From the beginning of the second Intifada the situation in Palestine has become dramatic and, according to the UN, on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe. Topics such as the complete deportation of the Palestinians (transfer), the elimination of their leadership and the complete cancellation of Palestine from geographical maps, have arrogantly entered the Israeli political agenda. The slaughters of civilians, the siege of cities, the curfew, the demolition of buildings and the assassinations of leaders, have become ordinary events since the Israeli occupation, as well as the support to the policy of installation and the blocking of humanitarian missions.

Palestine is now hungry and humiliated, held as if in a vice by the Israeli military forces and by the growing support to the Islamic groups that want to undertake a holy war to free Palestine and Jerusalem. Such groups have remarkably grown during the seven years following the signing of the Oslo agreements. The acceptance of the reduction of the Palestinian State to Bantustans, in which the PNA have essentially played a role of police repression, has led to an always growing support to those groups that openly denounced the underselling of the Palestinian State as Hamas or Jihad. This is the reason why the new Intifada lacks of political perspectives, with its fierce quarrels between its various members, even if the continuous slaughters and the Israeli violent repression have pushed the population to crowd around the PNA and Arafat who has been besieged for months.
Furthermore the fact that Palestine is divided between the supporters of the holy war and those who sustain the international terrorism, has enabled Sharon to get into another “holy war” – the fight against the international terrorism launched by the USA after September 11th – receiving so carte blanche as far as the methods and the purposes themselves of the war are concerned. This is why the targeted executions, which are real homicides, the slaughters of civilians, and the destruction of entire villages such as Jenin, are not considered by the international community as terroristic actions, but as military actions of defence, even when they are revenges following previous attacks.

The Camp David agreements, greeted as the extreme concession by a magnanimous Israeli, actually revealed the real spirit of the Oslo agreements, by carrying out that policy of Bantustans, which had already been experimented in South Africa during the Apartheid. The aim of such policy was to reunite the roughly 200 areas of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinians into three big Bantustans (plus a smaller one in east-Jerusalem) which had to be completely separated from one-another and from the Gaza Strip, in a condition of total dependence from Israeli. So the logic refusal of Palestinians led to the abandoning of that direction and to an open war even against those who had, up to that time, the task of guaranteeing control in the occupied territories such as the leaders of PNA.

The failure of those agreements, that later brought Sharon and the National Unity Government to govern Israeli, has put an end (at least so far) to any attainment of peace.

The Israeli left-wing and the pacifist movement are pressed between the generalised fear for terroristic attacks (that often seem to play more into Sharon’s hands than in Palestinians’) and the rhetoric of the holy war against the terrorism that amplifies the fears and most of all the hatred for the Arabs.

The actions for peace
For fifteen months now we have been waiting for an international observer/protection force to be sent to the region to provide some kind of security for Palestinians. Every time one of the 32 people who were prevented from receiving medical treatment died, we called for international observers to be located at checkpoints to prevent the same thing happening again. As the Israeli army mercilessly shelled civilian neighbourhoods, opened fire - unprovoked - on children at demonstrations, destroyed acres of land and agricultural produce or invaded areas under the Palestinian Authority, we have called for an international protection force to be sent here. (Mustafà Barghouthi dec. 2001)

One year later the situation has not changed that much. The uninterrupted opposition of Israeli and USA towards the sending of observers has created a sort of free zone where everything is possible and no law, apart from Israeli emergency laws, is valid anymore.
In this situation of political stalemate and military actions, associations and international pacifist movements have shouldered the burden of controlling the territories with an uninterrupted sending of activists from all over the world.

The aim of the international mobilisation is simple, non-violent and pacific: it consists in protecting the Palestinians through the presence of activists from all over the world; in avoiding the systematic aggressions of soldiers and colonisers; in expressing strong solidarity to the Palestinians and to whom fights in Israeli for the end of the occupation; in contributing in the countries of origin to guarantee correct information about the Palestinian situation through the direct experience and the self-product images; in providing an international political sign which supports the UN resolutions and the sending of interposition forces that could oblige Israeli to respect international law and to put an end to the occupation.
The actions for peace and the constant presence of international observers have also brought to another important result: that of pushing parts of the Israeli and Palestinian society to meet up, to communicate and to work together for peace. The uninterrupted campaign of hatred and revenge that accompanies the two nations has recently become very oppressive. Since the outbreak of the second Intifada the moments of meeting and exchange between the two nations have remarkably diminished not only in the working field (as a result of the no admittance in Israeli of several Palestinian workers as a response to the terroristic attacks of the latest period) but also in the political, cultural and social field in such a way that even long-lasting friendships have been interrupted.

These are the reasons why with the passing of time the international intervention has become more and more sectorial or rather target-oriented. A sort of diplomacy from below that has led feminist and environmentalist associations, trade unions and students and so on , to act as intermediary between associations and Palestinians and Israeli groups, in order to start again a dialogue and a collaboration which are indispensable to try to reach the peace. See also: http://www.palsolidarity.org/

It is in this point of view that the proposal of an action for peace promoted by the GLBT in Palestine, places itself. For a long time now, some parts of the Israeli GLBT have shouldered this task by introducing the topics of the end of the occupation and of the relief of the Palestinians as an absolute political priority. (See my report on Pride 2002 in Tel Aviv that you will find attached).

During the Pride as well as within the Israeli GLBT the campaign of hatred and fear towards the Arabs is much less widespread than in the rest of the country. In the Prides there were just few Israeli flags and not many people expressed their hatred or fear towards Palestine. Furthermore in the gay bars you still can meet mixed couples or groups of Israelis and Palestinian friends. Hardly never, racist campaigns based on ethnic or religious discriminations can take root amongst gay people, perhaps because they have not forgotten the millenary persecution against themselves. By saying this I do not want to state that the GLBT population is immune from socio-cultural influences or that inside it there are not racism or discrimination. I just want to say that gays and lesbians are naturally prone to policy of liberation in general and not only to that against sexual discrimination.
The intervention of the GLBT would assume various meanings apart from the main one of peace: it would help to sustain and to boost the socialisation and the dialogue between Palestinians and Israeli GLBT members; to take part into the democratisation of Palestine by promoting the matter of human rights; to make the Palestine question even more known. While in Israel the GLBT movement has reached important victories, (with the exception of the fight against HIV/AIDS that in Israel is at the European rates of the 80s and the 90s), in Palestine homosexuality is still a complete taboo and the GLBT movement does not exist at all. Recently, on the contrary, due to the uninterrupted war, the situation of the gay population is even worst, with gratuitous internment and a complete silent about the gay question. According to international reports, homosexuality is not contemplated at all in the Palestine legislation, at least the situation is not as bad as in Saudi Arabia where there is the death penalty, or in several states of the USA where the punishment for gay sexual intercourse is up to five-year imprisonment. Nevertheless the reinforcement of the integralist groups (see above) has not certainly improved the situation. On the contrary it has contributed to an even more male-chauvinist and authoritarian interpretation of the Koran that – added to a military mentality typical of wartime – strongly inhibits any chance of discussion and recognition of the right of individual self-determination even with reference to sexuality. This problem regards also the rights of women who recently are too often the target of male frustrations. Indeed in wartime it is difficult to talk about human rights, women rights, sexual orientation etc., but the war exists for everybody, and everybody can die at any moment, everybody can experience bullying, humiliations, tortures, hunger etc., including gays and lesbians, who yet experience the violence twice as much by Israelis and Palestinians too. No, war cannot be a deterrent to the policy of liberation, on the contrary it must be an incentive.

The presence of international GLBT pacifists would help to rise the question, above all considering the privileged position that international pacifists have in Palestine (report of my experience as gay pacifist in Palestine). Certainly the experience of one man cannot be compared to a specific international initiative that is advertised as such, but considering the human rights, the liberation of Palestine and the recognition of a free sexual orientation as equal, can give some help for sure.

Another important topic is publicity. One of the main problems for Palestinians consists in keeping the international attention continuously alive over the tragedy they are experiencing. But the daily violence and the brutality for such a long time decreases the attention, the interest and, unfortunately, the solidarity and the pressure over the governments. Maintaining always high the attention over Palestine is so one of the main aims of the international intervention. The daily news about massacres, destruction of buildings, bombardment of schools, does not make the head lines any longer because it has become routine. On the contrary we have experienced that symbolic actions strike the international political opinion and they can set up strong movements, as we have learned from the campaign for the picking of olives.
Certainly an international demonstration that combines sexual liberation with the liberation of Palestine, would have a very strong echo all over the world. Just as great echo had last year the first Pride in Jerusalem, that needed the protection of police forces, due to the protests of the fundamentalists who for the vast majority were Jews.

What kind of initiative?
Surely, organising GLBT initiatives in Palestine would not be easy at all and it would limit the participation of Israeli GLBT members. On the contrary some kinds of different initiatives that could take place between Jerusalem and Ramallah would allow us to be sure that at least some of them will reach the goal.
I strongly believe that the two main moments of the initiative should be the demonstration in Jerusalem in concomitance with the Pride that will take place this year again (but the Israeli companions have to confirm first that we can join them) and an official meeting with political leaders and representatives of Palestinian NGOs, in order to insert the topic of the rights of gays and lesbians in the project for the liberation of Palestine. I do not think that such action will be difficult to organise, especially considering the international publicity that such initiative would have.
Furthermore, reaching some agreements with the ISM, or with other organisations that deal with actions for peace, we could join for a few days the other initiatives in various Palestinian towns and take part as GLBT members.
We have to work hard and I believe that we are late already if we want to organise an initiative for June 2003 (in case the action can be postponed in September).
First of all, we have to organise a co-ordination of interested people and groups. The project has also been presented at the ESF of November in Florence, during the workshop Gay Lesbian and neoliberalism, and then inserted in the final document of the ESF. In Israel we have kept in touch with Black Loundry, a GLBT association (see Pride report), that is waiting for a written proposal from us, so that we can discuss it in details. We want to set a up a meeting in late February, that can be virtual for those who are too faraway, in order to define an official document through which we can throw out a suggestion for a GLBT initiative of international peace. For this document we could start from the elaboration of the members of the Black Loundry that for some time have dealt with the relationship between GLBT liberation and the end of the occupation, and – not less important – they live in Israel.
Every association and every group must make use of their contacts: associations, members of parliament, political parties, movements and individuals that can give help to the project. Furthermore it is desirable the presence of other GLBT activists who have already been in Palestine.

Massimo Mele
Movimento Omosessuale Sardo