[wvns] Palestine: A Policy of Deliberate Blindness
How the world backed itself into a corner
Palestine: a policy of deliberate blindness
By Régis Debray
Le Monde Diplomatique
5 August 2007
http://mondediplo.com/2007/08/05palestine
http://www.kanaanonline.org/articles/01243.pdf
Last year President Jacques Chirac asked Régis Debray
to study the situation in the Middle East. On 15
January 2007 Debray sent the French authorities the
following document on Palestine. It is an important
key to understanding a long policy drift whose results
are now obvious.
Dennis Ross, formerly the United States envoy to the
Middle East, admitted back in 2000 that mistakes had
been made in the 1978 Camp David accords: the
diplomatic process had not taken enough account of
developments on the ground, especially the
settlements. The number of Jewish settlers in the
Palestinian territories doubled from 1994 to 2000. As
many Israelis have settled in the West Bank since the
Oslo accords of 1993 as in the previous 25 years. With
an international conference again being discussed, it
would be a mistake to continue to ignore the real
state of affairs. There is no need for a committee of
inquiry. The report has already been drawn up, many
times over. No conflict in the world is as well
documented, mapped and recorded.
The OCHA (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs), a United Nations agency, keeps up-to-date,
detailed maps of the disputed territories, with
photographs, population counts and graphs. It takes an
hour to look at them, but doing so might forestall
some of the never-ending statements of good
intentions.
The maps show that the physical, economic and human
basis for a viable Palestinian state is disappearing.
The two-state solution and Israeli writer Amos Oz's
"fair divorce" (a territory shared between two
national homes, one smaller than the other and
demilitarised but sovereign, viable and continuous)
are now empty phrases belonging to the realm of
might-have-been. Some might argue that we have not yet
reached the point of no return and that the Israelis
may have won the territorial battle (with only 22% of
British mandate Palestine now outside their control)
but the Palestinians are sure to win the demographic
battle. They invoke the resilience of the local
population in the face of the steam roller that is
slowly but surely implementing the 1968 Allon Plan and
the 1984 "Road Plan 50".
It is clear from developments on the ground that:
• the purpose of the security wall is not, as is
believed, to trace a border that, however illegal
(since it encloses over 10% of the West Bank), will at
least serve as the dotted line for a future
international frontier;
• it is true (as Ehud Omert said on Israeli army radio
on 20 March 2006) that Israel's strategic border lies
on the Jordan: the whole valley has been declared a
forbidden area and the intervening area has been
nibbled away (cross-river transit is only possible at
certain points);
• the new east-west bypass roads built at the expense
of the old north-south axis clearly chart a territory
in the process of annexation, with space for three or
four Arab bantustans (Jenin, Ramallah and Jericho).
The exhaustion of natural resources in these
overcrowded enclaves will eventually lead to massive
emigration (much of the elite, especially Christian,
has already left); and
• with the construction of the separation wall, the
ongoing judaisation of East Jerusalem and
reconfiguration of the Jerusalem municipality, the
UN's repeated but purely formal condemnations have no
effect on Israel's grip on the whole city (1).
Away from the cameras
There is a huge gap between what is said because we
want to hear it (local withdrawals, easing of travel
restrictions, removal of one checkpoint out of 20, a
change of tone) and what is being done on the ground,
which we don't want to see (interlinking of
settlements, construction of bridges and tunnels,
encirclement of Palestinian towns, expropriation of
land, destruction of houses). Some would describe that
gap as duplicity, others as ambiguity. The gradual
encroachment happens out of sight of the cameras,
without causing a stir and without an explicit
colonial diktat. Nobody makes a formal complaint, even
supposing they can find out what's going on –
difficult if you haven't grown up locally. Israeli
maps and school textbooks refer to the West Bank as
Judea and Samaria and, following the Knesset's recent
rejection of a proposal from a Labour education
minister, obliteration of the 1967 green line is now a
legal fait accompli.
This is not just a gap between the de facto and de
jure situations. It reflects a method and tradition
going back to the earliest days of the Yishuv (2): the
strategy of fait accompli. That strategy has always
paid off: the Jewish state was there before it was
declared and recognised in 1948, as was the army. What
we have is a theatre with two stages: on the
international stage we hear repeated vague and
encouraging speeches concerning withdrawal,
coexistence and a Palestinian state, but the things
that count (settlements, roads, tunnels, water tables)
happen on the operational stage next door, where the
outcome is decided out of public view.
Understanding how public opinion works in a democracy,
successive Israeli governments of the left and right
take care to administer regular painkillers, plans for
unilateral withdrawal or the partial dismantlement of
settlements and encouraging announcements that are
always conditional and come to nothing. The media live
from day to day, with no attempt to remember. Who now
recalls that the road map (3) was supposed to be "a
final and comprehensive settlement of the
Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005"?
The Oslo process did not just remain a dead letter:
with the military reoccupation of Zones A and B (4) in
April 2002, it went into reverse.
Territorial fragmentation cuts off local authorities
from any possible central Palestinian administration
and from each other, while the systematic physical
destruction of national institutions, Palestinian
infrastructure and political leaders by the Israeli
army ensures internal anarchy and the spread of clans
and gang violence: bottomless chaos. Clearly the path
that has been taken is not that of nation building but
the deconstruction of all possible governance beyond
the separation wall. It is the logical counterpart of
a 30-year annexation process that will be endorsed,
when the time comes, "in view of the new reality on
the ground".
Autosuggestion
In these circumstances, constant invocation of the
road map by all parties has more to do with
autosuggestion than a sober look at the consistent
transformation of reality. That reality may not be
visible from Geneva, Paris or New York, but it is
immediately apparent to anyone travelling throughout
the country after a few years' absence. It is a land
carved up by military force, where the Israeli
settlements are no longer shapes on a Palestinian
background – instead the Palestinian areas appear as
shapes on a solidly-infrastructured Israeli
background: a land where water reserves are
confiscated and a temporary travel restriction is very
close to a permanent ban.
Some may take comfort in these ideas:
• since it was possible to withdraw settlements from
Gaza, it should be possible in the near future in the
West Bank. That is to ignore the fact that the
withdrawal of 8,000 settlers from one place in Gaza
was soon followed by the unpublicised installation of
20,000 settlers in another (the West Bank/Jerusalem).
Gaza is not part of the promised land, whereas Judea
and Samaria are its backbone. Sharon did not make any
secret of the fact that withdrawal on the margins
would be compensated by strengthening the Israeli
presence elsewhere (438,000 settlers to date,
including 192,910 in East Jerusalem);
• the dismantling of four small settlements in the
north (1,000 settlers) and the proposed concentration
of 60,000 settlers in the most populous blocs, Maale
Adumim, Ariel and Gush Etzion, will create a free
space. But with the settlements linked in a continuous
string under cover of the security wall, the West Bank
has been effectively cut in two. The wall separates
Palestinians from each other even more than it
separates them from the Israelis.
What is taking shape is not the Palestinian state
announced and desired by all: it is an as yet
unperceived Israeli territory enclosing three
self-governing Palestinian enclaves.
All parties have a vested interest in preserving the
international pretence (5). For the Israelis, history
is being created under the cover of the pretence. The
Palestinians cannot be told the truth – they are under
occupation yet hoping for a better life and not
self-destruction; wishful thinking provides notables,
elected representatives and officials with a living,
status, dignity and a raison d'être. The Europeans
chose to salve their consciences by providing
financial and humanitarian aid to apologise for their
political passivity and voluntary blindness. The
thinking of the Americans owes more to the Old
Testament than the New; their link with Israel is a
parent-child relationship beyond criticism. This
shared illusion of self-protection results from the
coincidence of opposing interests.
Is this situation tenable to the end of the century?
It seems doubtful, given Israel's obsession with
security, which makes it less secure, and its
disregard for the demographic and religious trends in
the region (6). Could not at least one European
government convey to our Israeli friends that we are
not all taken in by the deception, and that those who
deceive may not be be its first victims – but will
certainly be its last?
* Régis Debray is a writer and philosopher, and
honorary chairman of the IESR (European Institute of
Religious Studies), Paris
(1) See Dominique Vidal and Philippe Rekacewicz,
"Jerusalem: whose very own and golden city?", Le Monde
diplomatique, English edition, February 2007.
(2) A Hebrew term used by the Zionist movement before
the creation of the State of Israel to designate
Palestine's Jewish inhabitants and new immigrants.
(3) The road map, a proposal for ending the
Israel-Palestine conflict, was adopted by the Quartet
(UN, US, EU and Russia) on 30 April 2003.
(4) The Palestinian territories comprise the West
Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip (45 km long
and 10 km wide). The Oslo accords divided them into
three zones:
– Zone A comprising, since 1994, Gaza and the towns of
Jericho, Jenin, Qalqilya, Ramallah, Tulkarem, Nablus,
Bethlehem (Hebron was the subject of a separate
agreement in January 1997), in which the Palestinian
Authority has civil jurisdiction and police powers; –
Zone B comprising the remaining areas of the West
Bank, in which the Palestinian Authority has civil
jurisdiction but shares responsibility for internal
security with the Israeli army;
– Zone C comprising the Israeli settlements
establishing in the West Bank, Gaza (since dismantled)
and East Jerusalem, which remain under the control of
the Jewish state.
(5) See Alain Gresh, "Palestine wrecked", Le Monde
diplomatique, English edition, July 2007.
(6) See the report (PDF) submitted to the UN secretary
general on 5 May by Alvaro de Soto, UN Special
Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
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