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The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine The EU Must Change Vocabulary on Israel-Palestine © 2021 IAI by Michelle Pace As hundreds of Palestinians began Gazans as human beings – in spite of cleaning the debris left behind by Israel’s the “hell on earth”3 that Israel’s settler- ISSN 2532-6570 latest 11-day assault on the Gaza Strip – colonial violence has imposed upon which caused at least 256 Palestinian them.4 deaths, including 66 children, and a further 13 deaths within Israel1 –, a The campaign’s quest to humanise degree of humanity was restored to the everyday suffering of 2 million Gaza’s besieged population. inhabitants of Gaza stands in sharp contrast to Israel’s representation of the The Gaza City municipality – which Gaza Strip as a hotbed of terrorists: the initiated the volunteering campaign campaign overrides such depictions – named it Han’amarha (“we will build with the spirit of hope, love, solidarity it”).2 A strong statement that contributes and community. to undermine the “us” versus “them” binary, providing a window into the What happened across occupied individual and collective struggle of Palestinian territory (oPt) during May 2021 serves as a reminder that we are 1 The Norwegian Refugee Council confirmed again witnessing Israel’s sustained that 11 of the over 60 children killed by Israeli air strikes in Gaza were participating in its psycho- social programme aimed at helping them deal 3 UN Secretary General, António Guterres, with trauma. See, Norwegian Refugee Council, described the lives of children in Gaza as “hell Eleven Children Receiving NRC Trauma Care on earth” on 20 May 2021. See, UN News, Gaza Killed in Their Homes by Israeli Air Strikes, 18 Children Living in ‘Hell on Earth’, UN Chief Says, May 2021, https://www.nrc.no/news/2021/ Urging Immediate End to Fighting, 20 May 2021, may/11-children-killed. https://news.un.org/en/node/1092332. 2 “Hundreds of Palestinians Volunteer to 4 Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Clean up War-Ravaged Gaza (Video)”, in Palestine. A History of Settler Colonialism and Palestine Chronicle, 24 May 2021, https://www. Resistance, 1917–2017, New York, Metropolitan palestinechronicle.com/?p=71050. Books, 2020. IAI COMMENTARIES 21 | 28 - JUNE 2021 IAI COMMENTARIES Michelle Pace is Professor in Global Studies at Roskilde University and Associate Fellow at Chatham House’s Europe Programme. 1 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.
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