CRY, MY BELOVED PALESTINE

Posted by AsiaViews | Apr 8, 2018 | 0 |

MALAYSIA

The New Straits Times-Apr

It was a peaceful march by 17,000 Gazans fenced out (electric fence at that) into an open prison by Israel from their homeland. They call it the March of Return, a homecoming they hope one day to make. It is the world’s longest rehearsal of return, having run the course for 69 years and counting. Come May 14 it would be the 70th anniversary of the creation of Israel, when three generations of Palestinians were forcefully driven out of their homeland. The Palestinians call it Nabka —catastophe. And so it was in 1948, and still remains a catastrophe today.

Last Friday, the Israeli security forces shot dead 16 young adults and injured more than 1,000 others. One Youtube video actually shows a youth running away from Israeli fire only to be shot dead from behind by an Israeli sniper. Lt Gen Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli army chief of staff, proudly went on record to say that he had placed 100 snipers along the border with Gaza to take the protesters down. Such impunity is dumbfounding. But what is more baffling is that the international community has stood with arms folded while the blood of the very young and the very old, and every age in between, spill on the soils of their homeland. All because they dared to ask the brutal regime of Israel for their land to be returned. But what the United States did on March 31 was even more befuddling: it blocked a draft UN Security Council statement calling for an investigation into the clashes on the Gaza-Israel border that left 16 Palestinians dead.

This latest move by President Donald Trump’s administration and many others in the recent past do not help promote peace in the Middle East. In fact, it gives a green light to the Zionist regime to act with impunity. This is not the path to follow if Trump wants to make America great again. What will make America great again, though, is for it to be an honest peace broker by acting justly to both sides of the divide. Granted the Israeli lobby in Washington is strong, but this should not stop the US administration from punishing the wrong-doers. By legitimising the violent acts of Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal regime, the US is vicariously bearing the guilt that rightfully should be borne by Israel. The US is surely aware that the March 30 march by the Palestinians was to commemorate the Land Day, a day in 1976 when six Arabs were killed by the Israelis as the regime appropriated thousands of hectares of Palestinian land. To seek a return of their land that has been forcefully appropriated is surely not a crime in any municipal or international law.

There is only one way out of this Middle East muddle: a two-state solution that has fair space for the Palestinians. The international community has long accepted this two-state reality. The US administration must now knock some sense into Netanyahu’s recalcitrant regime to accept it. The two-state solution is in the best interest of Israel, Palestine, the US and the international community. Otherwise, it will be Nabka for generations to come in the Middle East.

(First published in The New Straits Times – https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/leaders/2018/04/352480/cry-my-beloved-palestine)

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EXTRICATING NDONESIAN CHILDREN FROM ISIS INFLUENCE ABROAD

Indonesia urgently needs to revisit the possibility of repatriating the neediest of its young citizens stranded abroad, whose families had earlier joined ISIS. Most of these children are in camps in northern Syria but there are also small numbers in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Iraq. “Extricating Indonesian Children from ISIS Influence Abroad”, the latest report from the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC) argues that the government could begin by bringing back small groups of unaccompanied children under ten years of age, who pose minimal security risk and are most vulnerable to deteriorating conditions in the camps.“The problem is that health and security conditions are worsening by the day in the Syrian camps, and the children are growing older,” says Dyah Kartika, IPAC analyst. “They need access to schools, a nurturing environment, and medical attention. If the government waits too long, the children will be further exposed to ISIS ideology.” The new report examines a 2019 list of Indonesians in camps and prisons run by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The Indonesian government has been trying to verify their citizenship, but with pseudonyms, misspellings and bad transliterations, it is a daunting task. At the time the data was collected, between March and June 2019, there were 555 Indonesians in SDF camps and prisons, including 367 children. Among the children, approximately 277 were under the age of ten and 34 were unaccompanied. In June 2021, there are fewer than ten children who are both unaccompanied and under the age of ten that could be prioritized for return. Bringing back children of ISIS families is no easy task. The report analyses the main challenges faced by the Indonesian government. These include definitional issues, bureaucratic competition, the difficulty of verifying nationality, evaluating the toll of exposure to conflict, assessing security risk, and finding relatives or others willing to provide care once the children are returned. In addition, COVID has meant stringent restrictions on travel, placing further obstacles in the way of repatriation. There are several models for rehabilitation of children exposed to violent extremism in Indonesia that could be modified to accommodate the needs of children repatriated from abroad. The report examines these models and argues that the government does not need to have every detail of rehabilitation programs in place before it starts extricating children from ISIS influence. It can start by bringing back the most vulnerable children and then modify programs as needed.

“It’s important that the government see these children as victims” says Dyah. “They deserve a chance to be children again.”

CRY, MY BELOVED PALESTINE