Insight from Bethlehem, West Bank/State of Palestine.

On the evening of November 29^th, 2012 the Bethlehem streets became increasingly raucous as we continued to watch through the United Nations General Assembly on the upgrade of Palestine’s status from non-member “entity” to non-member “state.” By the time of the third post-vote speech, we couldn’t handle it anymore and took to the streets by car in order to survey the action. Festive, but not overly-so – traffic filled the roads, horns honked, youth hung from the windows with the Palestinian flag or the iconic kuffiyeh flapping in the wind.

Earlier, a very symbolic screening of the UN bid was projected onto the Wall. I heard from one bystander that an Israeli soldier sitting in the watchtower above the crowd opened his window to take a photo at the spectators below – an unheard of interaction. Images of Ramallah’s central square were filmed by all local and international news channels, but circulating reports claimed that a significant portion of the attendees were civilian police or government employees. In Bethlehem, the Palestinian Authority security forces were on the streets primed to restrain potential demonstrations – as usual during politically charged moments – carefully keeping out of sight from Israel’s Wall (and the soldiers stationed in the turrets) that winds through the Northern portions of the city.

Despite being pleased with the symbolic victory, massive international support and receiving deserved attention, the Palestinians I spoke to exuded a restrained excitement conditioned by experience.

Before*

The potential of Palestine becoming a UN non-member observer state, but a state, nonetheless, is eliciting a similar feeling of excitement in the West Bank that local elections produced here in October (on a slightly larger scale, mind you). Both moments pose opportunities for change and a cause for celebration, but are illegitimate representations of Palestinians’ will – a play at politics that undercuts fundamental rights.

Mahmoud Abbas’ pursuit of UN upgrades last year and today, representing both the Palestine Liberation Organization and the PA, deepens a binary Oslo-ization begun in the 1990s. The deeply faulty process towards ‘statehood’ forgoes Palestinian self-determination by dispossessing Palestinian refugees originating from Israel proper (the vast majority of 6.8 million refugees) and Palestinian citizens of Israel (1.5 million). Secondly, pursuing statehood risks further institutionalizing the pseudo-sovereignty that has become the status quo within the West Bank and Gaza Strip – Israel will continue to partition the West Bank into enclaves of PA jurisdiction while extracting resources, transplanting its settler population and perpetuating the structural and naked violence of occupation; as was witnessed last week, the people of Gaza will continue to live under siege and a constant threat of violence.

On the bright side, elevating Palestine to observer state status may provide some benefits. The continuing occupation of what will now be formally recognized by the international community as a state, increases the legal burden on Israel and the moral imperative for international intervention. Palestine based on 1967 borders (excluding the portions expropriated by settlements, Israeli military control, buffer zone in Gaza and the Wall) will have an opportunity to press charges on crimes committed in its (remaining) territory. Media has been abuzz with the enticing option available to the prospective Palestinian state: becoming a member of the International Criminal Court. For the hopeful, it has a ring of accountability to it. Assuming Palestine will be accepted into the ICC (expect heavy resistance from the USA), it will have the potential to submit cases against individuals who have committed international crimes (war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide) within its territory. The chance of acquiring a limited form of justice is a grand feat for an impunity-stricken population (See here for a fuller discussion of the implications of Palestine’s potential membership to the ICC.). Finally, the seemingly limited UN bid may in-fact have the potential for an unforeseen coalescence of political shifts that spur a broader movement capable of achieving rights for all Palestinians.

Can UN non-member status better secure rights for Palestinians? Unlikely and it may compromise them. For example, Israel may use Palestine’s upgrade as a tool for affirming Israeli government-commissioned Levy Report published in June 2012 that claims, counter to international legal opinion, Israel is not occupying East Jerusalem, the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. Palestine may, however, gain some meaningful diplomatic leverage if Abbas secures 130 out of 193 possible votes at 10pm Palestine-time and around 150 are expected to vote in favor of non-member status today.

The morning following a debauched evening (I’ve heard) is filled with faulty memory, misunderstanding and regret. My day after – 138 votes for, 41 abstentions from and 9 votes against, the upgrade to Palestinian statehood – on public transportation, at work and among Palestinians, was a similarly headache-inducing experience. Ironic congratulations of the new ‘State’ of Palestine darted about followed by increasingly stale chuckles as it dawned that 1.) there was very little public understanding of what this so-called upgrade entailed – do Palestinians get PA-issued passports now?, and 2.) the time for an expected retribution from Israel had arrived.

After

On the Friday following Palestine’s UN bid, Israel announced that it intended to build 3,000 settler homes East of occupied Jerusalem – deep into the West Bank. The ‘E1 Plan,’ including military orders securing the territory surrounding the new settlement, will almost completely bisect the West Bank. If implemented, the E1 Plan will further undermine the possibility for sovereignty and physical contiguity of a Palestinian state based on what is left of the 1967 borders. Gaza is already separated from the West Bank and besieged by Israel. A widely held fear is that Israel is implementing a plan to unilaterally induce a Gazan reality as the future for the West Bank: another open-air prison (or two if split horizontally). Two weeks since announcing the settlement, the Israel Land Fund has begun advertising West Bank territory as “part of the battle to settle E1,” at $75,000 per dunam (or $300,000 per acre).

The second major act, viewed as “punishment” tied to the UN bid is a decision by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to confiscate more than $100 million in taxes it collects every month on behalf of the PA until March 2013, at least. The arrangement of tax collection: PA collects funds that it delivers to Israel who redelivers the funds back to the PA, was a mechanism determined by the Oslo Agreements that were meant to expire in 1999 (I recently heard Xavier Abu Eid, a member of the PLO negotiations team, comment that tax collection – delivered to Israel and doled out to the PA – is the last functioning component of the Oslo Agreements.). Over the summer, Israel forwarded the PA $66 million in tax funds after Palestinians protested against the local West Bank Palestinian regime, signaling that Israel desires and even requires the PA’s continued existence and stability – a buffer between itself and the financial and diplomatic costs of its occupation. On December 11^th, the Arab League promised $100 million a month allowance to the PA, which is likely a rebuttal to Israel’s economic scolding.

Expansion into the West Bank and budgetary disruption (the PA has announced that it will soon pay government employees their salaries for the past November) appear to be Israel’s two main actions delivered in response to the statehood bid.

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Despite the seeming normalcy of the continuing status quo, Palestinians are extremely politically active and have not been idle while the PA undermines their representation and Israel continues refusing their rights.

Over the course of the 2000s, Palestinian representatives from around the world have reached a consensus in a call for direct and democratic elections to the Palestinian National Council. The PNC is the electoral body of the PLO who is the sole representative of the Palestinian people, and which has been increasingly displaced by the PA since the Oslo process.

Palestinian youth from the exile community spanning from the UK to Chile to Lebanon to those living in historic Palestine affirmed the call for elections in 2012 and, “the Palestinian parties called for the democratic reform of the PLO through direct PNC elections at several recent national meetings in Cairo, during 2011 and early 2012, under the auspices of the National Reconciliation Committee,” reads the website of the civic registration drive for PNC elections.

Perhaps in response to the PA’s UN bid, momentum is building to revitalize the historic structure of representation as a means to regain control of Palestinians’ destinies.

*The portion of this post immediately following first appeared as “The ‘State’ of Palestine: fallacies at the footsteps to the UN,” on November 29^th, 2012 at my blog: the writing’s on the Wall.

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Thayer is a 2011 alumnus of the Jackson School’s undergraduate program, where he focused on ethnicities and nationalism, and human rights. Since the summer of 2012, Thayer has been living in Palestine and working in the media and legal advocacy fields while maintaining a blog of his writings. Contact him at hastit [at] uw [dot] edu

Insight from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Sitting in the Betty White Café (that’s right!) in Tel Aviv, I have come to the conclusion that Israel is a highly schizophrenic society.  I am a couple of blocks from the beach, where the evening sunsets over the Mediterranean are breathtaking.  And all around me people seem to be enjoying life to the fullest.  They sit in cafés and bars until all hours of the night, sometimes spilling out onto the street in the warm summer nights long after midnight.  The restaurants are full—and they are expensive.  Cultural events are packed.  World recession?  I don’t see it on the streets of downtown Tel Aviv.  At the old Tel Aviv port, now converted into a happening place of shops, shows, and bikinis, traffic jams to get in last until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.  This is Barcelona on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean.

Much of the good life is fueled by the extraordinary high-tech boom here—every sort of silly software that you can imagine, along with serious bio-medical products that are changing the world health scene.  Young entrepreneurs drive fancy SUVs and have gorgeous apartments in the city.  Construction is ubiquitous, mostly of fancy office buildings and apartments.

And, yet, there is the other side of Israel that is obvious as I sit in Betty White and read the newspaper.  The government fell apart today over the issue of army service and national service.  Israel has universal conscription that is not so universal.   Most, but not all, Palestinian Israelis are exempt from the draft.  They make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.  Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews are another fifth or so of Israeli society, and most of them do not serve either, gaining exemptions for learning Talmud or, in the case of women, for their desire to maintain their modesty.  So about 40 percent of the population avoids service, which does not sit well with many who send their sons and daughters off to risky army service.  A commission appointed by the Prime Minister recommended extending at least national service, if not army service, to Arab and Haredis.  That seemed to point the way to a solution until the Prime Minister realized he might lose his Haredi partners in his governmental coalition.  So he dissolved the commission.  Problem solved.

National service was not the only issue tugging at the seams of the government—and of society.  The protest movement of last summer—tents in the middle of Tel Aviv’s swankiest neighborhood—has returned with a vengeance.  Saturday night, I came to a dead stop two blocks from my apartment as protestors blocked Tel Aviv streets.  Israel vies with the United States for the top spot (or is it bottom spot?) on the list of most unequal industrialized countries.  Clearly, the packed cafés mask a worrisome poverty among those who live outside the high-tech bubble.  The protests do not seem to worry the country’s elite too much yet, but they could become serious.  This is a serious outcry, in a formerly socialist country, against the unfettered effects of neo-liberalism.

And this list of woes does not even include the occupation of the West Bank.  Here, in Tel Aviv, that occupation seems so far away.  But, in reality, it is less than an hour’s drive to the occupied territories.  The sons and daughters of the Tel Aviv elite, along with those of the poorer sectors of society, have to enforce that occupation.  And that enforcement eats away at the fabric of society.  Negotiations with the Palestinians that might bring the occupation to an end do not seem to be on the horizon, despite this week’s visit and exhortations by Hillary Clinton.  A solution, though, seemed to appear this week.  Yet another government commission reported that the occupation never really existed.  Everything that Israel is doing (and has done) in the West Bank are perfectly legal.  Alas, such dubious conclusions do not hide the fact that the sons and daughters have to man checkpoints and round up Palestinians.  No serious solution to that problem seems remotely near.

I guess that Israel lives with the schizophrenia like other societies do.  But here the starkness between the beautiful people of Tel Aviv and the ugliness of the occupation are particularly dramatic.  One can sip iced tea in Betty White while writing on a MacBook Air about state-society relations and momentarily forget about inequality and occupation.  But the truth is that, while the problems Israel faces may be hidden, they are having a corrosive effect on life here.

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Professor Joel S. Migdal is the Robert F. Philip Professor of International Studies in the University of Washington ‘s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.