Contents:
(1) Ali Abunimah & Omar Barghouti: Democracy: An existential threat?

(2) Gideon Levy: The Twilight Zone/Deer Hunters

(1) Opinion/Editorial
Democracy: An existential threat?
Ali Abunimah and Omar Barghouti, The Electronic Intifada, 30 December 2007

As two of the authors of a recent document advocating a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli colonial conflict we emphatically intended to generate debate. Predictably, Zionists decried the proclamation as yet another proof of the unwavering devotion of Palestinian — and some radical Israeli — intellectuals to the “destruction of Israel.” Some pro-Palestinian activists accused us of forsaking immediate and critical Palestinian rights in the quest of a “utopian” dream.

Inspired in part by the South African Freedom Charter [1] and the Belfast Agreement [2], the much humbler One State Declaration, authored by a group of Palestinian, Israeli and international academics and activists, affirms that “The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status.” It envisages a system of government founded on “the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens.”

It is precisely this basic insistence on equality that is perceived by Zionists as an existential threat to Israel, undermining its inherently discriminatory foundations which privilege its Jewish citizens over all others. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was refreshingly frank when he recently admitted that Israel was “finished” if it faced a struggle for equal rights by Palestinians. [3]

But whereas transforming a regime of institutionalized racism, or apartheid, into a democracy was viewed as a triumph for human rights and international law in South Africa and Northern Ireland, it is rejected out of hand in the Israeli case as a breach of what is essentially a sacred right to ethno-religious supremacy (euphemistically rendered as Israel’s “right to be a Jewish state.”)

Palestinians are urged by an endless parade of Western envoys and political hucksters — the latest among them Tony Blair — to make do with what the African National Congress rightly rejected when offered it by South Africa’s apartheid regime: a patch-work Bantustan made up of isolated ghettoes that falls far below the minimum requirements of justice.

Sincere supporters of ending the Israeli occupation have also been severely critical of one-state advocacy on moral and pragmatic grounds. A moral proposition, some have argued, ought to focus on the likely effect it may have on people, and particularly those under occupation, deprived of their most fundamental needs, like food, shelter and basic services. The most urgent task, they conclude, is to call for an end to the occupation, not to promote one-state illusions. Other than its rather patronizing premise, that these supporters somehow know what Palestinians need more than we do, this argument is quite problematic in assuming that Palestinians, unlike humans everywhere, are willing to forfeit their long-term rights to freedom, equality and self-determination in return for some transient alleviation of their most immediate suffering.

The refusal of Palestinians in Gaza to surrender to Israel’s demand that they recognize its “right” to discriminate against them, even in the face of its criminal starvation siege imposed with the backing of the United States and the European Union, is only the latest demonstration of the fallacy of such assumptions.

A more compelling argument, expressed most recently by Nadia Hijab and Victoria Brittain, states that under the current circumstances of oppression, when Israel is bombing and indiscriminately killing; imprisoning thousands under harsh conditions; building walls to separate Palestinians from each other and from their lands and water resources; incessantly stealing Palestinian land and expanding colonies; besieging millions of defenseless Palestinians in disparate and isolated enclaves; and gradually destroying the very fabric of Palestinian society, calling for a secular, democratic state is tantamount to letting Israel “off the hook.” [4]

They worry about weakening an international solidarity movement that is “at its broadest behind a two-state solution.” But even if one ignores the fact that the Palestinian “state” on offer now is no more than a broken-up immiserated Bantustan under continued Israeli domination, the real problem with this argument is that it assumes that decades of upholding a two-state solution have done anything concrete to stop or even assuage such horrific human rights abuses.

Since the Palestinian-Israeli Oslo agreements were signed in 1993, the colonization of the West Bank and all the other Israeli violations of international law have intensified incessantly and with utter impunity. We see this again after the recent Annapolis meeting: as Israel and functionaries of an unrepresentative and powerless Palestinian Authority go through the motions of “peace talks,” Israel’s illegal colonies and apartheid wall continue to grow, and its atrocious collective punishment of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza is intensifying without the “international community” lifting a finger in response.

This “peace process,” not peace or justice, has become an end in itself — because as long as it continues Israel faces no pressure to actually change its behavior. The political fiction that a two-state solution lies always just around the corner but never within reach is essential to perpetuate the charade and preserve indefinitely the status quo of Israeli colonial hegemony.

To avoid the pitfalls of further division in the Palestinian rights movement, we concur with Hijab and Brittain in urging activists from across the political spectrum, irrespective of their opinions on the one state, two states debate, to unite behind the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, as the most politically and morally sound civil resistance strategy that can inspire and mobilize world public opinion in pursuing Palestinian rights.

The rights-based approach at the core of this widely endorsed appeal focuses on the need to redress the three basic injustices that together define the question of Palestine — the denial of Palestinian refugee rights, primary among them their right to return to their homes, as stipulated in international law; the occupation and colonization of the 1967 territory, including East Jerusalem; and the system of discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Sixty years of oppression and forty years of military occupation have taught Palestinians that, regardless what political solution we uphold, only through popular resistance coupled with sustained and effective international pressure can we have any chance of realizing a just peace.

Hand in hand with this struggle it is absolutely necessary to begin to lay out and debate visions for a post-conflict future. It is not coincidental that Palestinian citizens of Israel, refugees and those in the Diaspora, the groups long disenfranchised by the “peace process” and whose fundamental rights are violated by the two-state solution have played a key role in setting forward new ideas to escape the impasse.

Rather than seeing the emerging democratic, egalitarian vision as a threat, a disruption, or a sterile detour, it is high time to see it for what it is: the most promising alternative to an already dead two-state dogma.

Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Omar Barghouti is an independent analyst and a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israelwww.pacbi.org/ . This article was originally published by the Guardian: Comment is Free and is republished with the authors’ permission.

Endnotes
[1] The Freedom Charter
[2] The Belfast Agreement
[3] “Israel risks apartheid-like struggle if two-state solution fails, says Olmert,” The Guardian, 30 November 2007.
[4] Nadia Hijab and Victoria Brittain, “Struggle for equality” The Guardian, 17 December 2007.

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(2) Twilight Zone / Deer hunters
By Gideon Levy mailto:levy@haaretz.co.il

After a night of rain, the sun broke through the clouds. Two brothers and their brother-in-law decided to go for a hike in the wild, through the spectacular valley of olive trees, west of Ramallah in the West Bank. Around midday they suddenly noticed a herd of deer descending pell-mell into the valley. They stood and watched, certain that in the wake of the frantically fleeing animals, other people would appear. And, in fact, a few minutes later they spotted a group of soldiers slowly making their way into the valley.

The three young Palestinians stood on the ridge of the hills that overlook the valley, a few hundred meters from the soldiers as the crow flies. Suddenly, according to the testimony of one of them, without any prior warning, the soldiers fired bursts of bullets at them. Firas Kaskas, 32, an unemployed gardener from the village of Batir, near Bethlehem, who had come to visit his brother-in-law in his new apartment, fell to the ground. He died of his wounds the next day. He left a young wife and three daughters, of whom the eldest is four.

This week the sun poured down again on the beautiful valley. We went there with Jamil Matur, the victim’s brother-in-law, who was with him on that brilliantly bright, but grimly dark day. We stood exactly where the three had been when Firas was shot and killed. Here, this is where Matur was standing; Kaskas was here, and his brother, Baha, was standing there.

A shepherd gathered his flock in the valley below, making strange groaning noises that carried a long way. In contrast, the tinkling of the sheeps’ bells was sharp and pleasant to the ears. A great calm descended on the valley, on whose stepped terraces are a number of ancient ruins. On the ridge across the way are the houses of the Mustaqbal neighborhood. The way to the valley also cuts through A-Tira, a prestigious neighborhood on the western slopes of Ramallah, a city which is today experiencing a building boom and economic prosperity. A few weeks ago, the members of the Kaskas family – Firas, his wife Majida, and their three little girls – visited Majida’s brother in A-Tira. He had just moved in, and the family went to see the new place and spend a peaceful weekend together.

On that Sunday morning the family had a late breakfast and lounged on the porch of their house. Firas suggested a walk. Majida wanted to visit another brother in nearby Bitunia; Jamil, Faris’ brother-in-law, suggested that they go into town. Finally, they decided that Majida and the girls would go to Bitunia and the three men – Jamil, Firas and Baha – would go for a little hike. Leaving their neighborhood, they walked along the ridge above the wadi. Near one concentration of ruins they stopped to watch the deer. Ramallah residents like to come here on weekends to spend some time in nature, to barbecue meat, smoke a nargileh and enjoy the view.

The three men were standing a few meters apart from each other when they noticed a group of soldiers descending into the wadi. They were about 300 meters away, as the crow flies, the valley separating them. The soldiers stopped next to the ruins on the slopes of the ridge opposite them. Jamil counted seven or eight soldiers. Then, suddenly, without any prior warning, Jamil relates, the soldiers opened fire. It came in one or two bursts, he says. Jamil immediately took cover behind a boulder, Baha lay down supine behind him, while Firas stood out in front, exposed to the gunfire. Jamil managed to call to Firas to take shelter behind the boulder, Firas turned toward him – and then collapsed.

“Are you hit?” Jamil asked in a panic.

“It’s nothing, just a rubber bullet,” Firas replied.

Jamil and Baha moved cautiously toward Firas, who was able to stand up. They supported him for a few steps, and then he fell again. Foam gathered on his lips and he gasped for breath. Jamil stripped off his brother-in-law’s clothes and saw a few drops of blood on his underpants and small holes in his lower stomach and lower back. Leaving the wounded man with his brother, he ran to the nearest house to summon help. He also waved his hands toward the soldiers, so they would not shoot at him, too. They stood mute. Employees from an ironworker’s shop and a few neighbors rushed over. They carried Firas to a private car and called a Palestinian ambulance. They met the ambulance up on the road and transferred Firas to the vehicle.

“Firas, are you alive?” Jamil asked his brother-in-law.

“It’s nothing,” Firas replied.

In the emergency room of the government hospital in Ramallah, he was still able to resist having his pants removed, but finally agreed and was taken immediately to surgery.

From the medical report: “The above-named man was brought to the government hospital in Ramallah on December 2, 2007, after being hit by a bullet, which penetrated behind the stomach region and exited in front. The patient was operated on urgently and it emerged that the small intestine was torn. Part of it was removed and the other part was stitched. It also emerged that there was heavy bleeding as a result of a torn central artery in the hip region. The bleeding was stopped and the arteries were connected. After the operation the patient was placed in intensive care. After the surgery the stomach bleeding began anew. The patient was taken to the operating room. It turned out that there was bleeding of all the stomach tissues.”

Firas died at five the next morning.

The Israel Defense Forces spokesman informed us that after a preliminary investigation, it transpired that soldiers at an army observation post had spotted three Palestinians who were behaving suspiciously.

“The three, who were identified as being busy on the ground for quite a few minutes, were suspected by the force of planting a bomb,” the statement said. “A force … was rushed to the site and launched a pursuit of the suspects, during which they called on them to stop and also fired into the air. When the calls were ignored, the force opened fire at the suspects.”

According to the IDF, “the incident was investigated at all levels of command, and the lessons will be learned and applied. The findings of the investigation will be conveyed to the Mili-tary Advocate General’s Office.”

Antigona Ashkar, from the human rights organization B’Tselem, who also investigated the event, wrote to the chief military prosecutor, Colonel Liron Liebman, saying: “The soldiers opened fire at Jamil, Baha and Firas suddenly, with no prior warning. The three were sitting on a boulder and looking at the view, and did not endanger anyone. They were surprised by the emergence of the soldiers from between the trees and remained where they were until the soldiers started shooting at them.” B’Tselem requested a Military Police investigation of the circumstances of the killing.

The B’Tselem field-worker in the Ramallah region, Iyad Hadad, said this week at the site of the killing: “It was a hunt. Those soldiers went on a hunting expedition. They killed Firas the way you hunt a deer or a stag. They couldn’t have had any other reason for shooting him.”

Jamil added: “What did the soldiers see in his hand? What did we do? Did they see a weapon in his hand? Was there a demonstration going on? Did we throw stones at anyone? They just shot us without batting an eyelash.”

In the village of Batir, Firas’ widow, Majida, in black mourning clothes, sits in her small, simple home. She is holding her infant daughter Sadil. At three months, Sadil’s father has been taken from her. The other two girls – Latifa, four, and Naama, two and a half – wander restlessly about their meager living room, blowing soap bubbles, until the whole room is filled with them.

Majida waited and waited in her brother’s home in Bitunia for Firas to arrive that day, as he had promised, after the hike. But Firas did not arrive. Not until the next day did her father come and tell her, “Firas is dead.”

Now Majida, her voice broken with crying, says: “I want to ask you and the whole world: What did he do? What was his crime? What was he guilty of? The father of three little girls – I want to know, why was he killed? Because I don’t know.”

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