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News from Within Vol. XXII No. 4 April 2006

Elections, Occupation and Solidarity
  

a publication of
The Alternative Information Center

Letter from the Editors:
Of Combatants and Civilians

In a rare moment of political candor, Israel Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, during a 28 March 2006 interview on the American TV news show ABC Nightline, differentiated explicitly between Palestinian guerrilla attacks against Israeli military targets and attacks against civilians. Livni was asked by the interviewer whether she regarded her father, Eitan Livni—who was the chief operations officer of the Jewish far-right Zionist militant group Etzel and was involved in attacks against British military and Palestinian targets before the establishment of Israel—as a terrorist. Livni replied that because her father was involved in attacks against British military targets, he could not be considered a terrorist. She then discussed this differentiation in regard to the Palestinian militants: “Somebody who is fighting against Israeli soldiers is an enemy and we will fight back, but I believe that this not under the definition of terrorism, if the target is a soldier.” Livni reiterated this point on 11 April, during an interview with Israel Radio, stating that: “attacks specifically against soldiers could be seen as ‘more legitimate’ than attacks on Israeli civilians”(Jerusalem Post, 11 April 2006).

Unsurprisingly, this admission of the qualitative difference between targeting combatants and targeting civilians has had no effect on the Israeli military’s actions on the ground in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). In the period since Livni’s statements on Nightline, 31 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, including at least three children. Nominally in retaliation for Qassam attacks from the Gaza Strip—which have caused no Israeli casualties since the Israeli redeployment in September 2005—the Israeli military has carried out the most extensive series of artillery barrages against targets inside the Gaza Strip, with little differentiation between militant and civilian targets. This has resulted in the highest Palestinian fatality rate since the redeployment. Israel has also stepped up incursions and extra-judicial executions in cities and towns around the West Bank. Additionally, due to the Israeli military’s lax open-fire regulations and its recent changes to artillery targeting orders, it has significantly increased the likelihood and potential frequency of future Palestinian civilian casualties.

In order to reduce this possibility, six Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations¹ have petitioned the Israel High Court on 16 April 2006. The petition stipulates that Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Chief of Staff

Dan Halutz must revoke the recent change in the orders to soldiers, governing the ‘safety zone’ for artillery shells fired into the Gaza Strip. This targeting buffer has been reduced from 300 to 100 meters distance from civilians and civilian residences. The petition details that this change would knowingly endanger Palestinian civilians and their property: “given that the shell fragmentation range is 100 meters […] and that the weaponry is not precise and shells can land dozens of meters from the target, reduction of the safety zone substantially endangers civilian lives, buildings, and other civilian objects located near the target.”² Moreover, the petition states that this order is a blatant breach of three basic principles of international law: “the requirement to distinguish between combatants and civilians, the principle of proportionality in the use of force, and the requirement to use caution in executing attacks.”³ The human rights organizations warn that both the order and its carrying out, put Israeli military officers and soldiers at risk of being charged with war crimes by international judicial bodies.

Moreover, the debate within Palestinian society over what constitutes an appropriate response to the Israeli Occupation continues. In the wake of the 17 April 2006 Islamic Jihad suicide bombing near the old Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, which left ten dead—the fi rst Palestinian attack over the Green Line since Hamas has taken office in the PA, and the deadliest in 20 months—ongoing differences and tensions between Fatah ministers and members of several other Palestinian parties and factions, have come closer to the surface. While Palestinian President Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas of the Fatah, has denounced the attack as a “despicable act which harms the struggle of the Palestinian people,” and Palestinian UN observer, Riad Mansour, has condemned the “loss of innocent lives, Palestinian and Israelis,” calling “upon the occupying power to do the same,” Hamas has refused to criticize the bombing and there has been sharp criticism of Abbas’ statements. The Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees, and Fatah’s own al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, in a joint statement, write that they “demand that brother Mahmoud Ab- bas, Abu Mazen, apologize to the Palestinian people for the harm that he has done,” in his condemnation of the attack (Saed Bannoura, IMEMC News, 18 April 2006).

Meanwhile, though the Israeli government has stated that it will ‘limit’ its response to the attack, it has already carried out a bombing raid in the Gaza Strip and incursions into the West Bank towns of Nablus, Qalqilia and Jenin, with more likely to come. In addition, it has taken a series of steps for collective punishment of the Palestinians. These include a stricter implementation of the policy of preventing Palestinian movement to different areas within the West Bank; extensions of border closures; and the decision to revoke the Jerusalem residency permits of three Hamas PLC members who reside in East Jerusalem (Ha’aretz, 18 April 2006). This act will likely result in their forced transfer to Palestinian controlled areas of the OPT.⁴

While the post Israeli election coalition talks are still ongoing and the final form of the new government has not crystallized, it is already clear that the declared policy of the new government bodes ill for any positive developments in the region. Israel’s continued refusal to recognize or negotiate with the elected Palestinian government, the ongoing collective punishment of the Palestinian people, along with the Israeli moves towards annexation of further chunks of the OPT can only lead to a prolongation and inevitable intensification of bloodshed. It is only through a total end to the Israeli Occupation, the mutual upholding of international law, and the defense of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people that there is the possibility for a long-term end to the conflict.

Notes

¹ These organizations include: Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, B’Tselem, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, The Gaza Community Mental Health Program and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel.
² http://www.stoptorture.org.il/news_eng. asp?id=68.
³ See note 2. For more information on international law and the targeting of civilian populations, see the Forth Geneva Convention, Section II, Art. 85, 3a-d.
⁴ This act is in breach of international law: “The […] transfer […] of all or parts of the population of the occupied territory within […] this territory is in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Convention.” Forth Geneva Convention, Section II, Art. 85, 4a.

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Letters to the Editors

We encourage our readers to submit letters to News from Within. Your comments are important and are appreciated. Letters should be sent to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or by mail to: AIC/News from Within, P. O. Box 31417, Jerusalem 91313

False Promise of a Palestinian ANC

Dear Professor Ilan Pappe,

Regarding your article in News from Within (November/December 2005): while you justly identify the fi rst problem confronting the international supporters of the struggle for Palestine as “the absence of a credible and effective Palestinian leadership,” your model of such a leadership—“a proper ANC”—is preposterous.

I spent five years in South Africa, from 1957 to 1962, as an active member of the liberatory movement (which was then, as now, a great deal more complex than the ANC dare admit). I have twice revisited the country, most recently in January of this year, so I have seen something of what the ANC leadership has wrought in its twelve years of office. Since you are evidently unaware of the consequences of its ‘negotiated settlement’ with international corporate investment, you might consider the following.

This settlement, while ensuring the prosperity of the emergent African bourgeoisie as well as that of the white landowners who continue to own some 87 percent of the land, has also ensured the continued and increasing misery of the landless peasantry which comprises four-fi fths of the African population. So much for the redistribution of the land that fi gured so large on the ANC Freedom Charter; what that meant, it turns out, is land for sale, under the rubric of “Willing buyer, willing seller.” The same goes for water and electricity (both now privatized), and education which, though compulsory, is free only in the poorest 20 percent of the schools. The sole post-apartheid benefit from which the landless peasantry is not excluded is freedom of movement. Hence, the unstanchable flood of rural migrants seeking employment in town, in preference to starving in the country. Hence, the miles upon endless miles of cardboard shacks encircling the cities; and hence, since unemployment (never mind the official estimate) now stands at nearly 50 percent, the massive crime industry. If this vast majority of the people are (arguably) no worse off than they were under the apartheid regime, they are certainly no better off.

With this model in mind, the lesson to be learnt is that divestment doesn’t come without a price tag. In the case of South Africa, international investment could reckon on a securer partnership with the flexible ANC leadership than with the inflexible apartheid government. That was the deal, and the South African masses are paying the price for it. But I wonder what—in the (alas, unlikely) event of divestment from Israel—international capital stands to gain from the liberation of Palestine, what sort of liberation that would be, and who would foot the bill.

Surely, in the absence of a responsible Palestinian leadership, it behooves the leadership of the economic sanctions campaign to see to it that the liberation they aim for this time amounts to more than an alternative form of oppression.

Yours sincerely,

Deirdre Levinson Bergson
New York, USA

Centering Kadima

Dear Editors,

I feel that it is important that the Western media should cease calling the new Israeli government of Kadima ‘centrist’. This indicates that they are a very moderate party, however their policy of unilateral disengagement, the use of the separation barrier, the expansion of settlements around Jerusalem and other locations, and the rejection of negotiations does not show ‘moderation’. Also the party which most Kadima MP’s came from should not be described as ‘center-right’ as under Netanyahu it denies the need for a Palestinian state. From an international context Likud verges on the far-right and Kadima are in many ways a right-wing nationalist party. If there was an ideological ‘center’ in Israel it would be probably to be found in the Israel Labor Party or Meretz.

Yours sincerely,

James Wild
London, UK

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 Elections, Occupation and Solidarity:
An Interview with Professor Tanya Reinhart

by Bryan Atinsky

NfW: As we are just after the 2006 Israeli elections, first I wanted to ask about your approach to elections in Israel and whether you voted?

Tanya Reinhart: Yes, I voted; I am completely for voting. The period when I called for a blank ballot was when there were direct elections for the prime minister; I never called for not voting for the party or even the prime ministry. I see a big difference between a blank ballot and non-voting. If you don’t vote, you drop out of the system and you get a situation like in the United States where 50 percent of the people don’t participate in the elections. The blank ballot strategy that I advocated was because you only had a choice of two candidates for prime minister and they were always identical and the strategy of blank ballots was to try to break this circle of having no choice. The idea is that since in prime ministerial elections, a candidate needs to get 50 percent, not just a plurality, but over 50 percent, in a functioning democracy, like in France, the blank ballot can cause neither of the candidates to be elected. So it is a form of struggle, because then you can force a second round and you can force a candidate to represent you more. In Israel, they took care you would not be able to do that because they did not count the blank ballots, they count them as non-votes. Still, the number of these “non-votes” is known, signaling the existence of a large body of voters protesting the lack of choice.

But of course for the parties it is different. In Israel at least, we have many parties, and it is important that there are some representatives closer to your views, which can represent you in the parliament in order for you to have some political voice.

NfW: That goes back to the fact that this election had the lowest turnout in the history of Israel, with 63 percent of the possible electorate voting. Even among the parties that won, the highest was 28 seats. So Kadima, who will likely be the head of any coalition government, is really a party representing a very small minority of the Israeli public. Can you explain what you think of the results and where we are going in the Israeli political scene?

Tanya: It is a fact that the vote in Israel drops. It is a process that started with the last elections. Given that Israel used to be this place where people cared a lot about the elections, with exceptionally high rates of voting, this does need an explanation—why is there this drop in the election turnout and the participation? I think that it is because the political system is growing further and further from the views of the people, so in fact, although the elections were presented as dramatic, they didn’t offer any real choice. If you look at public opinion polls in the last few years, you find that there is a majority of at least 60-70 percent for getting out of the territories and dismantling settlements, so that is also why both Sharon and Olmert knew they have to declare that is what they want to do because this is the majority, but it is not only that. Out of those who want out of the territories, about 25 percent want to get out of all territories, 50 percent want to divide Jerusalem.¹ These people have no big party represent ting them in the political system. Or if you take a more recent development, an interesting thing about the Israeli public was that immediately after the Hamas victory in the [PLC] elections, 50 percent [of the Israeli public] said that they want to continue negotiations with the Hamas. And it even grew—I read last week, a report of the Truman Institute, that 60 some percent of Israelis now support negotiations with Hamas.² So the numbers have even grown since the elections. Despite the propaganda and despite Israel’s declared policy, the majority of Israelis want to negotiate with Hamas. A majority of Israelis want to negotiate peace with the Palestinians; they do not want unilateral steps. But if you look at the political system, there was not a single of the big parties which represented anything like the views of the majority, or the views of a large section of the public. So, these people who are not represented do have the choice to vote for a small party like Hadash or Balad, but this is like investing in a very far future. They know that you cannot affect anything now, because any small party will not form the government.

So, there is really no particular reason to vote, and then you can’t decide because the parties are identical. Peretz—the Labor party—declares that he completely agrees with Olmert. He said in any matter of the territories, we will do exactly like Olmert, but we will also have a minimum wage. That was the Labor platform.

NfW: Along those lines, it seems interesting that in the 37 odd years since the Alon plan was proposed in 1967, at least if we are looking territorially, there hasn’t been any advancement in the Israeli conception of a final status situation with the Palestinians. Both Olmert and Peretz’s proposals for territorial concessions follow very closely to what was proposed by General Yigal Alon in 1967. Could you talk about these historical continuities and their implications?

Tanya: The truth is even sadder than what you stated. But what they all propose now, from Olmert to Peretz is not the Alon Plan. The idea of the Alon Plan was that while Israel would take 40 percent of the Palestinian land, in the other 60 percent the Palestinians would be allowed real autonomy (or a confederation with Jordan). So, in a way, this is what happened in Oslo. They did have real autonomy inside the 60 percent. Autonomy means here only control over internal matters, not external, but that was the model of Oslo, which is the Alon plan.

Barak, and then Sharon, wanted to undo the model of Alon Plan. What is now being constructed in the territories is a system of prisons; each of the enclaves is isolated from one another. The Army divided the West Bank to 60 something territorial cells (that is what they call them) and each of them is controlled, in fact, by a military commander. So the system that is being developed is straightforward occupation and controlled by a prison system like in Gaza. You surround the people with a wall and control their entries and exits, and their economy, and they have absolutely no options. Now, Olmert’s project, which is the exact plan of Sharon, is to build in the West Bank the same system of prisons. So the Wall is first taking as much Palestinian land as possible and moving it to Israel, and eventually inside the West Bank, there would be three prison enclaves separated by Israeli roads and the isolated settlements that are built deep inside the Palestinian land. The only right that the Palestinians will be given is to somehow stay alive., Furthermore, this plan of complete occupation, that in the past was viewed as right-wing, is now viewed as center or left-wing. Many in the media agree that Olmert is between center and Left, right? And everybody is happy that the rightwing Netanyahu is defeated, because now the Left has won.

NfW: In order to pull this off, there has to be some perception among the international public, including Europe and the United States, that some form of independent state has been created for the Palestinians. But for any foreseeable final status with a unilateral pullout, it won’t be agreed upon at all by the Palestinians, and I can’t conceive as how it would be internationally legitimized, especially Europe, and following that, by the United States. So how is Israel thinking this can be implemented in a realistic way?

Tanya: The line that Sharon started pushing is, first of all, that the Palestinian opinion should not be relevant. ‘We have no partner, they are not democratic, they are terrorists, so we cannot negotiate any agreement with the Palestinians; we should instead negotiate the agreement with the US.’ And, of course, with the Hamas election, that line seems to be successful, because, by now, although the US insisted that the Palestinian elections will take place and that the Hamas will participate, it did fall in line with the Israeli reaction that once the Hamas was elected, there really is no partner. So the line that Israel is pushing is that the final solution should be an international decision that should back Israel’s line.

Now, the question of whether they would succeed depends on many factors. We are in a period where the United States, and no less so Europe, accept Israel’s line that Israel is the peaceful side and it withdrew from Gaza and it declared its willingness to withdrawal from more. At this moment, they are backing Israel, because for the US, the main thing, given its involvement in Iraq and potentially Iran, the main thing is to ease public opinion. They want to look like they are putting some pressure on Israel and that Israel is finally making some concessions, and as long as there would be, from time to time, one evacuation of a settlement and this feeling that Israel is moving forward can be maintained, then the United States will be satisfied.

This is something I go over in my new book. I believe that Sharon did not evacuate Gaza out of his own will. It was straightforward US pressure, including military sanctions that were hidden behind the China arms sale deal. But there were sanctions that lasted for almost a year. At that time, international public opinion was really fed up with Israel. You could see this from European polls, and from US polls.

Right now, after the Gaza pullout, if you look at western media (not just US but also European media), everybody accepts that Israel is really moving forward toward peace and concessions. So there is an easing of international pressure. But when people see that Gaza is starved, when eventually people will notice what is happening in the West Bank, it could be that international pressure would resume. It could happen that eventually, Olmert will be the one that gets out of some of the territories. But it will not be because he or Peretz decided, but because the US will have no choice but force them again to do something.

NfW: The Zionist Left, and even some on the non-Zionist Left, saw Amir Peretz as a sea change in practical politics—the Labor Party especially. And many in the international community also saw Peretz as a significant change and hope for Israel. I would like to hear what you have to say about him as a political figure.

Tanya: It is good, indeed, to distinguish between the actual person Peretz -his actual history - and his rhetoric. If we start with who Peretz is, he has a long history of being unreliable and completely collaborating with the power system. He served as the fi rst head of the Histadrut (the union), following the period that it was broken up. It was broken up by Haim Ramon (at the time with Labor, but now with Kadima), in a struggle with [Haim] Haberfeld, the previous head of the Histadrut.

That was at the time that in the world, in 1994, the move of neoliberalism was to break the unions, and in Israel it was very difficult, because the Histadrut had a very glorious history of being a strong union. It was very powerful because it also controlled the Kupat Holim (universal Medicare in Israel), which in principal belonged to the workers. In 1994, Rabin and the Labor Party decided to break it. It was at this point that Peretz was appointed as the head of the new Histadrut, but by then the real Histadrut was dismantled, and there was only a symbolic organization left.

Since Peretz was appointed head of the Histadrut, there was never any “Heskem Sahar” (wage agreement), which is set in each sector separately, and this is the normal way it worked when we had unions. Each sector every few years would get a new wage agreement that really would raise the basic wage. In 12 years, since Peretz, there was never a new wage agreement. Instead, workers get special presents for the holidays or some special increase, but the basic wages never went up. The salary could go up, but this is completely up to the employers.

There was no strike that Peretz led which succeeded. The only strikes that succeeded were those that did not let Peretz interfere. There were some unions that refused to have the Histadrut handle their struggle and they won, but Peretz developed as a token worker’s leader. He has the relevant mustache, he has wonderful rhetoric. It wasn’t uncommon to see a picture of him speaking to the TV, flamboyantly about workers’ rights, and then he would ride home with [at the time Minister of Finance from Likud] Meir Sheetrit back to Tel Aviv in his fancy leather upholstered car.

So Peretz, in my eyes, is completely unreliable, but nevertheless, I think that it is a very good development that he was elected, because rhetoric is also important. What he was pushing is social justice and welfare rhetoric. And even if he has no intention to ever carry it out, the fact that the rhetoric returns is a very good thing,. It did help the Labor party become, at least at the level of rhetoric, an alternative to the Likud, Kadima, and the other major parties. Unfortunately, Peretz didn’t have good election advisors, and he backed away from this social rhetoric during the beginning of the campaign, so he has been working against his credibility right from the start.

On matters of the ongoing occupation, Peretz insisted that he was like Sharon and then like Olmert. He refused to take an alternative stand on these issues and he insisted that he would go only on the social platform. But even on this social front, he essentially took back almost everything he promised.

Labor should attract those people who are against the Occupation and for social justice, so at least on the level of rhetoric you have to insist on that. And Labor didn’t even have the courage to lie. Olmert doesn’t have any problem in lying. He says that he will withdraw from the territories; his social justice platform is identical to Peretz by now. He declared he would take care of the old and of education. As long as Labor does not present a real alternative, they don’t have a chance. The euphoria that the Peretz election brought in the beginning really shows that there is openness, readiness and expectation of the Labor Party, for going back to social welfare views and to an end of Occupation, because everybody believed that Peretz also wants to end the Occupation. So we can learn a lot from this excitement about Israeli public opinion, and also about what the Labor Party really is.

NfW: I saw in Ha’aretz this morning that there is a new book by the former Mossad chief, Efriam Halevy. He reveals that a few days before the failed assassination attempt on the Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, in Jordan in 1997, King Hussein had conveyed an offer from the Hamas leadership to reach an understanding on a ceasefire for thirty years.³ So, after this botched hit against Meshal, the agreement was totally negated. The question is—there have been numerous such instances, but can we connect this to an Israeli policy in which they are purposefully destroying the chances of moves towards peace with the Palestinians?

Tanya: There is no doubt that this is an Israeli policy. When the US came up with the Road Map, for the first time, the Hamas and other Palestinian organizations declared a hudna [cease-fire], even though they knew that it would be one-sided. They kept it for three months at least. They ceased terror, but Israel kept provoking them. The Israelis started assassinating the leadership of Hamas and they provoked the Palestinians time after time until the assassination of [Ismael] Abu Shaneb, who was a real moderate political leader of Hamas. That was the thing that eventually blew the ceasefire. So it is very clear that it is an Israeli policy to provoke terror.

The reason is that since Oslo, Israel has declared that it is willing to give up the territories. The only reason why this couldn’t materialize—in Israeli propaganda— is that there is no partner, there is never a partner. Now, once the Palestinians started using terror, that turned out to be very convenient for this Israeli line. There is this global war on terror, so when Israel is subjected to terror attacks, it immediately gains the sympathy of the world, and it is viewed as the victim and the Palestinians as the aggressors. As long as this goes on, it is easier to explain why we don’t get out of the territories. But, the fact of the matter now is that since the Sharm al-Sheikh summit in February 2005, Hamas has completely stopped terror. No matter what Israel does—and Israel did a lot to provoke the Hamas, like in July of 2005 they killed in one day seven Hamas activists in Gaza—they haven’t managed to provoke Hamas into a single suicide bombing attack.

NfW: There was a Shin Bet report at the end of December 2005, reported in Ha’aretz, which stated that only one Israeli death could be connected to Hamas in all of 2005.⁴ So you have the rhetoric of Hamas being ‘enemy number one’, but it actually was connected to less Israeli deaths than members of either of the militant groups connected to Fatah or Islamic Jihad.

Tanya: Indeed, these are the facts, Hamas is depicted as a terrorist organization, and so far it is working. You would expect the world reaction to Palestinian elections to be joy over the fact that a group that had used terror has announced a willingness to move away not just from terror (which happened in the beginning of 2005), but from more broadly to move from armed struggle to political struggle. That is an enormous achievement. One would expect this to be something the international community would want to support.

NfW: The Hamas win in the PLC election shows a move of Hamas from a militant organization outside of the control of the PA, to the PA itself, and a move from militancy to politics. Why is the Israeli government so afraid of what Hamas has become?

Tanya: To answer this, we have to go back to the type of infrastructure that was built in the territories since Oslo. Israel, together with the CIA, has managed to construct a very rich network of collaboration. Some of the Palestinian security organizations, most notably the Preventative Security of [Mohammed] Dahlan in Gaza, and [Jibril] Rajoub in the West Bank, were organizations that were working closely with Israel over the years. The role of the Preventive Security organizations has been always to protect the safety of the Israelis, mainly the settlers, who are vulnerable because they live in the territories. Their role extended not only to prevent terror, but to prevent protests and political organization that may change the system. Right before the elections, Israel was openly expressing the hopes that the young generation like Dahlan and Rajoub would win, pushing the line that the young generation was less corrupt then the old generation. They were openly hoping that their security collaborators would be elected as the head of the Palestinian Authority. But there was no chance that they were going to be elected. They formed a party that was supported by Israel, and [though] it was clear that they weren’t gaining any majority, if Fatah would be elected, they would remain in control of the security apparatus. What happened with the Hamas election is that it was obvious that Hamas would take over the security apparatus and this whole system of collaboration would collapse, so it is a very serious blow up for Israel, because they lose their inside control over the territories. It is extremely difficult to control the territories without inside help, which is what they were losing.

NfW: How should we understand the positions of the US and Europe in the continuing Israeli Occupation and actions towards the Palestinian Authority and citizenry? Does the 14 March Israeli military siege of the Jericho prison—in which Ahmad Sa’adat, the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was taken by the Israelis along with several other prisoners—signify a shift in the UK, and perhaps also in continental Europe, in which they have begun to move closer to the American policy stance vis-à-vis the Palestinians?

Tanya: The US/Europe relations on the matter of Israel have known various turns. Specifically, when the US started its [present] policy in the Middle East, first with the Iraq war, Europe, in particular Britain’s Blair, insisted that at the same time there should be some demands made on Israel. And the reason is obvious, Israel is conceived by the people of the world, if not by their governments, as a dangerous factor. There was, for example, an international poll, in which the question was “Which country do you view as the most dangerous to world peace?” and Israel came first, more dangerous than the US and North Korea and Iran.⁵ So the sentiment among the people of the world, has been for a long time that Israel is an aggressor. England and Europe were concerned with keeping some of their ties with the Arab world. And, for that, it is necessary that the West will not be conceived as backing Israel so fully. So, the Roadmap, in fact, was a response to a demand by Blair. At that point of the Roadmap, the US was not interested in anything but talking words. So they let Israel destroy the ceasefire, and kept backing Israel.

But, afterwards, during the second Bush administration, the US did change policy, and that was when Sharon was forced to evacuate Gaza. This was when the Iraq adventure was going badly and it was becoming clear that it would not be a simple matter, that the US is being defeated and that public opinion support was dropping radically. That was when the US also became convinced that some achievement was needed on the Israel/Palestine front. Bush would not consider giving up Iraq, but the headache of Israel he didn’t need. At that time, there was actual pressure. So, there is a big difference between US policy towards Israel in the second administration and in the fi rst.

But once Sharon evacuated Gaza, two things happened. Western discourse was eager to adopt the view that Israel had changed; the atmosphere of big concession was consolidated. From the perspective of European media and the western world, one would think that the Palestinian problem had been almost solved. On the other hand, the US was, and is, seriously entertaining the idea of also going to war against Iran, and on that issue, Israel is very crucial.

So right now, there is no trace of this period of US pressure, but it did exist, and that in my view means that the steady struggle of people in the world has an effect: Demonstrations, boycott and divestment movements, the Palestinian struggle along the line of the Wall; some courageous journalists that are willing to stand the pressure of the pro-Israel lobby and tell the story - all these have a cumulative effect in changing the people’s views, and then there are periods when the governments must listen to their people. So, in the same way that we had one period of pressure, we may have a similar period sometime soon.

NfW: I remember we talked not long after the beginning of the second Intifada, about the real need for international groups both to come here and show solidarity with the Palestinians and also, within their own communities around the world.⁶ The question is, has there been a genuine cumulative impact of international pressure, and how can we make it real and substantial?

Tanya: The model we can think about is South Africa’s apartheid, and it also took a long period for world pressure to build up. If we think about the Palestinian cause, first, the Palestinian struggle itself has pushed the Palestinian cause into the consciousness of the world—their policy of sticking to their land (Sumud), and especially the popular struggle that has started along the Wall. That is the major thing: as long as they can hold and keep struggling and survive, their cause will not be forgotten. The crucial next point is that there are circles and circles of people who are spreading awareness of the Palestinian issue, and demonstrations are no less important than divestment.

It is true that Israel has what South Africa never had, and that is the very strong pro Israel lobby, which is using brutal methods to silence any criticism of Israel. Still, this lobby has only limited effects on people’s actual consciousness. What we find in international polls, is that nevertheless people view Israel as dangerous; they sympathize with the Palestinians more than with Israel.⁷ So, even in the US, public opinion is far less favorable to Israel than it seems, but in Europe it even less favorable.

I would say that this is the only hope. This building up of public opinion is eventually going to slowly force the governments into action. But I do also think now that the most important, the most meaningful act right now is the international movement of solidarity. The fact that people from all over the world come here to protect the Palestinians in their struggle is very significant because, had the Israeli Army been given a completely free hand, there would be no demonstrations along the Wall; many more protesters would die. This way, people are only wounded and few die.

So, first, protection of the Palestinian struggle, and next another very significant thing is the Israeli solidarity movement— the people who go and stand with the Palestinians in front of the bulldozers and against the Israeli Army. They have crossed the lines and have joined the Palestinian popular struggle. This is extremely significant, in both protecting the struggle and in bringing this issue to the world consciousness. These wall demonstrations are covered; people do know that the International Court of Justice decision is not respected by Israel, and they know that there are Israelis who are opposed to this, and that the Palestinians are carrying out a non-violent popular struggle. Another aspect is gaining time, because Israel’s plan is to drive all these Palestinians along the line of the Wall, in a gradual way, into the center of the West Bank, where they will live as refugees in the outskirts of the cities. The Israel plan is to ‘redeem’ the land and in the process, to push the Palestinians out. So the first thing is to hold to the land, and make the process as slow as possible, and at the same time to raise world consciousness.

Tanya Reinhart is a professor emeritus of linguistics and cultural studies at Tel Aviv University and a professor at the University of Utrecht. She has written several books on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, has a regular column in Israel’s largest daily, Yediot Aharonot, and has had many articles published in international journals. Her latest book, The Roadmap to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003, published by Verso Press, will be out in June 2006.

Bryan Atinsky is the editor of News from Within.

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Notes

¹ “49% of Israelis back Jerusalem division,” Ynet, 16 December 2005

² See the March 16-21 polls, done jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, at: http://truman.huji.ac.il/upload/PressRelease240306English. doc. For an earlier poll, where around half of the respondents supported negotiations with Hamas see Prof. Ephraim Yaar and Prof. Tamar Hermann, Peace Index: January 2006, Ha’aretz, 8 February 2006.

³ “Ex-Mossad chief: Hamas offered 30-year cease-fi re in 1997” by Ze’ev Schiff, Ha’aretz, 30 March 2006.

⁴ “In 2005, [...] the Shin Bet holds Hamas directly responsible for only one fatal attack in 2005—the murder of Sasson Nuriel, who was kidnapped from Mishor Adumim and taken to Ramallah, where he was executed by a local Hamas cell.” Quoted from “PA denies Palestinian militants have anti-aircraft missiles,” by Amos Harel, Ha’aretz, 2 January 2006.

⁵ The poll was reported by Thomas Fuller, Herald Tribune, 31 October 2003; Ahto Lobjakas, Radio Free Europe, 3 November 2003. For the full report, see “Flash Eurobarometer 151: Iraq and Peace in the World” at: http:// europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/flash/ fl 151_iraq_full_report.pdf. 7500 people across the European Union were surveyed, about 500 in each country. The poll sparked outrage in Israeli government circles, followed by criticism and attacks on the Commission that ordered it, from the international pro-Israel lobby. In the U.S., a survey conducted for the Jewish Anti Defamation League showed that 43 percent of Americans believe Israel is a threat to world peace (Jonathan M. Katz, The Guardian, 18 December 2003).

⁶ The “sympathy” poll was smaller in range and covered British, Italian, French and German respondents. It is also surveyed in Thomas Fuller, Herald Tribune, 31 October 2003.

⁷ Listen to “Interview: Tanya Reinhart on the Al-Aqsa Intifada—Background and Context” at: http://mbanna.radio4all.net/pub/archive3/ mp3_4/0606tanyaradio.mp3.

Some Comments on the Class Foundations of the Occupation

by Danny Gutwein

The original Hebrew version of this article was published in Teoria ve-Bikoret [Theory and Criticism] 24 (2004): 203-211.

I

Two main processes have shaped the character of Israeli society in the past three decades: the privatization revolution and the perpetuation of the occupation. The underlying interdependence of these two processes has comprised the political logic of the Israeli Right and informed its hegemony. The gradual liquidation of the Israeli welfare state and the privatization and commercialization of its services have expanded the economic gaps and exacerbated the social inequality that hurt mainly the lower classes. Thus, the liquidation of the welfare state has turned the occupation of the Palestinian Territories and its byproducts— in particular the settlements and the split of the Israeli labor market— into a compensatory mechanism that has protected the Israeli lower classes from the detrimental impact of privatization. Privatization intensified the lower classes’ bonds with the political Right, alienated them from the Left, and created the social and political basis for the perpetuation of the Occupation. The practice and rhetoric of the Right have constantly blurred the causal relation between occupation and privatization and, coupled with the false separation between politics and society it became an essential part of the power relations that guaranteed the persistence of the hegemony of the Right.

Politically, exposing the causal relation between privatization and the Occupation should have been at the forefront of the Israeli Left’s struggle against the hegemony of the Right. However, despite its ongoing failure to enlist the support of the lower classes in its peace policy, the Left—which represents mainly the middle classes—not only abstained from exposing this relation, but it further blurred it by advancing an opposing casual explanation. According to the Left, the Occupation has been the reason for the economic and social inequality; the obvious conclusion that the Left inferred from this inversion was that the struggle for social justice should be postponed until Israel withdraws from the Territories and peace will be achieved. By this inversion, the Left has duplicated the false politics-society separation and used it to justify its neo-Liberal policies.

The Left has repeatedly argued that the lower classes’ support for the Right and the Occupation is irrational—the outcome of a plethora of ideological factors, such as religiosity and chauvinism—and contradicts their interests. It is the irrationality of this support, the Left has further maintained, that renders any attempt to fight it difficult. The Left has adopted, then, an idealistic and patronizing interpretation, which denies the social and economic basis of the Right’s hegemony, a basis whose undermining is a precondition for any political struggle against the Occupation. It appears that more than positing the Occupation as a source of the social gaps in Israel, the Left used the Occupation as an excuse for affirming the economic inequality, which, in fact, reproduced the necessary prerequisite for the right-wing regime and the continued occupation of the Territories. The Left’s paradoxical support of the power structure that guarantees the consolidation and perpetuation of the Right’s hegemony is inherent in the no less paradoxical support of the middle classes—the backbone of the Left’s champions—of the privatization revolution, which thus emerges as a decisive factor in the perpetuation of the Occupation.

“The paradox of the Left” and additional aspects of the class foundations of the Occupation, will be discussed below, focusing on their relationship to the privatization revolution. Obviously, the economic and social perspective proposed here highlights only part of the complex of factors that inform the continued Occupation. Yet their persistent absence from academic and public discourse adversely affects the understanding of the phenomenon, not to mention the ability to challenge it.

II

The false separation between politics and society reflects the erosion of social responsibility on the part of the Left’s mainly middle class supporters, following the loss of power to the Right in 1977. The class logic that repeatedly produces this false separation had already been expressed in the slogan “Peace Now”, which became the ethos of the Israeli Left. The moral, almost religious fervor which the ‘now’ ethos instilled in the struggle for encouraging peace and stopping the settlements, only emphasized the middle classes’ indifference to the growing economic inequality in Israel. Thus, the ‘now’ ethos, based as it is on opposition between ‘justice’ and ‘democracy,’ exposed the contradiction between the pious rhetoric of the Left and the class-based interests of its voters. The ‘now’ ethos has been further unveiled as a political defiance and cultural contempt on the part of the old hegemony, mainly of the labor movement, to the coalition of the ‘others,’ comprised mainly of the lower classes—either the Mizrahi (Oriental) Jews or the ultra-orthodox— who brought the Right to power in 1977. More than anything the ‘now’ ethos disclosed the vain frustration of the old establishment: as they lost their control over Israeli politics, they were determined to keep their hegemonic status through an indirect strategy, that of circumventing politics. This strategy would gradually adapt the Left to the privatization policy of the Right, which transferred power from politics and the state to the market and the professional establishments, where the middle classes still retained their power.

The other slogan of the Left—“money for the slums, not for the settlements”—ostensibly expresses an awareness of the causal relation between economic inequality and the perpetuation of the Occupation. But, in fact, this slogan co-opts the politics-society relationship only to negate it, all the while revealing the class-based interests that reproduce and sustain the separation between the two. Under the guise of concern for the weak, by this slogan the Left suggested a ‘zero sum game’ paradigm, which makes investment of money in poor neighborhoods conditional on the cessation of its flow to settlements, thus adopting the neo-Liberal logic that further increases inequality.

The emphasis the Left put on the Occupation and settlements, as the main factors hurting the lower classes, obscured the crucial role that the privatization revolution played in the increase of inequality and poverty. This obfuscation, which erased the liquidation of the welfare state from the Israeli political discourse, helped the middle classes to set the necessary conscious conditions for fostering the privatization process. The false separation between Occupation and privatization blurred the fact that they were merely two sides of the same policy. Thus, this separation further concealed the only real alternative to both: a policy that simultaneously invests in the poor neighborhoods and struggles against settlements. Such a policy, which would provide social security through a comprehensive and universal welfare state, would constitute the necessary preconditions for terminating the Occupation by eliminating the need of the lower classes—the main reservoir of Right’s supporters—for the compensatory mechanism it supplied.

In the introduction to the edited collection of essays, Real- Time: the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Israeli Left, Adi Ophir formulates the gist of the Left’s traditional logic of “the Occupation first.” According to Ophir, the Occupation is “the starting point, the mold for power relations and social relations” in Israel (page 11); and its termination is the prerequisite for both peace and social justice. Thus, the Left’s support for any social issue, just and worthy as it is, like opposing privatization or the raising of the minimum wage, must be “conditional on its contribution to the struggle against the continuation of the Occupation” (page 18). It seems, however, that the consecutive electoral failures of the Left suggest an alternative logic and diametrically opposite conclusion: in order to put an end to the Occupation, the social relations upon which it is based should be abolished first; in other words, postponing the struggle against economic inequality affirms, in fact, the very power relations that guarantee the continuation of the Occupation.

III

The settlements project in the Territories and the rapid growth of economic inequality in Israel have been complimentary foundations of the social and political power relations that the Right has constructed since 1977 to secure its hegemony. Regarding the universal welfare state as one of the main sources of power of the Left, the Right has used Thatcher-like practices to liquidate the welfare state through privatization and commercialization of its services. Naturally, this policy initially affected mainly the lower classes. Accordingly, in order to offset the losses it inflicted on its voters, the Right has constituted a compensatory mechanism by splitting Israeli society into rival interest groups—‘sectors’ that were defined on the basis of ethnicity, religion or culture— which has worked to undermine the universal welfare state and replace it as suppliers of partial substitutes to its gradually liquidated services. This strategy stimulated the political institutionalization of the sectors, a process that has turned the Right, in fact, into a coalition of rival sectorial interest groups. Commercialization and sectorialization are different facets of the privatization policy: in order to secure the much needed social services—which were turned from civic right into commodities— the lower classes were forced to ‘sectorialize’ themselves in an attempt to acquire, by their political power, those same services that they could not obtain by their purchasing power. Sectorialization, in turn, undermined the foundations of the welfare state and further expanded the vacuum that has been filled by privatized services, and so forth.

The settlement project best exemplifies the essential interrelationship between privatization and sectorialization: while the universal welfare state was liquidated in pre-1967 Israel, an alternative sectorial welfare state was constructed in the Territories. The enormous benefits, which the ‘Land of Settlements’ offers in housing, education, health, taxation, infrastructure and employment, have actually become a mechanism which compensated the lower classes for the damages inflicted upon them by the privatization of welfare services in Israel. These benefits spurred, in fact, most of the migration to the Territories. The migration to the ‘Land of Settlements’ offered the lower classes symbolic capital as well: inclusion into the new Israeli elite of the settlers. The lower classes’ political support of the Right, and their ideological identification with the settlement project, blurred the economic and social motives for their migration into the Territories. The importance of the economic and social opportunities that the settlements opened up for the lower classes increased—also for those who have not yet taken advantage of them—as privatization of the welfare state exacerbated the inequality in Israel. These opportunities erased the Green Line between Israel and the Territories even more than the political and religious idea of Greater Israel. Economics rather than either ideology or politics informed the lower classes’ hawkish views. Given the conditions that were created by the privatization regime, and considering their deteriorating situation, the lower classes’ support of the Right – in contrast to the repeated complaints of the Left – is totally ‘rational’: With the liquidation of the welfare state in Israel, the lower classes viewed the investment in settlements as an investment in them and their future. As such, they rejected, as false, the opposition that the Left propped up, between the slums and the settlements. The compensatory mechanism of the Occupation mitigated and concealed the detrimental effects of the cutbacks in social services, thereby, facilitating the promotion and intensification of the privatization revolution, as well as bolstering the lower classes’ dependence on, and support of, the Right. Thus, just as the Occupation created the settlements, privatization created the settlers.

The compensatory mechanism of the Occupation has influenced the ideologies of both the lower and middle classes. Given the close relation between social status, ethnic origins and voting patterns in Israel, the lower classes considered the Left’s attacks on the settlements as driven by social more than by political motives. They deemed these attacks to be an attempt on the part of the middle classes to obstruct the opportunities which the Occupation provided them, to cope with the growing inequality and improve their economic and social status. At the same time, as the middle classes’ support of the privatization grew, identifying the settlements with state intervention helped the Israeli Left to renounce its historic commitment to the welfare state and gave them a ‘moral’ excuse to abandon all values of social solidarity and turn to neo-Liberalism. The privatization of the welfare state turned the ‘Land of Settlements’ into the fantasy of the lower classes and, as the Green Line between Israel and the Territories gradually lost its politically significance, privatization imparted to it a new social meaning.

The Janus face of the Occupation, as a catalyst of the privatization revolution and a compensatory mechanism from the repercussions of the liquidation of the welfare state on the lower classes, was revealed in the labor market as well. The Occupation exposed the lower classes to an unbeatable competition with Palestinian workers, whose advantage grew as they adapted to the demands of the Israeli labor market, all the while accepting wages lower than those the Israeli worker demanded. This competition was later used as a whip to privatize the labor market and to break up organized labor in all branches of Israeli economy. Under the privatization regime, the Occupation not only accelerated the breakup of organized labor but, moreover, it has gradually become a false alternative to unionism as defense for low-wage workers. The frequent border closures, which prevented Palestinians from regular attendance in their workplaces and reduced their profitability, on one hand, and the fears of Jewish employers to hire Palestinian workers, on the other hand, constantly increased the competitive edge of Jewish workers. The Occupation transformed the Jewishness of the lower classes from a religious or national identity into an economic asset: it granted the Jewish worker a structural political advantage over the Palestinian worker. Maintaining this political advantage, which compensated for the economic inferiority of the Jewish worker, was conditioned on the continuation of the Occupation, and, thus, perpetuated the lower classes’ support for the Right. Conversely, the ‘privatized peace,’ championed by the Left—which encompassed the ‘New Middle East’ with its abundant cheap labor—would have hurt this political competitive advantage, and increased the lower classes’ aversion to peace and their alienation from the Left. The answer to this vicious circle lies in encouraging organized labor, thus undermining the role of the Occupation as a compensatory mechanism in the labor market, as well as in raising the education level and the employment abilities of the lower classes. This solution, however, contradicts both the ideological and business-oriented support by the middle classes and the Left, for the privatization of the labor market and the education system.

The interrelationship between the Occupation, privatization, the labor market, and Jewishness was a key factor in the rise of Shas, a sectorial party that appeal mainly to the Mizrahi religious lower classes. The widespread support Shas received in the ballots can not be explained—as suggested by most commentators— primarily by the limited social services it supplies. The position of its supporters in the labor market, and mainly with respect to competition with Palestinians and foreign workers, points to another facet of this support: Shas identified the economic advantage that Jewishness provided the lower classes. Accordingly, it rendered Jewishness, under the guise of Mizrahi ultra-orthodoxy, into symbolic capital, and translated this sectorial trademark into political power. Thus, Shas grew out of the interaction between the Occupation and sectorialization, which increasingly merged into one another as a defense and compensatory mechanism for the lower classes, subsequent to the liquidation of the welfare state and the privatization of its services. This, in turn, gradually transformed the ideology of Shas, which became increasingly hawkish, with the growing dependence of its supporters on the compensatory mechanism of the Occupation.

IV

The Left actively participated in establishing the privatization regime, which created the social and political conditions for the continued Occupation. When it became clear to the middle class voters of the Left that the lower classes’ support of the Right secures its power and hegemony for the foreseeable future, they adopted privatization as a strategy to preserve their class privileges by circumventing politics. Privatization transferred economic and social control from the state to the market and the professional establishments, in which the middle classes retained their hegemony and through which they believed they could maintain their privileges. The class interest of its voters had, thus, driven the Left to endorse the logic of privatization, and, as a part of it—in clear contradiction with its discourse of peace—adopted the practice of the compensatory mechanism of the Occupation. The nexus of privatization and the Occupation became the platform for establishing the regime of governments of national unity, and this nexus repeatedly revealed itself in the policies of Left governments.

The Left conducted the peace process at the same time it deepened the Occupation; while the separation between politics and society was reproduced in the unifi cation of ‘peace’ and ‘occupation.’ Thus, the Left allowed the middle classes to reap the profi ts of peace without compromising the compensatory mechanism of the Occupation, whose importance grew the more the privatization revolution increased the injurious inequality that the lower classes bore. Prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak acknowledged the relationship between the widening economic gap and the growing support for the Right. But, as representatives of the middle classes, both Rabin and Barak did not curb the privatization revolution; rather, they intensified it. Rabin’s government signed the Oslo agreement in order to put an end to the Occupation, but during his premiership, the number of settlements continued to grow. This contradiction can be explained by another aspect of the agenda of Rabin’s government: the deepening privatization of social services, and, in particular, that of education, health and labor. For example, with the support of Rabin, the Histadrut, Israel’s General Federation of Labor (founded in 1923), was fundamentally undermined. The weakening of the trade unions facilitated the privatization of the labor market, which increased the competitive edge of the unorganized Palestinian worker, and, thereby, strengthened the role of the Occupation as an alternative to unionism in defending the low-wage Jewish worker. The Left also allowed the continued development of settlements by postponing discussion on their future to the ‘fi nal status’ agreement. While these actions contradicted the declared peace policy of the Left governments, they served well their privatization policy, which ensured that “the Land of settlements” would continue to function as an alternative welfare state. The more privatization hurt the lower classes—whose support in its ‘peace policy’ the Left tried in vain to acquire—the larger a role that the compensatory mechanism of the Occupation played, a role which paradoxically informed the Left’s ‘peace policy.’ This paradox explains a dichotomy typical of the Oslo agreement. Lacking sufficient public and electoral support for its peace policy, the Left created an equation, according to which withdrawal from some of the Territories allowed for the continued direct or indirect occupation of other parts of the Territories—a formula which the Right gradually, and in different ways, accepted.

Privatization is, therefore, the pattern of social relations that sustains the Occupation. The ‘privatized peace’ of the Left has deepened economic inequality, which fit well with the self-interest of the middle classes and strengthened the Occupation as a compensatory system for the lower classes. The mutual support of privatization by the Left and the Right was reproduced as a merger of peace and the Occupation, and its underlying logic was unveiled in the policy of “disengagement.” Accordingly, the failure of the Israeli Left in the past three decades originated in the contradiction between its professed policies and the agenda of his middle class voters. The false interests of the middle classes in intensifying the privatization revolution that hurt the lower classes, gradually turned the Left into a partner in perpetuating the Occupation. Thus, the Left has transformed ‘peace’ from a political program to a cultural identity and a ritual of purification that ratifies both privatization and the Occupation. With the rejection of the struggle for social and economic equality, the Left has ceased being a viable alternative to the Right, whose hegemony has become strengthened as the compensatory mechanism of the Occupation has replaced the welfare state. Gradually, the Left has ceased representing the interests of the middle classes as well, and has increasingly lost its appeal to them. Privatization has undermined the social security of large segments within the middle classes. These déclassé groups have exchanged ‘the privatized peace’ for ‘a politics of hatred,’ that, as a sectorial identity, was assimilated in the Right and intensified the power structure that perpetuated its hegemony.

V

The Occupation is a continuation of the privatization and serves as a compensatory mechanism enabling the further deepening of privatization. This interrelationship is not particular to Israel, but it reconstructs the typical modus operandi of imperialism. Thus, for example, Radical criticism described British imperialism as a structure of power, designed, for one, to guarantee the interests of the landed aristocracy and financial bourgeoisie, and, two, to protect their hegemony by neutralizing the industrialists’ and proletariat’s opposition to their policies by means of sectorial advantages they garnered from the imperial market. Advocates of decolonization concluded from this analysis that the struggle against imperialism must focus not only on its political aspects, that is to say, the ongoing colonial rule, but on its role as an economic compensatory mechanism for different groups within British society. Indeed, the struggles in Britain for liquidation of the empire—especially, in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century and in India in the second half—were accompanied by the establishment of the British welfare state as an alternative to imperialism and its compensatory mechanism.

The Israeli Left rejected the British, and in fact the European, historical experience of decolonization, which regarded the introduction of the welfare state as a central means for annulling the compensatory mechanism of imperialism and for enlisting political support in the struggle for liquidating the colonial empires. On the contrary, the Left directed its criticism at the Israeli welfare state, portraying it as essential part of the oppressive mechanism of Zionism and the labor movement, while depicting the market and privatization as liberating factors. Thus, despite its open and firm opposition to the Occupation, in practice, the Left has supported the very economic and social bases which allowed for the continuation of the Occupation. This paradox is evident mainly among the more radical elements of the Left, who have adopted the cultural theory of postcolonialism but rejected the economic and social policies of decolonization.

The rejection of the historical experience of decolonization fit well with the interests of the middle classes in furthering the privatization policy, which, in turn, made the Left a partner to the perpetuation of the Occupation. Thus, the solution to the ‘paradox of the Left’ lies precisely in adopting the experience of decolonization, and mainly the liquidation of those economic and social conditions that comprise the basis of the Occupation. Applying the experience of decolonization means a radical change in the priorities of the Left, principally by adopting a policy of “welfare in exchange for territories.” That is to say, providing social security to the lower and middle classes through economic regulation, just distribution and social equality in the framework of a universal welfare state that will bridge the social and economic gaps. Such a welfare state would break the vicious circle of privatization, occupation and support for the Right, as well as create the political conditions for the struggle for a likely withdrawal from the territories and the end of the Occupation.

Danny Gutwein is a professor in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa.

The Politics of Thanatos: Life and and Death Under the Shadow of Occupation Under the Shadow of Occupation

by Hunaida Ghanem

Translated and adapted from an article in from Teoria v’Bikoret (Theory and Society) (Tel Aviv) 27, Fall 2005 The paper was fi rst presented at the conference “Colonialism and Postcolonialism in Israel” at the van Leer Institute in Jerusalem, 20-31 March 2005.

Let me begin this article with the testimony of Suleiman Qasrawi, a fifty-year-old teacher, married with five children. The testimony, which was published on the website of B’Tselem the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, describes the use of Palestinians as human shields,¹ and the execution of Mahmud A-Dab’i, who was wounded and helpless. The event took place in the village of Raba in the Jenin District on 3 December 2004. Suleiman relates:

On Friday, 3 December 2004, I was home. My house is located near the western entrance to Raba. Around five in the morning, I heard strange sounds from beneath the house. There was lots of noise, the sounds of a car engine, and voices speaking Hebrew. I did not know what was going on because I don’t understand Hebrew.

A few minutes later, I heard explosions from below the house and six or seven gunshots. My sons and my wife woke up. We all went to the living room. We knew that we had to leave the house in such a situation. We got dressed, and then somebody called out on a loudspeaker to turn the lights out. I turned out the lights. Then I heard an explosion far from the house.

Around 5:30, I heard knocking on our door; someone yelled “Open the door.” Ten soldiers were standing on the steps outside. One of them asked me to gather the whole family together in one room, and we all went into a bedroom. The soldiers came in and some thirty others followed them in. Most went onto the roof, and a handful remained inside.

After the soldiers spread out around the house and on the roof, one of them took me down the steps. We went toward the southeast corner of my house and they pointed to the house of my neighbor, Tayil Al-Bazur. The soldier said there was someone in there he wanted me to bring to him, so I walked to Al-Bazur’s house. As I did, I saw Tayil standing outside. I told him he was wanted, but he replied: “They don’t want me. […] They want a wounded, young, wanted man who is near the corner of the house.” Tayil and I walked over and saw the wanted man lying on the ground. We tried to pick him up, but we were so frightened that we couldn’t lift him.

While trying to lift him, I noticed that he had a pistol inside his pants. I took the pistol and raised it so that the soldiers could see it, and I shouted out that he had a pistol. One of the soldiers told me to bring the pistol to him, and the man’s ID card. I went back to the man, who had been lightly wounded in the neck. He told me that he didn’t have his ID card with him. The soldier who had spoken with me before then told me to bring the wounded man over.

Tayil and I picked the man up. On the way, soldiers in the other houses began to yell at us, and ordered us to set him down on the ground. We put him down, but the soldier who was under my house shouted to me to bring him over. I told him that I didn’t know which of them I should listen to. He said, “Do what I say, and the others will keep quiet.” We picked him up again and carried him to a distance of about 10- 12 meters from the corner.

The soldier ordered me to lift up Mahmud’s shirt. I refused because it was embarrassing, and my religion forbids it. The soldier told me that he had a cell phone in his pocket, and that I should bring it to him. I went over to the wounded guy and asked him if he had a cell phone. He said it was in his pocket [and] told me, “Make it easier, and tell them that my name is Mahmud A-Dabi’i,” he said. I took the cell phone from Mahmud’s pocket. He also had a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in his pocket. I gave the things to the soldier, and told him that the guy’s name was Mahmud A-Dab’i. The soldier took the cell phone and made a call with it. Then he shouted: “Come here!” He took me behind the stairway, and told Tayil to go toward the house of our neighbor. Less than a minute passed, and I heard five or six shots. Then I heard the soldier who had spoken with me shout: “Enough.” The shooting stopped. He told me to go home. I went to the room where my sons and wife were. The soldiers were still inside the house, but left within half an hour.

Immediately after the army had left, I went down to see what had happened to the wounded man. He was dead; he had been shot in the head. There were parts of his brain and skull, and lots of blood around the body.

This is where the story ends and new stories begin, many of which will not bear testimony and not be published, but will end up as numbers, as silent statistics. Think about the 3,441 killed who have nobody to tell their story—stories without a voice or the right to speech. We will not hear the testimonies of the 341 killed children, ages one day to fourteen years, or the stories of the 307 killed children ages 15-17, the testimonies of the 86 people who died at roadblocks or the stories of the 211 people who were eliminated in field trials.²

Death has become the only certain routine under the Occupation, and we have become accustomed to not questioning this routine or why it is occurring. The answer is obvious: there is Occupation and under Occupation there is chaos, there is antistructure. The Occupation is structurally an emergency situation, and in the context of this reality there is no point in discussing a single incidence. After all, there is no such thing. In this reality, there is no escape from the accumulative process: the bodies with their different faces keep on piling, one on top of the other.

We got used to the situation. Our thoughts are burdened with symbols of the Occupation. We are flooded with endless breaches of international law. Our eyes are weary of the pictures of the Segregation Wall that crushes our lives, tramples our olives groves, and destroys the historical main road between Ramallah and Jerusalem. We have come to understand that our houses are on one side of the Wall and our children’s schools on the other. We no longer become upset over the pictures of bloated body parts. We no longer become agitated about the destroyed homes or the collective administrative detentions. We are tired of mentioning concepts like apartheid, illegal occupation, ghetto-ization or crimes against humanity.

Yet, perhaps precisely because of this reality, shouldn’t we return to the beginning point and reexamine the so-called naïve questions: What is occupation? How is occupation conducted? In a more polished language, I try to avoid this naiveté with elegant and transcendental wisdom and ask what paradigm captures the ethos of the Occupation and the political economy of domination. Many have written about this issue, but it seems to me that there has not been any real effort to pierce the logic that exists between the occupier and the occupied. In the following pages I will try to do this.

Following Giorgio Agamben’s book, Homo Sacer³ and the works of Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality⁴ and Society Must Be Defended.⁵ I argue that the existence of the Occupation and its conduct are based on the status of the occupied subject reduced to a strictly biological one—a subject in which the main politics he experiences are ones of death.

Sovereign power is, in the words of Foucault, situated in bio-politics. “Power is situated and exercised at the level of life: the species, the race, the population.” Power situates itself in the development of technologies that will guarantee the production of a high quality, healthy individual, that is to say, the average good citizen. But in its journey from those nation-states to those vague places and occupied territories, bio-power goes through a mutation and situates itself in death. Instead of bio-power emerges Thanatos-power, the power of the death instinct. The ability to oppress the occupied, to rule them and manage them is neither supported, nor can be supported, by the principle of life. All the same, the perpetual threat of death and the transformation of death as an existential collective experience allows for this power to continue to exist and rule others. Death becomes the field into which flow the power relations between the occupier and the occupied.

The origin of Thanatos-politics is neither in the psychological nor cultural field of the occupier. Yet, the politics of death is an immediate result of the breakdown of social categories and the desire to favor one social group at the expense of other groups. Thanatos-power expresses itself in practice not only in executions, but in the frequent use of threats of death and its transformation into a superior, legitimate means of policing; in other words, its transformation into the political ethos of the Occupation.

As for the subject who is a citizen, life is a positive field of action. Putting a citizen to death is considered an unusual act, and the right to put him to death is granted to the state and its subordinates by virtue of the need to defend the physical or political existence of the collective.⁶ The biological subject, on the other hand, is situated outside legitimate citizenship; he is located in racial strips and political territories that are occupied through power.

An example of this is the situation of colonialism or military occupation. Life of a dominated group does not concern the occupier; the quality of life of the occupied is a joke, not part of the lexicon. Most of the discourse of the occupier is invested in shifting the debate from matters of life to regulation of death. The occupier conducts legal and legislative discussions on what are the conditions of possibility to kill and the means to use, on which legal experts to consult, on the army units to enlist and train, and on the spokespersons to train.

Despite the latent criticism inherent in the Foucaultian concept, bio-politics is a privilege, even a dream for the occupied. The occupied can only dream to achieve some political mileage in his biological life and broaden his existence beyond mere survival. The bureaucratic culture of death spreads its power among those bodies who are given the legitimacy to kill and those public relations persona and interpreters that provide the ethical basis for killing. But unlike the administration of a “normal” country, in the context of colonial occupation in which the occupier is not only tanks and rifles but also powers that settle land, grab hills and work the land of his ancestors—every descendant of the occupying race becomes a sovereign power, with the ability to kill, to destroy groves and burn trees—all without his actions being considered criminal. Because in a situation of occupation, in which the occupying state sends its citizens to settle the occupied territory, populate it with hostile people and with righteous justice, the settler acts as an official of the sovereign state. The settler cannot break the law, because he is himself the law. The sovereign state, the master law, will always find an escape hatch, sometimes indirect and sophisticated, that will promise his reintegration back to the same place, in the same home and with the same ideology. Instead of bearing the label of murderer, he will bear that of a defending victim.

And what about the subject living under the Occupation? Thanks to their origins, blood and position in the human hierarchy that the Occupation determines, the Occupation and its citizens are granted the right to put him to death. The occupied subject experiences death mainly as political expropriation. Death is demoted from its metaphysical and existential status; rather, it is totally experienced as illustrative of the occupation. The Occupation not only diminishes one’s existence to bare life and reduces the subject to a Homo Sacer, it even inverts the meaning of life and death. Life turns into a biological fate while death into a political experience.

Under the Occupation, life is not considered a taken-for-granted right. The occupier ‘grants’ life to the occupied under certain conditions. In the power relations between occupier and occupied—in the reality of racism and that of colonialism —life is ‘granted’ to the dominated. The commander will provide the worker an entrance permit or will grant the cancer patient a travel visa to receive medical treatment. In the same breath he will prevent my 77 year old grandmother from visiting one of her daughters living in Israel, because fifteen years ago, she broke the law and did not throw her ten year old granddaughter out of the house and send her to Jordan when her entrance visa expired.

Under the total phenomenon of occupation, the lives of subjects are expropriated. They are given to continual threat of death that becomes a permanent shadow accompanying them. Death is just on hold—again and again, from moment to moment. It’s not because of the conscience of the sovereign or his sleepless nights that the subject’s death is constantly delayed. On the contrary, the delay is clearly a product of economic calculation of cost and benefit, as well as an effort at making the system efficient. In fact, the delay is a moment when all the power is drained: the power populates the moment of delay, with clear and disguised signs of death threats, like a permanent shadow. Because of this threat of death, granting life becomes a tremendous ‘favor.’

In this context, to be a Palestinian is to be aware that at any moment of friction you can end up as a corpse. Except if the Palestinian learns to not disturb the interests of the occupier, desires or accepts entering into a state of political stupor, and accepts his status as a biological subject, devoid of politics. Then, the occupier is inclined to give the occupied life, all the while holding death as a permanent threat and as the basis of his relations with the occupied. The policy of elimination is but the radical application of the power to put people to death. And, the ability to let people live is the fulfillment of the politics of death at its best.

Hunaida Ghanem, who is presently at Harvard University, teaches in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Notes

¹ See: http://www.btselem.org/english/Testimonies/ 20041203_Suspected_Execution_ by_IDF_of_Raba_in_Jenin_Witness_Suleiman_ Qasrawi.asp /

² These numbers are for March 2005, when the paper was fi rst presented at the van Leer Institute in Jerusalem. The total number of Palestinians killed by Israel from 29 September 2000 to 8 April 2006 is 3863, as reported by the Middle East Policy Council at: http://www. mepc.org/resources/mrates.asp.

³ Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1998).

⁴ Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. R. Hurley, (New York: Penguin, 1990).

⁵ Michel Foucault, Society Must be Defended: Lecutre at the Collège de France, 1975-1976, trans. David Macey, (New York: Picador, 2003).

⁶ This said, in the case of the racialized citizen, power is directed at preventing his growth and outbursts. Such action is aimed at maintaining a static life, which is considered bearable, as long as it doesn’t threaten the exclusive rule of the group of the subject-citizen.