Monday 22 June 2009

Naqba and Loyalty Legislation Are No Disaster for Israeli Democracy


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Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman and US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

The proposed Naqba and loyalty legislation are not a disaster for democracy for the simple reason that in Israel there has always existed a circumscribed and ethnic democracy. Every citizen in the Jewish state has the right to vote, but in parallel there exist utterly anti-democratic mechanisms of control. Democracy is not measured by my ability, as a Palestinian citizen of Israel, to publish an article such as this in the Hebrew language press, and to a certain extent by freedom of expression in the framework of the importance of preserving democracy.

An immigrant-settler state that forcibly confiscated millions of dunam (one dunam is 1,000 square meters) from the Palestinian residents—some of whom are now citizens but a majority of whom were thrown across the border—today controls approximately 93% of the land, and the Israeli Lands Administration allocates land for Jews only, on the basis of ethnicity. I can write an article about this, but cannot receive the land of my family that is located three kilometers from the city of Tira, where I was born and raised; land on which no Jews settled and from which no one must be removed so we can establish the first Palestinian kibbutz in Israel, for example.

I can participate in a demonstration and even raise a Palestinian flag, but the kibbutz residents will continue to live peaceably on the land of Palestinian villages on which their kibbutzs were built, and even to believe they are building a new world, just and socialist. Bedouins in the Negev can receive a scholarship to study at Ben Gurion University or Sapir College, but they will continue to live in unrecognized villages that existed prior to 1948, and to appear as intruders on land of the Jewish state, which in parallel allocates tens of dunam for a single Jewish family (“single farms”) on these same lands. This method is, of course, no different from the handful of settlers who take a caravan and expand it to a settlement under the protection of the Israeli state and military in the occupied territories, of which we already have thousands. Also within the Jewish society there exists a hierarchy of those who are worth more and receive more, and those who deserve less, and this is prominent between the jurisdictions of the Mizrahi development towns and the Kibbutzs, but who am I to talk about this, I will leave the topic for discussion within the Jewish home.

Another very democratic mechanism is the Law of Return, in the framework of which everyone born a Jew, even if this is on a small island in the middle of the sea, receives the automatic right to Eretz Israel, for this is the joint business in which all Jews throughout the world have stock. There are those with more stock, less stock, those sitting on the board of directors and those not, but everyone is a partner. In parallel, for the Palestinian who lost his property and land, there is not even the right to a visa in order to visit Israel; he has not even one stock. Indeed, this is a type of cooperative society, but for Jews only. Around the Law of Return there exists an entire industry financed with tens of millions of dollars each year, which brings thousands of young Jews to connect with their roots. This program is called Birthright—how surprising.

And we have not yet spoken about the strange legal status of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem who have an identity card but no passport, as Jerusalem is the united and eternal capital of the state of Israel, but the problem is that too many Palestinians live there and it is unclear what should be done with them. We have also not yet spoken about intervention of the security apparatus in Arab schools, the relation of the state and society to the Arab language and culture, and more.

Everything hitherto mentioned are practices fundamentally derived from one foundation that the Zionist movement succeeded in establishing. The perception of the existential need for a state defined on an ethnic-religious basis—this is not a state with a Jewish majority or in which Jews have a right to live, but one that is under their exclusive ownership and which employs various mechanisms in order to preserve the ethnic regime, to attach additional groups whose religion is Jewish to the same ethnic group. This is not a democratic state of all of its citizens and its two peoples, but a state of the Jews—those living within it and those with a potential to migrate to it. This worldview is presented as an existential-security need, while it simultaneously results in the injustices caused to the Palestinians and a conflict that generates more and more violence and fears and hollow talk about security. This perception further flattens history and ties Jewish history in Europe, the racism toward Jews and the Holocaust, to what happens today in Israel. We were always persecuted and we will always be persecuted—this is a fact, everyone wants to eliminate us, to throw us into the sea, so we therefore need to be strong, with a strong military and to show them with whom they are dealing. This flattening of history ignores the fact that the Palestinians were not responsible for the Holocaust, that the Jewish immigrants settled at their expense, and on the homes and villages of another people who are not prepared to accept this and to express their gratitude.

After 61 years of Israeli independence that does not wish to be bothered with demands to take responsibility for the Palestinian Naqba, we reach another record. A Russian immigrant who speaks a heavily accented Hebrew wants to demand from the indigenous Palestinian population an oath of loyalty to the state created at their expense, to its Jewishness and its path of Zionism. Yet Lieberman is truly not the problem, but a clear reflection of the internal contradictions of the Zionist path that crosses borders of Left and Right. The fact that Lieberman’s proposals appear logical to a majority of the Israeli public, and incomprehensible outside of Israel, is simply a transparent view of the unsolvable paradox of the Zionist logic. In Israel, a political culture has taken root which makes a clear distinction between occupation, the refugees and “Arab Israelis.” This allows Israel to be seen as a normal and democratic state, albeit a bit special, alongside several singular problems that must be solved—the occupation, civil discrimination against Arabs, and the refugees—yet the latter is an overly complicated matter, too distant and dependent on the political agenda. This allows the liberal Israeli citizen to live relatively peacefully with the colonial mechanism within which it is active. Therefore, there exists a direct and clear connection between all of these topics, which are all part of a rejection of responsibility for correcting the injustices caused to the Palestinians through their dissection into a serious of unconnected sub-topics.

The direction taken by the political leadership to deal with the situation is to continue creating mechanisms of control and oppression that are creative, or, in the case of Lieberman, not so creative. This path leads to a continuation of confrontation, the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and the growing impatience of the international community, and, on the part of the United States, a beginning to perceive the cost of its unconditional support for the double standards it has wielded to date.

It is simply a matter of time to what extent it is possible to speak about peace on the one hand and on the other to continue dispossessing and settling. The relation of power and interests in the world is changing, and in front of Israel lays the opportunity to reach true reconciliation and to take responsibility for its past actions while it still has control over what is occurring.

I am not optimistic about a radical change in the perception of Israeli society from within. At the moment the direction is precisely the opposite, and in essence I have no idea why I began writing this article for Jewish readers. I assume that a majority of them will respond with a recitation of a series of expected contentions, some of which are connected to the partition plan, part to the destruction of the Second Temple and the return of the owners, others will insist on their status as timeless victims, and of course it is always possible to pull out the winning contentions of terrorism.

Apparently Israeli society insists on continuing to speak with itself and to develop its capacities for self-convincing through ideas of morality, enlightenment, and no choice, and to continue ruling and oppressing. This is the concern of those who economically or politically benefit from the permanent insanity.

Logical, long-term thinking should result in the conclusion that the sole way to become part of the region requires dealing with the Palestinian Naqba, which is part of Israeli history no less than it is part of Palestinian history. This is the choice between continuing to hold the fortress, reliant on American support—the continuity of which is not guaranteed—and a just solution that will ensure the right of the two peoples to live in the country as equals.

Today, the state of Israel is powerful, but it should begin thinking about the day in which the balance of power will change.

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