In a day or two, forty peace-makers from around the world, including myself, will sail from Cyprus to Gaza “to break the Israeli siege.” So rapidly does Israel alter the political, legal and physical “facts on the ground” in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that the very terms we use to describe them become obsolete almost as soon as they are coined. “Apartheid” is only the latest advance over the term “occupation,” which is still not accepted by Israel, which prefers to speak of “administered” or “disputed” territories. Other terms, such as “ethnic cleansing,” which characterized Israel’s policies in 1948, have only recently become legitimate, following the ground-breaking work of Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris in particular. “Siege,” which describes Israel’s policy towards many Palestinian places over the years – Gaza during repeated invasions, Jenin and almost all the Palestinian cities during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, villages and even urban neighborhoods closed in by the Wall – became a formal reality in 2006, when Israel, supported by the US, Europe and the UN, imposed an economic siege on Gaza, in the wake of the democratic election of Hamas in January, 2006. Such a siege is patently illegal in international law, which forbids targeting civilian populations. Wrote John Dugard, then the UN’s Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories:
“The siege of Gaza is a form of collective punishment in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The indiscriminate use of military power against civilians and civilian targets has resulted in serious war crimes.”
But, then, Israel disregards international law with impunity. Witness its defiance of the International Court of Justice ruling regarding the Wall. Who, after all, is going to bring it to justice? The siege, however, is only the tip of the iceberg of a much more sinister development of Israel’s control over the Palestinians: “warehousing” an entire people. Until recently one might have thought that using the term apartheid to describe the occupation was overstating the case. Warehousing makes even apartheid seem benign. Apartheid, like occupation, is conceived as a political issue which must be resolved by the parties with the intervention of the international community. Both apartheid and occupation possess a political dynamic: grassroots groups can resist, public opinion and political forces mobilize, appeals made to international law, human rights and the UN; competing political claims can be resolved. Warehousing, which best describes Israel’s “Occupation” after more than four decades, is a static system emptied of all political content; Israel casts its policies as a “war on terrorism” with no reference to occupation or a political conflict. Israeli control is a permanent “given” – unless the Palestinians accept a bantustan, “voluntary” apartheid being their only way out. In that they are pacified and contained behind barriers, the Palestinians can be “disappeared,” just as people were “disappeared” in Latin American under its military regimes. They become a non-issue, a state of status quo (another Israeli term for its policy towards the Palestinians). “What Israel has constructed,” argues Naomi Klein in her powerful new book, The Shock Doctrine,is a system,…a network of open holding pens for millions of people who have been categorized as surplus humanity….Palestinians are not the only people in the world who have been so categorized….This discarding of 25 to 60 percent of the population has been the hallmark of the Chicago School [of Economics] crusade….In South Africa, Russia and New Orleans the rich build walls around themselves. Israel has taken this disposal process a step further: it has built walls around the dangerous poor (p. 442).
Warehousing is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is indeed worse than the apartheid-era South African bantustans. The ten non-viable mini-states established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country’s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European-dominated “democracy.” This is precisely what Israel is intending – its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing 15% of historic Palestine, but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel, which has found a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Romania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as “surplus humanity;” nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do. Not only should the permanent warehousing of an entire people be of concern to the Palestinians and those who support them, it should, as Klein stresses, concern anyone troubled with warehousing as a global phenomenon. In fact, it may constitute an entirely new crime against humanity, one that affects, Klein says, those who have been judged irrevocably superfluous: the urban poor (more than a billion of whom are imprisoned in what Mike David, in his seminal book Planet of Slums, calls “global slums”), the rural poor, particular minorities, refugees and undocumented immigrants and, most recently, peoples, religions and countries demonized for political purposes as “evil” or “uncivilized.” To the extent that what we call Israel’s “Occupation” is, in fact, a model of warehousing, it has implications far beyond a localized conflict between two peoples. If Israel can package and export its layered Matrix of Control, a system of permanent repression that combines Kafkaesque administration, law and planning with overtly coercive forms of control over a defined population hemmed in by hostile gated communities (settlements in this case), walls or obstacles to movement of various kinds, then, as Klein writes starkly, every country will look like Israel/Palestine: “One part looks like Israel; the other part looks like Gaza.” In other words, a Global Palestine. Israel, then is in complete sync with both the economic and military logics of global capitalism, for which it is being rewarded generously. Instead of presenting the international community with issues that must be resolved – violations of human rights, international law and repeated UN resolutions, let alone the implications of the conflict itself – it is instead providing a valued service: it is offering a useful model of warehousing that can be applied to “surplus populations” everywhere, including right at home. Thus the siege on Gaza which, despite its illegality and outright injustice, garners international support. And we, the unarmed people from around the world who view Palestinians as people enjoying fundamental human rights, are forced to board old boats to do what our governments should be doing: breaking the siege and holding Israel accountable for its actions. Warehousing the Palestinians will not succeed if we, the people, resist it. Despite the siege of Gaza, despite the almost unlimited and unchecked power Israel has over every element of Palestinian life, it has nevertheless failed to nail down either apartheid or warehousing. Palestinian resistance continues, supported by the Arab and wider Muslim peoples, significant sectors of the international civil society and the critical Israeli peace camp; the conflict’s destabilizing effect on the international system grows steadily; and neither the Israelis nor the Americans (with European complicity) can force the outcome they seek, despite their overwhelming power. Whether we reach Gaza or not, our two old boats will open the doors of the warehouse and help free the Palestinian people. (Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.)
08.20.2008 | FreeGaza.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FREE GAZA MOVEMENT
In UK:
The Free Gaza Movement:
+447818040982
Palestinian Solidarity Campaign:
+442077006313
On Board Ship:
Paul Larudee:
+306 981 234829 (larudee@pacbell.net)
Osama Qashoo:
+44 7833381660
In Cyprus:
Ramzi Kysia: Greta Berlin
+357-990 81767 (iristulip@gmail.com)
Angela Godfrey-Goldstein:
+972 547 366 393 (angela@icahd.org)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
At 8:30 am Cyprus time, the Free Gaza and the Liberty rounded the last corner of this lovely island, escorted by the Cypriot Coast Guard, and pulled into on the Northern side of the commercial port in Larnaca.
“We’ve been waiting a long time to unify our group, which has been split between Cyprus and Crete. We are excited to combine both groups who have worked so hard on this project and are so enthusiastic about setting out for Gaza. On the way in today, we had the Cypriot authorities escorting us. Now, it’s time for the world to escort us to Gaza.” Said Paul Larudee, one of the organizers.
After a thorough inspection of both boats, the port authority will let the 20 passengers from Cyprus on board to make final preparations, including a memorial service for the more than 5000 Palestinians who have lost their lives since September 2000 as well as the 34 sailors aboard the USS Liberty who were assassinated by Israel in 1967. They, like the Palestinians, will not be forgotten. That service should be on Thursday, August 21 just before the boats begin their final journey to Gaza.
“It was exhilarating to watch the boats come in after waiting so patiently over the past two weeks. Seeing the sail on the Free Gaza followed to port by the Liberty has been worth the wait. Now we will get the boats ready to sail to Gaza, because that is our final destination. We are looking forward to going as soon as possible. ” Said a delighted Fathi Jaouadi, one of the passengers on board.
The boats will be in port for the next two days for media to photograph. The human rights workers on board will also be available for interviews.
