Following is my August update/analysis of what is happening in Palestine/Israel. We are experiencing the violent culmination of the Zionist project after 130 years of colonizing and Judaizing Palestine.
As usual, my “update” rapidly veers into analysis. This is important. Palestinian national rights will not be restored - indeed, the Palestinian people will not be restored to its land - and a just, inclusive post-colonial polity and society will not arise unless we have a strategy of decolonization. And that is lacking today: no Palestinian-articulated political program, no political organization or sustained and focused movement, no leadership and no strategy - all of which you have heard from me ad nauseam.
(There actually is a one-state political program I write about in my book Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestinewhich has been formulated by the Palestinian-led One Democratic State Campaign, but it has yet to gain traction.)
But my inclination towards analysis, I feel — and I certainly feel in this update — is bloodless; it does not capture the human suffering, injustice or sense of despair the Palestinians are experiencing. There are many accounts of what is happening on the ground, of course, which is why I feel my grounded, action-oriented analysis is filling a crucial gap. But I am there, and in updates like this one I feel I am not conveying the scale of the suffering and the urgency of the situation as I am experiencing it.
I don’t say so - which I should have - but this update was spurred not only by the crisis we are facing politically and on the ground as Zionism reaches its culmination, the settlement of Palestine (Judaization), the displacement, marginalization and killing of the Palestinians (de-Arabization), the brutal breaking of all resistance (pacification) and, finally, normaiization, a process disrupted by Gaza and the Iran War but by means ended. Rather it is motivated by a phone call from a friend and comrade, Abu Hassan of Beit Ummar, in which he broke down into uncontrollable sobbing.
This strong man, a farmer who has spent his entire life resisting, has reached an end-point. His town, Beit Ummar, has for decades been under pressure from the surrounding settlements in the Etzion Bloc between Bethlehem and Hebron, but has been occupied by the Israeli army and settlers for months.
Abu Hassan has lost all his land and has been forced to seek casual labor in Israel, although as a grandfather with health issues he has found it hard to find work. Since October 7th, however, he and more than 120,000 other Palestinians have been locked out of the Israeli economy, banned from entering - and have been replaced permanently by cheaper foreign workers from China, Thailand, India, Sri Lanks, Rumania and (informally) by African refugees who have been trapped in Israel for years.
That means he hasn’t had any income for the past almost three years, with little prospect of EVER having an income again. Nor have his three grown sons, one a computer engineer, another a hotel manager (hotels in the West Bank are closed), another a worker, and their families. Like the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, Abu Hassan and his family are facing hunger.
The night before my update the Israeli army had invaded his home for the second time in a couple months and destroyed whatever they had not destroyed in their previous visit. They go house to house with no purpose but to terrorize the popu๐๐๐๐ ๐๐๐ฅ๐ฉ๐๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐จ๐ฆ ๐๐๐ซ๐ฎ๐ฌ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฆ
Following is my August update/analysis of what is happening in Palestine/Israel. We are experiencing the violent culmination of the Zionist project after 130 years of colonizing and Judaizing Palestine.
As usual, my “update” rapidly veers into analysis. This is important. Palestinian national rights will not be restored - indeed, the Palestinian people will not be restored to its land - and a just, inclusive post-colonial polity and society will not arise unless we have a strategy of decolonization. And that is lacking today: no Palestinian-articulated political program, no political organization or sustained and focused movement, no leadership and no strategy - all of which you have heard from me ad nauseam.
(There actually is a one-state political program I write about in my book Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestinewhich has been formulated by the Palestinian-led One Democratic State Campaign, but it has yet to gain traction.)
But my inclination towards analysis, I feel — and I certainly feel in this update — is bloodless; it does not capture the human suffering, injustice or sense of despair the Palestinians are experiencing. There are many accounts of what is happening on the ground, of course, which is why I feel my grounded, action-oriented analysis is filling a crucial gap. But I am there, and in updates like this one I feel I am not conveying the scale of the suffering and the urgency of the situation as I am experiencing it.
I don’t say so - which I should have - but this update was spurred not only by the crisis we are facing politically and on the ground as Zionism reaches its culmination, the settlement of Palestine (Judaization), the displacement, marginalization and killing of the Palestinians (de-Arabization), the brutal breaking of all resistance (pacification) and, finally, normaiization, a process disrupted by Gaza and the Iran War but by means ended. Rather it is motivated by a phone call from a friend and comrade, Abu Hassan of Beit Ummar, in which he broke down into uncontrollable sobbing.
This strong man, a farmer who has spent his entire life resisting, has reached an end-point. His town, Beit Ummar, has for decades been under pressure from the surrounding settlements in the Etzion Bloc between Bethlehem and Hebron, but has been occupied by the Israeli army and settlers for months.
Abu Hassan has lost all his land and has been forced to seek casual labor in Israel, although as a grandfather with health issues he has found it hard to find work. Since October 7th, however, he and more than 120,000 other Palestinians have been locked out of the Israeli economy, banned from entering - and have been replaced permanently by cheaper foreign workers from China, Thailand, India, Sri Lanks, Rumania and (informally) by African refugees who have been trapped in Israel for years.
That means he hasn’t had any income for the past almost three years, with little prospect of EVER having an income again. Nor have his three grown sons, one a computer engineer, another a hotel manager (hotels in the West Bank are closed), another a worker, and their families. Like the vast majority of Palestinians in the West Bank, Abu Hassan and his family are facing hunger.
The night before my update the Israeli army had invaded his home for the second time in a couple months and destroyed whatever they had not destroyed in their previous visit. They go house to house with no purpose but to terrorize the population - or “asserting a presence,” as the army puts it.
What broke him, however, was their brutal treatment of his severely paralyzed and retarded daughter, since the family was forced to leave the house during the “search.” The soldiers moved her roughly from her special bed to a couch, proceeded to upturn the bed and all the medical equipment surrounding it, went through and scattered her medicines – and then left. Her special diapers were scattered and rendered unusable, some of the medicine bottles were smashed – and into that small detail that he had no money whatsoever to replace them simply shattered him. The Israeli government is withholding $5 billion dollars in tax monies owed to the Palestinian Authority, causing the virtual breakdown of the Palestinian medical system. If you can’t pay, you don’t get medicines and treatment.
This was the human background to my update, which I do not convey as well as others, painfully aware that unless the colonization of Palestine is ended politically, these tragedies, only a pinpoint of which are ever known, will continue forever. Still, if you look at the ICAHD website, a rich trove of information, analysis, resources and, yes, human stories out of our focus on home demolitions, the human dimension does emerge.
I wish, though, that I could better convey the suffering, the terror, the micro-humiliations, the helplessness, the suppressed anger, the pervasive injustice that is Abu Hassan’s life. It has a political purpose, of course: fostering paralyzing despair and passiveness, key to pacification. Jabotinsky talked about it in his seminal 1923 essay on Zionist colonialism, “The Iron Wall,” Sharon often referred to it s a touchstone of his reconquest of the West Bank. But it is tangible and suffocating. I wish I could communicate it better, alongside my political analysis.
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTojfC3QjtAlation - or “asserting a presence,” as the army puts it.
What broke him, however, was their brutal treatment of his severely paralyzed and retarded daughter, since the family was forced to leave the house during the “search.” The soldiers moved her roughly from her special bed to a couch, proceeded to upturn the bed and all the medical equipment surrounding it, went through and scattered her medicines – and then left. Her special diapers were scattered and rendered unusable, some of the medicine bottles were smashed – and into that small detail that he had no money whatsoever to replace them simply shattered him. The Israeli government is withholding $5 billion dollars in tax monies owed to the Palestinian Authority, causing the virtual breakdown of the Palestinian medical system. If you can’t pay, you don’t get medicines and treatment.
This was the human background to my update, which I do not convey as well as others, painfully aware that unless the colonization of Palestine is ended politically, these tragedies, only a pinpoint of which are ever known, will continue forever. Still, if you look at the ICAHD website, a rich trove of information, analysis, resources and, yes, human stories out of our focus on home demolitions, the human dimension does emerge.
I wish, though, that I could better convey the suffering, the terror, the micro-humiliations, the helplessness, the suppressed anger, the pervasive injustice that is Abu Hassan’s life. It has a political purpose, of course: fostering paralyzing despair and passiveness, key to pacification. Jabotinsky talked about it in his seminal 1923 essay on Zionist colonialism, “The Iron Wall,” Sharon often referred to it s a touchstone of his reconquest of the West Bank. But it is tangible and suffocating. I wish I could communicate it better, alongside my political analysis.
Click on the link to see Halper's insightful video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTojfC3QjtA
(Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson page Facebook)
