For the Zionists, Palestine was a "land without a people for a people
without a land" (1) and the indigenous populations did not exist. ----When the UN adopted the partition plan, in November 1947, it assigned
more than half of Palestine to the settlers, who represented little more
than a third of the population. The idea of the "two states" was already
present, but it was clearly unfair. The Zionists and the Arab Hashemite
dynasty had agreed to divide Palestine between them and, after the
Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49, there would be no Palestinian state (2).
The West Bank and East Jerusalem were annexed by Jordan and Gaza would
be under Egyptian protectorate.
This denial of the existence, rights and dignity of the Palestinians
continued even after the war. Immediately after conducting a
premeditated ethnic cleansing, Israel's founder and Prime Minister David
Ben-Gurion declared: "We did not expel anyone, the Arabs left of their
own free will."
With the conquest of all of historic Palestine in 1967 and the beginning
of the colonization of the territories that had not yet been conquered
in 1948, the goal of erasing Palestine became clear. In Israel, the word
"Palestinian" does not exist, these "Arabs" just need to dissolve into
the Middle East.
Oslo: The Great Illusion
Only one thing was signed in Oslo in September 1993: "security
cooperation," that is, the obligation for the occupied to guarantee the
security of the occupier. This signature definitively transformed the
Palestinian National Authority into a collaborationist entity. The key
issues for Palestine - namely, occupation, colonization, Palestinian
statehood, Jerusalem, prisoners, the right of return of refugees, etc. -
were discussed, but nothing was signed. In the twenty-six months between
the signing of the Oslo Accords and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin,
the latter settled sixty thousand new settlers and sent the Israeli army
to Hebron to protect them. What kind of peace could it have been? In
1993, there were about one hundred thousand settlers in the occupied
territories. Today, there are almost nine hundred thousand.
The "international community" played a despicable role. It pretended
that a "peace process" was underway while the steamroller of Israeli
colonialism continued to roll. The "negotiations," with further demands
for Palestinians to renounce their rights, multiplied (3).
Charles Enderlin recounts in his book The Broken Dream (4) how, at the
Camp David summit, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and US President
Bill Clinton tried to push Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat
to capitulate. When Arafat refused to sign, Clinton told him that "he
was a dead man" and that "he would be blamed for the failure" of the
negotiations. And Barak declared: "We made generous offers that Arafat
refused. We no longer have a partner for peace." These famous "generous
offers" consisted of making the village of Abu Dis the Palestinian
capital, while the occupier would keep Jerusalem and the main
settlements. And of course there was no mention of the return of the
refugees.
The situation has been characterized by total hypocrisy over the past
twenty years. Officially, the UN, the European Union and even the United
States defend the "two-state solution." Israel opposes it, multiplying
the number of new settlements and institutionalizing the occupation. And
the "international community" protects the occupier, criminalizes
support for Palestine and even, in the midst of the genocide in Gaza,
arms those responsible.
Two states? Impossible
When you cross the "green line" (5), you immediately ask yourself:
"Where is Palestine?". The settlements, the wall and the "ring roads"
(6) are everywhere. All the main Palestinian cities and most of the
villages are surrounded. A few years ago, «Le Monde Diplomatique»
published a map of the Palestinian archipelago, to underline that the
Palestinian territories have no unity or territorial continuity. The
archipelago has become just a few isolated dots. In 2007, when asked
about the feasibility of the two-state solution, Victor Batarseh, mayor
of Bethlehem of the PFLP (7), described the situation of his city: once
between Jerusalem and Bethlehem there was a beautiful forest. Today
there is the gigantic settlement of Har Homa, whose buildings stand
right in front of the Bethlehem municipality. «Where will you put the
Palestinian state?».
There have been evacuations of Israeli settlers in the past: around ten
thousand at the time of the evacuation of the Sinai after the peace with
Egypt, in 1978-79, and around eight thousand during the evacuation of
the Gaza settlements decided by Ariel Sharon in 2005. In the West Bank
and East Jerusalem there are hundreds of thousands of settlers.
Many of them belong to the religious far right and are armed. There is
no realistic possibility of evacuating them without the use of force.
The economies of Gaza and the West Bank have been destroyed by the
impossibility of producing or trading normally, by the transformation of
these territories into de facto captive markets, forced to consume
Israeli products that are often of poor quality. Tens of thousands of
Palestinians have been immigrant workers in Israel in the past,
precarious and underpaid, and above all regularly fired at the whim of
the occupier.
In short, to think that what remains of Palestine can be transformed
into a viable state is only a dream.
Two States? Unrealizable
The Zionist ideology was born as a theory of separation, stating that
Jews and non-Jews could not live together, neither in the country of
origin nor in the future Jewish state. Separation led to settler
colonialism, to the murderous concept of an ethnically pure state and
now to fascism. Two states means maintaining the Jewish state. A state
that is not the state of all its citizens is an apartheid state and is
not legitimate.
Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River there are seven
million Israeli Jews and seven million Palestinians. The former have
everything: military power, wealth, rights. The latter have been
fragmented into different sub-states of domination and have nothing.
Even if it were possible to evacuate the settlers, why should 78% of the
territory be given to the former and only 22% to the latter? (8).
The main reason why the "two-state solution" is totally unjust is the
refugee issue. The fundamental crime of this war was the premeditated
expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. Their descendants today number
more than ten million. Nearly six million Palestinians have UNRWA cards,
the United Nations agency that deals with refugees. It is clear that the
"two-state solution" sacrifices them. No just peace can ignore the right
of return of the Palestinians, recognized by the United Nations (9).
Currently, 75% of the refugees are in Gaza and 35% in the West Bank, and
their return would obviously be within the pre-1967 borders. Even if
only half of the refugees claim their right of return, maintaining a
Jewish state would no longer make any sense.
In the book Chroniques de Gaza (10), the few Gazans who say they are in
favor of two states essentially say: "The world is unjust, they will
give us a piece of desert that they will call a Palestinian state and we
will be so weak that we will be forced to accept it." "And the
refugees?" "The refugees are a sacred cause. As long as the right of
return is not recognized, the struggle to obtain it will continue."
A single state?
Some of the Jews who arrived in Palestine before 1948 came because they
did not know where to go and had no intention of expelling the
Palestinians. During the British Mandate (11), there was a
"binationalist" movement. In 1944, in the midst of the Nazi genocide, in
an internal election within the Yishuv (12), a list in favor of a
binational state, led by the philosopher Martin Buber, obtained 45% of
the votes. But this movement disappeared as soon as the fighting began
in 1948. At the time of the vote on the partition plan, the Supreme Arab
Committee, which brought together all the Palestinian political
currents, proposed to the UN a Palestine for all its citizens. The plan
envisaged that Palestine would welcome Jewish refugees. As Élias Sanbar
(13) explains in the film Le Char et l'Olivier (14), for Ben Gourion
this proposal was a real nightmare and had to be buried.
The PLO (15) soon sided in favor of "a single secular and democratic
state". This position was abandoned in 1988 at the Algiers Conference,
when the PLO recognized Israel within the pre-1967 borders. Yasser
Arafat was criticized by several left-wing political parties (including
the PFLP) and by personalities such as the writer Edward Said. This
renunciation allowed the signing of the Oslo Accords.
In Israel, the far-left organization Matzpen (16) also supported the
prospect of a secular and democratic state. A single state would
certainly be the most equitable solution. But it is clear that in the
region there is no balance of power to impose such a solution,
especially if it were to be based on "coexistence with equal rights".
When Palestinians who are in favor of "a single state" are questioned,
their vision is that of a country called Palestine, with a Palestinian
flag, in which Israeli Jews who accept equality would remain.
Can the UN be a solution?
All Palestinians complain that international law is not being applied to
them. International law is not the defunct League of Nations and it is
not the UN. In 1920, the League of Nations gave the British Empire the
mandate over Palestine, explaining that the Palestinians were not
"mature" enough to be independent and that they needed to be guided
towards maturity.
The UN has violated international law on several occasions. The vote on
the partition plan in 1947 was obtained by buying the votes of several
countries. The UN had no rights over this territory. In the six months
between the vote on the partition plan and Israel's declaration of
independence on May 14, 1948, almost all of the four hundred thousand
Palestinians who lived in the Jewish state granted to the Zionists by
the partition plan were expelled. The UN was half responsible for the
Nakba (17). In 1948, the United Nations passed Resolution 194 on the
return of Palestinian refugees. Israel's response was to prohibit their
return, confiscate the lands and properties of those who had been
expelled, destroy hundreds of villages, and erase all traces of
Palestine. Yet Israel was admitted to the United Nations with the
wording "it respects international law".
More recently, in 2019, ESCWA (18) asked legal experts Richard Falk and
Virginia Tilley to produce a report on the situation in
Palestine/Israel. The report's conclusion is indisputable: Israel is
practicing a policy of apartheid, according to the internationally
recognized definition of this concept. The Secretary General of the
United Nations, Antonio Guterres, banned the publication of this report.
Even though Israeli leaders now describe the UN as an "anti-Semitic
organization," and even though the vast majority of UN member countries
have recognized the Palestinian state, the solution will not come from
the UN.
International law
International law essentially consists of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights of December 10, 1948, which complements the Declaration of
the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. What does international
law say about Palestine? First, freedom: the end of occupation and
colonization, the destruction of the wall that crosses the West Bank,
the end of the blockade of Gaza, the release of Palestinian prisoners
(19). Then equal rights for all inhabitants of the region, regardless of
their origins, their real or presumed identity, their religious
affiliation or non-affiliation. Finally, justice: since the founding
crime of this war was premeditated ethnic cleansing, Palestinian
refugees must have the right to return. This also means bringing war
criminals to justice.
The Palestinian call "Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions" (BDS:
"Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions") launched in 2005 against the State of
Israel is not about one or two states. It is based on these three points.
At the same time, it is clear that the return of refugees is in
contradiction with the two-state solution.
The application of this right would guarantee Israeli Jews the
possibility of remaining, just as the end of apartheid allowed white
South Africans to remain. It is clear that the idea that Israel can
continue to impose itself endlessly by force and violence is criminal
and absurd.
Neoliberal or neoconservative leaders are faced with a dilemma: until
now they have claimed to defend the rule of law and democracy in the
face of Russia, Iran, Syria, China... Since October 2023, these same
Western countries are more than complicit in a genocide. Letting
Netanyahu do what he wants is to put an end to any idea of international
law, to return to the law of the jungle and to destroy international
institutions.
This battle is being fought on two fronts.
On the one hand, we must prevent the destruction of Palestinian society,
and on the other, force Israel's accomplices to stop supporting this
state and sanctioning it. It is essential to impose that any negotiation
be based on international law and only international law. The
application of this law would clearly mean the end of the Jewish state
and Zionism. There is no alternative to "coexistence with equal rights",
neither there nor here. "From the sea to the Jordan, equal rights!".
(*) The article was published in French in the magazine «Courant
Alternatif», n. 343, October 2024.
https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4270.
Notes:
(1) Phrase uttered in 1901 by the British writer Israel Zangwill, one of
the first Zionists.
(2) From this agreement the State of Jordan was born. The Israeli
historian Avi Shlaïm has documented the meetings and the connivance
between Golda Meïr and King Abdullah I of Jordan.
(3) The negotiations took place in Taba, Camp David, Annapolis and other
locations.
(4) Charles Enderlin, The Broken Dream, Newton & Compton, Rome, 2003.
(5) The internationally recognized border, or the line established by
the armistice of the 1948-49 war that separates Israel from the West Bank.
(6) Roads forbidden to Palestinians and reserved for settlers.
(7) Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the parties of
the Palestinian left.
(8) The West Bank and Gaza represent 22% of historic Palestine.
(9) With Resolution 194 of the UN General Assembly, approved on 11
December 1948.
(10) Sarah Katz, Pierre Stambul, Chroniques de Gaza, Éditions Acratie,
La Bussière, 2016.
(11) The British Mandate of Palestine, established by the League of
Nations after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War,
lasted from 1920 to 1948.
(12) Term indicating all Jews settled in Palestine before 1948.
(13) Palestinian historian and former ambassador to UNESCO.
(14) Film by Roland Nurier (2018).
(15) Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1964.
(16) Hebrew word meaning "compass". This socialist council organization
had several dozen members.
(17) Arabic word meaning "catastrophe." It refers to the expulsion of
the majority of Palestinians after the establishment of the State of
Israel in 1948.
(18) Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, a regional body of
the UN.
(19) Nearly ninety thousand Palestinians have been imprisoned since 1967.
Pierre Stambul is co-president and spokesperson of the Union Juive
Française pour la Paix (French Jewish Union for Peace).
http://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten