THE PALESTINIAN ISRAELI CONFLICT

Secretary of Peace and Non-Violence of the Humanist International
Author: Monica Czyza
Date: November 2004


INFORMATION
The confrontation between Palestinians and Israelis has lasted more than fifty years and what should be remarked is the national character of such dispute, that is to say, the struggle of two national movements for their realization in the same land. In these cases it is well-known, according to historical experience, that the absolute affirmation of a nationalism always goes against other nationalism.

Since the Jewish national movement had settled down (at the end of XIX) in Palestine, the Zionism, it ignored the mere existence of an Arabian Palestine. However, today we can claim that a Palestinian nation was configured, precisely because of such Zionist denial. The very national Jewish construction in Israel, was used as a mirror for the formation of a national Palestinian conscience.

During the Britannic term of office of 1920, first, a intercommunitary conflict would take place, among the immigrant Jews that aimed at having a native country in Ishuv, the para-state establishment in Palestine, and the old Arabian inhabitants of Palestine that wanted to avoid the Jewish immigration, because according to the vision of that times, it threatened their own identity and its inclusion in a Great Syria, absolutely Arabian. Such confrontation would become, from 1948, in an international conflict because of the intervention of the armies of the Arabian neighboring states that would refuse the partition of Palestine decided by the UNO and the consequent creation of a Jewish state.

The evolution of the Palestinian identity would undergo important changes when the state of Israel is created, and it would even be outshone by the transformation of the Palestinian-Israeli local conflict into the main regional conflict, the Arabian-Israeli conflict. What was Palestinian, would join the major Arabian identity that was proposed as the main one.

Also, the expulsions, the escape, and the exile consequent to the Israeli victory would transform thousands of Palestinians in refugees. Its national construction would be constrained by the struggling among the new participants, three status that were also longing for their affirmation: a good number of Palestinians would be par of the so-called Green Line of Armistice (the State of Israel) and would constitute themselves as Arabian Israelis, citizens of a new state of Jewish predominance, which is ethnically defined as Israel the Jewish state. On the other hand, at the Occidental side, added by Transjordany (which was at that time the Hasemite Reign of Jordan) the Palestinian would be considered Jordan and Jordan would try, with no success, a process of Jordanization that could prevent the possibility of a Palestinian construction which would question the legitimacy of the very reign, which would have now a population which was Palestinian in its majority, and not specifically Bedouin, as the original nucleus of King Abdul’s Transjordany was. Another small Palestinian part would be under Egyptian administration in Gaza and among others the Nasserist regimen would promote its Palestinity but in the Panarabist biggest context, to use them in the confrontation against the new big enemy of Arabs: Israel.

But neither the Nasserist Panarabism, nor Jordanization would be able to deteriorate the particular Palestinian identity. In the overcrowding fields of refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and in the diaspora of Egypt, Iraq, the Gulf and other countries, the basis for a Palestinian national movement of liberation were being developed.

At the same time, the confrontation between them would try to hide the inner contradictions, as every nationalism usually does. The dominant national project on the Israeli side would Laborist label, and the State would be built based on such ideology. On the Palestinian side the nationalist populist ideas would predominate in the hegemonic political field, the LPM, Al Fatah. But both would have inner opponents that will dispute the kind of nation which was going to be built.

The wars of 1967 and 1973 and the general character of the East-West confrontation would produce a transcendental shift in the Israeli Politics: the territorial acquisitions as a result of their military victims would not be useful for negotiation to obtain recognition as a state; the keeping of those lands as a part of a new triumphalist annexionist conception that t would give start to a new ethnisist-religious nationalism. From that moment, the , Occupied land at the Occidental coast would be named, according to the Jewish historical tradition, Samaria in the North, Judea in the South, recovered and not occupied according to the nationalist-religious view. Lately, the Syrian Golan and Jerusalem would be annexed to Israel, and the Holy City of the three big abrahamic religions would be officially considered the eternal capital of the state of Israel.

El Israeli opposition would have favorable effects on the development of a national Palestinian conscience, since the absolute occupation of the territories by non-Arabian populations would enhance their distinguishing particularities. There would be no more Palestinian under other power rather than the Israeli. Also, the slaughter and expulsion of the survivors of Black September massacre in 1970 performed by the Jordan government and the Nasser’s death during the same year would convince Palestinians that their affirmation could only be reached by themselves and not by means of the intervention of other Arabian nations, such as Egypt or Syria. Another factor of the absolute Israeli occupation would be the certainty that Israel was there to stay, and that the Jews would not be pushed to the sea as it had been thought.

Later, the Jewish settlements in occupied lands would show a movement of religious basis aimed at conciliating Mesianism with Nationalism and that would try to substitute Zionism by a Jewish state with ethinicist and excluding characteristics. On Palestinian side, at the same time, such project of forced Judeization of the Territories and the increasing confiscation of Palestinian lands, would motivate a greater resistance (the Intifada) to which a new competitor pf nationalism would join, the Islamic resistance, result of the influence of the new Islamic militancy that would seek the construction of an Islamic state, not a secular one.

The Intifada (the national Palestinian uprising of 1987) and the extinction of the Soviet Union would be the immediate antecedents of Peace negotiation that would open in 1991, still being developed at present out of the international system, in the field of mediation of the United States, and possible because of the new international situation of north-America unipolar predominance, and therefore according to Israeli will, who never trusted the United Nations, since the majority vote of the states that conform it always condemned Israel.

But such negotiations had in their beginnings a positive sub-product: the mutual acknowledgment of both nationalisms. For the first time, the state of Israel acknowledged the Palestinians when they accepted a negotiation with them and the Palestinians had already accepted Israel, when they manifested their will to build their independent Palestinian state only in the Occidental Side and in Gaza, admitting therefore the right Israel had to occupy the rest of the historical Palestine and their negotiating will for the rest.

However, the North American partiality towards Israel and the lack of international support for Palestinians would provoke the frustration of what had been agreed: peace in exchange of territories, principle found in the spirit of resolutions 242 and 338 of United Nations, which demanded that Israel should leave the Territories and the Arabian should recognize Israel.

The enforcement of the nationalist and religious Israeli right, supported indirectly by the different Israeli government when maintaining and expanding the Jewish settlements, ( clearly forbidden by the agreements signed) and the terrorist response from the Palestinian intransigence, would take to a standstill and to an pause till the end of 2004, when Yasser Arafat, historical Palestinian leader, died, and the PNA assumed the power, a moderate faction determined to go on with the negotiations with the negotiations.

REPORT
Palestinians were subdued to occupation. Such occupation is obviously legal by means of the international right and by the numerous resolutions of the United Nations.
According the report elaborated for the year 2004 by the Palestinian Center of Human Rights of Gaza, the Israeli army killed 834 Palestinians, of which 667 were civilians, 167 children, 13 women, 19 older than 60 years and hurt 1884 people. Since the beginning of the second intifada, in the year 2000, 3196 civilians have died, including 618 children, and there are 8545 injured, from which hundreds had permanent lessons.

“In the occupied territories, the Israeli army pulled down buildings and killed more and more Palestinians. About 700 Palestinians died, among them 150 children. The Israeli army killed most of them illegitimately since they performed shots in a reckless way, air bombardments or attacks were performed against refugees camps and other populated areas of Cisjordany an the area of Gaza. The Israeli forces went on with extrajudicial executions of members and leaders of Hama and other Palestinian groups, executions which frequently caused deaths or injuries to people who walked around the place where the event took place. About 109 Israelis, most of them civilians, and among them 8 kids, died as a consequence of the suicide attacks with explosives, gun shots and mortar attacks performed by armed Palestinian groups in Israel an in the occupied territories.
In Cisjordany and in the area of Gaza the systematic destruction of houses, lands and Palestinian properties was intensified,it in the greatest houses demolition registered in the area of Gaza since the beginning of the intifada (insurrection) The Israeli army pulled down in may about 300 buildings and damaged about 270 more refugees camp of Rafah, leaving approximately 4,000 Palestinians homeless. Despite the resolution of the International Judicial Court, Israel went on destructing in Cisjordany a fence/wall of 600 kilometers that surrounded and isolated Palestinian cities and suburbs. The fence/wall and the hundreds of control posts and blockages established by the Israeli army in the Occupied Territories went on obstructing and preventing the access of Palestinians to their lands and places of work, to health and education centers, and to other basic services.”

Since1976 Israel has been he main receptor of help from the United States. According to the report from the Research service of the United States congress in November of 2001, the North-American help to Israel during the past half century reached the huge amount of 81.3 thousand million dollars.In recent years, Israel continues to be the main receptor of military and economic assistance of his allied- The most well-known data is of 3 thousand million dollars a year, of which 1.8 thousand millions are donations of funds inside the External Military Financing (EMF) branch of the Defense Department, and 1,200 annual millions from the Funds of Economic Support of the State Department. Summarizing, 17% of all the help from the United Stated is destined to Israel. The United States also gives armaments and ammunition as a part of the Excess Defense Articles programs (EDA), giving them away with no charges. Between1994 and 2001, they provided the biggest part of the arms to Israel thanks to this program.

The International Court of the Hague condemned Israel to dismantle the wall that surrounded the Palestinian population and to compensate Palestinians, and also left in the hands of the General Assembly of the United Nations (where USA has no veto) the decision to take measures against the construction, and in favour of pulling down what had been built on the confiscated Palestinian lands. Israel ignored such resolution.

Also, North-American and European experts calculate that Israel possesses more than 200 devices, counting bombs and nuclear warheads, and also earth-to-earth transporting rockets, of medium and long reach, which allow them to bomb the different countries of the area and although the United States demands a nuclear disarmament plan for the whole Middle East, they exclude Israel for considering it a “special case”.

PROPOSAL
Our proposal is based on the following:

In the first term, the steps that Israel would have to give and in the immediate:

a. Return of the territories of Gaza and West Bank and with regard to the Israeli colonies installed in these territories, simply that the inhabitants could choose if they want to remain and to continue their life in Palestine as Palestinian citizens, or they prefer installing in another place that the Israeli government will grant them inside the Israeli territory.

b. Destruction of the wall.

c. Nuclear disarmament.

In the second term, Israel and the international community should support economically Palestine in order that  their inhabitants have access to work, health and education. It is not a question of turning Palestine into the western model of life, but of that  the palestinians have access to worthy conditions of life to which any human being has right.

The way to reach an agreement cannot be based just on the Israeli retirement of the occupied territories, the destruction of the wall or the monetary compensation.

It requires a process of conciliation which deals with the topic of responsibility, of victims and responsible ones on both sides.

And the hardest part will be on the Israeli side, which will have to acknowledge its role of colonist, oppressor and squatter, and above all, they’ll have to accept that even when Israel is an occidental “oasis” in the Middle East, they’ll have to share it with their “poor” Palestinian neighbours. They cannot only look towards Occident any longer, without taking into account what is going on around.

On their side, Palestinians will definitively have to convince themselves that the Jewish arrived to stay and that it is no longer possible to “push them to the sea” and that they have the same right on the lands.

A process that means an effort to reach conciliation would be that one which not only be centred in establishing offenders, but also in trying to identify the needs and obligations of the different communities. The Palestinian demand of justice can be useful to regulate life there where life was interrupted. Justice cannot be made to provoke suffering to the responsible, but to prevent that suffering goes on.

Such non-retributive trial was offered by the “Truth commission” presided by archbishop Desmond Tutu in South-Africa. The power of such commission was based on its rejection to impose punishments as well as its insistence on discussing future relationships among the different communities in South-Africa. It was the only way to assure that the victims could not become tyrants.

Victims y responsible ones have the opportunity to meet and on the one hand, the victim can publicly report its suffering, and on the other hand, the responsible one can explain what happened and express its regret and motivations.

Only in this way can they start a process of conciliation between both sides, recognize them as human beings above all, and not as enemies any more.

And the European community can play an important role in this process, not just facilitating resources to help the devastated Palestinian economy, but also by means of its wide experience after centuries of territorial, religious, and ethnic wars.

Europe should have the role of mediation to proceed with nuclear disarmament in the area, lands return, the destruction o the wall and the building of a conciliation committee between Palestinians and Israelis.

Europe can have this role with the creation of an international, interethnical and interreligious group of civilian volunteers, based on non-violence and the resolution of conflicts, that can get to the place with a plan of concrete work, work with Israelis and Palestinians so that they can move both in the governmental and civilian level, and in complete cooperation with non-violent associations of Israel and Palestine.

Finally, and with regard to Jerusalem, this city should be declared patrimony of the humanity and internationalized. Being a headquarters of three big religions, it should be administered by it own inhabitants and politically not belong to anybody especially and to all in general.

Palestine and Israel, are a source of permanent conflict since 50 years ago, no-one can be indifferent to that. The conflict should become conciliation and in open future for everyone who undergoes it everyday.