such laws, decrees, and military orders address relations with the Palestinians––especially as pertaining to the post-Oslo Accords and Areas A, B, and C––as well as Israeli settlers in illegal settlements, the status of these settlements in Israel’s military doctrine, and economic and social affairs, among other things. But whatever the new regulations may be, annexation is bringing new conditions that are likely to sow the seeds for extended conflict in the future, especially that the Israeli army itself has apparently been kept in the dark as to the particulars of the annexation.

Status of Jewish Settlers

After the supposed annexation, Jewish settlers will be treated exactly as if they are living in Israel de jure (by a lawful right), and not just de facto (by fact, or reality). Those who hold Israeli passports will continue to do so and will be treated as if living in Israel proper. This is significant since Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have often lost their residency status if they lived in the West Bank, which was considered to be “outside” the state of Israel by the Israeli Ministry of Interior, which controls their status. A prominent case that exemplifies this policy is that of East Jerusalemite Mubarak Awad who, in 1988, lost his case to maintain his residency in East Jerusalem, which had been annexed to Israel following the 1967 war. Israel’s High Court decreed that since Awad was not Jewish and the Law of Return does not apply to him, and since the law annexing Jerusalem failed to define his status, then the Law of Entry into Israel of 1955 applied to Awad and his status was akin to that of an immigrant to Israel, thus making him and other Palestinians living in Jerusalem residents instead of full citizens.

Jews who are in the annexed areas on visas will likely be further pressured to “make aliyah” (officially immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return) and obtain Israeli passports. What will be abandoned are the elaborate mechanisms of adjusting the laws and military orders to enable Jewish settlers to live fully and legally as if they are in Israel when they are technically living in the “administered territories” under the hybrid system of Jordanian Law and Military Orders. They will now be treated de jure as Israelis in Israeli territory. The annexation will have little impact directly on their rights, privileges, and responsibilities.

Palestinians in Annexed Areas

The status of Palestinian Arabs currently living in the areas to be annexed (estimated to number some 107,000 living in 43 villages, according to the Israeli organization Peace Now) is unclear thus far, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared they will not become citizens of Israel. In fact, he said they will be subjects of the Palestinian Authority. One possibility is that they would be given the same status as that of East Jerusalemites; as such, they would have a category as permanent residents, which is somewhat similar to the holders of “green cards” in the United States. They would be permanent residents who could live and work in Israel but who are not citizens, and they would lose that status if they leave the territory for an extended period of time, including for studying abroad, or if they obtain another citizenship or permanent residency elsewhere (as in Awad’s case).

It is possible, however, that this time, Israel would determine their status in the Knesset law annexing the territories in a way that may grant them a type of status that is markedly different from that applying to Palestinians of East Jerusalem. Perhaps it would authorize granting them special permits to enter and work in the newly annexed areas while continuing to be West Bank residents, in theory subject to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah. At one time after the Second Intifada, residents of the Jordan Valley were issued additional permits that they had to carry together with their identity cards that allowed them to enter or reside in the villages of the Jordan Valley. It is also possible that these Palestinians would be pressured immediately, or over time, to leave the newly annexed territories entirely—in other words, they would be ethnically cleansed.

Access to the Annexed Areas

It is expected that access to the new areas will be subject to the same restrictions that apply to entering Israel itself. While West Bank settlements outside of East Jerusalem have been effectively “gated communities” that Palestinians cannot enter without a permit, now all the lands that will be annexed will be subject to the same general permit requirements for entering Israel. New checkpoints will be erected to control movement into the entire Jordan Valley as well as the newly annexed areas, and the movement of the residents of these areas to the rest of the West Bank would also likely be restricted. That means that Palestinians who live there or who have lands they are currently farming in that area would now need some form of permit to continue to live there or to access their lands.

It is also possible that their lands would be expropriated en masse under the rubric of the Absentee Property Law since they will now be “in Israel”: landowners would technically be “absentees” under the definition of Israel’s absentee law. This bizarre outcome was hinted at in the January 2020 Trump plan, “Peace to Prosperity,” when it outlined the possibility of Palestinians being allowed to lease the lands they currently farm in areas that will be annexed. It is also possible that, initially, the status of the land would be left ambiguous with the precise status defined at a later point—that is, if Palestinians decide to assert ownership or challenge settlement expansion into their privately held lands.

Post-Annexation Institutions

In November 1981, Israel’s military commander created a civilian administration to rule the occupied Palestinian territories. Settlers were given different administrative structures in the form of “regional councils” of settlements which were accorded security functions to form their own security units, separate from the army. Israel also granted them direct access to governmental ministries and services, with every effort made to keep their areas as fully functioning Israeli administrative units—even though technically, they were physically and legally outside the state of Israel. At the same time, the entire West Bank was declared a closed military zone and Israel controlled all points of entry into it. Holders of visas or residency in Israel could freely go to the settlements and, if Jewish, they could also reside there. In addition, they could establish industrial zones that were not subject to Israeli environmental regulations and could employ Palestinian workers (though ironically, under the less advantageous Jordanian labor laws). Because of the restricted residence in these settlements to Jews only (whether Israeli citizens or not), settlers could claim many of the advantages of Israeli citizenship including health care, education, security benefits, and the like.

Once annexation takes place, the current status of Jewish regional councils is likely to be strengthened to the full extent of Israeli municipalities, with clear licensing, zoning, and administrative powers. They will enjoy open (and not surreptitious) access to funding and services of Israeli ministries as Israeli “development towns.” Israeli police, health, government, banking, public utilities, and postal services already exist in these settlements, though under questionable authority, since the settlements are “outside” Israel; but now they will be able to enjoy such services de jure. Palestinians residing in these areas and in “enclaves” will be left without services, in a manner similar to those living in unrecognized Arab villages in the Negev and elsewhere in Israel.

As for the Palestinian Authority, it will not be allowed to extend any services to these residents; further, they will not be able to obtain these services in the Jewish settlements. Palestinians in the annexed territories will thus be pressured to physically move to adjacent areas more directly controlled and serviced by the PA. Their inability to build and develop their lands will now be handled under the laws of Israel and the zoning plans and maps of Jewish settlements, rather than Israel’s Civil Administration. Those restrictions already exist since the Civil Administration rarely grants them permits. The problem will now be compounded, however, by the fact that their status under Israeli law is not clear and that they may well be deemed as “absentees” whose very physical presence is in question.

Israeli courts had taken the position that the occupied territories of the West Bank (except for East Jerusalem, and presumably the Golan Heights) are “occupied” under international law, and that the Hague Conventions (though not the Geneva Conventions) on belligerent occupation place some restrictions on how lands in the occupied territories can be used. Some security justification was deemed by Israel’s High Court to be necessary to allow building Jewish settlements on private Arab land (for example, the Elon Moreh case). Furthermore, public lands were supposed to be held in trusteeship until peace comes and their status is resolved. While these restrictions were minimal and usually circumvented, once the annexation takes place no such restrictions will be recognized, thereby allowing the settlements to expand with no internal restraints. The clear conditioning of rights and privileges on whether a person is Jewish or Arab, a well-known phenomenon experienced daily and fully understood by both Israelis and Palestinians, will become a formal legal feature of the landscape.

Apartheid Will Set In

The annexation that is looming in early July will undoubtedly alter Israel’s occupation policies and practices in the West Bank for the worse. While Netanyahu satisfies his political ambition and the voracious appetite of his right-wing supporters, conditions of Palestinians will worsen and international law will find another example of Israeli transgression and banditry. It is the clarity of conditions on the ground in the post-annexation period that will make it impossible to deny that the system of apartheid will have taken another step to being realized as an outcome of occupation. This is the reason why Palestinians, the larger Arab world, and the international community are opposed to annexation. It is also the reason that, importantly, so many liberal and conservative Zionists stand in opposition to it as well.

Jonathan Kuttab is a leading human rights lawyer and a Non-resident Fellow at Arab Center Washington DC. He is a resident of East Jerusalem and a partner of Kuttab, Khoury, and Hanna Law Firm there. He is the co-founder of Al-Haq, the first international human rights legal organization in Palestine, and of the Palestine Center for the Study of Nonviolence.

JONATHAN KUTTAB

April 27, 201922:55192

Read the Original at Arab News

One of the worst decisions for world peace made by the Trump administration has not received enough attention. Withdrawal from the Paris climate accords was bad, revoking the Iran deal sent a signal that international agreements signed by a US president may not be honored by subsequent administrations, and the successful intimidation of the International Criminal Court has caused dire consequences for the international order.

But the worst decision by the Trump administration is the cavalier reversal of a principle that has been the bedrock of international stability since the Second World War. In order to ensure that countries can longer benefit by invading and occupying weaker neighbors, the world unanimously agreed on the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” Attempts to violate this principle (Iraq in Kuwait, Russia in Ukraine, and Israel in Jerusalem and the Golan) were universally condemned and rejected. This principle was mentioned in the preamble of UNSC 242 and has been a fundamental principle of international law since the mid-1990s.

US officials, trying to justify the Trump administration’s sudden recognition of the illegal annexation by Israel of the Syrian Golan Heights, argued that the territory was acquired in a “defensive” war; and that in any case Syria is embroiled in a civil war and its current leader is not worthy of having his land back.

The defensive war justification does not hold water. Western governments, international human rights organizations and jurists, including some Israeli jurists, acknowledge that the prohibition against acquiring territory by war makes no reference to whether the war is defensive or offensive.  Israel claims that it started the June 1967 war because it feared an assault from Egypt. President Abdul Nasser had blocked the Straits of Tiran, and removed the UN peacekeeping forces established in Sinai following Israel’s invasion of Egypt in 1956.  Arabs dispute this and commonly refer to the 1967 war as an aggression against them. This only underlines the point that both sides in any war can claim to act “defensively,” which is why international law makes no distinction between a defensive or offensive war when it prohibits the “acquisition of territory” during war.  

The problem with Washington’s action is that it forms a dangerous precedent. No sooner had Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned from Washington after the Golan decision when he began talking about annexing portions of the West Bank, which would totally destroy the possibility of a peaceful resolution based on a two-state solution.

The effects of the reckless policy of President Trump will not be limited to the Middle East. Countries the world over that have an ambition to capture land they believe traditionally belongs to them will now have a strong precedent. “If the Americans and Israelis can do it,” they will say, “then so can we.”

Jonathan Kuttab

The consequences of Donald Trump’s recognition of the annexation of occupied Syrian territories extend far beyond the Middle East conflict, and sends a green light to every country in the world. If this principle is abandoned no one would be able to object to Russia claiming parts of Ukraine, or Saudi Arabia claiming parts of Yemen, Iraq demanding Kuwait be its 19th district, and so many other land disputes. Numerous countries in Africa, Asia and Europe have territorial disputes with neighboring countries, and may choose to resolve the issue by forcibly retaking territory to which they have some historic or tribal claim.

The Nazi war machine was so brutal, and its occupation of many countries in Europe so nasty, that the world community rose up and agreed on principles that were coded into international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention was written and approved in 1949 precisely to give protection to civilian populations falling under belligerent military occupation until peace is restored and their territories relinquished by the conquering armies. The occupier, in particular, is prohibited from moving its civilian population into the occupied territories (which is why all Israeli settlements are illegal under international law).  This was affirmed in the 2003 decision of the International Court of Justice in the case of Israel’s wall built deep in Palestinian occupied territory. Natural wealth, artifacts and resources in occupied areas cannot be legally taken by an occupying power. Annexing occupied areas is totally rejected.

For decades, successive US Democratic and Republican administrations, for all their support of Israel, have refused to recognize Israeli unilateral actions in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. They also insisted that Geneva Convention rules must apply. But the Trump administration has recklessly thrown out this important principle, denied the existence of an occupation, moved an embassy into Jerusalem, recognized the illegal Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights and was not even willing to discuss Netanyahu’s plans to  annex any parts of the West Bank.

American officials claim they are about to reveal a peace plan. This may be the case, but such a plan can hardly be advanced by this recent action. The effects of the reckless policy of President Trump will not be limited to the Middle East. Countries the world over that have an ambition to capture land they believe traditionally belongs to them will now have a strong precedent. “If the Americans and Israelis can do it,” they will say, “then so can we.”

• Jonathan Kuttab is a jurist doctor in international law from the University of Virginia, and co-founder of Al Haq Human Rights organization in Ramallah.

Twitter: @jkuttabDisclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News’ point-of-view     

ROSEMARY GANLEY: What is needed now is a commitment to human rights for all

OPINION Jan 23, 2019 by ROSEMARY GANLEY Special to The Examiner

Jonathan Kuttab with Just Peace Advocates coming to Peterborough.

I’m going to plunge into a topic that is fraught with division and deep trauma on all sides.

It is the situation in Israel, particularly the behaviour of the government of Israel, and what it has done and is doing in Gaza (population 1.8 million) and the West Bank (2.5 million), which are “occupied territories” holding Palestinians.

I listened to the testimony of a highly educated and compassionate spokesperson for the Palestinians this week at Sadleir House, Jonathan Kuttab. He is a lawyer, who recently was guest professor at the York University law school. He is a Christian Arab, born in East Jerusalem, now based in Jerusalem.

Critics of the policies of the Israeli government, and there are plenty in Canada and around the world, including the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, face the possibility, nay probability, that they will be labelled “anti-Semitic.” Or, if they are Jewish, they will be called “self-hating Jews.” But name-calling cannot become a reason for reticence when one looks at the massive, long-standing and ultimately cruel occupation, and denial of basic rights in the two shrunken areas.

The United Nations has been warned that Gaza, (40-by-six-kilometre) is expected to be “uninhabitable” by 2020. Electricity is on four hours a day. The barrier is a wire fence, backed up by armed Israeli soldiers. Food is very expensive. Water is often contaminated. A Gazan hospital was bombed in 2014. Unemployment is 40 per cent.

A Peterborough group headed by activist Margaret Slavin is in touch with a family in Gaza and knows the daily deprivation it suffers.

Kuttab offered his listeners slides, maps and some history. After the Second World War, in which Europe tore itself apart and then faced a dreadful acknowledgement of the Holocaust, during which six million Jewish citizens of several countries were killed in death camps, there was a global feeling of revulsion, guilt and shame.

So in 1948, the British government, which had been in charge of Palestine, decided to make the territory a homeland for the Jews. Except that it was already home to four million Palestinians who had no say in the matter. This was the Balfour Declaration.

Then came simmering resentment and some armed resistance. For 70 years, attempts at finding a solution failed. Twenty-five years ago in Oslo, Norway, leaders came up with the “two-state solution.” It might have worked, but separation was not so easy: Arabs were living among Jews everywhere. Progressive Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by a religious fanatic.

The pain in Kuttab’s presentation regarding the suffering of Palestinians was breathtaking, but equally so was the utter absence of vengefulness or hatred. He is convinced, as are many Israeli writers and citizens, that the imprisonment they are administering has the effect of imprisoning them also, and corrodes the long-admired Jewish conscience.

Israel is a nuclear power. We have seen pictures of boys with sticks and rocks being fired on by heavily armed soldiers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a hawk, is further empowered now by Donald Trump. Illegal settlements in the West Bank now house 700,000 Israelis.

Many Israelis have a strong fear that Arabs will exact revenge. But Kuttab said, “We are all intermixed now. What is needed is a commitment to human rights for all; an end to the blockade and the provision of services to all. The international community must help.”

Israeli’s neighbours, Syria, Egypt and Jordan, must pledge to respect its right to exist in safety. Israel is a democracy with freedom of speech and of the press.

Small steps in regional co-operation are needed. So is a conviction among Israeli leaders that justice for its Palestinian minority is crucial. Many lives depend on it.

NOTE: Reframe Film Festival will show a documentary entitled “Naila and the Uprising,” set in Gaza, on Friday at 1 p.m. at Showplace. Visit www.reframefilmfestival.ca for details.

Rosemary Ganley is a writer, teacher and activist. Reach her at rganley2016@gmail.com

Rosemary Ganley is a writer, teacher and activist. Reach her at rganley2016@gmail.com

Original appeared in Journey Magazine Peterborough on January 17, 2019

The 25-year-old Oslo Peace Accords are long dead.  A  two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is no longer viable. The Trump administration recently cut all US funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. 

 Gaza is suffocating under an Israeli/Egyptian air, land and sea blockade since 2007, and, according to the United Nations, could become uninhabitable by 2020.   Palestinians stage weekly mass protests as part of the Great March of Return movement, with many deaths at the hands of Israeli soldiers. 

Is there hope for peace and a decent life for the Palestinian people? 

About 50 people recently listened to a Palestinian international human rights lawyer  in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, Ontario as he told them, yes, there is hope.

It comes, not with violence, but with a commitment to human rights, equality and human dignity along with a call to action to the international community and citizens around the world,  “who have a passion, love, and respect for human beings regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity or other orientations,” said Jonathan Kuttab.

“But Palestinians, on their own, cannot do it.”

“The time has come to acknowledge that a two-state solution is not going to happen,” Kuttab said at the Jan. 9 event organized by four local social justice groups — Peterborough Peace Council, Peterborough and the Kawarthas Council of Canadians, Kawartha World Issues Centre, and OPIRG Peterborough. “Israel has triumphed completely in that there will not be a Palestinian-Arab state (as was once thought). In reality there is only one state called Israel,”  

“But we can, and do, and will live together. The short-term is very bad, but I think we will live together as equals. That is my hope. . . and all of us will, and should, be part of that change,” he said. “We must start working at peace instead of working at war.”

Kuttab, a Christian Palestinian, co-founded Al Haq in 1979, the first international human rights legal organization in Palestine, and is a founding director of Just Peace Advocates/Mouvement pour une Paix Juste, a Canadian based international law human rights not-for-profit. He practises law in East Jerusalem. (See full biography below.)

Jonathan Kuttab at Sadleir House in Peterborough, Jan. 9

After giving a synopsis of the history of Palestine and Israel to the audience, he shared his perspective on the situation now, noting “to this day, we are living” the results of the events of 1948 (the creation of Israel) and 1967 (the Six-Day War), and the start of Jewish settlements in the West Bank following that war.

After 50 years of occupation of Palestinians by Israel, the Jewish settlements in the West Bank have now become irreversible, with 700,000 settlers living in a permanent fixed manner throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, Kuttab said. 

“They live as lords and masters enjoying a system of roads that connect them to one anther and to Israel. They have their own education and health systems, laws, courts, police, and social security. They want and demand the right to live there, with all the advantages of Israelis.”

Gaza, with Israeli/Egyptian-controlled borders and limited fishing zone (wikipedia)

But of the three areas where Palestinians live — the West Bank, Gaza and Israel —  Gaza is worst, Kuttab said.

Gaza is a 140 square mile stretch of land located along the Mediterranean coast between Egypt and Israel. Blockaded by air, land and sea since 2007, the borders and its 2 million people are carefully controlled, the movement of goods and humans severely restricted, and the population faces food shortages and 40% unemployment — a collective punishment by Israel in reaction to Hamas gaining control of Gaza in 2007.  

Hospitals are forced to rely on generators for life-saving equipment, while supplies of life-saving medicines dwindle to dangerous levels. 98% of Gaza’s water is not fit for human consumption. As water treatment and desalination plants stop working, many fear the supply of drinking water will run out.

Palestinian women in Gaza protest (Anadolu Agency, Turkey)

Kuttab said nothing can go in or out — people, goods, fuel, food — without Israeli control. People are only allowed to fish three miles out, if at all; the Israeli army calculates the number of calories needed for a basic diet, and only allows food amounts into Gaza according to those numbers, he said.

(See also The Gift of Hope: Helping One Family Survive the Occupation https://journeymagazineptbo.com/2016/08/04/1580/)

But Israel has not won, altogether, said the lawyer.

“It has failed largely because it it an anachronism, living in the wrong century.” 

He explained that centuries ago it might have been considered a progressive experiment in human life, but that was during a time when systems like apartheid, a caste structure, slavery, and colonization were all acceptable. 

Not now. 

Today, especially after WWII, said Kuttab, there is an international recognition of sovereign boundaries and “a concept called human rights, which means if you belong to the human race it gives you certain rights, whether you are rich or poor, black or white, male or female. Just the fact that you are human beings means there is something divine in you, a part of God is in you, that other countries have to respect, not because they are nice people, but because it is your right.”

“Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said, ‘if you are powerful you can do what you want’,” Kuttab said. “I think people know that is not true. Eventually God, history, and reality catches up with you. Will the world accept a state that fundamentally and openly and through its constitution says we are only for Jews?”

There are not many in the rest of the world who accept the idea that Jews have any rights to the settlements in the West Bank, said Kuttab, and they agree the illegal settlements are an obstacle to peace and have made it hard to create a two-state solution.

And, while Israel managed to successfully evict two thirds of the Arab population, there are still six million Palestinians remaining in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel, he added, and history shows you cannot have a state with a large portion of your population disenfranchised. Eventually you have to accept them and give them rights, he said.

“It will be traumatic for both Palestinians and Zionists.”

Kuttab is adamant that violence is not the answer. For one thing, Palestine could never out-power the Israeli military, backed by the United States.

The solution must be economic, non-violent, and cultural, using diplomatic pressure, international law, and the global boycott, divest and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, he continued. It is a tiny country with few natural resources and it depends on the rest of the world, he said.

Kuttab mentioned two campaigns (other than BDS) in which Canadians can take part. One is Gaza 20/20, which is internationally focused on bringing awareness to the situation and calling on governments to hold Israel accountable, and lift the siege of Gaza, using both domestic and international law. Over 100 organizations have signed on.  

The second campaign is No Way To Treat a Child, which says each year the Israeli military detains and prosecutes around 700 Palestinian children as young as 12. The campaign calls for the Canadian government to “use all available means to pressure Israel to end the detention and abuse of Palestinian children”. It says 23 federal Members of Parliament have supported the campaign.

By Melodie McCullough

Jonathan Kuttab Bio (From http://www.justpeaceadvocates.ca)

Jonathan Kuttab is a leading human rights lawyer. After a graduating with his Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD) from Virginia Law School, and practising a couple years on Wall Street, Jonathan returned home to Palestine.

In 1979, Jonathan co-founded Al Haq, the first international human rights legal organization in Palestine. Later he co-founded the Palestinian Center for the Study of Non-Violence (now Non-Violence International) and also founded the Mandela Institute for Prisoners.

Jonathan is a Palestinian Christian, who is past chair of the Bethlehem Bible College serves on the board of the Sabeel Ecumenical Theology Center in Jerusalem and is a leader in the establishment of Christ at the Checkpoint conference. Jonathan was part of the 1994 legal team for the Cairo agreement that resulted in the Oslo II Accord.

Jonathan was visiting scholar at Osgoode Law School at York University in Toronto in the Fall of 2017, and is a founding director of Just Peace Advocates/Mouvement pour une Paix Juste, a Canadian based international law human rights not-for-profit.

Jonathan is a resident of East Jerusalem, and is a partner of Kuttab, Khoury and Hanna Law Firm in East Jerusalem.

“Kuttab supports a solution that would bring Israelis and Palestinians together as equal citizens, and a state government would meet the needs of both those who want a Jewish state and a place of safety and security, as well as the Palestinian Arabs who want a place where they can live in security and dignity.”  https://themennonite.org/feature/jonathan-kuttab-peacemaking-way-life/