The Israeli government has begun a tendering process for construction contracts in the so-called E1 area in the occupied West Bank. E1 is situated to the east of Jerusalem. If an Israeli settlement were established there, it would effectively bisect the West Bank, significantly diminishing any prospect that a future Palestinian state could be established on contiguous territory (i.e. in an undivided West Bank and East Jerusalem, with a corridor to Gaza).
Previous Israeli administrations have held back from actually beginning construction in E1. But the current regime, the most right-wing and pro-settler in Israel’s history, has an openly-declared project to “erase” prospects for a Palestinian state, as minister Bezalel Smotrich has put it. The government, and particularly Smotrich’s ministry, wants to establish facts-on-the-ground prior to forthcoming elections on 27 October, which could see it ousted from office. The tender closes on 19 October. If construction contracts for E1 have already been awarded, they will be harder for any incoming administration to reverse.
Settler terror continues to spread across the West Bank. Armed settlers, abetted by the army, recently conducted a siege of several homes in the Palestinian village of Qusra, preventing residents from leaving. Anti-occupation activists from Israel, from organisations including Standing Together, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Looking the Occupation in the Eye, travelled to Qusra to support the residents and attempt to break the siege. They succeeded in getting food and other essential supplies to the families.
On Friday 21 August, settlers shot and killed 17-year-old Kareem Shalaldeh. Under the guise of “hiking”, armed settlers regularly maraud through areas of the West Bank, sometimes attacking Palestinians they encounter. Standing Together said: “An increasingly common occurrence in the West Bank is settler ‘hikes’ (aka settler raids) that end in Palestinians being killed or injured. But while the army and the police call them ‘hikes’, we know that armed Israeli settlers entering Palestinian communities is an intentional provocation. This time, settlers killed 17-year-old Kareem [...]
“As activists who stand in solidarity with communities in the West Bank and offer protective presence, the difference in how the army treats activists and how it treats violent settlers is clear. While settlers publicly plan and carry out attacks on a regular basis without police or army interference, anti-occupation activists are turned around by the same authorities and watched closely.
“The reality is that Palestinians live in fear of attacks, raids, and of being forced from their homes to escape them. And the government and army encourage it. But every single one of us has a role to play in ending the occupation — and it will end when we, Palestinians and Jews on the ground, get organised and demand a different future.”
Condemned
International governments, including the UK, have condemned Israel’s plans. There are widespread calls from across civil society for tougher sanctions on the settlement project, including a ban on all settlement produce, and sanctions on businesses operating in or profiting from settlements. Such sanctions may have some positive effect. The more “rational” elements of the Israeli ruling class, including some elements within the military and security establishments, are concerned about Israel becoming a pariah state. They want smooth access to international markets, and sanctions which inhibit trade and diplomacy may induce them to increase political pressure to oust and marginalise the most extreme Jewish-supremacist currents now at the heart of government.
Workers’ Liberty, the organisation which publishes Solidarity, does not oppose calls for such sanctions on settlement products (as distinct from calls for blanket boycotts, usually “academic and cultural”, of Israel). However, we caution against seeing them as the instrument which can fix the problem. The historical and contemporary balance sheet shows sanctions largely ineffective as mechanisms for pressuring oppressive or authoritarian regimes to change their conduct. Extensive sanctions against Russia have indeed damaged the Russian economy, but not at all compelled Russia to abandon its war on Ukraine.
The historic example most frequently cited as proving the efficacy of boycotts and sanctions is apartheid South Africa. But cultural boycotts and economic sanctions were applied for decades; the decisive factor was when black workers in strategic industries such as mining and steel organised and rose up that the regime ultimately tottered and fell. The conclusion is clear: an internal agency, with meaningful power and leverage within the society in question, is necessary for fundamental democratic change, not merely external pressure.
The black working class in South Africa was powerful because it represented a social majority upon whose labour economic production largely relied. The white population was a 13% minority by the time apartheid fell.
This dynamic does not map neatly onto Israel-Palestine, where the Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab populations are of roughly equal size within the territory between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea, sometimes called “historic Palestine”. Whilst the Israeli economy does exploit Palestinian labour, it relies principally on the labour of its large Jewish working class.
In Israel, a source of social power equivalent to South Africa’s black working class exists only in potential: the 20% Palestinian minority in Israel, overwhelmingly working-class in economic composition, in alliance with as large a section of the Jewish working class as can be won to an internationalist perspective based on support for equal rights between the two peoples, including an equal right to self-determination and statehood.
The Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, beleaguered by a genocidal war and violent settlement expansion, are constrained in their ability to organise politically. Nevertheless, occasional demonstrations in Gaza around living conditions, which indict both the Israeli military and Hamas authorities, show an embryonic potential for the development of civic resistance there. In the West Bank, links between Palestinian communities facing dispossession and displacement and anti-occupation activists in Israel indicate the possibilities for constructing a democratic political perspective for the entire territory.
Forms of external pressure can be helpful to the development of such an agency. Sanctions that specifically target the machinery of occupation and militarism, such as arms embargoes, can help movements on the ground amplify their arguments for a turn away from policies of permanent war. But external pressure alone will always be limited without a movement aiming for social transformation from within. It can even be counterproductive, if generalised sanctions end up harming ordinary people more than the powerful, allowing the existing political regime to use them to whip up nationalist resentment.
Co-resistance
This makes the efforts of movements like Standing Together, which seek to mobilise “co-resistance” between Palestinians and Jews, vital. Such movements stress the inviolability of the Palestinian claim to equality and self-determination, on the basis of universal human rights. But they also stress a shared interest in equality, and seek to convince Jewish Israelis that the occupation regime, which appears to guarantee their safety and privilege, ultimately does the opposite, making them less safe and draining social resources to fund a permanent war against the Palestinians. As Karl Marx once put it, “A nation that oppresses another forges its own chains.”
Ahead of October elections for the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), some Standing Together leaders have launched a new political party, A Place for Us All. Avraham Burg, an ex-Labor politician and former Speaker of the Knesset, who has become something of a maverick leftist since his departure from official politics, recently announced his support for the new party, and joined its list as a candidate. Another anti-occupation voice in the election will be provided by the Joint List, a bloc comprising the radical-left party Hadash, linked to the Israeli Communist Party, and two Palestinian nationalist parties, Balad and Ta’al.
Direct links and solidarity with the forces of co-resistance provide a better central focus for international activist efforts. The anti-occupation, binational left in Israel is an embattled minority. That makes support for it more important, not less. By providing political solidarity and material support, we can help make co-resistance movements a greater factor in the balance of forces, one that can eventually transform the political reality.
Comments?We welcome replies, corrections and debate pieces. Contact us