SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINIANS: UN DAY DEMANDS JUSTICE DESPITE NAM'S BETRAYAL

Tomorrow is the United Nations Day of Solidarity with Palestine. Diplomatically, it delivers a powerful message, urging the world community to take the measures necessary to end Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. Yet, in practice, the day passes without bringing any tangible change on the ground.

- By Ameen Izzadeen

As the UN marks International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian people, in the war-ravaged Gaza, children are seen standing outside their tents after heavy rain flooded their makeshift camp. AFP.

In the early years, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and Arab and Islamic states carried the Palestinian torch, burning with the zeal that fuelled the 1954 Afro-Asian Solidarity Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, and reignited at every NAM summit. But with the international order changing after the collapse of the Cold War in 1991, the Palestinian cause came to be sacrificed at the altar of unprincipled foreign policies that most NAM nations—save a few—adopted.

The biggest loss was when India, once the global voice of the NAM, began to sideline the Palestinian cause it had unwaveringly championed. Today, under the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janatha Party government, India has become a powerful ally of Israel, acting like Zionism’s South Asian agent or viceroy. Palestinian activism, which was once regarded as part of India’s state policy, is today an irritation that activists fear may lead to state harassment or even arrests.

The erstwhile NAM nations—save a few that still resist the imperialist and neocolonialist agendas of the United States and other powerful nations—make no effort to mark the UN Solidarity Day that became part of international diplomacy since its passage in the General Assembly on December 2, 1977. Resolution 32/40B, which they sponsored during NAM’s active days, declares November 29 as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.