Israeli Practices of Governance in Palestine.

• Author: Zureik, Elia
• Position: ARTICLE - Report

Introduction

By the end of 2019, the Palestinian Census Bureau put the global number of Palestinians worldwide at 13.35 million of whom 5.03 million live in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and 1.597 million reside in Israel, 5.96 million live as refugees in neighboring Arab countries, and the remaining 0.727 million reside in other parts of the world. (1) The Jewish population of Israel was estimated at the end of 2017 as 6.9 million, 0.5 million of whom were settlers living in the occupied territories. (2) Therefore, the balance of Jews and Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, covering the entire territory of historical Palestine that is now controlled by Israel, stood at 6.9 million Jews compared to 6.5 million Arabs. From the point of view of population balance, the numbers of Jews and Arabs constitute parity and before too long they are expected to attain equal numbers.

Settler Colonialism as a Form of Apartheid

It is not fashionable nowadays to speak of colonialism, since it is considered an archaic 18th or 19th century passing phenomenon. Its staying power, however, is revealed in its essential features. Colonialism, which was part of the past, nevertheless also remains part of the postcolonial present, as geographer Derek Gregory points out. (3) It is manifested in the way it treats and controls the native population, in the panoply of its racialist laws, and its routine reliance on and use of instruments of violence. By its very nature colonialism is not a static phenomenon, as anthropologist Patrick Wolfe rightly emphasizes. It is an ongoing process and not an event. (4) Its structure is in constant evolution aiming to achieve its ultimate objectives. Israel, as a settler colonial state, provides an apt illustration of the process.

Land ownership is the cornerstone of any colonial edifice. It is clear from the Israeli Basic Law of 1951 that once the land is defined as Jewish, it shall remain so in perpetuity and its ownership cannot be transferred to any groups or individuals. This stance has recently been codified in legislation by the new Nationality Law, which was enacted in July 2018. It spelled out in more detail the implications of the new law for the status of the Palestinian minority in Israel.

Critical analysis of this nation-state Law is informed by a theoretical framework that is anchored in the settler-colonial perspective. The main components of the Law include downgrading the status of the Arabic language in the country, pointing out that Israel is the state of the Jewish people, thus ignoring the fact that demographically there are almost as many non-Jews as Jews living in historical Palestine under Israeli control, and that national self-determination is the prerogative of the Jews only. Furthermore, a related aspect of the law is that in its declarative capacity Israel is established 'in the land of Israel rather than on it'. What flows from this, in the absence of defined borders, is that the law leaves open the possibility that future state borders could extend beyond the current ones. Finally, immigration leading to automatic citizenship is open only to Jews. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lauded the law for signaling a "defining moment" in Israel's history, at a time when Palestinian citizens in Israel, who comprise 20 percent of the population, referred to it as a new "apartheid" law that treats them as second-class citizens. (5)

Amal Jamal, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University, offered contextual analysis of the law that, in his view, reveals the state's "exclusive ethno-theological values" and "settler-colonial ideology and practices." The law transformed the relationship between the state and the Palestinians (citizens and non-citizens), the Druze minority (of which he is a member), and the secular Jewish left. The old hegemonic elites represented by Ashkenazi Jews were supplanted by new hegemonic elites that are drawn from the extreme right in Israel. Under this law, the relationship between the Jewish state and the Palestinians has been mutated from "one based on contested disparity into a relationship of landlords and aliens." Moreover, "The Palestinians--citizens and non-citizens--are constructed not only as occasional inhabitants, but also as foes, whose fate is total surrender or death." The Druze, on the other hand, who early in the state's history succumbed to the divide and rule principle, subscribed to the notion that they were intrinsically different from the local Arab population, and their co-opted traditional leaders agreed for the Druze to be inducted into compulsory service in the army. Thus, according to Jamal, those who had "mistakenly thought of themselves as occupants of a privileged status akin to the Jews, found themselves outside the Jewish tribal nexus, as defined by the new law." The third group that was negatively affected by the new law is what Jamal calls liberal Jewish leftists "who are accused of betraying their national commitments by expressing loyalty to universal civic values." This is a loaded statement that is contested by the Palestinians. It is not clear that these universal civic values have been translated into solidarity with the Palestinians in their daily struggles. (6)

For Ahmad Sa'di, a Palestinian Arab academic at Ben Gurion University, the new law reveals modern Zionism's efforts at obfuscating its real intentions towards Palestine and the Palestinians by adopting in its discourse what is called constructive ambiguity. Throughout its modern history Zionism talked about reconciliation with the Palestinians and sharing the land with them. The racist language of the new law reveals that there is nothing further from the truth. All along, Zionism has been engaged in a "deceptive" language to disguise its true intentions at dispossessing the Palestinians through settler colonialism. (7)

In 2017, the United Nations (UN), through its Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), issued a bold report that traced the evolution of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories into a structure of apartheid. (8) The conclusion of the report states that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law.

Bearing in mind that in 1948, at the time of the establishment of Israel, not more than 7 percent of the land constituting historical Palestine was legally Jewish-owned, and this was after concerted efforts by Jewish settlers and Zionist organizations that received at the time the blessing of the British Mandatory government to induce the native Palestinians to sell their land. Arab land ownership now is estimated around 7 percent, a lopsided transformation of the original land ownership. How this came about is not a mystery.

The ESCWA Commission faced at the outset accusations from the Zionist lobby and its supporters that its report suffers from anti-Semitic bias, among other things. This response is expected when Israel is exposed for its inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. Rather than recapitulate the defense mounted by the United Nations agency, I shall summarize briefly the thrust of the report's arguments. The definition of apartheid rests on the 1973 Apartheid Convention and includes "similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in...