Below is Norman Finkelstein faced with a performance by Zionist hysterical students (who speak as if they “suffered in the Holocaust”…) – he definitely does not fall for this despicable behaviour displayed by them:
In the light of the debate in Norway about the academic boycott of Israeli Universities, this letter from Palestinian students is most welcome, and makes many crucial points:
Palestinian Students Open Letter to the Board of Governors of Trondheim University
Posted by RORCoalition on Tue, 11/10/2009 – 10:45
We are Arab students at the Israeli universities writing to you in support of the proposed academic boycott of Israeli academic institutions. We believe that the boycott is timely and hopefully will help in upholding moral values of fairness, justice and equality which have been sorely missed in our region.
While the reason for the boycott is rightly what has been going on in the 1967 occupied territories, we propose another angle which affirms the need for boycott, namely our daily experience as Arabs in Israeli institutions. We are the lucky ones who have been able to pursue our studies in institutions of Higher Education, to which we arrived against great odds. Only very few among our generation have been qualified to attend universities due to the State’s discriminatory policies. Our schools mostly lack the basic facilities needed for education, and the curriculum is structured to serve the State’s goal in socializing the pupils for self-estrangement. It contains very little, if any at all, on our history and culture. Additionally, it aims to erase our historical memory and promote the official policy line of divide and rule. In short, it is modeled on curriculums that dark regimes, like Apartheid South Africa, have used to indoctrinate rather than educate. We arrive to universities with this “educational” baggage.
The idea that Israeli universities adhere to the values of free academic institutions, where academic freedom, objectivity and meritocracy prevail is widely accepted in the West. From our experience we attest – and indeed prove beyond doubt – that this is not the case. In recent years Israeli universities have changed the criteria of acceptance to various faculties in order – as a certain president of an Israeli university put it – to prevent large number of undesirable [i.e. Arab] students from attending prestigious faculties such as Medicine and Natural Sciences. Moreover, lecturers who presented findings which are at odd with the official ideology – such as Ilan Pappe and Neve Gordon – are bullied and harassed or forced to resign. Meanwhile raw racist statements by many lecturers are considered by the administrations of the universities as benign or even objective statements. For example, recently Dr. Dan Scheuftan stated in one of his lectures: “The Arabs are the biggest failure in the history of the human race… there’s nothing under the sun that’s more screwed up than the Palestinians”; “Throughout the Arab world, people fire guns at weddings in order to prove that they have at least one thing that’s hard and in working order that can shoot.”
It goes without saying that none of these lecturers has ever been disciplined. Moreover, foreign students are warned by the security authorities of Haifa University not to visit Arab villages or towns.
Although some Israeli universities – such as the University of Haifa – pride themselves on promoting “co-existence”, yet nothing is further from the truth than this. We are prevented from forming our [i.e. Arab] students’ union, and racial discrimination against us – under the pretext of not serving in the army – is widely practiced in the granting of scholarships, as well as in the provision of housing at the universities’ residential halls . This is particularly grave as the universities are located in Jewish towns, and Arab students face many obstacles and hardships in finding appropriate housing due to prevailing prejudices and anti-Arab sentiments in Israeli society.
Yet, the restrictions imposed on our freedom of expression are more stifling. We are not allowed to express our collective sentiments or ideas publicly. It is quite often that our public gatherings are not only violently interrupted by extreme right-wing Jewish students, but also in various occasions the universities called on the police to intervene. In several occasions, as during our peaceful demonstration in Haifa University against the War on Gaza, the police sent in large number of its special units which are infamous for their brutality (pictures and videos attached). Needless to say that they do the job they are trained for . Moreover, the universities collaborate with the internal security services (the feared Shin Bet) and provide it with names of the activists among the students who are regularly summoned, investigated and threatened.
In the end, we are hopeful that you will take a decision which reaffirms the true meaning of human values, and provide a proof that racism, religious tribalism, obfuscation and disregard for human dignity are no longer tolerated.
Sincerely yours
Abnaa el-Balad- The Student Movement
Iqraa Student Association- Islamic Movement
National Democratic Assembly (NDA)- The Student Movement
For contact: ghwassim@gmail.com
References:
http://www.adalah.org/features/prisoners/GAZA_REPORT_ENGLISH_FOR_THE_NEW…
http://www.adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/pr.php?file=06_08_22
http://www.adalah.org/features/prisoners/protestors%20report.pdf
http://www.adalah.org/eng/pressreleases/pr.php?file=09_09_22
video of the police aggression towards Arab students:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YqAc7VUyC4
Israeli troops kill Palestinians: Al Jazeera online
Special forces of the Israeli army killed three Palestinians in the West bank [EPA]
Israeli soldiers have killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents.
Three of the deaths occurred when Israeli forces shot at Palestinians apparently trying to cross the security barrier from the Gaza Strip into Israel on Saturday, according to the Israeli military.
Palestinian medics said the other three Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers during a West Bank raid.
Palestinian medics and sources said the other three Palestinians were killed by Israeli soldiers during a West Bank raid.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Gaza, which is governed by Hamas.
However, a Hamas security source said the three were apparently civilians collecting scrap metal in an industrial zone near the Israeli border.
Palestinian condemnation
Palestinian officials accused the Israeli government of attempting to escalate the situation in the Palestinian territories.
“The Israelis have committed a crime that proves they do not want and do not even think about peace with the Palestinians,” Nabil Abu Rudaina, a spokesman for the Palestinian presidency, said.
“By committing this, Israel seeks to abort the US and international effort to resume negotiations.”
Describing the West Bank raid, Palestinian medics and witnesses said Israeli soldiers surrounded the homes of three members of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed group loosely linked to Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and then killed all three.
The raid took place two days after the same group was one of two to claim responsibility for the fatal shooting of an Israeli settler on Thursday on a West Bank road.
‘Cycle of violence’
Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh, reporting from the West Bank city of Nablus, said thousands of Palestinians turned out in Nablus to participate in a funeral for the three al-Aqsa Brigade members.
“This comes at a very emotional time for all Palestinians, just one day before they prepare to commemorate the one year anniversary of Israel’s war on Gaza where many lives were lost,” she said.
“The Palestinian Authority has said in a statement that this is just a move by Israel to push Palestinians into a vicious cycle of violence in order to escape international pressures.
“The Israeli army, for its part, has said that this comes as retaliation against the death of an Israeli settler in the area on Thursday night.”
The Israeli was the first to get killed in a Palestinian attack in about eight months in the West Bank, territory Israel captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek for a state.
Sources in Fatah said the three men targeted by the Israelis had been disarmed under security measures taken by Abbas’s police force.
At least one had previously been on an Israeli wanted list.
Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel will never quit settlements: BBC
The Israeli prime minister has taken part in tree-planting ceremonies in the West Bank while declaring Israel will never leave those areas.
Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel.
His remarks came hours after a visit by US envoy George Mitchell who is trying to reopen peace talks between Israel and Palestinians.
A Palestinian spokesman said the comments undermined peace negotiations.
“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity”, the prime minister said.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments have angered Palestinians, who want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.
“This is an unacceptable act that destroys all the efforts being exerted by Senator Mitchell in order to bring back the parties to the negotiating table”, Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, in the Jordanian capital Amman, Mr Mitchell emphasised the US commitment to the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
“We intend to continue to pursue our efforts until that objective is achieved”, he told AP.
US attempts to revive peace talks have stalled over the Jewish settlement issue.
Palestinians say they will not return to peace talks unless Israel stops settlement building in the West Bank.
Israel has a long-standing commitment under an existing peace plan to stop settlement growth.
But the Israeli government has temporarily curbed construction as a goodwill gesture, though not in East Jerusalem.
The two sides appear no closer even to sitting in the same room, says the BBC’s Tim Franks in Jerusalem.
All settlements in the the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
Premier: Israel to keep parts of West bank forever: Beaver County Times
Israel’s leader declared his country’s permanent claim to parts of the West Bank on Sunday, angering Palestinians again and complicating efforts by President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy – though the same claim was also made by previous, more moderate premiers.
Timing and context lent weight to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to two Jewish settlements and his declaration that they would remain in Israel forever. He planted a tree at one of them _ Maaleh Adumim, home to about 30,000 Israelis about two miles (three kilometers) from Jerusalem _ a symbolic act of ownership.
“Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of the state of Israel for eternity,” Netanyahu proclaimed, just as envoy George Mitchell was trying to restart peace talks after a yearlong stalemate.
In his claim, Netanyahu was referring to what Israel calls its “main settlement blocs,” most of them close to Israeli population centers. Israel has long said it would keep the blocs, where about 80 percent of its 300,000 settlers live, and trade Israeli land to the Palestinians in exchange for the blocs.
In failed negotiations with former, relatively moderate Israeli premiers like Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, Palestinians have indicated they might accept such a trade.
But Netanyahu is suspect in Palestinian eyes, since he has traditionally opposed ceding control of any of the West Bank and has backed settlement expansion. Only under heavy U.S. pressure did he express grudging acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state in a speech last June.
Netanyahu responded to Palestinian demands for a total construction freeze in the settlements by limiting new building in the West Bank but not in east Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as their capital.
Palestinians rejected the partial freeze as insufficient to get them back to the negotiating table.
Israel countered that by demanding a total freeze in construction in the settlements and east Jerusalem’s large Jewish neighborhoods _ also considered settlements by the Palestinians _ they have climbed out on a limb and are trapped by their own conditions.
On Sunday, claiming Maaleh Adumim and the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem, Netanyahu once again provided fuel for Palestinian outrage.
“This is an unacceptable act that destroys all the efforts being exerted by Senator Mitchell in order to bring the parties back to the negotiating table,” said Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
This came as Mitchell was conducting his latest round of talks in the region to try to get peace talks back on track.
In Amman, Jordan, Mitchell appeared unmoved by Netanyahu’s declaration on Maaleh Adumim, restating the U.S. goal of a Palestinian state living next to Israel in peace. “We intend to continue to pursue our efforts until that objective is achieved,” he said after meeting Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah II.
On the eve of Mitchell’s arrival last week, Netanyahu said Israel would demand a presence on the Jordanian border of the West Bank to stop weapons and rocket smuggling even if a peace deal is reached, in order to protect Israel’s heartland from militant attacks like those from Gaza.
Palestinians rejected that as well. They want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem and say they will not accept any Israeli presence there _ soldiers or settlers.
After his meeting with Mitchell, Netanyahu told his Cabinet he had heard “a few interesting ideas” on renewing peace talks. No details were forthcoming.
Even Mitchell’s boss, Obama, has been sounding pessimistic about the prospects.
Last year, Obama took office with the ambitious aim of putting Mideast peacemaking on a fast track. Instead, the peace mission has stalled over Israel’s settlements on occupied lands and the refusal by the Palestinians to return to peace talks.
Obama acknowledged in an interview published last week that he underestimated the domestic political forces at play in the region and overreached in expecting a quick breakthrough.
Also Sunday, a Belgian official protested after Israel prevented him from visiting Gaza. Development Minister Charles Michel said European officials must be able to visit the territory because they have aid projects there.
“This situation is unacceptable,” he told RTL TV.
Israel routinely bans foreign officials from crossing into Gaza, maintaining that such visits bolster the Islamic Hamas rulers of Gaza. Officials can enter Gaza from Egypt.
Associated Press Writer Jamal Halaby contributed to this report from Amman, Jordan.
Netanyahu plants tree in settlement: JTA
January 24, 2010
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planted a tree in a West Bank settlement to mark the Tu b’Shevat festival.
Netanyahu joined community members in planting trees Sunday in Kibbutz Kfar Etzion in Gush Etzion. He was scheduled to plant trees as well at the Maale Adumim and Ariel settlements.
Israelis plant trees from the beginning of the Hebrew month of Shevat until the holiday on the 15th of the month, which falls this year on Jan. 30.
“The message is clear — we are here, and we will stay here,” Netanyahu said Sunday in Kfar Etzion. “We plant and build — this is an inseparable part of the State of Israel forever.”
The planting came several hours after Netanyahu met with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell to discuss ways to restart peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
The Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim and Ariel settlement blocs are widely expected to be part of Israel in any peace settlement.
During Sunday’s Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said of the planting, “This expresses the unity that exists within the nation about how important it is for these places to remain part of the State of Israel forever. I encourage all members of parliament to get out and plant in the [settlement] blocs in our land.”
Netanyahu has called a 10-month freeze on new construction in West Bank settlements.
Only an idiot would say Israel has frozen settlement activity: Haaretz
Monday morning, as George Mitchell was on the way home from another diplomatic mission short on breakthroughs, Saeb Erekat did not sound dismayed. On the contrary, the head of the Palestinian negotiation team vehemently argued that the American envoy’s last visit actually moved up the moment of truth for the White House.
The veteran adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s favorite move of throwing the ball into the Palestinians’ court stopped working with the Americans.
They are patiently waiting for the prime minister’s answer to two questions: First, is he ready for the negotiations to pick up where they left off at the end of the former prime minister Ehud Olmert’s term? Second, does he accept the principle that the territory transferred to a Palestinian state will be the same size as the territory captured by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza during the Six-Day War.
The international community’s patience, Erekat concluded, is wearing thin.
Erekat is not alone in his thinking. Over the weekend, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pointed at Israel as not only the one responsible for the stagnation in the diplomatic process, but also for the thawing of the freeze on construction in the settlements.
Two months after the government decision on November 26 to freeze construction in Jewish settlements for 10 months, you’d have to be blind, an idiot, or a member of the Yesha Council of settlements to use the term “freeze” to describe the real estate situation in Judea and Samaria.
Two days ago, when Netanyahu planted a tree in Gush Etzion, he promised to place many more trees in the Ariel bloc as well, which is 20 kilometers east of the Green Line. In the case of Ariel, Netanyahu kept his word even before he gave it; as he was speaking yellow bulldozers were feverishly working on a new site for Ariel’s industrial zone.
The Civil Administration confirmed that the freeze also applied to industrial and commercial zones, and that surveys conducted last week in the Ariel region found several violations of the freeze order and an injunction to halt the construction was even issued. So what?
As mentioned, two days ago Haaretz documented bulldozers at work there (and also in the Barkan industrial zone). The Civil Administration spokesman explained that “the enforcement efforts and issuing of injunctions is done in accordance with all the relevant considerations and priorities.”
It seems that the freeze on the construction of new industrial zones in national priority zones of the government in the heart of the West Bank is not at the top of the defense minister’s list of priorities. He apparently was busy upgrading the status of Ariel University Center of Samaria.
Netanyahu’s colleagues will probably explain to the Americans that besides for the settlers, factories also experience natural growth.
Israel creates first ‘army-owned’ university: ROL
Monday, 25 January 2010 18:56 – Jonathan Cook
Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, approved last week the upgrading to university status of a college in a settlement located deep inside the West Bank, a move certain to further undermine Palestinian confidence in the peace process.
The decision, authorising the first Israeli university in Palestinian territory, is expected to entitle the college to significant extra funding, allowing it to expand its student population.
About 11,000 students, most from inside Israel, already attend the college in Ariel, studying amid a population of 18,000 settlers.
The expansion of Ariel, 20km inside the West Bank and close to Nablus, is likely to increase tensions with the US administration of Barack Obama. The White House has demanded a settlement freeze that is being only temporarily and partially honoured by Israel.
The United States and Israel have repeatedly clashed over Israeli plans to extend its separation wall east of Ariel, effectively annexing the settlement and separating the central and northern parts of the West Bank.
Peace groups have been particularly shocked that authorisation for Ariel college’s upgrade came from Mr Barak, leader of the Labor Party. Members of his centre-left faction had previously blocked attempts by right-wing parties to change the college’s status.
Several Israeli academics also warned that it would add fuel to existing campaigns in Europe to boycott Israeli universities, which have been accused of complicity with the occupation.
“This is all about trying to make the settlement of Ariel ‘kosher’,” said Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the Peace Now, an Israeli group that monitors settlement growth. “It helps to reinforce the growing consensus in Israel that Ariel should remain part of Israel permanently.”
Ariel College has grown dramatically since its founding in 1982 as the West Bank campus of Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, close to Tel Aviv. On becoming independent in 2004, the college immediately began lobbying for university status. A year later it won the backing of Ariel Sharon, the prime minister then, who described the upgrade as of “great importance” in realising a policy of “strengthening the settlements”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, declared at the time that a university in Ariel would ensure the settlement “will forever remain part of the state of Israel”.
The upgrade was opposed by Israel’s education oversight body, the Higher Education Council, which threatened to withhold recognition of the college’s degrees.
Nonetheless, in 2007 the college renamed itself the “Ariel University Centre”, a change of status initially endorsed by the government of Ehud Olmert. Under pressure from education officials, however, the decision was reversed on the grounds that only Israeli military authorities in the West Bank – under Mr Barak – could authorise such a change.
Despite opposition from members of his party, the defence minister finally consented last week.
Yossi Sarid, a former chairman of the Higher Education Council, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper on Thursday: “Thanks to [Mr Barak], we will have the only university in the free world whose founders and owners are uniformed officers.”
Mr Barak’s approval suggested the growing power of the far right in Mr Netanyahu’s government, said Anat Matar, a philosophy professor at Tel Aviv Universty.
Two weeks ago, Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, threatened to block all legislative proposals from Labor unless Ariel College’s upgrade was approved.
Yisrael Beiteinu has made the settlement’s expansion a key plank in its platform because Ariel has a large proportion of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Mr Lieberman’s core constituency.
Alex Miller, an Ariel resident and Yisrael Beiteinu politician, issued a statement last week welcoming the decision as an “important shot of encouragement for the settlements”.
Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, has said he intends to turn the settlement into Israel’s version of Princeton, a US town that has flourished on the back of its Ivy League university.
Mr Barak’s officials said the new status of “university centre” would be a transitional measure before Ariel College became Israel’s eighth fully fledged university, probably within two years.
Ariel College plans to double its intake of students over the next decade, triple the size of its campus and build a new neighbourhood for staff. About 70 per cent of the college’s students are drawn from the Tel Aviv area inside Israel, as well as a small number of Israeli Arab students.
The college displays an Israeli flag in every classroom and requires all students to take at least one course on Judaism or Jewish heritage, usually overseen by settler rabbis.
Ariel, the fourth-largest settlement in the West Bank, is considered by most Israelis as one of the “settlement blocs” that will be annexed to Israel in a peace deal. Palestinians say such an annexation would effectively cut the West Bank in two.
There are widespread fears among Israeli academics that calls for a boycott of Israeli universities will intensify following the Ariel College decision. Yaron Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University, called the decision the “academisation of the occupation”.
Amal Jamal, the head of political science at Tel Aviv University, said the upgrade would also highlight the extent to which universities inside Israel colluded with the West Bank college. “There is strong support for the college among some academics at Israeli universities, which co-operate with it in holding conferences, conducting research, supervising doctoral students and teaching,” he said.
A vote by the British lecturers’ union in 2005, in favour of a limited academic boycott of Israel, targeted Bar Ilan University because of its links to Ariel College. Similar boycott motions have been passed annually by the union, though later overturned.
Last November, a Norwegian university, Trondheim, became the first to vote on boycotting Israeli universities, though the motion was rejected.
Ariel College found itself at the centre of a diplomatic row last year when Spain disqualified its researchers from the finals of a competition to design a solar-powered house. Spanish officials said the institution could not participate because it was built on occupied Palestinian land.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
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Amira Hass: In the West they say it’s rain: Haaretz
Israel, via the Interior Ministry, continues to spit in the face of friendly countries, and those countries continue to admire the falling raindrops. The ministry’s most recent gob of spit was the cancellation of the work visas that citizens of those countries who are employed by international NGOs have been getting for years.
Instead, they will be given tourist visas that restrict their freedom of movement and activity. These people are usually employees of humanitarian organizations that operate among the Palestinian population of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
In taking this step, Israel is declaring its contempt for international aid organizations, as well as its ingratitude, because it is these bodies that put out the fires ignited by Israel’s discriminatory policies against the Palestinians in the territories. It is the governmental, public and private foundations from those friendly countries, mostly in the West, that fix the damage done by the occupation, both in the past and present.
The donations to the Palestinian Authority and to international and Palestinian NGOs are ostensibly evidence that the outside world supports the Palestinians and their aspirations for independence within the June 4, 1967 borders. But actually, they are evidence of Israel’s virtual inviolability. In 1993, the world did not demand that in the framework of what was named the peace process, Israel compensate the Palestinians for the damage wrought by the occupation. The friendly countries did it themselves, instead of Israel.
And today, they exert no real pressure on Israel to end its policies that restrict the development of the West Bank; policies that have created humanitarian disasters in the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. It is easier for Western governments to spend billions of dollars of their taxpayers’ money than to make Israel honor international laws and resolutions so that Palestinian dependence on aid money will diminish.
The cancellation of the work visas is another expression of the way Israel unilaterally draws the borders of the Palestinian entity that it plans to define as a state; without the lands of East Jerusalem, of course, where efforts to reduce the Palestinian population are ongoing, and without the Gaza Strip. The separation fence, deep inside the West Bank, has already become part of the ostensibly moderate Israeli consensus as the “western border”, and now a campaign is on for the annexation of most of Area C to Israel.
The Interior Ministry is doing its bit to create these facts on the ground. It takes pains to mention that its restrictions on foreign citizens are aimed at people whose destination is “the areas of the Palestinian Authority” – in other words, Areas A and B, or 40 percent of the West Bank. No Jerusalem, no Gaza, almost no Area C, where their work is limited anyway by the very restrictions on Palestinian development.
In the Oslo Accords, when travel and stays by foreign citizens are mentioned, the geographic reference is to the West Bank and Gaza. But the Interior Ministry distinguishes between “the boundaries of the Palestinian Authority” and “the boundaries of Israel.” Israel’s intentionally blurry borders are therefore being defined on the basis of the enclaves of the Palestinian Authority. The PA has no right to decide who enters its enclaves through the international crossing points, which are controlled by Israel. The Israeli Interior Ministry continues to prevent the entry of dozens of foreign citizens who have links of work, family or friendship with the Palestinian community.
“Israel has the sovereign right to impose restrictions on entry,” is how foreign diplomats explain their governments’ lack of intervention. That is, with their diplomatic laxity and financial generosity, the countries of the West, first and foremost the United States, are collaborating with the unilateral Israeli process of perpetuating the Palestinian enclaves.
The Inevitable Bi-national Regime: Haaretz
Meron Benvenisti January 22, 2010
Translated by Zalman Amit and Daphna Levitt.
The occupation of the territories in 1967 resulted from military action, but the military element quickly became secondary, while the “civilian” component,-settlements,-became the dominant factor, subjugating the military to its needs and turning the security forces into a militia in the service of the Jewish ethnic group. Eventually, settlements themselves were no longer as meaningful as they once had been.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the very fact of building and populating settlements at any given spot in the territories played a vital role in the creation of political faits accomplis. Those who planted the settlements in the Katif Block in the Gaza strip, or in the heart of Samaria and northern Judea, assumed that the Palestinians would forever remain submissive; otherwise, how could one explain the logic of establishing Jewish islands in the heart of Arab populations? The settlers argued that from the very beginning, Zionism flew in the face of reality. It succeeded, they said, precisely because it ignored reality. Therefore, the demographic and geographic arguments used against the settlers evaporated in the fervor of their fantasies.
Settlements as museum exhibits
Sometime in the late 1980s, the settlements crossed the critical threshold beyond which continued demographic and urban growth were assured. Settler leaders successfully set up a powerful lobby that straddled the Green Line. And thus the legal and physical infrastructure, making the de facto annexation of the territories possible was firmly in place. From that point on, the number of settlements, and even the size of their population, became immaterial because the apparatus of Israeli rule was perfected to such a degree that the distinction between Israel proper and the occupied territories—and between settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Jewish communities inside Israel—was totally blurred. Similarly, the takeover of land ceased to be chiefly for the purpose of settlement construction and became primarily a means of constricting the movements of the Palestinian populace and of appropriating their physical space.
In the new paradigm the settlements no longer have importance as instruments of spatial control. The separation barrier/wall and its gates, the “sterile roads,” and a myriad of military regulations have taken the place of the settlements as symbols of Zionism.
Nevertheless, most settlements, large and small alike, have continued squandering public resources on a colossal scale while falsely claiming to be “foci of Zionist ideological endeavor” and necessary for security. Forty years after the establishment of the first settlement, “the settlement”—like the kibbutz and the moshav and like the tower-and-stockade colonies of the pre-state era—became just another exhibit in the museum of Zionist antiquities. The age of ideology is over and erecting settlements, as well as dismantling them, has become an outdated pastime with no real impact on political developments, except as a symbol and a mobilizing device for both right and left.
The attempt to mark the settlements—and the settlers—as the major impediment to peace is a convenient alibi, obfuscating the involvement of the entire Israeli body politic in maintaining and expanding the regime of coercion and discrimination in the occupied territories, and benefiting from it.
By the late 1980s, after two decades of occupation, Israeli control of the territories beyond the Green Line has become quasi- permanent, differentiated from sovereign rule only vis-à-vis the Palestinian residents: As far as Israeli citizens and their range of interests are concerned, the annexation of the territories is a fait accompli. Defining the territories as “occupied” is, in fact, an attempt to depict it as a temporary condition that will end “when peace comes,” and is designed to avoid resolving, “in the meantime”, immediate dilemmas. The term is a crutch for those who seek optimistic precedents, allowing them to believe that just as all occupations end, this one will too. This linguistic choice thereby contributes to the blurring and obfuscation of the reality in the territories, thus abetting the continuation of the status quo.
Quasi stable status quo
The continuation of the status quo creates a quasi-stable situation: the Jewish community, a loose framework of cultures and ethnic tribes in constant tension, is held together by enmity to the Palestinian “Other”, and by a determination to rule them. The unity vis-à-vis the outside world enables it to maintain control and to successfully implement a strategy of fragmentation of the Palestinian community.
The “Divide and Rule” strategy is a notorious device of colonial power except that here it is implemented in the 21st century, in an era that perceives imperialist traditions as a disgraceful chapter in the history of the western world. The Palestinian people have been fragmented, over the last three generations, into splinters. They have not merely been crushed by force but also have taken upon themselves split identities and have surrendered to agendas, dictated to them: the Palestinian Authority ostensibly represents the Palestinian people but, actually, represents only the Palestinian splinter that lives in the West Bank and is struggling, through the “peace process”, to get better conditions for merely one quarter of the entire Palestinian nation. The residents of East Jerusalem want only to be left alone and not to be forced (”out of patriotism”) to forego the privileges they enjoy as Israeli residents; in the debate over detaching peripheral Arab neighborhoods, the residents of East Jerusalem support continued annexation to Israel. The Palestinian Israelis (”Israeli Arabs”) are fighting for recognition as a “national minority” and demand equal individual and collective rights within the Israeli polity. They do not tie their struggle to the struggle of their brethren who live on the other side of the separation fence/wall. The Palestinian Israelis are fighting for “Equality” and “Citizen Rights” whereas the Palestinians in the occupied territories are fighting for “Self Determination”. The Hamas activists in the Gaza Strip are not interested in the implications of their rhetoric on the interests of the entire Palestinian nation. And those in the Diaspora continue to carry around the keys to the homes they left in 1948 and to dream about “The Return.”
The process of splitting up into sub-communities has not yet reached its consummation, and the political, economic and security constraints are deepening the entrenchment of the divided identities, which slowly assume separate cultural and even linguistic characteristics. Over the generations the Zionist enterprise, whose development challenged the Palestinian Arab community, and thus helped its unification into a distinct national group, became the dominant force under whose fist the Palestinian community has been shattered.
Process of Palestinian fragmentation
Fragmentation became the major tool of Israeli control, to preserve their rule over Israel/Palestine from the river to the sea. Fragmentation serves them as insurance against the “demographic threat” when, very soon, the Palestinians achieve a numerical majority in the region. The ruling Jewish community will continue, even when it becomes a minority, to force this split on the Palestinians with the usual carrots and sticks, dictating the agenda, presenting threats, imposing collective punishments and bribery. This will preserve and even deepen the lack of coordination, the conflicting interests of the splintered Palestinian communities and insure the dominance of the internally fragmented but externally cohesive Jewish community over the fragmented Palestinians, thus sustaining the status quo.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the policy of fragmentation was aimed at the small minority of “Israeli Arabs.” Now it is being put into practice in the most sophisticated fashion against five million Palestinians, attracting almost no attention. It is not accidental that Israeli propaganda has no interest in stressing the achievements of the fragmentation; On the contrary, Israel aims the bogey of “existential threat” against a monolithic adversary, to rally against “the dark forces of Islamo-fascism.” In this, they are unwittingly assisted by leftist circles and the “Peace Camp” that remain steadfast to the romantic notion about a cohesive Palestinian people, united in its struggle for freedom, They are joined by Palestinian spokesmen who view talk about the success of fragmentation as hostile propaganda. Even those who are informed and knowledgeable are surprised when the extent of the fragmentation process is brought to their attention. Attention is diverted to marginal issues, and various competing organizations are supporting each fragmented group, pursuing different agendas and clamoring for attention, thus exacerbating the fragmentation, and increasing the confusion. The paradox is that serious attempts to deal with separate Palestinian agendas, which purport to challenge the status quo, are actually strengthening it.
The high profile of “international relations” and the diplomatic discourse is the most glaring example. Useless negotiations and lengthy expert discussions on “core issues” are going on decade after decade without any change in the stale arguments and counter arguments, while the reality is transformed and the “peace process” serves as a curtain behind which divide- and –rule is entrenched.
A unique concept of sovereignty
The traditional Zionist stance of denying the very existence of a Palestinian nation cannot serve as a response to the Palestinian demand for self determination in the occupied territories. Still the Israelis seek to limit their conception to a mere quarter of Palestinians, those who live in the West Bank. For them they have invented a unique concept of a “state”: its “sovereignty” will be scattered, lacking any cohesive physical infrastructure, with no direct connection to the outside world, and limited to the height of it residential buildings and the depth of its graves. The airspace and the water resources will remain under Israeli control. Helicopter patrols, the airwaves, the hands on the water pumps and the electrical switches, the registration of residents and the issue of identity cards, as well as passes to enter and leave, will all be controlled (directly or indirectly) by the Israelis. This ridiculous caricature of a Palestinian state, beheaded and with no feet, future, or any chance for development, is presented as the fulfillment of the goal of symmetry and equality embodied in the old slogan, “two states for two peoples.” It is endorsed, even by staunch supporters of “Greater Israel”, and the traditional “peace camp” rejoices in its triumph.
Large segments of the Israeli “Peace Camp”, who staunchly believe in “Partition of the Land” as a meta-political tenet, are gratified; they believe that they won the ideological, historical, debate with the Right. Now they can load the entire Palestinian tragedy on an entity that comprises less than 10% of the area of historic Palestine. Moreover it is supposed to offer a solution to all refugees outside Palestine “who can return to the Palestinian mini-state”, and also provide remedy to the Israeli –Palestinians who can achieve their collective rights in the Palestinian State. Indeed, a cheap and convenient solution; after all, it is seemingly based on the venerable model of the “national conflict” and the classic solution of two states for two peoples.
But how did it come to pass that Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, scions of the “Nationalist Camp” became champions of the” Palestinian Nation-State”? What brought those who believed that there is only one legitimate collective entity–and the Palestinians are merely terrorist gangs—to declare that the conflict is national and therefore the solution is partition between “two nation states”? This was caused by the Palestinians who by launching the al-Aqsa intifada compelled the Israelis to realize that they are irrepressible and cannot be ignored or deported. The intifada forced the Israelis, for the first time in their history, to delineate the geographic limits of their expansion, construct fences and roadblocks and abandon populated areas that could upset the demographic balance. The remaining areas, fragmented and non-viable, can be declared as a Palestinian state.
Erasing from consciousness
This realization came at a steep price for intercommunal relations. The violent events of the intifada brought the Jewish-Israeli public to a crossroads in relation to their neighbors-enemies. For the first time since the tragic encounter began more than a century ago, the Jews turned their backs to the Palestinians, erasing them from their consciousness, imprisoning them behind impenetrable walls. The Jews became willing to congregate in a ghetto and pray that the Mediterranean might dry up or a bridge be built to connect them with Europe. This mentality is manifested in two, recently constructed, architectural monuments whose symbolism transcends their functional value: The gigantic separation barrier/wall and the colossal Ben Gurion air terminal. The former is meant to hide the Palestinians and erase them from Israeli conciseness and the latter serves as an escape gateway.
Ostensibly this is not new: The Jewish public has always alienated and disregarded the Arabs. But it was an intimate disregard, similar to a person’s approach to his own shadow; one can ignore it but never be rid of it. The process of mental disengagement is a continual one, but there is no doubt that the emergence of suicide bombers hastened it. There could not be any intimate regard for a culture that nurtures such a monstrous phenomenon, and the Palestinians were thereby complicit in bringing about the divorce imposed upon them. Racist right-wing circles exploit the situation and turn diffuse emotions into a practical plan for “transfer” (or expulsion) and denial of civil rights; human rights activists beg for resistance to the injustices and meet with indifference; political movements thrive on erasing the Arabs from Israeli awareness; and those who caution that (it is all an illusion, that) millions of human beings cannot be erased, are treated with hostility. The Israeli right shows contempt toward the Arab “rabble” and believe that it is possible to control them by tricks and threats, and the Israeli left plays with theoretical peace plans and refrains from involvement in the daily hardship of the Palestinian population; everybody joins in chanting the slogan: “we are here and they are there”.
Durable status quo
The conclusion that Israel will continue to manage the conflict by fragmenting the Palestinians is realistic. The status quo will endure as long as the forces wishing to preserve it are stronger than those wishing to undermine it, and that is the situation today in Israel/Palestine. After almost half a century, the Israeli governing system known as “the occupation”–which ensures full control over every agent or process that jeopardizes the Jewish community’s total domination and the political and material advantage that it accumulates– has become steadily more sophisticated through random trial and error an unplanned response to some genetic code of a supplanting settler society.
This status quo, which appears to be chaotic and unstable, is much sturdier than the conventional description of the situation as “a temporary military occupation” would indicate. Precisely because it is constitutionally murky and ill defined, its ambiguity supports its durability: it is open to different and conflicting interpretations and seems preferable to apocalyptic scenarios, therefore persuasive.
The volatile status quo survives due to the combination of several factors:
1. Fragmentation of the Palestinian community and incitement of the remaining fragments against each other.
2. Mobilization of the Jewish community into support for the occupation regime, which is perceived as safeguarding its very existence.
3. Funding of the status quo by the “donor countries”.
4. The strategy of the neighboring states which gives priority to bilateral and global interests over Arab ethnic solidarity.
5. Success of the propaganda campaign known as “negotiations with the Palestinians,” which convinces many that the status quo is temporary and thus they can continue to amuse themselves with theoretical alternatives to the “final-status arrangement.”
6. The silencing of all criticism as an expression of hatred and anti-Semitism; and abhorrence of the conclusion that the status quo is durable and will not be easily changed.
Internal changes
One must not surmise that the status quo is frozen; on the contrary, actions taken to perpetuate it bring about long term consequences. Cutting off Gaza is not a temporary but a quasi permanent situation which will affect the future of the Palestinian people. The severance of Gaza from the West Bank creates two separate entities, and Israel can record another victory in the fragmentation process: 1, 5 million Palestinians are on their way to achieve a caricature of a state that encompasses 1. 5% of historic Palestine where 30% of their people reside.
The West Bank canton, whose area is rapidly shrinking due to massive settlement activity, is considered the heart of the Palestinians under occupation. However, it is experiencing rapid political and economic developments that resemble those experienced by Israeli-Palestinians after 1948, with obvious differences due to historical circumstances and population size. It seems that many West Bankers have genuinely grown tired of the violence that led them to disaster [DL1] t , which forces the Israelis to relate to their non-violent struggle and to their community’s accumulation of economic and socio-cultural power.
All these and other changes in the status quo, are significant yet internal, and take place under the umbrella of Israeli control that can speed them up or slow them down, according to its interests. However, without the sanction, or at least the indifference of external powers, the status quo would not endure. Massive financial contributions free Israel from the burden of coping with the enormous cost of maintaining the control over the Palestinians and create a system of corruption and vested interests. The artificial existence of the PA in itself perpetuates the status quo because it supports the illusion that the situation is temporary and the “peace process” will soon end it.
Economic disparity
Usually the emphasis is on the political and civil inequality and the denial of collective rights that the model of partition–or the model of power sharing–is supposed to solve. But the economic inequality, the greater and more dangerous inequity , , which characterizes the current situation, will not be reversed by either alternative. There is a gigantic gap in gross domestic product per capita between Palestinians and Israelis–which is more than 1:10 in the West Bank and 1:20 in the Gaza Strip–as well as an enormous disparity in the use of natural resources (land, water). This gap cannot endure without the force of arms provided so effectively by the Israeli defense establishment, which enforces a draconic control system. Even most of the Israelis who oppose the “occupation” are unwilling to let go of it, since that would impinge on their personal welfare. All the economic, social and spatial systems of governance in the occupied territories are designed to maintain and safeguard Israeli privileges and prosperity on both sides of the “Green Line”, at the expense of millions of captive, impoverished Palestinians.
One must therefore seek a different paradigm to describe the state of affairs more than forty years after Israel/Palestine became one geopolitical unit again, after nineteen years of partition. The term “de facto bi-national regime” is preferable to the occupier/occupied paradigm, because it describes the mutual dependence of both societies, as well as the physical, economic, symbolic and cultural ties that cannot be severed without an intolerable cost. Describing the situation as de facto bi-national does not indicate parity between Israelis and Palestinians–on the contrary, it stresses the total dominance of the Jewish-Israeli nation, which controls a Palestinian nation that is fragmented both territorially and socially. No paradigm of military occupation can reflect the Bantustans created in the occupied territories, which separate a free and flourishing population with a gross domestic product of almost 30 thousand Dollars per capita from a dominated population unable to shape its own future with a GDP of $1,500 per capita. No paradigm of military occupation can explain how half the occupied areas (”area C”) have essentially been annexed, leaving the occupied population with disconnected lands and no viable existence. Only a strategy of annexation and permanent rule can explain the vast settlement enterprise and the enormous investment in housing and infrastructure, estimated at US$100
History of bi-national-partition dilemma
The bi-national versus partition dilemma is not new to either national movement. The Palestinians, who rejected the 1947 UN partition resolution, stated in their National Covenant, that Palestine “is one integral territorial unit”. This principle evolved in the 1970s to the concept of “democratic non-sectarian (or secular) Palestine “. In 1974 PLO political thinking began to grapple with the idea of partition. The formula endorsed was the Phased Plan: “We shall persevere in realizing the rights of the Palestinian People to return, and to self determination in the context of an independent national Palestinian state in any part of Palestinian soil, as an interim objective, with no compromises, recognition, or negotiation”. In 1988 this strategy was changed through negotiations to the present formula of partition along the 1967 armistice lines,. Thus, Palestinian acceptance of the partition option is only two decades old.
Until the mid 1940s, the Zionist officially defined its ultimate national objectives exclusively by the general formula of the transformation of Palestine (Eretz Israel) into an independent entity with an overwhelming Jewish majority. The ultimate objective of all national movements, the creation of a sovereign state, was implied in Zionist self-identification as s national liberation movement. However, the debate on the merits of emphasizing that ultimate objective continued throughout the history of the Zionist movement. The official leadership concentrated on formulating intermediate political objectives and those changed according to political conditions. These objectives (in chronological order) were: a national home, unrestricted immigration and the creation of a Jewish majority, “organic Zionism” (i.e., settlement and an independent Jewish economic sector); power-sharing (”Parity”) with the Arabs (irrespective of size of population); a bi-national state; a federation of Jewish and Arab cantons; partition. Only in the early 1940s the Zionists openly and officially raised the demand for a sovereign Jewish state. The territorial objectives of the Zionist movement were also ambiguous. The agreement to the partition of Palestine (1936, 1947) was accepted by many as merely a phase in the realization of the Zionist aspirations, but also (by some) as a fundamental compromise with the Palestinian national movement.
During the Mandate period the bi-national idea was acceptable to the Zionist establishment, including Haim Weizman and David Ben-Gurion. However, one must remember that the Jews were a minority and the demand for a Jewish state was s impudent; power sharing, and even parity, sounded better. Also, a federation of cantons could have evened out the huge Arab demographic lead. The choice between bi-nationalism and partition was made twice: in 1936 the Peel Commission rejected the Cantonization Plan of the Jewish Agency and chose partition; in 1947 the UN General Assembly voted for partition and rejected the minority plan for a federal state.
Only a marginal group of Jewish intellectuals considered the bi-national state as the only way to avoid endless bloody conflict. They sought to emulate the Swiss model, accentuated the principle of parity but did not elaborate the details. Indeed, there was no need for such elaboration since both the Palestinians and the Zionists rejected the bi-national idea, and most Jews considered it treason. Hashomer Hatzsair movement adopted some elements of the bi-national model, but the establishment of the State in 1948 called off the initiative. The opinion that the realization of Zionism can only be achieved by a sovereign Jewish state triumphed, and those who dare to challenge this precept are considered traitors.
After the 1967 war the Israeli political Right played with the concept of bi-nationalism, in the shape that suited its ideology (the Autonomy Plan). Likud ideology rejected the” transitory” nature of Israeli occupation but its belief in “Greater Israel” clashed with the demographic reality, and liberal circles in Likud (led by Menachem Begin) struggled with the famous dilemma: a Jewish or democratic state? Begin’s answer was based on the (failed) system known to him in Eastern Europe after WW1—non- territorial, cultural and communal autonomy for ethnic minorities under the League of Nations minority treaties. Begin’s Autonomy Plan had been modified in the Camp David (1978) accords and territorial components were added. The Oslo model used many components (with major changes) of Begin’s Autonomy Plan, and the Oslo accords can be viewed as bi-national arrangements, because the territorial and legal powers of the Palestinian Authority are intentionally vague; the external envelope of the international boundaries , the economic system, even the registration of population, remained under Israeli control. Moreover, the complex agreements of Oslo necessitated close cooperation with Israel which, considering the huge power disparity between the PA and Israel, meant that the PA was merely a glorified municipal or provincial authority. So, in the absence of any political process, a de-facto bi-national structure, was willy-nilly, entrenched.
Description, not prescription
It is no longer arguable; the question is not if a binational entity be established but rather what kind of entity will it be. The historical process that began in the aftermath of the 1967 War brought about the gradual abrogation of the partition option, if it ever existed. Hence, bi-nationalism is not a political or ideological program so much as a de facto reality masquerading as a temporary state of affairs. It is a description of the current condition, not a prescription.