by Sonja Karkar
Sometimes one just needs to see with one’s own eyes what is possible and
what is not. But even then, it can be difficult to really make anything out
of the morass of lines and shadings on maps that attempt to document
Israel’s complex bureaucratic nightmare of land divisions, allocations,
closed zones, Palestinian areas, checkpoints, the Wall trajectory, and
future Israeli expansionism in the Palestinian West Bank under its military
occupation.
Le Monde Diplomatique, the French monthly magazine for world affairs offers
a series of strange maps in its 2009 edition of the Atlas du Monde
diplomatique and has one called “An Inverted World” on page 129 which
imagines the Palestinian West Bank as an actual archipelago. Strange indeed because the West Bank is in fact landlocked. However, it clearly illustrates how the Palestinian areas are divided and separated by Israeli settlements, checkpoints and barriers and how impossible the facts on the ground are for any kind of viable state for the Palestinians.
Produced below is the map showing a completely fragmented West Bank surrounded by water followed by an actual map of the West Bank as it appears within Israel. The difficulties the Palestinians face in moving from one city, town or village to another because of the endless checkpoints, poor roads, the Wall and the “no-go” areas become at once starkly obvious when one has to imagine navigating these obstacles by boat. Lest anyone think this would be a kind of pleasure cruise, they need to bear in mind that the distance between many of the towns is only around 30 kms, the sort of distances we don’t even think about when we travel to work or school, go shopping or visiting friends. For the Palestinians, the simplest outing can take all day, if they are even allowed through at all.
Gaza is worse. When Israel was dropping bombs on the Palestinians earlier this year, there was no safe haven to which they could run. Israel does not allow the inhabitants of Gaza out of its barricaded confines, not even by sea. The Palestinians were sitting ducks under Israel’s constant bombardments while the world sat back and watched as if Gaza was some amphitheatre with the Palestinians, the gladiatorial amusement. Not only are the not allowed out of Gaza, almost nothing is allowed in. The list of supplies prohibited from entering Gaza vary from day to day, but when even a staple like pasta is proscribed and not a singe building material has been allowed in since Israel’s 22-day blitz
Gisha – Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement in Israel commissioned a film by the director of the award-winning “Waltz with Bashir”, Yoni Goodman to show just what it is like being caged inside Gaza. It is a 90-second animated film called “Closed Zone” and is enormously powerful in its depiction of the Palestinian condition – the humiliations and the hopelessness – as Israel carries out a painfully slow ethnic cleansing. A press release
VIDEO LINK
The growing belief in a one-state solution
by Nadia Hijab
Ehud Olmert’s nightmare is at hand. Not only does the former Israeli prime minister now really have to fight those corruption charges. He also faces the realization of his fears that the Palestinians might give up on a two-state solution in favor of a struggle for equal rights that would mean, as he put it, the “end of the Jewish state.”
Yo, Ehud, that struggle is a growing movement, and it isn’t a threat to Jews – on the contrary, Jews are very much a part of it.
Just last weekend in Boston, American and/or Israeli Jews accounted for nearly a third of the 29 speakers at a conference organized by TARI (Trans Arab Research Institute) with the William Joiner Center at the University of Massachusetts.
This is the second major public conference on how to achieve a single democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis. The first was held in London in November, and a third is slated for Toronto in June.
In a sign of the one-state movement’s persistence, the conference was over-subscribed weeks before it was held; dozens were turned away because the hall only seated 500 people. Those who got in remained glued to their seats as one intense presenter followed another, in spite of limited time for questions and, on day two, no lunch. For my part, I remain agnostic. As I said in my remarks at the conference, both states must provide equality for all their citizens – Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, women or men, whatever their ethnicity. And, by the way, this isn’t currently the case in either the established Israeli state or the putative Palestinian state.
In other words, even if two states are established, Israel cannot continue to be a state that privileges its Jewish citizens over its non-Jewish citizens. So either one or two states would mean the end of a Jewish state – although not of the state of Israel.
Besides, I believe other vital challenges face the Palestinians, including how to keep Palestinians physically on the land of Palestine, and how to effectively and non-violently challenge a leadership that represents at best a quarter of the Palestinian people so as to prevent the abrogation of Palestinian rights.
I share the view of policy analyst Phyllis Bennis who warned at the conference that the United States might seek to impose a mini-state with minimal sovereignty and rights.
That’s why my talk focused on an analysis of the sources of non-violent power available to the Palestinian people, including economic, moral, cultural, legal, and political power.
One important fact (simple but of utmost importance) was reiterated by several Palestinians – from the occupied territories, from within Israel, and in exile. They said loud and clear that working for the one-state solution means working with Israeli Jews. As acting TARI chair Hani Faris put it, “The idea of one state cannot fly without a Palestinian wing and a Jewish wing.”