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.F.I.P.P. CONFERENCE...
The
following is a report by Faculty for Israeli Palestinian
Peace on the Tel Aviv Conference, held at
midsummer 2003, entitled An End to Occupation, A Just
Peace in Israel-Palestine, The Role of Academia
Highlights
The two week FFIPP trip included a two day
conference at Tel Aviv University on the topic of what
academics can do to end the Israeli occupation.
Trip participants were also scheduled to visit Gaza,
Jenin, Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, and East
Jerusalem. It proved impossible to get into Gaza
and visits to Arab-Israeli towns and villages were
substituted.
I) Two Day Conference at Tel Aviv University:
The conference drew an audience of about 150.Most of
those who attended were progressive Israeli academics and
students so it was a “friendly” audience.The
various panels (see the FFIPP website at www.ffipp.org) included Palestinian academics who arrived
(after much trouble) from Ramallah and Gaza.There was one
Arab academic participant who came from Egypt.
In brief, the conference revealed the following:
1. There are about 8 separate Israeli activist groups
working for an end to occupation.Most of them made
presentations at the conference.These organizations are
small and in many cases their membership overlaps.All of
these members (the majority of which are Jewish women)
are dedicated and brave people who often risk social and
professional isolation and, on occasion, attack and
arrest.Their internal differences are minor and not an
impediment to working together, which they often do.The
real problem is their small numbers.This results from the
disintegration of the Israeli Left following the failed
Camp David II conference.Also, most Israelis, including
academics, have little contact with Palestinians, choose
not to know what is really happening in the Occupied
Territories, and have long ago accepted the myth of
Barak’s “generous offer, and the notion of
eternal Arab animosity.Thus, those few Israeli Jews who
stand against the occupation and discriminatory nature of
Israeli society are often seen as traitors.
2. The conference participants agreed that activist
Israeli academics have a special obligation to push their
institutions to take a stand against and on-going
destruction of Palestinian education and academia. How to
do this effectively without losing one’s job is the
real question.Unlike the US there are no constitutional
safeguards (are they still intact in the US?)Those who
have been pushing their institutions (i.e. Ilan Pappe at
Haifa U) are under constant pressure bordering on
harassment.Nonetheless, the need for greater awareness
and a response to the very real complicity of Israeli
universities in the occupation and the horrible fate of
Palestinian academia was presented as an immediate goal.
3. The need to broaden out the FFIPP program of creating
an international faculty organization seeking the
immediate end to occupation was discussed.It was decided
that there is a need to make connections between the
struggle against occupation, the colonial adventurism of
the US in Iraq, and the work of Arab academics against
oppression in the ME.In other words, contacts and
organizational work connecting academics and
intellectuals in the US, Europe, the ME, Israel and the
OT is necessary.A follow up conference, perhaps somewhere
outside of Israel, but still in the ME, is a possibility.
4. Finally, there was discussion of the academic boycott
of Israel. The reaction of the audience was basically an
understanding one.A desire to somehow focus any academic
boycott on Israeli academic institutions, and promote
some recognition of those Israelis who are active against
the occupation, was expressed.The logistics of this
approach is difficult, however, because the boycott is a
decentralized operation without any set rules.Even with
the misgivings voiced, there was a general recognition
that there must be an escalating cost for Israeli society
(including academia) for the maintenance of the
occupation.This is best imposed by a broad international
grass roots boycott, which includes an academic
boycott.For more information on this controversial issue
see the defense of the academic boycott offered at www.monabaker.com
II) Other Aspects of the Trip:
1. The “Separation Wall”
FFIPP participants spent several days viewing the Israeli
construction of the “security wall” and
“fence” at several different sites. It is clear
that the Wall, which does not follow the Green Line, is
more of a land grab then a security project. (Indeed,
according to some Israeli human rights organizations, a
good number of the suicide bombers entered Israel through
or near the checkpoints).Maps of the Wall construction
can be found on the web site of Palestine Monitor (www.palestinemonitor.org)
In several areas two parallel western walls are being
built.For instance in the vicinity of Tulkarm and
Qalqiliya the towns are flanked on the west by the main
wall while a secondary wall moves inland to surround the
town and isolate it from the surrounding Palestinian
farmland.This is a tactic used against numerous smaller
villages as well. Such tactics render these Palestinian
sites economically unviable. Future plans are being made
by the Israeli government for an eastern wall that would
isolate the Jordan Valley and cut the future Palestinian
“state” into three bantustans.
To see the Wall in the making, the giant bulldozers, the
uprooted olive trees, the dust and waste land that
results (so much for the claim that Zionism makes
“the desert bloom”), is to witness an obscenity
in physical form.It results in visual images that one
cannot shake and sometimes show up in one’s dreams.
2. The Checkpoints:
There are over 100 checkpoints on the West Bank and the
vast majority of them have nothing to do with security.
Maps of the checkpoints are available on the website of
Palestine Monitor (www.palestinemonitor.org).In fact, most of them are located between one
Palestinian town or village and another, not between
Palestinians and the Green Line.They are designed to make
travel next to impossible for Palestinians and in the
process disrupt the economy, education, and family
relations. Parallel to the long and crowded checkpoint
lines through which Palestinians are slowly made to
proceed are separate lanes for settler cars which speed
through unimpaired.We went through several checkpoints
along with the Palestinians, and the long lines,
arbitrary delays, inane questioning, sexual harassment of
Palestinian women, and the like were all evident.Things
sometimes get much worse with indefinite delays of
ambulances, beatings, shootings, and arbitrary arrests
not uncommon.
There is a group of Israeli women who have an
organization called Checkpoint (Maksom) Watch (see www.icwpalestine.org).We had the opportunity to have dinner with
Maya Rosenfeld, one of their most active members.She
explained that they go in teams of three to major West
Bank checkpoints once a week.There they observe, record,
and when possible intervene to mitigate the humiliation
and that is often a daily fact of life at these points
where colonizer and colonize regularly meet.
As if to emphasize that the checkpoints are a form of
harassment and not security it became evident that one
can by-pass them if one wants to put out some cash and
take the heightened risk of arrest.The FFIPP group was
due to spend a day in Jenin as the guests of the local
medical clinic director.We were turned back at the
checkpoint because of some arbitrary decision by the
soldiers.So we got into an Arab taxi and went on a bumpy
45 minute ride overland and into Jenin.
3. “Unrecognized Villages” and the “blue
lining” of Arab-Israelis:
Because of our inability to enter Gaza, the group spent
considerable time visiting a number of Arab-Israeli towns
including Um-al-Fakm and Ain Hod.Um-al-Fakm is a
“recognized” or “legal” Arab Israeli
town.The Israelis have, conspicuously, placed a military
compound on the town’s outskirts, and have
confiscated town land for an industrial complex that
refuses to hire Arab-Israeli labor except for the most
menial of jobs.The Israeli government also shares with
Um-al-Fakm only a fraction of the tax revenues generated
by the complex.Over the years the Israelis have also
confiscated more and more of the town’s agricultural
land.Such behavior has led to protest in the recent past
to which the Israeli police have responded by shooting
down demonstrators.The situation has led to a feeling of
fear not so much on the part of the Arab-Israelis (whose
disappointment at not being treated as equal citizens has
led to feelings of defiance and insistence on equality
and respect) but on the part of Israeli Jews. It used to
be the case that Israeli Jews would come to the
Arab-Israeli towns to shop and eat on the Sabbath when
Jewish shops and restaurants were closed.Now they do not
come out of fear of being attacked.That their own
behavior is at the root of this animosity seems to have
escaped them.
There are also some forty “unrecognized” or
“illegal” Arab-Israeli towns and villages in
Israel. Many of these are sites to which 1948
Palestinians fled to escape the marauding Jewish
forces. But they fled only a short distance and
both lost their original homes while still ending up
within Israeli territory.Because the Israelis refuse to
recognize the legitimacy of these sites, they receive no
services (water, electricity, roads, etc.) One of these
places is the small town of Ain Hod.This town sits on the
top of a mountain only a couple of miles from the site of
the original village of Ain Hod.When, in 1948, the
residents fled to the hills, so to speak, the Israelis
occupied their village and refused to allow their
return.The original site is now an Israeli artist colony,
which demonstrates that there is no necessary connection
between artistic talent, a sense of justice or
humaneness, or for that matter taste (the Israeli artists
have had the callousness to keep the town’s original
name).The artists of the Jewish Ain Hod have not offered
a helping hand to the people they displaced.
The Israeli government is constantly threatening the
destruction of the “unrecognized
villages.” By now the Israelis are quite
expert at the “art” of house demolition.The
forty villages/towns at risk have organized an
association and hired lawyers to fight any government
move against them, but it is a long and expensive
process. At the Arab-Israeli village of Ain Hod we
met the head of this organization. He explained to
us that he now has plenty of time to devote to this cause
because, after 17 years working as an engineer for the
Israeli Interior Ministry he was fired so that his job
could be given to an incoming Russian Jewish immigrant.
When he protested, his boss told him that he was no
different than the Palestinians of Jenin and if he did
not cooperate he would find a way to fire him so that he
would lose his pension. He decided to cooperate, keep his
pension, and use his time to organize the
“unrecognized villages.” This is another good
example of how the discriminatory behavior of Israelis
comes back to hit them in the face.
There is one thing that “unrecognized” and
“recognized” Arab-Israeli Villages have in
common. They are both “Blue Lined.” On
official Israeli government maps all Arab-Israeli sites
(perhaps 6% of the total land of the country) are
surrounded by blue lines. On the ground these lines mark
real boundaries that lie only meters from the village or
town’s outlying houses. The Israeli government will
not allow any Arab-Israeli town to build beyond this
boundary line. This is the case even if the land on the
other side of the line is officially owned by the town.
Thus Arab-Israelis, whose birth rate is much higher than
Israeli Jews, cannot expand their living area. Like their
compatriots in the Occupied Territories, they are
ghettoized.
4. Meeting with Refusers:
There are a growing number of Israeli soldiers and
reservists (as of June 2003 there are over 550) who are
refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. Most
important of these are members of combat units who,
having experienced service in the OT now refuse to
return. These men have some credibility with the Israeli
public and media and therefore cause a lot of problems
for the Israeli government and army. The FFIPP group had
an opportunity to meet with representatives of this
organization.
These refusers are articulate and activist young men who
solicit media attention to discredit the role of the IDF
in the Occupied Territories. Some have gone to prison for
their actions. They also have representatives in the US
who are available to speak and advocate an end to the
occupation and a dismantlement of the settlements.
The FFIPP group visited many other people and places in
its two weeks in I/P. Among these were Bir Zeit
University and the city of Ramallah, The Arab-American
University outside of Jenin, Hebron, Bethlehem, and East
Jerusalem. We also met with Palestinian intellectuals,
faculty and students, Israeli politicians, ex-finance
ministers, and retired Mossad officiers. The FFIPP
trip to Israel and Palestine is an excellent way to see
and experience (in relative safety) the reality of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Trips are made twice a year
(in December and June). Anyone interested in making the
journey may contact me at ldavidson@wcupa.edu or Arnon Hadar at hadar@dominican.edu
Lawrence Davidson
The Association for One
Democratic State in Palestine/Israel
L'Association pour un seul État démocratique en
Palestine/Israël
L'Associazione per un solo Stato democratico in
Palestina/Israele
Gesellschaft für Einen Demokratischen Staat in
Palästina/Israel
c/o Sami Aldeeb, docteur en droit
Chairman / Président ,Ochettaz, 17025, St-Sulpice,
Switzerland
Tel. 0041 21 6916585 or 0041 21 6924968
E-mail: aldeeb@bluewin.chate web
/ site privé: http://go.to/samipage
Invitation to join us
We are a group of Jews, Christians, Muslims and
Agnostics, inside and outside Palestine/Israel. We
created an Association whose aim is to promote by
peaceful means the establishment of one democratic State in Palestine/Israel
which will respect human rights and the principle of
non-discrimination based on religion, gender,
nationality, ethnicity or language. We invite you to join
our group by filling the following questions and
returning them to my address: aldeeb@bluewin.ch. Please send this message to all
interested persons.
Bylaws of the Association in different languages
http://www.lpj.org/Nonviolence/Sami/OneState/Association.html
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