Israel’s apartheid policing

This article originally appeared on the blog Waging Nonviolence.

Israeli activists are hoping for a “million strong” march for social justice next weekend in protest of the high cost-of-living there and neoliberal economic policies. And while those demonstrations will likely shut down normal life in Israeli cities, there is little chance that the Israeli police will use tear gas or Qrubber bullets on the protesters. But over the weekend, the Israeli military met a peaceful protest at the Qalandia checkpoint calling for free Palestinian access to Jerusalem with excessive force. This is no surprise.

Whatever the issue—water allocation, permits for building, income levels—there exists massive inequalities between Jews and Palestinians as a result of Israeli policies. Israel privileges the Jewish residents it governs and systematically excludes and marginalizes the Palestinians under its control.

The Israeli police’s response to the outbreak of the July 14 social justice movement across the state exposes one more separate and unequal facet of Israeli policy: how the state responds to unarmed protests. Israeli Jewish protesters angry about the cost of living do not pose as big of a threat to the Israeli establishment as those who explicitly challenge the occupation and Israel’s system of racial discrimination. That much is clear when comparing security forces’ response to the different types of protests that occur between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

“Israelis are very hospitable to nonviolent protests by Jews. So I wouldn’t say that the police were too tough on the protesters, especially when you consider what’s going on in the West Bank,” Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf said in a recent interview on Israel’s social justice movement.

The burgeoning protest movement across Israel has held a succession of massive rallies that have brought hundreds of thousands into the street. While there have been some arrests for shutting down roads, Israeli Jewish protesters, who make up the vast majority of those participating in the J14 movement, have been quickly released. Tent encampments across Israel remain untouched for the most part.

Even within Israel, there are illustrations of the Israeli government’s ethnicity and political-based policing. The tent encampment that has arguably suffered the most from police harassment has been the one in South Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park, where African asylum-seekers and Ethiopian-Israelis have joined in. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, officers in uniform, accompanied by non-identified civilians, demolished an encampment there July 24, telling the protesters, “you brought Sudanese here.” And there has been different treatment reserved for those arrestees who are veteran Israeli activists in the joint struggle against the occupation.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian unarmed struggle continues to be brutally repressed. Weekly military incursions into Palestinian villages resisting settlements or the separation barrier continue to be a common occurrence, and unarmed protests continue to face down the Israeli military’s might.

A recent reporting trip I took through both occupied Palestine and Israel demonstrated these disparities starkly.

The West Bank village of Nabi Saleh has been resisting the expropriation of a nearby spring by the Halamish settlement at great cost. Eyad Tamimi, a popular committee activist in Nabi Saleh, told me that everyone in the village has been or knows someone who has been arrested by the Israeli military. Sixty of those who have been wounded by the Israel Defense Forces during the demonstrations are children.

“The Israeli government and military thinks Nabi Saleh is a virus, and they want to crush it before it spreads,” says Bashir Tamimi, another member of the popular committee in Nabi Saleh, which organizes the weekly Friday protests.

Recently, activists in Nabi Saleh set up their own tent in the village, mirroring Israel’s protests, and carried it during a protest “to tell the Israeli protest movement that their demands for social justice must include implementing the rights of Palestinians.” It was shot at and destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces.

The day after I visited Nabi Saleh, I found myself in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ein Kerem. An environmental-themed tent encampment had been set up there. Israelis milled around, smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and played acoustic guitar. Jarringly, there was no indication that just a short drive away, there existed another protest movement that was being brutally repressed.

It is clear that the “virus” of Nabi Saleh that challenges the Israeli occupation will not spread to Israel’s social justice movement. There is a strong aversion in the tent protests to connect social justice to the occupation.

And so the apartheid policing that the Israeli security forces practice will continue unabated so long as Israel’s housing protesters do not challenge the marginalization of the Palestinians they live so close to. This will surely be on display on September 3, as hundreds of thousands of Israelis will march without fear of injury the day after weekly protests in the West Bank are met with the Israeli military’s excessive force.

(UPDATED) Serious questions on Palestine UN bid raised in legal opinion

This article originally appeared on Mondoweiss.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has called the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) bid for United Nations recognition of a state of Palestine next month a diplomatic “tsunami.”  The United States has threatened to cut off aid to the PA if they proceed with the UN gambit.  But more importantly, a legal opinion submitted to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from the other side of the debate over the UN bid has raised serious and alarming questions about the PA’s plans.

The opinion, written by a law professor who was on the team that successfully challenged Israel’s separation barrier at the International Court of Justice, tackles the issues of Palestinian self-determination and the right of return.  Guy Goodwin Gill, the author of the opinion, recently told Al Jazeera English that he doubts that Palestinian refugees would “be enfranchised through the creation of a state.”  Senior PLO member Hanan Ashrawi has dismissed the concerns raised by Gill.

Excerpts from Goodwin Gill’s legal opinion read:

I am advised that one possibility being debated involves the replacement of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its ‘substitution’, within the United Nations, by the State of Palestine as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. In my view, this raises, first, what I will call ‘constitutional’ problems (in that they engage the Palestinian National Charter and the organization and entities which make up the PLO); secondly, the question of the ‘capacity’ of the State of Palestine effectively to take on the role and responsibilities of the PLO in the UN; and thirdly, the question of popular representation…

Until such a time as a final settlement is agreed, the putative State of Palestine will have no territory over which it exercises effective sovereignty, its borders will be indeterminate or disputed, its population, actual and potential, undetermined and many of them continuing to live under occupation or in States of refuge. While it may be an observer State in the United Nations, it will fall short of meeting the internationally agreed criteria of statehood, with serious implications for Palestinians at large, particularly as concerns the popular representation of those not currently present in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.  The significant link between the Palestinian National Council and the diaspora has been noted above in paragraph 4. They constitute more than half of the people of Palestine, and if they are ‘disenfranchised’ and lose their representation in the UN, it will not only prejudice their entitlement to equal representation, contrary to the will of the General Assembly, but also their ability to vocalise their views, to participate in matters of national governance, including the formation and political identity of the State, and to exercise the right of return.
In my opinion, current moves to secure recognition of statehood do not appear to reflect fully the role of the Palestinian people as a principal party in the resolution of the situation in the Middle East.

The interests of the Palestinian people are at risk of prejudice and fragmentation, unless steps are taken to ensure and maintain their representation through the Palestinian Liberation Organization, until such time as there is in place a State competent and fully able to assume these responsibilities towards the people at large.

The legal concerns raised in the opinion further reflect the skepticism of many Palestinians about the UN bid, as a piece by Mohammed Rabah Suliman in the Electronic Intifada recently pointed out.

Ali Abunimah also recently enunciated these concerns:

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority’s (PA) effort to seek UN recognition of “statehood” unilaterally, without consulting the Palestinian people from which the PA has absolutely no mandate, has raised fears among Palestinians that the move could actually harm Palestinian rights.

If the UN votes to admit the “State of Palestine,” it is likely that the unelected representatives of the Palestinian Authority would be seated in the General Assembly instead of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which currently holds the Palestine observer seat at the UN..

This would be a severe blow to the potential for realizing Palestinian rights in the long run through international bodies: whereas the PLO ostensibly represents all Palestinians, the PA “state” would only represent its “citizens” – residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Of course in reality this “state” would not represent anyone since it would have absolutely no control of the territory on which it purports to exist and its “government” – what is now the Palestinian Authority – would remain subject to the blackmail and pressure of its financiers and external political sponsors.

As September approaches, these concerns become ever more pressing.

UPDATE:  It’s only fair to link to some expert legal opinion that doesn’t agree with Goodwin-Gill’s.  Francis Boyle, who advised the Palestinian leadership on their 1988 Declaration of Independence, says that Goodwin-Gill’s opinion is “based on many erroneous assumption.”  The full piece is at CounterPunch.

Meanwhile, Ma’an News Agency has published four other opinions on the PA’s UN bid.  Some of them agree with Goodwin-Gill, others oppose.  It’s worth reading.

Palestinian non-violent protesters “knock on Jerusalem doors”

Yesterday, Palestinians protested against Israeli policies that deny Palestinians free access to Jerusalem.  While the number of demonstrators was not large–over 200 participated at the Qalandia demonstration, according to Palestinian blogger Jalal Abukhater–Israeli forces still used excessive force on the protesters.  The Los Angeles Times covers the demonstration here.  Meanwhile, two days ago I wrote a preview of the demonstrations and the movement behind it for +972 Magazine:

Sitting outside a Tamimi family house in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on a recent August evening, the conversation shifted from discussion of the previous Friday’s nonviolent protest to planned demonstrations for Friday, August 26. On normal Fridays in Nabi Saleh—if you can call it normal—residents of the village along with Israeli and international supporters attempt to march to a nearby spring that has been expropriated by the settlers of Halamish, whose red-tiled roofs and identical suburban houses overlook the village outside of Ramallah.  The nonviolent protests are, without fail, met with extreme violence by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF); some 30% of the population has been wounded since the demonstrations started, 60 of them children.

But the conversation that evening moved on to talk of a new campaign beginning on August 26.  The shift in conversation was a precursor to the shift in focus, energy and activism planned for tomorrow.

Calling their campaign the “Olive Revolution,” a coalition of popular committees—Nabi Saleh’s included—and youth groups in the West Bank have planned mass demonstrations for tomorrow to take place at the “four doors” of Jerusalem.  “We state that Jerusalem will remain the jewel of the Arabs and capital of our future country. Jerusalem is the symbol of our pride and our national dignity [and] that’s why we are going to knock on its doors by popular demonstrations and non-violent activities,” a recent statement by the “Olive Revolution” group reads.

Instead of the weekly protests in different West Bank villages, the popular committees and other activists are combining forces.  The protests are planned to take place at the Qalandia checkpoint, the separation barrier in Biddu, Shuafat and the southern gate at Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.  The four areas highlight places where checkpoints and the separation barrier have cut off unimpeded Palestinian access to Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian life.  And while access to Jerusalem has been made difficult to near impossible by Israeli policies, illegal Jewish settlements surrounding Jerusalem have easy access to what Israel calls its eternal and undivided “capital.”

The demonstrations are all part of a strategy that Bashir Tamimi, a popular committee organizer in Nabi Saleh, hopes will “smash the occupation” in order to “have our freedom.”  In addition to highlighting the lack of Palestinian access to Jerusalem, the “Olive Revolution” also wants to draw attention to the religious restrictions the separation barrier and checkpoints place on Muslims who want to pray at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s most holy sites.  According to the group’s website, “four famous Islamic scholars will come” and participate in the protests.

The “last Friday of Ramadan is the holiest time of Ramadan, and the Palestinian people used to go to Jerusalem to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque at that time and now most of them will not go, so we want to pray and nonviolently demonstrate at the four doors of Jerusalem,” Ayed Morrar, an “Olive Revolution” organizer and leading popular committee activist in Budrus, said in an interview at the Fatah Central Committee office in Ramallah.  Morrar provided more details on the planned campaign during the interview.

Read the whole piece here.

West Bank village under siege faces live-ammo, arrests and concussion grenades at nonviolent demo

The West Bank village of Beit Ommar has had a tough August, withstanding frequent Israeli military raids that see soldiers shoot tear-gas into residential areas and arrest Palestinian minors.  Last Saturday, the month got even tougher for activists resisting illegal Israeli settlements and land confiscation. 

The Israeli military repressed the Beit Ommar popular committee’s most recent demonstration on August 20.  The Israel Defense Forces fired live ammunition and concussion grenades, arrested five people, and broke the arm of a member of the committee before they detained him. 

(Watch video of the demonstration here):

The demonstrators, who protest weekly, were attempting to attempting to access Beit Ommar’s land near the settlement of Karmei Tzur and were also expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza, which until last night has been under a sustained air assault by the Israeli Air Force. 

The Ma’an News Agency reported on the Beit Ommar protest:

Israeli forces on Saturday used live ammunition to disperse a demonstration against land confiscation in Beit Ummar near Hebron, local officials said.

Popular committee spokesman Younis Arar said soldiers stormed the rally as demonstrators marched toward the illegal Karmi Zur settlement, built on Palestinian-owned land.

Arar said it was the first time Israeli troops used live bullets at the weekly protest in Beit Ummar. He added that forces assaulted several protesters.

Yousef Abu Marya, a popular committee member in Beit Ommar, was “brutally beaten” and had his arm broken by Israeli soldiers, according to the Palestine Solidarity Project, a Beit Ommar-based Palestinian-led direct action group.  Last week, while I was reporting from Beit Ommar, Abu Marya told me the Israeli military broke his arm two times before, in May and July of this year. 

According to an international activist with the Palestine Solidarity Project, the IDF refused to let Abu Marya see a doctor for at least eight hours. 

Beit Ommar’s recent troubles did not begin on Saturday, though.  As I reported for +972 Magazine last week, the IDF has raided the village of 16,000 five times during August:

A spate of Israeli army raids at night and arrests of young Palestinians have occurred since the beginning of August, shattering any hope for calm during Ramadan.  While Israeli military incursions into Beit Ommar are common, residents and activists say that the number of raids and arrests that have occurred in August is particularly high.  There have been five occasions this month in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have invaded the village, three of them that have occurred this past week—and the month is not even half over.

Witnesses to the raids and local activists say that the Israeli army has been shooting tear gas, sound bombs and flares into residential areas—in some cases causing injuries—and have arrested fifteen young Palestinians under the age of eighteen this month.  A landmark B’Tselem report recently released highlighted how common the arrest of minors is in the occupied territories…

The Israeli army’s repression in the village has not been limited to night raids, though. For the first time during the month of Ramadan, Beit Ommar residents and Israeli and international activists held a demonstration August 13, protesting land confiscation and the nearby settlement of Karmei Tzur.  At the demonstration, IDF soldiers repeatedly pushed back Palestinian residents of Beit Ommar attempting to access their land near the settlement, which was declared a closed military zone.  Beit Ommar is surrounded by six settlements, of which Karmei Tzur is one.

When the demonstration was over, one Palestinian, a forty-two year old man named Sakhar Abu Marya, was arrested and taken into a military jeep.  Recounting the events later, he said that a hood was placed over his head, and that he was beaten by the soldiers. While he was interrogated, soldiers said that, while they would release him now, they would come to his house later and arrest him.  Soldiers also brought out food and soda to mock Abu Marya, who is fasting for Ramadan.  He was then dropped off at the gate of the Karmei Tzur settlement, without being charged with anything.

Dispatch from Beit Ommar: IDF raids same West Bank town 5 times in last 2 weeks

This article originally appeared in +972 Magazine.

Israeli soldiers push down Mousa and Yousef Abu Marya, Palestinian residents of Beit Ommar protesting land confiscation and illegal settlements. (PHOTO: Alex Kane)

Beit Ommar, West Bank—The Islamic holy month of Ramadan is meant to be a time for reflection and spirituality.  But for the 16,000 residents of this rural, agricultural village near Hebron in the occupied West Bank, it has been an unusually tense one.I

A spate of Israeli army raids at night and arrests of young Palestinians have occurred since the beginning of August, shattering any hope for calm during Ramadan.  While Israeli military incursions into Beit Ommar are common, residents and activists say that the number of raids and arrests that have occurred in August is particularly high.  There have been five occasions this month in which the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have invaded the village, three of them that have occurred this past week—and the month is not even half over.

Witnesses to the raids and local activists say that the Israeli army has been shooting tear gas, sound bombs and flares into residential areas—in some cases causing injuries—and have arrested fifteen young Palestinians under the age of eighteen this month.  A landmark B’Tselem report recently released highlighted how common the arrest of minors is in the occupied territories.

“It just looked like a training exercise.  It just looked like they were practicing coming into town tear gassing people back and practicing flares,” said one international activist with the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP), a Beit Ommar-based Palestinian-led direct action group, when asked to describe an August 11 raid he was witness to.

One incursion, which took place on August 6, saw the IDF invade the village and disrupt a party held in a local park meant to celebrate the release of a prisoner from Beit Ommar. Five Palestinians were arrested, and some Beit Ommar residents, including women and children, were hospitalized due to tear gas inhalation, according to the PSP.  A 16-year-old Beit Ommar resident described the scene at the park similarly.

Mousa Abu Marya, a popular committee coordinator in Beit Ommar, said he thinks the high number of raids is meant to intimidate people ahead of September, when the world’s eyes will turn to Palestine as the Palestinian Authority makes a statehood bid at the United Nations.

The August 11 raid affected the Abu Marya house, with tear gas canisters hitting the residence, leaving visible marks on their driveway.  The tear-gas caused the bottom half of their house to become inhabitable for the night.

“Maybe they’re scared of September,” Abu Marya told me as we were sitting in an office at the Beit Ommar-based Center for Freedom and Justice.  “I think they want to make the soldiers ready for anything in September.”

A joint coalition of popular committees, including Beit Ommar’s, who held a popular resistance conference in mid-July drafted a statement that called September an “immense popular battle.”

September is “not the end of the road,” said Younes Arar, the executive manager of the Center for Freedom and Justice.  “But it is an important station in the Palestinian political situation.”

Meanwhile, a senior minister in the Israeli government has said that Israel may call up its reserve forces for September.  The IDF has also purchased $22 million worth of new military equipment in preparation for large-scale September protests.

The Israeli army’s repression in the village has not been limited to night raids, though. For the first time during the month of Ramadan, Beit Ommar residents and Israeli and international activists held a demonstration August 13, protesting land confiscation and the nearby settlement of Karmei Tzur.  At the demonstration, IDF soldiers repeatedly pushed back Palestinian residents of Beit Ommar attempting to access their land near the settlement, which was declared a closed military zone.  Beit Ommar is surrounded by six settlements, of which Karmei Tzur is one.

When the demonstration was over, one Palestinian, a forty-two year old man named Sakhar Abu Marya, was arrested and taken into a military jeep. Recounting the events later, he said that a hood was placed over his head, and that he was beaten by the soldiers. While he was interrogated, soldiers said that, while they would release him now, they would come to his house later and arrest him.  Soldiers also brought out food and soda to mock Abu Marya, who is fasting for Ramadan.  He was then dropped off at the gate of the Karmei Tzur settlement, without being charged with anything.

Will the Palestinian Authority collide with popular resistance in September?

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) bid for United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state remains on track, despite heavy pressure from the U.S. and Israel.  But what has received scant attention is the possibility that the September bid may also result in a collision between popular, grassroots Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation and the PA’s preferred avenues to statehood.

Following imprisoned Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti’s call for mass marches ahead of the September UN gambit for a state, the Palestinian Authority echoed Barghouti’s call.

“All of us are talking about resistance and it must be every day,” PA President Mahmoud Abbas said in late July.   Al Jazeera English reported August 1 on the PA’s planned mass rallies:

Palestinian officials have said they will begin mass marches against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank on September 20, the eve of a largely symbolic UN vote expected to recognise their independence.

Yasser Abed Rabbo, a Palestinian official, said leaders hope to attract millions of people, and the protest will be the first of a prolonged effort.

He said the campaign would be called “Palestine 194″ because the Palestinians hope to become the 194th member of the UN.

“The appeal to the UN is a battle for all Palestinians, and in order to succeed, it needs millions to pour into streets,” Abed Rabbo said.

But this week, the form of the PA’s planned “resistance” became clear, and it will certainly not mark the end of coordination between PA security forces and the Israeli military, one of the most important–and disliked among Palestinians–results of the Oslo era.

Haaretz reported last Friday that:

The Palestinian Authority has ordered its security forces to prevent demonstrations planned for September from escalating into violent confrontations with Israel, especially in potential friction points like the roadblocks and settlements.

Senior Palestinian Authority figures issued the orders to the Palestinian security forces in recent weeks out of concern that there may be violent clashes between thousands of Palestinian demonstrators and Israel Defense Forces at the end of September, following a vote at the United Nations General Assembly for recognition of a Palestinian state

In similar messages relayed to the IDF, the PA made clear that it intended to prevent largescale violent protests which would heighten tensions and undermine security cooperation between the two sides.

Last week PA President Mahmoud Abbas called on all Palestinians to participate in non-violent marches which are part of a series of events planned by the Authority for late September. Earlier this week, the General Secretary of the PLO Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, announced that plans to hold a mass rally on September 20 when UN deliberations in New York begin.

The Palestinian demonstrations are scheduled to take place in the centers of Palestinian cities – and not in locations where they may lead to friction with Israelis. Moreover, the PLO is sponsoring the events and the security forces are charged with overseeing order.

The PA, it seems, intends to coopt Palestinian resistance against the occupation. But it is highly unlikely that will fly with grassroots activists involved in the popular committees that demonstrate against the illegal separation barrier and settlements in the West Bank every week.  A confrontation between the PA and Palestinians seems likely, and is not without precedent.  As Adam Shatz pointed out in a recent piece n the London Review of Books, the PA turned back protesters who attempted to march to the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus during the May 15 protests marking the Nakba.

In a statement sent to me by activists in the West Bank, a coalition of popular committees in the West Bank said July 29:

The popular committees against the wall and settlements confirms that next September is the immense popular battle for the recognition of the State of Palestine, number 194 at the UN.

The popular committees against the wall and settlements, in addition to the national committee for popular struggle and the popular struggle coordination committee,  have discussed the issue regarding the intention of the Palestinian Authority to go the UN for the recognition of the Palestinian State.

All confirmed the right of the Palestinian people to have their state fully recognized with its capital Jerusalem through going to the UN, guaranteeing holding to the Palestinian fixed rights.

The committees consider the coming September a very important phase of struggle in the history of the Palestinian cause and calls upon the Palestinian people in its all categories wherever they are to actively engage and participate in such a phase. They also calls upon the Palestinian leadership not to tie going to the UN against going back to negotiations.

The committees commit themselves to initiate  to work in order to develop intensive action and mobilize people to expand the struggle for recognition of a Palestinian State in the Palestinian and the international arenas using an immense popular struggle program.

Therefore, the committees call upon our Palestinian people in all their locations in Palestine and Diaspora,  the fellow Arab countries and the International arena of supporters, solidarity movements and friends  around the world to stand with us and act in their communities for the recognition of the Palestinian state to become the state number 194 in the United Nations.

Call on the International movements to mobilize with us on the 21 of September, to make the day a world wide day in support of the right of Palestian people to their own state in freedom, democracy and self determination.

While the popular committee statement expressed support for the UN bid, it is clear that popular struggle leaders are not going to simply gather in Palestinian cities and stay put, especially considering the fact that the popular struggle confronts the Israeli military head on every week.  Come September, the PA’s statehood bid could lead to a confrontation with its own people.

The social order shakes: Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf on the Israeli social justice movement

This interview originally appeared in Waging Nonviolence.

If there was one country thought not to be in danger of catching the contagion of uprisings in the Middle East, it was Israel. Nobody thought much of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement on March 30 that, at a time when “everything is shaking and rocking…the only stable place, the only stable country, is this democracy Israel.”

But a month and a half later, Netanyahu’s statement is laughable. A mass movement has now erupted in Israel, shaking the status quo. What first started as a tent-city protest in Tel Aviv over the high cost of housing has mushroomed into tent cities all over Israel, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets and disruptions of business-as-usual in the Israeli Knesset. Angry over the high cost of living and the yawning gap between the rich and the poor in Israel, the protestors have called for “social justice” in the form of public housing, rent control and a raise in the minimum wage, among other demands. Stanford University professor Joel Beinin recently wrote that the Israeli protests were a revolt against neoliberalism.

The movement is said to represent the strongest challenge yet to Netanyahu’s government.

Criticism of the movement, though, has been voiced by Palestinians and activists involved in the Palestine solidarity movement. They have pointed to the fact that the social justice movement has stayed silent over the occupation of Palestine and has not connected the dots between Israel’s massive and illegal settlement project in the West Bank and the housing crisis within Israel proper.

To go beyond the headlines, I recently caught up with Noam Sheizaf, an independent Israeli journalist based in Tel Aviv. Sheizaf, whose work has appeared in the Nation, Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and more, is an editor and founder of +972 Magazine, a blog-based web magazine. Sheizaf recently authored a piece titled, “It’s all about real-estate: Understanding the tent protests.”

Alex Kane: What is your general take on the tent cities and mass protests currently making headlines in Israel?

Noam Sheizaf: I think it’s one of the most significant events I have seen in Israeli politics, certainly in the 20 years I have been following it closely. In the events I can remember that I witnessed in my own lifetime, this is one of the most important ones, most unexpected, and most promising one, perhaps.

AK: What do you think the political significance of the protests are?

NS: If you’re talking the narrow political games of the Knesset and the government, I don’t think we’ll see a lot happening right away. I don’t think this protest right now is a serious threat to the government. It’s more a challenge than a threat.

I think the protest is challenging something very important in the Israeli social order. There’s an unwritten agreement between various groups in Israeli society—I’m talking about the Jewish society. This is something that enables the entire system that we see here. So by declaring that the current social order is not suitable for us anymore, I think that the middle-class, the upper-middle class, the people who are protesting, are making a serious challenge against the structure of Israeli society. It’s more of something that represents an undercurrent in society than what you see on the surface. Because, ultimately, this protest doesn’t touch the significant political questions that we always hear about from Israel: the occupation, the future of the West Bank, the relations between Arab and Jewish citizens. But it touches on the layer beneath it that holds everything together. So, I think this is a major, major thing.

Read the whole interview here.