NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
I truly tried this evening to lessen the number of items that I have been sending lately, and to this end cut out (among other things) information about happenings at the Syrian border today, as these probably will be in your local newspapers. But after all the thinning, I’m still left with 6 items, of which at least 2 are fairly long. My apologies. But as I have previously said, I don’t make the news, I just send tidbits of it that seem to me you should know.
Item 1 reports the trial of Bassem Tamimi, and includes the full text of his statement (which he was not allowed to make in court) as well as background. Tamimi is being tried in a military court, not a civilian one, because Tamimi lives in the oPt under military occupation. Please read the full text of his statement as well as the rest.
Item 2 is an invitation to join a movement for a single pluralistic and democratic state for all. If you would like to join, please inform Mazin Qumsiyeh (his email below). Am wishing us luck.
Item 3 is more telling than its title—‘The Politics of Stasis”–suggests. The fact that this analysis appeared in German in a major German newspaper (translated into English below), Der Spiegel, suggests that attitudes towards Israel are changing in Germany. The fact that Germans feel free to criticize Israel shows that they are emerging from the guilt of the Holocaust which has sat on their shoulders but is apparently beginning to dissipate. The analysis in this article does not take an antagonistic tone towards Israel, but nevertheless states things as the author sees them. This amounts to a good deal of criticism of Israel. Let’s hope that this becomes a trend in Germany as well as elsewhere.
Item 4 is OCHA’s weekly report on Protection of Civilians.
Item 5, “Bullet vs Projectiles” includes a letter from the aunt of a protester who on May 15th was shot in the back. Please don’t miss this brief but gentle, warm, and intelligent note to all of us, and please distribute it widely.
I did take exception with Antoine Raffoul who pens the ‘1948 Lest We Forget’ commentary for his remark about Mark Regev going back to Australia, where he was born. I told Antoine that we should be learning how to live together rather than how to exile one another. I share his feelings about Mark Regev, but nevertheless object to sending any who live here back to where they came from.
In item 6, Akiva Eldar advises ‘Invest inside 1967 borders, not in settlements.” This piece is especially worth your attention for its statistics.
All the best,
And once again, let’s hope that soon we’ll see the light at the end of the tunnel, and that it will appear with no or little loss of life.
Dorothy
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1.Press release
Monday, 6 June 2011
West Bank Protest Organizer, Bassem Tamimi, to Judge: “Your Military Laws Are Non-Legit. Our Peaceful Protest is Just”
Tamimi, who has been held in custody for over two months, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and held a defiant speech explaining his motivation for organizing civil resistance to the Occupation. See his full statement below
After more than two months in custody, the trial of Bassem Tamimi, a 44 year-old protest organizer from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, finally commenced yesterday. Tamimi, who is the coordinator for the Nabi Saleh popular committee, pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against him.
In a defiant speech handed before a crowded courtroom, Tamimi proudly owned up to organizing the protest in the village saying, “I organized these peaceful demonstrations to defend our land and our people.” Tamimi also challenged the legitimacy of the very system which trys him, saying that “Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws […] that are enacted by authorities which I haven’t elected and do not represent me.” (See Tamimi’s full statement at court bellow).
Tamimi was interrupted by the judge who warned him that it was not a political trial, and that such statements were out of place in a courtroom. Tamimi was cut short and not allowed to deliver his full statement.
After Tamimi finished reading his shortened statement, the judge announced that the hearing’s protocol has been erroneously deleted. However he refused to submit the full written statement to the stenographer. She went on to dictate a short summary in her own words for official record.
Media contact: Jonathan Pollak +972-54-632-7736
The indictment against Tamimi is based on questionable and coerced confessions of youth from the village. He is charged with’ incitement’, ‘organizing and participating in unauthorized processions’,’ solicitation to stone-throwing’, ‘failure to attend legal summons’, and a scandalous charge of ‘disruption of legal proceedings’, for allegedly giving youth advice on how to act during police interrogation in the event that they are arrested.
The transcript of Tamimi’s police interrogation further demonstrates the police and Military Prosecution’s political motivation and disregard for the suspect’s rights. During his questioning, Tamimi was accused by his interrogator of “consulting lawyers and foreigners to prepare for his interrogation”, an act that is in no way in breach of the law.
Tamimi’s full statement:
Your Honor,
I hold this speech out of belief in peace, justice, freedom, the right to live in dignity, and out of respect for free thought in the absence of Just Laws.
Every time I am called to appear before your courts, I become nervous and afraid. Eighteen years ago, my sister was killed by in a courtroom such as this, by a staff member. In my lifetime, I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost 3 years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralyzed as a result of torture by your investigators. My wife was detained, my children were wounded, my land was stolen by settlers, and now my house is slated for demolition.
I was born at the same time as the Occupation and have been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom ever since. Yet, despite all this, my belief in human values and the need for peace in this land have never been shaken. Suffering and oppression did not fill my heart with hatred for anyone, nor did they kindle feelings of revenge. To the contrary, they reinforced my belief in peace and national standing as an adequate response to the inhumanity of Occupation.
International law guarantees the right of occupied people to resist Occupation. In practicing my right, I have called for and organized peaceful popular demonstrations against the Occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half of the land of my village, Nabi Saleh, where the graves of my ancestors have lain since time immemorial.
I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity.
Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law.
We have the right to express our rejection of Occupation in all of its forms; to defend our freedom and dignity as a people and to seek justice and peace in our land in order to protect our children and secure their future.
The civil nature of our actions is the light that will overcome the darkness of the Occupation, bringing a dawn of freedom that will warm the cold wrists in chains, sweep despair from the soul and end decades of oppression.
These actions are what will expose the true face of the Occupation, where soldiers point their guns at a woman walking to her fields or at checkpoints; at a child who wants to drink from the sweet water of his ancestors’ fabled spring; against an old man who wants to sit in the shade of an olive tree, once mother to him, now burnt by settlers.
We have exhausted all possible actions to stop attacks by settlers, who refuse to adhere to your courts’ decisions, which time and again have confirmed that we are the owners of the land, ordering the removal of the fence erected by them.
Each time we tried to approach our land, implementing these decisions, we were attacked by settlers, who prevented us from reaching it as if it were their own.
Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe, like us, that had it not been for the Occupation, we could all live in peace on this land. I do not know which laws are upheld by generals who are inhibited by fear and insecurity, nor do I know their thoughts on the civil resistance of women, children and old men who carry hope and olive branches. But I know what justice and reason are. Land theft and tree-burning is unjust. Violent repression of our demonstrations and protests and your detention camps are not evidence of the illegality of our actions. It is unfair to be tryed under a law forced upon us. I know that I have rights and my actions are just.
The military prosecutor accuses me of inciting the protesters to throw stones at the soldiers. This is not true. What incites protesters to throw stones is the sound of bullets, the Occupation’s bulldozers as they destroy the land, the smell of teargas and the smoke coming from burnt houses. I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror.
These demonstrations that I organize have had a positive influence over my beliefs; they allowed me to see people from the other side who believe in peace and share my struggle for freedom. Those freedom fighters have rid their conscious from the Occupation and put their hands in ours in peaceful demonstrations against our common enemy, the Occupation. They have become friends, sisters and brothers. We fight together for a better future for our children and theirs.
If released by the judge will I be convinced thereby that justice still prevails in your courts? Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.” With love and justice, we make peace and build the future.
Background
Bassem Tamimi is a veteran Palestinian grassroots activist from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah. He is married to Nariman Tamimi, with whom he fathers four children – Wa’ed (14), Ahed (10), Mohammed (8) and Salam (5).
As a veteran activist, Tamimi has been arrested by the Israeli army 11 times to date and has spent roughly three years in Israeli jails, though he was never convicted of any offence. He spent roughly three years in administrative detention, with no charges brought against him. Furthermore, his attorney and he were denied access to “secret evidence” brought against him.
In 1993, Tamimi was falsely arrested on suspicion of having murdered an Israeli settler in Beit El – an allegation of which he was cleared entirely. During his weeks-long interrogation, he was severely tortured by the Israeli Shin Bet in order to draw a coerced confession from him. During his interrogation, and as a result of the torture he underwent, Tamimi collapsed and had to be evacuated to a hospital, where he laid unconscious for seven days.
As one of the organizers of the Nabi Saleh protests and coordinator of the village’s popular committee, Tamimi has been the target of harsh treatment by the Israeli army. Since demonstrations began in the village, his house has been raided and ransacked numerous times, his wife was twice arrested and two of his sons were injured; Wa’ed, 14, was hospitalized for five days when a rubber-coated bullet penetrated his leg and Mohammed, 8, was injured by a tear-gas projectile that was shot directly at him and hit him in the shoulder. Shortly after demonstrations in the village began, the Israeli Civil Administration served ten demolition orders to structures located in Area C, Tamimi’s house was one of them, despite the fact that it was built in 1965.
Legal background
On the March 24th, 2011, a massive contingent of Israeli Soldiers raided the Tamimi home at around noon, only minutes after he entered the house to prepare for a meeting with a European diplomat. He was arrested and subsequently charged.
The main evidence in Tamimi’s case is the testimony of 14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub, also from Nabi Saleh, who was taken from his bed at gunpoint on the night of January 23rd. In his interrogation the morning after his arrest, Islam alleged that Bassem and Naji Tamimi organized groups of youth into “brigades”, charged with different responsibilities during the demonstrations: some were allegedly in charge of stone-throwing, others of blocking roads, etc.
During a trial-within-a-trial procedure in Islam’s trial, motioning for his testimony to be ruled inadmissible, it was proven that his interrogation was fundamentally flawed and violated the rights set forth in the Israeli Youth Law in the following ways:
1. Despite being a minor, he was questioned in the morning following his arrest, having been denied sleep.
2. He was denied legal counsel, although his lawyer appeared at the police station requesting to see him.
3. He was denied his right to have a parent present during his questioning.
4. He was not informed of his right to remain silent, and was even told by his interrogators that he is “expected to tell the truth”.
5. Only one of four interrogators present was a qualified youth interrogator.
While the trial-within-a-trial procedure has not yet reached conclusion, the evidence already revealed has brought a Military Court of Appeals to revise its remand decision and order Islam’s release to house arrest.
Over the past two months, the army has arrested 24 of Nabi Saleh’s residents on protest related suspicions. Half of those arrested are minors, the youngest of whom is merely eleven.
Ever since the beginning of the village’s struggle against settler takeover of their lands in December of 2009, the army has conducted 71 protest related arrests. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes approximately 10% of its population.
Tamimi’s arrest corresponds to the systematic arrest of civil protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages Bil’in and Ni’ilin.
Only recently the Military Court of Appeals has aggravated the sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah from the village of Bilin, sending him to 16 months imprisonment on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. Abu Rahmah was released on March 2011.
The arrest and trial of Abu Rahmah has been widely condemned by the international community, most notably by Britain and EU foreign minister, Catherin Ashton. Harsh criticism of the arrest has also been offered by leading human rights organizations in Israel and around the world, among them B’tselem, ACRI, as well as Human Rights Watch, which declared Abu Rahmah’s trial unfair, and Amnesty International, which declared Abu Rahmah a prisoner of conscience.
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2. From Mazin Qumsiyeh May 21, 2011
Please consider joining this action call and forward to those who you think
might join (Israelis and Palestinians). Mazin
Many people of good faith yearn for a future that is a joint democratic
pluralistic state that encompasses all of the historic land of Palestine
(currently the political entities of the apartheid State of Israel and the
post-1967 Israeli occupied Palestinian Territories). It is time to put our
beliefs into practice by bringing together all these people to effect the
needed transformation socially and politically. We call on you to join us to
formulate all the needed mechanisms for this transformation. We are seeking local and international legal experts to draft a constitution for our joint future state and we are seeking activists with other skills (media,
lobbying, civil disobedience etc) to translate the vision into reality. In
our joint future state, Palestinian Refugees will have the right to return
to their homes and lands and to receive reparation for their suffering as
supported by UNGA resolution 194. Return and self-determination are key
pillars of peace based on justice. The validity of all actual laws and
policies will be subject to this constitution with a bill of rights. This
constitution is founded on the critical principle that all people who live
in historic Palestine as well as Palestinians who will realise their
inalienable right of return will have an effective equality of citizenship
and will enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms as articulated in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Substantively and procedurally, the constitution and structures to effect
the needed transformation will be modified and adopted only via
democratically structured institutions and, in this vein, we support efforts
to reconstitute the Palestine National Council on democratic and
representative foundations for all Palestinians regardless of where they
currently live. The constitution will enable constant contestation of actual
laws ensuring that structures of power never entrench themselves.
Equal citizenship will have the result that present apartheid-based laws
will be abrogated and future social and economic rights will never again be
attached to any patterned and structured identity test that necessarily
results in discrimination, oppression and domination of those who do not
pass it. We believe in popular resistance and an anti-Apartheid struggle to
achieve our collective goals. We will build on the previous initiatives and
conferences that focused on one state solutions. We urge the international
community to support us in ending Israeli apartheid and achieving our goal
of one democratic state via the use of Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions
(BDS) and all other means of pressure as articulated in the Palestinian
Civil Society Call to Action 2005.
If you would like to join us, go to
<http://www.palestinejn.org/component/content/article/47-ongoing/124-join-th
e-one-state-initiative>
http://www.palestinejn.org/component/content/article/47-ongoing/124-join-the
-one-state-initiative . By signing, you agree to the use of your name and to
the outline above and to help the effort. Organizations may also join this
effort by sending the name of the organization, email address, physical
address, phone number, and individual name of the person authorized to
communicate with us on behalf of the organization to
<mailto:onestate@PalestineJN.org> onestate@PalestineJN.org .
Names, affiliation
(Affiliation does not imply institutional endorsement, all signers in
personal capacity)
Samir Abed-Rabbo (Dr.), ODS and Center for Advanced International Studies
Susan Abulhawa, Author
Ali Abunimah
Abdelfattah Abusrour (Dr.), Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Center, Aida
Refugee Camp
Khalid Amayreh, writer, journalist and political commentator. Dura, Hebron
Naseer Aruri (Prof.), Emeritus (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth),
Author of Dishonest Broker
Omar Barghouti, human rights activist
Ramzy Baroud, Author, Editor, The Palestine Chronicle
Oren Ben-Dor (Dr.), School of Law, University of Southampton, UK
George Bisharat, UC Hastings College of the Law, San Francisco
Haim Bresheeth (Prof.), BRICUP and University of East London
Eitan Bronstein
Shuki Cohen
Uri Davis (Prof.), Al-Quds University
Haidar Eid (Prof.), ODSG, Gaza
Jamil Fayez (Dr.)
Burhan Ghanayem (Dr.), Businessman and Philanthropist, Previously Researcher
at NIH, North Carolina
Neta Golan, International Solidarity Movement
Alma Abdul Hadi Jadallah (Dr.), School of Conflict Analysis and Resolution,
George Mason University
Sami Jamil Jadallah, JD, Founder of United Palestinian Appeal
Hatim Kanaaneh (Dr.), Author of a “Doctor in Gallilee”
Ghada Karmi (Prof.), University of Exeter, Devon, UK
Lubna Masarwa, Activist and Community Organizer, Jerusalem
Nur Masalha (Prof.), SOAS, University of London, UK
Lois Nakhlah
Dorothy Naor (Dr.)
Susan Nathan, Author, The other Side of Israel
Ken O’Keefe, Irish, Hawaiian, and Palestinian citizenship
Allegra Pacheco, Advocate
Ilan Pappe (Prof.), University of Exeter
Mazin Qumsiyeh (Prof.) Bethlehem University
George N. Rishmawi, Palestinian Center for Rapprochement, Beit Sahour
Suleiman Sharkh (Dr.), University of Southampton, Chairman of the PSC
Southampton Branch, Palestinian Refugee from Majdal Asqalan
Sammi Ibrahem, Journalist and Political commentator, U.K
————– next part ————–
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3. SPIEGEL ONLINE,
June 2, 2011
The Politics of Stasis
Israelis Increasingly Resigned to Life without Peace
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-765960,00.html
By Juliane von Mittelstaedt
There was a time when Israel was anxious to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians. Now, however, the majority of the country’s population seems to have given up hope. While young Arabs are rebelling against autocratic regimes in the region, apathy is spreading in Israel.
Flyers reading “Masbirim Israel,” or “Explain Israel,” have been laid out at the Tel Aviv airport for several months now. They are not meant for tourists, but for Israelis. Their government wants them to campaign abroad for greater sympathy with their country. The small brochure advises: Use a map to explain Israel’s vulnerability! Show pictures from home! Tell your personal story! Surprise your listeners with facts, such as this one: The USB stick, Windows XP and cherry tomatoes were all invented in Israel, and the country is number one in new patents and in establishing new businesses.
This is called Hasbara in Hebrew. Travelers are to become citizen ambassadors for their country, explaining it, campaigning on its behalf and, if necessary, justifying its actions.
Explanation is urgently needed. Israel and the rest of the world have drifted apart in recent years. Israel feels isolated, criticized and misunderstood — and would seem to believe this isn’t a problem of substance but of the way it’s portrayed.
The rest of the world, however, sees a country that apparently doesn’t mind violating international law, one that continues to expand its settlements in the West Bank, imposes a blockade on an entire region and intercepts a fleet of human rights activists on the high seas. It is also seen as a country whose interior minister agitates against “intruders” from Africa, and in which the foreign minister is a man whom 60 percent of Israelis hold responsible for the “rise in extreme nationalist and almost fascist tendencies.”
Israel is in a public relations crisis, as the country faces a growing lack of understanding, mostly in Europe, but also in parts of the United States, its closest ally. Who understands why the revolutions in its Arab neighborhood have prompted Israel to fall into a state of political autism? Why does it virulently reject all criticism? And why did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argue last week with US President Barack Obama, the most powerful man in the world, over a concept that has been beyond dispute for years: withdrawal to the 1967 borders and the exchange of territory?
Historic?
The speech that Netanyahu gave on Capitol Hill on Tuesday had been advertised beforehand as an historic speech. The premier supposedly intended to approach the Palestinians and convince them not to go forward with their plain to unilaterally declare independence in September.
But what Netanyahu offered only contributed to further alienation. He spoke of a “generous offer” and “painful concessions,” and yet there was no where, how or when to his promises. It was a speech meant to bind together his difficult coalition at home and preserve his power, its tone so deliberately intransigent that after the speech the Palestinians promptly rejected the idea of negotiations.
It isn’t just Netanyahu. A large segment of his country is apparently in a parallel existence. When Obama spoke to the American Jewish lobbying organization AIPAC on the Sunday before last, men and women were demonstrating on the Tel Aviv boardwalk with nooses around their necks, chanting: “Don’t hang us, Obama.” On the day after Netanyahu’s speech, four cabinet ministers, the speaker of the Knesset and a former chief rabbi came together to celebrate the completion of 60 new residential units in East Jerusalem, in the Jewish settlement of Maale Hazeitim in the Arab Ras al-Amud neighborhood, which will only heat up the conflict even further.
Opinion polls conducted the next day further highlighted the contradiction: Although 57 percent of Israelis said they believed that their prime minister should have been responsive to Obama’s peace proposal, 51 percent said they were satisfied with his performance in Washington.
Haywire, yet Admirable
Why does a majority of Israelis support a policy that apparently contradicts their wishes, a policy that has no intention of ending this conflict and that harms Israelis more than anyone else? The alternative to a two-state solution would be a bi-national state, in which the Palestinians will become the majority in the not-too-distant future. What is going on in this country, which, despite being about the size of the US state of New Jersey, dominates the attention of the entire world in such a unique way? A country that currently seems to have gone haywire, and yet remains both admirable and exceptional?
This is a question for Tom Segev, 66, Israel’s best-known historian; it is vital to look into the past to understand modern-day Israel. Segev receives his guests in his apartment in West Jerusalem, which has a view of two walls, an old one and a new one. The old wall surrounds the old city, a pilgrimage site for three world religions, while the new wall confines the Palestinians inside the West Bank.
The great interpreter of Israeli history seems to have tired of his role — as if he too could no longer understand his country, or understands it all too well. “For the first time in my life, I think the way the majority of Israelis do,” he says at the beginning of the conversation. “I no longer see the possibility of peace.” Ten years ago, Segev described modern Israeli society in his book “Elvis in Jerusalem.” But today he says: “Forget it. I was wrong. I had assumed that things could only get better.”
So what is the reason that Israel and the rest of the world have become so estranged in recent years? “We are so irrational, because this is a crazy country. Everything we do goes against our own interest, which is to live in a Jewish and democratic state, in peace with our neighbors.” And the reason this is the case, he says, is quite simple: “We have more to lose in this conflict than the Palestinians.”
Nuclear Power and a Nation of Startups
To this day, Israel is a country in a state of emergency. Half of its borders are still undetermined, every house has a safe room and every citizen has a gas mask in the closet. It’s a country in which men and women alike are drafted into military service, where on average there is a memorial for every 17 dead soldiers and where a soldier was kidnapped by Hamas five years ago and has been kept in a cell somewhere in Gaza ever since.
Israel is also a country that, on the one hand, has developed a liberal democracy, but, on the other hand, has kept its neighbors under occupation and military rule for 44 years. It is both a nuclear power and a nation of startups, one that has produced more Nobel laureates than the entire Arab world, but also one in which theologians define citizenship and there is no civil marriage, no constitution and no right of asylum.
Three events have profoundly influenced the country, says Segev, sitting on his couch with a framed copy of the Israeli declaration of independence on the wall above his head: the occupation of the West Bank since the 1967 Six-Day War, immigration from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s and the failure of the Camp David peace process in 2000.
The occupation has already lasted for two-thirds of the history of the State of Israel, and in all those years it has also changed the occupier, its institutions and its way of thinking. Prisoners are mistreated, while the government backs illegal settlements and ignores the Israeli Supreme Court’s rulings on the clearing of the settlers’ outposts. This has inured the Israeli public to a constant breach of the law, which needs a justification. The justification provided is that the occupation is essential to the survival of the Israeli nation. But Israelis have forgotten that David Ben-Gurion, the founder of their nation, was opposed to the takeover of the West Bank, because he saw it as a potential source of disaster.
Is a Life Without Peace Possible After All?
The roughly one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union brought obedience to authority to the country, which only amplifies the negative consequences of the occupation mentality. Surveys show that the new arrivals reject equal rights for Arabs and prefer having a strongman as their leader. As a result, many of them voted for Avigdor Lieberman, an Israeli version of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and head of the rightwing Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) party. Lieberman has been Israel’s foreign minister for the last two years.
The failure of the Camp David peace agreement, brokered by US President Bill Clinton between former PLO leader Yasser Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, has contributed greatly to the current political paralysis. When Barak returned home, he announced that the Palestinians had rejected his “generous offer” and were “no partner for peace.”
This was apparently confirmed by the years of suicide attacks that followed, which only convinced Israelis that they were the ones who wanted peace while the Palestinians wanted terror. Several years later, the same belief was reconfirmed when the Israelis evacuated their settlements in Gaza and the Palestinians responded by firing rockets into Israeli territory. But what the media often ignored and the Israeli public tended to forget was that Israel had also made mistakes, that the second Intifada was partly a reaction to Israeli violence, and that neither the Israeli offer at Camp David nor the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip were particularly “generous.”
A Technical Problem
The suicide attacks also engendered disappointment, fear and hatred — and, most of all, indifference to Palestinians — also among many Israeli liberals. Nevertheless, peace at the cost of compromise seemed necessary, as long as the attacks continued. But since they have ended, many Israelis prefer the current calm over the effort and uncertainty associated with a peace treaty. And since the security barrier was erected and the Iron Dome missile defense system installed, the lack of peace seems more like a technical problem that can be controlled.
“From the Israel perspective, a life without peace is now possible. There is hardly any terrorism, there is no war, and there are no major decisions that could trigger arguments at the breakfast table,” says Segev. “Netanyahu is so strong, because he pursues a policy of doing nothing about the Palestinians. And he has managed to make his policy the consensus.”
The feeling of being in a constant state of emergency helps reinforce this consensus. No one has as many enemies as Israel, no other country has been threatened to be wiped off the face of the earth by Iran, and nowhere else in the world is the trauma of the extermination of a people so deeply rooted. For a nation that constantly fears for its survival, everything it does is self-defense. The right wing, for example, refers to the 1967 borders as “Auschwitz borders,” thereby suggesting that ending the occupation of the West Bank would endanger Israel’s very existence.
“Politicians are using the Holocaust more and more to create fear,” says historian Segev. This, he adds, makes a politician who believes in peace and coexistence appear as naïve and unelectable in Israel today — or even as someone who is betraying his own people.
‘Real Danger Is Here and Now’
Mordechai Kremnitzer, 62, is familiar with the consequences of this vicious cycle of paranoia. The vice president of the Israeli Democracy Institute, Kremnitzer warns, almost daily, against a “democracy on a diet.” He says: “The moment of real danger is here and now.”
In recent months the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has adopted several initiatives directed against Israeli Arabs, who make up a fifth of the population. Under the most recent piece of legislation, the Nakba Law passed at the end of March, Arab schools or communities that commemorate the flight and expulsion of the Palestinians after the founding of Israel can be penalized with the denial of government funding. New citizens must now swear an oath of allegiance to the “Jewish and democratic state.” Small villages in the Negev Desert and the Galilee have been given the right to reject new arrivals who do not “fit” to the community. This will enable Jewish communities to reject Arabs in the future without violating the principle of equality.
“Now that the conflict is increasingly seen as an existential dispute between the two national projects, the Israeli Arabs are viewed as an internal enemy,” says Kremnitzer. Such a rigorous distinction between friend and foe divides society. While settlers who attacked soldiers during the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip were pardoned under an amnesty law, leftists are sent to jail for as little as taking part in an unauthorized demonstration.
Categorically Against Them
The majority of the population doesn’t protest. This, says Kremnitzer, is partly because the ultra-rightists have managed to brand anyone who disagrees with them as disloyal and unpatriotic. According to this mindset, increasingly accepted as common knowledge, criticism is not simply criticism, but instead stems from a fundamental hostility. According to a survey, more than half of Israelis believe that the world is categorically against them, regardless of the country’s policies.
For example, Richard Goldstone, an internationally respected judge from South Africa who had been appointed to head a United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza war, was vilified as a self-hating Jew and anti-Zionist. At the end of March, members of the Knesset seriously debated the question of whether J Street, a Jewish lobbying group in the United States that condemns the building of settlements, should be allowed to call itself “pro-Israeli.” Some critics are being barred from entering the country, even if they are prominent Jews, like linguist Noam Chomsky and political scientist Norman Finkelstein.
The American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg recently asked: “What if Israel ceases to be a democracy?” He outlines a scenario that is not even that unlikely anymore.
“Let’s just say, as a hypothetical, that one day in the near future, Prime Minister Lieberman’s government (don’t laugh, it’s not funny) proposes a bill that echoes the recent call by some rabbis to discourage Jews from selling their homes to Arabs,” Goldberg wrote. “Or let’s say that Lieberman’s government annexes swaths of the West Bank in order to take in Jewish settlements, but announces summarily that the Arabs in the annexed territory are in fact citizens of Jordan, and can vote there if they want to, but they won’t be voting in Israel. What happens then? Do the courts come to the rescue? I hope so. Do the Israeli people come to the rescue? I’m not entirely sure.”
Hope for the Future
Israel is still a free country, with a dynamic democracy, a free press and an independent judiciary.
But all it takes is a drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to see that there is also an alternative world within Israel, one in which every 10th Israeli now lives. It’s the world of ultra-orthodox Jews, of men dressed in black suits and women in wigs, holding their children by the hand. Most of them would prefer a theocracy.
When a photo of the American president and his advisors was published after the death of Osama bin Laden, it wasn’t a Saudi Arabian newspaper but an ultra-orthodox Israeli paper that used Photoshop to erase US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s image — because ultra-orthodox men are forbidden from looking at unfamiliar women.
At the same time, the seemingly intractable conflict has facilitated the merging of religion and nationalism, with the once politically moderate Orthodox Jews taking sides with the rightwing settlers. Leading rabbis are fighting against government courts and calling on the public to disobey orders issued by the army. Representatives of this nationalist-religious camp hold key positions in the parliament, the military and society. One is the new national security advisor, for example, who, according to Ha’aretz, said at a conference that anyone who interrupts a military mission, even a soldier, should be shot.
Oddly Unanswered
Secularists, nationalists and the religious are wrestling over the character of the nation, and over how Jewish or how democratic it should be. After 63 years, this question is still oddly unanswered, and yet the future of Israel and the West Bank hinges on it. Can Israel be democratic if it continues to occupy the occupied territories? Conversely, can Israel be Jewish if it gives up the biblical regions of Judea and Samaria?
It is by no means certain that democracy will prevail. The biblical connection to the land has joined the secular narrative of the occupation and is more important today than it was in 1967. This is why it makes perfect sense to an Israeli prime minister to use the stories of Abraham, David and Isaiah to justify Israel’s claims to the West Bank. Nevertheless, politicians become more irrational where religion is involved.
In the end, demographics will probably decide the outcome of this conflict. Settlers and the ultra-orthodox are the ones having the most children. Israel has a higher birth rate than Libya, and in some cities up to 64 percent of residents are children.
And what of Israel’s left, its peace activists, artists, entrepreneurs and liberals? What has happened to the country’s silent, secular majority?
The old elites, who once dominated the politics of peace, have largely withdrawn from the political process. Most have gone to Tel Aviv, the liberal enclave where Palestinians, settlers and Orthodox Jews seem equally far away. They are more likely to become involved in environmental causes than political parties. Tel Aviv is also home to those who are enjoying the economic boom and its benefits, including the many new restaurants, spas and wine bars that have opened in recent years. The effervescent, lively and overwhelming city of Tel Aviv is synonymous with this flight from politics.
Smarter than the Politicians
This is partly the result of a widespread feeling that parties and politicians are corrupt. Hardly any prominent politician has not faced a scandal in recent years. Netanyahu was accused of accepting luxury hotel stays paid for by others. Minister Lieberman faces an indictment for embezzlement and money laundering. And then there is the case of Moshe Kazaw, the former president, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for rape.
It would be easy to call Israel a corrupt nation, but it isn’t quite that simple, in fact. “There is a lot of exaggeration when it comes to corruption,” says Yossi Shain, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University. “Hunting people with charges of corruption has become a national sport in our country.” According to Transparency International, civil servants are less likely to accept bribes in Israel than in France, and the country gets a more favorable overall rating than Italy and Greece.
And if corruption isn’t as widespread as it seems at first glance, couldn’t it be that ideological obstinacy is not as dominant as it seems?
Intransigence, nationalist and religious extremism paint a gloomy picture that does not in fact coincide with the buoyant mood in the country. In a survey on how satisfied people are with their lives, for example, Israel was rated ninth, well ahead of Germany. This is also part of the picture that is so difficult to understand outside Israel.
Of course, there is still hope for the future, as yet another survey indicates. Despite being accustomed to a constant state of war, and despite their contempt for the Palestinians, 67 percent of all Jewish Israelis support a peace plan that includes a partition of Jerusalem and a withdrawal from the West Bank, but only 47 percent of Knesset members share this view.
What this shows, most of all, is that ultimately most Israelis are smarter than their politicians.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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