Slicing Off
Gaza Is Just A
Diplomatic Nose Job
By Sharif Hamadeh
18 August 2005
The
Electronic Intifada
A teenage soldier in Tapuah, a Jewish
settlement in the occupied West Bank, shot to death four Palestinian
citizens of Israel and injured several others last Thursday on a bus
in Shafa'amr, a quiet Arab town in the north of Israel where I work.
Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, denounced the shootings as an
act of "terrorism" designed to "harm the fabric of relations
among all Israeli citizens", and threaten Israel's "stability
as a democracy". For Palestinians living in Israel, however, his
words were of little comfort.
Relations between
Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel and their Jewish counterparts have
already been harmed by over five decades of state discrimination against
them, much of which was led or supported by Mr Sharon. The Shafa'amr
attack was not only an attempt to sow ethnic hatred and division among
the citizens of Israel, it was also the fruit of the deep-seated racism
cultivated by successive Israeli governments over many years.
Since the establishment
of the Jewish state in 1948, the indigenous Palestinian Arabs who remained
within what became the borders of Israel have been treated as second-
or third-class citizens, enduring extensive violations of their human
rights. Currently, over 20 Israeli laws discriminate against the Arab
minority which comprise approximately 20 per cent of Israel's citizenry.
Israeli politicians, such as the Finance Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu,
who resigned from the government yesterday, have incited prejudice against
these citizens, over one million in number, by labelling them a "demographic
problem".
For Palestinian
citizens of Israel, the shooting deaths on Thursday recalled not only
the massacre of Palestinians at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank
town of Hebron committed by Baruch Goldstein, another Jewish settler
fanatic in 1994, but also the killing of 13 unarmed Arab citizens of
Israel by state security forces during the protest demonstrations of
October 2000. The demonstrators were protesting against Mr Sharon's
provocative visit to the Muslim holy site of Haram ash-Sharif in Jerusalem.
Not a single individual has yet been charged for the Arab deaths. If
the state can act this way towards its Palestinian citizens - and do
so with impunity - is it any wonder that armed fanatical opportunists
will also view ethnic minority members among their fellow citizens as
legitimate targets?
Just as the wishes
of the 1.4 million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip play no part
in the public debate being waged in Israel over the withdrawal, the
fact that Palestinians have now become the disengagement's first victims
has been lost amid a sea of blue and orange ribbons, representing the
current competition between Jewish and ultra-Jewish nationalism.
Since there are
no ribbons for civic equality and human rights, Jewish Israeli society
and the international media remain transfixed by the pornography of
the disengagement. Attention is focused on the alleged trauma of the
government's decision to sponsor the relocation of approximately 8,000
Jewish Israelis from the Gaza Strip and a few hundred others from four
West Bank colonies to homes within their state. Such is the absurdist
theatre of the disengagement that the histrionic settlers even have
the audacity to compare their protests to the civil rights campaign
led by Martin Luther King Jnr.
These theatrics
serve Mr Sharon's agenda well, adding drama to the staged representation
of a Jewish nation on the brink of civil war. Far from its portrayal
as a traumatic operation of historic significance, the disengagement
is in reality a superficial, cosmetic operation. As UN Special Rapporteur
Professor John Dugard reported in March 2005, the dismantling of Jewish
settlements in Gaza does not mean that Israel will cease to be considered
an occupying Power in the Strip under international law. Moreover, following
the completion of Israel's annexation Wall, over 350,000 Israeli settlers
will illegally remain on the West side of the Wall in the occupied West
Bank, including East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, plans to encourage the intensive
Jewish settlement of the Galilee and Negev regions within Israel, where
large numbers of Palestinian citizens of Israel live, are also being
pursued. Slicing off the Gaza Strip from Israel's conscience thus amounts
to little more than a diplomatic nose job.
As if to further
prove that the state is not going soft on Palestinians, a week before
the Shafa'amr attack, Israel's parliament worked with marked efficiency
to enact two pieces of racist legislation within a single day. Israeli
Members of the Knesset voted to exempt Israel from paying compensation
to Palestinians in the occupied territories for deaths and injuries
caused by Israel's military. Illegal Jewish settlers, of course, retain
such a right to a remedy for any harm. That same day, they also voted
to extend a law, with minor amendments, banning family unification within
the Jewish state for Palestinians from the territories married to citizens
of Israel, thereby violating both Israeli and international law.
If the government
of Israel were sincerely concerned about racist attacks on its Arab
citizens, it would not only disengage from Gaza, but also from discrimination.
That means a withdrawal from the entirety of the occupied territories,
and a departure from the attendant colonial mentality. Under those circumstances,
Israelis and Palestinians could truly begin to prepare for peace.
The writer is a human rights advocacy and development fellow with Adalah
- The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. This article
was first published in The Independent newspaper (UK) on Monday 8 August.