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The
Electronic Intifada
 When I
published my book
Blood and Religion
last year, I sought not only to explain what lay behind
Israeli policies since the failed Camp David negotiations
nearly seven years ago, including the disengagement from
Gaza and the building of a wall across the West Bank, but I
also offered a few suggestions about where Israel might head
next.
Making predictions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might
be considered a particularly dangerous form of hubris, but I
could hardly have guessed how soon my fears would be
realized.
One of the main forecasts of my book was that Palestinians on
both sides of the Green Line -- those who currently enjoy
Israeli citizenship and those who live as oppressed subjects
of Israel's occupation -- would soon find common cause as
Israel tries to seal itself off from what it calls the
Palestinian "demographic threat": that is, the moment when
Palestinians outnumber Jews in the land between the
Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
I suggested that Israel's greatest fear was ruling over a
majority of Palestinians and being compared to apartheid
South Africa, a fate that has possibly befallen it faster
than I expected with the recent publication of Jimmy
Carter's book,
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. To avoid such a
comparison, I argued, Israel was creating a "Jewish
fortress," separating -- at least demographically -- from
Palestinians in the occupied territories by sealing off Gaza
through a disengagement of its settler population and by
building a 750km wall to annex large areas of the West Bank.
It was also closing off the last remaining avenue of a Right
of Return for Palestinians by changing the law to make it
all but impossible for Palestinians living in Israel to
marry Palestinians in the occupied territories and thereby
gain them citizenship.
The corollary of this Jewish fortress, I suggested, would be
a sham Palestinian state, a series of disconnected ghettos
that would prevent Palestinians from organizing effective
resistance, nonviolent or otherwise, but which would give
the Israeli army an excuse to attack or invade whenever they
chose, claiming that they were facing an "enemy state" in a
conventional war.
Another benefit for Israel in imposing this arrangement would
be that it could say all Palestinians who identified
themselves as such - whether in the occupied territories or
inside Israel - must now exercise their sovereign rights in
the Palestinian state and renounce any claim on the Jewish
state. The apartheid threat would be nullified.
I sketched out possible routes by which Israel could achieve
this end:
by redrawing the borders, using the wall, so that an area
densely populated with Palestinian citizens of Israel known
as the Little Triangle, which hugs the northern West Bank,
would be sealed into the new pseudo-state;
by continuing the process of corralling the Negev's
Bedouin farmers into urban reservations and then treating
them as guest workers;
by forcing Palestinian citizens living in the Galilee to
pledge an oath of loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and
democratic state" or have their citizenship revoked;
and by stripping Arab Knesset members of their right to
stand for election.
When I made these forecasts, I suspected that many
observers, even in the Palestinian solidarity movement,
would find my ideas improbable. I could not have realized
how fast events would overtake prediction.
 The first sign came in October with the addition to the
cabinet of
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of a party that espouses the
ethnic cleansing not only of Palestinians in the occupied
territories (an unremarkable platform for an Israeli party)
but of Palestinian citizens too, through land swaps that
would exchange their areas for the illegal Jewish
settlements in the West Bank.
Lieberman is not just any cabinet minister; he has been
appointed deputy prime minister with responsibility for the
"strategic threats" that face Israel. In that role, he will
be able to determine what issues are to be considered
threats and thereby shape the public agenda for next few
years. The "problem" of Israel's Palestinian citizens is
certain to be high on his list.
Lieberman has been widely presented as a political maverick,
akin to the notorious racist Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach
party was outlawed in the late 1980s. That is a gross
misunderstanding: Lieberman is at the very heart of the
country's rightwing establishment and will almost certainly
be a candidate for prime minister in future elections, as
Israelis drift ever further to the right.
Unlike Kahane, Lieberman has cleverly remained within the
Israeli political mainstream while pushing its agenda to the
very limits of what it is currently possible to say. Kadima
and Labor urgently want unilateral separation from the
Palestinians but are shy to spell out, both to their own
domestic constituency and the international community, what
separation will entail.
Lieberman has no such qualms. He is unequivocal: if Israel is
separating from the Palestinians in parts of the occupied
territories, why not also separate from the 1.2 million
Palestinians who through oversight rather than design ended
up as citizens of a Jewish state in 1948? If Israel is to be
a Jewish fortress, then, as he points out, it is illogical
to leave Palestinians within the fortifications.
These arguments express the common mood among the Israeli
public, one that has been cultivated since the eruption of
the intifada in 2000 by endless talk among Israel's
political and military elites about "demographic
separation." Regular opinion polls show that about
two-thirds of Israelis support transfer, either voluntary or
forced, of Palestinian citizens from the state.
Recent polls also reveal how fashionable racism has become
in Israel. A survey conducted last year showed that 68 per
cent of Israeli Jews do not want to live next to a
Palestinian citizen (and rarely have to, as segregation is
largely enforced by the authorities), and 46 per cent would
not want an Arab to visit their home.
A poll of students that was published last week suggests that
racism is even stronger among young Jews. Three-quarters
believed Palestinian citizens are uneducated, uncivilized
and unclean, and a third are frightened of them. Richard
Kupermintz of Haifa University, who conducted the survey
more than two years ago, believes the responses would be
even more extreme today.
Lieberman is simply riding the wave of such racism and
pointing out the inevitable path separation must follow if
it is to satisfy these kinds of prejudices. He may speak his
mind more than his cabinet colleagues, but they too share
his vision of the future. That is why only one minister, the
dovish and principled Ophir Pines Paz of Labor, resigned
over Ehud Olmert's inclusion of Lieberman in the cabinet.
Contrast that response with the uproar caused by the Labor
leader Amir Peretz's appointment of the first Arab cabinet
minister in Israel's history. (A member of the small Druze
community, which serves in the Israeli army, Salah Tarif,
was briefly a minister without portfolio in Sharon's first
government.)
Raleb Majadele, a Muslim, is a senior member of the Labor
party and a Zionist (what might be termed, in different
circumstances, a self-hating Arab or an Uncle Tom), and yet
his appointment has broken an Israeli taboo: Arabs are not
supposed to get too close to the centers of power.
Peretz's decision was entirely cynical. He is under threat on
all fronts - from his coalition partners in Kadima and in
Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu, and from within his own party
-- and desperately needs the backing of Labor's Arab party
members. Majadele is the key, and that is why Peretz gave
him a cabinet post, even if a marginal one: Minister of
Science, Culture and Sport.
But the right is deeply unhappy at Majadele's inclusion in
the cabinet. Lieberman called Peretz unfit to be defense
minister for making the appointment and demanded that
Majadele pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic
state. Lieberman's party colleagues referred to the
appointment as a "lethal blow to Zionism."
 A few Labor and Meretz MKs denounced these comments as
racist. But more telling was the silence of Olmert and his
Kadima party, as well as Binyamin Netanyhu's Likud, at
Lieberman's outburst. The center and right understand that
Lieberman's views about Majadele, and Palestinian citizens
more generally, mirror those of most Israeli Jews and that
it would be foolhardy to criticize him for expressing them -
let alone sack him.
In this game of "who is the truer Zionist," Lieberman can
only grow stronger against his former colleagues in Kadima
and Likud. Because he is free to speak his and their minds,
while they must keep quiet for appearance's sake, he, not
they, will win ever greater respect from the Israeli public.
Meanwhile, all the evidence suggests that Olmert and the
current government will implement the policies being
promoted by Lieberman, even if they are too timid to openly
admit that is what they are doing.
Some of those policies are of the by-now familiar variety,
such as the destruction of 21 Bedouin homes, half the
village of Twayil, in the northern Negev last week. It was
the second time in a month that the village had been razed
by the Israeli security forces.
These kind of official attacks against the indigenous Bedouin
- who have been classified by the government as "squatters"
on state lands - are a regular occurence, an attempt to
force 70,000 Bedouin to leave their ancestral homes and
relocate to deprived townships.
A more revealing development came this month, however, when
it was reported in the Israeli media that the government is
for the first time backing "loyalty" legislation that has
been introduced privately by a Likud MK. Gilad Erdan's bill
would revoke the citizenship of Israelis who take part in
"an act that constitutes a breach of loyalty to the state,"
the latest in a string of proposals by Jewish MKs
conditioning citizenship on loyalty to the Israeli state,
defined in all these schemes very narrowly as a "Jewish and
democratic" state.
Arab MKs, who reject an ethnic definition of Israel and
demand instead that the country be reformed into a "state of
all its citizens," or a liberal democracy, are typically
denounced as traitors.
Lieberman himself suggested just such a loyalty scheme for
Palestinian citizens last month during a trip to Washington.
He told American Jewish leaders: "He who is not ready to
recognize Israel as a Jewish and Zionist state cannot be a
citizen in the country."
Erdan's bill specifies acts of disloyalty that include
visiting an "enemy state" - which, in practice, means just
about any Arab state. Most observers believe that, after
Erdan's bill has been redrafted by the Justice Ministry, it
will be used primarily against the Arab MKs, who are looking
increasingly beleaguered. Most have been repeatedly
investigated by the Attorney-General for any comment in
support of the Palestinians in the occupied territories or
for visiting neighboring Arab states. One, Azmi Bishara, has
been put on trial twice for these offenses.
Meanwhile, Jewish MKs have been allowed to make the most
outrageous racist statements against Palestinian citizens,
mostly unchallenged.
Former cabinet minister Effi Eitam, for example, said back in
September: "The vast majority of West Bank Arabs must be
deported ... We will have to make an additional decision,
banning Israeli Arabs from the political system ... We have
cultivated a fifth column, a group of traitors of the first
degree." He was "warned" by the Attorney-General over his
comments (though he has expressed similar views several
times before), but remained unrepetant, calling the warning
an attempt to "silence" him.
The leader of the opposition and former prime minister,
Binyamin Netanyahu, the most popular politician in Israel
according to polls, gave voice to equally racist sentiments
this month when he stated that child allowance cuts he
imposed as finance minister in 2002 had had a "positive"
demographic effect by reducing the birth rate of Palestinian
citizens.
Arab MKs, of course, do not enjoy such indulgence when they
speak out, much more legitimately, in supporting their kin,
the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who are
suffering under Israel's illegal occupation. Arab MK Ahmed
Tibi, for example, was roundly condemned last week by the
Jewish parties, including the most leftwing, Meretz, when he
called on Fatah to "continue the struggle" to establish a
Palestinian state.
However, the campaign of intimidation by the government and
Jewish members of the Knesset has failed to silence the Arab
MKs or stop them visiting neighboring states, which is why
the pressure is being ramped up. If Erdan's bill becomes law
- which seems possible with government backing -- then the
Arab MKs and the minority they represent will either be cut
off from the rest of the Arab world once again (as they were
for the first two decades of Israel's existence, when a
military government was imposed on them) or threatened with
the revocation of their citizenship for disloyalty (a move,
it should be noted, that is illegal under international
law).
It may not be too fanciful to see the current legislation
eventually being extended to cover other "breaches of
loyalty," such as demanding democratic reforms of Israel or
denying that a Jewish state is democratic. Technically, this
is already the position as Israel's election law makes it
illegal for political parties, including Arab ones, to
promote a platform that denies Israel's existence as a
"Jewish and democratic" state.
Soon Arab MKs and their constituents may also be liable to
having their citizenship revoked for campaigning, as many
currently do, for a state of all its citizens. That
certainly is the view of the eminent Israeli historian Tom
Segev, who argued in the wake of the government's adoption
of the bill: "In practice, the proposed law is liable to
turn all Arabs into conditional citizens, after they have
already become, in many respects, second-class citizens. Any
attempt to formulate an alternative to the Zionist reality
is liable to be interpreted as a 'breach of faith' and a
pretext for stripping them of their citizenship."
But it is unlikely to end there. I hesitate to make another
prediction but, given the rapidity with which the others
have been realized, it may be time to hazard yet another
guess about where Israel is going next.
The other day I was at a checkpoint near Nablus, one of
several that are being converted by Israel into what look
suspiciously like international border crossings, even
though they fall deep inside Palestinian territory.
I had heard that Palestinian citizens of Israel were being
allowed to pass these checkpoints unhindered to enter cities
like Nablus to see relatives. (These familial connections
are a legacy of the 1948 war, when separated Palestinian
refugees ended up on different sides of the Green Line, and
also of marriages that were possible after 1967, when Israel
occupied the West Bank and Gaza, making social and business
contacts possible again.) But, when Palestinian citizens try
to leave these cities via the checkpoints, they are
invariably detained and issued letters by the Israeli
authorities warning them that they will be tried if caught
again visiting "enemy" areas.
In April last year, at a cabinet meeting at which the Israeli
government agreed to expel Hamas MPs from Jerusalem to the
West Bank, ministers discussed changing the classification
of the Palestinian Authority from a "hostile entity" to the
harsher category of an "enemy entity." The move was rejected
for the time being because, as one official told the Israeli
media: "There are international legal implications in such a
declaration, including closing off the border crossings,
that we don't want to do yet."
Is it too much to suspect that before long, after Israel has
completed the West Bank wall and its "border" terminals, the
Jewish state will classify visits by Palestinian citizens to
relatives as "visiting an enemy state"? And will such visits
be grounds for revoking citizenship, as they could be under
Erdan's bill if Palestinian citizens visit relatives in
Syria or Lebanon?
Lieberman doubtless knows the answer already.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in
Nazareth, Israel. His book,
Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and
Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press.
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