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An Israeli in Palestine Halper 00 pre i 13/12/07 17:23:15 Halper 00 pre ii 13/12/07 17:23:15 An Israeli in Palestine Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel Jeff Halper Pluto P Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI in association with ICAHD Halper 00 pre iii 13/12/07 17:23:15 First published 2008 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Jeff Halper 2008 The right of Jeff Halper to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 2227 8 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 2226 1 Paperback Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed and bound in the United States of America Halper 00 pre iv 13/12/07 17:23:15 Contents Illustrations and Maps vii Introduction: Getting It and Going There 1 PART I: COMPREHENDING OPPRESSION 1. The Making of a Critical Israeli 15 2. The Message of the Bulldozers 36 PART II: THE SOURCES OF OPPRESSION 3. The Impossible Dream: Constructing a Jewish Ethnocracy in Palestine 63 4. Dispossession (Nishul): Ethnocracy’s Handmaiden 97 5. The Narrative of Exodus 126 PART III: THE STRUCTURE OF OPPRESSION 6. Expanding Dispossession: The Occupation and the Matrix of Control 141 7. Concluding Dispossession: Oslo and Unilateral Separation 175 PART IV: OVERCOMING OPPRESSION 8. Redeeming Israel 207 9. What About Terrorism? 234 10. Where Do We Go From Here? 254 Halper 00 pre v 13/12/07 17:23:15 vi AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE Appendices Appendix 1: House Demolitions in the Occupied Territories Since 1967 275 Appendix 2: The Road Map and Israel’s 14 Reservations 278 Appendix 3: Letter from US President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon 286 Appendix 4: The Case for Sanctions Against Israel: ICAHD’s Position on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions 289 Bibliography 294 Further Resources 304 Index 305 Halper 00 pre vi 13/12/07 17:23:15 AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE vii Rami and Micha, the Civil Society offi cials who carried out the demolition of Salim and Arabiya’s home. Halper 00 pre vii 13/12/07 17:23:15 viii AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE The author resisting a demolition, and being arrested. The author resisting a demolition; here by chaining himself in a home. Halper 00 pre viii 13/12/07 17:23:16 AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE ix The demolition of the Shawamrehs’ home. Salim, beaten for resisting demolition, lies on the ground during the demolition of his home. Halper 00 pre ix 13/12/07 17:23:17 x AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE After Israeli, Palestinian and international activists poured the concrete for the fi rst rebuilt home. Here Salim is shaking hands with Gush Shalom leader Uri Avneri. Arabiya building her home with Israeli activists. Halper 00 pre x 13/12/07 17:23:17 AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE xi At the building site. Left to right: Arabiya and some of her children, the author, Uri Avneri, Salim, Ata Jabar (from the Baka Valley near Hebron, whose home was demolished twice and rebuilt each time by ICAHD), and Latif Dori of Meretz. Halper 00 pre xi 13/12/07 17:23:17 UNDOF* LEBANON Occupied SYRIA Golan Heights Sea of Galilee ISRAEL Mediterranean Sea West Bank No-man's JORDAN land Dead Sea Gaza Green Line Strip (1949 Armistice lines) ISRAEL EGYPT JORDAN 0315 0 Kilometers * United Nations Disengagement Observation Forces Map 1: Israel and the Occupied Territories/ the Full “Two-State Solution” Halper 00 pre xii 13/12/07 17:23:18 ISRAEL Mediterranean Sea JORDAN Jerusalem municipality ISRAEL Dead Sea 015 0 Kilometers Area A (full Palestinian civil and security control) Area C (full Israeli civil and security control) Area B (full Palestinian civil control and joint Israeli-Palestinian security control) Green Line (1949 Armistice lines) Nature reserve (Area B) Jerusalem municipal boundary Special case (Hebron Agreement - H2) No-man's land Database: The barrier - Israeli Government maps (Ministry of Defence & Seam Zone Authority) / Others - Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Cartography: OCHA-oPt, October 2007 Map 2: Areas A, B and C Halper 00 pre xiii 13/12/07 17:23:19 Sea of Galilee ISRAEL Mediterranean Sea West Bank 2 1 JORDAN No-man's land 3 4 5 6 West Bank Dead Sea 7 Gaza Strip Green Line (1949 Armistice lines) ISRAEL 0210 0 Kilometers WEST BANK GAZA Area without any Israeli presence Predicted 'State of Palestine' since Sept 2005 Settlement blocs No-go zone and Buffer zone under IDF control Map 3: Israel’s Settlement Blocs: (1) Jordan valley, (2) Western Samaria, (3) Modi’in, (4) Givat Ze’ev, (5) Ma’aleh Adumim, (6) Gush Etzion, Efrat-Beitar, Illit, (7) Hebron Halper 00 pre xiv 13/12/07 17:23:20 ISRAEL Jenin Mediterranean Sea Tubas Tulkarm Qalqilya Nablus Salfit JORDAN Ramallah Al Bireh Jericho Jerusalem municipality ISRAEL JERUSALEM EAST (Al Quds) Bethlehem Hebron Dead Sea 015 0 Kilometers Dead Sea Route of the Barrier - as of Sept 2007 Green Line (1949 Armistice lines) Jerusalem municipal boundary Israeli settlements and outposts Proposed route, not built Palestinian communities No-man's land Database: The barrier - Israeli Government maps (Ministry of Defence & Seam Zone Authority) / Others - Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Cartography: OCHA-oPt, October 2007 Map 4: Route of the Separation Barrier/Wall Halper 00 pre xv 13/12/07 17:23:21 (5a) Sea of Galilee ISRAEL Mediterranean Sea West Bank JORDAN No-man's land West Bank Dead Sea Gaza Strip Green Line (1949 Armistice lines) ISRAEL 0210 0 Kilometers WEST BANK GAZA Area without any Israeli presence Predicted 'State of Palestine' since Sept 2005 No-go zone and Buffer zone Areas to be retained by Israel under IDF control Map 5: Two Emerging Scenarios of the Palestinian Bantustan (a) minimal areas Israel will retain Halper 00 pre xvi 13/12/07 17:23:23 (5b) Sea of Galilee ISRAEL Mediterranean Sea West Bank JORDAN No-man's land West Bank Dead Sea Gaza Strip Green Line (1949 Armistice lines) ISRAEL 0210 0 Kilometers WEST BANK GAZA Palestinian enclaves (a Palestinian community Area without any Israeli presence or a group of Palestinian communities bordered since Sept 2005 by Israeli infrastructure) Settlements and outposts outer limits, land cultivated by Israelis, military bases, closed military areas, Israeli No-go zone and Buffer zone declared nature reserves, actual/projected areas under IDF control west of the Barrier and roads primarily for Israeli use Database: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Palestinian designated nature reserve Cartography: OCHA-oPt, October 2007 Map 5: Two Emerging Scenarios of the Palestinian Bantustan (b) maximal areas Israel will retain Halper 00 pre xvii 13/12/07 17:23:24 Halper 00 pre xviii 13/12/07 17:23:25 Introduction: Getting It and Going There One way of looking at the history of the human group is that it has been a continuing struggle against the veneration of “crap”. Our intellectual history is a chronicle of the anguish and suffering of men who tried to help their contemporaries see that some part of their fondest beliefs were misconceptions, faulty assumptions, superstitions and even outright lies. We have in mind a new education that would set out to cultivate just such people—experts at “crap detecting”….We are talking about the schools cultivating in the young that most “subversive” intellectual instrument—the anthropological perspective. This perspective allows one to be part of his own culture and, at the same time, to be out of it. —Neil Postman and Charles Weingarten, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969) When I began my career as an educator almost 40 years ago, I shared the simple, commonsensical and optimistic assumption of my fellow educators that people, when given suffi cient information, will “learn.” Indeed, education is based on the fundamental principle that if people are provided with the rudimentary tools of understanding—facts, context, concepts and an ability to fi gure things out for themselves—they can and will change their opinions and behavior. This does not mean they must easily give up the views and values they have been given by their society or which they have adopted themselves. It does mean, however, that they are capable of adapting their worldviews in light of issues or situations they might not have fully understood originally. Equally important—and this is the essence of learning—they are capable of modifying their worldviews even if the issues or situations at hand lead them 1 Halper 01 intro 1 14/12/07 10:16:31 2 AN ISRAELI IN PALESTINE to conclusions contrary to what they have hitherto accepted as “right.” As an anthropologist, an educator and a political activist, I still cling to that naïve idea. I am incapable of surrendering the belief that people are basically good and rational, the problem being that their deeply-held cultural identities, narratives, norms, experiences and interests often put them on a collision course with other equally good people whose own worldviews, practices and politics are diametrically opposed.
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