Ethnic Cleansing By Any Other Name

Changes in Israeli Military Orders Effective Today Target Palestinians

Palestine Center Brief No. 195

By Yousef Munayyer

Background

The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Israel maintains authoritative jurisdiction over the happenings in the West Bank via its military apparatus. Decisions governing the simplest aspects of Palestinian life, from traveling from one area to another to building a home, ultimately lie under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Military's High Command in the West Bank. In October of 2009, amendments were made to military orders governing the legitimate presence of persons in Occupied Palestinian Territory. The changes, effective six months after the signing of the orders, are beginning to take effect. It is important to note that Palestinians are not in control of the Palestinian population registry. Israel maintains strict control over this database and continues to do so. It is because of this that Israeli authorities can determine the residencies of Palestinians and only through the Israelis can the Palestinian Authority issue identification documents.

Changes in Israeli Military Orders

The main changes come as amendments to the Israeli Military Order No. 329 titled "Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration" which was signed into effect two years after the occupation began in 1969. This order defines so-called "infiltrators" as persons who "enter the Area knowingly and unlawfully having been present in the east bank of the Jordan, Syria, Egypt or Lebanon." In 1969, prior to peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, infiltrators as defined by this order were persons entering the West Bank from enemy states. The amendment to this order, order number 1650, signed in late 2009 changes this definition to "a person who entered the Area unlawfully following the effective date, or a person who is present in the Area and does not lawfully hold a permit." [emphasis added]

The original order also defines a "resident of the Area" as a "person whose permanent residence is in the Area." The new order eliminates this definition, apparently leaving determination of residency in the hands of military commanders.

Further, the original order states that a person that is present in the West Bank without documentation of their residency bears the burden of proving that he did not infiltrate the area. The amendment changes this language significantly and simply states that any person present in the West Bank without a document or permit is "presumed to be an infiltrator." The amendment adds that a lawful document or permit is only one that is issued by the commander of the Israeli Military in the West bank or someone acting on his behalf.

Changes have also been made to the punishments levied against those considered so-called "infiltrators". The amendments to the order now specify that deportation orders can be carried out as early as 72 hours from the issuance of the order and in some cases even sooner. Further, the Palestinians targeted for deportation will be held liable for the expenses of their deportation up to 7,500 NIS. Under the amendment, a military commander is permitted to seize monies held by the deportee to cover the expenses.

The section of the order on the sentencing of an alleged "infiltrator" was also modified. The old statute condemned an "infiltrator" to "imprisonment of fifteen years or a fine of 10,000 Israeli Lira or both". The new order seems to condemn Palestinians to imprisonment regardless of their innocence. Read closely the section below:

A. "The infiltrator shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of seven years.
B. The provisions of Subsection (A) notwithstanding, where an infiltrator has proven his entry into the area was lawful-he shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of three years"

A second amendment issued at the same time, Order No. 1649, establishes a committee to review deportation orders. However, hearings before this committee are for those held in custody in the process of deportation and the order stipulates that they be allowed a hearing before the committee no later than eight days from the issuance of the deportation order. The obvious problem which arises is that when deportation orders are executable in 72 hours, a Palestinian may be deported before they have a chance to have a hearing.

The collective effects of the changes made by the new orders yields an increased ambiguity that can be dangerously exploited to target Palestinians and others in the West Bank.

Implications for Palestinians Residing in the West Bank

The changes made to these orders may lead to sweeping changes in the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. Effectively, this order makes every resident of the West Bank subject to treatment as an alleged "infiltrator" and prosecution/deportation under this order for simply being unable to produce identification on the spot or not having the ambiguously defined and potentially unattainable identification mentioned in the amendments.

Two particular Palestinian communities will face increased difficulties because of these changes: Palestinians with Gaza Residencies and Palestinians with East Jerusalem Residencies.

Palestinians from Gaza - Palestinians which are either born in Gaza or maintain permanent residence in Gaza but reside in the West Bank are now subject to prosecution/deportation under this new order. This is a clear violation of the Oslo Accord agreements which stipulated that Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank would be treated as one nation and also a violation of international law which treats the peoples of the West Bank and Gaza as one nation under a single occupation. While it is unclear exactly how many Palestinians from Gaza are currently living in the West Bank, it is certain that this number is in the tens of thousands and possibly higher. This number has also increased in recent years as the prosperity gap between the West Bank and Gaza widened due to an Israeli siege leading many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who were able to come to the West Bank to do so. Aside from families which may have moved from Gaza to the West Bank, many married couples in which one spouse is a resident of Gaza will face forced separation because of the change to this order. Students who have residency in Gaza but study in the West Bank are also vulnerable to prosecution/deportation under this order. While cases like this are not new, this new order will certainly expedite separation and make legal objections far more difficult, placing an insurmountable burden of proof upon Palestinians for the "crime" of living on their land.

Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs - Another group that may face difficulties because of this order are Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs. Palestinians who reside in the territory that Israel refers to as East Jerusalem number approximately 270,000. These Palestinians have Israeli issued residency cards, which gives them a status between Palestinian Citizens of Israel and Palestinian residents of the West Bank. In an attempt to annex Jerusalem's geography without its demography, Israel permits these Palestinians residency without citizenship. Should Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs be present in the West Bank where they may have numerous family members as well as commercial ties, they too may be treated as infiltrators under this ambiguous order. It is conceivable that Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs prosecuted under this category may eventually lose their residency rights as a result of prolonged incarceration preventing the renewal of their residency.

Implications for Foreign Born Residents in the West Bank

Another category which may be targeted under the changes to this order are foreign born residents of the West Bank. People in this category are most often the spouses of native born Palestinians who reside with their families in the West Bank. A Palestinian born in Jordan, for example, who married a West Bank Palestinian will not have an Israeli issued ID proving residency in the West Bank and will therefore be subject to prosecution/ deportation under these changes.

Implications for Foreign Born visitors in West Bank

The change in definition of "infiltrator" in the old order now seems to allow for the deportation of persons who are foreign born visitors in the West Bank as "infiltrators". Citizens of foreign countries, like the United States or the United Kingdom for example, who enter into Israel without permission to be in the West Bank can be deported. While this is not expressly stated, it is the clear outcome of the sum of the policies in place. This may be part of an ongoing Israeli effort to silence dissent and crack down on international solidarity members and activists who travel to Palestinian areas to support protests and rallies often bringing with them the eyes of the outside world. The broad language in these orders basically allow the military regime that governs the occupied West Bank to arbitrarily deport or incarcerate nearly anyone present in the area.

In sum, the changes to these orders create a dangerous ambiguity with little protection for the most vulnerable under occupation: the Palestinians. Increasingly, Palestinians find themselves in the cross hairs of policies designed to force them off their land. It is important to keep in mind that in recent years, Israel's altering of residency policy in Jerusalem has led to a dramatic spike in residency revocations. It happened in the mid-1990s and it culminated in 2008 with a record high 4,800 residency revocations of Palestinians in Jerusalem. There is little doubt that Israel has both the motive and the tendency to use these types of policies as tools for ethnic cleansing. With such ambiguity in these orders, a history of ethnic cleansing and the capacity to carry out such horrific acts, the world should be very wary of what is happening in the Israeli occupied West Bank where Israel is charged under international law with the protection of the native population and not its endangerment. At a time when the United States and the International community have asked Israel to do more to restart peace negotiations, this is a clear and significant step in the opposite direction.

Related Content

Arab News: Israel's expulsion order a new catastrophe: PLO 4/13/10

Ma'an News Agency: Erekat: World must compel Israel to revoke military order 4/13/10

Guardian: Israeli Groups Fight Orders Allowing Army to Jail West Bank Residents 4/11/2010

Haaretz: IDF order will enable mass deportation from West Bank 4/11/2010

Report Forbidden Families: Familiy unification and child registration in East Jerusalem-B'Tselem & HaMoked 2004

Report Perpetual Limbo: Israel's Freeze on Unification of Palestinian Families in the Occupied Territories B'Tselem & Hamoked 2006

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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The Centrality of Jerusalem

Palestine Center Brief No. 194 (2 April 2010)
By Yousef Munayyer

If international law matters to any American president, it ought to be President Obama who has taught constitutional law.

Israel's supporters are wrong to downplay the significance of illegal settlement activity as innocuous building in "Jewish neighborhoods" of Jerusalem. Contrary to Prime Minister Netanyahu's claim that "building in Jerusalem is the same as building in Tel Aviv," according to international law and longstanding U.S. policy, building in East Jerusalem is the same as building in Jenin - or any other city in the occupied West Bank.

Despite all its remonstrating, Israel stands isolated from the entire international community over occupied East Jerusalem. Israel has no legitimate sovereignty on any inch of land beyond the Green Line, regardless of what they call it. As one European foreign minister recently stated: "I think I can say very clearly that Jerusalem is not Tel Aviv." Legally speaking, this rebuke to Netanyahu's bluster is correct, and the U.S. knows it.

Those who watch this conflict closely know that Israeli settlement expansion in Jerusalem has the potential to destroy the two-state solution and precipitate a third intifada. It is no minor matter. Nor was the timing of the announcements of 1600 new Jewish homes in the settlement of Ramat Shlomo during the visit of Vice President Biden, or of 20 more units for a site owned by an American funder of Netanyahu just hours before the prime minister was to meet with Obama.

Netanyahu rejected U.S. calls to halt settlement expansion and his Interior Minister, Eli Yishai -- the same man who started the fracas when Biden visited -- also seems determined to continue flouting the Obama administration.

Undeterred, unrepentant, and still in his job, Yishai declared more than two weeks after the initial incident: "I thank God I have been given the opportunity to be the minister who approves the construction of thousands of housing units in Jerusalem."

And when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced the concern of the Obama administration, MK Danny Danon of Netanyahu's Likud party said her "meddling in internal Israeli decisions regarding the development of our capital, Jerusalem, is uninvited and unhelpful." American organizations such as AIPAC and the ADL then urged the Obama administration to hush while expressing no public dismay at Danon's tongue-lashing of the American secretary of state.

Could you imagine what would happen today if the United States annexed Mexico down to Mexico City, claimed it as part of Texas, then began building US cities there and preventing Mexicans from entering?

Obviously, the rest of the world would not accept the annexation of land through conquest for the United States or any state -- even Israel.

But Jerusalem is not only a flash point because of Israel's ongoing colonization through settlement expansion; this transcends the territorial dimension. Jerusalem is a symbolic city dear to Muslims, Christians and Jews. And as the economic and cultural center of Palestinian life for centuries, it is the only city that could be the capital of a Palestinian state. Likewise, no viable Palestinian state could emerge without East Jerusalem as its capital.

That's why other Israeli provocations in Jerusalem are equally damaging to the diplomatic process and stability in the region. The ongoing de-Arabization of Jerusalem which has accelerated in recent years, demands the immediate attention of all those interested in a just solution to this conflict. From eviction and demolition of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, to the revocation of residencies and a complex matrix of walls and checkpoints, Israeli policies are slowly sapping Jerusalem of its Palestinian population.

In the Arab and Muslim world, this process playing out daily on the television screens of onlookers is interpreted as nothing short of a colonialist enterprise. (To see a video that explains Israels increasing grip on Jerusalem click here for a flash version and here for a YouTube version.)

While some Israeli spokespersons may claim that there is no need to fuss over building a few houses, the reality is that the Palestinians and others in the Middle East have been watching an ongoing and alarming trend in Jerusalem for decades. Major settlements like Har Homa, Gilo, Ramat Shlomo, Ma'ale Addumim and others, which were developed under the Israeli guise of building in Jerusalem "just like Tel Aviv," have created insurmountable obstacles to sharing Jerusalem between both peoples. The policies of removing or forcing out Palestinians from Jerusalem reinforce the notion that Israel has no intention of returning the land it occupies.

Without Jerusalem on the table, Palestinians not only lack incentive to negotiate, they lack any incentive to maintain the two-state framework.

Jerusalem tumult has the potential to send shockwaves through the Middle East and the broader Muslim world where the United States has far more important interests than the troublemaking state of Israel.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

Views expressed on this post or on linked web pages do not represent the Palestine Center, the educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. All content is for educational purposes only.

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Understanding Israel's Increasing Grip on Jerusalem through Maps

A video briefing explaining Israel's continued and expanding grip on Jerusalem since the occupation began in 1967.

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Welcome to Israel, Joe

Palestine Center Brief No. 193 (11 March 2010)

Policy Brief

By Yousef Munayyer

When he visited the Middle East, then Senator Barack Obama had a rude awakening. He was on the ritual visit for American presidential candidates to Israel, which usually consist of touring sites of significance to Jews and declaring support for the state of Israel. This is important for American politicians who pay homage to an influential pro-Israel lobby, and it was even more important for President Obama. His background, his middle name, his father's religion and his associations with Arabs and Muslims made him a target of critics who claimed he would be soft on security.

So, with a yarmulke upon his head, Barack Hussein Obama recited prayers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. But before his prayers could transcend the clouds and make it up to heaven, Obama was reminded just what he was getting into. In the crowd of onlookers and media that had formed around him, a heckler yelled out, "Jerusalem is ours, Obama. Jerusalem is not for sale, Obama."

Though it is doubtful that the unidentified heckler was Binyamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli prime minister, the same message was sent to the Obama administration this week from the Israeli government. After months of disagreement with the Israelis over their settlement policy, Vice President Joe Biden became the highest ranking Obama administration official to visit Israel and he was greeted by the announcement of 1,600 new settlement homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

Welcome to Israel, Joe.

Whether from hecklers or through government declarations the message from Israel to Washington is clear: we'll take what we want and you cannot stop us.

The problem is the message from Washington to Israel has been far too ambiguous. The Israeli government, addicted to gobbling up Palestinian land, is taking every opportunity to exploit this ambiguity and embarrass American and Palestinian officials while they are at it.

Some argue that the Obama administration made a strategic mistake by raising expectations before guaranteeing full Israeli compliance with a settlement freeze. They are only partially right. The Obama administration was, in fact, right to raise expectations and capitalize on a wave of good faith resulting from a historic election welcomed around the world and in the Middle East in particular. The strategic mistake, and a big one at that, was the failure to apply the necessary pressure on Israel to force compliance with a full settlement freeze.

It has been said that to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results is insanity. Why then should the United States expect anything other than continued Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and in Jerusalem without applying the necessary sanctions to modify Israeli behavior? It is very clear, given the insulting announcement that the Israelis greeted Vice President Biden with, that asking them politely is simply not working.

For two decades of "peace process" the United States has failed to pressure Israel and, low and behold during this time period, settlements have only grown in size and population. In the last 20 years, the number of settlers on occupied Palestinian land has doubled and walls have been built around these Israeli colonies creating a near inextricable reality.

If this doesn't change, nothing will stop Israel from completing its colonial project and the world will continue to live with an apartheid state in its midst.

The tools for change have always been in Washington but domestic politics have always made selecting to use these tools unpopular choices. The U.S. Congress is staunchly pro-Israel and looks at the Middle East blindly following the whims of influential pro-Israel lobbies.

Therefore, the Executive Branch will have to take unilateral steps to change the tone. The president has multiple tools at his disposal through the State Department, like the American vote in the Security Council, for example, which has been the single veto on nearly 40 occasions to save Israel from condemnation.

Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to be visiting DC at the end of this month; interestingly President Obama is conveniently scheduled to be traveling at the same time. Wouldn't it be fitting for the White House to take a page from Israel's book and announce a halt to U.S. support while the Israeli prime minister is in Washington?

Maybe, just maybe, if we communicated with the Israelis through a method they are familiar with they will finally get the message.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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Humanitarianism: Prolonging the Palestinian Political Plight? w/ Ilana Feldman, GWU

Dr. Ilana Feldman
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs,
George Washington University



Does humanitarianism delay a political solution to the question of Palestine? With the siege on Gaza and the occupation effecting the population in dramatic fashion and eliminating basic human needs for millions, there is a noticeable shift in the discourse on Palestine; that is a shift away from the struggle for freedom and toward a struggle for survival. If Palestinians are consumed with surviving for just another day they cannot focus on liberating their land. How does humanitarianism reinforce this situation and how can Palestinians avert suspended catastrophe?

27 January 2010

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The Palestinian Economy: Recent Experience and Prospects in 2010 w/ Oussama Kanaan, IMF

Dr. Oussama Kanaan
IMF Chief of Mission and Resident Representative
West Bank and Gaza

Friday, 22 January 2010



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BRIEF: The Perpetual Process for Impossible Peace

Palestine Center Brief No. 190 (15 January 2010)

Policy Brief

By Yousef Munayyer

In 1988, on a trip to Yugoslavia, Yasser Arafat the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was asked by a reporter if he believed there would be a Palestinian state in five years. His response "If God is willing, it will be within two years".

Twenty-two years later, Arafat has been dead for five years, the oval office has seen four new presidents, the Israelis had seven new prime ministers, Yugoslavia disintegrated into six republics, Pluto is no longer a planet and yet, according to the Obama administration's Special Envoy George Mitchell, we are still but two years away from a Palestinian state.

The peace seems lost in the process. After the Oslo Accords, a timeline was set and never met. After the road map, a timeline was set and never met. On several occasions, leaders repeated a one, two, three or four year time-table as if it were part of the instructions on the back of a box of Insta-State mix. We heard this in 2002 in the Rose Garden, with the Road Map in 2003, after Arafat in 2004, after Annapolis in 2007 and after Fayyad's plan in mid-2009.

Please pardon the Arab world, the Israelis and everyone else on the face of the earth if they no longer take these initiatives seriously. As the U.S. continued to cry wolf, Israel only perpetuated its colonization of Palestinian land. Time-tables were reset, the oasis of a Palestinian state moved even further away and another generation is born into occupation.

What's missing is the use of real American leverage over Israel. Let's not forget that the United States is a superpower, and it is not unrealistic to think that it could use its leverage over Israel to make it comply with international law and end its occupation. If the United States was trying to leverage any comparable country to follow a certain path, it would not take two decades.

At the crux of the problem is the fact that the United States has been reluctant to pull the levers at its disposal to influence the Israelis to end the occupation. Recently, the Saudi foreign minister said that Israel is treated like a spoiled child. He is right, except I would add that this spoiled child is something like Chucky out of the movie Child's Play. Israel is a well-armed nuclear power, with no undeterred threats, maintaining an occupation over 4-5 million Palestinians. The United States has continued to provide allowance money for Israel to buy American weapons and build more settlements in defiance of declared American policy, in addition to an omnipresent veto against any attempts to restrain Israel's behavior in the international arena.

If anyone is to take the process seriously, there needs to be an immediate and abrupt change in the flow of this hypnotic process. Everyone is locked into a perpetual cycle of delayed time-lines and endless negotiations and setbacks. The U.S. has always had two options for getting the message across to the Israelis that it's been reluctant to take. The first is ending arms sales to Israel. The second is the threat to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders by a specific time regardless to what transpires before then.

The U.S's "special relationship" with Israel has always stood in the way of taking these necessary steps and that leaves Palestinians with only one conclusion; the peace process is a façade.

After 9/11 it became clear that resentment of American support for Israeli occupation motivated some in the Arab and Muslim world to radicalize and convinced some policy makers that Israeli-Palestinian peace is in the U.S.'s interest. But if Washington thinks that they can placate public opinion in the Arab and Muslim world by being semi-engaged in a never ending on-again off-again process, while providing the weapons to Israel that ultimately kill Palestinian civilians, they are tragically mistaken.

Very few people have faith left in this process and many never did. The Arab public has grown tired, not only of the United States' support for what they see as its deranged, spoiled off-spring, but they have also grown tired of their own leaders, many of whom are thought to be more loyal to their American backers than the people they govern.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. Based on recent history, I wouldn't be betting on a Palestinian state in 2012.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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BRIEF: A Tale of Two Cities...in Palestine

Palestine Center Brief No. 189 (5 January 2010)

By Yousef Munayyer

While most would point out the differences between Gaza City, the impoverished and destitute administrative center of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and Ramallah, the burgeoning administrative center of the Fateh-run West Bank, there are important commonalities between what seem to be diametrically opposite poles.

A common misconception, which has gained considerable attention as of late, is that management or governing styles of different parties are responsible for the stark differences in the realities on the ground. This certainly plays into the narrative that we often hear emanating from Washington about engaging one Palestinian party and not the other. However, the fact of the matter is that the most important thing both Palestinian locales have in common is the underlying reason for their differences: the role of external factors in their economic conditions.

Gaza City, the largest city in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is home to about 400,000 Palestinians. The densely populated strip of land that surrounds the city and takes its name, is home to over 1.5 million Palestinians. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Gaza are refugees and a similar number rely directly on food aid for daily sustenance. While this number has historically been high since the creation of the refugees by the state of Israel in 1948, it has never been that high.

The plight of Palestinians in Gaza has been exacerbated in recent years due to Israeli restrictions on the Strip. This began after the election of a Hamas government in the Palestinian Legislative Elections in 2006 and accelerated in 2007. The immediate Israeli and international response was to cut off funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA). International players dried up aid and the state of Israel froze Palestinian tax revenue, preventing it from reaching the Palestinian governing body.

Imports and exports were likewise severely curtailed because of the siege. The Palestinian National Trade and Development Organization, PalTrade, reported that "imports into and exports from the Gaza Strip before the closure in 2007 reached a monthly average of 10,400 and 1,380 truckloads, respectively. This declined to about 2,834 truckloads of imports and no exports after the recent military operations. Immediately after the operations, there was only one isolated instance in which exports of flowers were allowed from the Gaza Strip in March 2009. Some 134 truckloads of cash crops were exported in total between June 2007 and May 2009."

As the siege tightened, we began to see more dramatic numbers and facts reported by a wide range of international organizations and NGOs. In 2007, the International Committee of the Red Cross called on Israel to "lift the retaliatory measures which are paralyzing life in Gaza". In 2008, Amnesty International reported that "Gaza's fragile economy, already battered by years of restrictions and destruction, has collapsed. …some 90 percent of industry has shut down."

Then the brutal 22-day campaign termed "Cast Lead", which required hearts of cold steel to perpetuate, further decimated Gaza. Along with the significant number of Palestinians killed, over 1,400 most of whom were civilians, the attacks leveled a devastating blow to an economy that was already in tatters. The attacks partially or completely destroyed 700 private sector establishments.

In 2005, for example, the furniture, garment and processed food industries in Gaza employed 6,500, 25,000 and 2,500 people respectively and included 600, 660, and 100 businesses respectively. After "Cast Lead," the employment figures dropped to 70,110 and 144, while the number of businesses dropped to 26, 10, and 16. Exports from these industries which were all triple-digit numbers in 2005 dropped to zeros across the board after last winter's attacks.

Yet just as Gaza's economic woes can be credited to the Israeli siege and the destruction levied during "Cast Lead," Ramallah is also indebted to external factors for its apparent successes.

Today, Ramallah has become known for its bars, nightclubs and cosmopolitan feel. Internationals and locals, working for outfits funded by hordes of donor dollars (many from the U.S.), are pouring the shekels they earn into nights on the town.

It wasn't always like this in Ramallah. Just a few years ago, after Hamas was elected to the PA, Palestinian civil servants, teachers and bureaucrats in the West Bank and Gaza were equally out of luck and out of money, as Washington-led sanctions prevented the PA from meeting payroll for months on end. Things started to change in mid-2007, however, when the Hamas-led PA dissolved and Fateh took control of the PA's institutions in the West Bank.

In mid-2007, to “avert a serious and immediate financial crisis” President Bush wanted to send funds to the now Fatah-led PA, but he needed to assure Congressional hawks that the funds would not end up used for violence or in the hands of Hamas or lining the pockets of officials often blamed for corruption. A trusted caretaker was needed and one with an accounting background was preferred.

Enter Salam Fayyad. The western educated former World Bank and IMF man, with no discernible political experience, took over as the newly appointed Prime Minister of the PA. In Washington, few things say “passivity” like a clean-shaven be-speckled accountant. Presidential waivers began to be issued to circumvent the sanctions levied against the PA by AIPAC-sponsored Congressional legislation . Every 6-months, a waiver; every 6-months an injection of funds to the new PA based in Ramallah, and till today President Obama continues this trend. Every donor dollar coming into the PA goes through Ramallah, and Ramallah, more than any other town in the West Bank, has felt the effects of this.

But despite the growth that donor dollars have produced, one can't help but notice how artificial the growth is. Economic studies on this issue tend to come up with the same conclusions. Yes, there has been growth in the West Bank, but (and this is a big but) that growth is due largely to an economy kept afloat by donor dollars and a relaxation of Israeli closures.

A recent IMF report indicates that expenditures in the PA budget for 2010 is $2.9 billion, $1.9 billion of which would not be covered by domestic revenue and would be financed by external support. The report also states that there has been an increase of 6 percent in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the first quarter of 2009 as compared to the first quarter in 2008.

In the U.S., many have clung to bits and pieces of reports like this, and declared victory for the policy of propping up one Palestinian party and sidelining the other. Headlines of articles on the issue declare unprecedented economic growth. Realistically, however, this would be like declaring unprecedented drops, from the previous year, in the number of homeless in New Orleans two years after Hurricane Katrina. Without controlling for the drastic conditions that existed beforehand, it's hard to call this growth. Years of occupation, restrictions, closure and high unemployment have left Palestinians below zero. But I guess going from negative 20 to negative 15 is still growth.

A finer reading of the economic reports reveals the truth behind the numbers in the West Bank. Assumptions of future growth are based on "a continuation of the process of lifting restrictions on movement in the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza".

Perhaps the bias in reporting on the economic realities is in part based on a western desire to have their 'secular' partner in Palestine succeed. Washington is, after all, more likely to cooperate with the pole where one can make time for happy hour, than the one where the most important time is the call to prayer.

Yet, regardless to the perceptions from Washington, Ramallah, Gaza or elsewhere about the parties involved, the reality is that both administrative centers are not in control of their destinies. Rather, what happens to the people of Palestine today, as in the past, remains in the hands of others.

In sum, the successes or failures of both Gaza and Ramallah, like all occupied Palestinian locales, are overwhelmingly determined by Israeli or American actions and intentions and not the actions of the respective regimes. This is not to absolve Hamas or Fateh of their responsibilities to the people they govern, but rather this puts their apparent successes and failures in the proper context: that is, the context of an ongoing illegal Israeli occupation that ultimately has more control over the daily lives of Palestinians than any of their representatives.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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Gaza, One Year On: the Palestinian Struggle Continues

Palestine Center Brief No. 188 (27 December 2009)

By Yousef Munayyer

One year later, the deadly attacks which targeted an already suffering Gaza Strip have become yet another chapter in the epic tragedy that is the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

During the attacks, over 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza woke up unsure if they would be able to experience waking up ever again. The Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip termed "Operation Cast Lead" by Israel, was a pivotal moment in the region and one that horrified people across the globe. Prior to the start of the attacks, Israel had a negotiated cease-fire with the Palestinian government in Gaza.

During the cease-fire, projectiles fired from Gaza into Israel had dropped 99 percent. Despite this, on 4 November 2008, while the world was consumed with a historic election in the United States, Israel launched an attack that shattered the cease-fire, killing several Palestinians. The crisis elevated through an increase in strikes by both sides and the tightening of an already debilitating Israeli siege on the Gaza Strip.

Instead of working to restore a cease-fire that worked well, on December 27th Israel launched aerial attacks killing hundreds of Palestinians. It became clear from this point forward that life in Gaza, which no one thought could possibly get worse, quickly would.

For two years, Palestinians in Gaza had been struggling to live under siege. Israel controlled all of Gaza's commercial ports and had sealed them shut, allowing in the bare minimum to keep Palestinians alive. Still, the devastation that was to come made the situation far worse.

The Israelis followed the air attack with a ground invasion. One of the highest-powered and most-mechanized armies in the world invaded a tiny, densely populated area where 80 percent of the population were refugees and half were children.

The human toll was tremendous and an Israeli arsenal that included one-ton bombs, white phosphorus shells and M-16 machine guns courtesy of American tax-payer money, made a visiting U.S. Congressman later say "I will admit and I was a little reluctant to say that I was an American Congressman. Quite frankly, it might have been the IDF launching the bombs, but they all said made in America."

After 22 days, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed. The majority of these casualties were civilians, over 300 of them children and over 100 more were woman. Countless more were injured or maimed in a walled off prison with inadequate medical care.

But it was not only the destruction of human life that was inflicted upon Palestinians in Gaza; unprecedented destruction of infrastructure was wrought upon an already impoverished place. Entire industries were bombed into oblivion.

For example, one of the most badly damaged industries was the construction industry. The United Nations Human Rights report on the Israeli attacks on Gaza, which was released earlier this year, detailed what seemed to be a deliberate Israeli policy to target the construction industry infrastructure to make the reconstruction of Gaza more difficult.

Certainly, this has succeeded. Today Gaza lies virtually in the same situation it did after the war. The only difference now is that more graves have been dug.

The American School in Gaza, which was funded by American taxpayer dollars and ultimately destroyed by bombs bought with American taxpayer dollars, still lies as a pile of rubble. The textbooks that were intended to educate the Palestinians of Gaza can still be found amidst the destruction.

It is obvious that as Americans we have some responsibility for what happened. Not only because we funded the operation, but also because our government, the only one with the necessary influence over the state of Israel, did little to stop the heinous attacks.

At this point, some would make a plea for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza and they certainly do need it. What they need more, however, is a real solution to the political crisis that underlies the ongoing illegal Israeli occupation.

Humanitarian assistance gives Palestinians the ability to survive, but it is the desire to pen the final sentence of their struggle that gives them the will to live.

If we as Americans can help them write it, we can work to erase the painful scar that "Operation Cast Lead" left on the human conscience.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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EVENT TODAY: Palestinian Citizens of Israel

[photo: Maureen Murphy | Electronic Intifada]

[Event video/audio recordings will be posted soon]

Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Stakeholders in Limbo?

with Dr. Shibley Telhami and Dr. Asad Ghanem

Wednesday, 2 December 2009
12:30 - 2:00 p.m.
The Palestine Center

[LIVE WEBCAST of the event will be available starting at 1 PM on this blog]

If you want to attend this in Washington, DC, please RSVP.

Treated as second-class citizens in Israel and left out of Palestinian national representative structures, this population continues to grow in number and political dynamism. What do the Palestinian citizens of Israel think about a negotiated solution to the conflict, the Right of Return, and their future status? How can/should this constituency participate in the decision making processes that will ultimately provide an answer to their national question? The speakers will explore these questions with a presentation of recently conducted public opinion data, commentary and analysis.

SPEAKER BIOS

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Park, and non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He has served as Advisor to the U.S. Mission to the UN (1990-91), as advisor to former Congressman Lee Hamilton, and as a member of the US delegation to the Trilateral US-Israeli-Palestinian Anti-Incitement Committee, which was mandated by the Wye River Agreements. Dr. Telhami is the author of the best-selling book, The Stakes: America and the Middle East (Westview Press, 2003; updated version, 2004)

Asad Ghanem is a senior lecturer at the School of Political Sciences at the University of Haifa. His theoretical work has explored the legal, institutional and political conditions in ethnic states. He has been the initiator and designer of several policy schemes and empowerment programs for Palestinian-Arabs in Israel. Dr. Ghanem has authored and edited numerous articles and books, among them Palestinian Politics After Arafat: A Failed National Movement; Ethnic Politics in Israel - The Margins and the Ashkinasi Centre and Palestinians in Israel-Indigenous Group Politics in the Jewish State.

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The Paucity of Hope

Palestine Center Brief No. 186 (25 November 2009)

By Yousef Munayyer

Ibrahim Abu Jayyab, 23, was a big Barack Obama supporter and during the election campaign he spent hours phone-banking for him. However, unlike some of Ibrahim's Palestinian-American counterparts, he was calling from Gaza, dialing internationally to American households, urging votes for Obama.

Today, a year since the election, prospects for "hope and change" coming to the people of Palestine have all but vanished. Despite fifteen years of talk of creating a Palestinian state, Palestinians have seen only increased illegal Israeli colonization of the land that was supposed to be their future state. A devastating assault on Gaza which left over 1,400 people, mostly civilians dead, was the culmination of eight years of failed George W. Bush administration policy. Still, you cannot blame Ibrahim and his fellow Palestinians for being hopeful when Barack Obama first took office.

Things could not seem worse during the Bush administration for the Palestinians, so Obama was an improvement before his first day in office. Many Palestinians felt President Obama would carry out an evenhanded policy for the first time. His lofty and populist rhetoric during the campaign resonated with a people long trying to appeal to a sense of international equality and justice. Despite failed peace efforts and a heinous attack on an already suffocated Gaza, many still remained hopeful.

However, the only real change taking place since Obama's election is Israel's continued illegal geographic expansion in the West Bank and increased defiance of international law. Israel continues unchecked settlement expansion and evicting scores of Palestinians and demolishing their houses in Jerusalem, defying their obligations under the 2003 Road Map for Peace.

Factually, there is little change between the Bush and Obama administrations' approaches to the peace process. Both administrations have failed to enforce Israel's obligations under the Road Map. Furthermore, the Obama administration has adopted the Bush administration's failed and flawed policy of supporting one Palestinian faction against the other, rather than unite them under a common theme of mutual interest.

Despite repeated requests from the Obama administration for Israel to stop colonizing Palestinian land, the colonization continues unabated. Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has openly defied and publicly ridiculed U.S. policy.

Yesterday, Israel announced the expansion of yet another illegal settlement. The Obama administration's response was a toothless statement expressing "dismay". The failure of successive U.S. administrations to increase political and financial pressure on Israel for violations of international law and U.S. policy has led to a West Bank littered with Israeli settlements and only emboldened the Israeli government to defy us further. Even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has put what little domestic legitimacy he had left on the line to participate in fruitless negotiations, said yesterday that Obama is "doing nothing" to advance the peace-process right now.

Today the effect of this, especially at this moment in history, is devastating. Palestinians were at the brink after the attacks on Gaza and the only thing that brought them back from the edge was optimism about the future. The focus now has returned to the pain of Gaza and years of wasted time invested in a process that has only resulted in dispossession of the Palestinian people.

There is a communication gap between the U.S., Israel and the Palestinians when defining the goal of a "peace process". Palestinians, and most of the world, believed the goal was to end the illegal occupation that started in 1967, creating a state in that territory for Palestinians which would ultimately lead to peace in the region. However, Israel's actions continue to defy that goal. The Israeli government's continued apartheid-styled occupation jokingly refers to a "piece process" as it continues to carve up Palestinian land one piece at a time. The world is not laughing.

The United States must immediately define to Israel and the Palestinians clear goals with specific and reasonable time tables enforced with tough political and financial repercussions for any party that fails to follow obligations.

Palestinian youth are unlikely to dedicate time to volunteer for President Obama's re-election and, the way things are going, are unlikely to be living in a free and independent state of Palestine by that time either. The future of the next generation of Palestinians, their ambitions, hopes and desires reflect our policies. So far, these policies have been hopeless.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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ANALYSIS: Humanity Targeted in Gaza

Palestine Center Brief No. 185 (30 October 2009)

By Yousef Munayyer

There was a time, not so long ago in fact, when opposing armies would line up across from each other with nothing but green fields between them and take turns exchanging fire. While these tactics were very efficient at killing soldiers on both sides, civilians were rarely ever hurt.

Somewhere along the line this all changed. Whether it was because of industrialization, urbanization or adaptations in military strategy, one stark and indisputable fact remains: at the beginning of the twentieth century the ratio of civilian to military deaths in wars was one to eight and by the end of it inverted to eight to one.

Certainly, there were turning points that made us cringe at the destructive power of humanity. Dresden, Nagasaki, Auschwitz and others led us to the conclusion that in today’s wars civilians needed more protection from the world’s most destructive powers–states. The laws of war, specifically those designed to protect civilians, were codified as urban settings increasingly became the locales of industrialized destruction.

There is perhaps no theater of war in a more urban setting than the Gaza Strip. As one of the most densely populated spots on the planet, Gaza is precisely the type of place laws of war were meant to protect civilians. It becomes comical then to even consider the notion put forward by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently. He boldly claimed that the laws of war should be amended so that operations like the one Israel carried out in Gaza this past winter that left over 1,400 dead, mostly civilians, could be legal.

In a war that could have been entirely avoided, Israel chose not only to attack but also to do so in a cowardly way that guaranteed tremendous civilian deaths and destruction to civilian infrastructure. The Israeli leadership, likely wary of upcoming elections and the Israeli electorates intolerance for casualties, decided to strike Gaza from a distance using disproportionate force and illegal weapons to keep their casualty rate down. On their way out of the Strip, the Israeli forces destroyed civilian factories and fields with the clear intention of levying collective punitive damages on the people of Gaza. It is precisely because political leaders in Israel consciously made this decision that they committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The report conducted by Justice Richard Goldstone and his team documents, in gruesome detail, the results of Israel’s cost/benefit analysis. Because of this documentation, some have begun to demand that Israel conduct an independent internal investigation into the allegation levied by the esteemed jurist. But this will not be sufficient. Israel has proven it cannot be trusted to produce justice through its internal investigations.

When thousands of Palestinian refugees were massacred in the Sabra and Shatila camps, for example, an independent Israeli commission was formed to investigate. To their credit, they held their defense minister responsible and recommended that he never be permitted to hold a ministerial position again.

Being banned from the cabinet for playing a role in the murder of 3,000 civilians may seem like a slap on the wrist. Yet, what is even worse, is that the man responsible not only came back onto the political scene, but was elected prime minister! Consequently, Ariel Sharon went on to pursue the largest expansion of Israeli settlements in 20 years. When it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israel is simply not capable of introspection.

In 1961, an esteemed Jewish writer who had escaped Nazi Germany became embroiled in controversy for criticizing Israel’s decision to try the Nazi Adolph Eichmann. Hannah Arendt’s argument was not that Eichmann deserved mercy but rather his crimes were against humanity, offending all, and that he should be tried before an international tribunal. Disregarding this, the state of Israel tried and executed Adolph Eichmann. That same disregard for international justice exists to this day in the state of Israel. There is an air of arrogance and a determination among the leaders to never let others judge their actions, even other Jews like Richard Goldstone or Hannah Arendt.

The United States has also proven incapable of holding Israel accountable for international law. Instead of upholding the Goldstone report’s recommendations the White House has criticized it. The Congress has begun to tow the usual Likud line by considering a resolution (H. Res 867) slamming the Goldstone report as anti-Israel.

There must come a point when Israel realizes the immorality of its actions in Gaza. But we cannot sit around waiting for that to happen. It was humanity that was targeted in Gaza and it is humanity (all of us regardless to race, nation or creed) that must demand justice.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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ANALYSIS: The Coming Intifada

Palestine Center Brief No. 183 (14 October 2009)

By Yousef Munayyer

Anyone watching the Middle East and the Occupied Palestinian Territories recently can tell you that anger and rage is bubbling just below the surface. What may not seem apparent is that a new intifada, or uprising, may be right around the corner.

When this happens, western media outlets will scramble to explain how and why we have come to this state. They will likely place the blame on the Palestinians, the victims of Israeli oppression, once again ignoring any and all history or context of the illegal Israeli occupation and its daily horrors.

If some might find this farfetched, we have only to look back at the recent war on Gaza when the western media blamed the victims and realized much later that they had ignored the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip and Israel’s violation of the ceasefire.

It is important, then, to note now the reasons why a critical mass of discontent is building.

Palestinians have endured dispossession and occupation for over 60 years. Despite this, some segments of Palestinian society have been willing to enter into a peace process with the Israelis on the basis of ending the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and establishing a Palestinian state.

Of course, these efforts have been in vain. During the post-Oslo peace process period, settlements grew at an astonishing rate, indicating that Israel was interested not in relinquishing the territory that it illegally occupied, but rather cementing its hold and effectively annexing it.

Then there was the (Former U.S. President) George W. Bush era of disengagement and disregard while Israel continued settlement expansion, and built a wall deep inside the West Bank that separated Palestinians from Palestinians.

Israel’s attack on Gaza this past winter was the culmination of failed American attempts to broker peace. With over 1,400 murdered, most of which were civilians, Palestinians were given an additional 1,400 reasons to doubt Israel sought any peaceful agreement. Of course, this war took place without objection from the Bush White House.

Yet, despite all of this, some Palestinians had hoped that a new president would help bring justice to their cause. The world had grown tired of George W. Bush, and just knowing he would finally be replaced gave some the will to live another day.

Sadly, all hope that Palestinians may have had in U.S. President Barack Obama seems to have evaporated. He began by saying some of the right things, but ultimately failed to get Israel to stop settlement expansion in the West Bank. Most recently, he conceded to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on a settlement freeze at the United Nations General Assembly.

This retreat was amplified by another fiasco. Seemingly capitulating to American and Israeli pressure, the Palestinian representatives at the United Nations in Geneva tabled the Goldstone Committee Report that alleged Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza.

Any and all recourse Palestinians had for the bloodbath in Gaza disappeared overnight. For Palestinians, the wounds of that horrific war have been reopened, and they cannot even turn to their own leaders for treatment.

The last intifada was sparked when Ariel Sharon and an entourage of countless armed soldiers violated the sanctity of the Noble Sanctuary. Today, tensions in Jerusalem are rising again as demonstrations against home demolitions continue, and Israel continues to prevent the freedom of movement for worshipers into the holy sites.

So now what? That is the question Palestinians are asking. Their leaders have failed them. The United States and Barack Obama, supposedly an honest broker, have failed them. The international community and the system which is supposed to protect the basic human rights of all people have failed them.

To whom shall they turn?

What is certain is that Palestinians will never concede their legitimate rights. But now that every avenue for achieving those goals has been closed off to them, it seems almost inevitable that another uprising is upon us.

We would be naïve, even culpable, if we dared to ask why.

Yousef Munayyer is the Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views expressed in this information brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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Two-Part Report on Reconciliation and Israel-Palestinian Peace

Reconciliation: Lessons for Peace and Justice in Palestine (Part One)
Palestine Center Brief No. 181 (18 August 2009)

Information Brief

By Hania Bekdash*

This is part one of a two part information brief. This brief explores recent reconciliation processes in history in the context of transitional justice in post-conflict societies. It argues that the traditional track for negotiated conflict settlement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must incorporate formal mechanisms of reconciliation. It offers examples and lessons that could apply to Israel and Palestine in order to guarantee that peace will be sustainable.

Click here to view and print this brief online.

Grassroots Reconciliation in Palestine and Israel (Part Two)
Palestine Center Brief No. 181 (18 August 2009)

Information Brief

By Hania Bekdash*

This is part two of a two part information brief. This brief examines the grassroots reconciliation practices that are currently taking place in Israel and Palestine. It attempts to discern which practices have worked in the past, which have failed and what more can be done. It maintains the overarching belief that a sustainable peace to this conflict cannot be achieved through negotiated agreements alone, but instead, reconciliation practices are effective and necessary.

Click here to view and print this brief online.

*This information brief was written by Palestine Center intern Hania Bekdash, a student at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, as culmination of her research during the Summer 2009 Internship Program. The views expressed within are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund or its educational program, The Palestine Center. This brief may be used without permission if credit is given to the Center.

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INFO BRIEF: Israeli Soldiers’ Testimonies on Gaza Invasion Shed Light on Contentious Issues

Palestine Center Brief No. 180 (30 July 2009)

By Mohammad Alsaafin and Will Youmans

Israel’s invasion of Gaza earlier this year was one of the most gruesome and destructive chapters in the decades-old Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and dispossession. For 22 days, the Israeli army, navy and air force pounded the coastal strip, destroying tens of thousands of homes as well as schools, mosques, food depots and hospitals. Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed, of whom only about 250 were combatants [1]. According to the United Nations, the Israeli military campaign left more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties and 200 schools damaged or destroyed, as well as 39 mosques and two churches [2].

Palestinians contended that from the very beginning of the assault, Israeli forces were operating under extremely lax rules of engagement and that the lives of Palestinian civilians were disregarded. Human rights organizations investigating the war and its aftermath concluded that Israeli soldiers were often reckless with regards to the safety of civilians and committed acts of deliberate destruction. Amnesty International found that Israeli troops had used Palestinian civilians as human shields--a war crime and tactic which Israel had continuously accused Hamas of using during the war (although Amnesty found no evidence of that) [3].

An Israeli human rights group, Breaking the Silence, just released testimonies from soldiers who served in Gaza [4]. Their comments corroborate Amnesty’s claims, previous soldiers’ statements and vindicate Palestinian accusations of criminal conduct by Israeli soldiers.

The Testimonies

Breaking the Silence published on its website [5] the testimony of 30 conscripts and reservists who took part in Operation Cast Lead.

In total, the soldiers describe an atmosphere in which they were given free rein to protect themselves, even at the expense of civilians. The destruction of life and property was allowed based on the slightest suspicions, and the rules of engagement were often ambiguous and inconsistent.

This led to the unnecessary deaths of many civilians and to the destruction of homes, mosques and property for no military purpose; for example, soldiers shot Palestinian water tanks at a time when Gaza was suffering from a severe water shortage. As one participant, a bulldozer operator, said, “In my own company there were plenty of people who fired just for the hell of it, at houses, water tanks. They loved targeting water tanks.”

By his estimate, “maybe half” of the property demolitions he undertook were for “operational needs.” “Sometimes the company commander would give the D-9s something to demolish just to make them happy.”

Sometimes there was an operational basis, but the response would still be excessive. As another respondent said, “Whole neighborhoods were simply razed because four houses in the area served to launch Qassam rockets.”

The testimonies also shed light on two contentious issues--the extent to which Israeli soldiers’ disregard for civilian life was a function of their orders and whether Israel used certain munitions in appropriate ways.

Chain of Command

Breaking the Silence found consistently in the testimonies evidence that the Israeli military officers’ instructions encouraged a disregard for the safety and well-being of civilians. The rules of engagement communicated to them, according to the testimonies, were unclear and did not strive to make the distinction between civilians and combatants.

Orders were not consistent. As one soldier said, “We did not get instructions to shoot at anything that moved, but we were generally instructed: if you feel threatened, shoot.” Others were instructed to shoot at anything that moves. As another soldier testified, “No one is supposed to be there, if you see any signs of movement at all, you shoot. These, essentially, were the rules of engagement. Shoot if you like. If you're afraid, or you see someone, shoot.”

Another soldier’s statement about their orders was similar: “People were not instructed to shoot at everyone they see, but they were told that from a certain distance when they approach a house, no matter who it is - even an old woman - take them down.”

In some areas, Palestinians seen outside at night were officially considered legitimate targets, even if they were visibly unarmed. The rationale was that they had to know the Israeli military was in the area and had no reason to be there. One testimony describes the shooting, without warning, of an unarmed elderly man carrying only a lit torch.

According to some, anyone spotted on a roof at anytime was designated a possible lookout for Hamas fighters and was targeted. Also, Palestinian sniper fire from buildings was often responded to by less precise tank shell or mortar fire. Despite taking over civilian neighborhoods, the army established its own “red lines,” zones in which the army had a “shoot to kill” policy. The red lines would change from night to day. Anyone spotted approaching the red lines was to be “cleared”--often warned by deterrent fire.

Even the use of human shields was ordered from higher-ups. The human shields were randomly drawn from “Johnnies,” the nickname for civilians who did not flee. One testimony described just one of the practices that put civilians in harm’s way: “Sometimes the force would enter while placing rifle barrels on a civilian's shoulder, advancing into a house and using him as a human shield.” The soldier who witnessed this also revealed how the commanders told them these were the instructions and they had to follow them.

Other civilians were also forced to knock down the walls of their homes and those of their neighbors with heavy hammers.

The picture of permissive rules of engagement painted by these testimonies verifies similar testimonies given by graduates of the Yitzhak Rabin pre-military preparatory course at Oranim Academic College in Tivon. Their experiences in Gaza were published by Ha’aretz in March [6].

At best, the range of soldiers’ testimonies show there was little standardization in the rules of engagement, meaning the Israeli government was complicit in violations of Palestinian human rights and well-being. At worst, the government mandated the military punish civilians. The evidence presented through these testimonies depicts a military machine that fell between these two poles of interpretation but arguably closer to the more egregious interpretation. The use of human shields was ordered, as were measures that directly gave the army a license to shoot to kill in various scenarios, regardless of the individual circumstances.

White Phosphorous

Some Breaking the Silence interviewees admitted the army used white phosphorous in populated areas. Population density was not the operational factor dictating its use. According to one soldier:

Often a house that was suspect for tunnels or explosive charges was a house that was targeted with various phosphorus shells, thinking this would activate all the charges. In other words, phosphorus was to serve as an igniter, simply make it all go up in flames, which then ignited the explosive charges. And the tunnels. Everything was ignited.

Shortly after the end of the Israeli invasion in January, the Israeli military initially denied employing the controversial substance in its munitions in response to an international outcry[7]. Israel soon acknowledged its use and conducted an internal investigation; it claimed that “no phosphorus munitions were used on built-up areas.”

This was met with doubt by many. According to an Amnesty International staffer, the group’s “Gaza mission team, who entered Gaza a few hours before Israel’s halt of attacks… found hundreds of white phosphorus-wedges in residential areas all over Gaza" [8]. The soldiers’ testimonies validate those doubts.

Conclusion
These revelations will not be received with surprise by many. The destruction of Gaza was watched closely around the globe. Such testimonies, however, will raise expectations among those awaiting the findings of the United Nations’ war crimes fact-finding mission. The accounts may impact how some Israelis view their policies towards the Palestinians, but it is likely not to change public opinion on the primacy of the safety of Israeli soldiers over that of Palestinian civilians.

Although Breaking the Silence intended the testimonies to be used to start a debate about the government’s policies and not as the basis for war crimes prosecutions, the group published the testimonies a week after UN war crimes investigator Richard Goldstone heard Palestinians in Gaza talk about their experiences during several days of hearings. He recently ended the fact-finding mission, despite Israeli refusal to cooperate, going as far as denying him a visa to visit the Israeli towns hit by Palestinian rockets [9].

As for the impact the accounts have within Israeli society, such testimonies should convince some to question the morality of Israel’s belligerence against the Palestinians. As one soldier confided, “I had thought I belonged to the most humane army in the world.”

Such admissions will not likely produce a sea change in public opinion, however. The assault on Gaza had wide support in Israel, across most of the political spectrum. Most Israelis are still convinced that they actually fought a defensive war. Israelis are ultimately, like most other peoples, more concerned with the lives of their fighters than with the morality and legal compliance of their military.

This sensitivity to military losses amounted to a political consideration that was reflected in the orders on the ground.

Following the 2006 Lebanon war, the military leadership was well aware of the Israeli public’s aversion to losing its own soldiers. Certain of the public’s indifference to the total destruction of Gaza, the officials instructed soldiers to minimize the danger to their lives at any cost, even if it meant more deaths and injuries among Palestinian civilians. As one soldier says in his testimony, "The soldiers were made to understand that their lives were the most important, and that there was no way our soldiers would get killed for the sake of leaving civilians the benefit of the doubt."

The point Israelis have to face is that the army’s brutality will not enhance the country’s long-term security, as each crime creates a cause for vengeance. If Israelis are not interested in inhibiting their government’s violence against the Palestinians, the international community must.

Mohammad Alsaafin is an intern of the Palestine Center.

Will Youmans is a consultant with the Palestine Center.

End Notes

[1] “PCHR Contests Distortion of Gaza Strip Death Toll”, PCHRGaza.org, 26 March 2009.

[2] “UN Gaza inquiry wraps up hearings”, BBC News, 8 July 2009.

[3] “Amnesty accuses Israel of using human shields in Gaza”, AFP, 2 July 2009.

[4] “Soldiers testimonies from Operation Cast Lead”, Gaza 2009, Breaking the Silence, July 2009.

[5] Ibid.

[6] “IDF killed civilians in Gaza under loose rules of engagement”, Haaretz.com, 20 March 2009.

[7] Greenslade, Roy, “Times vindicated over Israel’s use of white phosphorous in Gaza”, The Guardian, 23 April 2009.

[8] “Israel’s investigation into Gaza offensive more than disappointing”, AMnesty International (USA), 24 April 2009.

[9] “UN Gaza inquiry wraps up hearings”, BBC News, 8 July 2009.

The views expressed in this information brief are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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Hamas' Choice: Recognition or Resistance in the Age of Obama

Palestine Center Brief No. 179 (6 July 2009)

Policy Brief

By Ali Abunimah

In a major policy speech on 25 June 2009, Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas' political bureau, tried to do what may be impossible: present the Islamist Palestinian resistance organization as a willing partner in a U.S.-led peace process, while holding on to his movement's political principles and base [1].

This is the dilemma that every Palestinian leadership, and perhaps almost every liberation movement, has eventually had to confront. It is a choice, as political scientist Tamim Barghouti has pointed out, between recognition and legitimacy [2]. According to Barghouti, the old-guard Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership, when confronted with the same dilemma, chose recognition and forfeited its legitimacy, opening the way for Hamas to emerge. Now, it is the turn of Hamas: the price demanded by the United States and its allies for Hamas to be taken as an interlocutor is the abandonment of the very principles on which the movement built its mass support.

Meshaal's nearly hour-long "address to the Palestinian people and the world" was billed as a response to the speeches of U.S. President Barack Obama in Cairo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in June.

In his Cairo speech, Obama called for Americans and Muslims to engage in a "sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground." If he is serious about that, he--and others--should pay close attention to what Hamas is saying to domestic, regional and international audiences. Meshaal's goals--very much in tension--were to show that his movement is ready to do business with the United States, set out political red lines, reassure the movements supporters and Palestinians generally and deal with internal Palestinian divisions.

To begin with, the speech sought to present Hamas as a nationalist movement whose Islamism fits within a mainstream Palestinian consensus. Meshaal used an explicitly ecumenical message to counter Netanyahu's exclusivist Jewish claims to the land of Palestine. According to Meshaal, Palestinians roots stretched back thousands of years "in this blessed land of prophets and messages, of [Muhammad's] night ascension, of Muslim and Christian holy sites al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, the Nativity Church and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre."

More generally, he sought to portray Muslims as representing the very values Westerners claim to cherish most and dissociating Hamas from lurid and false comparisons to such groups as the Taliban. "We [Muslims] are the ones who introduced the world and humanity to science, civilization, culture and lofty humanitarian values," Meshaal declared, "values such as justice, freedom, equality, compassion and tolerance, and the values of interaction between civilizations and not a confrontation between them."

Meshaal welcomed a "change of tone" from President Obama but emphasized repeatedly that only a change of policy would matter. He nevertheless claimed the new tone as the fruit of the "stubborn steadfastness of the people of the region, while resisting in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan." Such resistance, according to Meshaal, frustrated the former U.S. President George W. Bush administration's plans for regional domination, prompting American voters to seek a different path to extricate their country from mounting crises and quagmires.

He chided regional leaders who had "marketed and promoted" Bushs policies. "Had the people of the region listened to them," Meshaal said, "the policy of Bush and the neoconservatives might have succeeded and the region's situation would be worse than imaginable." Meshaal voiced the widespread skepticism and perhaps hopes that Obama's promises amounted to more than the similar words about Palestine heard from the Bush administration.

Responding to Obama's recital of history, Meshaal did not seek to deny the Nazi Holocaust but to appropriate it. He took Obama to task for dwelling in detail on the "suffering of the Jews and their holocaust in Europe, while ignoring our present suffering and Israel's holocaust against our Palestinian people that has been continuing for decades."

Meshaal emphasized that even though Palestinians have heard only words, they were prepared to judge the U.S. by its actions, which would have to "begin with reconstruction of Gaza and the lifting of the blockade, lifting the oppression and security pressure in the West Bank, and allowing Palestinian reconciliation to take its course without external pressures or interference."

The "only thing" that can convince Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, Meshaal stated, "is genuine American and international will and efforts to end the occupation and lift the oppression from our people, to allow them to exercise their right to self-determination and the fulfillment of their national rights." When the Obama administration makes such an initiative, Meshaal said, "then we and all our people's forces will be ready to cooperate with it and with any international effort in that direction."

Obama's "new language toward Hamas," Meshaal underlined, "is the first step in the right direction towards direct dialogue without conditions." And that is the crux of the matter. Dealing with Hamas, Meshaal said, must be based on the recognition of its democratic mandate and not via the imposition of arbitrary conditions such as those of the Quartet which call on the movement to recognize Israel, abandon violence and commit by previously signed agreements.

Meshaal reasserted Hamas' political red lines while maintaining a sense of flexibility. In particular, Meshaal:

Rejected the Palestinian state envisaged by the Israeli leader as a "deformed entity, a large prison for detention and suffering, and not the national home a great people deserves."

Rejected Israel's demand to be recognized as a "Jewish state"--and warned against any Arab or Palestinian acquiescence--"because it means canceling the right to return to their homes of six million refugees, and the forced expulsion of our people in the 1948 areas [Palestinian citizens of Israel] from their cities and villages." Israel's demand, according to Meshaal, is no different than racist demands made by fascist Italy and the Nazis.

Reaffirmed Hamas previous acceptance of the program that represents the minimum demands of our people, for the establishment of a Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem with complete sovereignty on the borders of June 4, 1967, after the withdrawal of the occupation forces, and the dismantling of all the settlements, and the realization of the Right of Return.

Reaffirmed that "the refugees' Right of Return to the homes from which they were expelled in 1948 is a national right and an individual right held personally" by the refugees "and no leader or negotiator can waive it or compromise on it."

Meshaal also offered a nuanced response to Obama's call on Palestinians to abandon "dead end" violence in favor of nonviolent resistance. "We reaffirm our adherence to resistance as a strategic choice to liberate the homeland and restore our rights," Meshaal said, citing armed European resistance to Nazi Germany, American resistance to British rule and the Vietnamese and South African anti-colonial struggles as precedents for Palestinians.

"Nonviolent resistance is appropriate in a struggle for civil rights," Meshaal argued, "But when it comes to a military occupation using conventional and nonconventional weapons, such an occupation can only be confronted with armed resistance." Palestinians were forced to take up arms, Meshaal said. He could also have been implying that if Palestinians changed the definition of their struggle as being one for civil rights then the appropriate means of resistance would also change.

"Resistance is a means and not an end," Meshaal said, "and it is not blind. Indeed it perceives the changes underway." Yet, while staunchly defending the right to armed resistance--and even threatening new operations to take Israeli soldiers prisoner if it was the only way to free Palestinians prisoners--Meshaal also recognized other forms of struggle. He called for increased Palestinian, Arab and international solidarity efforts, including ongoing efforts to break the siege on Gaza, to resist the apartheid Wall and settlements and to prevent home demolitions and "Judaiziation" in Jerusalem.

For Hamas leaders, the dangers of submitting to western preconditions can be seen merely by looking at the trajectory of the PLO leadership which recognized Israel in 1993, renounced armed struggle and signed the Oslo accords. Since that time, Meshaal argued, the occupation and its oppression deepened as the number of Israeli settlements and Palestinian prisoners grew.

As Meshaal put it, "These conditions do not end; as soon as the Palestinian negotiator commits to one, more conditions are imposed. For example, first the condition was to recognize Israel, now it is to recognize the Jewishness of Israel. Then, that Jerusalem is its eternal capital, giving up the Right of Return, accepting that settlement blocks will remain. Then [Palestinians] must not only abandon resistance, but themselves work to oppress, pursue and disarm the resistance."

The latter point was a reference to the arrest campaign in the West Bank and what Meshaal called other "oppressive measures undertaken by the [Palestinian] Authority and the government of Salam Fayyad and its security forces under the supervision of the American General [Keith] Dayton." Meshaal presented this ongoing cooperation between the Ramallah security forces, Israel and the U.S. as the biggest obstacle to Palestinian reconciliation talks in Cairo aimed at restoring a unified national leadership.

After Hamas won the 2006 legislative election, the Bush administration began a program overseen by Dayton to arm and train anti-Hamas militias nominally loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The campaign has been accompanied by what Hamas and some human rights groups have described as a systematic crackdown on politicians, professors, charities and journalists suspected of sympathy or links with Hamas. Hamas has often retaliated by arresting Fateh-linked individuals in the Gaza Strip. In recent weeks, the Dayton-supervised militias have killed several members of Hamas in the West Bank ostensibly while trying to arrest them. Meshaal cleverly drew attention to the external role in fuelling Palestinian divisions--and how little has actually changed from the Bush administration--by "calling on Obama to withdraw Dayton from the West Bank and return him to the United States, in keeping with the new spirit of change."

Throughout the speech, Meshaal sought to reassure Palestinians that Hamas would not abandon its core principles in pursuit of recognition and power. "The land is more important than authority, and liberation before a state," he said at one point, and "no Palestinian leadership has the right to waive Palestinian national rights and interests as the price for recognition."

Some Palestinians worry that despite such assurances, Hamas has already set off down the very path Meshaal warned about and risks squandering the sacrifices Palestinians made, especially in Gaza. Haidar Eid, an independent analyst in Gaza, wrote before Meshaal's speech that some of the early enthusiastic Hamas responses to Obama's Cairo speech, as well as acceptance of the two-state solution, indicated "the beginning of a process of deterioration--even Osloization--not only in rhetoric, but also in action" [3]. This writer has heard similar fears voiced by Palestinians from the West Bank and recently in Amman. Given that many Palestinians consider that a previous generation of resistance leaders turn their backs on their peoples most fundamental interests and rights--all the while claiming to uphold them--such fears are far from irrational or uncommon.

Another analysis of Hamas' shift currently circulating argues that Hamas has accepted the Palestinian "consensus" position of a two-state solution on every inch of the 1967 occupied territories with removal of all settlements and with the Right of Return. But it knows that no potential peace deal coming from the Obama initiative will ever reach even these minimal conditions, and that if Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could not reach even the outlines of an agreement after two years of negotiations, the chances of any deal with a Netanyahu-Lieberman government are even tinier. In this scenario, Hamas need not stand in the way of a two-state solution because it will fail anyway. But by saying it would accept that minimalist outcome, it would avoid blame for the failure and its adherence to resistance would be vindicated.

What we do know is that Hamas' leaders, and the Palestinians generally, have been placed under intense pressure, occupation, blockades, starvation sieges and recurrent Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the vast majority so far has not submitted to Israeli conditions. But while emphasizing the role of resistance and struggle to achieve liberation, Hamas has not offered a clear vision of what liberation looks like other than the unconvincing and increasingly unrealistic two-state vision (leaving aside its long, outdated, though much-cited charter that offers no guide to the movements current thinking).

Meshaal's speech confirms Hamas' long-term shift away from Islamist rhetoric toward mainstream Palestinian nationalist discourse. It indicates that Hamas is highly sensitive to international and Palestinian public opinion and is aware that Palestinians need to build real international solidarity as part of a strategy to level the glaring power imbalance with Israel. But it is not prepared to seek recognition at any price. All this has implications for the movement's message and methods.

This leaves the field open for an urgent debate among Palestinians about what that future vision should be and what role resistance in all its legitimate forms should play. No group of leaders, whether from Hamas or any other organization, could or should carry the burden of restoring Palestinian rights by itself. Hamas, like other Palestinian organizations, can only be a guardian of fundamental rights to the extent that it is embedded in a broader movement mobilized in Palestine and globally to defend those rights.

And if Hamas' potential interlocutors are sincerely seeking ways to recognize the democratic mandate of the movement without trying to force it to forfeit its legitimacy, there are precedents. South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were both able to take part in successful political negotiations that got their respective countries out of disastrous political and military stalemates without being required to submit to unacceptable preconditions. That took a measure of leadership, foresight and political courage by others that has been notably absent in international dealings with Hamas.

Ali Abunimah is an expert on Palestine, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Abunimah also co-founded The Electronic Intifada, an online publication about Palestine and the Palestine-Israeli conflict, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon.

Notes:

[1] The speech is in Arabic. All excerpts quoted in this article are the author’s translation. A transcript and recording of the speech were made available by the Palestinian Information Center, a Hamas-affiliated website. See: http://bit.ly/mK7kS.
[2] In a paper given at the Annual Symposium of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University on the theme: “Palestine and the Palestinians Today,” April 2-3, 2009, Washington, DC.
[3] Eid, Haidar, “Hamas’ political immaturity,” The Electronic Intifada, 25 June 2009, (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10620.shtml).


The views expressed in this information brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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What is the Root of the Conflict?

Palestine Center Brief No. 178 (15 June 2009)

By Samar Assad

"In order to bring an end to the conflict, we must give an honest and forthright answer to the question: What is the root of the conflict?" This was the question Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu asked and answered in his 14 June 2009 speech at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv. While unsurprisingly his response was incorrect, it gave a clear indication that his approach to the peace process would be at odds with the Arabs and the majority of the international community.

A lack of understanding or intentional disregard of the root cause of the conflict--Israel's 42 year military occupation and illegal settlement of the Palestinian territory--means that there will be a lack of understanding of the true requirements for the "new era of reconciliation" he spoke of and most importantly, an unwillingness to take the steps outlined by the international community and previous bilateral and multilateral agreements that are necessary to bring a true end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The simple truth is that the root of the conflict was and remains Israel's military occupation of the West Bank (which Netanyahu referred to as Judea and Samaria), the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Sheba'a Farms as well as the denial of the outstanding historical grievances of 1948.

As for recognition, the Palestinians have recognized Israel's existence on 78 percent of their historic homeland while Israel is yet to recognize the fundamental rights and freedom of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, the Arab Peace Initiative (API) offers Arab recognition of Israel. Netanyahu's call to Arab leaders to "let us speak of peace and make peace" is a misleading statement by someone who failed to engage the API. As for Netanyahu's prerequisite that Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state, the simple truth there is that that is a precondition to negotiations designed to prejudge a major final status issue, the Right of Return. His goal to circumvent this issue is clearly stated in his speech when he said, "There must be a clear understanding that the Palestinian refugee problem will be resolved outside Israel's border."

In his speech, Netanyahu removed another important final status issue, Jerusalem. "Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel," Netanyahu said. Jerusalem is an Arab and Islamic issue, and Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem will not bring the regional peace Netanyahu claims he wants to achieve.

The speech showed disregard for international law, existing agreements and the direction of a new beginning that has been adopted by U.S. President Barack Obama. Netanyahu has clearly stated that his government will continue on the path of dictates rather than negotiations, control rather than partnerships and wars rather than peace.

It’s difficult not to notice that the structure of Netanyahu’s speech is similar to that of President Obama's Cairo speech. If Netanyahu is so keen on emulating Obama, the best way to do so is to adopt Obama's call for a new beginning based on an "effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground."

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Samar Assad is the executive director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views expressed in this information brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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