Ramallah, 4.2.2008
Greetings
- (Thank you for coming + long term cooperation) We are very glad and grateful that you all could come. PHR Israel after 20 years of cooperation – cooperation that has always been political, in solidarity with Palestinians against the occupation – and after 40 years of this never ending occupation – has decided to take a look at its strategies, and to try to share with its partners the dilemmas and questions that we have, and also to hear criticism of our work over the years
- (Health + Human Rights) Our work has always combined health and human rights. Health, in fact, does not – cannot – exist without human rights. Health that is only provision of services is part of the system, and is in danger of serving exactly the opposite of human rights.
- This is the message that we brought to Israeli – and Palestinian – health workers and the medical community, when we started our first joint actions in 1988, at the height of the first intifada.
- And here we are in the second intifada, and this message is more important than ever. Aid without political meaning is the opposite of aid. Medicine without ethics and without human rights is the opposite of health.
- (Nature of the participants) This is why I am glad that in this room we have together, health organizations and human rights organizations, women’s organizations and prisoners organizations. I hope that we may have a fruitful debate today.
- (“Prolonged occupation” – you can make this shorter if you like) The main subject of our debate is the status of the occupation. When international humanitarian law was written to demand of occupying powers responsibilities for occupied peoples, it did not imagine this occupation. It imagined a military, temporary condition. And for this reason it demanded minimum standards of human rights from the occupier. Here we have something that is neither temporary – we know that actually we are looking at an annexation – not completely military – we know of the privatization of the checkpoints, of the private military (called security) companies at the wall and at the checkpoints, and we know of Israeli businesses profiting directly from the occupation. So in this “prolonged occupation” – what do we demand of the occupier? What are our responsibilities as human rights organisations? And what is the responsibility of the international community – the international donors – towards this story? We know that they cannot remain neutral – they have taken part in the sanctions on the PA since 2006. what responsibilities do they have as a result?
- (Passing on to Allam) Many questions. I would like to ask Dr. Allam Jarrar, who is both from Medical Relief and from PNGO, to introduce the very complex challenges that we have before us, for this debate.