Israel cannot be a democracy and an occupier

March 3, 2009

New York, NY.

Full democracies are political systems that allow majorities to rule and minorities to thrive. What makes a democracy shine is the exercise of compassion in the protection of its minorities.

What good are democracies when they oppress their minorities? How righteous are nations which snatch land across their borders? For how long can states rely on wars to achieve security?

Israel is a hybrid political system. This country is a thriving democracy as well as an oppressive occupation. The Zionist state elects its representatives peacefully; its media are robust and it has a thriving free market. This same country has five million Jews ruling mercilessly over five million Palestinians.

This week, Peace Now, a local human rights group, reports that half a million Israelis live illegally on Palestinian land; Israeli settlements are continuously expanding. The US, the European Union and the United nations consider the building of settlements aggressive violation of international law.

A peaceful and content Israel could have become a model for the Middle East, where democracies are rare. This is not happening. With the growth of its political, economic and technological power Israel becomes more ethnically exclusive, territorially colonial and morally self-aggrandizing.

In 1948, Israel was established by displacing half the native Palestinian population from land they had inhabited for many centuries. The formation of this state through war may have structurally handicapped its political course.

Insecurity breeds insecurity. The unease of being an isolated nation led Israel in 1967 to “protect” its citizens by occupying more land and displacing more people. Israel now occupies or controls all what used to be historic Palestine, the Golan Heights in Syria and a narrow swath of land in south Lebanon, the Sheb’a Farms. These occupations are changing the moral premise on which Israel was founded and are at the focus of last month’s elections.

The recent elections in Israel reveal ominous trends. Observing the shadow of fascism in Israel, Rabbi EricYoffie, the President of the Union of Reform Judaism, laments the strong showing of Avigdor Lieberman in the February 10 elections. Lieberman’s party, Ysrael Beiteninu, explicitly advocates Arab ethnic cleansing. In an op-ed entitled Confronting our Demagogue (Feb. 17) in the Jewish Daily Forward , Rabbi Yoffie does not mince words in describing Lieberman’s election campaign against the one million Israeli Arabs, who constitute twenty percent of the population: “It was an outrageous, abominable, hate-filled campaign, brimming with incitement that, if left unchecked, could lead Israel to the gates of hell.”

The Israeli occupation provides a climate for extreme ideas, not only among resistance groups, but also among the occupier to justify the status quo.

The silent majority in Israel seems to be comfortable with the occupation. Lieberman is in unison with the majority of Israelis on the issue of Palestinian land rights. Lieberman’s party won only 12% of the parliamentary seats. But since the majority of the elected parties oppose negotiating with the Palestinians, Lieberman’s policy is not really far from the mainstream. In fact, this aggressive politician may have become popular for expressing the hidden wish of a society that is covertly betting on the eventual departure or deportation of most remaining Palestinians from their homeland.

Currently, the majority of Israelis do not advocate ethnic cleansing. But as time passes, and as demography changes, the hold of moral taboos on people may relax, fear-based rationalization may trump morality and hostile action may replace tolerance.

The logic of the continuation of the occupation leads in time to a unilateral and unplanned one-state “solution”. In such a forced “solution”, either Palestinians would displace Israelis or Israelis would displace Palestinians. Since the occupier is aware of this balance of “terror”, it is not difficult to guess who will start the process of the elimination of the other.

In a mutually agreed bi-national one-state solution the two sides of the conflict may find their political aspirations peacefully fulfilled. However, a peaceful integration of the two nations into one country is not likely in the foreseeable future. Today, the so called one-state bi-national solution stands as “academia” politics.

Israelis need to be rescued by the international community from a hole they have dug for themselves through occupying people they cannot force to disappear.

Palestinians too, need to be “treated” for chronic political self-injury and for a mindset in their leadership which sees “victory” in failure. The Palestinians may try to liberate themselves by force; but the use of force against an occupier who is supported by a superpower has proven clearly to be counterproductive.

Democracies shine with tolerance and decline with oppression. Israel cannot be both a democracy and an occupier; one dimension will eliminate the other. Palestinians, to accelerate the termination of the occupation, should unite and abandon the use of ineffective forms of resistance.