Two parallel uprisings in Israel
By Ghassan Michel Rubeiz
Israel is currently shaken by two parallel revolts. In what seems to be the beginning of a third Intifada (meaning “awakening” in Arabic), the Palestinians are protesting against a new wave of Israeli colonialism: more land grabbing for new or larger Israeli settlements.
The second revolt is of a different nature and from a different source. Israelis are protesting a legislative agenda by the extreme right wing government to overhaul the judicial system, particularly the Supreme Court.
The intended weakening of the judiciary will lead to the curbing of an already (structurally) flawed democracy and the strengthening of the conservative religious establishment. It also means curbing the roles of women, and rolling back “reforms” pertaining to sexual orientation, military service and Jewish identity.
That the two uprisings coincide suggests a connection. The 55-year old occupation by Israel of Palestinian territories, a blatant form of colonialism, stifles democracy.
No system of governance is sustainable when it applies one set of laws to the occupier and another to the occupied. When Israelis ignore the fact that the occupation is detrimental to their system of governance, there is little hope for a rational solution to the Israel – Palestine conflict.
To understand the relation between Israel’s expanding occupation and the continuous erosion of democracy, one has to examine the character of state building. Three factors come to mind: first, an impulsive rush to develop a “safe” demography for a nation with no officially defined borders and no constitution; second, the exploitation of religious history, ideology and symbolism in making the case for the assumed “chosen people”; and third, reliance on the unwavering support of the United States. All three factors go a long way in explaining the incremental erosion of Israel’s democracy and existential fear of sharing the land with the Palestinians.
Let us first discuss demography. Since its birth as a nation state, Israel has been challenged by demography. In 1948, Israel’s Jewish population was about 650, 000. When Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza and the Syrian Golan Heights in the 1967 War, the Jewish community was about 2.4 million. Over the past hundred years, with the phenomenal growth in immigration from the Diaspora, the Jewish population has reached over seven million. Still, the proportion of Jews in Israel has declined since the year of independence.
The Palestinian population is growing faster. In the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, there are about 7.3 million Palestinians, and estimate of two hundred thousand more than the Jewish residents. Palestine Population 2023 (Live) (worldpopulationreview.com)
Is Israel close to being a demographic minority ruling a majority? In compensation for being a small population, Israel is the first and only Middle East state to acquire the atomic bomb, shortly after its creation. Still, nuclear deterrence was not perceived as enough security. Was a new war “needed” to expand Jewish land? Indeed, the 1967 War offered vast acquisitions for border expansion.
In managing the occupation one factor has been missing: reducing the Palestinian demographic density. The occupation took land away, divided the victim’s leadership and absorbed Palestinian resources, but it did not take away the will of the indigenous Palestinians to adhere firmly to their land. Ethnic cleansing, making life miserable, demolition of homes, filling up prisons, creating separation walls, uprooting olive trees, inventing restrictive laws, all such mechanisms of oppression have failed to subdue Palestinian resistance. In fact, fifty five years of occupation has already transformed Israel into an apartheid system of rule.
The second factor of state building is symbolic and abstract. To justify its policies (of consecutive wars, a double standard system of laws and an expanding occupation) Israel found in religion a fertile resource of moral defense. Many in Israel believe that God promised them the land which they have acquired by military force.
This privileged religious mindset was once a minority opinion, but today it is no longer a position of a restricted segment of society. To justify the building of dozens of illegal settlements in the West Bank, the 750 000 Israeli settlers use Old Testament names, referring to the area as “Judea and Samaria”; East Jerusalem is claimed as an integral part of the sacred and undivided holy capital of the Jewish State.
There is another outstanding phenomenon in examining the role of religion in the service of the colonial enterprise: the Christian Zionist movement. This movement links the fanatics of Israel to the fanatics of political evangelists. In fact, the Christian fundamentalists are often more defensive about Israel’s privileges than the Israeli religious Zionists.
The third factor of manipulative statecraft lies in reliance on Washington’s near unconditional support of Israel’s occupation. The relationship between the two states is symbiotic. This is not to say that Israel should not be supported by the US. The concern is the non-conditionality of the support.
Regardless of how outrageous the behavior of Israel is in matters dealing with Palestinians, Washington seems always ready to defend Tel-Aviv. The US is used to vetoing any negative United Nations Security Council resolution pertaining to Israel. Even when Washington publicly declares “regret”, “concern”, or “dismay” regarding Tel-Aviv’s behavior, no action follows the critical rhetoric.
This week, the US State Department again expressed real anger and clear dismay over Israel’s ongoing escalation of Israeli military action in the West Bank. But there was no indication that Washington is ready for, or capable of, taking any punitive measures against a government which has already gone too far in provoking the Palestinians and in hampering the authority of Israel’s judiciary. Neither Washington’s nor Israel’s policy makers are ready to review the causes of Israel’s long term insecurity or to address the basic human rights of Palestinians.
Frozen attitudes and an interwoven demographic reality make the search of the possibility for the two rival nations to coexist increasingly challenging. Geographically, the internationally supported two-state solution seems no longer realistic, given the ever growing depth of Israeli settlements. Sociologically, the groundwork for a single-state solution has not been prepared.
The main barrier to social integration between Arab and Jew remains to be a matter of attitudes. What would make sense, is offering all 14 million residents who live between the River and the Sea equal rights in one state.
In such a democratic state the Palestinians would be the natural bridge between the Jewish community and the rest of the Arab world.
In partnership with the Palestinians the Israelis could expand and solidify peace with other Arab countries. Without the inclusion of the Palestinians, the existing precarious peace agreements will wither.
The future of peace making may lie in the intersection of conflict resolution and social planning.
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