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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Commentary Home page  back Print  Send To friend Gaza and the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood Henry Siegman Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center August 2014 Executive summary The slaughter of Palestinian civilians and the Dresden-like reduction to rubble of large parts of Gaza by Israel’s military forces in the name of its own citizens’ security has exposed the hypocrisy that lies at the heart of Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians. Israel’s claim to the right of self-defence in order to prevent its victims’ emergence from under its occupation is the ultimate expression of chutzpa. An occupying power is under two obligations in international law: to end the occupation, and until it does so, to protect the population under its occupation. Israel is in blatant violation of both of these obligations. The security threats to its own population that it invokes to justify its assaults that regularly result in the killing of far more Palestinian non-combatants than militants are triggered by its occupation. Occupied people who are told by their occupier that their subjugation is permanent and that they will never be allowed to exercise the right to national self-determination and sovereign existence on territories recognised by the international community as their rightful patrimony have every right to resort to resistance, including violent resistance, to achieve their freedom if they are reacting to the violence that is keeping them illegally under occupation. It is a right exercised by the Jewish people when their own struggle for statehood was challenged. The slaughter of Palestinian civilians and the Dresden-like reduction to rubble of large parts of Gaza by Israel’s military forces in the name of its own citizens’ security has exposed the hypocrisy that lies at the heart of Israel’s dealings with the Palestinians. Israel’s claim to the right of self-defence in order to prevent its victims’ emergence from under its occupation is the ultimate expression of chutzpa. Without entering the debate over whether the rocket assaults on Israel from Gaza were precipitated in every instance by Israel’s own violations of truces and ceasefire accords it negotiated with Hamas, as documented by various analysts (including Amira Hass, Peter Beinart, Nathan Thrall, Sara Roy and others), Israel’s claim to self-defence is based on a glaring falsehood. An occupying power is under two obligations in international law: to end the occupation, and until it does so, to protect the population under its occupation. Israel is in blatant violation of both of these obligations. The security threats to its own population that it invokes to justify its assaults that regularly result in the killing of far more Palestinian non-combatants than militants are triggered by its occupation. Occupied people who are told by their occupier that their subjugation is permanent and that they will never be allowed to exercise the right to national self-determination and sovereign existence on territories recognised by the international community as their rightful patrimony have every right to resort to resistance, including violent resistance, to achieve their freedom, if they are reacting to the violence that is keeping them illegally under occupation. It is a right exercised by the Jewish people when their own struggle for statehood was challenged. This reality has certain clear policy implications for the ceasefire discussions currently under way. Robert Serry, the United Nations (UN) special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, told the UN Security Council on August 18th that “The basic equation [in these negotiations] must consist of ending the blockade on Gaza, and addressing Israel’s legitimate security concerns”. These two “legitimate” goals are utterly irreconcilable, unless the Israelis are prepared to offer the Palestinians a guaranteed and enforceable road to a two-state solution, in conformity with the Road Map for Middle East Peace, to be implemented in parallel with Gaza’s demilitarisation. If they cannot or will not agree to this, there is no basis whatever for their demand for Gaza’s demilitarisation, for Israel has no right to expect Palestinians to acquiesce to the status quo as an occupied people as their permanent destiny. The war crimes committed by Israel’s armed forces during its War of Independence have been documented by Benny Morris in his book Righteous Victims, and more recently by Ari Shavit in his book My Promised Land. Both argue that because there would have been no Jewish state without these crimes (an unproven and doubtful claim), they must be accepted as a necessary evil. It is a dispensation that neither author, nor Israelis in general, are prepared to extend to Palestinians under Israel’s occupation who are still struggling for their people’s independence and statehood. Too many Israelis seem to believe – indeed, to take absolutely for granted – that they have a God-given right to occupy, suppress, disenfranchise and displace non-Jews – particularly Arabs – in Israel. This right seems to be implied in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s insistence that Palestinians affirm the State of Israel as the historic homeland of the Jewish people. It is a belief that, by extension, also leads some Israeli Jews to discredit and disenfranchise fellow Israeli Jews – typically those of Israel’s political left, and NGO humanitarian and civil rights activists – who criticise Israel’s behaviour as deeply violative of democratic and humanitarian norms. This is why there have been repeated efforts in Israel’s Knesset to outlaw such NGOs. It may also account for the fact that adherents to a Jewish religious tradition that stresses the sanctity of human life and man’s creation in the image of the divine react so callously to the destruction of innocents as Israelis have, 80-90% of whom approved Israel’s killing and maiming of so many of Gaza’s non-combatant population. It seems not to occur to them that this sense of special entitlement that characterises their behaviour resonates an ideology that led to the Holocaust – even as they invoke the memory of the Holocaust to justify measures they say are intended to prevent its reoccurrence. It also may explain why of all the democracies in the world, Israel is probably the only one in which a member of its parliament (the Knesset), Ayelet Shaked, who publicly advocates the genocide of the residents of Gaza, has not been expelled from her political party or from Israel’s parliament, and whose deputy speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, is an advocate of ethnic cleansing. If there was any doubt (there never should have been) that Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government had no intention of ever permitting Palestinians to realise their right to statehood and self-determination, Netanyahu personally dispelled it on July 11th 2014 in a press conference in Hebrew, in which he declared he would never allow Palestinians the right to genuine sovereignty, the one element that defines statehood. As noted approvingly in the Times of Israel by its editor, David Horovitz, “Nobody will ever be able to claim in the future that [Netanyahu] didn’t tell us what he really thinks. He made it explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank.” Israel’s pretense that it is sincerely committed to a twostate solution is repeatedly given the lie by the arbitrariness and contrariness of its dealings with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. In the more recent months of their on-and-off relationship, Netanyahu treated Abbas as a serious partner for peace as long as he was willing to engage Israel in a phony peace process that served no purpose other than to provide Netanyahu’s government with cover for the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, whose purpose, in turn, it is to prevent a two-state solution. When that deception became too obvious even for so compliant a peace partner as Abbas and his colleagues, who have been providing Palestinian security forces to facilitate the continuation of Israel’s occupation, they formed a unity government supported by Hamas. Abbas was immediately denounced by Netanyahu as no longer a partner for peace, and he accused him of having chosen terror over peacemaking. But now that Israel is faced with a rising wave of worldwide the killing and destruction wrought by Israeli forces in Gaza is being exposed, Netanyahu again finds it convenient to describe Abbas as a peace partner who can be relied on by Israel to serve as gatekeeper for the prison in which the victims of Israel’s latest “grass-mowing” activities,1 both living and dead, are interred. 1 During the July-August 2014 Gaza war Israeli security officials and pundits described such military campaigns as attempts to “mow the grass”, meaning a repeated action needed to maintain the status quo. 3 Noref Expert Analysis – August 2014 His vision is not much different to that of Naftali Bennett, who heads the ultra-nationalist, religious Habayit Hayehudi. He is counting on the Palestinians’ and the international community’s frustration and despair over a two-state outcome to allow Israel to proceed with unilateral measures that create disconnected Palestinian enclaves and the annexation to Israel of much of the West Bank. It is an arrangement, he believes, that would enable Israel to escape the stain of apartheid by granting nominal “full citizenship” to the few Palestinians remaining in the areas annexed to Israel. But he is mistaken; it will not happen. Too many Palestinian mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters have seen their loved ones killed and injured to allow Israel to escape the consequences of its ethnic cleansing and the resulting apartheid. In the New York Times of August 13th, Isabel Kershner reports that Netanyahu has dropped his condemnations of the new Palestinian government of reconciliation. Udi Dekel, a former lead Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians, said that most of the Israeli government now supports the idea of “turning the reconciliation inside out”. Yair Lapid, Israel’s finance minister and a leader of the government’s second-largest party, Yesh Atid, and other centrist ministers have been reported as putting forward plans “for an ambitious new order”. Some believe that the negotiations for a truce could lead to peace talks that produce a two-state accord. Of course, an opening for a two-state accord is the very last thing Netanyahu is seeking. He has devoted his entire political life to preventing such an accord, and probably believes it is a goal that this latest war in Gaza may finally have achieved. Henry Siegman is the president of the U.S./Middle East Project. He served as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a non-resident research professor at the Sir Joseph Hotung Middle East Programme, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is a former national director of the American Jewish Congress. Disclaimer The content of this publication is presented as is. The stated points of view are those of the author and do not reflect those of the organisation for which he works or NOREF. NOREF does not give any warranties, either expressed or implied, concerning the content. The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF) is a resource centre integrating knowledge and experience to strengthen peacebuilding policy and practice. Established in 2008, it collaborates and promotes collaboration with a wide network of researchers, policymakers and practitioners in Norway and abroad. Read NOREF’s publications on www.peacebuilding.no and sign up for notifications. Connect with NOREF on Facebook or @PeacebuildingNO on Twitter The author The Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre Norsk ressurssenter for fredsbygging Email: info@peacebuilding.no - Phone: +47 22 08 79 32 Links to the latest articles in this section The US and nuclear programs in the Middle East How can Israel, Palestine return to a two-state solution? A matter of concrete debate