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.

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.

U.S. Treasury: Nothing to see on tax-exempt support for illegal settlements

Investigative journalist and author Grant Smith‘s “Israel Lobby Archive” project gets a response from a Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2007, which asked for access to internal Treasury Department records on programs to stop or investigate charitable funds going to illegal Israeli settlements.  (Read the Institute for Research:  Middle East Policy statement on the response here.)

The department responded, in so many words, that they don’t do anything about it:

Unfortunately, we were unable to locate or identify any responsive records pertaining to:  Internal reports about Treasury Department investigations triggered by public revelations that U.S. charitable funds flows used are used to illegally confiscate Palestinian lands and commit crimes overseas; Meeting minutes of key Treasury Department 0fficials charged with combating money laundering conducted in Israel and the U.S. dealing with the Sasson report money laundering issues especially those with a focus on U.S. divisions of Hadassah, B’nai B’rith and other U.S. organizations managing WZO money laundering.

While the Treasury Department says it has “responsive information pertaining to Treasury Department programs designed to combat U.S. charitable money laundering to the West Bank,” the documents don’t say anything substantive on that topic.  The documents attached to the request consist of already online presidential orders, like the prohibition on transactions with organizations designated by the U.S. as “terrorist” organizations.

But the Treasury Department is doing nothing about the (at least) hundreds of millions of tax-exempt dollars that flow to illegal settlements on occupied land.  It is doing nothing about the New York-based Hebron Fund, which openly raises money for racist, extremist Israeli settlers who make the lives of Palestinians in Hebron hell.  It is doing nothing about Friends of the Ateret Cohanim and Friends of Ir David, who are actively engaged in the colonization of Palestinian land in occupied Jerusalem.

Nothing to see here.

Corporate media delete U.S. role in Hamas-Fatah split

In response to the youth of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank rising up on March 14 and 15 to call for Palestinian political unity, both the leaders of Fatah and Hamas pledged to enter into talks aimed at reconciliation.  Most recently, President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah “met with senior Hamas officials to discuss a proposed trip to Gaza and efforts to mend internal Palestinian division by forming a unity government,” the Ma’an News Agency reported.

With those talks came a spate of articles in the U.S. corporate media about the efforts at reconciliation.  But in providing background on why these talks are happening, and the roots of the split between Hamas and Fatah, media outlets have deleted the crucial role the U.S. played in fomenting that split.

The New York Times explained that:

[Abbas had] not set foot in Gaza in the four years since a brief, bloody civil war there sent him and his Fatah colleagues fleeing to the West Bank…Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in early 2006, and, for a brief time, Fatah and Hamas had a national unity government. But tensions between them led to the fighting and a break in communications.

TIME magazine’s Karl Vick similarly put it this way:

Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the Fatah party that governs the West Bank, has accepted an invitation from rival Hamas to travel to the Gaza Strip. The visit would be the first since Hamas drove Fatah operatives out of Gaza in 2007 — throwing some off from the tops of buildings — in the turmoil that followed Hamas’ surprise victory in elections months earlier.

All of these accounts don’t mention where the “turmoil” and the breakup of the short-lived national unity government between Hamas and Fatah following the 2006 elections came from.  The expose of the Bush administration’s role in the split by David Rose in Vanity Fair remains essential reading for those wanting to understand the roots of the split.

Some crucial excerpts:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza…

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says…

Without this back story, why there is a bitter Hamas-Fatah split remains obscured.  The least the U.S. media could do is provide a sentence explaining these facts.

Palestinian anti-wall activist tortured, threatened with rape and execution by Shin Bet because of BDS activities

The Israeli government’s repression of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is growing ever more harsh.  Domestically, earlier this month, “the Knesset plenum…approved in its first reading a ‘boycott law,’ which would levy harsh punitive fines on Israelis who call for academic or economic boycotts against Israeli institutions,” according to Ha’aretz.

While the anti-boycott bill is aimed at shutting up internal Israeli calls for BDS, much more punitive measures continue to be inflicted on Palestinian activists.

Jesse Rosenfeld, reporting for Alternet, has an exclusive report on the alleged torture of Mohammad Othman, a key organizer in the non-violent resistance campaign against the West Bank separation barrier. After returning from Norway in 2009, where he met with “Norwegian socialist movements and BDS activists, as well as members of the national Parliament, including the Norwegian finance minister,” Othman was arrested at the West Bank-Jordan border.  The interview with Rosenfeld marks the first time Othman has spoken out about his conditions in prison.

Othman tells Rosenfeld that:

He was psychologically and physically tortured by Shin Bet interrogators. He highlighted how interrogators pressed him for details about his activities in the BDS campaign abroad, asked about the the grassroots Stop the Wall movement, and probed his meetings with Norwegian parliamentarians and activists.

In Israeli military court, the military prosecution tried unsuccessfully to prove that he was acting as an agent for Hezbollah. But Othman said that attempts to force him to confess to working with Hezbollah were merely a pretext to jail him and not what actually interested the Shin Bet.

“They spent over 25 days focused on trying to find out about my boycott contacts and activist contacts in Norway. They were particularly interested in talking about my work with a Jewish American woman in drafting a boycott call,” said Othman, who detailed the brutal methods his interrogators used to try to extract information and confessions from him. “I was told by an interrogator that if I’m released before their investigation is complete, that they would kill me, that they would shoot me in the head,” he recalled.

Kept in a tiny cell that could only fit a small mattress and subjected to extreme hot and cold temperatures, Othman says psychological terror gave way to physical torture. “At one point they tied me in stress positions for five hours. They showed pictures of my sisters and told me they would rape them. They threatened me with rape.”

 

 

Palestinian unity movement’s goal strikes at heart of Israeli occupation strategy of divide and conquer

The slogans are simple enough:  “the people want an end to the division,” tens of thousands of young protesters in Gaza and the West Bank chanted as their protest movement demanding Palestinian political unity kicked off March 14.

But beneath the simple slogan is an audacious goal that would strike at the heart of a key Israeli strategy used to maintain their 44-year-old occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.  The goal, if realized, of a true united political front against the occupation is one giant step toward ending Israeli dominance over the lives of Palestinians.

“We want democratic representation first and foremost and then move to nonviolently challenging the occupation,” Fadi Quran, a Palestinian youth activist, notes on the Institute for Middle East Understanding’s profile page of activists involved with the pro-unity movement.  “We’re trying to move toward that goal. March 15th is seen not as an end in itself but the beginning of a new generation of struggle.”

Quran and his cohort are going to have to contend with some major forces working against them.

The deep divide between the West Bank and Gaza is something that is an official Israeli goal.  As Israeli blogger Noam Sheizaf reported in September 2010, an Israel Defense Forces document states that a “security and diplomatic objective” of Israel is to separate Gaza from the West Bank.  Israeli journalist Amira Hass has documented how “the total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics”–an achievement that closes the door on the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.

This territorial split–which began in the 1990s, according to Hass–has been compounded by the political split between the Islamist movement Hamas, which is in control of Gaza, and the Western-backed Fatah, which controls the West Bank.  And while the division was cemented in 2007, following the Hamas rout of Fatah forces in Gaza after a U.S.-backed Fatah coup failed, its roots run deeper.

When the Palestine Liberation Organization was still seen as the major threat to the occupation regime during the 1980s, Israel and the U.S. “encouraged the rise of the Palestinian Islamist movement,”  according to Stephen Zunes, the chair of the Middle Eastern Studies program at the University of San Francisco.  For example, Zunes notes, “while supporters of the secular PLO were denied their own media or right to hold political gatherings, the Israeli occupation authorities allowed radical Islamic groups to hold rallies, publish uncensored newspapers and even have their own radio station.”

The situation is reversed now, but the classic colonial principle of “divide and conquer” remains.  When the PLO was co-opted as a result of the Oslo peace process, Hamas began to be seen as the major threat to the Israeli occupation.

The political split, encouraged by Israel and the United States, reached its zenith when Hamas, following the 2006 Palestinian elections, took over Gaza after winning what amounted to a brief civil war there following a U.S.-backed Fatah attempt to overthrow Hamas.

The fact that Israel and the U.S. have sought to sow the seeds of division in Palestine throughout the past three decades attests to the importance of the strategy.  The occupation regime would be under real threat if there was a united Palestinian intifada aiming to kick Israel out of the occupied territories–something that the youth movement in Palestine recognizes.

The March 15 movement to end the division has to contend with two separate power structures (not including the Israeli occupation) seemingly intent on holding on to the perks of power and privilege as long as they can.  Both the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas have cracked down on the pro-unity protests.

It remains to be seen if the youth protesters will be able to persevere over the next few weeks and force their political leadership to take heed of their calls for unity.  What is clear, though, is that the road to a free Palestine runs through a united Palestinian front.

 

‘Progressive Zionist’ group in U.S. calls for settlement boycott

The liberal Zionist organization Meretz USA is calling on American Jews and Israelis to boycott West Bank settlements.

While distancing itself from the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, the statement represents a significant stand among left-leaning American Zionist groups who profess their belief in the two-state solution.

Even more significant is the fact that Meretz USA is closely linked with J Street, the liberal group that has taken great pains to distance itself from the BDS movement.  Meretz USA was a partner in J Street’s first annual conference, and the Union of Progressive Zionists, which Meretz USA helped to found, was “reorganized” as J Street U, the group’s college wing.

J Street’s official position on a boycott of settlements is more nuanced than their total rejection of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, but the organization has refused to come out in support of a settlement boycott.

The February 15 statement from Meretz USA, titled “Buy Israel–Don’t Buy Settlements (They’re not the Same)” reads:

We believe it is of great importance to actively oppose the policies of Occupation and settlement while at the same time struggling to defend Israel against those seeking its destruction.  Consequently we:

• Support the actions of Israeli performers, directors and writers who refuse to participate in performances held in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Support the actions of Israeli university professors who refuse to teach at or have professional ties with institutions of higher education in Ariel or any other settlement beyond the Green Line.

• Believe that American Jews, in order to express their support for the brave Israeli citizens refusing to cooperate with settlement policy, should refuse to purchase any goods or services, including tourism services, made in or by the settlements.

• Believe that American Jews should express their support for Israel’s continued existence within the Green Line by purchasing Israeli goods and services that are made within the Green Line.

• Disagree with calls to boycott, divest from or sanction Israel proper (within the Green Line), which we believe are misguided and ineffective.  Such a broad set of actions amounts to a blunt punishment of all Israelis, rather than a targeted approach that focuses on the issue of settlements and Occupation, and is incapable of bringing those polices to an end.

• Denounce the use of BDS whenever employed as a tactic to bring an end to the State of Israel.

 

In Ajami and Mas’ha, Evidence of the Continuing Nakba

Ramallah, West Bank–The Palestinian catastrophe, the Nakba of 1948, never really ended.  What happened since then, as Yehouda Shenhav, an Israeli sociologist and the author of Bounded by the Green Line, puts it, is a “continuation of the [1948] war by other means.”  There are continuous efforts by Israel to displace Palestinians of their land all over the occupied territories and inside Israel.

Two such efforts are evident in recently hearing the stories of Hani Amer, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank village of Mas’ha, and of the Palestinians living in Ajami, a neighborhood in Jaffa.

Amer sits down in his living room, talking with passion and at times smiling, despite his home being surrounded by the illegal separation barrier and Jewish-only settlements.  For seven years, Amer and his family have been struggling against the barrier, which restricts their freedom of movement and ability to farm their surrounding land.  As he explains, “until now, we’re being displaced”–a microcosm of Israeli efforts to confiscate Palestinian land and to push Palestinians out.  “The situation we’re living in is horrible,” Amer says.

But Amer’s story of displacement did not begin in 2003.  Instead, it began in 1948, the year that Israel declared its independence in the midst of an ethnic cleansing campaign that expelled about 750,000 Palestinians.  Amer is a refugee from Kafr Qassem, a Palestinian city east of Tel Aviv.  If he had the chance, he says, he would return.

Hani Amer stands in the doorway of his home, which is completely surrounded by the separation barrier and illegal settlements. Photo: Alex Kane

Amer is responsible for collecting water from his well.  When he wants to go to the well, he has to make sure the Israeli army gate that leads to his land is open.

Amer tells of how he can only access his land at specific times in the day, and of the Israeli occupation’s harassment.  For instance, at times Amer is forced to wait for what can be up to seven hours until the Israeli army lets him access his land.

“We are simple people facing a big entity,” he says.  “The reason why we keep doing this is because we want to sustain our land.”

What Amer is up against is an individual family’s example of what the barrier and settlements are doing to Palestinians across the West Bank.  In the village of al-Walajah, for example, the wall has surrounded “most of the village, with the side of the wall facing the Har Gilo settlement covered by Jerusalem stone and the side facing al-Walajah being exposed concrete,” according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

The same story of displacement—albeit a different chapter—is unfolding in the Palestinian neighborhood of Ajami.  There, the combination of gentrification and discrimination against Palestinians has led to a deteriorating situation, according to Sami Abushhadeh, a PhD student at Tel Aviv University who is writing a thesis on Jaffa as a center of Arab culture during Mandate Palestine.

After the 1948 war, Ajami became a Palestinian ghetto when Israeli forces “surrounded [the Palestinians there] by a barbed wire fence for a number of months,” according to the Israeli organization Zochrot.  But currently, real estate developers looking to make Ajami into a hot-spot for Jewish families are displacing some of the residents and threatening others with eviction.

Isabelle Humphries, writing in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, explains:

Walking around Jaffa, our local Palestinian guide pointed out new exclusive building developments built upon the sites of recently demolished homes and buildings. Eviction orders are issued by Amidar, the housing company owned and operated by the Israeli government. Amidar claims to offer subsidized and rent-controlled housing in Israel, but the fact that its major stockholders are the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund—two institutions openly mandated to support the Jewish population only—shows that it is not simply financial gain that authorities are pursuing. Indeed, since 1948 Palestinian representatives have been excluded from all stages of the urban planning process. Ben-Gurion’s vow that “Jaffa will be a Jewish city” remains the guiding principle.

As the cases of Mas’ha and Ajami show, Ben-Gurion’s vision of an ethnically exclusive state for Jews only remains the vision for the Israeli government today.