The London evening chill did not deter friends of the Palestinian people from coming to hear Marwan Bishara, university lecturer, writer and campaigner for Palestine. The talk was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)

, within a week of now famous London 'Don't attack Iraq, Justice for Palestine', anti-war march to Hyde Park on Sept 28 which the PSC co-sponsored.

Bishara, now based in Paris, grew up in Nazareth, the largest Arab city in Israel. About one million Israeli citizens are Palestinian (Arab) Christians and Muslims. Bishara's talk emphasised on the Palestinian struggle along democratic lines within Israel. But Palestinian citizens of Israel are treated as immigrants in their own lands. As "Arab-Israelis" they are treated no differently from the Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

Bishara asserts that Israel has failed its citizens, be they Palestinian or Jews, by treating its Palestinian citizens as a 'fifth column' that threatens the national security of the Israel state. I am not being emotional, I am passionate about the cause and I know the hard facts, he says.

No democracy

The democratic right of Palestinians in Israel to speak, to be free of discrimination, to be safe, to move freely, in other words, to be equal citizens, are increasingly threatened. Palestinians form about 20 percent of the total population. Bishara reasons that they cannot be true members of a state that defines itself by, and whose whole purpose is, its Jewishness. Israel cannot be a democracy for all its citizens while continuing to be a state for all Jews.

Palestinian school children in Israel are taught Hebrew literature and ancient Jewish teaching about the attachment of Jews for Palestine. They are forbidden to read Palestinian poetry or to study Palestinian cultural bonds to the land. Israeli history text books taught them that Palestine had been mostly swamps until Jewish settlers rehabilitate the land with hard labour and much sacrifice.

Two-thirds of lands owned by Palestinians were confiscated under various laws and military regulations. Bishara's father's home village in Tarshila in the Galilee, once known for its figs and tobacco, was reduced by 95 percent after five Jewish settlements were built on it.

But this is not enough for Israel. Bishara compares the land of Palestine to a bride, "The bride is beautiful, but she is taken." The only way for Israel to expand is to win Palestinian lands by force, war or by driving Palestinians out. The calls of "transfer of Palestinians" across the border, has moved from the margins to the centre of Israel polity.

Driving out the last Palestinian

Bishara's concerns on transfer is not a figment of his imagination. In September this year, Israeli newspapers published an interview with Shmuel Eliahu, the chief rabbi of Safad, in which he called for transfer of Arabs to Jordan, the Muslim republics of former Soviet Union or Canada.

The Peace Bloc, a coalition of left groups in Israel, warned that prime minister Ariel Sharon is pressing the US to attack Iraq in order that Israel may exploit the chaos to carry out the transfer. This opportunity allegedly provides Israel for its so-called final solution to the conflict.

The idea of expulsion of all Arabs is as old as modern Zionism. It was conceived by the 'prophet' and founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzi. Writing in 1895, Herzi proposed the transfer of the Arab population out, "discreetly and circumspectly" into transit countries.

The power which saw fit to partition Palestine, saw transfer as a "clean and final solution". The 1937 report of the British royal commission headed by Lord Peel recommended the partition of Palestine between its Jewish and Palestinian inhabitants and that 225,000 Arabs be transferred out of the 20 percent of the country the British had earmarked for Jewish sovereignty.

By the end of the 1948 war, some 700,000 Arabs became refugees in Gaza and the West Bank. According to UN sources, there are some four million Palestinian refugees today.

Israel's apartheid wall

The three decades of occupation which preceded suicide bombings, have robbed many Palestinians of a sense of purpose. Bishara, who authored Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid, Prospects for Resolving the Conflict (Zed Books), opines that it is little wonder that a growing number are finding a purpose in death. A people denied of other forms of expression will increasingly support whatever form of resistance that is available.

Both Sharon and Hamas speak the same language of revenge and killing of innocent civilians. Hamas fights with human bombs in order to rid Palestine of the occupation, while Sharon pursues it with American bombs in order to maintain Israeli domination over Greater Israel.

Relatively unnoticed, Israel on June 16 this year began building a wall in the West Bank allegedly as a necessary move for the prevention of suicide bombings inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel. This allegation appears a pretext for the illegal annexation of more land in the occupied territories. In a report issued by Israeli State Comptroller in July, most suicide bombers entered Israel through checkpoints. A wall does not resolve these concerns.

This wall is three times as long and twice as high as the one which divided Berlin. Dubbed the Apartheid Wall, the construction will unilaterally annex 10 percent of the West Bank.

The search for peace in Palestine remains elusive as ever while Palestinians at home and the several millions in forced exile brace for the Bush war against Iraq.

Authoritarian regimes, international financial institutions and capitalism put up fences against democracy. Fences can be real (the Berlin and Israel's Apartheid Wall, the Woomera detention centre for "illegals", the cages built around the conference centre in Quebec for the 2001 Summit of the Americas) or virtual as Naomi Klein theorises in her new book Fences and Windows (Vintage, Canada).

The launch of the book on Sept. 26 sponsored by the Toronto Women's Bookshop, drew throngs to the Bloor Street United Church in downtown Toronto where it was held. Judging by enthusiastic turnout, Klein no doubt, is Toronto's favourite daughter.

A small group of demonstrators with slogans, "End Occupation" had earlier gathered near the traffic intersection near the church. The slogan, which is a mantra of the people's movement against irresponsible globalisation, has included in its ambit, anti-war cries post Sept 11 and for the freedom of all peoples under occupation by undemocratic regimes (including capitalists).

The image of the fence

Klein, famous author of No Logo

, has put together a collection of her writings and speeches in the last two years in Fences and Windows . The image of the fence "kept coming up in discussion, debates and in my own writing, it seemed significant to me", she said in her speech.

"After all, the past decade of economic integration has been fuelled by promises of barriers coming down, of increased mobility and greater freedom. And yet 12 years after the celebrated collapse of the Berlin Wall, we are surrounded by fences yet again, cut off from one another, from the earth and from our own ability to imagine that change is possible.

"The economic process that goes on by the benign euphemism, 'globalisation', now reaches into every aspect of life, transforming every activity and natural resource into a measured and owned commodity.

"The current stage of capitalism is not simply about trade in the traditional sense of selling more products across borders. It is also about feeding the market's insatiable need for growth by redefining as 'products' entire sectors previously considered part of 'the commons' and not for sale."

Privatising 'the commons'

This invasion of "the commons" by the private has reached into categories of health, education, seeds, ideas, genes. These, as well as aboriginal remedies, plants, water and human stem cells are purchased, patented and fenced off. These fences separate communities from what are meant to be public resources. Public property is now fenced as private property, thus locking for example much-needed water, health facilities, information and resources.

On the other side of the fence, are real people, shut out of schools, hospitals, workplaces, their own homes, farms and communities. Fences, real and virtual, restrict movement across borders, prevent the expression of political dissent and demonstration on public streets.

Fences of social exclusion can discard an entire industry or an entire country as in Argentina when this year, Argentina is told by the IMF that she would not get a loan unless she reduces social spending, privatises more resources and eliminates support to local industries. Argentina's economic crisis is in fact deepened by the very same IMF policies.

Centralisation of power

When people reclaim the streets in the so-called 'anti-globalisation' protests, it is not an act in senseless futility, as some professor of economics in air-conditioned university lecture halls would have us believe. The protests are mass mobilisation strategies and must be seen as such. Protest is a visual articulation that more trade (alone) will not provide solutions to poverty, migration, dictatorships and terrorism.

The image of the fence as illuminated by Klein as a tool of those in power and control of much needed resources, is a powerful one.

Human rights activists recognise the common thread in the people's protest movements today, be it the Chiapas uprising, the intifida (Palestine civil uprising), the sweat-shops, manipulation of the ballot for representative rule or genetically modified foods (and the list goes on).

What unites people across issues and borders, is the critique of how power is distributed and a belief that decision-making is always more accountable when it is closer to the people who must live with the decisions.

When protest specifically targets 'free trade', people are not against trade itself. People are against the use of trade and investment that erode the principles of self-government. Protests target particular economic models that have a tendency to treat trade not as a part of internationalism but as the overarching infrastructure that swallows human rights, the environment and democracy inside the perimeters of trade.

New people politics

Resistance to 'occupying forces' of the lords of 'free trade' and occupying forces of authoritarian regimes over people's democratic spaces at the 'fences' has taken novel forms.

The stone-throwing intifida against the Israeli occupying forces is classic. Klein's Fences and Windows , provide imaginative examples. 'Free trade' protestors have 'fired' water pistols at water cannons. Hovering helicopters have been mocked with swarms of paper airplanes. The famous Italian direct action group, Tute Bianche (white overalls) had marched to a police line as 'Michelin Men', in white jumpsuits stuffed with rubber tires.

Klein reasons that these tactics reflect a refusal to engage in classic power struggles. The goal is not to take power for themselves but to challenge power centralisation on principle.

The resilience of 'fenced-out' communities is a story in itself in Klein's new book.

In the outskirts of Rome, Italians fed-up with corrupt politicians on both the left and right, have reclaimed abandoned buildings for social centres. The social centre network is a parallel political sphere that, rather than trying to gain state power, provides alternative state services, such as day-care and advocacy for refugees, at the same time as it confronts the state through direct action.

Argentinians have lost interest in the IMF's money. Regardless of any bailout and the failure of their politicians, the people are building new political counter-power centres in their community. These take the shape of neighbourhood assemblies at several levels. People are talking about a "citizen's congress" to demand accountability and transparency from their politicians. They are thinking about kick-starting local industries and re-nationalising assets. Instead of begging for loans, the people of Argentina are demanding reparations from the IMF.

These appear to be the new people politics. How we would work our own fences and walls is still pretty much up to us, the people. We might take much comfort that the movement to liberate is global, worked on the streets and wherever there is welcoming people's spaces. The word on the street is: End Occupation.

Acknowledgments: Thanks to Hoda and Fatima for dragging me to Holborn that night, Tina of U of T who got 'unwaged' tickets for Naomi's talk, and caring friends in both cities.