Jeff Halper

Jeff was originally American. He wasn’t enjoying the US (“nothing transcendent”). In the 1960s there was a return to roots, and as a non-religious Jew going back to Israel gave him a similar feeling. He served in the Education Unit of the IDF, and part of the unit of reserve soldiers who refused to serve in the occupied territories, but rose to the rank of Corporal.

Other participant Rada[?] is a 1948 Palestinian, forced out of Jerusalem. “Unlike Jeff, maybe, I didn’t like what I saw, I liked nothing that I saw. The Arab homeland I had had had become the possession of another people.”

ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against Housing Demolition)

Jeff: I knew from the beginning that nothing was quite right. Where I part from most Palestinians and Arabs is that I don’t consider Israel a purely European, white movement. I consider that the tragedy is that they never acknowledged that there was another people. To Judaize the country, drive the Palestinians out was part of the crimes we committed. The first thing I did was join the Israeli peace movement, but there is a legitimacy to a Jewish state. The fact of the matter is that we have to find a way to live together.

Rada: There is a premise which I think many people want to see reconciliation between the two sides, which is that the Jewish nation have a tie to this homeland and hence they are there, have a right, a legitimacy to being there. My problem with this, and that of all Palestinians, all Arabs, is that one can understand Jewish people feel they need to be in a part of the world where they have a historical link. What I don’t accept is that they should make it exclusively their own, that they should possess it. When in the 1940s Jews were pouring in seeking refuge, my father told me years later we had no problem with that, what we could not accept is that they wanted to take the place over. Having said that I do indeed of course see that reconciliation is possible, I can see a way that this can be done. For us Palestinians, traumatised as we were, dispossessed as we are, we have the humanity to see that something must be done, and it is possible to see a future in which the land is shared.

Jeff: I don’t think the holocaust or the persecutions play a major role in the politics of the Israelis. Fears are used, but I don’t think it’s important. Zionism was a national movement, that is the source of the ongoing conflict. It wasn’t spurred by persecution, it emerged in the 19th century as part of European nationalism. There’s a genuine national self-identification of Israelis and Jews that propels…

Jeff: As an Israeli Jew I have a privileged position. If a Palestinian got in front of a bulldozer he would be shot. As Israeli Jews we use our privilege to resist the occupation in ways that Palestinians can’t. We use the issue of house demolition to get a handle on the big issue of occupation. 95% of demolitions were nothing to do with terrorism. 18,000 demolished since 1967. We have rebuilt 150. I think that’s a very meaningful thing. We can’t just look at the occupation: the entire country is Palestine-Israel. It turns out that house demolition is the essence of the conflict. The message when Israel demolishes tens of thousands of houses is “get out, you have no place here”. To end the policy of house demolitions is not just a technical thing but a reconceptualisation of Israel.

There is a disturbing separation now between the two peoples because of the violence and this means one can demonise one’s enemies. Can you see a way back?

Rada: I can see what the solution should be, which is different from saying what it will be. This brutality against the Palestinians has been going on for so long that it has evoked a reaction that is not pretty just as the brutality was not pretty. How were the Zionists going to make a Jewish state in land already occupied by non-Jews? Option 1: empty the land. Option 2: give up. They took option 1. It created endless conflict, but they won’t give up, and what scares me is that they won’t give up.

Chair asks for claps and boos to stop.

Rada: only one thing you can do: to share the land equably as equal citizens in one state. If you look at Israel-Palestine today, it is one state. It is already there, not something that has to be created. But the state we are is an apartheid state. There are first, second and third class citizens. Needs to become a state with equal rights for all its citizens.

Jeff: This is really a simple conflict to resolve. The issues are simple. All the polls consistently show that 80% of Palestinians and Israeli Jews are happy to solve this. The problem isn’t the political one. The problem is the Israeli government’s: the ideologues and the extremists took over the government along with the settlers. Over the past 40 years Israel has consistently laid over the Palestinian state a matrix of control. All the occupied territories are only 22% of the country, and we won’t even give them that. The problem is that Israel wants to control the entire country. How do you justify that? The mechanism is security. Israel is by far the strongest party. The Israeli economy is three times larger than Egypt Jordan Syria and Palestine put together. It is the 4th nuclear power and an army as strong as any in Europe. Israel use the message of victimhood to counter that. In order to get israel to accept responsiblity and end the occupation, Israel has to give up this mechanism of presenting itself as the victim, but it’s working. You can’t get elected president of the US if you’re not pro-Israel. The Israeli economy is based largely on security and the military with the occupied territories as its laboratory. We don’t even use the word “Palestinian” in Israel because we don’t recognise them, we use the word “Arab” undifferentiatedly.

It’s hard for us living in this country to appreciate the urgency, as we’ve been hearing about the conflict for so long. 900,000 Palestinian children in the occupied territories, over half wetting their beds every night through fear.

Rada: overwhelmingly this story is told from the Jewish point of view. But the people with the real security problem are the Palestinians. I never cease to wonder how the narrative the Israelis have presented to the world has been swallowed hook line and sinker. Jeff has showed how simple the problem is. The Palestinians were being asked to give up livelihood, homes, land, futures. All this. As Carter pointed out (yesterday, 25th May 2008) they do not have time. In 2005 I went and worked in the Palestinian territories. I worked for the Palestinian Authority for four months, living among my own people with so many good people making so many friends but I couldn’t wait to leave. Every single bit of travel I wanted to make I had to plan with the idea that I would not be able to do it. I had to spend a whole day just planning to go from one place to another very close by. That brings me to another idea. I don’t think that Israel is going to do anything, they are enjoying the situation. I think that help has to come from outside.

One of the points that Carter made was that the EU could play a crucial role in this. Clearly not America.

Rada: Europe could play a decisive role. It is the biggest funder of the Palestinians and the biggest trading partner of Israel. I was staggered to discover the level of cooperation and favoured nation status that Israel enjoys in its relationship with Europe. It has a tremendously high status in Europe. Every time there is an attempt to suspend the “association agreement” with Israel, the most tremendous efforts come from Israel to try to stop this. How do you get the European Union to move? What do you expect with Germany, Holland, Denmark and the UK which are determined to prevent even criticism of Israel?

Jeff, one nation state?

Jeff: I would have no problems with that. What I want to emphasise though is that we are talking about two nations. Neither Israeli Jews nor Palestinians are ethnic groups. You can be a British citizen no matter where you come from. In Israel and Palestine you have two nations, and the principle of national self-determination applies. The history of two-nation states is not a happy one (Belgium, Canada). The Palestinian diaspora has moved to a one-state solution. Those in Palestine have not given up on the two-state solution. We’re in a struggle where the two-state solution has been eliminated by Israel, one state will not be accepted by Israel or the rest of the world, and the Palestinians haven’t yet spoken with a single voice.

Rada: for the first time I don’t quite agree. For Palestinians the Jews are not a nation. Zionism is a hated invasion by foreigners. No matter how it describes itself, Zionism is a colonialist settler movement. So of course the Palestinians want the whole country back. In the 1960s the PLO called for a single democratic state. In 1970s they changed to calling for the two-state solution because they started to understand they would not achieve this so shifted to wanting their own state in part of the land and live to fight another day. But if today you offered them a one-state solution they would of course accept it; they would accept the two-state solution simply because they don’t think they’ll get the whole land.

Questions

How can there be a single state solution if the part of Palestine won’t accept Israel’s right to exist?

Jeff: this is the problem of paradigms and slogans continuing no matter what happens. PLO has recognised Israel’s existence (UN resolution 242) 20 years ago. In 1988 in Algers PLO recognised Israel, without of course giving up Palestinian claims to the land. In 2002 the Arab League (Saudi Initiative) said: if you relinquish the occupied territories, and we will recognise you and integrate you into the region. Israel requested that the initiative be taken out of the roadmap. The Gulf States have economic representation in Tel-Aviv. It’s true that they don’t recognise the legitimacy of Israel, but no colonised people would.

Given that you two profoundly disagree, what’s the hope?

The growing extremism brings both a threat and an opportunity. Some analysts would say that the only people who can deliver peace in the Middle East are the Israeli right and Hamas. In Ireland only once the DUP and IRA were brought in was a settlement delivered.

Is there any solution to getting the majority heard in Israeli politics?

Jeff: the Israeli Jews have been disempowered. It’s not that they don’t want peace. Labour is more culpable than Likud. Barach continues to say there is no partner for peace. We left Gaza (say the Israeli public) and they still attack us, what would happen if we left the West Bank? If the international community would guarantee Israel’s security but the occupation would end now I think you’d have dancing in the streets of Tel-Aviv.

Can the situation take any encouragement from the US elections?

Rada: no. I came back from California yesterday and before that was on the East Coast. The political process is so well controlled by the Israel lobby that there is very little freedom of movement. But what I did notice in America is that on the civil society front, the extremely offensive heckling and rudeness that we used to get speaking in America seems to have gone.

Can you comment on the importance of American backing?

Jeff: This is a global conflict. It has a profound impact on the entire global system. The position of the US in the world has gotten so bad is that the first thing a new president has to do is repair relations with the rest of the world, and this has to start by dealing with Palestine. The war in Iraq has drained the US economy and my hope is that the US will have to see that it’s counterproductive to US interests, so I hope we’ll get a change. Bumper sticker: Injustice at this level is unsustainable. I can’t see the solution or where the countervailing force is going to come.

Rada: I want to leave you with a final thought. I think it’s very important for people to realise that there are two aspects to the one-state solution that we musn’t mix up: is it a good idea, and how do we make it happen? If only one could get a consensus on that principle then we have a banner under which we can march. I hope I’ve done something to convince you that a shared solution is far better than any other to this conflict.

Last updated 2008/05/31