The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine

IAI COMMENTARIES 21 | 28 - JUNE 2021 ISSN 2532-6570 © 2021 IAI 1 palestinechronicle.com/?p=71050. Chronicle Palestine up War-Ravaged (Video)”,Clean in Gaza 2 may/11-children-killed 2021, May Air byIsraeli Killed Homes in Strikes Their Care Trauma NRC Children Receiving Eleven Council, Refugee Norwegian See, trauma. with deal at helping them aimed programme social psycho- its in participating were Gaza in strikes air Israeli by killed children 60 over of the 11 that 1 individual andcollective struggle of binary, providing awindow into the to underminethe“us”versus “them” it”). – namedit initiated thevolunteering campaign The GazaCity municipality –which Gaza’s besieged population. degree of humanity was restored to further 13deaths within Israel deaths, including 66children, anda which caused at least 256Palestinian latest 11-day assault on theGazaStrip – cleaning thedebrisleft behindbyIsrael’s As hundreds of Palestinians began Chatham House’s Europe Programme. Michelle Pace isProfessor in Global Studies at Roskilde University and Associate Fellow at by Michelle Pace on Israel-Palestine The EUMust ChangeVocabulary

The Norwegian Refugee Council confirmed confirmed Council Refugee Norwegian The “Hundreds of Palestinians Volunteer to of Palestinians “Hundreds 2 A strong statement that contributes Han’amarha https://www.nrc.no/news/2021/ , 24 May 2021, 2021, May , 24 . (“wewill build https://www. 1 –,a , 18 , 18 colonial violence hasimposed upon the “hell on earth” Gazans ashuman beings–inspite of Books, 2020.Books, 1917–2017 Resistance, Colonialism and of Settler AHistory Palestine. 4 https://news.un.org/en/node/1092332 ImmediateUrging End to Fighting Chief Says, UN Children onLiving in Earth’, ‘Hell News, UN See, 2021. May on 20 on earth” “hell as Gaza in of children lives the described 3 again witnessing Israel’s sustained 2021 serves asareminderthat weare Palestinian territory (oPt) during May What happened across occupied and community. with thespirit of hope, love, solidarity campaign overrides such depictions Gaza Strip asahotbedof terrorists: the contrast toIsrael’s representation of the inhabitants of Gazastandsinsharp the everyday suffering of 2million The campaign’s quest tohumanise them.

UN Secretary General, António Guterres, Guterres, António General, Secretary UN Rashid Khalidi, Khalidi, Rashid 4 The Hundred Years’The War on , New York, , New Metropolitan 3 that Israel’s settler- , 20 May 2021, 2021, May , 20 . Gaza The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine

campaign of pressure through Predictably, Israel rejects these claims, “continued military rule, dispossession, dismissing any reflective thinking discrimination and violence”.5 about how its illegal actions (as a political agent) continue to embolden If observers have any doubts as the Palestinians’ determination to fight to whether Israel is intentionally for liberation. committing collective punishment and war crimes aimed at making life In fact, Israeli actions have sparked a

© 2021 IAI unbearable for Palestinians, a number global solidarity movement in support of reputable international organisations of Palestinian rights. Israel is feeling the have responded with nuanced evidence. pressure and is increasingly anxious The April 2021 report by Human Rights about it. When truth speaks to power it Watch finds Israel guilty of the crimes of can be more powerful than one of the apartheid and persecution.6 Israeli rights strongest armies in the world. bodies – including B’Tselem and Yesh Din – similarly claim that Israel is not a The idea of Palestine is not just about democracy but an “apartheid regime”.7 a place/country: its reach goes beyond ISSN 2532-6570 Furthermore, the International Criminal a specific geographical location.9 It Court’s chief prosecutor has opened a has become an ideal, an ideal that is formal investigation into alleged war spreading around the world. Global crimes in the oPt.8 solidarity for Palestine and Palestinian rights demonstrates the broad reach of this ideal, speaking loudly in the 5 Mairav Zonszein, “Haaretz front page today face of Israel’s injustice, violence and on the 67 children killed in Gaza…”, Twitter occupation. The vitality of the idea of post, 27 May 2021, https://twitter.com/mairavz/ status/1397787259223654400. Palestine conjures a sense of power 6 Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed. that Palestinians hold and Israel cannot Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid destroy. and Persecution, April 2021, https://www.hrw. org/node/378469. 7 B’Tselem, A Regime of Jewish Supremacy Europe has long been involved in Israel- from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: Palestine. Since the creation of Israel This Is Apartheid, 12 January 2021, http://www. btselem.org/node/213260; Michael Sfard, The 9 Edward W. Said, “The Idea of Palestine in the Occupation of the West Bank and the Crime of West”, in MERIP Reports, No. 70 (September Apartheid: Legal Opinion, Yesh Din, June 2020, 1978), p. 3-11. Palestinian territorial nationalism https://www.yesh-din.org/?p=7039. was created by Jewish Zionist nationalism. 8 International Criminal Court, Statement of See the King-Crane Commission report for ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, Respecting more on this: Henry C. King and Charles R. an Investigation of the Situation in Palestine, Crane, Recommendations of the King-Crane 3 March 2021, https://www.icc-cpi.int/ Commission with regard to Syria-Palestine Pages/item.aspx?name=210303-prosecutor- and Iraq, 29 August 2019, https://www.un.org/ statement-investigation-palestine. See also unispal/document/auto-insert-206598; and Amnesty International, Israel/OPT: Pattern Geremy Forman and Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar, of Israeli Attacks on Residential Homes in “From Arab Land to Israel Lands: The Legal Gaza Must Be Investigated as War Crimes, 17 Dispossession of the Palestinians Displaced by May 2021, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/ Israel in the Wake of 1948”, in Environment and news/2021/05/israelopt-pattern-of-israeli- Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 22, No. 6 attacks-on-residential-homes-in-gaza-must-be- (December 2004), p. 809-830. Thanks to Charles investigated-as-war-crimes. Shamas for our discussion on this point. IAI COMMENTARIES 21 | 28 - JUNE 2021 IAI COMMENTARIES

2 The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine

in 1948 and the parallel beginnings occupier has proven a dismal failure? of the Palestine refugee issue – with over 700,000 Palestinians fleeing or The facts on the ground speak to forced to abandon their homes in what Israel’s commitment to a unilateral became Israel –, Europe has sought to annexation of parts of the West Bank position itself as a mediator and power and discriminatory policies towards broker in the region. In spite of different the Palestinians. When in 2018 Israel’s European countries changing their “Nation-State Law” specified Israel as the

© 2021 IAI stances according to specific events and nation-state of the Jewish people, thus political orientations, the EU has long formalising Israel as a Jewish state12 – sought to adopt and maintain a single not as a Jewish and democratic state – policy on Palestine. the EU condemned the move. Yet, little of concrete has followed. In 1980, the then nine member European Community issued the Venice Europe needed no further evidence of Declaration, an important milestone Israeli Zionist exclusivism in historic in that it recognised Palestinians’ right Palestine. The EU’s prescription based on ISSN 2532-6570 to self-determination.10 Since then, negotiations between two presumably European countries have attempted equal parties in “conflict” is complicit to maintain a balance between their in Israel’s own embrace of the nation- support for Israeli security and right to state model which helps enable Israel’s exist on the one hand and Palestinian growing settler-colonial expansionism self-determination and independence and erasure of Palestinians from historic on the other. Palestine. If the EU is to have any legitimacy in this question, its efforts Their mantra has been that of pressing need to target Israel’s decoupling of for negotiations towards a two-state state from nation, while advancing the framework. The problems with this possibility of a state of no nation. formulation are well known.11 Young Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, This moment will come if and when East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, make the EU musters the courage to demand a laughing stock out of this concept: an end to apartheid. It must do this how can the EU be so far removed from together with international partners, their daily struggles across the oPt? Can’t even together with the US, given its the EU admit that this fixation on direct monopoly over Israeli-Palestinian negotiations between occupied and diplomacy. A new and alternative political order must be defined to push 10 Daniela Huber, “A New Venice Declaration the international community to end the from a ‘Coalition of the Lead Donors’ on Israel/ longest occupation in modern history.13 Palestine”, in IAI Commentaries, No. 19|30 (April 2019), https://www.iai.it/en/node/10253. 12 11 Michelle Pace, “The End of EU Democracy Knesset, “Full Text of Basic Law: Israel as the Promotion and of the Two-State Solution?”, in Nation State of the Jewish People”, in Knesset Esra Bulut Aymat (ed.), “European Involvement News, 19 July 2018, https://main.knesset.gov. in the Arab-Israeli Conflict”, inChaillot Papers, il/en/News/PressReleases/Pages/Pr13978_ No. 124 (December 2010), p. 87-96, https://www. pg.aspx. iss.europa.eu/node/688. 13 Marwan Muasher, “The EU’s Passive Approach IAI COMMENTARIES 21 | 28 - JUNE 2021 IAI COMMENTARIES

3 The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine

The EU needs to address Zionism consciousness based on the recognition head on and Zionists need to similarly that the flourishing of Jews and Jewish contemplate a situation where Jews will life does not require Zionism.”16 live alongside a non-Jewish majority in Palestine, on the basis of democracy: In It is therefore time for the EU to start other words what is needed is a vision focusing its efforts on the social of a state that is not constituted as a consciousness of Israelis. The question is nation-state.14 how the EU can go about strengthening

© 2021 IAI the moderate centre without bringing Israel’s occupation is permanent. Its about a further right-wing backlash? laws enshrine extra political rights for Jews over Palestinian Arabs and First, it is high time that the EU (along repeated threats of annexation are with the US and other key international real.15 Relying on the deeply discredited players) starts playing politics within Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, Israel – just as Israel does within Europe which nominally administers parts and the US. This will require coming of the occupied West Bank but in to terms with the reality that the EU’s ISSN 2532-6570 reality remains completely dependent approach to Israel is a failed and a self- on Israel, will no longer suffice. defeating one. Having again postponed Palestinian elections, the Palestinian Authority has The EU needs to change its vocabulary, continually demonstrated its inability moving to emphasise the need for (or unwillingness) to break free from equal rights for Palestinians. The EU the outdated Oslo model of direct could start by making it clear to Israel negotiations. that dialogue and political recognition will only be bestowed on those who With Israel’s new coalition government demonstrate a commitment to change shifting more to the right, a practice turn the realities on the ground. in the EU’s vocabulary is long overdue. As Mamdani has argued: “something else is Adopting a rights-based approach needed if a non-Zionist alternative is to grounded in the abidance to bloom in Israel itself. […] the Palestinian international law should represent the moment will come when it is not just new litmus test for any actor in Israel the oppressed who seek political change or Palestine wishing to benefit from but also the beneficiaries of oppression. European engagement. Conversely, Getting there will require a new kind of failure to do so, or continual violations, political consciousness within Israel, a should face isolation and sanctions.

to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict”, inStrategic In a nutshell, the EU needs to urgently Europe, 6 May 2021, https://carnegieeurope.eu/ strategiceurope/84486. follow its own human rights directives 14 Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor and policies in ways that are consistent, Native. The Making and Unmaking of Permanent without making exceptions, whoever Minorities, Cambridge, Belknap Press, 2020. 15 See, Adalah, The Discriminatory Laws Database, 25 September 2017, https://www. 16 Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler nor adalah.org/en/content/view/7771. Native, cit., p. 326. IAI COMMENTARIES 21 | 28 - JUNE 2021 IAI COMMENTARIES

4 The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine

the perpetrators. The alternative will not only spell further violence and injustice in Israel and Palestine, but also imply an accelerated erosion of European credibility and influence, both internally and externally.

5 The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine

Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) The Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) is a private, independent non-profit think tank, founded in 1965 on the initiative of Altiero Spinelli. IAI seeks to promote awareness of international politics and to contribute to the advancement of European integration and multilateral cooperation. Its focus embraces topics of strategic relevance such as European integration, security and defence, international economics and global governance, energy, climate and Italian foreign policy; as well as the dynamics of cooperation and conflict in key geographical regions such as the Mediterranean and Middle East, Asia, Eurasia, Africa and © 2021 IAI the Americas. IAI publishes an English-language quarterly (The International Spectator), an online webzine (Affarinternazionali), three book series (Global Politics and Security, Quaderni IAI and IAI Research Studies) and some papers’ series related to IAI research projects (Documenti IAI, IAI Papers, etc.).

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