The 'Israelisation' Illusion and 'Israeli Arabs' Propaganda: Palestine - The Occupied Territories
15 September 2017Once again, the
Israeli authorities have thrown another Palestinian leader into prison. Once
again that leader is Raed Salah, who has a defiant smile and whose life shares
characteristics with liberation leaders known to the world through their
civil, non-violent struggles, the price of which has been repeated
imprisonment and sometimes assassination.
Raed Salah, who is quietly approaching sixty and living an active life, is one
of the most prominent Palestinian leaders today. He has gained support from
Muslim and Christian religious leaders for his defence of the Palestinian
sanctities — mosques, churches, monasteries and historical monuments —
threatened by the Israeli authorities and extremists. What is unique in his
case is that his experience is closely linked to Jerusalem, even though he was
born in the very core of the Palestinian presence, which the Israeli
propaganda calls "Israeli Arabs". He is a Palestinian leader who is forced to
carry Israeli citizenship.
The Israelis around David Ben-Gurion who were in ecstasy at their military
victory in 1948 imagined that they had accomplished the task of ethnic
cleansing, the details of which have been set out in successive studies by
Israeli historians in recent decades. The task of dealing with those left
behind seemed easy; there were about 100,000 Palestinians who managed to
survive the Nakba in the territories occupied in 1948. They were forced to be
Israelis in terms of documentation, and it seemed like an easy task to
assimilate them, using them as propaganda for "the only democracy in the
Middle East".
It was not only demography that has since evolved dramatically, with the
"Israeli Arab" population jumping from 100,000 in 1948 to 1.5 million today.
The sense of the Palestinian collective identity, experience of the challenge,
cultural resistance and civil society activism has also grown. The "Israeli
Arabs" complain about this nomenclature, which links them to a state
established on the ruins of their homeland. They call themselves in terms that
express their identity more clearly, such as "Palestinians in Palestine" or,
more usually, "1948 Palestinians". The use of the year indicates explicitly
that the Nakba is the founding event for their collective consciousness.
What Israel wanted them to do was to stand up in May every year to glorify the
"independence" that crushed their people and displaced them in places of exile
that could be seen with the naked eye beyond the borders of their country.
However, over time, this has become the anniversary that worries the Israeli
government most, because of the marches in which "1948 Palestinians" carry the
names of their villages from which they were displaced, the keys to their
homes and Palestinian flags. The Nakba occurred entirely within Palestine as
well; Palestinians were displaced from their cities and towns to other areas
under Israeli military occupation in 1948. They were then prohibited from
going back to their homes, despite the fact that they were living under the
same occupation/state. The "1948 Palestinians" declared their commitment to
their land in a mass march in 1967, and they were rewarded by Israeli forces
shooting and killing six protesters, wounding 100 and arresting hundreds more.
Land Day has become an annual event on 30 March, to mark their defiance.
The Israeli authorities have done everything in their power to prevent the
emergence of coherent and effective formations among the "1948 Palestinians"
who fall under their direct rule, although according to the law they are
"Israelis". Thus, the local civil society groups and movements that emerged
after the Nakba were targeted by means of prohibition, persecution and
harassment, and continue to be so. As part of these efforts, many institutions
and associations have been banned and popular leaders are still being
prosecuted. Israel is full of excuses to justify every one of these measures.
In November 2015, the largest wave of banning orders included the Islamic
Movement, the largest and most organised grassroots organisation, with the
most number of affiliated institutions, associations, specialised centres and
public initiatives; the orders were issued in one fell swoop. This expansion
of the bans reflected the thinking within the extreme right-wing government
that abuses the legal system to serve its own purposes.
By cracking down on civil society institutions and prosecuting popular leaders
of the local Palestinian community, the Israeli authorities are relentlessly
crushing any opportunity for an effective leadership to mature among what the
media calls "Israeli Arabs". The latter are meant to behave in the way that
Israeli propaganda portrays them; smiling and feeling overwhelmingly content
because they are "citizens of the State of Israel, the only democracy…" I am
sure that you get the point.
The game seems to have ended a while back. The leaders of the Israeli
government have realised that this "Israelisation" project has not succeeded;
instead, "Palestinianisation" has emerged with the revival of a strong
awareness of Palestinian identity. This project has grown by engaging in mass
events and major programmes, even in the southern Bedouin communities where
most refuse to serve in the Israeli army and the youth are quick to express
their anger towards the authorities in various ways. This was apparent in the
early summer of 2014, when a youth uprising broke out in their areas, similar
to the uprising in the West Bank. In 2000, the first young men who were shot
by the Israeli forces in the Aqsa Intifada were Palestinians from the areas
occupied in 1948. The "1948 Palestinian" poets, including the late mayor of
Nazareth, Tawfik Zayyad, who was known for his intense poems in which he
declared "we are here stay", predicted the growing awareness of identities and
challenges.
The summer of 2017 has witnessed an important development in this regard.
Benjamin Netanyahu's government implement "security" measures in Al-Aqsa
Mosque with its usual degree of arrogance; it closed the mosque and banned not
only the call to prayer but also the prayers themselves. It also imposed
measures affecting the sovereignty of the Noble Sanctuary, such as electronic
gates and surveillance cameras. A popular outrage and rejection movement
emerged immediately from among the residents of Jerusalem and large numbers of
Palestinian "Israeli Arabs". In the years since the occupation authorities
isolated the West Bank from Jerusalem by means of walls, checkpoints and
travel bans, a vibrant relationship between the "1948 Palestinians" and
Jerusalem has formed. Sheikh Raed Salah has played a key role in encouraging
and developing this.
This is the context of the decision and timing to re-arrest the Palestinian
leader; Raed Salah's detention has a retaliatory nature to it, retaliation
against the Palestinian presence that the Israeli government system simply
cannot handle. This presence was demonstrated during the recent events in
Jerusalem, and it was able to break the Netanyahu government's decision.
Sheikh Raed's arrest is also part of a wave of prohibition and criminalisation
that started in 2015. It is worth noting that the Israeli government "allows"
civil society organisations to operate in the open rather than underground.
However, it felt the danger of the growing sense of Palestinian identity
through popular, cultural and media activism, and specialised institutions,
and so it began to destroy them with the force of the law.
Over the years, the decision to participate in elections to the Israeli
Knesset (Parliament) was a bone of contention among "1948 Palestinians". Some
rejected it on principle, insisting that it will give the Israeli government a
democratic mask of plurality that hides the reality serving the "Jewish
state", as Theodor Herzl put it. Others saw political participation as a
chance for defiance and to have their voices heard. Whatever the position
taken, everyone admitted the inability to achieve actual progress from such
participation. The Arab MKs have won 12 seats in the Knesset by means of
coordination between their lists. This has prompted the Knesset to take
inflexible and racist measure after sensing the emergence of the Palestinian
identity in the political arena.
Israeli logic cannot recognise and accept Palestinian identity in any way,
because it is saturated with the ideology of the Zionist establishment, which
is a mixture of the speeches of 19th century European nationalist movements
and the culture of colonial supremacy that indigenous peoples do not primarily
see.
As such, Israeli legislators have mobilised their efforts to eradicate
inspirational — for Palestinians — words such as Nakba, and have worked hard
to prevent the revival of the shocking memory of the Catastrophe in the
Palestinian collective consciousness. They have also enacted legislation to
enforce allegiance to the "Jewish state" and to promote the Israeli national
anthem, which has been adapted from European folk songs.
We have witnessed a wave of draft laws proposed in the Knesset in recent years
which aim to tighten the oppression against the "1948 Palestinians", such as
limiting the use of Arabic, in road signs, for example, and banning the call
to prayer from mosques, some of which were built before the founding fathers
of political Zionism were even born. There have been persecution and slander
campaigns against the few Arab legislators in the Knesset, threatening them
with the lifting of their parliamentary immunity and prosecution for their
statements and positions.
Thus, Israeli democracy shows loyalty only to its Jewish constituents,
provided that they are supporters of the occupation, of course. For the
victims of this "democracy" also include Jewish Israeli civil society
organisations which defend human rights and monitor, for example, grave
violations committed by the army. Israel is, in practice, not the state of all
Jews. In fact, there have been vicious decisions and incitement campaigns
aimed at suppressing independent Israeli organisations, while trying to stifle
them by preventing them from receiving funds from overseas, notably from the
EU. Only "good" Israeli organisations should make use of external donations if
their priorities are focused on recruiting young foreigners to the Israeli
army, supporting the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank,
controlling Arab homes in Jerusalem, or intensifying the obsessive and
fanatical propaganda calling for the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the
construction of a temple on its ruins.
Hence, ever more Israelis find themselves outside the framework of this
official obsessiveness, as well as groups of Israeli youth looking for their
own free future in Europe, as indicated by the high level of migration to
Germany in recent years. There are no longer bleak grey walls being erected in
Berlin, but there are plenty being built by the Israeli occupation authorities
in Palestine.
Despite the Israeli concern with portraying a democratic front, the reality of
its practices towards the Palestinians who had Israeli identity imposed on
them clearly indicates that it stems from the mentality of an occupation
regime committed to the interests of one group over the other. Anyone who
examines the scenario will see that the Palestinians are not wanted, even if
they do have Israeli citizenship. There is an abundance of evidence of
institutional discrimination in the system.
The authorities that imposed military control over this land in 1948 do not
recognise some of the "1948 Palestinian" villages in the Negev Desert, and so
they demolish them relentlessly. The images of such demolitions, in villages
like Al-Araqeeb and Umm Al-Hiran, have become familiar. The authorities
demolish and the Palestinians rebuild, and then the process repeats itself
over years. It is yet another bold expression of the Palestinians' defiance
and will. These images do not align with the image of the Arab Bedouins as
portrayed by Israeli propaganda, which shows them pouring coffee and welcoming
the leaders of the government and army which occupied their land.
The internal displacement of Palestinians is ongoing, by soft and hard means,
while the same authorities are pushing their illegal settlers across the
occupied West Bank in order to establish settlement blocs under the watchful
eyes of their security forces. These settlements are built on the land seized
forcibly from the Palestinians. Some of the settlers even occupy seats in the
Knesset and the government — more so now than at any time before — and they
are tailoring the laws, policies and procedures to their liking. These
settlers, along with others, have a problem with a growing Palestinian
demographic in the heart of the country, which they are marketing to the world
as the "Jewish state". Part of the Israeli strategy is to divide the
Palestinian people and isolate them in geographically fragmented areas; in
disconnected Bantustans, to use the Apartheid South Africa analogy.
The Israeli government is harnessing all of its efforts and institutions in an
attempt to divide the Palestinian people under occupation across historic
Palestine. Each section of land has its own governing system and means of
social control. We see the Gaza Strip and the West Bank; the latter is divided
into areas A, B and C, with each having its own system based on the Oslo
Accords. Then there is occupied East Jerusalem and the Palestinian presence
called the "Arab population" or "Israeli Arabs" by Israeli propaganda. They
are also subject to various systems based on unofficial categorisation of
their areas, based on the Palestinian population density, its significance and
geostrategic aspects. The government is persecuting local Palestinian
communities, while unleashing racist political parties, neo-fascist
organisations and Israeli settler gangs which all receive official support and
backing. Successive Israeli governments have prohibited the return of
Palestinian refugees to their land and homes, holding on to their property by
means of the "law" while granting the privilege of "return" only to those who
are Jews, regardless of what part of the world they are from, also in
accordance with the "law".
However, the methods resorted to by the Israeli authorities out of necessity
seem to be proof of the collapse of its project to dissolve the Palestinian
presence, the movement of which it can feel on its insides. The "1948
Palestinians" have not succumbed to Israel's attempts to subjugate them, but
have instead developed their own culture of smart defiance. This culture is
present in their rhetoric and discourse, as well as in their literature,
culture, arts and various civil and specialised activities. It is apparent
that, in the years to come, the "1948 Palestinians" will be even more involved
and at the heart of events.
Previous colonial and occupation experiences suggest that the arrest of
popular leaders and the pursuit of local leaders was an easy task for the
colonial occupation authorities, but prison was often a sign of defeat; the
failure of the comprehensive control project and the beginning of the
inevitable end. When the "1948 Palestinians" see their leading figures
challenging prison sentences, standing with smiles on their faces as they
listen to their comical indictments, the new generations will not be prevented
by anyone from raising the standards and levels of defiance and raising their
voices to declare, "This is Palestine, not Israel". It is likely that "former
Israelis" — Jews who choose to leave the country — will openly support them;
some are already doing so today.
- Hossam Shaker is an expert on Arab-European affairs and a journalist and
an author who has extensively covered the topic of migration in Europe. His
article was published in MEMO.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments