“I was born in Haifa. I am older than Israel,” said Lilian Mattar-Patey, a Windsor-based United Church minister. She addressed crowds gathered beneath a grey sky at Victoria Park in London on April 19 for a Palestine and Lebanon rally; a social media post about the protest read Two Nations. One Voice. Together, we rise. “In 1948, the first day of the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’, my brother was carrying me. I was less than two years old then, and he said that the Israeli soldiers were shooting at us, and one bullet came beside my ear and he said if he didn’t jump, it would have gone in my head. And so the killing continues for so many years…They are doing the same in Lebanon what they did in Gaza. This is repeating itself and the world is sitting watching rather than trying to stop them…What can we do? What you can do is contact politicians and tell them to do something, to speak up for human rights. For Lebanese, Palestinians, and all of humanity, we need to be free to live in our own homelands.”
She listed some of the policies that form Israel’s apartheid state: arbitrary detentions of Palestinians, restricted movement of Palestinians, and demolitions of Palestinian homes.
A 2022 UN report by former UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk states that Palestinians can be “imprisoned indefinitely through administrative detention” by Israeli forces. They are incarcerated without charges, evidence, trials, or convictions. The conviction rate is over 99 percent. This includes Palestinian children. Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reports that Israeli forces had 351 Palestinian children detained or imprisoned at the end of December 2025.
“In the middle of the night, they can come to your home, and take one of your children, and they will have no reason to tell you why they are taking your child,” said Mattar-Petey.
In 2017, fourteen year old Obaida Jawabra was detained by Israeli forces while on his way to a store. The Israelis bound his hands in plastic cords, covered his eyes and nose in a blindfold that made it “hard to breathe”, made him fall as he walked sightless, and beat him “in places that would leave no marks” so that he couldn’t testify to being brutalized. The next year, he shared his story in a 7-minute film, OBAIDA. He had dreams of becoming a chef; in the film, he fries vegetables in sizzling oil, presses sliced tomatoes in a pan, flips a mass of steaming lamb, vegetables, and yellowed rice – maqlouba – onto a dish to the faces of his smiling family. Jawabra asked: “Why are we so different from other children in the world? Why are we detained when we’re young and made to suffer, while others are happy playing sports, and with many opportunities that we don’t have? To this day, no one can answer me.”
Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Israeli-administered territory “Area C” of the West Bank are barred from building homes. Lynk’s report states: The United Nations has observed that, because permits for construction for Palestinian homes and property in East Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank “are nearly impossible to obtain,” Palestinians often build without one. In turn, the Israeli military frequently orders the demolition of Palestinian homes and property built without a permit. The report outlines that land is seized for “military needs”, “public needs” for “exclusive Jewish Israeli use”, and for “state land” of which 99.76% has been for Israeli settlements.
“Israelis can destroy or bulldoze your home if they want to,” said Mattar-Patey. “They say it is for their own security – what security? They continue to say ‘we need security and that is why we need the Palestinians out’.” (more...)
“Two Nations. One Voice”: Palestine and Lebanon rally grips Victoria Park
No comments:
Post a Comment