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ContentsVOLUME 11 NUMBER 1 AUTUMN 2008RAMADAN 1429

Editorial 3

Anti-Arab Racism and Incitement in Israel 5ALI ABUNIMAH

Outsides 11SAREE MAKDISI

Military Occupation: Samoud and Sorrow 17ALICE ROTHCHILD

The Israeli ‘Miracle’, Denial and theAlternative to Apartheid 25RAMZY BAROUD

BOOK REVIEWS 31

An Israeli in Palestine, ResistingDispossession, Redeeming Israelby Jeff HalperREVIEWED BY DR.HEYAM AWAD

The Iron Cage: The Story of thePalestinian Struggle for Stateby Rashid KhalidiREVIEWED BY DR. MARIA HOLT

The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions,Archaeology and Post-Colonialism inIsrael-Palestineby Nur MasalhaREVIEWED BY SAM JACOB

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestineby Ilan PappeREVIEWED BY DR.ANTHONY MCROY

Published ByFriends of Al-AqsaPO Box 5127Leicester LE2 0WU, UKTel: ++ 44 (0)116 2125441Mobile: 07711823524e-mail: info@aqsa.org.ukWebsite: www.aqsa.org.uk

ISSN 1463-3930

EDITOR

SUB-EDITOR

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© 2008 Friend of Al-Aqsa

WE WELCOME

Papers, articles andcomments on any issuerelating to Palestine andthe Middle East conflict.We especially encouragewritings relating to theHistory, Politics,Architecture, Religion,International Law andHuman Rights violations.The word count shouldnot exceed 2,000 words.Reviews of Books relatingto the issue of Palestineare also welcome andshould not exceed 1,000words. Letters on anyrelated topics can also besent and the Editorreserves the right to editletters for the purpose ofclarity. All contributionsshould be in Word format,Times New Roman fontsize 12 and sent to theEditor via email at theabove address. It mustinclude the author’s fullname, address and a briefcurriculum vitae.

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E D I T O R I A L

And Allah does increase in guidance those who seek guidance.May Allah’s blessings be upon all His Prophets from Adam to His final Messenger Muhammad (saw).

It is difficult not to feel overwhelmed by a sense ofhopelessness when faced with the reality of life in Gaza.As the inhabitants of that densely populated strip of landcry out in pain and anguish at the injustices being visitedupon them, their cries seem to be drowned out by an everdeafening international silence.

What will it take for the global community to stand upto Israel and its inhumane policies in Gaza? Israel continuesto deny that it has created a humanitarian catastrophedespite the overwhelming evidence confirming that theconditions have never been this bad since the occupationbegan. The situation is so horrendous, that the UN hasissued a number of statements condemning the on-goingsiege and the deteriorating conditions.

The damage that Gaza as a society has suffered iscolossal. For every employed Palestinian in Gaza, there are8.6 dependents. The damage to the economy by the siegeis irreversible, and the people of Gaza will spend yearstrying to recover from the total collapse of their societybrought about by deliberate Israeli measures. The strictrefusal to allow entry of adequate basic necessities such asfuel and medicines has impacted on every sector and everyfacet of life. From industry, schools, hospitals, and farms,to the power plant and sewage works, nothing has beenallowed to function normally.

The lack of fuel has meant that sewage treatment plantsare only able to treat about 20-40% of the raw sewage.The remainder is being pumped into the sea every day orallowed to gather in open cesspits which are a danger toall those living around. The environmental consequencesof this are grave, and already, Gazan children swimmingin the sea are contracting diseases and the sea life isdiminishing.

The effects of Israel’s siege in Gaza will be felt forgenerations to come, unless there is an effort to stop it,

now. Children face stunted growth from lack of keynutrients, while across the border in Israel the lifestyle is aparadox. Israel’s proposed reasons for the siege – to stopKassam rockets – does not bear mentioning, as it representsa clear and grossly disproportionate, appalling andinhumane tactic of warfare.

While Gaza rots, the West Bank fares little better, withIsraeli settlements expanding rapidly around Jerusalem inorder to complete the process of ethnic cleansing Jerusalemof all of its Palestinian inhabitants. Further into the WestBank, although there are no Kassam rockets, Israel continuesincursions and killings. And Palestinians remain terrorisedby violent Israeli settlers.

At this dark hour, the Palestinians can be sure that thereare millions of people around the world sharing their pain,working for justice and praying for an end to the conflict.Israel’s brutality will finally awaken the world and then theday when Palestine is free will not be far away.

Beyond donating aid and making prayers, each of usshares the responsibility for standing up against this injustice.Our democracy allows us to voice dissent againstgovernment policies that allow Israel this free reign ofmisery in Gaza and terror in the West Bank. We mustexercise that right and put pressure on our politicians tostand up for human rights in the Palestinian territories. Eachyear, there is a lobby of Parliament in November tocoincide with the UN Palestine day. This year, the lobbywill take place on 19 November 2008. Parliament is openfor all British citizens to visit their MPs and bring freshattention to the plight of Palestinians.

This opportunity should not be missed and in previousyears, the lobby day has brought together people of allreligions and backgrounds who share one common belief– that the occupation must come to an end. This mustcontinue in order to convince the government that peacein Palestine is a priority for all of Britain. The theme of‘Justice for Palestinians’ means calling for an end to theIsraeli occupation; the siege on Gaza; Israeli settlements;and the EU-Israel trade agreement, and supportingPalestinian self-determination.

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A YOUTH EXCHANGE PROGRAMME WITHAN NAJAH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, NABLUS, PALESTINE

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Ali Abunimah*

Anti-Arab Racism andIncitement in Israel

A prominent strategy of Israeli hasbara,or official propaganda, is to deflectcriticism of its actions in the occupied

West Bank and Gaza Strip by stressing thatwithin the country’s 1948 boundaries, it is amodel democracy comparable to the societiesin Western Europe and North America withwhich it identifies and on whose diplomaticsupport it relies to maintain a favorable statusquo. In fact, Israeli society is in the grip of awave of unchecked racism and incitement thatseriously threatens Israel’s Palestiniancommunity and the long-term prospects forregional peace. This paper examines societaland institutional racism and incitement bypublic figures against Israel’s Arab populationand considers some policy implications.

Background and context

When Israel was established in 1948, mostof the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants weredriven out or fled from the area that becameIsrael. Approximately 150,000 Palestiniansremained behind. Until 1966, these Palestinianslived under martial law. Today, having increasedin number to approximately 1.3 million orabout one fifth of Israel’s population (notincluding the Palestinian population ofoccupied East Jerusalem), they are citizens ofthe state of Israel and can vote in electionsfor the Knesset. Despite this, most viewthemselves as second-class citizens. Asindigenous non-Jews in a self-described Jewishstate, they face a host of systematic social, legal,economic and educational barriers to equality.Israel lacks a constitution and has no otherbasic law guaranteeing equal rights to all citizensregardless of religion, race, ethnicity or nationalorigin.

One measure of the cumulative impactof these discriminatory policies issocioeconomic: while just 16 percent ofJewish citizens in Israel fall below the officialpoverty line, the figure for non-Jews is 50percent, according to the Israeli DemocracyInstitute’s index.

In October 2000, Israeli police used liveammunition against unarmed civiliansdemonstrating their solidarity withPalestinians in the occupied territories.Thirteen Palestinians, of whom twelvewere Israeli citizens, were shot dead. Anofficial commission, headed by JudgeTheodor Or, was appointed to look intothe events which came to mark a dramaticdeterioration in Arab-Jewish relations insidethe country. In 2003, the Or Commissionconfirmed that the police used “excessive”and unjustifiable force, reported that thepolice viewed the country’s Arab citizensas “enemies” and documented a patternof “prejudice and neglect” towards themby Israel’s establishment.

While the Or Commission recom-mended a number of measures to redressthe sharp disparities between Jews andArabs in the country, families of the victimsregarded the report as a whitewash. TheCommission failed to examine the forensicevidence in each of the killings, and noneof the killers, nor any responsible official,were ever brought to justice. By 2007,according to Elie Rekhess of the MosheDayan Center at Tel Aviv University, thereremained “yawning” gaps between Jewsand Arabs in Israel and “the bottom line”is “that the conclusions and recom-mendations of the 2003 Or Commissionremain conspicuously unimplemented.”

* ALI ABUNIMAH is an American Journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada. His mother became a refugeein the 1948 Palestinian exodus. Ali Abunimah graduated from Princeton University and the University of Chicago, andis a frequent speaker and commentator on the Middle East, contributing regularly to the Chicago Tribune and the LosAngeles Times among other publications. This article first appeared in this version on Electronic Intifada

Israeli society isin the grip of awave of un-checked racismand incitementthat seriouslythreatens Israel’sPalestiniancommunity

while just 16percent of Jewishcitizens in Israelfall below theofficial povertyline, the figure fornon-Jews is 50percent

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Amidst the increasingly precarious situationof Palestinian citizens of Israel, prominent andbroadly representative leaders of thatcommunity published in 2007 a series ofdocuments setting out visions for Israel as astate of all its citizens with equality for all.1The response of the Israeli body politic wasoverwhelmingly to view these initiatives as anunwelcome threat to the “Jewish character”of the state. Israel’s Shin Bet (secret police),responsible among other things for many“targeted killings” in the occupied territories,went so far as to warn that it would “disruptthe activities of any groups that seek to changethe Jewish or democratic character of Israel,even if they use democratic means,” the Israelidaily Haaretz reported in April 2007.

Unlearned lessons: the Jabal al-Mukkabir“pogrom”

On 10 March 2008, a week after aPalestinian opened fire in the Mercaz HaRavyeshiva in Jerusalem killing eight students,apparently in revenge for Israel’s killing ofdozens of civilians in Gaza, a mob ofhundreds of Israeli Jews converged on theJabal al-Mukkabir neighborhood in occupiedEast Jerusalem where the gunman’s familylived. In what Haaretz termed an “organized,synchronized pogrom,” the mob threw stonesat Palestinian homes smashing windows anddestroying water tanks, damaged cars andchanted “Death to the Arabs” while police didlittle to stop them. Haaretz observed that suchan attack “could never take place in a Jewishneighborhood,” and noted that while “Israeland the Jewish world raise a huge cry overevery suspicion of an attack on Jews becauseof their ethnicity, it is intolerable that residentsof the capital [sic] are attacked solely becauseof their nationality.”

Although the mob action had been plannedand advertised days in advance, the Israelipolice had done nothing to prepare for it. “Thedistrict police didn’t need to be surprised,”former Jerusalem district police commanderMickey Levy told Haaretz. “There was no needto collect intelligence, it was right there in theirhand. Appropriate preparation was called forin order to prevent the violent demonstration.”

This event indicates that Israel’s officialinstitutions have failed to learn any lessonsfrom the Or Commission report but alsoserves as a warning sign of worse to come,against a backdrop of highly tolerated publicincitement and widespread racist attitudestowards Arabs.

Racist statements and incitement

One of the most blatant examples ofpublic incitement in the days before theattack on Jabal al-Mukkabir was a circularwidely distributed and posted aroundJerusalem and in West Bank settlements.Signed by a long list of rabbis, it called foracts of revenge on Palestinians inretribution for the Mercaz HaRav shooting:“Each and everyone is required to imaginewhat the enemy is plotting to do to us andmatch it measure for measure.”

Among the signatories was RabbiYa’acov Yosef, son of Rabbi OvadiaYosef, the former Sephardic chief rabbiof Israel and spiritual leader of Shas, a partyin Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coalitiongovernment. The younger Yosef is himselfa former Knesset member representingShas. Another signatory, Rabbi Uzi Sharbav,was one of a group of extremists whomurdered three Palestinian students at aschool in the occupied West Bank city ofHebron and set off bombs that maimedthe mayors of Nablus and Ramallah in theearly 1980s. Sharbav served a short prisonsentence for the murders but was pardonedand freed along with other extremists byIsrael’s president in 1990.

Other statements have been aimed atdelegitimizing, intimidating and threateningwith expulsion Palestinian, citizens of Israelexercising their democratic rights. In earlyMarch 2008, thousands of Palestiniancitizens of Israel staged a peaceful rally,attended by several Arab members of theKnesset to protest Israel’s military attacksin the Gaza Strip. In the Knesset, formercabinet minister Effie Eitam accused theArab legislators of “treason” forparticipating in the rally, adding, “We haveto drive you out, as well as everyone elsewho took part” in the demonstration. Dayslater, Olmert’s former Deputy PrimeMinister Avigdor Lieberman repeated theethnic cleansing threat in the Knesset, tellingArab members, “You are temporary here,”and “One day we will take care of you.”

Israeli extremists appear to be gettingthe message. Representatives of three Arabparties have reported that their Knessetmembers have been receiving death threatsin the mail daily. A spokesman for oneKnesset member told The Jerusalem Post,“We have always received threats but theyhave recently escalated to the point wherewe are growing truly concerned.”

In what Haaretztermed an

“organized,synchronized

pogrom,” the mobthrew stones at

Palestinian homessmashing

windows anddestroying water

tanks, damagedcars and chanted

“Death to theArabs”

Deputy PrimeMinister Avigdor

Liebermanrepeated the

ethnic cleansingthreat in the

Knesset, tellingArab members,

“You aretemporary here,”and “One day we

will take care ofyou.”

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Several rabbis have used the excuse of“security” in the wake of the Mercaz HaRavshooting to issue racist halakhic (religious)rulings against Arabs. Haaretz reports RabbiDov Lior, chairman of the rabbinical councilfor settlers in “Judea and Samaria” (the WestBank), decreed that “It is completely forbiddento employ [Arabs] and rent houses to them inIsrael. Their employment is forbidden, notonly at yeshivas, but at factories, hotels andeverywhere.”

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, considered aworld-wide Orthodox authority on Jewishlaw, held “that it is completely forbidden tohire Arabs, especially in yeshivas; there is aconcern for endangering lives.” Indicating thatsecurity might not be the only motivation forthis ruling, Kanievsky added that Jews shouldrefrain from hiring any non-Jews, “unless thereexists a huge disparity between the costs ofthe labor,” in which case non-Jews could behired.

While these are recent examples, Mossawa,an Arab civil rights advocacy group in Israel,documented dozens of instances of racistdeclarations by public figures and thousandsof examples of incitement on the Internet in2007 alone.2

Silence is consent

Leaders in the Palestinian community inIsrael worry that the escalating incitement willprovoke further violence against them. Aspokesman for Muhammad Barakeh, an Arabmember of parliament, told The Jerusalem Postthat the recent upsurge in death threats hadbeen reported to Knesset security, “But wehave seen nothing happen. I do not feel theyare taking this threat very seriously.” AnotherArab Knesset member urged Israel’s two chiefrabbis to condemn the rabbinical calls forrevenge, fearing that these statements mightincite the assassination of community leaders.There are no reports that the chief rabbisresponded to this plea. Indeed, while a handfulof Israeli Jewish voices have been raised inprotest, it was most often to decry thedeafening silence.

A spokesman for the Religious ActionCenter for Reform Judaism condemned an“ever growing phenomenon of racistincitement that distorts Judaism and is alsoillegal.” As Haaretz reports, the group calledon Israel’s attorney general to “shake off hisapathy” and begin to enforce anti-incitementlaws. An editorial in the same publicationcomplained that “the continued inactivity in

the face of acts of incitement and violenceby the extreme right is shared by all thelaw-enforcement authorities-the police,Shin Bet, State Prosecutor’s Office and thecourts.” A Haaretz reporter noted “thedizzying increase in incitement, curses andinsults leveled” at Arab Knesset members,“a spike that has gone almost withoutprotest or the involvement of the KnessetEthics Committee.” Another commentatorin the same newspaper observed that “aslong as no one demonstrates whenever aKnesset member curses Arabs; and as longas the number of people who rentapartments to or hire Arabs can be countedon one hand, Israeli society cannot beabsolved of the sin of racism.”

A society in crisis

“Israeli society is reaching new heightsof racism,” Sami Michael, one of thecountry’s most celebrated equalityadvocates and president of the Associationfor Civil Rights in Israel, told Haaretz. Agrowing body of research indicates thatracist sentiments are not the preserve ofthe right-wing fringe but increasinglyprevalent across Israeli Jewish society.

One particularly disturbing indicator isthat the chant “Death to the Arabs” isvoiced not just by mobs of right-wingersangered by this or that Palestinian attack.Rather, “in the late 1990s and onwards,”writes Amir Ben-Porat, a professor in theDepartment of Behavioral Sciences at BenGurion University, “ ‘Death to the Arabs’became a common chant in almost everyfootball [soccer] stadium in Israel.” Ben-Porat, who authored a study on the use ofthe chant, says that because of theimportance of soccer in Israeli society andits high profile in the media, “This chant isheard far beyond the stadium.”3

In its 2007 Israeli Democracy Index, theIsrael Democracy Institute found that 87percent of all Israeli citizens rated Jewish-Arab relations in the country as being“poor” or “very poor.”

In addition:

Seventy-eight percent of Israeli Jewsopposed having Arab parties orministers join Israel’s government.Just 56 percent of Israeli Jewssupport full equality for Palestiniancitizens of Israel and an identical

It is completelyforbidden toemploy [Arabs]and rent housesto them in Israel.Their employmentis forbidden, notonly at yeshivas,but at factories,hotels andeverywhere.”

‘Death to theArabs’ became acommon chant inalmost everyfootball [soccer]stadium in Israel.”

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number agreed that “Arabs cannot attainthe Jews’ level of cultural development.”75 percent of Israeli Jews agreed withthe statement that “Arabs are inclinedto violent behavior” (as compared with54 percent of Palestinian citizens ofIsrael who had an equivalent view ofIsraeli Jews).43 percent of Israeli Jews agreed that“Arabs are not intelligent” and 55percent agreed that “the governmentshould encourage Arab emigrationfrom the country.”

A recent Haifa University survey found thathalf of Israeli Jews object to Arabs living intheir neighborhoods (56 percent of Arabssupported residential integration with Jews).Similarly, ACRI reported that 75 percent ofIsraeli Jews surveyed said they would notagree to live in the same building as Arabs.The same survey found that more than halfof Israeli Jews felt that Arabs and Jews shouldhave separate recreational facilities.

There are two consistent trends among allthese surveys: both Palestinian citizens of Israeland Israeli Jews hold some prejudices towardseach other, but on almost every measure, IsraeliJewish views of Arabs are more negative andextreme than Arab views of Jews; second, thenegative trends have risen markedly in recentyears as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict hasintensified. The ACRI report found thatbetween 2005 and 2006, there was a 26percent rise in racist incidents targeting Arabs,and the number of Israeli Jews reporting thatthey felt “hatred” towards Arabs doubled to30 percent.

While the conflict is undoubtedly theoverarching context for these sentiments, animportant contributing factor may be theconsistently dehumanizing and denigratingstereotypes of Arabs that have for decadesbeen presented to Israeli Jewish schoolchildrenin their textbooks and media.

Discrimination against US citizens

An outgrowth of the institutional andsocietal racism against Arabs in Israel ismistreatment that some US citizens havereceived at the hands of Israeli authorities.

The US State Department recently warnedtravelers that “American citizens whom Israeliauthorities judge (based on their name or otherindicators) may be of Palestinian origin arelikely to face additional, and often timeconsuming questioning by immigration and

border authorities.” The warning adds thatthe “United States Government seeks equaltreatment for all American citizensregardless of national origin or ethnicity,”or as the Associated Press reports howState Department spokesperson SeanMcCormack put it, “You have a blueAmerican passport, you should be treatedlike an American citizen.”

Yet, while Arab American civil rightsadvocates have reported dozens of suchcases of discrimination to the USgovernment,4 American citizens who areconsidered Jewish by Israel are accordedspecial treatment, including free Israeli-government sponsored “Birthright Israel”trips and enticements to emigrate to thecountry. This is a long-standing problem;in 1987, the State Department lodged anofficial protest over the mistreatment ofAfrican Americans and PalestinianAmericans traveling to Israel.

Conclusions and implications

Anti-Arab racism and incitement arepersistent and growing problems in Israeland symptoms of hyper-nationalism thatseeks to consolidate and justify the state’s“Jewish character.” For decades, themistreatment of Palestinians in Israel hasbeen virtually ignored by Palestiniannational leaders, as well as by internationalpolicymakers and organizations under thedoctrine of non-interference in the internalaffairs of sovereign states.

Yet, the precarious position ofPalestinian citizens of Israel is closely linkedto the fate of Palestinians under militaryoccupation in the West Bank and GazaStrip and refugees outside the country. Itstems from the same set of historical events60 years ago. All three categories ofPalestinians are targets of discriminatory orabusive Israeli policies intended to preserveIsrael as a “Jewish state.” In the context ofa “solution” to the Israeli-Palestinianconflict, some Israeli politicians increasinglyspeak of population or territorial“exchanges” that would strip Palestiniancitizens of Israel of their citizenship andotherwise violate their fundamental humanrights. Palestinian citizens of Israel haveraised the alarm about this growingexistential threat, but they have received littleinternational solidarity.

Israel’s official institutions have failedfor decades to demonstrate any willingness

75 percent ofIsraeli Jews

surveyed saidthey would notagree to live inthe same build-

ing as Arabs.

Israeli Jewishviews of Arabs

are morenegative andextreme thanArab views of

Jews

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or capacity to treat Palestinian citizens as equalto Israeli Jews either in law or in practice.Israeli police act, in effect, as a uniformedsectarian militia protecting Jewish privilegerather than as an impartial police service for amodern, democratic state.

Although most international actors are notyet ready to do so, it is inevitable that thesituation inside Israel will eventually have tobe internationalized. A good example of thesuccessful internationalization of an “internal”situation is the role external actors played inoverseeing the transformation of the RoyalUlster Constabulary from a uniformedsectarian militia into the present-day PoliceService of Northern Ireland and otherwisesupporting the Northern Ireland peace process.There must also be external pressure on Israelto curb and punish racist incitement and tolaunch broad public initiatives, particularly inschools, to combat hateful stereotypes ofArabs.

As Israeli politicians and parties increasinglypropose “solutions” that treat all Palestinians,whether citizens or not, as equally inferior,Palestinians in the Diaspora, the occupiedterritories and inside Israel must urgently

engage with each other to formulatecommon strategies to protect and advancetheir human and political rights.

Notes1. The four documents are:

1. The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs inIsrael published by The National Committeefor the Heads of the Arab Local Authoritiesin Israel (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6381.shtml);

2. The Democratic Constitution published byAdalah: The Legal Center for Arab MinorityRights in Israel (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6606.shtml);

3. An Equal Constituion for All? On aConstituion and Collective Rights for ArabCitizens in Israel published by Mossawa Center- The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens inIsrael; and 4. The Haifa Declaration.

2. Press release, “Mossawa Center releases racismreport detailing over 169 cases, “Mossawa, 19March 2008.

3. AmirBen-Porat, “Death to the Arabs: the right-wing fan’s fear,“Soccer & Society, Vol. 9, No. 1,January 2008, pp. 1-13.

4. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee(ADC), “ADC Sends First Hand Accounts ofIsrael’s Entry Denials of U.S. Citizens to SecretaryRice,“20 March 2008.

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Al-Aqsa 11

Outsides

Saree Makdisi*

Mohammad Jalud lives in the smallvillage of Izbat Jalud, just south ofQalqilya in the West Bank. He has been

eking out a living by farming a small plot ofland, growing tomatoes and cucumbers andother crops. Until recently, it took him tenminutes to walk from his house to the plot ofland that he owns just to the west of the village.In September 2003, the immense wall1 thatIsrael had started building in the West Bankreached the Qalqilya region. The wall skirtedthe very edge of the built-up part of Izbat Jalud,cutting off the town from much of its mostvaluable farmland to the west.

The Israelis had built a gate in the wall thatcould enable access to the other side, but thegate was not open to Palestinians. To reach hiscrops, Mohammad had to start traveling severalmiles along the wall to the gate at Azun Atma,which was open to Palestinians. For a coupleof months, he was able to go south to AzunAtma, cross through the gate there, and then goback north on the other side of the wall to reachhis land—just across from the Izbat Jalud gate,which remained closed to him. What had oncebeen a ten-minute walk to his land now involvedat least an hour, assuming there was no delaycoming and going through the gate at AzunAtma. But at least, for now, he could get to hiscrops.

For most of its length, the wall is not builton the 1949 Armistice Line border that hadseparated Israel from the West Bank until 1967.Rather, it is on the inside, often miles inside andin certain places almost halfway into theoccupied territory itself. Almost 10 percent ofthe West Bank’s most fertile land will eventuallybe absorbed into the gap that Israel has openedbetween the 1967 border and the wall: an areawhich the Israelis refer to as the “seam zone.”

In October 2003, the Israelis classified the“seam zone” as a closed military area which, if

the wall is built as currently projected, willultimately enclose some 60,000 Palestiniansin forty-two villages and towns. “Facing thespecial security circumstances in the area andthe need to take the necessary steps in orderto prevent terrorist attacks and the exit ofattackers from the areas of Judea andSamaria to the state of Israel,” wrote GeneralMoshe Kaplinsky that month, “I herebydeclare that the seam zone is a closed area.”Henceforth, according to GeneralKaplinsky’s orders, “No person shall enterthe seam zone or stay in it.”

General Kaplinsky’s orders, reiteratingIsrael’s standard protocol for ordersdeclaring a closed military area, explicitlyexempt Israelis. And the orders specificallydefine “Israeli” not only as a citizen orresident of Israel, but also as “one who iseligible to emigrate to Israel in accordancewith the Law of Return.” Consequently, asof October 2003, Mohammad Jalud couldnot access his own land without applyingfor a permit from the Israeli authorities; butJews from Latvia and Moldova could, ifthey wanted to, because they are eligibleunder the Law of Return.

Israeli military regulations, pursuant toGeneral Kaplinsky’s orders, specify up to adozen different types of permits thatPalestinian farmers living on the east side ofthe wall need to apply for in order to accessand work on their land on the west side. Acomplex series of bureaucratic andadministrative hurdles needs to be clearedfor each permit.

The main hurdle involves proving thatone actually has land on the other side of thewall. This is easier said than done. For onething, Palestinian farming depends heavily ontraditional practices and relations to the land.Often, whole families, rather than

* SAREE MAKDISI is a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA. He has contributed articlesand commentaries on the Middle East which have appeared in many newspapers including the Chicargo Tribune andthe San Francisco Chronicle. This is an edited extract from ‘Palestine Inside Out’ by Saree Makdisi, published byWW Norton, £15.99.

The Israelis hadbuilt a gate in thewall that couldenable access tothe other side, butthe gate was notopen toPalestinians.

up to a dozendifferent types ofpermits thatPalestinianfarmers living onthe east side ofthe wall need toapply for in orderto access andwork on their landon the west side.

12 Al-Aqsa

individuals, maintain plots of productive land.In such cases, for as far back as anyone canremember, the ownership of agricultural landwas passed from generation to generationthrough traditional methods that never requireddocumentation in the modern sense; families andcommunities just knew whose land was whose.Superimposed on the traditional system oftracking land ownership was the Ottoman LandCode of 1858, which classified large swathesof fertile land as miri lands. Although the Sultanwas recognized as the ultimate (nominal) ownerof miri land, the Ottomans’ complex tax systemgranted to farmers, in return for paying a taxon the crops grown there, the right to possess,sell, and inherit actively cultivated miri land, aslong as there was no break in cultivation formore than a certain number of years, in whichcase the land reverted to the ownership of theSultan.

With the demise of the Ottoman Empireand the institution of the British Mandate inPalestine in 1922, a systematic effort was madeto modernize landholding, including formallyregistering miri land ownership, freed from theSultan at last, and assigning it to specificindividuals or families.

This program of modernization wascontinued after 1948 when the West Bank cameunder Jordanian rule following the destructionof Palestine and creation of Israel and theeventual annexation of the West Bank by Jordan,in April 1950. But the process was slow; by thetime the West Bank fell to the Israelis in 1967,only about a third of the land had been formallyregistered, and most of that was in urban areas.

The Israelis immediately suspended theprocess of formally registering land ownershipwhen they took over the territory. They alsoissued a number of military orders based ontheir reinterpretation of the 1858 OttomanLand Code, which, on their reading, granted tothe Israeli military command the authority toassume the former power of the Sultan and totake possession, in the name of the state, ofhundreds of thousands of dunums2 of not-yet-registered miri lands, even if they werealready cultivated. Many Palestinian farmersfound out too late that the plot their family hadbeen tending for generations had been declared“state land” by Israel and was henceforth off-limits to them, and thus could not do anythingabout it.

The Israeli human rights organizationB’Tselem notes that even if Israel had followedthe Ottoman Land Code to the letter, and notdeclared private property to be state property,its treatment of properly identified state land

has also been improper. “State-lands arepublic property, belonging to the lawfulresidents of the West Bank,” B’Tselem notes.“The role of the occupying power, i.e., theState of Israel, as the temporary substituteof the sovereign, is to administer the publicland for the benefit of that public, or,alternatively, to meet its [short-term] militaryneeds in the occupied territory. Rather thanacting this way, Israel, since it started takingcontrol of those state-lands, has completelydenied the Palestinians their right to use theselands, and has allocated them exclusively forthe establishment and expansion of Jewishsettlements.” In fact, the land seized for“military needs” and land expropriated for“public use”; all together amounting toalmost half of the entire territory, wasimmediately made available for Jewishcolonization and settlement.

A widely cited report published in 2006by the Israeli organization ‘Peace Now’found that, as of November 2006, privatelyheld Palestinian land (not state land)accounted for some 40 percent of the landused for Jewish settlement in the West Bank.Even according to Israel’s own laws (andof course international law), the constructionof settlements on privately held land isillegal.

Today the built-up areas of the Jewishsettlements in the West Bank account for nomore than 2 percent of the territory’s surfacearea. But, according to B’Tselem, through avariety of Israeli bureaucratic procedures, thesettlements actually exert administrativecontrol over some 42 percent of the WestBank’s surface area. And according to areport published by the U.N. Office for theCoordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) in July 2007, almost 40 percent ofthe West Bank is now taken up by Israeliinfrastructure, including roads, settlements,and military outposts.

Israel’s actions are in violation of theHague Convention Respecting the Laws andCustoms of War on Land as well as theFourth Geneva Convention, which are thekey international legal documents regulatingthe disposition of militarily occupied territory.The Geneva Convention, for example,expressly prohibits the “destruction by theOccupying Power of real or personalproperty belonging individually or collectivelyto private persons, or the state, or to anyother public authorities, or to social or co-operative organizations.” It also forbids“individual or mass forcible transfers, as well

The Israelisimmediately

suspended theprocess of

formallyregistering land

ownership whenthey took over

the territory.

‘Peace Now’ foundthat, as of

November 2006,privately held

Palestinian land(not state land)

accounted forsome 40 percentof the land used

for Jewishsettlement in the

West Bank.

Al-Aqsa 13

as deportations of protected persons fromoccupied territory to the territory of theOccupying Power or to that of any othercountry,” and stipulates that “the OccupyingPower shall not deport or transfer parts of itsown civilian population into the territory itoccupies.” Israel has tried to claim that theGeneva Conventions do not apply to thePalestinian territories it occupies, but this claimhas been dismissed not only by international legalscholars but also by a series of U.N. SecurityCouncil resolutions affirming the applicabilityof the Conventions to the Israeli occupiedterritories.

“Affirming once more that the GenevaConvention relative to the protection of CivilianPersons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, isapplicable to the Arab territories occupied byIsrael since 1967, including Jerusalem,” SecurityCouncil Resolution 465 of 1980, for example,reiterates that “all measures taken by Israel tochange the physical character, demographiccomposition, institutional structure or status ofthe Palestinian and other Arab territoriesoccupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or anypart thereof have no legal validity and thatIsrael’s policy and practices of settling parts ofits population and new immigrants in thoseterritories constitute a flagrant violation of theGeneva Convention relative to the Protectionof Civilian Persons in Time of War and alsoconstitute a serious obstruction to achieving acomprehensive, just and lasting peace in theMiddle East.” More recently, in its AdvisoryOpinion of July 2004 (“Legal Consequences ofthe Construction of a Wall in the OccupiedPalestinian Territory”), the International Courtof Justice in The Hague also unanimouslyreaffirmed the applicability of the GenevaConventions to the Israeli-occupied territoriesand added that all of the agreements (notablythe Oslo Accords) entered into by the Israelisand Palestinians since 1993 “have done nothingto alter” the fact that “all these territories(including East Jerusalem) remain occupiedterritories and Israel has continued to have thestatus of occupying power.”

None of these findings and rulings has madeany difference to the way in which Israeladministers its occupation of the West Bank.Its own regulations, rather than those ofinternational law, are the ones to which thePalestinian population is held accountable. Evenwhen, as with the case of Jewish settlement onprivately owned land, Israeli actions violateIsrael’s own laws, there is little Palestinians cando to seek redress. And when it comes to landwest of the wall, those regulations require that

a Palestinian prove to the satisfaction of theIsraeli authorities that a given plot of land ishis.

It is often extremely difficult for aPalestinian to do so. Even if some ancestordid obtain a tax certificate from the OttomanEmpire, or register the land with the Britishor the Jordanians, the Israelis apply the moststringent criteria to his application for apermit to enter the “seam zone.” Papers areoften incomplete or inconsistent, especiallygiven the fact that the legal documentationof West Bank land has gone through variousconflicts and upheavals, including two worldwars, and passed through the hands ofcountless municipal offices in four differentpolitical entities (the Ottoman Empire,Britain, Jordan and Israel). If a Palestinianfarmer’s land was mis-registered, or if thereare errors in the original registration, or ifthe original owner had died or movedoverseas, or if there are any questions aboutinheritances or divisions of land among orwithin or between families, or any questionsabout bills of sale, or titles, then theapplication for a permit will be suspendeduntil all the legal difficulties can be sortedout. In the meantime, Israel will retain controlof and access to the land in question.

In a number of cases, a Palestinianlandowner has been able to prove that hedoes indeed have a claim on the land, onlyfor the Israelis to declare that the land inquestion may be his, but that it does not lieon the west side of the wall after all. EidAhmed Yassin, for example, lives in al-Ras,a small village near Qalqilya. He and hisfamily own and farm 110 dunums, or about28 acres, of land in the “seam zone” westof the wall, but still in the West Bank. Eidsubmitted several applications to the Israelisfor a permit in order to access his land, allof which were turned down. Finally, withthe help of a coalition of human rightsorganizations, he applied again and wasgranted a permit in late 2004. When thatpermit expired in early 2005, he reappliedand was again rejected. This time hisapplication was returned, overwritten withHebrew handwriting asserting that hisproperty does not exist west of the wall.He can see and point to his land, his trees,his crops, from a nearby hilltop. But neitherhe nor the al-Ras municipality possess oneof the official Israeli maps indicating the exactlocation of the plots of land listed in theirtaxation documents (through which he wasable to establish ownership). Since Israel

a permit will besuspended untilall the legaldifficulties can besorted out. In themeantime, Israelwill retain controlof and access tothe land inquestion.

14 Al-Aqsa

prints and controls the maps, he has no way toprove that the land specified on a piece of paperis the land that has now been enclosed on theother side of the wall.

This is not just Eid’s problem. According tothe municipality, 90 percent of al-Ras’s land islocated west of the wall. In February 2005, 120applications for permits to access land west ofthe wall were submitted to the Israelis by farmersin al-Ras. By April, only seven had beenapproved, all for elderly people. In June, anotherthree permits were granted, for children agedten to fifteen. Their parents’ applications wererejected. Between June and September, onemore person was granted a permit. Inanticipation of the autumn’s crucial olive harvest,al-Ras’s farmers submitted 180 applications tothe Israelis in the late summer. One in three wasgranted. For an impoverished agriculturalcommunity, this was a catastrophe.

Thus, even if a landowner is granted a permitto access his land, his immediate family may notbe, so he may not have anyone to help him plow,sow, weed, water, or harvest his crops. And evenif various members of the family are grantedpermits, seasonal day laborers will almostcertainly be turned down. These are laborerson whom the farmer depends at peak momentsof the production cycle, such as the annual oliveharvest, when traditionally, up to half thePalestinian population would take time off fromother occupations to help out. About half ofthe tenant farmers, spouses, day laborers,grandchildren, all along the length of the wallhave had their permit applications denied. Bymid-2005, almost 40 percent of the permitssubmitted by Palestinians to access farmland onthe west side of the wall were being rejected bythe Israeli authorities (a figure that would rise tomore than 80 percent by November 2007, bywhich time Israel was granting permits only tosome 18 percent of those who used to work-land west of the wall). Two-thirds of therejections are handed down because theapplicant can’t prove to Israel’s satisfaction thathe or she owns land, or has a direct relationshipto the landowner.

Mohammad Jalud, however, had cleared allthese hurdles. Shortly after November 2003,when the Israelis institutionalized the “seamzone” permit system, Mohammad was able toobtain the two permits he needed to get to hisland. The Israeli army allowed him to use itspatrol road to cover the distance from the AzunAtma gate back up to where his plot of landlies, near the still-closed Izbat Jalud gate; anyother route would have taken him too close to

the settlement of Oranit. (The wall had alsoobliterated the previous road and pathsystem, so farmers often had to crossthrough each other’s fields to get to theirown land). Mohammad was not, however,allowed to bring his tractor. He would haveto carry his farm tools himself for the longwalk on the west side of the wall, and hewould have to carry his produce back outon his back. He could buy a donkey, but thedonkey would need a permit too—and thatwould involve a whole separate set ofapplications.

Mohammad persevered. He kept goingwith the hour-long journey, tending his crops,looking after the irrigation, fertilization, andso on. Then the gate opening and closingtimes got more erratic. The Israelis startedopening the gates for twenty minutes to anhour three times a day, not always in apunctual and timely manner. Even if he hadonly an hour or two of work to do,Mohammad would have to commit to fouror five hours on the other side of the wall,waiting for the gate to reopen so he couldleave the “seam zone.” And after any securityincident, no matter how distant, the Israeliswould seal all the gates and keep them closedfor days or weeks. At the peak of the oliveharvest season in 2003, for example, theIsraeli army sealed all the gates in the wallnear Qalqilya in response to a bombing inHaifa, about forty miles away on the coast.

Then in mid-2004, the Israelis decidedto open the Izbat Jalud gate: the one closeto Mohammad’s home and fields. Thatwould cut his daily commute downconsiderably. But when he tried to getthrough the gate at Izbat Jalud, the Israelisoldiers manning the gate told him that hispermit was for the gate at Azun Atma. Hecould not cross through at Izbat Jalud. Then,making his way down to the Azun Atmagate, he was informed by the Israeli soldiersthere that he could no longer use that gatebecause the army would no longer allowhim to use the patrol road to reach his land.The reason, they said, was that another, moredirect route, through the Izbat Jalud gate,was now open to him.

For much of the summer of 2004,Mohammad couldn’t get to his land. Heapplied for another permit. In August, thenew permit came through, but it once againrestricted him to the Azun Atma gate. Hemade an official request to the Israelis tochange his gate assignment to the Izbat Jalud

He could buy adonkey, but the

donkey wouldneed a permittoo—and that

would involvea whole

separate set ofapplications.

Al-Aqsa 15

gate. In February 2005, at last, he received a newpermit.

But it also assigned him to the Azun Atmagate. Cut off from his crops on the other sideof Israel’s wall, Mohammad had to startworking as a day laborer just to make endsmeet. He made further requests and entreaties,and, finally, in September 2005, he was granteda permit allowing him access to the Izbat Jaludgate. It had been over a year since he had tendedhis land.

He lost a year’s worth of crops, but at leasthe was able to save his land, for now. Accordingto Israel’s interpretation of the Ottoman landlaws, miri land that is not actively cultivated fora certain amount of time (even if its cultivationis being actively and forcibly prevented) revertsto state ownership.

Occupation by the Numbers

Length of West Bank–Israel border: 196milesProjected length of West Bank wall: 437milesProjected proportion of wall built onborder: 20 percentLength of wall in and around EastJerusalem: 104 milesLength built on internationally recognizedborder near Jerusalem: 3 milesPercentage of West Bank surface area,including enclaves in and near EastJerusalem, cut off by the wall: 12Amount of land expropriated forconstruction of the wall: 8,750 acres

Number of gates built into the wall:67Number open on a daily basis toPalestinians (with appropriate permits):19Percentage of Palestinian agriculturalland planted with olive trees: 45Percentage of Palestinian populationthat participates in annual oliveharvest: 50Number of olive trees in occupiedterritories: 9 millionNumber inaccessible or accessrestricted after construction of wall:1 millionNumber of trees burned, uprooted,or bulldozed by Israeli army from2000 to 2005: 465,945Percentage of Palestinian families notpermitted to access their land in“seam zone” in northern West Bank:82Palestinian communities in “seamzone” with 24-hour access toemergency medical care: 1Palestinians living in “seam zone”upon its completion: 60,500Palestinians living in Jerusalem cut offfrom the city by the wall: 63,000

Notes1. I will use the terminology adopted by the

International Court of Justice in its 2004 AdvisoryOpinion.

2. A dunum is about 1,000 square meters, or abouta quarter of an acre.

�

Al-Aqsa

EditorThe Articles published in this journal do not necessarily reflect the views of

the Editorial Board or of Friends of Al-aqsa

16 Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 17

Military Occupation: Samoud and Sorrow

Alice Rothchild*

Since 2003, a health and human rightsproject developed by members of JewishVoice for Peace has organized yearly

delegations to Israel and Palestine, joining withpartners such as Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, (PHR-I) and Palestinian Medical ReliefSociety, (PMRS). We document conditions onthe ground, bring our stories home, and workon moving the political conversation towards achange in US policy. We focus on issues relatedto occupation, its impact on the civilianpopulations, and the consequences of Israeliincursions, restrictions of movement, andcollective punishment.

Returning in the fall of 2007 so much haschanged and so much is worse. Kalandia“checkpoint” is now a “terminal,” theimplication being that the unpredictable lines,arbitrary approvals, tightly-controlled turnstiles,and soldiers staring at permits and passportsbehind bulletproof windows are merely amodern but permanent inconvenience.

Even though I have seen the statistics, thegrowth of the Jewish settlements in the WestBank is stunning. The sprawling 31 square mileJewish city of Ma’ale Adumin with its industriesand neighborhoods stretches ever closer toJericho, cutting the north of the West Bank fromthe south. The ancient olive trees transplantedto the entrances of tastefully landscaped plazasfeel like an added insult to history. Even thescattered hilltop “outposts” that dot thelandscape like mushrooms after rain, have pavedroads, electricity and running water, flauntingtheir resources and military support assurrounding Palestinian villages do without basichuman needs. The martyrs’ posters hanging onthe walls of Rafidia Hospital in Nablus are nolonger of suicide bombers, but young menkilled in nightly Israeli incursions. The separationwall enclosing Bethlehem is decorated by a

graphic artist; he paints hugely distortedhideous portraits, pushing the ugliness in ourfaces. I sense both a normalization as well assterilization of the state of military occupation.

The Palestinians I meet often admit thatthey are losing the battle, living on memory,hope, and samoud, or steadfastness. Their livesare more constricted, their traumas aremounting, and their government has failedto change the course of Israeli expansionismand control. The loss of land continues, theIsraeli military incursions are almost a routineoccurrence rarely reported in the Westernpress, and people are tormented by thebureaucracy that constrains their lives. I amseized by a desire to give voice to this reality,to share the lives of ordinary Palestinians whoare the players and casualties in this painfuldrama.

Returning to Nablus: CollateralDamage

After spending the morning at the PMRSNablus Child Rehabilitation Center, Dr.Allam Jarrar takes the delegation to visit anumber of families who experienced anattack by Israeli soldiers several days before.Although Allam had explained earlier thatthere are almost nightly Israeli incursions intoNablus, the reality is still jarring and painfullysurreal. We walk past a dusty cement-mixer,through a gate and down cracked stone stepsto reach the entry to the top floor of a five-story white stone house, built into the hillylandscape in the neighborhood of Ras al-Ein. Potted plants, shattered tiles, and glassare strewn along the path. Men lumber by,cigarettes in hand, carrying panes to repairfractured windows and the air echoes withthe sounds of hammering and electric

* ALICE ROTHCHILD is an obstetrician/gynecologist, activist, author and co-chair of Jewish Voice for Peace,Boston, USA. This article is an excerpt from an updated version of her book, ‘Broken Promises, Broken Dreams:Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Resilience’ to be republished in 2009. Broken Promises, Broken Dreamswas first published by Pluto Press, April 2007. For further information, visit: www.brokenpromises brokendrems.com

The ancientolive treestransplanted tothe entrancesof tastefullylandscapedplazas feel likean addedinsult to history.

18 Al-Aqsa

machinery. We are soon met by three oldermen, eager to tell their stories, as a woman standsin the doorway holding a crying child and ateenage boy peeks shyly out of a brokenwindow. One man speaks animatedly.

Around 2:30 a.m. I heard a lot of soldiersout there and they start to launch the grenades.Like, tens of hand grenades have been thrownhere. By loudspeakers they started to say,“Everybody should get out of the house, raisingtheir hands up,” without identifying what house.We couldn’t realize if it was our house or someother houses here.

In no time, the children woke up from thesounds of grenades. Shooting started from alldirections, and we stood inside the house. Andthe shooting started from outside here and here.The windows have been crashed all over thehouse. I started to shout, “Why are you shootingus? We have children,” but they continued. Somy wife and children, we went out here, weraised our hands. They took us and forced usto remove our clothes. They cuffed us. Heasked me, “Whose is this house?” I said, “It’smy house.” The officer told me there had beenshooting from this house. I said, “It’s me, mywife and my children. We didn’t shoot! Wedon’t have guns to shoot.”

The delegates are ushered into one apartmentafter another; richly upholstered living roomfurniture, formal dining room tables, long whitedraperies, decorative wooden head boards,posters in a child’s room, a blinking TV, now allsplattered with bullet holes. The curtains areshredded and burned by gunfire; walls, floors,and ceilings fissured and pock-marked in everydirection. In one apartment we are shown a neatpile of rocket parts, bullet casings, mortar shells,and empty flares, the English lettering clearlyvisible: “White Star Parachute.” Later, a quickcheck on an internet weapons guide reveals thatthese flares were made in the US.1 There is a senseof grim determination and horror in the facesof the people who belong to this place andeverywhere, wide-eyed, terrified, crying children.One teenage boy plays at his computer, seeminglyoblivious to the destruction around him,American pop music drifting through the openrooms. On the first floor, we are told that a 70-year-old man was shot and killed when heopened his door for the soldiers.

In one apartment we are examining a tiledfireplace, fractured during the attack. An intenseyoung woman, holding her crying child,approaches the group, clearly wanting to talk.

“The soldiers are all in this building. Youare American? I want to say something.I want to transport a true picture about

our life. They in America, they don’tknow what we are living here. Theythink we are shit. Really! I heard itfrom more than one person. We arehuman being, like you! Transport apicture to see why and how we livehere in Palestine. My God put us here.If he put us in America, then we livethere. You understand me? I amvery nervous and terrified.”

She shows us her daughter’s tiny whitesweater, shot through with bullet holes andthe child’s bed, also riddled with bullets. Herhusband hovers nearby. Later, I meet thiswoman, Fedaa Bolos, sitting with her childat the Rehabilitation Center, waiting to seethe psychiatrist on our delegation.

An attractive woman with delicatefeatures and a burning sense of indignation,Fedaa is trying to comfort her anxious two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Lara.Gradually we start to talk about trauma,recovery, and the recent events that radicallychanged her life. I learn that Fedaa is 28years old, a graduate of Najah Universitywith a major in economics. Because she hasbeen unable to find work, she stays at homeand cares for her daughter, reading andwatching TV for distraction. “There is noplace to go or to take my child to play.” Herhusband, Nomair Isbaih, is now 30 yearsold and a production manager in his father’sindustrial engineering company.

She recounts that her husband woke herat 1:15 a.m. and told her:

“There’s Jewish in our area and I amafraid about Lara alone in her room.Go to her room.” I said, “Nomair, Iwant to sleep.” He came back angryand said, “Fedaa, wake up.” Suddenlythey shoot at us. There is a bombingsound in the bathroom. I get out andgo quickly to Lara’s room. I sat behindmy daughter and they shoot us againin Lara’s room. Nomair startedshouting at them, “Go! What do youwant? Why do you shoot us? There isa baby here.” The soldier was standingin front of the window, maybe onemeter from us. He said to Nomair,“Go, I will shoot you now.” ThenNomair carries me and Lara to ourroom, seconds between Nomair anddeath. This is a miracle, I was shakingand I felt my soul go and Nomair hitme on my face and Lara is not crying,not speaking, just shaking.

a quick checkon an internet

weapons guidereveals thatthese flareswere made

in the US.

Al-Aqsa 19

When we go to my room, it started torain bullets and glass and rocks whereNomair was standing. After that werealize they saw us, we move from oneroom to others and Nomair was thinkingquickly and he said we must hide in a placethey can’t see us, under a chair in the cornerfrom 2 o’clock until 5:30 a.m. We heardsomething broken and shooting. Theysearch me on the stairs. Then the soldierssat in my home for a day-and-a-halfduring which time we went to a neighbor’shome. They smash my home when wewas in our neighbor’s house.

I saw death in my eyes and in myhusband’s eyes and child’s eyes. And thedifficult thing is that I saw Nomair can’tprotect me and my child. He hasn’tanything in his hands to do it. The catcan protect her child, but we can’t. Whyare we like this? Why can’t we live inpeace? Why must we live in fear?

Now she waits in a crowded clinic with herchild, unclear how to cope with her ownincessant shaking, her inability to go to thebathroom at night alone, her husband’s angerwith his wife’s paralysis in the face of dangerand his own impotence in front of soldiers. Herdaughter clings fearfully to her and has startedto wet her bed at night. Fedaa struggles withfeelings of aggression and anger and is havingdifficulties sleeping. She talks of the soldiersconfronting Nomair, forcing him to strip to hisunderwear, and “tying his hands so bad, theblood cannot move in his fingers.” Sheadamantly denies that anyone was involved inshooting at the Israeli soldiers. Weeks later weexchange emails and she says, “We are still tiredand still afraid to move in our home after 8p.m.” She desperately wants to move to a safeplace, “where there are no Jewish guns,” buther visa has been repeatedly denied. She hasnever met an Israeli who is not a soldier.

Reports in the BBC2 and the Israeli daily‘Haaretz’3 note that an Israeli raid into Nabluskilled “one Palestinian civilian and one militant.”The Israeli military expressed regret but did notassume responsibility for the death of the elderlyman. Interestingly, B’Tselem, The IsraeliInformation Center for Human Rights in theOccupied Territories, includes a carefuldescription of the event on its website. Thisconfirms what we were told and adds additionaldetails regarding the shooting of the old man,the soldiers’ delay in calling an ambulance, andthe rounding up and temporary detention of anumber of the men in the Sabiah apartment.4

For me, there is so much that is trulyobscene in this description, both in itsparticulars and as an example of dailyoccurrences in the Occupied Territories.Israelis have a right to demand security, butI wonder what is happening in the mind ofan Israeli soldier when he threatens to shootan unarmed Palestinian man clutching hiswife and child in his own home, or usesanother as a human shield to move fromapartment to apartment, or shoots an elderlyman in the doorway of his apartment? Howdo repeated acts of collective punishmentand humiliating and terrorizing civilianspossibly contribute to Israeli security? Thinkof the tens of thousands of Fedaas whoselives are constricted and traumatized by theseexperiences. Think of the children who havenever met an Israeli who did not carry a gun.Look at what we know and what we choosenot to see. Consider our media, where thesuffering of the innocents in the Israeli townof Sderot periodically bombarded byKatusha rockets from Gaza, is squarely inthe public eye while the innocents in the cityof Nablus under frequent attack by a heavily-armed military, stand invisible and unheard.

A Day in Tulkarem: Hope andHarassment

The morning of October 24, 2007 issupposed to be straightforward. I board asparkling, new ambulance, a row ofstethoscopes jangling like loose-legged frogs,grasping my passport and US medicallicense. We set off for Route 60, the mainnorth-south highway used by Israelis andPalestinians in the West Bank. Five minutesinto the trip, at the first checkpoint, an Israelisoldier demands our papers, flips throughthe documents and says, “No!” thus violatingthe Geneva conventions and a host ofhumanitarian laws regarding the safe passageof medical personnel.

The ambulance driver returns to PMRS,and after further consultation, I find myselfin a vehicle with a PMRS sign perched onthe dashboard, snaking through smallPalestinian villages as we make our way upthe back roads between Ramallah andTulkarem. The trip involves sevencheckpoints, long lines of cars, tiresomedelays, and takes one-and-a-half hours. Ourdocuments are never again reviewed.

At one point, we arrive at a flyingcheckpoint with one car ahead of us. TwoIsraeli soldiers have parked their military

Think of thechildren whohave never metan Israeli whodid not carry agun.

20 Al-Aqsa

vehicle to obstruct passage and arelackadaisically setting up metal pyramids,draping cloth over them that read “STOP,” andplacing a ribbon of spikes across the road. Aswe wait, I study the body language of thesoldiers. A little flick of the hand, a quick nodof the head, a gesture of the arm, either meansstop or go. I can see the first driver constantlywatching and at one point he interprets a nodof the head to mean, “Go,” and drives up tothe flying checkpoint and we follow. Thisinfuriates the soldiers and they start yelling, “Backup! back up!” After this slow motionchoreography, the checkpoint is finally completeand the soldiers wave us through, ending abizarre moment of arbitrary harassment.

Tulkarem is a sad little city with a livelymarketplace and the PMRS clinic is located onthe second floor above a women’s clothingstore. A row of blond, blank-faced mannequins,probably dating from the 1950s, wearingdelicately embroidered Palestinian dresses, linesthe entry to the shop as I head up the steepstairs to the tumult of a clinic waiting room.As I feared, I am so late that Dr. KhuloudSalman has already seen most of the patients.

Khuloud is an attractive, small-bonedwoman with a vivacious face and easy laugh.Her nine-year-old and six-and-a-half year olddaughters, Waed (Promise) and Majd (Glory),play at the computer behind her desk and aresoon absorbed in drawing with the magicmarkers I pull out of my pack. In betweendiscussing medical topics from vaginitis tomenopause, nibbling on sweets and strawberryjuice, and seeing two patients, Khuloud agreesto share her life story.

“I am a Palestinian from Ramallah but Iwas born in Kuwait. My parents left theWest Bank before the last occupation in1967. They have to work; my motherwas a nurse and my father was workingin an insurance company. So I am born inKuwait, I finished my high school thereand then I went to get my training inBulgaria.”

She explains she cannot live in Kuwait becausethe Gulf States do not offer citizenship toforeigners born there and at this point she holdsa Jordanian passport. At the age of 18, shetraveled to Bulgaria and started her universityand medical school training. She met her futurehusband and because he is a citizen of the WestBank, after a seven year sojourn in Jordan, theyreturned to Palestine. Her problem is that shedoes not have an identity card. “My parents,they lost their identity card when they were

working in Kuwait. When the occupationin 1967 happened, the Israelis gave theidentity cards for the people who are herein the West Bank. So now they are living inJordan and I came here. Now I haven’tseen them for 10 years.”

She initially entered the West Bank with athree-month permit because she is marriedto a Palestinian with papers. The permit wasrenewed for another three months andKhuloud gave her documents to the Israeliauthorities to obtain an identity card andpermanent status, “because I have the right,not only because it is my land, but because Iam married to a citizen from here. But youknow what happened after the Intifada, theystopped everything.” Since 2000, she haswaited for a response, living illegally inTulkarem, constantly afraid that she will bedeported to Jordan. She laughs, “What areyou going to do?” and explains, “Everythingin our lives stopped for this ID card.” Thecouple would like to own a home, but theyrent because of the uncertainties surroundingher ID. They consider moving to Ramallah,but Khuloud is afraid she will be caughtwithout papers, deported and separatedfrom her family.

She works six days a week from 8 to 2o’clock and the girls join her when school isover at 1 o’clock. Her sweet-faced daughterslaugh shyly and pose coyly for photos in theirdark blue and white striped school uniforms,and then return to the serious business ofdrawing. Khuloud explains that her husbandis a pediatrician and works in a Ministry ofHealth hospital in Nablus and he and thedaughters all have identity cards and havetraveled to see her parents. She describes avery modern marriage in which her husbandcooks and cleans, “He is a big helper.” Thismay be a reflection of their experiences inBulgaria, but both of them are from familiesthat are “communist and open-minded.”After living in Bulgaria and traveling inGermany, Eastern Europe and many Arabcountries, she finds Tulkarem provincial andnot open to other cultures as people rarelytravel out of the city. She remarks that shemaintains her equanimity through contact onthe internet. She keeps medically up-to-dateand also exchanges videos and messages withher family, although she notes her childrenare much more computer savvy than she.

As the sound of Arabic music andhonking traffic insinuates into ourconversation Khuloud says she would likeher children to study the oud, (a MiddleEastern stringed instrument), and plans to

They considermoving to

Ramallah, butKhuloud is afraid

she will be caughtwithout papers,

deported andseparated from

her family.

Al-Aqsa 21

hire a private teacher from Ramallah. Shedreams that they will be able to live a better life,to have a good education, and to travel aroundthe world.

Meeting Nonviolent Resisters: Combatantsfor Peace

I meet up with an Israeli, Shimon Katz, southof Hebron near a dusty, devastated Palestinianvillage called Tuwani after visiting a familyforced to live in a cave due to Israeli restrictionson housing in the area. Sweet-faced and earnestwith a gentle manner, Shimon talks of his recentpersonal conflicts and his plans to move to thenorth of Israel to begin a training program inclinical social work. I am interested in histransformation from an elite combat officer inthe IDF to an active member of Combatantsfor Peace, started in 2005. As we drive pasthilltop Jewish settlements and tiny outposts,Israeli army installations and old Palestinianvillages, Shimon shares his personal journey.

“I was an officer in the army in an eliteunit but afterwards I went to the Far Eastand started getting involved in meditationand it was a very transformative periodin my life. I was also examining themasculine, macho stuff and switchingonto the more feminine part, morelistening. I became interested in meditationand the Dali Lama and Mahatma Gandhi.It was a profound transformation in mylife. When I got back I still served in thereserves. I really felt how I grew up as anIsraeli that needs to serve, defend and takecare, and I should be a loyal citizen whoobeys the law. I actually advocated for thatwhen I was an officer in the army andthen I felt at the same time it doesn’t followmy moral way of thinking.”

He describes a gradual process as well as acritical turning point. His unit was serving in“Schem” (Nablus) and one Israeli soldier wasshot in the head and killed. He remembers thatthey were on a mountain overlooking the cityaround 6 p.m. and there was shooting towardshis unit. “And the routine was to shoot backinto the city, even if you don’t really see exactlywhere the shooting is coming from.” Onesoldier suggested shooting at the Palestinianrooftop solar panels.

“We’re going to make them suffer andthen the shooting will stop.” Somethingfelt wrong with that kind of thinking. Isaid, “No, we are shooting into a crowd

of people or to the city, that’s notresponsible. We can defend ourselveswithout shooting back into the city,because shooting back into the citycreates more and more suffering andmisery and reasons for them to wantto retaliate.” This is the whole storyin a nutshell, the action and reactionbetween us and them. I personallythink that Israel doesn’t have negativeaspirations, and is not blood hungry.Since it was formed, Israel is just notsensitive enough to the native peoplewho have been living here.

IDF trucks rattle by and we pass clustersof heavily-armed Israeli soldiers along thehighway. Shimon comments, “The truth ishonestly I feel more safe driving on thisroad when I know that there is army guysevery few kilometers because there’s beena lot of rock throwing and shooting andthat kind of stuff. I think we shouldn’t behere at all as Israelis or maybe if thePalestinians welcome us to come here, butnot forcefully to be here.” He then reflectsthat Arabs too have flaws; everyone makesmistakes.

“It’s not like one side is completelythe victim and the other side is theaggressor. Sometimes it seems likethat, but I think truth is beyond that,from my point of view. It’s not thatthey’re only innocent victims and we’rebloodthirsty, it’s not true. We couldhave gotten along with each other.”

Shimon needs to leave to join up withother Combatants for Peace who are goingto work in the olive harvest. He explainsthat picking olives side-by-side withPalestinian farmers is both an act ofsolidarity and a means of protection for thefarmers who are often harassed or assaultedby hostile, gun-toting, rock-throwing Jewishsettlers. I need to return to Ramallah to meetup with the other half of this organization,Palestinian fighters who have beenimprisoned in Israeli jails and now havedecided to put down their guns and fightnon-violently to end the communalbloodletting.

I head back to Ramallah to the RockyHotel, an elegant building a half-an-hourwalk from the center of town, surroundedby that mix of construction and catastrophethat is part of the historical legacy of thisarea. Two Palestinian Combatants for Peace

picking olivesside-by-side withPalestinianfarmers is both anact of solidarityand a means ofprotection for thefarmers who areoften harassed orassaulted byhostile, gun-toting, rock-throwing Jewishsettlers.

22 Al-Aqsa

meet us for an evening of discussion, sweets,and chain-smoking. Once again, I am mostinterested in the personal transformation thatthese militant fighters have undergone.

Osama Abu Kersh, a handsome man withslightly graying hair, a gentle look ofdetermination, and a pensive, expressive face,is more fluent in English than his colleague,Ra’ed al Haddar. Wearing an open plaid shirt,white khaki pants, and holding a small cup ofcoffee and a cigarette with a long tail of ash, hebegins his story. In the First Intifada when hewas 14 years old, living south of Hebron, hebecame involved in demonstrations, throwingstones and Molotov cocktails, writing on walls,and organizing anti-occupation activities. Thefocus of the group was to raise the Palestinianflag. “It’s a symbolic thing about our identity,about our state, but we speak here aboutthirteen-year-olds. It’s like children games. Butsomehow, it’s about occupation.”

“Our parents, they try to keep us awayfrom the Israeli army. Our parentsdressed us in the morning to go to school.We go to school but on the way to schoolwe see the Israeli army. When we goout we saw them in the street, we sawthem in our playground, in front of ourhouses. Everywhere we see the Israeliarmy, the military jeeps. It’s not aboutcontrol of our parents. They tried topunish us, to control us, “Don’t go.Don’t leave the home.” But in the end,you can see them anyway, anytime, youcan see the Israeli army.”

At the age of 14, Osama was imprisonedfor three years in three different jails. Hedescribes his arrest in the cold of March andnine days of investigation punctuated by coldshowers, food deprivation, and painful beatingswith a plastic rod while handcuffed. He wrinkleshis forehead, gesturing with his well-manicuredhands, and depicts the technique used for sleepdeprivation: hanging the prisoner by his armsfrom the wall in an arched position where asharp object jabs him in the back if his bodycurls forward. “I think if you are 150 cm, youwill be hanging 155. You understand?”

The first nine days, no one was allowed tovisit him. These nine days were the mostdifficult in his life, “because of pain, becauseof all these techniques that they use, I give themall information. I will not be a hero, becauseI’m a child then. What kind of informationyou need from me?”

He was then transferred to a regular prisonand became acquainted with the prison system

and the monthly visits from his lawyer.Osama lived in a four meter by four metercell with 16 similarly aged teenagers in anIsraeli prison internally organized by Fatah.He says he had to wake up at seven, doexercises, have breakfast and then studysubjects, “related to our history, ourevolution, our identity, our state, our politics,”led by the oldest boy in the group. Theywere supplied with books, pens, and paper.At 11 o’clock they were taken to an outsidearea enclosed by a net, “But you can see thesun. We sit or walk one hour and then wego back to the room. It’s free time untiltwo. You can sleep. You can read. You canplay.” At two there was lunch and at four,another educational meeting. The prisonershad personal free time until dinner. “Fromnine-and-a-half until ten it’s preparing bedsto sleep. After this we sleep until morning,and another day, another day.”

We are impressed by this very disciplinededucational system in the jail and Osamaexplains that this arrangement was builtthrough nonviolent struggles and strikesagainst the Israelis. He adds that theemotional turmoil continued despite theorganization.

Because we are children, we are boys,there. We change it from jail space toplay space. We eat chocolate. Welaugh, we cry, we fight each other, butit’s not fighting-fighting. We are aschildren fight each other, but the hardmoment in this day is when you goto sleep. You miss things you have indaily life. It’s about your parents,about your family. Hard moments.That’s our life in the jail.

Upon release, he says he was quieter,ready to complete high school, start college,and that is when he met Ra’ed at BirzeitUniversity. The two students became activein the Fatah youth movement and in studentcouncil. In 1994, one year after the Osloagreement, Osama was asked to join anIsraeli-Palestinian youth meeting organizedthrough the Fatah Youth Organization. Hestarted to meet Israelis through a groupcalled People to People.5 “I met many Israelisin Jericho, Tel Aviv, in Italy.” They continuedmeeting until 1999, the debacle at CampDavid, and the beginning of the SecondIntifada.

Everything changed in 2000. There wasgreat confusion, “Whether to join this violenceor to stop, it’s a big question raised at that

I am mostinterested inthe personal

transformationthat these

militantfighters have

undergone.

Al-Aqsa 23

time.” Some of Osama’s friends joined inviolent resistance, others focused on theirpersonal lives and families. Then in 2002, theIsraeli army invaded the cities of the West Bankand was met with violent resistance. Osamaand Ra’ed struggled with the personal changesthat had started in the prisons and continuedwhile they were in the university.

This time we think, “No! We can defendour people through nonviolent struggle.I remember when the Israeli armyentered the Moquata, where Arafat lived,and surrounded him. All the people ofRamallah took things from the kitchenand start to bang pots. Through onehour, tens of thousands of peoples werein the roads. And that night I think thereare three who are killed and manywounded.

This proved to me that the nonviolentstruggle is more effective. I start througha project with an NGO named MEND,(Middle East Nonviolence andDemocracy) to establish groups ofnonviolence in each city. At the end of2004 we, as a group of friends, startedto meet the ex-Israeli soldiers who refuseto serve in West Bank and Gaza and westart to build Combatants for Peace.

Like Ra’ed, Osama’s family needed to discusshis positions before they were able to supporthim.

Osama explains that the Combatants forPeace are involved in nonviolent protest ralliesthat attract thousands of Palestinians as well asmeetings with Israelis which usually occur in AreaC on the West Bank. He reminds us that there isa long history of Palestinian nonviolent resistancein the form of boycotts, refusal to pay taxes tothe Israeli authorities, and demonstrations. Thecombatants continue to meet and share theirindividual stories despite the pain and conflict.Osama describes hearing Israeli soldiers talk ofestablishing curfews in Palestinian towns,entering cities in tanks, and killing Palestinians.The Palestinians are also aware that at home,the Israeli soldiers have been personallythreatened and sometimes jailed when they takepublic positions refusing to serve in theOccupied Territories.

The Israeli combatants deal with both theaccusation of betrayal and the apathy of theIsraeli population. Many reservists prefer to

forget the details of their militaryexperiences, preferring to go off to Indialike Shimon, but often becoming moreinvolved in the amnesia produced by druguse than the insight born of meditation. Wediscuss the continued violence, the recentprison riot in the desert detention camp,Kitziot, the steady loss of Palestinian life, thedangers of bringing Israelis into areas wherethe wounds are fresh.

On the other hand, these combatants havemore credibility than many other grassrootsorganizations because they personally havebeen involved in the violence, whether in thearmy, on the streets, or in the prisons. Thisgroup is also unique in that it has attemptedto address the common problem of Israeldomination of joint organizations byestablishing a democratic steering committee,with seven Israelis and seven Palestinians,where decisions are made by consensus. Thecombatants plan to maintain their office in AlRam, a neighborhood northeast of EastJerusalem, and to branch out into smaller localgroups in Tel Aviv and Tulkarem, Jerusalemand Ramallah, Be’ersheva and South Hebron.Because of the intense restrictions onmovement for Palestinians, the combatantsare trying to develop local autonomousgroups, guided by the steering committee.They focus on meeting with Palestinian ex-prisoners and as Osama explains, “We are notagainst Israel, against the Israeli army. We areagainst the occupier of the West Bank andGaza. We are against the occupation. Thebest solution is a two-state solution on the’67 border. When you defend your state onyour border it’s your right.” He laughs andadds, “Ah! But you have to know where yourborder is!”

Notes1. http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/infantry/

grenade/40mm_ammo.html (accessed 12/28/07)2. http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/

print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7046541.stm (accessed 12/28/07)

3. Avi Issacharoff and Yuval Azoulay, HaaretzCorrespondents and The Associated Press, 10/19/07

4. http://www.btselem.org/english/Testimonies/20071016_Abd_al_Wazir_shot_to_death_by_Soldiers_witness_Bulos.asp (accessed 12/29/07)

5. http://www.studentambassadors.org/default.asp(accessed 1.7.08), http://www.mendonline.org/aboutus.html (accessed 1.7.08)

He reminds usthat there is along history ofPalestiniannonviolentresistance inthe form ofboycotts, refusalto pay taxes tothe Israeliauthorities, anddemonstrations.

24 Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 25

The Israeli ‘Miracle’, Denial and theAlternative to Apartheid

Ramzy Baroud*

Israel: A Miraculous Birth?

Israelis and their supporters tend to depictIsrael as a country of miracles. What else couldexplain the country’s astonishing “birth” andsubsequent survival against all sorts of“existential threats”? How else would Israeldevelop at such a phenomenal pace, making the“desert bloom” and continually scoring a highranking amongst developed nations in mostnoteworthy aspects?

Meanwhile, Palestinians continue to bedepicted as “their own worst enemies”, a peoplewho “never miss an opportunity to miss anopportunity” and who stand outside theparameters of rational human behaviour. Israelis often, if not always, contrasted against aregional backdrop of “backward”,“undemocratic” and essentially violent Arabs andMuslims.

Such depictions - of luminous, civilisedIsraelis facing wicked, backward Arabs - arethe building blocks of a polemic sold tirelesslyby Israeli, American and Western media. Mostoften, it goes unchallenged, thus defining theWest’s understanding of Israel and its moral“right to exist”. The argument is rooted in thehorrors of the Jewish holocaust; however,Israel’s handlers have managed to turn deservedsympathy for that tragedy into an unwarrantedassertion, somehow equating Palestinians withNazi Germany in order to justify a constant stateof war in the name of self-defence.

In this specific context, the power of themedia cannot be over-emphasised. It hasdefined a fallacious reality based on a skewednarrative. Never in history has a story been soslanted as that of Palestine and Israel. Neverhas the victim been so squarely blamed for hisown misfortunes as the Palestinian. This is notan arrogant counter-narrative to Israel’sconcoctions. It is a glaring truth that continuesto be either ignored or misunderstood.

The “miracles” often associated withIsrael are not random; they are assertions.Miracles are a religious notion, referring tothe unexplained and supernatural. Thus theybecome exempt from rational questioning.This formula has served Israel’s strategicpurposes well. On one hand, Israel’sexistence is portrayed as a resurrection ofsorts: from near-annihilation to a “miracu-lous” rebirth. Indeed, considering how the‘Birth of Israel’ story is offered, the narrativeis no less impressive than biblical legends.Such discourse has been used successfully toappeal to a much larger group than thosewho identify with Israel on ethnic orreligious grounds. It has impressed tens ofmillions of Christian fundamentalistsworldwide. In the United States, ChristianZionists represent the popular backbone ofthe pro-Israeli camp. While American Jewstend to vote based on economic or politicalinterests, Christian Zionists see their allegianceto Israel as a religious duty.

Like all religious miracles, Israeli miraclesare “matters of faith”. They can either beaccepted as one package or rejected as such;the bottom line is that they are beyondargument, beyond the need for tangibleproof. Those foolish enough to deconstructthis - and thus question Israel as a stateaccountable to law, like all others - aresubjected to the wrath of God (in the caseof the “true believer”) or the wrath of themedia and the Zionist lobby (in the case ofthe sceptic). When an American politician,for example, is accused of not standing “fullybehind Israel”, the accusation doesn’t warrantjustification. It stands on its own, like abiblical command that has survived the testof time and reason: Thou shalt stand fullybehind Israel. The accused politician can onlydefend his record of support for Israel; he

* RAMZY BAROUD is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in manynewspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle(Pluto Press, London). www.ramzybaroud.net

Never in historyhas a story beenso slanted asthat of Palestineand Israel. Neverhas the victimbeen so squarelyblamed for hisown misfortunesas the Palestinian.

26 Al-Aqsa

cannot question why this is necessary in the firstplace, or ever acknowledge the fact that thelatter’s track record is soaked in blood, sulliedby illegal occupations, and grounded on humanrights violations and defiance of internationallaw.

As the 60th anniversary of the birth of Israelcame and went, a most impressive, albeitgrotesque, misrepresentation of that history wasoffered in abundance. Media pundits andpoliticians once again celebrated the miracle,omitting how Israel was delivered on top ofthe ruins of hundreds of Palestinian towns andvillages. The killing and ethnic cleansing thatbecame known as the Palestinian Catastrophe,or Nakba, was not the work of invisible andmiraculous seraphs, but rather well trained andwell-armed Zionist gangs and their supporters.

Nor did Palestinians lose the battle due totheir laxity or backwardness. Their bravery, forthose who care to consult serious historicalworks (such as those of Israeli historian IlanPappe or late Palestinian Professor EdwardSaid), is a badge of honour that will be carriedby Palestinians for years to come. They lostbecause, as parallel historic experiencesdemonstrate, neither bravery nor fortitude wereenough to withstand so many powerful forcesat play, all plotting for their downfall.

Moreover, those celebrating Israel’smiraculous efforts in making the desert bloom,the inference being that “nomadic Palestinians”failed to connect with the “neglected” land,and only the “return” of its rightful ownersmanaged to bring about its renewal, will mostlikely forget that its was the Palestinianproletariat, the cheap, oppressed, anddispossessed labour force, that mostly workedthe land, erected the homes and tended to thegardens of the miracle state. And no less than$100 billion of American taxpayers’ moneycontributed to Israel’s current economicviability, as well as military preparedness.

All of this is likely to be overlooked as Israeland “friends of Israel” around the worldcelebrate another miraculous year of survivaland affluence. Will they pause to wonder whyover five million Palestinian refugees aredispossessed and scattered around the world?Will they lend a moment’s silence to the manythousands who were brutally murdered so thatIsrael could live this fallacious miracle? Will theyever understand the pain and the tears ofsuccessive generations dying while holding ontothe keys of homes that were destroyed, deedsto land that was stolen, and memories of a oncebeautiful reality from which they were violentlyuprooted?

If there is any miracle in Israel’s existenceit is that the lies upon which it is foundedcould be perpetuated for so long, despiteglaringly obvious truths to the contrary.Indeed, it is a miracle that such grave injusticecould reign for so long uncontested.

And as the Israeli miracle is celebrated,the very existence of Palestinians, or, at bestthe recognition of their long denied rights,is doubted.

Palestine and the Palestinians

‘Don’t ask for what you never had,’ isthe underlying message made by supportersof Israel when they claim Palestine was nevera state to begin with.

The contention is, of course, easilyrefutable. Following the disintegration of theOttoman Empire in the early 20th Century,colonial powers plotted to divide the spoils.When Britain and France signed the secretiveSykes-Picot agreement in 1916, whichdivided the spheres of influence in west Asia,there were hardly any ‘nation-states’ in theregion which would fit contemporarydefinitions of the term.

All borders were colonial concoctionsthat served the interests of the powerfulcountries seeking strategic control, politicalinfluence and raw material. Most of Africaand much of Asia were victims of thecolonial scrambles, which disfigured theirgeo-political and subsequently socio-economic compositions.

But Palestinians, like many other people,did see themselves as a unique group linkedhistorically to a specific geographic entity. AllThat Remains by Professor Walid Khalidi isone leading volume which documents athriving pre-Israel history of Palestine andthe Palestinian people. Such history is oftenoverlooked, if not entirely dismissed. Somechoose to believe that no other civilizationever existed in Palestine, neither prior to norbetween the assumed destruction of theSecond Temple by the Romans in 70 CEuntil the founding of Israel in 1948. But whatabout irrefutable facts? For example, theIsraeli Jerusalem Post was called the PalestinePost when it was founded in 1932. WhyPalestine and not Israel? Whose existence, asa definable political entity, preceded theother? The answer is obvious.

It is not the denial or acceptance of Israel’sexistence that concerns me. Israel does exist,even if it refuses to define its borders, oracknowledge the historic injustices

They lost because,as parallel historic

experiencesdemonstrate,

neither braverynor fortitude

were enough towithstand so

many powerfulforces at play, allplotting for their

downfall.

Al-Aqsa 27

committed against the Palestinian people. Thesystematic and brutal ethnic cleaning of themajority of Palestinian Christians and Muslimsfrom 1947 to 1948 is what produced a Jewishmajority in Palestine and subsequently the ‘Jewishstate’ of Israel.

Also worth remembering are the equallysystematic attempts at dehumanising Palestiniansand denying them any rights. When Ehud Barak,Prime Minister of Israel at the time, comparedPalestinians in a Jerusalem Post interview to“crocodiles, the more you give them meat, theywant more,”1 he was hardly diverting from aconsistent Zionist tradition that equatedPalestinians with animals and vermin. AnotherPrime Minister, Menachem Begin referred toPalestinians in a Knesset speech as “beastswalking on two legs.”2 They have also beendescribed as “grasshoppers”, “cockroaches”and more by famed Israeli statesmen.

Disturbingly, such references might be seenas an improvement from former PrimeMinister Golda Meir’s claim that “there wereno such thing as Palestinians...they did not exist.”3

To justify its own existence, Israel has longsubjugated its citizens to a kind of collectiveamnesia. Do Israelis realise they live on the rubbleof hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns,each destroyed during a most tragic history ofblood, pain and tears, resulting in an ethniccleansing of nearly 800,000 Palestinians?

As Israel celebrated its 60th birthday, nothingis allowed to blemish the supposed heroism ofits founding fathers or those who fought in itsname. Palestine, the Palestinians, and animmeasurably long relationship between apeople and their land hardly merit a pause asIsraeli officials and their Western counterpartscarry on with their festivities.

While some conveniently forgot manyhistoric chapters pertinent to the suffering ofPalestinians, Israeli leaders - especially those whotook part in the colonization of Palestine - werefully aware of what they did. David Ben Gurion,the first Prime Minister of Israel, warned in1948, “We must do everything to insure they(the Palestinians) never do return.” By ensuringthat Palestinians were cut off from their land,Ben Gurion had hoped that time will take careof the rest. “The old will die and the young willforget,” he said.

Moshe Dayan, a former Israeli DefenceMinister also had no illusions regarding the realhistory beneath Israel’s momentousachievements. His speech at the Technion inHaifa was quoted in the Israeli daily Haaretzthus: “We came here to a country that waspopulated by Arabs and we are building here a

Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arabvillages, Jewish villages were established. Youeven do not know the names of thosevillages, and I do not blame you becausethese villages no longer exist. There is not asingle Jewish settlement that was notestablished in the place of a former Arabvillage.”4

Israel has, since its inception, laboured toundermine any sense of Palestinian identity.Without most of their historic land, therelationship between Palestinians andPalestine could only exist in memory.Eventually though, memory managed tomorph into a collective identity that hasproved more durable than the physicalexistence on the land. “It is a testimony tothe tenacity of Palestinians that they have keptalive a sense of nationhood in the face ofso much adversity. Yet the obstacles tosustaining their cohesiveness as a people aretoday greater than ever,”5 reported theEconomist.

Living in so many disconnected areas,removed from their land, detached from oneanother, fought with at every corner,Palestinians have not just been oppressedphysically by Israel, but psychologically as well.There are attempts from all angles to forcethem to simply concede, forget, and moveon. It is the Palestinian people’s rejection ofsuch notions that makes Israel’s victory and‘independence’ superficial and unconvincing.

Sixty years after their Catastrophe(Nakba), Palestinians still remember theirpast and present injustices. Of course morethan mere remembrance is necessary;Palestinians need to find a common groundfor unity - Christians and Muslims, poor andrich, secularist and the religious - in order tostop Israel from eagerly exploiting their owndisunity, factionalism and political tribalism.

However, despite Israel’s hopes and bestefforts, Palestinians have not yet forgottenwho they are. And no amount of denial canchange this.

The Alternative?

For the last 60 years, all those who havesought a genuinely peaceful and fair solutionfor Israel and Palestine have faced the sameobstacle—Israel’s sense of invincibility andmilitary arrogance, abetted by the US andother Western governments’ unwaveringsupport.

Despite recent setbacks on the militaryfront, the Israeli government is yet to awaken

Memory managedto morph into acollective identitythat has provedmore durablethan the physicalexistence onthe land.

28 Al-Aqsa

to the reality that Israel is simply not invincible.The wheel of history, which has seen the riseand fall of many great powers, won’t grind toa halt. Experiences have also repeatedly shownthat neither Israel’s nuclear arms norWashington’s billions of dollars in annual fundscould create ‘security’ for the former.

While Israel can celebrate whatever skewedversion of history it wishes to, it still cannotdefeat ordinary people armed with their will tosurvive and reclaim what was rightfully theirs.The same problem confronted the US inVietnam, France in Algeria and Italy in Libya.The Palestinian people will not evaporate.Attempts to undermine Palestinian unity, instigatecivil violence, and groom and present shadycharacters as ‘representatives’ of Palestinianshave failed in the past and will continue to fail.

Representing, and thus dealing with theconflict as one invented and sustained by Arabgreed and Palestinian terrorism helped Israelgarner sympathy, while simultaneouslyconvoluting what should have been an urgentexample of injustice, predicated on colonialismand ethnic cleansing.

More, depicting the mere existence ofPalestinians as a ‘threat’, a ‘problem’ and a‘demographic bomb’ is inhumane and actuallya full-fledged form of racism. Throughout its60 years of existence, successive Israeligovernments have treated Palestinians—thenative inhabitants of historic Palestine—asundesired and thus negligible inhabitants of aland that was promised only to Jews by somedivine power thousands of years ago.

This archaic concept has managed to definemainstream politics in Israel, and increasingly theUS, allowing religious doctrines to discriminateand brutally repress Palestinians, both citizensof Israel and residents of the occupiedTerritories.

Needless to say, neither a figurative Iron wall,like that proposed by Vladimir Jabotinsky in1923, nor an actual massive and menacingstructure as the one being erected in the WestBank can really separate Israel from its ‘problem’,the Palestinians. An area roughly the size of theUS state of Vermont cannot sustain such acomplex model—a country that is openunconditionally for all Jews who wish toimmigrate, and an oppressed population that iscaged in between walls, fences, and hundredsof checkpoints—without inviting perpetualconflict.

What Israel has created in Palestine belies itsown claim that its ultimate wish is peace withsecurity. While occupied East Jerusalem is entirelyannexed by an Israeli government diktat, 40 per

cent of the total size of the West Bank isused exclusively for the purposes of theillegal Jewish settlers and the Israeli military.How can Israel’s claim of wanting to live inpeace be taken seriously if it continues toinvade the lives, confiscate the land and usurpthe water of Palestinians?

When Israel invaded East Jerusalem, theWest Bank and Gaza in 1967, the Jewishcitizens of Israel celebrated the ‘return’ ofbiblical Judea and Samaria and thereunification of Jerusalem. Nearly 300,000more Palestinians were ethnically cleansed,adding to the many more who were evictedfrom historic Palestine in 1948.

Yet, most Palestinians have remainedhostage to the Israeli-invented limbo thatsuggests they were neither citizens of Israel,nor of their own state, nor deserving of therights of an occupied civilian populationunder the Geneva Convention.

Despite this, Israel’s insistence onemploying military ‘solutions’ in its dealingwith Palestinians have constantly backfired.Palestinians naturally rebelled and wererepeatedly suppressed, which only worsenedthe feud and heightened the level of violence.

The PLO’s acceptance of Israel’sexistence, and UN Resolution 242 as a firststep towards a two state solution was bothridiculed and rejected by the Israeligovernment, which continued to arrange forits own ineffective and ultimately destructivesolutions.

Throughout the years, Israel translatedits military strength to erect more settlementsand move its population to occupiedPalestinian territories. Even after the OsloAccords of September 1993, theconstruction of settlements didn’t slowdown, but rather accelerated. After the mostrecent peace talks in Annapolis in November2007, Israel continues to grant more permitsto build more homes in illegal settlementsunder the guise of ‘natural expansion.’ But itmay have gone too far, leaving itself andPalestinians with few options now.

In a November 29, 2007 interview withIsraeli daily Ha’aretz, Prime Minister EhudOlmert warned that without a two-stateagreement, Israel would face “a SouthAfrican-style struggle for equal voting rights”in which case “Israel (would be) finished.” Itis ironic that Israeli leaders are now advocatingthe same solution that they vehemently rejectedin the past. However, the Israeli version ofthe two-state agreement hardly meets theminimum expectations of Palestinians.

What Israel hascreated in

Palestine beliesits own claim

that its ultimatewish is peacewith security.

Al-Aqsa 29

Without Jerusalem, without their refugees’ rightof return as enshrined in UN resolution 194 andwith a West Bank dotted with over 216 settlementsand scarred by a mammoth wall, asking Palestiniansto accept an Israeli version of the two-state solutionis asking them to agree to their eternalimprisonment, subjugation and defeat—which theyhave rejected generation after generation.

If Israel is indeed interested in a peacefulresolution to this bloody conflict, one that is basedon equal human and legal rights, justice, securityand lasting peace, then it must add a new word toits lexicon: coexistence. Jews and Arabs coexistedpeacefully prior to the rise of Zionism, and they

are capable of doing so in the future. Anyother solution would simply institutionaliseracism and apartheid, undermine democracyand human rights and thus further perpetuateviolence.

Notes1. Jerusalem Post, 30 August 20002. Quoted by Amnon Kapeliouk, “Begin and the

‘Beasts’”, the New Statesman, 25 June 1982.3. Interview in the Sunday Times, 15 June 1969.4. Haaretz, 4 April 1969.5. ‘The Wandering Palestinian’, The Economist (print

edition), 8 May 2008.

�

Books Available For Review

1. The Middle East in International Relations, Power, Politics and Ideology, by Fred Halliday

2. The Israel Palestine Conflict, by James Gelvin

3. Palestine Inside Out, An Everyday Occupation, by Saree Makdisi

4. A Doctor in Galilee, by Hatim Kanaaneh

5. Hamas in Politics, Democracy, Religion, violence, by Jeroen Gunning

Interested individuals contact Friends of Al-Aqsa

30 Al-Aqsa

B O O K R E V I E W

An Israeli in Palestine, ResistingDispossession, Redeeming IsraelBY JEFF HALPER, London, Pluto Press, 2008, ISBN978-0745322261, pp. 317, £16.99

In “An Israeli in Palestine,” Jeff Halper describes his ownjourney from being a Jew living in the USA to becomingwhat he describes as an Israeli in Palestine. The turning

point in Halper’s view of Israel and Palestine occurred whenhe witnessed the demolition of a Palestinian family home byIsraeli bulldozers. This experience was an eye opener throughwhich he started to discover the injustices against andoppression of, the Palestinians.

Oppression is regarded by Halper as the key issue in thePalestinian/Israeli conflict and he has based this whole bookaround it. The text is divided into four parts which are titled inconsecutive order: “comprehending oppression”, “sources ofoppression”, “the structure of oppression” and “overcomingoppression.” Halper believes that “oppression names thesituation and names the oppressor as well, in this case Israeland the Zionist movement that preceded it” (page 8).

The first three parts are divided into seven chapters andgive a comprehensive account of the forced displacementof Palestinians which began in an organised way as early as1904 and reached its peak in 1948, but never actually ended.The author acknowledges the ethnic cleansing that happenedin 1948 with 36 massacres and the destruction of 517 entirevillages (page 113). This horrible crime was not enough forthe founders of Israel, as many of them saw the 1948 waras a “job undone.” Halper quotes Yigal Allon who wrote justbefore the 1967 war “in case of a new war we must avoidthe historic mistake of the war of independence and mustnot cease fighting until we achieve total victory; the territorialfulfilment of the land of Israel” (p141).

After the 1967 war which resulted in another catastrophefor the Palestinians and more dispossessions; the attemptsto transfer Palestinians from their land continued.Moreover, Israeli governments have always tried to createfacts on the ground aimed at making the occupationpermanent.

In Halper’s view, the causes of the oppression are rootedin the Zionist idea of having an ethnocratic Jewish state inPalestine. He rightly states that an ethnocracy cannot bedemocratic contrary to the claim that Israel is the onlydemocracy in the Middle East.

Halper concludes the book by proposing his personalviews about overcoming this oppression, stating that theonly way forward is by redeeming Israel from its colonialstatus and normalising its existence in the Middle East. Thesolution, he suggests, is a Middle East confederation withinwhich Israelis can live peacefully and Palestinians can havethe right to return. Halper also believes that reframing theconflict with the adoption of alternative opinions aboutthe struggle and its roots is a necessary step to reaching ajust peace.

In the introduction, Halper emphasises the importanceof critical thinking, and he states that “one of the hardestparts of critical thinking is the ability to detect in yourselfelements of irrationality, prejudice, fear, peer pressure andsocial conditioning- and to confront them” (page 29). It iseasy to agree with this statement and in this book. Halperhas shown critical and indeed courageous thinking. However,some further critical questions which are important inunderstanding the conflict were left unanswered.

Halper and many other Israeli academics and peaceactivists accept the Zionist idea that Jews as a nation “possessthe right of self determination in their historichomeland…and it seemed …self evident that that homewas the land of Israel” (page 21).

This statement gives rise to two questions overlookedby Halper. Firstly, if the Jewish people as a nation despairto have a homeland then why have only 1% of AmericanJews immigrated to Israel? Why have the other 99% stayedcontent and satisfied with living in the USA rather thanfulfilling the urge to return to their national homeland?While Halper does mention that this fact is problematic, hemakes no attempt to explain it.

Secondly, is it a fact that Palestine is the historichomeland for the Jewish people? Halper says this is “selfevident”, with religious and national sources to back upthis claim. The religious claim roots from the Bible as Godsays to Abraham in Genesis12:7 “unto thy seed will I givethis land.” There are several problems regarding interpretingthis verse:

1. God says ‘I give this land’. Many religious Jewsincluding orthodox rabbis believe it is only God whodecides when to give the land and when to take it.Thus, they believe the Torah allows their return to

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Palestine by divine intervention only and not byhuman attempts.

2. The verse speaks to Abraham and not to the Jewishpeople and Arabs are also the seeds of Abraham,thus why are they excluded from this promise?

3. The modern world cannot accept a religious text as thebasis for claiming sovereignty over a land and justifyingthe ethnic cleansing and transfer of a whole nation.

The national claim to Palestine as being the homeland ofJews is even more difficult to justify. Palestine has 10,000years of recorded history. The first people who lived therewere the Canaanites who were Arabs and the Jewish peoplefirst came to Palestine as immigrants. Although the sons ofProphet Abraham were born in Palestine, Abraham himselfimmigrated to Palestine from Iraq. Joseph, the son of Jacob,who was the son of Isaac, went to Egypt as a slave, andwhen he was reunited with his family he asked them to bringall their people to Egypt. Thus, it was only a maximum ofthree generations of Jews who lived in Palestine during thatperiod.

Following that, it was not until 1020BC that they againcould enter Palestine with Prophet David. The kingdom ofDavid and that of his son prophet Solomon lasted until 922BC (98 years only). After that, Palestine was ruled byBabylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans until 638ADwhen it came under Islamic rule lasting for 1300 years.

It is clear from this historical background that Jews onlyruled Palestine for a very short period and they were alwaysimmigrants to it. So the reference to Palestine as the nationalhomeland of the Jewish people lacks credibility.

The confederation between Jews and Palestinians suggestedby Halper could be an ideal peaceful solution within which theIsraeli nationality could flourish within the larger MiddleEastern one. However, in reality, Israeli leaders are highlyunlikely to accede to such a solution due to deep rootedprejudices and anti-Arab cultural conditioning.

Halper is clearly sincere in his analysis. He says “I am anIsraeli living in a real country called Israel, that means for methat Israel is a fact of life. No matter whether Israel shouldhave been established, the crimes committed in 1948…Israelis a political fact that can not be simply erased, even if onefeels all the moral justification to do so” (page 31). However,one would have to question the “facts on the ground” andwhat Halper’s views about Israel as a permanent entity couldmean in the future. If Israel is aiming to annex more Palestinianterritories occupied in 1967, which it is clearly seen to be doing,and making this occupation permanent and a “political fact”;would Halper, in a decade or so, argue that the land stolenpost-1967 is a fact which cannot be reversed and thereforerequires no more discussion?

In conclusion, this is a thoroughly enjoyable book andthe author is to be congratulated for his courageous ideaswhich for many Israelis would be unacceptable andunthinkable. However, some issues require further criticalexploration in order to fully succeed in the aim set out byHalper, when he states: “a conflict cannot truly be endedunless its underlying causes are addressed.”

Dr Heyam Awad

The Iron Cage: The Story of the Pal-estinian Struggle for StateBY RASHID KHALIDI, Oxford, Oneworld., 2006, ISBN0807003093, £10.99

In this excellent and comprehensive account of the“Palestinian struggle for statehood” since the beginningof the British mandate in the early 1920s, Rashid Khalidi,

while acknowledging that the Palestinians were “the weakestof all the parties engaged in the prolonged struggle todetermine the fate of Palestine”, sets out to explore theargument that the Palestinians were not only victims butshould also take some responsibility for their continuingfailure to achieve an independent state. He recognizes thelink between the “pressing current issues of terrorism.

War in Iraq, United States policy, and the seeminglyunconnected question of the Palestinians’ failure to achieveindependence” and attributes this to the continuity of westernpolicies in Palestine. He argues, firstly, that we have tounderstand Palestinian history in its own terms; secondly,that we must “ascribe agency to the Palestinians”, in order toavoid seeing them as “no more than helpless victims of forcesfar greater than themselves”; and, thirdly, that “the unfortunatecase of Palestine illustrates…the long-term perils and pitfallsof great powers following short-sighted policies that are notbased on their own professed principles, and are not consonantwith international law and legitimacy”.

There is no doubt that Palestinian history has been oneof tragedy and injustice. This raises the question of whetherthe Palestinians could have done anything differently. Bydescribing in detail British policies during its mandate overPalestine and, in particular, its commitment to the creationof a “national home” for the Jewish people and its use of“divide and rule” tactics to prevent the emergence ofPalestinian pre-state structures, and by challenging some ofthe founding myths of the Israeli state, Khalidi suggests thatPalestinians were let down by their leadership, mainlycomposed of traditional notable families, who failed torespond adequately to the rapidly escalating crisis in the 1920sand 1930s. Yet, even had the national leadership been moreunited and proactive, Khalidi argues that the outcome couldprobably not have been avoided. From the start, he notes,there was a “basic asymmetry” between the two sides. By thetime the grassroots Palestinian revolt began in the mid-1930s,it was already too late. Palestinians were unable to escapefrom what he describes as “the fiendish iron cage devised forthem by the British”.

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After 1948, the Palestinian people were scattered beyondthe borders of their homeland and national identity becameeven more difficult to construct or maintain. The majorachievement of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),founded in 1964, was its success in creating a vehicle for theachievement of Palestinian national aims “that was universallyaccepted among the entirety of the Palestinian people”. In1988, the PLO accepted a two-state solution but failed, inKhalidi’s view, to draw “the logical conclusion that what wasnecessary was the re-education of the Palestinians away fromarmed struggle and toward a whole new approach of unarmedmass popular struggle (as demonstrated in the first intifada).Unfortunately, as Khalidi makes clear, the PLO – and its leaderYasir Arafat – had great difficulties in making the transitionfrom a liberation movement engaged in armed struggle to anembryonic government. The Palestinian Authority, establishedin 1994 under the terms of the Oslo peace process, sufferedfrom inexperience and was accused of arrogance and ofengaging in increasingly corrupt practices. It contributed towhat Khalidi described as “the Palestinians’ failure to developstructures of state through most of their modern history”.As a result, the ruling Fatah regime was defeated, in the January2006 elections, by the Islamist Hamas party; many Palestiniansbelieved that, not only was Hamas less corrupt than Fatah,but was also willing to stand up to the increasingly aggressivetactics of the Israeli occupation.

This book is a painstaking and scholarly piece of research.Khalidi starkly illustrates the awful dilemma of Palestinianswho have, since the 1920s, faced an uphill struggle. Threeprincipal levels of argument emerge. The first reveals theenormity of the struggle which pitted unprepared Palestiniansagainst the might of the British empire. After the creation ofthe state of Israel, British patronage was replaced by the supportof the mighty United States. Secondly, it seems that Palestinianshave not been well served by their leaderships, either in theearly chaotic days of struggle against the British and the Zionistsor the more recent era of an inexperienced and corruptPalestinian Authority. Thirdly, despite their many setbacks,the Palestinian people have refused simply to disappear asperhaps the Israelis might have liked; instead they havecontinued to resist the obliteration of their identity and thetotal loss of their land and, although the odds against themappear, especially since the start of the second intifada in 2000,almost insurmountable, Khalidi insists that Palestinians still havesome power to influence their own future. It is here, I think,that we find the strength of this book.

To date, as Khalidi states, none of the Palestinian partieshave been able to assert Palestinian rights or move closer toself-determination, and this raises the question, for him, ofwhether an independent Palestinian state in the West Bankand Gaza Strip is any longer feasible. Given the continuedIsraeli expansion of settlements, the building of a networkof roads for Israeli use only, and the construction of whatPalestinians call the “Apartheid Wall” in the West Bank, itmay be time to return to the old idea of a one-state solution.While acknowledging that such a step would face enormousobstacles and would be highly unequal, he concludes thatthis might be the best available answer to allow thePalestinians at last to be liberated from their iron cage.

Centre for the Study of Dr Maria HoltDemocracy, University of Westminster

The Bible and Zionism: InventedTraditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Israel-PalestineBY NUR MASALHA, London,Zed Books, 2007, ISBN:978 1842777619, Pp.321 + notes, bibliography and index,£19.99

The author is a British-Palestinian academic who isDirector of the Centre for Religion and History inthe Department of Theology, Philosophy and History,

St. Mary’s University College, Twickenham, London. He isthe author of numerous books on the Palestinian refugeecrisis, and is a leading authority on this issue in the post-1948history of the state of Israel. The book under review is asmuch a detailed scholarly work as well as an anguished ‘cryof the heart’ for Dr. Nur Masalha, as he seeks to reason outwhy his native homeland of Palestine was forced to becomea kind of ‘refuge(e)’ holding station for Jewish peopleworldwide, whilst rendering the indigenous Palestinian Arabinhabitants expellees, refugees and aliens in their own landor elsewhere in the region and the world as such. All this wasdone in collusion and under the grip of a nationalistic ideologytotally alien to the peaceful eastern Palestinian and Arab ethosof the Holy Land. Masalha himself belonged to the so-called‘Palestinians of 1948,’ those indigenous Arab people whonever left the former British Mandatory state of Palestinewhen it was conquered by Zionist Jewish forces in 1948. Allhis works to date have focussed on the eternal dilemma ofPalestinians in the state of Israel, simultaneously Israeli citizensas well as unwilling ‘refugees’ caught in legal and bureaucraticlimbo in a state that does not want them, as they struggle forrecognition from the very same state.

The book starts with the astonishing fact that nearly 70%of the Palestinian population worldwide are actually refugees,unable to return to their homeland, even if they want to(p.1). This fact is repeated again to emphasize the disastrousconsequences of this cataclysmic event in the psyche of thePalestinian people (p.55). One of the great weights ofMasalha’s scholarship is his ability to integrate archival researchinto his work, particularly using his proficiency in four mainEuropean and Middle Eastern languages as well as hisrelatively easy ability (due to his joint identity as a Briton aswell as a Palestinian with roots in the present state of Israel)to access the archival sources both in Israel as well as theUK (p.6). As a collection of virtually independent, yet

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interdependent essays, this book must strike the reader asunique in its breadth of discourse in the now increasinglyover-subscribed as well as predominantly ‘area study’ focusseddiscipline of Middle Eastern politics and history. The bookevidently reflects half a life-time’s passion for study andresearch into the crucial political, historical-sociological andtheological issues of the Palestine-Israel region. Masalha’swork must also mark the first time that a scholar ofPalestinian Arab-Muslim background has attempted a detailedanalysis of the historical and political claims underlying thewriting of the ‘Judaeo-Christian Torah-Old Testament’ inthe light of contemporary religious-political ideologies suchas Zionism and Christian Zionism in the West.

Masalha’s first chapter is the longest in the book at amassive 70 pages and is a summary of much of the author’sprevious scholarship into the field of ‘Nakba’ studies as wellas the genesis and creation of the Palestinian refugee issue.The Author’s presence in the state of Israel during the ‘activist’post-foundational period of the formation is evident in themaking and the content of this chapter. Pertinent to Masalha’sthesis in his latest book is the ‘conviction’ as he puts it amongWesterners and Zionists, of both secular as well as religiousorientation that ‘God’ through the ‘Bible’ has given Canaan-Palestine in perpetuity to the Jewish people (p.15). All Jewishas well as later Israeli settler colonialism in the Holy Landwas based on this ‘scriptural’ fact. This is one of the reasonswhy Masalha has titled his first chapter with the highlyprovocative heading: ‘The Bible is Our Mandate.’ While theearlier political Zionists who played a major role in theestablishment and development of the pre-state Yishuv inPalestine were staunchly secular like the first premier of thestate of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, they were also literallyconvinced of the historical authenticity of the Bible (p.17).This, after all, would be the sole testing point to their claimto ‘exclusivist’ ownership of the land of Canaan-Palestine-Israel in Western Christian eyes. The Bible was viewed moreas a guide book by Israeli leaders in their attempts to justifythe Zionist project for the state of Israel (p.21, 22).

Masalha has sought to deal with the symbolically andstrategically appropriated political tendencies of early Israelileaders such as David Ben Gurion to portray their occupationof the land of Palestine in line with the direct fulfilment ofthe earlier ‘divine’ biblical mandate to occupy and colonisethe land of Canaan-Palestine to the ‘total’ exclusion of itsprevious occupants. Early Israeli leaders were soundly secular,but they still sought to portray themselves as religious so asto appropriate the historic and heroic ‘Jewish-Christian’ imagesfrom the bible in their quest for establishing a Jewish ‘free’state in the Holy Land with Western backing. Masalha traceshow the early radical theoreticians for a state of Israel suchas Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky were greatly indebted to thekind of ‘racist’ nationalist ideologies emanating from the West,to justify their occupation and colonisation of the land ofPalestine. Jabotinsky himself popularised the so-called ‘IronWall’ doctrine that sought to develop the aggressive thesisthat the Zionist settlement of Palestine could only be achievedagainst the wishes and aspirations of the native Arabs of theregion. The leaders of early Israel, Zionist and otherwise,often appealed to the Joshua story and to the process bywhich Joshua, son of Nun (p.24-35) cleared the land ofPalestine and Jericho in particular, in order to justify the

expulsion of Palestinians from their territory in the land ofCanaan-Palestine.

Masalha quotes extensively from the first founding primeminister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion to show that hecomprehensively advocated the concept of transfer alongwith the early Zionist leaders (p.48-49). He refers to how theBible, from a pre-eminently spiritual and historic ‘Judaeo-Christian’ document has become secularized and internalisedin the contemporary Israeli and Western cultural dialogue byits appropriation by the early Zionist colonists in Palestine.Even the poetry of the early Zionists was tuned to the strainsof an ‘empty land waiting for a people.’

Masalha reveals some ‘shocking’ facts that were broughtto light in previous archival research by him, especially asregards the willingness of the 1967 Jewish religious-militaryhierarchy in Israel to level the Temple Mount and pull downthe Mosque of Omar as well as the Dome of the Rock (p.79). He refers to attempts by Israeli leaders well into the1990s to portray the state of Israel as a state formed in anempty void where nobody resided (p. 43-44). The earlyZionists had always fixed their eyes on something much biggerthan the part of Palestine that they acquired. They werelooking at a space that included trans-Jordan eastwards almostup to the Euphrates River in today’s Iraq, as well as theentire region up to the Litani River now in Lebanon and theregion that extended south west to the Suez Canal in Egypt.

Some interesting information that Masalha raises in hisfirst chapter includes the description of the so-called‘Government Names Committee,’ a state-sponsoredcommittee set up by the Israeli government in July 1949 torename the areas of the former Palestine that had beenevacuated and taken over by the new state of Israel (p.68).He also refers to the similar process by which Israeliarchaeologists sought to manipulate the archaeology of theHoly Land to suit the designs and aspirations of the ‘new’Zionist rulers of Israel.

Masalha’s second chapter is dedicated to the growth of‘biblical archaeology’ in the Holy Land. Masalha traces theinfluence of Christian Zionism on Western attitudes towardsthe state of Israel. Masalha details how the Western Protestantreformation provided cannon fodder for the developmentof Christian Zionist attitudes in the West. He details theexploits of British military colonel Orde Wingate and othersin the mandatory political and geographical landscape ofPalestine and their early support for the pre-state Yishuv’smilitary training programs. Masalha clearly links thedevelopment of biblical archaeology in the Holy Land withthe modern re-emergence of Christian Zionism in the West.He traces the impact and influence of biblical archaeologistslike William Foxwell Albright and others on the ‘digging’ scenein mandatory Palestine and describes how these people soughtto glamorise the ancient biblical heritage of the Holy Landwhile simultaneously denigrating and even discarding the thencontemporaneous ‘Arab’ social and political scene.

Masalha mentions the impact of the Crusades on theArab psyche over the last millennium and also traces the riseof the Christian Zionist lobby in America, particularly as aresult of the Israeli victory in the 1967 war and the need totheologise this event in the national and public consciousnessof Christian America. Some interesting issues raised byMasalha in this chapter include the description of the ongoing

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groups of violent settler militias that sought to terrorise thePalestinian populations of the West Bank as well as EastJerusalem and the Palestinian areas within the state of Israel.

The Author ends this chapter with a call to theinternational community and the UN to put pressure on Israelto end its skewed policies benefiting one community alone-the Jews in Jerusalem, and to actively engage underinternational law to protect the Palestinian Muslim andChristian residents of the city from the ‘depredations’ ofJewish right wing groups active in the Old city area ofJerusalem.

Chapter five is a continuation of some of the issues raisedby the Author in chapter four as he seeks to analyse andinterpret the philosophy and teachings of the great medievalArab-Jewish philosopher and theologian Moses Maimonides,a functionary and close associate of various medieval Islamiccourts and rulers. Born in Umayyad Cordoba, Maimonidesended up in Fustat, Egypt at the court of Salah-e-din Ayyubiand his son. Maimonides was credited with describingmedieval Catholic Christianity as a form of idolatry. Masalhais very critical of the way that nationalist and religious Zionistshave appropriated Maimonides without making any allowancefor the medieval Islamic context in which he operated andthe Umayyad and later Ayyubid civilisational contexts in whichhe functioned.

Chapter six gives us a comprehensive account of the riseand growth of the Palestinian radical Islamist party Hamaswhich grew out of the Palestinian wing of the MuslimBrotherhood movement. The Muslim Brotherhood inPalestine (Gaza and the West Bank) was one of the strongestpolitical and social movements in the pre-and post-1967interregnum as the premier party of Palestinian resistanceper se in the Occupied Territories. This ‘fact on the ground’changed with the arrival of the erstwhile ‘banned’ PalestinianLiberation Organisation (PLO) in its new ‘avatar’ as thePalestinian National Authority (PNA) after the Oslo Accordsin 1993.

Hamas was always staunchly against the Oslo processwhich it saw as an act of ‘treason’ against the Palestinianpeople and a process initiated behind the back of thePalestinian people without adequately consulting them or the‘legitimate’ resistance in the Occupied Territories. Masalharaises the interesting issue that Hamas contrary to popularas well as international awareness, was not united as regardstheir policy of carrying out ‘suicide-bombings’ both in thestate of Israel as well as against ‘legitimate enemy’ targets inthe Occupied Territories. There were strong voices withinHamas that called for an end to the policy of ‘suicide-bombing.’ He reminds us how Hamas actually called for aceasefire with the Israelis as early as June 2003, almost threeyears into the Al-Aqsa Intifada. It was Hamas’s highly‘pragmatic’ approach towards the use of violence and peacein the conflict that secured them victory in the January 2006Palestinian elections, according to the Author.

Chapter seven is probably the most important chapter inthis book as the Author seeks to deal with the debate inBiblical studies concerning the historicity and scientific‘validity’ of the Hebrew Bible in our modern world. Biblicalarchaeology started in the ‘holy land’ as a tool to representand establish Western and later Jewish links to the ancientland of Israel-Palestine. Masalha describes how the Hebrew

conflict between the US Embassy in Tel Aviv which isaccredited to the state of Israel whereas a US consulatefunctions in East Jerusalem and is primarily meant to caterto the Palestinians of the West Bank and East Jerusalem (p.119). Masalha ends his second chapter with a call forcommitted liberal Christians to come together with a visionfor a democratic pluralistic state of Israel-Palestine whereall its citizens, Jews as well as Arabs can live together inpeace and on the basis of shared interests.

Masalha’s third chapter focuses on internal ‘theological’developments within the state of Israel, the development andgrowth of the so-called movement of ‘neo-Zionism’ that soughtto play itself out primarily in the post-1967 settlements as thenew face of ‘old’ state-sponsored political Zionism. Masalhadocuments the attempts to rid the so-called ‘Eretz Israel’ regionof ‘Judea and Samaria’ (Occupied Territories of the WestBank) of Palestinians by the religious Zionist settler groups.Masalha specifically deals with the ideology and politics of theGush Emunim settler movement as well as the teachings ofthe two Rabbi Kooks, father and son, who were responsiblefor the development of religious Zionism as a force to bereckoned with on the Palestine-Israel stage.

The Author details the incredible lengths to which rightwing Rabbis would go to justify any amount of militaristicexpansionist activity on the part of the Israeli state and armydirected at neighbouring Arab nations in the Middle East.He also describes the increasing popularity of Torah based‘Halacha’ Jewish law among Orthodox and neo-Zionist groupsin Israel along with warnings of strong demands by Rabbisto extend the halachic status of ‘resident alien’ to non-Jewsin Israel-Palestine (p. 152,164). Masalha ends this chapterwith a warning that the state of Israel must be careful lestthey realise too late that their support for the militant settlersof the West Bank has actually turned into a dagger aimed atthe very heart of the ‘Jewish’ state.

The fourth chapter deals with the ‘sacred geography’ ofJerusalem, a city holy for three major world religions, Judaism,Christianity and Islam. Over the last two millennia, Jerusalemhas been the focus of contestations by followers of all thethree religious groups, with very bloody results for the ordinaryresidents of the ‘holy’ city. Masalha rightly raises the pointthat today and since 1967, the greatest threat and danger tothe Palestinian Arab and Muslim presence in East Jerusalemhas been the uniting of religious Zionists and the ultra-Orthodox settler lobbies with the Western Christian Zionistmovement as a potent tool of money and effort directed attaking over the Al-Aqsa / Dome of the Rock compoundand building a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount again.Masalha narrates how Jerusalem is critically important andholy for Muslims as the place of the third holiest site (al-Masjid al-Aqsa) in the Islamic world.

Masalha describes the moves made by the Israeli rightwing as well as their Western and ‘Jewish state’ sponsors toradically change the ethno-political and religious make-up ofthe Old City of Jerusalem. He makes special reference tothe Old City settler group known as Ateret Cohanim, set upin December 1978 with the aim of settling Jews in ArabEast Jerusalem and thereby preparing the way for an eventualreturn to a period when the ‘Third Temple’ can be built onthe Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif esplanade. Allied tothese movements that grew up in the 1980s were the various

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The Ethnic Cleansing of PalestineBY ILAN PAPPE, Oxford, Oneworld, 2006, ISBN1851685553, Pp.313, £16.99

This vital book should be sent to President Bush. Hehas denied the Palestinian Right to Return, insteadinsisting on compensation. Perhaps if he could visit

the victims of the 1948 Nakba and hear their stories, evenhe might pause for reflection. This book sets the recordstraight about one of the worst crimes against humanity since1945. However, the reader must be warned: this book is notfor the faint-hearted. Never have I encountered a book thatturned my stomach so much, as I read of the forcedexpulsions, rapes and massacres. That this history has beencovered-up is one of the greatest scandals in modern history.The fact that an Israeli scholar is the one unearthing thisstory is an encouraging step.

Pappe sets the context in his preface when he refers toDavid Ben-Gurion addressing the Jewish Agency Executivein 1938 and stating ‘I am for compulsory transfer; I do notsee anything immoral in it’, (p. xi). This demonstrates twopoints: firstly, that Zionist policy saw ethnic cleansing as acentral plank throughout its history, from Theodor Herzlonwards (p. 7). Secondly, that Zionist racial ethics cannot beequated with modern Western morality on ethnicity. TheWestern reaction to ethnic cleansing of Bosnia and Kosovodemonstrates that Zionist racial ethics are irreconcilable withours. Thus, to insist that Israeli society and state share ourvalues is simply false. Thus, it is hardly surprising that theIsraeli regime and its supporters seek to suppress thisinformation.

Another important point, often neglected, is how Pappeaddresses not just Nakba-denial, but also Nakba-trivialisation.Sometimes Muslims fall into the trap of Holocaust-trivialisation, usually to offset Zionist propaganda that utilisesthe Holocaust to justify policy against the Palestinians. In thelatter case, this usually consists of noting that Stalin or Maomassacred more people than Hitler. This ignores theproportional enormity of the Holocaust, and the targeted natureof the genocide – there was legally nothing a Jew or a Gypsycould do to avoid it, because the victim was attacked onaccount of his race, not his politics. Equally, Zionist supportersfrequently engage in Nakba-trivialisation, saying that ‘only’ ahalf-million people or slightly more were made refugees,

Bible has always been used as an instrument to legitimise therule of the Jewish state in Israel. Western scholarship on theBible in its entirety has always been based on the assumptionthat there are certain unassailable truths that cannot bedebated or denied in the Bible. However this has not beenproved by early and later twentieth century archaeologicalexcavations in the fertile Levant. Masalha had already madethe point in an earlier chapter about the ‘racist and prejudiced’policies of American archaeologists like William FoxwellAlbright who sought to disregard the ‘legitimate’ historical,political and demographic realities of the majority (ArabMuslim) population of historic Palestine in favour of amythologized ‘pseudo-reality’ from the ancient past ofCanaan-Israel-Palestine.

Masalha traces how the critical biblical theorists weredescribed as ‘anti-Semitic’ by Israelis as well as other Westernevangelical Christian writers (p. 258). He emphasizes the factthat there is no archaeological evidence to prove that therewas an ancient ‘great’ Davidic or Solomonic kingdom in theland of Canaan (p. 250).

Chapter eight focuses on the contribution of Dr. Masalha’sformer close friend and companion, the late Professor (Fr.)Michael Prior C.M., to the development of a radicalPalestinian theology of liberation. Michael Prior was a fellowacademic at St. Mary’s College of the University of Surrey,London’s leading Catholic College of higher education. Priorwas heavily influenced by the need to ensure a just andpeaceful solution to the Palestinian issue. Prior was heavilyinfluenced by Edward Said’s ‘post-colonialist’ studies approachas well as Robert Allan Warrior’s ‘Canaanite’ model ofinterpreting Biblical literature and the Exodus ‘liberation’story. Prior’s main contribution to biblical studies was in hisattempt at a post-colonial reading of the Bible as an intendedreflection on the way the Bible has been used to justifycolonialism and imperialism worldwide

Masalha’s final chapter in what must surely rank as hismost significant book to date, is a tribute to the overridinggenius of the late Professor Edward Said, the Palestinian-American academic who in his long tenure as Professor ofEnglish at Columbia University, was the direct inspiration forthe development of the relatively ‘new’ academic fields ofpost-colonial and cultural studies (p. 280). The Author hasnever sought to hide his reverence and admiration for EdwardSaid, a man who strode like a colossus across the stage ofmodern twentieth century literary and cultural criticism.

This book is indeed a dedication to the monumentalefforts of intellectual and academic giants like Michael Priorand Edward Said to the growth and development of anintellectual probity and clarity as regards the Palestinian issue.As Masalha states in his epilogue to this very important andcontextually relevant book, both Prior as well as said remainedimplacably opposed to Zionism and were not afraid to critiqueit, despite the inevitable badge and ultimate scandal, from anacademic point of view, of being called anti-Semitic in theWest (p. 318). Masalha’s subject bibliography in this book isvery recommendable as a painstaking collection of all themost relevant works in the multivariate disciplines involvedin this work, selected from three contemporary and veryimportant world languages, English, Arabic and Hebrew.

Department of Theology, Sam JacobUniversity of Exeter

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months before any Arab forces entered the land, and indeed,whilst the British were still present:

‘All this took place before a single regular Arab soldierhad entered Palestine… Between 30 March and 15May, 200 villages were occupied and their inhabitantsexpelled. This is a fact that must be repeated, as itundermines the Israeli myth that the ‘Arabs’ ran awayonce the ‘Arab invasion’ began. Almost half of theArab villages had already been attacked by the timethe Arab governments eventually, and, as we know,reluctantly decided to send in their troops. Anotherninety villages would be wiped out between 15 Mayand 11 June 1948, when the first of two truces finallycame into effect’, (p.104).

So much for the ‘voluntary exodus’ lie. Indeed, anotherimportant contribution by Pappe is to show how totallyuseless and cowardly the Arab governments were at thispoint: ‘they procrastinated, and postponed, for as long asthey could, the inevitable military intervention, and thenwere only too happy to terminate it sooner rather thanlater’, (p.117). That could almost be a contemporaryaccount of the reaction of Arab states to Palestiniansuffering. Indeed, the only force that could have stood upto the Zionists, the Jordanian Arab Legion, stood by duringthe initial ethnic cleansing (p.119), basically because KingAbdullah was in cahoots with the Zionists to divide Palestinebetween them. What this does show is that the Palestiniansdid not flee to allow Arab armies free rein, and also thatthe Palestinian exodus was indeed the consequence ofZionist ethnic cleansing. It also demonstrates that the Zionistswere not the victims of Arab state aggression: rather thePalestinians were the victims of Zionist aggression.

Even after the ceasefire, massacres and abuses continued,such as the labour camps for Palestinian detainees, (pp.202-203). Any Arabs remaining in ‘mixed’ cities such as Haifawere deported to and ghettoised in Wadi Nisnas, one of thecity’s poorest areas, (p.207). The pattern was repeated acrossthe land, with ‘Israeli Arabs’ being reduced to second-class‘citizens’ in a racist system of discrimination anddispossession. However, not only were Palestinian villagesand towns wiped off the map physically: the actual historyof the ethnic cleansing was deliberately smothered in whatPappe calls ‘memoricide’, (ch. 10.) Prime Minister Blair neverever referred to the Palestinian villages that were ‘wiped offthe map’. Nor has President Bush ever done so. Moreover,Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communities and theirspokesmen in the West have failed to make known the natureand extent of the Nakba, thus leaving Israeli propagandiststhe field. Yet would 9/11, Madrid or 7/7 have happened ifArab and Muslim opinion had not been so inflamed by this,the most central of their causes? In a sense, these atrocitiesby deranged, evil murderers should remind us of thoseatrocities committed by other evil murderers in 1948; thetwo are linked. Hence, if we want to prevent more of thesame by isolating Al-Qaida, the ‘memoricide’ of the Nakbamust be confronted.

London Dr Anthony McRoy

usually comparing this with refugee movements of Germansafter 1945 or the disruption following the Indian Partition.Pappe counters that we need to think in percentages: ‘Half ofthe indigenous people living in Palestine were driven out,half of their villages and towns were destroyed, and onlyvery few among them ever managed to return’ (p. 9). PerhapsPalestinian, Arab and Muslim spokesmen need to denouncethis practice by identifying it specifically as unacceptable‘Nakba-trivialisation’.

Essentially, Pappe shows us that the immediate originsof the Nakba lie in the ‘Red House’ in Tel-Aviv, which in1947 became headquarters for the Hagana, the socialistZionist militia, (p.xi). It deserves to be compared to if notthe villa where the Wannsee Conference plotted the FinalSolution, then certainly to the Presidential residence ofSlobodan Milosevic where the Bosnian and Kosovar tragedieswere planned. In was in the Red House, on a date that shouldgo down in infamy, 10 March 1948, that eleven Zionist leaders‘put the final touches to a plan for the ethnic cleansing ofPalestine’, (p. xi). This plan, codenamed Plan D (Dalet inHebrew), was generally successful: around 800,000 people,i.e. over half the Palestinian population, were ethnicallycleansed, 531 villages destroyed and eleven urbanneighbourhoods emptied. Among the methods used werepoisoning the Acre water-supply with typhoid, ‘numerous casesof rape’, and ‘dozens of massacres’, (p. xv).

The British involvement in the enterprise is somethingthat needs to be highlighted for the UK public. Quite apartfrom the Balfour Declaration, the British had prepared thefield by the ruthless suppression of the Palestinian uprisingin 1936-39. One British officer in particular bears muchresponsibility: Order Wingate, the ‘Chindit’ hero of Burmaduring the war, (p.16). Becoming a fully-fledged Zionist, hetaught Zionist forces special combat tactics. He even attachedHagana troops to British forces during the uprising. Ofcourse, the British quashing of the revolt also underminedPalestinian resistance to the Nakba.

When the ethnic cleansing began in 1948, British forces,still legally obliged to maintain order (p.93) generally stoodaside at best, or at worst assisted the Zionists by encouragingthe Palestinians under siege to flee (p.124), as in Haifa (p.94).Some British politicians rightly acknowledge these events asthe most shameful in the history of the Empire in the region.Yet no apology has been forthcoming, and certainly nocommemoration of the Nakba. Palestinian, Arab and Muslimcommunities in the UK need to redress this by publicly stagingNakba commemorations, inviting local and nationalgovernment officials to participate, and shaming those whodecline.

Page after page presents stomach-turning atrocities byZionist forces, the best known among them being Deir Yassin.I will not soil sensitive consciences by listing them. Here, Britonsneed the opportunity to witness accounts and pictures of theNakba on an annual basis through commemoration/educationprogrammes, and Palestinian, Arab and Muslim communitiesshould begin this process immediately. This should counterboth Nakba-trivialisation and Nakba-denialism. One facet ofthe latter is that the Palestinians left voluntarily and clearedthe way for Arab armies to decimate the new Israeli state. Avital point made by Pappe is that the ethnic cleansing began