Posts from the ‘Articles’ Category

Mar 30

Land, citizenship and exclusion in Israel

This 30 March, the Palestinian minority inside Israel will mark ‘Land Day’, 35 years after Israeli security forces killed six Arab citizens protesting against the expropriation of land by the state. Land Day has become a global day of commemoration and protest for Palestinians, but its significance is that its origins are in the struggle of the Palestinians in Israel. This year there is an added resonance, as the Israeli parliament has only recently passed discriminatory new legislation targeting the Palestinian minority (around 20 per cent of the population). In fact, in recent years, Israeli Members of Knesset have been proposing and passing a whole raft of disturbing proposals, a trend that did not begin with, but was boosted by, the current Netanyahu-Lieberman coalition (see summaries by Adalah and ACRI). Just last week, however, two new laws were passed on the same day. One, dubbed the ‘Nakba Law’, enables “the withholding of funds to public institutions deemed to be involved in publicly challenging the founding of Israel as a Jewish state or any activity ‘denying the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state’. A law, in the words of an editorial in Ha’aretz, “designed to shut people up”. Read more

Mar 12

Will the two-state solution go the way of the defunct peace process?

In the last week, press reports have suggested that Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing to give a key speech on the peace process in the next few months, with many flagging up his planned visit to the US in May. Claims of an imminent bold proposal have been met with a good deal of scepticism, from both Palestinians and Netanyahu’s domestic political opponents. Analysts have described the talk of a new plan as a “trial balloon” and a “public relations exercise aimed first and foremost at Washington”.

Netanyahu’s new plan, should it materialise, is rumoured to be based on the “the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders” as part of an “interim peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority”. Other reports have been even vaguer, claiming that Netanyahu is proposing “a phased approach to peacemaking”, but leaving it open if this includes temporary borders. Read more

Feb 13

The Iconography of Revolt

In Egypt, as in many other uprisings, the image became central, the iconography of revolt: the martyrs’ faces, defiant stand-offs, and liberated public spaces. As many noted, this was a televised revolution, but Al-Jazeera is only part of the story. More potent still was the impact of the images to people on the ground, images that spoke of hollow authority and a people seizing control of their destiny.

Certain images linger – or perhaps burn – in the mind longer than others. There is the man telling the camera, as he walks, that he and his family have nothing and that he is ready to give his life. The riot police retreating under a hail of stones, with a young woman and young man at the front, advancing on the disintegrating row of shields and weapons. People at prayer being hosed down by water cannon. The abandoned, burning police truck, rocked on the bridge. Tahrir Square, a sea of people, flags, signs, colours, and defiance. Just some of the images; you may recall others. Read more

Dec 6

Towards a Just Peace

A year ago, Palestinian Christians issued a historic call for global solidarity – and got a timid response from those fearful of being branded antisemitic. Ben White believes genuine interfaith dialogue is only strengthened when we speak out boldly on injustice.

Living on the family farm outside Bethlehem, Daoud Nassar is under constant threat from the illegal Israeli settlements that have sprung up around him. When I visited last summer, he had just had a new crop of demolition orders delivered by Israeli soldiers, targeting ’structures’ ranging from animal sheds to water cisterns and tents.

‘Of course, we will never get a building permit here,’ he told me sadly, as his little boy sat eating crisps on his lap. ‘But I said to the Israeli officer, if I need a permit just for my tents, I’m also expecting you to go to my neighbours and give them demolition orders for their buildings, built on Palestinian land. And of course, his answer was, ‘This is none of your business.’1 Read more

Nov 9

East Jerusalem’s Shu’fat Refugee Camp: “For All Practical Purposes, Ramallah”

From routine clashes in the streets, to the talk of “final status issues” by international diplomats, Arab East Jerusalem continues to be at the center of the struggle in Palestine/Israel. In recent years, there have been some particularly prominent foci: right-wing Jewish settlers and the demolition of Palestinian homes in Silwan; evictions of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah; Israel’s apartheid wall in Abu Dis. Off the radar, however, there are many localized battles as Palestinians face an intensified Israeli regime of control and colonization.

One such place is the Shu’fat refugee camp. While the fact that it is the only Palestinian refugee camp in East Jerusalem makes it unique, Shu’fat’s reality reflects a number of key Israeli strategies in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as a whole: it is surrounded by illegal Jewish-only colonies, choked by the wall and checkpoints, and considered “separate and unequal.” Read more

Nov 9

Looking Beyond the Loyalty Oath: the Rising Tide of Jewish Nationalism and the Palestinian Factor

On October 10, an overwhelming majority of the Israeli cabinet approved a proposed amendment to the country’s Citizenship Law, which if made into law would require any non-Jew seeking citizenship to swear his loyalty to Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state. This latest move, while headline grabbing in its own right, is reflective of a wider phenomenon within Israel today, in which the Jewish identity of the state has become central not only to negotiations with the PLO but also to relations with Israel’s Palestinian minority. Read more

Oct 22

Israel’s apartheid demands a response

When I visited Israel and Palestine in July (my eighth trip since 2003), I once again witnessed the reality attested to by countless human rights organisations, journalists and Israeli and Palestinian peace activists: Israel’s brutal occupation and apartheid is only worsening.

Take, for example, Daoud and his family in the Bethlehem Governate of the West Bank. Like millions of Palestinians they are under military rule, denied basic rights we take for granted. The family has owned a farm for generations, yet must fight to maintain their presence there.

This summer, Israeli soldiers issued the family with demolition orders for several structures on the farm, including an outside toilet, chicken coop, and underground water cistern. In 60% of the West Bank, Palestinians must apply for building permits from Israeli occupation forces; yet according to a 2008 UN report, 94% of applications are denied. Building illegally means demolition. Meanwhile, all around the farm’s olive trees and vines, Jewish settlements expand and flourish. Read more

Aug 20

1948 and Israel’s deceptive bargaining position

The refrain from Israeli politicians and the country’s allies and apologists is familiar: There can be no peace deal until the Palestinians “recognize” Israel as “a Jewish state.” While this can sound reasonable to the casual listener in the West, this demand actually points to critical flaws in the “peace process” and the way in which the international community approaches the Palestine/Israel question.

This is because such a demand, and understanding why it is so unacceptable to Palestinians, means going back to 1948 – when hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed, their inhabitants forbidden from returning by the new Jewish state — and throwing the spotlight on two groups of Palestinians that the so-called peace process has ignored or marginalized: the refugees of ‘48 (and their descendants) and the Palestinian minority that’s left inside Israel. The unpleasant reality is that Israel as “a Jewish state” means the permanent exile and dispossession of the former, and the colonial control of the latter. Read more

Aug 17

The Jordan Valley is a microcosm of Israel’s colonisation

The Jordan Valley, stretching all the way down the West Bank’s eastern side, is a microcosm of Israel’s discriminatory policies of colonisation and displacement. For 40 years, settlements have been established, military no-go areas declared, and Palestinians’ freedom of movement restricted. There are now 27 colonies in the Jordan Valley – most of them had been established by the late 1970s under Labour governments. There are also nine “unauthorised” outposts. In the 1990s, the size of territory afforded to the settlements increased by 45%.

As we watch yet another bout of periodic, though tempered, enthusiasm about “direct negotiations”, Israel is doing as much as possible to determine the Bantustan borders – policies exemplified in the Jordan Valley, a substantial area of the West Bank almost isolated from the rest of the occupied territories. In 2006, B’Tselem noted how the Israeli military “made a distinction between the ‘territory of Judea and Samaria’ (ie the West Bank) and ‘the Jordan Valley’, indicating that Israel does not view the two areas as a single territorial unit”. Read more

Aug 6

Throughout Israel, Palestinians are being suffocated

Shortly after I had arrived in Palestine last month, I visited the devastated community in the Jordan Valley where the Israeli army had, just days earlier, demolished around 70 “illegal” structures. The same week, I visited Dahmash, an “unrecognised” village between Ramla and Lod, inside Israel, where Palestinian citizens face pending demolition orders. Finally, a few days later, I woke up to the news that the “unrecognised” Palestinian Bedouin village of al-Araqib, in the Negev, had been destroyed in a raid involving 1,300 armed police (and cheering volunteers).

Whether under military rule in the West Bank, or as citizens in Israel, Palestinian communities’ ability to grow naturally is compromised by laws, “zoning” plans and permit systems designed to enforce a regime of separation and inequality. In 2008, a UN report detailed how 94 per cent of Palestinian building permit applications are denied in “Area C” of the West Bank, an area that covers 60 per cent of the territory. Read more