MONDOWEISS ONLINE NEWSLETTER

‘Safe passage’ shows the siege of Gaza is about more than just nutmeg

Posted: 25 Jun 2010

The Israeli NGO Gisha has just released an interactive computer game called “Safe Passage” to highlight the ongoing siege of Gaza. A player chooses one of three characters – a student trying to use a scholarship, a businessman who wants to sell ice cream in the West Bank or a father trying to stay with his family – and attempts to navigate their way through Israel’s closure policies.

While Israel’s draconian restrictions on common foodstuffs like coriander and nutmeg have received much needed attention, the game helps point to two larger issues – the ongoing restriction on movement and the intentional separation of Gaza from the West Bank. Gisha’s director Sari Bashi, points out, “This week’s announcement of ‘easing’ the closure of Gaza fails to end the ban on export or on travel between Gaza and the West Bank. Israel should allow the free passage of goods and persons between Gaza and the West Bank as the basis for a healthy and prosperous society.”

Play the game here.

The failed peace process is on display in Silwan

Posted: 25 Jun 2010

From Cast Lead to the Mavi Marmara, few states have displayed Israel’s commitment to unilateral action. A unique ability to deflect external criticism has allowed successive adminstrations to pursue unpopular policies without hindrance. A microcosm can be glimpsed in Jerusalem, where Mayor Nir Barkat’s intention to re-develop in Silwan place the Municipality’s glamour project over the rights of residents, the agenda of his government and stillborn proximity talks.

Far from applauding the nationalist initiative, which would see at least 22 Arab homes demolished to make way for the King David Gardens, Defence Minister Ehud Barak condemned a “lack of common sense and sense of timing”. The US State Department concurred that the move “undermined trust” ahead of proximity talks.

The notional objectives of both are undermined by Monday‘s announcement. The Israeli Government have stepped up diplomacy efforts in an attempt to repair their shattered image following the flotilla massacre, while the Whitehouse is losing credibility as US-sponsored talks continue to founder. Alluding to the declaration in March, coinciding with Vice President Joe Biden’s visit, that 1,600 new settlement homes would be built in Arab East Jerusalem, Barak lamented that it was “not the first time” the Municipality had embarrassed the nation and its main sponsors.

The Municipality response has been robust. Senior Mayor’s Aide Stephan Miller told me the criticisms are of “no concern”, while a mayor’s office statement claimed the “defence minister acts without checking the facts”. The statement goes on to claim the work is essential to restore a run-down area delivering little to the city’s economy.

The plans for re-development of Silwan were first mooted in March, but government pressure saw them shelved as too inflammatory. Since then Barkat has been corralling support, including a tour of Washington in which he hosted a Q & A dinner party for influential journalists. Known as a highly driven businessman and entrepreneur, his vision for the King David Gardens is central to a “fundamental commitment and responsibility to preserve and safeguard Jerusalem, its landscapes and vistas, and historic and scenic sites for the sake of future generations.”

Arab leaders fear this new city is envisaged without them in it. Islamic Supreme Committee head Ekrima Sabri last year accused the mayor of “conducting a war against Palestinians”, following a spate of evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. Barkat has presided over a rapid acceleration in revoking residency permits for Palestinians, as well as an increase in settler numbers in the future Palestinian capital.

Today there are around 200,000 settlers in East Jerusalem, slightly fewer than in the whole of the West Bank. The Municipality claim residents of the 22 homes slated for demolition will be re-housed in “new, legal buildings”, but would not reveal details. Similar promises have been made without fulfilment to displaced families in Sheikh Jarrah.

Opposition to Barkat’s plan has not been limited to external parties. The left-wing Maretz faction of his ruling coalition submitted a vote of no confidence, claiming “Jerusalem is too explosively charged” and warning of “devastating political consequences”. As a result all Maretz representatives have been stripped of their portfolios and salaries, including Deputy Mayor Pepe Alalo.

The secular Mayor will now share power with more religious, Haredi parties, an arrangement guaranteed to beget more friction. Maretz spokesman Ido Porat explained his party’s concern over the move, “we think you do not resolve the problem by destroying people’s houses.

This way you destroy trust and increase separation.” Porat disputes the Mayor’s claim that the homes were built illegally, “Israel never allows them to build through their beaurocracy. The laws are against Palestinians.”

That is certainly the feeling in Silwan, where the inhabitants talk of constant harassment and persecution. Muhammad Rajabi, a 23-year-old hospital worker, believes the Municipality are pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing. “They do not want peace. They want all of Jerusalem. They occupy it with soldiers, settlers, parking lots, gardens, history parks, anything but Palestinians.

There are 1500 people in Bustan. It is more than just houses. This is our history. This is not Israel. This is Palestinian land, that they took in 1967. Why do I need a permit from Israel to live in my home in Palestine?”

In addition to the 22 structures scheduled for demolition, the mayor’s office claim a further 66 that were previously targeted, will now be given retroactive permits. Hajj Fahkri Abu Diab of the Popular Committee for Silwan is not convinced. “We cannot believe them.

They say only 22 homes, but they are lying. Our engineers and lawyers know the plans and the details, and they say it is for all 88 homes, not 22. If they can give permits why do they wait? They should give permits now before they demolish. We pay taxes and they promise us clean roads and schools. But we have no clean roads and our children cannot go to school. How can we believe them?” If all 88 homes are demolished around 1000 residents will be displaced.

The Mayor’s Office insist the plans are yet to be finalised. “There are two more stages of the Local Planning Committee before it is then brought to the District Planning Committee”, Stephan Miller told me. But damage has already been done. The only unity can be found in the divisions; between Jerusalem’s political parties, between Municipality and Israeli Government, between Israel and the USA.

All represent barriers to the embryonic peace process, now seemingly destined to further stagnation. But feuding politicians will not foot the bill for their failures, instead the price will be paid by displaced families in Silwan.

Israel lobby group FLAME says black Ethiopian Jews are ‘backward’

Posted: 24 Jun 2010

Is the Israel lobby out of touch with America today? Or is this just the charm offensive for President Obama? Here’s an ad that the lobby group FLAME (Facts & Logic About the Middle East) is running in at least one Jewish newspaper and that is on the group’s website, too: an answer to the question, “Israel: An Apartheid State? Is there any truth at all in this oft-repeated calumny?” Excerpt:

Israel has granted permanent residence and full citizen rights to a large number of legal and illegal foreign workers and their families – from the Philippines, Eritrea, Colombia, Nigeria, and from many other countries. Nobody, of course, is forced or requested to convert to Judaism as a condition of their being allowed to stay.

Israel has accepted a shipload of Vietnamese refugees who had sought asylum. No Arab country has accepted a single one of those refugees. Israel has brought in about 70,000 black Ethiopian Jews, who despite their backwardness have become fully integrated citizens of Israel. Everything that Blacks were not allowed to do in South Africa is totally open to non-Jews in Israel.

Is this how the Israel lobby works, by employing racist stereotypes? Also, what about Blacks with a capital B? Sounds very officially racial… A friend saw it in J Weekly of Northern California, a relatively progressive Jewish news magazine. Progressive. Is there any truth to that oft-repeated claim?

Midnight on the Mavi Marmara

Posted: 24 Jun 2010

Learn more and order the book on the OR Books website.

The ‘one state’ conversation continues

Posted: 24 Jun 2010

I was pleasantly surprised to read Ben Zakkai’s one-state formula for Palestine/Israel. Our thinking on the issue is closer to one another than I thought it would be. There are some big things I disagree with, but the fact that an Israeli (Jewish-Israeli?) has undertaken to grapple with the one-state solution is a net positive.

Before launching into criticisms of Zakkai’s outline, it’s worth taking stock of the fact that Ali Abunimah’s one-state book was published only four short years ago. It’s impossible to know how long it will take to implement, but the movement as a whole is undoubtedly maturing into a coherent political program.

Zakkai writes that most Palestinians and Israelis don’t want a one-state solution. Frankly, I’m skeptical about the claim that most Palestinians don’t want a one-state. I suspect that Palestinian nationalism is not the racial-purist brand that dominates some Western European countries.

It has less to do with purebloods than a culture of resistance and embracing struggle as a value. That’s how George Galloway ends up with a Palestinian passport.

Furthermore, the Diaspora experience has colored Palestinian nationalism to yield a more diffuse and fluid national identity than you might find elsewhere. Palestinian nationalism is very much informed by Palestine – the geographical space and the communitarian memories associated with it – and less by skin color or heredity.

So ask Palestinians, “How would you like to live in all of Palestine – to picnic in Tiberius, swim in the sea at Jaffa, pray in the Holy places in Jerusalem, or enjoy Gaza oranges?” I think many of them will answer in the affirmative. I could be wrong, but I haven’t seen a poll that asks the question in the right way (I’m aware of the irony of this statement).

I am inclined to agree, however, that most Israelis probably don’t want a one-state solution. At present, Jewish people in Israel are the beneficiaries of system predicated upon the idea of racial privilege. A one-state solution means the end of that system; it means a meritocratic and competitive society that doesn’t distort access to labor, education and healthcare in favor of Jewish people.

But to the Israelis I say: Palestinian freedom is not your prerogative. Your society has engineered our mutual dependence and intertwined existence. I regret to say it in this way, but you don’t have a choice.

Or rather, they don’t have any good choices. The call for a one-state is distinct from the two-state in many ways, not least in the way it empowers the Palestinians as equals; the one-state solution is not a ‘negotiated’ settlement. The colonial power dynamic is upended by the call for enfranchisement, equality and mutual responsibility.

When the Palestinians demand their equal rights they can’t but do so from a position of power. That’s because Palestinian power flows directly from the continued Zionist resistance to a massively popular idea – that all people are equal irrespective of race. The Israeli choice thus becomes 1) deeper apartheid/more ethnic cleansing/genocide (there’s no point in making distinctions) 2) equal rights.

 I’m genuinely curious about how ghettoized Israeli Jews are willing to become before they succumb to the superior force of our morality. My implicit assumption here is that there will never be a Palestinian state.

It’s naïve and probably counterproductive to encourage Palestinians and Jewish Israelis to integrate their neighborhoods and lives right away. I can say from firsthand experience that Beirut is still undergoing a gradual de-rifting – and the civil war ended twenty years ago. That’s one of the reasons I proposed a non-racial federal model for the one-state, which I believe is the best way to allow the communities to be as close or as distant from one another as they can bear to be initially.

I’m also not convinced Uri Avnery’s claim that socio-economic disparities are an effective barrier to the one-state. It’s true that Palestine/Israel will likely suffer from the same tremendous socio-economic gaps that many other countries do. But Averny’s mistake is that he assumes that the failures of neoliberal economic policies are change-resistant systemic realities.

There are good ways to address social inequality if the political will to make that change exists. Zakkai himself addresses the socioeconomic gap issue by invoking Keynesian development schemes. Furthermore, a Danish-style tax and social services system will go a long way towards increasing standards of living. We may sacrifice a few billionaires in the process, but it’s doable.

The Belgian, or Quebecois experience is invoked by opponents of the one-state solution to suggest that multiethnic states have a tendency to want to fly apart. That’s probably true, but we have one thing going for us in Palestine/Israel that neither Belgium nor Canada do: mutually revanchist populations. Many Israelis claim a biblical right to what they call Judea and Samaria, and many Palestinians claim a natural historical right (me included) to what some call Palestine 1948. I also pointed out in my initial essay on a federal one-state that three of the four proposed federal units are home to a mix of Palestinians and Jewish people, which should help to prevent the growth of separatist movements.

As to the final issue Zakkai talks about – that somehow Jews and Arabs are too tribal to build a liberal democracy – well, I reject the racially or culturally deterministic view of people that he seems to espouse. Reasonable people can disagree, I guess.

I did find myself in broad agreement with most of the Articles Zakkai envisioned. There were two big issues on which I disagree strongly, however. Both the Golan and Palestinian refugees are way off the mark.

The Golan ought to be returned to Syria even before the one-state becomes a reality. If it hasn’t been, that’s the first thing the leaders of the new state should do (and return the Shebaa farms to Lebanon). For the state to succeed, it will need the full support of neighboring states. Why prejudice those relationships before they’ve even been formally established? Zakkai may say that they ought to be swapped for a formal peace deal, but I can’t foresee a scenario where that peace deal wouldn’t be forthcoming.

The second issue, the Palestinian refugees, is the really big one. Under no circumstances is the right of Palestinian refugees to return home going to be repealed. The human and moral right of the refugees to return is inviolable. For any political solution to take root in Palestine/Israel, it must address the right of return in a way that most Palestinian refugees regard as equitable. Personally, I don’t think many refugees will choose to return (with the possible exception of those in Lebanon), but those that would like to must have the ability to exercise that right.

Insisting upon this point may delay the one-state for a while. But by not doing so, we risk creating a politically illegitimate and unstable state. Expediency can’t come before justice.

There is one other issue that may complicate the quest for justice in Palestine/Israel through a one-state; that’s the prospect of Israel becoming a failed state. The recent clashes between the secular courts and rabbinical authority over Ashkenazi racism in Emmanuel demonstrates that the state is increasingly incapable of exercising the rule of law. I always conceived of a one-state growing out of the strong (albeit racist) institutions of the Israeli state.

 No one benefits when those institutions are eroded. Who is supposed to abdicate the Basic Laws of the state if the state can’t even desegregate schools?

On the whole, I’m encouraged by Zakkai’s essay. It’s impossible to know how many Israelis actually support the one-state; Zakkai himself (herself?) uses a pseudonym. But I believe support is growing among segments of both the Palestinian and Israeli populations. Hopefully, with more good will and creative thinking, we’ll get there.

Where Kindness Is A Crime

Posted: 24 Jun 2010

In a May 7 article, Haaretz reporter Ilana Hammerman described in dramatic detail a crime she had methodically planned and committed. In defiance of laws supposedly related to Israel’s security, Hammerman picked up three teenage Palestinian girls in their village in the West Bank, took them through the Betar checkpoint, and drove them into Tel Aviv.

There they ate ice cream, visited the mall and museum, and played in the sea. Even though the girls lived just a few kilometers from the beach, Israel’s military occupation had prevented them from ever visiting it before their illegal “day of fun.”

Hammerman wrote in her account of the experience, “If There Is A Heaven:”

“The end was wonderful. The last photos show them about two hours after the trip to the flea market, running in the darkness on Tel Aviv’s Banana Beach. They didn’t want to stop for even a minute at the restaurant there to have a bite to eat or something to drink, or even to just relax a bit. Instead they immediately removed their sandals again, rolled up their pants and ran into the water.

And ran and ran, back and forth, in zig-zags, along the huge beach, ponytails flying in the wind. From time to time, they knelt down in the sand or crowded together in the shallow water to have their picture taken. The final photo shows two of them standing in the water, arms around each others’ waists, their backs to the camera.

Only the bright color of their shirts contrasting with the dark water and the sky reveals that the two are Yasmin and Aya, because Lin was wearing a black shirt.”

But the fun ended as soon as a group called The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel filed a request with Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein demanding that Hammerman be prosecuted for breaking the country’s “Law of Entry to Israel” forbidding Israelis from assisting Palestinians in entering Israel. If Weinstein agrees to the request, Hammerman could face as much as two years in prison.

The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel was founded by a religious nationalist settler named Nachi Eyal. When I reached Eyal on the phone, he maintained to me that his concern related strictly to Hammerman’s disregard for the rule of law. “She broke the law and she made a report about her breaking of the law,” Eyal told me.

“She wanted everyone to know that you can take Palestinians in against the law and lie to police officers and the Army. I want to send a message that no citizen in Israel can take the law into his hands and if he does they have to pay.”

However, a glance at Eyal’s past campaigns and statements reveal his targeting of Hammerman as part of a broader agenda that has less to do with the rule of law than with opening a new phase in the settlement movement’s political agenda. A former aide to settlement founding father Chanan Porat, Eyal founded his Legal Forum in 2004 to combat the Israeli government’s planned evacuation of the radical Gush Katif settlement from the Gaza Strip.

In recent years, the Legal Forum has focused its efforts increasingly inside the Green Line, ramping up the pressure against Palestinian citizens of Israel and anyone who advocates on their behalf.

Eyal has boasted of his latest campaign to push Jewish settlement activity in coastal cities of Israel like Jaffa, Akko and Haifa which maintain sizable communities of Palestinian citizens of Israel. He claimed he has “encouraged Jews not to put up ‘for sale’ signs in these areas in order to dissuade Arabs from buying up these properties.” The Legal Forum is also intent on preventing Palestinian Israelis from building on their own land.

“We are mapping Israel’s land resources, investigating illegal Arab building sites and filing suits against such building,” Eyal has said.

The Legal Forum is a prominent player in right-wing efforts to disqualify Palestinian-Israeli legislators from the Knesset. In May, when Balad MK Jamal Zahalka made anti-Zionist statements during a speech in Ramallah, Eyal called on the government of Israel to revoke his citizenship.

 “If a member of Knesset goes to the enemy and says bad things about Israel they must pay for this,” Eyal insisted to me. “Israeli democracy must have weapons to preserve the democracy or it will be destroyed.”

In another recent campaign, Eyal attacked a military investigation of an Army colonel who publicly justified his use of torture techniques to compel Palestinian detainees into confessions. The investigation “ties the IDF’s hands during the war on terrorism,” Eyal said, “and helps the terrorists.” Eyal’s Legal Fund spearheaded the campaign to suppress a book, “The House of Dajani,” that portrayed the early Zionists in unflattering terms.

His efforts led to the reversal of a decision to award the book the Sapir Prize, Israel’s most prestigious literary award.

Now Eyal’s efforts are focused on ensuring that Hammerman’s kindness does not go unpunished — “they have to pay,” as he said. The Attorney General has ordered the police to open an investigation of Hammerman and Eyal is confident that case will proceed to the next stage.

“I think we will succeed because [Hammerman] broke the law and she made a lot of noise,” Eyal remarked. “Israel will not allow these kinds of things to continue.”