Struggle for Palestinian statehood: The defining liminal moment of our time, By Yusuf M. Tuggar

A liminal moment is a time of realisation that the way things are is no longer sustainable, yet the way thing will become is yet to happen. In other words, a liminal moment is a period of transition. The quest of Palestinians for statehood and the right to exist is going through a transition period in which the world is awakening to the fact that the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and the institutionalised system of segregation used to administer the territories is neither tenable nor sustainable.

Although the violence and carnage being meted out to the Palestinians appear at first glance to strengthen the hands of the Israeli government and provides opportunity for settlers to expand territorial ambitions, a closer examination reveals it to be a pyrrhic victory. The resolve of the innocent civilians on the receiving end is only getting stronger, determined to avert another Nakba, the term referring to the exodus that followed the 1948 partitioning that created the state of Israel.

Many Palestinians lost their homes in the event, never to return again. Families still clutch on to the keys of their houses as mementos of a mistake passed down from one generation to another, that must never be repeated again. The struggle for Palestinian statehood is the liminal moment of our time.

When it comes to standing up against injustice and racial discrimination, Nigeria has maintained an admirable consistency. We deployed resources and energy over three decades towards the liberation of Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Apartheid South Africa. Nigeria follows the dictum of International Relations guru, Hans Morgenthau, of making ethical foreign policy behaviour an integral part of our state objective.

President Bola Tinubu continued this tradition when he spoke out equably for an end to the violence in Palestine and Lebanon during the Arab-OIC Extraordinary Summit in Riyadh on 11th of November, calling for the actual implementation of the two-state solution that has been the subject of several UN Resolutions, dating back to Resolutions 242 and 338 of 1967. President Tinubu’s intervention was considered by other countries in attendance as providing the missing mechanism when he suggested the creation of a secretariat to monitor the implementation of the Summit’s resolutions and provide regular reports to the leadership, until peace is achieved. This was unanimously adopted as a late addition to the draft resolution and hailed as a departure from the previous ones that lacked implementation mechanisms.

President Tinubu has remained deeply concerned by the human suffering in Gaza, especially of children and women. For this reason, Nigeria worked with Red Cross officials and employed its diplomatic channels to facilitate the evacuation of sick and injured children to Egypt, UAE and Jordan. Today, three-year-old Alaa Madhon, nine-month-old Salma Chagu of Khan Yunus, another three-month-old baby Alaa and baby Suhail, are all alive with the help of Nigeria’s back channel diplomatic efforts.

In his speech, President Tinubu reminded the world that the conflict did not begin on 7th October, contrary to media reporting that often gives the impression that the Hamas attack and kidnapping of civilians was the casus belli that justified Israeli aggression, while discounting the daily aggression meted out to Palestinians living under the apartheid system in Gaza and the West Bank. He candidly challenged leaders by stating that it was not enough to issue empty condemnations and although countries in a rules-based international order had the right to self-defence, they had to take into account the proportionality of violence they applied, especially on innocent civilians.

President Tinubu pointed out that an entire civilian population cannot be dismissed as collateral, in meting out revenge for 7th of October. The contradiction of justifying the Israeli aggression against innocent civilians within the context of a rules based international law and order is that the whole point of international law is to rule out revenge. Justice is antithetical to revenge.

Those who attempt to give religious colouration to standing up for what is right and just betray a lack of understanding of the Palestinian quest for statehood. Some of the most prominent figures in that struggle have been Christians; academic Edward Said, PLFP founder George Habash, political activist Hanan Ashrawi are among the recognisable names. And within the state of Israel exist Arabs that are Muslim, Christian and Druze. The Republic of South Africa that instituted a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice is 82 per cent Christian.

The nationhood journey of South Africa and the struggle against apartheid make it the most morally appropriate nation to file such a case against Israel where a similar apartheid system confines over 2.2 million people in an open-air prison called Gaza. Like South African Bantustans or homelands, those living within require passes to move around, their fundamental human rights restricted. So South Africans can identify more easily with the plight of the Palestinians as non-citizens on their own land.

But Nigeria can also identify with such a system and share the pain because of our own journey to nationhood. Apartheid was simply an extreme form of indirect rule. The system designed by Lord Lugard and Jan Smuts to answer the native question was to segregate a black majority, creating Sabon Garis and Zangos that restricted movement and mingling among the owners of the land. Black people were not allowed to venture into the Government Reservation Areas (GRAs) of Ikoyi in Lagos and Nasarawa in Kano, else one would be arrested for “wandering.” Late Ibrahim Gusau (who later became a Minister in the first republic) was punished by the colonial authorities for being found in Sabon Gari, with a copy of the West African Pilot, published by anti-colonial agitator Nnamdi Azikiwe.

It was therefore not surprising that after gaining independence, Nigeria’s foreign policy maintained a proclivity for standing up against discrimination and injustice. Apart from supporting liberation movements to free others from the colonial choke hold, Nigeria refused to sell oil to Apartheid South Africa and penalised businesses that dealt with racist regimes on the continent.

The Balewa government lobbied for the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth and set up the National Committee Against Apartheid across the country, the Gowon government helped strengthen the United Nations Committee Against Apartheid and pushed for recognition of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde as independent states, the Murtala/Obasanjo administration created the Southern Africa Relief Fund (SAFR) or Mandela tax as it was popularly known, and the Shagari government engineered the Lancaster House Conference that paved the way for Zimbabwe’s independence. President Tinubu continues this noble tradition by standing up for the actualisation of the two-state solution.

Nigeria’s diversity gives it an advantage on the world stage in consensus building through the hard work of conversation and virtues of principled compromise. Though this may be taken for granted at home because it comes naturally to us, it remains an uncommon trait abroad much admired by others. It is a gift that we must continue to tap into in our share political project both at home and abroad.

Yusuf M Tuggar is the minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.