Palestine Special: All Along Israel's West Bank Watchtower

From The Flying Carpet Institute:

A member of the FCI got the chance to tour the Separation Wall last Sunday, seeing the "realities on the ground", as Israeli governments have a habit of saying.

The most expensive project in the history of the state, the Wall or Fence (it is actually both, with the Fence-version suspiciously resembling its US-Mexican counterpart) is responsible for one of the biggest land grabs against Palestinian territory in the recent years. Even more permanent-looking behind it are the settlements, fortresses of the Israeli extreme right amidst a shrinking Palestinian landscape.

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The Wall is responsible for the arbitrary division of Palestinian land, an elaborate system of permanent surveilance (we had a "friendly visit" by an Israel Defense Forces jeep during the tour), the isolation of Palestinians from their places of residence, and a variety of psychological disorders in the Palestinian population, especially amongst children. The Wall is complemented by so-called Workers Terminals, policed by private security firms and designed to ease the access of Israeli goods to enclaves controlled by the Palestinian Authority, as well as the flow of cheap Palestinian labour to Israel.

But is it really "Apartheid"?



How did this term become so popular among Palestinians and international activists? Probably the reason is the direct optical reality. Seeing the Wall separate the Palestinian enclaves from a modern Israel brings to mind images of a prosperous, European Johannesburg and a "Third World" Soweto township. The Workers Terminals certainly bring to mind the thousands of black South Africans commuting everyday from their townships to the factories and diamond mines of white South Africa.

However, to quote socialist Israeli dissident Moshé Machover, to call this Apartheid is misleading. The situation is worse than Apartheid. The South African Apartheid dug its own grave by ending up as a system of a white ruling class exploiting a black working-class majority. While the Worker Terminals are intended to bring Palestinian labour into Israel, the proportion of Palestinians that are vital for the functioning of the Israeli economy is very small. In fact, a significant amount of workers employed in the factories set up along the barrier, as in Tulkarem, employ not only Palestinians but also migrant workers from countries such as Romania and Thailand.

So the Wall is not an effective high-tech policing operation intended to exploit Palestinian labour. Instead, it is seeks to suffocate economic and cultural activity by the Palestinians to the point of forcing them to leave, while settlements expand from the hilltops to the valleys. (If any doubts arise about this statement, then I suggest reading Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent statement that Israel (West Bank) is here to stay.) There is no Palestinian workers' strike that is able to paralyze the Israeli economy and force a significant change in current Israeli policy. Judging by the high levels of unemployment and cases of extreme alcohol abuse, the Palestinian Authority enclaves resemble Native American reservations in the United States.

So calling this Apartheid is a self-defeating statement. Apartheid does a favour to the Palestinians by assigning them a better status than the one they enjoy now.

Comments

[Dave]

It appears that the Obama administration is distancing itself from this. The Israelis and the Palestinians weren't mentioned in the State of the Union address, and I suppose that could increase Israeli assertiveness.

A negotiated settlement and destruction of the wall/fence would also lead to some undesirable consequences, if the World Human Rights Report 2010 is any indicator as to the kind of Palestinian state that would emerge. Torture, oppression of women, persecution of Christians -- it's no different from anywhere else in the Arab world. A free Palestinian society would not emerge even if the state of Israel were to disappear tomorrow. I don't think a comparision can be made to South Africa. The kinds of cultural and political institutions that challenged the regime and fought for a free South Africa (ie. South African Council of Churches) do not exist in Palestine. State and nation-building efforts for a democratic and free Palestine for all of its inhabitants would fail, and I think the reason for this lies deep within Palestinian/Arab political culture and theology - just as the reasons for Stalinism lie deep within Russian political culture. There is no real democracy to be found there either and the future looks dim there as well.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/01/25/world-report-2010-harsher-climate-human-rights?print

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