80-year-old Omar Abdalmajeed Asad died while in the custody of Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Wednesday
His death sparked an angry response from American lawmakers including Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin.
Asad had lived and worked for decades in the city of Milwaukee before
returning to Palestine ten years ago. The senator tweeted:
This is a horrible tragedy that demands a thorough investigation
and I want to extend my condolences to the Asad family, including those
in Wisconsin who are mourning this tragic loss and deserve answers.
Also weighing in on Twitter was Rashida Tlaib who wrote
Two days ago, Israeli troops stopped a car driven by 80-year-old
Palestinian-American Omar Abdulmajeed Asad. They dragged him from the
car, beat him, and left him on the ground to die.
Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American in Congress, called the death
outrageous and demanded that Secretary of State Antony Blinken
investigate. Her tweet came a day after a State Department spokesperson
had said it had been in touch with the Israeli government and “supports
a thorough investigation into the circumstances of this incident.”
The IDF says that Asad was detained “after resisting a security
inspection” and that he was alive when released. Many questions remain
unanswered, including why an 80 year old was even stopped in the first
place. However it is not likely that the IDF, investigating itself, will
robustly pursue the true facts. Justice for Omar Abdalmajeed Asad and
his family will in all likelihood not be realised.
It is precisely this sort of incident that damages Israel’s
international reputation and in this instance, given that the victim was
an American citizen, strains relations with Israel’s most important
ally.
The case, as so many others over the years have done, points yet
again to the absence of justice for Palestinians. That being so we
thought it appropriate to publish a transcript, edited for length and
clarity, of our 31 December podcast with the Conservative MP for Reigate
Crispin Blunt. He, together with human rights lawyer Tayab Ali, is the driving force behind the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) launched in the summer of 2021. You can find the podcast here.
What is the thinking behind setting up the ICJP?
It struck me that the time had come to put into practice an idea
Tayab had originally had about having a legal centre, that would be a
place which we would advance legal claims to seek justice for
Palestinians. Because if you can identify routes to restitution and
justice, all of that helps use the moral and legal authority of the
Palestinian position. Whereas resorts to violence, in desperation, do
act to undermine that legal and moral authority, and have so far blocked
routes to justice for Palestinians, rather than enabled them.
And the intent?
I think the objective has got to be to invite people to see the board
from the other side. What does it look like, from Gaza if you're an
ordinary Palestinian looking over the wall at Israel? What is the
perspective of people there? Why have they chosen to support Hamas?
Palestinians were one of the most liberal Arab societies. So how have we
got to a stage where they're voting for a religious based party that is
now the majority representative in their PLC (Palestinian Legislative
Council), although they hadn't had an election since 2006? But why
haven't they had an election since 2006? What route is there for
Palestinians to democratically express their views? And so I don't think
one needs, particularly to advocate, one needs to show and tell. And I
think getting people (to see the other side) who are sympathetic to
Israel - I'm sympathetic to the state of Israel - it is one of the
greatest achievements of the 20th century to find a safe place for
people in Europe who had to face centuries of oppression, and had just
been on the receiving end of the greatest crime in human history. Now,
of course, that has come at a price, finding that home. And it was a
price when the British recognized what we were trying to do in the
Balfour Declaration: that we were going to protect the interests of
people already in the territories where the Jewish home was to be
founded. Only we haven't delivered that half of the Balfour Declaration
and that is the core of the injustice to Palestinians. Israelis deserve
to live in security. But that can only come if the Palestinians are able
to live with a recognition of what they have lost and restitution that
is made.
How will the ICJP pursue its legal mission and what sort of cases do you think you'll take on?
I think Tayib Ali and I share hopes that it will become a legal firm
in its own right at some point and be able to receive instructions in
that way rather than seek legal firms to take on cases for us. And I
also want it to begin to occupy a space where we start to coordinate all
the different legal actions that are being taken on behalf of
Palestinians in different jurisdictions so we don't have people doubling
up and replicating areas. And where (we use) rather obvious legal
avenues for restitution that are not being taken. Or through any other
avenues available to us, whether it's through the Israeli courts, or
whether it's through international courts, or whether it's through
global private sector institutions like Facebook who then set up their
own oversight boards to make sure that people who use their services are
being dealt with fairly, that we can use those as well and we need to
be innovative about how we progress things. But of course at the core of
the issue does remain the most serious breach of international law, the
Fourth Geneva Convention and much flows from that.
So you are talking here about the settlements; they're illegal.
Yes
But they’re continuing. Is that the sort of case that the ICJP will take on? And if so, how significant would a victory be?
Well a victory, any kind of advance in that area is very significant.
But take the United Kingdom for example, there's a very strong campaign
against the boycott and divestment campaign in the UK. But you then
have to say to people who are saying, ‘you can't engage in that’, what
are people supposed to do? You are not allowed to occupy someone else's
territory, expel the people who live there and then settle your own
citizens on it. That is a gross breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
And I'm an ex-soldier. I grew up in a profession where the laws of war
were the most profound laws that we had to understand and abide by and
breaches of them were the most serious matter of all.
And here is a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention; it's really
grotesque that it is largely now being ignored by much of the
international community and the United Kingdom can find itself signing
an agreement with Israel where we're advancing security and
cybersecurity connections. Well, all those things ought to come with a
real consideration of how Israel is going to be invited to meet its
international obligations. It is a signatory to these conventions.
You, as you say, are ex- military and the IDF is an army of
occupation. We've seen the videos where the army has stood by while
settlers attack Palestinian farmers. This cannot be good for an army, to
be in occupation, and for its soldiers to sit by while these various
acts of aggression are carried out by settlers who are there illegally
in the first place.
Exactly, and then one sees settlers who are even illegal by Israeli
standards, and Israeli laws, where illegal settlements are then
constructed, and then they gradually somehow become established
settlements as the years go by. And then the different justice
arrangements available for settlers as opposed to Palestinians under
occupation. And all of it does then present a rather ugly story to the
outside world for anyone who's going to fairly look at the situation.
And I think, of course, there are very many Jews around the world who
also looked at Israel as a very special place as a Jewish state as well
as Israeli Jews for whom actually they want to put this right. And they
don't want the State of Israel to be associated with injustice and the
illegality of driving a coach and horses through the Fourth Geneva
Convention. And actually, that's the basis on which reconciliation can
be found.
You have said you're done with the two state solution
I am done with false hope in Parliament put it that way. I'm an
eternal optimist, but I've got fed up with advocating the cause in the
British Parliament and it has gone nowhere. So being a voice in
Parliament I actually now much more am about doing something real, and
trying to pursue avenues of justice. I think this will be a more
effective use of my experience and time and so that's why I've taken my
efforts in this direction.
I'm interested that you have abandoned the two state solution.
This is something that Jonathan Kuttab, who I spoke with a few months
ago on the podcast
has also done. But I'm wondering, it's a very difficult and hard road.
Do you think that there can be a one state solution that gives equality
to all? Do you see that happening?
Do I see that happening? It's a different question to whether it
could. And theoretically, it could, it depends. It would need political
movements on both sides to be in a majority position in order to enable
it to happen. It may be that the Palestinians, if they get to a position
where they say, ‘well, we're not going to get our own state, we'll go
for a one state solution’, of course, there then becomes a rather basic
request for their individual human rights within that one state if it is
to be a democracy. And that leads you to certain conclusions about how
that state might be organized. And if you got to that point, I think
maybe the Israelis might be more interested in a rather more realistic
two state solution. And even if it's therefore a tactical approach, that
you are prepared to engage in full reconciliation within a single
state, that sends a pretty powerful moral message. And on that basis,
Israel, or the climate of opinion may be able to be created in Israel
that would support a more realistic route to a two state solution.
Interesting thought that the possibility of a one state solution
may be enough to jar the Israelis into actually taking seriously the
idea that a two state solution is viable.
That was actually the thinking that was presented to me as long as 20
years ago. It was then that I was struck by the force of that approach
(that) well if you're not going to give us a state of our own, then it
has to be one state. And what are the implications of that? I quite like
the implications from a moral point of view of making reconciliation
and living together an actual project and then make it a project that
commands global admiration for taking this terrible conflict that so
disfigured the last half of the 20th century and the first part of the
21st and making it an example to the world of reconciliation.