June 1995, Pages 7, 85-87

The Retreat From Oslo: Tactical Repositioning or Total Abandonment?—Three Views

A Jewish-American Peace Activist

A Jewish State Brings Back the Pale

By Rachelle Marshall

As czarist Russia carved away larger and larger portions of Poland during the late 18th century, the new empire found itself with a large population of Polish Jews whom the Russian rulers were determined to keep from moving into Russia. To the Russian Orthodox hierarchy such an influx was unthinkable: the Jews had turned their back on Christianity, they were clannish and observed bizarre rituals, and as skilled businessmen they posed a competitive threat to Russian merchants. Rumors spread that Jews used the blood of Christian children in baking their Passover matzoh.

In 1791 Catherine the Great and her advisers solved the problem by creating the Pale—a belt of land stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea—and confining almost all Jews within it. Not only were they not allowed to move elsewhere in Russia, but even within the Pale they were forced to live in cities and towns and could not own land outside the town boundaries. The restrictions remained in place until the early 1900s, when the czar allowed a few favored families to move out of the Pale. In 1917 the Soviets abolished the restrictions entirely.

Today, 200 years later, the Pale is being re-created, not in Eastern Europe as before, but in territory that once belonged to the Palestinians. In a strange reversal of circumstances, this time the guardians of the border are Jews. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's proposal for permanent physical separation of Palestinians and Israelis means isolating the Palestinians within closely guarded enclaves and barring them from access to Israel and East Jerusalem. Like the Jews of 19th century Russia, they would be permanently at the mercy of armed and hostile neighbors and the soldiers assigned to guard them. Palestinians would be "separated" from Israelis in the same sense that prisoners in San Quentin are separated from the rest of society.

During the last week in March a committee of defense experts headed by Police Minister Moshe Shahal completed work on plans for a 212-mile security strip between Israel and the West Bank that would be protected by border fences, electronic monitors, army patrols, sniffer dogs, helicopters and 1,000 extra police. An electronic fence is already under construction along Israel's border with Gaza. The Finance Ministry believes the cost of implementing the plan could be as much as $670 million.

The immediate rationale for Israel's confinement of an entire population is that in the past year and a half Palestinian attackers have killed some 130 Israelis, most of them in shockingly gruesome suicide bombings. The attacks aroused so much anger and revulsion among Israelis that Rabin, reluctant to suspend talks with the PLO, felt obliged to take punitive action. By closing Israel's borders with Gaza and the West Bank after each act of violence, he punished nearly two million Palestinians for the actions of a few.

In preventing Palestinians from reaching their jobs in Israel and barring them from Jerusalem, Rabin no doubt satisfied the desire of many Israelis for revenge and for enhanced security, but by making life under occupation even more oppressive he insured that such attacks would continue and that growing numbers of Palestinians would condone them. At the same time, Israel's repeated imposition of harsh collective punishment has eroded the Palestinians' faith in peace negotiations with Israel and with the PLO leadership that agreed to enter them.

After Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the April 9 bombing in Gaza that killed seven Israelis and an American college student, Palestinian police arrested some 300 suspected Hamas members. But as Hamas leader Dr. Mahmoud Zahar pointed out, the Israelis' use of mass arrests in the past had not reduced Palestinian resistance. "The PLO is doing the same thing now," he said, "and getting the same reception. When they show up at homes to arrest our people, their cars are stoned and children spit at them." As for Yasser Arafat, president of the Palestinian National Authority, "He is losing his popularity every time he uses the word terrorist to describe Palestinians fighting against Israeli occupation."

Like collective punishment and mass arrests, Rabin's plan for separation is also destined to provoke more anti-Israel violence rather than prevent it. So far no Israeli official has explained how 800,000 West Bank Palestinians can be effectively walled off from the more than 130,000 Israeli settlers who live among them, a number that has grown by 20 percent since Rabin took office and continues to increase. Despite rigid border controls and the killing by Israeli guards last year of more than 20 Palestinians caught attempting to cross without a permit, infiltrators bent on violence were able to get into Israel. As a Bir Zeit University employee recently commented to the Jerusalem Times, "Suicide bombers generally do not bother applying for permits. Israel's policy of sealing the territories has only created more bitterness, even among those who support the peace process."

In Gaza, most of the victims of Palestinian attacks have been young soldiers assigned to protect the 4,000 Israeli settlers. With forced and permanent separation, the far larger number of West Bank settlers would be in greater need of protection than ever as Palestinians see Israelis enjoying swimming pools and well-built roads while they are unable to provide food for their children. It is not surprising that after Israeli undercover agents killed three Hamas members in Hebron in April, an angry Palestinian bystander shouted, "We are all Hamas. The whole city is Hamas!"

It is the nature of the occupation itself that breeds suicidal violence. The inconsistent policies, maddening restrictions, and petty cruelties that Palestinians faced in the past have only increased since the Declaration of Principles was signed in 1993. The harassment takes many forms. The government announces one day that it will allow 15,000 Palestinians to work in Israel, but in the end only 6,000 are actually admitted. Citizens of Bethlehem with valid permits to enter Jerusalem are suddenly asked at the border to present proof that they paid their water bills. Prisoners spend six months in a desert prison without being told the charges against them and on the day they expect to be released a prison official tells them curtly that their sentence has been renewed. A Palestinian receives a permit to go to Jerusalem for medical treatment only to have the permit torn up and his identity card taken by a border guard. Commuter buses are routinely turned back for no reason. According to one driver, "It depends on the mood of the soldiers." The 80,000 Palestinians of Hebron are kept under round-the-clock curfew for the entire week of Passover as thousands of right-wing Israelis pour into the city to show support for a local Jewish settlement.

Gazans lucky enough to receive work permits for jobs in Israel are no longer allowed to ride the cheap Gazan buses but must take Israeli buses that cost a third of their daily wage. Students from Gaza who attend West Bank universities are denied permission to travel to them even though Rabin had promised to open "safe passage" routes between the territories. After the regular nightly curfew Palestinians in Hebron wake up to find that Israeli soldiers have slaughtered more than 100 of their dogs and left the carcasses in the street. Dogs owned by settlers are not harmed.

A Policy of Breaking Promises

Breaking promises is an integral part of Israeli policy. Rabin repeatedly promises to release more Palestinian prisoners only to back down. He promises to freeze settlement activity, but in two years confiscates 40,000 additional acres of Palestinian land for new settlements. The government agrees to turn over to the Palestinian National Authority money deducted from the paychecks of Palestinian workers only to cancel the payment before it is completed. Israel grants the Palestinian Authority the right to collect the tax on phone bills in the occupied territories but the Israeli phone company moves its offices from Ramallah to Jerusalem and says the Palestinians are no longer entitled to the money. With great fanfare Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Arafat announce that Palestinian elections and Israeli troop withdrawals will begin next July 1, but Peres later tells the Knesset that only Palestinians who recognize Israel and oppose violence may take part in the elections. (Israel is yet to pass a law allowing only Israeli pacifists to vote.) Finally, Rabin repeats his warning that "no date is sacred" and threatens to delay elections until Arafat takes stronger action against terrorists.

As if repeated frustration and dashed hopes were not tormenting enough, Israel has been waging an all-out effort to prevent Palestinian economic development—an effort that has nothing to do with fear of terrorism or conflict over territory but everything to do with protecting profits. Scores of wealthy Palestinians from abroad stand ready to finance enterprises in the occupied territories that would provide employment for thousands of people, but they are unable to do so because of the barriers Israel has put in the way.

Barriers to Development

Frequent, unpredictable border closings make it impossible for Palestinian producers to import the raw materials they need or to export their finished products. One potential investor in Gaza, Said El Mashal, joined with several other Palestinian businessmen to found a $200 million holding company with plans for low-income housing, a clothing factory, and a cement plant. But because of export restrictions they are reluctant to begin. "How can I do anything," El Mashal complained to reporters, "when I am not responsible for the destiny of my product?" Yet while Israel cuts off shipments of raw materials to the occupied territories, and bars Palestinian trucks from entering Israel, Israeli goods continue to pour into Gaza and the West Bank. In late March, as producers in Gaza claimed losses of $6 million a day from the ban on exports, PNA Minister of Agriculture Mohammed Nashishibi threatened to retaliate by preventing Israeli produce from entering Gaza. Israel ignored the threat.

Even before the suicide bombings, Israeli authorities made it all but impossible for outsiders to invest in the occupied territories. Until 1991 Israel banned all industry in the territories that could compete with Israeli businesses. Although the ban has since been lifted, investors still face frustrating red tape. According to a report by Muhammed Daraghmeh in the Feb. 10 issue of the Jerusalem Times, "Sometimes projects are not allowed on lands because they are classified as absentee property. On other occasions the reasons for their refusal is unclear." Daraghmeh cites a former West Bank resident who applied for a permit to establish a three-stage industrial project to produce building materials. He had to give up the idea when the Israeli Civil Administration granted him permits for the second and third stages but refused to grant one for the first stage. Another investor succeeded in finding a plot of land on the West Bank to build a factory only to have Israel deny him permission to hook up with a nearby electric grid. Israel also refuses to let Palestinian businesses take advantage of a law waiving sales taxes on new equipment purchases during the first three years, a policy Palestinians believe is deliberately aimed at discouraging development.

Israeli opposition to Palestinian economic development is consistent with the government's ongoing effort to keep the Palestinian economy dependent on Israel's. In the past this has meant using the occupied territories as a source of cheap labor and a market for Israeli goods. With separation, as Rabin envisions it, the only change will be that instead of commuting to Israel, Palestinians will work in "industrial zones" located in the occupied territories. In theory, Palestinians as well as Israelis could own and operate factories in these zones, but in fact Israel would retain ultimate control, since in order to buy or sell in Israel or abroad, Palestinians would still need Israeli permits, which could be granted or withheld according to the whim of Israeli officials. According to the left-wing Israeli publication News from Within, Rabin's plan for industrial zones combined with separation is being publicized in Israel with the slogan, "Instead of bringing menial workers to Israel, we will bring the work to them."

Some Palestinians insist that an alternative is possible, that if Palestinian entrepreneurs can be persuaded to invest in Gaza and the West Bank the payoff in increased employment and high profits would be great. But competing pressures on Arafat from Israel and the U.S. on the one hand, and from Palestinian opponents of the Declaration of Principles on the other make the future of the Palestinian territories uncertain. If he continues to bargain for crumbs from Israel while jailing his opponents and counting on foreign donations to help rescue his leadership, the prospect for most Palestinians will be bleak. Life in a police state where sweatshops are the only source of jobs would be no better because the police and some of the factory owners are Palestinians instead of Israelis.

Yet that is where the current peace talks are heading. Rabin openly opposes any substantial Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. (He recently said he would consider offering Palestinians a state in the Gaza Strip "if they would...leave the West Bank alone.") Under his plan for separation, Palestinians would remain a subject people indefinitely. Realizing this, many Palestinians are ready to abandon the current negotiations and, like Ahmed Yousef writing in the April-May issue of the Washington Report, consider renewing the political struggle for independence. But as Yousef points out, any new effort must be as inclusive as possible if it is to avoid factional violence.

Only a representative assembly, chosen in fair and open elections, can provide a forum where the whole spectrum of Palestinian opinion can be expressed and decisions reached democratically. For this reason, Palestinians and all others who would continue to work for a just peace should focus on pressuring Israel to allow the long overdue Palestinian elections to be held as as soon as possible. Within the U.S., such a call would force Washington policymakers to choose between upholding the most fundamental principle of democracy—free elections—and continuing to support an Israeli government that is doing everything in its power to prevent them. It would not be the first time that a commitment to democratic values conflicts with blind allegiance to the government of Israel.

Rachelle Marshall is a free-lance editor living in Stanford, CA. A member of the International Jewish Peace Union, she writes frequently on the Middle East.