American Footprints » Israel

Already One State

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:55:58 +0000

Much like me, Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled don’t see much future for the two-state solution in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They argue, however, that a single state already exists:

“Instead of pursuing the mirage of a two-state solution, would-be peace makers should recognize the fact that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in fact constitute one state that has been in existence for nearly forty-five years, the longest lasting political formation in these territories since the Ottoman Empire. (The British Mandate for Palestine lasted thirty years; Israel in its pre-1967 borders lasted only nineteen years). The problem with that state, from a democratic, humanistic perspective, is that forty percent of its residents, the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, are non-citizens deprived of all civil and political rights. The solution to this problem is simple, although deeply controversial: establishing one secular, non-ethnic, democratic state with equal citizenship rights to all in the entire area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.”

What’s striking is how intuitive this is. U.S. Presidential Rick Santorum recently committed a gaffe by saying that all the inhabitants of the West Bank were Israelis because they lived under Israeli rule. The Israeli government refuses such a formulation because giving Palestinians in the Occupied Territories citizenship would, in fact, mean that Israel is no longer “the Jewish state” as that has usually been defined. However, the fact that Santorum’s is a mistake commonly made tells you a lot about the political configuration in practice on the ground.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Requiem for a Two-State Solution

Brian Ulrich — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 21:23:24 +0000

Carlo Strenger believes a two-state solution is no longer a viable option in the Arab-Israeli conflict:

“Nousseibeh suggested (in a recent book that) the Palestinians relinquish their struggle for statehood. He even asked them to accept that, for a long time, they would not have full political rights, and that they should settle for civic and human rights to make life as bearable as possible. His deeply pessimistic conclusion was that, given the realities, the human cost of continuing the struggle for a Palestinian state was too high…

“From a historical perspective, the two state solution’s demise was, maybe, inevitable. Except for six years, the Likud has been in power for the last thirty-five years, and the Likud never relinquished its dream of the greater land of Israel. When Rabin won elections for Prime Minister in 1992, both he and Peres felt that this was a last chance; they believed that what they would not achieve in Rabin’s term would not be achieved at all.

“Rabin had to govern, with a minority of the Knesset supporting him, and Israel’s right never felt that he had a mandate for the Oslo process. Netanyahu spoke at demonstrations where crowds held posters depicting Rabin as a Nazi. He was later recorded taking pride in having killed off the Oslo process.

“Now he can take partial credit for having killed the two state solution. The other half goes to the Palestinians: As Mahmoud Abbas said more than a year ago, the Palestinian’s greatest mistake was the second Intifada. Indeed, together with Hamas’ win of the elections in 2006 and the shelling of southern Israel, the Intifada’s horrible violence has made Israelis averse to taking further risks for peace.”

I am not the one to say whether Strenger is right. I would still like to believe it could work, but do not see a realistic chance of it happening under Netanyahu’s leadership. Whether two states remain possible depends on the combination of facts on the ground and the political will to alter them. I cannot judge the former, and perhaps given the latter, it might be better to say that it has entered a persistent vegetative state from which no recovery is foreseeable.

How one apportions blame depends largely on what you think happened in the diplomacy under Ehud Barak in 2000. I’m not even going to attempt to untangle that mass of conflicting assertions. Strenger is right that the Second Intifada strangled the Israeli peace camp, but that in turn flowed from a belief in Israeli perfidy during negotiations. The uprising’s most violent aspects were also the terrorist attacks on civilians inside Israel, and in the history of the conflict’s violence, one should not forget that Hamas only turned to those tactics and made them a key part of its struggle after Baruch Goldstein committed the Hebron massacre in 1994, a massacre which stemmed directly from the inclinations toward ethnic cleansing on the part of many in the settler movement which the Israeli state tries to control, but also supports with defense and infrastructure. What Hamas did, in other words, was escalate dirty warfare in the region, not introduce it.

Strenger also addresses the future:

“Our long-term task is to develop new models of dealing with the emerging reality. I wish I could say something clear and constructive, but for the time being I can’t. I have not yet seen realistic models other than the two state solution.

“The one state solution, at this point, is an empty concept, so is that of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation. For neither case can I imagine how the parliament of the greater Israel-Palestine would function, or how equality of all citizens with respect to security could be achieved: I agree with Sari Nousseibeh that Jewish history from the Pogroms through the Holocaust, from the 1948 war to that of 1973, is too traumatic for Israelis to relinquish control of security for a long time to come…

“I am afraid that Israel will lose many friends in the gradual process of finalizing its sovereignty over the West Bank. Netanyahu and Lieberman have already aggravated many politicians and supporters of Israel, ranging from Hillary Clinton to Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. And they have deepened the alienation many Jews in the Diaspora feel towards the current government’s policies that they cannot accept.”

I actually think that what will happen is that, within 10-20 years, Israel will impose Netanyahu’s vision of disconnected cantons with nominal sovereignty under Israeli domination. The path toward any one-state solution depends on demographics and, perhaps, the fate of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Demography and the Jewish State

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 21:48:38 +0000

Matthew Yglesias argues that population statistics will not compel Israel to adopt any particular policy toward the Palestinians. Here’s what he foresees:

“The Israeli government will disavow any claim to sovereignty over the Gaza Strip. They’ll count on public opinion in Egypt to ensure some level of integration across the Gaza-Egypt land border, and then they’ll wash their hands of the whole thing. Nobody’s going to give West Bank Palestinians the vote (if anything, the trends in Israeli politics point toward diminished civil rights for the Palestinians who already have Israeli citizenship) but this will solve the Jewish majority problem. That, however, is just a reminder that there really is no Jewish majority problem. The problem is that the Israeli government wants to exercise sovereignty over the West Bank without granting citizenship to its Arab residents.”

The idea of Palestinian cantonments in the West Bank can also be seen as an avenue by which Israel can functionally be a Jewish state while still retaining control of the Occupied Territories. Along these general lines, though, I remember that when I lived in Jerusalem from 2006-2008, I often heard assertions that the demographic argument was cooked up by Palestinians and leftists based on false premises to weaken Israeli resolve, and this was apparently a common argument in the right-wing nationalist media. I doubt this line of thinking has gone away in the past three years, and even though Prime Minister Netanyahu presumably understands the situation, a lot of Israeli public opinion will clearly never buy demography-based arguments.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Netanyahu’s Border Negotiation Gambit

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 21:44:47 +0000

Right now, the biggest moving issue in the Arab-Israeli conflict is the push by the Palestinian Authority to be recognized as a state by the United Nations. President Obama, of course, has refused to use this as leverage on the settlement issue, and promised to use all the U.S.’s diplomatic clout to try and prevent it. In the context of these developments, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered this:

“Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants to negotiate borders with the Palestinian Authority (PA), according to local media reports, in an attempt to head off a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations next month.

“The exact details of Netanyahu’s proposal are unclear. Israel’s Army Radio and Channel 2 television both reported on Tuesday that Netanyahu was willing to hold talks based on the pre-war 1967 borders…

“AFP quoted an unnamed Israeli official who said the borders would be the basis for talks.

“But a separate report from the Reuters news agency, quoting another unnamed official, said the proposal would not mention 1967 borders, though it could include borders ‘that would be difficult for Israel to accept’.

“The reports say Netanyahu would agree to the talks if the PA drops its UN bid.

“They also say that Netanyahu will demand the PA recognise Israel as a ‘Jewish state,’ something it has publicly refused to do – though Al Jazeera’s publication of The Palestine Papers revealed that Palestinian officials accepted that demand in private.”

Frankly, I don’t trust Netanyahu. Anyone can agree to negotiate, as long as they don’t actually agree on anything. I also wonder if Netanyahu is making a gesture toward the Israeli center in the event that ongoing economic protests there lead to elections.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Politics of Turkish-Israeli Relations

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 15:37:52 +0000

Turkish politicians clearly feel that accusing opponents of being pro-Israel is a winning tactic:

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, used a campaign speech in Istanbul on Sunday to slam opponents for failing to stand up to what he sees as Israeli bullying. Mr Erdogan is a religiously conservative Muslim known for his outspoken criticism of Israel.

In his speech, Mr Erdogan said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, had admitted that he would not have allowed last year’s Gaza flotilla to sail…

“Mr Kilicdaroglu shot back, claiming that Mr Erdogan, who is expected to win the elections, had cosied up to Israel. He alleged that the prime minister proposed that an Israeli company receive a Turkish government contract to clear mines along the border with Syria. Later he called Mr Erdogan the ‘co-leader of the Greater Middle East Project’, a purported scheme by the US to reshape the region that is often cited by Turkish secularists as evidence that Mr Erdogan is backed by Washington. The plan supposedly props up Turkey as a model state for the concept of moderate Islam.

“In a meeting with reporters in the southern province of Mersin yesterday, Mr Kilicdaroglu accessed Mr Erdogan of secretly sending one of his ministers to Israel to secure a deal for a Turkish businessman close to the prime minister. He gave no further details.

“The public exchange shows the depth of the rift between Turkey and Israel that now extends from the halls of government to the bazaar. No party in Turkey has dared campaign on a pro-Israel platform.”

Actually, it doesn’t sound like being pro-American is that great in Turkish politics right now.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Ha’aretz on Qatar’s Emir

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:03:46 +0000

I haven’t done a close check of even the English media, but sense that the Israelis are having a field day with the Wikileaks cables, claiming that they vindicate Israeli policy in multiple ways. This Ha’aretz lede is an example:

“Israelis can’t be blamed for mistrusting Arabs, according to remarks by the ruler of the Arab state of Qatar released by the WikiLeaks group in the latest of a string of surprising revelations.

“Qatar’s Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, made the comments in a meeting with U.S. Senator John Kerry on February 23. A report of their discussions, obtained by the WikiLeaks group, was filed by America’s Ambassador to Qatar Joseph LeBaron.”

That summary is based entirely on the following:

“The Amir cautioned that the Syrians will not accept everything the U.S. proposes, stressing that the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights continues and that the return of this land to Syria is paramount for Damascus. The Amir observed that the ‘Syrians have lost confidence in the U.S. and that the Israelis now have the upper hand in the region because of the support of the United States.’ The Israeli leaders need to represent the people of Israel, who themselves do not trust Arabs. The Amir said this is understandable and ‘we can’t blame them’ because the Israelis have been ‘under threat’ for a long time…

“‘What has changed, continued the Amir, is that Arabs ‘for sure’ now want two states — Israel and Palestine. When you consider that many in the region perceive that Hizballah drove Israel out of Lebanon and Hamas kicked them (at least initially) out ‘of the small piece of land called Gaza,’ it is actually surprising that the Israelis still want peace. The region, however, is still ‘far away’ from peace, concluded the Amir.”

First off, I don’t totally understand what Emir Hamad is getting at with his surprise that the Israelis are still interested in peace, though if there’s a general tendency to use “Israelis” and “Arabs” as shorthand for the political leaders of the various countries it could related to such leaders’ fears of looking weak on the regional stage. Taken as a whole, however, and especially within the context of the entire cable, this is not some general admission of Arab perfidy, but rather a simple assessment of the effects of conflict on public opinion and a recognition that democratically elected leaders are more representative of such opinion.

The emir also asserted that Hamas would accept the 1967 borders, but would not say so publicly because of its reliance on popular support. That same point was also made in this related cable, which also explicitly warned against a Fatah-only approach. None of this made it into the Ha’aretz article.

Marc Lynch has called attention to the way in which lots of people are just using the cables to support their own existing ideas, with his focus being Iran. This is another example of that.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Israeli Foreign Policy, 1967-1971

Brian Ulrich — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 05:35:46 +0000

I arrived at this year’s Middle East Studies Association annual meeting later than usual because of a combination of its location in San Diego, and the opposite end of the country from me, and my Sunday afternoon presentation time, which necessitates my missing class Monday. I decided not to miss Friday, as well, and so didn’t get here until late last night.

My approach to large conferences seems different from most people I know, who attend almost exclusively sessions in their research specialization, however they define it. I definitely pick up some of those, but am often more drawn to sessions in other areas, particularly those I am responsible for teaching or which seem important for outreach purposes, which feature top scholars in the field. I figure this gives me a way to keep up with what’s really happening in these other fields, based not only on the papers themselves, but on the audience reaction to them. In fact, the one session today which I went to because of its proximity to my core areas of expertise was the one from which I didn’t get that much, simply because the papers, while clearly excellent in their own right, didn’t really engage their material in the way I expected them to, and in fact did so in a way that I’ve simply never found that engaging.

On the other hand, the session “At a Crossroads: Moments of Decision in Israeli Foreign Policy”, which featured papers by Oxford Avi Raz, UC-San Diego’s Gershon Shafir, and UCLA’s Leonard Binder, definitely provided me with useful information and perspectives. I don’t feel comfortable explaining Binder’s, which I could tell was a response to a Stephen Walt book where I know most of the facts of Middle Eastern history and the issues involved in the debate, but not in detail how the two relate to each other, if you take my meaning. I will say I’m dubious of his central contention, which is that Arab states in the past few decades have tended to form alliances with those they perceive as threatening, which opposes Walt’s traditional realist views that states seek allies to counter threatening powers.

I will, however, call attention to Raz’s paper on Israeli attempts to limit the repatriation of refugees to the West Bank after the Six Day War, which clearly indicates that in contrast to the idea that the Israeli government was instantly ready to return occupied land for peace, the government of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol saw the area as a potential future part of Israel, with a desire to limit the Arab population accordingly to preserve the Jewish demographic advantage.

Gershon Shafir’s work also questioned the Israeli desire for peace by examining the reasons for Israel’s refusal to engage with the 1971 Sadat Initiative, concluding that two key elements were the desire to keep settlements in the Sinai Peninsula and the weakness of an Israeli peace camp in the wake of what was seen in Israel as a war of necessity against Arab aggression. One of his final points was that the old canard that the Arabs “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” applied just as much to Israel. The discussant, Concordia University’s Neil Caplan, was unenthusiastic about that formulation, suggesting that the “missed opportunity” idea usually just served the political ends of whomever was saying an opportunity was missed, but Shafir countered by saying his only qualm about the term regarding 1971 was that the opportunity wasn’t “missed” so much as “avoided.” I suspect the Arab League proposal that’s been floating around since 2002 will one day be added to the list.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Silwan Protest Tent

Brian Ulrich — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 18:12:06 +0000

In the spirit of Wednesday’s post, here’s another example of Israel cracking down on non-violent resistance:

“Jerusalem city council is threatening to expel a Palestinian and raze his home if he does not remove a protest tent from a strife-torn district on the city’s eastern side, locals said on Friday.

“Residents in Silwan told AFP that city officials had delivered a ‘demolition order’ late on Thursday, ordering the removal of a tent set up to protest against municipal plans to level 22 homes to make way for a new tourism park.

“‘They told Naim al-Ruweidi, who owns the land, that he must take the tent down by 8:00 am on Sunday,’ Fakhri Abu Diab, one of the protest leaders, told AFP.

“‘They said that if he didn’t do it, they would expel him and his family from Jerusalem and demolish his house.’”

Al-Ruweidi is protesting plans to build a tourist park on the site, which is associated with the “City of David” archaeological site, the Jerusalem which served as the capital of ancient Judah. The archaeology is not neutral, however, in that archaeologists not driven by Biblical considerations almost unanimously consider it unlikely that the site hosted a capital of a “United Monarchy” as implied by the name, and in any case claiming it for the Israeli heritage is an example, more defensible than most, of still an example, of emphasizing the city’s Jewish heritage so as to buttress Israel’s claims to it. I’ve been to the City of David, and before the tour, which is actually interesting and well-done, you watch a video on the history of Jerusalem which simply omits everything that happened between the Bar Kokhba Revolt and the Zionist movement even though the city’s most recognizable monument, the Dome of the Rock, looms over this very neighborhood.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Abdallah Abu Rahme

Brian Ulrich — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:47:24 +0000

Matthew Yglesias correctly notes that non-violent resistance requires an audience, so I’ll call attention to Israel’s conviction of Abdallah Abu Rahme:

“One of the leading figures behind a recent wave of non-violent protests against occupation has been sentenced by an Israeli military court to one year in prison.

“The court also ordered Abdallah Abu Rahme this week to pay a fine of 5,000 shekels (Dh5,140) after he was found guilty in August of incitement and organising and participating in illegal demonstrations…

“Permits are required for demonstrations of 10 or more people, according to the Israeli military law that governs much of the West Bank. That law was cited as justification to arrest Mr Rahme and some of the dozens of people who have protested against the separation barrier, which stretches hundreds of kilometres and reaches beyond Israel’s internationally recognised boundaries and deep inside the West Bank.”

This sort of thing is hardly new among Palestinians, though I suspect many will perceive it as such. Long before intifada there was sumud, or “clinging,” which was primarily nonviolent.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Censoring the Nakba

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:33:53 +0000

Israel’s Ministry of Education is ordering teachers not to attend a workshop that promotes including the facts of Palestinian dispossession in classes:

“Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

“Israel’s education ministry issued the advisory after Zochrot – a Jewish group that seeks to raise awareness among Israeli Jews of the events of 1948, referred to as the ‘nakba’ by Palestinians – organised a workshop for primary school teachers…

“The warning is the latest move by the education ministry, headed by Gideon Saar, a member of the prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, to use school curricula to advance a more strident Zionist agenda.

“In March, for instance, the ministry banned Israeli schools from distributing a booklet for children about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Critics had objected to parts of the declaration that refer to freedom of religion and protection of asylum-seekers.”

As you can gather from this short excerpt, the Israeli government has a great amount of power over Israeli society, power which is used to promote the educational agenda favored by the current government. Under Netanyahu, that means attempting to indoctrinate students with right-wing Israeli nationalism.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Sic Transit Zion

Brian Ulrich — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:17:14 +0000

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is becoming openly pessimistic about the two-state solution:

“Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said on Thursday he feared the concept of a two-state solution to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians ‘is beginning to erode.’

“‘I would like to express concern that the situation is very difficult,’ he said in remarks at a Washington think tank.

“‘The concept of a Palestinian state … with an Israeli state, I fear, is beginning to erode,’ he said.”

What makes me pessimistic is not just the current situation on the ground, but the direction the current Israeli government is pursuing. Matt Duss addressed some problems here.
(Crossposted to my blog)

The Devil’s Not the Details

Brian Ulrich — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 03:11:37 +0000

In the wake of yesterday’s assault on the Gaza aid flotilla, the most important tactic of Israel’s defenders, such as including the American government, has been to focus on the details of the events which transpired aboard the Mavi Marmara in the early stages of the confrontation. The Israelis argue that their military was pursuing something like peaceful crowd control until they were attacked by activists aboard the ship, and pointing to the two seriously and eight lightly injured soldiers, insist they fired in self-defense.

The Israeli preference, in other words, is to have a discussion about rules of engagement. In attempting to focus the international discussion there, they are also implicitly asking their critics to somewhat carelessly accept the premise that the flotilla represented a force which required a military assault in international waters. If the Mavi Marmara was something like a transport vessel carrying an enemy guerrilla force, then what took place aboard her decks loses its power.

No one, however, really contends that the activists attacked the soldiers first. That bears emphasizing, because the Israeli position also requires acceptance of the fact that scrambling the communications of and forcibly boarding a ship in international waters is not a form of attack against which the activists with their makeshift weapons sought in vain to defend themselves, only to be smashed by the superior Israeli firepower. I’m sure Israeli commanders did hope to achieve their objectives without bloodshed, but the logic and arc of the events they set in motion carried that possibility from their conception.

Despite half-baked claims to the contrary, this was not, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed today, “a violent force”, and the Israelis have apparently found no weapons to trumpet before the cameras. Instead, they have found a bunch of humanitarian aid which they are allegedly transferring to Gaza themselves. I would love for someone to examine that situation, and determine how much of it was in violation of Israel’s draconian blockade of the territory, and consequently how dangerous it can really be if Israel’s now just passing it on.

For the real story here is not about a military confrontation at sea, but about an ongoing siege the consequences of which for the Gaza Strip have been well documented elsewhere. If Israel were just checking ships and convoys for weapons and then waving them on, this flotilla would not have existed. The violence yesterday was but an extension of the ongoing violence of siege which does not protect Israel, but makes Gaza into a giant internment camp in which conditions are becoming increasingly desperate. In this context, who did what to whom once the Israeli assault was in progress simply doesn’t matter.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Assault on the Freedom Flotilla

Brian Ulrich — Mon, 31 May 2010 14:05:49 +0000

Israeli military forces have used lethal force against peaceful humanitarian activists in international waters:

“Israeli naval commandos shot dead at least 16 people and wounded over 30 on Monday morning, as they attacked an unarmed humanitarian and civilian flotilla – in international waters – trying to bring desperately needed aid to Gaza. The death toll was expected to rise.

“Chaos, confusion and outrage surround the exact circumstances under which the Free Gaza (FG) flotilla was stormed with live footage from a Turkish TV channel showing masked and heavily armed Israeli soldiers commandeering one of the six (FG) boats, the â€˜Mavi Marmaraâ€™.

“An Al Jazeera correspondent who was on board, reported that Israeli troops used live ammunition during the operation. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) countered that some of those on board attacked soldiers with sharp objects, including knives.

“The organisers disputed this, saying the IDF opened fire as soon as they boarded the boats.

“It is uncertain how the Turkish channel managed to air the live footage. Israeli authorities had scrambled the boatsâ€™ communications system shortly before the commando raid in a bid to prevent the crews from using navigational equipment and contacting the crews on the other boats.”

Juan Cole suggests that the shooting may have come when Israeli soldiers overreacted, but frankly any time you set up this sort of military encounter you have to expect the possibility for fatalities caused by the side with all the weapons. This was a brutal attempt to enforce a brutal and inhumane siege of one of the world’s most impoverished patches of land.

(Crossposted to my blog)

The Timing of It

Brian Ulrich — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 19:02:55 +0000

I’ve been too busy during the week to follow the details of anything happening in the Middle East, but this doesn’t surprise me:

“Obama is said to have still been bristling at the slight of VP Joe Biden when the latter was in Israel (Netanyahu insisted on supporting continued colonial settlements on theWest Bank.the form of an announcement of the building of more homes on occupied Palestinian land. The Palestine Authority leadership, including President Mahmoud Abbas, refuses to restart peace negotiations as long as Netanyahu refuses to commit to a freeze of Israeli colonization efforts. Abbas had been about to set aside his objections and begin proximity talks when Netanyahu’s government announced a substantial settlement expansion. And they made the announcement on the very day of Joe Biden’s arrival to kick off the talks with the Palestinians. Predictably, the Palestinians pulled out of the talks.”

Does anyone else think the timing was specifically to scuttle the talks with the Palestinians while trying to make it look like it was their fault? That was Netanyahu’s pattern during his last tenure as prime minister, when the issue was the Oslo Process, and he seems to be up to the same tricks.

I’ve recently read some suggestions that Netanyahu is acting this way because of his far-right coalition. That’s possible, I suppose, as reading coalition effects on the overall conduct of government isn’t an exact science. However, just as I felt convinced Ehud Olmert had been driven by demographic projections to sincerely want an end to the conflict based on the two-state solution, so Netanyahu’s career pattern seems to be to pursue a maximal Israeli nationalist agenda to whatever extent he can get away with in a given climate.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Sheikh Jarrah

Brian Ulrich — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 21:46:44 +0000

I wouldn’t call it a revolution, but events in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah are starting to put the Israeli left back in the public consciousness. The story goes back to last summer:

“A mixed group of Israeli and international human rights activists have been gathering weekly since August in this residential neighborhood to protest the eviction of two extended Palestinian families – a total of 53 people – from the homes they had occupied since 1956. Originally refugees from areas that became part of Israel after the 1948 war, the families were settled in the abandoned houses, then under Jordanian control, by UN refugee authorities…

“The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the Sheikh Jarrah houses had belonged to Jews before 1948, when the city was divided between Jordan and the new state of Israel. The court ruling paved the way for the evictions, which were carried out by Israeli border police who broke into the homes in the pre-dawn hours of August 2, 2009, and evicted the families by force. One of the Palestinian families has since lived in a tent pitched nearby.”

Let’s first note what this shows about what counts as legal in Israel. A Jew is permitted to reclaim land in Jerusalem from before the war, and people who have lived there for half a century are rounded up and evicted in the middle of a night. A Palestinian with property in Israel they had to abandon during 1948, however, is probably not even allowed to enter Israel.

What’s getting attention in Israel is the police treatment of protesters, which itself has spawned a larger protest:

“In Sheikh Jarrah this week the demonstration was even bigger than those of previous weeks. 350 demonstrators, amongst them former minister and Knesset Chair Avraham Burg, former minister Yossi Sarid, MK Muhamad Barak’e and former MK Uri Avneri, gathered in a park near the neighborhood to protest the racist evictions taking place there in spite of intensifying police oppression of the struggle (see last week’s report). Two demonstrators offered the police officer in charge, Avi Cohen, a big bouquet of flowers, thanking him for helping the struggle gain nationwide attention by arresting about 20 activists every week. Cohen refused to accept the flowers and they were left at his feet.

“After about an hour of demonstrating in a tense atmosphere, demonstrators started marching towards the neighborhood. Border and Riot policemen stopped the march, while still allowing settlers and visitors of the Shimon Hat’sadik Tomb through. After a quarter of an hour police attacked the demonstration, arresting about 15 people and beating on others. The demonstration continued for another two and half hours, with police occasionally beating people and shoving them back, but attempting to avoid too many more arrests. The day ended with 22 arrested.

“During the demonstration it became apparent that settlers were attacking Palestinians inside the neighborhood, and two residents required medial care. At the same time police raided Palestinian homes and arrested people who participated in the demonstration and then went home. The demonstrators’ protests outside against the police’s siding with the violent settlers were met with yet more police brutality.”

The first arrests, it should be noted, were ruled illegal by Israel’s Supreme Court. Beyond the issues in Sheikh Jarrah and East Jerusalem more broadly, many Israelis are concerned about a long-term deterioration in human rights in the country. The crackdown on visas for NGO workers in the Palestinian territories also probably represents part of this.

(Crossposted to my blog)