First,
you create great expectations. Handshakes on the
White House lawn. A rhetoric of peace
("No more war. No more bloodshed"). Elections,
giving them a flag of their own. Then secret meetings, summit
meetings, dinners, retreats, peace treaties, interim agreements,
promises, tantalizing benefits held before hungry eyes. More handshakes,
more "gestures."
Then you create a framework of peace that guarantees you negotiating
superiority. Take out international law, human rights covenants, UN
resolutions, and for good measure enlist your strategic ally, the
strongest power in the world, the one who supplies you with all your
arms, as the "mediator."
Then, as you talk peace in Oslo, Washington, Paris, Cairo, the Wye
Plantation, Stockholm, Amman, Camp David, Sharm, you "create
facts" on the ground that ensure your continued control and
prejudice the negotiations altogether. You exploit the last seven years
since the signing of the Oslo Accords to:
- Dismember the West Bank into "Areas A, B and C," giving the
Palestinian Authority full control of only 18% of the land while
retaining control over 61%; divide tiny Gaza into "yellow, white,
blue and green areas," giving 6,000 settlers control of 40% of the
territory and confining 1,000,000 Palestinians to the rest; and
completely sever East Jerusalem from the wider Palestinian society;
- Expropriate 200 square kilometers of farm and pasture land from its
Palestinian owners for your own exclusive settlements, highways and
infrastructure;
- Uproot some 80,000 olive and fruit trees that are in the way of your
construction projects, thereby impoverishing their owners and making
them casual day workers in your labor market -- provided they can get
access to your labor market;
- Add some 30 new settlements, including whole cities like Kiryat Sefer
and Tel Zion, to the dozens of settlements that already exist in the
Occupied Territories over which negotiations are taking place, and
constructed 90,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the
settlements exclusively for your own population;
- Demolish more than 1200 homes of the people with whom you are
negotiating peace;
- Double your settler population across the 1967 border to 400,000, 90%
of which you have already decided will remain under your sovereignty
even though you haven't negotiated that with the other side yet;
- Begin construction of 480 kms of massive highways and
"by-pass" roads serving your settlements while dissecting the
future territory of your peace partner into tiny disconnected islands,
thereby preventing the emergence of another viable and competing economy
next door;
- Impose a permanent "closure" to prevent those whose lands
you took from finding employment in your own economy, because you have
discovered that workers from Rumania and Thailand are cheaper and more
docile. While you're at it, you also exclude them from entering
Jerusalem, the site of their holiest places;
- Exploit their natural resources, unilaterally and illegally drawing,
for example, 25% of your country's water from your neighbors' aquifers
while leaving them thirsty for months on end;
- Vandalize their countryside and environment, burying its fragile
historic landscape under your massive settlements and highways and
turning it into a disposal site for your industrial and urban wastes.
Next, you wait until your occupation has become irreversible and
all-encompassing, until you've integrated your two economies under your
control, the electrical grids, the highway and urban infrastructure,
until you've completely absorbed your partner's economy and society into
your own. Then you announce that your concept of peace is
"separation," and you lock your neighbors into a few small
islands, taking away any hope they have for a better future, for a real
country and identity of their own. You keep tightening your control,
restricting their life space, humiliating and harassing them -- until
the uprising finally explodes.
Then you tell your story to the world: how you tried to negotiate, how
"generous" you had been, how you wanted peace, and how
disappointed you feel they "they" let you down. How
"they" met your good intentions with stones, how
"they" are not partners for peace, how "they" are
not yet ready for peace. And so, until they agree to end their violence
against you and return to the same negotiating table that allowed you to
construct your matrix of control in the first place, you resort to force
-- defensive force, of course, since "they" are the
aggressors. The most up-to-date American weapon systems, snipers,
closures until starvation, clearing thousands of acres of agricultural
land, destruction of hundreds of houses….
Until they get the message.
-
Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against
House Demolitions (ICAHD). He is a Professor of Anthropology, lived in
Israel
since 1973 and researched and written extensively on Israeli society. As
a long time peace activist and Coordinator of ICAHD, he has worked
closely with Palestinian organizations in developing non-violent civil
disobedience actions in opposition to house demolitions and the
Occupation of Palestinian Lands.