Collective Punishment in Gaza
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/collective-punishment-gaza
July 29, 2014
Collective Punishment in Gaza
By Rashid Khalidi
Three days after the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the
current war in Gaza, he held a press conference in Tel Aviv during which he
said, in Hebrew, according to the Times of Israel, “I think the Israeli
people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under
any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of
the River Jordan.”
It’s worth listening carefully when Netanyahu speaks to the Israeli people.
What is going on in Palestine today is not really about Hamas. It is not about
rockets. It is not about “human shields” or terrorism or tunnels. It is about
Israel’s permanent control over Palestinian land and Palestinian lives. That is
what Netanyahu is really saying, and that is what he now admits he has “always”
talked about. It is about an unswerving, decades-long Israeli policy of denying
Palestine self-determination, freedom, and sovereignty.
What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. It is punishment
for Gaza’s refusal to be a docile ghetto. It is punishment for the gall of
Palestinians in unifying, and of Hamas and other factions in responding to
Israel’s siege and its provocations with resistance, armed or otherwise, after
Israel repeatedly reacted to unarmed protest with crushing force. Despite years
of ceasefires and truces, the siege of Gaza has never been lifted.
As Netanyahu’s own words show, however, Israel will accept nothing short of
the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. It will accept only
a Palestinian “state” that is stripped of all the attributes of a real state:
control over security, borders, airspace, maritime limits, contiguity, and,
therefore, sovereignty. The twenty-three-year charade of the “peace process” has
shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington.
Whenever the Palestinians have resisted that pathetic fate (as any nation
would), Israel has punished them for their insolence. This is not new.
Punishing Palestinians for existing has a long history. It was Israel’s
policy before Hamas and its rudimentary rockets were Israel’s boogeyman of the
moment, and before Israel turned Gaza into an open-air prison, punching bag, and
weapons laboratory. In 1948, Israel killed thousands of innocents, and
terrorized and displaced hundreds of thousands more, in the name of creating a
Jewish-majority state in a land that was then sixty-five per cent Arab. In 1967,
it displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians again, occupying territory
that it still largely controls, forty-seven years later.
In 1982, in a quest to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization and
extinguish Palestinian nationalism, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing seventeen
thousand people, mostly civilians. Since the late nineteen-eighties, when
Palestinians under occupation rose up, mostly by throwing stones and staging
general strikes, Israel has arrested tens of thousands of Palestinians: over
seven hundred and fifty thousand people have spent time in Israeli prisons since
1967, a number that amounts to forty per cent of the adult male population
today. They have emerged with accounts of torture, which are substantiated by
human-rights groups like B’tselem. During the second intifada, which began in
2000, Israel reinvaded the West Bank (it had never fully left). The occupation
and colonization of Palestinian land continued unabated throughout the “peace
process” of the nineteen-nineties, and continues to this day. And yet, in
America, the discussion ignores this crucial, constantly oppressive context, and
is instead too often limited to Israeli “self-defense” and the Palestinians’
supposed responsibility for their own suffering.
In the past seven or more years, Israel has besieged, tormented, and
regularly attacked the Gaza Strip. The pretexts change: they elected Hamas; they
refused to be docile; they refused to recognize Israel; they fired rockets; they
built tunnels to circumvent the siege; and on and on. But each pretext is a red
herring, because the truth of ghettos--what happens when you imprison 1.8 million
people in a hundred and forty square miles, about a third of the area of New
York City, with no control of borders, almost no access to the sea for fishermen
(three out of the twenty kilometres allowed by the Oslo accords), no real way in
or out, and with drones buzzing overhead night and day—is that, eventually, the
ghetto will fight back. It was true in Soweto and Belfast, and it is true in
Gaza. We might not like Hamas or some of its methods, but that is not the same
as accepting the proposition that Palestinians should supinely accept the denial
of their right to exist as a free people in their ancestral homeland.
This is precisely why the United States’ support of current Israeli policy
is folly. Peace was achieved in Northern Ireland and in South Africa because the
United States and the world realized that they had to put pressure on the
stronger party, holding it accountable and ending its impunity. Northern Ireland
and South Africa are far from perfect examples, but it is worth remembering
that, to achieve a just outcome, it was necessary for the United States to deal
with groups like the Irish Republican Army and the African National Congress,
which engaged in guerrilla war and even terrorism. That was the only way to
embark on a road toward true peace and reconciliation. The case of Palestine is
not fundamentally different.
Instead, the United States puts its thumb on the scales in favor of the
stronger party. In this surreal, upside-down vision of the world, it almost
seems as if it is the Israelis who are occupied by the Palestinians, and not the
other way around. In this skewed universe, the inmates of an open-air prison are
besieging a nuclear-armed power with one of the most sophisticated militaries in
the world.
If we are to move away from this unreality, the U.S. must either reverse
its policies or abandon its claim of being an “honest broker.” If the U.S.
government wants to fund and arm Israel and parrot its talking points that fly
in the face of reason and international law, so be it. But it should not claim
the moral high ground and intone solemnly about peace. And it should certainly
not insult Palestinians by saying that it cares about them or their children,
who are dying in Gaza today.
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at
Columbia University and the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was
an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid-Washington
Palestinian-Israeli negotiations of 1991-93. His most recent book is “Brokers of
Deceit.”
July 29, 2014
Collective Punishment in Gaza
By Rashid Khalidi
Three days after the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the
current war in Gaza, he held a press conference in Tel Aviv during which he
said, in Hebrew, according to the Times of Israel, “I think the Israeli
people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under
any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of
the River Jordan.”
It’s worth listening carefully when Netanyahu speaks to the Israeli people.
What is going on in Palestine today is not really about Hamas. It is not about
rockets. It is not about “human shields” or terrorism or tunnels. It is about
Israel’s permanent control over Palestinian land and Palestinian lives. That is
what Netanyahu is really saying, and that is what he now admits he has “always”
talked about. It is about an unswerving, decades-long Israeli policy of denying
Palestine self-determination, freedom, and sovereignty.
What Israel is doing in Gaza now is collective punishment. It is punishment
for Gaza’s refusal to be a docile ghetto. It is punishment for the gall of
Palestinians in unifying, and of Hamas and other factions in responding to
Israel’s siege and its provocations with resistance, armed or otherwise, after
Israel repeatedly reacted to unarmed protest with crushing force. Despite years
of ceasefires and truces, the siege of Gaza has never been lifted.
As Netanyahu’s own words show, however, Israel will accept nothing short of
the acquiescence of Palestinians to their own subordination. It will accept only
a Palestinian “state” that is stripped of all the attributes of a real state:
control over security, borders, airspace, maritime limits, contiguity, and,
therefore, sovereignty. The twenty-three-year charade of the “peace process” has
shown that this is all Israel is offering, with the full approval of Washington.
Whenever the Palestinians have resisted that pathetic fate (as any nation
would), Israel has punished them for their insolence. This is not new.
Punishing Palestinians for existing has a long history. It was Israel’s
policy before Hamas and its rudimentary rockets were Israel’s boogeyman of the
moment, and before Israel turned Gaza into an open-air prison, punching bag, and
weapons laboratory. In 1948, Israel killed thousands of innocents, and
terrorized and displaced hundreds of thousands more, in the name of creating a
Jewish-majority state in a land that was then sixty-five per cent Arab. In 1967,
it displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians again, occupying territory
that it still largely controls, forty-seven years later.
In 1982, in a quest to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization and
extinguish Palestinian nationalism, Israel invaded Lebanon, killing seventeen
thousand people, mostly civilians. Since the late nineteen-eighties, when
Palestinians under occupation rose up, mostly by throwing stones and staging
general strikes, Israel has arrested tens of thousands of Palestinians: over
seven hundred and fifty thousand people have spent time in Israeli prisons since
1967, a number that amounts to forty per cent of the adult male population
today. They have emerged with accounts of torture, which are substantiated by
human-rights groups like B’tselem. During the second intifada, which began in
2000, Israel reinvaded the West Bank (it had never fully left). The occupation
and colonization of Palestinian land continued unabated throughout the “peace
process” of the nineteen-nineties, and continues to this day. And yet, in
America, the discussion ignores this crucial, constantly oppressive context, and
is instead too often limited to Israeli “self-defense” and the Palestinians’
supposed responsibility for their own suffering.
In the past seven or more years, Israel has besieged, tormented, and
regularly attacked the Gaza Strip. The pretexts change: they elected Hamas; they
refused to be docile; they refused to recognize Israel; they fired rockets; they
built tunnels to circumvent the siege; and on and on. But each pretext is a red
herring, because the truth of ghettos--what happens when you imprison 1.8 million
people in a hundred and forty square miles, about a third of the area of New
York City, with no control of borders, almost no access to the sea for fishermen
(three out of the twenty kilometres allowed by the Oslo accords), no real way in
or out, and with drones buzzing overhead night and day—is that, eventually, the
ghetto will fight back. It was true in Soweto and Belfast, and it is true in
Gaza. We might not like Hamas or some of its methods, but that is not the same
as accepting the proposition that Palestinians should supinely accept the denial
of their right to exist as a free people in their ancestral homeland.
This is precisely why the United States’ support of current Israeli policy
is folly. Peace was achieved in Northern Ireland and in South Africa because the
United States and the world realized that they had to put pressure on the
stronger party, holding it accountable and ending its impunity. Northern Ireland
and South Africa are far from perfect examples, but it is worth remembering
that, to achieve a just outcome, it was necessary for the United States to deal
with groups like the Irish Republican Army and the African National Congress,
which engaged in guerrilla war and even terrorism. That was the only way to
embark on a road toward true peace and reconciliation. The case of Palestine is
not fundamentally different.
Instead, the United States puts its thumb on the scales in favor of the
stronger party. In this surreal, upside-down vision of the world, it almost
seems as if it is the Israelis who are occupied by the Palestinians, and not the
other way around. In this skewed universe, the inmates of an open-air prison are
besieging a nuclear-armed power with one of the most sophisticated militaries in
the world.
If we are to move away from this unreality, the U.S. must either reverse
its policies or abandon its claim of being an “honest broker.” If the U.S.
government wants to fund and arm Israel and parrot its talking points that fly
in the face of reason and international law, so be it. But it should not claim
the moral high ground and intone solemnly about peace. And it should certainly
not insult Palestinians by saying that it cares about them or their children,
who are dying in Gaza today.
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at
Columbia University and the editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, and was
an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at the Madrid-Washington
Palestinian-Israeli negotiations of 1991-93. His most recent book is “Brokers of
Deceit.”