Opinion
March 25
The occupation must end. After spending five days in the West Bank this winter break and seeing it first hand, it is brutally clear to me that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is illegal, unjust and inhumane. I've opposed the occupation theoretically and intellectually for a while now. But seeing the immense physical and psychological damage it inflicts on Palestinian lives - seeing the tragedy that is Hebron - seeing the isolating hatred from both sides - is something completely different.
I met Israeli settlers in the settlement suburbs of Ofra and Binyamin who spoke of their deep religious connections to Biblical holy sites in "Judea and Samaria." They told me that all they want is to "live without fear" of Palestinian terrorism, showing me a bullet hole in their pre-school's wall as proof.
I met Palestinian leaders of the nonviolent protest movements in the towns of NabiSaleh and Bil'in, who said that simply to live with dignity is to resist. They spoke about their desire for a third nonviolent intifada, a peaceful mass uprising of Palestinians that would expose the harsh tactics of the Israeli military and force change.
I met with a lawyer from a human rights organization that tracks the violent interrogations and rigged trials of Palestinian children accused of throwing stones. He told me that Israel "is not an apartheid state. It's much, much worse." He meant that Israel is no longer simply separating and discriminating against Palestinians - it is actively annexing Palestinian land through settlements. He put it like this, "They are taking the land without the people."
Colonialism and imperialism are frameworks to use when looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Civil rights are another. As far as I could tell, most of the Palestinians I met saw themselves as oppressed and disenfranchised, but not necessarily as colonial subjects of Israelis. They often spoke of wanting to live normal lives, simple things like the ability to travel without checkpoints and roadblocks, to find employment, to provide decent education and healthcare for their families, to vote. Ideally, they said, they would cast their votes in an independent Palestinian state. But with eroding faith in the peace negotiations, they believed it far more likely that they would be absorbed into an Israeli state. And I'm not sure that Palestinians' civil rights in a Jewish state, in the form it exists today, would be equal to those of Jewish Israelis.
The status quo cannot continue. It is not sustainable for an increasingly fragmented and destroyed Palestinian society or for Israel if it claims to be a democracy that upholds equality and justice. But what is the way forward? First, we must recognize that Israel is not an evil monolith. It is a nation, it is not going anywhere and it has internal political complexities that have enormous effects on its future.
Israel was founded on Zionism, and Zionism exists on a political spectrum, from leftist and progressive to right wing and conservative. Much of Israeli society was founded on socialist labor Zionism in the form of the Kibbutz Movement. While sometimes painted as white European settlers colonizing Palestinian land, these Chalutzim (or pioneers) saw themselves as building a new future for the scattered and persecuted Jewish people. They were young idealists (like many of us at Tufts) and envisioned a utopian society in which Jews would work the land, live together in nonhierarchical, equal communities and coexist with their Palestinian neighbors.
This idealism didn't come from nowhere, though. The need to create a new future of the Jewish people came from a past of brutal and constant oppression in Europe. In many ways, Zionism was actually a liberation movement. It was the youth's quest for emancipation and empowerment of Jewish peoplehood in the wake of the Holocaust. However, the Jews' history of persecution made it even more crucial for the leftist Zionists to support sharing the land with Palestinians.
As Amos Oz writes in "Under This Blazing Light" (1995), "The Zionist enterprise has no other objective justification than the right of a drowning man to grasp the only plank that can save him. And that is justification enough. (Here I must anticipate something I shall return to later: There is a vast moral difference between the drowning man who grasps a plank and makes room for himself by pushing the others who are sitting on it to one side, even by force, and the drowning man who grabs the whole plank for himself and pushes the others into the sea. This is the moral argument that lies behind our repeated agreement in principle to the partition of the land
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The kibbutz network disintegrated as Israel transitioned into a capitalistic society, but many aspects of it continued to inform Israeli society. Socialist Labor Zionism gave birth to the Labor party, which dominated Israeli politics through the 1970s and played a large role in Israel's social welfare policies and Rabin's bid for peace at the Oslo Accords. In addition, the Histadrut labor union, founded 20 years before the state of Israel by chalutzim in the Third Aliyah, continues to be one of Israel's most important institutions.
It's equally important to note that Zionism had militant, rightist and intolerant factions since the very beginning. Revisionist Zionism called for the Jews' exclusive territorial rights to Israel and led to the foundation of the Irgun, a right wing terrorist group. The right wing strain of Zionism, unfortunately, gained dominance in current Israeli politics and policy as Palestinian violence increased and the left disintegrated. The right, which includes much of the ultra-religious community, is what enables increasing settlements in the West Bank, as well as harassment of Reform Israeli women attempting to pray at the Western Wall.
The re-emergence of the Israeli left is a critical step in ending the occupation. There is an urgent need for loud voices on the left urging Prime Minister Netanyahu to take initiative and forge a peace deal, recognizing and accepting the Palestinians' demands for an autonomous state and their already significant concessions. The left must mobilize a passive Israeli society against the occupation, prevent the continuing threat of settlements in the West Bank and stand in solidarity with nonviolent Palestinian resistance movements. In essence, the left must pioneer a new round of fundamental changes to Israeli society from within, which includes a fundamental questioning of what it means to be a Jewish and democratic state.
The liberal and progressive element of the American Jewish community, which includes organizations like J Street, has a crucial role to play here. America's longstanding support of Israel gives it a particular leverage to pressure the government to change its ways - which has been mostly absent so far. However, in a recent interview, President Obama stated his intentions to put pressure on Netanyahu to make peace, saying: "If not now, when? If not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?"
As for the Tufts community, I was encouraged to see the intellectual range and depth of discussion about the conflict during this year's Israeli Apartheid Week. I commend students for taking direct actions, writing op-eds and standing up against the despicable status quo of the occupation.
However, if we really want Israel's oppression of Palestinians to end, we can't reject Israel wholesale. We need to keep a nuanced and complete view of its history and politics, and remember that there are still segments of Israeli society that oppose their leadership and constantly work towards justice.
The risks of ignoring the Israeli left in our anti-occupation discourse far outweigh the benefits. What are we losing when we choose to erase the movements for peace from Israeli identity? What do we gain when we isolate allies who may be the most able to truly create a more just future for Israelis and Palestinians alike?
To end the occupation, we must see both Palestinians living under the occupation and Israelis fighting to end it as our partners.
