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The
Israeli war waged against the Palestinians has taken
many forms and not all of them well known to us. Bombings,
assassinations, house demolitions, and arbitrary imprisonment
are some of the concrete manifestations in this war--these
are clear for all to see and understand. However,
other tactics employed in this war aren't so evident.
Foremost among them is an assault on the Palestinian
identity itself.
European
colonialists learned that to keep a strangle hold
on their possessions a policy of divide and rule was
necessary. However, the unintended consequence of
this was to engender a strong nationalism, a force
that eventually doomed the colonialist enterprise.
The Israelis have learned this lesson, and trying
to implement measures that shield them from the errors
of the past. The policies now applied in the Occupied
Territories (OPT) apply the divide and rule principle,
but they attempt to quell the nationalism that accompanied
this in the past. The foremost element to achieve
this is to actively demolish or restrict the Palestinian
identity in the OPT.
The
process of connecting all the settlements in the OPT
to Israel proper by building the networks of the so-called
bypass roads also entailed intentionally stopping
traffic and contact between neighboring towns in the
OPT; contact between the West Bank and Gaza has been
mostly impeded since 30/Sept/2000. It is now very
difficult for a resident of any Palestinian city to
visit the nearby village. Either a circuitous path
must be taken, or it is simply impossible to cross
the so-called military checkpoints, in reality choke
points. Furthermore, quite a few villages have been
isolated thanks to the fences and walls currently
being built unilaterally by Israel. Finally, some
Palestinian villages have been isolated due to the
settlement expansion activities. Consequently it is
difficult for Palestinians anywhere to relate to other
Palestinians elsewhere in the OPT. The Israeli instigated
policy aims to fragment the Palestinian identity,
and make people think of themselves exclusively as
residents of Ramallah or Bethlehem.
For
the past 145 days (since June 25, 02), Nablus has
been under military curfew. People are only allowed
out for a few hours every week, otherwise they are
subjected to a lock down regime that even prevents
them from sitting on a balcony or peer out of the
window. Here the frame of reference of the citizens
of Nablus has been further restricted to only account
for the individual. People are atomized, and start
to view their problems with reference only to themselves,
and it is difficult for them to appreciate that it
is their entire community facing this collective punishment.
Again, the Palestinian identity is threatened, and
the ensuing frame of reference stultified so that
it can be manipulated more easily by the Israeli military.
Nablus' militancy singled it out for this atomization
and an assault on people's identity. From the Israel
occupying forces (IOF) perspective, perhaps it is
an experiment to determine how others can similarly
be "broken".
During
the past few months community leaders not related
to the Palestinian Authority have been rounded up
and subjected to arbitrary detentions (e.g., see Arbitrary
Detentions [1]). The aim of this policy is to
remove leaders who provide the necessary cohesion
to a society. Once the educated organizers have been
imprisoned, the sense of isolation is reinforced,
increasing the vulnerability of the population. Furthermore,
the actions of the Israeli occupation have targeted
the middle class where most of the leadership of a
society emanates. The people who can direct others
or offer an interpretation of events are hounded,
imprisoned or isolated.
For
Palestinians the temptation to escape the communal
misery must be very difficult for many to resist.
It may come in the form of the advertisements by the
Israeli ultra right-wing Moledet Party offering assistance
for Palestinians to emigrate; the temptation to drop
everything and leave must be very great (e.g. see:
One way ticket [2]). The enticements by Israeli soldiers
to obtain collaborators are an added element in the
psychological warfare. People will be tempted to obtain
favors, food, permission to work, in exchange for
betraying fellow Palestinians. Accepting to collaborate
accelerates the demolition of their Palestinian identity;
it is difficult to see how these people will act in
the interests of their society afterwards. The suspicion
that someone in their midst is giving information
to the IOF also poisons the air in the mind of other
Palestinians. Either way, the Palestinian identity
has come under threat by attempts to corrupt the vulnerable
or criminal elements in the society.
Traveling
in the West Bank and Gaza one immediately becomes
aware of the importance of symbols. The IOF is very
keen to plant an Israeli flag wherever it is, and
it is keen to rip down Palestinian symbols. Even the
colors of the Palestinian flag elicit a violent response
from soldiers. During the first intifada in July 1989,
Jamal Radwan, an agricultural laborer from Gaza and
a father of five, had the tattoo of the Palestinian
flag on his arm cut off by an Israeli soldier. The
scar runs more than half way from his shoulder to
his elbow. Perhaps today the IOF isn't so much concerned
with the physical manifestation of symbols, but is
more concerned with the mental national identity.
During
the Israeli invasion of Beirut, Israeli soldiers plundered
and destroyed the Palestinian archives and important
cultural treasures. During the invasion of Ramallah
earlier this year, the same thing happened, important
historical archives were plundered, key databases
destroyed, and the video archives of the Palestinian
TV stations were damaged. The Sakakini Centre and
Kasaba Theatre in Ramallah, two very important contemporary
cultural institutions, were demolished earlier this
year. These attacks aim to erase the Palestinian history
and culture, an important aspect of any national identity.
While Israelis belabor their past and use it for political
ends, they are at the same time attempting to erase
the history of the nation they occupy.
If
one thinks of one's national identity, then some buildings
and their history come to mind. For the English Big
Ben is extremely important; Americans similarly relate
to the Statue of Liberty. For Palestinians the key
symbols are the Haram Al Sharif temple (known to Israelis
as Temple Mount) and the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem,
the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the Casbah
-- the Old Town (dating from 71BC) -- and the al-Khadra
Mosque (1,000+ years old) in Nablus, all are of great
importance. The latter has already been demolished
in several phases this year--this is destruction of
world heritage monuments. The Casbah has been blasted
by very large bombs and repeatedly hit by tank fire
(see Nablus info [3]). The Church of the Nativity
with a spiritual value to hundreds of millions of
people was damaged earlier this year by Israeli actions.
A clear threat hangs over the Haram Al Sharif temple
with ever increasing calls by the erstwhile fanatic
fringe of the settlers, but increasingly coming from
centrist politicians to demolish the temple. The extremist
settlers aim to blow it up or undermine the structure
by digging tunnels under it; some "centrist"
politicians have called to cut the building in pieces,
and send the crates to Saudi Arabia. Supposedly, this
temple is in the way of a planned Jewish sacred temple,
and just like Palestinians have been pushed aside
in most of their homeland, their monuments may soon
be cast aside too. The destruction of the national
identity has an architectural component.
For
decades, Israelis have been attempting to erase the
vestiges of the 400+ Palestinian villages and towns
destroyed during the 1948 war. The towns have been
bulldozed and the ruins have been built over. Where
one finds a pine forest in Israel proper one will
find the ruins of a Palestinian village that the Israelis
are trying to hide. In recent months, many of these
ruined villages have been "developed" so
that Palestinians won't be able to claim them in an
eventual peace agreement, but part of the process
is to rid the country of Palestinian history and vestiges.
Erasing the ruined villages is not only an attempt
to rid any Palestinian claim to the land, but also
another attempt to demolish their identity. The most
potent symbol for Palestinians is the "key"--the
claim to the homes that the Israelis stole. The key
is also the principal symbol excised out of all cartoons
and art by the Israeli censor. Further demolition
of the ruins has important implications for all.
Archeology
has been a battleground with a long history. Israelis
have always claimed monopoly in archeology, and they
have prohibited Palestinians from studying this field
in Israeli universities. Israeli archeologists will
usually concentrate on the old layers in the archeological
excavations, to the exclusion of the more recent ones
dealing with Palestinian history -- these are usually
destroyed. A few years ago, Dr. Albert Glock, an American
archeologist head of the Palestinian Institute of
Archeology at Bir Zeit University, was excavating
the recent layers near Ramallah when he was mysteriously
assassinated. Palestinians suspect that the Israelis
assassinated him because digging up the recent history
counters the Israeli attempts to bury the Palestinian
history.
The
looming threat of war against Iraq casts a dark shadow
over the Palestinians. As Prof. Illan Pappe has stated,
it is now a centrist political position in Israel
to propose plans for "transfer" -- that
obscene euphemism for the mass expulsion of Palestinians.
One can read about this in the Israeli press, listen
to the Molodet Party's proposals, or one can listen
to some of the principal cabinet members in the current
government; they all clamor with varying degrees of
viciousness about plans to expel the Palestinian population.
The only restraining factors are the international
reaction to such a crime and the feasibility of expelling
the population to Lebanon, Jordan, or Iraq. Graham
Usher, a British journalist, recently said that what
is being envisaged by the US in the area is not simply
"regime change, but region change." [Note
4] If such seismic changes are implemented entailing
the redrawing of borders in Iraq and Jordan, then
Israel may see an opportunity to implement its sinister
plans. One must see the current attempts to demolish
the Palestinian identity in this context. An atomized
and brutalized population without any effective leadership
can perhaps be terrorized to flee across the border
in the event of a war.
It
is unimaginable why any population should be subjected
to the threat of ethnic cleansing in the 21st century.
After WWII, the world had achieved a consensus that
the "might makes right" principle was unacceptable
and incompatible with peace. Annexation by war, it
was agreed, could not be tolerated. As such, the incessant
pressure to expel the Palestinian population, to erase
their history, and to demolish their identity, are
incompatible with principles that have formed the
basis of international law and consensus for the past
50+ years. It is the responsibility of the so-called
international community to put a stop to the war and
to the Israeli campaign against Palestinians. One
would hope that the UN would play a leading role,
but the organization is currently compromised and
manipulated by the US. One can hardly expect Kofi
Annan, a venal politician, to act decisively; the
Rwandan genocide occurred during his watch, and the
callousness he exhibited then doesn't portend for
an active role now. Unfortunately, up to now, the
stance of most European governments has been disgraceful.
Similarly, the role of major human rights organizations
with responsibility for the area has been less than
honorable (see Amnesty
[5]). The establishment of a war crimes tribunal holding
Sharon, Mofaz, Netanyahu, Ben-Eliezer, and Peres,
to account is of paramount importance, yet no action
is seen for its institution. One fears the worst:
that mass crimes and ethnic cleansing will occur in
the area and no peep will be heard from the so-called
international community.
This article was reproduced with the permission
of the author. It first appeared in Counterpunch
Note
1: www.counterpunch.org/bahour1023.html
Note 2: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2377273.stm
Note 3: www.nablus.org/invasion/press2.html.
Don't miss: www.theartnewspaper.com/news/article.asp?idart=10291
Nothing like seeing the photos.
Note 4: Talk given in the House of Parliament,
London, Nov. 14, 2002.
Note 5: www.counterpunch.org/rooij1031.html
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