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War by other means
By Saleh Abdel Jawad, 05/2001
Judaising Palestine has always been the aim of the Zionist movement.
The 1948 war produced devastating results: 85 per cent of the
Palestinian villages that fell under Israeli control during the war
were entirely destroyed, while their inhabitants were forced to flee
beyond the borders of the newly declared state of Israel. These
villages, constituting 50 per cent of the Palestinian villages within
the former historical borders of Palestine, were demolished one after
the other, though most of them had suffered little damage from
military operations, that is if they had engaged in military
operations at all. Some of these villages were only demolished many
years after 1948, and this despite the Israeli urgent need to provide
housing for the million Jewish immigrants who arrived in Israel in the
few years following the war. Palestinians in the cities fared no
better. Cities such as Beir al-Sab' (BeerSheba), Bisan, Tiberius and
Safd were entirely evacuated of their original inhabitants. Others
such as Jaffa, Acre, Lod and Ramla were partially evacuated, leaving
only a few thousand in each. For weeks following the fall of their
cities, the remaining inhabitants watched in horor as hundreds of
Palestinians were subjected to summary executions.
These drastic measures, employed in 1948, to expel the indigenous
population, have been refined over time, and have given way to a
policy which I shall call "sociocide", that is the gradual undermining
of the communal and psychological structures of Palestinian society in
order to compel the Palestinians to leave by other means. The use of
the June 1967 war to achieve this aim is a case in point. The Israeli
government had already, before the outbreak of war, undertaken a
comprehensive survey of Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza.
Once occupied in June 1967, Israel imposed its military rule and,
through this, it set out to achieve four main aims: firstly, to
destroy the Palestinian economy; secondly, to decimate Palestinian
national spirit and identity; thirdly, to deprive Palestinians of
their political and civil rights, and fourthly, to transform
Palestinian daily life into an endless chain of hardship.
Over the years, the Israeli government has stripped the Palestinian
people of their land under a variety of pretexts. They have been told
that their land was actually government property, that the land they
lived on no longer belonged to them, since they were no longer
physically present in the country (naturally, since they had had to
flee Israeli troops in 1967, some for the second time...), or that
their land was needed for 'public welfare'. But, after the signing of
the Oslo accords, the Israelis have come to feel that that they do not
have to give any notification at all for their decision to confiscate
Palestinian land. Israel now owns or controls over 70 per cent of the
land on the West Bank and approximately 30 per cent of the land area
in Gaza. In addition, it has gained total control over Palestinian
water resources. As Palestinian farmers' crops have withered, Israeli
settlers on Palestinian land have been able to sunbathe around their
newly installed swimming pools.
Palestinian markets have been flooded by Israeli products. There are
no customs controls, and no form of protection is afforded to
Palestinian products. 92 per cent of imports into the West Bank come
from Israel, and 22 per cent of Israeli exports are destined for Gaza.
As a result, the majority of Palestinian farmers, who constitute about
65 per cent of the population, have found themselves without land,
without water and without safeguards against the influx of Israeli
agricultural products.
Palestinian industry is stagnant. Already the victim of British
colonial policy and Jordanian rule, the latter concentrating all
Palestinian industry on the East Bank when the West Bank was under
Jordanian control, the Palestinian economy has now been subjugated to
the Israeli, not only in terms of the dependency of the periphery upon
the centre, but also as part of Israel's policy to de-develop the
Palestinian economy. According to Sara Roy of Harvard University,
"de-development not only distorts development, but forestalls it
entirely by depriving the economy of its capacity and potential for
rational structural transformation and preventing the emergence of any
self-correcting measures." De-development, therefore, is not merely a
form of political control and economic exploitation, it also has the
long-term aim of thoroughly dislocating Palestinian society and
development.
Once again the original land owner -- the Palestinian farmer -- has
been the victim of these policies. As was the case both before, and in
the wake of the 1948 war, Palestinian farmers have had no alternative
but to put themselves on the Israeli labour market under very singular
conditions in which political, rather than economic factors, have
prevailed. Palestinian labourers have been forced to work at rates
varying from 40 to 60 per cent of the pay of Jewish workers doing the
same jobs. They have been confined to areas in which opportunities for
career and personal advancement are limited, such as fruit-picking,
cleaning and janitorial services, and construction. These have
absorbed some 51 per cent of the Palestinian labour force.
As was the case with cheap Arab labour at the time of the first
Zionist settlements in Palestine in the late 19th century, Palestinian
workers today are forbidden to sleep near their work places, which are
frequently located near the areas their forefathers had lived in. They
are therefore obliged to travel an average of 100 kilometres a day, to
work like machines, and to return home exhausted so that their
families can "enjoy" the fruits of Israeli production. They have also
been forbidden to set up Palestinian labour unions, and, deprived of
any opportunity to defend their rights at the workplace, and forced to
accept discriminatory wages, they have been denied the kind of
protections commonly accorded workers elsewhere. Palestinian workers
have also been forced to pay a portion of their salaries into a fund,
the volume of assets of which remains a mystery, and from which no
Palestinian has ever received any benefit.
These circumstances have not been solely dictated by the nature of the
Israeli economy. Beyond the opportunity for exploitation signalled by
a mass of cheap labour, there has been, among Israelis, the very
conscious fear of developing a Palestinian working class, which could
generate polarisation between a Jewish bourgeoisie and a Palestinian
proletariat. At all events, as a result of industrial stagnation, a
decline in tourism and a decline in the Palestinian agricultural
sector, there has evolved in the West Bank and Gaza a malignant
dependency on the Israeli labour market. More than 50 per cent of the
per-capita income in Gaza is derived from this source. The proportion
is less for the West Bank, although it is still significant and has
had a profound social, economic and political impact.
When Israel blockades the West Bank on the pretext of security
precautions, it effectively commits a major crime and one that can not
be equated to blockades which Western European countries, under the
strains of unemployment, have imposed in an attempt to stem the influx
of foreign labour. Fifty years ago, Israel dispossessed these workers
of their land and the land of their children, who now live in refugee
camps. It has pillaged the economic foundations of the people whose
land it occupied in 1967. It has destroyed their entire social
structure with the aim of converting them into a source of cheap
labour to serve the Israeli economy and the state's long-term
political aims. It has made no gesture of remorse for the crimes it
committed in 1948, felt no moral obligation to make redress for the
rights it has usurped and made no attempt to alleviate the suffering
inflicted by its racist policies.
Parallel to its economic policies, Israel has also targeted, from the
outset, Palestinian civic institutions. It dissolved the municipal
council of East Jerusalem, and among the first to be expelled
following the occupation were the head of the council, Ruhi al-Khatib
and Sheikh al-Hamid al-Saih of the supreme Islamic commission. It has
also routinely closed down universities for extended periods of time.
Beir Zeit university in the West Bank, for example, had been closed 15
times since it was founde in 1974 for periods ranging from several
weeks to several months, and this does not include the innumerable de
facto closures intended to disrupt university life by setting up
military barricades. The last closure of Beir Zeit lasted four years.
And the closure not only interrupted studies: No one --professors,
cleaning staff, lab technicians -- were permitted to enter the
university, and this disruption of education, research, and the
maintenance of the university and its facilities has taken an
incalculable toll. It is also seldom appreciated that the libraries
these universities contain are the only libraries available to
citizens of the West Bank and Gaza, and closure has meant that for
years Palestinians have been deprived of access to sources of
information and cultural stimulus.
Schools, including nurseries, have been routinely shut down, if for
shorter duration, causing disastrous disruption to the curriculum and
children's education. Other institutions such as cultural centres and
youth clubs have been closed down permanently. Freedom of travel for
the purpose of cultural and educational exchanges within the Arab
World, long a primary stimulus to Palestinian cultural life, has been
curtailed. After thirty years of occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,
Israel, the so-called "democratic oasis of the Middle East" can boast
that it has transformed generations of Palestinian young people, once
a major tributary of the Arab intelligentsia, into a mass of
undereducated, overworked labourers.
Democratic institutions, such as municipal councils, have also been
subjected to systematic destruction. The last municipal elections in
the West Bank were held in 1976 and in Gaza in 1967, when the Israeli
government dismissed the popularly elected representatives and
replaced them with corrupt Israeli officers. The councils themselves
were then replaced by committees, most of which were run by
appointees, individuals with criminal records, or individuals who had
dubious connections with the Israeli authorities. Four Palestinian
municipal leaders from some of the West Bank's larger cities were
dismissed or banished during the period 1969 - 1981. In a single day
in June 1980, three other municipal leaders were the target of
assassination attempts. Two of these suffered severe and permanent
injuries.
Exile has long been the Israeli government's main weapon for depriving
the Palestinian people in the occupied territories of their popular
leaders. Up until the Madrid peace conference in 1991, the Israelis
had exiled more than a thousand Palestinian figures. To put this
figure into some kind of perspective, even under the emergency laws in
force under the British mandate, laws which Menachem Begin himself
described as more horrendous than Nazi ones, exile was exceptional,
and even then subject to specific time limitations.
Under these circumstances, the only explanation for Israel's policy is
to drive home to the Palestinians that they are aliens on their own
land, a perception that today is being forced upon the Arabs of
Jerusalem, Muslims and Christians alike. All individuals who do not
hold an Israeli passport find themselves divested of their natural
right to citizenship; Palestinians have been transformed into
'permanent residents', and even that status is open to question. Two
years ago, the Arab population of Jeusalem, whose ancestors lived in
the city for hundreds of years, suddenly found themselves at risk of
losing their "permanent resident" status, if one of three instances
could be said to apply. Firstly, if they left the country and obtained
a foreign nationality, then the occupation authorities would consider
them aliens, who would have to obtain a visa to "visit" their native
country. The law, of course, is discriminatory, as most Israeli Jewish
citizens are permitted to hold dual naionality. Secondly, if a
Palestinian from Jerusalem resided for more than six years outside the
city's boundaries, then, according to the new law, they would lose
their residence status. This provision has been applied to thousands
of young Palestinian couples, whom, by virtue of Israel's racist
housing policies, have been unable to find housing inside Jerusalem.
Thirdly, if a Palestinian resided outside the country for a period
beyond that specified in his exit permit and was unable to obtain an
extension from an Israeli consulate abroad, he would also forfeit his
resident status. Little wonder, then, that the expression "silent
transfer" has been coined to describe this phenomenon of exile by
other means.
One of the worst aspects of Israeli policy (unique, it might be
thought, in colonial experience) is the use of prisons as instruments
of sociocide. Throughout the world, prisons are used to punish
offenders, but, in Israel they have other purposes. Since 1967, more
than a quarter of a million Palestinians have been imprisoned, many
more than once and for periods of up to 12 years. Many have
languished in prison for years on end without charges being brought
and without prospect of trial. To imprison a quarter of a million
people out of a total population of two million is in itself
extraordinary. And the philosophy underlying this extends beyond
combating Palestinian resistance. In fact, Israeli prisons have been
transformed into large-scale means of control and investigation,
designed to enable the Israeli authorities to tighten their control.
Palestinian prisoners have routinely been subjected to various forms
of torture, often for the most innocuous reasons such as being members
of student unions, or participating in peaceful demonstrations. Since
1976, however, prison authorities have relied primarily on
psychological torture, or forms of physical torture that do not leave
visible marks, such as covering the victim's head for several days.
Interrogations are conducted with the aim of furnishing an in-depth
profile of the individual concerned. Interrogators compile data on
their victims' political leanings, family life, personal strengths and
weaknesses, sex life, leadership capacities, powers of endurance, and
so on, so as to weaken his or her resistance.
In addition to instilling fear and degradation, Israeli prisons are
also recruiting grounds for thousands of informers, a further
instrument for psychologically breaking the prisoners and destroying
their confidence in themselves and in their society.
In spite of the fact that Israel had inherited dozens of British
prisons, built in virtually every town and city in order to subjugate
Palestinians during the 1936 revolution, the Israeli occupation
authorities have built many more. Some, such as Ansar-2 in the Negev,
can accommodate several thousand detainees.
Another unique phenomenon that sets the Israeli occupation apart is
the excessive, deliberate use of administrative measures to dominate
the Palestinian population. Every detail of the Palestinians'
day-to-day life is subject to bureaucratic controls, creating enormous
psychological pressure upon the individual. Even the simplest
concerns, concerns that should constitute natural individual rights in
every country of the world, must pass through Israel's apparatus of
military rule. This includes obtaiing a work permit, travel abroad,
marriage to a person from abroad, being reunited with one's relatives,
forming cultural societies, establishing hospitals, obtaining an
identity card, obtaining a building permit, taking driving lessons,
obtaining a driving licence and obtaining a birth certificate. Of
course many of these permits require a certain amount of red tape in
all countries. However, approval there can generally be expected, and
the paperwork is routine. In Israel, on the other hand, every request
for a permit must be put through the security mill, even those that
could not possibly have security implications. Moreover, a large
number of requests are turned down with no explanation. After all,
what logical justification could be offered for refusing dozens of
applications to build hospitals in an area where public health
services have seriously deteriorated since 1967?
At a time when Zionist propaganda has succeeded in projecting the
Palestinian struggle as a terrorist movement, two million people are
suffering under a deliberate policy of state terror. The constant
threat of harassment and even of murder, of curfews, arbitrary arrest
and road blocks plague Palestinian daily life, and have gradually
forced the population to retreat behind closed doors as soon as night
falls. As the occupation has grown more arrogant, people have been
forbidden to go to the seaside, to pray in holy places, to take walks
in mountains which had once belonged to them. The few cinemas and
amusement parks have vanished.
All these and other measures have generated a climate of fear,
anxiety, and unbearable depression and frustration. Simply to go on
living under these conditions demands a high degree of personal
sacrifice and commitment to the national cause
