By Jeff Halper* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

No one knows the precise plans of the Palestinian Authority (PA) vis-a-vis September: will PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declare a Palestinian state within recognized borders and ask that it be admitted as a full member of the UN - or not? Perhaps Abbas himself does not know. Now political leaders often make decisions alone or in consultation with a small group of advisors. As in so many matters political, however, the Palestinian leadership finds itself in a unique situation. Its main allies are not governments, and certainly not the American government, whose support for some inexplicable reason has constituted the Palestinians' default position for the past 40 years. Rather, the Palestinians' most loyal and powerful ally is civil society. And yet, this most solid base of support remains unappreciated, unutilized and ignored.

Three circles of popular support radiate out into the wider world, able to mobilize millions of people to the Palestinian cause. First, of course, is the Palestinian people itself. Displaced, scattered, oppressed, occupied, struggling for its national rights and very cultural identity, this "little grain of sand", as it has been called, continues generation after generation to jam not only the vaunted Israeli military machine but that of its main supporter, the United States, which for decades has used Israel as its forward position in the Middle East.

To oppressed people everywhere, the Palestinians have become an inspiration, almost their surrogate. Their ability to remain steadfast (sumud) is proof that injustice, even when supported by the most advanced weaponry of the most powerful superpowers, can be resisted. But Israel, helped by time and geography, has succeeded in fragmenting the Palestinians. The refugees in the camps are almost completely excluded from political processes, but it is the exclusion of the diaspora that is especially problematic. Highly educated for the most part, fluent in all the European languages, they could play a major role in promoting the Palestinian cause abroad. Indeed, a few individuals have carved out influential positions despite being excluded, even resisted, by the West Bank leadership. Instead, the Palestinian Authority has fielded, with a couple notable exceptions, a most inept and inarticulate corps of diplomats. Rather than using their greatest asset, their own people abroad as well as the legions of articulate spokespeople at home, including younger people, the Palestinian Authority has tied its own hands diplomatically just when Israel is mounting a major international offensive against it. Just recall one astounding fact: during the entire year that saw the Obama administration taking office and the invasion of Gaza, there was no official Palestinian representative in Washington!

The second circle of civil society support for the Palestinian cause is, of course, the Arab and wider Muslim worlds. While each uprising of the "Arab Spring" has its own reasons and dynamics, the Palestinian struggle provided the inspiration. The Arab peoples came to realize that the same forces oppressing the Palestinians - militarism designed to thwart democracy and ensure neo-colonial control over their lands and resources - are at the source of their own oppression as well.

Indeed, the Palestinians possess one source of tremendous clout: they are the bone in the throat of the global powers that prevent them from completing their imperialist plans. The Palestinian struggle is not simply a local one between Palestinians and Israelis; it has become global on the order of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. It cannot be by-passed. Even though there are larger and bloodier conflicts in the Middle East, until the Palestinians signal to the rest of the Muslim world that they have arrived at a political settlement with Israel and the time has come to normalize relations, the conflict is not over. A solution cannot be imposed, and the Palestinians are the gatekeepers. Nothing can happen without them, and until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed resolved, the US and Europe will be unable to pursue their interests unencumbered in an empowered Middle East.

The third circle of civil society just waiting to be mobilized are the millions of ordinary people the world over whose have devoted enormous energy and resources towards the realization of Palestinian national rights. The Palestinian struggle has indeed assumed the proportions of that against apartheid. It is one of the two or three leading issues in the world. Churches, trade unions, university students, political and human rights organizations, prominent intellectuals, performers and even key politicians have all mobilized in support of the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel). They are evident in the repeated attempts to break the siege of Gaza by sending international flotillas.

But they, like Palestinian civil society and that of the Arab and Muslim worlds, wait to be mobilized by the Palestinian leadership. According to newspaper accounts - unfortunately, the PA leadership has never conducted an open discussion of the crucial September initiative and has never shared its deliberations - the two main objections to seeking membership in the UN are fear of upsetting the American administration and failure to obtain the required number of votes. The first is ridiculous. Does anyone still believe the Palestinians will gain anything by pursuing American-led "negotiations"?

The second objection, that not receiving the required votes for admission to the UN constitutes a "failure", exposes a key flaw in the strategic thinking of the Palestinian leadership. If Abbas approaches the UN in a docile and half-hearted way, appearing more to be pushed by an Israeli refusal to negotiate than by his people's own just cause and urgent need for independence, the Palestinian struggle will certainly suffer. Many other countries that would otherwise support the Palestinian initiative will indeed waiver, giving in to US and Israeli pressure because it seems the Palestinian themselves are not serious about it. But if he goes into the UN as the head of a national unity government with the support of the world's peoples, Mandela-like, he could decisively change the course of events forever.

To pull off his September initiative, Abbas must reject the go-it-alone approach that the Palestinian leadership has followed fruitlessly for so long. He must recognize that civil society the world over - and in the Muslim world and Europe in particular - is the Palestinians' most important ally. The issue is not whether the initiative "succeeds"; it is clear that the US will cast a veto. The true struggle is to pull out all the stops to show the world just how strong the Palestinian movement is. If mobilized, the collective power of the grassroots who have for years laboured on the Palestinian issue will generate a momentum that will be hard to stop.

Time is of the essence. Mobilization must begin immediately. The elected representatives of the Palestinian people in the occupied territory, joined for the first time by Palestinians of the refugee camps, inside Israel and the diaspora, should issue a joint "Call for Support". Immediately following the Palestinian call, grassroots activists would issue a Civil Society Call to support the Palestinian initiative, which would be signed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world and delivered to the UN in September. If a campaign for public support begins now, if the political leadership works intensively and closely with its own civil society to garner widespread support, more than 100,000 people can be gathered at the UN in New York in September in a mass rally for Palestinian independence. (And believe me, Israel will mobilize its own supporters!)

Inside the UN, Abbas would present Palestine's compelling case for independence and UN membership, as he did in his New York Times piece of 16 May. He would also reframe the conflict. It is not specious security issues that lay at the roots of the conflict, but Israel 's refusal to respect Palestinian national rights and to end the occupation. As he also did in the New York Times article, Abbas must also make it clear that recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in no way compromises the right of refugees to return to their homes, a key point of future negotiations with Israel. He should also state up-front that the establishment of a Palestinian state does not end the Palestinian quest, through peaceful means, of an inclusive single-state solution.

If international mobilization is pursued vigorously and Abbas exudes a genuine determination to see a Palestinian state established and recognized, more than 130 countries, including many of the leading European ones, will vote to accept Palestine into the UN. Even if this does not overrule the US veto in the Security Council, it is far more than a merely symbolic achievement and certainly cannot be considered a failure. Such a massive expression of support would demonstrate the inevitability of Palestinian statehood. It would signal the beginning rather than the end of an international campaign for Palestinian rights, one now joined by governments as well as civil society.

We, the people who have pursued Palestinian rights over the decades, Palestinians and non-Palestinian alike, are an integral part of the struggle. We have earned the right, all of us, to have our voices heard in September. Indeed, I would argue that if September comes and goes without any breakthrough due to the acquiescence and weakness of the PA leadership, civil society support might well dissipate. The people can bring the struggle to a certain point; we cannot negotiate or pursue initiatives at the UN. If the leadership fails us then we truly have nowhere to go. All those Palestinians who have suffered, resisted and died over the past decades cannot be let down at this historic moment by a vacillating political leadership. We call on you to mobilize us. Together we shall succeed, and sooner rather than later.

* Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.

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By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

I hope the grey suits in the Palestinian Authority (PA) regularly receive ICAHD's monthly newsletter – ICAHD being Jeff Halper's excellent organization, the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions.

And I especially hope they pay close attention to the June edition just out, because it contains a must-read article by Jeff himself headed "Palestine/Israel: Where do we go from here?"

Halper looks ahead to the Palestinians' "September moment", when they intend to go for independence and apply for admission to the United Nations, and how the PA must move quickly to mobilize civil society support worldwide. "Mahmoud Abbas [the PA chairman] and the PA in general should see this as an integral part of the Palestinian strategy. International civil society is the Palestinians' most important ally, but as non-Palestinians we can only organize in response to a Palestinian call."

"Mobilization," Halper says:

should begin with a call for support issued by the elected representatives of the Palestinian people in the occupied territory (the national unity government), together with Palestinians of the refugee camps, those inside Israel and of the Diaspora. Immediately following this, grassroots activists throughout the world could issue a civil society call to support the Palestinian initiative at the UN, to be signed by thousands of supporters and delivered to the UN in September.

To accompany the application for membership Jeff Halper visualizes a climactic demonstration of support at UN Headquarters in New York attended by tens of thousands of people from all over the world. "This would generate coverage and anticipation that would make it hard for the US and Europe to defy. Time is extremely short, but the infrastructure exists to make this happen – if we move quickly."

The words move quickly are not, I think, in the PA's lexicon.

The September moment is less than four months away. So let me pause here to consult the PA's snazzy new London embassy website.

Nope, there is no focus whatsoever on the bid for independence and statehood and no press releases or official reports for the critical month of May and nothing in April on the subject.

Compare this with the slick, always-on-the-ball Israeli operation, which is busy undermining the Palestinian bid for freedom.

So far, not so good.

Does anyone trust the PA to do this right?

Halper wants action. "The PA should appoint an articulate senior official with credibility and organizational talent to coordinate the campaign and mobilize civil society. The lack of spokespeople capable of carrying the Palestinian case to the public – something Israel excels in – has hampered our ability to inform and persuade the public for decades. The official responsible for information should be given authority to establish a team of effective spokespeople, based both in Palestine and in key countries abroad, that will provide the framing and counter the campaign that Israel and its supporters have already mounted against the September initiative. The lack of articulate, pro-active people among the Palestinian diplomatic corps has also contributed to the PA's notoriously bad public relations.

Regardless of our view on September – and we have to ask ourselves if we can afford to miss political opportunities like this – if the PA is going to pursue admission to the UN, we must do everything we can to ensure that it succeeds.

I and others have banged on about the Palestinian Authority's failure to understand that the war of words, if conducted effectively, is more important than the war of bullets, rockets, air strikes and suicide bombings. Israeli spin doctor Mark Regev and his lie machine would be easy meat for a well-trained Palestinian media outfit. Abbas should have set up a professional communications unit and trained and funded Palestinian embassies around the world to educate and inform, and orchestrate an effective worldwide campaign.

"We are not trained like the Israelis," I heard one senior PA man say. Exactly. Five years ago the PA was offered training in media skills and declined. Its refusal to gear up to meet the challenge has been a costly blunder for the Palestinian cause. And Abbas still drags his feet. The PA, sadly, has "form". It was programmed to foul up and has endeared itself to no-one except the US-Israel axis. It needs watching carefully even now.

Fortunately, Tel Aviv's propaganda has been significantly blunted recently not by the Palestinian Authority but by increasingly savvy student groups and other pro-Palestinian activists around the world – by international civil society, in fact.

But the Israelis are pouring and redoubling their dirty-tricks effort in desperation.

Jeff Halper, meanwhile, is quite upbeat even at the prospect of the statehood bid failing because it nevertheless will have advanced the Palestinian cause in two ways.

First, it has gotten fruitless "negotiations" out of the way. International support for September, including that of major European countries, arises precisely out of a realization that negotiations have been rendered impossible by Israel and its American patron. The fog has lifted. No longer will so-called negotiations be a façade for continued Israeli occupation. Indeed, the very positions set out by Netanyahu – recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; Israel's retention of its settlement blocs; a "united" Jerusalem under Israeli control; a demilitarized Palestinian state that has no control over its borders, land, resources or the movement of its people; a solution to the refugee problem "outside Israel" and no negotiations with a government that includes Hamas – become manifestly unacceptable.

And second, rejecting Palestinian admission to the UN puts an end to the "two-state solution". As long as the possibility of two states could be held out, any other option, including one state or a regional confederation, was effectively eliminated. Moving beyond that after September clears the way for the only genuine and possible solution: one inclusive state.

The September moment if pursued seriously, he says, offers positive gains for Palestinians, whichever way it turns out.

So, there's everything to play for and nothing much to lose. But is the Palestinian Authority really going out there to win?

The PA's London embassy, instead of briefing on the September moment and UN membership, chooses to give space to two recent news stories about French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe trying to restart the discredited peace talks before September. What is the PA's real agenda?

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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Either might force international community's hand

By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The other day I looked back with sadness on how nothing had changed for the better since my last trip to Palestine three years ago. On that occasion I also visited Gaza, an experience indelibly etched on my memory.

The situation there only goes from bad to worse – intolerably worse. But if I'm dispirited, heaven knows how the average Palestinian must feel as a result of the incompetent leadership they have had to endure these last 63 years, a leadership which failed to coherently argue and convey the justice of the Palestinian cause and never bothered, even to this day, to formulate and put into action an effective communications plan to win freedom.

The Israelis, though accomplished propagandists, are not very bright. In the battle for hearts and minds they have a violent story to tell and a lousy reputation to defend. And it's getting worse every day. In their greed they score potentially damaging own-goals and leave the moral high ground to their victims.

Their conduct reveal a cruel streak. They trample human rights and show no respect for international law. They are steeped in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Yet the Palestinians shrug and let the endless flow of priceless PR opportunities slip away.

The Palestinian Authority, which is supposed to be leading the fight-back, has little to say to the outside world and the many sympathizers out there. The task of informing and educating is left to a handful of exiles, academics, dedicated internet site operators, conscientious UN personnel like John Ging and Richard Falk, political mavericks like George Galloway, bold "freelancers" like Ken O'Keefe, a host of courageous charities on the ground and rising numbers of students across the globe. Jewish peace activists play a vital role too.

All work hard to keep the issue alive, no thanks to the PA.

The front that Palestine presents to the world remains disunited, chaotic and dysfunctional, just the way Israel and the US like it. Fatah, with a history of sleaze and corruption, has taken on a role similar to that of the hated Milice in World War II, the ass-licking paramilitary outfit set up by the Vichy French government, with Nazi help, to fight the French Resistance and do much of the Nazis' dirty work. Parallels with what's happening now in the Holy Land are unmistakable.

Fatah should remember that when the Nazis were beaten the French people took their revenge on surviving members of the Milice.

Hamas, defending its packed coastal enclave, meanwhile allows itself to be demonized and makes no move to overhaul its image – a puzzling omission and a blunder with huge self-inflicted consequences.

We are watching the sort of self-indulgent and ultimately self-destructive lunacy no-one in this day and age can afford, least of all the Palestinians. Who can blame sympathizers for throwing up their hands in exasperation, crying "Enough! A pox on you all," and reaching for the "off" switch?

If any real progress is to be made, things must now change drastically within Palestinian ranks.

My own finger was hovering over the "off" switch when an excellent piece by Jeff Halper entitled "Palestine 2011" dropped into my inbox and made me sit up. When this remarkable man speaks I, for one, listen.

Will a jolt from the outside create "new circumstances for peace"?

For many years Jeff Halper and his organization, the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) have closely monitored the Israeli occupation and its sinister methods, sometimes courageously facing the bulldozers and rebuilding what they knock down. ICAHD's analyses and other resource materials are essential reading for anyone wishing to properly understand the situation. If you visit ICAHD in Jerusalem, as I have done twice, you can arrange to be taken on a tour to see the awful truth.

"We are at a dead-end of a dead 'process'," says Halper, adding: "Israel will never end its occupation voluntarily; the best it may agree to is apartheid, but the permanent warehousing of the Palestinians is more what it has in mind."

Given the massive "facts on the ground" Israel has established in the occupied territories, Halper believes the international community will not exert enough pressure to make the two-state idea a reality. Even if they wanted to, the veto power enjoyed by Israel's sponsor, the US, wouldn't allow it. "And the Palestinians, fragmented and with weak leadership, have no clout. Indeed, they're not even in the game ... we have arrived at the end of the road."

However, he predicts that 2011 will create a new set of circumstances in which a just peace is possible, but the necessary game-changing jolt must come from outside the present "process".

He puts forward two possibilities. The first is a unilateral declaration of independence by the PA on the 1949 armistice lines (the 1967 "Green Line") together with an application for UN membership. A Palestinian state within those pre-1967 borders, which UN member states, including the US, already recognize, would be accepted by most countries in the world. Such a move would place reluctant powers like the US, Britain and Germany in an awkward position and force the hand of the international community.

The trouble is, says Halper, "the leadership of the Palestinian Authority lacks the courage to undertake such a bold initiative".

It's more likely, he thinks, that 2011 will see a continuing deadlock in "negotiations" and the collapse of the PA, bringing to an end the current process. It would be unthinkable for Israel to allow Hamas to fill the vacuum, so it would be faced with the prospect of reoccupying the territories at full security strength, a massive burden. Such a move would, of course, inflame the Muslim world and generate massive protests worldwide, again forcing the hand of the international community. "Looked at in this way," Halper observes, "the Palestinians have one source of enormous clout: they are the gatekeepers."

Jeff Halper throws some welcome shafts of sunlight onto a bleak landscape. But is civil society, in Palestine and abroad, in any shape to seize the opportunities presented by either of these scenarios? Activists, wherever they are, need to prepare for what happens and agree how to react if the PA falls.

"Abbas may be weak and pliable, but he is not a collaborator," says Halper. Well, he certainly had me fooled. If it waddles like a collaborator, quacks like a collaborator and jumps through hoops like a collaborator, it sure as hell ain't no patriot duck! Abbas might have created a better impression if he'd carried the fight to the Israelis and the US, demanded the enforcement of international law and UN resolutions, refused to negotiate before Israel complied, and insisted on any subsequent talks being supervised by the UN, not by Israel's ally, financier, arms supplier and all-purpose bitch.

Far from upholding Palestinian rights, "honest broker" America torpedoes them at every turn even under this peace-prize president. It must be sidelined somehow.

To my mind the international community, with or without the US, could have used leverage to force an end to the occupation any time during the last 63 years, and could do so tomorrow. The great mystery – for many – is why the PA and the Arab community of nations have not explored that angle energetically enough.

It has always been vitally important to counter Israeli propaganda. Abbas should have set up a professional communications unit, trained and funded Palestinian embassies around the world to educate and inform, and orchestrated an effective worldwide campaign.

Why didn't he? His "silent routine" and reluctance to make waves lend weight to accusations of collaboration. The only information coming out of the PA's embassy in London, for example, is social "froth" like details of the next concert. Its website hasn't been updated for since April, which just about sums up the uselessness of Abbas and his henchmen.

Compare this with the slick, always-on-the-ball Israeli operation.

As for Hamas, they certainly have what it takes in terms of raw courage, firm resolve and popular support to fill the void, as they did in the 2006 elections. But they are unapproachable at a time when they need to open up, forge friendly links and defuse the West's fears and misconceptions. Without a careful makeover and general rebranding they'll have a hard road ahead and so will their people.

If 2011 doesn't bring Jeff Halper's "jolt from outside", and a dose of salts to flush Palestine's insides, the "off" switch will remain a serious temptation.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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By William A. Cook * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Pete Pasho: www.dollopsofirony.com.

"Our goal is two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security," (President Obama) such is the illusion that resurfaces to restart the peace negotiations that will stabilize the mid-east. For 63 years that "goal" has been the carrot held before the people of the United States and Britain as the ultimate resolution for the Israeli/Palestinian crisis. In reality there is nothing in the statement that is true.

The Israeli government, from its inception in May of 1948 to now, has never had as its "goal" two peoples in two states living in peace and security. Indeed, the opposite has been true: "What should be obvious now, after the carefully researched and scholarly work of Dr. Pappe (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) and ...Dr Morris (Righteous Victims), ...complemented now with the materials preserved by Sir Richard C. Catling, is the truth about the creation of the State of Israel: the acceptance of UN Resolution 181 by the Jewish Agency Provisional Government as the designated Jewish State was not done with intent to abide by the goal of the UN General Assembly-to provide a state for two peoples in the land of Palestine-but rather to use it as a means to gain eventual control of all the land and cleanse that land of its indigenous people to whatever extent possible." (The Plight of the Palestinians 6). In truth the Jewish Agency, from 1939 to the Declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, acted as a colonial power taking by force the land of the indigenous peoples and maintains that policy to the present day. Jeff Halper tracks over nineteen illusory "peace proposals" aborted by the Israeli government in his detailed article "The Problem with Israel" (11-23-2006 in The Plight of the Palestinians).

If the Israeli government never had as a "goal" peace with the indigenous people, the facts on the ground today clearly establish the consequences of the Israeli intent to eradicate the possibility of a Palestinian State. A cursory look at a map of what remains to the Palestinians now demonstrates the impossibility of a viable state.

1. Close to 500,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements throughout the West Bank linked by a series of highways traversing Palestinian land serving Israelis only. This means that citizens of another state populate major segments of the proposed Palestinian state and use highways that interconnect to Israel but are not useable by the state that owns the land.
2. The eastern border of the West Bank, the Jordan River, is no longer the eastern border since Israel has determined unilaterally that it needs a second border for security purposes lest enemies fire rockets or gain access to Israel from Jordan. The land theft here confiscates the richest agricultural land in Palestine as well as major water resources thus denying the Palestinian people necessary subsistence resources for the proposed state.
3. The entire West Bank is surrounded by an imprisoning wall, a 400 mile barrier of cement and steel that locks the people of Palestine inside with all egress and ingress controlled by the Israeli military. While the Palestinians have welcomed the possibility of UN Peace Keepers along the border of the green line, Israel refuses to relinquish its control.
4. The Israelis have successfully divided the West Bank into three subareas surrounded by the IDF and the wall making a contiguous state impossible without the complete compliance of the Israeli government. The 500 checkpoints within the West Bank would be removed one assumes should a state be proposed in time; but that has not been determined even now.
5. Finally, Gaza sits isolated from the West Bank on the edge of the Mediterranean surrounded by the IDF with Egyptian support on the south. The Israeli navy ensures Israeli control in international waters.

A future state for the Palestinians is a mirage; the peace pretense is in fact a delaying tactic to ensure that such a state never exists. No state can be viable without borders that it controls unhindered by another state. No state can exist that does not control the continuity of access to its land, its water, including the sea, and the airspace over it. No state has the right to take by force another people's land, to confiscate its most productive arable areas, to steal its aquifers, to deny it the right to self-defense, to dictate what laws it will live by, to build on land within the borders of another and transfer its people to those settlements, and no state has the right to imprison another state with walls of cement and steel determining thereby the borders of that state. It should be clear by now that a state for the Palestinians cannot exist and the peace talks brokered by the United States is a farce.

But if the future state of the Palestinians is a mirage, the present Israeli State mocks the definition of a nation State; a true state has jurisdiction over a given territory. The state of Israel refuses the demarcation of its borders and refuses to abide by the United Nations resolutions that demand it return the land it has illegally occupied to the people of Palestine. Given this defiance, the possibility of establishing "two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side" can be construed as nothing less than hypocrisy.

Let's be absolutely clear about "peace in Palestine." There cannot be a resolution of the crisis between Israel and Palestine unless the United Nations wrests total control of negotiations from the United States. Obama must realize by now that Israel is determining what will be negotiated, when it will be negotiated, with whom it will be negotiated, and at what time it will cease to be negotiated. He must also realize that Israel is using him as a patsy to delay resolution so that Israel can leverage more military ordinance and more billions from the United States knowing full well that nothing will result from these meaningless talks. And, finally, Obama must understand by now that he can achieve nothing from Israel because the Congress of the United States is owned by Israel, virtually every one of them, more than two thirds in the House and 100% in the Senate. As a result, nothing he might hope to accomplish by way of equity of resolution can be brought into the open without the Congress crying foul against the victimized Israelis. He is literally a slave in the office of the Presidency, shackled to the demands of Israel; his only option is defiance.

Defiance means publicly recognizing the hypocrisy of America pretending to serve as an objective broker for peace when in fact Israel speaks for America. As matters stand now in Palestine, Israel occupies virtually the entire land area of Mandate Palestine and controls the little that remains to the Palestinians. For Obama to bargain a delay in further construction of illegal settlements when the real issue is the removal of all settlements from Palestinian land if there is to be a distinct state of Palestine is the height of hypocrisy to say nothing of ridiculousness. To bargain with a man, Mahmoud Abbas, who does not legally hold office or speak for all Palestinians, leaving the justly elected Hamas party out of the room, is equally hypocritical and ridiculous. To bargain a just settlement from this reality is nothing less than a sham.

Peace cannot exist unless justice exists. That means a return to the premises that the UN in 1947 used to create "two states living side by side in peace and security." How ironic, but how true. Based on UN resolutions since that date, Israel must be forced to relinquish all illegally obtained land by action of the Security Council with America abstaining. By this one act, Obama can free himself from Israeli control, free America to act justly toward both Palestinians and Jews, and show the world that it is no longer tethered to the defiant state of Israel. Allowing the UN resolutions to be acted upon by the world's communities enables that body to reclaim its purpose as a union created to resolve disputes and foster equity among its members. For Obama, his defiance will bring him everlasting rewards as a man of principle, of morals, and of compassion, a man who wields only the banner of justice against entrenched power thereby freeing the American flag to unfurl above the White House unencumbered by the chains that have secured it to the will of a few at the expense of the many.

* William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East Policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, and most recently, The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com.

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by Jeff Halper

So rapid is the pace of systemic change in that indivisible entity known as Palestine/Israel that it almost defies our ability to keep up with it. The deliberate and systematic campaign of driving Palestinians out of the country in 1948 was quickly forgotten, the plight of more than 700,000 refugees becoming an invisible "non-issue." Instead, a plucky, European, "socialist" Israel arose as the darling of even the radical left, completely eclipsing the campaign of ethnic cleansing which enabled its creation.

Likewise Israel"s 1967 occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, which remained a virtual non-issue until the outbreak of the first Intifada in the last days of 1987. The only part of the conflict which did appear on the public radar was the equation of Palestinians with terrorism. Until the start of the Oslo negotiations in 1993, even the mention of the word "occupation," not to mention "Palestinians," would have gotten you labeled an anti-Semite " terms that until today are seldom used in Israel. Even when the conflict, if not the Occupation per se, became an international issue, Israeli ruled the all-important realm of PR. The most telling argument against the Palestinian struggle is the widespread notion that Arafat refused Ehud Barak"s "generous offer" at Camp David. The facts of the matter " that there never was a "generous offer" and that even if Barak had offered 95% of the Occupied Territories (as Olmert has recently "offered" 93%), a Palestinian state would constitute little more than a truncated and non-viable South African bantustan on less than 20% of historic Palestine " disappear in the spin. All that remains is a re-demonized Arafat. Sharon"s subsequent imprisoning the Palestinian president in a dark room of his demolished headquarters, eliminating him politically and, I believe, physically, raised virtually no opposition or even criticism in the international community.

For all that, a determined effort of civil society groups around the world " human rights and political organizations, church and critical Jewish groups, trade unions, intellectuals and even certain political figures, in Israel as well as abroad " succeeded in the past decade or so in raising the Occupation to the status of global issue. No sooner had the concept of Occupation taken hold, however, than Israel"s feverish expansion of the "facts on the ground" overtook that term. For an occupation is defined in international law as "a temporary military situation." The establishment of more than 200 settlements and outposts in the Occupied Territories, organized into seven large settlement "blocs" anchored by more than 20 are major urban centers, all tied inextricably into Israel proper by a massive network of Israeli-only highways and, most recently, the Separation Barrier, have rendered the Occupation permanent. No longer either temporary or security-based, one indivisible system, an Israeli system, has grown up between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Before our eyes those willing to look unflinchingly saw the truth: whether committed to a two-state solution or not, the Occupation has been transformed into a permanent state of apartheid. It is as yet an de facto reality. If the "Annapolis Process" works out according to Israel"s plan, it will become a de jure system of apartheid, cleverly sold as a "two-state solution" and approved by a Palestinian collaborationist-leader.

Annapolis does not really matter, however. Israel knows that neither the Palestinians nor the international civil society will accept apartheid. Its function is what all the other "political processes" of the past four decades were intended to do: put off any solution that would require Israel to make meaningful concessions while giving it the political cover and time to create irreversible facts on the ground. Israel"s "Occupation" has moved beyond apartheid, a term that has become outmoded almost as soon as it began gaining acceptance amidst great protest and clamor. What has evolved before our eyes, something we should have seen but lacked a reference for, is a system of warehousing, a static situation emptied of all political content. "What Israel has constructed," argues Naomi Klein in her powerful new book, The Shock Doctrine,

is a system,"a network of open holding pens for millions of people who have been categorized as surplus humanity".Palestinians are not the only people in the world who have been so categorized".This discarding of 25 to 60 percent of the population has been the hallmark of the Chicago School [of Economics] crusade".In South Africa, Russia and New Orleans the rich build walls around themselves. Israel has taken this disposal process a step further: it has built walls around the dangerous poor (p. 442).

Israel"s facts on the ground are merely the physical expression of a policy that seeks to de- politicize and thereby normalize its control. The Israel/Palestinian conflict is not presented as a conflict with "sides" and a political dynamic. Instead it is cast as a "war on terrorism," a fight with a phenomenon that eliminates " or presents as irrelevant " any reference to occupation, which Israel officially denies having. Since "terrorism" and the "clash of civilizations" which underlies it is portrayed as a self-evident and permanent "given," it assumes the form of a non-issue, a status quo (Israel"s official term for its policy towards the Palestinians) immune to any solution and or process of negotiation. If the terrorists and their ilk " jailed prisoners, illegal immigrants, slum dwellers and the poor, the discontented victims of "counter- insurgency," adherents to "evil" religions, ideologies or cultures, to name just a few " are permanent fixtures to be dealt with rather than people whose grievances, needs and rights should be addressed, then prisons, including prisons-writ-large such as Gaza, the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a whole and entire populations and continents, are the penultimate solution.

Warehousing, then, is the best, if bleakest, term for what Israel is constructing for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. It is in many ways worse than the Bantustans of apartheid-era South Africa. The ten non-viable "homelands" established by South Africa for the black African majority on only 11% of the country"s land were, to be sure, a type of warehouse. They were intended to supply South Africa with cheap labor while relieving it of its black population, thus making possible a European dominated "democracy." This is precisely what Israel is intending " its Palestinian Bantustan encompassing around 15% of historic Palestine " but with a crucial caveat: Palestinian workers will not be allowed into Israel. Having discovered a cheaper source of labor, some 300,000 foreign workers imported from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Rumania and West Africa, augmented by its own Arab, Mizrahi, Ethiopian, Russian and Eastern European citizens, Israel can afford to lock them out even while withholding from them a viable economy of their own with unfettered ties to the surrounding Arab countries. From every point of view, historically, culturally, politically and economically, the Palestinians have been defined as "surplus humanity;" nothing remains to do with them except warehousing, which the concerned international community appears willing to allow Israel to do.

Since warehousing is a global phenomenon and Israel is pioneering a model for it, what is happening to the Palestinians should be of concern to everyone. It may constitute an entirely new crime against humanity, and as such should be subject to the universal jurisdiction of the world"s courts just as are other egregious violations of human rights. In this sense Israel"s "Occupation" has implications far beyond a localized conflict between two peoples. If Israel can package and export its layered Matrix of Control, a system of permanent repression that combines Kafkaesque administration, law and planning with overtly coercive forms of control over a defined population hemmed in by hostile gated communities (settlements in this case), walls and obstacles of various kinds to movement, then, as Klein writes starkly, every country will look like Israel/Palestine: "One part looks like Israel; the other part looks like Gaza." In other words, a Global Palestine.

This goes a long way towards explaining why Israel is unconcerned about entering into genuine peace processes or resolving its conflict with the Palestinians. By warehousing them it has the best of both worlds: complete freedom to expand its settlements and control without ever having to compromise, as a political solution would require. By the same token, it explains why the international community lets Israel "get away with it." Instead of presenting the international community with thorny issues that must be resolved " violations of human rights, international law and repeated UN resolutions, let alone the implications of the conflict itself on international politics and economy " it is instead seen as providing a valued service: developing a model by which "surplus populations" everywhere can be controlled, managed and contained.

Israel, then is in complete sync with both the economic and military logics of global capitalism, for which it is being rewarded generously. Our mistake, encouraged by such terms as "conflict," "occupation" and "apartheid," is to view Israel"s control of the Palestinians as a political issue which must be resolved. Instead, it will be "resolved" when the Palestinians are "disappeared," just as people were "disappeared" in Latin American under its military regimes. Dov Weisglass, the architect of the Sharon government"s "disengagement" from Gaza, said as much in a revealing interview ("The Big Freeze," Ha"aretz Magazine, Oct. 8, 2004):

The disengagement plan is the preservative of the sequence principle. It is the bottle of formaldehyde within which you place the president's formula [that Israel can retain its settlement "blocs," including a Greater Jerusalem] so that it will be preserved for a very lengthy period. The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians.

Is what you are saying, then, is that you exchanged the strategy of a long-term interim agreement for a strategy of long-term interim situation"

The American term is to park conveniently. The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians. There is a decision here to do the minimum possible in order to maintain our political situation. The decision is proving itself. It is making it possible for the Americans to go to the seething and simmering international community and say to them, "What do you want." It also transfers the initiative to our hands. It compels the world to deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote".

Warehousing is the starkest of political concepts because it represents the de-politicization of repression, the transformation of a political issue of the first degree into a non-issue, a regrettable but unavoidable situation best dealt with through relief, charity and humanitarian programs. It is a dead-end, a "given," for which no remedy is available. This, of course, is not the case, and we cannot let it be presented as such. Warehousing is a policy arising out of particular interests of the most powerful. Our use of the term "warehousing," then, should be to "name the thing" in order to give us a grasp of it, all the better to combat and defeat it. Again Israel provides an instructive (and heartening) example. Despite the almost unlimited and unchecked power Israel has over every element of Palestinian life, including the active support of the US, Europe and much of the international community, including some Arab and Muslim regimes, it has failed to nail down either apartheid or warehousing. Palestinian resistance continues, supported by the Arab and wider Muslim peoples, significant sectors of the international civil society and the critical Israeli peace camp. The conflict"s destabilizing effect on the international system grows steadily, so that it may eventually force the international community to intervene. Neither the Israelis nor the Americans (with European complicity) are able, despite their overwhelming power, to force on the Palestinians the outcome they seek.

The term "warehousing," then, though referring to a real phenomenon, is also meant as a warning. We must continue our efforts to end the Israeli Occupation, even if this is means, ultimately, the creation of a genuine Palestine/Israel or a wider regional confederation, rather than apartheid-cum-two-state solution or warehousing. Looking at Palestine as a microcosm of a broader global reality of warehousing enables us to more effectively identify those elements appearing elsewhere and grasp the model which Israel is developing, all the better to counter it. Regardless, our language and the analysis it generates must not only be honest and unsparing, it must keep pace with political intentions and ever more rapidly developing "facts on the ground."

(Jeff Halper is the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.)

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