{"id":73327,"date":"2022-06-21T11:30:42","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T01:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=73327"},"modified":"2022-07-19T11:16:24","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T01:16:24","slug":"israels-endless-occupation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/israels-endless-occupation\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel\u2019s endless occupation"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

In the 55 years Israel has been occupying Palestinian lands, there have been two intifadas, four wars in Gaza, and a long series of failed efforts to negotiate a two-state solution roughly adhering to Israel\u2019s pre-1967 borders. The situation may truly be as hopeless as it seems.<\/p>\n

Intransigence on both sides\u2014which no US president has managed to overcome, though virtually every one since the Six-Day War has tried\u2014has gotten us to this point. While the Palestinians have sometimes embraced international diplomacy, they have also engaged in periods of obdurate resistance. It was the Palestinians who thwarted two promising peace initiatives, led by the forward-looking Israeli governments of Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.<\/p>\n

Given sentiment in Israel today, they might not get another chance. With each failed peace process, the promise of peace has lost its potency as a mobilising cause in Israel. Meanwhile, Israel has gradually tightened its control over the occupied territories, with virtually no international pushback. Even the Arab states\u2014six of which have normalised ties with Israel\u2014seem to have grown indifferent to the agony of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

All of this has driven Israeli voters radically to the right, leaving Israel\u2019s peace camp demoralised and weak. The religious-nationalist bloc that former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu leads now represents the majority of Israelis. And as far-right as Netanyahu may be, he is practically a leftist compared to the tens of thousands of radical Jewish nationalists who marched<\/a> through Jerusalem\u2019s Muslim Quarter on Jerusalem Day last month waving Israeli flags, repeating violent and Islamophobic chants like \u2018death to Arabs\u2019, and attacking Palestinians.<\/p>\n

When Algerians rebelled against their French occupiers in one of the most brutal anti-colonial wars of the post-1945 era, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote<\/a>, \u2018It is not their violence, but ours, which turns back on itself.\u2019 In fact, the French found the violence being enacted in their name so abhorrent that 75% of them voted to grant Algeria independence in the 1961 referendum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A similar sentiment is difficult to discern in Israel. On the contrary, popular support for the military\u2019s fight against \u2018Palestinian terrorism\u2019 is overwhelming.<\/p>\n

To be sure, Israel has known its share of mass demonstrations in support of a peace deal, with protest movements like Women in Black still going strong. Israeli non-government organisations such as B\u2019Tselem, Peace Now and Breaking the Silence work hard to alert Israeli society of the sins of occupation. Joint Israeli\u2013Palestinian organisations, like those bringing together family members of those lost to the ongoing conflict, do similarly admirable work.<\/p>\n

But none of these efforts has had a transformative impact on the peace process. This stands in stark contrast to the experience in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, when checkpoints, home searches, abusive language, blackmail, beatings and arbitrary arrests were once standard practice, just as they are today in the occupied Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n

In Northern Ireland, pressure from civil-society groups and NGOs eventually drove the security forces to curb abusive practices, improve their recruitment processes and introduce training for dealing with intercommunity tensions. The path to peace in Northern Ireland was paved largely by a mobilised civil society.<\/p>\n

In Israel, however, only the Supreme Court stands between the military and worse behaviour. The reason seems to lie in the nature of the conflict. Algeria\u2019s war of independence was an anti-colonial struggle taking place far away from France\u2019s shores. And the Troubles came down to an intercommunity cleavage, which could be resolved through disarmament and power sharing.<\/p>\n

The Israeli\u2013Palestinian conflict, by contrast, is existential. The question of where to draw borders is not merely practical; it has deep religious and cultural significance. For the Palestinians, Israel is the occupying power, impinging on their right to self-determination, but it is also their homeland. And for the now-dominant Israeli right, the occupied territories are the cradle of Jewish Biblical civilisation.<\/p>\n

By fighting for the same lands, the two sides are effectively calling for the unconditional exclusion, even destruction, of the other. That goes a long way towards explaining their eagerness to alter the demographic balance\u2014Israel through Jewish immigration and the expansion of settlements, and the Palestinians by demanding the \u2018right of return\u2019 for all refugees. Yasser Arafat, the late founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization, once called the womb of the Palestinian woman his \u2018strongest weapon<\/a>\u2019 against Israel, as it would give the Palestinians a demographic advantage in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

Even if Israel did accede to the creation of a Palestinian state, it might continue to face threats to its survival. After all, Palestine wouldn\u2019t be located far from its borders, like Algeria was from France.<\/p>\n

What if a radical Islamist group rose to power in Palestine and challenged the peace agreement? What if state-building faltered or failed, generating rising instability on Israel\u2019s doorstep? Or what if Palestine became a frontline outpost of a hostile foreign power? Already, Hamas and Hezbollah\u2014with robust assistance from Iran\u2014have turned Gaza and southern Lebanon, respectively, into launching pads for missiles targeting Israeli territory.<\/p>\n

Fifty-five years after Israel began occupying Palestinian lands, it is more difficult than ever to imagine a way out. The seeds of the two-state solution that were planted by visionary leaders on both sides have failed to take root. All that remains is a fatalistic acceptance of the conflict\u2019s insolubility. For both the occupied and the occupier, the future is bleak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 55 years Israel has been occupying Palestinian lands, there have been two intifadas, four wars in Gaza, and a long series of failed efforts to negotiate a two-state solution roughly adhering to Israel\u2019s …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":484,"featured_media":57542,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[240,926,806,1371],"class_list":["post-73327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-peace","tag-religion"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIsrael\u2019s endless occupation | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/israels-endless-occupation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Israel\u2019s endless occupation | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the 55 years Israel has been occupying Palestinian lands, there have been two intifadas, four wars in Gaza, and a long series of failed efforts to negotiate a two-state solution roughly adhering to Israel\u2019s ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/israels-endless-occupation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-06-21T01:30:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-07-19T01:16:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/GettyImages-509527878-e1594775012595.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"950\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"618\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Shlomo Ben-Ami\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Shlomo Ben-Ami\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/israels-endless-occupation\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/GettyImages-509527878-e1594775012595.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/GettyImages-509527878-e1594775012595.jpg\",\"width\":950,\"height\":618,\"caption\":\"TOPSHOT - 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