[rad-green] Contra Israeli Apartheid -- former United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk

*https://www.transcend.org/tms/2019/12/contra-israeli-apartheid/*
<https://www.transcend.org/tms/2019/12/contra-israeli-apartheid/>

*Transcend Media Service          2 Dec 2019*
Contra Israeli Apartheid

PALESTINE - ISRAEL
<https://www.transcend.org/tms/category/palestine-israel/>

*Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media
Service <https://www.transcend.org/tms/author/?a=Richard%20Falk>*

*1 Dec 2019 – *This is a modified version of remarks made at the opening
plenary session of the “*1st Global Conference on Israeli Apartheid:
Dimensions, Repercussions and the Means to Combat It*,” 29-30 Nov 2019,
Istanbul. The conference was held under the joint auspices of the Global
Organization against Racial Discrimination & Segregation and the Union of
NGOs of the Islamic World. Opening statements by the respective presidents
of the two organizations, Rima Khalaf (who was the director of ESCWA at the
time the apartheid study, “Israeli Practices toward the Palestinian People
and the Question of Apartheid” commissioned by ESCWA in 2016 and written by
Prof. Virginia Tilley and myself) and by Ali Kurt. The conference was
loosely structured around the theme of updating our report since its
release on March 15, 2017. The undertaking of the conference was also to
launch a new NGO as named above, and formally established in Geneva, headed
by Rima Khalaf, and devoted to opposing racism worldwide, with priority
given to opposing Israel/Palestine apartheid.

*Introductory Observations*

Our experience with the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia
(ESCWA) as authors of the Report owes so much to the courage, dedication,
and vision of Rima Khalaf, and this conference is itself a testimonial to
the leadership she exhibited. She had the audacity to treat the UN as if it
were what it was meant to be– an independent body representing the peoples
of the world that seeks truth, respects law, and promotes peace and
justice. In the age of Trump to act honorably in this manner is obviously
‘politically incorrect,’ that is, daring to act in the most admirable
possible way from the perspective of *human* interests.

The firestorm that greeted the release of our report, what might be
described as a ‘HalleyStorm’ exceeded the hostile pushback we expected
after the report was formally released by ESCWA. I thought such an academic
study would go largely unnoticed except by the most ardent Zionist
watchdogs, especially since the text was preceded by a very visible
disclaimer distancing the UN and ESCWA from our analysis and
recommendations. By overreacting our high-profile attackers at the UN
seemed to miscalculate, or maybe putting it better, contented themselves
with scoring points in the short game, while giving away many more points
in the long game that will ultimately determine the outcome of the
Palestinian struggle for basic rights.

The attention given at UN Headquarters in New York City by the defamatory
attacks launched by Ambassadors Halley & Danon greatly increased interest
in our report, especially in civil society circles. What has happened in
the two plus years since the ESCWA release in March 2017 has been to
normalize the use of ‘apartheid’ to describe the Israeli/Palestine
relationship, and governing structure, particularly in civil society
circles. More than this, the apartheid discourse has influentially eroded,
if not altogether superseded, the emphasis on ‘ending occupation’ as the
clarion call of those seeking a sustainable and just peace for Israel and
Palestine. In illuminating contrast, the report exerted little influence on
the inter-governmental or formal UN discourse, which continued the zombie
practice of dwelling on the occupation and placing hopes and bets on the
two-state solution. I think there exists a growing consensus among
pro-Palestinian activists that ending Israel apartheid as doctrine and
practice now constitutes the one and only path to a sustainable peace. Of
course, total ethnic cleansing or genocide is an outcome too distasteful to
contemplate, leading to what should be termed an ‘unjust peace’ or ‘imposed
peace’ and certainly not ‘a peaceful solution.’ Unfortunately, it has
historical resonance whenever the context is one of settler colonialism.
Resistance encountered in several settler colonial settings including the
United States, Canada, and Australia resulted in the suppression,
marginalization, and dispossession of the native people, and on occasion by
genocidal means.

Conceptually and existentially our report revealed the links between
allegations and findings relating to apartheid as a criminalized form of
racism in international criminal law to a sinister politics of
fragmentation and dispersal by which Israel has victimized and subjugated
the Palestinian people in a variety of ways. What made this linkage of
fragmentation and apartheid so important was that it was an inclusive way
of understanding the scope of the distinctiveness of Israeli apartheid,
embracing refugees, exiles, minority, and occupied Palestine in a single
indivisible framework of victimization by way of racist domination of one
ethnicity over another. This meant that if apartheid, as thus understood,
were to be credibly dismantled, it would have to give equal status to
Palestinians formerly marginalized or ignored by the long prevailing peace
formula of expectations arising from an emphasis on the ‘land for peace’
slogan. In this manner our study privileges ‘people’ as distinguished from
‘territory’ as the core of the challenge of finding that elusive path
leading to sustainable and just peace, as distinguished from the
geopolitically manipulated Oslo peace process, which could never have
achieved, even if an agreement had somehow emerged, more than a ceasefire
disguised by being proclaimed by the negotiating parties as a permanent
solution, or even worse, as ‘the deal of the century.’

We understand our task at this conference to be partly one of updating our
ESCWA study in light of what has transpired since March 15, 2017 and partly
to draw some interpretative perspectives and policy implications that
derive from the study but were not contained in it. We have submitted
separate updating papers that summarize our understanding of the changes
relevant to the apartheid discourse as applied to Israel. In the papers we
express somewhat differing understandings on some secondary issues,
although in complete agreement on the core issue of the evidence support.
Yet more significant is our shared acceptance of the basic apartheid
framework as indispensable for useful analysis and policy formation, which
is joined to our belief that dismantling apartheid, as we have
conceptualized it, is the one and only gateway to sustainable peace between
these two peoples. Underneath this conviction is my somewhat
counterintuitive  view that Israeli Jews would also be beneficiaries of the
ending apartheid in Israel just as the white South Africans were 25 years
ago.

*Problematics of Ethnocracy and Partition: Decoding the Zionist Project*

Although not part of the original study, understanding the development of
the dominant tendencies in the Zionist movement is crucial for the changing
character of the relationship between Zionism and the relevance of the
right of self-determination to the particular circumstances in Palestine.
Of central relevance is the specific nature of Zionist opportunism when it
comes to shaping policy. It changes through time, and is most basically
expressed by grasping at what is available at each stage, without
considering what was sought at prior stages or treating an acceptance of
what was being offered in the present as the end of the road. From seeming
to settle for a homeland, rather than a state in the Balfour/League
formulations to the reluctant acceptance of the partition approach foisted
on Palestine after World War II, to the current posture of, in effect,
calling for Palestinian surrender in their own homeland, Zionism has kept
raising its expectations ever closer to its underlying ambitions and its
interpretation of the relevant balances of power and influence internally,
regionally, and globally.

In many ways, and less often articulated, the Palestinian national movement
for understandable reasons has taken what seems an opposite approach to
that of the Zionist Project and later Israeli leadership. Palestinians
quite reasonably rejected as unacceptable what was being offered to them at
every stage of the conflict, which had they accepted it would have been
seen as a political defeat. And somewhat ironically, the White House
handshake between Rabin and Arafat symbolizing the mutual acceptance of the
Oslo framework to resolve the conflict, which was portrayed at the time as
a dramatic breakthrough leading to peace, turned out to be a disastrous
tactical move by the Palestinian leadership. Oslo diplomacy allowed Israeli
propagandists to portrays the Palestinian leadership as rejectionist as it
seemed to be insisting on demands that were non-negotiable when what it was
actually doing was trying to do was to avoid further encroachments on
Palestinian land and rights, which were being continually diminished on the
ground and by way of partisan brokered diplomacy. As Israelis consistently
looked ahead on the basis of ever higher expectations, Palestinians looked
backward in time ready to settle at a later stage for what they had
rejected as a previous stage. Illustratively, when partition gave
Palestinians 45% of the territory it seemed like and was treated as a
totally unacceptable external fracturing of the unity of Palestine as a
territorial polity and a disregard of the most elemental rights of its
majority population, but later on the Palestinian leadership seemed ready
to accept even 22% of Mandate Palestine as the boundaries of their greatly
shrunken state. By then Israel, in contrast, was insisting on the total
control of Jerusalem, a variety of security infringements on Palestinian
sovereignty, including border control and permanent Palestinian
demilitarization, as well, of course, as retention of the unlawful
settlement blocs established on territory occupied in 1967. The Palestine
Papers, document disclosing later secret direct peace negotiations between
Israelis and Palestinians, involve a portrayal of this clash between
Palestinian expectations then lowered even below the 22% threshold as
Israeli actions and demands were no longer content with a mere 78% of the
land, positing demands in various devastating ways on the Palestinian
territorial remnant, including even diverting the water aquifers of the
West Bank. It is worth noting that what Israel seemed to be demanding in
its pre-Trump diplomacy was the Gazaization of any future Palestine entity,
that is, Gaza after the Sharon disengagement plan was put into operation in
2005 that did involve the withdrawal of IDF occupation force, really their
redeployment and even the dismantling of Israel settlements.

In addition to Zionist opportunism and this distorted picture of
Palestinian rejectionism in relation to respective diplomatic postures,
there are two other features of Zionist practice that have undermined the
Palestinian pursuit of basic rights. First, the hegemonic political
discourse used at any given time is calibrated by Israel to fit changing
external circumstances of constraint and opportunity. In recent times,
without Trump, and possibly lacking Saudi approval, for instance, it is
doubtful that Israel would have moved to annex the Golan Heights or engaged
in actions to treat the settlements as incorporated into Israel as a matter
of law, although both moves were undoubtedly featured on the actual
long-range Zionist agenda even if not  realizable under present conditions.
Secondly, the disclosed changing Israeli policy agenda at each stage in the
evolution of the struggle never corresponded with the actual, and
relatively fixed, agenda. Perhaps, very recently this dual agenda is no
longer part of the Zionist tactical approach as the Netanyahu/Kushner
victory scenario is being quietly and misleadingly promoted as a strategic
endgame for the struggle. This coming into the open is coupled with an
insidious suggestion that Israel tighten even further the apartheid screws
to compel a Palestinian surrender, or as phrased by its advocates, the
unfinished Zionist business being to convince the Palestinian leadership of
the reality of their ‘lost cause.’

The apartheid discourse seems useful in demonstrating that this kind of
Israeli endgame will not finish the struggle but merely prolong it, at
most, generating yet another ceasefire that is almost certain to be
followed by yet another intifada, or some other expression of resurgent
Palestinian resistance. The world might is currently ignoring the
significance of the sustained and innovative resistance under the most
difficult circumstances of the Great March of Return. Palestinians and
their supporters understand this dramatic form of resistance for what it
is, a decisive repudiation of ‘the lost cause’ endgame, which is itself the
more discreet form of describing the victory scenario. This scenario has
been given its most forthright formulation by the Zionist extremist, Daniel
Pipes, which can be viewed in all its crass ugliness on the pages of his
website vehicle, Middle East Forum. The essential argument put forth by
Pipes is that diplomacy has been tried and failed, and now is the time to
end the conflict by its coercive resolution, which means making clear that
Israel has won and Palestine has lost. All that remains to be done is to
make the Palestinians see this reality, and since they stubbornly refuse to
do, apply force and various types of soft power aggression until they
finally give into the pain, and accept their defeat by a formal
acknowledgement of surrender.

I believe this context makes the apartheid diagnosis and prescription more
important than ever, first to grasp the full existential scope of the
Palestinian ordeal, and then to envision that despite everything that has
transpired, peaceful coexistence on the basis of realizing a regime of
ethnic equality remains a possibility, and indeed it is the only positive
alternative to permanent conflict or further ethnic cleansing.

We know that the present arrangement of forces, regionally and
geopolitically will not last forever. It currently appears extremely
favorable to Israel, but if the next phase of Arab awakening brings to
power leaders more receptive to the views and values of their own people,
the Arab politics of accommodation and appeasement would likely be quickly
repudiated, and replaced overnight by a more confrontational approach. And
even the current hyper-partisan support of the United States is not
assured. If the Republicans are defeated in 2020 presidential elections,
the policy toward Israel is likely to revert to its earlier posture of
partisanship rather than its present absurd hyper-partisanship. This means,
in more concrete terms, a revival of mainstream ‘liberal Zionist’ advocacy
of a two-state solution and a diplomacy based on a supposed need for mutual
political compromise. It was the approach most clearly articulated and
promoted in the American presidencies of Clinton and Obama. Of course,
without changes within Israel this revival of liberal Zionism as the basis
of American foreign policy will not reverse or diminish Israeli
expectations or end the Palestinian ordeal. For this reason, whether
Trumpism persists or is replaced by a more moderate presidency, the
responsibility for a sustainable peace will depend on the growth and
deepening of global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle in all
societal settings, which include governments, the UN, and above all, civil
society.

Even if we achieve a civil society consensus on this apartheid analysis, it
will not be enough to produce change. We need also to act on the basis that
ending Israeli apartheid is the one and only path to peace. In the present
setting, it is also evident that neither diplomacy nor the UN will endorse
the apartheid analysis unless pushed very hard from below, and even many
segments of the Palestinian leadership and movement are reluctant to do so.
In this sense, work remains on the level of ideas organization as it is
crucial to achieve a higher degree of doctrinal and organizational unity
than presently exists.

For action, with the notable exception of South Africa and a few other
governments, this burden of action principally falls on civil society at
this stage. We can hope that with an expanding movement of people more
governments and the UN may be gradually led to join the effort. What the
South African precedent tells us is that what seemed impossible until it
happened, became possible all of a sudden because sufficient pressure had
been brought to bear over time by robust resistance within and militant
solidarity efforts without. Over time this combination of pressures exerted
sufficient pressures on the Afrikaner leadership to bring about its
tactical transformation. There was no change of heart, but a recognition
that the cost of maintaining apartheid were too high, and that many of the
white privileges of apartheid could be retained by negotiating the
replacement of *political *and *legal* apartheid by a multi-racial
constitutional order. It goes without saying that Israel is not South
Africa, and that Palestinians remain disunited with respect to
representation and lack the sort of inspirational leadership that proved to
be so valuable in the South African anti-apartheid movement. At the same
time, we should never forget that the anti-colonial flow of history remains
the dominant international trend of our time, and may yet bring the Israeli
elite to their senses. A genuine post-apartheid peace will benefit Jews and
Palestinians alike—this is the affirmation of peace and justice that
follows from the negation of apartheid.

On the basis of present analysis and past experience we know what needs to
be done, and so now the main challenge needs to be met in the doing, with a
vigilant eye toward ever changing circumstances of struggle, constraints as
well as opportunities.

*__________________________________________*

*
<https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/richard-falk.jpeg>**Richard
Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network <https://www.transcend.org/>, an
international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at
Princeton University,**  Distinguished Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of
Global Studies, UCSB, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a
speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human
Rights Council
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Council> (UNHRC)
appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Special_Rapporteur> on “the
situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_territories> occupied since
1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at
the local campus of the University of California in Global and
International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age
Peace Foundation. His most recent book is *Achieving Human Rights* (2009).*

Go to Original – richardfalk.wordpress.com
<https://richardfalk.wordpress.com/2019/12/01/contra-israeli-apartheid/>

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