Israel-Palestine is already a de facto single state

by Antony Lerman

Critics of the one-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict see it, at best, as utopian and unachievable, and at worst, as the dismantling of Israel, the denial of the right of Jewish self-determination and the ultimate expression of the new antisemitism.

The idea certainly doesn't find favour among the Palestinian and Israeli populations, as the One Voice survey results showed. The two-state solution, despite the failure of years of peace negotiations to bring it about, still seems to be the preferred option of significant majorities on both sides.

Nevertheless, there are increasing doubts that it will ever come about, even though it is the choice of the international community, and more voices are now calling for a "one-state" solution as the only way of protecting the human rights of the Palestinian population in Gaza and the West Bank. And as such voices are heard more often, so too are the critics' predictions that it would spell national suicide were the single state to be adopted.

There's something surreal about all of this, about both the fulminations of the critics and the theoretical scenarios of the advocates. And that's because we're already there: one state exists.

It has not been formally proclaimed. It has no legal status. No one wants to acknowledge it. But it's hard to see Israeli control of the area of the pre-1967 state, the West Bank and Gaza as constituting anything other than one, de facto state.

First, look at control of territory, security and administration. The 1995 Oslo Accords divided the West Bank into three areas. On paper, Palestinians have full responsibility for civilian and security matters only in spaces designated as Area A. "The territorial space of Areas A and B is not contiguous," says the World Bank.

Everything in these areas "is surrounded by Area C, which covers the entire remaining area, is the only contiguous area of the West Bank, and includes most of the West Bank's key infrastructure, including the main road network. Area C is under full control of the Israeli military for both security and civilian affairs related to territory". As for Gaza, Israel continues to maintain complete control over the air and sea space of the Strip.

In terms of the size of the three areas, 59% of the West Bank is under Israeli civil and security control; 23% is under Palestinian civil control, but Israeli security control. The areas of Palestinian Authority (PA) control are mainly located in Palestinian urban areas – the population centres where much of the fast-growing population lives. These take up 8.5% of the West Bank.

"Israel continues to control the joint Gaza Strip-West Bank population registry", even though formal authority for administering the population registry was transferred to the PA under the second Oslo Agreement of 1995. "By controlling the population registry," says B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, "Israel continues to determine who is a 'Palestinian resident' and who is a 'foreigner'."

Second, the nature of the settlement enterprise reinforces this control. The eastern strip of land running north-south between the mountains and the Jordan river is included within the area of two regional councils, Arvot Hayarden and Megillot.

Settlements in the mountain strip area to the east more or less "block the potential for urban development in the major Palestinian cities situated along the mountain ridge". And the settlements on the western hills "interrupt the territorial contiguity of the Palestinian villages and towns located out along this strip". B'Tselem says the Israeli administration has applied most aspects of Israeli law to the settlers and the settlements, thus effectively annexing them to the state of Israel.

Settlement activity in and around Jerusalem has involved the expropriation of extensive areas of privately owned Palestinian land, severed the West Bank in two, and "blocke[d] urban development of Bethlehem and isolate[d] it from Palestinian communities", according to B'Tselem.

Moreover, official plans to build thousands of housing units in settlements indicates that the confirmation Israel gave at the 2007 Annapolis conference to stick to its Road Map commitment to freeze settlement activity, including natural growth, is worthless.

Third, while it's true that "the economies of the two territories are not intertwined with Israel's", in reality, Israel exerts a virtual stranglehold on their economic development. It has maintained its system of economic restrictions in the West Bank that discourages or restricts private investment, and has established six commercial crossing points in the separation barrier, which serve as yet another barrier to Palestinian trade.

In general the physical obstructions Israel maintained in the West Bank, which increased from an average of 459 in 2007 to an average of 537 in the first nine months of 2008, contributed to the steep decline in GDP since 2000. This was all part of Israel's policy of controlling access to land, water, ability to travel and residency for the Palestinian population.

The wall tells the world that Israel wants to separate itself from the Palestinians in the occupied territories, yet the facts on the ground show the Palestinians being separated from each other and from Israelis within the civil, military and administrative structure Israel has imposed on the territories, and which is inextricably linked to Israel in its pre-1967 borders.

Any quasi-autonomy is negated by the encircling and overlapping forms of control and restriction Israel has created. Notwithstanding that the Palestinians live on what's left to them of their own land, to all intents and purposes they are trapped in this de facto single state.

If the secular, democratic one-state solution is a utopian fantasy, its mirror image is like an all too real evil twin, created by a country "which defines itself as a democracy" but, as the Association for Civil Rights In Israel says, "presides over several million people who are denied their rights under military occupation in which no rights are guaranteed: not the right to life, personal security, or freedom of movement, not the right to earn a livelihood, to freedom of expression, or to health".

Seeing the current reality as one state is meant to send a stark message to the advocates of the two-state solution that time is running out. And by no means the least of the tasks to be done to prevent the clock from stopping is to confront the question of how this structure can ever be dismantled to allow self-determination for Jews and Palestinians in two separate states. This may be what the people want, but by the way they have voted recently, they may well have decided that it's no longer possible.

This is not intended as a plug for the one-state solution based on justice and equality. I have mused on the eventual evolution of a federal version of this as a way of guaranteeing the human rights of Israelis and Palestinians in the long term, but believe that it could only ever happen from a position of two states first and only with the consent of both peoples.

So, to concentrate minds everywhere on achieving a two-state arrangement means admitting frankly and openly that the illiberal one-state is here, and that debates full of righteous indignation over the secular, democratic one-state idea are, today, just a distraction.

Israeli exports hit by European boycotts after attacks on Gaza

A fifth of Israeli exporters report drop in demand as footage of Gaza attacks changes behaviour of consumers and investors

Israeli companies are feeling the impact of boycott moves in Europe, according to surveys, amid growing concern within the Israeli business sector over organised campaigns following the recent attack on Gaza.
Last week, the Israel Manufacturers Association reported that 21% of 90 local exporters who were questioned had felt a drop in demand due to boycotts, mostly from the UK and Scandinavian countries. Last month, a report from the Israel Export Institute reported that 10% of 400 polled exporters received order cancellation notices this year, because of Israel's assault on Gaza.
"There is no doubt that a red light has been switched on," Dan Katrivas, head of the foreign trade department at the Israel Manufacturers Association, told Maariv newspaper this week. "We are closely following what's happening with exporters who are running into problems with boycotts." He added that in Britain there exists "a special problem regarding the export of agricultural produce from Israel".
The problem, said Katrivas, is in part the discussion in the UK over how to label goods that come from Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Last week British government officials met with food industry representatives to discuss the issue.
In recent months, the Israeli financial press has reported the impact of mounting calls to boycott goods from the Jewish state. Writing in the daily finance paper, the Marker, economics journalist Nehemia Stressler berated then trade and industry minister Eli Yishai for telling the Israeli army to "destroy one hundred homes" in Gaza for every rocket fired into Israel.
The minister, wrote Stressler, did not understand "how much the operation in Gaza is hurting the economy".
Stressler added: "The horrific images on TV and the statements of politicians in Europe and Turkey are changing the behaviour of consumers, businessmen and potential investors. Many European consumers boycott Israeli products in practice."
He quoted a pepper grower who spoke of "a concealed boycott of Israeli products in Europe".
In February, another article in the Marker, titled "Now heads are lowered as we wait for the storm to blow over", reported that Israelis with major business interests in Turkey hoped to remain anonymous to avoid arousing the attention of pro-boycott groups.
The paper said that, while trade difficulties with Turkey during the Gaza assault received more media attention, Britain was in reality of greater concern.
Gil Erez, Israel's commercial attache in London, told the paper: "Organisations are bombarding [British] retailers with letters, asking that they remove Israeli merchandise from the shelves."
Finance journalists have reported that Israeli hi-tech, food and agribusiness companies suffered adverse consequences following Israel's three-week assault on Gaza, and called for government intervention to protect businesses from a growing boycott.
However, analysts stressed that the impact of a boycott on local exporters was difficult to discern amidst a global economic crisis and that such effects could be exaggerated.
"If there was something serious, I would have heard about it," said Avi Tempkin, from Globes, the Israeli business daily.
Israeli companies are thought to be wary of giving credence to boycott efforts by talking openly about their effect, preferring to resolve problems through diplomatic channels.
Consumer boycotts in Europe have targeted food produce such as Israeli oranges, avocados and herbs, while in Turkey the focus has been on agribusiness products such as pesticides and fertilisers.
The bulk of Israeli export is in components, especially hi-tech products such as Intel chips and flashcards for mobile phones. It is thought that the consumer goods targeted by boycott campaigns represent around 3% to 5% of the Israeli export economy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/03/israel-gaza-attacks-boycotts-food-industry

The real Israel-Palestine story is in the West Bank

by Ben White

It is quite likely that you have not heard of the most important developments this week in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the West Bank, while it has been "occupation as normal", there have been some events that together should be overshadowing Gaza, Gilad Shalit and Avigdor Lieberman.

First, there have been a large number of Israeli raids on Palestinian villages, with dozens of Palestinians abducted. These kinds of raids are, of course, commonplace for the occupied West Bank, but in recent days it appears the Israeli military has targeted sites of particularly strong Palestinian civil resistance to the separation wall.

For three consecutive days this week, Israeli forces invaded Jayyous, a village battling for survival as their agricultural land is lost to the wall and neighbouring Jewish colony. The soldiers occupied homes, detained residents, blocked off access roads, vandalised property, beat protestors, and raised the Israeli flag at the top of several buildings.

Jayyous is one of the Palestinian villages in the West Bank that has been non-violently resisting the separation wall for several years now. It was clear to the villagers that this latest assault was an attempt to intimidate the protest movement.

Also earlier this week, Israel tightened still further the restrictions on Palestinian movement and residency rights in East Jerusalem, closing the remaining passage in the wall in the Ar-Ram neighbourhood of the city. This means that tens of thousands of Palestinians are now cut off from the city and those with the right permit will now have to enter the city by first heading north and using the Qalandiya checkpoint.

Finally – and this time, there was some modest media coverage – it was revealed that the Efrat settlement near Bethlehem would be expanded by the appropriation of around 420 acres land as "state land". According to Efrat's mayor, the plan is to triple the number of residents in the colony.

Looked at together, these events in the West Bank are of far more significance than issues being afforded a lot of attention currently, such as the truce talks with Hamas, or the discussions about a possible prisoner-exchange deal. Hamas itself has become such a focus, whether by those who urge talks and cooption or those who advocate the group's total destruction, that the wider context is forgotten.

Hamas is not the beginning or the end of this conflict, a movement that has been around for just the last third of Israel's 60 years. The Hamas Charter is not a Palestinian national manifesto, and nor is it even particularly central to today's organisation. Before Hamas existed, Israel was colonising the occupied territories, and maintaining an ethnic exclusivist regime; if Hamas disappeared tomorrow, Israeli colonisation certainly would not.

Recognising what is happening in the West Bank also contextualises the discussion about Israel's domestic politics, and the ongoing question about the makeup of a ruling coalition. For the Palestinians, it does not make much difference who is eventually sitting around the Israeli cabinet table, since there is a consensus among the parties on one thing: a firm rejectionist stance with regards to Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty.

During the coverage of the Israeli elections, while it was clear that Palestinians mostly did not care which of the candidates for PM won, the reason for this apathy was not explained. Labor, Likud and Kadima alike, Israeli governments without fail have continued or intensified the colonisation of the occupied territories, entrenching Israel's separate-and-unequal rule, a reality belied by the false "dove"/"hawk" dichotomy.

Which brings us to the third reason why news from the West Bank is more significant than the Gaza truce talks or the Netanyahu-Livni rivalry – it is a further reminder that the two-state solution has completed its progression from worthy (and often disingenuous) aim to meaningless slogan, concealing Israel's absorption of all Palestine/Israel and confinement of the Palestinians into enclaves.

The fact that the West Bank reality means the end of the two-state paradigm has started to be picked up by mainstream, liberal commentators in the US, in the wake of the Israeli elections. Juan Cole, the history professor and blogger, recently pointed out that there are now only three options left for Palestine/Israel: "apartheid", "expulsion", or "one state".

The path of the wall, and the number of Palestinians it directly and indirectly affects, continues to make a mockery of any plan for Palestinian statehood. Jayyous is just one example of the way in which the Israeli-planned, fenced-in Palestinian "state-lets" are at odds with the stated intention of the quartet and so many others, of two viable states, "side by side". As the World Bank pointed out (pdf), land colonisation is not conducive to economic prosperity or basic independence.

In occupied East Jerusalem meanwhile, Israel has continued its process of Judaisation, enforced through bureaucracy and bulldozers. The latest tightening of the noose in Ar-Ram is one example of where Palestinian Jerusalemites are at risk of losing their residency status, victims of what is politely known as the "demographic battle".

It is impossible to imagine Palestinians accepting a "state" shaped by the contours of Israel's wall, disconnected not only from East Jerusalem but even from parts of itself. Yet this is the essence of the "solution" being advanced by Israeli leaders across party lines. For a real sense of where the conflict is heading, look to the West Bank, not just Gaza.

It's time to rethink Zionism

by Daphna Baram

The results of last week's parliamentary elections in Israel brought to the surface some of the most rotten fruits of a debate that has been going on throughout the state's existence: the idea that a mono-ethnic Jewish state is feasible, legitimate and desirable. In other words, it enhanced the predicament of the moral and practical consequences of the Zionist state ideology.

In 1948, during its war of coming-to-be, Israel had driven out of its territory 750,000 Palestinians; another 250,000 were pushed out during the 1967 war. Ever since then, the Israeli left-right division has been marked by the desire for territorial expansion, promoted by the right, and the aspiration for ethnic purity, propagated, curiously, by the Zionist "left". It has always been the "left" that pushed for "division" of the land and "separation" between Jews and Arabs in order to secure a big Jewish majority inside Israel. The right, historically, seemed unconcerned by and large with the consequences of having a large number of Palestinians living under Israel's occupation, as long as they do not get to enjoy citizens' (or other, civil) rights. The Labour party always had a leg in both camps. It had agreed to partition in 1947, seeing it as a chance to get as much Arab-free land as possible, and recognising the opportunity to ethnically clear it off most remaining Arabs during the following war. It was the same Labour party, however, that was responsible for Israel's great victory in the 1967 war, which led to vast territorial expansion and at the same time to the inclusion of millions of Palestinians in the territories under Israel's rule.

An annexation of these territories, known as Gaza Strip and the West Bank, has always been unthinkable for the Labour party and its satellites on the left, as it would involve granting citizenship to the Palestinians who live in them, hence compromising the majority of Jewish citizens in Israel. The right had toyed with the idea of annexation, but was deterred by the same dilemma. The temporary solution had been to keep building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, while hoping that somehow, miraculously, the Palestinians would disappear, or that a huge influx of Jewish citizens would somehow flood the country and tip the balance in a conclusive way.

In the fringes of the left there were always voices calling for either a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. To its left, there was an even smaller group calling for what nowadays can be described as the South African solution: one state, with equal rights to both Jews and Palestinians living in it.

The latter idea had never become popular among Jewish Israelis, but over the last 10 years it had turned into a threat that haunts the dreams of all Zionists. The phrase "the demographic danger" became a legitimate part of the discourse calling for a two-state solution. What started as a lefty support for Palestinian national self-determination had turned in this century into a tool for propagating apartheid. From that point, it was easy for anybody on the right, from Ariel Sharon to Tzipi Livni and Binyamin Netanyahu, to adopt it, and for George Bush's administration to embrace it. Accordingly, that obscure entity the "Palestinian State" was to be of crippled borders that would compromise its already questionable viability. It was to be a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan Bantustan.

The Arab citizens of Israel, traditionally ignored by left and right Zionists as a "barely tolerable" minority, embody the impossibility and futility of the attempt to achieve ethnic purity by means of division. A few years of rising racism inside Israel turned its Arab citizens into a "ticking bomb" of the "demographic danger", and unleashed unprecedented attacks against them by the right wing, with little to no response from the Zionist left. Avigdor Lieberman gained his startling achievement in Tuesday's elections by riding this wave to its natural conclusion. His revolutionary idea – giving up not only territories in the West Bank and Gaza but even territories of Israel proper, in order to get rid of as many Arabs as possible – confused and embarrassed the Zionist left. It had also exposed the absurdity and moral unacceptability of the whole Zionist idea by taking it to its only rational conclusion. If having a Jewish state is the most desirable goal, than getting rid of the non-Jewish citizens is the only rational way to go about it. And hey, it is all to take place in a very benign way: no more talks of "transfer", but an adoption of the "lefty" slogans of division. And all this under the new sinister banner "No loyalty – No citizenship".

The fact that Lieberman can easily claim to be a genuine successor of Israel's founder, Labourite David Ben Gurion, should be an alarm bell in the ears of any Israeli liberal. It is time for any Israeli with an enlightened self-image to look at the mirror and see Avigdor Lieberman staring back. It is time to stop the procrastination over the question whether Israel can be both Jewish and democratic. Lieberman provided the answer loud and clear: it cannot. At this late hour, when the shadow of proto-fascism is hovering over the land, it is time to join forces with Palestinian citizens in the battle against ethnic purity, and for a true democracy. It is time to stop fidgeting, and to admit that mono-ethnicism cannot be a framework for liberal values. It is time to apologise to MK Azmi Bshara, who was dabbed "an Arab nationalist" by Israeli liberals because of his call for "a state of all its citizens". It is time to rethink Zionism.

Children's Demo 4 Gaza!