http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon06072008.html
The Occupation and the Politics of Death
The Land, Not the People
By NEVE GORDON
On June 8, 1967, just a few hours after
the Israeli military captured Jerusalem's
Temple Mount, Haram al Sharif,
Defense Minister Moshe Dayan visited the site.
Noticing that troops had hung an Israeli
flag on the cap of the Al-Aqsa shrine,
Dayan asked one of the soldiers to remove it,
adding that displaying the Israeli national
symbol for all to see was an unnecessarily
provocative act.
Those who have visited the Occupied
Territories in the past years have no
doubt noticed Israeli flags fluttering
over almost every building Israel occupies
as well as above every Jewish settlement.
Ariel Sharon's highly publicized
visit to the Al-Aqsa compound in
September 2000 -
an act that served as the
trigger for the second Intifada -
could be considered the final
step in a process that has ultimately
undone Dayan's strategic legacy of trying
to normalize the occupation by concealing
Israel's presence.
"Don't rule them," Dayan once said,
"let them lead their own lives."
Another significant change that has
transpired over the past 41 years
involves the Israeli government's
relation****p to trees, the symbol of life.
If in 1968 Israel helped Palestinians
in the Gaza Strip plant some 618,000
trees and provided farmers with improved
varieties of seeds for vegetables and
field crops,
during the first three years of the
second Intifada Israel destroyed
more than ten percent of Gaza's
agricultural land and uprooted
over 226,000 trees.
The appearance and proliferation
of the flag on the one hand,
and the razing of trees on
the other,
signify a fundamental transformation
in Israel's attempts to control the
occupied Palestinian inhabitants.
It appears as if Israel decided
to alter its methods of upholding
the occupation,
replacing a politics of life,
which aimed to secure the existence
and livelihood of the Palestinian
inhabitants, with a politics of death.
This ****ft manifests itself in numerous ways.
During the occupation's first decade,
for example, Israel tried to decrease
Palestinian unemployment in order to
manage the population,
but following the new millennium it
intentionally produced unemployment
in the Occupied Territories.
Israel provided immunization
for cattle and poultry during
the first years after the 1967,
but in 2008 it created conditions
that prevented people from
receiving immunization.
Changes like these clearly reflect the
radical transformation in the repertoires
of violence deployed in the Occupied Territories.
Whereas an estimated 650 Palestinians
were killed in the West Bank and Gaza
Strip during the first two decades
following the 1967 War,
during the six-year period
between 2001 and 2007,
Israel has, on average,
killed more than 650
Palestinians per year.
The number of Israelis killed in
this conflict has significantly
increased as well,
and this is not coincidental.
Whereas during the thirteen-year
period between December 1987 and
September 2000,
422 Israeli were killed by Palestinians,
during the six-year period from the eruption
of the second intifada until the end of 2006,
1,019 Israelis were killed.
Commentators do not usually attempt
to make sense of such changes, and,
when they do,
they almost always underscore
the policy choices of the Israeli
government or the decisions made
by the different Palestinian
political factions.
Such an approach, while often helpful,
elides the significant impact of the
occupation's guiding principle.
By the occupation's guiding principle,
I mean the distinction Israel has
made between the land it occupied
and the people who inhabit the land.
Levi Eshkol, Israel's prime minister in 1967,
clearly articulated this distinction during a
Labor Party meeting that took place just
three months after the war.
Discussing the consequences
of Israel's military victory,
he turned to Golda Meir,
who was then the party's general secretary,
and said:
"I understand. you covet the dowry, but not the bride."
One cannot fully understand the
occupation and the reason it has
become more violent without taking
into account the separation between
the dowry
(i.e., the land that Israel occupied in June 1967)
and the bride (the Palestinian population).
This principle is the propelling force
behind the massive settlement project,
the by-pass roads,
the expropriation of Palestinian water
and the erection of the separation barrier
deep inside Palestinian territory.
And it is precisely these latter
Israeli actions that have precipitated
the intensification of violence in the
Occupied Territories and, one might
even argue, the rise of Hamas.
The occupation's guiding principle
has consequently produced the very
conditions that are now impeding a
peace agreement based on the
two-state solution.
Recognizing the full ramifications
of this principle is crucial since
it allows us to see beyond the smoke
screen of political proclamations
and statements,
and to improve our understanding
of why the acrimonious conflict
has developed in the way that it has.
Just as im****tantly,
the principle sheds light on
how the conflict can be resolved,
since the key to reaching a just
and peaceful solution involves
reuniting the Palestinian people
and their land and offering them
full sovereignty over the land.
So long as the guiding principle is ignored,
blood will continue to be spilled.
Neve Gordon teaches politics
at Ben-Gurion University, Israel.
Read about his new book, Israel's Occupation,
and more at www.israelsoccupation.info
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