fonte: Counterpunch
Exército usado para deportar ativistas contra o muro
A guerra de Israel ao protesto
Por Jonathan Cook
Os tribunais de Israel ordenou a liberação esta semana de duas mulheres estrangeiras presas pelo exército na Cisjordânia, em que os advogados de direitos humanos alertam, como um amplo esmagamento por parte de Israel a protesto de ativistas internacionais, israelenses e palestinos.
A prisão das duas mulheres, durante uma incursão noturna na cidade palestina de Ramallah, destacou uma nova tática de funcionários israelitas: usando a polícia de imigração para tentar deportar estrangeiros simpatizantes da causa palestina.
Uma mulher Checa foi deportado no mês passado depois que de ter sido presa em Ramallah por uma unidade especial conhecida como OZ, inicialmente criada para prender imigrantes que trabalham ilegalmente em Israel.
Advogados de direitos humanos dizem que nova ofensiva de Israel visa minar a atividade conjunta não-violenta de ativistas internacionais e moradores palestinos protestando contra roubo de terras por Israel à medida em que constrói o muro de separação em terras da Cisjordânia.
No que jornal israelense Haaretz, recentemente chamou de "guerra ao protesto", as forças de segurança israelenses lançaram uma série de incursões na Cisjordânia ao longo dos últimos dois meses para deter os líderes da comunidade palestina organizando os protestos contra o muro.
"Israel sabe que a luta não-violenta está se espalhando e que é uma arma poderosa contra a ocupação", disse Neta Golan, uma ativista israelense baseada em Ramallah. "Israel não tem resposta para isso; é por isso que as forças de segurança estão em pânico e começaram a fazer muitas prisões."
Esta semana a detenção de Ariadna Marti, 25, da Espanha, e Bridgette Chappell, 22, da Austrália, sugere um reavivamento de uma longa luta de gato e rato entre Israel e o Movimento de Solidariedade Internacional (ISM), um grupo de activistas palestinianos que se uniram em oposição não-violenta à ocupação israelense.
O último grande confronto, há alguns anos da segunda Intifada, resultou em um breve surto de mortes e ferimentos de ativistas internacionais nas mãos do exército israelita. A mais controversa foi, Rachel Corrie, americana de 23 anos de idade, que foi atropelada e morta por um escavadora do exército em 2003, quando ela se colocou em frente a uma casa em Gaza, ameaçada de demolição.
Neta Golan, a co-fundadora do ISM, disse que Israel demonizado os ativistas do grupo nos meios de comunicação israelenses e internacionais. "Em vez de mostrar a nossa luta como um movimento de "não-violência", somos retratados como "cúmplices do terrorismo ".
A primeira investida da polícia de imigração de Israel em uma área sob controle palestiniano na Cisjordânia, a chamada "Área A", ocorrido no mês passado quando uma mulher Checa foi presa em Ramallah. Eva Novakova, 28, que tinha sido recentemente nomeada coordenadora de mídia do ISM, foi acusada de permanência ilegal no país e foi deportada antes que ela pudesse recorrer aos tribunais.
Advogados de direitos humanos dizem que tais ações são ilegais.
Os funcionários da Autoridade Palestiniana (AP) tem se tornado cada vez mais descontente com os abusos do regime de segurança de Israel que datam deste era de Oslo. O presidente da Autoridade Palestina, Mahmoud Abbas, descreveu recentemente as operações israelenses na Área A, tal como " incursões e provocações".
Embora o Supremo Tribunal tenha libertado as duas mulheres sob fiança nesta segunda-feira, enquanto a sua deportação foi considerada, foram proibidas de entrar na Cisjordânia e condenou cada uma a pagar uma fiança de US $ 800.
Os juízes questionaram o direito do exército de entregar as mulheres à polícia de imigração de uma prisão militar na Cisjordânia, mas deixou em aberto a questão de saber se a operação teria sido legal se a transferência ocorresse em território israelense.
O governo espanhol é relatado de ter pedido ao embaixador de Israel na Espanha a promessa de que Ariadna Marti não seriam deportada.
Ariadna Marti disse que foi acordada na madrugada de domingo por "15 a 20 soldados, que que nos apontavam as suas armas". Exigiram os passaportes das duas e depois as algemaram. Mais tarde, ela disse, que lhes foi oferecida a opção entre "concordar com expulsão imediata ou ficarem presas por seis meses."
Na quarta-feira, logo após a decisão do tribunal, o exército invadiu o escritório do ISM em Ramallah novamente, confiscando computadores, camisetas e pulseiras com a inscrição "Palestina."
"Israel conseguiu barrarr os ativistas internacionais de chegarem, negando-lhes a entrada nas fronteiras", disse Neta Golan. "Mas aqueles que conseguem entrar, enfrentam deportação se forem presos ou tentarem renovar seu visto."
O ISM tem trabalhado de perto com uma série de comitês populares palestinos locais, na organização de manifestações semanais contra roubo por Israel do território palestino sob o
disfarce da construção do muro.
Os protestos somente se tornam manchetes intermitentes, geralmente quando ativistas internacionais ou israelenses ficam feridos ou mortos por soldados israelenses. Os feridos palestinos, na maior parte das vezes, passam despercebidos.
Em um incidente que ameaçou constranger Israel, Tristan Anderson, 38, um membro americano do ISM, foi deixado com danos cerebrais em março passado depois que um soldado disparou uma granada de gás lacrimogêneo em sua cabeça durante uma manifestação contra o muro na aldeia palestina de Nilin .
Além das regulares detenções de manifestantes palestinos, Israel aprovou recentemente uma nova tática de prender os líderes comunitários e mantendo-os em detenção por longos períodos administrativos. Um editorial do Haaretz chamou essas práticas de "familiares nos mais negros regimes".
Abdallah Abu Rahman, um professor e chefe do comitê popular na aldeia de Bilin, está preso desde dezembro por posse de armas. A acusação mostra que ele criou em sua casa um mural feito com cilindros de gás lacrimogêneo disparado pelo Exército israelense contra os manifestantes.
Na segunda-feira, os escritórios do Stop the Wall, uma organização de proteção aos comitês populares, foi invadida, e os seus computadores e documentos confiscados. Dois coordenadores do grupo, Juma Jamal e Mohammed Othman, foram libertados da prisão no mês passado depois de crescente pressão internacional.
A polícia israelense também tem sido duramente criticada pelos tribunais por espancar e prender dezenas de ativistas israelenses e palestinos que protestavam contra a desapropriação de casas palestinas por colonos em Jerusalém Oriental nos arredores de Sheikh Jarrah.
No mês passado, Hagai Elad, o chefe do maior centro de leis de direitos humanosde Israel, a Associação de Direitos Civis em Israel, foi um dos 17 libertados por um juiz depois de manifestantes terem sido detidos por dois dias pela polícia, que os acusou de serem "perigosos".
Jonathan Cook é um escritor e jornalista baseado em Nazaré, Israel. Seus últimos livros são "Israel e o Choque de Civilizações: Iraque, Irã e do Plano de refazer o Médio Oriente" (Pluto Press) e "Disappearing Palestina: Experiências de Israel em desespero humano" (Zed Books). Seu site é www.jkcook.net.
Uma versão deste artigo apareceu originalmente em The National (www.thenational.ae), publicado em Abu Dhabi.
Traduzido por EB, equipa Todos Por Gaza
Showing posts with label Jonathan Cook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jonathan Cook. Show all posts
Monday, 8 March 2010
Thursday, 3 December 2009
As mulheres árabes de Israel não precisam sequer de se candidatar a um emprego
É a discriminação e não as especificidades culturais que mantém as famílias árabes na pobreza
por JONATHAN COOK
Em Nazaré
tradução: equipa Todos Por Gaza
Na semana passada, o Ministro das Finanças israelita foi acusado de tentar desviar as atenções das politicas discriminatórias que mantém muitas das famílias árabes do país na pobreza, colocando a culpa para os seus problemas económicos naquilo que descreveu como a “oposição da sociedade árabe ao trabalho feminino”.
Um relatório recente produzido pelo Instituto Nacional de Segurança mostra que metade das famílias árabes em Israel são consideradas pobres comparadas com 14 % das famílias judias.
Yuval Steinitz, Ministro das Finanças israelita, disse durante uma conferência sobre a discriminação no emprego, realizada este mês [novembro] que a falha das mulheres árabes em se tornarem parte da força de trabalho tinha um impacto negativo na economia de Israel. Só dezoito por cento das mulheres árabes estão empregadas, e dessas, apenas metade a tempo inteiro, enquanto que pelo menos 55 % das mulheres judias trabalha.
O ministro atribuiu a baixa taxa de emprego entre esta minoria a “obstáculos culturais, estruturas tradicionais e à crença que as mulheres árabes devem permanecer nas suas cidades de origem”, dizendo ainda que estas restrições são características de todas as sociedades árabes.
Contudo, há investigadores e associações de mulheres que sublinham que o numero de mulheres árabes em Israel é mais baixo do que em quase todos os outros países do mundo árabe, incluído aqueles onde os números do emprego feminino são uma mancha, como sucede na Arábia Saudita e Omã.
“A maior parte das mulheres árabes quer trabalhar, incluindo um grande número de licenciadas, mas o governo tem recusado abordar os vários e grandes obstáculos que lhe têm aparecido no caminho” disse Sawsan Shukhra, da associação Mulheres contra a Violência, uma associação com base em Nazaré.
Esta afirmação é confirmada por um inquérito realizado este mês e que revela que 83 % dos homens de negócios israelitas nas principais profissões (incluindo publicidade, direito, banca, contabilidade e media) admitiram ser contrários à ideia de contratar licenciados árabes, independentemente do seu sexo.
Yousef Jabareen, um urbanista da Universidade Técnica de Technion em Haifa, que realizou um dos maiores inquéritos sobre o emprego das mulheres árabes em Israel, disse que os problemas que estas enfrentam são únicos.
“Em Israel enfrentam uma dupla discriminação, por serem mulheres e por serem árabes” disse.
A média de emprego feminino no mundo árabe é cerca de 40&. Só em Gaza, na Cisjordânia e no Iraque (onde se vive em circunstâncias excepcionais, é que encontramos taxas de emprego entre as mulheres árabes mais baixas do que em Israel.
Jabareen acrescentou que uma série de factores funcionam como obstáculos para as mulheres árabes, entre os quais políticas discriminatórias aplicadas por sucessivos governos para prevenir que a minoria árabe de 1.3 milhões, que constitui cerca de um quinto da população do pais, usufruísse de qualquer tipo de desenvolvimento económico. Estas medidas incluem discriminação generalizada nas políticas de contratação quer no sector privado quer no público, um fracasso em construir zonas industriais e fábricas perto das comunidades árabes, falta de serviço público de apoio à maternidade, quando comparado com aquele que é providenciado às comunidades judias, falta de transportes nas áreas árabes que impedem as mulheres de se deslocar a lugares onde há trabalho e falta de cursos direccionados para as mulheres árabes.
De acordo com um estudo efectuado pela associação Mulheres contra a Violência, 40 por cento das mulheres árabes detentoras de um grau académico não conseguem arranjar emprego. Aquando da entrevista, Mr Jabareen disse que 78% das mulheres desempregadas culpam a falta de oportunidade de emprego pela sua situação.
Maali Abu Roumi, de 24 anos, da cidade de Tamra no norte de Israel, tem procurado emprego como técnica de trabalho social desde que acabou o curso há dois anos. Um relatório elaborado por Sikkuy, uma organização que promove a igualdade cívica em Israel, revelou este mês que a população árabe de Israel recebe cerca de menos 70% de ajuda governamental para serviços sociais do que a população judia, e que os técnicos de serviço social árabes (numa profissão mal paga e que atrai maioritariamente mulheres) tinham uma carga de trabalho superior em 50%.
Maali Abu Roumi disse também que, para além disso, escolas Arabes, ao contrário das escolas judias não podem empregar um trabalhador social porque não têm dinheiro, e que a minoria árabe de Israel não usufruía das instituições de assistência social fundadas por judeus de outros países que ofereciam trabalho a muitos técnicos sociais judeus. “ A maior parte dos judeus com quem estudei já encontraram emprego, enquanto que muito poucos dos árabes do meu curso o conseguiram” disse. “quando um trabalho aparece, é geralmente em part-time e há sempre dúzias de concorrentes”.
O Centro de Planificação Alternativa, uma organização árabe que estuda o uso da terra em Israel, informou que em 2007, apenas 3.5 por centro das zonas industriais do país estavam localizadas em comunidades árabes. A maior parte atraia apenas pequenos negócios como oficinas de reparação de carros ou de carpintaria, que oferecem poucas oportunidade às mulheres.
“O sector privado israelita está quase totalmente fechado ás mulheres árabes devido a práticas discriminatórias dos empregadores que preferem dar emprego a judeus”, disse Mr. Jabareen. Disse ainda que o governo falhou em dar o exemplo: entre os trabalhadores governamentais, menos de 2% são mulheres árabes, apesar de vários ministros pedirem o aumento de emprego para os árabes.
A Sra Sukha sublinha: “ O serviço público é um grande empregador, mas muitos desses trabalhos ficam no centro da cidade, em Tel-Aviv e em Jerusalém, muito longe do norte, onde vive a maioria dos cidadãos árabes.
Para além disso, a maior parte não pode viajar longas distâncias para encontrar trabalho devido à escassez no fornecimento de serviços de apoio às crianças. De 1600 centros de pré-escolar públicos existentes em todo o país só 25 estão junto das comunidades árabes. Shawshan Shukha também critica o ministério do comercio e da industria dizendo que apesar de este investir muito na educação das mulheres judias só 6% das mulheres árabes frequentam cursos, sobretudo os de costura e secretariado.
Jabareen disse que de acordo com este inquérito, 56% das mulheres árabes desempregadas queria trabalhar imediatamente. “Desde 1948 que os governos israelitas culpam as barreiras culturais impedindo as mulheres árabes trabalhar da sua pobreza, mas todas as investigações mostram que o argumento é absurdo” comentou. Há centenas de mulheres árabes que competem pelos trabalhos que aparecem no mercado”.
Acrescentou que os homens árabes também enfrentam discriminação, mas encontram trabalho porque preenchem a necessidade de trabalho pesado e manual que a maior parte dos judeus recusa fazer, e viajando ainda longas distâncias para os locais das obras.
“As mulheres nem sequer têm essa opção” ajuntou. “ Não podem fazer esse tipo de trabalho e precisam de ficar perto das suas comunidades porque têm responsabilidades nas suas casas”.
O urbanista disse ainda que em média as mulheres árabes em Israel têm mais anos de escolarização do que as dos países árabes vizinhos e do que no terceiro mundo. Há até mais mulheres árabes do que homens a estudar na universidade.
“Toda a investigação levada a cabo mostra que quanto mais educada é a população, mais fácil deveria ser encontrar emprego. O caso das mulheres árabes em Israel contraria estes dados. Constituem um caso único”.
Um estudo realizado pelo Banco de Israel e publicado no mês passado sugere razões adicionais para o nível de pobreza das famílias árabes. Mostra que os homens árabes são forçados a reformar-se por volta dos 40 anos, uma década antes dos trabalhadores judeus e dos trabalhadores europeus e americanos.
Os investigadores atribuem o desemprego dos homens árabes ao facto de que a maior parte executa apenas trabalhos físicos muito exigentes e também ao facto destes trabalhadores estarem a ser substituídos por trabalhadores oriundos do terceiro mundo, que recebem menos do que o salário mínimo.
Jonathan Cook é um escritor e jornalista que vive em Nazaré. O seu site é: www.jkcook.net.
(uma versão deste artigo foi originalmente publicada em The National)
fonte: Counterpunch
Thursday, 22 October 2009
A polícia israelita escondida!
fonte:PC
Israeli Police Don Arab Disguise
Israeli Police Don Arab Disguise
By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth
Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel's Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs.
It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country's 1.3 million Arab citizens that were adopted long ago in the occupied territories, where soldiers are regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians.
According to David Cohen, the national police commissioner, the unit was established two years ago after an assessment that there was "no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community". He said that, in addition, undercover agents had been operating in East Jerusalem for several years to track potential terrorists.
Israel's Arab leaders denounced the move as confirmation that the Arab minority was still regarded by the police as "an enemy" - a criticism made by a state commission of inquiry after police shot dead 13 unarmed Arab demonstrators inside Israel and wounded hundreds more at the start of the second intifada in 2000.
In a letter of protest to Israeli officials this week, Adalah, a legal rights group, warned that the unit's creation violated the consitutional rights of the Arab minority and risked introducing "racial profiling" into Israeli policing.
Although the police claim that only Arab criminals are being targeted, Arab leaders believe the unit is an expansion of police efforts to collect information on political activists, escalating what they term a "climate of fear" being fostered by the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Awad Abdel Fattah, general secretary of the National Democratic Assembly party, whose activists are regularly interrogated by the police even though the party is represented in the national parliament, said there was strong evidence that undercover units had been operating in Arab communities for many years.
"The question is, why are the police revealing this information now? I suspect it is designed to intimidate people, making them fear that they are being secretly watched so that they don't participate in demonstrations or get involved in politics. It harms the democratic process."
Secret agents disguised as Arabs - known in Hebrew as "mista'aravim" - were used before Israel's founding. Jews, usually recruited from Arab countries, went undercover in neighbouring states to collect intelligence.
The Haaretz newspaper revealed in 1998 that the secret police, the Shin Bet, also operated a number of mista'aravim inside Israel shortly after the state's creation, locating them in major Arab communities.
The unit was disbanded in 1959, amid great secrecy, after several agents married local Arab women, and in some cases had children with them, in order to maintain their cover.
But the mista'aravim are better known for their use by the Israeli army on short-term missions inside Arab countries or in the West Bank and Gaza, where they have often been sent to capture or kill local leaders.
Famously Ehud Barak, the current defence minister, was sent to Beirut in 1973 disguised as an Arab woman to assassinate three Palestinian leaders.
More recently, however, the army's mista'aravim have come to notice because of allegations that they are being used as agents provocateurs, especially in breaking up peaceful protests by Palestinians in the West Bank against the separation wall.
In April 2005, during a demonstration at the village of Bilin, north of Jerusalem, Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers were revealed to be mista'aravim. They were filmed blowing their cover shortly afterwards by pulling our pistols to make arrests. The army later admitted it had used mista'aravim at the demonstration.
Palestinians claim that stone-throwing by mista'aravim is often used to disrupt or discredit peaceful demonstrations and justify the army's use of rubber bullets and live ammunition against the protesters in retaliation.
Last week Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of the parliament, warned other legislators of the danger that mista'aravim police officers would adopt similar tactics: "Such a unit will carry out provocations, in which the Arab public will be blamed for disorderly conduct."
Mr Abdel Fattah said there were widespread suspicions that mista'avarim officers had been operating for years at legal demonstrations held by Israel's Arab citizens, including at the protests against Israel's winter attack on Gaza. He said they were often disguised as journalists so that they could photograph demonstrators.
He said a woman activist from his party had been called in by the police for interrogation after a demonstration last year in the Arab town of Arrabeh. "The officer told her, 'I know what you were saying because I was standing right next to you'. And he then told her exactly what she had said."
In his testimony to a government watchdog, the police commissioner, Insp Gen Cohen, said he had plans for the unit "to grow" and that it would solve a problem the police had in infiltrating Israel's large Arab communities: "It's very hard for us to work in Umm al-Fahm, it's very hard for us to deal with crime in Juarish and Ramle."
Several unnamed senior officers, however, defended their role in monitoring the Arab community, claiming the commissioner was wrong in stating that the use of mista'aravim inside Israel was new. One told Haaretz: "Existing units of mista'aravim have operated undercover among this population for about a decade."
Orna Cohen, a lawyer with the Adalah legal group, said the accepted practice for police forces was to create specialised units according to the nature of the crime committed, not according to the ethnicity or nationality of the suspect.
She warned that the unit's secretive nature, its working methods and the apparent lack of safeguards led to a strong suspicion that the Arab minority was being characterised as a "suspect group". "Such a trend towards racial profiling and further discrimination against the minority is extremely dangerous," she said.
Comments two years ago from Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, have raised fears about the uses the police unit may be put to. He said the security services had the right to use any means to "thwart" action, even democratic activity, by the Arab minority to reform Israel's political system. All the Arab parties are committed to changing Israel's status from a Jewish state to "a state of all its citizens".
Mr Abdel Fattah said: "This is about transferring the methods used in the West Bank and Gaza into Israeli to erode our rights as citizens. It raises questions about what future the state sees for us here."
- Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at ww.jkcook.net. (A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.)
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Do boicote a Bilin: Uma entrevista com Jonathan Cook
fonte:EI
From boycotts to Bilin: An interview with Jonathan Cook
Jeff Gore, The Electronic Intifada, 9 October 2009
Jonathan Cook is a British journalist based in Nazareth, the largest Palestinian city in Israel, whose work is regularly published by The Electronic Intifada. His latest book, Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair, was published by Zed Books last October. He recently sat with Jeff Gore to discuss his work and his analysis of the current situation on the ground.
Jeff Gore: How and when did you first become interested in the Middle East, specifically the issue of Israel/Palestine?
Jonathan Cook: It was a gradual process that took over a decade. I became interested in Arab culture during a backpacking trip to Morocco in my early 20s. Later I got my first, faint taste of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Oslo years when I crossed over from Jordan for a three-day visit to Jerusalem. While I was walking along the Old City walls, I was surprised to see a group of Israeli soldiers beating two young Palestinian boys, maybe 12 years old, for no apparent reason. It certainly disturbed me, although I can't say it greatly politicized me at the time -- like most tourists, I suppose, I put it to the back of my mind.
A vague interest in the Middle East solidified into a more obvious concern while I was working in the foreign department of the Guardian. I started to sense that the paper's coverage didn't seem to be giving the whole picture of what I was seeing on my travels. Assuming the fault lay with me, I then did a two-year, part-time MA in Middle East politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. By the end I felt even more strongly that the media were failing. I chose as the topic of my MA dissertation land problems faced by Israel's Palestinian citizens in the Galilee. It was during the research that I began to conclude that much could be understood about the regional conflict from Israel's approach towards its Palestinian minority. I was surprised no one else appeared to be reaching such a conclusion, at least not at that time. Eventually, in 2001, I decided to leave my job in London and move to Nazareth to write a book about Israel's treatment of the minority at the start of the second intifada. I expected to complete it in a year. It took five -- and I am still in Nazareth eight years after my arrival.
JG: On your website you state that "There are striking, and disturbing, similarities between the experiences of Palestinians inside Israel and those inside the West Bank and Gaza." This is definitely true, but the occupation has persisted for long enough that it seems there would also be some noticeable differences. How does the outlook of a Palestinian citizen of Israel differ from that of a Palestinian living in the occupied territories?
JC: The "striking similarity" is in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians inside the areas it controls. It has sought to apply a very sophisticated form of divide and rule. From the outset inside Israel, Palestinian citizens were referred to not only as Arabs, to undermine their identity as Palestinians, but also as "the minorities." Israel's primary goal was to accentuate a series of subgroup identities -- Muslim, Christian, Bedouin, and Druze. The [Druze] were officially awarded the status of a separate nationality, with its own education system and requirement to serve in the army alongside Jews.
But even within these main categories there were further separations: between those in recognized communities and those in unrecognized communities; between those who were internal refugees, and had therefore lost all rights to their property, and those who weren't; between those who lived in the "mixed cities" and those in self-contained Arab communities; and between the main geographical areas: the Galilee, the Triangle and the Negev. On top of that, Israel has accentuated political differences, cultivating a series of splits between the main Arab parties to the point where even the Islamic party has two hostile wings.
The Palestinian minority inside Israel started to wake up belatedly to this game in the late 1990s, during the Oslo process, for a variety of complicated reasons set out in my book Blood and Religion. The result is a recent unprecedented reassertion of Palestinian identity as a way to circumvent these other crippling sub-identities. Nonetheless, it is an uphill struggle and far from won.
Interestingly, just as the Palestinians inside Israel realized they needed to create unity, the Palestinians in the occupied territories succumbed to Israel's divide-and-rule game. Israel used the Oslo process in particular to foster similar kinds of division, using the carve-up of the West Bank into a series of zones -- Areas A, B and C -- to interfere in Palestinian life in different ways. That process was taken a step further with the split both between the already-heavily divided West Bank and Gaza Strip and between Fatah and Hamas.
JG: Compared to the West Bank and Gaza, the occupied Golan Heights gets scant media attention. My guess is because there is far less "action" there. When I visited the Syrian village of Majd al-Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan, I encountered no checkpoints, saw street signs in Hebrew, and found that the Syrians enjoyed substantially more liberties there than the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. The last substantial flare-up of Syrian anger in the occupied Golan was more than a quarter-century ago (the general strike of 1981) and the intifada still remains a distinctly Palestinian struggle. What do you think are the reasons for this relative quiet in the Golan?
JC: The main reason is that the Druze in the Golan, unlike the Palestinians in the occupied territories, are not struggling for national liberation -- they are waiting for the Syrians to negotiate their return. A Druze intifada would be pointless because the small Druze community in the Golan does not want to run its own affairs. In a way, the Golan Druze are in a very similar position to the Palestinians inside Israel. Both are in a sort of political limbo, awaiting direction from the larger national group to which they belong.
Also, it should be noted that the settlement drive has been a relative failure in the Golan, most of which is empty. The settlers are hardly visible and certainly not encroaching on the Golan Druze in the way settlers are in the West Bank.
JG: I was involved in a debate about the effectiveness of the weekly protests at Israel's barrier in the West Bank villages of Nilin and Bilin, which often result in airborne stones and teargas canisters. Supporters of the protests say that it is a symbol of the indomitable resistance of the Palestinians, a sign that they will not be quieted and that Israel will never be able to rest easy as long as it remains an illegal occupier. Yet its detractors say that it gives trigger-happy Israel soldiers the perfect excuse to shoot and kill, that they look forward to it every week as some sort of military game or target practice. What's your take on these protests?
JC: The media often represent this as a battle between young hot-headed Palestinian stone-throwers and over-excited Israeli soldiers. That's largely a fiction. On the Palestinian side are to be found a cross-section of the resisting community, including its leaders and many middle-aged villagers who have families to support. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand off regularly against heavily armed Israeli teenagers, a significant number of them Jewish religious fanatics raised to believe they are fighting a holy war and many of the others raised to believe that the "Arabs" are a primitive, barbaric people. It may be true that some of the soldiers enjoy getting the chance to use their weapons (isn't it always true of some soldiers?) but again I cannot see why that should determine whether it is a good idea for the Palestinians to stage the protests.
As for the question of effectiveness, the answer is that the protests have undoubtedly been successful. The naked violence that Israel is forced to unleash against the protesters, and the subsequent raids to arrest the protest organizers, indicate just how much of a concern they are to Israel. In the case of Bilin and elsewhere the protests have successfully led to a change in the route of the wall that has restored to the villages some of their desperately needed farm land. The protests are also an important way for ordinary Palestinians to feel they have some agency in the conflict, both against Israel and in forcing a different agenda on to their corrupt national leadership. In the tearing down of the wall between Gaza and Egypt, for example, ordinary Palestinians showed what a much more concerted campaign of civil disobedience could achieve. If Israel deepens its apartheid rule in the West Bank, such campaigns of civil resistance are almost certainly the face of the future.
JG: How important do you think the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is at this stage in the conflict?
JC: It is a hugely important development in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. Certainly I think its moment has arrived.
This is a Palestinian grassroots initiative that cannot be bought off by Israel in the way the Fatah leadership was bought off by Oslo. It empowers Palestinians by allowing them to set the scope and agenda of their struggle, such as by demanding that artists respect their call not to perform in Israel. It offers a practical way for people outside the region to show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle by heeding that call and thinking creatively about how to implement BDS in their own countries. In the controversy and debate it generates it offers a chance to engage and educate those who are at the moment only vaguely aware that there might be problem here. And if BDS gains more momentum, it could really harm the Israeli economy. In fact, in my view there is no way to end the occupation unless Israelis are made to see that they will pay a heavy price for its continuance. The US could do that overnight by withdrawing its huge subsidies to Israel. I'm not holding my breath. Instead BDS gives all of us the power to show Israel that the occupation does not pay.
As for the issue of wider Palestinian support, it is still early days for BDS. In my experience, many ordinary Palestinians in the occupied territories and inside Israel are not yet sufficiently aware of the campaign or its potential importance. Some may also take some persuading that the outside world, which has aided and abetted their persecutors for so long, is capable of providing a solution. But my impression is that interest in and support for BDS among Palestinians is growing all the time.
JG: Since you live in Nazareth, you're in a rather unique position as a journalist sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. Considering that the Israeli government is not reluctant to arrest, censor, or deny entry to those fundamentally opposed to its policies, how have you survived professionally in Israel for so long?
JC: There are two reasons. First, I really am no threat to Israel, so why would it risk drawing attention to my work by making an example of me? Like other journalists whose reporting challenges the official consensus on Israel, I am excluded from the mainstream media. I write either on the Internet for Western readers who already know things are bad here (hopefully I can fill in some of the details they don't fully grasp) or for the Arab media, which most Westerners regard as unreliable. Early on it looked briefly as if I might break out of this ghetto. I started writing commentaries for The International Herald Tribune, a sort of globally syndicated version of The New York Times. Israel's lobby groups in the US moved into action very quickly, getting their foot soldiers to write complaints to the newspaper on a scale the paper had apparently never seen before (nor probably since). I was soon dropped. Israel really doesn't need to exert that kind of pressure itself: there are lots of organizations doing this stuff very successfully on its behalf.
The second reason is that I am married to an Israeli citizen, even if one from the Palestinian minority, and I therefore have Israeli residency. If Israel tried to bar me from the country, I would have a right of appeal to the courts. The law would almost certainly be on my side, mainly because I am a Westerner (it would be different were I a Palestinian or Arab) and because it would be difficult to show I posed any sort of security threat.
JG: Given that you've been covering this issue for nearly a decade and have written three books regarding Israel's policies, what advice can you give to freelance journalists interested in writing about this area of the world?
JC: Well, first of all you have to make a choice: are you going to report according to a ready-made script for the mainstream, or are you going to write it as you see it but struggle to get noticed or earn a living wage? Neither option is easy.
For those choosing the first path, the problem is that this is possibly the most reported conflict in the world. There are lots of journalists out here and most are very experienced, at least at writing the same safe reports designed not to offend either Israel or their news desks back home. Just getting your foot in the door is hard.
Anyone wishing to follow the second path better be resigned to staying on the margins of the media. There is rarely money in reporting critically about Israel. At least I was lucky that I could draw on savings I had accumulated while working at the Guardian. That's a luxury most aspiring young journalists don't have.
The third way is to abandon this traditional model of journalism and blog. There are still possibilities, though rapidly diminishing ones, to locate oneself in a West Bank community (though not in Gaza, because Israel controls all access) and send back eyewitness reports. You're not going to become Seymour Hersh or Robert Fisk, but you can still make a difference as a rare witness to what is going on.
Jeff Gore is a freelance journalist based in Athens, GA. He is a frequent contributor to the Athens weekly Flagpole Magazine and has also written articles for Dissident Voice and The Comment Factory. His journal of his summer spent in Palestine can be read at holylanddispatches.blogspot.com.
From boycotts to Bilin: An interview with Jonathan Cook
Jeff Gore, The Electronic Intifada, 9 October 2009
 |
| Jonathan Cook |
Jeff Gore: How and when did you first become interested in the Middle East, specifically the issue of Israel/Palestine?
Jonathan Cook: It was a gradual process that took over a decade. I became interested in Arab culture during a backpacking trip to Morocco in my early 20s. Later I got my first, faint taste of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during the Oslo years when I crossed over from Jordan for a three-day visit to Jerusalem. While I was walking along the Old City walls, I was surprised to see a group of Israeli soldiers beating two young Palestinian boys, maybe 12 years old, for no apparent reason. It certainly disturbed me, although I can't say it greatly politicized me at the time -- like most tourists, I suppose, I put it to the back of my mind.
A vague interest in the Middle East solidified into a more obvious concern while I was working in the foreign department of the Guardian. I started to sense that the paper's coverage didn't seem to be giving the whole picture of what I was seeing on my travels. Assuming the fault lay with me, I then did a two-year, part-time MA in Middle East politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. By the end I felt even more strongly that the media were failing. I chose as the topic of my MA dissertation land problems faced by Israel's Palestinian citizens in the Galilee. It was during the research that I began to conclude that much could be understood about the regional conflict from Israel's approach towards its Palestinian minority. I was surprised no one else appeared to be reaching such a conclusion, at least not at that time. Eventually, in 2001, I decided to leave my job in London and move to Nazareth to write a book about Israel's treatment of the minority at the start of the second intifada. I expected to complete it in a year. It took five -- and I am still in Nazareth eight years after my arrival.
JG: On your website you state that "There are striking, and disturbing, similarities between the experiences of Palestinians inside Israel and those inside the West Bank and Gaza." This is definitely true, but the occupation has persisted for long enough that it seems there would also be some noticeable differences. How does the outlook of a Palestinian citizen of Israel differ from that of a Palestinian living in the occupied territories?
JC: The "striking similarity" is in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians inside the areas it controls. It has sought to apply a very sophisticated form of divide and rule. From the outset inside Israel, Palestinian citizens were referred to not only as Arabs, to undermine their identity as Palestinians, but also as "the minorities." Israel's primary goal was to accentuate a series of subgroup identities -- Muslim, Christian, Bedouin, and Druze. The [Druze] were officially awarded the status of a separate nationality, with its own education system and requirement to serve in the army alongside Jews.
But even within these main categories there were further separations: between those in recognized communities and those in unrecognized communities; between those who were internal refugees, and had therefore lost all rights to their property, and those who weren't; between those who lived in the "mixed cities" and those in self-contained Arab communities; and between the main geographical areas: the Galilee, the Triangle and the Negev. On top of that, Israel has accentuated political differences, cultivating a series of splits between the main Arab parties to the point where even the Islamic party has two hostile wings.
The Palestinian minority inside Israel started to wake up belatedly to this game in the late 1990s, during the Oslo process, for a variety of complicated reasons set out in my book Blood and Religion. The result is a recent unprecedented reassertion of Palestinian identity as a way to circumvent these other crippling sub-identities. Nonetheless, it is an uphill struggle and far from won.
Interestingly, just as the Palestinians inside Israel realized they needed to create unity, the Palestinians in the occupied territories succumbed to Israel's divide-and-rule game. Israel used the Oslo process in particular to foster similar kinds of division, using the carve-up of the West Bank into a series of zones -- Areas A, B and C -- to interfere in Palestinian life in different ways. That process was taken a step further with the split both between the already-heavily divided West Bank and Gaza Strip and between Fatah and Hamas.
JG: Compared to the West Bank and Gaza, the occupied Golan Heights gets scant media attention. My guess is because there is far less "action" there. When I visited the Syrian village of Majd al-Shams in the Israeli-occupied Golan, I encountered no checkpoints, saw street signs in Hebrew, and found that the Syrians enjoyed substantially more liberties there than the Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza. The last substantial flare-up of Syrian anger in the occupied Golan was more than a quarter-century ago (the general strike of 1981) and the intifada still remains a distinctly Palestinian struggle. What do you think are the reasons for this relative quiet in the Golan?
JC: The main reason is that the Druze in the Golan, unlike the Palestinians in the occupied territories, are not struggling for national liberation -- they are waiting for the Syrians to negotiate their return. A Druze intifada would be pointless because the small Druze community in the Golan does not want to run its own affairs. In a way, the Golan Druze are in a very similar position to the Palestinians inside Israel. Both are in a sort of political limbo, awaiting direction from the larger national group to which they belong.
Also, it should be noted that the settlement drive has been a relative failure in the Golan, most of which is empty. The settlers are hardly visible and certainly not encroaching on the Golan Druze in the way settlers are in the West Bank.
JG: I was involved in a debate about the effectiveness of the weekly protests at Israel's barrier in the West Bank villages of Nilin and Bilin, which often result in airborne stones and teargas canisters. Supporters of the protests say that it is a symbol of the indomitable resistance of the Palestinians, a sign that they will not be quieted and that Israel will never be able to rest easy as long as it remains an illegal occupier. Yet its detractors say that it gives trigger-happy Israel soldiers the perfect excuse to shoot and kill, that they look forward to it every week as some sort of military game or target practice. What's your take on these protests?
JC: The media often represent this as a battle between young hot-headed Palestinian stone-throwers and over-excited Israeli soldiers. That's largely a fiction. On the Palestinian side are to be found a cross-section of the resisting community, including its leaders and many middle-aged villagers who have families to support. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand off regularly against heavily armed Israeli teenagers, a significant number of them Jewish religious fanatics raised to believe they are fighting a holy war and many of the others raised to believe that the "Arabs" are a primitive, barbaric people. It may be true that some of the soldiers enjoy getting the chance to use their weapons (isn't it always true of some soldiers?) but again I cannot see why that should determine whether it is a good idea for the Palestinians to stage the protests.
As for the question of effectiveness, the answer is that the protests have undoubtedly been successful. The naked violence that Israel is forced to unleash against the protesters, and the subsequent raids to arrest the protest organizers, indicate just how much of a concern they are to Israel. In the case of Bilin and elsewhere the protests have successfully led to a change in the route of the wall that has restored to the villages some of their desperately needed farm land. The protests are also an important way for ordinary Palestinians to feel they have some agency in the conflict, both against Israel and in forcing a different agenda on to their corrupt national leadership. In the tearing down of the wall between Gaza and Egypt, for example, ordinary Palestinians showed what a much more concerted campaign of civil disobedience could achieve. If Israel deepens its apartheid rule in the West Bank, such campaigns of civil resistance are almost certainly the face of the future.
JG: How important do you think the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is at this stage in the conflict?
JC: It is a hugely important development in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. Certainly I think its moment has arrived.
This is a Palestinian grassroots initiative that cannot be bought off by Israel in the way the Fatah leadership was bought off by Oslo. It empowers Palestinians by allowing them to set the scope and agenda of their struggle, such as by demanding that artists respect their call not to perform in Israel. It offers a practical way for people outside the region to show solidarity with the Palestinian struggle by heeding that call and thinking creatively about how to implement BDS in their own countries. In the controversy and debate it generates it offers a chance to engage and educate those who are at the moment only vaguely aware that there might be problem here. And if BDS gains more momentum, it could really harm the Israeli economy. In fact, in my view there is no way to end the occupation unless Israelis are made to see that they will pay a heavy price for its continuance. The US could do that overnight by withdrawing its huge subsidies to Israel. I'm not holding my breath. Instead BDS gives all of us the power to show Israel that the occupation does not pay.
As for the issue of wider Palestinian support, it is still early days for BDS. In my experience, many ordinary Palestinians in the occupied territories and inside Israel are not yet sufficiently aware of the campaign or its potential importance. Some may also take some persuading that the outside world, which has aided and abetted their persecutors for so long, is capable of providing a solution. But my impression is that interest in and support for BDS among Palestinians is growing all the time.
JG: Since you live in Nazareth, you're in a rather unique position as a journalist sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. Considering that the Israeli government is not reluctant to arrest, censor, or deny entry to those fundamentally opposed to its policies, how have you survived professionally in Israel for so long?
JC: There are two reasons. First, I really am no threat to Israel, so why would it risk drawing attention to my work by making an example of me? Like other journalists whose reporting challenges the official consensus on Israel, I am excluded from the mainstream media. I write either on the Internet for Western readers who already know things are bad here (hopefully I can fill in some of the details they don't fully grasp) or for the Arab media, which most Westerners regard as unreliable. Early on it looked briefly as if I might break out of this ghetto. I started writing commentaries for The International Herald Tribune, a sort of globally syndicated version of The New York Times. Israel's lobby groups in the US moved into action very quickly, getting their foot soldiers to write complaints to the newspaper on a scale the paper had apparently never seen before (nor probably since). I was soon dropped. Israel really doesn't need to exert that kind of pressure itself: there are lots of organizations doing this stuff very successfully on its behalf.
The second reason is that I am married to an Israeli citizen, even if one from the Palestinian minority, and I therefore have Israeli residency. If Israel tried to bar me from the country, I would have a right of appeal to the courts. The law would almost certainly be on my side, mainly because I am a Westerner (it would be different were I a Palestinian or Arab) and because it would be difficult to show I posed any sort of security threat.
JG: Given that you've been covering this issue for nearly a decade and have written three books regarding Israel's policies, what advice can you give to freelance journalists interested in writing about this area of the world?
JC: Well, first of all you have to make a choice: are you going to report according to a ready-made script for the mainstream, or are you going to write it as you see it but struggle to get noticed or earn a living wage? Neither option is easy.
For those choosing the first path, the problem is that this is possibly the most reported conflict in the world. There are lots of journalists out here and most are very experienced, at least at writing the same safe reports designed not to offend either Israel or their news desks back home. Just getting your foot in the door is hard.
Anyone wishing to follow the second path better be resigned to staying on the margins of the media. There is rarely money in reporting critically about Israel. At least I was lucky that I could draw on savings I had accumulated while working at the Guardian. That's a luxury most aspiring young journalists don't have.
The third way is to abandon this traditional model of journalism and blog. There are still possibilities, though rapidly diminishing ones, to locate oneself in a West Bank community (though not in Gaza, because Israel controls all access) and send back eyewitness reports. You're not going to become Seymour Hersh or Robert Fisk, but you can still make a difference as a rare witness to what is going on.
Jeff Gore is a freelance journalist based in Athens, GA. He is a frequent contributor to the Athens weekly Flagpole Magazine and has also written articles for Dissident Voice and The Comment Factory. His journal of his summer spent in Palestine can be read at holylanddispatches.blogspot.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
