24 - 30 January 2002
Issue No.570
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 24 - 30 January 2002 Issue No.570 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
It's the occupation, stupid
Marwan Bishara* wonders why a few hundred fanatics are holding millions hostageThe situation continues to deteriorate in Israel/Palestine. What to do? Blame the Palestinians? Implore the parties to stop the violence -- at least for a week, as Ariel Sharon demands, or perhaps region by region, as Shimon Peres proposes? Build a wall between the two peoples? Or how about getting rid of Arafat, as the Israelis army insists? Better get rid of Sharon... Or, while you're at it, why not get rid of both? Alas, the list goes on, ignoring the factor that has prolonged the conflict and blocked the peace: the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
If the subject of occupation and illegal settlement in the occupied territories is not dealt with directly and quickly, it will continue to fester and move the region toward conflict. The Lebanese and Bosnian scenarios are being discussed seriously in the region. The Intifada is already turning into a classical colonial war. The latest debacle surrounding the Karine A only goes to confirm this. As long as the Israeli army continues to bombard Palestinian cities with its F-16s and Apache helicopters, Israel can expect no less than resistance from a people under occupation.
Many initiatives are on the table, but most look for ways to calm the "security situation" under occupation -- surely a contradiction in terms. US special envoy Anthony Zinni is pointing to the so-called Dahania understanding between Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat as the basis for breaking the security impasse. And then there are the Tenet points, referring to the CIA director's plan to implement the Mitchell Report, commissioned internationally and made in America, which highlighted the need for a freeze on Israeli settlements -- all settlements.
But to arrive at durable peace rather than a useless cease- fire under occupation will require going beyond a "freeze" to the outright dismantling of most if not all the settlements that constitute extra-territorial entities on Palestinian land. Today all the flashpoints involve scarcely inhabited settlements in the heart of Palestinian communities. Taking them out is long overdue. The Israeli government has done exactly the opposite, however, by approving an extra $400 million for the settlements.
Paradoxically, Israel's rejection of a settlement freeze, which paved the way to Oslo in 1993, allowed the unprecedented expansion of settlements during the Oslo period and eventually led to the demise of the peace process in 2000. In seven years, the number of settlers doubled, reaching 400,000 in 200 sporadic settlements located near major Palestinian population centres. This a classical case of creating a "geography of conflict." A network of by-pass roads and industrial parks that connect and reinforce these settlements has translated into Israeli spatial domination of the Palestinian territories .
The Oslo process became the instrument whereby two laws prevailed in Palestine: one for Jews and another for Palestinians. Israelis had the freedom to move about, build and expand, while the Palestinians were cooped up in besieged cantons. Israelis had access to the land and expropriated more of it, while Palestinian access only diminished. This put the entire process on the path of apartheid.
Ariel Sharon admitted that without the settlements the army would have left long ago. The settlements justify the Israeli refusal to see their military as "foreign army ruling a foreign population." Without the settlements, Israeli occupation would have been unlikely 34 years on.
To ensure control, therefore, Labour and Likud governments alike encouraged Israel's citizens to move into the settlements through privileges and financial rewards. Promised safety and stability, low- and middle-income families were shoved into what would necessarily become a classical case of colonialism. These pragmatic settlers, not the fanatical fundamentalists, make up the majority of the settler community.
For several years, however, the settler community has been moving in an increasingly radical and mystical direction, as religious fanatics consolidate their hold on the settlers' political movement. The absolute majority of the settlers -- more than 94 per cent -- voted for Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon in recent elections: no surprises there.
In a recent tour of the West Bank with a delegation of European civil society leaders, we encountered angry settlers at an army checkpoint after a car was shot at near a Palestinian village. In a strong American accent, one settler expressed his peaceful intentions by recounting his glorious days in the civil rights movement in America. Asked if that didn't contradict with his colonial crusade in the Palestinian territories, he referred me to the Torah.
When I told him that it was the Afrikaners of South Africa who spoke of themselves as "a distinct people or nation, occupying a distinct fatherland... speaking God-given language... and endowed by God with the destiny to rule [the land] and civilise its heathen peoples," the peaceful exchange turned violent as stones were hurled at our bus.
The Camp David summit produced an explicit agreement regarding Israeli annexation of the settlements on the Green Line, where most of the settlers reside, in exchange for comparable territory in Israel. This leaves the settlements in the heart of the Palestinian territories.
Israel could begin the process of confidence-building by dismantling settlements such as Nitzarim, which accommodates tens of individuals amidst a million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, or Hadassah, which houses 400 fanatics in the heart of Hebron. These settlements have caused most of the damage, and most Israelis would like to see them go.
It has been said often that if the logic of the settler wins, Israel will be transformed into an apartheid state. Unfortunately, the logic of the fundamentalist settlers has already won, and is dictating Israel's agenda in dealing with the Palestinians. Their presence will transform any barbed wire boundaries into segregated bantustans for the Palestinians.
Today, millions of Palestinians and Israelis continue to live in fear for the sake of few settlers who are plunging the area ever closer to a full-scale communitarian/colonial war. Israel has nothing to gain and much to lose if it insists on continuing settlement expansion.
Back in 1992, after American had emerged victorious from the Gulf War and the Cold War, Bill Clinton caught American attention with a simple slogan: "It's the economy, stupid." Today, Israel might be winning its war in the occupied territories, but it is losing the battle for peace and coexistence with the only people that could bring it security and legitimacy. Why? It's the occupation, stupid.
If the settlements remain, no wall, no leader and no amount of weaponry will suffice to stop the violence. No God will want to disengage the two peoples. Welcome to the end of apartheid.
* The writer is a researcher at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and a professor at the American University of Paris. He is also the author of Palestine Israel: Peace or Apartheid.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page