A week into the official unveiling of the Trump Administration’s “Deal of the Century,” there is no lack of analysis of how this “vision for peace to prosperity” legitimizes Israel’s numerous crimes, while fulfilling the country’s aspirations for acceptance into the region. And as we denounce this vision, it must be emphasized that it does not propose much that is novel, as much as it merely sets up an official, contractual framework for transgressions that are already “facts on the ground.”
The annexation of Jerusalem and declaring it the capital of Israel, the denial of the Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return, Israel’s control of all Palestinian borders, including the Gaza Strip’s maritime borders, the annexation of West Bank settlements, Palestinian demilitarization, the setting up of regional alliances, and putting an end to BDS, are not a bold “vision” as much as a long-standing reality, which Trump wants Palestinians to officially agree to. (Or else what? Gaza is already unlivable, BDS criminalized, protestors in the Great March of Return are shot on sight, while refugees in the global diaspora are denied return). In other words, the plan does not propose apartheid, it seeks to formalize it.
And while analysts remain busy explaining the Deal’s many offensive details, Israel is moving full steam into annexing more land, and seizing more Palestinian homes.
Here in the US, the “Deal of the Century” has reinvigorated the discourse naming Israel’s practices as apartheid—again, nothing new, the analogy is at the basis of the 2005 call for BDS. And as we welcome these belated nods of acknowledgement, we must keep pushing the discourse towards a denunciation of the entire scope of the initial catastrophe that befell Palestinians last century, rather than its recent manifestations.
Al Nakba was more than apartheid. Yet many who fancy themselves progressive do not question the settler-colonial mindset behind their support of the two-state solution, which would preserve their beloved Israel as a Jewish state. I am thinking of groups such as J Street, “the political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” and IfNotNow, “building a movement of Jews to end Israel’s occupation,” who denounce only the 1967 occupation. And of course I have written about Bernie Sanders’ Zionism, even as I maintain that he is the best presidential candidate for Palestinians.
More than denouncing apartheid, it is time to acknowledge that Israel, in whatever form it has taken, or can take, would never have come into existence without European imperialism and settler-colonialism. If there was ever to be an Israel that is a Jewish state, in parts of what was once Palestine, that Israel could only happen through the initial expulsion, followed by the ongoing violation of the right of return of the Palestinian people to their homes, villages, towns and cities in pre-1967 Israel.
So this is a call for consistency: just as apartheid is wrong, a crime against humanity, so settler-colonialism is racism, which entails the dispossession and disenfranchisement of an indigenous people, so as to create an enclave of supremacy–of whatever size. The Zionism of 1917, (Lord Balfour’s Declaration), of 1923 (Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s “Iron Wall”) and of 1948, that is, the early Zionism which laid the foundations for the new state of Israel, was no less murderous and violently separatist than the Zionism of today’s Hebron occupiers.
Only weeks ago, “progressive Zionists” were appalled at the New York Times’ alarmist announcement (which was later proven unwarranted) that Trump would be issuing an executive order asserting that Judaism is a nationality, not just a religion. Yet if Judaism is not a nationality, then Jewish self-determination should not necessitate the trappings of a nation-state, especially one founded on stolen land, whose rightful owners remain refugees to this day.
Fifteen years since the call for BDS was issued, using South Africa as a model, there is finally broad acceptance amongst progressives that Israel is an apartheid state, not the vibrant democracy they had long assumed it to be–albeit with some post-1967 blemishes and flaws. That discursive change is important, as it is at the basis of the growing global solidarity with the Palestinian people. But we must not stop at that. We should not only push for a recognition of Israeli apartheid, we must demand the recognition that any Jewish Israeli state, whatever its boundaries within historic Palestine, is necessarily a settler-colonial state. And no form of settler-colonialism is progressive.
The modern nation-state of Israel, the one founded through an imperial “declaration” early in the twentieth century, was envisioned as an enclave of ethno-nationalist supremacy, achieved through the expulsion of the indigenous inhabitants of the land. The “Deal of the Twenty-First Century” cannot be a continuation of settler-colonialism. It must be the recognition that all settler-colonialism is wrong, and that today’s “facts on the ground” necessitate the acceptance of one state, from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all.
Maybe we need to focus on the pathology of Zionism. This is what it is. Murderous and paranoid.
There has to be more honesty about why Israel turned out like this. You can’t walk away from mass extermination and start over as if everything will be fine.
Israel is always led by sociopaths. We have to talk about WW2 trauma.
Wehave to intensify BDS. And change the framing. Israel is not the dominant power. Israel is out of control and heading for collapse.
The Zionist interference in the recent UK election is a sign of how vulnerable Zionism is. Things fall apart.
“Fifteen years since the call for BDS was issued, using South Africa as a model, there is finally broad acceptance amongst progressives that Israel is an apartheid state… That discursive change is important.”
Last weeks New York Times Book section has a review of Rashid Khalidi’s book “The Hundred Years War On Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017”, here it is:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/books/review/the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine-rashid-khalidi.html
Even 10 years ago I don’t think the Times would have printed a review like this – the times are changing (pun intended). The review, by the way, is somewhat critical of Khalidi’s book but I think the critique is weak and doesn’t even attempt to refute the books main points.
When will the Times finally do a review of Max Blumenthal’s “Goliath”?
Elia, “The “Deal of the Twenty-First Century” cannot be a continuation of settler-colonialism. It must be the recognition that all settler-colonialism is wrong, and that today’s “facts on the ground” necessitate the acceptance of one state, from the river to the sea, with equal rights for all.”______________________________________________________
Elia makes many valid observations. Haunting us is the absence of a coherent path to achieve one secular state from the river to the sea. Elia is making a case it is necessary first to establish one narrative being right the other wrong in order to get to positive relations through equality under the law. Is that most important at this point?
Hopefully, Palestinians are considering national elections or are considering publishing their vision/plan as Trump has requested. Either could stir up political discussions and facilitate a consensus on co-existence. Whatever course is taken, it is imperative to consider a “one-gun policy” so individuals, no matter how defiant or angry, submit to the collective interest.
A published thought-through response to Trump’s vision/plan will influence Americans, especially progressives and Members of Congress who hold the purse strings and will strengthen alliances with Jews. It will block unilateral decisions by Netanyahu and direct negotiations to Trump. It would lay the groundwork for getting to the PLO objective of one state with equal rights.
Must read!!
Part 1.
“Don’t Call It a Peace Plan”
“Ten ways Trump has launched a relentless assault on the very idea of Israeli-Palestinian peace” BY DANIEL LEVY JANUARY 30, 2020, The American Prospect.
DANIEL LEVY
Daniel Levy is the president of the U.S./Middle East Project, based in New York and London, and is a former Israeli negotiator.
“From the mid-1990s to the early noughties, much of my professional life was spent in a rather niche pursuit that came flooding back to me with yesterday’s release of President Trump’s ‘Peace Vision.’
“The drafting of Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements became my thing—sometimes in uniform serving in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), sometimes as a concerned citizen in informal and often clandestine talks, and sometimes as an adviser in the offices of the Israeli prime minister and then justice minister during official negotiations.
“I was a negotiator at the agenda-setting Oslo B agreements under Yitzhak Rabin; submitted texts from afar to Clinton’s Camp David Summit with Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak; and then joined the follow-up talks between Israelis and Palestinians, in Taba in January 2001. I have participated in numerous track-two Israeli-Palestinian talks before becoming a lead drafter of the unauthorized Geneva Accord plan in December 2003. The picture of that signing ceremony of Israelis and Palestinians seeking a new way forward still hangs in my study.
“Some of those texts saw the light of day and some were even signed with great pomp and ceremony in the presence of world leaders. None, of course, led to anything approaching peace.
“In the intervening and often gloomy years of entrenched conflict and occupation, I often questioned the wisdom of what we had attempted. Those memories and uncertainties hit me like a punch to the gut when reading the lengthy White House plan issued Tuesday: “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People.”
“Had these talks after all been an exercise in softening the Palestinians, prematurely extracting concessions based on the ultimately dashed premise that an Israeli partner would emerge? In its outward appearance, the plan had such a familiar feel to it, like returning to a place of one’s childhood. But as I absorbed the words, nostalgia gave way to a feeling of having entered a topsy-turvy Alice in Wonderland. The language of peace had been cut and pasted, then put through a grinder, delivering an act of aggression dripping with the coarse syntax of racism. A hate plan, not a peace plan.
“Here are ten ways in which the document released on Tuesday is a relentless assault on the very idea of Israeli-Palestinian peace:
“1. Good Guys, Bad Guys, and Peace Plans
“Terms of surrender and peace plans are not the same thing. But even terms of surrender have more chance of being durable if they are constructed in such a way as to maintain a semblance of dignity of the defeated party.
“A peace plan has to be predicated on both sides saving face, on both sides being able to declare some kind of victory. The plan announced is a 180-page hate letter from the Americans (and by extension the Israelis) to the Palestinians. Until one reads the entire document (and unless one knows the history of the conflict), it is hard to convey the depth of contempt and scorn this text displays toward Palestinians. It oozes colonialist supremacism.
“The text is drawn from the most unsophisticated and patronizing of Israeli PR talking points, an exclusivist narrative from start to finish. Only the Israeli side is deemed worthy by the American plan of empathy, of having its historical claims and justifications to the land and to nationhood embraced. According to the plan, the Palestinians exist to be slapped and pushed around. They are interlocutors only insofar as they can offer contrition and penance.
“Per the text, Israel’s military actions are always defensive. Its relinquishing of any occupied territory is a generous concession, for this is ‘territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.’ Israel is depicted as an exemplary steward of a united Jerusalem, and its population is crowded into a narrow coastal strip (someone should really tell the White House that Israel has the most powerful military in the region, including a nuclear weapons capacity).
“The Palestinians by contrast are a gang of miscreants, inciting, ungrateful, and corrupt. It is hard not to read in this text a white supremacist mindset. Racism comes to the fore in the plan’s adoption of the idea of transferring the political rights of residents of the Triangle area in Central Israel, where communities of Palestinian citizens of Israel live. Under land swaps, the Triangle could be transferred to the Palestinian state, thereby undermining the citizenship status of the entire Palestinian-Israeli community. The plan endorses the ethnocracy-over-democracy logic of Israel’s recently passed Nation State Law.
“2. A Palestinian State? This Is a Bantustan Arrangement.
“The visuals of the map proposed are a dead giveaway: a patchwork of Palestinian islands best viewed alongside the map of South Africa’s apartheid-era Bantustans. A Palestinian state is supposedly on offer, but that notion is drained of all possible meaning. The document even goes on a philosophical detour to tell us, ‘Sovereignty is an amorphous concept that has evolved over time.’ Israel will control all security, territorial waters, airspace, and international crossings of this nonstate—and can even maintain a permanent naval blockade.
“The lack of contiguity of this nonstate should be of no concern, after all, since the plan ‘maximizes ease of travel within the state of Palestine through state of the art infrastructure solutions comprised of bridges, roads and tunnels.’ Palestinians will even have access roads so they can traverse the Jordan Valley, ‘subject to Israeli security requirements.’ The enclaves of Palestinians in Israeli territories will unfortunately also only have access to the rest of ‘Palestine’ subject to ‘Israeli security responsibility,’ and in certain areas Israel can also decide zoning rules and building permits for Palestinians. Palestinians are all too familiar with what this matrix of control amounts to in practice.
“The Palestinian nonstate will not have Jerusalem as its capital, for that is to remain the ‘undivided, sovereign capital of the State of Israel.’ The Palestinians can have outer Jerusalem neighborhoods on the other side of where Israel has erected its security barrier, but don’t despair, the Palestinians can call this noncapital by whatever name they like.
“Oh, and finally, the glorious nonstate of Palestine only comes into being if a series of preconditions are met, which ‘must be determined to have occurred by the State of Israel.’
“3. Asks of Israel? There Are None.
“Despite some tactical attempts in Israel, from both the left and right, to depict the U.S. document as demanding unwanted Israeli concessions, this is a slam dunk for Israeli maximalism. Israel is only asked to not do or give up things it has already declared no interest in. And if Israel should change its mind or should that not be enough, then there is a fallback; Israel can stop any implementation with the unilateral veto it is accorded in the plan.
“The Jerusalem border will be set according to the barrier Israel already unilaterally built. There is no end to settlement growth. Israel has defined all the land it wants; it can both continue building there without disturbance and extend Israeli sovereignty in all such areas, with American endorsement.
“The clause supposedly placing a moratorium on the demolition of Palestinian homes and structures has the following helpful override clause: ‘This moratorium does not apply to the demolition of any structure that poses a safety risk, as determined by the State of Israel, or punitive demolitions following acts of terrorism.’
“Israel even gets to unilaterally override U.N. Security Council resolutions. The American conceptual map is designed ‘in the spirit of UNSCR 242’—the definitive blueprint to a two-state solution that was unanimously passed after the 1967 war—’and in a manner that meets the security requirements of the State of Israel and … takes into account the State of Israel’s valid legal historical claims.’
“4. Humiliation, Part One: Refugees and Prisoners
“Anyone familiar with the Palestinian experience will know the historic centrality for Palestinians of the refugee experience and the enormous shadow cast in contemporary Palestinian life by the phenomenon of so many Palestinians having served time in Israeli prisons. The latter is the consequence of a demeaning occupation that inevitably generates resistance, both violent and peaceful, and which has over the years criminalized any act of Palestinian political struggle.
“The plan is uniquely invidious in its treatment of Palestinian refugees; they are not even accorded the kind of rhetorical empathy that is heaped on Israel by the bucket load. Israel’s tough line on refugee return is a matter of historical record, but in peace talks there have been at least attempts to soften the blow. Here, not so.
“The text asserts that ‘there shall be no right of return by, or absorption of, any Palestinian refugee into the State of Israel.’ Not only that, but Israel can decide how many and which Palestinian refugees could take up residence in the new nonstate of Palestine. ‘The rights of Palestinian refugees to immigrate into the State of Palestine shall be limited in accordance with agreed security arrangements … and regulated by various factors including increased security risks to the State of Israel.’
Nada Elia: “In other words, the plan does not propose apartheid, it seeks to formalize it.”
While offering it as a solution for peace and co-existence. Orwell meets Hendrik-Frensch-Verwoerd.