ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER
"News From Within," September 1996
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THREE YEARS SINCE OSLO: BUILDING THE APARTHEID STATE
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by Tikva Honig-Parnass
Today, facing the chilling reality which has been revealed to
us, one can say that even the very few who soberly and totally
rejected the Oslo agreements at the beginning were somewhat naive
and blind.
At that time, our main concern was to point out that the Oslo
agreement did not recognize the national right of the Palestinian
people to an independent state. However, by emphasizing
statehood, we attributed an almost supreme significance to the
legal status and the symbols of sovereignty of the entity which
was supposed to emerge at the end of the political process. All
too often, we found ourselves entangled in the local and
international discourse over whether the Oslo agreement could
indeed lead to 'a Palestinian state' or not.
Today it is clear that this should not have been the central
issue in the discussion of Oslo. The agreement as such does not
contradict the granting of formal independence - in the framework
of a mini-Bandustan. However, its essence is the delineation of a
solid foundation for the continuation of Israel's colonial
control of the natural resources and the cheap labor force found
within the Zionist apartheid state, with the active help of a
treacherous Palestinian leadership. Moreover, the characteristics
of an independent Bandustan are strongly in Israel's interest.
Only the dim and unclear promise of such an independence which
was given then to the international community could have brought
about its retreat from its former consensual position, that
Israel must withdraw fully from the territories occupied in 1967
and adopt a two state solution. And Israel is quite aware that
only the implementation of this promise for 'independence' will
enable her to remove the issue of Palestinian national rights
from the international agenda.
Our accumulated experience of colonialist movements in
general, and the Labor Zionist movement in particular, should
have prepared us better to recognize the magnitude of cynicism in
the present readiness of the Labor party to remove its objection
to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the
fragmentary lands of the autonomy. There are many indications
that Netanyahu and some other Likud leaders would agree to this
plan (as reported in an interview with Likud former Prime
Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, Ha'aretz, 3 September 1996). This is
equally true of the clauses delineating Palestinian-Israeli
security co-operation and the work of the joint co-ordinating
committees responsible for ensuring the inequitable use of the
natural resources - control over which was denied to the
Palestinians. There is only one interpretation of this situation:
it is preparing the infrastructure for an apartheid state.
A clearer grasp of the colonial narrative would have prepared
us better to confront the inevitable implications of this
apartheid scheme. That is, the unlimited hunger for immediate
maximum profits and the continuous devastation of the Palestinian
economy which prepare the ground for the full control of a cheap
and submissive Palestinian labor force.
The characteristics of apartheid necessarily require, from the
beginning, a regime and an ideology which will enable submission
to it. It requires, first of all, a breaking of the spirit, of
the backbone and the personal and collective self-esteem of the
subjects of the apartheid policy. Then comes the destruction of
the entire basis of an organized personal and community life. Of
course, we foresaw the role allocated to Arafat as the leader of
an oppressive regime 'without B'Zelem and without the High Court
of Justice'. But we underestimated the breadth and depth of the
oppression of an dictatorial system of rule which is not only
directed against the political opposition, killing and torturing
them, but stamps out any individual rights in the realm of civil
liberties - such as the confiscation of Edward Said's books. We
did not foresee the speed and the comparative ease with which the
spirit of political and intellectual leaders could be broken to
the point that they hardly responded to the confiscation of
books.
The need for strengthening adherence to a Zionist ideology
which could justify the policy of apartheid was also, in a
certain sense, an innovation which was not sufficiently expected:
the eduational program for this year, which had already been
prepared by the former Minister of Education from the Meretz
party, Amnon Rubinstein, was to have concentrated on teaching the
history of Zionism and the acquisition of its values.
The depth of the hypocrisy of the Zionist 'peace camp' is the
last in a long series of developments whose strength we did not
anticipate. This hypocrisy is a direct result of the agreement of
this whole camp, throughout its entire political spectrum, to
support the apartheid state which is being constructed right
before its eyes. They differ among themselves mainly concerning
the question about to whom, and to whose version of events, they
will give their loyalty: to the Israeli rulers or to their
Palestinian servants. In the face of rampant human rights
violations, of murder and torture on both sides, they have
refrained from making their voice heard in the past few years,
while sowing the illusion of the chances of the 'peace' and the
'establishment of an independent Palestinian state.'
The total marginalization of the very few who recognized the
Oslo agreements from the beginning as a disaster for the
Palestinian people and for the whole region - this was the
unescapable result of the breakup which we (radical Israelis and
Palestinians) made, a number of years before and during the
intifada, over our vision of a single democratic state in all of
Palestine/Israel. This breakup has ended. The apartheid state
being constructed turns the joint struggle for full equality
within a single democratic state the only realistic alternative.
-- Tikva Honig-Parnass
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