Articles |

Sep 13

Infographic: Twenty years of Oslo

This Friday will mark 20 years to the day since Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chair Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn, signing an agreement that established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and a framework for negotiations that has lasted to this day.

On the 20th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, the infographic below demonstrates what these years of the US-led peace process have produced for Palestinians in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip: an acceleration of Israeli colonisation and a cementing of an apartheid regime of control and discrimination. The infographic is far from comprehensive: The last two decades have also seen the siege and brutalisation of the Gaza Strip, the consolidation of the checkpoint and permit system, land confiscations, settler outposts expanding, and the detention and torture of thousands. Read more

Sep 8

By insisting on a Jewish state Israel denies Palestinian rights

Given the insistence by its leaders that Israel be “recognised” as a Jewish state, some people might be surprised to know that there is considerable disagreement among Jewish Israelis about exactly what that means.

Enter the justice minister, Tzipi Livni, who in addition to her key role in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority seems set on making a contribution to one of the most contentious issues in Israeli politics: the state’s Jewish identity. Read more

Aug 27

If Israel continues to target Palestinian families, what’s the point of a ‘peace process’?

Human Rights Watch this weekend released a must-read item on demolitions in Israel that they say are intended “to drive [Palestinian] families off their land”, part of a wider regime of “forcible transfer” and “discrimination”.

The report notes that some 3,800 Palestinians have been displaced by Israeli home demolitions since Prime Minister Netanyahu took office in 2009.

The continuation and even escalation of Israeli violations of international law during peace talks illustrates that the official “peace process” only serves to protect Israel from accountability over its policies. What Palestinians actually need is a protection of their basic rights and an end to the impunity enjoyed by the state of Israel. Read more

Aug 17

Boycotts that aid the Palestinians

As governments and civil society groups around the world increase their efforts to target goods produced in Israel’s illegal settlements, the Israeli government and BDS critics are stepping up the propaganda counter offensive.

One of the main tactics adopted by those seeking to stem the boycott tide is to state that these measures actually harm Palestinians. Read more

Aug 8

Michael Oren justifies institutionalized racism on CNN

Two weeks ago, Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the US Michael Oren was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on CNN. In the context of discussing renewed negotiations, Zakaria asked Oren about the demand that Palestinians recognize “Israel as a Jewish state”. Oren’s response is instructive and goes to the heart of the nature of the State of Israel as a settler colonial ethnocracy that practices an institutionalized racism Oren specifically denies, yet unintentionally highlights.

According to Oren, a “Jewish state” means ensuring that “refugees from 1948” will “will be repatriated to the Palestinian state and not to Israel” since, quite simply, Israel is “predicated on having a Jewish majority”. Read more

Jul 31

A peace process that protects Israel

With peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian officials beginning again, many analysts have given their reasons for being either cautiously hopeful or sceptical. Yet what is incredible is that, twenty years on from the Oslo Accords, many people still have not asked more fundamental questions about the paradigm of the official peace process itself. Read more

Jul 21

Israel’s similarity to South Africa’s apartheid is more than skin-deep

As the world has reflected on Nelson Mandela’s legacy and his fight against apartheid in South Africa, some have recalled his famous observation: “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

That special bond between two peoples and their national struggles has in recent times contributed to increasing South African efforts to challenge continuing Israeli human-rights abuses and systematic discrimination. Read more

Jul 17

Fighting new Nakba in the Negev

From the refugees in 1949 looking over the Lebanese border at the land from which they were expelled, to the students in the Gaza banned by the Israeli Supreme Court from studying in the West Bank, Israeli colonisation has fragmented the Palestinian people over the decades with walls, fences, guns, bureaucracy and propaganda.

Overcoming that fragmentation has become further complicated in recent times on account of the moribund state of representative bodies like the Palestine Liberation Organisation, as well as the long-running split between Fatah and Hamas. Read more

Jul 12

Britain re-writes diplomatic protocol to protect Israeli officials

In recent weeks the UK government has once again shown itself to be entirely unwilling to hold Israeli war crimes suspects to account, to the extent that the Foreign Office is leaving its procedures open to ridicule.

At the end of last month, IDF Major General (res.) Doron Almog was scheduled to visit Britain in order to meet with the UK Task Force, an organisation that coordinates engagement by Jewish groups on issues relating to Palestinian citizens of Israel. Almog was presumably invited in his capacity as “chief of staff” for implementing a pending Israeli government plan to forcibly displace tens of thousands of Bedouin citizens in the Negev. But the military man is perhaps better known for narrowly escaping arrest in 2005 at Heathrow airport, after a warrant was issued based on allegations of war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip. Read more

Jun 20

The meaning of a two-state solution

Discussion about a one state solution in Palestine/Israel is moving into the mainstream. As its advocates gain a platform for their views, defenders of ethnic separation are increasingly falling back on crude arguments about birth-rates and how ‘Jews’ would be treated in an ‘Arab state’. But a smarter, seemingly ‘pragmatic’ objection to a single state is also common: namely that a majority of both Israelis and Palestinians actually want a ‘two-state solution’. At first glance, this can appear to be a strong argument, particularly when deployed in debates in the West (e.g. ‘Who are you to force your solution on people who don’t want it?’) However, it is a claim that cannot withstand serious scrutiny. Read more