In light of the recent protests Joseph Dana’s interview with Al Jazeerah and London Review of Books article What about the Occupation? directs us to the most pressing concern impacting social justice in Israel today.
AJ: The government has tried to label these protesters ‘left wing’. Are they and why as far as the government is concerned is an accusation of being left wing such a slur?
DANA: In israeli politics everything is on a very stark left/right divide, the left being associated with Palestinian rights. The sad reality is that if Israelis discuss Palestinian rights and specifically the rights of Palestinians under Israeli occupation they very quickly lose public support. Now we’ve been waiting, as I’ve said, and given the protest a number of weeks here to develop any sort of criticism about the occupation and I think if there is no criticism of the occupation it will provide absolute proof that Israeli society is not ready or willing to discuss this occupation and will not be able to end it itself.
Dana’s LRB article draws our attention to the timeliness of addressing Palestinian rights given the United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood in September and the pressing choice facing Israeli protestors. Note the framing of the GOI: one regime rules the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The protesters’ working definition of ‘social justice’, however, is unclear and full of contradictions. Most glaringly, they have yet to address the question of the Occupied Territories. From the start, organisers maintained that their protests were a rare instance of ‘apolitical’ social organising. The Palestinian issue was understood to be too divisive to be included under the umbrella of Israel’s social justice revolution, and there’s no doubt that, had protesters connected their struggle for social justice to the occupation, many fewer Israelis would have joined the protests.
The rights of Israelis, however, are inextricably tied with the rights of Palestinians, both inside the 1967 borders and in the Occupied Territories. The protesters, like most of Israeli society, are operating under the assumption that they are disconnected from the Palestinians who live under Israeli military occupation. But the fact is that one regime rules the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and any discussion of the allocation of resources here, not to mention social justice, must take into account the rights of everyone who lives under the regime.
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The protest as a whole will soon be forced to confront the question of the occupation. Last week the military announced that it will initiate a massive call up of reserves ahead of the United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood in September. Most of the protesters, young men and woman with reserve duty obligations, will have to decide whether to increase the pressure on the government by refusing to serve, or abandon their protest without having made any concrete gains. At the moment, the latter course seems more likely.
