On Palestine (24 page)

Actually, that warning was given forty-seven years ago, in September 1967, at the time of Israel's first colonization, illegal colonization, of Gush Etzion. Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg recently reminded us of this. Little has changed since, in the last forty-seven years, apart from the scale of the crimes, which continue, without a break, with constant US support. Well, as for the prospects, there is a conventional picture. It's repeated constantly on all sides—Israel, Palestine, independent commentators, diplomats. The picture that's presented is that there are two alternatives: either the two-state settlement, which represents an overwhelming international consensus, virtually everyone, and if that fails, there will have to be one state—Israel will take over the West Bank, the Palestinians will hand over the keys, as it's sometimes said. Palestinians often have favored that. They say then they will be able to carry out a civil rights struggle, maybe modeled on the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, fight for civil rights within the whole one state controlled by Israel. Now, Israelis criticize that on the grounds of what is called “the demographic problem,” the fact that there will be too many non-Jews in a Jewish state—in fact, pretty soon a majority. Those are the alternatives that are presented, overwhelmingly, hardly an exception.

My own opinion, which I've written about repeatedly—without convincing many people, apparently, but I'll try to convince you—is that this is a total illusion. Those are not the two alternatives. There are two alternatives, but they're different ones. One alternative is the international consensus on a two-state settlement, basically the terms of January 1976. By now, it's virtually everyone—the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States, [which] includes Iran, Europe, Latin America—informally, at least, [just] about everyone. That's one option. The other option, the realistic one, is that Israel will continue doing exactly what it is doing right now, before our eyes, visible, with US support, which is also visible. And what's happening is not a secret. You can open the newspapers and read it. Israel is taking over what they call Jerusalem, as I mentioned, a huge area, maybe five times the area of historic Jerusalem, Greater Jerusalem, big area in the West Bank, includes many Arab villages being dispossessed, destroyed, bringing settlers in. All of this is doubly illegal. All the settlements are illegal, as determined by the Security Council, advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. But the Jerusalem settlements are doubly illegal, because they're also in violation of explicit Security Council orders going back to 1968, with the US actually voting for them at that time, barring any change in the status of Jerusalem. But it continues. That's Greater Jerusalem.

There are then corridors extending to the east. One major corridor extending from Jerusalem almost to Jericho, virtually bisecting the West Bank, includes the Israeli town of Maale Adumim, which was built largely during the Clinton administration, with the obvious purpose of bisecting the West Bank—still a little contested territory, but that's the goal. There's another corridor further to the north including the town of Ariel, partially bisecting what remains. [And] another one further to the north including the town of Kedumim. If you look at the map, these essentially break up the West Bank into pretty much cantons. It looks, from a map, as though a large territory is left, but that's misleading. Most of that is uninhabitable desert. And that's separate from what I mentioned before, the slow, steady takeover of the Jordan Valley to the east—again, about a third of the arable land, the country.

Israel has no official policy of taking it over, but they're pursuing the policy in the way that has been carried out now for a hundred years, literally—small steps so nobody notices, or at least people pretend not to notice, establish a military zone. The Palestinians who live there have to be displaced because it's a military zone, no settlement allowed, and pretty soon there's a military settlement, Nahal settlement, and another, then, sooner or later, it becomes an actual settlement. Meanwhile, dig wells, dispossess the population, set up green zones—a large variety of techniques which have, by now, reduced the Arab population from about 300,000 in 1967 to roughly 60,000 today. As I mentioned, that essentially imprisons what's left. I don't think Israel has any intention of taking over the Palestinian population concentrations, which are left out of this, these plans.

There are analogies often made to South Africa, but they're quite misleading. South Africa relied on its Black population. That was 85 percent of the population. It was its workforce. And they had to sustain them, just like slaveowners have to maintain their capital. They tried to sustain the population. They even tried to gain international support for the bantustans. Israel has no such attitude toward the Palestinians. They don't want to have anything to do with them. If they leave, that's fine. If they die, that's fine. In standard neocolonial pattern, Israel is establishing—permitting the establishment of a center for Palestinian elites in Ramallah, where you have nice restaurants and theaters and so on. Every Third World country under the colonial system had something like that. Now, that's the picture that's emerging. It's taking shape before our eyes. It has so far worked very well. If it continues, Israel will not face a demographic problem. When these regions are integrated slowly into Israel, actually, the proportion of Jews in Greater Israel will increase. There are very few Palestinians there. Those who are there are being dispossessed, kicked out. That's what's taking shape before our eyes. I think that's the realistic alternative to a two-state settlement. And there's every reason to expect it to continue as long as the United States supports it.

 

 

This essay is based on a speech delivered to the United Nations General As
sembly on October 14, 2014.

Acknowledgments

 

I still have to pinch myself to believe that I am working on a second book with Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappé.

Huge thanks to both of them for accepting and taking the time to do this again. It was amazing spending time with them in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Noam's workplace, MIT, and hanging out with Ilan in Boston was priceless, too (even though he left at halftime during a Boston Celtics basketball game).

I love to be able to work with Haymarket Books, always. To do this again with Anthony Arnove was fantastic and Dao X. Tran did an amazing job as editor. Thanks to Laura Gottesdiener for helping organize and prepare the manuscript.

Huge thanks to the Lyonses for giving us such a great welcome in Boston! We loved staying and spending time with you.

My brother Florent was once again by my side throughout the process. He came to Boston with me and even took part in the “Brussels” interview with Ilan. He is crucial to everything I do.

My “families” (by blood or not) help me in ways they often do not even realize: Min, Dad, Mae, Christopher, Laury, Romane, Florence, Tania, Ewa, Maria, Fay, and Herve, Rafeef, Aneta, Noura, Kasia, William, Awatef, Aneta and Maximilien. Knowing that you exist makes me stronger.

Jeanne, you are my enabler. You are the one who makes things tick, the one who shows me the way and the right direction. You are my main source of energy, love, and laughs. You are my light. Everything I do has parts of you in it. The fact that we have, together, given life to two amazing boys, Leo and Thom, makes me much more hopeful about the present and the future and makes me appreciate the beauty of life in ways that did not exist before.

Notes

 

Chapter Ten

1
. Ilan Pappé,
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
(Oxford: Oneworld, 2006).

2
. On these negotiations see Avi Shlaim,
Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).

3
. Pappé,
Ethnic Cleansing
, 193–99.

4
. On this lobby see Tom Segev,
1967: Israel, the War, and the Year That Transformed the Middle East
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007).

5
. Ami Gluska,
The Israeli Military and the Origins of the 1967 War
(London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 122–25.

6
. On these plans see Ilan Pappé, “Revisiting 1967: The False Paradigm of Peace, Partition and Parity,”
Settler Colonial Studies
3, nos. 3–4 (2013): 341–51.

7
. The minutes of these meeting are now open to the public in the Israel State Archives, Section 43.4, cabinet meeting of June 11–20, 1967.

8
. Ibid. The crucial meetings were on June 18 and 19.

9
. Ibid.

About the Contributors

 

© Florent Barat

Noam Chomsky
is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. He is widely regarded as one of the foremost critics of U.S. foreign policy in the world. His books include
At War with Asia
,
Towards a New Cold War
,
Fateful Triangle
,
Necessary Illusions
,
Hegemony or Survival
,
Deterring Democracy
,
Failed States
,
and
Manufacturing Consent.

 

Professor Ilan Pappé
is the Director of the European Center for Palestine Studies and a fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of fifteen books, among them
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
and his most recent
book,
The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge
.

 

Frank Barat
is a human rights activists and author. He was the coordinator of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and is now the president of the Palestine Legal Action Network. His books include:
Gaza in Crisis
and
Corporate Complicity in Israel's Occupation
. He can be contacted @frankbarat22 on Twitter.