‘Peace’ Had a Rough Weekend

Over Columbus Day weekend, while the onset of the erasure of a native people of this land was marked with buy-one-get-one-free sales, Israel drove three more nails into the coffin of the two-state solution as part of their effort to rid Palestine of its native inhabitants – the Palestinians. Few, if any, were paying attention.

Still, in this short period of time, a series of events poisoned the atmosphere between Israelis and Palestinians at a moment when it had become hard to imagine that the situation could get any worse. The political and diplomatic reverberations of this weekend’s events will be serious and debilitating to any peace process, even if the Obama administration can succeed in resuscitating it.

First, came the report late last week that a new law in Israel would force all Israeli citizens, including the 1 million-plus Palestinian citizens of Israel, to swear loyalty to a Jewish state. By Sunday, the anticipated law was modified so that only non-Jews would have to swear loyalty to a Jewish state. The Palestinian population in Israel, which has held steadfast to the land its ancestors lived on despite numerous efforts at depopulation, was clearly being targeted. Either they would have to swear allegiance to an ideology (Zionism) that is responsible for their dispossession and the dispossession of their kin, or be stripped of their citizenship and denied the mere second-class rights they are currently afforded by the state of Israel. It is the equivalent, if you can imagine, of a law passed in the United States demanding all non-whites to swear allegiance to a “White state” as a condition for citizenship. This law is a result of a dangerous and growing trend within Israel which supports a super-ethnonationalist narrative. This is evidenced by the success of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, now the third largest in Israeli politics. The loyalty oath law is a new benchmark in the trajectory Israeli politics is taking to the extreme right.

Then the news came that the Israeli government supported legislation that would ensure that the negotiated return of occupied territories – like Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza and the Golan Heights – would have to be subjected to a referendum of the Israeli public. With an Israeli electorate that has continued to move to the right over the years, and has elected pro-settlement expansionist parties which currently comprise the most right-wing coalition in Israeli history, subjecting the return of occupied territory, an Israeli obligation under international law, to a public referendum effectively sets the bar for withdrawal far out of practical reach.

Finally, the Israeli prime minister’s long post-settlement freeze silence was broken when he stated what needed to happen for a settlement freeze to be extended for another 60 days. The offer of Binyamin Netanyahu was to extend the Israeli settlement freeze for two months if the Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” For Palestinians, this is problematic for some of the same reasons the loyalty oath is. Simply put, the recognition of a “Jewish state” would mean the justification of the creation of the Israeli state which led to the dispossession of the Palestinians, and would lay the groundwork for 1 million-plus Palestinians in Israel to face even greater hostility as minorities in their native land.

Of course, the settlement freeze is an Israeli obligation and the 10-month moratorium which recently expired was neither comprehensive nor properly enforced. So in essence, what Binyamin Netanyahu is asking the Palestinians for is an unthinkable, upfront concession in return for temporarily and incompletely fulfilling a decades-old obligation.

The peace process, which was expected to grind to a halt, has done so. Meanwhile, the Obama administration is consumed with impending domestic elections and has made no mention of the additional obstacles to peace created by the Israelis this weekend.

As many Americans went shopping in malls, or enjoyed the last hints of summer sun, in places like Chicago, Manhattan and Massachusetts – all named for the native populations who used to exist there – another native population’s drive for self-determination and survival was set back immeasurably.

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