Jeff HalperThe Narrow Gate to Peace
Those of us who live in Palestine-Israel find ourselves at a
fateful crossroads. From Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s point of
view, Israel has won its conflict with the Palestinians. Surveying
the landscape - physical and political alike - Sharon can feel a
great deal of satisfaction. He has finally fulfilled the task with
which he was charged in 1977 by Menachem Begin: to ensure permanent
Israeli control over the entire Land of Israel while foreclosing the
emergence of a viable Palestinian state.
With almost unlimited resources and the enthusiastic complicity
of the Labor Party when his party, the Likud, was out of power,
Sharon set out to establish irreversible "facts on the ground" that
would pre-empt any process of negotiations. He oversaw the
establishment of some 200 settlements on land expropriated from
Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza; these
settlements are home today to almost half a million Israelis.
During the Oslo "peace process," Israel doubled its settler
population and constructed, with the permission and financial
backing of the United States, a system of 29 major highways intended
to irreversibly incorporate the settlements into Israel proper. In
the meantime, 96 percent of the Palestinians were locked into what
Sharon calls "cantons," deprived of the right to move freely. They
are now being literally imprisoned behind concrete walls and
electronic fences. Although comprising half the population of the
country west of the Jordan, the Palestinians - including those with
Israeli citizenship - are today confined to some 70 desolate,
crowded, and disconnected enclaves on a mere 15 percent of the
country.
Still, Israel faces a fundamental dilemma: how to retain control
of the Occupied Territories while ridding itself of their 3.6
million Palestinians. Sharon attacked this problem in three ways.
First, since international law defines occupation as a temporary
situation resolvable only through negotiations, Israel’s expansion
into East Jerusalem and the West Bank would have to be transformed
into a permanent political fact that trumped international law. That
accomplished, a Palestinian mini-state of five or so disconnected
cantons would have to be established that would "relieve" Israel of
the Palestinian population while leaving Israel in de facto control
of the country’s borders, lands, water, tourism, airspace,
communications, and overall developmental potential. Finally, a
quisling Palestinian "leader" would have to be found willing to sign
off on this Middle East version of apartheid.
The first two tasks proved so easy that even Sharon was taken
aback. In an April 2004 exchange of letters, the Bush administration
surpassed Sharon’s wildest expectations by declaring that Israel
would not be required to withdraw to the 1949 Armistice Line (the
"Green Line") nor, indeed, from its major settlement blocs
(euphemistically called "major population centers") in East
Jerusalem and the West Bank. In one fell swoop the United States
nullified U.N. Resolution 242 (the very basis of the two-state
solution), unilaterally recognized Israel’s annexation of East
Jerusalem and 25 to 30 percent of the West Bank, and rendered
meaningless the "road map" Middle East peace plan sponsored by the
United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations.
And if this was not enough, the Bush letter was almost unanimously
ratified by Congress, the House approving it by a vote of 407-9, the
Senate by 95-3. (The other three members of the road map "quartet"
expressed outrage, as did the Palestinians, but for Israel the
United States is the only player that counts.) That left the
Palestinians with only the cantons, hardly a viable state capable of
offering the traumatized and destitute Palestinians any genuine
sovereignty, economy, or hope for a better future.
Empowered by Bush’s unilateral nullification of international
law, the Israeli government immediately accelerated its settlement
expansion, announcing the establishment of a new city of 55,000 (Givat
Yael) between Jerusalem and Bethlehem as well as construction of
3,500 new housing units in the E-1 corridor linking Jerusalem to the
settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim. And what about the "disengagement"
from Gaza, a scorched earth of no strategic value whose fresh water
has been exhausted by the settlers and a densely packed Palestinian
population of 1.5 million? Nothing but redeployment, eliminating an
inconvenient flashpoint and deflecting world attention from Israel’s
consolidation of its hold on the West Bank.
All that remains is to find that Palestinian leader who will sign
off on such a state. Although Arafat was ready for major concessions
(after all, he recognized the State of Israel on 78 percent of the
country and was willing to compromise even on the 22 percent that
remained), he would not betray his people and was reduced - with
active American complicity - from Nobel Peace Prize winner to
so-called enemy of humanity. Neither will Abbas play that role. (He
has already been characterized by Israeli political leaders as "an
Arafat without a uniform.") Not to worry: Quislings abound.
All this leaves the Palestinians in an untenable situation.
Having moved in the late 1980s from a one-state approach to a
two-state objective, the Palestinian Authority - like the
international community, the mainstream Israeli left, and liberal
Zionist circles in the United States and elsewhere - finds itself
locked into a political program that has been overtaken by Sharon’s "facts on the ground" and American
betrayal. If the solution to the conflict requires the establishment
of a viable Palestinian state on all (or almost all) of the lands
occupied by Israel - as envisioned in every peace initiative since
the formulation of U.N. Resolution 242 in 1967 – it would appear
that solution is dead and gone. The Palestinians seem to face a
bleak set of alternatives: continuing to pursue a viable state that
Israel has - in my opinion - eliminated; accepting a truncated,
non-viable "Bantustan" and apartheid; or going back to the idea of
one democratic state in Israel/Palestine that, compelling and just
as it sound, dismantles Israel as a Jewish state and is thus a
nonstarter.
This is where we come in. Confident as Sharon is that he has won,
hopeless as the Palestinian position appears to be, one element, I
would submit, is missing from the equation: us, members of what is
known (somewhat awkwardly) as the international civil society. The
people, gathered into hundreds of organizations worldwide that
support Palestinian rights - faith-based communities, human rights
organizations, political groups, trade unions, Israeli and Jewish
peace groups, Muslims, Christians, intellectuals, students,
unaffiliated members of the public - have at their disposal a
growing awareness of the importance of human rights and instruments
of international law. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(authored by a French Jew, René Cassin), the Geneva Conventions, the
U.N. system, the International Court of Justice, and the newly
formed International Criminal Court - all these and more are
acquiring a crucial role in international affairs, although we are
far from wresting from governments powers of effective
implementation. The global framing of fear, security, terrorism,
enmity, "good and evil," domination, militarism, and American Empire
espoused so effectively by the neo-cons is being challenged by a
powerful human rights reframing. "We refuse to be enemies" is one of
the slogans of the Israeli peace movement.
This is a development that Sharon has not taken into account.
Believers in realpolitik tend to ignore or discount human rights and
international law as significant forces in international affairs -
and even see them as an "illegitimate" challenge to nation-state
sovereignty, a favorite line of the neo-cons. Apartheid might well
emerge in Israel-Palestine, but progressive civil society resistance
will render it untenable.
So if we are actors in this drama, what should we be demanding?
At a minimum the end of the occupation, whatever form a political
solution eventually takes. And what do I mean by "demanding"?
Protest, resistance - and even sanctions. You can’t have it both
ways. You can’t complain about violence on the part of the
Palestinians and yet reject effective nonviolent measures against
the occupation - such as economic sanctions - that support their
right to self-determination. You can’t condemn the victims of
occupation for employing terrorism while, by opposing divestment,
sheltering the occupying power that employs state terror. You can’t
end the isolation and suffering of people living under occupation
while permitting the occupying power to carry on its life among the
nations unencumbered by a boycott of its economic and cultural
products.
Sanctions, divestment, and boycotts are absolutely legitimate
means at everyone’s disposal for effectively opposing injustice. As
penalties, protest, pressure, and resistance to policies that
violate fundamental human rights, international law, and U.N.
resolutions, they are directed at ending a situation of intolerable
conflict, suffering, and moral wrong-doing, not against a particular
people or country. When the injustice ends, the sanctions end.
Because they are rooted in human rights, international law, and
the will of the international community, because they are supremely
nonviolent responses to injustice, sanctions carry a potent moral
force. A campaign of sanctions, even if it proves impossible to
actually implement, mobilizes what has been called "the politics of
shame." No country wants to be cast as a major violator of human
rights. Precisely because it is so difficult to enforce
international humanitarian law, holding up a country’s oppressive
policy for all to see is often the only way of pressuring it to
cease its oppressive policies. The moral and political condemnation
conveyed by a campaign for sanctions and the international isolation
it threatens sends a powerful, unmistakable message to the
perpetrator: Cease your unjust policies or suffer the consequences.
Rather than punishment, a campaign of sanctions rests upon the
notion of accountability. A country threatened by sanctions stands
in violation of the very principles underlying the international
community - not to mention the fundamental religious principle that
every individual is created in God’s image, endowed with inalienable
dignity. Sanctions, divestment, and boycotts are invoked when
injustice and suffering have become so routinized, so
institutionalized, so pervasive, so resistant to normal
international diplomacy or pressures that allowing the situation to
continue compromises the integrity of the international system and
the moral standing of its members - countries, corporations, and
citizens alike. Sanctions target the strong parties. The very basis
of a call for sanctions is that the targeted country has the ability
to end the intolerable situation.
A campaign of selective, strategic economic sanctions against
Israel as the strong power is therefore appropriate. They are not
invoked against Israel per se, but against Israel until its
occupation ends. When, as in the case of South Africa, occupation
does end, Israel takes its place once more in the international
community.
Beyond this, we must actively advocate for a just and sustainable
resolution of the conflict that recognizes the existence and
national rights of two peoples to Israel-Palestine. Any solution, we
should insist, must rest at a minimum on these essential elements:
1) national expression for the two peoples; 2) a viable Palestinian
existence in whatever political arrangement is reached; 3) a just
and acceptable resolution of the refugee issue; 4) a regional
dimension that opens new possibilities of resolving the conflict
lacking in the more narrow two-state (or even one-state) approach;
and 5) acknowledging and addressing Israel’s security needs.
This is the vision behind the "road map," the first
internationally accepted initiative that calls explicitly for an end
to the occupation and a viable Palestinian state (the non-American
members of the quartet shrewdly call it the "Bush vision" so as to
give him some degree of ownership and therefore, hopefully,
commitment). Civil society advocates of a just peace should be
campaigning, it seems to me, for a revitalization of the moribund
road map, the only diplomatic initiative on the table. In the
absence of any alternative, our silence about the road map - and the
silence of Palestinians in particular - is puzzling.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict poses a fundamental challenge to
progressive civil society: the danger of depoliticization. The
Israeli framing of the conflict, dovetailing perfectly with the
neo-cons’ post-9/11 discourse, depoliticizes it by casting Jews and
Arabs as primal antagonists, enemies since a mystical "time
immemorial."
Rather than grievances, structural inequalities, competing claims
and exclusion - political issues that can be resolved - we are sold
a "clash of civilizations," good against evil, us-against-them,
Crusading Christianity against Radical Islam (where the Jews,
destined to perish in the fiery Armageddon pursued by fundamentalist
"Friends of Israel," are somehow allied to the former). If the
problem is indeed merely "them," then the only solution is...a final
solution. This, the mother of all framings, leaves no room for
dialogue or hope for peaceful resolution. It is a framing of
ultimate hopelessness. With the Arab-Israeli conflict as its banner,
the us-against-them framing indeed leaves nowhere to go but
Armageddon.
We must protest. But we must also counter hopelessness,
injustice, and permanent conflict with an assertive framing of our
own, one based on human rights. This is what offers a way out, and
this is why the neo-cons have so vehemently rejected it as a force
in international affairs. And here, in Israel-Palestine, at the
gates of Mordor, is our battleground. If, in the light of day, on
the southern border of Europe, in our face, an occupation actually
wins, an entire people is literally imprisoned behind electrified
fences and 26-foot concrete walls, and a new apartheid system
emerges before our eyes (in which Jews, heaven forbid, become the
new Afrikaners), it makes a mockery of all the values we hold dear.
What is a world worth in which human rights and justice - based on
the fundamental dignity of human beings, rooted in religious
tradition or secular values - is rendered irrelevant, a
laughingstock of neo-cons and oppressors?
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has assumed significance far
beyond a localized spat between two Middle Eastern tribes. Lose this
struggle against the occupation, and we lose all hope in the ability
of civil society to bring into being a truly better world.
Jeff Halper, an Israeli anthropologist, is the coordinator of
the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Reprinted
with permission from Sojourners. 1-800-714-7474.
www.sojo.net. |