Reframing Israel-Palestine: Critical Israeli Responses to the Palestinian Call for Just Peace Teodora Todorova, BA (Hons), MA Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2014 Abstract: This thesis examines how Israeli critical activist engagement with the Palestinian call for just peace reframes Israel-Palestine. The thesis makes a political-theoretical intervention by arguing that Israeli civil society engagement with the principles underlying just peace requires, if it is to be successful, the utilisation of non-statist conceptualisations of peace politics. The thesis draws upon feminist critical theory and postcolonial critique to theorise peace politics as a practice of solidarity. From this perspective the conflict is analysed through the prism of Nancy Fraser’s ‘all affected’ principle which asserts that all those whose lives and wellbeing are affected by an institution of power, whether that be a state or a transnational corporation, are subjects of justice in relation to that institution, whether they hold the same citizenship as its representatives or not. Thus, by virtue of sharing the same, albeit politically diffentiated, geo-political space Israelis and Palestinians residing in Israel within its 1948 borders, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as the refugees outside Israel-Palestine, are subjects of justice and potential solidarity. As such, the Palestinians have the right to demand justice not only from the state of Israel but also from its citizens. The activist work, narratives and responses of three critical Israeli case study groups are examined in relation to the call for just peace: Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW), the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), and Zochrot (Remembering). The activist narratives and practices examined testify to the way in which critical Israeli engagement with nonviolent ethical responsibility towards the Palestinian people can result in unprecedented narrative convergence, practical solidarity, and the possibility for non-domination and cohabitation. These critical activist practices reveal just peace as an emergent and ongoing project to reframe and rearticulate the contemporary relations of oppression and domination in Israel-Palestine. Key words: Israel-Palestine, just peace, critical activism, feminist critical theory, framing 2 Acknowledgements: Thank you to Professor Roger Bromley for his unwavering support, guidance and inspiration throughout the whole research process. Thank you to Dr James Mansell for joining my supervision team and providing me with invaluable guidance and timely feedback. Thank you to my examiners Professor Laleh Khalili and Dr Colin Wright. Thank you to the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies for financially and otherwise supporting my research for the past four years. Thank you to Zahera Harb and Dina Matar for the opportunity to publish in their brilliant edited volume, Narrating Conflict in the Middle East, 2013, I.B. Taurus. Thank you to Gwamaka Kifukwe for the insightful conversations and debates on the role of civil society in transnational governance. A big thank you to Elisabeth Ravasio, the best mum in the world, who has always believed in me and who I hope I am making proud. To my best friend and partner Neil Burton, a huge thank you for putting up with the existential crisis that has been doing a PhD. Thank you to Konnie Lloyd, a true friend and companion who is a top ‘partner in crime’ in the fight against injustice. To the Feminism and Teaching Network – Eva Giraud, Stefanie Petschick, Kathryn Telling, and Laura Graham – thank you for the great opportunity to be part of a very special and inspiring project, and for generally being a bunch of great women. To the Palestinian Society (a.k.a. Pal Soc), thank you for being the most passionate, inspiring and dedicated people I’ve had the pleasure to work with. Last but not least, thank you to all the critical Israeli and Palestinian activists and thinkers who inspired this project and made it possible and worthwhile. In particular, thank you to Eitan Bronstein, Raneen Jeries, Amit Perelson, Rula Hamdan, Jeff Halper, Arabiya and Salim Shawarmeh, Maya Rotem, Ronnie Barkan, Yossi Bartal, Merav Amir, and Ronnen Ben-Arie. 3 Contents Introduction 5 Chapter One: Reframing Peace as a Question of Justice 37 Chapter Two: Reframing Israel-Palestine 72 Chapter Three: Reframing Responsibility as Ethical Nonviolence 107 Chapter Four: Bearing Witness to Al Nakba in a Time of Denial 147 Chapter Five: Decolonising Israel-Palestine 184 Chapter Six: Armed with Nonviolence and Solidarity 226 Conclusion 254 Bibliography 263 4 Introduction This thesis examines how Israeli engagement with the Palestinian call for just peace is articulated through activist practice, and how these Israeli critical activist practices reframe Israel-Palestine in the process. In particular, the thesis considers the key individual, institutional and collective narratives which motivate and/or deter a critical engagement with just peace. The thesis makes a critical intervention in the field by arguing that Israeli civil society engagement with the principles underlying just peace requires, if it is to be successful, the utilisation of non-statist logics or conceptualisations of peace politics in Israel-Palestine. The thesis further theorises the potential for an emergent peace politics based on a notion of justice situated beyond state-centric approaches to conflict resolution. Feminist critical theory and postcolonial critique are drawn upon to produce a new theoretical framework which enables the theorisation of peace politics as a practice of solidarity. Postcolonial theory, and in particular, the work of Edward Said, with its notions of overlapping centres and peripheries, intertwined histories, and contrapuntal narratives which give rise to new hybrid forms of being and doing, challenging logics of separation and irreconcilability, serve as a starting point from which to survey the conflicted and contested political and theoretical terrain of Israel-Palestine. At their core, postcolonial critique and feminist critical theory, the latter embodied in the work of Nancy Fraser (2005), Iris Marion Young (1990, 2002), and Judith Butler (2004, 2009, 2012), among others, share a commitment to context, history and positionality which require us to reconceptualise questions of justice, rights and peace in non-institutional, socially embedded ways. In such an instance the failure to observe that peace is a question of justice becomes an ethical choice between complicity with oppressive power or speaking truth to power. 5 This theoretical approach conceptualises just peace as a process that can only be brought about through the emergence of intercultural solidarity beyond the dominant logic of ethno-national separation. From this perspective the conflict is analysed through the prism of Nancy Fraser’s (2005, 2008) ‘all affected’ principle and Iris Marion Young’s (1990, 2002) work on the politics of difference, justice, and democratic inclusion. Nancy Fraser’s ‘all affected’ principle asserts that all those whose lives and wellbeing are affected by an institution of power, whether that be a state or a transnational corporation, are subjects of justice vis-à-vis that institution, whether they hold the same citizenship as its representatives or not. As such, the Palestinians have the right to demand justice not only from the state of Israel but also from its citizens, as well as international institutions complicit in their oppression. Iris Marion Young similarly views solidarity as a relation of justice which arises from a shared structural condition. Thus, by virtue of sharing the same, albeit politically diffentiated, geo-political space, Israelis and Palestinians residing in Israel within its 1948 borders, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as the refugees outside Israel-Palestine, are subjects of justice and potential solidarity. Moreover, as Juliet Hooker (2009) writes, solidarity is not simply about sympathy or pity: The struggle for justice of historically disadvantaged and excluded groups (including indigenous people, cultural minorities and the descendants of the enslaved) raises important questions for political theory about what it means to be the fellow citizen of persons perceived as radically “other” and about the kinds of political obligations that extend across difference (ibid: 23). As such, solidarity is a question of recognition, and the willingness to take action on behalf of your fellow subjects of justice. Solidarity is not altruistic, in that it contains elements of self-interest: the self-interest to live in peace, with the absence of violence. Neither does solidarity depend on mutual identification. Rather, it is contingent on a 6 shared disadvantage that needs to be addressed collectively. However, acts and attempts of solidarity are often plagued by tacitly ignored and/or actively obscured intersections of unequal power and privilege. The problem with racialised solidarity, referring to differential sympathies with racialised others, remains at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Challenging racialised solidarity necessitates the transformation of ‘the ethical- historical perspective of dominant racial groups. One way to approach this rather daunting task is through changes in the public memory and self-understanding of the political community as a whole’ (Hooker, 2009: 42). In the present the prevailing statist logic