----------- Israel Shahak writing 6 years ago -----------

ANALYSIS OF ISRAELI POLICIES: THE PRIORITY OF THE IDEOLOGICAL FACTOR

By Israel Shahak

At the time of this writing the end of the "peace process"
initiated in Madrid and Oslo is all too evident. It has failed
primarily because the Israeli government did nothing to make the
majority of the Palestinians in the Territories support it, at
least temporarily, although it could have obtained their support
without sacrificing any major imperial Israeli interests. Many
commentators, including some well-intentioned ones, are wringing

their hands imploring Rabin to refrain from taking another
provocative step - e.g the further confiscation of land in East
Jerusalem as decided on April 30, 1995. Those commentators fail
to take into account that Rabin's policies have an internal logic
and consistency based on the consensus of Labor Zionism as formed
already in the 1920s. This report will describe those policies,
to conclude that their analysis and prediction are very easy to
make on the assumption that they constitute an application of the
Zionist ideology which tends to override pragmatic
considerations. The apparent exceptions to this rule, e.g.
Israeli withdrawals from formerly conquered territories, are also
explainable in terms of idelogical factors, in this instance in
terms of the loss of Jewish lives in unsuccessful or inconclusive
wars and of the wish to avoid further losses of Jewish lives.

For instance, as pointed out by Tanya Reinhart (Yediot Ahronot,
May 1, 1995) in all Rabin's interviews to the Hebrew press
published on the Passover Eve, April 14, he reiterated his
ideological commitment to the principle that only the Jews "have
the right over the entire Land of Israel". Rabin didn't bother to
specify the exact borders of the Land in question: he only
admitted that "it is also inhabited by 2 million Palestinians"
who constitute "a problem" which only Labor knows how to solve.
This is a standard formula of Labor and center Zionism which
hasn't changed for more than 75 years.

On the same day "a senior officer of the Central Command of the
Israeli army", which is in charge of the West Bank, was
interviewed by Nahum Barnea (Yediot Ahronot, April 14). The
officer defined "the official policy of the Israeli army as
providing every Jew in every settlement, whether of the West Bank
or the Gaza Strip, with exactly the same degree of security and
well-being as Jews of Haifa and Tel Aviv have during all stages
of the peace process and afterwards". Needless to say, nothing
was said about security of the Palestinians who, more than before
Oslo, are harassed by the settlers backed by the army and by
Arafat's secret polices backed by the Shabak. The officer also
singled out with pride the ever increasing number of Palestinian
administrative detainees in the West Bank (3,600 according to
him, more than 5,000 according to my sources), adding that "the
detention orders which in the past have been issued for only half
a year are now issued for an entire year". He promised that the
Israeli army will soon take many other steps such as "the
confiscation of property" of individuals considered to be "Hamas
supporters" and as "decisive measures against the mosques. Not
every mosque is affiliated with Hamas, but a mosque which we will
consider as so affiliated will be dealt with utmost firmness".

The plan which the Israeli army already implements in the
Territories (known as "Rainbow of Colors") was published in the
Hebrew press in November 1994, but its crucial feature, the
"bypassing roads" on which only the Jewish settlers, their
visitors and the Israeli army will be permitted to drive, was
discussed by the press already in September. Reinhart (ibid.)
notes that the plan had been "formulated already in the early
1980s" by the settlers, but under Likud and "national unity"
governments nothing much was done to implement it. "It is 'the
peace government' which opened new vistas for the plan's
implementation". The annual cost of the plan is one billion
shekel [$330 million], to be continued for 3 years. Most of the
cost, as noted by Meir Shteglitz (Yediot Ahronot, April 9) Israel
expects to covered by the U.S. Relying on an interview given by
the commander of the Central Command, general Biran, to Haaretz
(April 28), Reinhart described the plan as "envisaging maximal
defense of all existing Jewish settlements and the partition of
the West Bank into enclaves containing Arab localities. Each
enclave is to be surrounded by bypassing roads, settlements and
Israeli army fortresses. The situation will be then the same as
in the Gaza Strip". (I will deal with the Gaza Strip later.) "If
Israel ever decides to withdraw its troops from any downtown area
of an Arab city [of the West Bank], the plan is to guarantee that
the Israeli army will continue to rule that city from outside".
Indeed, "control from outside" is a favorite term of Rabin and
other Labor stalwarts, in use from before the June 1992
elections.

Actually the plan was formulated already in 1977 by Ariel Sharon
and it was then described in the Hebrew press in detail. At that
time Sharon was still "only" an Agriculture minister. Rabin and
Peres, fresh from their defeat in the 1977 elections didn't
object to the plan, but Begin and Weizman, (Defense minister
1977-1980) did, since they assigned higher priority to making
peace with Egypt. When Begin began to lose his sanity and Sharon
became Defense minister, the highest priority was assigned to the
invasion of Lebanon. To the best of my knowledge, the plan under
current implementation has since remained the Israeli Security
System's "preferable solution" to "the problem" of Palestinians
in the Territories. According to the information available in the
Hebrew press, the plan began to be implemented in the Gaza Strip
right after Oslo. Reinhart quotes press sources showing that in
the West Bank the beginnings of its implementation date from July
1994, when in an amicable meeting Rabin agreed with the Gush
Emunim leaders "who explained to him that construction of the
bypassing roads lay in a common interest of the government and
the Jewish settlers. And at the same time Rabin was told the same
by [the then Chief of Staff] Barak". The plan was welcomed by
Gush Emunim leaders in their internal writings, but attacked
whenever they addressed the general public. According to general
Biran (ibid.) the plan "was intended to give the settlers the
full opportunity to live a normal life. I take this occasion to
stress that no Jewish settlement whatsover will ever be removed
from its place. In order to achieve this goal the Israeli army is
now implementing a number of plans, such as the construction of
the bypassing roads and of a separate electricity and water
networks intended to guarantee that each Jewish settlement will
have maximum security and welfare".

Reinhart provides a sophisticated but in my view insufficient
explanation of why the apartheid-like "Rainbow of Colors" plan
was welcomed by the "Peace Now" and by most of both Jewish and
Palestinian "peace camp". All too clearly, the plan favored the
settlers and was intended to perpetuate the Israeli conquest of
the Territories more effectually than before by "control from
outside". Yet "Peace Now" extolled this racist plan as "a
positive sign of implementation of the peace process", and its
leaders rushed to convince Arafat in Gaza about its virtues.
Noting that the settlers and all the right-wing censured the
"Rainbow of Colors" plan as "selling out the Land to the
Gentiles", Reinhart observes that "the religious settlers and
Likud had long ago discovered a panaceum for neutralizing the
left. As soon as they attack the government, the doves of various
persuasions stand to attention ready to help the government
pursue the 'peace process'. The result is that the supporters of
a plan devised by the settlers can pass for 'peace lovers'. The
more one insists that the government speeds up carrying out this
plan in the whole of the West Bank, the more reputation for
'peace loving' he acquires. And whoever dares to oppose this plan
is instantly censured by the doves for 'sabotaging the peace' and
branded as one of those 'extremists from both sides' who by
virtue of opposing Rabin's policies is 'objectively against
peace'".

This explanation is correct on a tactical level. It clearly
points out how the Oslo process in effect advanced the cause of
the Israeli apartheid, by virtue of making it possible to brand
every Jewish or Palestinian opponent of racism as "enemy of
peace". Yet in my view Reinhart, like many other Jewish leftists,
misses the main point. I wholeheartedly agree with her prognosis
of the effects of the "Rainbow of Colors" upon the Palestinians.
She writes: "The meaning of the plan is that we will solve the
problem of 2 million Palestinians in the Territories by
imprisoning them in ghettoes, starving them and turning them into
beggars. But instead of calling it 'an occupation', we will
present it as a step toward a Palestinian state. We will pry
Palestinian throats with our boots while smiling to them nicely".
[A clear allusion to Shimon Peres, I. Shahak.] But the point
which Reinhart misses is that Labor's version of Jewish racism
has always been much more hypocritical and hence more dangerous
than Likud's, but also more noxious in terms of actual oppressing
of its victims. I will return to this point below.

Meron Benvenisti's presentation (Haaretz, April 27) is similar to
Reinhart's. He also derides the Zionist doves who support Israeli
brutalities committed after Oslo in general and the "Rainbow of
Colors" in particular, while reassuring the Palestinians that
these are means conducive to the Palestinian state, "at first
only in the Gaza Strip". Benvenisti says that "far from promoting
justice, peace or progress, a world-view reduced to establishing
a state as its single goal cannot but be empty, deceitful and
conforming to Israeli interests. Now, when the Palestinian
Authority already has an autonomous authority in domestic
affairs, its corruption and arbitrariness in the Gaza Strip
cannot stand in greater contrast from the ideals of human freedom
and dignity, and from the struggle against deprivation. Hence,
even if Israel grants Arafat a semblance of a state, no relief
can be expected in the conditions of oppression, control and
exploitation. Such conditions were dictated by Israel to Arafat
in the Oslo and Cairo Accords. This is why no conceivable change
of labels may prompt the Palestinian population to ideologically
identify with Arafat's regime". Benvenisti says that Israel may
possibly agree to Arafat's statehood, but only in order to
present it as a "seeming concession enabling Israel to demand
from the Palestinians in return 'more flexibility', in
acquiescing to the perpetuation of the Israeli colonial rule over
the Territories". I don't think the Labor government will ever
agree to independent Palestinian state, even in the Gaza Strip
alone. The talk about such a prospect was no more than a typical
ploy by Shimon Peres, intended to extract from Arafat more
compliance with Israeli demands. Had Labor intended to establish
a Palestinian state, it would have exploited it in the fast
approaching Israeli election campaign. Moreover, Rabin would have
sought to justify it in his numerous Passover Eve interviews. Yet
the Israeli government has done nothing in order to explain and
justify such a policy change to the Israeli public.

To describe the aims of the "Rainbow of Colors" apartheid,
Benvenisti speaks, in my view all too cogently, of "conceptual
ethnic cleansing i.e. of erasing the others from one's
consciousness. It cannot be attributed to chance that the so-
called 'peace process with the Palestinians' is in Jewish society
accompanied by an unusually high incidence of ethnocentrism
approaching racism, of tribal forms of morality and of the
failure to distinguish between the moral right to exist and the
moral obligation to behave decently". Among Benvenisti's examples
of such "incidence", a particularly outrageous (at least in my
view) was the imposition of a round-the-clock curfew on
Palestinians of Hebron so as to let the visitors of Jewish
settlers "hold a picnic", and roam around the city in perfect
safety. For a single day during the Passover week the city was
for this purpose filled up with troops: a circumstance which let
the picnickers exult over Palestinians confined in their houses
and throw stones at them, especially if their dared to look out
from their windows. The whole thing was intended as a concession
of Rabin to Gush Emunim. It nevertheless failed to prevent the
latter to use the day for the grossest forms of abuse of what
they call "the government of wickedness", including public
prayers to God to "abolish it quickly".

Benvenisti concludes, rightly in my view, that "the Oslo process,
the resultant ideology of segregation and the resultant security
considerations are intended to vest [Israeli] ethnic cleansing
with an aura of respectability. Sure, my use of that term may be
viewed as a manifestation of extremism compared to its usual use
as an elegant term for expulsions and mass murders. But in my
view ethnic cleansing may also be more limited in time. A closure
of the Territories or a curfew intended to cleanse the public
space from the presence of "others" are perfect examples of such
conceptual ethnic cleansing limited in time".

Danny Rabinovitz (Haaretz, April 25), whom I am going to quote
extensively, tries to capture the difference between the Israeli
right- wing and Rabin and his supporters. "The right-wing would
have liked that Israeli troops would have reentered Gaza [Strip]
so as to let Israel itself deal with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
In contrast, Rabin and his Jewish supporters are worshipping the
Moloch of segregation and dream about creating a tough and
sophisticated Palestinian Authority capable of eradicating terror
and thus letting the Jews live in perfect security. On the
surface, these may seem two very different approaches, not merely
to the problem of terror but also to the solution of the Jewish-
Palestinian conflict. On one side the nostalgic right-wing vision
of 'Greater Israel' and on the other 'Pax Israeliana' of the
humanistic and peace-loving left. On closer inspection, however,
what may be called 'Rabin's vision' may make one wonder whether
the difference between the left and the right on those fateful
issues is really that great. What will be the meaning of peace,
if Arafat accepts the current Israeli proposals and becomes a
guardian of security of the Jews by successfully trying to
eradicate the extremists in the Gaza [Strip]? This was precisely
the nightmare of the Palestinian opponents of Oslo, whether
religious or secular. They feared that what went under the name
of 'the peace process' was to be nothing more than a change in
forms of the Israeli military conquest from a cruel but a
temporary regime, into a durable form of political and economic
enslavement, not only more oppressive but also more perpetual".

Let me omit Rabinovitz's historical analysis of Arafat's role as
a linchpin in the long succession of the Ottoman, British,
Jordanian and Israeli "mukhtars" [village headmen], granted the
security of tenure together with opportunities for exploitation
of others, in exchange for being responsible to "the authorities"
for guaranteeing good behavior of people under their
jurisdiction. Currently, says Rabinovitz, "Rabin wants Arafat to
become Israel's 'rais' [headman or contractor in Arabic or
Hebrew] for security of Jewish lives, threatening that in the
event of his failure in this task, Israel will stop the
negotiations, impose a perpetual closure of the Territories and
stop the flow of money from the Western states. However, if
Arafat performs his job as required, Rabin will reward him by
granting him the security of tenure as a Mukhtar... It is true
that Rabin has decisively opted against militaristic form of
colonialism, but what the [Israeli] left proposes instead is
nothing less than a neo-colonialist form of perpetual
domination...

"It is still unclear whether Arafat wants to fight Hamas and
whether he believes that he can defeat it. But Arafat can defeat
Hamas only in a way which guarantees his stay in power as an
Israeli puppet heading the crowds of his secret police agents, a
sort of a Palestinian Antoine Lahad responsible for another
'security zone'. In such a case it may be possible to maintain
Arafat in power with the help of money from Western states and
other means Israel would take to maintain him in power. But in
such a case Arafat cannot be expected to deliver political
benefits which only a legitimate leadership with a popular
mandate could deliver. This is why the difference between the
respective solutions of [Israeli] left and right do not seem to
be so great. The right-wing solution is cruder, more violent and
more short-sighted of the two, whereas the leftist solution is
better adapted to current international fashions. But neither
succeeds in protecting us from the cold wind entering through the
tear and wear in the cloak, so hastily patched up in Oslo in
order to keep us cozily warm".

Those developments could have been predicted (and have in fact
been predicted in my reports) by those who took the trouble to
analyze the actual Zionist policies pursued since the 1920s, and
after 1967 in the Territories. Let me begin with Israel itself.
The laws of the State of Israel pertaining to the use of land are
based on the principle of discrimination against all non-Jews.
The State of Israel has turned most of the land in Israel (about
92%) into "state land". After those lands are defined as owned by
the State of Israel they can be leased for long periods only to
Jews. The right to a long-term lease of such land is denied to
all non- Jews without a single exception. This denial is enforced
by placing all state lands under the administration by the Jewish
National Fund, a branch of the World Zionist Organization, whose
racist statutes forbid their long-term lease, or any other use,
to non- Jews. Their lease to Jews, conditioned upon the
prohibition of sub-lease to non-Jews, is granted for the period
of 49 years with an automatic renewal for another 49 year period.
Consequently, they are treated as property and are bought, sold
and mortgaged, provided the party to the deal is Jewish. The
small and decreasing number of cases of leasing state land to
non-Jews for grazing is never for more than 11 months. A Jewish
leasee of state land is allowed, often subsidized or otherwise
encouraged, to develop the land and especially to build a house
for himself there, but non-Jewish leasee is strictly prohibited
to do so. Leasing state land to a non-Jew is always accompanied
by restrictive conditions, such as the prohibition of
construction or any other development or sub-leasing it to
somebody else. By the way, membership of all kibbutzim and
moshavim (whose supposed "socialist" or "utopian" character is so
stridently advertized outside Israel) is strictly limited to Jews
by virtue of their being all located on state land. Non- Jews who
desire to become members of a kibbutz, even a kibbutz whose
Jewish members are atheists, must convert to Judaism. The kibbutz
movements, in cooperation with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, are
keeping special training facilities for preparing "easy", (i.e in
most cases fake) conversions to Judaism for such people.

As a consequence the Galilee can be described as the land of
apartheid. Palestinian localities are bursting with population
growth but are surrounded by state land which they cannot use it
in order to expand. The town of Sakhnin in the Galilee, inhabited
by about 25,000 Palestinians, is surrounded from three sides by
state land allotted to three kibbutzim founded in 1970s for the
express purpose to "guard state land" from "Arab encroachment".
Those kibbutzim are in every respect failures. The original
members had long ago left them and so did their successors, but
new Jewish volunteers (mostly from the "peace camp") are being
sent there all the time. Those kibbutzim receive huge subsidies,
both from the Israeli government and from the Jewish Agency i.e.
ultimately from tax-free contributions of Jews all around of
world. No one proposes, even for the sake of efficiency or
winning support of the Palestinians for the peace process, that
even the tiniest part of state land around Sakhnin be allotted to
non-Jews of that town. Obviously, an ideological consideration
overrides all political considerations, like in religion the
sacred always overrides the profane.

There are many states which in the past were systematically
engaged in land robbery. The USA, for example, robbed the Indians
of their land, transforming most of it into state land.
Nevertheless, this land is now available for use by any USA
citizen. If a Jew were in the USA prohibited to lease land
belonging to the state only because he were Jewish, this would be
rightly interpreted as anti-Semitism. But anti- Semitism is
already considered in the USA disreputable, whereas in Israel
"Zionism" is the official state-ideology and is indoctrinated as
a goal of public education. Of course, the land issue is no more
that a single (but crucial) example of official racism and
discrimination against the non-Jews. But racism pervades all
walks of life in Israel, victimizing mainly the Palestinians.
Some Zionists recently want to alleviate its effects, but no
Zionist party nor Zionist politician has ever proposed to abolish
it or had second thoughts about its underlying ideology. The
whole discriminatory system is obviously intended to be practiced
in the foreseeable future.

It is easy to see that by the rigorous enforcement of such laws,
also against most loyal supporters of the state, Israel is
undermining its own imperial and military power. Let me give two
instances of this. The first concerns the Druzes who, as
discussed in report 153, are serving in the Israeli army, police
and intelligence, often reaching high ranks in those services.
They are nevertheless legally barred from use of the state land
and as non-Jews they suffer from other discriminatory laws as
well. The same can be said about other Palestinians who either
serve in the above mentioned security services or reach high
ranks in various branches of civil service, for example as
judges. Israel had appointed Palestinians to be its consuls and
other diplomatic representatives. It is now contemplating an
appointment of the first Palestinian ambassador. But a
Palestinian general, ambassador or judge is still subject to the
discussed discriminatory laws. He still does not have the right
to lease even a small plot of state land, whereas any released
Jewish murderer has this right as matter of course.

(continued...)