Friday 15 October 2004

Weblog by Elizabeth Block

8:45am Arrived early. All of Europe’s left swarms around, waiting for doors to open. All the usual alternative newspapers being flogged, as well as a new crop of European ones.

8:55 am Joined with a freedom-of-immigration guy I met on the bus and got in a side entrance before main gates opened. Got press pass and turquoise wrist band. One of my favourite colours but felt like a newborn wearing a wristband.

9am Sessions are supposed to be starting but clearly everything is late. Stalls still setting up. Found a coffee bar and met Jan Burgess, another American. I’d heard about her as she’s an academic based in Sheffield who’s active in peace circles. Turns out she’s writing a book on the US military for Pluto Books.

I know several people working on private military companies so we exchanged email addresses.

Jan said she’s been dropping into non-political chat rooms, such as a Good Housekeeping or a French language chat room. Said she’s amazed by the level of faith in arms. “When I write something about peace initiatives, people are so surprised. They think that being armed to the teeth is the key to security.”

As an American citizen, Jan can vote by absentee ballot (postal vote) in her state - Nebraska. Although voting is supposed to be private, her vote was public as she arrived at the postbox near Conway Hall just as the box was being emptied. So she shouted, “Wait – I have to post my vote for Kerry!” She got a big cheer from the many ESF’ers around.

9:20am First session – Great Hall 6. The somewhat forbidding title: “The Exemplarity of the Palestinian Question: Social Movements and Building Strategies.”

I chose this out of the many many offerings starting at same time as I’d met a woman from the Alternative Information Centre in Jerusalem (AIC) on walk up to Ally Pally and I’m concerned about the issue as a member of Peace Now UK, a mainly Jewish group lobbying for a two-state solution and an end to settlements.

Curiously, my new friend had told me that the AIC is funded by Basques (!) and sure enough a Basque named Josu Egireun from the Basque Social Movement was listed as one of the speakers.

Two Gaza residents were scheduled as speakers but apparently had been prevented from leaving by the Israeli authorities. So the first speaker was one Hassan who called on the people of Gaza to know of the international movement to stop aggression. “Is what happens to use the result of peace initiatives?” he asked? “Of the road map? Of Oslo?”

I’m not too sure about the “us” as it isn’t the Basques who were the subject of roadmaps and Oslo. Clearly he’s identified with his subject.

To defeat Sharon, he said, “We need to focus on one tactic: a large demo in every European city to get European governments to stop Israeli military action.”

Then came Matan Kaminer, a Refusenik – a member of the Israeli armed forces who refuses to serve in the Occupied Territories. Matan and four comrades have the distinction of having been given the longest sentences to date – two years, but were let out recently after a mere 21 months.

Matan, who speaks unaccented American English, is one of the most eloquent and wonderful people I’ve ever heard, and I’ve had the opportunity to hear Refuseniks before. He explained the distinction between “occupational Refuseniks” and pacifists. See www.refuz.org.il for a full story.

Most important, when someone urged a “one-state” solution, which could mean an unlimited right of return to all Palestinians, Matan sighed. “The situation is so much more complicated than people in Europe realise,” he said. He was obliquely referring to the fact that, because of the high Palestinian birth rate, Jews would soon become a minority in Israel.<>“We must be realistic,” he said. “The fact is that returning Palestinians would not find their own houses, or if they did, someone else would live in them. The fact is that this is not the only occupation in the Middle East. There’s a worse one in Iraq.”

The Basque speaker then came on in Spanish so I wandered off to find some headphones.<>

11 am Stopped for a cigarette which I thought I would have to smoke in shame outside. It turns out that when you invite 20,000 plus Europeans to your forum, there will be smoking everywhere. Not an ashtray in sight, so people made do with coffee lids or whatever. Would have liked a coffee but long queues.

I sat down at a smoke-filled table which turned out to be occupied entirely by Greeks. I talked with Yannis Protonotarios, a professor off earthquake engineering but at ESF as a member of the Greek Social Forum. “We’re very active as our forum includes five parties of the left, big trade unions and local forums. We have organised many demos against the war in Iraq including 15 February 2003 and another big one when the war started. For a while we had a demo every week but now we’re planning an anti-occupation march in late November.

Went out to find another coffee bar and found a Basque music quintet performing in the foyer.

11:25 am Back to Great Hall 6 to hear a speaker from a Tunisian human rights group. “No one has mentioned the importance of human rights and democracy in the region,” he claimed. Seems to me that I have heard both mentioned more than once.

A Palestinian speaker called for a “European Day for Palestine”. He suggested 10 December – international human rights day.

Noon: I missed some of the Palestinian session as I went to Great Hall 9 for “Living in Fear: Civil Liberties and the War on Terror.”

Weblog by Elizabeth Block