[Peace-discuss] The Quiet Occupation

[David Green]

Let me add that our current guest, Yossi Klein Halevi,
would either avoid referring to this reality, or
justify it in terms of "security."


The Quiet Occupation
By Ran HaCohen

Antiwar.com

October 26, 2005

One of the difficulties in writing regularly about the

Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, in my eyes, that so
little ever changes. The basic 
constants - above all, Israel's overwhelming military,
economic, and 
political superiority, all serving its colonialist
aims - change slightly 
over years, if at all. The media concentrate on
immediate episodes: a 
violent incident, a statement, a 
peace plan - but in hindsight, they all make very
little difference. In 
the longer term, the realities on the ground are
ultimately derived 
from the aims and interests of the stronger side, with
minor 
considerations, modifications, or delays due to
Palestinian resistance or 
international reservations.


Blockade on Gaza


The Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip seems to be
one of those few 
great earthquakes that do change the view completely,
for better or 
worse. This is not the place, perhaps not the time
either, to evaluate the 
withdrawal as a whole; but at the moment, even here
little has changed. 
The Quartet's special envoy for the disengagement
finds that Israel is 
acting as if the disengagement never happened. James
Wolfensohn says 
"the Government of Israel, with its 
important security concerns, is loath to relinquish
control, almost 
acting as though there has been no withdrawal,
delaying making difficult 
decisions and preferring to take difficult matters
back into slow-moving 
subcommittees."


Typically, what Israel targets is Palestinian freedom
of movement. The 
Gaza Strip has no seaport nor airport; the border to
Egypt is closed: 
"The Israelis have not agreed to accept the EU's
generous offer to 
consider the role of 'a third party' in supervising
the Rafah crossing 
temporarily," says Wolfensohn in his report, and as
for the Strip's border 
with Israel, Ha'aretz (24.10.2005) reports that "since
the pullout was 
completed, the Erez Checkpoint has been almost
hermetically sealed to 
Palestinian traffic. Before the disengagement, 
6,500 people went through Erez daily. That number
dropped in September 
to 100, on average, and to zero at the beginning of
this month. The 
Karni cargo crossing has also been either closed or
particularly slow." 
The Palestinians may now move freely inside the 5 x 25
miles of the 
Strip, free of Israeli settlements, but the economic
and humanitarian 
disaster due to Israeli strangulation from without has
only worsened since 
the withdrawal.


Apartheid Roads in the West Bank


But the real gambit of the Gaza pullout, in Israel's
eyes, is the West 
Bank. Barely a month after that pullout, using as
pretext an armed 
Palestinian attack killing three Israeli settlers, the
Israeli army closed 
Road 60 - the main intercity road of the West Bank,
connecting the 
urban centers of Hebron and Nablus with Jerusalem - to
Palestinian private 
vehicles. Following American protest, officials in
Jerusalem clarified 
that Israel had no new plans to separate Israeli and
Palestinian 
traffic. That is quite true: Israel has no such new 
plans. What is being implemented, step by step, are
very old policies. 
The settlers' far Right, always the best indicator for
the government's 
future plans, demanded almost a decade ago, years
before the second 
Intifada, to impose "complete and perpetual closure on
the Arabs of Judea 
and Samaria" (Moledet Party ad published in Ha'aretz,
June 15, 1996); 
during the past half decade, this demand was more than
met. As Gideon 
Levy writes (Oct. 23, 2005),


"For nearly five years, the basic freedom of movement
has been denied 
to 2.5 million residents in the West Bank. ... Most of
the roads in the 
West Bank are desolate, with no people or cars. On
days [Shabbat] and 
hours when the settlers are not traveling on them,
they become ghost 
roads. ... If you strain your eyes, you will notice at
the sides of the 
road the traffic lanes assigned to the Palestinians:
pathways through the 
terraces winding up the hills, goat paths on which
cars are sputtering, 
including those carrying the sick, women in labor,
pupils, and ordinary 
citizens who decide to place their life in their 
hands in order to travel for two to three hours to
reach the
neighboring village."


The Permit System


There are about 700 checkpoints and roadblocks spread
throughout the 
West Bank. The checkpoints are not an ad hoc measure
for the short term; 
they are part of long-term policy. The checkpoints are
supported by an 
entire bureaucratic edifice, responsible for the
permit system. 
Incredible as it sounds, a Palestinian needs an
Israeli permit to pass 
internal checkpoints within the occupied territories -
not just from the 
Occupied Territories to Israel, but also between the
different geographical 
cells in the West Bank, whose defined by the Israel
security forces; in 
order to get to the Palestinian enclaves 
that have been created by the Wall; in order to move
between the Gaza 
Strip and the West Bank; and between both of these and
East Jerusalem. 
The permits are issued by eight so-called "District
Coordination and 
Liaison Offices" (DCO) - historically a joint
Palestinian-Israeli 
institution of the Oslo period, but in fact the
authority to issue permits is 
exclusively in Israeli hands. The DCOs are chronically
- i.e., 
intentionally - undermanned; applicants wait for hours
on end, treated like 
cattle, humiliated by rude Israeli teenage soldiers
who are given the 
chance to play God over the helpless colonized
subjects. At least one DCO 
(Nablus) is located behind an Israeli checkpoint,
which, absurdly enough, 
makes it inaccessible to Palestinians without 
a permit - you have to have a permit in order to apply
for one. A 
permit is issued - or, more often, not issued - by a
confidential, 
unaccounted-for decision by Israel's notorious General
Security Services. 
Estimated hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,
mostly men, are blacklisted 
by the GSS and cannot get even a magnetic card, which
is a necessary, 
though not sufficient, condition to get a permit of
any kind. Appeals to 
a court or even just hiring a lawyer often makes the
GSS change their 
mind, exposing the total arbitrariness of their
previous rejections. 
Rules for blacklisting Palestinian!s are Kafkaesque:
if a Palestinian is 
killed by a settler or soldier, the 
whole family is blacklisted - thus deprived of job
opportunities, 
access to health and education facilities, etc. - for
fear of revenge. If 
issued, a permit can be valid for a few days or for a
month, from sunrise 
to sunset only; it has to be renewed regularly.
MachsomWatch activists 
in their extensive annual report have countless
heartbreaking stories 
to tell, like that of the father not allowed to visit
his two children, 
lying badly injured in a traffic accident in
Palestinian and Israeli 
hospitals in Jerusalem. The principle question is, of
course, why an 
individual needs a permit to get to his/her workplace,
or go to school, or 
visit the doctor, or to do any other mundane activity.


Stinkers and VIPs


The answer is obvious to anyone who knows a thing or
two about control 
mechanisms, especially colonialist ones. Permits of
sorts were imposed 
by apartheid South Africa, by the Dutch in colonial
Indonesia, and 
elsewhere. The colonizer's gains are clear:
divide-and-rule; destroying 
national coherence in favor of separate, conflicting
local interests; 
making the colonized too busy with survival to oppose
their oppression; and 
so on. The GSS have a more concrete motivation, well
phrased in the 
sentence that so many Palestinians discretely hear 
when they apply for a permit: "We'll help you, if you
help us." After 
all, collaborators - "stinkers" in Israeli army
jargon, "helpers" as the 
official Israeli Newspeak terms them - are at the
heart of every 
tyranny, and the occupation run by the Middle East's
only democracy is no 
exception. If the only way to save your child's life
is by betraying your 
brother, what would you do? The permit system allows
the Israeli forces 
to spot the soft points of a Palestinian - a family
tragedy, a sick 
child, a dying parent, financial plight - and take
advantage of them. The 
weakest is always the easiest prey.


On the other end of the ladder, or perhaps on the
same, are the 
Palestinian VIPs. Again, no tyranny can survive
without them, and Israel is no 
exception. Already in the Oslo years, when limiting
the Palestinian 
freedom of movement started, the occupation was wise
enough to issue 
so-called VIP cards to the Palestinian elite -
politicians, intellectuals, 
businessmen. While the vast majority of Palestinians
have to chose 
between the legal torture (DCO, permits, and
checkpoints) and the illegal 
one (avoiding checkpoints by using goat paths and
pathways through the 
terraces), a thin layer of Palestinian VIPs can pass
any checkpoint in 
their air-conditioned cars, enter Israel rather
freely, and enjoy much of 
the freedom of movement denied their less lucky
compatriots. The 
benefits for the colonizer are again obvious: the
co-opted elite has got 
something to lose, which separates it from the
powerless masses. The 
Palestinian 
elite is thus complicit in the occupation; VIP
cardholders d
eserve an accusing Palestinian finger no less than the
wretched persons 
blackmailed by Israel into collaboration.



		
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