From fragile peace to violent apartheid: Israel and Palestine are at war.

• Jurisdiction: Australia
• Author: Yiftachel, Oren
• Date: 01 January 2001

Hope and Beyond

We have a clear plan for the Camp David peace summit: go all the way in our effort to achieve peace; if we fail, we know it's the fault of the other side ... We'll be able to look at the eyes of Jewish mothers and say: 'We have tried everything and we need to unite for our defence'. (1) In the summer of 2000 there was cause for some optimism in the war-torn land of Israel/Palestine. There was hope for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories who were seeking political liberation; hope for their deprived brethren inside Israel who were pursuing equality and some autonomy; and for Israeli Jews who were still looking, finally, to achieve a secure Jewish state at peace with its neighbours. The stakes were high as both Jews and Palestinians were keen to enter a new era, free of the violence and destruction that characterized their painful histories. At the helm of the Israeli government stood Ehud Barak--a pragmatic general who had replaced the rightist and belligerent Netanyahu. Israel had just withdrawn its troops from decades of occupying southern Lebanon, and peace negotiations with the Palestinians were gathering momentum, culminating in the Camp David summit under the auspices of a 'caring' Bill Clinton.

However, the spring of 2001 tells us that the great expectations must now be suspended. In the following pages, I shall try to account for the shattering of these hopes, and for the replacement of peace rhetoric with a violent reality that I describe as creeping apartheid. Rather than the usual academic approach, I offer here a vantage point 'from within'. It combines political analysis with impressions gained by first-hand daily exposure to the sorry tale of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict.

Deadlock

Going back to the summer of 2000, and below the surface of 'peace talks', another reality was festering. Israel's promised phased withdrawal from the Palestinian Territories as part of the 'peace process' had been delayed by more than three years; settlements were being built at a rapid pace; and the daily movement of Palestinians was tightly controlled. There was much talk of 'peace' and a stubborn reality of a deepening, violent, occupation. (2) It was therefore not surprising when the peace negotiations hit a deadlock, largely (although not solely) due to an enduring denial by most Israeli-Jews of the main problems simmering beneath the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. Issues such as the future of Palestinian refugees, control over Jerusalem or the future of Jewish illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, were systematically silenced in the Israeli public arena, and were even marginalized in international discourse by a powerful American influence. As a result, when these issues were inevitably raised during serious peace negotiations, Israeli negotiators were locked inside their own silence--they were unable to think about resolving the conflict on equal terms, or even discuss the minimal parameters requested by the Palestinians.

In historical terms, most Palestinians felt they had already performed their historical compromise with Zionism. During the 1993 Oslo agreements, the Palestinians recognized Israel's right to exist securely on seventy-eight per cent of their historic homeland (that is, Israel within the 'Green Line'--its internationally recognized border, not including the Palestinian Occupied Territories). This step was taken without the approval of most Arab states, after decades of frustration and disappointment from reliance on assistance from the Arab world. The Palestinians thought that the remaining twenty-two per cent would be gradually transferred to their control (with minor modifications) during the implementation of peace accords. Hence the stand expressed by Faisal Husseini, a renowned Palestinian leader, in a recent interview: 'There is no compromise on the compromise!' (3)

Most Israeli-Jews, however, were led to think otherwise. They perceived the historical compromise between Zionists and Palestinians as occurring within the territories conquered by Israel in 1967. The main Jewish perception is that the conflict is between a Jewish Israel and 'the Arabs', and hence the only Jewish state in the world--established after centuries of anti-Semitism--must exist within secure borders, while the Palestinians (refugees and others) can safely integrate within any of the twenty-two Arab states. In recent years many Israeli-Jews have reluctantly accepted the existence of a Palestinian nation, after decades of denial. However, they still overwhelmingly perceive the Palestinians as part of a hostile Arab region that has continued to deny the right of Jews for national self-determination.

This view led most Israelis, including the 'leftist' Labour camp, to equate 'going all the way for peace' with the annexation of most (internationally illegal) Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories, and with a total denial of the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their original lands and villages. In his recent memoirs of the Camp David peace talks, Israel's leftist foreign minister at the time, Shlomo Ben-Ami boasts:

The Camp David summit was a major Israeli achievement: for the first time ... the Americans accepted ... and Clinton stressed the importance of annexing 80 per cent of the settlers ... and a large Jewish Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty ... and we never, at no stage, agreed to the return of the Palestinian refugees. (4) The vastly differing perceptions of Israeli-Jews and Palestinians led to the collapse of peace talks and carried the sparks of violence.

The Slide

The situation quickly deteriorated. Ariel Sharon, then leader of the rightist opposition, lit the fire with a provocative, well-publicized visit to the sacred Muslim mosques in occupied East Jerusalem. A deprived and frustrated Palestinian population, and a...