To be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize is, of course, an honor in itself. It is all the more so, however, when one is nominated by the American Friends Service Committee, co-recipient of the 1947 Peace Prize, and all the more so yet when one shares the honor with Ghassan Andoni, a Palestinian intellectual and truly courageous leader in his people’s struggle for self-determination.
In my view, however, the nomination is not merely of two individuals but, through them, of the critical voices they represent — voices loud and clear in the cause of universal human rights yet only faintly heard in the corridors of power or in the mainstream media.
Ghassan Andoni speaks not only of peace between Palestinians and Israelis, but of the only sustainable and true form of peace, that based on justice. A peace that acknowledges the national existence and collective rights of the Palestinian people, as well as the pain and injustice they have endured over the past six decades. A peace based on restorative justice, in the case of the Palestinians on full self-determination, is the only one capable of leading to reconciliation and a genuine end – closure, sulha – of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As for myself and the organization I head, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), we also speak of peace wholly informed by justice, in which Israelis, having secured self-determination for themselves, must address their own responsibility towards the Palestinians under their control: to either end their occupation of Palestinian lands taken in 1967 or to be willing to live with them in a single democratic state of equal rights for all its citizens. Restorative justice, a sine qua non of any sustainable peace, obliges Israel to acknowledge its role in driving the Palestinian refugees from their homes, to acknowledge their right of return and to work towards a just resolution of this ongoing tragedy.
As an Israeli, I am chilled by the prospect of my country imposing a new apartheid regime on another people, by the prospect of my people, the Jews (of all people), becoming the new Afrikaners. I must also be concerned over the rising frustration and fury in the Arab and Muslim worlds, fueled in large measure by American and European support for Israel’s occupation policies that both deny the Palestinians their right of self-determination and turn my country into a pariah state. Ghassan and I are not on opposite “sides.” Besides our concern for the destructive impact of Israel’s Occupation on both our societies, we both consider it a global issue – a fundamental challenge to a world based on inclusion, equality, justice, peace, prosperity, self-determination, international law and universal human rights. If occupation and repression in this most transparent conflict actually defeat a people’s aspirations for freedom and fundamental human rights, what are the implications for oppressed peoples the world over far from public attention?
I consider myself a critical advocate of peace and justice, meaning that I am ready to criticize my own people if they do not accept responsibility for ending oppression created by their own actions. May our voices, acknowledged in this nomination, be amplified.
