Syed Qamar Afzal Rizvi.
The current Israeli government’s ulterior move of demolishing the Palestinian village of Susiya located in the occupied territories ;and consequently the historic July 24th display– of the Israeli civil society’s remonstrance against this inhumane, illegal, unethical action of an apparently democratically elected government of Netanyahu– is an index of the fact that there seems a brewing tug of ideological war between the Israeli government’s supported notion of ‘neonationalism’ and that liberal forces and peace motivated segments of the Israeli civil society- ardently engaged in espousing the cause of ‘protection of human rights and civil values’.
The Palestinian village of ‘Susiya’ has existed for hundreds of years, long predating the Jewish Israeli settlement of ‘Susya’, which was founded in its neighborhood in 1983. Written records of the existence of a Palestinian community in its location exist from as far back as 1830, and the village is also found on British Mandate maps from 1917. The Palestinian residents’ ownership of this land is ‘established in law’. Israel deliberately wants to connect the ‘archeological site to a residential settlement’, also called Susya, that flanks the Palestinian town on the far side. The state offered the argument they need to expand the preservation of historical Jewish sites underneath where the Palestinians now live.
A representative for the Susya archeological park told Mondoweiss (an independent Middle eastern website), the expansion is not to continue archeological excavations, rather the land will be used for ‘residential housing’. This estimate has been endorsed by the fact that just after few hours of the release of the pending order of the Israeli court,Netanyahu gave official instructions regarding the construction of 300 ‘residential units’ in that area. In between the period 1986-2015, there seems to have been the ‘fourth forced expulsion’ of the Palestinians from Susiya, based on Israeli government’s unwarranted ‘fourth legal petition’.
The evidence advocates that it is not an issue of legal constraint, it is rather an intentional policy with a clear motive: the quiet and strategic transfer of Palestinians out of Area C – as is evident also in the reports of ‘the UN representatives and the European Union’. In rare and stern separate statements, European Union and United States politicians demanded that Israel’s military reconsider its demolition plans. John Kirby, a U.S. State Department spokesman, warned that any demolition of structures in the village would be “harmful and provocative.” U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., sent an open letter, signed by 10 members of the House, to Secretary of State John Kerry, asking him to intervene.
The EU also condemned Israel’s plan, accusing the country’s government of planning the “forced transfer” of Palestinians, Times of Israel reported. The Susiya syndrome shows that the desire of demolition has come from undemocratic quarters of power–the noenatioanlists-cum- ultranationalists,the hardliners and the neoZionists. The surge of a ‘true democratic system’ remains the driving manifesto of the Israeli civil society.Yet the struggle over Israel’s democracy cannot be divorced from the ongoing occupation, nor can it be detached from the continuing conflict between Israel and its neighbors.
The fact of the matter is that the Israeli government policies– under both the Likud and the labour governments are intrinsically based on unjustified and illegal expulsions of Palestinians from the ‘occupied territories’—seem to have been in blatant compliance of the Israeli doctrines of ‘neonationalism and neoZionism’– weakening or distancing the national institutions from gaining the popular strength of ‘democratic approfondissement or deepening’.
While Netanyahu hails from an ‘ultranationalist group’ in the Likud party, Israel has deepened its hold on the West Bank, adding Jewish settlers to the point where the territory may soon become inseparable from ‘Israel proper’-the neonationalists’ engineered design of the greater Israel. Combined with the Jews in occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, there are some 600,000 Jews living on ‘occupied land’. And yet there have been the blowing winds of moral and ethical social ‘resuscitation in the Israeli educational, peace and human rights communities’.
It has been in this analogy that the civil society in Israel developed in tandem with the realization of the ‘occupation’. Its progressive components have been attacked precisely because they are opposed to its ‘continuation’ and to the value system it embodies. Therefore,the democratic deterioration unleashed by the recent campaign against civil society groups has generated a popular pushback which addresses the most fundamental issues regarding Israel’s guiding values.
Israel’s democratic and ethical reawakening — and consequently its existence in the most profound sense of the term — cannot be secured without ending the most persistent cause of Israel’s democratic crisis extremely evolving in the post 1999 phase(since the continuous dominance of the Likud party in its parliament (Knesset)– its attempt to continue to rule over another people against their will. But it has become increasingly clear that critics of Israeli government and state policies– the very people often most committed to the idea and reality of Israel as a democracy — are also the targets of the coalition’s policies.
The Netanyahu-led coalition has had arrested and harassed journalists, anti-occupation and anti-military activists; attacked newspapers and media organisations; opened inquiries against NGOs; promoted an obsessive concern with the “delegitimisation” of Israel; and repeatedly flouted supreme-court rulings. It has been under this backdrop that the need for a complete streamlining of public priorities has begun to shift attention away from the ‘security nexus’ that has so totally dominated discourse in the past. The call for accountability of elected representatives (in the Knesset) to voters has given rise to several monitoring groups that have been repeatedly exposing ‘problematic government policies’ and ensured ongoing popular oversight of official actions.
The process of civil society’s reawakening– regulated and accompanied by constructivist,positivist,reformist or evolutionist and cosmopolitan or non-governmental approaches– acts as a counterpoint to the ‘dominant neo-nationalist thinking’. These progressive, substantive, democratic impulses operate beyond the formal realm of ‘centrist approach’ and are engaging the present power structure on a variety of issues. Their definition of democracy is ‘liberal in essence and substantive in practice’. All these patterns of changes reflect on ‘social and political metamorphosis’ that undergoes in the Israeli community. Seen from an ‘international juxtaposition’, Netanyahu’s ‘ultra vires doctrine’ of the ‘Jewish settlements’ on the Palestinian territories is in no way different from India’s.
Both Israel and India are making blatant violations of human rights. Both are engaged in practicing ‘a fait accompli policy’ of occupying the ‘land by dint of force’. Both do not intended to accept the ‘defacto civil right of the principle of ‘self-determination’ of the Palestinians and the Kashmiris in their homelands.And unfortunately,both the governments in Tel Aviv and New Delhi pay no heed and attention to the ‘honourable voice’ of international law. What the Israeli government must conceive the truth that in this emerging era of global transformation of communication technology backed by the ‘reawakening phenomenon of global civil societies, the old practices of ‘suppression and exploitation negatively sustained by the quest for ‘unlawful annexation of land’, can no longer be accepted by both the local and international civil societies.
The best option available to the Israeli government is to adopt a recourse to ‘democratic peace’ by revisiting the ‘peace norms’ established in the Oslo accord (1993) between the Palestinians and the Jews. The Israeli authorities must review their policies ,keeping in view Henry Kissinger’s words of wisdom:”No foreign policy — no matter how ingenious– has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none.” The first and foremost thinking that the Israeli government of Benjamin Natanyahu needs to change is its modus operandi on the issue of the Jewish settlements—deviously trying to change the ‘demographic realities’ of the respective Municipalities (the Local Councils)existing in the geographical peripheries of the West bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
The Israeli conjectured design is to change the present fate of the Palestinian dominant populations in the areas affiliated with the ‘occupied territories’, thereby manipulating the results of the future ‘municipal elections’ in those areas. The International community at large, and the Israeli civil society in particular, can’t be hoodwinked by such ‘negative trajectories’ of the Israeli government. What remains the most ironic fact is that the Israeli governments both in past and present, have been purposely escaping from accepting an irrefutable international truth: that the construction– on the Occupied Territories has– no ‘locus standi’ under international law-reflected in the UN’s manifold resolutions and the decision delivered (in April 2004) regarding the construction of 700 km long Israeli fence on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) by The Hague based International Court of Justice.
“Israel cannot rely on a right of self-defence or on a state of necessity in order to preclude the wrongfulness of the construction of the wall”. The Court asserted that “the construction of the wall, and its associated régime, are contrary to international law. The Israeli neorealists’ crafted plan of waging an open conflict regime- between ‘Israel’s neonationalist forces and its civil society’–is by all means an alarming sign to stain its ‘national identity’. If not yet prevented or refrained from making such partis pris or practicing ‘prejudicial policies’ advocated by the ‘totalitarian mindset’– of wiping out the material truth or circumstantial evidence as has been happening in case of Susiya– there seems much truth in prognostication of foreseeing an ‘enfeeblement via system’s breakdown from within the state- causing great damage to the state edifice.
