The Moving Debate

Deconstructing Occupation

2011-05-26T01:19:00.003+03:00

Background: “End the Occupation” has long become the slogan for the peace movement however this has also largely been seized upon by those who wish to delegitimize Israel and bring about the end to the Jewish State. The common exploitation of this aphorism by diversely motivated parties has by default placed those legitimately seeking an end to the conflict to be erroneously perceived as firmly hostile to Israel.

The term “occupation” with respect to Israel has become a generic term under which fall a wide range of categories: Israel’s military presence since 1967 in predominantly Palestinian inhabited territories that were previously under governance or occupation by Arab states; military rule of local inhabitants in those territories under the authority of the “Civilian Administration”, a means of local government under the authority of the Israeli army; urban expansion of Jerusalem and the creation of large settlement blocks over the green line initiated by successive Israeli governments; Jewish settlement and the creation of towns and villages in Palestinian rural areas; pervasive wildcat and illegal settlement by zealots and extremists.

This wide ranging generic classification has become a source of confusion in pointing to the root causes of the current impasse and in understanding the core issues at stake. The debate in Israel and with Israel’s partners - whether they be Diaspora Jewry or allies who wish to see an end to the conflict - must focus on the two key issues of occupation that need to be addressed: Settlement and Security.

There is a clear distinction between security needs and settlement activity over the green line. Both the belligerent wing of the settlement movement and extreme anti-Israel activists use the term “Settlement” (Hebrew- hitnahalut) and “Occupaton” respectively, in a way that merges these two separate issues to create an indistinct, overall, false merger in order to serve the interests of each side.

The extreme left and anti-Israel lobby will use “occupation” denoting the reason for human rights abuses, the denial of Palestinians to self determination and will point to the military presence in occupied territory as the means for executing these policies while discounting Israel’s vital security needs. From this reasoning, settlement is thus seen as a colonization process whereby the army’s presence is derivative of such and therefore servicing that interest
.
Conversely the settlers will use the term “settlement” falsely as a term that vindicates Israel’s presence in occupied territory, not purely as a messianic pursuit or a means to low-cost housing, but as the vanguard of the military presence critical for the security needs of the entire state of Israel. This notion is borrowed from the historical process before the war of independence when the “tower and stockade” overnight structures were used to create a de facto presence on the ground and served as a military defense strategy until the formal military command could manage defenses in the area.

While it is true to say that the Israeli military does indeed service the settlements , today its presence in and around those settlements are primarily a byproduct of security needs until such time as an agreement is reached, and secondarily an answer to the exposure of those settler populations who have become more a liability both financially and strategically rather than an asset in answering security needs.

But it is precisely the point of confluence of settlement and military rule that undermines Israel’s legitimate security needs, its democratic foundations, and its moral standing among nations. The incidents of this are multifold: The clearest example of this can be seen in the case of the separation barrier. The Likud government which incorporated the concept of a greater Israel in its platform was reluctant to build a barrier despite exigencies arising from the second intifada in its early phase. The reason for this was the deliberate blur or merger the settlement lobby wished to create between Israel based on 1967 boundaries and the greater Israel in occupied territory. Only when security needs demanded drastic action following the extreme nature of Palestinian premeditated suicide bombings in Israel’s cities, the separation barrier was set into motion. Rather than attempt to run the barrier along 1967 lines, the barrier conveniently includes settlements over the green line yet transverses Palestinian owned land thus separating rural populations from their livelihood and cutting access to roads while including Jewish populations that reside over the green line within access to Israel. So here we have a classical example of discrimination of a certain population at the expense of another which has arisen at first from a genuine security need but has been remolded by ideological pressure. Rather than adhere to a pure military concern by running the barrier along the green line which is a natural border in terms of land ownership, the barrier violates privately owned land boundaries and worse, requires arrangements for local Palestinian land owners to cross it through special entry points when the security objectives were to reduce the access of this population from mainland Israel.

The resultant outcome is what is generally referred to internationally as a “land grab” – the 10% of the West Bank which is on the Israeli side of the barrier. The International Court of Justice has ruled that it is in violation of international law. The discriminatory nature of its route and the resultant human rights issues arising from it, have together lent credence to the theory that the Government of Israel (GOI) pursues both deliberate discrimination against Palestinians and uses security as a camouflage while arrogating Palestinians from their land. The barrier has provided a great deal of safety for Israelis and is one of several important instruments in curbing terror however the legitimacy of that argument has been laid to waste by the illegitimacy of its implementation. The distance between this and slogans such as the “Apartheid Wall” is a very short one. Add to this the general unwillingness to address details and the entire project is considered a shameful blot rather than a bulwark against terror. This is the point of confluence at its worst and this is “Occupation”.

The point of confluence is demonstrated today in a multitude of variations ranging from the Jordan Valley, critical for Israel’s security but dotted with Israeli settlement, to the relatively minor case recently of Nebi Saleh, a small Palestinian town in the middle of the West Bank. A spring adjacent to the town is located on land owned by a local Palestinian. Settlers from the settlement Halamish have taken control of the spring and prevented locals from accessing their land. The result: Palestinian protest, reactive incursion of Israeli security forces and harassment of the town’s inhabitants. This too is “Occupation”, a confusion of settlement and security both linguistically and literally.

If we are to see an end to the conflict, if we wish to retain a democratic Israel with a viable Jewish majority, if we wish to avoid not only the label of apartheid but avoid the creation of real de facto apartheid and if we assume that Israel’s security is a non-negotiable item that must be considered in any constellation, the only removable part that comes as a first requisite in unraveling occupation is “settlement”. This is the key issue that must now be addressed in the discourse within Israel and between Israel and its supporters. Not “Occupation” in its confused totality. The unhinging of settlement from occupation must begin even in a symbolic manner and the form that beckons is a moratorium or freeze in the first instance.

Closing letter from Jonathan Zausmer in the debate with Doron Isaacs following the SA Human Rights Delegation to Israel and the West Bank

2008-12-16T21:08:00.003+02:00

Dear Doron
The ongoing labour of life here has prevented an earlier response to your lengthy letter, however a response was needed so, late as it may be, here it is. In this reply I will try to summarise briefly (compared to our previous texts, that is) the key arguments and make some closing statements and I urge you to do the same. I will address the matter of the controversial nature of the delegation (HRD), issues you raise pertaining to Israel’s continued presence in the occupied territories with some perspectives for the future and some concluding words.

I believe you do yourself (and me) a disservice by playing the personal injury card. It must surely be evident to you that having embarked on such a public journey which would clearly produce contentious and heated debate from many directions, you are obliged to answer and address the many questions that arise. I have not made attacks as you say. I have raised questions: questions that need answering because without clear answers they undermine your personal credibility and the nature of the mission itself. I also stated and meant clearly, not cynically that I stand to be corrected and wish to be corrected. This stands in clear contrast to some of the inexcusable and vulgar verbal assaults that have been thrown publicly at you in SA without bothering to ask, enquire or examine the facts. I will therefore spell out for us some of the points relating to these uncomfortable yet necessary queries and ask some further questions. Of course you have no obligation to answer but in view of the fact that the HRD has taken a strong moral and ethical standpoint vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians, I really believe that by clearing the air, we will all only benefit from clearly stated public record relating to these matters in the knowledge that the ethical foundations of the HRD itself (I do not refer to its constituent members) are all in place.
I must mention firstly that it is not clear to me who the founders are and in what framework this enterprise came to be. I address you in this correspondence because it seems that only you are described on the website as a co-organiser. It’s possible that I have not traversed all the written information regarding this. Purely as a matter of interest, I am curious as to how the HRD came about, who the other co-organisers are, who the founders are and whether this concept originated within a political or non- political movement or as a personal initiative of one or several people. Another question that must be addressed I think is the funding: in view of the fact that this was a serious undertaking involving logistics, air-tickets, accommodation, aimed not only for private edification but also for public statement, it would help to make the financial source transparent. I say this because the information that I have (merely hearsay with no confirmed fact) is that the same donor to the Kasrils “Not In My Name” campaign provided the finance for the HRD. I apologise in advance if this is mere idle rumour and will happily accept a categorical refutation with great relief, however I think it may be wise to get this problem out of the way as you can clearly understand that this would not look good for fairness if this indeed was the case.

Regarding the Gordimer letter your answer has not brought me satisfaction in this respect. Gordimer, her interactions with other authors and her moral standpoint are not the issue here. Doron Isaacs is. The letter you signed states clearly “We believe that you would do more to change the awful situation in Palestine/Israel by withdrawing from the Festival than by attending” This is an attempt to effect a cultural boycott, let us make no mistake. At a secondary level you suggest that if she attends it where and with whom she should interact. You signed this a month before the HRD set out on its journey, the program, objectives and itinerary of which were clearly in motion. As the organiser (founder/ initiator: please clarify) this suggests that your mind was made up before you set about any fact-finding process. It suggests that possibly you worked from the position of concluding in advance who the guilty party is before you set about arranging the schedule of the HRD. You can understand that while your intentions were no doubt in good faith, in the eyes of some, you tarnished the credibility of the delegation and your own position as organiser indicating that the purpose of the delegation was to look for proof and to confirm what you already believed to be fact.
As you have pointed out previously, the delegates all have impeccable and impressive records yet let us consider for a moment how we are all influenced by what we read, hear, see and discuss and the timing of all of the above. If we take a group of people, many of whom are not familiar with the facts on the ground in Israel and the West Bank and expose them on one day to the horrors of the holocaust at the Yad Vashem institute and then take them on another day to the bigoted and hateful ravings of Baruh Marzel and his followers we may all conclude that the irony of history reveals how the persecuted have become themselves the persecutors. Now let us consider a scenario where after the Yad Vashem visit, the delegation goes to the site of Merkaz Harav yeshiva, where only few months before your delegation arrived a terrorist killing of teenagers took place. If they were to hear the story of the boy who was hiding in the annex of the library trying to explain to the emergency services how his friends were being shot behind the door and pleading for help, maybe the conclusion is that Jewish people are still victims of gratuitous hatred and violence?
The HRD was not a Jewish delegation. It was a human rights delegation made up of a variety of people, some of who were Jewish. For those who come from within the Jewish milieu maybe they are exposed excessively to the Jewish narrative and need to see the Palestinian reality from close up: as Judge Davis put it “Two stories have to be told”. But what of those who come from the milieu which I believe is the predominant one in the press, at universities and in mainstream political thinking in South Africa which accuses Israel as a perpetrator of human rights abuses and apartheid? Was the Israeli narrative clearly delivered here? Was the perpetual abuse of Israelis’ human rights by Palestinian terror historically endorsed by its institutions, recognised and internalised? Were the security issues on the ground related to in depth from the Israeli perspective?

It is my opinion that despite the deeply important experience of meeting with the bereaved families’ forum, one must also pay attention to those Israelis who remain outside of this group, and who take a less optimistic perspective regarding the violent realities that continually play themselves out in this part of the world.
Though you take care to provide details of your Israeli hosts and lecturers “how does this square with the lectures we heard from Hillel Cohen and Amos Goldberg…” you ask, rather than absolving yourself of the responsibility of reasonable objective perspective, I learn from this that you have taken the predominant position of interacting with like-minded parties in preference to listening to the mainstream Israeli narrative in depth alongside Palestinian perspectives which are often outlined extensively by various Israeli scholars. What better way to convey the Palestinian narrative than through the scholarly works of empathetic Israelis? Where was the other side of this picture? I believe there wasn’t one. We are not comparing museum to museum, lecturer to lecturer, High Court judge to High Court judge as you attempt to reason. We are looking at how content should be presented fairly – not selectively - to a diverse forum whose members report back to their respective communities, constituencies and reading public.

In answer to your argument referring to the second intefada and the current status on the West Bank I will briefly relate to some of the points you raise and clarify the issues.
The Mitchell Report does not as you say “go a long way to falsifying” my “version” of events nor does it lend support to Bar-Tal’s later revisitation of those events. Its independent record of events at the time illustrates clearly how Bar-Tal’s selective list of several attacks by Palestinians is not the whole story. In fact we know that the Mitchell Report was fairly inconclusive and pretty much blames both sides. However, the Mitchell Report was completed on the 30th April 2001 before the publication of the Husseini “Trojan Horse” interview on June 24 2001 and more importantly before the Barghouti interview on Sept 29 2001. Your attempt to discount the profound significance of this historical record without using fact but rather some kind of psychological interpretation speculating his need to “take credit” is very weak indeed. For one, let it be known to you as it is accepted by both Palestinians and Israelis that Marwan Barghouti is a highly regarded leader, one to be taken very seriously indeed. Though he sits in an Israeli jail on 5 counts of murder, we may well see his release when a path to a true peace process opens up. I am going to refer you and our readers to the full interview which has been translated on the Israel Foreign Affairs website because it really outlines clearly the premeditated nature of the violence, the scale and breadth of which were aimed at truly destabilising the State of Israel in its entirety. What I quoted in my previous letter was a mere snippet of a very detailed piece of evidence in this discussion.[1] Incidentally, Barghouti was not alone in his clear documentation of engineering the second intefada. Self affliction for causing it is mainly the product of Israeli scholars such as Bar-Tal who work on revisionist history (or as they say in the lexicon of current music, a “remix”). Palestinian leaders did not, for the most part, even try to hide this fact[2].

You have brought to the table some very interesting statistics. You say that 58% of Palestinians support a 2 state solution and this has declined over the last years. But how does this line up with the fact that when Israel disengaged from Gaza (when the statistic was higher), the residents there voted in a party who call for the destruction of Israel, use the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in their platform and have since engaged in a policy of rocket attacks on civilians? This is peaceful coexistence? Those are the facts, not the polls. My only interpretation regarding this anomaly is that there is support for a 2 state solution but without peaceful coexistence. You also do not mention that in that same poll taken in March 2008 “An overwhelming majority of 84% support and 13% oppose the shooting attack that took place in a religious school in West Jerusalem(Merkaz Harav). Support for this attack is greater in the Gaza Strip (91%) compared to the West Bank (79%)” If ever there was a vindication of the paradigms discussed in my opening letter, this is it.[3]
You relay a newspaper interview with Dov Weisglass at the time of the disengagement from Gaza as proof that Israel has not made the paradigm shift to withdraw and dismantle settlements but rather to entrench them further. I suggest you look at a more formidable personality, Sharon’s deputy at the time and our current prime minister Ehud Olmert – a hard line right wing stalwart who did not support the peace treaty with Egypt. In an interview on the 30th September 2008, he clearly proposes a two state solution, settlement removal, compensation of land and a fair resolution for Jerusalem[4] . His successor in the Kadima party, Ms Livni, another ex-Likud stalwart, recently refused to form an interim coalition government because of unreasonable attempts to prevent her negotiating a compromise for Jerusalem: we can see how the swing of several conservative sectors in Israel has made a full turn. So I do believe the paradigm shift in Israel has taken place or at least is in process.
I am encouraged by your reference to the Council for Peace and Security (CPS). In fact their position represents almost everything that I consider the correct approach to our situation so in many respects you and I share a lot of common ground on this issue. I don’t think though, that we can use this body as blanket argument for the complete and immediate removal of the occupation and the concept that settlement is the driving force behind the occupation. In response to my position that the separation barrier is one of a series of measures that saves lives you quote the CPS recommending the “removal of barriers and blocks throughout the West Bank…..security risks of the above are minimal, having regard for Israel’s other operational capabilities”. I want to clarify what the clear meaning of this statement is: The CPS does not call for the complete dismantling of the separation barrier (though it supports vociferously the High Court rulings regarding its route and I obviously agree with that). It calls for the dismantling of the many checkpoints within the West Bank that are the source of so much frustration, anger and humiliation. Its important to note too that when they say “Israel’s other operational capabilities” they are in my opinion, referring to, amongst other means, the presence of security personnel deep in West Bank cities who continue to rout out planned terror assaults at source and which comes at hard moral cost of invading the sanctity of people’s homes. You quote the CPS as saying that “a Palestinian state is not a threat” In principle I agree with this but since the inception of the CPS in 1998 matters have complicated this statement so we need to read what the CPS says in the next sentence following your quote “ with necessary security provisions”[5]. This is no easy task.
You write that I have said that ending the occupation will lead to the creation of yet another jihadist state. This is not what I said. To be accurate I said that we can assume with a high level of confidence that a full removal of the occupation could (not will) lead to another jihadist state[6] inferring that without a comprehensive process with necessary prerequisites in place we could have another jihadist state. To underscore how dangerous the risk for a complete end to the occupation is we need only to look at Gaza which has a border with Egypt of 15 km yet despite Egypt’s friendly status with Israel and repeated attempts at preventing arms being smuggled into Gaza a steady stream of armaments pours through and find their way into the rocket war against southern Israel. Now consider the impact of a border of 200km with Jordan and a sovereign Palestine into which all the elements needed for long range Katyusha type missiles (used successfully by Hizbolla in the last war with Lebanon) can be smuggled through. There would not be a town or strategic site in Israel that is not vulnerable. The complex rural terrain and crowded urban environments in the West Bank become a huge barrier to prevention of terror if a withdrawal of Israeli troops takes place. What I am saying is that if every settlement, legal and illegal, were removed tomorrow, the IDF would still remain on the Jordanian border (occupying Palestinian land) and on all the strategic high ground and possibly in certain urban areas until and if a full peace is proven and effective. Opponents to the occupation say that Israel justifies anything in the name of security. There is some truth in this and we cannot always use the security argument for contraventions of the 4th Geneva Convention and human rights infractions. But the other side of this coin is that we stand to lose everything if we do not take the security threats into account. Now let’s look at what you say: “Were there no settlements today on the West Bank, there would be no Occupation….. The settlements drive the occupation”. Where are the building blocks for this bold statement? I have scrutinised your texts and simply cannot find them.

Concluding Remarks
You incorrectly write that I accuse you and the delegation of hypocrisy. If you read the text, you will see that I have never said that. Nor have I ever mentioned that it is not the right of any person, group or country to criticise or question policies and actions of others. I too like many citizens of the world have strong opinions about the actions of individuals and countries that are far removed from Israel. What I do say is twofold: One is that we must look within and figure out from where we are coming with our criticism, turn down the sanctimonious volume-knob a notch or two on our PA system before we try to export our own particular brand of self-righteousness if we are to be taken seriously. The other point is that we must choose our battles judiciously if we are to be effective. The case of Darfur and human rights disasters in Africa in general are relevant because the sheer scale of violation is beyond comprehension and it is pertinent to South Africa. You point out that Zackie Achmat and Nathan Geffen have a powerful record and continue an ongoing struggle in pursuit of human rights in South Africa, China, Darfur and elsewhere. I want to add that the work and achievements of TAC – from my limited knowledge from afar- is humbling, must be respected and serves as a model way beyond South Africa. We must remember though, that the HRD was not a TAC delegation (as it was not a Jewish delegation), though many activists made up its members. It was a body of highly respected members with records of achievement in many disciplines. Not only was it a human rights delegation but a South African human rights delegation and I think that comes with a specific identity of its own which gives it special authority while carrying special responsibilities as to its goals and its findings.
When you say that that the delegation chose Israel in the framework of a 5 day interlude in members’s lives I ponder why Israel and not say, Darfur. A human rights mission of this scale with members of this stature and with financial backing such as this has as far as I know never been sent to Darfur from South Africa. The government of South Africa as you may well know has a very poor record regarding Darfur. It has consistently backed the government of President El Bashir, opposed and diluted resolutions critical of the Sudanese regime and has abused its position on the UN security council regarding the matter of the Darfur[7]. While it contributed troops to the AU one would think that as Africa’s leading economic powerhouse together with the moral responsibility that comes with its history in defeating apartheid we would see some leadership. Today the slaughter in Southern Sudan is estimated at between 300,000 to 500,000 with millions more refugees. Would not the impact here be greater than a mission to Israel-Palestine?
The question you raise pertinently as to whether Israel is always singled out is not answered by the fervent works of some of the delegations members. One of the reasons Israel is most often on the agenda is its very easy access and despite its myriad of problems, the relative safety of the participants in missions and delegations who elsewhere may be kidnapped or executed or simply disappear. But let us be honest: there is another reason and that is the piquant issue of the Jewish nature of the state and the moral ironies that now beset it. While I make no comparisons, the AUT (Britain’s association of university teachers) and its successor the UTU adopted singularly discriminatory measures in an attempt to impose an academic boycott on Israel while ignoring gross human rights violations across the globe. These decisions were revoked in 2005 and recently in 2008 under legal threat citing prejudicial and discriminatory practises.
Having said that, I stated in my first letter to you that if this is the road we must go down to engage leaders, thinkers and social activists from South Africa, so be it. You are right in suggesting that I would prefer that people ignore Israel. You are also right that I am particularly sensitive to one word in the cacophony of anti Israel slander that inundates us: “Apartheid”. Yet even if I don’t wish to deal with this, I must deal with it because as you have taken care to document the many instances of Israelis and others who use this analogy, the debate rages on in our country as to our future, the peace process, the dreadful circumstances in the occupied territories, our moral dilemmas and our security needs. The word “Apartheid” is bandied around here and elsewhere without understanding its meaning, the depth of its implications and the destructive consequences in using this terminology. The way to deal with criticism is to engage and to look at the details. The most dangerous public discourse is one which is based on slogans, platitudes and catchphrases.

You challenge me by suggesting that my “attitude to Palestinians is one of mistrust and that my “conception of them is a threat” and that I did not voice empathy in my previous letter. So let me answer you directly. I am deeply troubled by the current status of Palestinians. My daily work takes me frequently into direct contact with Palestinians and Arab residents of Israel who identify with the Palestinian people and I neither see them as a threat nor feel any mistrust. I see Palestinian people as no different to people anywhere in the world, however my personal experience and knowledge of our environment in the middle east leads me to take great care when considering the political processes that occur and their implications. I have no implicit mistrust of Iranians but I am concerned by the threat of a nuclear empowered Iranian theocracy. Freedom and statehood for the Palestinian people by no means implies stable government in Palestine and peaceful coexistence. We need only look to the one serious attempt at democracy in our region besides Israel, namely Lebanon to see how fragile the regime is and how regional fanaticism can take hold even in an environment that shows a potential for hope and freedom belying the notion that “people with hope are less likely to engage in violence”. Yet I must say that neither we, Israelis must be excused from scrutiny. We now see rampant violence from rogue settlers, and a preponderant no-vision-for-peace reaction in the political arena following the trauma of the second intefada, the success in bringing it to an end and the mutation of Palestinian nationalism into separate geographical and ideological entities. Precisely because of our relative strength it is incumbent on us to act, albeit with caution, in order to create solutions.

Though I struggle to find the logical foothold in your position that settlement drives the occupation and your cry to end the occupation as the solution to our problems, I respect your willingness to engage and to tackle the issues methodically, carefully documenting your sources. You have taken valuable time to respond to my arguments without any obligation except one of moral responsibility and true commitment and without any public reward. You have brought valuable information to the debate giving us much to think about. While there may have been productive discussions following the HRD I have also observed a destructive wake following it however those who hurl abuse must be held accountable: not you or the delegation. Whether the HRD has left a lasting public impression that offers a certificate of “kashrut” for the Kasrilian doctrine roundly condemning Israel, or whether it has differentiated itself enough to affirm a secure Israel alongside a free Palestine by focusing on worthy criticism of both sides, I leave for our readers to judge.

It is my hope that this debate will provide a document outlining the issues and the many facets of our current dilemmas. For those who blindly accuse us in Israel of “Apartheid” or under the slogan “End the Occupation” elaborate full deligitimization of Israel with accusations of every heinous crime, our document offers a reference point that outlines the complexity of the issues, and Israel’s existential needs. Conversely, those that recede into the shell of denial and who cling solely to the belief of biblical entitlement to territory under dispute will see that there is a heavy moral cost and real questions of sustainability for the future. I have observed in the various internet based forums and in letters in the Jewish press in South Africa that many young Jewish people neither have the knowledge nor an ability to articulate a skilful defence of Israel in the face of a plethora of verbal challenges from the media and academic environments as they move from schools into institutions of higher learning. I hope the arguments presented provide a sound basis for verbalising a viable defence for Israel, understanding that our existence is a critical, urgent and morally justified need for the Jewish people yet that we are also morally imperfect – like South Africa and most countries in the world.
Jonathan Zausmer
Kohav Yair, Israel

[1] http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2001/9/Interview%20by%20Marwan%20Barghouti%20to%20Al%20Hayat%20-%2029-Sep
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Mp6Yal2mA
[3] http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2008/p27ejoint.html

[4] http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3603841,00.html
[5] http://www.peace-security-council.org/about.us.asp
[6] See my previous response (JZ)
[7] http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/02/13/letter-deputy-minister-foreign-affairs-south-africa

Doron Isaacs responds in the 2nd round of the debate

2008-10-02T21:52:00.000+03:00

17 September 2008
Dear Jonathan,

I hope this finds you well. Here then is my response to your second letter.

Let me say at the outset that if this debate is to continue in the meaningful way it began, it cannot be considered acceptable to make cynical attacks on my ‘intellectual integrity’. Suggesting that I ‘have a predisposition to make [my] judgment and deliver sentence long before the court has convened’ is not a good way to open a letter to someone who continues to treat you with courtesy. For me the court convened years ago and I continue to sit transfixed and listen to the arguments. At a certain point it became clear to me that conviction and action required me to participate in that discussion. On the basis that this correspondence intends to make a genuine contribution to that process I am obliged to respond.

My first letter made clear my strong attachment to Israel and my uncompromising opposition to attacks against its people. In choosing a theme I neglected to respond to all the points you raised – it would be a mistake to see that decision as me conceding the issues I didn’t deal with. To make this clear, I will begin here by dealing with some of the issues I have neglected to fully respond to thus far.

YOUR OBJECTIONS TO ASPECTS OF THE DELEGATION

The Gordimer letter, not related to the delegation, rejects the “violence manifesting itself on both sides” and counts the loss of life on both sides. It is not a call for general boycott, a position I have not taken. It addresses itself to Nadine Gordimer, awarded the Nobel Prize for her humane writing, someone who not long ago publicly called on Susan Sontag to boycott Israel, and asks her why she is supporting a festival at which not one Palestinian was invited to speak. The letter says that writers like her should travel to Israel to engage with people but not miss the opportunity to address crucial issues. It implicitly accepts her visit and urges her to take the chance to engage with activists – she called to thank a signatory to a similar letter and through him did arrange additional meetings.

You consider the picture on the website – at www.humanrightsdelegation.org – to be ‘inflammatory’. I don’t. You previously compared the image to that of a ‘Nazi’, a statement which is definitely inflammatory. That soldier is standing with his hands in his pockets. He is looking down unthreateningly and curiously at the children, who are amusing themselves and smiling. The picture shows the way that the Occupation is interwoven into life. Let us pause for a minute and consider that soldiers dressed like that are probably the only Israelis those children have ever seen. The picture is poignant and relevant.

You accuse the delegation’s itinerary of lacking neutrality. I think that this attack falls short for a number of reasons. Firstly, the itinerary contained a lot of input from the official Israeli perspective. Do your complaints take account of our discussions with the Chief Justice of Israel, the former Deputy Attorney General, and the former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem? We didn’t meet equivalent people on the Palestinian side. I can’t think of a better person than the Chief Justice to present Israel’s case to a group of South Africans, many of whom were lawyers. Are you ignoring the meeting with families whose children were killed in bombings and shootings? Whilst we tried as much as possible to meet with and hear from Palestinians, the reality is that the tour was organised and hosted by Israeli organisations and their representatives, with whom we spent the majority of our time, including major mainstream left-wing groups like Peace Now, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Yesh Din.

We’ve also been wrongly accused of not providing a context. How does this square with the lectures we heard by Hillel Cohen and Amos Goldberg of Hebrew University and Ben Gurion University of the Negev respectively, and the lengthy tour through Yad Vashem? Again, we were not lectured by Palestinian academics and did not visit a Palestinian museum.

Surely all those who automatically defend Israel’s every action also need context - need to know of the dispossession, the inability to move, the unemployment, the hunger, the forced entry into homes, the indignity at the hands of settlers and the IDF, that Palestinians suffer daily?

In the case of Sderot, we felt that a visit there would have required us to deal properly with the political and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, something that we did not touch on at all. I do understand that this omission has been hard to accept for Israelis, and perhaps we didn’t anticipate that in advance, but we felt at the time that meeting with victims of terrorism, perpetrated by Palestinians from the West Bank, was an appropriate way to give that perspective given that we focused on the West Bank and Jerusalem. It was indeed a powerful meeting. This is why Geoff Budlender, for example, has written publicly about the “very deep impact” and “terrible suffering” caused by suicide bombings.[1]

Why do critics of the delegation continually try to find little holes and omissions, whilst ignoring the substance of our criticism? Can the arguments not be dealt with – and here I must concede that you have often been an exception – on their merits? Would recognising that our eyes are open to Israeli suffering and Palestinian crimes make our condemnation of the occupation irresistible?

RETURNING TO THE SECOND INTIFADA

Let me now turn to dealing with your response in regard to the events on the Second Intifada in the wake of Camp David. In doing so I will from time to time need to comment on your use of sources.

You have quoted from the Mitchell Report, a report put together by a fairly impressive group of internationally known figures: George J. Mitchell, Chairman (Former member and Majority Leader of the US Senate), Suleyman Demirel (9th President of the Republic of Turkey), Thorbjoern Jagland (Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway), Warren B. Rudman (Former Member of the US Senate), and Javier Solana (High European Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, EU).

The Report goes a long way towards falsifying your version of the outbreak of that intifada. Whilst it does not explicitly endorse the view that Professor Bar-Tal has advanced (which I summarised in my previous response) that the majority of the responsibility can be attributed to Israel, it clearly demonstrates that it is problematic to suggest that this was a premeditated and orchestrated armed Palestinian effort, directed by Arafat, in which the preponderance of violence was inflicted upon Israelis, and whose aim it was to destroy the diplomatic process.

You quoted from the Mitchell Report that the Israeli Government claimed there were 9000 attacks against Israel. That is of course a claim, made by one side, and serious scholarship must of course not invoke, as facts, claims by either side to a conflict. In any case, by the Israeli Government’s own admission, according to the Mitchell Report, ‘for the first three months of the current uprising, most incidents did not involve Palestinian use of firearms and explosives.’[2]

The Report then goes on to say:

‘Altogether, nearly 500 people were killed and over 10,000 injured over the past seven months; the overwhelming majority in both categories were Palestinian. Many of these deaths were avoidable, as were many Israeli deaths. Israel's characterization of the conflict, as noted above, is overly broad, for it does not adequately describe the variety of incidents reported since late September 2000. Moreover, by thus defining the conflict, the IDF has suspended its policy of mandating investigations by the Department of Military Police Investigations whenever a Palestinian in the territories dies at the hands of an IDF soldier in an incident not involving terrorism. In the words of the GOI, "Where Israel considers that there is reason to investigate particular incidents, it does so, although, given the circumstances of armed conflict, it does not do so routinely."’[3]

The Mitchell Report also gives support to what I have said about the inability of people like us – liberal people who grew up believing in the brotherhood of man – to see the suffering and hardship of Palestinian life. Before making that point, the Report begins in the following measured terms:

‘Despite their long history and close proximity, some Israelis and Palestinians seem not to fully appreciate each other's problems and concerns… Some Palestinians appear not to comprehend the extent to which terrorism creates fear among the Israeli people and undermines their belief in the possibility of co-existence...’[4]

That, I am sure, we would both agree with, but the Report also says:

‘Some Israelis appear not to comprehend the humiliation and frustration that Palestinians must endure every day as a result of living with the continuing effects of occupation, sustained by the presence of Israeli military forces and settlements in their midst, or the determination of the Palestinians to achieve independence and genuine self-determination.’[5]

You may consider that the delegation falls into the former category of not appreciating Israeli fears, but as I showed in my previous response, it does not. However, what most critics of the delegation have demonstrated through their own writing is that they fall into the latter category. In your first letter to me you accepted that the Palestinian experience is marked by a “lack of freedom of movement”, “suffering and humiliation”, “indignities” and “unemployment”.[6] But this empathy is nowhere in your second letter.

You fill a page with the record of Palestinian attacks against Israelis, in order to prove that in his recounting of bombings, Professor Bar-Tal omitted to mention the eight Israelis killed by the terrorist bus driver. Nobody can deny that this catalogue of crimes makes for depressing and painful reading, but you say not a single word about violence and death suffered by Palestinians.

You also use this list to claim that ‘we clearly see a completely different picture, depending on the time frames’. Besides missing the point, the statement is also false. It misses the point, because I was engaging you on the origins of the Second Intifada, and thus focused logically on a certain timeframe. And it is false because even if we take the entire period between 2000 and the present, notwithstanding the litany of horrific suicide bombings, there are four times more Palestinian deaths. From 29 Sept 2000 until 31 August 2008 there were 4880 Palestinians killed by Israelis and 1061 Israelis killed by Palestinians.[7] Of those killed there were 949 Palestinians children and 123 Israeli children. Clearly, whilst the picture on both sides is horrific, and the loss of any one life is incalculable, it remains far safer to be an Israeli than a Palestinian.

I share your outrage at the lynching in Ramallah on Oct 12, 2000 and at the record of suicide bombings. You are right that the particularly brutal nature of these events created wounds, perhaps still open, not even yet scars. Your conclusions, however, do not follow. We cannot conclude from this, as you say many have, that ‘Palestinians actually would like to see the murder and destruction of all Jewish Israelis if ever given the chance’. There are those Palestinians, but they are in the minority and there is a duty on responsible commentators to recognise that.

It also does not follow, as you claim, that ‘our partner in peace wishes neither a 2 state solution nor peaceful coexistence’. In a research survey done in March 2008, 66% of Palestinians supported and 32% opposed the Saudi initiative which calls for Arab recognition of and normalisation of relations with Israel in exchange for ending the Occupation and recognising the establishment of a Palestinian state.[8] In the same survey, 55% supported mutual recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish people and Palestine as the state for the Palestinian people as part of a permanent status agreement.[9] Specifically in regard to the model for a ‘solution’ which you raised, 58% of Palestinians prefer the two-state solution and 27% prefer the one-state solution.[10]

Despite the hardships of the last eight years – which have seen a decline in Palestinian belief in peace and coexistence, just as on the Israeli side – the above results show that the majority of Palestinians still want to live in peace with Israel. These numbers were better before the Intifada, when almost three quarters (73%) would support reconciliation between the two peoples after reaching a peace agreement leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state recognised by Israel.[11]

Depressingly, support for terrorism is high. Findings show a significant increase in the level of support for armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel with 67% supportive and 31% opposed. Average support for such attacks on Israeli civilians stood at 40% in 2005.[12] This survey also reveals that Palestinians regard incursions by the IDF in the same way Israelis regard violent Palestinian attacks – as terrorism – and of course support for such operations is very high in Israeli society. The harshness of the occupation, the building of the separation barrier, the collapse of economic conditions, and a lack of any political progress and the resulting despair in the peace process feed into this hardening of attitude among Palestinians. As an illustration 68% believe that the chances for the establishment of a Palestinian state during the next five years are non-existent or weak.[13]

The fundamental point remains that there is a majority of Palestinians, around 60%, who support the ‘two states for two peoples’ concept. According to the Steinmetz Centre’s Peace Index for March 2008, support for that concept on the Israeli side is 68%.[14]

In regard to your extracts from the speech by Arafat and the interview with Faisal Husseini, you have not provided proper references that one can access. In fact for the Arafat piece you provide no reference, and for the Husseini one you reference an Arabic newspaper which neither you nor I would be able to read. I have tried quite extensively to locate these extracts in standard news sources and cannot find them.[15] Organisations like Camera, Memri, HonestReporting and the like are not reputable sources of information that any serious person would rely upon, particularly not in regard to translations from Arabic. There are plenty of equivalent organizations on the Palestinian side, but one can never rely on such organisations, whether they are pro-Palestinian, pro-Israeli or whatever – most often they are worse than the media they purport to monitor.[16] As you have suggested, “behind the walls of quotations and resources are revealed the very biases we aim to avoid.”

Nevertheless, I must assume for the purposes of this discussion that those quotes are bona fide. To read that Arafat or Husseini said some shocking things is not surprising. I have never defended the Palestinian leadership and I think we should all be critical of them, particularly those who returned with Arafat from exile, for their poor leadership, their corruption, their toleration of and involvement in violence, and their reluctance to champion a truly progressive politics. We have not been shy in the public meetings we have held back in South Africa to criticise this Palestinian leadership. One of the delegation, Farid Esack, a professor of religion at Harvard, writing about the trip for the Al Qalam, a Muslim monthly, complained of being subjected on the trip to “the insufferably boring lamentations of some Fatah apparatchiks”.[17]

At the same time let us remember that some Zionist leaders also planned in maximal terms whilst speaking moderately in international forums. Almost all Israel’s current leaders say that Jerusalem is the eternal undivided capital of Israel, even though this is a non-starter for serious negotiations. But let us take Ben Gurion as our example. This extract dealing with Ben Gurion’s leadership is from former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami – someone you cited in your recent letter:

“Israel would always reject the admittedly ambiguous peace overtures of the PLO on the ground that they were part of a ‘strategy of phases’, the final objective of which was to take over the whole of Palestine and eventually do away with the State of Israel altogether. But the copyright for the strategy of phases might lie elsewhere: it was conceived by the leaders of the Yishuv in the mid 1930s, it was inherent in the notion they had of the real meaning of partition, as the first stage to wider territorial accomplishments. By endorsing partition as it was proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937, Ben-Gurion did not necessarily mean to relinquish Zionist claim for the entire Eretz-Israel.”[18]

Partition, or peace, was, as Ben Gurion put it, “a decisive stage along the path to greater Zionist implementation.”[19] It was on this basis that he agreed to successive partition plans. As he wrote to his son Amos in 1937, “The rest will come in the course of time. It must come.”[20]

Ariel Sharon too understood well how to dress territorial ambitions in the clothes of political moderation. In October 2005 Dov Weisglass gave a startlingly frank interview to Ari Shavit of Haaretz in which he admitted that the disengagement from Gaza was aimed at deepening the Occupation in the West Bank. Weisglass was Ariel Sharon’s long-time friend and lawyer, and for the 30 months leading up to the disengagement served as his bureau chief and senior adviser.

“The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.”

“The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation.”

Shavit reminded him that the disengagement plan included a few small settlements in the West Bank, to which Weisglass responded:
“The withdrawal in Samaria is a token one. We agreed to [it] only so it wouldn't be said that we concluded our obligation in Gaza.”

“[I]n regard to the large settlement blocs, thanks to the disengagement plan, we have in our hands a first-ever American statement that they will be part of Israel.”

Shavit suggested that given what Weisglass was saying the settlers should have been the number one supporters of the disengagement. Weisglass agreed:
“They should have danced around and around the Prime Minister's Office.”

“The political process is the establishment of a Palestinian state with all the security risks that entails. The political process is the evacuation of settlements, it's the return of refugees, it's the partition of Jerusalem. And all that has now been frozen.”

Shavit said that this sounded like the maneuver of the century. Weisglass didn’t enjoy the word, but he did like the compliment:

“When you say ‘maneuver,’ it doesn't sound nice. It sounds like you said one thing and something else came out. But that's the whole point.”[21]

Therefore, in sharing your disgust at what Palestinian leaders have said, and particularly at the warlike phrasing, I am conscious that the language of maximalist territorial ambition is a bi-national talent and curse.

The Barghouti quote is even less interesting; that a politician like him would want to take credit for the Intifada is not surprising. It is silly to discuss the Intifada as either spontaneous combustion or planned arson. Sure, Palestinians have leaders and they played a role in shaping it. But the fundamental point is that because of worsening conditions on the ground it was always likely that there would be an eruption of popular feeling.

AGAIN: IS SECURITY THE DRIVER OF THE OCCUPATION?

You spend considerable time arguing that the continuation of the occupation is driven by security concerns and suggest that were I to pay attention to these I might understand this better.

Let me rely then on a body of people with considerable military experience: The Council for Peace and Security. This is a non-political group of people which was formed in 1988, bringing together some thousand members, each with a rich background in fields associated with security and diplomacy. Members include former high-ranking officers of the IDF, former holders of equivalent positions in the Mossad and Shin Beth Security Services, the Israel Police, retired diplomats, directors of Government Ministries and academics from various fields. It considers the support of the Middle East Peace Process to be a necessary component of National Security.[22]

The Council states: “Continued occupation of the Territories and control over the Palestinians is damaging the democratic character of the State of Israel. It is weakening the army, undermining its ability and its preparedness to respond to military threats.”[23]

You quoted me correctly as having previously written to you to say that rather than protecting Israel the restrictions on Palestinian movement, and complete freedom of movement for settlers, “possibly endangers Israel, and benefits settlers.” Here is what the Council for Peace and Security says:

“Barriers and blocks on internal roads in Judea and Samaria are one element of the means taken for day to day security. However, these barriers have serious negative effects. They humiliate the Palestinians and motivate a desire for revenge, interfere with the ability to rebuild the Palestinian economy and are a cause of loss of hope. They also adversely affect Israel’s international image and cast doubt upon the professionalism, social skills and morale of Israeli troops. When all elements of the equation are considered, the barriers have a negative and even dangerous effect upon Israel’s security.”[24]

You say the system is critical to “security and saving lives”. These 1000 Israelis with considerable military and intelligence experience say otherwise. They recommend the “removal of barriers and blocks throughout the West Bank” and state that the “security risks of the above steps are minimal, having regard for Israel’s other operational capabilities.”[25]

You say ending the Occupation will lead to the creation of “yet another jihadist hate-state”. The Council for Peace and Security say: “A Palestinian State is not a threat”.[26]

Their letter ends with a stern warning:

“Israel is the strongest party in the dispute and should therefore take the first step, without demanding the prior condition of “Palestinian war on terror”. Waiting for a “more suitable” reality will put Israel in a far more difficult position, in which the “two states for two nations” solution will no longer be feasible.”[27]

Your defense of the Separation Barrier amounts to producing a list of seven instances where planned Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians were thwarted. In most of these cases, particularly in places like Nablus, the Separation Barrier does not seem to have played a role. But I accept that the Separation Barrier makes Israelis feel safer and has helped to stop certain attacks. However, there remain three serious problems with your defense of the Barrier: Firstly, you do not address the issue of the route; Secondly, you do not address the issue of proportionality – the increase in Israeli security has to be balanced with the destruction of Palestinian communities; and Thirdly, you ignore other possible causes for the drop in suicide bombings – this might not be entirely explained by the Barrier.

You accept that “the settlers do benefit from this newfound freedom and freedom and exploit it to the full” and that this has “undermined deeply the credibility of successive Israeli governments”. You claim that since the 2005 Gaza pullout the settlements no longer drive policy. You seem to accept that this was a driver of policy before the disengagement. As the Weisglass interview shows, post Gaza pullout the needs of the West Bank settlers drive policy as much as ever.

Ultimately, no amount of mental acrobatics can escape the fundamental point: Were there no settlements today on the West Bank, there would be no Occupation. Israel would find other, better, less expensive, less oppressive ways of maintaining its security. The settlements drive the occupation.

TERMINOLOGY: WHO SAYS ISRAEL LOOKS A LITTLE LIKE APARTHEID?

You say: “Terms such as “Apartheid”, “Ethnic Cleansing”, “Nazi”, “Holocaust” are used without discretion.” You claim that “one of the outcomes of the human rights delegation has been the irresponsible application of this kind of terminology by journalists, commentators and leaders…” In fact, and I may be mistaken, but I have seen no use, irresponsible or otherwise, of the terms “Nazi” and “Ethnic Cleansing”, except for your strange interpretation of the picture of the Israeli soldier and the children as being Nazi-like. The Holocaust has been present in the normal, necessary sense as a fundamental event in the background.

When people lump all these terms together, as you have done, with little regard to whether they have in fact been used or not, they are attempting to do two things. Firstly, they want to paint us as glib purveyors of cheap slogans, and thus not careful and serious people. Secondly they want to create the impression that all of the above terms of equally ridiculous, specifically because there is intense worry over the use of one term: “Apartheid”. This term has in fact been discussed quite frequently in the context of the delegation and I will therefore deal with it at length.

As I will make clear later, I don’t find the Israel-Apartheid analogy to be particularly appealing. That is why, although I have referenced it, I have never personally invoked it. But first, I want to dispel the impression that Mondli Makhanya and Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge were the first respectable people to ever make this comparison. They are not quite the chalutzim you might see them as.

There is a significant record of noteworthy Israelis making this comparison. Michael Ben-Yair, attorney-general of Israel from 1993 to 1996 referred to Israel establishing, "an apartheid regime in the occupied territories", in an essay published in Haaretz.[28] Ami Ayalon, Israeli admiral and former leader of the Shin Bet, in discussing the Separation Plan, said “Israel must decide quickly what sort of environment it wants to live in because the current model, which has some apartheid characteristics, is not compatible with Jewish principles.”[29] Shulamit Aloni, former education minister, Israel Prize winner, and a former leader of Meretz, said that the state of Israel is “practicing its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.”[30] Former Knesset member Yossi Sarid explicitly compared an array of Israeli practices to apartheid in a Haaretz column entitles "Yes, It's apartheid" on April 25, 2008.[31]

An academic paper by Professor Oren Yiftachel, Chair of the Geography Department at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev, predicted that Israel's unilateral disengagement plan will result in “creeping apartheid” in the West Bank, Gaza, and in Israel itself.[32] Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli political scientist and the former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, predicted that the interim disengagement plan would become permanent, with the West Bank barrier entrenching both the isolation of Palestinian communities and the existence of Israeli settlements. He warned that Israel is moving towards the model of apartheid South Africa through the creation of "Bantustan" like conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.[33] Danny Rubinstein, a columnist at Haaretz also reportedly likened Israel to apartheid during a United Nations conference at the European Parliament in Brussels, stating: “Israel today is an apartheid State with four different Palestinian groups: those in Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Israeli Palestinians, each of which had a different status.”[34]

Most significantly perhaps was a Haaretz editorial, in the context of the visit by former US President Jimmy Carter earlier this year, in which the Apartheid analogy was made directly:

“Israel is not ready for such comparisons, even though the situation begs it. It is doubtful whether it is possible to complain when an outside observer, especially a former U.S. president who is well versed in international affairs, sees in the system of separate roads for Jews and Arabs, the lack of freedom of movement, Israel’s control over Palestinian lands and their confiscation, and especially the continued settlement activity, which contravenes all promises Israel made and signed, a matter that cannot be accepted. The interim political situation in the territories has crystallized into a kind of apartheid that has been ongoing for 40 years.”[35]

Not only Jewish Israelis have used the Apartheid comparison. The Economist, in an article on the debate over withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, asserted that “Keeping the occupied land will force on Israel the impossible choice of being either an apartheid state, or a binational one with Jews as a minority.”[36] British journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft noted that, historically, Israeli officials had mulled the possibility of adopting the South African apartheid model as one that the state of Israel itself might emulate. In the late 1970s “(t)hey didn't wish to copy what was once called 'petty apartheid', the everyday harassment of black South Africans, but 'grand apartheid', the Nationalists' attempt to conjure away the problem of minority rule by dividing the country into supposedly autonomous cantons or 'homelands'.”[37] Perhaps most gruesome – or amusing, because he meant it as a compliment – is the direct comparison by a relative expert in Apartheid, Hendrik Verwoerd, then prime minister of South Africa and the architect of South Africa's apartheid policies, who in 1961 said: “The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.”[38]

To be sure, serious people have made rebuttals of the analogy. You cite Benjamin Pogrund, a former member of Habonim and Deputy Editor of the Rand Daily Mail, now living in Israel and involved with Yakar. Whilst the thrust of Pogrund’s Haaretz piece was to rebut the Israel-Apartheid analogy he did not attempt to defend the Occupation. The title gives some indication of this: “Catastrophic, but not apartheid”. In fact, he conceded that “there is no question that our occupation policies and practices can be compared with apartheid.”[39]

To come back to the present: Despite the long list of precedents, the delegation made little use of the Apartheid analogy. For every case of the analogy being used by one of the delegation, there is an instance of it being questioned by another. The delegation's final formal statement made no mention of comparisons with apartheid and Dennis Davis, a member of the delegation, said he thought the use of the term in the Middle East context was “very unhelpful”[40] and that said despite “stark parallels” to apartheid, “it's incredibly unhelpful to say you can simply take this to be apartheid and therefore the South African struggle is the same and the South African solution is the same. That's a very lazy form of reasoning.”[41] Fatima Hassan, another member of the delegation, said she thought the comparison was a “red herring”.[42] Farid Esack has written that, after the trip, he “could not avoid the conclusion that the simple Zionism=Apartheid equation is also a simplistic one.” [43]

I agree with Davis that the apartheid analogy can be unhelpful. Daphna Golan-Agnon, co-founder of B’Tselem, has grappled with when this analogy helps or hinders the search for peace and justice:

“I'm not sure if the use of the term apartheid helps us to understand the discrimination against Palestinians in Israel or the oppression against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. I'm not sure the discussion about how we are like or unlike South Africa helps move us forward to a solution. But the comparison reminds us that hundreds of laws do not make discrimination just and that the international community, the same international community we want to belong to, did not permit the perpetuation of apartheid. And it doesn't matter how we explain it and how many articles are written by Israeli scholars and lawyers -- there are two groups living in this small piece of land, and one enjoys rights and liberty while the other does not.”[44]

I prefer to treat the Occupation fairly and on its own terms. I have always felt uncomfortable with those who that take a term which emerged for the 1948 South African elections, in a specific historical context, and act as if it can adequately describe what is happening in 2008 in Israel/Palestine. I also know that often the outcomes of such comparisons are discussions like these, which turn on terminology rather than on the actual situation which needs to be addressed. I prefer to describe the actual situation as I did in my previous letter to you. I also believe that the Occupation is serious enough not to need any additional dramatisation.

VIGILANT EVERYWHERE: WHO REALLY HAS DOUBLE STANDARDS?

You advise as follows: We ‘must stay vigilant – on our own soil’. Well, the world, as you say, is full of ironies. The members of the delegation do little other than defend and protect human rights on their own soil. A five day trip to Israel and the West Bank is a brief interlude in lives that are defined by their struggles, before and after Apartheid, for social justice and peace in South Africa. The members of the delegation were selected precisely for their vigilance on their own soil, and particularly in recent years. Those who attack the delegation have no such record of personal commitment for human rights on their own soil. I do take you seriously when you offer to ‘track and follow every infraction of human rights and to act to remedy each one’ and I would welcome an update on this front. The concept of a human right, as you know, is one not distinguished by nationality or religion.

You also ask me whether as a South African I would welcome a human rights mission that drew harsh conclusions in regard to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa, even one that said it was ‘worse than Apartheid’. For the past eight years South Africans have been engaged in a struggle to save lives in the struggle against AIDS. It has been devastating but also inspiring: whilst hundreds of thousands have died, activism has cut medicine prices to a fraction and resulted in a national roll-out of AIDS medicines. Basic strategies in this struggle have included the use of moral pressure on government and drug companies and international solidarity. Not only have we welcomed the citizens of the world demonstrating outside South African embassies worldwide, but we have helped to organise those demonstrations. Not only have we tolerated accusations that there is more death and poorer health now than during Apartheid but we have been the ones making those accusations. Not only have we accepted editorials in foreign newspapers about the failure of our government’s approach to AIDS, we have instigated them. The list of examples of how the politics of morality and shame and have been fearlessly and successfully employment by AIDS activists is long and impressive. Would we oppose a delegation of internationally respected doctors coming to South Africa and condemning that which deserves to be condemned? No, we would welcome them. Simply put, people’s lives are more important than the need of middle-class people to feel comfortable and proud of their country. Ultimately anyway, it is the spirit of this activism, despite the embarrassment it may bring to the government, that makes me proud to be South African.

You accuse us of hypocrisy, although I have shown you we are consistent. In truth, there is hypocrisy in what you are asking for. On the one hand you want everyone in the world to stay vigilant on their own soil, and on the other you bemoan the world’s silence “in the face of one the most horrendous violations of human rights in Darfur” and “as Mugabe drains the life out of his own country”. Which is it? Should we protest human rights violations around the world or stick to our own? Or do you not mind people raising objections to what happens around the world as long as they ignore Israel? Is it your view that unless Israel is worse than Zimbabwe, Iran or Sudan it is not deserving of public criticism?

To this some might respond that Israel is always singled out, and that if everyone was criticised fairly that would be fine. I want to use the example of only two members of the delegation to illustrate that Israel is not so special as we might think, and that many other places come in for sustained criticism. I will use as my examples Nathan Geffen and Zackie Achmat, two of the members of the delegation, both of whom have a long history in TAC, the main vehicle of AIDS activism. Achmat was its founding Chairperson and Geffen was its first National Manager, later Director of Policy, and now Treasurer.

For years, TAC has criticised the Mugabe government. TAC has organised several solidarity events with people campaigning for democracy in Zimbabwe, the most recent being a demonstration in Gauteng in July, but also in CT in April. Achmat organized a Social Justice Coalition's rally for Zimbabwe on 25 June 2008.[45] Achmat and Geffen have given several radio interviews and published articles condemning Mugabe.[46] Achmat, Geffen and TAC's main international solidarity work deals with Zimbabwe and one could provide endless examples of this.

Soon after the delegation Geffen flew to Mexico for the International AIDS Conference where he spoke in the main plenary, to several thousand people about China's arrest of AIDS activist Hu Jia.[47] This was on the day the Beijing Olympics opened. TAC has also protested China’s oppressive labour practices.[48] Again, I could provide further examples.

TAC has issued a statement condemning arrests of AIDS activists in Ghana[49] and called on people around the world to bombard the Ghanaian consulate with faxes. Similar action has been taken against Iran, and Geffen also issues a report against Iranian treatment of dissidents at the above-mentioned conference. Achmat has been a life-long critic of the Iranian revolution and theocracy. It's one of the reasons he is poorly treated by the Muslim community. On 16 April 2003, TAC issued a statement calling for a democratic Swaziland. They have also supported actions of the Swaziland democracy movement.

Achmat and Geffen have both been outspoken in regard to Darfur. In his 2004 Ashley Kriel Memorial Lecture, one of the most important annual lectures in the country, Achmat said: "Darfur will be a test for our government but more importantly a test for civil society. We failed this test to ensure democracy in Zimbabwe. We cannot fail the people of Darfur and Sudan."[50] Geffen organized a large TAC group to go to the Holocaust Centre to learn about the Darfur Conflict.

Looking through the TAC materials and publications one easily finds Achmat and Geffen criticizing human rights abuses by the US, Uganda, Namibia and Saudi Arabia. Geffen was also involved in a group that worked to reduce human rights abuses in Iraq during the period of Saddam Hussein.[51] If you would like a similar record for other members of the delegation I am sure it could be provided.

And so the position is clear: As is stated in the delegation’s Mission Statement:

“We believe that human rights are interconnected and indivisible. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We know that global stability is important for all of our prosperity. Similarly, we are committed to upholding international law and human rights.”

The criticism Israel has received from the delegation is not derived from malice, a strange fixation, an ignorance of suffering around the world, or an avoidance of domestic concerns. It is because such criticism is deserved.

MINDSETS AND POLITICS

You correctly say that mindsets have to change. A lot of what I saw in the West Bank with the delegation made clear how much Palestinian mindsets do need to change. As members of the delegation have written, the culture of martyrdom we saw in Nablus was deeply disturbing. But I would like to challenge you, a modern, progressive person, with privileges and education that few on the West Bank enjoy, to consider your own mindset. Your basic attitude to Palestinians is mistrust, and your conception of them is as a threat. That kind of thinking cannot survive genuine people-to-people encounters where individuals get to see each other’s lives and understand each other’s dreams. In this regard South Africa is an example of both what can be achieved, and the dangers of not doing it. Many people have crossed previously unbridgeable divides. Those who did it 30 years ago were considered dangerous radicals. Today most white South Africans have still never been into a township, do not know a poor black person other than their domestic worker, and still, sitting in their comfortable, well-protected homes, regard the black masses as a threat, rather than as a suffering people needing support. The challenge to all of us – not only the Palestinians – is to take active steps, today, to break down those mental and physical walls.

People living in desperate conditions need a viable peaceful political course of action, otherwise they will turn to violence. That decision to turn to violence is never justified, but there is a certain inevitability to it. I would prefer to give the Palestinians hope. People with hope are far less likely to engage in violence. Hope comes in many small ways: the “dialogue on both sides” that you propose, the “removal of the daily hardships Palestinians undergo” that you recommend, the presence of Israelis working with Palestinians against the effects of the Occupation, a clear political horizon that arcs towards freedom of movement and away from ongoing settlement expansion, moderate leadership which can find a foothold in its society by pointing to moderate leadership on the other side, and yes, international solidarity from groups like the delegation, who, while being implacably opposed to calls for the destruction of Israel, support an end to the Occupation. There are only two alternatives to this kind of politics. The one is a very violent uprising. The other is extreme repression needed to contain such violence. Both seem unacceptable to me, and yet they are given if things continue down the present course.

This correspondence has given me the opportunity to clarify and think through some of my own difficulties and I want to thank you for that.

Regards,

Doron
[1] Moira Schneider interview with Geoff Budlender ‘Israeli visit “depressing and inspiring” SA Jewish Report 7/17/2008.
[2] Government of Israel, First Statement, Mitchell Report, April 30, 2001.
[3] The Mitchell Report April 30, 2001, available at http://www.mideastweb.org/mitchell_report.htm; See also, Alex Fishman, "The Intifada, the IDF and Investigations," Yediot Aharonot (in English, Richard Bell Press, 1996, Ltd.), January 19, 2001.
[4] Mitchell Report supra.
[5] Mitchell Report supra.
[6] Jonathan Zausmer ‘An open letter to Doron Isaacs in response to the South Africa Human Rights Delegation’s visit to Israel and the occupied territories’ 23 July 2008 available at http://themovingdebate.blogspot.com/2008/08/human-rights-delegation.html.
[7] Of the Palestinians killed, 4823 (4754 in the OPT and 69 in Israel) were killed by Israeli security forces and 57 (54 in the OPT and 3 in Israel) were killed by Israeli civilians. Of the Israelis killed, 726 were civilians (236 in OPT and 490 in Israel) and 335 were security personnel (245 in OPT and 90 in Israel). See B’Tselem Statistics at http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp; See also UN Office For Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Report Centre at http://www.ochaopt.org/?module=displaysection&section_id=97&static=0&format=html.
[8] PSR - Survey Research Unit: Public Opinion Poll # 27, 13-15 March 2008, available at http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2008/p27e1.html#peace.
[9] Ibid.
[10] PSR - Survey Research Unit: Public Opinion Poll # 28, 5-7 June 2008, available at http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2008/p28e.html#head2.
[11] PSR - Survey Research Unit: Public Opinion Poll # 3, 19-24 December 2001, available at http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2001/p3a.html.
[12] PSR Poll #27 supra.
[13] PSR Poll #27 supra.
[14] Tel Aviv University: Tami Steinmetz Centre for Peace Research PEACE INDEX March 2008, visit http://www.tau.ac.il/peace/.
[15] I have found a South African press briefing which deals with Arafat’s comments in the Johannesburg mosque, although it does not include the more extreme comments you quote. It also explains that the only record is a tape which sounds like Arafat and was handed to the press by members of the South African Jewish community http://70.84.171.10/~etools/newsbrief/1994/news0518.
[16] In fact, in the run up to the delegation the Media Review Network, a local pro-Palestinian media group, sent us 23 copies of Uri Davis’ book Israel: An Apartheid State (1987), which we politely declined to circulate.
[17] Farid Esack ‘Seeing through the eyes of the other’ 12 August 2008, available as a reprint from Published in ZAM Africa Magazine, September 2008, 12/3 http://www.humanrightsdelegation.org/press_item.asp?id=21&page=1.
[18] Shlomo Ben-Ami Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (London: Phoenix, 2005) at 24.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid at 25.
[21] Ari Shavit ‘The Big Freeze’ Haaretz 10/11/2005 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=485929 (this is the reference for all the above Weisglass quotes).
[22] Management of the Council for Peace and Security: President: Maj Gen (Ret.) Danny Rothschild; Managing Director: Police Maj Gen (Ret.) Shaul Givoli; Treasurer: Brig Gen (Ret.) Yitzchak Elron; Legal Counsel: Col (Ret.) Mati Atzmon; Audit Committee: Col (Ret.) Danny Razgor; Lt Col (Ret.) Oded Eytan; Members: Prison Commissioner (Ret.) Orit Adato; Col (Ret.) Shaul Arieli; Brig Gen (Ret.) Giora Goren; Maj Gen (Ret.) Amos Lapidot; Maj Gen (Ret.) Zeev Livne; Lt Col (Ret.) Yoel Marshak; Mr Reuven Merchav; Brig Gen (Ret.) Ilan Paz; Brig Gen (Ret.) Giora Forman-Ram; Adv Talia Sasson; Maj Gen (Ret.) Nathan Sharoni; Dr Nachman Tal; Maj Gen (Ret.) Aviezer Yaari; Brig Gen (Ret.) Gadi Zohar; Mr Yossi Alpher; Mr Avner Azulai; Brig Gen (Ret.) Shlomo Brom; Col (Ret.) Yuval Dvir; Brig Gen (Ret.) Yaakov Even; Brig Gen (Ret.) Yehuda Golan; Brig Gen (Ret.) Michael Navon; Prof Yehiam Prior; Brig Gen (Ret.) Zvi Shor – for short biographies see http://www.peace-security-council.org/about.us.asp.
[23] Council for Peace and Security, About Us, http://www.peace-security-council.org/about.us.asp.
[24] Council for Peace and Security ‘Necessary Security Measures in Judea and Samaria - The Council's Position - LETTER FROM THE COUNCIL FOR PEACE AND SECURITY TO: The Prime Minister, Mr. Ehud Olmert, The Minister of Defense, Mr. Ehud Barak, The Foreign Minister, Ms. Tzipy Livni’, Council Flashes 28/04/2008 http://www.peace-security-council.org/flashes.asp?id=726.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Council for Peace and Security, About Us, http://www.peace-security-council.org/about.us.asp.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Michael Ben-Yair ‘The War’s Seventh Day’ Haaretz, 03/03/2002, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=136433.
[29] Ami Ayalon ‘Israel warned against emerging apartheid’ Daily Dispatch December 5, 2000 http://www.dispatch.co.za/2000/12/05/foreign/IISRAEL.HTM
[30] Shulamit Aloni ‘Yes, There is Apartheid in Israel’ Counterpunch January 8, 2007 http://counterpunch.com/aloni01082007.html.
[31] Yossi Sarid ‘Yes, It is Apartheid’ Haaretz 25/04/2008 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/977947.html.
[32] Oren Yiftachel, Department of Geography and Environmental Development, Ben Gurion University of the Desert (2005) Neither two states nor one: The Disengagement and "creeping apartheid" in Israel/Palestine in The Arab World Geographer/Le Géographe du monde arabe 8(3): 125-129 http://users.fmg.uva.nl/vmamadouh/awg/forum2005/AWG83Yiftachel.pdf.
[33] Meron Benvenisti ‘Bantustan plan for an apartheid Israel’ The Guardian, April 26, 2005 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/apr/26/comment.
[34] Yaakov Lappin ‘Zionist Federation cancels Haaretz journalist: Danny Rubinstein reportedly likens Israel to apartheid South Africa’ Ynetnews.com 31/8/07 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3444320,00.html#n.
[35] Haaretz Editorial 15/4/2008 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/974893.html.
[36] ‘Israel's settlers: Waiting for a miracle’ The Economist August 11, 2005.
[37] Geoffrey Wheatcroft ‘No Fairy Tale:The forgotten history of Zionism’ Times Literary Supplement Feb.22, 2008 pp.3-5,7-8, p.8.
[38] Chris McGreal ‘Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria’ The Guardian 2006-02-07 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/07/southafrica.israel; Rand Daily Mail, November 23, 1961.
[39] Benjamin Pogrund ‘Catastrophic, but not apartheid’ Haaretz 02/05/2008.
[40] Donald Macintyre ‘“This is like apartheid”: ANC veterans visit West Bank’ The Independent 2008/07/11 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/this-is-like-apartheid-anc-veterans-visit-west-bank-865063.html.
[41] Q&A: 'Israel In a Weak Parallel with Apartheid' Interview with Dennis Davis, High Court Judge in Cape Town http://www.worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43404.
[42] Donald Macintyre ‘“This is like apartheid”: ANC veterans visit West Bank’ supra.
[43] Farid Esack ‘Seeing through the eyes of the other’ 12 August 2008, available as a reprint from Published in ZAM Africa Magazine, September 2008, 12/3 http://www.humanrightsdelegation.org/press_item.asp?id=21&page=1.
[44] Golan-Agnon, Daphna, Next Year in Jerusalem, New York: The New Press, 2002. p. 206.
[45] http://www.tac.org.za/community/node/2361.
[46] http://www.tac.org.za/community/node/2164.
[47] I can provide the text, slides and video of this upon request. Also see:
http://www.tac.org.za/community/node/2340 where TAC called for Hu Jia to be freed.
[48] http://www.tac.org.za/newsletter/2005/ns29_03_2005.htm#jobs.
[49] http://www.tac.org.za/newsletter/2002/ns21_10_2002.txt.
[50] Zackie Achmat ‘First Ashley Kriel Memorial Lecture’ 2004 http://www.ijr.org.za/recon-recon/memoryhealing/ashley-kriel-memorial-lecture-by-zackie-achmat-final-version.doc/view.
[51] http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00541.html.

A reply to Doron Isaacs's response. Some perspectives

2008-08-20T18:31:00.010+03:00

An open answer to Doron Isaacs’s response and some perspectives following the Human Rights Delegation. By Jonathan Zausmer, Israel 19 August, 2008
Dear Doron
I contemplated answering your comprehensive reply, and for a while, concluded that instead of embarking on an endless voyage of debating the issues raised, to wait a while and examine what transpires.
That was before I learned that a month before your delegation’s visit to Israel and the West Bank, you called on Nadine Gordimer to boycott the writers’ festival in Israel[1]. The uninvolved bystander may conclude that you have a predisposition to make your judgment and deliver sentence long before the court has even convened.
I have, since your letter, also followed several features in the SA press and observed some of the vengeful rhetoric that always seems to come from those representing the Palestinian position. I will relate to these matters in more detail however I first wish to discuss your letter in general and some the points raised in particular.
I have taken due note that you have omitted to contest some opening observations and the closing comments in my letter to you.
· The inflammatory insignia on your website that indicates an a priori one sided approach to this matter
· Gaping holes in the delegation’s itinerary converse to its mission statement which propounds neutrality. Examples of this would be: an absence of Sderot on the itinerary, the civilian target of indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza; a focus on tours and interactions on the ground which predominantly cover areas of the West Bank; a lack of focus and visitation of Israeli targets of suicide bombings and sites of indiscriminate killings of civilians by Palestinians (which as you know continue to occur including these past weeks).
· The apparent lack of context of events, historical, current, military, political and geographical that bear relevance on Israeli security policies and thus impact on the lives residents in the West Bank
I will accept these omissions as admission of ‘error’ (used in the name of moderation) strengthening further the overall impression of bias, wittingly or unwittingly in the delegation’s agenda.

Your resource-based reply clearly requires a like response, however in the name of caution I will say that very often behind the walls of quotations and resources are revealed the very biases we aim to avoid:
An example of this within your hypothesis that Intefada Al-Aksa was some sort of spontaneous combustion event is as follows: you quote Daniel Bar Tal stating obliquely “In terms of major attacks inside Israel. In November 2000, a bomb was placed in the Jerusalem market and later in Hadera. Then on March 1, a bomb was placed in a taxi”[2]. Now let us examine the full list of all major attacks from November 2000 to the end of 2001. [3]

Nov 2, 2000 - JerusalemTwo people were killed and 10 injured by a car bomb explosion near the Mahane Yehuda market. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.Nov 20, 2000 - Gush KatifTwo people were killed and 9 injured by a roadside bomb that exploded alongside a bus carrying children to school.Nov 22, 2000 - HaderaTwo people were killed, and 60 wounded when a powerful car bomb was detonated alongside a passing bus on the town's main street.Nov 28, 2000 - Kfar SabaTwo Israeli teenagers on their way to school were killed in a suicide terrorist attack near the "Meeting Place of Peace" gas station in Neve Yamin. The bomber, from the Hamas terror group, blew himself up in a gathering of students waiting at a bus stop. Four other teenagers were wounded, one critically.Jan 1, 2001 - Netanya60 people were injured when a car bomb exploded near a bus stop in the shopping district.**Feb 14, 2001 - HolonEight people were killed and 25 injured when a bus driven by a Palestinian terrorist plowed into a group of soldiers and civilians waiting at a bus stop. (see comment below)Mar 4, 2001 - NetanyaThree people were killed and more than 60 injured in a suicide bombing in the downtown area.May 18, 2001 - NetanyaA Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself outside a shopping mall, killing five people and injuring over 100. Hamas claimed responsibility.Jun 1, 2001 - Tel Aviv21 young people were killed and 120 wounded by a suicide bomber outside the Dolphinarium disco along the seafront promenade.Aug 9, 2001 - Jerusalem15 people were killed (including 7 children) and 130 injured in a suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizzeria on the corner of King George Street and Jaffa Road in the city center. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attack.July 16, 2001 - BinyaminaTwo Israeli soldiers were killed and 11 people were wounded when a suicide terrorist attacked at a bus stop near the train station. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.Sept 9, 2001 - NahariyaThree people were killed and 90 injured in a suicide bombing near the Nahariya train station. The terrorist waited until the train arrived from Tel-Aviv and people were exiting the station, and then exploded the bomb he was carrying. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.Nov 29, 2001 - HaderaThree people were killed and nine others wounded in a suicide bombing on Egged bus #823 enroute from Nazereth to Tel Aviv near the city of Hadera. Islamic Jihad and Fatah both claimed responsibility for the attack.Dec 1, 2001 - Jerusalem11 people were killed and 180 injured by two suicide bombers on Ben Yehuda Street's pedestrian mall. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.Dec 2, 2001 - Haifa15 people were killed and 40 injured in a suicide bombing on Egged bus #16. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

We clearly see a completely different picture, depending on the time frames however, pay attention to the Feb 14th entry noted ** above. This is an unexplained omission in Bar Tal’s description of events until March 2001 - this kind of false representation by omission is not acceptable by any standards.
According to Israeli government sources, there were some 9000 attacks (minor and major events) by Palestinians in the first three months of the intefada[4] which would explain the massive use of army fire power. The attempt to count bullets (an impossible mission by the way, for anyone with basic military experience) explains neither causality nor the bearing of events on the outcome. What does bear relevance, deeply, on the long term outcome is the nature of events. The nature of events impacts not only on the national psyche but also directly, on the methodology ultimately employed by the military in the praxis of building a viable defense system. Let us examine 2 examples
1. The public lynching of two Israelis on Oct 12, 2000 in a police building in Ramalla with the participation of Palestinian uniformed police that went unpunished. This terrible event outlined two important warnings for Israelis. One was that the structure of authority and state in Palestine has no real power or it wishes not to control popular violence, but rather to unleash it as an instrument of leverage. More deeply (correctly or not) this event was interpreted as further proof that Palestinians actually would like to see the murder and destruction of all Jewish Israelis if ever given the chance.
2. The suicide bombings. One needs not elaborate on the frequency and ferocity of these events however they confirm yet again for the Israeli public that our partner in peace, wishes neither a 2 state solution nor peaceful coexistence. The porous open border through which most of the perpetrators move leads to a complex and controversial decision to build a physical barrier.
As to the question of responsibility for the outbreak of the intefada, with respect to your analysis of “versions” of events, the following comments are relevant:
One should not underestimate the Israeli public’s prowess at reading between the lines and drawing conclusions. A public that has undergone the trauma of the Yom Kippur War on the one hand and the witnessing of Sabra and Shetila and its own subsequent censure of government following those two separate turning points, has a finely tuned sense of interpretation of events. What Amos Gilad said or didn’t say or what Israeli security officials write and present is comparable to a first, second and third opinion of medical specialists who ever so often all reach very different conclusions. The suggestion that the public was subtly manipulated by Barak and his generals into a “version” of history is highly speculative and quite frankly, disparaging. The public in fact took rapid and furious action in the face of Barak’s error of judgment regarding Palestinian intentions and preparations for an uprising: Barak was voted out of office in February 2001.

An accurate assessment of causality and thus responsibility and consequence, I contend, is made up from a range of different inputs regarding the long term intentions of Palestinian leadership and by hard evidence. One of the first benchmarks denoting a future abrogation of agreements was recorded shortly after the Oslo talks when Yasser Arafat delivered a speech in a mosque in Johannesburg on May 10th 1994 shortly after the signing of the Oslo accords, the text of which has been widely circulated:

“The Jihad will continue, and Jerusalem is not [only] for the Palestinian people, it is for all the Muslim nation…..No, you have to come and to fight and to start the Jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your first shrine” With reference to the Oslo accords he says: “This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce.”[Ed. note: The agreement with Koraish allowed Mohammed to pray in Mecca, which was under Koraish control, for ten years. When Mohammed grew stronger two years later, he abrogated the agreement, slaughtered the tribe of Koraish and conquered Mecca.] ….”We are in need of you as Moslems, as warriors of Jihad".

This kind of rhetoric was repeated over the years from the time of Oslo and until Intefada Al-Aksa. The pervading thinking of the Israeli government, that had endorsed Oslo, and of those within the peace movement (including me) was that the very process of engaging Palestinian leadership and effecting the instruments of peace would in itself drive concomitantly, a fundamental change within the paradigms (discussed in my previous letter) that pose a barrier to the process. How wrong we were.
Says Faisal Husseini, revered Minister in the Palestinian government in an interview just after the second intefada erupted referring to Oslo as a Trojan horse to be used against Israel (and published later in June 2001)[5]:

"Had the U.S. and Israel not realized, before Oslo, that all that was left of the Palestinian National movement and the Pan-Arab movement was a wooden horse called Arafat or the PLO, they would never have opened their fortified gates and let it inside their walls." "Despite the fact that we entered these walls in order to build, unlike the Greeks who entered in order to destroy, I now tell you all, all those to whom I spoke in a secret meeting during the days of Oslo: 'Climb into the horse and don't question what type of material the horse is made of. Climb into the horse, and we shall transform your climbing into that horse into a beginning of a building era rather than an era of the end of hope." He also says blatantly “When we are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo Agreement and at other agreements as "temporary" procedures, or phased goals, this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them. However, the truth is that we are doing exactly what they are doing..”
Really?
Let us now have a look at Israel’s status by the 3rd quarter of 2001: the country was stunned by the enormity of the violence, in a state of almost disbelief that Oslo had come crashing down. Israel’s prime economic generator, the high tech industry, was in serious crisis consequent to the dot com crash and 9/11 had uttered in an era of complete uncertainty. This was indeed a ‘perfect storm”. Palestinian leadership had gained confidence as the momentum of the intefada seemed unstoppable. It is at this time that one of the most revealing pieces of evidence as to where responsibility lies, is recorded: the head of the Tanzim militia of Arafat’s Fatah movement, Marwan Barghouti stated in an interview in the London based Al- Hayat Newspaper :
"I knew that the end of September was the last period (of time) before the explosion, but when Sharon reached the al-Aqsa Mosque, this was the most appropriate moment for the outbreak of the intifada....The night prior to Sharon's visit, I participated in a panel on a local television station and I seized the opportunity to call on the public to go to the al-Aqsa Mosque in the morning, for it was not possible that Sharon would reach al-Haram al-Sharif just so, and walk away peacefully. I finished and went to al-Aqsa in the morning....We tried to create clashes without success because of the differences of opinion that emerged with others in the al-Aqsa compound at the time....After Sharon left, I remained for two hours in the presence of other people, we discussed the manner of response and how it was possible to react in all the cities (bilad) and not just in Jerusalem. We contacted all (the Palestinian) factions." [6]
As you can see, there is no flawed interpretation. There was no spontaneous combustion. There was in fact, arson.
Insofar as Professor Bar Tal’s explanation of the breakdown of talks at Camp David, he may or may not be correct but the fact is that no counter proposal was ever made. Says Professor Shlomo Ben Ami Israel’s foreign minister at the time, in an interview “Never in the negotiations between us and the Palestinians was there a Palestinian counterproposal.”[7]

Now let us address the very relevant questions you raise whether security is the only thing driving the occupation.
Firstly, let us understand the concept of occupation. I pointed out in my previous letter that the current occupation is essentially a reoccupation. You have mistakenly confused the settlers and settlement activity with occupation and security. The situation you see today is one which emerges after a long terrible campaign by Palestinians which failed. Intefada Al-Aksa has in effect been won by Israel
and the losing side is suffering. What you see is the lifting of the “fog of war’ and the picture is never pretty.
My problem with your analysis of roadblocks and the movement of population through the range of barriers, is that I do not see any attempt at searching for the logic from a military expert, a spokesman or trained security personnel. Even if these experts were to present a slanted viewpoint or different viewpoints, is this not necessary before drawing conclusions? Your narrative pertaining to the critical question of security is based on a mixture of statistics, personal observations together with interpretation which extends to charges of racism. This partially anecdotal presentation does not necessarily lead to a logical string. I can only assume that the delegation as a whole was never given the opportunity of looking at the problem from the perspective of the military. This is a failing.
In the absence of such, let me present you with another viewpoint. In the initial stages of Intefada Al-Aksa, the Israeli public was both unprepared and surprised by the waves of suicide bombings and the scale of the attacks. At that time, the Israeli presence within West Bank cities was minimal, in most cases non existent. In our gamble for peace, almost no protection existed for us at home and consequently bombings and deaths occurred at clubs for children, aged homes, on buses and in the streets of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. The first line of defense put in place was deep inside Israel. Restaurants, supermarkets, malls, clubs – in fact any public location, was by law required to provide guards at the gates. This however could not thwart the problem as very often, suicide bombers would merely detonate their charges on the streets adjacent to populated areas or in public places where the commercial security agents lacked the skills to detect and prevent perpetrators.
A second and a third level of defense was put in place only later in the form of the separation barrier and the reoccupation of areas denoted to be the source of killings. The Israeli government really had no desire, neither for messianic settler ambitions nor territorial gain. The facts are that since the barrier has been erected and since the security apparatus can now operate at the source of terror – within Palestinian cities, the entire campaign known as the second intefada has dissipated from a bang into a whimper. See the graph below for an idea correlation[8]. The management of roadblocks, temporary and permanent checkpoints and the controlled movement of population is not surgery. You will find that there are indeed tracks that by-pass roadblocks. We know that the security barrier does not even cover the distance of the green line but in the scale of things the system works. You say with authority “Rather than protecting Israel, the irrational system I have described discriminates against Palestinians, possibly endangers Israel, and benefits settlers”
Have a look at the following partial list to give you an indication how the irrational system is critical to security and saves lives:
On March 9, 2008, the Post reported that on March 6, "A third member (of a terror group planning an attack on Midgal Oz) was arrested in a checkpoint set up by the IDF in nearby El-Aroub."
• On April 20, 2006, the Post reported: "A 19-year-old Palestinian was caught with five pipe-bombs at a checkpoint west of Nablus."
• "In the afternoon (of April 2, 2006), a 17-year-old was caught at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus in possession of a two-kilogram pipe-bomb" (reported April 3, 2006).
• On March 13, 2006, "At the Kalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem, security forces arrested two Palestinians after they were caught carrying a 50-centimeter sword and a number of bullets" (reported March 14, 2006).
• On Feb. 3, 2006, two teens were caught at Beit Iba (checkpoint) attempting to smuggle explosive belts, each containing seven kilograms of explosives, intended for populated areas in the center of Israel. The Post reported: "Their arrest prevented a double suicide bombing."
• On Feb. 2, 2006, "a military policewoman manning the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus caught two Palestinian teenagers attempting to smuggle 12 pipe-bombs through the checkpoints" (reported Feb. 5, 2006).
• On Dec. 29, 2005, a Palestinian suicide bomber en route to carry out an attack in Israel was stopped at a roadblock near Tulkarm and detonated himself, killing an Israeli soldier, his accomplice and Palestinian bystanders (reported Dec. 30, 2005). [9]
The separation of roads is part of the same vast military project that enables security forces and Israeli citizens including Arab citizens (who conduct trade and social interaction there) to effect the ongoing management of that reoccupied zone and business within it.
The single argument that warrants merit in all of this is that the settlers do benefit from this newfound security and freedom and exploit it to the full. We are not in disagreement that this single factor undermines deeply the credibility of successive Israeli governments but post the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza it does not drive policy.
We need to look at events that occurred subsequent to the evacuation from Gaza to gain perspective and insight from a completely different angle: Says Bassam Eid (Executive Director and co-founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG) in an interview in January 2008 “In my opinion, the establishment of a Palestinian state is not only related to the Israelis. It concerns the Palestinians. We have had a very bad experience with building a state, developing it and keeping it alive.
That brings me to the September 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza. Everybody thought that the Israeli disengagement would be a kind of test for the Palestinians. It would test whether we are really able to build our own state and manage our daily lives ourselves. In my opinion, we totally failed to manage Gaza, develop it, and build infrastructure”.[10]
This observation is extremely important and it relates to your question whether the events of the second intefada lead to the present reality and your conclusion that the “most important thing needed…is an end to the occupation”.
Right now Israel has two Proof of Concept (POC) models for trying to achieve peace. The first was a mutually negotiated set of agreed principles to reach that end namely the Oslo accords. The second was a unilateral disengagement in Gaza aimed at lessening tensions and enabling further withdrawals from occupied territory. Both POC models involved substantial risk. Both have failed and have cost Israel dearly. The mantra that “occupation” is the source of the problem which is chanted so often lately and resonates in an Orwellian “4 legs good, 2 legs bad” fashion, is misleading.
We know the occupation is corrupting. We know it is brutalizing – for both sides, but it is not the cause of the conflict which would logically then lead us to the conclusion you reach, implying its removal will bring about the change we need. Let us review Henry Kissinger’s observations which shed light on the current situation with reference to paradigms previously discussed and Israel’s disengagement from Gaza:
“The Palestinians have yet to make a comparable adjustment. Even relatively conciliatory Arab statements, such as the Beirut summit declaration of 2003, reject Israel's legitimacy as inherent in its sovereignty; they require the fulfillment of certain prior conditions. Almost all official and semi-official Arab and Palestinian media and schoolbooks present Israel as an illegitimate, imperialist interloper in the region.The emergence of Hamas as the dominant faction in Palestine should not be treated as a radical departure. Hamas represents the mind-set that prevented the full recognition of Israel's legitimacy by the PLO for all these decades, kept Yasser Arafat from accepting partition of Palestine at Camp David in 2000, produced two intifadas and consistently supported terrorism. Far too much of the debate within the Palestinian camp has been over whether Israel should be destroyed immediately by permanent confrontation or in stages in which occasional negotiations serve as periodic armistices. The reaction of the PLO's Fatah to the Hamas electoral victory has been an attempt to outflank Hamas on the radical side. Only a small number of moderates have accepted genuine and permanent coexistence”.[11]

We have today, enough empirical proof measured in blood and suffering on both sides, to assume with a high level of confidence that a full removal of the occupation in the West Bank – which you call for – would lead to the creation of yet another jihadist hate-state similar to that in Gaza. The range of a home-made Kassam3 rocket is 10 km. The range of a Grad missile is 20km[12]. Now let us analyze the distance between the West Bank and Israel’s critical metropolises and some key strategic sites:
East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem – 0 kms; Naalin to Modiin – 3 kms; Budrus to Ben Gurion Airport – 13.5 kms; Kalkilya to Kfar Saba – 5 kms; Dir Balut to Rosh Haayin 12 kms. The list goes on and on. The implications are clear and if we factor in the very high likelihood of Katyusha missiles finding their way into the West Bank – Israel’s entire population would be under daily threat of attack, with the exception of Eilat. The barrier to peace is as Kissinger puts it, is in the mind-set. Palestinian thinking is still locked so deeply within its paradigm that the walls of that conceptual separation barrier cannot be penetrated at this time.
A physical barrier can come crashing down. We have seen that repeatedly in history. Tractors and cranes can remove buildings. Roads can be rebuilt. Trees can be replanted. The walls of the mind are a far greater challenge and present serious danger without careful intervention. I will not defend the 9% land grab of the barrier, nor will I defend the illegal settlement movement, nor the humiliation of one person by any one undisciplined soldier but I also cannot support jeopardizing our existence here by senseless risk-taking. In view of recent history, this would be negligent. The process will be slow and must start by dialogue on both sides, an end to terror and removal of the daily hardships Palestinians undergo. The last step in this long arduous process will be the removal of the occupation.

Perspectives
When terms such as “Apartheid”, “Ethnic Cleansing”, “Nazi”, “Holocaust” are used without discretion, they are frequently applied with other inflammatory material to arouse emotions of hatred using the common emotional perceptions within the public and a common target a public can clearly isolate. Thus it is not uncommon to find this lexis in the service of hate mongers, totalitarians and those who are engaged in those very dark activities the words describe.
Sadly, one of the outcomes of the human rights delegation from South Africa has been the irresponsible application of this kind of terminology by journalists, commentators and leaders which in effect demonizes Israel and the Jewish community in South Africa who loyally have supported Israel over the years. Demonization leads to delegitimization and that, as we know is the first step in isolating and destroying any individual or group publicly branded with those labels. Examples are many, but one such instance is when South Africa’s foremost journalist, the editor of the Sunday Times says “The apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all….We also knew that it would end one day; here there is no end in sight. The end of the tunnel is blacker than black”[13] and in an article in The Sunday Times on the 27th August he writes a one sided tirade against Israel’s policies in the West Bank saying “it is the most diabolical concept of separate development”
In a way, Doron you went further than this in your letter to Gordimer. Not only do you implicitly allude to the apartheid demon, you boldly believe you should mete out punishment, namely a boycott which is derivative of such.
I will try to illustrate more clearly the arrogance which I perceive, regarding events leading up to and following the South African delegation: let us say that a group of esteemed medical professionals, leaders, social activists and journalists from Israel were to visit South Africa on a self-appointed mission to investigate the HIV AIDS pandemic in South Africa. We know that 2.5 million people have been victims of AIDS in South Africa in the past years and that 29% of pregnant women test positive for HIV[14]. Let us say that following this visit some comments openly said and written in the press were that the situation resembles the “Holocaust”, that it is worse than anything during “Apartheid”, the negligence of government and its health minister are “Crimes Against Humanity”. Would this be productive for problem solving? Would not many South Africans simply react by calling on the “delegation” to go back to Israel and sort out their own house?
With regard to the Apartheid - Israel accusations that are thrown around now so carelessly, I urge our readers to refer to Benjamin Pogrund’s definitive paper written in 2005 “Israel is a democracy in which Arabs vote – not an apartheid state”[15] which incisively puts to rest that accusation, while taking a hard look at Israel’s policies and the occupation.
You point out correctly that there are members of your delegation who wrote a balanced account of what they encountered. Particularly perceptive and insightful was Judge Dennis Davis’s marriage and divorce analogy[16] and his article that appeared in the South African Jewish Report[17]. The problem is: The SA Jewish Report goes out to 40,000 readers. The Sunday Times goes out to 3.5 million readers. Though articles have been written in response, to me it appears that we have two different games with two sets of rules. The vitriolic press hammers the Apartheid-Israel slander and plays a game of “Lets have a dual. I’ll start by shooting you three times in the back” Weapon of choice: the Human Rights Delegation findings peppered with the hate slogans mentioned above. The offended party shows up a week later in whites and tennis shoes ready for a game of badminton. Racquet of choice: logical debate.
It’s a charade and it’s played out in full public view at the expense of South Africa’s small Jewish minority and Israel’s public image. This theatre of the absurd finds an applauding audience in mainstream political thinking within South Africa’s largest political party. I have no issue with members who participated in this delegation however the air is pungently thick with questions of intellectual integrity regarding those who conceived, funded, orchestrated this delegation with its one sided itinerary and apparent agenda and now take a bow in the spotlight. I stand to be corrected; in fact I wish to be corrected, for selfish reasons. As an Israeli, my belief is that we are in need of scrupulously unbiased parties who can contribute to solutions – not only fret about the problems.
My conclusions following the Human Rights Delegation are that we in Israel and you in South Africa must stay vigilant – on our own soil.
For us that means to track and follow every infraction of human rights and to act to remedy each one; it also means that we must stand alert and ready in the face of those who wish to destroy us not forgetting that it is this country that is the only national homeland the Jewish people have with a population smaller than most major cities and an area not larger than the Kruger National Park – it is we who are under siege here in the face of a Middle East of 350 million, who for the most part do not recognize our right to exist. Finally, we must stand vigilant in the face of those who besmirch our names, who demonize us and seek to delegitimize us.
For you that may mean to continue to seek out and expose the HIV denialists and act against that travesty and remedy the tragedy. It may mean that you need to stand vigilant in the face of rampant crime that seems to have acquired a life on its own in every city, town and village in your country. It may also mean that you need to listen to the rumblings which threaten to dislodge the underpinnings of the society you are all so proud of.
The world we live in is full of ironies: The world that shrugged its shoulders and turned its back on 800,000 Rwandans in the genocide of 1994 and that now stands helpless in the face of one the most horrendous violations of human rights in Darfur, is the same world that is counting checkpoints in the West Bank. It is indifferent when Iran’s theocracy cuts the tongue out of Massoud Osanlou[18] to silence him, but listens attentively as South Africa’s foremost journalist speculates “Apartheid” in the Middle East’s only democracy. It is the world that stands silently as Mugabe drains the life out of his own country but it now lines up the odds as to whether the proverbial crocodile that has eaten the sun out of Zimbabwe will look south to fill its insatiable needs and rip the heavens out of South Africa’s fragile young democracy.
Stay vigilant
Jonathan Zausmer,
Kohav Yair, Israel

[1] A letter from SA students to Nadine Gordimer 5th May 2008 http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=26837
[2] Palestine Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture Vol. 11, Nos 3&4, 2004/2005
[3] Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/Israel+in+Maps/2000-2004-+Major+Terror+Attacks.htm
[4] The Mitchell Report April 30 2001
[5] Al-Arabi' (Egypt), June 24, 2001.
[6] Excerpts taken from Jerusalem Center for Public affairs from the interview in Al-Hayat (Sept 29th 2001)
[7] Haarezt Sept 2000
[8] Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
[9] Jeruasalem Post Archives sources from Camera http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=42&x_article=1478
[10] New Society Harvard College Student Middle East Journal January 29th 2008 ‘Life is Better than Death” an Interview with Bassem Eid.
[11] The Washington Post, Monday, February 27, 2006; Page A15 What's Needed From Hamas Steps in the Peace Process Must Match Conditions on the Ground. By Henry A. Kissinger.
[12] http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/hamas-qassam.htm
[13] In an article by Gideon Levy, Haaretz 7/11/2008
[14] Taken from http://www.tac.org.za/community/keystatistics
[15] Focus 40 (December 2005). Focus is published by The Helen Suzman Foundation.
[16] http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/nota.asp?idnews=43404 Interview with Dennis Davis, High Court Judge in Cape Town
[17] SA Jewish Report 8th August 2008 ‘Two stories have to be told”
[18] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/01/05/do0502.xm

2008-08-11T01:05:00.001+03:00

Open Response to Open Letter from Jonathan Zausmer to Doron Isaacs

Re: South African Human Rights Delegation to Israel & the Occupied Palestinian Territories July 2008

26 July 2008

Dear Jonathan,

Thanks very much for your letter. One of the purposes of the delegation was to create rational debate, and your letter is a good basis around which to have such a debate.

Just as Jews who don’t live in Israel have had a legitimate and crucial role in Israel’s development as a modern successful state, so too is there a place for Jews outside of Israel to express, even publicly, their concerns. Notwithstanding your criticisms, you acknowledge that people like us “have a role to play” and I think that is important. This conversation, between Israeli Jews and Jews around the world is worthwhile. Speaking personally, Israel has, for a long while, been a big part of my life and my identity, and it will remain so.

I want to begin by saying that I agree with much of what you say: There is a long history of anti-semitism that was part of the motivation for establishing Israel; Security concerns remain a major issue for Israel to this day; There is a historical context to events; Palestinian terrorism has been a terrible policy which has delivered disastrous results for the Palestinian cause, not to mention the enormous toll it has taken on Israeli society.

I am glad to say that all these points were emphasized strongly during our time in Israel. Below is an extract from an interview with Geoff Budlender, one of the delegation, that was published in the SA Jewish Report:

What also struck him forcibly was the “very deep impact” that the suicide bombings have had on the Israeli people.

“Now standing back, one can see that they’ve not only caused terrible suffering, but were actually a terrible strategic mistake and miscalculation by those who were carrying them out and have also made any solution much more difficult. Everybody still clearly has them in their minds and understandably so.” [he said.]

He agreed that the phenomenon has “coloured Israel’s response” in terms of the security measures it has adopted. Nor, he said, could one dispute the fact that the separation wall had been effective in putting an end to the suicide bombings.[1]

I think this makes it obvious that those issues around Israel’s security – which you stressed at length – were dealt with very seriously during our time in Israel. A suggestion that our delegation ignored or minimized those issues can’t really be taken seriously: nothing could be further from the truth.

You correctly point out that you and I have a lot in common, and I appreciate that. There is something extra which you missed. We are both long-winded! I will try to be concise, but given the breadth of what you have surveyed, it will require a sizeable response.

I think there are two key points that requires debate:
1. Is security the only thing driving the occupation?
2. Do the events of the second intifada lead logically to the present reality?

I will deal with each of these in turn.

1. Is Security the only thing driving the Occupation?

We met with the Chief Justice of Israel in Jerusalem. In the course of discussion we expressed concern at a number of the oppressive things we had seen in the West Bank. Every example raised was explained as being necessary for security. This is of course how the Israeli government defends itself in her court, and from time to time she finds their arguments unsupported by the evidence, but in this private discussion she was particularly unwavering in her rebuttals: the measures undertaken by the military commander responsible for the occupation are driven by security.

Let us take the simple issue of people in the West Bank moving around from place to place. There are 2,5 million Palestinians in the West Bank[2] and 462,000 Jewish settlers. [3] Of these 271,400 live in the West Bank proper beyond the municipal border of East Jerusalem.[4] Many of these people, Israelis and Palestinians, need to get from the West Bank into Israel itself for work, education, family, and social and administrative services. If the aim was to protect Israel there would be a checkpoint on that border at which every car was searched. There would be a logic to that – because nobody can say that Israel should ignore the threat of terrorist attack – but that isn’t how it works. There are 40 permanent checkpoints that scrutinize only Palestinian cars entering Israel.[5] Returning from Nablus, which has been dubbed by Israeli spokespeople as the “nest of terror”, our bus drove straight through into Israel at 100km, as all Israeli cars with yellow number plates do. Alongside us on the Palestinian branch of the road was a long snaking line of cars with white and green number plates. It is illegal for a Palestinian to even be a passenger in an Israeli car, but nobody would have known if we had one sitting in our bus, because it is just too inconvenient for settlers to have their vehicles checked. Now this differential treatments of two sets of cars – those of Palestinians and those of Israelis – can have security implications. There is in fact a black-market industry of Israelis driving into the West Bank and picking up Palestinians in the West Bank and driving them back into Israel on settler roads. This is for jobs, education, social services etc, but it could just as easily be for terrorism. Rather than protecting Israel, the irrational system I have described discriminates against Palestinians, possibly endangers Israel, and benefits settlers. It would simply be too inconvenient to settlers to ask them to stop and be searched daily, on their way to work, at a military checkpoint. They are advantaged, possibly endangering Israel in the process.

But there are not only checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank. As of May 2008, the Israeli army had 62 permanent checkpoints inside the West Bank[6]. According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), there was an average of 90 additional flying checkpoints – checkpoints not fixed in one place. Again these present a potential inconvenience to settlers, and thus Israel is developing an entirely separate road system in the West Bank. This separation of road networks was one of the most extraordinary things we saw. Israeli roads are being built to connect settlements and bypass Palestinian villages and town – in official documents these are called “fabric of life” roads.[7] But duplicating every road is impossible, so many roads previously used by both Israelis and Palestinians have simply been declared to be for Israelis only. The military governor calls these “sterile” roads. As one drives through the West Bank one sees village after village having had its road access – which is many cases dates back centuries – blocked by huge piles of earth. In March 2008 there were 512 such physical obstructions in the West Bank.[8] People must take a much longer route, walk on foot, or simply accept that they do not have the right to travel. Again, this has precious little to with protecting Israel. It is for the advantage of the Israeli civilian population living in occupied territory in violation of international law.

A particular extraordinary aspect of these roads merits mentioning. They are not just Israeli-only roads, but perhaps more correctly, Jews-only roads. On the roads there are large yellow signs. They say: This road can only be used by (1) an Israeli citizen (2) a person with a permit (3) a person who entered Israel on a tourist visa or (4) anyone who could become an Israeli citizen under the law of return. So that means all Jews, or actually almost anyone, except Palestinians.[9]

The same rules apply for presence in the seam-zone: the 9% of the West Bank lying between the Green Line and the Separation Barrier. Palestinians who have lived there all their life are now living illegally, and must now apply for a permit in order to stay. Accessing permits means skillfully navigating a Kafkaesque bureaucracy.

To move between villages and areas requires permits. One needs a permit for a car and for yourself. If you ride a horse you need a permit for your horse. If you are a farmer whose grapevines have been cut off by the Separation Barrier, you need a permit in order to tend to them. This permit will permit you 24 days access per year, because this is what Israeli agronomy experts have determined is needed to harvest grapes.[10] For peanuts it is different, for olives different, ad infinitum.

There are many other examples. Settler and Palestinian water networks and electricity grids are being separated, with settlers receiving more power and water per person. There are different legal systems: If a settler and a Palestinian commit the same crime against the same person in the same place they will be tried in two different courts under two different and unequal bodies of law. The settler and the Palestinian may be virtual neighbours, committing an identical crime – let’s say fraud or theft, totally non-political – and upon arrest the settler will receive all the rights and privileges of Israel’s modern legal system, whereas his Palestinian counterpart can be held for eight days without bail, and will be tried in military court under Ottoman, British Mandate, Jordanian and Israeli Military Law.

You rightly say that the Hebron settlers are an extreme fringe element that does represent Israeli society. You also rightly say that opinion polls show that most Israelis don’t support the settlements and are in favour of two states. Every society has its extremes and that is what the Hebron settlers represent in Israeli society. You make the following points: “You may ask: does Israel not need to make a paradigm-shift regarding the settlers in occupied territories? My answer is no: that shift has actually already been made.” This is true on a certain level but it misses the point. The settlers in Hebron are receiving the protection of the state. Therefore, although they are a fringe group, they are given legitimacy by the state itself. As you would know better than me, for every settler there is more than one soldier to protect him.

We had an interesting lecture by Talia Sasson. She was appointed by the Prime Minister to write the official report on the “illegal outposts” for the State Prosecutors Office. As she explained to us, many of the illegal outposts have paved roads, official electricity connections, official water connections, postal delivery, Ministry of Education Schools etc. She made it very clear settlement is done with informal cooperation and funding from the state.

What I am describing is happening to a large extent on the east of the Separation Barrier – the area designated, even in the most conservative Israeli peace proposals, as land for a Palestinian state, alongside Israel. From what we saw, it could be cautiously said that the settlements may make a two-state solution impossible, if they haven’t already. Far from providing security for Israel, the Israeli occupation presence in the West Bank is a great threat to Israel’s future viability.

It seems clear to me therefore that anyone who considers himself or herself a Zionist – let alone a person concerned with human rights – should waste no time defending the occupation, because it is truly capable of creating an existential crisis for Israel. It also runs directly counter to Israel’s genuine short and medium term security needs, because it provokes more hatred and more humiliation which will tragically lead to more violence.

2. Do the events of the second intifada lead logically to the present reality?

In this section I would like to examine some of the history of the second intifada. I am devoting attention to this because I think your description of events is substantially flawed. How the two sides engaged with each other during the intifada has implications, as you have said, for who carries the responsibility for the current reality.

Before I turn to that, let me make clear my point of view on Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians. The use of terrorism, particularly suicide bombing, has not only caused enormous pain and suffering in Israel and been utterly wrong from a moral point of view, but has damaged Palestinian society and has been a politically disastrous tactic for their cause. This trip firmly cemented that view. Members of the delegation spoke time and again to Palestinian audiences about the dangers of armed struggle and the need to engage non-violently. Senior ANC members and South African judges put these messages across at two separate events in Nablus. A member of the armed with of the ANC gave the same message at a community dinner in Budrus.

During the trip the Jerusalem Post reported as follows:

Isaacs said the group's campaign was based on the premise that violence has not been and will not be effective for the Palestinians ...
"Palestinians must understand the fears of Israeli and the fears of Jews and fight against problems in society rather than against people themselves," he said.[11]

Since returning to South Africa I wrote in the SA Jewish Report about the need to speak out against the “the immoral and counterproductive use of violence against Israeli civilians”.[12]

You speak about the problem of martyrdom. We saw this with our own eyes and found it disturbing. In the Business Day, Jonny Steinberg wrote eloquently about what he called “shrines to violence and death”, as follows:

The streets of Nablus are lined with the portraits of “martyrs”, most of them young men killed by the Israeli army since the start of the second intifada.

The dead boys in the pictures have assault rifles slung over their shoulders, bullet belts across their narrow chests, and glazed determination in their eyes. They are by no means the only signs of reverential vengeance. Carved into a martyr’s tombstone in the city’s cemetery are the words: “Do not forget. Do not forgive.”

This rejection of the use of violence is not expressed only by a few individuals but by the delegation as a whole. The Mission Statement states that “[w]e want to support those, Palestinian and Israeli, working daily, by non-violent means…”. And the Concluding Statement echoed this support for a non-violent approach, and the need to ensure “peace, with justice, equality and security” for all.

So our delegation not only gained an understanding of the security fears and needs of Israelis, but has also been unequivocal in condemning violence. This has continued during the public events held in South Africa.

But now, having made clear our position on the use of violence, I must return to examine the historical events of the second intifada. What does the heading of this section actually mean, and what is its significance?

You accept that Palestinians experience “lack of freedom of movement”, “suffering and humiliation”, “indignities” and “unemployment”. You have written that this has significantly developed since 2000. But you ask us to see these things, and others, as consequences of a Palestinian decision to engage in a violent intifada, resulting from a prior Palestinian decision to scupper the Camp David talks. You specifically see the intensification of the occupation as resulting directly from “lengthy terror war initiated and orchestrated by Palestinian leadership”.

I am now going to examine this version of history which you have presented. Just to recap: The events preceding the intifada were the Camp David talks, the Taba talks, and Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount / Haram al Sharif.

In the conflict with the Palestinians, at the end of September 2000, senior IDF commanders adopted General (res.) Amos Gilad's assessment according to which Yasser Arafat's foray into negotiations was a scheme aimed at leading to Israel's destruction, and that he in no way planned to reach an agreement. Instead he made a deliberate decision to turn to a violent, premeditated intifada which he then directed. This is and was the dominant view on the key events, but it has been shown to lack credibility.

To provide a critique of this dominant narrative I will rely partly on a piece by Prof Daniel Bar-Tal, professor of political psychology at Tel Aviv University. He states as follows:

“When the negotiations ended without an agreement, Barak provided major information by saying he had done everything, leaving no stone unturned in the search for peace by making a very generous and far-reaching offer at Camp David, and that Arafat had refused to accept it, without making any counter proposals. This left the responsibility for the failure solidly on the side of the Palestinians. Subsequently, almost all the country’s political, social and religious leaders, as well as the Israeli mass media, intensely circulated this information… which had a profound impact on the construction of the Israeli people’s view. It implied that, although Israel made its ultimate compromise and “gave everything,” Arafat and the Palestinians refused to accept this offer. It meant that Arafat and the Palestinian leadership were not interested in resolving the conflict through compromise and in a peaceful way, but were still striving to annihilate Israel. This smear campaign was well prepared in advance, and was carried out with great success, especially in Israel, but also abroad. It focused mainly on Arafat, presenting him as “not a partner” for a peace process.”[13]

Thus data from a survey carried out at the end of July 2000 showed that 67 percent of Israeli Jews believed the Palestinian side to be entirely, or in the main part, responsible for the failure of the Camp David summit.[14]

There are numerous published accounts about the negotiation process at Camp David.[15] As Bar-Tal continues:

“These accounts reveal that the formal version presented by Barak can be best presented as his narrative. Numerous other accounts criticize not only Palestinian behavior but also insufficient Israeli proposals, Barak’s negotiation conduct, lack of American preparation, and so on. It became clear that, although from the Israeli perspective Barak’s offers were unprecedented and far-reaching, from the Palestinian perspective they were far from satisfying, since the future Palestinian state would not have been a sovereign, contiguous and viable state, being divided into three separate enclaves on 87-88 percent of the West Bank and the entire Gaza Strip, without control of the Jordan Valley for many years to come.”[16]

Israelis and Palestinians remember the start of the second intifada, in September 2000, very differently. With regard to hard facts, in the first four days of the uprising, 39 Palestinians and five Israelis were killed; by the end of October, 141 Palestinians had been killed and about 500 injured, while 11 Israelis had been killed and one injured. During November and December, 186 Palestinians were killed and about 540 were injured, while 31 Israelis were killed and 84 were injured. From the beginning of the intifada until April 1, 2001, 409 Palestinians were killed and about 1,740 injured; in the same period, 70 Israelis were killed and 183 injured.[17]

Professor Bar-Tal evaluates these numbers as follows: “The number of casualties on both sides reveal the disproportionate and indiscriminate use of fire-power by the Israeli army, which caused massive killings including many innocent civilians.”[18]

Bar-Tal states a fact which has now been widely reported: “During the first days of the intifada, the Israeli army shot about a million bullets and shells.”[19]

In terms of major attacks inside Israel: In November 2000, a bomb was placed in the Jerusalem market and later in Hadera. Then on March 1, a bomb was placed in a taxi. The first suicide attack took place on March 28, 2001, east of Kfar Saba (after the election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister in February 2001).”[20] I want to make it absolutely clear that I regard these terrorist attacks, and other violence by Palestinian armed factions, as a major contributing factor to the overall deterioration of the situation in the West Bank. The people who planned and executed these attacks therefore carry their share of responsibility for the current grave situation.

Whether one thinks the IDF used excessive force or not, were they responding to a premeditated campaign by the Palestinian leadership? This is certainly the view put forward by General (res.) Amos Gilad, who at the crucial time was chief of the research section (and as such the No. 2) of the Army Intelligence Department. Gilad reported directly to the Prime Minister and took part in cabinet meetings. Most ministers are forbidden to read the written report submitted by intelligence. Therefore, the oral summary presented by the chief of research to the Prime Minister and the cabinet is of paramount importance.

Amos Gilad went even further: he appeared almost daily in the media, commenting on almost every political and security event. He was commonly called the “national explainer” in the media.[21] Major security and government sources rallied behind the information that was being continuously disseminated by the media. Amos Gilad, along with Ehud Barak, was the key figure in convincing Israeli society that Arafat had ruined the negotiations, fallen back on a prepared plan of violence, and that there was therefore “no partner”.
Professor Bar-Tal argues that Gilad’s public pronouncements were not based in reality. I am not in a position to verify which story is right, but what is obvious is that the dominant narrative is seriously flawed.

“[I]ntelligence sources had a different interpretation of the events.”[22]

“In contrast to the popular belief perpetuated by Barak and some of the military officers, it is well accepted by experts that Arafat did not plan the intifada, but that it erupted spontaneously and then evolved, at least partially, due to the overwhelming, forceful responses of the Israeli army, on the one hand, and the lack of political incentives to stop it, on the other. As Ami Ayalon (Major General in the reserves and head of the General Security Service until six months before the beginning of the intifada) put it, “the al-Aqsa intifada was initially a popular phenomenon, spontaneous and lacking a clear political objective...The PA chairman has been drawn into this violent whirlpool, and to stop it he must create political hope.” This view was supported by Yuval Diskin, who was at that time deputy to the head of the General Security Services (Haaretz, February 10, 2005) and by Matti Steinberg who was special adviser on Palestinian affairs to the General Security Services.”

Amos Malka (major general in the reserves who headed the intelligence branch of the Israel Defense Forces [IDF] at the beginning of the intifada) mounts the most important challenge to Gilad’s professional integrity, and his version of reality, saying:

“During my entire period as head of military intelligence there was not a single research department document that expressed the assessment that Gilad claims to have presented to the prime minister. As obligatory under the work regulations, no document can leave the research department without getting the approval of the head of the division.”[23]

Ephraim Lavie, who headed the Palestinian desk at the intelligence branch of the IDF, said:

“I can determine, unequivocally, that in written formal evaluations of the research department formulated during [his] service from summer 1998 until February 2002, there was no intelligence basis for [Amos Gilad’s] conception existing today.”[24]

I have scrutinized two historical events in this section. Firstly the breakdown of the Camp David talks and secondly the outbreak of the Second Intifadah. You seem to take it for granted that Arafat and the Palestinians are entirely responsible for both of these. Clearly there is serious debate on this.[25] Clearly Israel must also take a share of the responsibility for the start of the intifada, and what has occurred since. Crucially therefore, Israel must also take responsibility for its share of the “suffering”, “humiliation”, and “indignity” which you recognise.

3. Concluding Points

You say that “a change in this reality will only really come about when a paradigm-shift occurs within the Palestinian world”. I agree, and I think the most important change needed in the “Palestinian world” is an end to the occupation. Along with that go other important changes that Palestinians have to make for themselves, like a rejection of violence and a commitment to democracy and human rights.

You appeal to members of the delegation “to attempt to work towards that paradigm-shift with Palestinians.” As I stated above, in regard to our firm opposition to violence, we did do, publicly and repeatedly, exactly what you are asking for.

But now I must ask you. Where in your letter is there room for Israel’s responsibility? As the dominant power in this relationship, is Israel powerless to change the situation?

You say: “A majority of Israelis would support withdrawal in favour of a real sustainable peace agreement.” I have no doubt that you are right about this. But will a majority of Israelis demand an immediate end to settlement expansion? Will they demand an end to denial of Palestinian human rights, except where absolutely necessary for the security of people living inside Israel.

You say that, “Israeli’s do, very much, see Palestinians as human beings.” I know this is true in many cases because most of the Israelis I have known throughout my life are truly fine people with humanistic values. But my overall sense is that the majority of people, on both sides, fail to see each other as human beings. Many Palestinians know only two kinds of Israelis: soldiers and settlers. And many Israelis know only two kinds of Palestinians: cheap labourers and suicide bombers. It seems very unlikely that peace and coexistence can emerge under such circumstances.

The message of our delegation, to both sides, is precisely that. When human rights are being totally disregarded, whether by Palestinian terrorists or by the occupation system, things are likely to get worse, not better. I hope that our delegation has been able to shine a bright light on some of the problems, and an even brighter light on those organisations that hosted us – which I haven’t had space to mention in this letter – who are doing superb work in the name of human rights for all.

Warm Regards,

Doron Isaacs
Cape Town

[1] Moira Schneider Israeli visit
‘depressing
and inspiring’
[2] The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.
[3] Btselem (http://www.btselem.org/english/Settlements/Statistics.asp).
[4] Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
[5] Btselem (http://www.btselem.org/English/Freedom_of_Movement/Statistics.asp).
[6] Btselem (http://www.btselem.org/English/Freedom_of_Movement/Statistics.asp).
[7] There are about 130 settlements the Israeli government considers legal and 105 it considers illegal, all illegal in terms of international law.
[8] Btselem (http://www.btselem.org/English/Freedom_of_Movement/Statistics.asp).
[9] Israel has over 1 million Arab citizens who would be able to use these roads in terms of the law.
[10] Lecture notes, Michael Sfard lecture, Jerusalem.
[11] Asaf Shalev ‘South African tour of Hebron curtailed by police’ Jerusalem Post 7/10/2008.
[12] Doron Isaacs ‘Human Rights in the Here and Now’ SA Jewish Report 18-25 July 2008.
[13] Daniel Bar-Tal (Professor of political psychology at Tel Aviv University) Palestine Israel Journal of Politics, Economics & Culture Vol. 11, Nos 3&4, 2004/2005.
[14] Peace Index, July 2000.
[15] For example, H. Agha & R. Malley (August 9, 2001), “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors,” New York Review of Books; S. Ben-Ami (2004) A Front without a Rearguard (Tel Aviv: Miskal-Yedioth Ahronoth Books and Chemed Books), (Hebrew); C. Enderlin (2003), The Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East: 1995-2002 (New York: Other Press); A. Hannieh (2001), “The Camp David Papers,” Journal of Palestine Studies 30:75-97; M. Klein (2003) The Jerusalem Problem: The Struggle for Permanent Status (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press); J. Pressman (2003), “Vision in Collision: What Happened at Camp David and Taba?” International Security 28: 5-43; R. Pundak & S. Arieli (2004), The Territorial Aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian Final-Status Negotiations (Tel Aviv: Peres Center), (Hebrew); D. Rubinstein (2003), Camp David 2000: What Really Happened There (Tel Aviv:Yedioth Ahronoth), (Hebrew); S. Shamir & B. Maddy-Weitzman (Eds.), (forthcoming), The Camp David Summit, 2000: What Went Wrong? Lessons for the Future; G. Sher (2001) Just beyond Reach: The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Negotiations 1999-2001 (Tel Aviv: Miskal-Yedioth Ahronoth Books and Chemed Books), (Hebrew).
[16] Bar-Tal (note 13).
[17] The Palestinian casualty numbers were taken, by Prof Bar Tal, from the Palestine Red Crescent Society, www.palestinrecs.org; the Israeli figures are from the Israeli Foreign Ministry www.mfa.gov.il, where the nature of the events is also described.
[18] Bar-Tal (note 13)
[19] Bar-Tal (note 13). See also Reuven Pedatzur ‘More than a Million Bullets’ Ha’aretz June 30,2004. In that article Pedatzur says the figure was around 1,3m bullets in the first month.
[20] Bar-Tal (note 13)
[21] You might remember that in June 2004 Amos Gilad claimed for himself the benefits due to disabled army veterans. He was not wounded in battle, but claimed that the stress caused by his difficult job has inflicted on him irreversible mental damage.
[22] Bar-Tal (note 13).
[23] A. Eldar, “Popular Misconception,” Haaretz June 11, 2004.
[24] E. Lavie, “Baseless Conception,” interview by Yoav Shtern, Haaretz June 13, 2004, p.B3.
[25] The key sources I have used above have been widely discussion in the Israeli press.

An open letter to Doron Isaacs in response to the South Africa Human Rights Delegation’s visit to Israel and the occupied territories

2008-08-11T00:18:00.000+03:00

An open letter to Doron Isaacs in response to the South Africa Human Rights Delegation’s visit to Israel and the occupied territories.
Posted by Jonathan Zausmer, Kohav Yair Israel 23rd July 2008

Doron shalom – we met for the first time briefly at the outset of 2008 at Onrust. I believe we may share similar core beliefs and values emanating from our common movement background, albeit in at very different times, which place proactive Zionism as a central binding force in the Jewish world, a strong sense of Jewish identity within our communities no matter where, and a social conscience reaching out beyond our ethnic borders.
Unlike you, as a young Jewish South African, many years ago, I together with friends and associates chose to make Aliya and build a community in Israel as I believed then and still believe today, that the realities of the post holocaust era place exigencies upon us that demand augmentation of the Jewish state in the form of conviction and action, thereby breathing life into this entity beyond the resources of moral support and financial aid.
So it was that I found myself preparing for a life-change in 1976 and while Soweto burned, some close friends and colleagues were randomly being drafted in the Apartheid army for riot control while others found themselves randomly under the baton of the SAP or overtly and covertly trying to bring an end to white supremacy. My emigration was born neither by any fear of potential violent change in South Africa nor by the lure of foreign fields of Australia or America, but by choices made through a sense of history and destiny, through challenge and through leadership by example.
I say this not to denigrate the choices you may have made but out of respect for similar such values, social action and innovation I understand you now undertake within the current South African reality.
When first confronted with the delegation website outlining your mission, objectives and program, though admittedly overcome by a profound sense of discomfort especially by the inflammatory graphics prompting the association of a Nazi type soldier presiding over helpless children and the apparent one sided itinerary, on closer inspection of the esteemed personae making up the delegation, my position was that if this is the road we in Israel must go down in order to engage leaders, thinkers and social activists from South Africa so be it: my familiarity with at least some of the delegation members led me to believe that no matter what – intelligent discourse could only come from such a journey. Destructive remarks emanating from certain individuals within the South African Jewish community and within Israel as to this mission have served no good purpose specifically the “guilty by association” innuendos thrown around.
Without details of the knowledge process during the delegation’s tour of Israel and the West Bank and left only with the website and public observations, I can therefore only judge results based on comments and press following the delegation's visit and as this information is what goes out into the public domain, it is this I wish to address.
I will preface by stating the following:
1. The apparent perspective of some delegation members (and with the greatest respect and admiration for human rights groups and concerned citizens from both sides of the conflict) that if only Palestinians and Israelis would listen to each other, talk and communicate things can be worked out – though very valuable - is simplistic and fundamentally incorrect.
2. I will add that the political and geopolitical realities we face here in Israel and within the emerging Palestinian state to be, together with global factors, determine ultimately where this conflict is going.
3. The fact is that in most of the conflicts of the 20th century there has been a wrong and a right: Hitler’s Germany was in the wrong. Stalin’s Gulags were wrong. America’s Vietnam war was wrong. Pol Pot’s killing fields were wrong. Serbia’s ethnic cleansing was wrong. White supremacy in South Africa was wrong. True, more often than not, right has also committed terrible acts, and on occasion inexcusable acts in the face of unspeakable atrocities on the other side, but in the overview of history sometimes there is very little choice – and choice is the key word here. I will outline why I believe the Palestinian position has been the wrong here and has wrought a great deal of damage on Israel but almost irreversible destruction on itself. That does not excuse us in Israel from taking stock of serious errors we have made along the way thereby exacerbating this conflict.

Jonathan Berger writes in the M&G of his visit to Hebron and the encounter with Baruch Marzel, a local hate monger. Attempting to engage Marzel and the downtown settlers is really no different than the bizarre encounters we saw with TerreBlanche in South Africa and his quirky band with the exception that the latter probably commanded more support than the former. Marzel does not represent any aspect of Israeli society nor commonly accepted Jewish values of any kind and his influence or support is microscopic within the Israeli public. My problem with these observations is that this bizarre outcrop on the Israeli periphery is not put in perspective against very wide, politically endorsed public hatred campaign on the Palestinian side. I refer you to “Farfur’ the cute Palestinian Mickey Mouse look-alike who indoctrinates Palestinian children on TV to violence, hatred and murder as merely one example of state sponsored hate-education at roots level.

Zackie Ahmat also highlights his Hebron experience: clearly once a focus is made on this highly problematic location of conflict a perspective is built way beyond its proportional weight within the broader context. As a reserve soldier who once had the dubious task of ‘guarding” the Hebron settlers it comes as little surprise to me to hear of the abusive behavior especially towards Israeli officials themselves. Yes, we need to take care of the Hebron fanatics, but this neither represents Israel nor does it comprise the heart of the conflict.
Another matter referred to was the violent acts of young settlers under 14 years of age: please note a that a far wider problem has occurred for years with young Palestinians throwing rocks at moving vehicles which impact no less that a missiles or bullets thereby injuring, maiming and killing the passengers.

Doron, you write of denial of normal life, and of unspeakable impairment on people’s dignity.
Please note: In the year 2000 Israel had withdrawn from almost all the Palestinian cities, most Palestinian towns and land, had handed to the Palestinians extensive control including weaponry and instruments of state management. The Israeli people and the government had no desire to occupy, or to control or to infringe in any way on Palestinian rights. The Oslo peace talks had ushered in a new era of peace and though many problems still needed sorting out, joint industrial projects between Israeli and Palestinian entrepreneurs were underway, business partnerships were beginning to form: Israeli soldiers joyfully withdrew from populated areas in the West Bank and Gaza. There was no fence, no wall and no desire on either side for boundaries.
Let us recall that Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat met in July 2000 at Camp David in order to negotiate a final settlement to the conflict which reportedly included a 2 state solution, Palestinian control over East Jerusalem, a full withdrawal from all occupied territories with certain exceptions to be negotiated, an exchange of land in Israel for settlements not viable for removal, Palestinian control over the temple mount. Clearly the conflict was nearing its end and it remained for Arafat to make a choice.
The Palestinian answer to those talks was a war of terror which took the form of “Intefada Al-Aksa” and which is now commonly recognized on all sides as a premeditated attempt at a final struggle to bring Israel to its knees. Unfortunately the ethos of Palestinian nationalism has in the past always elevated the spilling of blood – if possible of completely innocent victims, sacrifice and confrontation, powered by the culture of hatred as an innate necessity in the manifestation of future statehood and therein lies the tragedy of the current situation. Behind this drive have been leaders who at every turn have led their flock astray. Abba Eban once commented that the Palestinians will “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. That fateful observation unfortunately remains undisputed until this very day.
By 2001 a stunned Israeli public realized that they could not walk in a mall, could not send their children to school by bus, could not listen to the radio or watch TV without looking at body parts bleeding in the streets.
So what do we have today? We have a wall and a fence which after much argumentation and disagreement on the Israeli side was built only because the scale of slaughter brought about by terror and suicide bombings of children, the aged, passengers on buses, people simply going about their business was too much to endure without taking action. We have roadblocks because the free flow of Palestinians resulted in ‘pregnant’ women or laborours concealing explosives exporting Jihad into restaurants and malls and the consequent butchering, burning and dismembering of innocent human beings. We have an almost complete reoccupation of the West Bank when it became apparent that the Palestinian authority itself had endorsed the conflict and the geography enhanced its damage capability.
What are the results of Intefada Al-Aksa on the Palestinian side?
A robust new Palestinian economy that showed growth of 5% GDP per annum in 1999 imploded 2 years later receding by 35% and has not recovered to this day
A dynamic work force that moved freely from the territories to Israel can no longer access our economy due to the dangers imposed by agents of terror who used the free population flow for suicide missions aimed at the Israeli public.
Consequent unemployment of a scale as yet unknown
Crisis of leadership as violent militia were permitted free reign and thus gained control
Complete failure in reaching objectives in the declared struggle and an almost complete peace negotiation forgotten along the way.
Extremist Hamas now ruling Gaza with government endorsed indoctrination for children, anti Semitism (including Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and ferocious anti homosexual policies within it’s doctrine.

Lack of freedom of movement within and without the territories causing suffering and humiliation as Israeli military authorities reestablished the capability of containing terror by operating over the green line.

The Intifada appears now to have ended but with disastrous consequences. Palestinian leadership is completely divided geographically and politically leaving Israel no partner for meaningful negotiation.
Conservative elements in Israeli society now claim wider support with the assumption now empirically proven, that repeated attempts made at entrusting Palestinians and sacrificing land for peace will inevitably end in disaster.
A settlement movement in the West Bank that was in a state of retreat now prepares itself for reinstatement at the expense of a majority of Israelis who do not wish to retain occupation at all and would like to see a political solution to the conflict.
The human suffering and indignities you observe must be seen in the context of these events and as consequential to decision-failures by Palestinian leadership at the turn of this decade and though there is no excuse for such hardship and indignity and we need to figure out a way to solve this problem, the solution cannot be at the expense of our existence, our safety, our homes and our children.
I observe on my visits to South Africa how every house surrounds itself with barbed wire, electric fencing, high walls, fences, alarms, guards in the streets: safety and security are basic human needs; they are in fact rights, even if they come at a terrible moral cost.

Ms Madlala-Routledge observes as quoted in Haaretz that the struggle against the occupation is not succeeding because of US support for Israel. The observation is incorrect. The occupation is in fact a reoccupation outlined above and is a horrible necessity born out a lengthy terror war initiated and orchestrated by Palestinian leadership and until there is a radical change in concept from that leadership there will be little support within Israel and internationally for any change at all.

Mondli Makhanya’s observation as reported in Haaretz - quote “ the apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all. How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible - and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible” also fails to penetrate to the historical and political context of events. Israeli’s do, very much, see Palestinians as human beings, equal partners and neighbours and were therefore completely unprepared for the scale of violence and the campaign for destruction, for the lynchings of innocent Israelis at the outset of the Intifada that went unpunished, and the tsunami of suicide bombings over most the years of this decade: the violence of this conflict has been directed from Nablus and Ramalla, Jenin and Gaza and goes way beyond your South African perspective. The human brain that engineered this separation brought a stop to the killing spree in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and engineered the conflict back to its source: that’s all there is to it.

The relevance of human right groups and the monitoring of events within the territories is I believe of great importance however a change in this reality will only really come about when a paradigm-shift occurs within the Palestinian world: that paradigm-shift must include two key elements:
The concept of “jihad’ and the intrinsic value placed in martyrdom and the ‘shahid” specifically within Palestinian society by means of gratuitous slaughter and bloodletting of one’s perceived enemy as an assured path to purification and godliness, is the first and foremost element in the paradigm-shift that needs to fall away.
The concept that Israel’s destruction is imminent, that it is inches away from implosion and obliteration and that without America, Israel has no strength, thus tempting the abrogation of agreements reached and an ongoing terror campaign as means of delivering the final death blow, must too be reversed. This concept has driven most of the conflicts in this region and remained as a core factor behind Intifada Al-Aksa. The reality is that Israel is a country with immeasurable resilience which has been demonstrated repeatedly.
These two key beliefs are bolstered by regional forces at work, such as Iran’s call for the destruction of Israel and its nuclear quest, making that threat real.
My appeal to members of the delegation is to attempt to work towards that paradigm-shift with Palestinians. We the Israelis cannot do that within our current reality.
A clear analogy here of such a paradigm-shift is when De Klerk and his government realized that Apartheid and the ideology of white supremacy were simply wrong, non-viable concepts, and forcefully persuaded their electorate thus opening the gates for honest negotiation and real change. Though I do not see such an epiphany in the making within Palestinian society, these are processes that need time and determination by enlightened forces within and without and could still occur.
You may ask: does Israel not need to make a paradigm-shift regarding the settlers in occupied territories? My answer is no: that shift has actually already been made. A majority of Israelis would support withdrawal in favour of a real sustainable peace agreement. Moreover the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 proved to Israelis and observers world wide, that if need be, withdrawal is feasible. The fact that the Palestinian thank-you present has resulted in incessant rocket attacks on towns in southern Israel will not change that reality though it underscores yet again the problem on the other side.

I honestly do believe that the South African delegation, and future delegations have a role to play, but we need complete impartiality, an accumulation of knowledge down to the core, and the fair processing of such information - not based only on the agenda and observations of the day but in the context of events past and present: here is where it appears, this last mission may have failed.

With G-d willing, Be Ezrat Hashem, Inshalla and a great deal of work and patience maybe we will see meaningful change in years to come.

An open letter to Doron Isaacs in response to the South Africa Human Rights Delegation’s visit to Israel and the occupies territories.
Posted by Jonathan Zausmer, Kohav Yair Israel 23rd July 2008

Doron shalom – we met for the first time briefly at the outset of 2008 at Onrust. I believe we may share similar core beliefs and values emanating from our common movement background, albeit in at very different times, which place proactive Zionism as a central binding force in the Jewish world, a strong sense of Jewish identity within our communities no matter where, and a social conscience reaching out beyond our ethnic borders.
Unlike you, as a young Jewish South African, many years ago, I together with friends and associates chose to make Aliya and build a community in Israel as I believed then and still believe today, that the realities of the post holocaust era place exigencies upon us that demand augmentation of the Jewish state in the form of conviction and action, thereby breathing life into this entity beyond the resources of moral support and financial aid.
So it was that I found myself preparing for a life-change in 1976 and while Soweto burned, some close friends and colleagues were randomly being drafted in the Apartheid army for riot control while others found themselves randomly under the baton of the SAP or overtly and covertly trying to bring an end to white supremacy. My emigration was born neither by any fear of potential violent change in South Africa nor by the lure of foreign fields of Australia or America, but by choices made through a sense of history and destiny, through challenge and through leadership by example.
I say this not to denigrate the choices you may have made but out of respect for similar such values, social action and innovation I understand you now undertake within the current South African reality.
When first confronted with the delegation website outlining your mission, objectives and program, though admittedly overcome by a profound sense of discomfort especially by the inflammatory graphics prompting the association of a Nazi type soldier presiding over helpless children and the apparent one sided itinerary, on closer inspection of the esteemed personae making up the delegation, my position was that if this is the road we in Israel must go down in order to engage leaders, thinkers and social activists from South Africa so be it: my familiarity with at least some of the delegation members led me to believe that no matter what – intelligent discourse could only come from such a journey. Destructive remarks emanating from certain individuals within the South African Jewish community and within Israel as to this mission have served no good purpose specifically the “guilty by association” innuendos thrown around.
Without details of the knowledge process during the delegation’s tour of Israel and the West Bank and left only with the website and public observations, I can therefore only judge results based on comments and press following the delegation's visit and as this information is what goes out into the public domain, it is this I wish to address.
I will preface by stating the following:
1. The apparent perspective of some delegation members (and with the greatest respect and admiration for human rights groups and concerned citizens from both sides of the conflict) that if only Palestinians and Israelis would listen to each other, talk and communicate things can be worked out – though very valuable - is simplistic and fundamentally incorrect.
2. I will add that the political and geopolitical realities we face here in Israel and within the emerging Palestinian state to be, together with global factors, determine ultimately where this conflict is going.
3. The fact is that in most of the conflicts of the 20th century there has been a wrong and a right: Hitler’s Germany was in the wrong. Stalin’s Gulags were wrong. America’s Vietnam war was wrong. Pol Pot’s killing fields were wrong. Serbia’s ethnic cleansing was wrong. White supremacy in South Africa was wrong. True, more often than not, right has also committed terrible acts, and on occasion inexcusable acts in the face of unspeakable atrocities on the other side, but in the overview of history sometimes there is very little choice – and choice is the key word here. I will outline why I believe the Palestinian position has been the wrong here and has wrought a great deal of damage on Israel but almost irreversible destruction on itself. That does not excuse us in Israel from taking stock of serious errors we have made along the way thereby exacerbating this conflict.

Jonathan Berger writes in the M&G of his visit to Hebron and the encounter with Baruch Marzel, a local hate monger. Attempting to engage Marzel and the downtown settlers is really no different than the bizarre encounters we saw with TerreBlanche in South Africa and his quirky band with the exception that the latter probably commanded more support than the former. Marzel does not represent any aspect of Israeli society nor commonly accepted Jewish values of any kind and his influence or support is microscopic within the Israeli public. My problem with these observations is that this bizarre outcrop on the Israeli periphery is not put in perspective against very wide, politically endorsed public hatred campaign on the Palestinian side. I refer you to “Farfur’ the cute Palestinian Mickey Mouse look-alike who indoctrinates Palestinian children on TV to violence, hatred and murder as merely one example of state sponsored hate-education at roots level.

Zackie Ahmat also highlights his Hebron experience: clearly once a focus is made on this highly problematic location of conflict a perspective is built way beyond its proportional weight within the broader context. As a reserve soldier who once had the dubious task of ‘guarding” the Hebron settlers it comes as little surprise to me to hear of the abusive behavior especially towards Israeli officials themselves. Yes, we need to take care of the Hebron fanatics, but this neither represents Israel nor does it comprise the heart of the conflict.
Another matter referred to was the violent acts of young settlers under 14 years of age: please note a that a far wider problem has occurred for years with young Palestinians throwing rocks at moving vehicles which impact no less that a missiles or bullets thereby injuring, maiming and killing the passengers.

Doron, you write of denial of normal life, and of unspeakable impairment on people’s dignity.
Please note: In the year 2000 Israel had withdrawn from almost all the Palestinian cities, most Palestinian towns and land, had handed to the Palestinians extensive control including weaponry and instruments of state management. The Israeli people and the government had no desire to occupy, or to control or to infringe in any way on Palestinian rights. The Oslo peace talks had ushered in a new era of peace and though many problems still needed sorting out, joint industrial projects between Israeli and Palestinian entrepreneurs were underway, business partnerships were beginning to form: Israeli soldiers joyfully withdrew from populated areas in the West Bank and Gaza. There was no fence, no wall and no desire on either side for boundaries.
Let us recall that Ehud Barak, Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat met in July 2000 at Camp David in order to negotiate a final settlement to the conflict which reportedly included a 2 state solution, Palestinian control over East Jerusalem, a full withdrawal from all occupied territories with certain exceptions to be negotiated, an exchange of land in Israel for settlements not viable for removal, Palestinian control over the temple mount. Clearly the conflict was nearing its end and it remained for Arafat to make a choice.
The Palestinian answer to those talks was a war of terror which took the form of “Intefada Al-Aksa” and which is now commonly recognized on all sides as a premeditated attempt at a final struggle to bring Israel to its knees. Unfortunately the ethos of Palestinian nationalism has in the past always elevated the spilling of blood – if possible of completely innocent victims, sacrifice and confrontation, powered by the culture of hatred as an innate necessity in the manifestation of future statehood and therein lies the tragedy of the current situation. Behind this drive have been leaders who at every turn have led their flock astray. Abba Eban once commented that the Palestinians will “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”. That fateful observation unfortunately remains undisputed until this very day.
By 2001 a stunned Israeli public realized that they could not walk in a mall, could not send their children to school by bus, could not listen to the radio or watch TV without looking at body parts bleeding in the streets.
So what do we have today? We have a wall and a fence which after much argumentation and disagreement on the Israeli side was built only because the scale of slaughter brought about by terror and suicide bombings of children, the aged, passengers on buses, people simply going about their business was too much to endure without taking action. We have roadblocks because the free flow of Palestinians resulted in ‘pregnant’ women or laborours concealing explosives exporting Jihad into restaurants and malls and the consequent butchering, burning and dismembering of innocent human beings. We have an almost complete reoccupation of the West Bank when it became apparent that the Palestinian authority itself had endorsed the conflict and the geography enhanced its damage capability.
What are the results of Intefada Al-Aksa on the Palestinian side?
A robust new Palestinian economy that showed growth of 5% GDP per annum in 1999 imploded 2 years later receding by 35% and has not recovered to this day
A dynamic work force that moved freely from the territories to Israel can no longer access our economy due to the dangers imposed by agents of terror who used the free population flow for suicide missions aimed at the Israeli public.
Consequent unemployment of a scale as yet unknown
Crisis of leadership as violent militia were permitted free reign and thus gained control
Complete failure in reaching objectives in the declared struggle and an almost complete peace negotiation forgotten along the way.
Extremist Hamas now ruling Gaza with government endorsed indoctrination for children, anti Semitism (including Protocols of the Elders of Zion) and ferocious anti homosexual policies within it’s doctrine.

Lack of freedom of movement within and without the territories causing suffering and humiliation as Israeli military authorities reestablished the capability of containing terror by operating over the green line.

The Intifada appears now to have ended but with disastrous consequences. Palestinian leadership is completely divided geographically and politically leaving Israel no partner for meaningful negotiation.
Conservative elements in Israeli society now claim wider support with the assumption now empirically proven, that repeated attempts made at entrusting Palestinians and sacrificing land for peace will inevitably end in disaster.
A settlement movement in the West Bank that was in a state of retreat now prepares itself for reinstatement at the expense of a majority of Israelis who do not wish to retain occupation at all and would like to see a political solution to the conflict.
The human suffering and indignities you observe must be seen in the context of these events and as consequential to decision-failures by Palestinian leadership at the turn of this decade and though there is no excuse for such hardship and indignity and we need to figure out a way to solve this problem, the solution cannot be at the expense of our existence, our safety, our homes and our children.
I observe on my visits to South Africa how every house surrounds itself with barbed wire, electric fencing, high walls, fences, alarms, guards in the streets: safety and security are basic human needs; they are in fact rights, even if they come at a terrible moral cost.

Ms Madlala-Routledge observes as quoted in Haaretz that the struggle against the occupation is not succeeding because of US support for Israel. The observation is incorrect. The occupation is in fact a reoccupation outlined above and is a horrible necessity born out a lengthy terror war initiated and orchestrated by Palestinian leadership and until there is a radical change in concept from that leadership there will be little support within Israel and internationally for any change at all.

Mondli Makhanya’s observation as reported in Haaretz - quote “ the apartheid regime viewed the blacks as inferior; I do not think the Israelis see the Palestinians as human beings at all. How can a human brain engineer this total separation, the separate roads, the checkpoints? What we went through was terrible, terrible, terrible - and yet there is no comparison. Here it is more terrible” also fails to penetrate to the historical and political context of events. Israeli’s do, very much, see Palestinians as human beings, equal partners and neighbours and were therefore completely unprepared for the scale of violence and the campaign for destruction, for the lynchings of innocent Israelis at the outset of the Intifada that went unpunished, and the tsunami of suicide bombings over most the years of this decade: the violence of this conflict has been directed from Nablus and Ramalla, Jenin and Gaza and goes way beyond your South African perspective. The human brain that engineered this separation brought a stop to the killing spree in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and engineered the conflict back to its source: that’s all there is to it.

The relevance of human right groups and the monitoring of events within the territories is I believe of great importance however a change in this reality will only really come about when a paradigm-shift occurs within the Palestinian world: that paradigm-shift must include two key elements:
The concept of “jihad’ and the intrinsic value placed in martyrdom and the ‘shahid” specifically within Palestinian society by means of gratuitous slaughter and bloodletting of one’s perceived enemy as an assured path to purification and godliness, is the first and foremost element in the paradigm-shift that needs to fall away.
The concept that Israel’s destruction is imminent, that it is inches away from implosion and obliteration and that without America, Israel has no strength, thus tempting the abrogation of agreements reached and an ongoing terror campaign as means of delivering the final death blow, must too be reversed. This concept has driven most of the conflicts in this region and remained as a core factor behind Intifada Al-Aksa. The reality is that Israel is a country with immeasurable resilience which has been demonstrated repeatedly.
These two key beliefs are bolstered by regional forces at work, such as Iran’s call for the destruction of Israel and its nuclear quest, making that threat real.
My appeal to members of the delegation is to attempt to work towards that paradigm-shift with Palestinians. We the Israelis cannot do that within our current reality.
A clear analogy here of such a paradigm-shift is when De Klerk and his government realized that Apartheid and the ideology of white supremacy were simply wrong, non-viable concepts, and forcefully persuaded their electorate thus opening the gates for honest negotiation and real change. Though I do not see such an epiphany in the making within Palestinian society, these are processes that need time and determination by enlightened forces within and without and could still occur.
You may ask: does Israel not need to make a paradigm-shift regarding the settlers in occupied territories? My answer is no: that shift has actually already been made. A majority of Israelis would support withdrawal in favour of a real sustainable peace agreement. Moreover the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 proved to Israelis and observers world wide, that if need be, withdrawal is feasible. The fact that the Palestinian thank-you present has resulted in incessant rocket attacks on towns in southern Israel will not change that reality though it underscores yet again the problem on the other side.

I honestly do believe that the South African delegation, and future delegations have a role to play, but we need complete impartiality, an accumulation of knowledge down to the core, and the fair processing of such information - not based only on the agenda and observations of the day but in the context of events past and present: here is where it appears, this last mission may have failed.

With G-d willing, Be Ezrat Hashem, Inshalla and a great deal of work and patience maybe we will see meaningful change in years to come.

Opening Announcement

2008-08-10T23:40:00.000+03:00

This forum hosts debate and discussions on interrelated issues of Israel, South Africa and Jewish Identity