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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/26/the-everyday-violence-of-life-in-occupied-palestine/">counterpunch.org</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The Everyday Violence of Life in Occupied Palestine</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Vijay Prashad - October 26, 2023<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div>
<div id="gmail-attachment_301467" class="gmail-wp-caption"><img src="cid:ii_lo7gy09b0" alt="Palestinians_wearing_Che_Guevara_tshirts-680x452.jpg" width="413" height="275"><br><p></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-301467" class="gmail-wp-caption-text">Photograph Source: Justin McIntosh – <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">CC BY 2.0</a></p></div>
<p>
Driving along the Jordan River Valley in the Occupied Palestine
Territory (OPT) of the West Bank is a stunning experience. The road is
officially called Highway 90. The arable and irrigated land along this
road is held militarily and <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm">illegally</a>
by Israeli settlers, many of whom are not actually Israeli citizens,
but residents from the Jewish diaspora. A United Nations Commission <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/coiopt/2022-10-19/Report-COI-OPT-14Sept2022-EN.pdf">report</a>
published in 2022 showed that this settlement activity is a crime
against international human rights law (transfer of population into an
occupied territory). Israeli settlers and the Israeli military that
defend them call Highway 90 <em>Derekh Gandhi</em> or Gandhi’s Road.
When I first drove along that road over a decade ago, I was puzzled by
Gandhi’s name there. Mahatma Gandhi was a leader of the Indian freedom
struggle, and had on many occasions—such as in his 1938 <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/lsquo-the-jews-rsquo-by-gandhi">article</a>,
“The Jews”—offered his sympathy and solidarity with the Palestinian
people. In fact, the road that slices through the West Bank—a crucial
part of a proposed Palestinian state—is named after Rehavam Ze’evi, who
was ironically given the nickname Gandhi.</p>
<p>Ze’evi led the National Union party, which brought together all the
most dangerous currents of Israeli far-right politics. As the leader of
this party, and, before that, of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moledet">Moledet</a>, Ze’evi <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/18/israel2">advocated</a>
the removal of Palestinians from what he considered to be Israel’s land
(East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank). He supported the creation of
<a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/politics/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/eretz-yisrael-hebrew-meaning-land-israel">Eretz Yisrael</a> that would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. In March 2001, Ze’evi—who would later be <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2016-04-15/ty-article/.premium/tv-program-rips-image-of-idf-general-zeevi-to-shreds/0000017f-ec5e-d4cd-af7f-ed7ee4100000">accused</a> of sexual harassment and of being involved in organized crime—<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/18/israel2">told</a>
The Guardian that “it’s not murder to get rid of potential terrorists,
or those who have blood on their hands. Each one eliminated is one less
terrorist for us to fight.” A few months later, Ze’evi showed that he
did not distinguish among Palestinians, calling all of them a “cancer”
and <a href="https://ips-dc.org/where_is_the_outrage/">saying</a>, “I
believe there is no place for two peoples in our country. Palestinians
are like lice. You have to take them out like lice.” He was shot to
death by fighters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
(PFLP) in October 2001. The name of the road that cuts across the West
Bank—promised to a Palestinian state in the Oslo Accords of 1993—still
bears Ze’evi’s name.</p>
<p>Ze’evi was assassinated by PFLP fighters because the Israeli army had
killed their leader Mustafa Ali Zibri by firing two cruise missiles at
his home in Al-Bireh (Palestine). The assassination of Zibri was not an
isolated incident. It was part of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/and-darkness-covered-land/">plan</a>
to “cause the collapse” of the Palestinian Authority—created to manage
the Oslo Accords—and “send them all to hell.” Apart from the murder of
civilians on a punctual basis, from July 2001 the Israeli government
killed four political leaders (Islamic Jihad leader Salah Darwazeh and
Hamas leader Jamal Mansour in July, and then Hamas leader Amer Mansour
Habiri and Fatah leader Emad Abu Sneineh in August). After the killing
of Zibri, the Israelis assassinated Hamas’s Mahmoud Abu Hanoud in
November. “Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation,” <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/sharon-or-arafat-which-sponsor-terror/">wrote</a>
military correspondent Alex Fishman in Yediot Ahronot, “knew full well
that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement
between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas
was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line
[Israel’s pre-1967 borders].”</p>
<p><strong>Hot Violence, Cold Violence</strong></p>
<p>For centuries, Palestinian Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived
side-by-side in the lands that would eventually be Israel and the OPT,
including along the Jordan River Valley. Since the expulsion of the
Palestinian Christians and Muslims and the arrival of European Jews, the
legal apparatus—or the “cold violence,” as the writer Teju Cole <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/132-letters-to-palestine">calls</a>
it—worked alongside paramilitary and military violence against the
Palestinians to create a fantasy of an ethno-nationalist state project
(the Jewish State, as it was then called). The erasure of the non-Jewish
Palestinians was key to this project, either by massacres (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deir_Yassin_massacre">Deir Yassin</a>
in 1948) or the wholesale removal of the Palestinian population from
their land (the Nakba of 1948). The massacres and the population
transfers came alongside the denial of the <em>reality</em> of Palestine and the Palestinian people. The heir to Ze’evi, current finance minister Bezalel Smotrich <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-smotrich-palestinians-no-such-thing">said</a>
this March, “There’s no such thing as Palestinians because there’s no
such thing as a Palestinian people.” This is not an opinion that can be
dismissed as a far-right rant. Likud member Ofir Akunis, minister of
science and technology, <a href="https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/281166">said</a>
three years ago, “There’s no place for any formula to establish a
Palestinian state in Western Israel.” The phrase “Western Israel” is a
chilling statement about the Israeli consensus on full annexation of the
West Bank with disregard for international law.</p>
<p>A focus on Gaza is essential. The Israeli “hot violence” is extreme,
with the death toll of Palestinians—almost half of them in Gaza of
children—over 5,000. The Israeli land invasion has been blocked, for
now, by the recognition of high morale among the Palestinian resistance.
The latter will fight every Israeli soldier that goes into the ruins of
Gaza. Before this Israeli incursion, 450 trucks <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5027f41d-90e6-4481-a386-0fde2cdffa63">crossed</a>
into Gaza with supplies for the 2.3 million residents; it was taken as a
victory when nine United Nations trucks and 11 trucks of the Egyptian
Red Crescent crossed into Gaza on October 21. Amnesty International
looked at only five bombings of the Israelis and <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/damning-evidence-of-war-crimes-as-israeli-attacks-wipe-out-entire-families-in-gaza/">found</a> evidence of war crimes, which should alert the International Criminal Court to re-open its <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-fatou-bensouda-respecting-investigation-situation-palestine">file</a>
on Israeli atrocities. This should include the crime of collective
punishment by cutting water and electricity to Gaza, and bombing access
roads to the Rafah crossing into Egypt, and by bombing the Rafah
crossing itself.</p>
<p>Large demonstrations across the world demand a ceasefire (at a
minimum) and an end to the occupation. Israel is not interested. Its
defense minister Yoav Gallant <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/gallant-says-after-hamas-vanquished-israel-will-seek-new-security-regime-in-gaza/">told</a>
parliament that his forces have a three-point plan—to destroy Hamas, to
destroy the other Palestinian factions, and to create a new “security
regime” in Gaza. The Palestinian people—not just the armed factions—are
resolute in their resistance to Israeli occupation. The only way for
Gallant’s new “security regime” to work would be to erase this
resistance, which means to remove all Palestinians from Gaza either by
massacres or by dispossession. The United States is following along with
this extermination plan: a U.S. State Department memorandum <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-department-internal-emails-gaza-israel_n_65296395e4b0a304ff6ff95d?ykm">says</a>
that its diplomats must not use phrases such as “de-escalation,”
“ceasefire,” “end to violence,” “end to bloodshed,” and “restoring
calm.”</p>
<p><em>This article was produced by </em><a href="https://globetrotter.media/"><em>Globetrotter</em></a><em>.</em></p>
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<em>Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is
The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US
Power (New Press, August 2022).</em>
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