But, what is actually happening?

It is clear, however, that all the efforts (some more and some less successful) undertaken during the Second Intifida to reassure the Israelis, to soothe their anxieties and understand their psychological mind-set and their (directly and indirectly-expressed) security concerns has not changed one damn thing. The situation has only gotten worse and worse.

Sam Bahour, American-Palestinian businessman and activist living in Ramallah, sent this information in a message today with attached document by e-mail today. Here are some excerpts:

“Palestinian society is a dynamic, thinking society which has been so battered and demeaned by Israel and its supporters that many folk, including many Palestinians themselves, will be surprised that the Palestinians have any options whatsoever. One thing is for sure: No matter how long the illegal Israeli occupation continues, do not expect the Palestinians to wake up one morning and accept that they are somehow less human than any other free person in this world. The Palestinian people have given everyone – including their own traditional leadership – plenty of time to end this humiliating and brutal occupation. When all else fails, Palestinians will reclaim the initiative, and will continue to do so over and over, until this occupation is consigned to the trash bin of history, along with all the war criminals who allowed it to persist for so many years”.

Sam Bahour lives in occupied Palestine and is co-editor of “Homeland: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians.” He may be reached at sbahour@palnet.com.

“The central proposal in this Report is that Israel’s strategic calculations are wrong. Israeli strategic planners overestimate their own strength and underestimate the strategic opportunities open to Palestinians. There are four main perceived alternatives to a negotiated agreement that are attractive to Israel and therefore prevent Israel from reaching a final settlement on the terms offered.
…
First, the default option of prolonging negotiations indefinitely by pretending that ‘progress has been made’ and that suspensions are temporary as during the past twenty years, with ongoing encroachments and military incursions, few burdens, and considerable financial and other benefits from continuing occupation.

Second, a pseudo provisional ‘two state agreement’ with a strengthened but severely constrained PA masquerading as a Palestinian government while Israel disaggregates and picks off the ‘historic issues’ and retains permanent control.

Third, a unilateral separation dictated by Israel.

Fourth, a control of the occupied territories by Egypt and Jordan.

But these four alternatives are unacceptable to Palestinians. They do not take Palestinian national aspirations seriously. Indeed, they aim to undermine Palestinians’ national identity and rights altogether. So, if Israel refuses to negotiate seriously for a genuine two-state outcome, Palestinians can and will block all four of them by switching to an alternative strategy made up of a combination of four linked
reorientations to be undertaken singly or together.

First, the definitive closing down of the 1988 negotiation option so long abused by Israel. This blocks the first two preferred Israeli alternatives to a genuine negotiated agreement.

Second, the reconstitution of the Palestinian Authority so that it will not serve future Israeli interests by legitimising indefinite occupation and protecting Israel from bearing its full burden of the costs of occupation (it may become a Palestinian Resistance Authority). This also blocks the first two preferred Israeli alternatives, and also helps to block the third.

Third, the elevation of ‘smart’ resistance over negotiation as the main means of implementation for Palestinians, together with a reassertion of national unity through reform of the PLO, the empowerment of Palestinians, and the orchestrated eliciting of regional and international third party support. The central aim will be to maximise the cost of continuing occupation for Israel, and to make the whole prospect of unilateral separation unworkable.

Fourth, the shift from a two state outcome to a (bi-national or unitary democratic) single state outcome as Palestinians’ preferred strategic goal. This reopens a challenge to the existence of the State of Israel in its present form, but in an entirely new and more effective way than was the case before 1988.

Is this what Israel wants? Israel cannot prevent Palestinians from a strategic reorientation along these lines. Does Israel really want to force Palestinians to take these steps?

The result of a reorientation of Palestinian strategy will clearly be much worse for Israel than the negotiation of a genuine two state outcome on the basis of the existing 1988 offer. Although many Palestinians may still prefer a genuine negotiated two state solution, a failure of the present Annapolis initiative will greatly strengthen those who argue against this. Most Palestinians are then likely to be convinced that a negotiated agreement is no longer possible. What is undoubtedly the case is that a reversal of the 1988 offer and the adoption of an alternative strategy is much preferable for Palestinians to any of the four preferred Israeli alternatives to a negotiated agreement. So, if current negotiations fail, Palestinians will be driven to replace the 1988 offer by a new strategy, not just rhetorically but in reality. The negotiated two state outcome will then be definitively cancelled. Palestinians will ensure that Israel is seen to be responsible for the closure of their 20 year offer. Israel will have lost an historic and non-recurrent opportunity to end the conflict and to secure its own future survival on the best terms available for Israel.
…
The first strategic task is the detailed working out of a fundamental reorientation of Palestinian strategy along the lines outlined above, including the new preferred strategic path, and the full range of means of implementation. All of this is commented upon in the main body of the Report. This task must be undertaken in all seriousness and on the assumption that present negotiations will fail. Even if only used as a strategic threat in order to force Israel to negotiate seriously, the intention must still be to implement the new strategy should negotiations fail. An empty threat is strategically no threat. A mere bluff does not work. So it is now an urgent priority for Palestinians to agree and work out in detail their alternative to a negotiated agreement and to communicate this as soon as possible and as forcefully as possible to Israel. This must be the immediate focus of unified national strategic planning that includes all Palestinians, from different backgrounds, generations, genders, and political affiliations, both those living in the occupied territories and those living elsewhere.

The second strategic task is to make sure that Israel understands the terms on which the 1988 offer is still held open by Palestinians and is clear about what Palestinians can and will do should these terms not be met. Has a national movement ever made a concession on a similar scale to that made by Palestinians in 1988? In negotiations Israelis repeatedly say ‘we do all the giving and the Palestinians do all the taking’. This is the opposite of the truth. Palestinians continue to demand no more than 22% of their historic land. It is Israel that has done all the taking through continuous government-backed settler encroachment on this remaining 22%. The second strategic task for Palestinians, therefore, is to spell out the minimum terms acceptable for negotiating a fully independent Palestinian state on 1967 borders, and to explain clearly why this is by far the best offer that Israel will ever get, including guarantees for Israel’s future security from neighbouring Arab states. Palestinians will set out a clear timetable for judging whether this has been attained or is attainable. It is Palestinians who will judge ‘success’, and it is Palestinians who will decide how long to persist in negotiations and when the moment has come to change strategy entirely.

The third strategic task is to ensure that it is the Palestinian discourse that frames international discussion of the Palestinian future. This is elucidated in the Report. The aim is to make clear to regional and international third parties that in all this it is not Palestinians who are lacking in commitment to a negotiated outcome, but Israel. Palestinians have persisted for twenty years with their historic offer of 1988. Israel has refused to honour it. That is why Israeli protestations are no longer credible to Palestinians. Israel has given Palestinians no option but to look elsewhere for fulfilment of their national aspirations. Israel bears full responsibility should negotiations fail.

In conclusion, it needs to be understood clearly that we Palestinians will never allow Israel to continue its encroachments and domination under the pretence of insincere negotiations, nor to go on imagining falsely that there are better alternatives available to Israel. Israel will have to decide whether to accept the time-limited negotiation offer that is evidently in its own best interest, or not. And we Palestinians will then act accordingly at a time and in a way of our own choosing.

It is now up to us as Palestinians to regain the strategic initiative and to take control of our own national destiny. Israel, regional partners, and international actors, must understand definitively that Palestinians will not be divided in their strategic objectives, and that the Palestinian people, steadfast and determined, will never give up their national struggle…”

This document can be read in full here.

Here is the daily SUMMARY OF EDITORIALS FROM THE HEBREW PRESS, compiled and sent by email from the Government Press Office … the gap between this and the Palestinian document appears very great:

“Yediot Ahronot accuses Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of behaving irresponsibly in the negotiations with the Palestinians given that his is a lame-duck administration. [n.b. - this seems to suggest Olmert must not make any concessions...]

Ma’ariv suggests that the, ‘peace activists,’ like those who recently sailed into the Gaza Strip, ‘bubble over with hatred, preach boycotts and miss no opportunity to justify our most murderous enemies.’ The editors add that, ‘Those whom our objective media has coronated with the crown of peace are aggressive, war-mongering enemies, people who have nothing to do with peace and tranquility.’”

Yisrael Hayom surveys the history of the peace process and asserts that, ‘The fact is that the withdrawals have not succeeded, not because this or that detail has not been honored but because of the discovery raised by the Palestinians’ conduct since the Oslo accords – they do not want peace.’ The editors believe that too many Israelis hold to the concepts that, ‘We need only to find a partner and there will be peace or that in order to assure the continuity of the Jewish state, we must sign peace agreements as quickly as possible.’ The paper warns that, ‘Re-entering the Jewish ghetto inside the 1967 borders will crumble Israeli society, deepen hatred and – mainly – invite further terrorism and unnecessary wars.’

[Gilad Sharon, Eiland, Nadav Haetzni and Dror Edar wrote today’s articles in Yediot Ahronot, Ma'ariv and Yisrael Hayom, respectively.]“

Amira Hass, an Israeli journalist who has lived among and reported on the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank and in Gaza, reporting for Haaretz newspaper, wrote a few years back about the desire expressed by her Israeli compatriots that when they say they want “peace”, she believed what they really meant was “peace” as in “peace and quiet”.

Her recent reporting has taken on a more exhausted and impatient tone.

At the beginning of October, she wrote an article entitled “Democracy is more than going to the polls”. It opened by a reflection on the use of the word “calm” in Israeli reporting about the aftermath of Buddhist-led demonstrations against the military junta in Myanmar: “… several editors chose the word ‘calm’, which embodies the rulers’ point of view: The norm is ‘calm’, even if it means constant government violence. The mass protest against the oppression is a disruption of order and calm. The word ‘calm’ was an automatic reflection of how most Israeli Jews and their media see the constant, 40-year Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. This is the norm one thinks of when the Palestinians disrupt the calm.

The oppression of the Palestinian people is intended to perpetuate its banishment from its land and the infringement on its rights there. But on the other side of the regime of oppression is democracy for Jews, even those who oppose the occupation …

Generally, Jewish dissidents are not risking their life, livelihood, freedom or rights … there are dozens of anti-oppression activities that do not endanger the hundreds of devoted activists (mostly women) who take part in them.

[But] Potentially, hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis could have taken part in activities against the multi-faceted Israeli oppression – the apartheid laws and orders, military attacks, hidden information, economic siege, land expropriation, expanding settlements, and more. Not a hair on their head would be touched. These are people who say they support peace, with a Palestinian state beside Israel. But apparently their interpretation of participation in democracy is going to the polls once every few years, and faint protest in their living room.

However, democracy also is displaying civic responsibility, by constantly supervising the political decisions and acts between elections, thus ensuring that democracy’s essence has not been eroded. Those who say they support a two-state solution are ignoring the other facet of the democracy-for-Jews – the military regime that it imposes on the Palestinians … The Jewish citizens who enjoy their democracy are not personally harmed by its other facet. On the contrary, they gain from it – cheap land and quality housing, additional water sources, a cadre of security professionals in demand worldwide, and thriving defense industries. This is the “calm” that even self-defined peace supporters refrain from disrupting …

[However] In Israel, because it is a democracy for Jews, all those who sit idle, ignoring what is being done in their name, bear a heavy responsibility. Chiefs of staff, prime ministers, ministers and generals are not the only ones responsible. Anyone who theoretically objects to oppression, discrimination and expulsion, but does not actively take part in the struggle and in creating a constant popular resistance to topple the apartheid regime we have created here, is responsible.
Amira Hass’ recent article on the calm of the occupation is here.

An editorial published by Haaretz in early October, entitled “Where is the Occupation”, takes the description a bit further: “The occupied territories and the Palestinians living there are slowly becoming virtual realities, distant from the eye and the heart. Palestinian workers have disappeared from our streets. Israelis no longer enter Palestinian towns for shopping. There is a new generation on each side that does not know the other. Even the settlers no longer meet Palestinians because of the different road systems that distinguish between the two populations; one is free and mobile, the other stuck at the roadblocks. While the politicians argue over dividing the land between two peoples, the public is apathetic. The people feel that the division has already taken place. The disengagement from the Gaza Strip, the evacuation of Gush Katif, the construction of a separation barrier – the problem is solved to our satisfaction. The settlers are conducting a settlement policy of their own, taking over new areas, expanding settlements, anything to prevent a permanent solution. They are also satisfied with the status quo that relies on the Shin Bet security service and the Israel Defense Forces. The de facto separation is today more similar to political apartheid than an occupation regime because of its constancy. One side – determined by national, not geographic association – includes people who have the right to choose and the freedom to move, and a growing economy. On the other side are people closed behind the walls surrounding their community, who have no right to vote, lack freedom of movement, and have no chance to plan their future …” The Haaretz editorial on the present invisibility — in Israel — of the occupation is here.

Part of how the occupation is administered is through a system of barriers and checkpoints. The main checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah, Qalandia, is operated as if it were a border “between two countries”, as the soldiers and other personnel manning it say frequently — though there is no state on the other side, the Palestinian side, but rather something that more closely resembles what is now called a “failed state”.

A new vocabulary is emerging in which Israeli officials attempt to describe their relationship with the Palestinians as one of a provider of services.

At the same time, practices such as strip searches — usually reserved in most democratic countries for a person who is under sufficient suspicion to be in jail — have become a matter of routine for Israelis checking Palestinians (and even some internationals, or citizens of third countries) at checkpoints, real border crossings such as the Allenby Bridge, and the Ben Gurion international airport.

The checkpoints in the West Bank are in a state of transition: formerly manned by the Israeli defense forces, they are now controlled by a combination of soldiers, police, and employees of private security contractors. This has not improved the conditions there, but the language is sanitized, as Meron Rapoport reported in another article published in Haaretz, entitled “Outsourcing the checkpoints”:

“… The dozens of Palestinians who gather in the early morning hours at the metal turnstile at the checkpoint’s entrance have no opinion about privatization. But they have very definite opinions about the checkpoint’s privatization. Without exception, men and women, young and old, miss the soldiers. They say it quickly before entering the checkpoint, and explain why at greater length when they emerge, exhausted, after a wait ranging from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. ‘May God remove whoever brought them here’, somebody says, summing up the widespread feeling toward the civilians who have replaced the soldiers. It appears the Palestinians will have to get used to the new reality. The model of privatized, civilian-run checkpoints is the future, at least as far as the large checkpoints are concerned. Thus far, in addition to Reihan, four other checkpoints in the northern West Bank have been privatized. Soon, more will follow their lead in the center and southern part of the territories. Eliezer Rosenbaum, the deputy director general of the Public Security Ministry, promises that the civilianization of the checkpoints around Jerusalem will begin by mid-2008.

The new system has a dual purpose, according to the relevant authorities in the Defense and Public Security Ministries: On the one hand, it is supposed to make the security checks more efficient, while at the same time, the procedure is meant to improve ‘the level of service to Palestinian citizens’, to quote Rosenbaum. But there is another factor that they talk about less: According to the authorities, replacing soldiers with a contractor’s employees saves money and it absolves the government of any responsibility for them. That, too, is an economy …

The dozens of people I met as they emerged from the checkpoint spoke about long checks, about the indifference of the private company’s employees, and especially about inexplicable delays. ‘The soldiers would only hold back those they thought were suspicious’, says Yehiye: ‘One here, one there. Now 90 percent of the men are detained for checks’.

The checks themselves are humiliating, complain the Palestinians. ‘They put eight of us in one room, sometimes even up to 15′, says Yehiye. ‘They force us to strip, in front of the others … The security personnel confiscate the mobile phones of everyone inside the room, and the Palestinians are forced to wait half an hour, sometimes 45 minutes or even more than an hour. During that time, one of the regulars relates, ‘the checkers do nothing. They speak on their mobile phones and we wait. Sometimes, if someone makes trouble, says another, they stop the checks, close the gates, and anyone who is inside the checkpoint is stuck’.

The worst complaints relate to ‘Room 3′, a small sealed room where, according to the testimony of Yehiye and others, Palestinians are made to strip completely.

A few weeks ago, a man passed out in this room. His friends said he was kept in there for two hours; the Shin-Bet company said he was only held for a few minutes. One way or the other, the incident intensified tensions at the checkpoint.

The treatment of the women is even more of a sensitive point. A few days ago, according to a report by the women of Machsom Watch (“machsom” is the Hebrew word for checkpoint), two women were told to strip in Room 3. The report stated that their transit permits were canceled after they refused to strip and instead returned home to the West Bank. The women I spoke to at the checkpoint, all of whom work as seamstresses in the eastern, Palestinian side of Barta’a, had heard the story …

Officials in the Defense Ministry deny the allegations. ‘There is no stripping, no exposure of body parts, it just doesn’t happen’, said a senior source in the ministry. The same source added that the physical conditions at the checkpoint have been improved substantially – there are now shelters, drinking water and chemical toilets – and that the Palestinians are processed in a ‘polite and considerate’ manner. The delays, according to the source, are a consequence of ‘an improvement in the security checking process, which possibly [emphasis added] prevents Palestinians from doing things they did in the past – and the wise will understand the allusion’.
…
The Defense Ministry’s official response stated that ‘the person crossing spends no more than 15 minutes [in the checkpoint]. Those who require a more thorough security check may remain in the checkpoint for up to 30 minutes’. That is not what I witnessed at Reihan last week. Most people only emerged after 45 minutes or more.

In my first conversation with the senior source in the Defense Ministry, he told me that the example of Reihan and the other four civilianized checkpoints was ‘not just successful, but very successful’. In our second conversation, after I told him what I had seen at Reihan, he conceded that ‘it is possible that there are rare shortcomings’, and added that ‘several personnel were dismissed’ because of such shortcomings …

Haggai Alon, a former adviser to the defense minister on the fabric of Palestinian life, was involved in the discussions on the privatization of the checkpoints. This past June he raised several tough questions regarding the authority of the private security companies vis-a-vis that of the army and the police. ‘There is a real danger that private companies will operate under instructions for opening fire without supervision or authority’, Alon says today. ‘Beneath the positive move of civilianizing the checkpoints lies a dangerous process of putting [national] security in private hands’. [n.b., while removing much of the element of accountability...].

Rosenbaum says that the work that will determine these details has not yet been completed. For instance, it is not even certain whether the police or the Public Security Ministry will be the responsible authority. In any event, he reiterates, the goal is to ‘provide quick and efficient service’ … ” The report by Meron Rapoport in Haaretz about the “privatization” of security at checkpoints in the West Bank is posted here.

A week ago, during U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s latest attempt at what used to be called “shuttle diplomacy”, this time between Israelis and the Palestinian Authority, the Associated Press reported that the Israeli Defense Minister (and former Prime Minister) Ehud Barak, after meeting Rice, “issued a statement saying the [Israeli] military’s freedom of movement in the West Bank was a ‘fundamental principle that must be demanded in the future as well’.” The AP did note drily that these comments “came despite long-standing Palestinian demands for a reduced Israeli presence in the West Bank”. See the post published in UN-Truth here.

And, during her most recent, Rice was treated to the use of the new “service-oriented” vocabulary to discuss Israel’s re-positioned relations with the Palestinians, when she asked Israeli officials about news that the Israeli military had confiscated land from four Palestinian villages in order to construct a Palestinian bypass road around the enormous Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, located in the West Bank, west of Jerusalem. She told journalists on 14 October that she had, indeed, received some official Israeli clarification while here. Here is her exchange with journalists on the topic, according to a transcript later released by the U.S. State Department:

“QUESTION: Madame Secretary, did you get an answer from the Israelis about this confiscation of Palestinian land?

SECRETARY RICE: I did. What I’ll do is I’d prefer to have the Israelis say precisely what they — their clarification. But let me put it this way: it was a clarification concerning the timing of such a — the actual timing that anything would happen, saying that it was not imminent and also that it was to improve Palestinian mobility. We’ll continue to have discussions about this. But the point that I’ll be making is we have to be very careful as we’re trying to move toward the establishment of a Palestinian state by actions and statement that erode confidence in the parties’ commitment to a two-state solution”. See “Rice is in Jerusalem to check on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations” posted here.