'Dispute' or 'occupation?'
Opinion
July 6, 2006
Israel does not act by the standards it expects of the Palestinians, writes Maher Mughrabi.
IN ANY conversation with well-meaning bystanders about Israel and the Palestinians, the moment always comes when they ask why the two sides can't just learn to live as neighbours. The current escalation of hostilities in Gaza must seem to be pure bloody-mindedness if you believe — as these people seem to do — that the two sides live next door to each other.
Such a belief is probably what makes the so-called security barrier seem so logical. Israeli novelist Amos Oz has asked the world to help Israelis and Palestinians to "divorce". He seems to forget that the two sides have never been "married"; that there is no legally binding arrangement committing them to one another's welfare.
A recent letter to The Age took the familial metaphor a step further. Its author pointed to Hamas' refusal to give "direct" recognition to Israel and said it was time to choose: "One cannot be just a little bit pregnant."
If only politics were a science, like biology. Then we might be able to explain why it is that while Australia, Britain and the US all recognise Israel, they also have their embassies in Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem, because they do not recognise Israeli rule over part of its own "indivisible" capital.
Better yet, we might understand how it can be that Israel does not recognise the presence of its troops and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an occupation, and why it was that when former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon used the O-word to describe what was happening in Gaza, he was forced to rephrase by his own attorney-general.
If Israel recognised that the West Bank and Gaza were occupied, rather than "disputed", two things would follow. First, the Geneva Convention would apply fully to those territories, making it illegal for settler families to move into them and for thousands of Palestinian men, women and children to be taken out to face indefinite "security detention" in Israeli jails. Second, instead of simply talking about a "viable Palestinian state", Israel would have formally acknowledged the existence of a separate entity west of the River Jordan.
There was a time when Arab governments pretended to themselves that Israel did not exist — its name was never mentioned in the media or official pronouncements. The rest of the world saw this as absurd. Yet in recent times, spokesmen for the Israeli Government have warned the European Union that funding to help the Palestinians should not give the democratically elected Hamas Government "recognition or legitimacy", while at the same time insisting that the Palestinian Authority must be held "responsible" for the capture of Israeli soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit. Which is it to be?
Israel's withdrawal from Gaza is another phantom pregnancy. That people still express surprise over such a unilateral move's failure to produce peace is baffling, given that even the bitterest divorce is not only negotiated but also subject to independent legal arbitration. As the blockade of Gaza and subsequent military incursion demonstrate, Israel may have abandoned the prerogative of settlement, but it retains that of collective punishment.
Hamas, meanwhile, has limited itself to de facto and not de jure recognition of Israel because it understands that the sovereignty which stands in need of recognition is not Israeli but Palestinian. Or, to put it another way, the question is not "is Israel?" but " where is Israel?"
Is Hebron in Israel or not? Is the town of Ariel, or the arable land of the Jordan Valley? If so, then what does "viable statehood" for Palestinians mean, and where is it expected to take place?
Until recently, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn was the man the international community assigned to such questions. He had the decency to seem puzzled by Western powers who poured billions of dollars into building Palestinian institutions only to cut them off after a democratic election. "It would surprise me if one could win by … starving the Palestinians," he said in May, "and I don't think anyone in the Quartet believes that to be the policy."
Yet it was precisely the decision of the EU and the US to declare a Palestinian Authority governed by Hamas untouchable that gave Israel renewed financial and political power over the lives and deaths of Palestinians, culminating in the mass kidnapping of Hamas MPs and ministers.
The Gaza power plant destroyed by Israel was insured by an arm of the US Government, and there has been plenty of media speculation as to whether (and, given its sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, how) it will pay out.
But the greater question is when will the US and its allies feel the need to provide some sort of cover for the basic human rights of Palestinians and their own investment in Palestinian governance.
Over the years, many people have agonised over one-state and two-state solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But if Palestinian self-determination is ever to become a reality, and Palestinian and Israeli calls for justice in the face of terrorism are to be tackled in a non-partisan way, then everyone involved in this conflict must have access to a common standard of rights.
It is time for the world to commit itself to a one- status solution. Continued
Maher Mughrabi is a staff writer.
July 6, 2006
Israel does not act by the standards it expects of the Palestinians, writes Maher Mughrabi.
IN ANY conversation with well-meaning bystanders about Israel and the Palestinians, the moment always comes when they ask why the two sides can't just learn to live as neighbours. The current escalation of hostilities in Gaza must seem to be pure bloody-mindedness if you believe — as these people seem to do — that the two sides live next door to each other.
Such a belief is probably what makes the so-called security barrier seem so logical. Israeli novelist Amos Oz has asked the world to help Israelis and Palestinians to "divorce". He seems to forget that the two sides have never been "married"; that there is no legally binding arrangement committing them to one another's welfare.
A recent letter to The Age took the familial metaphor a step further. Its author pointed to Hamas' refusal to give "direct" recognition to Israel and said it was time to choose: "One cannot be just a little bit pregnant."
If only politics were a science, like biology. Then we might be able to explain why it is that while Australia, Britain and the US all recognise Israel, they also have their embassies in Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem, because they do not recognise Israeli rule over part of its own "indivisible" capital.
Better yet, we might understand how it can be that Israel does not recognise the presence of its troops and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an occupation, and why it was that when former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon used the O-word to describe what was happening in Gaza, he was forced to rephrase by his own attorney-general.
If Israel recognised that the West Bank and Gaza were occupied, rather than "disputed", two things would follow. First, the Geneva Convention would apply fully to those territories, making it illegal for settler families to move into them and for thousands of Palestinian men, women and children to be taken out to face indefinite "security detention" in Israeli jails. Second, instead of simply talking about a "viable Palestinian state", Israel would have formally acknowledged the existence of a separate entity west of the River Jordan.
There was a time when Arab governments pretended to themselves that Israel did not exist — its name was never mentioned in the media or official pronouncements. The rest of the world saw this as absurd. Yet in recent times, spokesmen for the Israeli Government have warned the European Union that funding to help the Palestinians should not give the democratically elected Hamas Government "recognition or legitimacy", while at the same time insisting that the Palestinian Authority must be held "responsible" for the capture of Israeli soldier Corporal Gilad Shalit. Which is it to be?
Israel's withdrawal from Gaza is another phantom pregnancy. That people still express surprise over such a unilateral move's failure to produce peace is baffling, given that even the bitterest divorce is not only negotiated but also subject to independent legal arbitration. As the blockade of Gaza and subsequent military incursion demonstrate, Israel may have abandoned the prerogative of settlement, but it retains that of collective punishment.
Hamas, meanwhile, has limited itself to de facto and not de jure recognition of Israel because it understands that the sovereignty which stands in need of recognition is not Israeli but Palestinian. Or, to put it another way, the question is not "is Israel?" but " where is Israel?"
Is Hebron in Israel or not? Is the town of Ariel, or the arable land of the Jordan Valley? If so, then what does "viable statehood" for Palestinians mean, and where is it expected to take place?
Until recently, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn was the man the international community assigned to such questions. He had the decency to seem puzzled by Western powers who poured billions of dollars into building Palestinian institutions only to cut them off after a democratic election. "It would surprise me if one could win by … starving the Palestinians," he said in May, "and I don't think anyone in the Quartet believes that to be the policy."
Yet it was precisely the decision of the EU and the US to declare a Palestinian Authority governed by Hamas untouchable that gave Israel renewed financial and political power over the lives and deaths of Palestinians, culminating in the mass kidnapping of Hamas MPs and ministers.
The Gaza power plant destroyed by Israel was insured by an arm of the US Government, and there has been plenty of media speculation as to whether (and, given its sanctions against the Palestinian Authority, how) it will pay out.
But the greater question is when will the US and its allies feel the need to provide some sort of cover for the basic human rights of Palestinians and their own investment in Palestinian governance.
Over the years, many people have agonised over one-state and two-state solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But if Palestinian self-determination is ever to become a reality, and Palestinian and Israeli calls for justice in the face of terrorism are to be tackled in a non-partisan way, then everyone involved in this conflict must have access to a common standard of rights.
It is time for the world to commit itself to a one- status solution. Continued
Maher Mughrabi is a staff writer.
posted by HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace at 5:32 PM
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