The skeletons in the closet

Pluto author Alice Rothchild talks to Professor Yehouda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University about the failure of the two-state solution, the short-comings of the Israeli left and Jewish history in the Middle East.

6th January

I have been reading about the Israeli governmental criticism and talk of censorship of left wing academics in Israel and I am eager to meet a professor who has been under fire. Professor Yehouda Shenhav of Tel Aviv University has a way of exploding the assumptions that frame many of our understandings of the conflict. A brilliant and provocative thinker and author of “Bounded by the Green Line,” he describes himself as a member of the radical left. An older man in a light blue sweater and jeans, he starts out stating that peace negotiations are useless, the two state solution is a menace to Jews and Palestinians, and he believes in one space, (not necessarily a state) for two people.

The nuances of BDS: How can Israelis boycott themselves?

Pluto author Alice Rothchild meets with an Israeli activist and supporter of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

6th January

Because most Israelis are opposed to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement, I am very interested in hearing from Kobi Snitz, a thin, intense man active with Boycott from Within and Anarchists Against the Wall. Meeting with the delegation in Tel Aviv, he states that the Palestinian BDS guidelines are clear in principle, refined and legalistic, but the applications are subtle. For a supportive Israeli, what can he do? Quit his job? Stop eating? Obviously not, but there are many nuanced decisions to be made, for instance in the world of universities.

Activists blockade Scotland Yard over police use of sex as subterfuge

Chris Browne reports from the blockade of Scotland Yard by activists protesting against the use of sex by undercover officers who infiltrated environmentalist groups.

Every movement and social group has its own stories, the ones they tell, and retell, and that are gradually sculpted into little anthropological myths. The alterglobalisation movement is no different. Young, bright-eyed activists will hear the same stories of outrage and intrigue from the movement’s near past. Like the one where an anti-MacDonalds action group transpired to have been infiltrated by a number of undercover police. No real story there, perhaps, were it not for the fact that the number of undercover agents vastly outnumbered the genuine activists in the group.

Settlement products: Boycott PA style

Pluto author Alice Rothchild meets activists in Ramallah involved with the campaign to boycott settlement produce in the occupied territories.

5th January

Many US activists are becoming increasingly involved in the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement as a nonviolent tactic to change Israeli policy through economic and political pressure and creative education and actions. Much is available on the internet, including the 2005 BDS call from Palestinian civil society and the PACBI call for academic and cultural boycott of Israel. Our day in Ramallah started out with a presentation and discussion with Omar Barghouti, a political analyst, cultural critic, electrical engineer, former dancer and choreographer, and one of the founders of PACBI. Although he gave an elegant and compelling analysis, much of his work is readily available in the US so I am going to comment on our next meeting.

Twitter revolution?

Pluto author Joss Hands looks at the debates over the role of new social media in the Tunisian uprising.

Popular uprisings are now regularly accompanied with speculation as to whether they are ‘Twitter’ revolutions, and much of this speculation consists in counter-claims that Twitter’s importance has been overblown. We have seen this now with at least three different events – in Moldova and Iran in 2009 and now Tunisia.  A flavour of this is captured in the debate between Evgeny Morozov and Clay Shirky.

Israeli Rejectionism: The full history of Israel’s refusal to negotiate peace in Palestine

Around 9 months ago, we at Pluto were considering the title for a book on the history of the Middle East Peace Process, which drew on material in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Title discussions are often a torrid affair, but in this case the evidence pointed to a clear conclusion: Israel did have a partner for peace, but the Palestinians did not. From there, it was a short journey to reversing ‘Arab Rejection’ – the mainstream media’s narrative of the failing peace process – and using the title to assert that Israeli Rejectionism was the main enemy of the peace process. In this post, the book’s authors, Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit, outline the historical background that led to the PA’s misguided but understandable stance and the inevitable reaction from Israel.

On Sunday, January 23^rd, the TV Network Al Jazeera released 1600 documents covering the ‘Peace Negotiations’ between the Israelis and the Palestinians over ten years that were leaked from the Palestinian Authority.  These leaked documents reveal that Palestinian leaders made enormous concessions to the Israelis including their willingness to forego the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland and even allowing Israel to annex most of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinian claim as their future capital. Such concessions fundamentally contradict the known official Palestinian position and expose the extent to which they were willing to go for peace.  The Palestinian people themselves had no idea, apparently, of these concessions.  But even more incredibly these concessions were a complete contradiction to the Israeli version of the failure of the peace negotiations.

Our book, Israeli Rejectionism: A Hidden Agenda of the Middle East Peace Process is about to be released by Pluto Press. The main tenet of the book is that the failure of peace negotiations had nothing to do with the Palestinian unwillingness to be a partner for peace but has always been that for Israel peace was never the goal. Throughout its history, the State of Israel and the Zionist Movement before it considered the entire territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea as its own rightful land and took every opportunity to conquer more and more of this land. Israel achieved its territorial goal in 1967 when it conquered all of British Mandatory Palestine. It is therefore not surprising that during the period covered by the leaked documents Israel sabotaged all peace proposal presented to it, as we demonstrate in our book.

Regardless of the enormity of concessions made by Palestinian leaders such as Saeb Erekat and Ahmed Kourei, Israel’s standard response was that these offers were inadequate and therefore of no interest. It is no consolation to demonstrate that these leaked documents confirm and validate our contention that there is no peace because Israel never wanted peace. Nevertheless the documents clearly confirm our contention of Israel’s rejectionism and reveal that the Palestinian rigidity alleged by Israel is untrue.

Israeli Rejectionism A Hidden Agenda in the Middle East Peace Process Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit An analysis of the Middle East ‘peace process’ showing that peace has never been in the interest of the state of Israel. £18.99 Exclusive! Click here to Pre-order now! Only £15 inc. P&P within the UK. Your copy will be despatched in the first week of February so you can read this revealing book weeks before anyone else and impress everyone with your superior knowledge.

Upheaval in Tunisia

Pluto author Deina Ali Abdelkader writes on the uprising in Tunisia and prospects for democratic change in the Middle East.

Tunisia like many other countries in the Middle East has been a country striving to modernize and democratize. Like other countries of the region it too has suffered a prolonged history of French colonization.

Its history of colonization together with its more recent and contemporary political leadership has meant that the Tunisians have been economically, socially, and politically oppressed for more than a century. The violence that we see today is self explanatory to anyone slightly familiar with the prolonged sense of worthlessness and despair that the population of Tunisia feels. Since its independence Tunisians have been promised a “rose garden” with technological know-how, democracy, and economic welfare. None of that has materialized in the past six decades.

The very arbitrary, extreme banality of power

Pluto author Alice Rothchild visits the African quarter of east Jerusalem and discusses strategies for the Palestinian movement with activists.

4th January

We return from Ramallah to East Jerusalem to join the health and human rights delegation and once again I am taken aback by the daily outrages that have now become ordinary. Sitting on the #18 bus, windows caked with mud and grime, we reach the massive traffic chaos at Qalandia checkpoint for the bizarre ritual of getting through. West Bank Palestinians with permits leave the bus for the walk through “security,” half an hour? two hours? Go home? An elderly gentleman with a blue ID card for East Jerusalem stays on the bus explaining that he does not need to leave because of his ID. A muscle man with sunglasses gets into the bus and I hand him my passport. He explains that he is “security” and stands legs apart in the bus, trying to look fierce. A bearded baby-faced soldier then enters the bus and has some argumentative conversation with the driver. He gestures to the old man to leave and the man shows his blue ID, muttering, “Is there now a new law?” He tells us he also has a US passport, “I have everything,” and never goes through security. Frustrated, he is forced off the bus for the never never land of security lines. We drive through the checkpoint and pick up Palestinians on the other side who have crossed the hurdles. A man with piercing green eyes explains that the soldiers told him he could not pass and they started arguing. He demanded, “I talk to your commander!” and the soldier relented. He is still clearly seething with rage and frustration. Suddenly I realize that I am holding my breath as if even the air is suffocating.

‘I am here to save the Jews from Israel’

Pluto author Alice Rothchild meets some inspiring activists in Nablus calling for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

4th January

Saed Abu Hijeh, an intense Palestinian human geographer, poet, and radio host, greets us in his garden in Nablus, explaining that this is where is mother, well known peace activist Shaden Abdel Qader Al Saleh Abu-Hijleh, was assassinated by Israeli soldiers in 2002 while sitting on her veranda embroidering.  His father Dr. Jamal Abdel Al Kareem Abu-Hijleh was also injured and Saed was hit with broken glass. He still keeps the fractured glass door taped, as if this tragedy happened yesterday, and a larger than life portrait of his mother is one of the few paintings in his living room. The case of his mother’s murder is now working its way through the Israeli court system. Saed says he was not granted a permit to go to court and now is in the ludicrous and maddening situation where he has to get a permit to get a permit to go to court to testify.  She bled to death in his arms.

Ramallah Fragments: the dangerous qanun and the intoxication of power

Pluto author Alice Rothchild experiences the first performance of the Palestine National Orchestra and the humiliation of Palestinians at the Qalandia checkpoint in Ramallah.

3rd January

We leave the taxi at Qalandia checkpoint and for 50 shekels grab a ride in the back of a truck with Israeli license plates. The truck doors advertise flooring and construction, three scruffy men sit in the front seat, and soon we are staring through dusty windows at the imposing separation wall, massive amounts of construction and garbage, new cream white apartment and office buildings, and a disarray of cars all heading in opposing directions.