Thursday, 1 June 2017

The Israel-Palestine Conflict and Political Activism

by 


It is now 50 years since Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank during the six-day war of June 1967, with as yet no end in sight for the military occupation and colonisation that has been forced upon the Palestinians since then. Whatever happened to the peace process? Once the world’s prominent cause, recent events in the wider Arab world have somewhat diverted attention from it. There is hardly any activity at the institutional level, and yet the consensus on the resolution of the conflict was recently reaffirmed by the 2016 UN Resolution 2334, which is binding on the international community. What is this consensus? Roughly, the end of the occupation, the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), and the creation of an independent Palestinian state. All rather reasonable, and certainly lawful, so why has the peace process stalled?
I am not actually interested in discussing the peace process itself, however. What I would like to do instead is focus on some of the actions available to those individuals committed to the Palestinian cause, as this raises interesting choices and dilemmas, which are worth discussing. I will analyse three kinds of actions: organising and supporting boycotts and divestments campaigns against Israel; volunteering in the occupied territories in order to directly assist the Palestinians; and lobbying one’s government and the international community to promote the consensus on the conflict. These three choices are not entirely independent of each other and the same concerns do surface in all three cases, but a wide-ranging view will showcase what is at stake precisely, hopefully illuminating the peace process too.
Boycotts, Divestments, and Sanctions 
An analogy is sometimes drawn between the plight of the Palestinians and that of black South Africans living under Apartheid. In particular, it has been suggested that some of the tactics employed to undermine the Apartheid regime can be used to pressure Israel too. This is the stance adopted by the so-called BDS movement (for boycott, divestment, and sanctions). Launched in 2005, it calls for a general boycott, trade divestment, and international sanctions regime against Israel with the aim to achieve three main objectives: the end of the occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands under Israeli control; the granting of full rights to Israeli Arab citizens; and the promotion of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes.
The analogy with South African Apartheid shouldn’t be pushed too hard, however, as there are as many similarities as there are differences.[1] One of the main differences is that most of the campaigns against Apartheid had very specific targets in mind – academia, for instance, wasn’t usually one of them – and this is not quite the case when it comes to the BDS movement, as they support a very general and wide-ranging campaign against Israel. In any case, we can certainly draw a distinction between the tactics the BDS movement employs and the movement itself, and I shall point to a rather telling similarity between Apartheid and the Israel-Palestine conflict later on. Of particular importance now is the BDS positioning regarding two central issues: the overall resolution of the conflict, and the future settlement of Palestinian refugees. If the main aims of the BDS movement were to be achieved in whole, this may well result in the disappearance of Israel as we know it, and this is an objective that surely can hardly be justified. This is not an exaggerated claim.
Considering that Israel has a current population of 1.5 million Arabs and that the descendants of those displaced by the 1948-49 wars number more than 5 million, a return of most if not all refugees to Israel, as defended by the BDS, would displace Israeli Jews, who now number 5.9 million, as the most numerous group within the state, and that would make Israel a very different country indeed.[2] This is not to suggest that Palestinians ought to give up their ‘right of return’, a right that is in any case enshrined in UN legislation. A compromise will have to be reached on this question, one involving reparations of some kind and the return of the refugees to a future State of Palestine rather than to Israel, as the comprehensive return of the refugees to their ancestral homes is not a real possibility.
Tellingly, the BDS movement would welcome a dramatic change in the internal constitution of Israel, as they envision a one-state solution as the final settlement to the conflict. According to this vision, the whole of Israel together with the occupied Palestinian territories would become a bi-national country, Arabs and Jews equal citizens within the same state. It is not clear whether this position is held by both the Palestinians that take part in the BDS movement and their supporters overseas, but the BDS movement certainly finds itself in a bit of pickle here.
First of all, this position disregards the opinions of most of the people in the region – there is really no reason to believe that Arabs and Israelis want to live under one state – and, more importantly, the one-state solution involves clear dangers for the Palestinians. The current situation is already a kind of a one-state settlement, albeit one in which Palestinians live under military occupation and have very limited rights within the confines of their own semi-independence, whilst Israeli Arabs are effectively second-class citizens. Given the current power dynamics in the region, it is hard to see how a sanctioned one-state solution would be any different.
Secondly, even though the BDS movement makes much of the fact that the 2005 call was supported by some 170 organisation, a collection of people they like to call the Palestinian civil society, this doesn’t necessarily settle the question of whether the international community ought to support the BDS movement or not. After all, the fact that a given tactic receives ample support from the Palestinians – indeed, even total support – does not mean that the international community ought to second it without appropriate consideration. One may well disagree with the particulars, or even find the whole idea objectionable, and therefore reject it.
This is especially pertinent regarding the general boycott of Israel. Such a campaign, being too indiscriminate, is already morally objectionable, not least on the grounds that it is likely to harm some who cannot be considered responsible for the occupation (including many Palestinians, as I will discuss later). Besides, judged in purely practical grounds, such a general boycott is likely to alienate instead than to entice many in the international community, and such a factor should not be downplayed. A campaign directed against the occupation itself, on the other hand, is likely to resonate more widely, given the international consensus on its illegality and injustice. In fact, many countries have legislation in place restricting their dealings with Israeli entities that directly benefit from the occupation, and there can be little controversy here.
In fact, the EU has various free trade agreements with Israel, but none of these cover goods that come from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, while the US has well-established protocols regarding how to the treat the OPT in its official dealings.[3] There’s usually much protest from Israel regarding these policies, but these are effectively institutional bulwarks against more general boycotts, clearly benefitting Israel (and perhaps cementing the status quo). In general, then, well-directed campaigns will stand on much more solid moral ground, especially if Israel and the OPT are appropriately distinguished in these actions.
More importantly, it is unlikely that the campaign the BDS movement defends will bring an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and this is surely what those committed to the Palestinian cause should primarily focus on. This is not to say that BDS tactics should be discarded. The main problem with the BDS movement is not with their tactics, but with what they want to achieve with these and how they use them. BDS tactics need to be exercised judiciously, for they are not without its own set of problems. In fact, a campaign such as the one the BDS movement envisions may not benefit the Palestinians as much as it is supposed, as I shall discuss now.
Volunteering in the Occupied Palestinian Territories: A Personal Tale
There are many possibilities open to someone willing to assist the Palestinians in the region, from volunteering at local farms and orphanages to working with many of the international agencies in the region. In the summer of 2009, I had the opportunity to spend some time at a permaculture farm in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, and a discussion of what this farm aimed to achieve raises interesting questions about this sort of activity.
Permaculture is a global movement based on a number of self-reliance principles: minimal consumption, recycling and reinvesting of waste products, and the redistribution of surplus. As such, this type of farming is especially useful in areas with limited access to materials and resources. It is not new to the region, actually – a Sustainable Development Centre was founded in 1993 to study how permaculture could be employed in the OPT – and alternative farming is certainly on the rise now.
The main challenge for any sort of farming enterprise in the OPT is access to water, which is very limited indeed. Overall, the average water supply to Palestinian homes in the West Bank is around 63 litres per capita per day, which is below half of Israeli consumption. The farm I visited in Beit Sahour, the Bustan Qaraaqa project, was set up to meet this scarcity head on. Sitting on a 1.2 hectares of land, the farm boasted, among other things, a large tree nursery and various water tanks distributed throughout the property. The most important water tanks were the two rain-collectors on the roof, which directly serve the kitchen and bathroom. Connected to a “grey water system”, compost toilet included, the water the farm uses is then filtered and reused for irrigation, and it is this overall “reduce and reuse” network that, the project managers hoped, will eventually allow the farm to come off the grid of the Israeli-controlled water supply lines.[4]
It is not clear how successful this strategy can really be, as it does involve buying water tank after water tank, and that’s hardly sustainable. Of more interest for the purposes of this article, however, is how this project has immersed itself in the overall community. I’m particularly interested in the connections they have made, the volunteering and measures they have promoted in other farms and areas of the West Bank, and of course their place within the occupation itself.
The first thing to note is the farm’s effect on the immediate community where it is based, the Henna Saad valley in Beit Sahour. Originally set up by four British ex-pats, the project has attracted a great number of volunteers and guests (it offers accommodation too), generating much commerce for the few shops in the area. This commands a respectable amount of trust from the local population, for the businesses in the valley mainly serve one or two families – each family in the area easily numbering hundreds of people – and not necessarily foreign residents. Such commerce brings up a relevant point regarding the BDS tactics discussed earlier.
As occupied territories, Israel controls what goes in and out of the West Bank and Gaza, and as such, the Israeli and Palestinian economies are much more intertwined than usually appreciated. This manifests itself in various ways. One is the very obvious fact that many of the products on sale in the OPT come from Israel, or are dependent upon it (the local beer Taybeh, for instance, has to import all glass from Israel). Another, more poignant case is the many jobs Palestinian men lost when the separation wall was built – jobs that were in Israel. And there’s of course all the tax receipts Israel collects from the territories. Unsurprisingly, it would make little sense for a Palestinian living in the OPT to follow BDS tactics to the letter; that is, to boycott Israeli products and businesses, as they would be literally damaging their own household economies. This point is somewhat lost on BDS supporters, and yet the line between Palestinian and Israeli interests is probably too diffuse to draw at all. This makes BDS tactics rather impractical; or at very least they need to be considered on a one-by-one basis, and never as a blanket measure.
Of equal importance is the extensive connections the Bustan Qaraaqa project has fostered with other organisations in Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. Some of these range from organising workshops and talks, assisting international organisations, or helping with the farming needs of various organisations. As a result, much work has been undertaken in many places, especially in particularly sensitive areas such as in properties near the separation wall, which are in constant danger of expropriation, and this has resulted in a significant improvement in people’s lives. Unfortunately, military might will impose itself eventually. Like everyone else in the West Bank, Bustan Qaraaqa live under, and are therefore part of, an occupation, and this bring its own set of issues.
In a thorough analysis of the occupation, the Israeli scholar Neve Gordon has argued that in the early decades Israel purposely invested money and resources in the OPT in order to “normalise” the occupation by offering a high quality of life to its inhabitants (without going so far as to annex these territories, thus keeping them outside of most Israeli legislation).[5] This was, however, accompanied by an ever-increasing military presence and violence and more and more Israeli settlements, the latter then seen by Israel as a prerequisite for territorial safety against the surrounding Arab states.[6] Israel was slowly creating “facts on the ground”, as they say, and with that inevitably came resistance, a cycle of violence that continues to this day.
The normalisation of the occupation and the colonisation of the West Bank alongside the shutting-off of Gaza undoubtedly constitute the biggest impediments to the resolution of the conflict. Are projects such as Bustan Qaraaqa inadvertent players in the normalisation of the occupation? As mentioned, one of the aims of this project is to get off the Israeli water supply lines in order to gain some much-needed independence, and by doing so, it could be argued, a permaculture-organised region would be setting up a way of life around the occupation instead than under it. And perhaps becoming as independent from the occupier as possible puts you in a stronger position in peace negotiations. But how is this different from what the Palestinians have done since 1967? To live as decent and autonomous a life as possible given the current conditions is in many ways a compromise, no more than life’s daily grind for the Palestinian. More importantly, there is little reason to believe that the sustainable world envisioned by the permaculture movement would dent the military occupation in any significant way, and it certainly falls short of the stable institutions needed for proper development and self-rule.
As a matter of fact, the normalisation of an occupation is a process in which some sort of autonomy may be granted to the occupied, which would of course be illusory and nothing more than a tactic to fragment and divide a given territory. This was certainly implemented in the Oslo Accords, where the West Bank was divided into three administrative zones (Gaza is a locked-in territory at present). Area A is under the full control of the Palestinian National Authority (PA or PNA), but comprises only around 1% of the West Bank. Control of area B, a 27% of the area, is divided between the PA and Israeli security services, while area C is under the full control of Israel and constitutes around 72% of the West Bank. In such a situation, the Palestinians can hardly be in control of their own destiny, let alone maintain the infrastructures and institutions needed to function as a state.
This is most evident in a rather dramatic case: the state of the health system in the OPT. The Lancet magazine commissioned a series of papers about this issue in 2009, and the main findings are very revealing.[7] The first paper in the series identifies the main factors contributing to the deterioration of the Palestinian health system, and we here find the on-going colonisation, constant insecurities, violations of human rights, poor governance and mismanagement, and dependence on foreign aid. Then, and after reviewing the status of a number of health indicators, such as maternal and child health, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, the studies conclude that whilst ‘substantial aid can alleviate some of the short-term effects…of a crisis, it does not tackle the root causes of ill health’. This is, no doubt, the result of there not being ‘an autonomous state to safeguard [Palestinians]’, which means that ‘no comprehensive agenda for improving health and services…can be outlined with any confidence’. That is, without an international agreement on ‘a just political and economic solution’, the report concludes, ‘all other measures are likely to prove temporary and superficial’.
There really is no hope under an occupation, and everything that happens under it can be co-opted for the occupier’s own benefit. Some of the measures I have described can have great benefits for the Palestinian population, but these are only compromises in the greater scheme of things and can only be regarded as temporary. This, unfortunately, is precisely the situation that a volunteer has to face in the OPT.
Campaigning for the International Consensus
The third and final course of action I would like to discuss is focused on lobbying one’s government and the international community in support of the consensus on the Israel-Palestine conflict. As mentioned, there is an international consensus on how to solve the conflict, which has been in effect for over forty years now and was reaffirmed in UN resolution 2334 in 2016.
Such a consensus calls for an end to the occupation and the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the OPT (including the release of thousands of political prisoners), the establishment of a Palestinian state within the so-called “green line” (that is, with pre-1967 borders), and a fair settlement for Palestinian refugees (retribution and a return to a future State of Palestine). Actively campaigning for the consensus seems to sit on more solid ground than the blanket boycott of Israel and should offer a better prospect for Palestinians than what the volunteering movement can provide in the territories. As ever, however, the details are rather nuanced but worth discussing.
Though the consensus may be as clear and as legally well-established as anything else, Israel has as a matter of fact never accepted it.[8] In fact, Israel has to this day never accepted the possibility of an autonomous and independent Palestinian state. The record is very clear on this: Israel has taken more and more land from the Palestinians, and all it has offered in return is the possible recognition of a semi-independent and demilitarised entity (but not quite a state) composed of bypassed enclaves under the full control of the Israeli army – a Greater Israel, in effect.[9]
The campaign for such a widespread consensus requires a focused and international undertaking, and this is currently not what we find. Emblematic of the general situation is the current disconnect between the international community and the Palestinians themselves. There are possibly a number of reasons for this, not least the fact that the international campaign I’m referring to is almost non-existent at present. Another possible reason is the perceptible lull in Palestinian activities in the OPT. The Palestinians have certainly always resisted the occupation and colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza, but the struggle for political self-determination is currently at a low ebb, the current campaign of hunger strikes notwithstanding. Getting things moving will require much renewed effort and old-fashioned campaigning, but there are signs that the objectives are not so far-fetched.
If the consensus on how to solve the conflict really is so widespread, why has the occupation endured for so long, though? Here the analogy with South African Apartheid is more apt. The international movement against Apartheid was extensive and long-lasting (much more so than in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict), and while many factors no doubt contributed to its demise, a rather central factor was the loss of US support. We now know that the South African government was all too happy to resist international pressure and remain an international pariah as long as they could count on American support and financial assistance. In a telegram sent by the US ambassador in South Africa to the Department of State in 1958, we read that the South African foreign minister informed the ambassador that ‘[a] specific and strong resolution against South Africa voted for by a majority of nations in [the] UN did not matter so much as this was to be expected. What mattered perhaps more than all other votes put together was that of [the] US in view [of] its predominant position of leadership in Western world’.[10]
The situation is rather similar in the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Even though the US has nominally been a supporter of the international consensus since the 1970s, it is very doubtful that Israel could maintain the occupation and its general settlement policy without the huge funds it receives from the US on a yearly basis, not to mention military and diplomatic support.[11]
This could be taken as suggesting that the international campaign I am discussing would not be as significant as I have been presuming, but this is slightly misleading. US support for Israel is mostly a matter of geopolitical considerations, and such support is not set in stone. In fact, the US stance seems to be waning a bit, at least from the perspective of American public opinion on the conflict, which has changed in the last few decades. As Norman Finkelstein and John Mearsheimer discuss in The American Conservative, international public opinion on Israel is not what it used to be.[12] In particular, negative views towards Israel are on the increase, including among the American-Jewish population. What’s more, recent polls suggest that Americans by large believe that the US should not favour either Israel or the Palestinians, but act as a neutral arbiter, in clear contrast to what has historically been the case.
In this regard, it is worth noting that one of the last acts of the Obama administration was to not veto UN Resolution 2334 – the US surprisingly abstained in this case – and this is certainly significant. The mood may have changed with the new Trump administration, though. In an early pronouncement, President Trump stated that he would consider both a one-state and a two-state solution, and the former would certainly be a disaster for Palestinians, as discussed earlier on.[13]
This brings us back, once again, to the international consensus on the conflict and the need to create the appropriate conditions for a viable Palestinian state. Much as it happened to Apartheid South Africa, the Israel-Palestine conflict will be settled once Israel loses its main international backers, especially the support of the US. As such, the importance of an international movement targeting public opinion in the US should not be downplayed, as it is probably the only way in which real pressure can be brought to bear on Israel. There have been some cases of proper US pressure on Israel in the past, from the threat of sanctions during the Suez canal crisis in 1958 to the withholding of loan guarantees in 1991 to force Israel to attend peace talks in Madrid, but these have all but disappeared in the last 20 or so years.[14]
Much remains to be done, of course, but such an international campaign is likely to be more conducive than the other two courses of action I have discussed. It incorporates the same sort of objectives and concerns, but with fewer moral conflicts, and that’s to its advantage. But I’m not suggesting any particular action. What I have tried to show here is that those dedicated to the Palestinian cause need to think carefully about the tactics they employ, for their objectives may not be well-supported. As is usually the case in political activism, a balance needs to be struck between difficult choices and the accompanying moral dilemmas.[15]
David J. Lobina is a philosopher at the University of Barcelona.
Notes.
[1] Mona Younis, Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2000.
[2] The demographics of Israel can be consulted at http://www.cbs.gov.il/www/yarhon/b1_e.htm, while the number of registered refugees can be found here: http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=253.
[3] A summary of the EU position can be found in the 2010 judgement of the European Court of Justice in the Brita case: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&num=C-386/08
[4] See http://bustanqaraaqa.weebly.com/ for more information about the project.
[5] Neve Gordon, Israel’s Occupation, University of California Press, Berkeley 2008.
[6] Zeev Maoz’s Defending the Holy Land, The University of Michigan Press, Ann Harbor 2006, convincingly argues that the settlements are in fact detrimental to Israel’s security.
[7] The Lancet, Vol. 737, 2009, pages 837, 847, 1141, 846, 775. The complete list of papers can be accessed at http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory
[8] Richard A. Falk & Burns H. Weston, “The Relevance of International law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: In Legal Defense of the Intifada”, Harvard International Law Journal, 32/1 (1991).
[9] Edward Said, The End of the Peace Process, Granta, London 2000.
[11] Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle, South End Classics, New York 1999, offers an authoritative account of the US-Israel relationship.
[15] I wish to thank Paloma Atencia, Noam Chomsky, Robin Muller, and Leah Sullivan for comments on an earlier version of this article.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/30/the-israel-palestine-conflict-and-political-activism/

posted by Satish Sharma at 17:14

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