volume 9 - issue 1 - autumn 2006

Al-Aqsa 1

ContentsVOLUME 9 NUMBER 1 AUTUMN 2006

SHAWWAL 1427

Editorial 3

The Muslim Fascination with Jerusalem:The Case of the Sufis 5SHAMSUDDIN AL-KILANI

The Israeli/Palestinian Struggle Over Water Resources:

Gender, Ideology and Resources 11SARAH IRVING

My War with Zionism 19ALAN HART

Israel Seperation Wall: Apartheid, IllicitLigtimate Self-Defence 25JAMES BARRETT

BOOK REVIEW 35

Jerusalem: Constructing the Study of Islamic Art, Vol. IVby Oleg GrabarRVIEWED BY ABU HUZAYFA

Dining with Terrorists: Meetings with theWorld’s most wanted Militants

by Phil ReesRVIEWED BY DR. ANTHONY MCROY

The West Bank Wall: Unmaking Palestineby Ray DolphinREVIEWED BY DR. MARIA HOLT

Politicide – Ariel Sharon’s War against the Palestinianby Barugh KimmerlingREVIEWED BY HASAN LOONAT

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EDITOR

Ismail Adam Patel

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2 Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 3

2

E D I T O R I A L

Surely they who recite the Book of Allah and keep

up prayer and spend out of what We have given

them secretly and openly, hope for a gain which will

not perish. That He may pay them back fully their rewards

and give them more out of His grace: surely He is Forgiving,

Multiplier of rewards.

May Allahs blessing be upon all His Prophets from

Adam to His final Messenger, Muhammad (saw).

At a time when violence in the Middle East has

intensified, the Zionist-Anglo-American Alliance

has made no secrets of its aims of destabilising and

destroying the Hamas led Palestinian government

in favour of a more moderate and pliable Fatah

leadership. This ideal has translated itself on the

ground in the form of severe oppression and Israeli

tyranny against the Palestinians on a scale that

possibly outweighs the worst of the intifada.

The Israeli led drive to ‘starve’ the Palestinian

Authority of both finances and international ties

has persisted for the majority of 2006. It was

intended to compel the Palestinian President to call

a new election but this has thus far failed to

materialise. While the pressures brought to bear

on the democratically elected Hamas are

unprecedented, their popular support and refusal

to compromise their rights continue. However, in

the face of continuing economic pressures and

international boycott, the change and reform

promised by Hamas has not materialised. In its

stead, Palestinians are facing fresh crisis’ every day

and a new level of paralysis in their daily lives. The

only factor that seems to make this endurable is

the decades of suffering and poverty that has

preceded it and which these people had to bear and

thus have become hardened by.

Through the conflict with Lebanon, while eyes

were turned away, hundreds of Palestinians died in

Gaza due to the Israeli incursions, the majority of

which went unreported. Testimonies of greater

brutality across the West Bank were also reported;

telling a story of millions of besieged and

devastated people. The impact of sanctions against

Hamas on the Palestinian economy is unrivalled by

any other stage of this long conflict, due to total

Anglo-American complicity. The Alliance will

maintain this condition until either one of two

scenarios transpires: Hamas surrenders Palestinian

rights and recognize Israel; or the Palestinians call

another election in which the Zionist-Anglo-

American cast the deciding vote.

Unsurprisingly, it is little reported that Hamas

has indeed renounced violence and has maintained

a 20 month cease fire despite repeated Israeli

offensives in Gaza and the deaths of hundreds of

Palestinians. Hamas’ continued truce unfortunately

seems to have been a green card for Israel to commit

more and more atrocities, no doubt with the aim of

provoking a violent response from Palestinians.

It seems clear that in the short term at least,

Hamas are here to stay. The latest political

manoeuvre has been to promote the formation of a

new government of national unity, bringing Hamas

into coalition with Mahmoud Abass’ Fatah. This is

likely to be accepted by the Palestinians, and will

pull the rug from under the feet of the Zionist-

Anglo-American Alliance as it would create a

government that most of the international

community would resume ties with; most notably

Europe. This would cause a split in the international

approach to the Palestinian Government, and thus

provide it with some viability.

In any event, while the politicians continue to

play their games, it is clear that, once again, the

civilian population is bearing the brunt through yet

more misery and devastation.

�

4 Al-Aqsa

A YOUTH EXCHANGE PROGRAMME WITH

AN NAJAH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, NABLUS, PALESTINE

Al-Aqsa 5

Shamsuddin Al-Kilani*

The Muslim Fascination with Jerusalem:

The Case of the Sufis (Part I)

I asked

About Muhammed within your wallsI begged newsOf Jesus in your streets

O Jerusalem!Swiftest path between heaven and earth!

Nizar Qabbani

From the early beginnings of Sufism,devotees have been passionately drawn to

Jerusalem; the city has held a profoundlysanctified place in the Islamic social imaginationand consciousness, and this has led Sufis to travel

there to seek blessing from its sites and veneratedsymbols. While Sufis have not been alone in thislonging for Jerusalem, they have bestowed special

traits on the longing. This is reflected in thedistinctive way they have conceived the sense ofholiness embodied in the Muslim faith vis-à-vis

Jerusalem. This is also evident from the devotionshown in their ribats (hospices) to the Muslim holyplaces in Jerusalem, particularly to the Holy Rock

from which it is assumed the Prophet Muhammad(peace be on him) ascended to the UppermostLote-tree. These Sufis, in fact, gave new

connotations to the panoply of Muslim sacredgeography that has Jerusalem at its heart,enhancing the sacred Islamic implications of the

city and adding creative meanings and symbolsto these according to their particular aim ofrevelation and connection through sublimation.

Thus they saw in Jerusalem, in the Aqsa Mosque,and especially in the Holy Rock, the causewayconnecting them to heaven.

Quite apart from these special connotationsand attendant practices of the Sufis, there hasbeen a general background of intimations shared

by all Muslims. This background has comprisedpart of their Islamic religious consciousness,leading them all to yearn for Jerusalem and seek

closeness to it so as to derive blessings from itsholy sites. This is why the Companions of theProphet, the Successors and other pious Muslims,

and indeed the Muslim rank and file as well,

have come one after the other to visitJerusalem. Yaqut al-Hamawi (d. 626/1229)has provided a graphic illustration of the place

Jerusalem occupies in Muslim religiousconsciousness. “The word muqaddas”, he says,“means ‘purified’ ... the meaning of ‘glorify

Your Holy Name’ is that we purify ourselvesfor You ... Hence comes the name bayt al-

maqdis, that is, the purified home, through

which people purify themselves of their sins”1

The merits of Jerusalem are many, andsome of these should be mentioned here for

the purpose of general information. Accordingto Muqatil ibn Sulayman (d. 150/767), amajor scholar in the field of Qur’anic exegesis:

“When Almighty God says: ‘But We deliveredhim [i.e., Abraham] and [his nephew] Lût [anddirected them] to the land which We have

blessed for all beings’ (21: 71), He meansJerusalem. When He says: ‘And We made aCovenant with you on the right side of Mount

[Sinai]’ . . . (20: 80), He means Jerusalem.When He says: ‘And We made the son of Maryand his mother as a sign: We gave them both

shelter and high ground, affording rest andsecurity, and furnished with water springs’(23:50), it is Jerusalem. When He says: ‘Glory

to (God) Who did take His servant for anocturnal journey from the Sacred Mosqueto the Farthest Mosque’ (17: 1), it is Jerusalem.

When He says: ‘... in houses which God hathpermitted to be raised, and His name to becommemorated therein; therein glorifying

Him, in the mornings and the evenings aremen whom neither commerce nor traffickingdiverts from the remembrance of God ...’ (24:

36), it means the Sacred House, that is,Jerusalem”.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be on

him) is quoted as saying that he who performsa prayer in Jerusalem his reward is multipliedby 1,000.2 Among Jerusalem’s merit is that

* SHAMSUDDIN AL-KILANI is the co-Author of al-Tariq Ila’l-Quds

Thus they saw in

Jerusalem, in the

Aqsa Mosque, and

especially in the

Holy Rock, the

causeway

connecting them to

heaven.

6 Al-Aqsa

God raised Jesus, the son of Mary, to heavenfrom this city. The first spot from which the

Deluge receded was the Rock of Jerusalem. It isalso in Jerusalem that the Trumpet will be blownon the Day of Resurrection and on the Rock of

Jerusalem the Caller will proclaim the Day ofjudgement.3

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him)

is quoted as saying: “Mounts are saddled to threeplaces only: this Mosque of mine [in Madinah],the Sacred Mosque of Makkah and the Mosque

of Jerusalem”.4 One single prayer in Jerusalemis better rewarded than a thousand prayersperformed elsewhere.5 It is also the nearest point

on this earth to heaven.6 The Antichrist will beforbidden to enter it and Gog and Magog willperish before they are able set their feet in it.7

Ibrahim immigrated to it, and it is in this city thatpeople will be gathered together and resurrected.8

Jesus, when still an infant in the cradle, also talked

to people in this very city of Jerusalem.9 Inreligious teachings, Paradise will be led toJerusalem on the Day of Resurrection, and it will

be from Jerusalem that people will go either toheaven or to hell.10 Ka’b (d. 50/670) is quoted assaying that all the prophets (peace be on them)

visited Jerusalem out of veneration.11 ‘Abd Allahibn ‘Abbas (d. 68/687), a Companion of theProphet reportedly said: “The Sacred House [i.e.

Jerusalem] was built by prophets, and wasinhabited by prophets. There is no space, even assmall as a span of the hand, but has been a site

of prayer for a prophet or an angel”.12

The famous Companion Abû Dharr al-Ghifari(d. 32/653), and one of the greatest of the

Prophet’s Companions, a paragon of pietisticausterity and moral excellence, is reported to havesaid: “I asked the Prophet Muhammad (peace be

on him): ‘Which was the first mosque to be builton earth?’ The Prophet answered: ‘The SacredMosque of Makkah’. Then I asked him: ‘Which

was the next?’ Thereupon he replied: ‘The Mosqueof Jerusalem, with a period of forty years betweenthem’ ’’.13 Ka’b, another Companion of the

Prophet, said: “Whoever visits the Sacred House[Jerusalem] out of pure longing, will go to Paradise.Whoever prays two prostrations will come out as

much cleansed of his sins as on the day his motherbore him, and he will be granted a thankful heartand a tongue that eloquently remembers and

glorifies God”.14

This panoply of sacred symbols, especially theNight Journey and the Ascension (al-Isra’ and al-

Mi’raj), seized the imagination of Sufis, linkingthe monotheistic faith from the Prophet Ibrahim(peace be on him) till the Prophet Muhammad

(peace be on him). From this panoply we learnhow Muhammad (peace be on him) was the heirand seal of all prophets when he led them all in

prayer near the Rock and on the floor of the

Sacred Mosque. This journey also forged asacred bond between Makkah, Madinah and

Jerusalem, extending, at its furthest, mostdistant extent to the Uppermost Lote-tree nearthe Throne of God. The journey has, besides,

bestowed a vast and sanctified significance onthe site of the Aqsa Mosque, from whichopened the road that connects with heaven.

This miracle of the Ascension has sincedazzled the imagination of Muslim Sufis,leading them, one after the other, to visit

Jerusalem to seek blessings and to try toenvisage, albeit at second hand, that momentof Ascension in which the Prophet

Muhammad (peace be on him) acted as anintermediary between the terrestrial and theheavenly.

The significance of the Night Journey andAscension has led Muslims to join the oldersymbol of holy locale to the newer orientation

towards the righteous, holy personality,whereby it has become possible for man andlocale to find the relation between the heavenly

and the terrestrial.15 This found a gracious anddignified embodiment after the constructionof the Dome of the Rock in the Umayyad

period. It rose high above the ground to shadethe Rock from which the Prophet (peace beon him) had ascended to heaven and drew

Muslim Sufis to take up residence in its vicinity.They tried to see how Muhammad (peace beon him) had lost his identity in the state of

elation in the Divine Presence, seeing in this“annihilation of self ” a prelude to that“enduring survival” wherein humanity attains

an exalted realization of self. The Sufis,therefore, hastened to Jerusalem, taking uptheir residence in the colonnaded porticos

around the pavement, meditating on thesymbols of the Rock from which the Prophet(peace be upon him) had commenced his

Ascension. 16 Many other Sufis wished tospend the remaining period of their lives inJerusalem and to be buried there, since they

considered Jerusalem to be the earthly pointclosest to heaven. Jerusalem was also regardedas the venue for the resurrection of the dead.17

PIETISTIC AUSTERITY AND SUFISM

Sufism has deep roots in pietistic austerity

which characterized the lives of manyCompanions of the Prophet especially thoseknown as Ashab al-Suffah (“people of the

ledge”), who confined themselves to worshipat a ledge built for them by the Prophet (peacebe on him) in his Mosque. Here they waited

constantly to be enlisted for service in theProphet’s armies. Some were required to teach

Many other Sufis

wished to spend the

remaining period of

their lives in

Jerusalem and to be

buried there, since

they considered

Jerusalem to be the

earthly point

closest to heaven.

Al-Aqsa 7

Islam in different regions. As teachers of the Qur’anthey were an elite among the believers. The same

austerity characterized the lives of many Successors(al-Tabi‘ûn) as it had characterized the lives of theOrthodox Caliphs, the muezzin Bilal (d. 20/641),

Abû Dharr al-Ghifari; Suhayb (d. 38/659), AbûHurayrah [‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Sakhr] (d. 59/679),‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Umar (d. 74/693), ‘Ammar ibn

Yasir (d. 37/657), ‘Asim ibn Thabit al-Ansari (d.4/625), those who were party to the ‘Aqabah Pactof allegiance to the Prophet (peace be on him),

Shaddad ibn Aws (d. 58/677), Tamim al-Dari (d.40/660), and other Successors such as Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 161/778), Ibrahim ibn Ad-ham (d. 162/

779) and Dha’l Nan al-Misri (d. 245/859).18

The trend towards a pietistic austerity whichbegan in the first century AH was marked by a

cathartic moral attitude as embodied by AbûDharr al-Ghifari. In the second half of thatcentury, it developed a stance of protest on the

part of the a number of pious people in Kûfah,Basrah and Egypt against the affluence of theUmayyad court.19 By the end of the second

century AH, overly austere behaviour came toprovide a nucleus for a mystical interpretivemethodology in the hands of such renowned

figures as Rabi‘ah al-’Adawiyyah (d. 185/801) andMa‘rûf al-Karkhi (d. 200/815). We are nowcrossing the threshold of Sufism: Rabi‘ah al-

’Adawiyyah sets out the concept of “divine love”,while al-Karkhi introduces the concept of “tasteknowledge”, leading in turn to God.20

Sufis, who subsequently combined theirmysticism with philosophy, are unanimous thatthe aim common to all of them is union (ittihad),

annihilation of self (fana’) or solitude throughsublimation (al-tawahhud bi ‘l-ta‘ali). Sufismbranched out into a number of directions, of

which the most important were the Baghdadschool with al-Muhasibi (d. 243/857), al-Junayd(d. 297/910), al-Saqati (d. 253/867); the Nisapûr

school with al Qassar (d. 271/884); and the Syrianand Egyptian school with Dhû ‘l-Nûn al-Misribefore the philosophy of illuminism (ishraq) and

inspiration (ilham) reached its peak with the threefamous Sufis, al-Hallaj (d. 309/922), al-Suhrawardi (d. 587/1191) and Ibn al-’Arabi (d.

638/I240).21 Concurrently and subsequently, thisfurther branched off into orders (tariqahs) eachwith its own rituals, hospices and cloisters.

THE COMPANIONS AND ‘PEOPLE OF

THE LEDGE’ IN JERUSALEM

The Muslim conquerors’ attachment to

Jerusalem - and a great many of them werecompanions of the Prophet - was manifestedmost openly when they stood directly outside its

walls, placing their full trust in the sacredconnotations expressed by their religion. They

vied with one another for the honour ofsharing in its conquest, so much so that, when

they stood up for prayer outside the gates ofJerusalems:

The call [to prayer] was made and people

performed the dawn prayer. Yazid ibn Abi

Sufyan recited the following verse ...: ‘O mypeople! enter that holy land which God hath

assigned to you and turn not back ...’ (5: 21).The other field commanders are said to haverecited the self-same Qur’anic verse as if they

had been in absolute concordance with eachother.22

During the conquest of Jerusalem and

after it many Companions and Successors,including pietists and “People of the Ledge”,who are regarded as the harbingers of Sufism,

went there one after the other. Books ofIslamic history, along with books written onfada’il al-Quds (Merits of Jerusalem), took

pains to mention the Companions andSuccessors who visited Jerusalem or diedthere, seeking the blessings of visiting it or

being buried in it.Foremost among those visiting Jerusalem

was the second Caliph, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab

(d. 23/644), who went there at the time ofthe conquest and granted the famousCovenant to Sophronius, the Patriarch of

Jerusalem, pledging to safeguard the rights ofreligious freedom to the Christians. Abu‘Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah (d. 18/639) was the

commander of the armies that conqueredJerusalem. He died when he was on his wayto visit it for the second time with the intent

to pray in the Aqsa Mosque, and was buriedto the west of the River Jordan.23 Bilal ibnRabah, the Prophet’s muezzin, visited

Jerusalem and made his first call for prayerafter the Prophet’s death. When it was timefor the midday prayer following the conquest

of the city, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab requestedBilal to call people to prayer.24 Others enteringJerusalem with the Muslim conquerors

included the great general, Khalid ibn al-Walid(d. 21/641) and Yazid ibn Abi Sufyan (d. 18/639). Mu‘awiyah ibn Abi Sufyan (d. 60/680)

also received the oath of allegiance (bay‘ah)as caliph in Jerusalem. Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas(d. 55/675) came to Jerusalem and entered

the state of ihram for pilgrimage. SomeCompanions came with the intent to proceedto hajj. They started with a visit to Jerusalem,

where they entered the state of ihram on wayto the Sacred Mosque of Makkah. They didso in compliance with the following hadith of

the Prophet: “He who begins hajj or umrah

from the Aqsa Mosque to the MakkahMosque will be forgiven his previous sins”.25

Thus ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Umar came to

O my people! enter

that holy land which

God hath assigned

to you and turn not

back ...’ (5: 21). The

other field

commanders are

said to have recited

the self-same

Qur’anic verse as if

they had been in

absolute

concordance with

each other

8 Al-Aqsa

Jerusalem and started his ‘umrah rituals from there.He is said to have come to Jerusalem after the

early morning prayer and to have sat in theMosque. When the sun rose, he too rose to praytogether with his companions, and then they made

for their mounts. ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Abbas also visitedJerusalem, starting his pilgrimage to Makkah fromthere in winter.26 Safiyyah bint Huyayy (d. 50/

670), a wife of the Prophet Muhammad (peacebe on him), came to Jerusalem, climbed themountain called Tur Zeita and prayed there.

Standing on the mountainside, she said: “Fromhere people will part company from one anotheron the Day of judgement and will go either to

Paradise or to Hell”.27

Foremost among the pietists and “People ofthe Ledge” eager to visit Jerusalem were Abû

Dharr al-Ghifari, Mu‘adh ibn Jabal al-Ansari (d.c. 25/645), ‘Abd Allah ibn Salam (d. 43/663),Abû Hurayrah, who was the greatest memoriser

of the Prophet’s traditions, ‘Ubadah ibn al-Samit(d. 35/655), Shaddad ibn Aws, and Tamim al-Dari. Abû Dharr al-Ghifari stayed in Jerusalem

for some time in devotional kneeling andprostration. He became famous for his forcefulpleadings to the rich that they share their wealth

with the poor. Another famous visitor was Mu‘adhibn Jabal al-Ansari. He came to Jerusalem andspent three days there in fasting and prayer. On

his departure he turned to his companions andsaid: “As for your previous sins, you have beenforgiven. Reflect now on what you will do with

the remaining part of your lives”. Abû Hurayrah,who was with the conquerors when Jerusalem wastaken, went there again, and it is who narrated

the hadith: “Mounts are saddled for three mosquesonly”.28

A number of Companions known for their

pietistic attitude resided in Jerusalem until theydied and were buried there. An example was‘Ubadah ibn al-Samit al-Ansari who was a dignitary

and a witness of the First and Second Pacts of‘Aqabah. He was also present in the Battle ofBadr and all the other battles led by the Prophet

(peace be on him). ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab appointedhim qadi and preacher in Greater Syria. He wasalso made qadi of Palestine and then of

Jerusalem. It is said that he was seen weepingover the eastern wall of Jerusalem. When askedwhy he did so, he replied: “The Prophet

Muhammad (peace be on him) told us that it isfrom here that he had a vision of Hell”.29 ‘Ubadahresided in Jerusalem and died in Ramlah, but was

buried in, Jerusalem.Shaddad ibn Aws al-Ansari, a Companion of

the Prophet, also resided in Jerusalem until he

died, and was buried there. It was he who narratedthe Prophet Muhammad’s saying to the effectthat al-Sham [Greater Syria] would be conquered

and so would Jerusalem. Shaddad’s grave is said

to be in the Rahmah Graveyard. Othersinterred in Jerusalem include: Wathilah ibn al-

Asqa’ (d. 83/702); Dhû ‘1-Isba‘ al-Tamimi andthe Yamani prince of Persian origin, Fayrûzal-Daylami (d. 53/673)30

THE SUCCESSORS

Jerusalem was frequented by many piousSuccessors who came to Jerusalem to obtain

its blessings. The famous faqih, ‘Abd al-Rahmanal-Awza‘i (d. 157/774), said: “Qubaysah ibnDhu’ayb (d. 86/705), ‘Abd Allah ibn Muhayriz

(d. c. 100/719) and Hani’ ibn Kulthûm (d. c.100/719) would [occasionally] come fromRamlah to Jerusalem for the performance of

ritual prayers. They were devout worshipperswith austere habits. The famous scholar, Raja’ibn Haywah (d. 92/710) said about him: “If

the people of Madinah are proud of theirdevout worshipper Ibn ‘Umar, we are proudof our own worshipper, Ibn Muhayriz.

Indeed, his being amongst us was a securityfor the people of the earth”. Hani’, on theother hand, declined - obviously out of

pietistic considerations - the governorship ofPalestine when it was offered to him.31

Jerusalem was also visited by Muharib ibn

Dithar (d. 116/734), the jurist and judge ofKûfah. It was said about him that he surpassedother in three fields: inordinate performance

of ritual prayer, long silence and liberality.32

Another visitor was the pious servant,Muhammad ibn Wasi‘ (d. 127/744) from

Basrah, who is quoted as saying: “Beware ofthe world; and if you are not able to do so,look upon the world as a thorn, taking good

care where you set your feet”.33

SUFIS OF THE SECOND/EIGHTH

CENTURY

According to historians of Sufism, its mostprominent figures were Rabi‘ah al-‘Adawiyyah,Sufyan al-Thawri, al-Layth ibn Sa’d (d. 175/

791), al-Fadayl ibn ‘Iyad (d. 178/803), Ibrahimibn Ad-ham, Yahya ibn Dinar and Sa’id ibnal-Musayyab (d. 94/713). To these they add

the name of Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi‘i(d. 204/819) because he kept company withSufis for seventeen years. They also add the

name of al-Awza‘i for the same reason.34 Acareful examination of the lives of those wholaid the foundations of Sufism reveals that

most of them were eager to visit Jerusalemto earn the blessings of the various sacredsites there.

We shall now proceed to note the extentof the most prominent Sufis’ devotion toJerusalem.

On his departure he

turned to his

companions and

said: “As for your

previous sins, you

have been forgiven.

Reflect now on

what you will do

with the remaining

part of your lives

Al-Aqsa 9

Rabi‘ah al-‘Adawiyyah (d.c. 185/801)

According to Ibn Khallikan, she was one ofthe most distinguished figures of her time. Others

say that she came from a poor family. When shegrew up and her father died while she was still inthe prime of her youth, a drought struck Basrah,

and Rabi‘ah, together with her three sisters,wandered about aimlessly. She was captured by aman who sold her to another man, and the latter

overburdened her with work.35 Al-‘Attar gives thefollowing account of how Rabi‘ah’s spiritualmessage descended on her. One day when she saw

a man casting evil looks at her she fled along theroad to Syria. This is meaningful enough if weremember that Jerusalem lies in the heart of Syria,

“in the land whose precincts We have blessed”(Qur’an 17: 1). On this road she had an intimatesilent communication with God. She asked: “Are

You pleased with me?” Thereupon she heard avoice saying: “Do not be grieved! For on the Dayof judgement the favoured people in Heaven will

look up to you and envy you”. She came back toher master’s home and spent the night in prayers.

When her master saw how pious she was, he

set her free and she dedicated herself to worshipand devotion, spending her life in continuouspenitence.36 Rabi‘ah made for Jerusalem where

she spent the rest of her life and died. Her graveis just outside Jerusalem at the top of the TurZeita mountain. Her grave was well known during

the time of Shihab al-Din al-Maqdisi and wasvisited by people.37 According to Badawi, theauthor of Shahidat al-‘Ishq al-Ilahi, her grave is

on the peak of Tur Zeita to the east of Jerusalem,near the place from where Jesus (peace be onhim) ascended to heaven; it is to the south, in a

cloister to which people come down by means ofa staircase.38 The famous historian and traditionistIbn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1201) says that Rabi‘ah died

in 135/752, while others consider her to havedied much after that.39 It is said that when shewas about to die, a large number of pious people

thronged around her. Then she said: “Get up andgo out. Leave the road open to the messengersof Almighty God” (meaning, God’s angels). They

all left, and, as they shut the door, they heard thevoice of Rabi‘ah reciting the shahadah, testifyingthat “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad

is the Apostle of Allah”. After she had breathedher last, these devout people gathered again,bathed her and recited the funeral prayer over

her, then rested her in her final abode.40

Ibrahim ibn Ad-ham (d. 162/799)

He came from Balkh and was of royal lineage.Once he went out hunting and an invisible caller

wakened him from his heedlessness. Thereuponhe abandoned his way of life, based on addiction

to worldly pleasures, and espoused a life offrugality and piety, refusing to take any of his

rich and rightful inheritance. He made his wayto Makkah accompanied by Sufyan al--Thawriand al-Fudayl ibn ‘Iyad and then went on to

Syria.41

It is said that Ibrahim asked some religiousscholars about what was permissible (halal),

and they advised him to go to Syria to knowthese things thoroughly. He went to Tarsûs,and would say: “I have never enjoyed life and

relished livelihood except in Syria. I fled in anattempt to maintain my faith, from one highplace to another, and from mountain to

another mountain, and whoever saw me wouldsay I was obsessed and deluded”.42 Ibrahimended up in Jerusalem, where he slept

habitually beside the Rock.43 One day, whileleaving the city, he passed by a group ofarmed troops, who asked him: “Are you a

slave”? He answered: “Yes”. Then they said:“A runaway”? Once more he replied: “Yes”.Thereupon they had him put in prison. When

people in Jerusalem learned of this, they wentall together to the governor of Tiberias toask for his release. The governor summoned

him and asked him: “Why were youimprisoned”? “Ask the armed troops”, hereplied. They, in turn, said: “You are a runaway

slave”. He said: “True. I am running away frommy sins”. Thereupon he was released.44

Sufyan al-Thawri (d. 161/777)

He was a famous Sufi, celebrated for his

asceticism and piety. He came to the AqsaMasjid where he offered his congregationalprayer. It is said that he came to the Holy Rock

and read the entire Qur’an there. Al-Walid ibnMuslim (d. 195/810) recounts how he metSufyan at the Masjid in Jerusalem. He asked

Sufyan whether he had visited the Dome ofthe Rock. “Yes”, Sufyan replied, “and I readthe entire Qur’an there”.45 When in Jerusalem

he was described as a shaykh who looked as ifhe were burned with fire, being dressed in ablack cloak with a black turban, silent, noble-

looking, with thick hair and looking very sad.When advised to change this dress, it is saidthat he wept and said: “This is very much like

the dress of one bereaved; in this world we aresurely in a state of mourning”?46

Al-Layth ibn Sa‘d (d.175/791)

Al-Maqdisi said of al-Layth that he was

the most learned scholar in Egypt and the peerof Imam Malik (d. 179/795) in erudition. Itwas said that he was so open-handed that no

year of his life ever passed without leavinghim in debt. He went to Jerusalem and during

10 Al-Aqsa

his stay there Caliph al-Mansûr (d. 158/775)visited the city. Upon meeting al-Layth, he told

him: “I admire your strength of mind, and I thankGod Who has created people like you among mysubjects”.47

Thawr ibn Yazid (d. 153/770)

He stayed in Jerusalem and kept companywith a man from a village near the city. This manwould come to Thawr at dawn and perform all

prayers in Jerusalem, then return to his villageafter he had performed the evening prayer. Thisman heard Thawr tell how Khalid ibn Ma‘dan (d.

104/722) recounted to him a hadith which hetraced back to the Prophet (peace be on him):“Anyone who witnesses something that shocks or

terrifies him should say: ‘God is One, and thereis nothing like Him. He is the One and theSubduer’. Anyone who says this will be relieved

of his troubles, even if he were encircled with aniron wall”.48

Muqatil ibn Sulayman (150/767)

He visited Jerusalem and prayed there. He

sat at the southern door of the Holy Rock, wheremany people thronged around him, writing andlistening to what he said.

(Part II in Next Issue)

Notes

1. Shihab al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allah Yagut ibn ‘Abd Allah

al-Hamawi, Mu’jam al-Buldan (Beirut: Dar

Sadir,1977) 5: 166.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Hajj,

Bab Safar al-Mar’ah Ma’ al-Mahram ila al-Hajj wa

Ghayrih.

5. Yaqut Ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Hamawi, Mu‘jam al-Buldan,

5:166.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., 5:166-167.

11. Ibid., 5:167.

12. Ibid.

13. Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Masajid

wa Mawadi’ al-Salah.

14. Yaqut al-Hamawi, Mu‘jam al-Buldan, 5: 167.

15. Karen Armstrong, Jerusalem, trans. Fatimah Nasr

and Muhammad ‘Anani, al-Quds: Madinah Wahidah

wa ‘Aqa’id Thalath (Cairo: Sutnr, 1998), 380.

16. Ibid., 413.

17. Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Muqaddasi

al-Bashshari, Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma‘rafat al-Aqalim

(Leiden: Brill, 1906), 166.

18. Muhammad ‘Abdul-Mun’im Khafaj i, Dirasat f i al-

Tasawwuf al-Islami (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qahirah,

n.d.), 74.

19. Karen Armstrong, God and Man, trans., Muhammad

al-Jura (Damascus: 1996), 230. See also Ignaz

Goldziher, Introduction to Islamic Theology and

Law, trans., Muhammad Yusuf Musa , al-Aqidah

wa al-Shari ‘ah f i al-Isl a m (Baghdad: Maktabah

al-Muthannah, 1959), 147.

20. Abu ‘1-‘Ula‘Afifi, al-Tasawwuf al-Thawrah al-

Ruhiyyah fi ‘-Islam (Beirut: Dar al-Sha’b, n.d.),

85.

21. Ibid., 89-91.

22. Muhammad ibn ‘Umar al-Waqidi, Futuh al-Sham

(Beirut: Dar al Jil, n.d.), 1: 231.

23. Shihab al-Din Abu Mahmud ibn Tamim al-

Maqdisi, Muthir al-Gharam ila Ziyarat al-Quds

wa al-Sham, ed., Ahmad al-Khutaymi (Beirut:

Dar al Jil, 1994), 299-300.

24. Ahmad ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Azdi, Ta’rikh Futuh al-

Sham, ed., ‘Abd al-Mun’im‘Abd.Allah ‘Amir

(Cairo: Mu’assasah Sajill al-’Arab, 1970), 257.

25. Abu Dawud Sulayman ibn Ash’ath, Sunan Abi

Dawud, Kitab al-Manasik, Bab fi Mawaqit; Diya’

al-Din Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi,

Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis, ed., Muhammad Muti‘

al-Hafiz (Damascus: Dar al-Fikr, 1985), 88.

26. Mahmud Ibrahim, Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis

(Kuwait: al-Munazzamah al-‘Arabiyyah li al-

Tarbiyyah wa al-Thaqafah wa al-‘Ulum, 1985),

354.

27. Muhammad Hasan Shurrab, Bayt al-Maqdis wa

al-Masjid al-Aqsa (Damascus: 1994), 174.

28. See Mujir al-Din al-Hanbali, al-Uns al Jalil fi

Ta’rikh al-Quds wa al-Khalil (Aleppo: n.d.), 1:

234-236; Abu Mahmud ibn Tamim al-Maqdisi,

Muthir al-Gharam, 332, 334, 338; and

Muhammad Hasan Shurrab, Bayt al-Maqdis wa

al-Masjid al-Aqsa, 355-56.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Muhammad Ibrahim, Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis, 379-

80.

32. Ibid., 379-84.

33. Ibid.

34. Muhammad ‘Abd al-Mun’im Khafaji, Dirasat fi

‘l-Tasawwuf al-Islami, 81.

35. Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr Ibn

Khallikan, Wafayat al-A‘yan, ed., Muhammad

Muhyi ‘1-Din ‘Abd al-Hamid (Cairo: Maktabah

al-Nahdah al-Misriyyah, n.d.), 2:48.

36. Cf. ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi, Shahidat al-Ishq al-

Ilahi: Rabi’ah al-‘Adawiyyah (Cairo: Maktabah

al-Nahdah al-Misriyyah, n.d.), 12.

37. Al-Maqdisi, Muthir, 350.

38. ‘Abd al-Rahman Badawi, Shahidat al-Ishq al-

Ilahi: Rabi‘ah al- :Adawiyyah, 97.

39. Ahmad ibn Muhammad Ibn Khallikan, Wafayat

al-A’yan, 2: 48.

40. Badawi, Shahidat al-Ishq al-Ilahi, 157

41. Muhammad ibn al-Husayn al-Sulami, Tabaqat

al-Sufiyyah, ed., Nur al-Din Sharibah (Cairo: Dar

al-Kitab al-‘Arabi,1953), 27.

42. Abu al-Fida’ Ibn Kathir, al-Bidayah wa al-

Nihayah (Beirut: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1966), 10: 136.

43. Ibrahim, Fada’il Bayt al-Maqdis, 393.

44. Ibid., 139.

45. Al-Hanbali, al-Uns al-Jalil, 1: 261.

46. Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn ‘Ali al-Suyuti, Ithaf

al-Akhissa’ bi Fada’il al-Masjid al-Aqsa, ed.,

Ahmad Ramadan Ahmad (Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-

Misriyyah al-‘Ammah li al-Kitab, 1988), 2: 46.

47. Al-Maqdisi, Muthir, 355.

48. Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Suyuti, Ithaf al-

Akhissa bi Fada’il al-Masjid al-Aqsa, 2: 47.

Al-Aqsa 11

The Israeli/Palestinian Struggle Over

Water Resources –

Gender, Ideology and Natural Resources

Sarah Irving*

In the summer of 2004, a day-tour designed

to show foreigners the situation of

Palestinians living in the Jerusalem area took

me through the illegal settlement of Ma’ale

Adumim. Amongst its pristine new homes and

glossy shopping centres were swathes of bright

green lawns and bright flowerbeds, being watered

by drip irrigation and sprinklers which glistened

in the sun. A public swimming pool advertised

activities, and in the gardens of private houses,

bushes and trees were growing.

I had been staying in the comparatively

comfortable, affluent Palestinian town of Beit

Sahour, near Bethlehem in the West Bank.

Although water was freely available, it tasted

unpleasant and we were urged to have quick

showers. Visiting refugee camps I had encountered

houses where running water was available for only

part of some days and sometimes standpipes had

to be used. I also knew that the camps were often

under curfew or military attack, and that going

outside to collect water was not feasible. I had

also read the accounts of Amira Hass, an Israeli

journalist who had lived in Gaza, who described

the brown, rusty, foul liquid which came out

(occasionally) of the taps in Gaza City.

There is a substantial body of academic and

institutional literature on the issues of water

distribution in the West Bank and Gaza, and the

subject was one of the five main areas of

discussion in the doomed Final Status

Negotiations of the Oslo Accords1. Amongst the

Palestine solidarity community, however, water

has been less widely picked up as an issue.

Settlements and the Separation Wall can be seen;

human rights abuses listened to and agonised over.

But the details of aquifers and rainfall can seem

scholastic and dull, and the key significance of

water – for Palestinian survival and in Israeli

strategic considerations – is easily passed over.

Even more commonly discounted is the role of

ideology in the way that water is regarded, and

the differential impact that water appropriation

has on different groups; especially women, within

Palestinian society. I particularly want to focus

on these two aspects of the water issue in

Palestine and Israel, as I believe that

highlighting them adds considerably to

understanding of the way that access to water

has been used as a weapon against the

Palestinian people, and has affected relations

within Palestinian society.

PART 1: THE NORMATIVE

STATUS OF WATER

Israeli Uses of Palestinian Water

Access to Palestinian water was recognised

by the architects of the State of Israel as vital

to their plans. The Zionist leaders, coming

from a rapidly industrialising Europe, aspired

to standards of living which were much more

resource-intensive than those pursued by the

inhabitants of Palestine under the Ottoman

Empire and British Mandate. This included

plans for hydroelectric power generation and

for intensive forms of agriculture that were

already, even in the 1920s, causing dangerous

levels of salinisation of soil around Jewish

farms under the British Mandate2.

In 1946 the American Zionist Association

employed Tennessee Valley Water Authority

engineers, who had been responsible for some

of the biggest water management projects in

the modern world, to present plans for the

diversion of the Jordan River to the Negev3.

The Haganah Museum in Tel Aviv attaches

great significance to water in the founding of

the country and in the military aims of the

‘Founding Fathers,’ and features maps linking

the lines of water control between the Mandate

era Jewish settlements of the 1930s. Just five

years after the establishment of Israel, the UN

intervened to prevent conflict with Syria over

Israel attempts to divert water from part of

the Jordan River in the demilitarised zone

down to the Negev. With this plan foiled, the

National Water Carrier was built between 1959

and 1964, using a network of pipes and tunnels

* SARAH IRVING is a freelance writer with a long history of involvement in the environmental justice, anti-

globalisation and Palestine solidarity movements. She was involved in the International Solidarity Movement in

Palestine in 2001-2 and is a director of Olive Co-operative, which runs tours to Palestine and sells fairly traded

Palestinian products.

water has been

used as a weapon

against the

Palestinian people,

and has affected

relations within

Palestinian society.

12 Al-Aqsa

to draw water from the Sea of Galilee to the

desert South4.

This level of water appropriation was still,

however, insufficient for Israeli usage. The

occupation of the West Bank in 1967 increased

Israel’s accessible water by 50% due to its

occupation of the three West Bank aquifers5. Israel

used Military Orders to enforced control over

Palestinian water. In addition, the Golan Heights,

also occupied by Israel in 1967, increased Israel’s

water supply by giving it control of two Jordan

tributaries; the Banyas and the Yarkon, and

provided a “water tower”6 for the country.

Despite this widespread appropriation of

other countries’ water resources, and the

availability of efficient water-saving technologies,

Israel still massively over-uses water, and has done

so since the 1970s7, aspiring to the lifestyles of

water-rich industrialised nations. Israel takes 40%

of its groundwater and 25% of renewable water

supplies from Palestinian sources; draws heavily

on its own stocks; and still needs to undertake

negotiations with Turkey to buy water capacity

from this and other countries. With a projected

population in Israel of 8 million by 2025, this

desperation for water can only increase. In

addition, Israel is the only country of the Jordan

basin not to have signed up to the UN

Watercourse Convention, which aims to promote

dialogue between countries sharing water

resources8. Solutions to water shortages are the

subject of great interest in Israel – from

desalination plants to the use of wastewater for

agricultural irrigation9 – but it is unlikely that any

of these will be able to meet the kind of increases

in demand that are projected.

While the over-use of water by Israel is the

result of individual habits and a reaction to the

availability of water, I would contend that it is

also influenced by the way that Israeli society

wishes ideologically to see itself and to promote

itself worldwide. This is as a ‘modern,’ ‘Western-

style’ nation with unlimited resources and access

to pastimes such as swimming pools, lush gardens

and keeping expensive cars sparkling clean. An

Israeli elite that has often grown up in European

countries or the USA, or has family links with

these countries, has profited considerably from

its identification as being ‘like’ these countries, in

an international climate where non-whites are

categorised as inferior. It is their success in

maintaining this racist differentiation that has been

so useful to the Israeli state in presenting itself to

the West as rational, victimised and ‘white’, so

that its enemies – Palestinians and the wider Arab

world – are constructed in opposition to this; as

the violent attackers. Western anti-Jewishness has

been overcome by another layer of prejudice,

which Israeli politicians have successfully

manipulated in the international arena to create a

racist stereotype of their opponents. Water is

fundamental to this lifestyle, both for Israelis

themselves and for the experience that Western

visitors to Israel have of a country that is

‘civilised.’

Symbolism And Ideology

My contention about the normative role

of water leads into a discussion of the

symbolism and ideology which surrounds water

in Palestine and Israel. The conflict is ridden

through with emotional, ethnic and religious

significances which further complicate any

notion of ‘rational’ decisions that international

relations scholars might attempt to apply. As

Miriam Lowi, one of the first scholars to

consider the subject of Israeli and Palestinian

water in an international context, pointed out:

“What is more important to understand,

though, is that interests emerge within the

context of a particular belief system and

historical experience. Both the neo-realists and

neo-liberals fail, in general, to take sufficient

account of this. Indeed, national interests and

foreign policy behaviour are responses to

environmental constraints that are normative

and ideational in nature, as well as being

structural and material”10.

For right-wing religious Jews, such as Rabbi

Ariel of the violent exclusivist movement

Gush Emunim, “the real Zionism, the holy

one with profound roots, exists only where

the really religious Jews are living; in the

mountains of Judea and the valleys of

Samaria”11. Both land and water have

profound religious significant, and the racism

which is implicit (and often explicit) in such

religious fervour rejects the validity of any

other ownership of ‘God-given’ natural

resources, and therefore lays religious claim

to water as well as land: “[Gush Emunim]

argue that what appears to be the confiscation

of Arab-owned land for subsequent settlement

by Jews is in reality not an act of stealing but

one of sanctification”12. Thus taking possession

of Palestinian-owned land is seen as not only

a matter of resource control but also a

religious duty.

For Israeli Jews who are not of religiously

fundamentalist leanings, there are still

significant normative values associated with

water. The place of agriculture in the Israeli

psyche is particularly prominent, associated

with Zionist slogans about ‘greening the desert’

and symbolic of the fertile ‘promised land.’

Its significance in this respect is out of all

proportion to the contribution it makes to the

country’s economy. In 1999, for example,

economists proposed a solution to the summer

drought which entailed giving water to

Palestinian farmers, in order to maintain the

Israel takes 40% of

its groundwater and

25% of renewable

water supplies from

Palestinian sources

Al-Aqsa 13

Palestinian economy and Palestinian consumption

of Israeli goods. In monetary terms, this would

benefit the Israeli economy more than giving the

same water to Israeli farmers. The public outcry

and political opposition that crushed this idea is a

clear illustration of the overwhelming of

economics by ideological passions13.

The symbolic value of water has also made it

an effective weapon, not only in disrupting

people’s lives but also by humiliating and depriving

them. All societies have notions of cleanliness and

pollution which go beyond the immediate

biological or chemical properties of substances,

which means that actions such as urinating in

water tanks (recorded in both the first and second

Intifadas); serve to enforce the helplessness of

people under occupation and the contempt of

their occupiers, as well as to affect their health

and physical cleanliness.

It is factors such as these which go some way

to explaining the inadequacy of Israeli

macroeconomic analyses of the water situation.

One such analysis suggests the settlements are

not a significant tool of water policy because to

use conflict to control water is more expensive

for Israel than to buy it from other countries14.

To rely solely on the pragmatic issues around

water is to fail to understand the normative

significance it has for the Israeli policy-makers

and public.

Land, agriculture and water also inhabit

significant normative spaces for Palestinians,

though without the kind of ethnic exclusivism

expressed by Israeli Jewish fundamentalists.

Women interviewed by Tamar Mayer during the

first Intifada regularly used words such as ‘holy’

to express their perception of the land and its

resources. For these women, farming (often under

difficult conditions) and their relationship to the

land had become part of their resistance to the

Israeli occupation and had taken on emotional

and nationalistic connotations15. Unlike the Israeli

religious right, for Palestinians keeping control of

their land and its resources is not only a matter

of physical survival, but also of identity and of

spiritual resistance. As two female Palestinian

citizens of Israel wrote in 2002: “land is

fundamental to Palestinian culture, economy and

identity. The current destruction of olive groves

by Israeli military and settlers is not simply the

destruction of thousands of trees, but of the

Palestinian soul.”16

The normative role of water and land also

underlies a significant problem of dealing with

water issues for the Palestinians. As water has

become a symbol of the oppression, and a

significant factor in day-to-day difficulties for

them, a discourse has developed which only

allows water problems to be attributed to the

Occupation. This means that other problems

which became rife in the West Bank and Gaza

due to water shortages cannot be properly

dealt with, because their root causes cannot

be acknowledged. These problems include

corruption, water theft and mismanagement,

the chaos caused by different agencies and

aid organisations failing to co-operate with one

another in the Oslo period, and the failure of

some villages to acknowledge the

consequences of their own choices to be

attached to the Israeli state water network17.

Trottier uses the concept of ‘sanctioned

discourses’ to explain the circumscribed way

in which certain ideas and concepts are allowed

– or not allowed – to exist within the way that

water is talked about by Palestinians. The

‘sanctioned discourse’ of a simple Israeli

appropriation of all West Bank water is

undoubtedly a useful rallying cry for the

Palestinian Authorities, but it also obscures

inquiries into bureaucratic incompetence and

corruption18.

Ideology And The Sitting Of Settlements

Despite official denials, the use of the West

Bank settlements to control water resources

is well known and widely admitted. The pattern

of settlement building since the 1970s has

followed the ridges and edges of aquifers in

the hills of the area, allowing settlers to

dominate aquifers and more easily access their

contents19. It is widely acknowledged that

settlers use between three and four times as

much water per head as their Palestinian

neighbours20. Their access to more

sophisticated drilling equipment allows them

to drill deeper wells to access clean water,

which many Palestinians believe saps the

supplies of their own older, shallower wells.

The Taba agreement between Israel and the

Palestinian Authority, signed in 1995, ceded

Israel the rights to 82% of West Bank water,

setting in stone Israeli control over Palestinian

resources. This agreement was facilitated by

the ‘facts on the ground’ created by the

settlements. This also reinforced the kind of

situation, typical in the West Bank, commented

on by Hanna Nasir, mayor of Bethlehem, in

2002: “Here we are surrounded by settlements.

They are grabbing the land around the clock

and taking eighty-one percent of our water.

Oppression to this extent doesn’t help the cause

of peace”21.

Those who attribute the sitting of

settlements to Israeli desires to control water

resources are still largely dismissed as

conspiracy theorists despite evidence to the

contrary coming from many quarters. Even

Malcolm Rifkind, former Conservative

defence minister in the UK, acknowledged that

this was the case and that it was illegal22. A

The symbolic value

of water has also

made it an effective

weapon, not only in

disrupting people’s

lives but also by

humiliating and

depriving them

14 Al-Aqsa

study cited by Trottier denied strenuously that

water grabbing motivated settlement

construction – but admitted that the IDF’s

planning department included an officer whose

responsibilities included “the evaluation of the

strategic influence of water resources”23. And

maps produced by Palestinian organisations such

as HDIP and Israeli human rights groups such

as B’tselem confirm the congruence of

settlement construction and the position of water.

The most recent of these maps also confirm

the role of the Separation Wall in reinforcing

this control, throwing long spurs into the West

Bank to strengthen ownership of strategically

important settlements such as Ariel and Barkan.

Thus, the pragmatic concerns of Israeli planners;

to control water resources; further coincides with

the ideological motives of racially and religiously

discriminatory Israelis whose primary objective

is the expansion of the state of Israel.

Ideology and Israel’s International Water

Relations

The appropriation of Palestinian water has

not been Israel’s only controversial acquisition.

Water conflicts have been key to interethnic

conflicts in the region since Biblical times, and in

their plans for a state the early Zionists were well

aware of the issue. They were the only group to

bring the subject into the peace conferences at

the end of World War I, whereas the Hashemites

complacently assumed they would control the

entire region and did not need to consider specific

areas. Even Zionist founder Theodor Herzl

commented that “the real founder of the new-

old country were the hydraulic engineers”24.

In 1953, the UN had to prevent the newly

formed state of Israel from diverting water from

the demilitarised zone between Israel and Syria,

in order to draw it south to the Negev desert25.

Having been thwarted in this, Israel built the

National Water Carrier; a network of pipes which

took water from the Sea of Galilee to the southern

desert. Israel’s 1967 occupation of the Golan

Heights was also partly inspired by the desire to

take control of this source26. It was access to this

water and its channelling southwards which

allowed Israel to carry out the Zionist dream of

‘greening the desert.’

Prior to 1948, Zionist organisations entered

into a deal with King Abdullah of Jordan,

offering him the West Bank aquifers and parts

of the Jordan River in return for co-operation27.

The two countries co-operated from 1963

onwards and more so after 1967, although the

relationship was kept quiet because of hostility

from other Arab states28. A 1994 treaty

formalised exchanges of water between the two

countries in times of crisis, setting in law the de

facto control by Israel of the Wadi Arabah,

captured in 1967. However, the deal was not

well thought out on the Jordanian side, as

the absence of a clause specifying water

quality has meant that Israel has handed over

dirty, high-salinity water after receiving

cleaner supplies29. Israel’s lack of respect

for its Arab neighbours makes sending them

dirty water an act of symbolic aggression, as

well as of short-term economic pragmatism.

PART 2: WATER AND DAY-TO-DAY

LIFE FOR PALESTINIANS UNDER

OCCUPATION

Water in Israeli-Palestinian Peace and War

As Birgit Schlutter noted at the end of

2005, “With the beginning of new peace

negotiations under Palestinian President

Mahmud Abbas, the topic of water and its

allocation to Palestinians and Israelis is back

on the negotiation table.” Water has of

necessity featured in the provisions of all

Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since the

Madrid talks and Oslo accords of the early

1990s. However, Israel has held a hard line

on the subject. At Madrid it refused to discuss

the ‘political’ aspects of water, insisting on

covering only ‘technical’ areas and

programmes of capacity-building in Arab

states and areas, including resurrecting the

idea of a canal between the Nile and Gaza30.

The Oslo agreement included an annex

specifying ‘co-operation’ on water issues31, but

the 1994 Cairo agreement placed the

Palestinian Authority in an untenable position

of being responsible for water and sewage

in the West Bank and Gaza, but keeping

supply in the hands of the Israeli Mekorot

Water Company32.

As is often the case, many people – the

press, the international community, and the

governments of the countries concerned –

spend a lot of time talking about the ‘big’

questions – of geology, of international

politics, agreements and treaties. What so often

fails to appear in such discussions is the impact

on millions of ordinary people.

Israel’s controlled manipulation of water

sources has been used as a weapon during

both Intifadas. During the first Intifada even

the Mayor of Jerusalem cited the illegality of

collective punishment in his objections to army

cutting of water supplies in East Jerusalem as

punishment for communities in resistance33.

Similar tactics were still being employed in the

second Intifada, for example in Bethlehem in

2002 Israeli soldiers cut domestic water pipes

while keeping the city centre under 24-hour

curfew for weeks34.

The pragmatic

concerns of Israeli

planners; to control

water resources;

further coincides

with the ideological

motives of racially

and religiously

discriminatory

Israelis whose

primary objective is

the expansion of the

state of Israel.

Al-Aqsa 15

The Situation for People in the West Bank

In January 2006 the Israeli newspaper

Ha’aretz printed a story that will be familiar, in

essence if not in detail, to anyone who pays

attention to Israeli incursions onto West Bank

land. According to the piece: “Wadi Fuqin is known

far and wide for its traditional farming practices, considered

by many to be the finest, most impressive agricultural

system in any Palestinian village. However, extensive

[settlement] expansion plans are now threatening the

preservation of this farming tradition by endangering,

among other things, the village’s water supply. If the

plans materialize, the village will be surrounded on nearly

all sides by new Betar Illit neighbourhoods and the

separation fence. A planned road will also cut through

village fields.

This tale illustrates the breadth of the impact

that Israel’s attitude to Palestinian water has. It

not only affects people’s livelihoods by curtailing

agriculture, but destroys heritage and ways of life

that have lasted for generations. In urban settings,

where supplies can not be just disrupted but cut

altogether, it impacts on health, causing unsanitary

conditions and an inadequate supply of clean

drinking water. Everyday tasks such as washing

clothes and bathing are restricted, and stereotypes

about ‘dirty Arabs’ reinforced, despite Israeli

imposition of any lack of cleanliness. Increasingly,

environmental problems occur as a result of

Israel’s over-exploitation of its own and others’

water. Chemicals, fertilisers and sewage pollution

are starting to concentrate in the aquifers,

damaging future water resources35, while even the

Jordan River is drying up as the sources feeding

it are used to excess. According to environmental

groups, fifty years ago “some 1.3 billion cubic

metres of clean water flowed through the Lower

Jordan each year. Today, the total is less than 100

million cubic metres, much of it either sewage or

diverted saline water. Massive water diversion

programs, closed borders and sewage discharge

have almost completely destroyed the natural and

cultural heritage of this river”36. This not only

damages current agriculture and domestic access,

but also has considerable implications for a

putative Palestinian state built on industries such

as agriculture and tourism. It also contributes to

the high levels of unemployment in the West Bank,

where an estimated 60% of the population lives

below the poverty line37, as jobs lost to inadequate

resources join those cut off by movement

restrictions such as the Wall and checkpoints.

Israeli control of Palestinian water has also

had longer-term impacts, preventing development

and planning. The (in)famous Military Order 158

of 1967 subjected all drilling of agricultural or

industrial wells in the West Bank to Israeli licenses,

and only 23 were granted between 1967 and

199038. Domestic wells were largely allowed,

indicating that the intention was to stifle economic

activity and ensure that Palestinians, until the

first Intifada, remained a source of cheap

labour for Israeli agriculture and industry.

Economic uses of water were further

prevented by high prices; well above the

subsidised rates for Israelis served by the same

supplier; which were set by a board dominated

by Israeli farmers39 in whose interests it was

to price their Palestinian colleagues out of

existence. Despite some allocation of

governance to the Palestinian Authority, under

the Taba agreement, the Israeli state retained

a veto40, allowing it to forever inhibit

Palestinian development and curtail the

Palestinian authorities’ ability to plan or to deal

adequately with fraud and theft (should it be

inclined to). The ideological element of this

process is illustrated by the fact that under

slightly more ‘dovish’ Labour governments,

the committee determining water licenses met

frequently allowing decisions to be made

quickly. Under the ‘hawk’ Netanyahu, the

timing was cut to just four times a year,

slowing the process even further41. As well as

the economic impacts of such constraints, they

continued to function as impediments to the

Palestinian people’s sense of being in control

of its own affairs and contributed to a

situation of disempowerment in which the

impetus and energy was drained from

Palestinians who were continually denied the

chance to make decisions or have a say in

their own futures.

The Situation for People in Gaza

The water situation in Gaza is in some

respects worse than that in the West Bank,

where, although the Israelis draw large

quantities of water out, rainfall is more

abundant and the Israeli state has largely stayed

out of domestic water issues. In Gaza,

however, the underlying aquifer has been

seriously depleted and what water remains is

polluted and saline. The population of Gaza

was massively increased by refugees of 1948

and 1967, increasing demand on already

diminished supplies, and proper wastewater

treatment only started in the 1990s42. Although

the occupying authorities had been more

inclined to allow wells to be dug than in the

West Bank, where they wanted to keep the

water for Israeli use43, this now leads to a

complex situation for the post-withdrawal

Palestinian Authority, which must decide

whether to allow more wells to be dug –

further depleting the already scanty aquifer –

or to try and take a longer-term approach

which may be unpopular with a public which

has had to put up with desperately scarce

running water. In addition, the occupying

Massive water

diversion programs,

closed borders and

sewage discharge

have almost

completely

destroyed the

natural and cultural

heritage of this

river

16 Al-Aqsa

Israeli authorities have refused to invest in

infrastructure, resulting in a situation of poverty

and hardship, as described by Amira Hass:

“The Israeli military government set up in

1967, and the civil administration after it, were

distinguished by their budgetary niggardliness, by

a lack of provision for development, by heavier

taxation than in Israel, by an education system

that could not or did not try to keep up with the

increasing number of schoolchildren, and by

monumental neglect of Gaza’s infrastructure: its

roads, its water, sewage, telephone and electricity

systems. Families compensated for the neglect with

their own improvisations, and the cost was

shouldered by sons and daughters and siblings

and in-laws. Such improvisations often included

makeshift sewage systems, private water tanks,

illegal wells, or even just a battery of jerry cans

filled with unpolluted water taken from pipes near

the Jewish settlements or the Sheikh Radwan

neighbourhood – all to avoid the foul-tasting water

in most homes and to cope with the frequent

interruptions in its flow”44.

The situation for Palestinians in Israel and

East Jerusalem

The Israeli State’s ideological desire to control

water resources, and to reserve them for its Jewish

population, does not only impact on Palestinians

resident in the West Bank and Gaza. Hadas Lahav,

a left-wing Israeli activist with labour rights and

women’s organisations, takes visitors to the Galilee

through the countryside alongside either side of

the main roads. She points out that on one farm

a crop will be tall and robust, while the same

species growing in a neighbouring field will be

stunted and sparse, yielding far lower harvests.

Jewish Israeli farmers, who are granted licenses

to irrigate their fields and use considerable

amounts of water, own the lush, healthy farms.

The poor, sparse plants are those of Palestinian

Israeli farmers, who are frequently denied

irrigation permits and have to struggle to grow

crops that are reduced in quantity and quality,

confining their sale to local markets and denying

the farmers access to lucrative export sales.

Restrictions on access to water also affect

Palestinian-Israeli towns; where water supplies are

often inadequate for the population size, and

Israeli state polices which deliberately under-fund

Palestinian towns mean that amenities such as

public swimming pools, common in Jewish towns,

are rare in Arab neighbourhoods.

Palestinian residents of Jerusalem live under

much more direct day-to-day control of the Israeli

state than West Bank and Gazan Palestinians. Like

Israeli citizens of Palestine, East Jerusalemites also

exist as second-class citizens when it comes to

access to water and sanitation, with many

neighbourhoods still lacking proper running

water45. Many existing water lines were

installed in the early 1970s, in the immediate

aftermath of Israeli annexation of East

Jerusalem, and are inadequate for current

population levels. The lack of will of the Israeli

authorities, combined with tensions between

the communities which at times has made it

difficult for Israeli water engineers to carry

out repairs in Palestinian areas, has also meant

that many pipes are broken and leaking46.

Again, normative considerations – racism and

concepts of exclusive rights to resources –

govern decision-making about access to water.

This attitude is illustrated by the comments

of a former Mayor of Jerusalem, whose

policies ensured sub-standard conditions for

Palestinians:

“Only when the lack of infrastructure

threatens to produce wider problems for

Jewish populations has the Israeli state invested

systematically in modernising occupied

Palestinian communities. On retiring, Teddy

Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem between 1967 and

1993, made a startling admission: ‘For Jewish

Jerusalem I did something in the past 25 years,’

he reflected. ‘For East Jerusalem? Nothing!

Sidewalks? Nothing! Cultural institutions? Not

one! Yes, we installed a sewerage system for

them and improved the water supply. Do you

know why? Do you think it was for their good,

for their welfare? Forget it! There were some

cases of cholera there, and the Jews were

afraid that they would catch it!’”47.

Gendered Impacts

Different groups within Palestinian society

are affected in different ways by the problems

of water shortages and appropriation. I want

to look specifically at the way that women;

particularly those living in the refugee camps

of the West Bank and Gaza, and women in

other working-class areas, both urban and

rural, are impacted on. It is a truism of

development studies that women are most

affected by poverty, as in many societies they

are more likely to be confined to the domestic

sphere and to be responsible for allocating

scarce food resources within the family,

resulting in less resources being allotted to

themselves. So, as well as the issues discussed

below, it must be understood that Palestinian

women are likely to be on the receiving end

of the declines in income caused by

unemployment, economic closures of large

areas of Palestine, and the decline of

agriculture48.

Around a third of the Palestinian

population lacked piped water to their homes

in the early 1990s. Although aid donors and

the PA have improved this situation, many

The poor, sparse

plants are those of

Palestinian Israeli

farmers, who are

frequently denied

irrigation permits

and have to

struggle to grow

crops that are

reduced in quantity

and quality,

Do you think it was

for their good, for

their welfare?

Forget it! There

were some cases of

cholera there, and

the Jews were

afraid that they

would catch it

Al-Aqsa 17

rural households still have no running water49. In

areas such as refugee camps this pattern is

repeated because they are most likely to be subject

to attack by Israeli troops, including severing of

water supplies, and the inhabitants of the camps

are least likely to be able to afford illicit extensions

from the established water network. In addition,

many urban areas with pipes fitted only actually

receive water through them for a few days a

week50. The result for women is that they are

often expected to carry water for long distances,

either from wells and springs, or from standpipes51.

During the first intifada, women were shot at by

soldiers and settlers while collecting water, and

were extremely vulnerable during the 2-6 hours

it can take to gather water for an average-sized

family of 6 people. The collection of water was

also often a job allocated to older girls in a family,

meaning that they were even less likely to be able

to choose whether to stay in education52.

Many of the houses with poor water supplies

also have substandard sewage and sanitary

provision, due to decades of underinvestment,

as observed by Karen Assaf: “sewage disposal

and treatment has been systematically neglected

since the days of the British Mandate which ended

in 1948. All types of development in the OTs

have been more directly hindered by the Israeli

occupation”53. The pressure on this infrastructure

is increased by the growth in population density,

especially in Gaza and the refugee camps. This

results in widespread problems typical of the kind

found in the presence of poor sanitation, such as

endemic dysentery and other digestive tract

problems, especially amongst children. When such

diseases become chronic they also have longer-

term effects, such as malnutrition54. The dangers

for women in childbirth also increase when water

is scarce, as sterilisation becomes impossible55. The

health effects of water shortage are

disproportionately heavy on women and female

children, as they tend to spend more time within

contaminated areas, while men are more likely to

work or socialise away from home, and boys are

more likely to be permitted to go to school or

play further from home56. Some commentators

have even seen this as a means of covert

population control by the Israeli authorities of a

‘despised population’57.

The contamination of water sources with

substances such as unregulated pesticides, which

the Israeli authorities have allowed to enter the

West Bank and Gaza while banning inside Israel,

also disproportionately affects women and

children, as they are again more likely to be

routinely drinking water from a single source.

Water supplies in the West Bank have never been

regularly tested for pesticide residues. It must, of

course, be noted that such health problems are

likely to be increasing amongst men in the West

Bank, as they too have been more confined to

small areas and to the home since the

beginning of the second Intifada brought

checkpoints and mass job losses.

Conclusion

Water, the little-discussed and unglamorous

but utterly vital resource, is key to so many

aspects of the situation of the Palestinian

people and their Israeli occupiers, from the

smallest everyday acts to the grandest dreams

of men forging international agreements and

launching international wars. Its significance

in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship is not as

simple as a blanket scarcity affecting all

Palestinians, or a pragmatic concern of the

Israeli state. It is crosscut by myriad factors

of class, ethnicity, geography and, as I have

highlighted in this essay, gender and ideology.

It is these complexities which make resolution

of the water issue – even should the Israeli

state desire such a resolution – so difficult.

Because water has such symbolic significance,

creating fair agreements on it is not simply a

matter of technical issues but of emotion and

ideology. For the Israeli state to relinquish even

a small percentage of the water it currently

controls, it would not only impact on its

people’s lifestyles but also their self-image and

the international standing of their country, so

vital to its continued defence by the states that

currently determine the world’s balance of

power. And because the voices of women,

especially working-class ones, are largely absent

from political and international negotiations,

in Palestine as in so many other parts of the

world, their specific needs and the particular

challenges they face in their roles as women

continue to remain unaddressed.

Footnote: the geography of Palestinian

and Israeli water

Palestine lies at the Western end of the

Fertile Crescent, the site of humankind’s first

domestication of plant and animals. Although

there is sufficient water for agriculture, many

areas are very dry, and water was key to the

sitting of some of the earliest towns in the

region, such as Beersheba. Early inhabitants

of what is now Israel and Palestine, such as

the Nabateans, were amongst the first desert

farmers, and the techniques they developed

are still used today amongst the Bedouin.

Ironically, the Romans wrote of these people

‘making the desert bloom,’ a phrase which

echoes the propaganda of Zionist projects to

bring agriculture to the Negev desert .

Nevertheless, water has always been in short

supply in the region, and fertile land goes

uncultivated for lack of it.

Some com-

mentators have

even seen this as a

means of covert

population control

by the Israeli

authorities of a

‘despised

population

18 Al-Aqsa

There are five main aquifers – underground

rock formations where water is stored – in the

land making up Israel and Palestine (the West

Bank and Gaza). The Israeli coastal aquifer

stretches from Mount Carmel south to Gaza,

while the Yarkon-Taninim runs from Mount

Carmel inland to Beersheba, and is partly fed by

rainwater which falls in the West Bank and

percolates downwards through the rocks.

In addition to these, the West Bank area of

Palestine contains three further aquifers. One is

situated in the West of the area, another in the

East, where its water flows down to the Jordan

River, and one to the North, where its water ends

in the Galilee in Israel. The position of these

aquifers, and the direction of their water flow, is

key to understanding much of Israel’s behaviour

towards the Palestinian people and the territory

they live on.

Notes

1. Trottier, Julie (1999) Hydropolitics in the West Bank and

Gaza Strip, PASSIA (Palestinian Academic Society for

the Study of International Affairs), at 1.

2. Ibid, at 42, 45.

3. Ibid at 13.

4. Bregman, Ahron and Jihan el-Tahri (1998), The Fifty

Years War: Israel and the Arabs, Penguin, at 257-259.

5. Supra note 1, at 60.

6. Ibid at 59.

7. Hunt, Constance E (2004)., Thirsty Planet: Strategies For

Sustainable Water Management, Zed Books, at 51.

8. Ibid at 56, 269.

9. Ibid at 125.

10. Quoted by Trottier, supra note 1, at 9.

11. Quoted by Shahak, Israel and Norton Mezvinsky (2004),

Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (2nd ed.), Pluto Press, at

88.

12. Ibid at 67.

13. Supra note 1, at 192-193.

14. Ibid at 15.

15. Mayer, Tamar “Heightened Palestinian nationalism:

military occupation, repression, difference and

gender”, in Tamar Mayer (ed) (1994) Women and the Israeli

Occupation: the Politics of Change, Routledge, pp 62-87, at

81.

16. Shaheen, Wafaa and Trees Zbidat-Klosterman (2002)

“We have to change our lives”, in Trouble & Strife: Feminist

Perspectives After September 11th, pp37-45, at 37.

17. Supra note 1 at 23, 77 and 163.

18. Ibid at 164.

19. Philo, Greg and Berry, Mike (2004), Bad News from Israel,

Pluto Press, at 94.

20. Ibid. See also, Hunt, supra note 7, at 51.

21. Schubert, Katharine von (2005), Checkpoints And

Chance: Eyewitness Accounts From An Observer

In Israel-Palestine, Quaker Books, at 25.





26. Ibid at 230.


28. Ibid at 7-8.

29. Ibid at 10, 60, 68.

30. Ibid at 63.



33. Cheshin, Amir S., Hutman, Bill and Melamed, Avi

(1999), Separate and Unequal: the inside story of Israeli

rule in East Jerusalem, Cambridge/London, Harvard

University Press, at171.

34. Irving, Sarah (2004), Besieged in Bethlehem: letters home

from Palestine March-April 2002, at 10.


36. Friends of the Earth Scotland 2005. ‘What on Earth’

magazine Winter 2005, at 15.

37. Gavrilis, George 2006. ‘The Forgotten West Bank.”

Foreign Affairs, January-February 2006, http://

w w w. n y t i m e s . c o m / c f r / i n t e r n a t i o n a l /

20060101faessay_v85n1_gavrilis.html?_r

=1&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin


39. Ibid at 62.

40. Ibid at 67, 184.

41. Ibid at 184.

42. Ibid at 71, 120.

43. Ibid at 171.

44. Hass, Amira (1996) Drinking the sea at Gaza: days and

nights in a land under siege, New York, Henry Holt &

Co, at 59.


46. Ibid, at 84, 130 and 174.

47. Graham, Stephen (2002) ‘Clean Territory:’ urbicide in

the West Bank, www.opendemocracy.net, http://

w w w. o p e n d e m o c r a c y . n e t / c o n f l i c t -

politicsverticality/article_241.jsp (last visited

February 2006)

48. Assaf, Karen (1994), ‘Environmental problems

affecting Palestinian women under Occupation’,

in Tamar Mayer (ed) Women and the Israeli Occupation:

the Politics of Change, London, Routledge pp 164-

178, at 173.

49. Ibid at 170.

50. Ibid at 169, and supra note 44 at 60.

51. Supra note 48 at 170.

52. Young, Elise G. (1994), ‘A feminist politics of health

care: the case of Palestinian women under Israeli

occupation 1979-1982’, in Tamar Mayer (ed), Women

and the Israeli Occupation: the Politics of Change, London,

Routledge, pp178-198, at187.



55. Ibid at 187.



�

Al-Aqsa 19

My War with Zionism

Alan Hart*

Events at the time of writing oblige me

to begin this article with a confession.

I am ashamed, deeply ashamed, to be a

citizen of a nation with a government which,

along with the Bush administration, is complicit

in Israel’s collective punishment of two peoples

– the Palestinians and the Lebanese. Collective

punishment is a war crime, so it can and should

be said that Prime Minister Blair and President

Bush are complicit in the war crimes of Israel’s

generals and those Israeli politicians who rubber

stamp their demands.

What I think we have been witnessing in the

Zionist state of Israel since 12 July 2006 – some

would say since Israel’s unilateral declaration of

existence in 1948 - is the emergence into the

full light of day of the New Nazis – Zionist

Nazis. And that’s not only the opinion of this

Gentile.

On 15 June I chaired a panel presentation

and debate at the School of Oriental and African

Studies at London University (SOAS) on the

subject of “WHY ANTI-ZIONISM IS NOT

ANTI-SEMITISM.” One of my four

distinguished panellists was a German-born

Jewish gentleman, Dr. Hajo Meyer. As a youth

fighting in the Jewish underground, he was

captured by the Gestapo in Holland and

transported to Auschwitz. In other words, he is

a holocaust survivor. On the platform he said

that Israel’s behaviour could and should be

likened to that of the Nazis in Germany and

Nazi-occupied Europe.

It might well be that there is much more to

Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon than

collective punishment of a whole people as part

and parcel of a stated objective – the destruction

of Hezbollah as a Muslim David which can hit

and hurt the Zionist Goliath.

In one possible scenario, the Zionist state’s

real game plan is to ethnically cleanse Lebanon

up to the Litani River, with a view to occupying

and then annexing the ethnically cleansed

territory. For Zionism this would be the

fulfilment of the vision of modern Israel’s

founding father, David Ben-Gurion. His

vision was of a Zionist state within “natural”

borders, those borders being the Jordan

River in the East and the Litani River of

Lebanon in the north. Israel gained control

of the Jordan River border in its 1967 war

of expansion, but all of its attempts to date

to establish the Litani border have failed.

It might also be that Zionism’s real game

plan includes the installation of a Christian

puppet government in Beirut, one that would

make peace with Israel on Israel’s terms. In

other words, Israel’s New Nazis may be

seeking to succeed where Sharon failed in

1982. And it’s not impossible that this what

the neo-cons in and around the Bush

administration really want. They would view

such an outcome to the recent events in

Lebanon as proof that they can create “a

new Middle East” on their terms.

In my opinion a new Middle East based

on more Zionist ethnic cleansing, and the

fortification of the Zionist state of Israel as

the hammer of American policy in the

region, would make the so-called “war

against terrorism” (with Syria and Iran) less,

not more, winnable. I think it would make a

Clash of Civilisations, Judeo-Christian v

Islamic, unstoppable. And perhaps that, a

Clash of Civilisations, is also what the neo-

cons and their Christian fundamentalist and

Zionist allies really want.

It was to assist the understanding, so

desperately needed, if the longest running

conflict in all of human history is not to end

in catastrophe for us all, that I devoted more

than five years of my life to researching and

writing Zionism: the Real Enemy of the Jews. It

has two central and related themes.

One is how the modern state of Israel,

the child of Zionism, became its own worst

enemy and a threat not only to the peace of

the region and the world, but also to the best

interests of Jews everywhere and the moral

integrity of Judaism itself.

* ALAN HART is a former ITN and BBC Panorama reporter who covered wars and conflicts wherever they

were taking place in the world. His latest book, an epic in two volumes, is ZIONISM: THE REAL ENEMY OF

THE JEWS

the Zionist state’s

real game plan is to

ethnically cleanse

Lebanon up to the

Litani River, with a

view to occupying

and then annexing

the ethnically

cleansed territory

20 Al-Aqsa

� It is a fact that prior to the obscenity of

the Nazi holocaust most informed and

thoughtful Jews everywhere, including

the very small number of Jews then living

in Palestine who had maintained the

Jewish presence on the land throughout

everything and who regarded themselves

as Palestinians, were opposed to

Zionism’s colonial enterprise. Why?

Because they believed it to be morally

wrong. Because they feared that it would

lead to unending conflict given the

opposition of the entire Arab and Muslim

world. And because they also feared that

the creation in the Arab heartland of a

Zionist state for some Jews (a minority)

would not be in the best interests of those

(the majority) who preferred to live, as

they still do, as integrated citizens in the

many lands of the mainly Gentile world.

� A more recent expression of the latter

fear can be found in Israel’s Fateful Hour

by Yehoshafat Harkabi, Israel’s longest

serving and most enlightened Director

of Military Intelligence. In this seminal

book, published in English in 1988,

Harkabi wrote the following (my

emphasis added):

“Israel is the criterion according to which all

Jews will tend to be judged. Israel as a Jewish

state is an example of the Jewish character,

which finds free and concentrated expression

within it. Anti-Semitism has deep and historical

roots. Nevertheless, any flaw in Israeli conduct,

which initially is cited as anti-Israelism, is likely

to be transformed into empirical proof of the

validity of anti-Semitism. It would be a tragic

irony if the Jewish state, which was intended to

solve the problem of anti-Semitism, was to

become a factor in the rise of anti-Semitism.

Israelis must be aware that the price of their

misconduct is paid not only by them but also

Jews throughout the world.”

The other central and related theme is why,

really, the whole Arab and wider Muslim world

is an explosion of frustration and despair waiting

for its time to happen.

In this context I describe the Palestine

problem as the cancer at the heart of

international affairs; and I summarise what I

mean with this statement. If an America

President had a magic wand, and if he could

wave it to get Israel back behind its borders as

they were on the eve of the 1967 war, with

Jerusalem an open city and the capital of two

states, he would have (with one wave of the

wand) the thanks, respect and support of not

less than 95 percent of all Arabs and Muslims

everywhere.

The way to put violent Islamic funda-

mentalism out of business is not with bombs

and bullets (the neo-con and Zionist way)

and draconian “anti-terror” legislation which

degrades the human and civil rights of all,

but by curing the cancer at the heart of

international affairs, the cure being justice

for the Palestinians.

I insisted on Zionism: The Real Enemy of

the Jews as the title because it reflects in seven

words two related truths for our time. The

first is that the sleeping giant of anti-

Semitism has been re-awakened. The second

is that the prime cause of the re-awakening

is the behaviour of Zionism’s arrogant, self-

righteous and aggressive child, Israel.

Do I really believe that a book could help

to change the course of history?

Yes, in principle, if… If with it, and the

assistance of peoples of all faiths and none

who share my passion for the truth of

history, I can succeed in setting a new agenda

for informed and honest debate about who

must do what and why for justice and peace

in the Middle East; by definition a debate

on something other than Zionism’s terms.

Why, really, is such a debate needed?

From the Nazi holocaust and Israel’s

unilateral declaration of independence in

1948 to the present, informed and honest

debate has not been possible throughout the

mainly Gentile Judeo-Christian world. Why

not? Because its first and still existing draft

of history – which to my shame today I

helped to write as an ITN and Panorama

reporter – is constructed on Zionist

mythology.

The core assertion of this mythology is

that poor little Israel has lived in danger of

annihilation – the “driving into the sea” of

its Jews. The truth of history, which flows

fully documented through both volumes is

that Israel’s existence has never, ever, been

in danger from any combination of Arab

force. Not in 1948. Not in 1956. Not in

1967. And not even in 1973.

1948

It is true that on 15 May 1948 it was the

Arabs, elements of the armies of five states

– Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and

Transjordan – which initiated the first Arab-

Israeli war in response to Israel’s unilateral

declaration of existence. But the prospect

of Israel being annihilated was not a real

one accept in Zionist mythology, which was

able to present itself as truth to the mainly

Gentile Judeo-Christian world because of

the ignorance of public opinion and the

bellicose rhetoric of some Arab spokesmen;

It would be a tragic

irony if the Jewish

state, which was

intended to solve

the problem of

anti-Semitism, was

to become a factor

in the rise of anti-

Semitism

Al-Aqsa 21

and this against the background of the Nazi

holocaust.

In reality as opposed to rhetoric, the Arabs

had neither the ability nor the intention to

destroy the Zionist state at birth. The actual

intention of those Arab leaders who went

through the motions of fighting Israel was to

hold the territory assigned to the Arab state of

the UN General Assembly’s partition plan – to

prevent the Zionists grabbing it, too. During a

30-day truce which ended on 9 July, the IDF

came formally into being with 60,000 men added

to its fighting strength. When the war was

resumed it was no contest. Some 90,000 well-

armed Israelis were taking on not more than

21,000 Arab regular soldiers who were without

the ammunition and weapons to offer more than

token resistance. From that point on it was the

Arab (Palestinian) state of the partition plan that

was in danger of annihilation. Not the Zionist

state. And from this point on, Israel was,

actually, the Goliath.

Still today there is a great deal of ignorance

about what really happened in the countdown

to the first Arab-Israeli war and whether or not

Israel has “a right to exist”.

The truth is that because of the

circumstances of its creation, the Zionist state

of Israel had no right to exist unless….. Unless

it was recognised and legitimized by those who

were dispossessed of their land and their rights

during the creation of the Zionist state. In

international law only the Palestinians can give

Israel the legitimacy it craves.

According to first and still existing draft of

history, Israel was given its birth certificate and

thus legitimacy by the UN Partition Resolution

of 29 November 1947.

� In the first place the UN without the

consent of the majority of the people

of Palestine did not have the right to

decide to partition Palestine or assign any

part of its territory to a minority of alien

immigrants in order for them to establish

a state of their own.

� Despite that, by the narrowest of margins,

and only after a rigged vote, the UN

General Assembly did pass a resolution

to partition Palestine and create two

states, one Arab, one Jewish, with

Jerusalem not part of either. But the

General Assembly resolution was only a

proposal – meaning that it could have

no effect, would not become policy,

unless approved by the Security Council.

The truth is that the General Assembly’s

partition proposal never went to the

Security Council for consideration. Why

not? Because the US knew that, if

approved, it could only be implemented

by force; and President Truman was

not prepared to use force to partition

Palestine.

� So the partition plan was vitiated

(became invalid) and the question of

what to do about Palestine was taken

back to the General Assembly for

more discussion. The option favoured

and proposed by the US was

temporary UN Trusteeship. It was

while the General Assembly was

debating what to do that Israel

unilaterally declared itself to be in

existence.

The truth of the time was that the Zionist

state came into being as a consequence of

Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing.

A question raised by the events of the

time is, why did President Truman give the

unilaterally declared State of Israel de facto

recognition and thus an apparent degree of

legitimacy, and why, also, was he the first to

give it?

The answer according to those who have

bothered to ask the question is that Truman

did what he did, probably against his own

best judgement and certainly against the

advice of his Secretaries of Defence and

State, to secure the Jewish votes and

campaign funds needed to guarantee his re-

election for a second term. But there is

another possible explanation. Truman may

have feared that if America did not

recognise the self-declared state of Israel and

was not the first to do, the Soviet Union

would be the first and that Israel would then

look to it not the U.S. for superpower backing.

I think there is sufficient evidence to support

the view that Ben-Gurion had Truman put

on notice that Israel would play its cards

through the Soviet Union if the U.S. was

not the first to recognise Israel. And I

speculate that Truman’s real problem was

that he did not know whether Ben-Gurion

was bluffing or not.

1956

If governments had had their way, we

would still be ignorant of what really

happened in 1956. But today there are no

serious historians or writers of any kind who

dispute the truth – that Israel went to war

with Nasser’s Egypt in a conspiracy with

France and Britain. There is also no dispute

about how this war ended. President

Eisenhower read the riot act to the

conspirators, and then confronted Zionism

by insisting that Israel withdraw un-

conditionally from the Egyptian territory it

The actual

intention of those

Arab leaders who

went through the

motions of fighting

Israel was to hold

the territory

assigned to the

Arab state of the

UN General

Assembly’s

partition plan

22 Al-Aqsa

had occupied while doing the dirty work for

France and Britain, and from which it had not

been intending to withdraw unconditionally.

When Kennedy entered the White House it

was his intention to continue Eisenhower’s policy

of seeking to contain both Zionism and the MIC

(Military Industrial Complex). If he had been

allowed to live there would not have been a shift

of U.S. policy in favour of Israel right or wrong;

in all probability the1967 war would not have

happened – Greater Israel would not have been

created; and the Zionist state would not have

been allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Really?

That, on balance, is my conclusion and why

Volume Two begins with a chapter headed

“Turning Point – The Assassination of President

Kennedy”.

1967

Nearly four decades on from the Six-Day

War of June 1967 which resulted in the creation

of Greater Israel, almost all Jews everywhere,

and very many Gentiles, still believe that Israel

went to war either because the Arabs attacked

(that was Israel’s first claim), or because the

Arabs were intending to attack (thus requiring

Israel to launch a pre-emptive strike).

For ITN I was the first Western

correspondent to the banks of the Suez Canal

with the advancing Israelis; and because of the

quality of my contacts – they included one of

the founding fathers of Israel’s Directorate of

Military Intelligence - I was privy to some of

the plotting behind closed doors on the Israeli

side in the countdown to war.

The truth about that war only begins with

the statement that the Arabs did not attack and

were not intending to attack. The complete truth

includes the following facts:

� Israel’s prime minister of the time, the

much maligned Levi Eshkol, did not want

to take his country to war. And nor did

his chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin. They

wanted only very limited military action,

an operation far, far short of war, to put

pressure on the international community

to cause Egypt’s President Nasser to re-

open the Straits of Tiran.

� Israel went to war because its military

and political hawks insisted that the Arabs

were about to attack. They, Israel’s hawks,

knew that was nonsense, but they

promoted it to undermine Eshkol by

portraying him to the country as weak.

The climax to the campaign to rubbish

Eshkol, who was wise not weak, was a

demand by the hawks that he surrender

the defence portfolio and give it to Moshe

Dayan, Zionism’s warlord and master

of deception. Four days after Dayan

got the portfolio he wanted, and the

hawks had secured the green light

from the Johnson administration to

smash Egypt’s air and ground forces,

Israel went to war.

� What actually happened in Israel in

the final countdown to that war was

something very close to a military

coup, executed quietly behind closed

doors without a shot being fired. For

Israel’s hawks the war of 1967 was

part of the unfinished business of

1948/49 – to create Greater Israel

with all of Jerusalem its capital. (In

reality Israel’s hawks set a trap for

Nasser and, for reasons of face, he

was daft enough to walk into it).

1973

On 7 October 1973 it was the Arabs –

the Egyptians and the Syrians – who initiated

the fighting. But… Their intention was only

to liberate (take back) territory Israel

occupied in 1967, in Egypt’s case only a small

amount of it, to give Henry Kissinger the

opportunity to get a peace process going – a

peace process in which Israel prior to that

war had no interest. At that moment in

history, even Kissinger was troubled by

Israel’s intransigence and the threat he

believed it posed to America’s and Israel’s

own best, real interests in the region.

Question: How did Zionism get away

with it?

The short answer is publishing and media

complicity in the suppression of the truth

of history.

My own experience of this complicity

can be summarised as follows.

To get the first book published in the UK,

I had to set up my own publishing company,

(World Focus Publishing). This despite the

fact that my literary agent had on file letters

of rare praise for my work from some of

the chiefs of the major, conglomerate-owed

publishing houses. One letter, as I note in

the Acknowledgements of Volume One,

described my manuscript as “awesome…

driven by passion, commitment and profound

learning.” This letter added: “There is no

question it deserves to be published.” But,

out of fear of offending Zionism, they were

all too frightened to publish. Sadly, and as

many authors including Jewish critics of

Zionism know, that’s par for the course in

the conglomerate-owned world of book

publishing.

The truth about

that war only

begins with the

statement that the

Arabs did not

attack and were

not intending to

attack

Al-Aqsa 23

Why, you might ask, are major publishing

houses everywhere (including some with Jewish

ownership) frightened of offending Zionism?

Behind closed doors on one of many visits

to America I was given an answer by a number

of publishing executives. I was in New York

trying to interest them in my first book, Arafat,

Terrorist or Peacemaker? It was published in the

UK by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1984 and

subsequently in updated editions over a decade.

It was the first ever book to tell Arafat’s side of

the story as told to me by the man himself and

his most senior leadership colleagues. The

conclusion it invited, and which I asked readers

to consider, was that Arafat had completed a

journey into reality, the reality of Israel’s

existence, and was ready to make peace on terms

which any rational government and people in

Israel would accept with relief.

In New York a number of publishing

executives said they really would like to take

the book on. Some even declared that it was

well written. But each in turn said they could

not publish it. Naturally I asked why. The answer

I was given was that “our friends” (supporters

of Israel right or wrong) would organise boycotts

of major stores carrying my book and, as a

consequence, no books in the boycotted stores

would sell.

There’s much more that could be said about

how, over the years, Zionism has used its

awesome influence to prevent the publication

of books which exposed its version of history

for the propaganda nonsense it mainly is; but

those are revelations for another time and place.

When I had secured access for Zionism: The

Real Enemy of the Jews to the retail trade in the

UK (bookshops and on-line Amazon),

something I was not supposed to be able to do,

I assumed that I had overcome Zionism’s veto

on truth-telling. How naïve I was!

Because conflict in the Middle East is a hot

and almost constantly running news story, my

book is topical and timely, so I had also

assumed that the media – some mainstream

newspapers and some TV and radio

programmes – would give it and me some

attention. However, the mainstream media

refused to give my book any attention, review

or other; and this despite the fact that in the

months prior to publication of the first

hardback edition of Volume One, I put great

effort into seeking the interest of the literary

editors and/or editors of most major

newspapers in the UK, and programme decision

makers in TV and radio organisations. In

addition to briefing them in writing on what I

regarded as the significance of the book and

the need for the information it provides, I

invited them to receive advance copies of both

volumes. Not one of the media people to

whom I wrote, repeat not one, had the

courtesy even to acknowledge my overtures.

In total I sent 21 letters with enclosures

to different BBC production people and

programme editors. None of them

responded. And when I wrote challenging

letters asking why not to Chairman

Michael Grade and Director General

Mark Thomson, all I received in reply,

eventually, was unsatisfactory and silly

responses from an information officer.

At senior management level the BBC is

more terrified of offending Zionism than

any other media organisation. Just how

frightened (perhaps I should say

intimidated) BBC news executives are is

indicated by the following comment one

of them made in conversation with Greg

Philo, director of Glasgow University’s

internationally respected Media Group.

“We live in fear of the incoming call from

the Israelis. When it comes we ask only

two questions. The first is: From what

level did it come – the press office of

the Israeli embassy, the ambassador

himself or an Israeli government

minister? The second is: To what level in

the BBC’s chain of command did it go –

to a middle order executive or all the way

to the top, Director General or

Chairman?” (This executive went on to

say to Greg, “If you quote me by name,

I’ll deny it.”)

In many cases the media’s refusal to

come to grips with the difference between

Zionist mythology and the documented truth

of history is born of self-censorship out of

fear of offending Zionism.

But why, you might ask, is the media

frightened of offending Zionism?

One part of the answer is in the fact that

since the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust –

a Gentile crime for which, effectively, the

Arabs were punished – the charge of anti-

Semitism is a blackmail card Zionism has

played, ruthlessly and brilliantly, to silence

criticism of Israel and suppress informed

and honest debate about who must do what

and why for justice and peace in the Middle

East. The point is that there’s nothing media

people (and politicians and all in public life)

fear more than being accused of anti-

Semitism, even when they know the charge

is false. They just don’t want the hassle of

having to deal with it.

The other main cause of self-censorship

is the fear managements have of their

newspapers or their commercial TV and

In many cases the

media’s refusal to

come to grips with

the difference

between Zionist

mythology and the

documented truth

of history is born of

self-censorship

24 Al-Aqsa

radio stations being punished by the withdrawal

of advertising revenue (In 1984 The Observer

changed its mind about running extracts from

my Arafat book on the advice of its then

advertising manager).

Because I am aware of the media’s fear of

offending Zionism, I emphasised in my

overtures to literary editors and others that

Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews is the opposite

of anti-Semitic, and contains the call of a

concerned and caring Gentile, me, for the Jews

to become the light unto nations. My summary

view of how they could become that is

contained in the text on the back cover of

Volume Two, and I drew this text to the

attention of all the media people to whom I

wrote. It reads as follows:

If the Jews of the diaspora can summon up

the will and the courage to make common

cause with the forces of reason in Israel

before it is too late for us all, a very great

prize awaits them. By demonstrating that

right can triumph over might, and that there

is a place for morality in politics, they would

become the light unto nations. It is a prize

available to no other people on earth because

of the uniqueness of the suffering of the

Jews. Perhaps that is the real point of the

idea of the Jews as Chosen People… Chosen

to endure unique suffering and, having

�

endured it, to show the rest of us that

creating a better and more just world is

not a mission impossible.

I had hoped that those words, from my

heart, would inspire at least some media

people to find the courage to take the risk

of offending Zionism, but they didn’t.

Nearly a year on from the publication the

Wall of Silence the media has constructed

around it, and the documented truth of

history it represents, is as solid as ever.

When I joined ITN as a very young

reporter, it’s then Editor-in-Chief, Geoffrey

Cox, gave me a most explicit mission

statement. Our job, he said, like that of the

media as a whole, was to “sustain democracy”

– to help keep it alive by providing the

information which makes possible the

informed and honest debate which is the

very lifeblood of democracy. By its

complicity in the suppression of the truth

of history as it relates to the Arab-Israeli

conflict, I think the media has betrayed

democracy.

I wrote Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews

not only to set a new agenda for informed

and honest debate, but to empower citizens

of all faiths and none, so-called ordinary folk

especially, to become engaged and participate

in debate.

Information on Palestine

www.aqsa.org.ukJournal – Referenced articles from previous issues of Al Aqsa.

Newsletter – Quarterly printed by Friends of Al Aqsa.

Publications – History of al Masjidul Aqsa and Guide to al Masjidul Aqsa.

Flyers – On Jerusalem, Refugees, al Masjidul Aqsa, UN Resolutions and Much More.

News From Palestine – Important news and views from Palestine.

Photographic Gallery – Photos from the ground in Palestine.

Book Reviews – Reviews on books related to Palestinian issues.

PLUS * CAMPAIGNS * ACTIVITIES * EVENTS AND * MUCH, MUCH MORE

Al-Aqsa 25

Israel’s Seperation Wall: Apartheid, Illicit

Legitimate Self-Defence

James Barrett*

* JAMES BARRETT studied history (BA Hons.) at the University of Sheffield and obtained a Masters in Politics

at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg , South Africa. His thesis explored anti-capitalist social

movements in pre and post-Apartheid South Africa. He is also a founding member of the Palestine Solidarity

Committee at Wits.

Introduction – Outlining the Wall in

Palestine

In assessing the nature of the “SeparationWall”, it is first necessary to sketch out itsphysical characteristics. In the West Bank, theroute of the final Wall will be approximately700 km long.1 Over 300 km of the Wall wasfinished by February 2006. The first stage ofthe project in the West Bank began in Jenindistrict in mid-2002, costing $4.7 million perkilometre. Construction cut deep intoPalestinian lands, running southwards from thenorth-western side of the West Bank. Thesecond stage of the Wall saw this processcontinue further south, through the districts ofRamallah, Bethlehem and Hebron whereconstruction is ongoing. The total western routeof the Wall, confirmed by the OccupationForces in January 2005, annexes 9.5% of theWest Bank, isolates Palestinian communitiesfrom their lands, and bars Palestinians fromtheir capital Jerusalem.2

In the east of the West Bank, a third stageof the Wall project is beginning to take shape,enabling the annexation of the Jordan Valley tothe Occupation. Meanwhile, a Wall built in the1990s already imprisons Gaza’s population of1.3 million. The Wall here – which is not builton the 1949 “Green Line” but on Gaza’s lands– is being bolstered by the current constructionof a second Wall. This seals the Strip’s status asthe world’s largest open-air ghetto.

Mainstream media and international agenciessuch as OCHA and the EU tend to ignore thepresence of the Wall beyond that which runson the western side of the West Bank. Togetherwith a lack of cognisance for the way in whichthe Wall is designed to cut Palestinian towns andvillages off from their lands, it has helped tofuel misguided perceptions that the Wall formsa separation or barrier between Jews andPalestinians. To the contrary, we will demonstratethat it forms a highly effective tool to divideand imprison Palestinians into a series of

miserable and disparate cantons, for the

direct benefit of the Occupation and the

expansion of its settlements.

Moreover, the Wall takes on various

forms often negated in coverage and analysis

of the Occupation of Palestine. From the

daunting 8 meter-high concrete structure, to

razor wire reinforced fences, to militarised

settlement infrastructure and fenced in

settler-only roads, the Wall in Palestine is a

myriad of forms that prevents Palestinian

movement and steals Palestinian land. Taken

together, we suggest that the Wall advances

a specific system of Apartheid that confines

Palestinians to ghettos and appropriates their

lands. Creating a hellish existence for

Palestinians trapped behind the Wall and its

fortified checkpoints, a total of 50% of the

West Bank is being stolen by the Apartheid

Wall project. It facilitates settlement

expansion currently being stepped up on

Palestinian lands from Jerusalem to the

Jordan Valley. In Gaza, where 85% of the

population are refugees from 1948, the Wall

serves as a permanent barrier to their right

of return, in clear defiance of international

law and convention.

We will argue that the Wall continues a

project begun in 1948 when the Nakba

forcibly drove over 750,000 Palestinians

from their homes into exile. Over the last

58 years the Occupation has sought by

various means to facilitate the exile of

Palestinians from their lands, as well as

controlling, regulating and profiting from

Palestinian life under Occupation.3 This has

created a dualism to Israeli colonialism,

which distinguishes it from other forms of

imperialism, racism and Apartheid. Thus a

brief deconstruction of Israel as an

Apartheid and pariah state will flesh out

important similarities, but also fundamental

differences, with experiences of Apartheid

in South Africa.

it forms a highly

effective tool to

divide and imprison

Palestinians into a

series of miserable

and disparate

cantons, for the

direct benefit of

the Occupation and

the expansion of its

settlements

26 Al-Aqsa

In conclusion, our analysis will suggest that

any portrayal of the Wall as “security” apparatus

is misguided and buys into the discourse and

aims of the Occupation. Israel as an occupying

and colonial power cannot claim legitimate self-

defence until it fulfils the obligations it has under

international law and convention to respect the

intrinsic rights of the Palestinian people to their

lands, and provide adequate reparations for the

injustices they have suffered over the last 58

years. While the Wall is illicit, and has been

declared illegal by the highest organ of

international law in The Hague (the International

Court of Justice – ICJ), we will argue that

characterising the Wall as “illicit” or “illegal”

cannot possibly encompass the ideological

framework under which it is being created and

the realities it shapes. We will suggest that while

both “separation” and “illicit” reflect some

characteristics of the Wall, they remain inferior

definitions if compared to the overall dynamics

emphasized by the terminology of the

“Apartheid Wall”.

Through its enclosure of Palestinian life,

racist segregation, and land annexation, the Wall

requires people of conscience from across the

global community to stand side by side with

Palestinians struggling under the latest stages of

the most brutal military Occupation.

Understanding that the central tenet of the

Israeli Occupation is based upon an imposed

system of Apartheid which necessitates

resistance provides an analysis from which

bonds of solidarity can be strengthened with

Palestinians struggling for their freedom and

liberation.

The Wall as a “Security Barrier”: Rhetoric

and Reality

Significant attempts by Zionists, in and

outside Israel, to suggest the Wall is a “security”

mechanism or barrier, have had some resonance

within the way mainstream media and

international institutions alike portray the

Occupation of Palestine. In mass media the Wall

is all too often presented as some kind of

division between two peoples seen as being in

some kind of inextricable conflict with each

other. With no historical context of the

Occupation of Palestine and the right of an

occupied people to resist, popular Western news

is often littered with references to Palestinian

suicide bombers and the Wall as a final measure

forced upon Israel to protect its citizens and

borders. It has been described as a “temporary”

measure that can be dismantled once Palestinian

“terror” has ended. Popular statistics churned

out to justify the Wall include the drop in

bombings and reduction in Palestinian militancy

since its construction.

Moreover, the largely cosmetic changes

made over the route of one section of the

Wall – announced by the Occupation Forces

in February 2005 – was viewed in some

quarters as proof of Israel as a moderate

and sincere force capable of making

compromises for the sake of “peace”.4 The

myth and hype around “disengagement” was

also tainted by such distortion, failing to show

any comprehension that Israel was actively

engaged in the further conquest of

Palestinian land in the West Bank while

making Gaza a fortified prison.

Denying the role of historical context in

determining Palestinian resistance, and

negating the continual conquest of

Palestinian land by Israel, forges an

understanding of the “security” Wall and self-

defence, which is profoundly politicised

within the Zionist ideology that Palestine and

Palestinians don’t exist. Buying into the

“security” rhetoric forges complicity with the

Wall project and the catastrophic realities it

entails. Yet, perhaps more dangerous, is that

such complicity does not restrict itself to

popular western media, but dominates the

policies and actions of significant players in

the international community.

Israel, The World Bank and

International Community: Complicit

Partners in Crime

Acceptance of the myth around Israeli

expansionism as “self-defense” by influential

global powers has helped to shape the

conditions by which the Wall and Occupation

become sustainable. It is useful to briefly

elaborate on the role of such agencies if we

are to deconstruct claims over “security”

functions of the Wall.

One of the most influential external

institutions working in Palestine – and which

works to promote the crimes of the

Occupation – is the World Bank. Its history

in the region dates to the early 1990s when

the Bank were approached by the organizers

of the 1992 “Middle East Peace Talks”,

headed by the USA, to prepare a study of

“economic prospects and development

challenges”.5 This culminated in the report

of September 1993, “Developing the

Occupied Territories: An Investment in

Peace”. So suitably impressed with the

World Bank’s negation of the crucial

precursors for genuine development such

as dismantling the settlements, ending the

Occupation and actualising the right of

return for refugees, that the Bank was

praised by global players for being

“technically competent and politically

Buying into the

“security” rhetoric

forges complicity

with the Wall

project and the

catastrophic

realities it entails

Al-Aqsa 27

neutral.”6 When the Oslo Accords were signed,the Bank took on responsibility for coordinatingdevelopment and investment in the WBGS.One of its first tasks was to create thePalestinian National Authority (PNA) toadminister the disparate Bantustans of theWBGS. It established an economic formulabased upon neo-liberal, export based principles,together with the “security” reservations ofthe Occupation, shaping a highly politicisedbrand of “development”. The Bank becamedeeply entwined with policy makingmechanisms within the PNA and consistentlythreatened – on occasion doing so – to withhold“aid” when the Authority failed to meet theconditionalities being imposed.7

The Al-Aqsa Intifada reflected a funda-mental rejection of Oslo, and specifically thecreation of a fractured Palestinian Bantu-State,in which the Bank were playing an importantrole in attempting to construct and make viable.By 2003, as the intensity of the Intifada declined(after the killings and imprisonment ofthousands of Palestinians), the Bank rekindledits relationships with the institutions it had builtin the PNA and began to proselytise the formof “development” needed to reinforce what itcalled the “peace process”. This led to thepublication of two key documents in 2004. Thelarger of the two reports, “Stagnation or Revival?Israeli Disengagement and Palestinian EconomicProspects”, made a series of premises that onceagain revealed an acceptance by the Bank ofthe Occupation’s realities on the ground and nowincluded the Apartheid Wall.8

The Bank, unsurprisingly given its historyas a strong supporter of the Occupation,welcomed the construction of the Wall in twoways. Firstly, for producing the conditions bywhich the “security” requirements of theOccupation could be met in regards to concernsover the use of cheap Palestinian labour.9

Arguing they could be efficiently screened andfunnelled through the terminals in the Wall, theBank pleaded with Israel to change its positionafter Ehud Olmert announced that from 2008there would be no more Israeli work permitsfor Palestinians from the WBGS. Moreover, theBank has strategically placed plans for massiveindustrial zones around the Wall in order to meetthe “security” requirements of businessinterests.10 The Bank sees opportunities fordevelopment stemming from the abundance ofcheap labour in Palestine – currently beingincreased by the Wall stripping farmingcommunities of their lands – and seeks theirintegration into the industrial zones. This formsthe prototype for Palestinian development; massexport production by a cheap workforce, lockedbehind walls, for the benefit of foreignconsumers and profits.

Secondly, the Wall has been welcomedfor creating a climate in which other closuresin Palestine can be removed. Ex-BankPresident James Wolfensohn is currentlyengaged in the role of “special envoy”,overseeing disengagement and some of theBank’s operations on the ground. He expectsa reduction in checkpoints because the“security barrier” has rendered them“obsolete”.11 He calls for roadblocks, internalpermits and other closures to be removedas “taken together, this system constitutes aformidable barrier to economic efficiency.”He states that discussions need to focus onconcrete steps to reduce “these barriers” butnot the Wall.12 Wolfensohn’s belief, that heis striking a “creative balance betweensecurity and development”, believe theemphasis he has placed on coordinating“development” in the West Bank which iscentred upon the permanency of theApartheid Wall.13

It reveals the acceptance of ever-shrinking Palestinian areas and the buildingof “state” infrastructure that continuesPalestinian dependency upon Israel as anoccupying and colonial state. Meanwhile theillegality of checkpoints and zones which fitin with the infrastructure of the Wall hasnot deterred the Bank from pursuing theirconstruction as part of the export orientatedeconomy. It cites how such projects can goahead on the basis of “humanitarian”grounds.14 The United States has providedconsiderable funding for these fortifiedterminal checkpoints, to the tune of $150million, in direct support of the Occupationproject.

The Bank recently stated how it wasworking to continue work permits for cheapPalestinian labour so that: “Israel wouldcushion the shock that completion of theSeparation Barrier will otherwise cause tothe Palestinian labour market, while replacingillegal labour with an equivalent quantity ofpermitted – hence safer – laborers.”15

The Bank’s manipulation of the Wall, andits willingness to buy into the “security”arguments of the Occupation, are at oddswith international law and the fundamentalrights of the Palestinian people. Theinternational financial institution (IFI) isconsiderably powerful and influential inshaping the economic policies in the“developing” world, and its role in Palestineis significant. With the mandate of theQuartet, the Bank has and is playing a centralrole in legitimising the Wall by treating it asa necessary security feature. Headed by arch-Zionist Paul Wolfensohn, the policy makersof the Bank in Washington are engaged in

With the mandate

of the Quartet, the

Bank has and is

playing a central

role in legitimising

the Wall by

treating it as a

necessary security

feature

28 Al-Aqsa

developing the means by which Palestinians can

be “calmed” and coerced into willing players in

a peace process where they suffer further

dispossession.16

In order to circumvent international law and

whitewash their crimes, the Bank and powers

within the international donor community, have

created the most outlandish euphemism behind

which they justify their actions: “for the benefit

of Palestinians”.17 Taken with the Orwellian

double-speak around notions of terror, peace

and justice, such discourse has contributed to

the climate in which the Wall has been removed

from reality and cast as a legitimate and justified

security measure. Yet if some powerful elements

of the global community have attempted to cloak

the role of the Wall, creating illusion and fantasy,

statements from the Israeli Occupation Forces

themselves have revealed the real role of the

Wall as a political device of colonial conquest.

They have felt no need to make secret the

motives of the Wall in securing Occupation

expansion upon Palestinian land. It is here where

we begin to discern the discrepancies between

the rhetoric of Zionists and their sympathisers,

and the realities being inflicted upon the

Palestinian people.

Creating Facts on the Ground

In understanding the impetus for the Wall,

we need look no further than the numerous

comments made by figures and institutions within

the Occupation Forces. They have felt little

reason to conceal Israel’s actions within the

rhetoric of “self-defense”, shedding light on the

Zionist mentality behind the latest round of

colonial expansion on Palestinian land.

In 2005 Israeli “Justice Minister” Tzipi Livni

noted to a conference in Caesarea that,

“One does not have to be a genius to see

that the fence will have implications for the

future border.”18 The Occupation’s High Court,

when considering the Wall in Qalqiliya, stated:

“We were completely unconvinced that there is

a decisive military-security reason for placing

the route of the fence where it currently runs”.19

More blatant have been the comments of

“Defence” Minister Mofaz, who has outlined

the intentions of the Occupation Forces in re-

defining the borders of Israel. He stated the

future borders would encompass “the settlement

blocs, including the Jordan Valley” adding that:

“Israel is taking a step to shape a new reality.

Disengagement will continue after Gaza.

Together with the Fence in Judea and Samaria

[West Bank] it will bring a strategic achievement,

enforce real negotiations and coexistence in

defensible borders.”20 Mofaz also noted the

Wall’s role in maintaining the demographics of

Israel in which Palestinians are a minority.

Such comments require little elaboration

and are not considered unusual in Israeli

society where a popular anti-Zionist

movement has yet to take shape. For the

moment, the society continues to be hinged

upon the continual colonisation and

domination of Palestinian land, creating and

re-creating facts on the ground.

The motivations and ideology which

underpin the Wall project have been

understood by Palestinians from the Wall’s

inception, and recognised as further stage in

Israeli colonialism. The comments of the

Occupation Forces dispel any myths around

the legitimate “security” or “self-defense” of

Israel, and reinforce the assertions

consistently made by Palestinians. It was

their petitions and refusal to accept the Wall,

which raised its profile on a global level, and

was in part responsible for the issue reaching

the ICJ in The Hague in 2004.

The Wall and International Law

Palestinian calls and resistance to the Wall

brought the attention of the highest organ

of international law, the ICJ in The Hague.

After several months of deliberations the

court declared the Wall to be illegal, called

for it to be immediately dismantled and for

suitable reparations to be made available to

Palestinians whose lives had been destroyed

by it. Moreover, in the ruling made on the

9th of July 2004, the ICJ called upon the

international community not to “recognize

nor render aid and assistance to the Wall”.21

The ruling was subsequently supported by

an overwhelming majority of states in the

United Nations General Assembly (GA),

meeting opposition from just a handful of

the usual suspects such as the United States.

The subsequent failure of the

international community to implement the

ICJ decision, and apply the necessary

pressure on Israel, has caused much

resentment amongst Palestinians for the

double standards shown by the most

powerful global powers. Moreover, it repeats

the familiar narrative in which the

international community have consistently

failed to act in ways which can secure the

rights of the Palestinian people. While the

ICJ and the UN were both clear regarding

the illegality of the Wall, it has not catalysed

any serious international effort to support

the Palestinian people who challenge the Wall

with their bare hands on a daily basis. To the

contrary, companies from across the world

are allowed to continue to reap profits from

the Wall and Occupation expansion, at the

expense of the blood, tears and misery of

More blatant have

been the

comments of

“Defence” Minister

Mofaz, who has

outlined the

intentions of the

Occupation Forces

in re-defining the

borders of Israel

the ICJ called upon

the international

community not to

“recognize nor

render aid and

assistance to the

Wall

Al-Aqsa 29

Palestinians.22 The United States provides direct

funding for the Wall’s fortified terminals. The

World Bank works to create industrial zones

around the Wall for the benefit of global capital,

creating the most devastating system of racial

capital seen since the days of Apartheid South

Africa. While international agencies such as the

UN remain idle, and thus complicit partners in

the Israeli project, global powers such as the

US are actively engaged in the attack upon

Palestinian communities. The Palestinian right

to resist remains as vital now as ever before.

The Palestinian Right to Resist

Given the scenario we have outlined, any

basic analysis of the Wall in Palestine leads to

the realisation of the basic Palestinian right to

resist a military Occupation. This Occupation,

to the contrary of abating, increases in its

temerity via the Wall on a daily basis. House

demolitions, confiscation orders for Palestinian

land, assassinations, expansion of settlements

and their roads, incursions and harassment at

checkpoints, form the daily experience of

Palestinians in the West Bank. In Gaza, the

Occupation continues as before, leaving

Palestinians ghettoised and cut-off from the rest

of the world. The following quote from the

Israeli Disengagement Plan (IDP) of 2005

illustrates the nature of such an Occupation:

“Israel will guard and monitor the

external land perimeter of the Gaza Strip,

will continue to maintain exclusive

authority in Gaza air space, and will

continue to exercise security activity in

the sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip.”23

Israel states that, “the completion of the plan

will serve to dispel the claims regarding Israel’s

responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza

Strip”.24 However, international conventions

suggest otherwise. The consensus within

international law for describing the status of an

Occupation can be seen within notions of

“effective control” over a population. Stemming

from the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Gaza

Strip is still considered under such definitions

as under “effective Occupation”, thus re-

asserting the right for Palestinians to continue

their resistance. Moreover, the Wall around

Gaza is not built on the 1949 Armistice Lines,

and the majority of the population are waiting

to fulfil their right to return to their homes and

communities in the 1948 areas. Indeed, until

the latter goal is achieved, “self defence” via

the construction of a Wall around Gaza can

never be justified as a legitimate measure by

Israel. The increasing severity of the

Occupation and the Wall has sharpened the

experiences of racism and Apartheid for

Palestinians in the WBGS, who are denied

the most basic rights and freedoms, and

struggle under conditions that threaten a new

Nakba in the 21st century.

Israel’s Wall: An Apartheid Mechanism

“There are few places in the world where

governments construct a web of nationality

and residency laws designed for use by one

section of the population against another.

Apartheid South Africa was one. So is

Israel.”25 Chris McGreal - January 2006

So far we have only touched upon the

conditions of Palestinian life in the WBGS,

and pointed to the impact that the Wall has

for Palestinians squeezed into tighter

ghettos, isolated from their lands. However,

the Wall is equally fundamental in the role

it plays for Palestinian life remaining in

Israel. It is here that we might begin to piece

together the ways in which the Wall is

designed to elaborate a twin system of

Apartheid.

The first goal of the Wall is, as Mofaz

revealed, to protect the demographic Jewish

majority in Israel, and to expand this through

the re-creation of borders and Jewish

settlements. The Wall acts to shut Palestinians

out from their capital, prevents any

contiguous Palestinian state and serves to

sustain the demographics of Israel in which

Jews make up around 80% of the total

population. McGreal’s comments point to

the systematic discrimination against the 1.1

million Palestinians who hold Israeli IDs.

These Palestinians face a plethora of

discriminatory laws and practices, which

control and regulate every aspect of life.

93% of the land is reserved for exclusive

Jewish use through state ownership, the

Jewish National Fund and the Israeli Lands

Authority. This has halted any natural

expansion of Palestinian areas, while

Palestinians remaining in the Negev and

Galilee are surrounded by new Jewish-only

settlements funded with grants from the

United States.26

From de-facto pass laws, restrictions on

movement, house demolitions, denial of

access to basic services such as electricity

and water, to the propagation of Zionist

propaganda in the educational curriculum,

Israel is characterized by a political, social

and cultural system in which racism and

oppression are central. It is not necessary to

detail every element of Israeli Apartheid -

this has been done convincingly elsewhere -

but for us to make the basic assertion that

Israeli society is one which bears a marked

the Wall is

designed to

elaborate a twin

system of

Apartheid

Israel is

characterized by a

political, social and

cultural system in

which racism and

oppression are

central

30 Al-Aqsa

resemblance to that of the previous regime inSouth Africa.27

However the Wall fulfils anotherfundamental role, squeezing Palestinians in the1967 areas into ever-tighter ghettos andBantustans in which they can be totallycontrolled. Existence is suffocated to the extentthat livelihoods are crushed, life becomesunbearable, and exodus becomes an inevitableoutcome. It is worth pausing here to draw out afew examples of how the Wall creates thecatastrophic conditions by which to securecontinuous Palestinian exile.

The first stage of the Wall entailedconstruction throughout the districts ofQalqiliya, Tulkarem and Jenin. Cutting in deeplyfrom the “Green Line”, the Wall isolated hugechunks of Palestinian land and weaved in andout to annex the settlements. Palestiniancommunities found themselves isolated fromtheir farming lands and basic resources such asgroundwater wells. Initially Occupation Forcesset up a “permit system” which wouldsupposedly lead to continued access forPalestinians to their arable lands. For the firstfew years after the presence of the Wall, a fewpermits were granted, often arbitrarily andsubject to restrictions whenever deemednecessary by Occupation Forces. As a resultPalestinian crops rotted and livelihoods weredestroyed. However, even such limitedPalestinian access has now begun to come to anend. Over the last few months, permits havebeen withdrawn and steps are being taken toincorporate isolated Palestinian lands intosettlements or new military camps.28

In Qalqiliya city itself, the population iscompletely encircled by the Wall. A single militarycheckpoint provides the only entrance and exitto the ghetto. In total, 41,600 people in whatwas the regional administrative and economiccentre are now cut-off from the rest of theworld, and subject to Occupation behind Walls.Already, over 4000 people have left.

As the Wall runs southwards, it continues todispossess Palestinian communities of theirfarming lands. In Jerusalem, 181 kilometres ofWall is being constructed in order to shutPalestinians out of the city and strip away theirlands for the expansion of the settlements. Thisis creating an exodus of Palestinian social andcultural organisations, businesses, and institutionsinto the cantons of the West Bank anddevastating Jerusalem.

In Bethlehem district, two Walls work inparallel to each other to imprison Palestinians.A total of 71,000 dunums of land are taken inthe district, with the Apartheid Wall encroachinginto the heart of Bethlehem city to annexRachel’s Tomb (Bihal Mosque). Villages aroundBethlehem are totally isolated between two Walls

enabling the Gush Etzion settlement bloc toexpand by 40% on confiscated lands. Thesevillages already lost large amounts of landafter 1948 and life will now be unbearableafter the latest theft. Checkpoints built intothe Wall and the fenced in settler-onlyhighway roads reveal Occupationinfrastructure working in tandem to preventPalestinian movement. Contiguity for Israelisettlements is assured through an elaboratesystem of Apartheid bypass roads whichyield total Occupation control of the land.29

Meanwhile, in the Jordan Valley, massivesettlement expansion schemes are underway.Working within the framework of the thirdstage of the Apartheid Wall project,Palestinians who use the Valley to grow cropsand for pasture are being expelled, and theirlands permanently annexed by theOccupation.

The Valley is a rich fertile area, thetraditional and historic centre of agriculturefor various Palestinian farming communitiesincluding Bedouins. Providing access tosignificant water reserves and the hilltops thatoverlook the West Bank, the Valley has longbeen a key target for the Occupation. Since1967, 21 colonies have been built in theValley, currently occupied by 6300 settlers.Israeli agricultural minister Binyamin Rompronounced in an interview with Ha‘aretznewspaper (8/9/2004) that Israel’s intentionsare to confiscate 32,000 dunums of land toexpand these settlements. This includes 3,200dunums used as military camps that will beevacuated and handed over to Jewish settlers.The remaining 28,800 dunums will beconfiscated directly from the Palestinianpopulation.

Rom explained how the vast amount ofland should be secured for Jewish rule andsupremacy: “The plan which has already wonapproval from within different ministries willincrease the number of residents in 21settlements by 50 percent in a year and thenby a further 50 percent in the followingyear.”

The full extent of the land theft is laidbare from some basic statistics. Out of 2,400km2 that make up the territory of the JordanValley, 455.7 km2 is already designated as“military closed areas.” This project will puta total of 1655.5 km2 of lands under thecontrol of already existing settlements. Thetotal figure of confiscated lands will reach2354.2 km2. This leaves only 45 km2 of landsfor Palestinians use, 10km2 of which is takenup by built up areas.

By the end of 2005, this process was wellunderway. Palestinians were being cut offfrom the entire eastern sector of the West

Contiguity for

Israeli settlements

is assured through

an elaborate

system of

Apartheid bypass

roads which yield

total Occupation

control of the land

Al-Aqsa 31

Bank. Farming communities were under attack,

suffering house and property demolitions and

in some instances forced expulsion. A state

driven Zionist development project invested 60

million NIS ($13 million) in 2004, joined by an

additional 58 million NIS ($11 million) in 2005,

with a further 85 million NIS ($19 million) slated

for 2006- 2008.

Development of Apartheid infrastructure to

ensure the permanent annexation of this land

will develop from the fenced in settler roads

and highways which already pepper the

landscape of the Jordan Valley. Such

infrastructure deploys razor wire fencing,

checkpoints, trenches and roadblocks in a

contiguous form that mirror the cement Walls

that enclose Palestinians from the west.

Meanwhile, surveyors have arrived in the north

of the Valley undertaking research, which

Palestinians assert to be for the continuation

of the Wall from Jenin district into the Valley.

Pariah States: Israel and South Africa

“This is much worse than apartheid …

the Israeli measures, the brutality, make

apartheid look like a picnic. We never had

jets attacking our townships. We never

had sieges that lasted month after month.

We never had tanks destroying houses.

We had armoured vehicles and police

using small arms to shoot people but not

on this scale.”

Ronnie Kasrils - 2004

Kasril’s statement touches on the major

distinction that exists between Israeli and South

African Apartheid, the goal of cleansing a nation

of people from their lands. While the racist

regime in Pretoria coerced blacks into the

Bantustans upon 13% of the land, Israeli

Apartheid continuously re-defines borders to

suffocate the indigenous Palestinian population.

The Wall is the current manifestation of this

process and is creating new facts on the ground

which are having a devastating effect upon

Palestinian existence.

Israeli Apartheid is unique in that it

incorporates dual colonial processes that

complement, and at times, contradict each other.

The Wall provides a clear example of this.

Ramifications of its construction include the

dispossession of Palestinian towns and villages

of their lands, the denial of movement, right to

dignified and sustainable livelihoods, and access

to basic services. In this way it facilitates

Palestinian exodus by making life in ghettos

unbearable. Yet, the dynamics of the

Occupation have also ensured a continual

relationship with Palestinians based upon

dependency. As a site for cheap labour, a market

to dump and flood with products, and in

which domestic Palestinian produce is stifled,

Israel profits immensely from the

Occupation of Palestine.

The issue of the industrial zones is of

particular relevance, given their role in

continuing the asymmetrical relationship

between the economies of Palestine and the

Occupation. In a confidential report from

2001, the World Bank noted how:

“The initial conception of the

industrial estate development

program was one of fostering

business clusters on the borders

between Israel and the Palestinian

territories (“border” estates), so as to

permit employment by international

and Israeli entrepreneurs of

Palestinian workers free of security-

related restrictions on the entry of

Palestinians into Israel proper.”30

Palestinians, currently being disposed of

their lands and livelihoods, are reduced to

the role of a cheap labour force. Meanwhile,

Palestinian businessmen and elites associated

with PIEDCO, a subsidiary arm of

PADICO which receives substantial funding

from the World Bank, have been linked to

an industrial zone being built on land stolen

from Palestinian farmers in Irta (Tulkarem

district).31 The land, isolated behind the

Apartheid Wall has been significantly built

up over the last year with farmers now

resigned to the loss of their land. Mr. Munib

Rashid Masri, PADICO Chairman noted in

June 2005 how the company had “plans for

development and management of industrial

zones”.32 Details of such schemes, and if

they are funded with World Bank or donor

money, are expected to emerge shortly and

could be the target of significant outcry and

protest if they are built around the

infrastructure of the Apartheid Wall.

A system of racial capital for the direct

benefit of Israel as a colonial power forms

strong parallels with the South African

experience. Yet the ghettoization caused by

the Occupation adds features to Israeli

Apartheid which surpass the system of racist

discrimination of South Africa. For

Palestinians remaining in the 1948 areas,

subjugated to systematic racist and

discriminatory laws and practices, identity,

life and culture as a Palestinian is denied. It

leads us to conclude how the Wall as a

manifestation and extension of this

Apartheid, and a crime of humanity against

the Palestinians can be dismantled.

Moreover, it leads us to consider how tearing

Kasril’s statement

touches on the

major distinction

that exists

between Israeli and

South African

Apartheid, the goal

of cleansing a

nation of people

from their lands

32 Al-Aqsa

down the Wall can come as part of a sustained

campaign to realise the fundamental rights of

the Palestinian people to their lands.

Conclusion - After the Wall: A framework

for Palestinian Rights

Even if the Wall were to be switched to the

“Green Line”, it would continue to preserve

Israel’s nature as an Apartheid state. Until the

right of return for Palestinian refugees, the

ending of racist and discriminatory laws and

practices against Palestinians in the 1948 areas,

and until the end of the Occupation of the

WBGS, Israel cannot lay claim to legitimate self-

defense. That the Wall is built to exact even

further conquest of Palestinian land perhaps

makes the term “Annexation Wall” – which is

used in some quarters - more suitable than

Apartheid. However, Apartheid captures the

overall dynamics and ramifications of the Wall

for Palestinians in the WBGS and in the 1948

areas. The parallels it draws with South African

experiences are by no means entirely accurate,

but it serves as an important mobilisation tool

for a global justice movement to target Israeli

Apartheid and develop the means by which to

support all Palestinians who are struggling for

their freedom and liberation.

The Wall threatens to enact another Nakba

on Palestinians in the WBGS, and create a

fractured Bantu-State made up of miserable

and disparate ghettos. It seeks to enshrine a

highly racialised system of exploitation from

dispossessed Palestinian communities with the

creation of industrial estates. It represents the

continual Israeli conquest of Palestinian land

and the re-definition of borders as settlements

expand. The World Bank’s attempt to “cushion”

the impact of the Wall symbolises the direct

complicity many global powers and agencies

have chosen to take in direct support of the

Occupation and its crimes.

The Wall is illicit, it does separate (Palestinians

from Palestinians), it also annexes, but

fundamentally it is designed to sustain the

Apartheid nature of Israel and continue the

Bantustanisation of areas in which Palestinians

still live. The Wall as a manifestation of

Apartheid can be seen as a mechanism of “self-

defense”, but only in the sense that it attempts

to prop up a system of Israeli Apartheid, and

extend the Zionist project for the further

conquest of Palestinian lands.

Its removal, followed by the settlements,

along with the implementation of the right of

return into the 1948 and 1967 areas, provides

a blueprint by which people of conscience and

justice movements across the world can offer

the solidarity which Palestinians are asking for.

Standing side by side with communities who

resist Israeli Apartheid and the Wall on a daily

basis heralds the means by which

international law and convention, but most

importantly, the rights of the Palestinian

people can be won.

Abbreviations

− Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC)

− Consultative Group For Palestine (CG)

− Emergency Assistance Program for the

Occupied Territories (EAP)

− European Union (EU)

− International Court of Justice (ICJ)

− Israeli Disengagement Plan (IDP)

− International Monetary Fund (IMF)

− Joint Liaison Committee (JLC)

− Local Aid Coordination Committee

(LACC)

− Organisation for Economic Co-operation

and Development (OECD)

− UN Office for the Coordination of

Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

− Palestine Development and Investment

Company Limited (PADICO)

− Palestine Industrial Estate Development

and Management Company (PIEDCO)

− Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)

− Palestinian Liberation Organization

(PLO)

− Palestinian National Authority (PNA)

− Palestinian Non-Governmental

Organizations (PNGO)

− Office of the United Nations Special

Coordinator (UNSCO)

− United Nations Development

Programme (UNDP)

− United Nations General Assembly (GA)

− United Nations Relief and Works Agency

(UNRWA)

− United States Agency for International

Development (USAID)

− West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS)

World Health Organization (WHO)

Notes

1. The references to basic features, facts and

characteristics of the Wall used in this work can

be found in the resources and materials available

from the Grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid

Wall Campaign at www.stopthewall.org

2. View maps at www.ochaopt.org and

www.stopthewall.org

3. For detailed exploration of this issue see Samara,

A. (1992), Industrialization in the West Bank: A

Marxist Socio-Economic Analysis, Al-Mashriq

Publications for Economic and Development

Studies, Jerusalem

4. For the modified route of the Wall refer to maps

available from www.ochaopt.org

The Wall is illicit, it

does separate

(Palestinians from

Palestinians), it also

annexes, but

fundamentally it is

designed to sustain

the Apartheid

nature of Israel

Al-Aqsa 33

5. World Bank (2002), West Bank & Gaza: An Evaluation

of Bank Assistance, Washington, p. 7

6. Ibid. p. 7

7. The latest incident coming at the end of 2005 when

the Bank held back payments to the PNA due to its

failure to meet the targets the Bank had set.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

is developing new fiscal measures, which the PNA

will be required to meet.

8. Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

(2005), Israel, The World bank and ‘Sustainable

Development’ of the Palestinian Ghettos, La Citta Del Sole,

Napoli

9. See Office of the Special Envoy for Disengagement

(2005), Periodic Report: 17th October and also World

Bank (2005), The Palestinian Economy and the Prospects

for its Recovery: Economic Monitoring Report to the Ad Hoc

Liaison Committee, Number 1, December 2005. The

Bank in the same document has praised continuing

levels of Palestinian labour used in the settlements as

a “positive trend”, and is currently engaged in brokering

an agreement to secure the continuation of cheap

Palestinian labour into Israel.

10. Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign

(2005), Israel, The World Bank and ‘Sustainable

Development’ of the Palestinian Ghettos, La Citta Del Sole,

Napoli

11. Office of the Special Envoy for Disengagement

(2005), op. cit. p. 2

12. World Bank (2005), The Palestinian Economy, p. 2/3

13. Ibid.

14. World Bank (2004), Stagnation, Overview, p. 37 where

the Bank note that “It is understood that projects

considered ‘borderline’ from a political perspective,

but which serve important humanitarian needs, could

be approved”.

15. Ibid.

16. The Bank’s own evaluation has noted its success in

calming the Palestinians throughout the 1990s, see

World Bank (2002), West Bank & Gaza: An Evaluation

of Bank Assistance, Washington, p. 7

17. See Inter Press Service News Agency (February 24th

2005), “World Bank May Fund Israeli Checkpoints”,

h t t p : / / w w w . i p s n e w s . n e t /

interna.asp?idnews=27620, where Bank Official

Markus Kostner considers World Bank Funding for

�

Terminals in the Apartheid Wall “for the benefit

of Palestinians”.

18. Reported by various Israeli and Palestinian media.

19 Ibid.

20. Mofaz interview with Yedioth Aharonot

newspaper, 29/09/04

21. ICJ ruling available from http://www.icj-cij.org/

icjwww/icjhome.htm

22. Caterpillar is example of a company directly

profiting from the Wall.

23. The Israeli Disengagement Plan can be accessed

from, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/

Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/

Israeli+Disengagement+Plan+20-Jan-2005.htm

24. Ibid.

25. McGreal, C, (2006) Worlds Apart, for The

Guardian (UK)

ht tp ://www.guard i an . co.uk/ i s r ae l/S tor y/

0,,1703245,00.html, February 6

26. Humphries, I. (2005), From Gaza to the Galilee:

Same Policy, Same Agenda, http://www.miftah.org/

Display.cfm?DocId=8698&CategoryId=5 which

details the Judaization of the remaining Palestinian

areas of the 1948 lands.

27. For more details of the crimes of Israeli Apartheid

see Davis, U. (2003), Apartheid Israel: The Struggle

Within, Zed Books, New York and Patel, I.A,

(2005) Palestine: A Beginners Guide, Al-Aqsa

Publishers, Leicester

28. Refer to www.stopthewall.org where the “Latest

News” section documents such developments.

29. For more detail of the Apartheid Roads see Hass,

A. (2006), Israel cuts Jordan Rift from rest of

West Bank, in Haaretz, http://www.haaretz.com/

hasen/spages/681938.html, 13th February

30. Samara, A (2001), Globalization, The Palestinian

Economy and the ‘Peace Process’, http://

w w w . w p b . b e / i c m / 2 0 0 1 / 0 1 e n /

Palestine_Samara.htm, where he cites a

confidential World Bank document.

31. Rapoport, M. (2004), Israel: Industrial Estates Along

The Wall, http://mondediplo.com/2004/06/

05thewall

32. PADICO (2005), Press release – June 30th, http:/

/www.padico.com/Press%20release6-2005.htm

Books Available For Review

1 HAMAS – A Beginner’s Guide, by Khaled Hroub

2 The Second Palestinian Intifada, by Ramzy Baroud

3 Checkpoint Watch, by Yehudit Kirstein Keshet

4 A threat from within – A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, by Yakov M. Rabkin

5 The Persistence of the Palestinian Question, by Joseph A. Massad

6 Blood and Religion – the unmasking of the Jewish democratic state, by Jonathan Cook

Interested individuals contact Friends of Al-Aqsa

34 Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 35

B O O K R E V I E W

Jerusalem: Constructing the Study of

Islamic Art, Volume IVBY OLEG GRABAR, 2005, ISBN: 0 86078 925 X HB, P

284 and Includes 48 B&W illustrations, £65.00

Oleg Grabar has dedicated his academic life toIslamic art and architecture and in these fourvolumes he brings together 50 years of his work.

Jerusalem is the final volume in a set of four selections ofstudies on Islamic art. Between them they bring togethermore than eighty articles, studies and essays; work spanning

half a century by an academic of the field.Grabber is Emeritus Professor in the School of

Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study,

Princeton, USA, and Aga Khan Professor Emeritus ofIslamic Art and Architecture at Harvard University, USA.

In Jerusalem he brings to the fore the Islamic city of

Jerusalem, today known as the ‘Old City’. Within the OldCity, the Dome of the Rock gets particular attention andGrabar’s fascination with the Dome of the Rock appears

to absorb him and he rises on most occasions towardsunderstanding this enchanting and mystical building.

There is no doubt of Grabar’s academic dedication to

Jerusalem and his scholarly approach to the art. However,just beneath the surface lurks an element of suspicion withIslam and Muslim scholars that seems to rear its head every

now and again in his writing.To Grabar, many Islamic structures and their purposes

post the 7th century are debatable if not questionable. On

the other hand, he states as a matter of fact informationabout structures pre 7th century: ‘[the buildings within al-Aqsa Sanctuary] … repaired and restored by the Romans,

throughout the Middle Ages and in the modern period,this platform can be assumed to have been a Herodiancreation of the Jewish Temple’ (p60). Further to this, on

p64 he states: ‘It is the accidental inheritance by the Muslims

of such vast area and precise developments in the historyof the Muslim faith that made it a unique sanctuary’. Theconnotations are clear; Jerusalem only became important

to Muslims accidentally because they happen to conquerit. Whereas most elementary students of early Islamichistory and of the Prophet Muhammed [pbuh] are well

aware of the Prophet Muhammed’s [pbuh] effort toinculcate upon his Companions the importance ofJerusalem as early as the 9th year of Prophethood, long

before the establishment of an Islamic state or theexpansion of Islamic lands.

Again one is concerned with Grabar’s political intention

for stating: ‘Also it is located on the site of the JewishTemple, in the Holy city of Christianity’ under the subtitleof ‘Significance’ in the chapter of ‘Qubbat al- Sakhrah’.

Grabar successfully narrates in several places the threemain thoughts behind the purposes of building the Domeof the Rock; a building to commemorate the Prophet’s

[pbuh] night journey and ascension; to replace the Ka’baas the site for pilgrimage; and a monument celebrating thenew faith’s presence in the city of Jerusalem. Although the

second reasoning has been academically successfullydemolished, in almost every chapter Grabar repeats it.

The anti-Islamic angle mares yet again an excellent

chapter on ‘Al-Kuds Monument’ in which Grabar states,regarding lack of pictures of living creatures in the Domeof the Rock, ‘the other one is absence of any

representation of living beings several decades before webecome aware of a partial Muslim prohibition of images’(p120). In fact Imam Abu Hanifa (b.80 AH) in his Hidaya

within the first century of Islam recorded what waspracticed and orally transmitted regarding the prohibitionof representing living creatures.

In the first chapter Grabar contends the Dome of theRock, ‘can only be understood in all its complexity anduniqueness when seen in its Umayyad context. As a political

…structure it soon lost its meaning. But as a religiousbuilding it continued the great tradition of the Temple(Jewish) …’ (p46). Irrespective of the political motives of

Umayyad’s, which may be debatable, there already existedat this early stage within Muslims the desire to establishMosques as a testimony of their devotion to their faith.

Grabar unfortunately skims through the potential socio-religious aspects behind the building of the Dome of theRock.

There is an interesting hypothesis in chapter IXsubstantiated from Professor Goitein’s remarks thatMuawiyah may have initiated the idea of building the

Dome of the Rock on its present location. This is probablebecause there are historical sources which ascertain thatan oath of allegiance to Muawiyah (as a Caliph) was taken

in Jerusalem.Undermining Islamic historians if not history and Islam

itself appears again in chapter XII : ‘Whether or not the

36 Al-Aqsa

caliph Umar came for the occasion (liberation of al-Quds)is not clear, although the various events which are said by

later legends to have occurred as he arrived and as hevisited the city are fascinating exercise in the formation ofhighly creative and imaginative historical myths’ (p187) and

‘It had been the place where Herod the Great (71-4 BCE)and his successors built the spectacular Jewish Temple withfull use of Hellenistic architectural technology and design’

(p188).This book attempts to provide an understanding as to

how buildings can be and are used by competing faiths

and politicians to stamp authority. It has been lucidlypresented and is a valuable source for anyone interestedin not only art and architecture but also the politics of the

city.This is a valuable reference book for all and a must

read for Muslims who wish to understand how ‘others’

view the Islamic holy city of Jerusalem in which Muslimsproudly proclaim the sanctity of Jews and Christians.

Contents

The Umayyad Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem; A newinscription from the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem; Al-Haram al-Sharif; The earliest Islamic commemorative

structures, notes and documents; Qubbat al-Sakhrah; Al-Kuds, monuments; A note on the Chludoff Psalter;Al-Masjid al-Aqsa; The meaning of the Dome of the Rock in

Jerusalem; Le Temple, lieu de conflit: le monde de L’Islam;Jerusalem elsewhere; The making of the Haram al-Sharif:the first steps; Space and holiness in medieval Jerusalem;

The Haram al-Sharif: an essay in interpretation.

Leicester Abu Huzayfa

Dining with Terrorists: Meetings with the

world’s most wanted militantsBY PHIL REES, Macmillan 2005, ISBN: 140504716X, 400pp.,

HB £18.99

Rees is to be congratulated for producing a readable, at

times enthralling book on a vital issue. Frankly, one

cannot put it down. Objective yet penetrating, its value is

heightened by the fact that it does not only deal with ‘Islamic

terrorists’. These days, we could be forgiven for thinking that

guerrilla warfare is the sole prerogative of Islamists, but as Rees

addresses situations in Colombia, meeting FARC, the Tamil

Tigers, the IRA, etc., we can see that the situation was always

more complicated than that. One criticism; having met the IRA,

Rees should have dealt with corresponding Loyalist groups,

especially as in his chapter on Colombia, he meets not only the

FARC Marxist terrorists, but their right-wing opponents, and in

Kosovo he encounters not only Albanians supporting the KLA,

but also their Serb mirror-images.

The diversity of guerrilla organisations and their differing,

often contradictory aims reveals the central problem concerning

‘terrorism’; not how to stop it, but how to define it. After all, as

the famous cliché states, ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s

freedom fighter’, p. xv. It must be galling for Americans to read

that if this cliché had existed in 1776, Washington would have

been labeled as a ‘terrorist’ by the British government. The

Apartheid regime labeled Mandela as a terrorist, but we know

how most people viewed him. Rees notes that every global effort

to give an objective definition of the term since 1996 has failed,

p. xvii.

The problem is complicated by several factors, among them

the identification of legitimate targets, and the methods used.

Another is the issue of justification – is it unethical to oppose

an occupying army that enjoys conventional military superiority?

Rees observes that the US invasion of Iraq, not sanctioned by

the UN, caused a resistance to emerge which the US often

designates, and certainly where ‘foreign fighters’ are concerned,

as terrorists’, p. 4. However, Rees asks the pertinent questions

of how, if using the same justification as the US and UK, Iraqi

troops occupied Britain, what would be the popular reaction, or

if Hitler had occupied London in 1940, whether Britons would

have accepted his rule, p. xvii?

Al-Aqsa 37

This is one area which Rees could have developed further.

The obvious response to this from the US and UK is that they

are democracies, but how do we respond if democracies do not

act democratically – at least in their treatment of others? The US

may be democratic but it supports an Israeli regime whose

treatment of the Palestinians is anything but democratic.

Remember also that part of the aim of the US blitz of Iraq in

2003, as Rees observes, was to ‘terrify the civilian population

into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’, p. xvii.

Was the US acting democratically or was it guilty of state terrorism?

The global overview of ‘armed militants’ is one of the most

fascinating aspects of Rees’ book. From Latin America to the

Balkans, from North Africa to Sri Lanka, and from Palestine to

Cambodia, the trail of tears is gripping. It is also frequently

stomach-turning. The section of the Khmer Rouge and their

genocidal policies in Chapter Seven goes over familiar ground,

but the display of Man’s inhumanity to Man never fails to shock.

When we consider their policies and practices, could we ever

consider this group as ‘freedom fighters – even after the 1979

Vietnamese invasion which transformed them into a guerrilla

group once more, resisting foreign occupation, and enjoying

support from China – and the West, p. 166? If not, then how

should we regard the Zionist guerrilla groups such as the Irgun

and Stern Gang who terrorised Palestinians with slaughter and

ethnic cleansing, or the Serb ‘paramilitaries’ who did the same to

Albanians, p. 157? Remember, the latter had the backing of the

‘legitimate’ government of Serbia? Perhaps that is why the media

described them as ‘paramilitaries’ instead of ‘terrorists’.

The ambivalence on definition is best exemplified by

considering the Kosovo Liberation Army. America at first

designated it as a terrorist group, p. 152, and it would have

definitely been so-defined after 9/11, p. 154, but America about-

faced and effectively supported it. Is the US definition of

terrorism therefore based on a group’s opposition to US policy?

After all, the US allied itself with Kurdish guerrillas against the

recognised government of Iraq, but designates Kurdish guerrillas

across the border in Turkey as terrorists – ah, but Ankara is a US

ally. Yet when I interviewed British-based Kurds some years ago

about the Turkish situation, their spokesman – an Iraqi Kurd –

stated that the Turkish situation was worse than its Iraqi

equivalent.

One of the most useful parts of the book is the postscript

dealing with 7/7 and its legacy. An interview with a moderate

Muslimah who heads Slough Race Equality produces the

startlingly frank statement that whatever is said publicly, privately

many British Muslims regard Bin Laden as a hero, p. 371. Why?

Because of US/UK policy. Salma Yaqoob is quoted as pointing

to the hypocrisy of the public response to Ken Bigley’s murder

whilst the deaths of Iraqi civilians remain uncounted, p. 374.

Defining ‘terrorism’ remains a Herculean task.

London Dr.Anthony McRoy

The West Bank Wall: Unmaking PalestineBY RAY DOLPHIN, London: Pluto Press, 2006, ISBN

0745324339, pp 256, £15

I read this book in Beirut in mid-July 2006 as the Israeli

bombardment of Lebanon began and intensified. At the

time, it seemed to many that Israel’s brutal assault was part

of a very longstanding pattern and that Hizbullah’s actions, in

capturing two Israeli soldiers and then firing rockets into northern

Israel, were a legitimate way of striking back against all the

indignities and humiliations suffered by Palestinians, Lebanese

and other Arabs since the state of Israel was created in 1948.

There is a link between the occupation of Arab land, the

terrorization of powerless civilians and the building of what

many refer to as an “apartheid wall” in the occupied West Bank.

I have seen the wall at several points along its route and, as

Ray Dolphin comments, it is “disingenuous to describe such a

formidable construction as a ‘fence’”. It is a monstrous and

shocking structure, cutting off communities and defacing the

landscape. Dolphin’s book charts in painstaking detail the history,

politics and reality of the wall. He makes extensive use of Israeli,

Palestinian and international sources in an effort to illustrate the

destructive nature of what Graham Usher, in his excellent

introduction, terms the “most lethal and potentially irreversible”

component of Israel’s system of rule in the occupied territories.

For the Israelis, the wall is seen as a protective device, a

contribution to the global war against terrorism. But, as Dolphin

says, the main purpose of the wall is “to obliterate the

internationally-recognised Green Line and to create a new border

deeper within West Bank territory, in the process annexing major

settlements, territory and water resources to Israel”. As the wall

has taken shape, it has swallowed up Palestinian farmland, cut

off Palestinian villages from medical and educational facilities,

made travel difficult and, for some, encouraged emigration. The

Israeli settler movement has had a significant impact on the

route of the wall. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization,

states that the Israeli cabinet’s decision on the route of the wall

was “to establish facts on the ground that would perpetuate the

existence of settlements and facilitate their future annexation to

Israel”.

The settlers’ greed and intransigence is supported by the US

government, and few in the international community seem

willing or able to speak out against it. In July 2004, the

International Court of Justice delivered a strongly worded

38 Al-Aqsa

advisory opinion on the wall. The Court ruled that “the wall –

where it deviated into the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which

was for the majority of its route – was contrary to international

law. Israel must cease construction, dismantle the sections already

build, compensate those affected and ‘repeal or render ineffective’

the gate and permit system”. Palestinians, as an Israeli

commentator observed, “have appealed to the world’s sense of

justice, while we seek the world’s pity”. However, the Israeli

government does not seem inclined to comply with this ruling

and no one has seen fit to pressure them. Dolphin also describes

the non-violent campaign waged by farmers in the village of

Jayous to prevent the wall from stealing their land. According to

one villager, “economic strangulation and ‘voluntary’ emigration

is the real purpose of the wall: ‘they want the land without the

people’”. Legal channels and peaceful resistance have achieved

little; apparently, as Pat O’Connor of the International Solidarity

Movement remarked, “it is forbidden for Palestinians to use the

tactics of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr to try to save their

land and their communities from destruction. The Israeli

government continues to do as it pleases and, as a result of the

wall and the 2005 unilateral Israeli disengagement from Gaza,

the Middle East Road Map is now moribund.

Dolphin reports on the physical and psychological impacts

on Palestinian residents affected by the wall. Women, he suggests,

“bear the brunt of these new movement restrictions. Families

are increasingly reluctant to allow female members, including girl

pupils, to endure the humiliating delays and searches at the gates,

further diminishing women’s mobility, social participation and

educational opportunities”. Children, too, are suffering. A survey

carried out in 2003 reveals that almost half the children in Qalqilya

“had personally experienced conflict-related violence or witnessed

violence affecting a member of their immediate family”. In the

words of one child: “they stole the smile from our faces”.

In East Jerusalem, a policy of “military conquest by

architectural means” was introduced by the Israeli government

after 1967. As Dolphin notes: “To provide housing, and to

forestall pressure for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 boundary, a

large-scale settlement programme was undertaken in East

Jerusalem and the surrounding area, primarily on private land

expropriated from Palestinian owners… By the end of 2001,

nearly 47,000 housing units had been built exclusively for Jews

on this expropriated land”. The wall, he adds, “marks the

summation of Israel’s policies in Jerusalem since 1967, literally

setting in concrete the fruits of decades of annexation and

settlement building”.

Many Arabs point to the occupation of Syrian, Palestinian

and Lebanese land, the terrorization of civilian populations, the

constant violation of human rights, and the ongoing

construction of the wall as evidence that Israel is not interested

in reaching a mutually acceptable peace. There is something

pernicious about this behaviour which seems calculated to cause

maximum misery, thereby forcing Palestinians to accept yet more

compromises. I recommend this book as an unsentimental and

factually precise examination of a situation which seems to many,

both Arab and non-Arab, not simply immoral but also short-

sighted.

London Dr. Maria Holt

Politicide – Ariel Sharon’s War against

the Palestinians.BY BARUCH KIMMERLING VERSO 2003, ISBN

1859845177, 234 pp., £15.

Henry Kissinger once recalled that Ariel Sharon was

the most dangerous man he met in Middle East,

Baruch Kimmerling’s title of Politicide reflects that

opinion by his detailed account of how Sharon as a soldier,

general, politician and as Prime Minister created the

dissolution in the hearts and minds of every Palestinian by

his political and military onslaught for over fifty years.

Kimmerling wrote his book in 2003, which was well before

his disengagement plan from Gaza, the internal political

upheaval in Israeli which resulted in the creation of the

Kadima Party and subsequent incapacitation of Sharon due

to his stroke. Nevertheless this book deals with Ariel Sharon

through the lens of academic critique which questions the

creation of policies which Kimmerling refers to as Politicide.

The book portrays a detailed attack on Sharon who directly

or indirectly has been associated with repression, war crimes

and clear provocation against the Palestinian population by

a series of measures such as the Sabra and Shatila massacres,

the ongoing assault since 2000 and his usage of the war on

terror to suppress Palestinian resistance.

From reading the arguments it is quite clear that

Kimmerling is a soft Zionist with a conscience as much of

his book constantly refers to how Sharon has led Israel to

self destruction due to the process of politicide. The term

Politicide is constantly used to describe a wide range of social,

political and military activities as the means to destroy the

existence of a community and any possibility of self

determination. He refers to methods which have been

incorporated by the military elite of Israel who under the

banner of democracy have used their position to justify and

control their means by the argument that there is a Palestinian

menace which is an obstruction to Israeli society, which has

to be suppressed. He refers to the Israeli interference in

Lebanon as a military exercise by Sharon who as the Defence

Secretary shielded all military action from his fellow cabinet

members and acted reputedly against any checks and

Al-Aqsa 39

balances. Throughout the book it is highlighted that

Kimmerling is a patriot committed to the well being of his

people, and that this book is a painful thesis to wake up the

Israeli population against the barbaric measures of the Likud

government and in particular Ariel Sharon. Kimmerling on

some occasions does not hide his Zionist credentials, in

particular his admires the assassinated leader Yitzhak Rabin;

his chapter on the Oslo accords is very sympathetic towards

Rabin and Peres. He ignores the weak leadership of Arafat

and how Israel negated the Right of Return, no commitment

to dismantling all illegal settlements, no clarified position

towards the final status of Jerusalem and that how Oslo

had created a fragmented Palestinian society by the constant

Israeli infringement upon Palestinian life. Kimmerling rather

naively believes that Israel gave more than it should and

fails to realise that the PLO had at the expense of the

Palestinian people sold out many of their principles.

Kimmerling also can be accused of not highlighting the

duplicity of the USA in the whole conflict. Throughout the

book there was no clear question raised about the role of

the USA. One would have expected to at least read about

the Bush administration through the neo-con agenda have

tightened the screws upon the Palestinians and thus allowing

Sharon a blank cheque in any systematic erosion of any

Palestinian society.

Kimmerling however should be commended on his

explanation on the policies of politicide by Sharon have

instigated the heightening rise of suicide bombers. He also

indulges in explaining that much of the motivation of

suicide bombers is not based on religious doctrine but

secular and political factors. He publicly berates Israeli

society for not understanding Palestinian desperation as a

precursor for suicide bombings due to the constant

humiliation and politicide policies by the Israeli military

especially during the reign of Sharon.

Politicide is a book in which the reader will understand

that Kimmerling who as a left wing Zionist is attacking the

Likudites under the stewardship of Sharon. He advocates

that Sharon has created a partial ethnic cleansing

programme through systematic policies which is slowly

eroding the already fragmented Palestinian society.

Politicide draws the argument that Sharon and his allies

�

are more belligerent towards creating facts on the ground

while at the same time generating a step towards an Eretz

Israel as the only solution for the survival of the Jewish

state. As Politicide was written before the Disengagement

of Gaza, the book sadly cannot offer any logical explanation

to where the Disengagement fits in to this wider plan of

Sharon. No doubt due to the permanent incapacitation of

Sharon nobody would ever find out what Sharon really

wanted to achieve, but it is certain after reading this book,

it can be concluded that the final aim was to create a

demoralised and destroyed Palestinian society who would

accept any imposed settlement to cease any more

humiliation. Kimmerling offers a rationale that this policy

will backfire as every repressive measure merely resurrects

a Palestinian mindset to resist at all costs any imposed attack

as for all Palestinians everything is to be played for. This is

wholly evident by the election victory of Hamas and how

the Palestinian population are now mentally equipped to

engage in a war of attrition with their sticks, stones and

mental defiance.

Politicide is a book in which it is argued that through

the policies of Politicide the real victim in the long run is

the Zionist society of Israel. Kimmerling offers an opinion

of someone on the Israeli left who believes that iron and

the rule by force can no longer be applied on any people,

as sooner or later the oppressor himself will become the

victim of their own misfortune. Sharon is blamed for being

the architect of this foiled plan of Politicide, as no matter

what can happen, there will always be a Palestinian people

and that their defiance will be the downfall of the of the

Jewish state. There could have been more emphasis on

Israeli policy since 1948 which has created this vacuum of

political uncertainty, nevertheless he eloquently argues that

Politicide was the brainchild of Sharon through the auspices

of Likud and that the mindset of the Israeli political and

military elite itself is the precursor towards failure. With

hindsight we do know that Sharon is no longer more active,

but it seems sadly his policies and style are to have outlived

his own political career through the constant Politicide of

the Palestinian people.

Leicester Hasan Loonat

40 Al-Aqsa

volume 9 - issue 1 - autumn 2006

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