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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. |
