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Abstract
Much has changed during Israel's 40 years of occupation of Palestinian territory. Within the past six years Israel has, on average, killed more Palestinians per year than it killed during the first 20 years of occupation. Those who help manufacture public opinion within Israel claim that the dramatic increase in Palestinian deaths results from the fact that the Palestinians have changed the methods of violence they employ against Israel, and that Israel, in turn, has also begun using more violent means. Palestinians might invert this argument, claiming that they have altered their methods of resistance in response to Israel's use of more lethal violence. While such explanations no doubt contain a grain of truth, they are symptomatic accounts, and do little to reveal the root causes underlying the processes leading to the substantial increase in human deaths. A different approach is therefore needed, one that takes into account the structural dimension of Israel's military rule and tracks the two major principles that have informed the occupation over the past four decades: the colonisation principle and the separation principle. By the colonisation principle I mean a form of government whereby the coloniser attempts to manage the lives of the colonised inhabitants while exploiting the captured territory's resources. By the separation principle I do not mean a withdrawal of Israeli power from the Occupied Territories, but rather the reorganisation of power in the territories in order to continue controlling the resources. The major difference, then, between the colonisation and the separation principles is that, under the first principle there is an effort to manage the population and its resources, even though the two are separated. With the adoption of the separation principle Israel looses all interest in the lives of the Palestinian inhabitants and focuses solely on the occupied resources. Such a reorganisation of power helps explain the change in the repertoires of violence and the dramatic increase in the number of Palestinian deaths.
Notes
Nitza Berkovitch, Michal Givoni, Adi Ophir and Catherine Rottenberg read earlier drafts of this paper. I would like to thank them for their helpful comments and suggestion.
1 I refer to the Gaza Strip as occupied territory, even though Israel dismantled its settlements and withdrew its troops from the region in August 2005. The reason I do so is because Israel is still sovereign both in the traditional sense of supreme authority over a given territory and in the sense of monopoly over the means of movement. See John Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p 4.
2 Associated Press, ‘UN: Iraq civilian deaths hit a record’, cbs News, 21 September 2006. In addition to the 6187 Palestinians who were killed by Israelis, no more than 1500 Palestinians were killed by Palestinians. See www.btselem.org and www.iraqbodycount.org for up-to-date information.
3 In East Timor, for example, an estimated 200 000 people were killed out of a population of 700 000. Mathew Jardine, East Timor: Genocide in Paradise, Tucson, AZ: Odonian Press, 1995.
4 The colonial enterprise is, to be sure, a multifaceted and complex phenomenon and cannot be defined in one sentence or passage. For an analysis of the different dimensions and types of the colonial project, see Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli Palestinian Conflict, 1882 – 1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
5 The annexation applied to the territory itself, whereas its inhabitants were given the option to become Israeli citizens, but in order to do so had to relinquish their Jordanian citizenship. Only a small number complied. Nonetheless, all the inhabitants were made permanent Jerusalem residents and could vote for municipal elections. Eitan Felner, A Policy of Discrimination: Land Expropriation, Planning and Building in East Jerusalem, Jerusalem: B’tselem, 1995; and Yael Stein, The Quiet Deportation: Revocation of Residency of East Jerusalem Palestinians, Jerusalem: HaMoked and B’tselem, 1997.
6 Meron Benvenisti & Shlomo Khayat, The West Bank and Gaza Atlas, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Post, 1987, pp 112 – 113; Sara Roy, The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development, Washington, DC: Institute for Palestinian Studies, 1995, pp 175 – 181; and Yehezkel Lein, Land Grab: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank, Jerusalem: B’tselem, 2002, p 18 (in Hebrew).
7 The passage is cited in several places, including Shlomo Gazit, The Carrot and the Stick: Israel's Policy in Judea and Samaria, 1967 – 1969, Washington, DC: B’nai Brith Books, 1995, p 135.
8 State of Israel, Ministry of Defence, Unit for Co-ordination of Activities in the Territories, Three Years of Military Government, 1967 – 1970: Figures on Civilian Activity in Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip and Northern Sinai, Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defence, 1970, p 4 (in Hebrew).
9 Shabtai Teveth, The Cursed Blessing: The Story of Israel's Occupation of the West Bank, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970.
10 State of Israel, Ministry of Defense, Unit for Co-ordination of Activities in the Territories, Two Years of Military Government, 1967 – 1969: Figures on Civilian Activity in Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip and Northern Sinai, Tel-Aviv: Ministry of Defence, May 1969, p 11 (in Hebrew).
11 Raphael Meron, Economic Development in Judea – Samaria and the Gaza District: Economic Growth and Structural Change, 1970 – 1980, Jerusalem: Bank of Israel Research Department, 1983, p 6.
12 Central Bureau of Statistics, National Accountability: Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, 1968 – 1993, Tel Aviv: Central Bureau of Statistics, publication 1012, 1996, p 125 (in Hebrew).
13 Yehezkel Lein, Builders of Zion: Human Rights Violations of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories Working in Israel and the Settlements, Jerusalem: B’tselem, 1999, p 8.
14 United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General, ‘Development and International Economic Co-Operation: Living conditions of the Palestinian people in the occupied Arab territories’, A/35/533, 17 October 1980.
15 Central Bureau of Statistics, National Accountability, p 18.
16 Roy, The Gaza Strip, pp 4, 128.
17 According to the Bank of Israel, average annual gnp growth in the West Bank and Gaza was 14% between 1970 and 1975, 7% between 1976 and 1980, and 0% between 1981 and 1982. Dan Zakai, Economic Development in Judea – Samaria and the Gaza District, 1981 – 1982, Jerusalem: Bank of Israel Research Department, 1985, p 11.
18 Lisa Hajjar, Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005, p 56. For a detailed description of the construction of the legal doctrine in the Occupied Territories as well of as Shamgar's role, see ch 2. Not surprisingly, as Chief Justice Shamgar supported Israel's policy of suspending the Geneva Convention on every occasion, rights advocates petitioned this policy in the High Court of Justice. Thus one can gain a glimpse of how Israel's judiciary system supported the occupying power on all principle matters. See also David Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002.
19 Jordan had actually annexed the West Bank, but only the UK and Pakistan recognised the annexation. Meir Shamgar, ‘Legal concepts and problems of the Israeli military government: the initial stage’, in Shamgar (ed), Military Government in the Territories Administered by Israel 1967 – 1980, Jerusalem, Harry Sacher Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law, 1982, pp 35 – 36.
20 Ibid, pp 31 – 43.
21 Ibrahim Dakkak, ‘Back to square one: a study of the reemergence of the Palestinian identity in the West Bank, 1967 – 1980’, in Alexander Scholch (ed), Palestinians over the Green Line: Studies on the Relations Between Palestinians on both sides of the 1949 Armistice Line since 1967, London: Ithaca Press, 1983, p 67.
22 The Hague Convention also states that the occupying power will only be the temporary manager and beneficiary of land and other properties in the occupied territories, and is not permitted to create permanent ‘facts on the ground’ which will remain in the area after the occupation.
23 In the Gaza Strip Egyptian law and ordinances continued to be valid, while in the West Bank Jordanian law and ordinances continued to be valid. See Chief Military Command, Orders and Proclamations, Judea and Samaria, 1968 – 1972, Tel-Aviv: Israeli Defence Ministry, 1972. The Jordanian and Egyptian laws are based on the laws of the British Mandate period. See Sasson Levi, ‘Local government in the Administered Territories’; and David Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice: The Supreme Court of Israel and the Occupied Territories, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002.
24 For a discussion of the military orders, see Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice, pp 27 – 29.
25 Many of these orders undercut international legal provisions that ensured the rights of occupied populations. See Raja Shedadah, Occupier's Law: Israel and the West Bank, Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1985.
26 To support this claim, Israel also set up an elaborate system of military courts, staffed by military personnel who were responsible for trying those who were suspected of illegal activity. Lisa Hajjar, Courting Conflict.
27 In 1971 General Ariel Sharon, the head of the southern command, was asked to suppress Fatah and the People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine's (pflp) armed resistance in the Gaza Strip's refugee camps. A fence was erected, which surrounded parts of the region, as Israeli troops, the Shabak and Palestinian collaborators combed the area with a list of ‘wanted’ men. The families of these men were also rounded up and some 12 000 inhabitants were sent to the remote Abu Zneima detention centre on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula. An estimated 2000 houses were demolished in refugee camps like Shati and Jabaliya in order to make it easier for the military to patrol the camps. These demolitions displaced, again, over 15 000 refugees.Footnote27 Simultaneously curfews were imposed on the camps, adult males were randomly stopped and searched, and several Palestinians were shot and killed for ‘[failing] to halt for routine searches’. After the armed resistance was crushed, however, Israel changed the repertoires of violence it employed in the Strip and emphasised disciplinary forms of control. Aside from the Gaza invasion, coercive methods were only intermittently enforced and, when they were employed, they were implemented with less intensity.
28 State of Israel, Three Years of Military Government, p 4.
29 As cited in Shlomo Gazit, Trapped Fools: Thirty Years of Israeli Policy in the Territories, London: Frank Cass, 2003, p 163.
30 Joel S Migdal, Palestinian Society and Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980, p 62.
31 On 19 July 1967 Israel organised a conference for the mukhtars (village leaders) in Nablus, where they were ‘warned that they would be punished if foreigners or terrorists would be found in their villages and if they distribute the communist party's paper Al-Itihad’. Each village mukhtar was paid 75 Israeli pounds a month, while the second mukhtar in the same village was paid 50. Michael Shashar, The Seventh Day War: The Diary of the Military Government in Judea and Samaria (June – December 1967), Tel-Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1997, pp 105, 161 (in Hebrew). See also Military Order 176, which authorises the military commander to dismiss any mukhtar.
32 Timothy Mitchell, ‘The limits of the state: beyond statist approaches and their critics’, American Political Science Review, 85 (1), 1991, pp 77 – 96.
33 Meron Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies: Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. See also in this context Amira Hass, Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege, New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996; Edward Said, Peace and its Discontents, New York: Vintage, 1996; Graham Usher, Dispatches from Palestine: The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Peace Process, London: Pluto Press, 1999; and Neve Gordon, ‘Outsourcing violations: the Israeli case’, Journal of Human Rights, 1 (3), 2002, pp 321 – 337.
34 The eight agreements in chronological order are: Declaration of Principles On Interim Self-Government Arrangements (13 September 1993); The Paris Protocol on Economic Relations (29 April 1994); Agreement on the Gaza Strip and the Jericho Area (May 4, 1994); Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities Between Israel and the plo (29 August 1994); The Israeli – Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip (also known as Oslo II) (28 September 1995); Hebron Protocol (17 January 1997); The Wye River Memorandum (23 October 1998); and The Sharam el-Sheikh Memorandum (4 September 1999).
35 In 1997 Hebron was divided into two parts: H1 under nominal control of the pa and the smaller H2 section under the control of the Israeli military. Area H2 is home to about 35 000 Palestinians and 500 Israeli settlers. The Old City and the Tomb of the Patriarchs are also located in H2. Yellow areas in the Gaza Strip are more-or-less equivalent to Area B in the West Bank and comprise 23% of the Strip, while White Areas are equivalent to Area A and comprise a little less than 10% of the Strip.
36 The Agreements were Wye I, II and III and Sharam I.
37 Yehezkel Lein, Forbidden Roads: The Discriminatory West Bank Road Regime, Jerusalem: B’tselem, 2004, p 4.
38 Anex III, Article IV of the Interim Agreement states that ‘In Area C, in the first phase of redeployment, powers and responsibilities not related to territory, as set out in Appendix 1, will be transferred to and assumed by the [Palestinian] Council in accordance with the provisions of that Appendix’, thus indicating that, even though Israel had full authority over all matters in area C, the pa took over responsibilities not related to territory (emphasis added).
39 Noga Kadman, 1987 – 1997: A Decade of Human Rights Violations, Jerusalem: B’tselem, 1998, p 10.
40 Ibid, pp 10 – 11.
41 Rema Hammami & Salim Tamari, ‘Anatomy of another rebellion’, Middle East Report, 217, 2000.
42 Fred Abrahams, Marc Garlasco & Darryl Li, Razing Rafah: Mass Home Demolitions in the Gaza Strip, New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004.
43 Kretzmer, The Occupation of Justice, pp 145 – 164.
44 Abrahams et al, Razing Rafah, pp 127 – 128.
45 Alice Rothchild, ‘Pitching in for health on the West Bank’, Boston Globe, 6 March 2004.
46 James Ron, Frontiers and Ghettos: State Violence in Serbia and Israel, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.
47 Amos Harel, ‘Avi Dichter supports the disengagement…’, Ha’aretz, 10 June 2005 (in Hebrew).
48 Jewish settlers could continue moving freely across the Green Line, while after Oslo a very small number of Palestinians received vip cards and could travel even in times of closure.
49 Lein, Builders of Zion, pp 9 – 10.
50 Usher, Dispatches from Palestine, p 97.
51 The Palestinians did not oppose the construction of this fence since it was erected on the Green Line. Yehezkel Lein, One Big Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan, Jerusalem: Btselem, 2005, p 60.
53 B’tselem, ‘The Palestinian economy during the period of the Oslo Accords: 1994 – 2000’, at www.btselem.org.
54 Neve Gordon & Dani Filc, ‘Hamas and the destruction of risk society’, Constellations, 12 (4), 2005, pp 542 – 560.
55 Research shows that ‘malnutrition is a contributing factor in nearly 60 percent of deaths in children for which infectious disease is an underlying cause’. Bahn Maharj, Bhandari Nita and Bahl Rajiv, ‘Management of the severely malnourished child: perspective from developing countries', British Medical Journal, 326, 2003, pp 146 – 151. Per capita food consumption has declined by a quarter since 1998. Human Development Group, Supplemental Trust Fund Grant to the Second Emergency Services Support Project, Middle East and North Africa Region: World Bank, 2002, p 2.
56 Akiva Eldar, ‘Popular misconceptions’, Ha’aretz, 11 June 2004 (in Hebrew). See also Reuven Pedatzur, ‘More than a million bullets’, Ha’aretz, 30 June 2004 (in Hebrew).