Dear editor,
Should we be surprised that the first martyr of the year is a Palestinian?
Jawaher Abu Rahma, a 36 year-old activist, was protesting against Israel’s apartheid wall in the village of Bilin ― for years the site of weekly peaceful protests ― when she was tear-gassed by Israeli troops.
She collapsed and was rushed to a hospital in Ramallah, also on the West Bank of occupied Palestine. That was on Dec. 31. She died on Jan. 1.
Jawaher’s brother, Bassem Abu Rahma, was also killed during a Bilin protest April 17, 2010. He was hit on the head by a tear-gas canister fired at close range. It should be emphasized over and over again that neither Jawaher nor Bassem, nor any of the other protesters at Bilin was armed.
Bilin has become a symbol of the peaceful, nonviolent struggle of the Palestinian people for self-determination. International advocates of the Palestinian cause are regular protesters at Bilin. Some of them like the Nobel Peace Laureate, Mairead Maguire, have also suffered injuries at the hands of the Israeli troops.
The Bilin protesters have vowed to continue with their peaceful struggle. They will not give up. Indeed, it is partly because of their perseverance that they managed to breach the apartheid wall on Dec. 31.
On the whole, the peaceful mobilization of the people against Israeli occupation is beginning to yield results. Though Palestinian freedom fighters continue to die, the truth about the Israeli regime is now more widely known than ever before.
The Flotilla episode in the middle of 2010 exposed the brutality of the regime. It happened just 18 months after Israel’s merciless assault on the helpless people of Gaza which revealed to the whole world the magnitude of the asymmetry of power between Israel and the Palestinians.
In the course of 2010, both the Goldstone Report and the Report of the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine, Richard Falk, admonished the regime for its harsh, inhuman treatment of the Palestinian people.
Last year has shown that truth and justice in the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot be suppressed forever.
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar
President of International Movement of a Just World (JUST) in Malaysia