By Marina Coblentz
Jan 26, 2025
Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh is the founder and director of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, Bethlehem University. He has a PHD in zoology and specialises in molecular and cyto-genetics. He served at Tennessee, Duke and Yale universities. He published 2500 scientific papers, 30 book chapters, hundreds of articles, and several books on topics as varied as the environment and climate, biodiversity and cancer, cultural heritage and Human Rights. He oversaw the formulation of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan and projects empowering farmers, women, and children that benefitted tens of thousands. He is laureate of the Paul K. Feyerabend Foundation award, the Takreem award, Peacekeeper of the year award, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 2025.
Professor Kumsieh was nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize by Merid Corrigan McGuire, winner of the same prize in 1976 for promoting peace in Northern Ireland. For Novi magazin, Kumsiyeh talks about the nomination, peace activism, the misconception about the possibility of dividing the country between the autochthonous population and the colonizers…
On January 1, 2025, you were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. You have been a peace activist in Palestine and abroad for half a century. What are your achievements?
I am honored to be nominated by Meredith Maguire. There are many such, equally valuable individuals who take initiatives to improve life, I am just one of them. Successes are also made by the communities, the teams we belong to. A few examples include: the “Wheels of Justice” bus tour I co-organized in the US lasted 6 years during which we spoke at thousands of educational institutions, from high schools to universities, mosques, churches, even a few synagogues, and hundreds of community centers to advocate for peace and justice – justice is a prerequisite for peace. We have influenced tens of thousands of people, some of whom have become lifelong advocates for peace and justice. We also launched a petition on the inalienable right of return of Palestinian refugees, which gathered 1.5 million signatures in 1999. I also led many demonstrations, dialogues, exposed genocide, ecocide and scholasticicide, wrote hundreds of articles and books, influencing the change of policy of some governments. I donate the money that came with the awards I receive for this work to our institutions and my colleagues. Most important was the establishment of institutions in the homeland such as the Palestinian Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability.
In your 2004 book „Sharing the Land of Canaan“ you blended your scientific background with your peace activism. What are some of its main points?
Ben Gurion in the early 1920s came up with a public relation campaign by which the Zionist colonial movement -which he himself described as colonial- claimed it was interested in sharing Palestine, i.e. splitting it with the indigenous people. In his diaries and letters to his son, Ben Gurion explained that the idea is only for propaganda purposes, giving as example the European colonisers of North America who even made treaties with indigenous people, but once they strengthened their basis, they violated the treaties and seized the entire country.
When speaking to the leadership of the Yishuv he said that Israel will „ …expand to the rest of the country with or without agreement with the Arabs.“ This is what happened, 1948, 1967, now 2024-25, including further expansions into Syria. This is what colonialists do. Many people in the West as well as some liberal Jews mistakenly think that there was a real plan to have a country divided between the colonisers and the colonised. Even some Palestinian leaders agreed to it, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas convinced the Palestinian Liberation Organization to accept what has become known as the „two state solution“. There was never in the history of colonisation a country split between indigenous and non-indigenous people, i.e. colonisers. Attempts to do so as in South Africa was called apartheid was not acceptable to anyone, including the international community. The Oslo Accords committed Palestinians to recognise the Israeli state on 78% of Palestine without „Israel“ agreeing to recognize Palestine or even minimal Palestinian rights. My book explains why there is no such thing as a two state „solution“ to colonial/anti-colonial struggle, there is two state delusion or illusion, but not solution. So here we are in 2024 still in the same impasse. Since the Oslo Accords there have been endless negotiations that have led nowhere. Zionists have been letting the idea of a two state solution linger giving time for increased colonisation, but in the past two decades clearly spoke and voted in their parliament against it.
What is the solution then to 100 year old conflict between Israeli Jews and Palestinians?
The full title of my book is „Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle“. The resolution to any conflict is the application of Human Rights. When Human Rights are violated there cannot be peace. Consider the 8,5 million Palestinian refugees and displaced persons. According to international law and UN resolutions refugees have the right to return to their place of origin. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes that. Other articles forbid discrimination against people based on religion or the enactment of other apartheid laws. We need this to be implemented. Whether there will be elections, a parlimentary system, a confederation, a kingdom or two states is all meaningless without Human Rights. When human dignity and rights are protected, political arrangements then become obvious.
In your book „Popular Resistance in Palestine: A history of Hope and Empowerment“ you cover Palestinian civil non-violent resistance going back to 1878 i.e. the first Jewish colony under the Ottoman rule to the second Intifada in 2000. What impact has Palestinian violence had over the decades on efforts to reach peace and co-existence with Israeli Jews, as compared to the impact of peaceful resistance?
I support non-violent, non-armed popular resistance. As a scientist I have to describe things as they are: When European colonisers went to North America which they wanted to conquer, they named towns and cities „new“ this and that, like New York, New Orleans, to create a country similar to what they left behind. Indigenous people, whose way of life evolved over thousands of years, were different -they were therefore in their way. The colonisers used violence, their only tool, to rid themselves of the people of the land they coveted. The tribes resisted in different ways, the Apaches undertook armed struggle, even learned to use European horses and guns, others offered peace pipes during negotiations. But whatever way they resisted, their land was usurped.
There is no anti-colonial resistance by one method only, one cannot expect masses of people to all resist in the same way. Nelson Mandela believed in armed resistance, Desmond Tutu in non-armed resistance, but whatever the method used, it is irrelevant to the coloniser. No matter how peaceful the resistance, they want the land without the people on it, end of story. Therefore, like in South Africa and over 200 other colonized countries before us, the way to end violence, mostly perpetrated by the colonizers, and resistance of all forms is to end the colonization process, i.e. decolonize.
Was the Palestinian/Hamas October 7th, 2023 attack on Israel that targeted mostly civilians who made up most of the victims resistance or was it something else?
There are essentially three types of anti-colonial resistance: collaboration, considered as a form of legitimate resistance by those who collaborate, e.g. Chief Bhutelezi in South Africa who collaborated with the Apartheid regime, or some native Americans who were trackers for the British colonisers in the North-East and the planes. At the other end, there is armed resistance. Both these forms of resistance garner a small proportion of a population. The great majority follow non-violent resistance, as myself. In South Africa and Ireland those that engaged in armed resistance, including the African National Congress and the Irish Republican Army, committed atrocities. In South African, rubber tires were placed around people’s necks who were then burned alive. The problem is apartheid, racism, colonialism, all of which are violent. In turn, they generate violence. So October 7th, 2023 happened. The events of this particular day need to be investigated. If you want to stop resistance, any kind of resistance and its symptoms, including terrorism, end apartheid, colonialism and, one should add, economic theft, e.g. Israel’s control over Palestinian territorial waters rich in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of natural gas and its issuance of exploration licenses. Indeed, since apartheid ended in South Africa, people are no longer burned alive, whites are not killing blacks and vice versa, the underlying etiology of the disease has been removed. Focusing on what indigenous people have done will not solve the problem. Since 1948 the conflict has caused the death of Israeli Jews in the lower tens of thousands and of Palestinians in the lower hundreds of thousands.
You are a Palestinian Orthodox Christian who has been arrested and detained many times by the Israeli army while peacefully protesting injustices. Have you had any issue with the Palestinian authorities?
Yes, but not because I am Christian. I have been taken for interrogation a couple of times. The Palestinian Authority does not like me because I speak about one country and am not supportive of the delusion of „ two states“. The Palestinian Authority also does not like me because I criticise its corruption.
Has your Christian background in any way influenced your approach to the Israli-Palestinian conflict?
No, because members of any religion hold different political views. However, I will note that pre-1948, the proportion of Muslims to Christians was 90-10 which is the same among the 850,000 Palestinians who became refugees in 1948. Zionists do not differentiate between the two. All colonialism is against human and biological diversity.
What is the impact of the relentless bombardment of Gaza that releases climate warming gases, the use of white phosphor and the sewage leaked into the Mediterranean sea due to destroyed sewage systems?
The damage is extreme. In North Gaza 94% of tree cover was destroyed. Whether they can regrow is questionable due to soil pollution and degradation of the water acquiefer. Some of the degradation will likely never be reclaimed.
Your book entitled „Mammals of the Holy Land“ was published in 1996. Have the numbers of endangered species decreased further or become extinct, and have other species been added to the endangered list since?
Of the 120 mammal species, the leopard has dissappeared, others have had their numbers reduced, and several of the 540 bird species have gone extinct in the past 30 years. The continued environmental degradation negatively affects all fauna, among which also reptiles, amphibians, and fish of which some have disappeared or nearly. We need more scientists and more research to study these things.
In view of calls within Israel to rase the West Bank similarly to Gaza and to creating a „Greater Israel“, are you personally worried?
As a scientist being worried is not the kind of thing I engage in because I have to remain objective and positive. We could be wipped out. Had I been born into slavery 300 years ago, I would never see the end of slavery, does that mean that I should not resist slavery? Israel will continue usurping land until the end of the colonisation process. That end can come in three ways: as in Algeria which the French left after a bloody war and Algeria obtained independence; as in the US and Australia where very few indigenous people are left; or, as in most of the world, where the outcome is one country for everyone, i.e. descendents of colonisers and colonised. The latter is the outcome for which I continue to resist non-violently.
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