As I’m preparing this archival program (Part two of two) for rebroadcast at the end of June, 2020, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to announce his government’s annexation of major areas of the Israeli-Occupied Palestinian West Bank.
This is Prof. Edward Said’s last major speech on Palestine given at UC Berkeley seven months before his death on September 25, 2003. He was born in Jerusalem in 1935, lived in exile in the US and was professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
In this conclusion of his speech Edward Said gave a report on GAZA, still under military occupation. He also referred to the first and second Intifada, the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, and the beginning of the building of the separation wall.
The building of Israeli settlements, the major cause of conflict and suffering, continues to this day. By July 2020 more than 800,000 settlers are estimated to live in 150 exclusively Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank including East Jerusalem all of which are considered to be in violation of international law by the International Court of Justice. The West Bank is home to 2.16 Palestinians.
Since Said spoke in 2003 many analysts and even some governments have pointed to international law codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention that states: “The occupying power shall not … transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.” Article 49 of that same convention also protects the legal right of Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation.
Said ends with a very personal description of the healing collaboration between him and the Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim. The youth orchestra that they founded together in 1999 to bring Palestinians and Israelis together still performs in 2020.
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