Palestine - A State or a Bantustan?

Doris and I just had tea with Jeff Halper, the director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, excellent analyst of the Palestinian situation, activist and friend. Jeff helps me remember that not all Israli Jews are alike and some are my allies. Jeff is just back from a 6 week tour which ended in  South Africa where he was an expert witness at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, held
in Capetown.

It had started to rain, so we arrived at Jeff's new office dripping wet. He showed us around as he finished hanging some framed photos and posters on the wall. Then he suggested we go to a coffee shop to chat. We all ordered tea, and were soon disecting Jeff's trip, the meaning of apartheid, the Arab Spring and Palestine's bid for statehood.

The purpose of the two weeks of testimony at the Russell Tribunal was to see if the facts on the ground in Israel /Palestine meet the international legal definition of "apartheid." Jeff's testimony alone would seem to be enough to prove that they do. Israel's policy of demolishing homes in the rural areas (Area C under the Oslo Accords) in order to force Palestinians into the urban and village areas (Areas A and B) is the same as pushing them into bantustans as occurred in apartheid South Africa.

Israel denies that its policies are based on race and thus it cannot be accused of apartheid. But its policies are clearly based on religion, as Jews are not targeted in the same way as Palestinians. Jeff argues that such policies are aimed at separating the two peoples, to the advantage of Jews over Palestinians/Moslems. And, he adds, Israel does not use the word "apartheid" but does use the Hebrew translation of that word, which is "hafrada". The term “hafrada" came into use under former Prime Minister Ehud Barak as the definition of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

Next, I wanted to hear Jeff’s take on l) the impact of the Arab Spring on Palestine and 2) the value of Palestine’s bid for a seat at the United Nations. Jeff agreed with me that last Fall when I was here, hope for peace was at an all time low. He thinks the Arab Spring has given people a new sense of hope and energy. Also, he doubts that Mahmoud Abbas would have tried for a seat at the U.N. if not for this boost from the Arab Spring

As for the actual bid for statehood, Jeff was critical of the nay-sayers among some Palestinian intellectuals and activists who waited until the last minute to raise objections such as Abbas not representing the PLO or the refugees outside of Palestine, and his still calling for a two-state solution when it seems o bvious that there is not enough land left for a separate Palestinian state. But more importantly, Jeff worries that Palestinians do not have a plan or stategy for where they are going. If they don’t get statehood, it is possible that Abbas will resign, leaving a vacuum into which Israel will have to move, most likely with renewed military occupation of the cities.

It is a probem that noone has articulated a one-state goal--given the fact of the settlements strewn throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem which makes a separate state hard to envision. Everyone who supports Palestinians wants the Israeli occupation to end. But then what?? Jeff plans to write another article about this dilemma. Meanwhile, he wonders if Palestinians might take a civil rights approach by demanding a vote within the system that controls them and has taken away so much of their land. If Israel denied them the vote, could it still claim to be a democracy and not an apartheid state?

As a footnote to the above, we had to ask why the U.S. insists on supporting Israel to the degree of seeming to be subservient to it. Jeff named three main reasons: l) the pro-Israel lobby, especially strong among Democrats, 2) the Republican Christian Zionists, and 2) the arms industry. Seventy percent of the huge aid package of $3 billion a year must be spent on U.S. military supplies.

These realities seem intractable , but hope springs eternal. Who could predict the Arab Spring would bring down two dictators - so far.