Rabbi Rick Jacobs of URJ photo by Jewish Federations of North America

Last night on MSNBC, for instance, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of the liberal Zionist group J Street, said that Israel cannot be both democratic and Jewish if it is one state; and all its military leaders say so. In the same episode, Chris Matthews spoke of one state in alarmist terms, describing the bomb that Israel faces in Palestinian population numbers in a one-state scenario. He said the number of Jews between the river and the sea is only slightly more than the number of Palestinians, so Palestinians would soon outnumber Jews in a combined state.

Today Senator Ben Cardin, who identifies as an ardent Zionist, expressed the same concern at a hearing. “I don’t see how Israel can remain Jewish and democratic” with a one-state outcome, he said. “The demographics are unambiguous in this regard.”

The Union for Reform Judaism also saw Trump’s statement “darkly,” saying that it spells the end of a Jewish, democratic Israel. Rabbi Rick Jacobs:

The question is: can Israelis and Palestinians live with it in a way that allows for a Jewish, democratic State of Israel and realization of the legitimate rights and aspirations of the Palestinians. And the answer to that question remains “no.” Only a two-state solution can achieve the goals of the Israelis and Palestinians.

That is why we see President Trump’s abdication of the longtime, bipartisan support for a two-state solution so darkly. It is potentially devastating to the prospects for peace and Israel’s Jewish, democratic future.
 

Earl Blumenauer is a Congressman from Oregon, supported by J Street. He writes:
 

Astounding. Just when we thought it couldn’t get worse or more chaotic, Trump considers one-state solution–which is no solution at all.
 

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, retweeted that, saying:
 

One state is the problem not the solution. For those like @repblumenauer who want Israel to be democratic natl home of the Jewish people.
 

J Street’s statement on the Trump comments— “One State is the Problem, Not the Solution”– emphasized the likelihood of violence, though it also cited the state’s Jewish identity:
 

To be clear, there is no one-state configuration that leads to peace. There is no resolution to this conflict without full political rights and independence for both peoples. All so-called “one-state solutions” are recipes for more violence that will ultimately threaten Israel’s identity as a democracy and a Jewish homeland.
 

NY Rep. Jerrold Nadler emphasized the Jewish democratic angle, along with the violence:
 

Trump abandoning a 2SS–Jewish & democratic Israel living next to a Palestinian state–leaves Israel less secure & peace much more elusive.
 

Peace Now’s statement on the “terrifying” press conference also expressed those concerns, Israel’s Jewish future, and violence:
 

the two leaders are not only depriving Israel of the very possibility of reaching peace but also undermining Israel’s own future as a democracy and a Jewish state. They are delivering a huge victory to extremists on both sides.
 

In a piece that came out in USA Today anticipating the Trump indifference about one state, Senators Dianne Feinstein (CA) and Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico baldly stressed the population numbers, as the most important issue with one state– even more important than the potential for violence:
 

Perhaps most importantly, without an independent Palestine by its side, Israel cannot be both a democratic and majority Jewish state. Today, the Jewish people are already a minority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. There are 6.3 million Jewish Israelis compared to 6.6 million non-Jewish minorities,  most of them Palestinian Arabs.

Since the Jewish people are already a minority, a one-state solution cannot be both majority Jewish and democratic. We have not heard a plausible proposal where a one-state solution wouldn’t require a Jewish minority to govern a non-Jewish majority
 

By contrast, on PBS News Hour last night, Shibley Telhami had a non-hysterical discussion of one state. Telhami spoke of the left’s support for one-state: “not a Jewish state– a democratic state for Arabs and Jews.” And he mentioned the rightwing support for “an apartheid state.” He also said that the one-state idea was appealing to many Palestinians, even if they did not regard it as realistic. Here he cited population numbers: “If they can have a full equal relationship within Israel, of course they would [support it], because ultimately they’re going to be a majority… It is a non starter for Israelis, undoubtedly.”

Two comments: It would be helpful if these speakers addressed the 20 percent of “Israel proper” that is not Jewish. About the same number of Americans are non-Christian; in the U.S. we would find it insupportable if the U.S. made it official policy that it’s a Christian state.

And as to the fear of greater violence in one state, this is surely legitimate. But the problem with emphasizing this fear is that it tends to be very Jewish-centric. What do I mean? Well, there’s one state right now in which violence is dished out regularly to Palestinians, so the real problem in Israel Palestine is not prospective, it’s before our eyes, but that’s never the problem; and the concern that Israel will become an apartheid state amounts to a denial of the reality for Palestinians today, that it is an apartheid state. As to the unstated but looming apprehension that Israel and Palestine will become Algeria, and many Jewish Israelis will flee– only a fool would say that that is not a possible outcome, and a concerning one. But that apprehension cannot justify the tyranny that exists right now, in which the conflict is “managed,” and Palestinians have no rights. The American revolutionaries were rather succinct about the use of violence to achieve their rights.

This article was first published on mondoweiss.net

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The ‘settlement law’ adopted by the Israeli parliament this week legalises apartheid rule over Palestinians.

By itself, the law passed in Israel on Monday will not substantially change the day-to-day reality of the Palestinian struggle. It’s a piece of legislation that simply adapts legal strategies used since 1948 to dispossess Palestinians of their land.

Proponents of the law are clear: this is not the start but the final step in the process of annexing the West Bank

What the law does, however, is significantly alter Israel’s legal relationship with the Palestinians under its military control in the West Bank.

For the first time, Israel’s parliament, not its military administration, has put forth rules over the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and their property rights.

Under the Israeli judicial system, the law legalises settlements constructed on Palestinian private land unauthorised by the military, so long as the settlers acted "in good faith" and received some kind of assistance from the state.

It also allows Israel to appropriate private land for its own use if the owners are unknown, or, if the owners are known, they will be eligible for "compensation".

The new law will affect 55 outposts and 4,000 structures built on over 8,000 dunums (8 square km) of Palestinian private land. That’s just a fraction of the over half a million illegal settlers on Palestinian land and the roughly 60 percent of West Bank land that has been de facto taken over by Israel already through settlements, the apartheid wall, closed military zones and areas designated as "natural reserves".
 

The start of annexation?

Proponents of the law are clear: this is not the start but the final step in the process of annexing the West Bank.

"This is a historic step toward the completion of a process,” said MK Bezalel Smotrich  said this week.

Annexation has been systematically implemented since the de facto adoption in 1968 of the Allon Plan , the blueprint for Israeli settlement policy that outlined the focus areas for colonisation.
 

The Knesset seems confident enough to start moving towards the de jure integration of the West Bank’s Palestinian population as people without rights under Israeli jurisdiction
 

These are: East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the southern Hebron hills and two strategic corridors, one created by the Ariel finger line of settlements and their expansion area south of Nablus and one from
Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea.

The classification of Area C as part of the Oslo process and afterwards the path of the Wall have only further delineated these lines of annexation.

Like most other colonial regimes, Israel has used modern private property laws to dispossess Palestinians who were not protected under the laws and few of whom had property deeds.

Since 1948, several legal strategies have been used to take Palestinian land in Israel, including the so-called "state lands", absentee laws, which dispossess any Palestinian that has left their land or property, and a law that bars owners from appealing any of the expropriations if a court accepts that the Israeli authority was acting “in good faith”.  “Cultivation of wasteland” acts have also allowed the state to confiscate even more land.

Similar practices have been applied in the West Bank. Palestinians who left in the wake of the 1967 war were immediately dispossessed of their properties. Wasteland regulations have also been applied to do the same for decades.

Since 1999, the Israeli State Property Delimitation Team has worked in the West Bank to find and categorise land that is considered not to be "privately owned", which is then claimed by the state.
 

The government and opposition are both aware that the annexation of the West Bank is almost complete, and the issue now is which legal trick to use to subjugate the 2.5 million Palestinians living there
 

Only around 37.5 percent of West Bank land had private property deeds at the time Israel occupied it, so the team’s work has resulted in a huge land-grabbing scheme. Starting in 2011, Israel further authorised  the takeover of lands with so-called "undefined" ownership.

In late 2011, they informed UN agencies about plans to ethnically cleanse many of the Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley  and in the corridor between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Since then, land annexation and expulsion of Palestinian communities has relentlessly intensified.

In Jerusalem, elaborate urban planning schemes  for ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering of the city, the demolition  of almost 1,000 Palestinian structures in 2016 alone and a steep increase in approval of new settlement housing units pushes annexation and colonisation further.

"Present absentees" in the West Bank – people living in the area but still considered absent for any legal purposes – are the only novelty in the law: even if they can prove that they own private property, no claims on the land can be made if settlers acted "in good faith", and the state can still take over private land of "unknown owners".
 

Does apartheid start now?

In fact, it’s not the legalising of land grabbing – a foundational Israeli practice – but the legal status of Palestinian people on that land that forms the crux of the law.

As Isaac Herzog , opposition leader in the Knesset warns: “This law will annex into the State of Israel millions of Palestinians who will demand the right to vote and full civil rights. It will lead to the end of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and to the end of the Zionist vision.”  

To avoid this, the Israeli parliament had so far refrained from extending its laws to the West Bank, even though it had already issued and adapted dozens of laws  relating to the settlers in the West Bank.

Israel has always considered itself sovereign over the land and has never granted any claims of Palestinian self-determination or collective rights over it and this won’t change with the law.

However, the Knesset now seems confident enough to start manoeuvring towards the de jure integration of the West Bank’s Palestinian population as people without rights under Israeli jurisdiction – only further proof that Israel has effectively extended its apartheid regime from its pre-1967 territory to the West Bank.
 

Land without people

The debate on the law will continue and the Israeli Supreme Court may even revoke the law for West Bank land outside Jerusalem.

One thing should nevertheless remain in our collective understanding: talks about maintaining the possibility of a two-state solution or dreams of Israeli democracy should finally be set aside.
 

Talks about maintaining the possibility of a two-state solution or dreams of Israeli democracy should finally be set aside
 

The debate in the Israeli parliament on the law clearly showed that the government and opposition are both aware that the annexation of the West Bank is almost complete, and the contention now is which legal trick to use to subjugate the 2.5 million Palestinians living there.

The day after the bill passed, the Israeli government responded  to critics of the law arguing that Israel “will not annex territories with Palestinians. They have their own Palestinian rule and they can vote for the Palestinian parliament”. 
 

Oslo null and void

This underlines the central role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the legitimisation strategy of the Israeli apartheid regime. For the Palestine Liberation Organisation, this should be the final trigger to officially declare the negotiation process void, and hold Israel responsible for the failure of the Oslo Agreements and the destruction of any possibility for a two-state solution.

With this, the functions that have transformed the PA into a prison guard in our own ghettos must be handed over to Israel – in line with the legal obligations of an occupying power over occupied populations or of an apartheid state in front of its citizens. Otherwise, we will continue to allow Israel to have what it always wanted: a land without people.
 

For the PLO, this should be the final trigger to officially declare the negotiation process void, and hold Israel responsible for the failure of the Oslo Agreements
 

The international community has to understand that their initiatives and resolutions that criticise Israel, only to be followed by business-as-usual interactions, simply ensure that Israel can continue keeping an entire people under a brutal apartheid regime and perpetuating war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The global civil society movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions has gradually built up strength in order to end this complicity. Governments should follow the same course of action.

In the 1980s, still at the beginning of Israel’s annexation policies, the UN Security Council called for banning any support of the settlements and related activity, and the General Assembly passed resolutions for a full set of military embargos and sanctions against Israel. It is time to implement them now.

– Jamal Juma' is coordinator of the Palestinian Stop the Wall Campaign and the Land Defence Coalition.

Photo: A picture taken from the West Bank city of Hebron on 7 February 2017 shows a view of the Kiryat Arba Jewish settlement on the outskirts of the Palestinian city (AFP)

Courtesy: Middle East Eye

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Courtesy: mondoweiss.net

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