MODERATING VOICE: The eldest of eight, Mohammed Omer has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed by Israeli soldiers. Still he is a moderating voice. (AN photo)

John Pilger | The Guardian
Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of £5,000 with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. His citation reads: “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.” The eldest of eight, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, “he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel”.

Getting Mohammed to London to receive his prize was a major diplomatic operation. Israel has perfidious control over Gaza’s borders, and only with a Dutch embassy escort was he allowed out. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel’s infamous security organisation. Mohammed was told to turn off his mobile and remove the battery. He asked if he could call his embassy escort and was told forcefully he could not. A man stood over his luggage, picking through his documents. “Where’s the money?” he demanded. Mohammed produced some US dollars. “Where is the English pound you have?”

“I realised,” said Mohammed, “he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn prize. I told him I didn’t have it with me. ‘You are lying’, he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: ‘Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.’ He said, ‘This is nothing compared with what you will see now.’ He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, ‘Why are you bringing perfumes?’ I replied, ‘They are gifts for the people I love’. He said, ‘Oh, do you have love in your culture?’

“As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror.”

An ambulance was called and told to take Mohammed to a hospital, but only after he had signed a statement indemnifying the Israelis from his suffering in their custody. The Palestinian medic refused, courageously, and said he would contact the Dutch embassy escort. Alarmed, the Israelis let the ambulance go. The Israeli response has been the familiar line that Mohammed was “suspected” of smuggling and “lost his balance” during a “fair” interrogation, Reuters reported yesterday.

Israeli human rights groups have documented the routine torture of Palestinians by Shin Bet agents with “beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation”. Amnesty has long reported the widespread use of torture by Israel, whose victims emerge as mere shadows of their former selves. Some never return. Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, who receive barely a fraction of the kind of coverage given to the BBC’s Alan Johnston.

The Dutch government says it is shocked by Mohammed Omer’s treatment. The former ambassador Jan Wijenberg said: “This is by no means an isolated incident, but part of a long-term strategy to demolish Palestinian social, economic and cultural life … I am aware of the possibility that Mohammed Omer might be murdered by Israeli snipers or bomb attack in the near future.”

While Mohammed was receiving his prize in London, the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Proser, was publicly complaining that many Britons no longer appreciated the uniqueness of Israel’s democracy. Perhaps they do now.

This smuggling tunnel was built 8 years ago. (Photo Propa Images)

By Hiyam Noir and Fady Adwan - Gaza

The smuggling of goods through tunnels beneath the surface of Rafah in Gaza Strip continues, in the eighth day of the tattered ceasefire between the Palestinian armed resistance and the Israeli occupant.

The Israelis have closed the crossings for legal imported goods,amidst exchange of accusations of who first violated the truce agreement. Mahmoud Zahar prominent leader of Hamas said in a public statement on Saturday that “Hamas will arrest anyone who make an attempt to break the cease-fire with the Israelis, and will confiscate their weapons. The Israelis have breached the cease fire throughout the Gaza Strip seven times, some of the shootings have seriously injured Palestinian farmers. In retaliation operations the Palestinian resistance fired a barrel of rockets across the border into Israel.

Since September 2000, the smuggling tunnels has functioned as an import of a significant amount of basic supplies, including medicine, food, clothes, auto -spare-parts, medical equipment, electronic items, foreign currency, cigarettes and weapons.

The Palestinians still have to rely on smuggled victualled from Egypt, food, medicine and other basic supplies through the underground tunnels, the life-nerves, which are stretching from Gaza Strip to the inside of the Egyptian border. The smuggling tunnel featured in our reportage, was built 8 years ago, in the beginning of the second Palestinian Intifada, the cost of building this tunnel is estimated to over $50.000. While working in this environment, in the cold, sometimes trapped, suffocating under water or collapsing walls of dirt and concrete, 82 people have died. It took three months to finish a hard and dangerous, 24 hours make shift work.

The excavation of smuggling tunnels in the Rafah area began in 1982, subsequent to the division of the Rafah city between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. The average smuggling tunnel is approximately 500 meters in length, and 20 to 25 meters deep. The tunnels may be equipped with wood-paneling, electrical infrastructure, communications gear, and rudimentary elevators in vertical shaft, to transport people or the freight of goods. The openings of the tunnels are often located within private Egyptian homes or other buildings, near or next to the border with Egypt.

The Oslo Accords of 1994-95, granted the Palestinian Authority control over the majority of the Gaza Strip. However, the Accords stipulated that the Israelis would retain control of a narrow strip of land (known as the “Philadelphi Route”) between the area under Palestinian control, and the border with Egypt. The route is 11 km (6.5 miles) long and approximately 100 metres (330 feet) wide. In the Israelis “peace agreement” with Egypt, the Egyptians signed a granted security control over Egyptian territorial land, running 70 meters east of the Philadelphi Road.

In August 2004, the Egyptians had knowledge what type of weapons being smuggled and could have prevented the smuggling of RPG’s into the Gaza Strip. It is also believed that Egypt wanted..Katyusha rockets to be smuggled in via the tunnels. The Israelis accused Egypt to use the weapons smuggling as a measure against the Israelis. In September 2004, the Israelis concluded that the Egyptians is supporting the Palestinian resistance against the Israelis which has enabled Hamas and other Palestinian political organizations to use Sinai as a logistic rear miles away from the fighting front. However it is also believed that the Israelis have used the Rafah tunnels as a pretext to create a depopulated ‘buffer zone’ along the Gaza-Egyptian border,which resulted in the destruction of 1,600 homes by September 2004.

In August 2005, the Israelis said that the Egyptians deployment of its forces along the border with Gaza Strip to halt smuggling, was a strategic Trojan Horse. The Israelis said that Egypt paved the way for a complete dismissal of the 1978 peace treaty with Cairo. The Cairo treaty stipulates that only one division of Egyptian armed forces, is allowed to be stationed in the Sinai peninsula, and only up to 50 km east of the Suez Canal.

Civil Egyptian police equipped with light weapons, were permitted along the Egyptian side to a depth of 40 km of the border with the Israelis. The Israelis said that it does not matter the small force, but they made a strategic mistake. The Israelis did not have any strategic depth,150 kilometers from the border or 15 km would be significant in an opening shot of a war.

In October 2006, Egypt threatened to increase its military presence by 5,000 troops along the Gaza Strip border. The additional Egyptian security members of the police central security force, were slated to join approximately 750 border guards. An Egyptian official, claimed that the deployment would occur in anticipation of a possible Israeli counter-terrorist operation that could include, bombing of the weapons smuggling tunnels.

In February 2007,Yuval Diskin the Shin Bet Chief, determined that Egyptian security forces were failing to stop the smuggling of weapons from the Sinai Desert to the Gaza Strip. Discin said that” If Egypt starts to thwart the transfer of weapons, then that will slow down the resistance buildup in Gaza Strip and delay a military operation there. The Egyptians have a key in their hands and they know it.”!

The Israelis constructed a wall of 7-9 meter along the Philadelphi Route. In addition,the IOF detonated explosives along the route to cause collapse of tunnels in the area. Canals were also dugged in an attempt to flood the tunnels, with sea water. In addition, the IOF integrated “several sophisticated systems”, inserted explosive material into the ground, including sensor systems that defined the depth of the tunnels. In January 23, 2008, the Palestinian resistance destroyed several parts of the Israeli built wall, dividing Gaza Strip and Egypt in the town of Rafah. Thousands of starving Gazans moved across the Philadelphi Route into Egypt, in search of food and basic supplies.

Hamas has excavated tunnels for operations against Israeli posts and population centers close to the Gaza Strip border fence. The tunnels allow the Palestinian resistance to infiltrate into Israeli territory and then return to the Gaza Strip. In June 25, 2006, members of the Palestinian resistance utilized an “infiltration” tunnel to carry out an operation against a Israeli post near the Sufa Crossing. Two Israelis were killed in this operation and Gilad Shalit was captured.

There are also designed military tunnels as safe passages for operatives in the Palestinian resistance in battle zones. Such tunnels are typically located between buildings. Hamas has also populated “ambush” tunnels with camouflaged IEDs and utilized underground (concrete) firing positions and offensive capabilities, hidden rocket launch sites which is activated via a delay system concealed in vegetation or between buildings.

Back in November 2000, the Israeli Radio reported that weapons and ammunition were smuggled into Gaza Strip and the President Yasser Arafat’s airport, via Arafat’s private air plane. The weapons and ammunition were distributed to Fatah Tanzim in Gaza Strip. Worth notice, even when the Israelis bombed the Gaza airport, and it was closed for traffic, the Israelis continued to permit the air plane to land and take off, and no inspection was done by the Israelis.

- Hiyam Noir and Fady Adwan contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
The Independent of London

The dark-haired 22-year-old in black T-shirt, blue jeans and red Crocs is understandably hesitant as he sits at a picnic table in the incongruous setting of a beauty spot somewhere in Israel. We know his name and if we used it he would face a criminal investigation and a probable prison sentence.

The birds are singing as he describes in detail some of what he did and saw others do as an enlisted soldier in Hebron. And they are certainly criminal: the incidents in which Palestinian vehicles are stopped for no good reason, the windows smashed and the occupants beaten up for talking back – for saying, for example, they are on the way to hospital; the theft of tobacco from a Palestinian shopkeeper who is then beaten “to a pulp” when he complains; the throwing of stun grenades through the windows of mosques as people prayed. And worse.

The young man left the army only at the end of last year, and his decision to speak is part of a concerted effort to expose the moral price paid by young Israeli conscripts in what is probably the most problematic posting there is in the occupied territories. Not least because Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the military, 24/7, to protect the notably hardline Jewish settlers there. He says firmly that he now regrets what repeatedly took place during his tour of duty.

But his frequent, if nervous, grins and giggles occasionally show just a hint of the bravado he might have displayed if boasting of his exploits to his mates in a bar. Repeatedly he turns to the older former soldier who has persuaded him to speak to us, and says as if seeking reassurance: “You know how it is in Hebron.”

The older ex-soldier is Yehuda Shaul, who does indeed “know how it is in Hebron”, having served in the city in a combat unit at the peak of the intifada, and is a founder of Shovrim Shtika, or Breaking the Silence, which will publish tomorrow the disturbing testimonies of 39 Israelis – including this young man – who served in the army in Hebron between 2005 and 2007. They cover a range of experiences, from anger and powerlessness in the face of often violent abuse of Arabs by hardline Jewish settlers, through petty harassment by soldiers, to soldiers beating up Palestinian residents without provocation, looting homes and shops, and opening fire on unarmed demonstrators.

The maltreatment of civilians under occupation is common to many armies in the world – including Britain’s, from Northern Ireland to Iraq.

But, paradoxically, few if any countries apart from Israel have an NGO like Breaking the Silence, which seeks – through the experiences of the soldiers themselves – as its website puts it “to force Israeli society to address the reality which it created” in the occupied territories.

NAYEF HASHLAMOUN/REUTERS/CORBIS Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian student during a protest in Hebron in 2005. Hebron is the only Palestinian city whose centre is directly controlled by the Israeli military

The Israeli public was given an unflattering glimpse of military life in Hebron this year when a young lieutenant in the Kfir Brigade called Yaakov Gigi was given a 15-month jail sentence for taking five soldiers with him to hijack a Palestinian taxi, conduct what the Israeli media called a “rampage” in which one of the soldiers shot and wounded a Palestinian civilian who just happened to be in the wrong place, and then tried to lie his way out of it.

In a confessional interview with the Israeli Channel Two investigative programme Uvda, Gigi, who had previously been in many ways a model soldier, talked of “losing the human condition” in Hebron. Asked what he meant, he replied: “To lose the human condition is to become an animal.”

The Israeli military did not prosecute the soldier who had fired on the Palestinian, as opposed to Gigi. But the military insists “that the events that occurred within the Kfir Brigade are highly unusual”.

But as the 22-year-old soldier, also in the Kfir Brigade, confirms in his testimony to Breaking the Silence, it seems that the event may not have been exceptional. Certainly, our interview tells us, he was “many times” in groups that commandeered taxis, seated the driver in the back, and told him to direct them to places “where they hate the Jews” in order to “make a balagan” – Hebrew for “big mess”.

Then there is the inter- clan Palestinian fight: “We were told to go over there and find out what was happening. Our [platoon] commander was a bit screwed in the head. So anyway, we would locate houses, and he’d tell us: ‘OK, anyone you see armed with stones or whatever, I don’t care what – shoot.’ Everyone would think it’s the clan fight…” Did the company commander know? “No one knew. Platoon’s private initiative, these actions.”

Did you hit them? “Sure, not just them. Anyone who came close … Particularly legs and arms. Some people also sustained abdominal hits … I think at some point they realised it was soldiers, but they were not sure. Because they could not believe soldiers would do this, you know.”

Or using a 10-year-old child to locate and punish a 15-year-old stone-thrower: “So we got hold of just some Palestinian kid nearby, we knew that he knew who it had been. Let’s say we beat him a little, to put it mildly, until he told us. You know, the way it goes when your mind’s already screwed up, and you have no more patience for Hebron and Arabs and Jews there.

“The kid was really scared, realising we were on to him. We had a commander with us who was a bit of a fanatic. We gave the boy over to this commander, and he really beat the shit out of him … He showed him all kinds of holes in the ground along the way, asking him: ‘Is it here you want to die? Or here?’ The kid goes, ‘No, no!’

“Anyway, the kid was stood up, and couldn’t stay standing on his own two feet. He was already crying … And the commander continues, ‘Don’t pretend’ and kicks him some more. And then [name withheld], who always had a hard time with such things, went in, caught the squad commander and said, ‘Don’t touch him any more, that’s it.’ The commander goes, ‘You’ve become a leftie, what?’ And he answers, ‘No, I just don’t want to see such things.’

“We were right next to this, but did nothing. We were indifferent, you know. OK. Only after the fact you start thinking. Not right away. We were doing such things every day … It had become a habit…

“And the parents saw it. The commander ordered [the mother], ‘Don’t get any closer.’ He cocked his weapon, already had a bullet inside. She was frightened. He put his weapon literally inside the kid’s mouth. ‘Anyone gets close, I kill him. Don’t bug me. I kill. I have no mercy.’ So the father … got hold of the mother and said, ‘Calm down, let them be, so they’ll leave him alone.’”

Not every soldier serving in Hebron becomes an “animal”. Iftach Arbel, 23, from an upper-middle class, left-of-centre home in Herzylia, served in Hebron as a commander just before the withdrawal from Gaza, when he thinks the army wanted to show it could be tough with settlers, too. And many of the testimonies, including Mr Arbel’s, describe how the settlers educate children as young as four to throw stones at Palestinians, attack their homes and even steal their possessions. To Mr Arbel, the Hebron settlers are “pure evil” and the only solution is “to remove the settlers”.

He believes it would be possible even within these constraints to treat Palestinians better. He adds: “We did night activity. Choose a house at random, on the aerial photo, so as to practise combat routine and all, which is instructive for the soldiers, I mean, I’m all for it. But then at midnight you wake someone up and turn his whole house upside down with everyone sleeping on the mattresses and all.”

But Mr Arbel says that most soldiers are some way between his own extreme and that of the most violent. From just two of his fellow testifiers, you can see what he means.

As one said: “We did all kinds of experiments to see who could do the best split in Abu Snena. We would put [Palestinians] against the wall, make like we were checking them, and ask them to spread their legs. Spread, spread, spread, it was a game to see who could do it best. Or we would check who can hold his breath for longest.

“Choke them. One guy would come, make like he was checking them, and suddenly start yelling like they said something and choke them … Block their airways; you have to press the adams apple. It’s not pleasant. Look at the watch as you’re doing it, until he passes out. The one who takes longest to faint wins.”

And theft as well as violence. “There’s this car accessory shop there. Every time, soldiers would take a tape-disc player, other stuff. This guy, if you go ask him, will tell you plenty of things that soldiers did to him.

“A whole scroll-full … They would raid his shop regularly. ‘Listen, if you tell on us, we’ll confiscate your whole store, we’ll break everything.’ You know, he was afraid to tell. He was already making deals, ‘Listen guys, you’re damaging me financially.’ I personally never took a thing, but I’m telling you, people used to take speakers from him, whole sound systems.

“He’d go, ‘Please, give me 500 shekels, I’m losing money here.’ ‘Listen, if you go on – we’ll pick up your whole shop.’ ‘OK, OK, take it, but listen, don’t take more than 10 systems a month.’ Something like this.

“‘I’m already going bankrupt.’ He was so miserable. Guys in our unit used to sell these things back home, make deals with people. People are so stupid.”

The military said that Israeli Defence Forces soldiers operate according to “a strict set of moral guidelines” and that their expected adherence to them only “increases wherever and whenever IDF soldiers come in contact with civilians”. It added that “if evidence supporting the allegations is uncovered, steps are taken to hold those involved to the level of highest judicial severity”. It also said: “The Military Advocate General has issued a number of indictments against soldiers due to allegations of criminal behaviour … Soldiers found guilty were punished severely by the Military Court, in proportion to the committed offence.” It had not by last night quantified such indictments.

In its introduction to the testimonies, Breaking the Silence says: “The soldiers’ determination to fulfil their mission yields tragic results: the proper-normative becomes despicable, the inconceivable becomes routine … [The] testimonies are to illustrate the manner in which they are swept into the brutal reality reigning on the ground, a reality whereby the lives of many thousands of Palestinian families are at the questionable mercy of youths. Hebron turns a focused, flagrant lens at the reality to which Israel’s young representatives are constantly sent.”

A force for justice

Breaking the Silence was formed four years ago by a group of ex-soldiers, most of whom had served in Israel Defence Forces combat units in Hebron. Many of the soldiers do reserve duty in the military each year. It has collected some 500 testimonies from former soldiers who served in the West Bank and Gaza. Its first public exposure was with an exhibition of photographs by soldiers serving in Hebron and the organisation also runs regular tours of Hebron for Israeli students and diplomats. It receives funding from groups as diverse as the Jewish philanthropic Moriah Fund, the New Israel Fund, the British embassy in Tel Aviv and the EU.

External Link : http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/rot.html

Gaza’s imprisonment has stopped being a metaphor and become a daily reality

By Jonathan Cook

In 1895 Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s chief prophet, confided in his diary that he did not favour sharing Palestine with the natives. Better, he wrote, to “try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country … Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

He was proposing a programme of Palestinian emigration enforced through a policy of strict separation between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous population. In simple terms, he hoped that, once Zionist organisations had bought up large areas of Palestine and owned the main sectors of the economy, Palestinians could be made to leave by denying them rights to work the land or labour in the Jewish-run economy. His vision was one of transfer, or ethnic cleansing, through ethnic separation.

Herzl was suggesting that two possible Zionist solutions to the problem of a Palestinian majority living in Palestine — separation and transfer — were not necessarily alternatives but rather could be mutually reinforcing. Not only that: he believed, if they were used together, the process of ethnic cleansing could be made to appear voluntary, the choice of the victims. It may be that this was both his most enduring legacy and his major innovation to settler colonialism.

In recent years, with the Palestinian population under Israeli rule about to reach parity with the Jewish population, the threat of a Palestinian majority has loomed large again for the Zionists. Not suprisingly, debates about which of these two Zionist solutions to pursue, separation or transfer, have resurfaced.

Today these solutions are ostensibly promoted by two ideological camps loosely associated with Israel’s centre-left (Labor and Kadima) and right (Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu). The modern political arguments between them turn on differing visions of the nature of a Jewish state orginally put forward by Labor and Revisionist Zionists.

To make sense of the current political debates, and the events taking place inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza, let us first examine the history of these two principles in Zionist thinking.

During the early waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the dominant Labor Zionist movement and its leader David Ben Gurion advanced policies much in line with Herzl’s goal. In particular, they promoted the twin principles of “Redemption of the Land” and “Hebrew Labor”, which took as their premise the idea that Jews needed to separate themselves from the native population in working the land and employing only other Jews. By being entirely self-reliant in Palestine, Jews could both “cure” themselves of their tainted Diaspora natures and deprive the Palestinians of the opportunity to subsist in their own homeland.

At the forefront of this drive was the Zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut, which denied membership to Palestinians — and, for many years after the establishment of the Jewish state, even to the remants of the Palestinian population who became Israeli citizens.

But if separation was the official policy of Labor Zionism, behind the scenes Ben Gurion and his officials increasingly appreciated that it would not be enough in itself to achieve their goal of a pure ethnic state. Land sales remained low, at about 6 per cent of the territory, and the Jewish-owned parts of the economy relied on cheap Palestinian labour.

Instead, the Labor Zionists secretly began working on a programme of ethnic cleansing. After 1937 and Britain’s Peel Report proposing partition of Palestine, Ben Gurion was more open about transfer, recognising that a Jewish state would be impossible unless most of the indigenous population was cleared from within its borders.

Israel’s new historians have acknowledged Ben Gurion’s commitment to transfer. As Benny Morris notes, for example, Ben Gurion “understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst.” The Israeli leadership therefore developed a plan for ethnic cleansing under cover of war, compiling detailed dossiers on the communities that needed to be driven out and then passing on the order, in Plan Dalet, to commanders in the field. During the 1948 war the new state of Israel was emptied of at least 80 per cent of its indigenous population.

In physically expelling the Palestinian population, Ben Gurion responded to the political opportunities of the day and recalibrated the Labor Zionism of Herzl. In particular he achieved the goal of displacement desired by Herzl while also largely persuading the world through a campaign of propaganda that the exodus of the refugees was mostly voluntary. In one of the most enduring Zionist myths, convincingly rebutted by modern historians, we are still told that the refugees left because they were told to do so by the Arab leadership.

The other camp, the Revisionists, had a far more ambivalent attitude to the native Palestinian population. Paradoxically, given their uncompromising claim to a Greater Israel embracing both banks of the Jordan River (thereby including not only Palestine but also the modern state of Jordan), they were more prepared than the Labor Zionists to allow the natives to remain where they were.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the leader of Revisionism, observed in 1938 — possibly in a rebuff to Ben Gurion’s espousal of transfer — that “it must be hateful for any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be linked with such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens”. The Revisionists, it seems, were resigned to the fact that the enlarged territory they desired would inevitably include a majority of Arabs. They were therefore less concerned with removing the natives than finding a way to make them accept Jewish rule.

In 1923, Jabotinsky formulated his answer, one that implicitly included the notion of separation but not necessarily transfer: an “iron wall” of unremitting force to cow the natives into submission. In his words, the agreement of the Palestinians to their subjugation could be reached only “through the iron wall, that is to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be influenced by Arab pressure”.

An enthusiast of British imperial rule, Jabotinsky envisioned the future Jewish state in simple colonial terms, as a European elite ruling over the native population.

Inside Revisionism, however, there was a shift from the idea of separation to transfer that mirrored developments inside Labor Zionism. This change was perhaps more opportunistic than ideological, and was particularly apparent as the Revisionists sensed Ben Gurion’s success in forging a Jewish state through transfer.

One of Jabotinsky disciples, Menachem Begin, who would later become a Likud prime minister, was leader in 1948 of the Irgun militia that committed one of the worst atrocities of the war. He led his fighters into the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin where they massacred over 100 inhabitants, including women and children.

Savage enough though these events were, Begin and his followers consciously inflated the death toll to more than 250 through the pages of the New York Times. Their goal was to spread terror among the wider Palestinian population and encourage them to flee. He later happily noted: “Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of ‘Irgun butchery’, were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede.”

Subsequently, other prominent figures on the right openly espoused ethnic cleansing, including the late General Rehavam Ze’evi, whose Moledet party campaigned in elections under the symbol of the Hebrew character “tet”, for transfer. His successor, Benny Elon, a settler leader and rabbi, adopted a similar platform: “Only population transfer can bring peace”.

The intensity of the separation vs transfer debate subsided after 1948 and the ethnic cleansing campaign that removed most of the native Palestinian population from the Jewish state. The Palestinian minority left behind — a fifth of the population but a group, it was widely assumed, that would soon be swamped by Jewish immigration — was seen as an irritation but not yet as a threat. It was placed under a military government for nearly two decades, a system designed to enforce separation between Palestinians and Jews inside Israel. Such separation — in education, employment and residence — exists to this day, even if in a less extreme form.

The separation-transfer debate was chiefly revived by Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. With Israel’s erasure of the Green Line, and the effective erosion of the distinction between Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, the problem of a Palestinian majority again loomed large for the Zionists.

Cabinet debates from 1967 show the quandary faced by the government. Almost alone, Moshe Dayan favoured annexation of both the newly captured territories and the Palestinian population there. Others believed that such a move would be seen as transparently colonialist and rapidly degenerate into an apartheid system of Jewish citizens and Palestinian non-citizens. In their minds, Jabotinsky’s solution of an iron wall was no longer viable.

But equally, in a more media-saturated era, which at least paid lip-service to human rights, the government could see no way to expel the Palestinian population on a large scale and annex the land, as Ben Gurion had done earlier. Also possibly, they could see no way of persuading the world that such expulsions should be characterised as voluntary.

Israel therefore declined to move decisively in either direction, neither fully carrying out a transfer programme nor enforcing strict separation. Instead it opted for an apartheid model that accommodated Dayan’s suggestion of a “creeping annexation” of the occupied territories that he rightly believed would go largely unnoticed by the West.

The separation embodied in South African apartheid differed from Herzl’s notion of separation in one important respect: in apartheid, the “other” population was a necessary, even if much abused, component of the political arrangement. As the exiled Palestinian thinker Azmi Bishara has noted, in South Africa “racial segregation was not absolute. It took place within a framework of political unity. The racist regime saw blacks as part of the system, an ingredient of the whole. The whites created a racist hierarchy within the unity.”

In other words, the self-reliance, or unilateralism, implicit in Herzl’s concept of separation was ignored for many years of Israel’s occupation. The Palestinian labour force was exploited by Israel just as black workers were by South Africa. This view of the Palestinians was formalised in the Oslo accords, which were predicated on the kind of separation needed to create a captive labour force.

However, Yitzhak Rabin’s version of apartheid embodied by the Oslo process, and Binyamin Netanyahu’s opposition in upholding Jabotinsky’s vision of Greater Israel, both deviated from Herzl’s model of transfer through separation. This is largely why each political current has been subsumed within the recent but more powerful trend towards “unilateral separation”.

Not surprisingly, the policy of “unilateral separation” emerged from among the Labor Zionists, advocated primarily by Ehud Barak. However, it was soon adopted by many members of Likud too. Ultimately its success derived from the conversion to its cause of Greater Israel’s arch-exponent, Ariel Sharon. He realised the chief manifestations of unilateral separation, the West Bank wall and the Gaza disengagement, as well breaking up Israel’s rightwing to create a new consensus party, Kadima.

In the new consensus, the transfer of Palestinians could be achieved through imposed and absolute separation — just as Herzl had once hoped. After the Gaza disengagement, the next stage was promoted by Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert. His plan for convergence, limited withdrawals from the West Bank in which most settlers would remain in place, has been dropped, but its infrastructure — the separation wall — continues to be built.

How will modern Zionists convert unilateral separation into transfer? How will Herzl’s original vision of ethnic cleansing enforced through strict ethnic separation be realised in today’s world?

The current siege of Gaza offers the template. After disengagement, Israel has been able to cut off at will Gazans’ access to aid, food, fuel and humanitarian services. Normality has been further eroded by sonic booms, random Israeli air attacks, and repeated small-scale invasions that have inflicted a large toll of casualties, particularly among civilians.

Gaza’s imprisonment has stopped being a metaphor and become a daily reality. In fact, Gaza’s condition is far worse than imprisonment: prisoners, even of war, expect to have their humanity respected, and be properly sheltered, cared for, fed and clothed. Gazans can no longer rely on these staples of life.

The ultimate goal of this extreme form of separation is patently clear: transfer. By depriving Palestinians of the basic conditions of a normal life, it is assumed that they will eventually choose to leave — in what can once again be sold to the world as a voluntary exodus. And if Palestinians choose to abandon their homeland, then in Zionist thinking they have forfeited their right to it — just as earlier generations of Zionists believed the Palestinian refugees had done by supposedly fleeing during the 1948 and 1967 wars.

Is this process of transfer inevitable? I think not. The success of a modern policy of “transfer through separation” faces severe limitations.

First, it depends on continuing US global hegemony and blind support for Israel. Such support is likely to be undermined by the current American misadventures in the Middle East, and a gradual shift in the balance of power to China, Russia and India.

Second, it requires a Zionist worldview that departs starkly not only from international law but also from the values upheld by most societies and ideologies. The nature of Zionist ambitions is likely to be ever harder to conceal, as is evident from the tide of opinion polls showing that Western publics, if not their governments, believe Israel to be one of the biggest threats to world order.

And third, it assumes that the Palestinians will remain passive during their slow eradication. The historical evidence most certainly shows that they will not.

- Jonathan Cook is a journalist and writer based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest book, ‘Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East’, is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Christopher Vasillopulos

IN his beautiful and profound novel, “Cry the Beloved Country”, Alan Paton wrote about the innumerable tragedies European imperialism implied for black and white South Africans. A powerful plea for reconciliation between the races, the oppressor and the oppressed, his beautiful book nevertheless told bitter truths about the brutal, racist regime and the often criminal and violent responses of the people it tyrannized. In the same spirit I offer this piece. It uses the same structure of a speech the murdered and martyred hero of the novel never lived to give.

It is permissible for the Jews to have claimed a homeland in Palestine. It is not permissible for them to have evicted hundreds of thousands of native Palestinians in the process. It is permissible for the Jews to have gathered up the refugees in camps. It is not permissible to have kept them, who now are five million, there in abominable conditions for as much as 60 years.

It is permissible for Israel to have defended itself against Arab attacks. It is not permissible for Israel to thereby confiscate all but 10-12 percent of Palestine.

It is permissible for Jews to use their influence and money to win support in the US and the UK for their objectives in Palestine. It is not permissible for Jews to label everyone who expresses sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians as anti-Semitic or Nazis. It is permissible for Israel to be a Jewish state. It is not permissible to pretend that it can be a Western-style democracy, when double standards based on Jewishness are built into the Basic Laws of the Israeli state. It is permissible for Israel to recruit Jews from around the world to immigrate: The Right of Return. It is not permissible for Israel to deny Palestinians the same right, especially since most of them were coercively exiled. It is permissible for Israel to subsidize Jewish immigrants. It is not permissible to settle them on Palestinian land. It is permissible to have occupied Palestinian territory in the wake of war. It is not permissible to continue to occupy Palestine indefinitely. It is permissible for Israel to defend itself against criminal and terrorist acts. It is not permissible to punish, maim, kill, torture, or terrorize the innocent in the process.

It is permissible to interrogate suspects and prisoners. It is not permissible to torture or imprison them without due process. It is permissible for Israel to regulate water, electricity, garbage collection and other essential services in the territories it controls. It is not permissible to suspend these services to punish Palestinians for alleged support of dissidents.

It is permissible for Israel to defend its borders (indistinct and unofficial as they are). It is not permissible to use border checks to harass or punish Palestinians. It is permissible for Israel to have defense forces. It is not permissible to use it as an aggressive, invading army.

It is permissible for Israel to have weapons of mass destruction, estimated at between 200-400 nuclear warheads. It is not permissible to deny their existence in an effort to deny deterrent capability to its neighbors.

It is permissible to consider Jerusalem, Hebron and other towns as religiously significant. It is not permissible to deny the same claims by Muslims or Christians. It is permissible for Jews to want to live in peace and security. It is not permissible to deny this possibility to Palestinians. It is permissible for Israel to exist. It is not permissible for Israel to deny this right to Palestinians.

Alan Paton died before his beloved country freed itself from colonial oppression. How many Palestinian “Alan Patons” will die before their beloved country will free itself from its oppressors?

— Dr. Christopher Vasillopulos is professor of political science and international relations at Eastern Connecticut State University.

‘I never leave this place, I live here and I play here.’ (Photo: PalestineFreeVoice)

By Hiyam Noir and Fady Adwan in Gaza

Amid all levels of infrastructural devastation in the Gaza Strip, many families are hit by increasing poverty, and many are forgotten, living absolute marginalized.

In the heart of Gaza City is an old cemetery, where some families have found shelter, and where they live their lives among the dead. One family we meet have lived on the old Gaza City graveyard, for over five decades. Others have become poor and dispossessed during the last decade. Because of the many difficult conditions and the hardship under occupation, many have lost their employment or a business, and without income there is very little money over to pay for the rent, or to build or buy a new home.

“I came here, to live between the tombs, with my husband and children, 50 years ago,” says Um Suhail Jilo, 72. Her family was forced out from their village in the 1948 expulsion, the Al Nakba, this is the time of disaster for the Palestinians. The time when the Jews on Arab Palestinian land erected the illusory state, that became the Zionist state of Israel. Jewish armed gangs like Irgun, the Stern - gang, and the terrorist organizations Palmack and Haganah terrorized and brutalized hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, forcing the inhabitants to flee their homeland and leave their possessions, to search for safe shelters abroad, in other countries.

“In that time, so long ago, no one helped us to build for us a simple house… so we found no other choice, but to find a roof over our heads here inside the Gaza City old graveyard. We bought tin plates to build a house for our family. The house became impaired and corroded by time or wear, so a few years later, we made some small improvements and added cement onto the walls “. Um Suhail tell us, she lives here with 16 of her family members, her sons and daughters, her in-law’s and grandchildren, in a house consisting of three bedrooms.

Um Suhail’s husband, as so many other husband’s and family- supporters were forced to move outside Gaza Strip to work, to be able to support the family. “Now I have not heard from him in tens of years,” Um Suhail says with a sad voice. “I do not know what happened to him.” Mean while she is making food using a wood burning stove, Um Suhail says: “We have got used to live among the graves of the dead… we are like them, depending on charities and handouts.”

Due to the Israeli-led international siege imposed on Gaza Strip since June last year, the son’s of Um Suhail have lost their jobs, and the family have lost their main source of income. For years, this worn out and exhausted woman has hand washed all the clothes for her large family, until a well doing family bought her a modern washing machine.

Mohammed, a six-year-old boy, born in the home on the graveyard tell us , “I never leave this place, I live here and I play here, and I do not fear ghost’s or the tomb’s.” But in the night, Mohammed fear most the snakes and the spiders, says his grandmother Um Suhail. “Last month, we found and killed, a one and half meter long snake in our house, it was not a pleasant experience, believe me.”

In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. But the people of the town are angry.

By Uri Avnery

And suddenly: quiet. No Qassams. No mortar shells. The tanks are not rolling. The aircraft are not bombing.

In Sderot, sighs of relief. Children venture out. Inhabitants who have exiled themselves to other towns return home.

And the reaction? An outburst of jubilation? Dancing in the streets? Applause for the Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense, who at long last have come to their senses?

Not at all. The expression on the nation’s face is a grimace of disgust. What kind of thing is that? Where is our victorious army?

The people of Sderot are really angry. OK, so there are no Qassams, but this was supposed to happen only after the army had entered Gaza and wiped it out.

Haaretz headed its front page with the mendacious headline: “Israel pays with deeds - and gets promises”.

“It’s fragile,” Ehud Olmert soothes us, it can come to an end any minute. And the other Ehud, Barak, who pushed for the cease-fire, has an excuse: we have to go through the motions before starting the Big Operation in Gaza. For the sake of Israeli and international public opinion.

And nobody says: Thank God, the killing has stopped!

Why? What causes this almost unanimous reaction of disappointment? Why is there a general feeling of humiliation, almost of defeat?

It’s because the national ego is hurt. How wonderful it would have been to see the Israeli army in Gaza destroying Hamas, together with the entire city. But, instead of the crushing victory, we have something that smacks of a rout. And that in spite of the assertions of those now rooting for re-occupying the Gaza Strip: that at any minute, with just a little more starvation and closure, the population would have broken and rebelled against Hamas.

From the military point of view, a year of war in the Gaza Strip has ended in a draw. IDF-Hamas 1:1. But the IDF and Hamas are not two football teams of equal standing. Hamas is an armed political-religious movement, what is termed in current Western parlance “a terrorist organization”. When such an organization achieves a draw with one of the mightiest armies in the world, it can justifiably claim victory.

The aim of Olmert’s war was to topple the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip and to destroy the organization itself. This has not been attained. On the contrary, according to all reports, Hamas is stronger than ever, and its hold on the Strip is solid. Even in Israel that is not questioned.

For a year, the Israeli government has maintained a total blockade of the Strip - on land, at sea and in the air. It has enjoyed the unqualified support of Europe, which assisted in starving a population of one and a half million men and women, children and old people. The US was, of course, a full partner in this glorious enterprise. Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, dependent on the US, collaborated, if unwillingly.

All this was not enough to beat poor and crowded Gaza, a narrow strip of land 35 km (22 miles) long and 10 km (6 miles) wide, into submission. Not only did the rockets not stop, but their range increased. Their victims in Israel were few, a child could count them, but their impact on morale was immense.

The Israeli army was helpless against this primitive weapon, which costs next to nothing. The army killed wholesale and in retail, on land and from the air, with missiles, shells and infantry weapons. To no avail.

Hamas has survived, but it, too, did not achieve its aim. It had no answer to the blockade. Only the pressure of international public opinion (as well as the Israeli peace forces) prevented total starvation, but in the Strip there was a shortage of everything. Unemployment was rampant, fuel disappeared, many inhabitants suffered from undernourishment, bordering on starvation.

That is the nature of a draw: neither of the two sides is able to force a decision and impose its will on its opponent.

A ceasefire only comes about when both sides need it. (True, Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military philosopher, has said that in war it is impossible for a situation to be beneficial to both sides at the same time, that something that is good for one side is necessarily bad for the other. But in real war there are exceptions.)

Indeed, the Israeli army needed the ceasefire no less than Hamas. That became clear from the comments of the “military correspondents”, almost all of whom are thinly disguised army spokesmen. Of course, not one of the cabinet members would have agreed to a ceasefire if the army brass had objected.

Usually, the army bosses press for one more action, one more operation, one more war. Have they suddenly turned into doves? Not really. But they knew that they had to choose between two “bad” options: a ceasefire or the “Great Operation” - the re-conquest of the entire Gaza Strip.

The commanders did not like the first option, and that is an understatement. It means admitting failure. But the second option they liked even less - much, much less.

The Great Operation, which a large part of the public yearned for, which almost all the media demanded at the top of their voices, is very problematical. Hamas has had a lot of time to prepare for it. No army likes to fight in a built-up area, among a crowded population. Every alley is a potential trap, every man - and every woman - a potential suicide bomber. Even if the army succeeded in entering and occupying the strip with only “tolerable” casualties, that would just be the beginning of the troubles. Every day soldiers would be killed. The mutual bloodletting would be endless. See: the Iraq war.

Public opinion is fickle. Every dead soldier whose smiling picture is shown on television increases the pressure to get out. Sooner or later the army would be compelled to leave - and the situation would revert to what it was before, only worse.

The army chiefs know this. Olmert and Barak also know this. The lesson of the Second Lebanon War has not been forgotten. There is no mood for war.

The ceasefire has far-reaching political implications. It changes the Palestinian - and perhaps the regional - map.

One can protest from here to eternity, one can shout from the rooftops that “we don’t negotiate with Hamas” and that “we have no agreement with Hamas” - every child understands that we indeed do, and indeed have.

This is an agreement between the Government of Israel and the Gaza authorities. It means a de facto recognition of the Hamas government there. In Gaza, too, every child understands that the Israeli government was compelled to agree because it was unable to break Hamas by force.

In the eyes of the Palestinians, the situation is clear: Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah has not got anything from the Israelis, Hamas has.

Abbas tries by peaceful means. He is the darling of the Americans and the Israelis. But since the great performance in Annapolis, not only has he not achieved any meaningful concessions at all and not freed a single prisoner, but additional prisoners are being taken every night, the settlements are being enlarged and the Israeli government announces grandiose new building projects in East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. And the Israeli government would not dream of agreeing to a ceasefire there.

While at the same time Hamas, besieged by the whole world, losing fighters every day, has attained a significant military and political achievement: goods will flow into the Strip, cars will again bounce along the potholed roads, the Rafah crossing, which cuts off the Strip from the world, will be opened. In the coming prisoner exchange, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners will be released in return for the captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.

The conclusion? Everybody can ask themselves: if I were a Palestinian, what conclusion would I draw?

The ceasefire affects the balance of power within the Palestinian people. Hamas has proved that it can maintain an orderly government. Now it is proving that it can control the radical organizations, too.

The wisest thing Mahmoud Abbas can do now is to form a Unity Government, based on both Hamas and Fatah.

Will the ceasefire hold? The correspondents report that nobody expects it to.

When Olmert says that it is fragile, he knows what he is talking about.

There is no written agreement. No orderly mechanism for settling disputes. No arbitrator to decide, in case of need, which side is responsible for a violation.

If somebody in Israel wants to break the ceasefire, nothing will be easier: a squad leader opens fire on a group of Palestinians near the border fence, because he suspects that they are about to plant an explosive device. A spy helicopter pilot believes that he is being shot at and launches a missile. The army intelligence chief claims that large quantities of arms are being smuggled into the Strip.

It can be done in other ways, too. The army will kill half a dozen Islamic Jihad militants in the West Bank. In response, the organization will fire a salvo of Qassams at Sderot. The army will announce that this is a violation of the agreement and answer with an incursion into the Gaza Strip. It will even be right formally, since the ceasefire does not cover the West Bank.

Every agreement holds only as long as both sides believe that it serves their interests. If one of them thinks otherwise, it will break it (and assert that the other side broke it first). In this case, the first to break it will most likely be the Israeli side.

A ceasefire is not peace (salaam), and not even an armistice or truce (hudnah). It is no more than an agreement between combatants to stop shooting for some time.

In the nature of things, each side will use the ceasefire to prepare for the next round of fighting - to breathe deeply, to rest, to train, to plan, to obtain more advanced weapons.

But the ceasefire can become more than that. It can lead to Palestinian unity, to Israeli re-thinking, to a practical advance towards a peaceful solution. At the very least, every day of the ceasefire saves human lives.

And in the meantime the Hebrew and the international dictionaries have acquired another Arabic word: Tahdiyeh, calm.

-Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom.

LIVELIHOOD GOES UP IN SMOKE

Palestinian olive trees burn after being set ablaze by Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement on Thursday June 19 , in the West Bank village of Burin (AFP/Getty Images)

The Neo-Nazi Israeli Thugs(settlers)

Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement watch after a Palestinian olive tree field was set ablaze by a group of Jewish settlers on June 19, 2008 in the West Bank village of Burin.(AFP)

A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli settlers (unseen) from the nearby Yitzhar Jewish settlement try to set ablaze her olive tree field on June 19, 2008 in the West Bank village of Burin.(AFP)

Sarah Yeivin | AFP

HEBRON, West Bank: As a deterrent against armed Jewish settlers it does not look much. But the video camera has become a frontline defense for ordinary Palestinians living between Hebron and the Jewish settlement of Kyriat Arba in the West Bank.

“I always keep the camera at my side; it’s the only thing which prevents the settlers from hurling stones at us or coming into my shop,” says Bassam Al-Jaabari as he stitches a pair of shoes in his dusty and poorly stocked grocer’s shop.

He jerks his head toward a three-story house that can be seen about 100 meters away through the grill protecting his store windows.

More than a year ago, several families of Israeli settlers, who claim they had bought the property, moved into the building in the Palestinian district of Al-Ras.

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, immediately provided the four Palestinian families living near that house with video cameras, as part of its program “Shooting Back.”

“We know from experience what happens as soon as settler move into the heart of Palestinian areas,” explains Issa Amro, the B’Tselem official responsible for the volatile Hebron sector in the southern West Bank. “They (the settlers) make the life of the Palestinians impossible. But if their neighbors film them, they think twice before harassing them,” he adds.

Since the start of 2007, B’Tselem has distributed about 100 cameras to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, especially in the Hebron area where tension with the Jewish settlers is particularly intense.

Some of the videotapes have been broadcast by Israeli and international media, including one in March last year that showed an Israeli woman hurling a stream of insults for several minutes at a Palestinian neighbor in the old town of Hebron.

“The pictures of this woman have been broadcast throughout the world and provoked at lot of reaction. It was then we realized the potential of ‘Shooting Back’ which was then in a testing phase,” recalled Oren Yacokovobish, in charge of the B’Tselem program.

“The cameras have above all a deterrent effect; they protect Palestinians. They also enable the public to see incidents which otherwise are invisible and whose veracity can always be challenged,” he added.

Last Tuesday, two settlers were arrested after being filmed beating up two Palestinian shepherds, an elderly man and his wife, near Hebron. The incident was made public the previous week when the BBC broadcast video showing young masked settlers apparently attacking the couple with clubs.

“The settlers gave us a 10-minute warning to clear off from the land,” Thamam Al-Nawaja, 58, told the BBC after spending three days in hospital following the attack.

She said she and her 70-year-old husband stood their ground and that her arm was broken and her left cheek fractured in an ensuing attack.

An Israeli soldier walks alongside a group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron, 24 July 2007. (Mamoun Wazwaz/MaanImages)

By Khalid Amayreh

Last week, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released video clips showing masked Jewish settlers ganging up on and severely beating elderly Palestinian peasants near the town of Yatta, southwest of Hebron. At least three Palestinians were wounded in the unprovoked assault, including a man and his wife, both in their early sixties.

The latest act of settler terror was not an isolated incident, as official Israeli spokespersons would often claim. It represents a disturbing and persistent phenomenon as young and usually heavily armed settlers continue to attack Palestinian farmers, peasants and shepherds and vandalize their property in an effort to drive them away from their lands and villages.

We who live in the West Bank know too well what it means to live next to a Jewish settlement. It means constant harassment, unending vandalism and perpetual terrorism, both psychological and physical.

What is even more disturbing is the often brazen collusion between the army and the settlers. Ask any conscientious Israeli or Palestinian and he or she will tell you that the settlers couldn’t do what they are doing without at least a “yellow light” from the government and army.

Israel claims to be a state where the rule of law prevails. However, it is abundantly clear that when it comes to settler savagery in particular, and Israel’s overall violations of Palestinian rights in general, the rule of law is suspended.

For example, when a Palestinian files a complaint against settlers, he or she is asked to produce nearly impossible evidence, like the names of the perpetrators, their identity card numbers and their places of residence. Eventually, the complaint is registered against “anonymous” and consigned to oblivion. Such was the fate of thousands of complaints filed by desperate Palestinians seeking redress in Israeli courts.

And whenever serious physical damage to Palestinian property occurs, as happens often, the Israeli police challenge the Palestinian victims to prove beyond doubt that the damage was done by Jews and not self-inflicted. In other words, Jews can do no harm and settlers are innocent even if proven guilty.

The routine and nearly daily attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians and their property throughout the West Bank are not merely mundane acts of vandalism by rogue elements within the settler population. On the contrary, they are part of a larger and well-devised plan aimed at driving Palestinians away from their villages and hamlets and lands in order to make more room for Jewish settlement expansion. It is part and parcel of Israel’s ethnic cleansing schemes against non-Jews in Palestine.

Besides, it is well known that whenever a terrorist settler is detained, and this happens rarely, dozens of politicians, Knesset members, retired army commanders and of course, rabbis, are mobilized to free “an innocent Jew whose only guilt is defending Jewish rights and showing loyalty to the Land of Israel.”

This proves, if any proof were needed, that the entire Israeli Jewish society is accomplice and guilty in this shame, not only by keeping silent but also by always covering up for settler crimes.

To be sure, there are some Israeli Jewish and international groups, such as B’Tselem, the Christian Peace-making Teams (CPT) and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) that monitor settler crimes against Palestinians. On this occasion and on behalf of the Palestinian people, I would like to salute these conscientious people and thank them for their dedication and laborious efforts on behalf of humanity and justice.

Nonetheless, settler crimes in the West Bank are so rampant and pervasive that greater efforts are required to monitor and expose them, especially in light of the obvious collusion between the occupation army and the settlers.

Hence, young men and women from around the world including Jews, Christians and Muslims and others, are encouraged to come to the West Bank to be a voice for the voiceless and lend a helping hand to those helpless Palestinians for whom daily life has become a formidable challenge due to settler harassment, vandalism and terrorism.

In addition to physical assaults on Palestinian villagers, settler terrorists routinely burn down fields, orchards and olive groves, often in full view of Israeli soldiers who look on nonchalantly, if not satisfactorily. Moreover, the settlers close Palestinian roads, even roads to one’s home, break water pipes, power and telephone cables. They also often throw poisonous or contaminated substances in Palestinian water wells.

Again, when Palestinians complain to the police, they are made to feel as if they were talking to a wall.

The criminal behavior of the settlers reflects a virulent ideological indoctrination whereby non-Jews in general and Palestinians in particular are viewed as “not fully human.”

For example, Rabbi Abraham Kook, the spiritual Godfather of religious Zionism, e.g. the settler movement, claimed that “the difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”

I know that some religious-Zionist pundits would indulge in all sorts of metaphorical interpretations to make Kook’s Jewish supremacy doctrine look innocuous.

However, the behavior of his followers in the West Bank should leave no doubt as to the virulent nature of his teachings.

Today, the vast majority of settlers in the West Bank believe that non-Jews living in Israel-Palestine ought to be either exterminated, enslaved or expelled. To enforce their racist ideas, prominent rabbis often cite the most extremist biblical and Talmudic passages pertaining to treatment of non-Jews living among Jews.

A few months ago, a settler leader in the Hebron region told me, “you have to choose between death, enslavement and expulsion from the Land of Israel.”

Obviously, with such a mindset, there can be no peace and coexistence between Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land.

Indeed, how can you coexist, let alone coexist amicably, with someone who believes that you are not equal to him and that God created you to be enslaved by him as a wood-hewer or water-carrier?

Finally, a few words to the Israeli government. During the Nazi era, the German authorities gave Nazi vigilantes, such as the Hitler Youth organization, free rein to attack Jews and their property. Now, you are effectively doing the same by giving these settler hoodlums a free rein to terrorize and assault innocent Palestinians. So, take note of what you are doing.

Related Article : Israeli settlers wage campaign of intimidation on Palestinians and internationals alike

Senator John McCain is greeted by an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man as he arrives at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, March 19, 2008. (Photo: AP)

By Ramzy Baroud

Abstract: A study of the political, religious and cultural factors underlying the pro-Israeli bias apparent in the Western media today, as depicted in the mainstream news and television programmes.

As Palestinians hurriedly buried their loved ones in the Gaza Strip following a deadly Israeli onslaught, which further contributed to Gaza’s worst humanitarian crisis since 1967 [1], US and Israeli celebrities rallied at a Los Angeles benefit concert for the Israeli town of Sderot, located near the border of Gaza. [2] Hollywood movie stars Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Valerie Harper and comedian Larry Miller mingled with Israeli celebrities such as singer Ninet Tayeb and others. Children from the Israeli town of Sderot, which received the lion’s share of homemade Palestinian rockets, were cheerful nonetheless. Song and dance, interrupted occasionally by solemn messages of support delivered via satellite by both Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates, replaced the cries of sirens the images of huddling families in the town’s shelters. It was a bittersweet moment, that of solidarity, a renewal of the vow made too often, that Israel’s plight is that of America, and Israel’s security is an American priority, and, indeed, ‘God loves those who love Israel’.

Welcome to America’s parallel reality on Israel and Palestine, barefaced in its defying of the notions of commonsense, equality and justice, ever-insistent on peeking at the Arab-Israeli conflict from a looking glass manufactured jointly in the church, in the Congress and in the news room, where the world is reduced to characters interacting in a Hollywood-like movie set: good guys, well groomed and often white-skinned vs. bad guys bearing opposite qualities.

One may become accustomed to watching, reading and listening to the chorus of support that America – its politicians, most of its mainstream media and a large conglomerate of its churches and clergies – tirelessly offer Israel. But one must never dismiss such support, as typical, expected or, as some of Israel’s supporters would put it, ‘special’ and ‘historic’. As simplistic and naïve in its articulation as the so-called pro-Israeli sentiment in the United States may be, in actuality, its intricate manifestation of political, religious, and cultural factors are as old, in some way, as the United States itself. To understand these factors, some deconstruction is in order. This article merely aims at shedding light at some of these factors and the history behind them.

Religion Meets Politics – Old and New

“They own the [Holy] land, just the mere land, and that’s all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven’t any business to be there defiling it. It’s a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them.” — Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, 1894.

Americans are commonly accepted for being more religious than their Western counterparts, whether in Canada or in Europe. After all, the American Dream was largely initiated by what is widely interpreted as a religious pilgrimage on board the Mayflower in 1620. The history of colonization of the American continent, of course, goes back to earlier years; nonetheless, it was that particular ‘pilgrimage’, in cultural consciousness, that defined the historic relationship between the immigrants from Europe and the so-called New World. One rather significant omission which often occurs is the recognition of the many nations in the new physical landscape, which in fact existed.

Although the Native Americans’ plight has received a somewhat fair share of deserved analysis, I mean to emphasize here an important component that makes their story most relevant to my argument. Native Americans were dismissed as non-existent, were seen as an obstacle to the harbingers of civilizations, and, when they were recognized as an entity, political or cultural, it was meant merely to juxtapose their backwardness, their irrelevance, their savageness, with the progressiveness, the relevance and the civility of the newcomers.

They too, the immaterial ‘Indians’ may have merely owned the land (although Native Americans didn’t believe in such a concept to start with), but it’s “our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy.” The religious aspect of colonization is significant in the sense that it validates the cruelty of the physical uprooting, the massacring and the dismissal of entire races. “Where a command and a faith are present, in certain historical situations conquest need not be robbery,” Martin Buber wrote once. [3] If God, particularly the American God, justifies such acts, who are we, mere mortals, to defy His will? America was and remains in the minds of some, a Holy Land, with many of its towns bearing the name Salem, just like city of Jerusalem, occupied and illegally annexed by Israel. Such notions as legality and illegality might be relevant to the United Nations (itself rendered irrelevant once by US President George W. Bush himself) [4], but among large circles of American religious institutions, these notions are extraneous to the point of ridicule.

But there is more, of course, to the ‘special relationship’ that justified Israel’s robbery of Palestinian land in an American religious, political and intellectual landscape than their combined search for a holy land and their textual, often selective interpretations of the Old Testament.

In 1879, a scale model of the Holy Land known as the Palestine Park was constructed on Lake Chautauqua, New York by Reverend John Heyl Vincent. J. A. Miller explains, Palestine Park was a “visual aid for the legions of Sunday school teachers who flocked to the Chautauqua Institute to bone up on biblical history and geography.” It was the “first ever example of a theme park, a quintessential American construct.” [5] It featured: “…a life-size Tabernacle built to the specifications given in Exodus, a pyramid, a model of Jerusalem, and a small scale replica of the biblical Holy Land itself - complete with a ten-foot-long Dead Sea, a smaller Sea of Galilee, and markers for important biblical sites - landscaped into the rocky terrain of the shoreline …which serves as the Mediterranean Sea.” [6]

The Chautauqua Institute was established five years before the Park, and “spawned hundreds of ‘assemblies’, throughout America, their popularity lasting until radio and cinema decimated their customer base.” That customer base was not only large, but influential, for it included such luminaries as “Amelia Earhart, Helen Keller, Thomas Edison, George Gershwin and at least nine presidents. Ida Tarbell, famed muckraker of Standard Oil, happily recollected cavorting on Palestine Park’s Mount Hermon as a girl.” [7]

Miller argues, that although there were many smaller precursors on American church grounds, “Palestine Park is the iconic example of what geographer John Kirtland Wright called geopiety, ‘a deep religious devotion to a vision of the Holy Land concocted from a ‘curious mix of romantic imagination, historical rectitude, and attachment to physical space’.” [8] He proceeds, “Geopiety is a particularly Protestant obsession originating in England in the 16th century and culminating in the Balfour Declaration. Long before Herzl revved up the Jewish branch of geopiety, the Archbishop of York pugnaciously encapsulated the concept in 1875: “Our reason for turning to Palestine is that Palestine is our country. I have used that expression before and I refuse to adopt any other”. [9]

While these roots continued to be firmly planted, newer religious phenomena helped contribute to that construct, thus widening the parameters of the Park to include a larger segment of American society, using television as the new and relentless platform. Welcome to the Armageddon-seeking American Evangelicals. While the advocacy for Israel by various evangelical churches is both bizarre – since the ultimate objective of this crowed is the annihilation of most Jews and the conversion of some as prerequisites for the Rapture – and widely acknowledged, their influence on the political culture of America is not equally recognized. Pastor John Hagee, for example, a “televangelist to 99 million viewers and pastor of the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, established Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in 2005 following the publication of his book, ‘The Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World.’ Hagee envisions CUFI as the Christian version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby whose political clout has significant influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East.” [10]

Journalist Max Blumenthal took his cameras to the CUFI’s Washington-Israel Summit held in July 2007, in Washington DC. The result was a documentary entitled, “Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United for Israel Tour.” It opens with a dialogue with former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who was asked how important is the Second Coming is in his support of Israel. “Obviously, it is what I live for. Really, I hope it comes tomorrow. Obviously, we need to be connected to Israel to enjoy the Second Coming of Christ.” [11]

Robert Weitzel reports, “John Hagee is not without fawning friends in Washington. Presidential hopeful John McCain made a campaign stop at the Summit and admitted to the audience that, ‘It’s very hard trying to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan . . .’ House Minority Whip Roy Blunt followed McCain to the podium and assured the faithful that ‘This is a mission, this is a vision that I believe is a vision for God’s time.’ Senator Joe Lieberman was there and described Pastor Hagee as an “Ish Elokim,” a man of God. Never one to be left out of a well-attended Christian Right convocation, President Bush sent his best wishes, ‘I appreciate CUFI members . . . for your passion and dedication to enhancing the relationship between the United States and Israel. Your efforts set a shining example for others . . .’ [12]

Popular Culture

To examine the relationship between political and religious cultures and the popular culture in America is not an easy task, since the relationship is neither one-way nor linier. However, those preaching their version of God, aspiring to hold on to their political powers, understood well how to communicate their messages to the general public. Pop cultures are hardly shaped by polemics, reason and dialectics but by rather seemingly simple and indirect gestures that overtime ingrain lasting impressions. Combined with an already existing bias regarding Palestine, as disseminated by religious and political institutions, popular culture is constantly bombarded with positive imagery and language depicting Israel, and negative representations of Palestinians.

In popular sitcoms such as Friends, Malcolm in the Middle and others, references are quite often made of Israel. One of Friends’ main characters, Chandler, had an Israeli girl friend, attractive and funny. When it was time to break up, he feared that her fighting skills, obtained during her service in the Israeli army would make such a task too difficult. That image of Israel, and the Israelis, being funny, attractive and fearsome is recurring in American television. Palestinians on the other hand are mentioned, sporadically (outside the evening news), and almost always in a negative light. I was up for a big surprise watching an episode of American Dad, one of the most watched animation programs following the Simpsons. The show comes across as progressive, in a roundabout sort of way. A young boy, one of the show’s main characters, was frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t figure out how to operate a homemade rocket. “If a five year old Palestinian boy can do this, so could I.” In another segment, another reference was made to the “anti-Zionist Aryan brotherhood,” an imaginary group that equates an anti-Zionist affiliation to white supremacy. Many such references are made on American television as well as the big screen. However, I will focus the remaining part of the article on media language and its contribution to the manufacturing of an alternative, convenient reality regarding the Middle East, but Israel and Palestine in particular.

Media Language

In the competitive world of media today, swift and conveniently selective reporting is of prime importance. GoogleNews, for example, claims to scan 4,500 news sources, of which only a few are highlighted as main stories. There are thousands of similar services, all competing to produce a story in the fastest time. Thorough - and thus slower - reporting is relegated and crucial information often appears too little too late.

The corporate media’s depiction of the Gaza story, following Hamas’ election victory in January 2006, and which culminated in the clashes between Fatah and Hamas and the latter’s capture of Gaza in June 2007, was reduced to a few typical headlines, depicting Palestinians as unruly, uncivilized, criminal and unpredictable (thus incapable of being a trustworthy peace partner, as often parroted by Israel.)

The imprisonment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza – where a humanitarian crisis, unemployment and poverty are still underway – should have been depicted first and foremost as a humanitarian disaster compelled by an Israeli siege. The dates related to the successive stages of the siege should follow a line of political, not ‘security’ logic. Any reasonable timeline of recent events could easily verify that (the formation of the Hamas government in March 2006, the ousting of the pro-Israeli Palestinian security apparatus in June 2007 and so on being followed by dramatic Israeli moves to tighten the siege on Gaza, Hamas’ stronghold).

But little of that seemed relevant to the way the Gaza story was amply reported. Like the Iraq story, where the two main trusted sources are the occupation and its puppet Iraqi government, any story of relevance to Israel and Palestine has to be validated by the official Israeli source and to a lesser but growing extent by their allies among Palestinians. The rest are ‘extremist’, radical and hell-bent on the destruction of the ‘Jewish state.’ Note how the Jewishness of Israel is often emphasised whenever the word ‘destruction’ or similar words are infused.

This is what Bridget Johnson wrote in the Los Angeles Daily News, chastising the United Nations’ Human Rights Council for its condemnation of Israel’s siege on Gaza: “There was zero mention of Hamas’ continued rocket attacks on Israel — which preceded the cut-off of supplies that has caused such an uproar — or Hamas’ refusal to renounce violence against and attempted destruction of the Jewish state.” [13] The claims were preposterous – especially that of a small group’s ‘attempted destruction’ of a country saturated with nuclear arms. The words ‘destruction’ and ‘Jewish state’ are simply passed as an innocent ‘opinion’, read by millions of Americans. There are many notable omissions as well. Hamas has repeatedly called for a mutual ceasefire, that was also repeatedly rejected or simply ignored by Israel. The siege followed the democratic election of Hamas, not the rocket attacks. Also conveniently missed is the disparity between the numbers of Israelis killed as a result of the Palestinian rockets – 10 in six years of violence – and Palestinians killed by Israeli ‘retaliation’ - over 120 Palestinians in Gaza alone within 9 days, starting February 27. [14] The killing of any civilian anywhere is tragic, but the facts are rarely contextualised by the media. This is only the tip of the iceberg since human suffering cannot only be measured by those who die, but also those who continue to live in perpetual torment. For Johnson, this is irrelevant, since this is not about right and wrong, but a war of language. To win the war, one must have command over language – and the way it’s manipulated – and access to platforms that reach the largest number of readers. An easy recipe to victory in this non-conventional war is an intentional mix of terms as Islamic extremism, al-Qaeda, Hamas, Jewish state, security, existential threats, right to exist, juxtaposed with images or clips of angry Palestinian youth burning Israeli and American flags, ‘side-by-side’, and you will have an American public and government standing in eternal solidarity with Israel.

While most US politicians are self-seeking, power hungry and would do whatever it takes to be elected, the average American, unlike what it may seem, is not born ‘pro-Israel’, and ‘anti-Palestinian.’ Most Americans are pro-the-manufactured, yet misleading images of Israel reach their homes through television, wait at their doorsteps in the morning and confront them through the web. Israel has mastery over the language of the Western media, which, again, helped create a parallel reality that has little correlation to the real world, that of facts, numbers and actual events. That alternative universe only exists on the pages of New York Times, the images of CNN, and the blabber of Fox News ‘experts’. According to that narrative, Palestinians, are irrational, suicidal, demonic, mad, extremists, self hating, and all the rest.

Conclusion

There is no serious, equitable debate regarding Palestine and Israel in the US media, nor any other cultural, political and religious circles. If the existing narrative is to be called a debate, then it’s one with an imagined, not real, language, almost entirely irrelevant to the realities in Palestine and Israel. It’s one that is largely predicated on a narrow minded, apocalyptic religious discourse which for decades has found itself an accepted point of departure for most politicians, even those who falsely pose as liberals. Between the two discourses, that of misguided religious fantasies and pandering politicians, there exists enough room for alternative narratives. Unfortunately, that space is too overwhelmed by cultural misconceptions, institutional bias and deliberate confusion, introduced and instilled deliberately by media producers, pundits and the other manufactures of American popular culture. Until the gatekeepers of pop culture in America are seriously challenged, Palestine will continue to reside in the American imagination as a battle between good and evil, a ‘Holy Land’ that must be wrestled from the hands of those who might have owned the land, at one point, but now, they “haven’t any business to be there defiling it.”

-Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

(This article was first published in the Palestine Internationalist Journal, Volume 3 Issue 3, Apr 2008 – South Africa)

Bibliography

[1] Gaza humanitarian Crisis ‘Worst Since 1967′, MSNBC. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23497420/
[2]) U.S., Israeli Stars Rally at L.A. Benefit Concert for Sderot. www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/959308.html
[3] Martin Buber, On Zion:The History of an Idea, 1974, p. 146
[4] Matthew Rothschild, Bush Trashes the United Nations. The Progressive, April 2003. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_4_67/ai_99818480
[5] J. A Miller, Palestine Park, The Palestine Chronicle, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13390, Jan 8, 2008
[6] Timothy Beal, Roadside Religion, 2005, p. 28
[7] J. A Miller, Palestine Park, The Palestine Chronicle, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13390, Jan 8, 2008
[8] Timothy Beal, Roadside Religion, 2005, p. 28
[9] Issam Nassar, “In Their Image”, Jerusalem Quarterly, October 2003 www.jerusalemquarterly.org/details.php?cat=4&id=185
[10] Robert Weitzel, Children of Palestine and Israel: Cannon Fodder for the Rapture, The Palestine Chronicle, http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13592
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid
[13] Bridget Johnson, The U.N. can learn something from Rambo. The Los Angeles Daily News. www.dailynews.com/columnists/ci_8102360
[14] Aljazeera, Hamas sets terms for Israeli truce. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B09F81FA-14D9-4BCA-A7BD-AF2E52693830.htm; and Amnesty International, Children and civilian bystanders in Gaza death toll: www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/children-and-civilian-bystanders-gaza-death-toll-20080303

By Neve Gordon

It took me a moment before I understood why my story about a few relatively inconsequential incidents, which occurred years ago at my high school, had such an effect on the undergraduates taking my fall semester course in 2006.

One of my anecdotes related to classmates of mine who lived in the Jewish settlements at the northern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. It was 1981, and the following year they would be forced to leave their homes as part of Israel’s peace agreement with Egypt, but at the time, I told my students, the evacuation did not seem imminent, at least to many teenagers for whom each year stretches without end. A particular issue that did preoccupy us, I continued, was learning to drive. I described to my students how my friends from the farming communities located in the Sinai and the small town of Yamit took their lessons in the Palestinian town of Rafah and were among the first to pass their driving tests.

My students in the politics and government department of Ben-Gurion University found this story incomprehensible. They simply could not imagine Israeli teenagers taking driving lessons in the middle of Rafah, which, in their minds, is no more than a terrorist nest riddled with tunnels used to smuggle weapons from Egypt; weapons subsequently used against Israeli targets.

The average age difference between me and my students is only 15 years, but our perspectives are radically different. When I was a high-school student at the agricultural school Eshel Hanasi, I frequently hitched a ride back from school to my home in Beer Sheva with Palestinian taxis from the Gaza Strip. In the current context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this is simply unfathomable. No taxis from the territories are allowed to enter Israel, and even if they were somehow able to obtain an entry permit, Israeli Jews would be afraid to use them.

Two decades ago, Palestinians were an integral part of the Israeli landscape, primarily as low-wage laborers who built houses, cleaned streets and worked in agriculture, but in the last few years they have literally disappeared. In the 1980s, most Israelis and Palestinians could travel freely between the territories and Israel and, in many respects, felt safe doing so. Currently Palestinians are locked up in the Gaza Strip, and Israelis are not permitted to enter the region. Palestinians from the West Bank are confined behind a separation barrier and only the Jewish settlers living there travel back and forth from Israel.

Most of my students have consequently never talked with Palestinians from the territories, except perhaps as soldiers during their military service. Their acquaintance with Palestinians is therefore limited to three-minute news bites that almost always report on Palestinian attacks on Israeli targets or Israeli military assaults on Palestinian towns.

The students’ reaction to my teenage experiences is accordingly understandable, but it also brings to the fore a crucial issue that is often overlooked: namely, that Israel’s occupation has dramatically changed over the past four decades, and particularly since the eruption of the second Intifada in 2000.

Some of the changes; the most damaging of which are the ongoing expansion of the settlements and the hermetic closure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, both of which have, in many respects, led to the rise of Hamas; are often discussed in the media and are rightly understood as hindering the possibility of Israelis and Palestinians reaching a peace agreement based on the two-state solution. The change that is hardly ever mentioned is the current lack of contact between ordinary Israelis (as opposed to soldiers and settlers) and Palestinians.

The separation barrier built deep inside Palestinian territories best symbolizes this change. One of its many devastating effects is the severance of practically all day-to-day contact between the two peoples. The younger generation on both sides of the Green Line no longer sees the ‘other’ as living, breathing beings but rather in stereotypical terms, which are often informed by prejudice and racist assumptions.

The alienation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians consequently serves the interests of all those who would like to portray the other side as a perpetual and mortal enemy.

The effects of this change should not be underestimated. Simply put, it seems that the younger (Jewish) generation within Israel is less likely than ever to support a leader who would have the courage to initiate a just peace agreement based on the full withdrawal to the 1967 borders, including the return of East Jerusalem, and some kind of creative solution for the Palestinian refugees.

Tragically, after 41 years of occupation the two-state solution seems to be more remote than ever before. Peace within the existing context, as Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member, Uri Avnery, has convincingly argued, is like surmounting an abyss. One cannot achieve it with short strides but only with a great leap. My students’ reactions suggest that the gulf between the two peoples is only growing wider.

- Neve Gordon is a senior lecturer in the Politics and Government Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

(Photo: Musa al-Shaer/PalestineChronicle.com)

By Joharah Baker

Israeli intellectuals and political pundits often accuse the Palestinians of living in the past, hashing up the old excuse of “the occupation” to push aside any “real and genuine” Israeli efforts for peace. They say that not only is their argument “old”, Israelis cannot possibly consider arriving at a peace deal with a people who continue to attack them. Palestinians, of course, see this approach as just one more way of postponing any final settlement to the conflict and furthering even more Israeli facts on the ground.

Over the past few years, Palestinians have provided fuel for this fire, with the internal split between Hamas and Fateh, the geographical and political separation between the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the various Palestinian factions that continue to fire homemade rockets into Israeli territory, even though these rockets cause minimal or no damage at all.

However, recently, the Palestinians have been showing increasing signs of willingness to put these divisions both between themselves and even with Israel, aside for the sake of creating an atmosphere of calm. Unfortunately, however, Israel is not reciprocating, proving once again that its goals are far more insidious than they seem and are fundamentally expansionist in nature.

Ever since Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Israeli rhetoric has focused primarily on the isolation and condemnation of the Islamic movement’s hold on the Strip. Israel, the United States and by proxy, almost the entire international community, has shunned Hamas and insisted that no peace talks would ever move forward if its de facto government in Gaza remains in place.

For a long time, Hamas also towed a similar line – Israel was not to be recognized, its only capacity on any political playing field being one of a belligerent occupation which by no means should be negotiated with. Coupled with the Fateh-headed West Bank government under President Mahmoud Abbas in place and towing a similar line vis-à-vis Hamas, the internal situation and that with Israel took turn after turn for the worse.

Keeping this status quo was in Israel’s best interests, no doubt, in spite of all of its hullabaloo about the constant threat Israeli citizens are under from the rocket attacks coming out of Gaza. Yes, the rockets, if nothing else, are a nuisance and have occasionally killed a few Israeli citizens. However, the benefits reaped by Israel from maintaining the situation in Gaza far exceed any real threats to its “security.” For one, it has the full backing of the international community in isolating and besieging Hamas and therefore the entire Gaza Strip. Israel has blockaded Gaza, killed scores of innocent civilians and has denied the population food, medical supplies and fuel for days on end, with virtual impunity, all under the guise of combating this “terrorist” organization and trying to curb the rocket attacks.

Furthermore, the continued internal Palestinian divisions have played straight into Israel’s hands. Especially now with peace talks restarted after the Annapolis conference in November of last year, Israel is keen on keeping a united Palestinian front at bay. A weak Palestinian leadership at the negotiating table equals fewer concessions from the Israelis.

Luckily, the Palestinians seem to have realized this, even if considerable damage has already been done. On the Palestinian front, President Abbas has called for reconciliation talks with Hamas based on the Yemeni Initiative last March. This time, it looks as if the two sides may actually make some headway as opposed to previous efforts.

Furthermore, Hamas in Gaza is also trying to put its best face forward, offering a truce agreement – mediated by the Egyptians – to Israel. It has said it would withhold rocket attacks into Israeli territory and has presented a letter – via the Carter Center in Ramallah – penned by captured Israeli Corporal Gilad Shalit, which was handed to his parents as a gesture of good faith.

These are quantum leaps for Hamas, particularly when coupled with its efforts to reunite with the leadership. But l