The
Nightmare after 50 Years of Failed Military Policies
November 02, 2023
The Hamas-Israel War reflects the
failure of 50 years of U.S. geopolitics in the region. Ultimately, the problem
stems from the occupied territories, their Jewish settlers and apartheid
policies.
Source: Peace Now/ICBC
After the Yom Kippur War, Israel’s
Labor coalition began to intensify the expansion of the boundaries of Jerusalem
eastward. This encouraged a group of Messianic settlers to create a foothold in
the West Bank, including Ma’ale Adumim by the group Gush Emunim. These
religious far-right Jews were met with protests by the peace activists.
Ever since then, the Jewish
settlements have been a time-bomb that could subvert Israeli democracy and
endanger Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens and Palestinians. It has unleashed
apartheid policies and contributed to a cycle of “forever wars” in the region.
One of the founders of the Israeli
peace movement was the late novelist Amos Oz. He was among the first Israelis
to advocate a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also
warned of the dangers of the occupation already back in 1967 calling the
radicalized settlers neo-Nazis. As he put it, “Even unavoidable occupation is a
corrupting occupation; an enlightened and humane and liberal occupation is
occupation.”
West Bank settlements,
apartheid regime
The Jewish settlements have fostered a
de facto one-state reality in Israel, wherein Israelis have rights and
Palestinians don´t. Meanwhile, talks for a two-state solution have been
stalling since 2014. Rhetoric aside, Netanyahu’s government has “engaged in
actions that annex the West Bank and threaten the prospects for a just and
lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
In the past, periods of heightened
security tension and military operations have ensured an opportunity for
settlers to establish facts on the ground. After the brutal attack by Hamas,
the alarming trend of increased settler violence has rapidly escalated.
Here’s a reality check: Nothing has
halted the settlers’ steady expansion since the late 1960s and the Israelis’
expansion in East Jerusalem.
In South Africa, the system of
apartheid, based on white supremacy and racial segregation, was in place from
1948 until 1994. In April 2021, the Human Rights Watch warned that Israel had
crossed the apartheid threshold. In early September this year, the ex-chief of
Mossad, Tamir Pardo, said that Israel’s mechanisms for controlling the
Palestinians matched the old South Africa. “There is an apartheid state here,”
since “two people are judged under two legal systems.”
Even amid the peace talks in Oslo in
the early ‘90s, Palestinian per capita income was just 15% relative to the
Israeli level. But hopes for peace died with the Jewish far-right assassination
of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Despite all the hoopla by the Trump
and Biden administrations that the Middle East is at the cusp of peace and
prosperity, Palestinian per capita income has fallen and is now only 12.9%
relative to the Israeli level; lower than decades ago.
As bad as these aggregate figures are,
they reflect Palestinian averages, not Gaza’s hell. Years of isolation and
recurrent conflicts have left the local economy far behind the West Bank’s, due
to the Israeli-imposed blockade, four wars, and domestic divisions.
Gazan per capita income is now less
than a third of that in the West Bank. Half of the labor is unemployed; over
half of the population lives below the national poverty line.
Apartheid rule
Long before the Hamas offensive,
Palestinian stagnation reflected economic ruin that was excessive even relative
to apartheid South Africa.
During the apartheid (1948-94), the
blacks’ per capita income relative to the whites climbed from 8.6% to 13.5%. In
relative terms, the Palestinians’ starting point relative to Israelis was
almost twice as high after the Oslo Accords. But today it’s behind that of the
blacks at the end of the apartheid. The reversal occurred under the watch of
the Trump and Biden administrations.
From Apartheid South
Africa to West Bank/Gaza
Farsighted Israeli leaders no longer
deny the reality of apartheid. Last year, former attorney general Michael
Ben-Yair called Israel “an apartheid regime.” Recently, the parliament’s former
speaker Avraham Burg and renowned historian Benny Morris were among more than
2,000 Israeli and American public figures who signed a public statement that
“Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid.”
In retrospect, the peace efforts in
Israel have been vital and inspiring, but no match to the settlement policies
that have been legitimized in terms of national security interests and fueled
by U.S. Big Defense. Like the peace movement, international community considers
the settlements a violation of international law. Yet, hawkish advocates of
national security favored their expansion.
Currently, the settlers are escalating
anti-Palestinian violence and dreaming of mass expulsions in the West Bank. For
all practical purposes, they have won. In the early 1970s, there were barely
2,000 settlers in the West Bank. Today, that figure exceeds 500,000.
Their problem is that they will never
win the peace.
Dr. Dan Steinbock is the founder of Difference Group and has
served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institute for
International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see
https://www.differencegroup.net.
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