Briefing Paper - June 2010

By Sawsan Ramahi

Racism was, and still is, an inherent feature of Zionism and the state established on its back, Israel. From its declaration of independence up to this day, the 20% of Israel's citizens who are Arabs have suffered from the state's racist policies and have been subjected to a fierce campaign of repression. Through racist laws and the demolition of their homes, the confiscation of their land and looting, the Arabs of Israel have seen their overwhelming majority ownership of the land pre-1948 reduced to just 2.5%, even though they make up more than 20% of Israel's population. This is not an accident, but a planned programme by successive Israeli governments, with several goals: Forcing Arab citizens who hold Israeli citizenship to migrate and leave and, in the process, stirring up Jewish Israeli public opinion against their Arab compatriots by calling them "enemies" and "traitors" who are "working to undermine the Zionist project".

Briefing Paper - June 2010

An overview of the Christian presence in Palestine

The estimated number of Palestinian Christians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Jerusalem is 51,710, making the percentage of the Palestinian Christians in the Occupied Territories two percent of the Palestinian population.ⁱ There is, in contrast, a higher percentage of Christians in Israel. The percentage of the Arab Christians in Israel - including Israeli Occupied Jerusalem - is 1.66, according to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Bethlehem, which traces its roots to the very origin of the Christian faith, is the home to the highest percentage of Christians in Palestine (43.4%), followed by Ramallah (24.7%), then Jerusalem (17.9%).

Christianity has a long standing history in Palestine, and Palestinian Christians belong to several traditional communities of faith. The first are the traditions of the Eastern Orthodox churches, the second is made up of the Syrian, Coptic and Armenian Orthodox churches, and a third category consists of those churches belonging to the Catholic family of churches. There are also a small but increasing number of evangelical churches, including the Lutheran and Episcopal churches.

The International Criminal Court (ICC)

The last decade has seen some major welcome developments by the international community to promote universal justice and human rights. This is manifest, for instance, in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague following the 1998 Rome Statute. The ICC was set up in an effort to end the impunity of offenders who commit the most serious crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The urgent need for the establishment of such an independent body, to ensure that no individual would be beyond impunity, was cemented by the horrors unfolding in the Balkans in the 1990’s as well as the Rwandan genocide in 1994. However, while efforts were made to set up tribunals into crimes committed in those regions, no similar efforts were made to bring Israel to account for its offences against the Palestinian people despite numerous calls for international tribunals into Israeli war crimes.

Briefing Paper - June 2010

"Israel has enjoyed strong economic growth over the last decade, but the benefits of this are being distributed unevenly. Poverty rates are higher than in any OECD country, which reflects the deep social and economic divides in Israeli society."¹

According to most reports, Israel’s economy has managed to withstand the global economic down turn quite admirably. Often described as an advanced, industrialised and technologically sophisticated country, it has one of the world’s highest GDP per capita incomes. Indeed, last month Israel gained accession to the OECD, membership to which confers an upgrade in economic status from that of an emerging economy, to that of a developed one.

However, its accession to the OECD was controversial, not least because it could not provide economic data independent of the Palestinian territories it occupies. Additionally, it fails to conform to the 2007 benchmarks outlined by the OECD which required it to show "commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights, adherence to open and transparent market economy principles and a shared goal of sustainable development".