Olmert's Lame-Duck Epiphany About Palestinian Peace
Scott MacLeod
Time Magazine
September 30, 2008
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1845831,00.html
He is a former leader in the rightist Likud Party who for decades staunchly believed that the West Bank and Gaza Strip belonged to the Jewish people and that the territories, along with the Golan Heights, should remain part of Greater Israel forever. Along with former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert gradually came to understand that this was a fantasy. They broke away from Likud and created the centrist Kadima ("Onward") Party three years ago. Now, as Olmert hands the reins to Tzipi Livni and leaves office amid a corruption scandal, he's made a series of stunning departure statements that form a swan song of historical importance. Peace advocates, Israeli dreamers, Arab skeptics and U.S. mediators in a future McCain or Obama Administration should read his words carefully and take note.
The political lame duck's views expressed in interviews and public comments reveal the sweeping reversals that have taken place among some of Israel's ultra-nationalists. Olmert says Israel should withdraw from "almost all" of the West Bank and Golan Heights. A former mayor of "the undivided capital of the Jewish state," he now advocates dividing Jerusalem with the Palestinians. He wants to keep some of the Jewish settlements that adjoin Israel's pre-1967 border but accepts giving the future Palestinian state Israeli territory in a land swap with a "close to 1-to-1-ratio." "The notion of a Greater Israel no longer exists," Olmert says, "and anyone who still believes in it is deluding themselves."
True, these are not radical views. Former Labour PM Ehud Barak put something like this on the table at Camp David negotiations with the Palestinians eight years ago. What Olmert is saying today broadly conforms to the thinking of Israeli Labour politicians, mainstream Palestinian and Arab leaders, and U.S. officials, as well as the international community. What is important is the source, content and context of Olmert's statements.
Olmert is no Arab-loving pacifist. As Prime Minister, he ravaged half of Lebanon in 2006 in a military offensive after Hizballah killed and kidnapped Israeli soldiers. He has unmercifully turned the screws on Hamas-controlled Gaza. Olmert's comments reflect a profound shift toward realism among Israeli rightists, akin to what Palestinian and Arab nationalists started going through three decades ago, when Israel was in the prime of its strategic strength. The shift is evident not only in Olmert's prescription for a peace settlement, but also in his severe critique of a [self]-righteous Israeli mind-set that has turned out to be self-destructive.
"Forty years after the Six-Day War ended, we keep finding excuses not to act," Olmert says. "We refuse to face reality ... The strategic threats we face have nothing to do with where we draw our borders ... For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at the reality in all its depth." Saying Israel would not attack Iran unilaterally to stop Tehran's nuclear program, Olmert scoffs, "Part of our megalomania and our loss of proportions is the things that are said here about Iran. We are a country that has lost a sense of proportion about itself."
Olmert is by no means agreeing to a surrender. Yet, after Israel's failure to impose its will on Arab opponents by force over four decades, he's crying uncle. "We invested our mental resources and thoughts in 'how to build Judea and Samaria,' yet history made clear to us that the state of Israel has other realistic and viable options," he says. "The state of Israel's future won't be found in intermixing with the Palestinians, but rather, is to be found in unpopulated regions that are desperate for our entrepreneurship and innovation."
Palestinian demands, Olmert is acknowledging, won't go away. Recall, the Likud Party, with which Olmert made his career, always refused any dealings with the PLO or even to recognize its demands for Palestinian independence. Indeed, Sharon invaded Lebanon in 1982 with a grand vision of redrawing the Middle East map with no place for a Palestinian state. The expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank proceeded rapidly in the ensuing decades. With his about-face, Olmert effectively acknowledges that the Palestinian uprisings of 1987 and 2000 succeeded in forcing Israel to address Palestinian rights. Everybody, including Camp David host Bill Clinton, loved to blame Yasser Arafat for the collapse of the peace process. When Sharon succeeded Barak as Prime Minister in 2001, he began implementing a unilateral vision of a settlement by ending Israel's occupation of Gaza. Yet for the last year, at the tragically belated coaxing of the Bush Administration, Olmert, who replaced the ailing Sharon in 2006, has been quietly engaged in a revival of negotiations with Arafat's successor. Like Olmert's willingness to enter those talks, his swan song amounts to an admission that Israel never went quite far enough in accommodating the Palestinians' basic requirements for peace.
The realism behind Olmert's change of heart is of tremendous import, summed up by one sentence: "The international community is starting to view Israel as a future binational state." In other words, forget about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's threats to wipe Israel off the map. Echoing views he initially expressed in 2003, Olmert reasons that without an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, the Jewish state faces the self-inflicted, mortal danger of being destroyed by demographics, overwhelmed by Muslim and Christian Arabs demanding political representation. Olmert fears that the international community could ultimately favor a one-state solution, thus spelling the death of the two-state partition that has been at the core of an acceptable Israeli-Palestinian solution for decades. "Time is not on Israel's side," Olmert says. "I used to believe that everything from the Jordan River bank to the Mediterranean Sea was ours ... But eventually, after great internal conflict, I've realized we have to share this land with the people who dwell here ? that is, if we don't want to be a binational state."
In the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Aluf Benn disparages the Israeli Prime Minister's "epiphany," saying "Olmert is an excellent commentator, but he lacks the firmness to execute his ideas."
Sadly, that seems to be the case. Yet Olmert, on the eighth anniversary of the second Palestinian intifadeh, has done history a valuable service by puncturing some myths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If future negotiators, as well as American mediators, abandon their fantasies as Olmert has done, a peace that truly benefits all parties is much likelier to come.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
No more "Peace Process", Please!
Enough talk
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz.com
The most unstable country in the Middle East is changing its government again. Soon Israel will have a new government, with "continued peace negotiations with the Palestinians" engraved on its banner. Well, now it's time to end the farce after more than 15 years of futile negotiations that led nowhere and brought no peace. It's time to say enough already to the second most dangerous game after the war game - the "political process" game.
This mainly involves playing with ourselves, an idiom meaning masturbation in some languages, and thus a perfect metaphor for this "peace process" that must now be brought to an end. Snuff out this bonfire of vanities, this process of self-deception that pushes us ever further from any agreement. The time has come for decisions and actions - war or peace, annexation and a state of all its people, or dividing the land into two sovereign states. All this must take place during injury time; the 90th minute has long passed.
After 15 years of talking, nothing has been left unsaid or undiscussed. After endless peace plans, "drawer" and "shelf" plans, road maps and interim agreements, none of which has been carried out, we must scream to the new government: Don't start again with that futile negotiations carousel. Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, Yossi Beilin and Abu Mazen, Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, Ehud Barak and Arafat - they've all said it all. Now's the time to decide - to pull the detailed plans out of Bill Clinton's or Yossi Beilin's or Barak's or Rabin's drawer. The differences between them are minimal.
Advertisement
There is only one plan on the table: the end of the occupation, the '67 borders and solving the refugee issue in exchange for peace - yes or no. All the rest is insignificant. It cannot take much more time, simply because time has long run out. Take the Clinton plan or Geneva initiative, who knows what the differences are, and start implementing it. There will be no other plans.
It's not merely a criminal waste of time, which always acts against peace. That which could have been achieved a decade ago cannot be achieved today, and that which is still attainable today will no longer be possible in a decade. This danger is real: At the end of each negotiating round lurks the next cycle of violence. Nothing is more dangerous in this region than another failed negotiation.
In addition, the very existence of peace negotiations enables Israel to pretend to be doing something about the situation, without actually doing anything. Israel can thus go through the motions with no intention of reaching a peace agreement and feel as if it were doing everything to achieve it.
But while critical time was being wasted, Israel did not stand idly by. Neither did the Palestinian Authority. While they were negotiating, Israel was building more and more homes in West Bank settlements. In fact, it never stopped. Even Barak, the bravest of them all, added 6,000 housing units to the unworthy project. From one negotiation to the next, more and more opportunities dissipated. The occupation became increasingly heartless and brutal, as did Palestinian terrorism.
The only missing ingredient in all the tedious, superfluous negotiations was sincere goodwill to reach peace. Nothing is more critical than this, which has never been on the table, not even in the great illusion era of Oslo. That is why Israel has never offered, even then, to evacuate a single potted plant in the West Bank settlements. All it did was build more and more, dunam after dunam of destroying every chance. There is no other conflict in the world, it seems, where the negotiations to solve it have lasted so many years while the solution moved ever further away, like the horizon.
If the new government is headed for peace - and this is extremely doubtful - it must start with actions, not talks. It is very easy to change the occupation's road map: Just take a few steps like a mass release of prisoners and taking down all internal roadblocks to signal that the government intends to make peace. This would advance the political process more than all the talks, as daring as they may be.
If I were a Palestinian leader, I'd tell the new government: You know what our positions are, as we know yours. Let's not start everything over again. If you are sincere, start acting, even before the first photo-op between Livni and Abbas. This is even more apt when it comes to peace with Syria - we know what the conditions are, there is nothing to talk about, only to decide. Enough talk. It's time to act.
By Gideon Levy
Haaretz.com
The most unstable country in the Middle East is changing its government again. Soon Israel will have a new government, with "continued peace negotiations with the Palestinians" engraved on its banner. Well, now it's time to end the farce after more than 15 years of futile negotiations that led nowhere and brought no peace. It's time to say enough already to the second most dangerous game after the war game - the "political process" game.
This mainly involves playing with ourselves, an idiom meaning masturbation in some languages, and thus a perfect metaphor for this "peace process" that must now be brought to an end. Snuff out this bonfire of vanities, this process of self-deception that pushes us ever further from any agreement. The time has come for decisions and actions - war or peace, annexation and a state of all its people, or dividing the land into two sovereign states. All this must take place during injury time; the 90th minute has long passed.
After 15 years of talking, nothing has been left unsaid or undiscussed. After endless peace plans, "drawer" and "shelf" plans, road maps and interim agreements, none of which has been carried out, we must scream to the new government: Don't start again with that futile negotiations carousel. Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat, Yossi Beilin and Abu Mazen, Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, Ehud Barak and Arafat - they've all said it all. Now's the time to decide - to pull the detailed plans out of Bill Clinton's or Yossi Beilin's or Barak's or Rabin's drawer. The differences between them are minimal.
Advertisement
There is only one plan on the table: the end of the occupation, the '67 borders and solving the refugee issue in exchange for peace - yes or no. All the rest is insignificant. It cannot take much more time, simply because time has long run out. Take the Clinton plan or Geneva initiative, who knows what the differences are, and start implementing it. There will be no other plans.
It's not merely a criminal waste of time, which always acts against peace. That which could have been achieved a decade ago cannot be achieved today, and that which is still attainable today will no longer be possible in a decade. This danger is real: At the end of each negotiating round lurks the next cycle of violence. Nothing is more dangerous in this region than another failed negotiation.
In addition, the very existence of peace negotiations enables Israel to pretend to be doing something about the situation, without actually doing anything. Israel can thus go through the motions with no intention of reaching a peace agreement and feel as if it were doing everything to achieve it.
But while critical time was being wasted, Israel did not stand idly by. Neither did the Palestinian Authority. While they were negotiating, Israel was building more and more homes in West Bank settlements. In fact, it never stopped. Even Barak, the bravest of them all, added 6,000 housing units to the unworthy project. From one negotiation to the next, more and more opportunities dissipated. The occupation became increasingly heartless and brutal, as did Palestinian terrorism.
The only missing ingredient in all the tedious, superfluous negotiations was sincere goodwill to reach peace. Nothing is more critical than this, which has never been on the table, not even in the great illusion era of Oslo. That is why Israel has never offered, even then, to evacuate a single potted plant in the West Bank settlements. All it did was build more and more, dunam after dunam of destroying every chance. There is no other conflict in the world, it seems, where the negotiations to solve it have lasted so many years while the solution moved ever further away, like the horizon.
If the new government is headed for peace - and this is extremely doubtful - it must start with actions, not talks. It is very easy to change the occupation's road map: Just take a few steps like a mass release of prisoners and taking down all internal roadblocks to signal that the government intends to make peace. This would advance the political process more than all the talks, as daring as they may be.
If I were a Palestinian leader, I'd tell the new government: You know what our positions are, as we know yours. Let's not start everything over again. If you are sincere, start acting, even before the first photo-op between Livni and Abbas. This is even more apt when it comes to peace with Syria - we know what the conditions are, there is nothing to talk about, only to decide. Enough talk. It's time to act.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Palestinian and Israeli Families Agree
Dear Friend of Palestinians and Israelis,
I've been trying to restrain myself from putting too much on the table to you, long-suffering friend.
And send only the most meaningful stories and information relating to the need for addressing and resolving the 60 year-old breakdown (actually longer than that of course). Parents' Circle is Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost children and want to see dialogue between "sides" and resolution, so there will be no more bloodshed. Read on, JRK
Israeli, Palestinian bereaved families meet
Anat Shalev
Ynetnews
September 21, 2008
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3599864,00.html
This weekend a series of meetings between Jewish and Palestinian families was held under the auspices of the "Parents Circle," a group connecting bereaved families from both sides.
The Palestinians listened to the accounts of families of individuals who were killed by Qassam rockets, while the Israelis heard stories from Palestinian parents who have lost their children in the West Bank village of Naalin. Both sides agreed that peace must prevail to stop the bloodshed.
"Our organization is very special," said Nir Oren, the Israeli chairman of the Parents Circle. "Everyone of us has lost a family member as a result of the conflict. Each one of us is working for peace so that neither side will gain more bereaved families."
Oren said that on Saturday a group of 20 Palestinians and 10 Israelis visited the Kibbutz Kfar Aza home of the late Jimmy Kdoshim, who was killed by a mortar round. "The encounter was exciting, and everyone sympathized with the pain Jimmy's family was going through and the fear of rockets that still looms over this kibbutz," he said.
The second encounter took place in the village of Naalin. The group visited the homes of Ahmed Musa and Yousef Amera, who were killed during demonstrations against the construction of Israel's security barrier. "They (Palestinians) told us about how the (security) fence is affecting their daily life, we toured the area where the fence will be constructed and heard their reservations," added Oren.
"We are dealing with people who are losing their livelihood. Ahmed's father told us that he is only interested in peace, his land and bringing the person who shot his son to justice. It's only been 40 days and he is speaking with a tone of appeasement," he said.
Oren added, "the residents of the village understand the security interest in putting up the fence and they are only fighting to change its route. The Israeli group even had a settler who told us stories about living with the Palestinians from the village."
After the meeting, a ceremony was held in Beit Jala where peace activists were cited for their work. One of the recipients was Ismail Hatib, who donated his son's organs to an Israeli. Hatib said, "The most important thing in the world is human life. If I lost my son and I can help another human being, Israeli or Palestinian, that is what is important."
Co-chairman Abu Awwad then spoke about his delegation's experiences while visiting Kibbutz Kfar Aza and said, "We talked to the residents about the co-existence and agricultural cooperation that occurred prior to the year 2000 and how the only contact now is through violence.
"We later visited Jimmy Kdoshim's widow. It was very difficult to hear about her experiences. She lives with the images of the event and we can sympathize with her because we have all been there. My brothers were killed by the IDF, everyone in the Palestinian delegation sympathized and opened up about their own experiences," he said.
"What makes her story more tragic," said the Palestinian chairman, "is that she and her husband worked towards peace and deliberation between the two sides.
"We continued to discuss the different factors and the situation itself and how we can promote dialogue. The important thing is that we get dialogue going between us, the ordinary people. We need to understand each other, with the main problem being the dislike for the different. As soon as we change that, we can move that change further up the ladder," said Abu Awwad.
I've been trying to restrain myself from putting too much on the table to you, long-suffering friend.
And send only the most meaningful stories and information relating to the need for addressing and resolving the 60 year-old breakdown (actually longer than that of course). Parents' Circle is Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost children and want to see dialogue between "sides" and resolution, so there will be no more bloodshed. Read on, JRK
Israeli, Palestinian bereaved families meet
Anat Shalev
Ynetnews
September 21, 2008
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3599864,00.html
This weekend a series of meetings between Jewish and Palestinian families was held under the auspices of the "Parents Circle," a group connecting bereaved families from both sides.
The Palestinians listened to the accounts of families of individuals who were killed by Qassam rockets, while the Israelis heard stories from Palestinian parents who have lost their children in the West Bank village of Naalin. Both sides agreed that peace must prevail to stop the bloodshed.
"Our organization is very special," said Nir Oren, the Israeli chairman of the Parents Circle. "Everyone of us has lost a family member as a result of the conflict. Each one of us is working for peace so that neither side will gain more bereaved families."
Oren said that on Saturday a group of 20 Palestinians and 10 Israelis visited the Kibbutz Kfar Aza home of the late Jimmy Kdoshim, who was killed by a mortar round. "The encounter was exciting, and everyone sympathized with the pain Jimmy's family was going through and the fear of rockets that still looms over this kibbutz," he said.
The second encounter took place in the village of Naalin. The group visited the homes of Ahmed Musa and Yousef Amera, who were killed during demonstrations against the construction of Israel's security barrier. "They (Palestinians) told us about how the (security) fence is affecting their daily life, we toured the area where the fence will be constructed and heard their reservations," added Oren.
"We are dealing with people who are losing their livelihood. Ahmed's father told us that he is only interested in peace, his land and bringing the person who shot his son to justice. It's only been 40 days and he is speaking with a tone of appeasement," he said.
Oren added, "the residents of the village understand the security interest in putting up the fence and they are only fighting to change its route. The Israeli group even had a settler who told us stories about living with the Palestinians from the village."
After the meeting, a ceremony was held in Beit Jala where peace activists were cited for their work. One of the recipients was Ismail Hatib, who donated his son's organs to an Israeli. Hatib said, "The most important thing in the world is human life. If I lost my son and I can help another human being, Israeli or Palestinian, that is what is important."
Co-chairman Abu Awwad then spoke about his delegation's experiences while visiting Kibbutz Kfar Aza and said, "We talked to the residents about the co-existence and agricultural cooperation that occurred prior to the year 2000 and how the only contact now is through violence.
"We later visited Jimmy Kdoshim's widow. It was very difficult to hear about her experiences. She lives with the images of the event and we can sympathize with her because we have all been there. My brothers were killed by the IDF, everyone in the Palestinian delegation sympathized and opened up about their own experiences," he said.
"What makes her story more tragic," said the Palestinian chairman, "is that she and her husband worked towards peace and deliberation between the two sides.
"We continued to discuss the different factors and the situation itself and how we can promote dialogue. The important thing is that we get dialogue going between us, the ordinary people. We need to understand each other, with the main problem being the dislike for the different. As soon as we change that, we can move that change further up the ladder," said Abu Awwad.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Listen to BOTH Narratives
Dear Friend of Israelis and Palestinians,
Saliba Sarsar was a colleague of mine when I served a Presbyterian congregation in NJ (First, Red Bank). He spoke at a class I organized there. He teaches at nearby Monmouth University.
Below is his usual even-tempered comment about his friend, Dan Bar-On. Professor Sarsar was raised in the Russian monestery on the side of the Mt. of Olives (dedicated to Mary Magdalene) and is a Greek Orthodox Christian Palestinian.
Overcoming our whirlwinds
Saliba Sarsar
Haaretz
Opinion
September 12, 2008
https://www.americantaskforce.org/admin/content/node-type/daily-news/fields
Dan Bar-On had a story about how he learned to see things through Palestinian eyes. An Israeli Jew, born in Haifa to refugees who had left Nazi Germany in 1933, Dan was a psychology professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and he had long been interested in seeing his nation live in peace with its Palestinian neighbors. At a certain point back in the mid-1990s, however, he realized, as he told me in a formal interview I conducted with him last year, that "I could not live my life in this region without seeing Palestinians, without feeling their pain."
Unable to tolerate such a situation, he began to watch the interactions of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli students as they participated in dialogue workshops under the auspices of BGU's behavioral sciences department. Over a three-year period, Bar-On observed their encounters through a one-way mirror. "That was a painful study for me," he told me. But he felt compelled "to test my own stereotypes about Palestinians."
Bar-On had already made a name for himself with his studies of the intergenerational after-effects of the Holocaust on the children and grandchildren of both survivors and Nazi perpetrators. Now, by watching the Jewish-Palestinian groups, he explained, he saw how it was easier to do Holocaust-related studies, "because I come from the victim side ... the good side." When it came to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, "I was much more involved [and] under the pressure that I belong to the side that occupies the Palestinians, who prevents them from having their own state, and it was difficult morally for me to be in that role." While he had no doubt that the Jews had a right to their national home, he realized that it was essential to find a way to also "accept the Palestinian need for such a right, and it was not an easy task for me to understand."
But Dan Bar-On, who died on September 4, at age 69, did not shrink from the task. And as a consequence of combining his professional pursuits with his political convictions, he was not only a psychologist but a peace builder, someone who used his voice and his touch to help change Israeli society in support of social justice, for both his own people and the Palestinians.
I first met Dan in 1999, when I invited him to speak to a New Jersey group of Arab Americans and American Jews working for dialogue and peaceful coexistence. As a Jerusalemite raised in Palestinian culture, I was impressed by his empathy, his capacity to listen, and the depth of his knowledge, not only of history, but also of how to go beyond victimhood. He always maintained his professional composure, but, as he explained in his book "Tell Your Life Story," he sometimes felt "overpowered by unpredictable whirlwinds ... [and had] to work my own way through in spite of them." In reality, Dan sometimes felt politically estranged in Israel, "due to the growing political animosity in Israel toward the Palestinians and toward my own work with them."
Our relationship evolved into joint publications and co-teaching. In one of our articles, we suggested that, for Israeli Jews and Palestinians to conduct dialogue, "each national community must acknowledge and respect the other's painful memory, whether or not it was party to its creation." Sometimes, in their pain, both peoples have a tendency to see only their own victimization, a blindness that only serves to perpetuate the conflict. But we were convinced that "an inclusive act of communication and faith [would] prepare the way for reconciling the past and for building a better future, one to which our children and grandchildren are entitled."
To this end, Dan and Palestinian educator Sami Adwan, his co-director in the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME), with the help of Israeli and Palestinian teachers, put together three sets of booklets in Arabic, Hebrew and English for high school students. The booklets, published between 2002 and 2007, presented the narratives of both sides, one next to the other, with a space in between the two narratives for students to write their own comments. In describing it to me, he observed that initially, students from one group, in encountering the story of the other, "usually see it as propaganda. They delegitimize it, they say that their narrative is morally superior." Being presented with both narratives at the same time, however, "they are faced with both narratives in a way where they can read both of them, can compare them, and have to learn to respect the narrative of the other side just as they respect their own."
In the current political environment, where expediency, narrow self-interest, and cynicism reign, it behooves Israelis and Palestinians to find the inner strength, as Dan did, to cross the border and find a workable solution to what is ailing them. Like it or not, they are destined to be neighbors forever. The quicker they realize it, the better their relationship will become. Bottom-up peace builders, leading without power, are urged to maintain their struggle for peace and to synchronize their plans with top-down peacemakers. Toward that end, today, hope may mean, as Dan concluded in "Tell Your Life Story," "giving up the romantic, monolithic desires of the idealized past in favor of a less perfect but more complex understanding of the world and ourselves, an understanding that can create new possibilities for dialogue within our selves, among ourselves within a collective, and with the Other."
Dr. Saliba Sarsar is professor of political science and associate vice president for academic program initiatives at Monmouth University in New Jersey.
Saliba Sarsar was a colleague of mine when I served a Presbyterian congregation in NJ (First, Red Bank). He spoke at a class I organized there. He teaches at nearby Monmouth University.
Below is his usual even-tempered comment about his friend, Dan Bar-On. Professor Sarsar was raised in the Russian monestery on the side of the Mt. of Olives (dedicated to Mary Magdalene) and is a Greek Orthodox Christian Palestinian.
Overcoming our whirlwinds
Saliba Sarsar
Haaretz
Opinion
September 12, 2008
https://www.americantaskforce.org/admin/content/node-type/daily-news/fields
Dan Bar-On had a story about how he learned to see things through Palestinian eyes. An Israeli Jew, born in Haifa to refugees who had left Nazi Germany in 1933, Dan was a psychology professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and he had long been interested in seeing his nation live in peace with its Palestinian neighbors. At a certain point back in the mid-1990s, however, he realized, as he told me in a formal interview I conducted with him last year, that "I could not live my life in this region without seeing Palestinians, without feeling their pain."
Unable to tolerate such a situation, he began to watch the interactions of Jewish and Palestinian Israeli students as they participated in dialogue workshops under the auspices of BGU's behavioral sciences department. Over a three-year period, Bar-On observed their encounters through a one-way mirror. "That was a painful study for me," he told me. But he felt compelled "to test my own stereotypes about Palestinians."
Bar-On had already made a name for himself with his studies of the intergenerational after-effects of the Holocaust on the children and grandchildren of both survivors and Nazi perpetrators. Now, by watching the Jewish-Palestinian groups, he explained, he saw how it was easier to do Holocaust-related studies, "because I come from the victim side ... the good side." When it came to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, "I was much more involved [and] under the pressure that I belong to the side that occupies the Palestinians, who prevents them from having their own state, and it was difficult morally for me to be in that role." While he had no doubt that the Jews had a right to their national home, he realized that it was essential to find a way to also "accept the Palestinian need for such a right, and it was not an easy task for me to understand."
But Dan Bar-On, who died on September 4, at age 69, did not shrink from the task. And as a consequence of combining his professional pursuits with his political convictions, he was not only a psychologist but a peace builder, someone who used his voice and his touch to help change Israeli society in support of social justice, for both his own people and the Palestinians.
I first met Dan in 1999, when I invited him to speak to a New Jersey group of Arab Americans and American Jews working for dialogue and peaceful coexistence. As a Jerusalemite raised in Palestinian culture, I was impressed by his empathy, his capacity to listen, and the depth of his knowledge, not only of history, but also of how to go beyond victimhood. He always maintained his professional composure, but, as he explained in his book "Tell Your Life Story," he sometimes felt "overpowered by unpredictable whirlwinds ... [and had] to work my own way through in spite of them." In reality, Dan sometimes felt politically estranged in Israel, "due to the growing political animosity in Israel toward the Palestinians and toward my own work with them."
Our relationship evolved into joint publications and co-teaching. In one of our articles, we suggested that, for Israeli Jews and Palestinians to conduct dialogue, "each national community must acknowledge and respect the other's painful memory, whether or not it was party to its creation." Sometimes, in their pain, both peoples have a tendency to see only their own victimization, a blindness that only serves to perpetuate the conflict. But we were convinced that "an inclusive act of communication and faith [would] prepare the way for reconciling the past and for building a better future, one to which our children and grandchildren are entitled."
To this end, Dan and Palestinian educator Sami Adwan, his co-director in the Peace Research Institute in the Middle East (PRIME), with the help of Israeli and Palestinian teachers, put together three sets of booklets in Arabic, Hebrew and English for high school students. The booklets, published between 2002 and 2007, presented the narratives of both sides, one next to the other, with a space in between the two narratives for students to write their own comments. In describing it to me, he observed that initially, students from one group, in encountering the story of the other, "usually see it as propaganda. They delegitimize it, they say that their narrative is morally superior." Being presented with both narratives at the same time, however, "they are faced with both narratives in a way where they can read both of them, can compare them, and have to learn to respect the narrative of the other side just as they respect their own."
In the current political environment, where expediency, narrow self-interest, and cynicism reign, it behooves Israelis and Palestinians to find the inner strength, as Dan did, to cross the border and find a workable solution to what is ailing them. Like it or not, they are destined to be neighbors forever. The quicker they realize it, the better their relationship will become. Bottom-up peace builders, leading without power, are urged to maintain their struggle for peace and to synchronize their plans with top-down peacemakers. Toward that end, today, hope may mean, as Dan concluded in "Tell Your Life Story," "giving up the romantic, monolithic desires of the idealized past in favor of a less perfect but more complex understanding of the world and ourselves, an understanding that can create new possibilities for dialogue within our selves, among ourselves within a collective, and with the Other."
Dr. Saliba Sarsar is professor of political science and associate vice president for academic program initiatives at Monmouth University in New Jersey.
I, John Kleinheksel, have been in Omar's home!
Dear Friends of This Blog,
You can imagine my amazement when Doug Dicks sent this piece from the Guardian (UK)! It didn't hit me right away. Then I realized this was probably the very Qassis family in whose home Sharon and I stayed when we visited Isr/Pal in June, 2000!
This is an interesting story. Do you have time? We were guest of the Abuna (Father) of Holy Sorrows RCC in the little village of Aboud, West Bank. After worship, we went to various homes. Sharon (my wife) and I were hosted by the Qassis family, the widowed mother (whose young husband died in Ohio a few years earlier) and her sons, Hanna (a student at Beirzeit U) and Omar, maybe 11 or 12 years old at that time.
I pledged to stay in touch with Hanna, a bright young man, in hopes of getting schooling in the US. After a little over a year, I lost track of him. His email address would no longer accept my messages. He had been accepted at an American school, but couldn't get a visa to leave Palestine.
Now Phil Leech, a PhD student at Exeter U in the UK, found Omar, now himself in jail, but previously at student at Beirzeit as well as his older brother.
I have tried to contact Mr Leech (see article below), to no avail. The Guardian refuses my enquiries, and Exeter does not list its students online. What follows then, is the update on the Qassis family: JRK
Education, occupation, incarceration
The story of Omar Qassis, a Palestinian student detained for more than a year without trial, is far from unusual
Phil Leech
Monday September 08 2008
The Guardian (UK)
I first met Omar, a final year student at Birzeit University near Ramallah, in the summer of 2007. I was taking part in their Palestinian and Arabic studies programme for international students. Omar was their chief volunteer. He was particularly helpful to me when, in his own time and without payment, he helped me by arranging and translating interviews with young Palestinians. Without his kindness, I could not have completed my research.
In the early hours of March 27 2008 Omar was arrested at his family home by the Israel Defence Forces. Since being taken into custody he has been transported across territorial borders from the West Bank to Mascobia detention centre in West Jerusalem (contravening the fourth Geneva convention), and was denied access to his family or legal counsel. Omar's detention was then extended several times and access to legal counsel was systematically impeded.
On May 1, Omar was formally placed under administrative detention and charged with throwing stones on an unspecified date between 2001 and 2002. The charges do not make reference to any specific incident making it impossible to defend against them. They also refer to Omar as an adult, even though he would have only been 16 at the time.
Omar managed eventually to contact the right to education campaign at Birzeit. His full statement is available on their website. With the campaign's permission I include a short extract here:
I saw soldiers beating other inmates and fear that I could be next. I'm also very disoriented, I hear sounds of dogs barking and people screaming at night. I think these are recordings but they affect me ... I have no idea how long I will be in prison. I have no idea what they are doing or claiming. All I know is that I'm not a threat to security but I was still being questioned about all sorts of things, so anything and everything is going through their heads. I basically just want to know when I can see my family again.
Omar has since been moved to a prison in the Negev, inside Israel. His family have again been denied visitation rights. His case has not been to trial and neither he nor his lawyer has been shown evidence.
Omar's case is nothing unusual. Over 80 other students from Birzeit University are similarly incarcerated, 35 have not faced trial. In the last 5 years, nearly 350 students studying there have served time in prison. Widespread arrest and detention is only one example of the occupation forces' systematic attack on education in the occupied territories, and Birzeit is only one hundreds of schools, colleges and universities under occupation. The use of checkpoints, the separation barrier, arbitrary curfews, rigidly controlled resources and even extra-judicial killings are all measures which cause extensive and critical damage to academia at all levels.
A book by the Defence for Children International's Palestine section in 2004, Stolen Youth, documents the route for detainees though the distinct system of law operating in the West Bank which governs matters between Israeli settlers, the military and secret services, and Palestinians. Prisoners are subjected to poor conditions, malnourishment and torture. Access to family, medical attention and legal counsel are restricted arbitrarily.
Furthermore, legal procedures in military courts are so biased that many Palestinian lawyers can only really supply psychological counsel for their clients rather than any effective defence.
Omar's incarceration is based on secret evidence from the Israeli general security services which was shown to a military judge. The law provides that he may be held for up to six months, on a renewable basis (in violation of the international covenant on civil and political rights).
Omar's health is suffering because of poor conditions, ill-treatment, psychological stress and solitary confinement, but his case is not the worst nor the most emotive story of Palestinian prisoners under the Israeli occupation. However, it highlights the absurdity of the occupation particularly in relation to the peace process. It is too easy simply to regurgitate the old leftwing argument that if Israel treated Palestinians a little better this would eliminate all threats to the state. The situation is vastly more complex than that. But, unquestionably, a viable, independent and prosperous future for any prospective "state of Palestine" is the key to a lasting peace.
The Omar I knew before his detention was an extremely intelligent, charismatic, and generous young man. He bore scars of the occupation, like all Palestinians, but held no specific ill-will against Israelis, Jews or Judaism. Omar speaks fluent English (with an infectious Californian accent) and was not driven by any religious sectarianism. He was profoundly committed to his family, his education and working towards a better standard of living and greater access to justice for his peers. Despite the oppression of Israel's occupation, he had retained the ambition to contribute to the wellbeing and stability of any future Palestinian state.
It is impossible to fully appreciate Omar's experiences inside Israel's prisons. And I don't know if, or how much, they will have changed him. My profound hope is that he is strong enough to remain someone still with everything to live for, no matter what the future holds for the Palestinian national project. However, Omar's treatment has opened my eyes to the pressures undergone by a new generation of Palestinians which, regrettably, gives them yet another reason to fight Israel. It also provides another reason for peoples all across the region to believe that the celebrated doctrine of human rights is reserved for the west and its allies and for no one else.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/08/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast
You can imagine my amazement when Doug Dicks sent this piece from the Guardian (UK)! It didn't hit me right away. Then I realized this was probably the very Qassis family in whose home Sharon and I stayed when we visited Isr/Pal in June, 2000!
This is an interesting story. Do you have time? We were guest of the Abuna (Father) of Holy Sorrows RCC in the little village of Aboud, West Bank. After worship, we went to various homes. Sharon (my wife) and I were hosted by the Qassis family, the widowed mother (whose young husband died in Ohio a few years earlier) and her sons, Hanna (a student at Beirzeit U) and Omar, maybe 11 or 12 years old at that time.
I pledged to stay in touch with Hanna, a bright young man, in hopes of getting schooling in the US. After a little over a year, I lost track of him. His email address would no longer accept my messages. He had been accepted at an American school, but couldn't get a visa to leave Palestine.
Now Phil Leech, a PhD student at Exeter U in the UK, found Omar, now himself in jail, but previously at student at Beirzeit as well as his older brother.
I have tried to contact Mr Leech (see article below), to no avail. The Guardian refuses my enquiries, and Exeter does not list its students online. What follows then, is the update on the Qassis family: JRK
Education, occupation, incarceration
The story of Omar Qassis, a Palestinian student detained for more than a year without trial, is far from unusual
Phil Leech
Monday September 08 2008
The Guardian (UK)
I first met Omar, a final year student at Birzeit University near Ramallah, in the summer of 2007. I was taking part in their Palestinian and Arabic studies programme for international students. Omar was their chief volunteer. He was particularly helpful to me when, in his own time and without payment, he helped me by arranging and translating interviews with young Palestinians. Without his kindness, I could not have completed my research.
In the early hours of March 27 2008 Omar was arrested at his family home by the Israel Defence Forces. Since being taken into custody he has been transported across territorial borders from the West Bank to Mascobia detention centre in West Jerusalem (contravening the fourth Geneva convention), and was denied access to his family or legal counsel. Omar's detention was then extended several times and access to legal counsel was systematically impeded.
On May 1, Omar was formally placed under administrative detention and charged with throwing stones on an unspecified date between 2001 and 2002. The charges do not make reference to any specific incident making it impossible to defend against them. They also refer to Omar as an adult, even though he would have only been 16 at the time.
Omar managed eventually to contact the right to education campaign at Birzeit. His full statement is available on their website. With the campaign's permission I include a short extract here:
I saw soldiers beating other inmates and fear that I could be next. I'm also very disoriented, I hear sounds of dogs barking and people screaming at night. I think these are recordings but they affect me ... I have no idea how long I will be in prison. I have no idea what they are doing or claiming. All I know is that I'm not a threat to security but I was still being questioned about all sorts of things, so anything and everything is going through their heads. I basically just want to know when I can see my family again.
Omar has since been moved to a prison in the Negev, inside Israel. His family have again been denied visitation rights. His case has not been to trial and neither he nor his lawyer has been shown evidence.
Omar's case is nothing unusual. Over 80 other students from Birzeit University are similarly incarcerated, 35 have not faced trial. In the last 5 years, nearly 350 students studying there have served time in prison. Widespread arrest and detention is only one example of the occupation forces' systematic attack on education in the occupied territories, and Birzeit is only one hundreds of schools, colleges and universities under occupation. The use of checkpoints, the separation barrier, arbitrary curfews, rigidly controlled resources and even extra-judicial killings are all measures which cause extensive and critical damage to academia at all levels.
A book by the Defence for Children International's Palestine section in 2004, Stolen Youth, documents the route for detainees though the distinct system of law operating in the West Bank which governs matters between Israeli settlers, the military and secret services, and Palestinians. Prisoners are subjected to poor conditions, malnourishment and torture. Access to family, medical attention and legal counsel are restricted arbitrarily.
Furthermore, legal procedures in military courts are so biased that many Palestinian lawyers can only really supply psychological counsel for their clients rather than any effective defence.
Omar's incarceration is based on secret evidence from the Israeli general security services which was shown to a military judge. The law provides that he may be held for up to six months, on a renewable basis (in violation of the international covenant on civil and political rights).
Omar's health is suffering because of poor conditions, ill-treatment, psychological stress and solitary confinement, but his case is not the worst nor the most emotive story of Palestinian prisoners under the Israeli occupation. However, it highlights the absurdity of the occupation particularly in relation to the peace process. It is too easy simply to regurgitate the old leftwing argument that if Israel treated Palestinians a little better this would eliminate all threats to the state. The situation is vastly more complex than that. But, unquestionably, a viable, independent and prosperous future for any prospective "state of Palestine" is the key to a lasting peace.
The Omar I knew before his detention was an extremely intelligent, charismatic, and generous young man. He bore scars of the occupation, like all Palestinians, but held no specific ill-will against Israelis, Jews or Judaism. Omar speaks fluent English (with an infectious Californian accent) and was not driven by any religious sectarianism. He was profoundly committed to his family, his education and working towards a better standard of living and greater access to justice for his peers. Despite the oppression of Israel's occupation, he had retained the ambition to contribute to the wellbeing and stability of any future Palestinian state.
It is impossible to fully appreciate Omar's experiences inside Israel's prisons. And I don't know if, or how much, they will have changed him. My profound hope is that he is strong enough to remain someone still with everything to live for, no matter what the future holds for the Palestinian national project. However, Omar's treatment has opened my eyes to the pressures undergone by a new generation of Palestinians which, regrettably, gives them yet another reason to fight Israel. It also provides another reason for peoples all across the region to believe that the celebrated doctrine of human rights is reserved for the west and its allies and for no one else.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/08/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast
Monday, September 15, 2008
The "Iron Wall" Strategy
I'm attaching the last part of an "opinion" from M.J. Rosenberg, because it describes the "Iron Wall" strategy under which Israel has labored since before its Independence in 1948.
Mr. Rosenberg favorably quotes Ian Lustick (Political Science prof at the U. of PA), who argues that the Israelis are abandoning their "Iron Wall" strategy, when it has been working so well for decades!
The latest demand by Olmert and Livni (the foreign minister) is that Israel's Arab neighbors "recognize" Israel "as a Jewish state." Does this mean that Arab Palestinians must "accept" the Zionist nature of the Jewish state (contrary to modern definitions of a democratic state, where "one man, one vote" is the ideal)?
Read on: (with thanks to the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). JRK
THE IRON WALL THAT WAS
M.J. Rosenberg
Israel Policy Forum
Opinion, Sept. 12, 2008
The "Iron Wall" was the creation of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the father of right-wing Zionism and spiritual leader of today's Likud Party.
Jabotinsky, who died in 1940, believed that the Jewish state would not be able to achieve acceptance by the Palestinians because the two nationalisms were in fundamental and irreconcilable conflict over the same territory.
He wrote this about the Palestinians in 1923: "There has never been an indigenous inhabitant anywhere or at any time who has ever accepted the settlement of others in his country. Any native people views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. . . . Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement."
Accordingly the Jews should not even seek Palestinian consent to Jewish settlement. They should, instead, build a Jewish state behind a metaphorical "iron wall." They should build a state so strong that the Arabs would have no choice but to accept its permanence. Peace would be achieved not by any Arab recognition of Jewish rights, but rather by recognition of the Israeli reality.
Jabotinsky wrote: "As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation. . . . Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. I am optimistic that they will indeed be granted satisfactory assurances and that both peoples, like good neighbors, can then live in peace."
In other words, the Israelis should simply build their state and wait the Arabs out. Once they understood that Israel wasn't going anywhere, the Arabs would agree to peace.
The "Iron Wall" concept was first vindicated in 1977 when, after failing to defeat Israel in four wars, the Egyptians essentially threw in the towel. President Anwar Sadat announced that he would go to Israel and sign a peace agreement. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Jabotinsky's political heir, welcomed Sadat and returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for Egyptian recognition. Begin had no illusion that the Egyptians had come around to accepting Israel, just that they accepted reality. That was good enough.
The Israeli-Egyptian peace has held for almost 30 years, 30 years without a single dead Israeli or Egyptian soldier.
"The Iron Wall" concept was also vindicated when Jordan agreed to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1994. The Jordanians did not suddenly accept the premise of Zionism; they accepted reality. Most significantly, the Palestinians did the same when the PLO accepted the two-state solution in 1988 and signed the Oslo Agreement recognizing Israel in 1993.
So Jabotinsky's terms have been met. The Arabs (not the extremist minority but the mainstream) are finally reconciled to Israel's permanence. They are, essentially, suing for peace.
But now the Israeli government says that is not good enough. Now there's a new demand.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that the Arabs must "recognize the State of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state." Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has also said that they "must not only recognize Israel's right to exist but to exist as a Jewish state."
Suddenly, Israel needs not just security, but an endorsement by Arabs of its special character. But states don't recognize each other as anything in particular. The United States recognizes Canada without regard to the special character of Quebec. Germany recognizes Belgium without regard for whether the Flemish or the Walloons are dominant.
Why would Israel need Arabs to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state? That is nobody's business but Israel's. As the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban once put it, "Our right to exist is independent of any recognition of it." That is even truer about Israel's right to exist "as a Jewish state."
Those who seek that kind of acceptance from the Arabs are barking up the wrong tree. Listen to Jabotinsky: it's not going to happen. The Israelis can argue among themselves about the nature of their state. The Arab world, and especially the Palestinians, can only offer security and peace. That used to be enough. It should be now.
Mr. Rosenberg favorably quotes Ian Lustick (Political Science prof at the U. of PA), who argues that the Israelis are abandoning their "Iron Wall" strategy, when it has been working so well for decades!
The latest demand by Olmert and Livni (the foreign minister) is that Israel's Arab neighbors "recognize" Israel "as a Jewish state." Does this mean that Arab Palestinians must "accept" the Zionist nature of the Jewish state (contrary to modern definitions of a democratic state, where "one man, one vote" is the ideal)?
Read on: (with thanks to the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP). JRK
THE IRON WALL THAT WAS
M.J. Rosenberg
Israel Policy Forum
Opinion, Sept. 12, 2008
The "Iron Wall" was the creation of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the father of right-wing Zionism and spiritual leader of today's Likud Party.
Jabotinsky, who died in 1940, believed that the Jewish state would not be able to achieve acceptance by the Palestinians because the two nationalisms were in fundamental and irreconcilable conflict over the same territory.
He wrote this about the Palestinians in 1923: "There has never been an indigenous inhabitant anywhere or at any time who has ever accepted the settlement of others in his country. Any native people views their country as their national home, of which they will always be the complete masters. . . . Every indigenous people will resist alien settlers as long as they see any hope of ridding themselves of the danger of foreign settlement."
Accordingly the Jews should not even seek Palestinian consent to Jewish settlement. They should, instead, build a Jewish state behind a metaphorical "iron wall." They should build a state so strong that the Arabs would have no choice but to accept its permanence. Peace would be achieved not by any Arab recognition of Jewish rights, but rather by recognition of the Israeli reality.
Jabotinsky wrote: "As long as there is a spark of hope that they can get rid of us, they will not sell these hopes, not for any kind of sweet words or tasty morsels, because they are not a rabble but a nation. . . . Only when not a single breach is visible in the iron wall, only then do extreme groups lose their sway, and influence transfers to moderate groups. Only then would these moderate groups come to us with proposals for mutual concessions. I am optimistic that they will indeed be granted satisfactory assurances and that both peoples, like good neighbors, can then live in peace."
In other words, the Israelis should simply build their state and wait the Arabs out. Once they understood that Israel wasn't going anywhere, the Arabs would agree to peace.
The "Iron Wall" concept was first vindicated in 1977 when, after failing to defeat Israel in four wars, the Egyptians essentially threw in the towel. President Anwar Sadat announced that he would go to Israel and sign a peace agreement. Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Jabotinsky's political heir, welcomed Sadat and returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for Egyptian recognition. Begin had no illusion that the Egyptians had come around to accepting Israel, just that they accepted reality. That was good enough.
The Israeli-Egyptian peace has held for almost 30 years, 30 years without a single dead Israeli or Egyptian soldier.
"The Iron Wall" concept was also vindicated when Jordan agreed to sign a peace agreement with Israel in 1994. The Jordanians did not suddenly accept the premise of Zionism; they accepted reality. Most significantly, the Palestinians did the same when the PLO accepted the two-state solution in 1988 and signed the Oslo Agreement recognizing Israel in 1993.
So Jabotinsky's terms have been met. The Arabs (not the extremist minority but the mainstream) are finally reconciled to Israel's permanence. They are, essentially, suing for peace.
But now the Israeli government says that is not good enough. Now there's a new demand.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says that the Arabs must "recognize the State of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state." Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni has also said that they "must not only recognize Israel's right to exist but to exist as a Jewish state."
Suddenly, Israel needs not just security, but an endorsement by Arabs of its special character. But states don't recognize each other as anything in particular. The United States recognizes Canada without regard to the special character of Quebec. Germany recognizes Belgium without regard for whether the Flemish or the Walloons are dominant.
Why would Israel need Arabs to recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state? That is nobody's business but Israel's. As the late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban once put it, "Our right to exist is independent of any recognition of it." That is even truer about Israel's right to exist "as a Jewish state."
Those who seek that kind of acceptance from the Arabs are barking up the wrong tree. Listen to Jabotinsky: it's not going to happen. The Israelis can argue among themselves about the nature of their state. The Arab world, and especially the Palestinians, can only offer security and peace. That used to be enough. It should be now.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Rabbi Jeff Halper says it "Warehousing"
Dear Friend of Palestinians and Israelis
Here is an excerpt from a scathing analysis by Rabbi Jeff Halper, recently of the Liberty ships to Gaza.
The first part (which I do not include, for time and space reasons), rehearses the history of Israeli occupation and gobbling up of Arab land (see the B't Salim news today).
But his real input is to show how Annapolis is part of the four decade-old window dressing so that Israel can continue to create "Facts on the ground" to make the Palestinians disappear, wall them off, make it so impossible for them that their "terrorism" will allow Israel to finally destroy them (instead of dealing with their grievances)
And since they are "terrorists" (and not aggrieved persons to be respected), the USA (and others) allows the carnage to continue, since we imprison or kill terrorists too as non-human beings, etc., etc.) Jeff Halper's words come via our PCUSA liaison in the Middle East, Doug Dicks. JRK
Israel knows that neither the Palestinians nor the international civil society will accept apartheid. Its function is what all the other “political processes” of the past four decades were intended to do: put off any solution that would require Israel to make meaningful concessions while giving it the political cover and time to create irreversible facts on the ground.
Israel’s “Occupation” has moved beyond apartheid, a term that has become outmoded almost as soon as it began gaining acceptance amidst great protest and clamor. What has evolved before our eyes, something we should have seen but lacked a reference for, is a system of warehousing, a static situation emptied of all political content. “What Israel has constructed,” argues Naomi Klein in her powerful new book, The Shock Doctrine,
is a system,…a network of open holding pens for millions of people who have been categorized as surplus humanity….Palestinians are not the only people in the world who have been so categorized….This discarding of 25 to 60 percent of the population has been the hallmark of the Chicago School [of Economics] crusade….In South Africa, Russia and New Orleans the rich build walls around themselves. Israel has taken this disposal process a step further: it has built walls around the dangerous poor (p. 442).
Israel’s facts on the ground are merely the physical expression of a policy that seeks to de-politicize and thereby normalize its control. The Israel/Palestinian conflict is not presented as a conflict with “sides” and a political dynamic. Instead it is cast as a “war on terrorism,” a fight with a phenomenon that eliminates –or presents as irrelevant – any reference to occupation, which Israel officially denies having. Since “terrorism” and the “clash of civilizations” which underlies it is portrayed as a self-evident and permanent “given,” it assumes the form of a non-issue, a status quo (Israel’s official term for its policy towards the Palestinians) immune to any solution and or process of negotiation.
If the terrorists and their ilk – jailed prisoners, illegal immigrants, slum dwellers and the poor, the discontented victims of “counter-insurgency,” adherents to “evil” religions, ideologies or cultures, to name just a few – are permanent fixtures to be dealt with rather than people whose grievances, needs and rights should be addressed, then prisons, including prisons-writ-large such as Gaza, the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a whole and entire populations and continents, are the penultimate solution.
Warehousing, then, is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is in many ways worse than the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. The ten non-viable “homelands” established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country’s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated “democracy.” This is precisely what Israel is intending – its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing around 15% of historic Palestine – but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel. Having discovered a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens, Israel can afford to lock them out even while withholding from them a viable economy of their own with unfettered ties to the surrounding Arab countries. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as “surplus humanity;” nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.
Since warehousing is a global phenomenon and Israel is pioneering a model for it, what is happening to the Palestinians should be of concern to everyone. It may constitute an entirely new crime against humanity, and as such should be subject to the universal jurisdiction of the world’s courts just as are other egregious violations of human rights. In this sense Israel’s “Occupation” has implications far beyond a localized conflict between two peoples. If Israel can package and export its layered Matrix of Control, a system of permanent repression that combines Kafkaesque administration, law and planning with overtly coercive forms of control over a defined population hemmed in by hostile gated communities (settlements in this case), walls and obstacles of various kinds to movement, then, as Klein writes starkly, every country will look like Israel/Palestine: “One part looks like Israel; the other part looks like Gaza.” In other words, a Global Palestine.
This goes a long way towards explaining why Israel is unconcerned about entering into genuine peace processes or resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. By warehousing them it has the best of both worlds: complete freedom to expand its settlements and control without ever having to compromise, as a political solution would require. By the same token, it explains why the international community lets Israel “get away with it.” Instead of presenting the international community with thorny issues that must be resolved – violations of human rights, international law and repeated UN resolutions, let alone the implications of the conflict itself on international politics and economy – it is instead seen as providing a valued service: developing a model by which “surplus populations” everywhere can be controlled, managed and contained.
Israel, then is in complete sync with both the economic and military logics of global capitalism, for which it is being rewarded generously. Our mistake, encouraged by such terms as “conflict,” “occupation” and “apartheid,” is to view Israel’s control of the Palestinians as a political issue which must be resolved. Instead, it will be “resolved” when the Palestinians are “disappeared,” just as people were “disappeared” in Latin American under its military regimes. Dov Weisglass, the architect of the Sharon government’s “disengagement” from Gaza, said as much in a revealing interview (“The Big Freeze,” Ha’aretz Magazine, Oct. 8, 2004):
The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula [that Israel can retain its settlement “blocs,” including a Greater Jerusalem] so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.
Is what you are saying, then, is that you exchanged the strategy of a long-term interim agreement for a strategy of long-term interim situation?
The American term is to park conveniently. The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation. The decision is proving itself. It is making it possible for the Americans to go to the seething and simmering international community and say to them, “What do you want.” It also transfers the initiative to our hands. It compels the world to deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote….
Warehousing is the starkest of political concepts because it represents the de-politicization of repression, the transformation of a political issue of the first degree into a non-issue, a regrettable but unavoidable situation best dealt with through relief, charity and humanitarian programs. It is a dead-end, a “given,” for which no remedy is available. This, of course, is not the case, and we cannot let it be presented as such. Warehousing is a policy arising out of particular interests of the most powerful. Our use of the term “warehousing,” then, should be to “name the thing” in order to give us a grasp of it, all the better to combat and defeat it. Again Israel provides an instructive (and heartening) example. Despite the almost unlimited and unchecked power Israel has over every element of Palestinian life, including the active support of the US, Europe and much of the international community, including some Arab and Muslim regimes, it has failed to nail down either apartheid or warehousing. Palestinian resistance continues, supported by the Arab and wider Muslim peoples, significant sectors of the international civil society and the critical Israeli peace camp. The conflict’s destabilizing effect on the international system grows steadily, so that it may eventually force the international community to intervene. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans (with European complicity) are able, despite their overwhelming power, to force on the Palestinians the outcome they seek.
The term “warehousing,” then, though referring to a real phenomenon, is also meant as a warning. We must continue our efforts to end the Israeli Occupation, even if this is means, ultimately, the creation of a genuine Palestine/Israel or a wider regional confederation, rather than apartheid-cum-two-state solution or warehousing. Looking at Palestine as a microcosm of a broader global reality of warehousing enables us to more effectively identify those elements appearing elsewhere and grasp the model which Israel is developing, all the better to counter it. Regardless, our language and the analysis it generates must not only be honest and unsparing, it must keep pace with political intentions and ever more rapidly developing “facts on the ground.”
(Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.)
Here is an excerpt from a scathing analysis by Rabbi Jeff Halper, recently of the Liberty ships to Gaza.
The first part (which I do not include, for time and space reasons), rehearses the history of Israeli occupation and gobbling up of Arab land (see the B't Salim news today).
But his real input is to show how Annapolis is part of the four decade-old window dressing so that Israel can continue to create "Facts on the ground" to make the Palestinians disappear, wall them off, make it so impossible for them that their "terrorism" will allow Israel to finally destroy them (instead of dealing with their grievances)
And since they are "terrorists" (and not aggrieved persons to be respected), the USA (and others) allows the carnage to continue, since we imprison or kill terrorists too as non-human beings, etc., etc.) Jeff Halper's words come via our PCUSA liaison in the Middle East, Doug Dicks. JRK
Israel knows that neither the Palestinians nor the international civil society will accept apartheid. Its function is what all the other “political processes” of the past four decades were intended to do: put off any solution that would require Israel to make meaningful concessions while giving it the political cover and time to create irreversible facts on the ground.
Israel’s “Occupation” has moved beyond apartheid, a term that has become outmoded almost as soon as it began gaining acceptance amidst great protest and clamor. What has evolved before our eyes, something we should have seen but lacked a reference for, is a system of warehousing, a static situation emptied of all political content. “What Israel has constructed,” argues Naomi Klein in her powerful new book, The Shock Doctrine,
is a system,…a network of open holding pens for millions of people who have been categorized as surplus humanity….Palestinians are not the only people in the world who have been so categorized….This discarding of 25 to 60 percent of the population has been the hallmark of the Chicago School [of Economics] crusade….In South Africa, Russia and New Orleans the rich build walls around themselves. Israel has taken this disposal process a step further: it has built walls around the dangerous poor (p. 442).
Israel’s facts on the ground are merely the physical expression of a policy that seeks to de-politicize and thereby normalize its control. The Israel/Palestinian conflict is not presented as a conflict with “sides” and a political dynamic. Instead it is cast as a “war on terrorism,” a fight with a phenomenon that eliminates –or presents as irrelevant – any reference to occupation, which Israel officially denies having. Since “terrorism” and the “clash of civilizations” which underlies it is portrayed as a self-evident and permanent “given,” it assumes the form of a non-issue, a status quo (Israel’s official term for its policy towards the Palestinians) immune to any solution and or process of negotiation.
If the terrorists and their ilk – jailed prisoners, illegal immigrants, slum dwellers and the poor, the discontented victims of “counter-insurgency,” adherents to “evil” religions, ideologies or cultures, to name just a few – are permanent fixtures to be dealt with rather than people whose grievances, needs and rights should be addressed, then prisons, including prisons-writ-large such as Gaza, the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a whole and entire populations and continents, are the penultimate solution.
Warehousing, then, is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is in many ways worse than the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. The ten non-viable “homelands” established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country’s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated “democracy.” This is precisely what Israel is intending – its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing around 15% of historic Palestine – but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel. Having discovered a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens, Israel can afford to lock them out even while withholding from them a viable economy of their own with unfettered ties to the surrounding Arab countries. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as “surplus humanity;” nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.
Since warehousing is a global phenomenon and Israel is pioneering a model for it, what is happening to the Palestinians should be of concern to everyone. It may constitute an entirely new crime against humanity, and as such should be subject to the universal jurisdiction of the world’s courts just as are other egregious violations of human rights. In this sense Israel’s “Occupation” has implications far beyond a localized conflict between two peoples. If Israel can package and export its layered Matrix of Control, a system of permanent repression that combines Kafkaesque administration, law and planning with overtly coercive forms of control over a defined population hemmed in by hostile gated communities (settlements in this case), walls and obstacles of various kinds to movement, then, as Klein writes starkly, every country will look like Israel/Palestine: “One part looks like Israel; the other part looks like Gaza.” In other words, a Global Palestine.
This goes a long way towards explaining why Israel is unconcerned about entering into genuine peace processes or resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. By warehousing them it has the best of both worlds: complete freedom to expand its settlements and control without ever having to compromise, as a political solution would require. By the same token, it explains why the international community lets Israel “get away with it.” Instead of presenting the international community with thorny issues that must be resolved – violations of human rights, international law and repeated UN resolutions, let alone the implications of the conflict itself on international politics and economy – it is instead seen as providing a valued service: developing a model by which “surplus populations” everywhere can be controlled, managed and contained.
Israel, then is in complete sync with both the economic and military logics of global capitalism, for which it is being rewarded generously. Our mistake, encouraged by such terms as “conflict,” “occupation” and “apartheid,” is to view Israel’s control of the Palestinians as a political issue which must be resolved. Instead, it will be “resolved” when the Palestinians are “disappeared,” just as people were “disappeared” in Latin American under its military regimes. Dov Weisglass, the architect of the Sharon government’s “disengagement” from Gaza, said as much in a revealing interview (“The Big Freeze,” Ha’aretz Magazine, Oct. 8, 2004):
The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula [that Israel can retain its settlement “blocs,” including a Greater Jerusalem] so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.
Is what you are saying, then, is that you exchanged the strategy of a long-term interim agreement for a strategy of long-term interim situation?
The American term is to park conveniently. The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation. The decision is proving itself. It is making it possible for the Americans to go to the seething and simmering international community and say to them, “What do you want.” It also transfers the initiative to our hands. It compels the world to deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote….
Warehousing is the starkest of political concepts because it represents the de-politicization of repression, the transformation of a political issue of the first degree into a non-issue, a regrettable but unavoidable situation best dealt with through relief, charity and humanitarian programs. It is a dead-end, a “given,” for which no remedy is available. This, of course, is not the case, and we cannot let it be presented as such. Warehousing is a policy arising out of particular interests of the most powerful. Our use of the term “warehousing,” then, should be to “name the thing” in order to give us a grasp of it, all the better to combat and defeat it. Again Israel provides an instructive (and heartening) example. Despite the almost unlimited and unchecked power Israel has over every element of Palestinian life, including the active support of the US, Europe and much of the international community, including some Arab and Muslim regimes, it has failed to nail down either apartheid or warehousing. Palestinian resistance continues, supported by the Arab and wider Muslim peoples, significant sectors of the international civil society and the critical Israeli peace camp. The conflict’s destabilizing effect on the international system grows steadily, so that it may eventually force the international community to intervene. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans (with European complicity) are able, despite their overwhelming power, to force on the Palestinians the outcome they seek.
The term “warehousing,” then, though referring to a real phenomenon, is also meant as a warning. We must continue our efforts to end the Israeli Occupation, even if this is means, ultimately, the creation of a genuine Palestine/Israel or a wider regional confederation, rather than apartheid-cum-two-state solution or warehousing. Looking at Palestine as a microcosm of a broader global reality of warehousing enables us to more effectively identify those elements appearing elsewhere and grasp the model which Israel is developing, all the better to counter it. Regardless, our language and the analysis it generates must not only be honest and unsparing, it must keep pace with political intentions and ever more rapidly developing “facts on the ground.”
(Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.)
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