|
CounterPunch
October
9, 2002
Preempting Transfer
Israel May
"Transfer" Palestinians During the War on Iraq
by WILL YOUMANS
In 1989 Benjamin Netanyahu told students at Bar-Ilan
University:
"Israel should have exploited the
repression of the demonstrations in China, when world attention
focused on that country, to carry out mass expulsions among the
Arabs of the territories."
Many commentators and the Palestinian
public in general are worried that the Israeli government will
not miss the opportunity with impending war on Iraq.
Around one hundred Israeli academics
wrote a letter warning that talk of transfer, a sanitized term
for ethnic cleansing, is increasing within mainstream political
discourse in Israel. The letter warned that the "Israeli
ruling coalition includes parties that promote 'transfer' of
the Palestinian population as a solution to what they call 'the
demographic problem'".
It cited a recent interview in Ha'aretz,
by chief of staff Moshe Ya'alon. He discussed the possible need
for a special "treatment" in the occupied territories.
Prime minister Sharon supported his "assessment of reality."
The letter also mentioned that, "escalating racist demagoguery"
in Israel "may indicate the scope of the crimes that are
possibly being contemplated."
In August, 2002, Ali Abunimah published
an expose on Gamla, "a group founded by former Israeli military
officers and settlers." Its website featured a technical
paper entitled "The Logistics of Transfer," which calls
for Israel to ethnically cleanse all of the Palestinian territories
as "the only possible solution." Besides offering instructional
suggestions, it provides a theological justification for those
not convinced by the political rationale.
More mainstream voices have considered
it in disturbingly acquiescent tones.
On October 3rd, the Guardian featured
an essay by the prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris on the
history of the concept of transfer as a political tool in Israel-Palestine.
Morris seemed to also write this in response to the more frequent
discussion of transfer as an option. He cited "Shmuel Eliahu,
the chief rabbi of Safad" who "called for the transfer,
to 'Jordan, the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union,
or Canada,' of Arabs who are unwilling to accept Israel as a
Jewish state."
He points out that as shocking as this
may seem, even Arab and British officials once considered transfer
an acceptable political necessity. He quotes a few private statements
of Jordanian and Iraqi officials to that effect.
Morris is warming us up to the idea to
the idea of transfer. Since it was a historical option, his essay
suggests, it may make sense now. He speculates, "perhapstoday's
Middle East would be a healthier, less violent place" if
Israel had dispossessed all of the Palestinians in 1947-48, as
opposed to only the "700,000 of Palestine's 1.25 million
Arab inhabitants."
He wrote that ethnic purity would have
been the "historically calming result." The logical
and unstated conclusion is that the opportunity to achieve purity
still remains. Thus the article leaves as its end where it started:
that transfer is an option.
That a highly revered historian who helped
tarnish Israel's founding myth that the Palestinian refugees
were self-created now flirts with ethnic cleansing so comfortably
proves that ethnic cleansing is becoming increasingly accepted
as an acceptable route in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
If Israel plans on displacing Palestinians
during the campaign against Iraq, it will be carefully implemented
in order to not upset American designs on Iraq. Premeditated
plans in the absence of an overt pretense would be piecemeal
- Israel's long preferred way of shifting populations. After
all, hundreds of thousands of refugees pouring into Jordan may
force Jordanian officials to disallow American use of Jordanian
airfields, for example.
Displacement en masse could happen after
Iraq falls. Observers have speculated that western Iraq may provide
a place for Israel to expel Palestinians to. It would give Israel
somewhere to dump the Palestinians and would happen after Iraq's
chemical arsenal had been fully disarmed.
Transfer could also appear to be a natural
response to a "mega-terrorist" attack or if Saddam
Hussein launches enough missiles at Israel.
The probable starting point for a program
of ethnic cleansing would center on the new security wall complex
Israel is building in and through the outskirts of the West Bank.
With a 5-6 meter-high fence, trenches, mine fields, a sand patch
to detect footprints, watchtowers, and an electrified fence,
this complex will snake around the inner portions of the Palestinian
side of green-line. So far, 43 miles of it has been built. In
the end it will run the entire length of Israel's de facto border
with the West Bank (a map of the project is available at B'Tselem's
website).
The long and winding complex drops deep
into parts of the West Bank in order to bring settlements into
the Israeli side of the wall. So far, 10,000 Palestinians in
8 towns and villages have also fallen on the west-side of the
wall, separated from the rest of the West Bank, according to
a report by the Israel human rights group B'Tselem. Also, "thirty-five
Palestinian families residing along the northern edge of Bethlehem
are expected to remain on the northern side of the barrier in
south Jerusalem, due to the decision to include Rachel's tomb
inside the barrier."
Besides the fact that this impinges on
Palestinian lands, involves the bulldozing of homes and farmlands,
separates families, violates the basic rights of mobility and
work, and further disjoints Palestinian rootedness in the land,
it leaves in limbo the fate of over ten thousand Palestinians.
They could be the most attractive targets for ethnic cleansing.
On a practical level, all of Israel's
security mechanisms, from the checkpoints, curfews, and closures,
to this new wall, regard all Palestinians as potential terrorists.
Given the broadness of most of these arrangements, will Israel
really allow over 10,000 Palestinians to remain on the other
side of this wall? The wall complex is immensely popular in Israel
and moves to bolster its efficacy will be well received by most
Israelis.
Israeli officials know that it will give
the Palestinians even more to be angry about. The Financial Times
reported that farmers have lost direct access to their fields,
people's homes have been commandeered for military use, and schools
and other edifices have been demolished just for being too close
to the wall complex's vicinity.
At a deeper level, Israeli officials
across the ideological spectrum read the Palestinians as a demographic
threat. That is, by their very existence Palestinians challenge
Israel's dominant historical mythology. They are the noxious
foot-note to Zionism's colonizing slogan that declared Palestine
"a land without people for a people without a land."
However, the extent of any forthcoming
ethnic cleansing is indeterminable. It could be limited to the
more than 10,000 Palestinians who escaped containment by Israel's
wall security complex, or it could be the "full-fledged
ethnic cleansing" the 100 Israeli academics warn of.
Further ethnic cleansing is a realistic
possibility given the centrality of transfer in Israel's history.
Benny Morris affirms what every Palestinian knows: "The
idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied
its evolution and praxis during the past century." Other
circumstances point to transfer as well: Israel is in an economic
and political crisis, the ruling coalition is made up of parties
calling for transfer, Sharon is running out of ideas and his
raison d'etre is not peaceful diplomacy but military action premised
on Israel's security obsession.
Like the massacre at Tiananmen Square,
the next war on Iraq may be a period of relaxed international
scrutiny of Israel's actions. Already we have seen Israel use
the wake of the September 11th attacks to enhance its operations
against the Palestinians by extending and aggrandizing its violent
incursions into Palestinian populations. Sharon's comment that
"the concern now is not about a few Scud missiles, but suicide
bombers everywhere" offers no solace.
The contemporary path to the moment of
transfer is paved with Israel's recent expulsions of the Palestinian
fighters who were in the Church of Nativity, and families of
suicide bombers. Reports that Iraq facilitates suicide bombs
and would encourage them more in the event of an attack further
links the war on Iraq with Israeli security. When combined with
Israel's security premise that all Palestinians are potential
terrorists, this formula hints at the Palestinian "demographic
threat" that once left Golda Meir sleepless at night and
now serves as the subject of obsession for Israeli conferences
and nervous policy analysts.
The Israeli academics' letter calls for
"the international community to pay close attention to events
that unfold within Israel and in the occupied territories."
International activists must "make it absolutely clear that
crimes against humanity will not be tolerated." It also
recommends, "concrete measures to prevent such crimes from
taking place."
Anti-war activities should include messages
to this effect. Anytime an Israeli spokesperson takes questions,
they should be asked about this. This idea must enter into the
media via op/eds, letters, and so on. Confront and deluge congressional
representatives with this suspicion. The goal should be to force
Israeli spokespeople to take a position now and to recognize
that the world will be watching them. Activists should establish
our own preemptive doctrine. Let's act now, and not react after
Israel has established new facts on the ground.
Read: B'Tselem's report "Separation
Barrier" (9/2002) at http://www.btselem.org
Benny Morris's piece http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/010551,803417,0
0.html
Will Youmans
is a 3rd year law student at University of California, Berkeley.
He can be reached at youmans@boalthall.berkeley.edu
Yesterday's Features
Hesham Hassaballa
Here
We Go Again:
Rev. Falwell's Slurs
Ann Pettifer
Brainwashing
in America
Anita Ramasatry
Airline Security Run Amok
Josh Frank
Iraq: It's
About Globalization
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Iraq:
the Double Standard
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Illogical War Speech
David Vest
Dylan in
Eugene
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- How to Change the Subject: Corporate Scandal and Pension
Reform as Weapons Against Warmongering;
- Padilla's Predecessor: Court Ruling Cites 1904 War
Against Mining Union;
- Adios Hitchens: the Dorian Gray of Our Time;
- Object of Suspicion: How the FBI Watched Janis Ian
From Birth;
- First Carter, Then Clinton,
Now Sen. John Edwards:
Another "New South" Slimeball;
- Corporate Crooks: Nature or Nurture?
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|