The reasons for the explosion which caused the Intifada of
September 28, 2000, were there for all to see, written for years in
bold letters on the wall. Nevertheless, the outbreak of violence
led most of the Israeli public, and especially the peace camp, to
feel a deep sense of humiliation, so deep that for the first month
of the Palestinian uprising it looked as if there was nobody to
talk to in Israel. The problem was that the Israelis, including the
peace camp, had become accustomed to the illusion that peace is
possible with settlements. This illusion was shattered with the
bloody events of October 2000.
In dealing in the following excerpts1 with the apartheid condition
that developed in the occupied Palestinian territories over the
last seven years before the situation exploded, I am not saying
that "I told you so," but rather making a plea: can there arise in
Israel a peace camp that will at once take up the challenge and go
back to speaking of peace in terms not only of "security" but also
of justice, equality and universal values? Or is it too late?
The Election of Ehud Barak as Prime Minister2
The rejoicing in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square by tens of thousands of
young people served as visual proof to the Palestinian Authority
that it was correct in its former assumption that the majority of
the Israeli public supports peace. However, ever since the
Palestinian Authority took over in 1994, these people have been
living under the misapprehension that we have got rid of the
occupation and left behind a world in which the Palestinians as an
occupied people are naturally rebelling. Rather than seeing the
unfolding Palestinian reality as it really was, for them it looked
as if only Bibi Netanyahu's policies had delayed the liberating
process. In effect, Ehud Barak and his coalition would merely be
improving the de luxe occupation that has developed in the
territories since May 1994, even if it is wrapped in the euphemism
of "separation." In Afrikaans, separation is called
"apartheid."
The regime of "separation" in Israel has two mainstays: control
over the land in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and control over
the freedom of movement of the Palestinian population. Palestinian
land is dissected by settlements, be they small, medium or large,
and by massive bypass roads and circular security roads leading to
nowhere. The settlement policy, which began immediately after the
conquest of the territories in 1967, created the geography on which
the Oslo agreements were founded.
This is what defined the "capacity" for Palestinian development: in
the Gaza Strip, the north and south are divided by the settlements
of the Katif Bloc; the southern part of the West Bank is divided
from the north by Jerusalem, both because the Palestinians' entry
into Jerusalem has been forbidden since 1993 and because of the
constantly expanding settlements of Ma'aleh Adumim, Efrat and the
Etzion Bloc; and the northern part of the West Bank is broken up
into enclaves by settlements like Ariel, Alfei Menashe, Kedumim and
Karnei Shomron, as well as by the systematic expulsion of Bedouins
from the lands in the Jordan Valley.
In addition to the geographical fragmentation of the territories,
all Israeli governments since 1991, and particularly since 1993,
divided up Palestinian society into sub-strata, characterized by
their different degrees of mobility. While denying the basic right
of freedom of movement to the whole population, the Israeli
authorities were generous enough to allocate different amounts of
"movement privileges" to various sections of the population, with
top priority in the permit system going to the heads of the
Palestinian Authority. The separation regime is an invention of
neither Bibi Netanyahu, nor of the Likud. Actually, it was
perfected during the preceding Labor-Meretz government (1992-96),
which turned the official Palestinian representatives into a
privileged group, divorced from the people and exploiting to the
maximum the enjoyment of economic, cultural and personal benefits
inherent in their generous travel permits.
The policies of closure and of demographic fragmentation were
harsher in the days of the Labor government (with or without
terrorist attacks) and served as a fine means of pressure during
the Oslo negotiations. They wore down the Palestinian Authority
economically, deepened the alienation between the public and its
representatives, and brought to the negotiating table a leadership
aware of its weakness in the eyes of its own people and its
helplessness in the face of Israeli dictates. Only Netanyahu's
personality blurred the fact that the Likud and the Labor
governments (and now apparently the Barak government) have
different views only as regards the size of the Palestinian
enclaves and the territorial continuity between them. However,
while the Western governments were in a hurry to criticize
Netanyahu, experience shows that they are less prone to criticize a
"leftist" Israeli government for the forceful administrative and
economic measures which it, too, takes in order to squeeze
concessions out of the Palestinian Authority. In the long run, it
would become clear that these would become intolerable for the
Palestinian people.
Are the Settlers to Blame?3
In a glossy pamphlet presented in the Knesset as "food for thought"
by the rightist-religious "Front for Eretz Yisrael," the settler
institutions try to persuade Israeli (Jewish) citizens why "another
retreat" or withdrawal in the occupied territories is out of the
question. The first argument is directed to those opposed to ruling
over another people. The pamphlet claims that "there is no
demographic problem in Judea and Samaria, the hilly region in the
center of the state where about 170,000 Jewish residents are living
in 144 settlements. Some 1.2 million Arabs populate only about 28
percent of the area. The areas which it is under proposal to return
[to the Palestinians] are empty and only a small part is used for
agriculture. In the Oslo agreements, towns and villages that were
returned contained 97 percent of the Palestinian population, living
in 27.8 percent of the area. Today there is already no demographic
problem and Israel is not ruling over another people."
The logic is clear: the Palestinians have to be satisfied with the
area where they are living today. Unlike we Jews, they are not in
need of space in which to plan their community's future. Elsewhere
in the world such discriminatory and shameful allocation of living
space according to national origin would be contemptuously rejected
as racism.
For the Palestinians, every one of the settlements in whose shadow
they live is a symbol of degradation and an act of racism. For
their part, however, the settlers, be they in Hebron or in Efrat,
in Yitzhar or in Givat Ze'ev, are right in demanding that they
should not be abandoned on the battlefield. It was the Israeli
government, all the Israeli governments, that encouraged them and
sent them to put into practice this discriminatory logic; at the
same time, the Palestinian physical and economic infrastructure in
the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank was not developed, encouraging
their emigration from there.
Discriminatory logic according to national origin isn't only a
matter of "crazy" settlers. It is found, for example, in the
division of water determined by the government of Israel in the
territories: from the yearly output of three aquifers in the West
Bank, only about 20 percent is allocated to 1.2 million
Palestinians, the rest going to residents of Israel and the
settlers. The water crisis in the West Bank is the result of this
inequitable allocation from which the settlers, like all Israelis,
benefit, but it was not the settlers who decided on it.
Discriminatory logic is to be found, too, in the various
development plans that were drawn up not by "lunatic extremists."
In December 1994, in the promising light of the Oslo agreements and
forecasts of the Labor government, a research team presented a plan
called "The Jerusalem metropolis, a master plan and development
plan." Though never officially adopted, up to this day parts of it
serve the authorities. Development plans were proposed for five
areas in the metropolitan expanse of Jerusalem, including Ma'aleh
Adumim, Givat Ze'ev and the Etzion Bloc, all of which are
undoubtedly in the West Bank. They note that 17,000 Jews and 35,000
Arabs live in the Ma'aleh Adumim area, but are not ashamed to
determine that what they call its growth capacity is 65,000 Jews
and 41,000 Arabs.
Similarly, in Givat Ze'ev, there are almost three times more Arabs
than Jews, but the proposed growth capacity is about identical. The
plan is not referring to natural growth, but to encouraging the
Jews to live there through allocating a wide expanse for their
needs, with water and roads, the development of industry and
tourism, and convenient mortgages for purchasing houses. The
Palestinians, on the other hand, will have to put up with whatever
can fit into enclaves that are from the start limited, in order to
keep down their numbers. This, too, is the significance of dividing
the West Bank into areas A, B and C, in the framework of which
Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres also intended to hand over only 50
percent of the area to the Palestinians, haggling over the rest
with the help of the settlements as part of a final-status
agreement. They promised to allocate as little land as possible to
the Palestinians, with as much as possible encircled by
settlements.
However one looks at it, though they didn't create the policy, the
settlers are certainly the most faithful envoys of the practice of
Jewish superiority in the occupied territories.
The Land of Israel and the State of Israel4
In a press conference with Madeleine Albright in December 1999,
Ehud Barak spoke of "the struggle of the State of Israel to rule
over the Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael)." These are his actual
words, which were broadcast live on Israel Radio, seemingly without
drawing any particular attention. Keeping secret the news that the
talks with Syria would be renewed, Barak said that he saw no reason
to delay tenders for new construction in the settlements in the
occupied territories and any different policy would weaken "the
State of Israel in its struggle to rule over the Land of
Israel."
This succinct statement by the former IDF chief of staff is an
additional ideological link in a chain of similar declarations: for
instance that Ma'aleh Adumim and Beit El are part of the State of
Israel; that he feels closer to the settler-oriented National
Religious Party than to the dovish Meretz Party; and that UN
resolutions 242 and 338 don't apply to the Palestinian territories
and to other territories taken by Israel in 1967.
The declaration made in Albright's presence defines most precisely
the undeclared annexation policy of Israeli governments since 1967.
It is odd to hear it announced so proudly in the middle of
political negotiations with the Palestinians. Barak felt confident
about automatic support from the Western countries for any
arrangement with Israel that Arafat would sign, while at the same
time he outlines a future of "struggle" against the Palestinian
people living in those parts of "Eretz Yisrael" which have not yet
been transformed into "the State of Israel." Here, Barak is
declaring the victory of a certain historiography.
The establishment of the State of Israel has different dichotomous
and historiographic explanations. For instance, Divine Promise to
the Jews as against the Promise (which will be fulfilled in the
future) of Allah to the Muslims; Jewish settlement in the Land of
Israel as the just realization of a historical right inspired by
the Zionist movement, as against a Jewish-Western colonial plot;
and a colonial connection that succeeded because of a sophisticated
Jewish strategy and Western financing, as against the thesis that
Zionism was indeed part of the colonialist period, but the state
itself was the result of historical circumstances compelling a
Diaspora people, most of the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, to
choose to emigrate to the Land of Israel, and, subsequently, to the
State of Israel. This was seen as the only solution, after
Christian Europe acted on the program of the Third Reich to get rid
of the Jewish people that had lived there for 2,000 years: to
eliminate them not only from their countries, but from the whole
world.
The significance of international (and Palestinian) recognition of
the State of Israel in the 1967 borders, and of resolutions denying
Israel's right to hold on to the territories conquered in 1967, was
the acceptance - even unconscious - of the last of these
historiographic explanations. With the Oslo process, there were
Israelis and Palestinians who deluded themselves that the intention
was also to Israeli recognition of the right of the Palestinians to
exist as a people on its own land, and that now the time had come
for strong Israel to recognize the Palestinian tragedy of 1948.
Israel should now prove that the way to (partially) compensate the
Palestinians and to assure a secure future for the two peoples is
in the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and
the Gaza Strip.
But along comes Barak and strengthens the colonialist explanation,
which sees in the State of Israel an entity aspiring in its essence
to territorial expansion under the auspices and with the support of
the American and European Western world. His jargon is identical to
that of Gush Emunim. Israel was confident that it could talk peace
and simultaneously "struggle" to assure its "rule" over those parts
of "the Land of Israel" that it didn't manage to acquire in 1948.
The debate is only over the amount of the Land of Israel that can
now be incorporated into the State of Israel.
The Natural Order of Things5
On the eve of Tish'a Be'Av, August 2000, a fast in remembrance of
the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, some well-known
rightist activists carried out provocations against Palestinians
from Silwan. It was the Israeli police that reported on the
identity of the provocateurs. The Palestinians, from the Kara'in
family, defined them as "settlers" or "Jewish worshipers."
According to the police version, its people intervened and
separated the two rival camps "with the use of great force against
both of them." The Palestinian residents deny this: "The residents
only exchanged insults and it was the police who started hitting
out."
In any case, the scenario is familiar: Israeli rightists go out of
their way to provoke Palestinians, the police intervenes and six
wounded arrive at hospital, all Palestinians. When, for example,
settlers in Hebron rioted and started to stone Palestinians, the
police arrested three settlers and seven Palestinians, even though
the Israeli authorities themselves admitted that the Jews initiated
the trouble.
In fact, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense
Forces (IDF) is defending not Israel but the Israeli settlers,
whose numbers have doubled over the last decade from 92,000 in 1991
to 200,000 today. For some thirty years they have enjoyed
privileges denied to others, founded on a basic ideological
privilege: that the Jews have a right to arise and settle
everywhere in the Land, a right denied to the Palestinians. Thus
the Jews can return by right to Hebron, city of the Patriarchs, and
demand possession of every building that was in Jewish possession
before 1948. [The Jewish community which had been living there left
in 1936, after many Jews were killed by Arabs in the troubles of
1929 - ed.] Palestinian refugees, on the other hand, have no right
to their family homes in Israel, and their brothers living as
Israeli citizens in Galilee have to accept the loss of their lands
in order to establish new Jewish neighborhoods.
In this tale of injustice in all areas of life, the privileges
beneficiaries receive accustom them to see the discrimination as
part of natural law: it follows that only a criminal would try to
deny this natural order.
Israel Has Failed the Test6
In the Oslo agreement, Israel and the West put the Palestinian
leadership to the test: in exchange for an Israeli promise to
gradually dismantle the mechanisms of the occupation in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian leadership promised to put
an immediate end to all acts of violence and terror. For that
purpose all the apparatus of security coordination was created,
more Palestinian jails were built, and demonstrators were barred
from approaching the settlements.
The two sides agreed on a period of five years for the completion
of the new deployment and the negotiations on a final agreement.
The Palestinian leadership agreed time and again to extend its
trial period, in the shadow of Hamas terrorist attacks and Israeli
elections. The "peace strategy" and the tactic of gradualism
adopted by the leadership were at first supported by most of the
Palestinian public, which craves normalcy. Fatah (the main faction
of the PLO) was the backbone of support for the concept of gradual
release from the yoke of military occupation. Its members were the
ones who kept track of the Palestinian opposition, arrested
suspects whose names were given to them by Israel, imprisoned those
who signed anti-Israeli manifestos. The personal advantage gained
by some of these Fatah members is not enough to explain their
support for the process; they really believed for a long time that
this was the way to independence.
But as Palestinians, from their perspective, Israel was also put to
the test: were the Israelis really giving up that attitude of
superiority and domination that they had built up in order to keep
the Palestinian people under their control? More than seven years
have gone by and Israel has security and administrative control
over 61.2 percent of the West Bank, and about 20 percent of the
Gaza Strip, all of the above in Area C. It has security control
over another 26.8 percent of the West Bank (Area B).
It is this control that has enabled Israel to double the number of
settlers in ten years, to enlarge the settlements, to continue
discriminatory water quotas for three million Palestinians, to
prevent Palestinian development in most areas of the West Bank, and
to seal a whole nation into restricted areas, imprisoned in a
network of bypass roads meant for Jews only. During the closure in
the days of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, one could see how the bypass
roads were planned to ensure freedom of movement for 200,000 Jews,
while locking some three million Palestinians into their
Bantustans.
Israel has failed the test. The Palestinians control 12 percent of
the West Bank, but Israel has proved that it does not envisage a
peace based on the principles of equality between nations and
between people. Through massive settlement, it has set out to
extend its borders and ensure maximum control over most of the Land
of Israel, relying during all this activity on the Palestinian
security apparatus and Fateh to keep things quiet. Just as the
first Intifada of 1987 was the direct result of Israeli occupation,
the popular uprising which broke out on September 28, 2000, must be
seen as a popular protest against seven years in which the
Palestinians have experienced not the peace they were promised, but
a more sophisticated type of occupation.
1. This piece is based on several articles that were
published in the Israeli daily newspaper Ha'aretz.
2. Ha'aretz, 19.5.99.
3. Ha'aretz, 30.5.99.
4. Ha'aretz, 21.12.99.
5. Ha'aretz, 22.8.00.
6. Ha'aretz, 19.10.00.
