Joint Israeli-Palestinian non-profit company promoting two states
Combatants for Peace’s non-violent activism
Preface:
During the past five months I listened to other Palestinian voices in the United States, attended a Nakba commemoration ceremony at the Cape Town castle, participated in a June 16 commemoration expressing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid and attended (on-line) two joint Israeli/Palestinian peace movement events in Israel.
My notes and documents recording these events too provide a sound basis for more near-future articles, starting with this note about joint Palestinian/Israeli ceremonies commemorating loved ones from both sides of the divide who died during the imposition of Israeli apartheid and the armed resistance that it provoked.[1] These ceremonies took place under the auspices of an organisation called Combatants for Peace (CfP), which was formed in 2006 to work through non-violent strategies ‘towards a two state solution in the 1967 borders, or any other mutually agreed upon solution (my emphasis) that will allow both Israelis and Palestinians to live in freedom, security, democracy and dignity in their homeland’.
The CfP website gives examples of its activism: tours of the West Bank, a public Freedom March, public encounter groups with Israeli and Palestinian members of CfP, a Jordan Valley Coalition, bi-national groups meetings,[2] and CfP-initiated and led protests against the occupation of the territories by Israel and the conditions under which Palestinians live: i.e. Youth Action Group, Marches & Demonstrations, Rebuilding Homes destroyed by the Occupation, Protecting Shepherds, Safeguarding Olive Groves, Demanding Water Rights, Building Playgrounds, and Providing School Supplies for Bedouin Children. CfP claims to have acted to prevent Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in the following places: Kfar Mallik, Khan Al Ahmar, Sumud Freedom Camp, Susya, Wadi Al Ahmar, Sheikh Jarrah, Humsa, and Beita.
CfP’s aim to develop the basis for the two peoples to live together in peace and mutual respect raises the question of how it sees the form that a future state (or states) will take. First, I will consider the latest polling data that shows the opinions of Israeli citizens (both Jewish and Palestinian) and of Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs), about the likely and aspired-to future state(s). Thereafter follow some observations of what transpired at these two events and links to video recordings for readers to see and hear the original footage. I conclude by juxtaposing the key ideas and practices driving CfP through its projects, with the ideas and practices of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement and with the armed struggle of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
Form of state: Jewish Israeli and Palestinian opinions
The CfP exists and practices within the context of a compendium of Jewish Israeli and Palestinian aspirations for different forms of state. In an earlier article, ‘The dialectic of Israel’s rights’, under the sub-heading ‘BDS and global Palestine solidarity positions’, I referred to the so-called one-state and two state solutions, where the former is a single democratic state with equal civic and national rights for all (it could take the form of a binational state) and the latter is two autonomous states (Israel and a Palestinian state comprising the OPTs, Including East Jerusalem).
According to the 2021 survey by B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the OPTs, Only 13 per cent of all people living under Israeli control (Israeli and Palestinian citizens and Palestinian subjects in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip) then believed that Israel was seeking a two-state solution (12 per cent of Israeli citizens and 14 per cent of occupied Palestinians). A large majority believed that Israel intended to continue its military control, and an even larger majority that Israel intended to annex the West Bank. These beliefs suggested that they might be increasingly open to considering (and supporting) a one state outcome (whether based on equal rights or on an apartheid state structure, as is currently the case).
More recent surveys indicate steadily decreasing support for a two-state solution. As indicated in the figure below the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) (based in Ramallah) in conjunction with the International Programme in Conflict Resolution and Mediation at Tel Aviv University found that 60 per cent of Palestinian Israelis, 34 per cent of Palestinians in the OPTs and 33 per cent of Jewish Israelis expressed support for a two-state solution in 2022.
In 2011 Palestinian support for a two-state solution stood at 55 per cent. By December 2022 this support had dropped to 39 per cent (see my earlier article). Sixty per cent of Palestinian citizens of Israel still supported a two-state solution in 2022 as did 34 per cent of Jewish citizens. Amongst Jewish citizens of Israel support for one unequal state under Israeli rule was higher than for a two-state solution. Between 14 and 54 per cent of Israeli and Palestinian respondents supported various aspects of a confederation of states where there would be open borders and permanent residency rights in each state for citizens of both states (analogous to what Ali Abunimah ascribed to the Good Friday agreement for Northern Ireland, as stated in my earlier article referred to above).
In 2023 The Pew Research Centre reported that Jewish Israeli belief that Israel and an independent Palestinian state could coexist peacefully had fallen from 46 per cent (in 2013) to 32 per cent. Among Palestinian Israelis that belief had fallen from 74 per cent to 41 per cent. This suggests significantly less support amongst Palestinian citizens of Israel in 2023 than the PSR survey indicated in 2022, for a two-state solution.
The CfP website however, takes no position on one or two states; neither does it reflect on the confederation of states idea polled, as a concrete form of a two state solution, notwithstanding its stated objective of ‘a two state solution in the 1967 borders’. Listening to what was said at the two events I assumed that many of CfP’s active participants as well as many attendees at its events might hold a range of views about two states based on the confederation of states example referred to, to a single unitary state with equal rights for all. Of course, many might also hold no view about the form of a future government (or governments), a position on a future state (or states) not being a precondition for participating in CfP.
Memorial events:
During April and May 2023, I viewed two ceremonies organised by CfP. These events have been named the Israeli-Palestinian Memorial ceremonies. The first took place on 24 April (the 18th memorial ceremony) and the second, a joint Nakba commemoration ceremony, on 15 May.
The CfP gives no formal indication of the extent of its support and membership but claims 3 000 people attended the 2017 ceremony, 8 000 in 2018, 200 000 viewed a live broadcast in 2020 and 250 000 in 2021 (with more than 100 sponsoring organisations). According to another report 300 000 people viewed the 2022 broadcast, and a further million people streamed it. If accurate these numbers suggest an outreach far beyond what is probably a relatively small membership core, emphasising CfP’s significance lies in its ideological impact.[3]
The first memorial event of 24 April featured, inter alia, an address by a Palestinian mother from the West Bank who lost her child to an Israeli bullet while they were sitting on their verandah and a nearby altercation took place between Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian protestors. She recounted how long it took for her to join CfP through which she learnt that ‘their’ pain of losing Jewish children was like her bereavement. Her talk was followed by a Jewish Israeli speaking of his sister murdered by a suicide bomber in a bus. A second Palestinian speaker referred to his being uprooted by the 1948 Nakba and called for an end to a ‘pure’ Jewish state and exclusive Jewish control of the land of Greater Israel, based on a divine promise of exclusivity. He criticised the current 2023 protests by liberal Zionists against the settler influenced right-wing Zionism because these protests failed to include the question of the oppression of the Palestinians and effectively left the status quo untouched. He emphasised that just like there cannot be a Muslim and democratic state, or a Christian and democratic state, so there cannot be a Jewish and democratic state.[4] This speaker referred to a future of coexistence within one shared country or within two countries with open borders. A Jewish human rights activist and professor from Tel Aviv university called out the current right-wing government and the settlers, in reflecting on an alternative future to the present violent conflict and oppressive conditions imposed by the occupation. In the background I could hear the right-wing protestors outside the venue shouting expletives at those participating in the memorial event. The intensity of the split in Israel between the now-dominant right-wing Zionist political formations and participants at CfP events is vividly illustrated by the 2022 verbal attacks on 84-year old Rivka Michaeli, a famous Israeli actress, for her participation in the Israeli-Palestinian memorial ceremony of that year. The above verbal attacks are a spill over from right-wing conflict with liberal Zionists.
The second memorial event took place on 15 May and was a joint Nakba remembrance ceremony. At this event Palestinian eyewitnesses spoke about the 1948 Nakba. An elderly lady recalled the wandering of the refugees expelled from their homes by Zionist militia, without anywhere to go and having to live and sleep outside in the open. This reminded me of an excerpt from The Gun and the Olive Branch, by then Guardian Middle East correspondent David Hirst, quoting Israeli journalist Amos Kenan who participated in the Nakba, telling the story of ethnic cleansing from one of many Palestinian villages, Beit Nuba.[5] A Palestinian from the diaspora related the story of a relative’s trauma from being expelled in 1948 (depicted through an emotionally moving video). A Palestinian Authority minister shared her memories heard from her grandparents, who were expelled by the British army as well as by Zionist Jews, resulting in thousands being massacred and the largest refugee crisis in modern history. She called for the implementation of the Right to Return for Palestinian refugees worldwide, an apology by the state of Israel (on behalf of Jewish Israelis) instead of continuing denial, and then forgiveness by the Palestinians. Similar stories were referred to by another Palestinian about the expulsion of people from Haifa — the massacre of several hundred Palestinian residents of Haifa and the flight in terror of the majority from advancing (with British colonial complicity) Zionist forces, is documented by the Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi in ‘The Fall of Haifa Revisited’.[6]
Mention was made of a story by the late Jewish Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery in his book ‘The other side of the coin’, about the callous execution of three Palestinian civilians during the 1948 Nakba by Zionist soldiers — Avnery represented an exception to the denialism. A Jewish professor from Tel Aviv university recalled the years that it took for her to get to a satisfactory answer to the question of why the Palestinian occupants fled from their architecturally beautiful homes in 1948, a further testimony to the ideological power of the Zionist narrative. A Yemeni Jewess who grew up in the United States recounted how she came to Israel, served in the Israel Defence Force (IDF), discovered contradictory narratives about 1948 and eventually became a peace activist.
My impression from listening to these addresses is that the active participants and passive followers of CfP are not only opposed to the occupation of the Palestinian territories that followed the 1967 War, but that many also question the Zionist narrative regarding their 1948 War of Independence. I also recollect a Jewish Israeli speaker at one of the events analysing the state of Israel as an apartheid state: while this does not form part of the lexicon of CfP it appears that it is possible to articulate this position within a CfP event without being censured.
Conclusion:
In concluding this article, I think it is useful to reflect on the key ideas that CfP puts forward through its communiques and its practices, and how these might impact on and interact with other oppositional discourses to the state of Israel and Zionism. To this end I will juxtapose CfP’s ideas with those of the BDS movement (generally accepted as the largest non-violent resistance to Israel and its policies) and also juxtapose CfP’s non-violence principle -of-action with the armed resistance of Hamas.
Perspective on Zionism as settler colonialism/apartheid
The terms settler colonialism and apartheid are conspicuous by their absence from CfP’s documents on its website. These documents suggests a symmetrical conflict, thereby occluding asymmetrical power relations inherent in the historical process of Zionist colonization and dominance (ethnic cleansing and population relocation) as well as between the Jewish state and the Palestinians (including Palestinian citizens of Israel excluded from a state sanctioned and protected nationality). The absence of a historical understanding of the social power dynamics that underpinned the founding of the state of Israel is reflected in the absence from the CfP discourse of a strategy for resisting the political power of the state of Israel. Reflecting this, the frequently asked questions page of the CfP website informs the viewer that CfP has no official position regarding the global BDS campaign. By contrast the BDS campaign is predicated on the understanding that Zionism is a form of settler colonialism and apartheid.
A similarity between BDS and CfP are that both are agnostic on the question of one or two states and while CfP takes no formal position on the Palestinian right of return, in 2019 its Jewish Israeli leadership publicly expressed their support for the Palestinian Right of Return, which reflects a cardinal BDS principle.
Where CfP and BDS differ significantly is on the questions of a Jewish state and normalisation. Equal civil and national rights for all is a cardinal BDS principle, that ipso facto excludes the notion of an ethno state, i.e. a nation state for only one group of its citizens. BDS activism includes a sub-campaign the Palestine Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which views normalization as constituted when events organised by Israeli institutions are attended by other academics, artists and cultural workers of other nationalities, or when Israeli academics, artists and cultural workers attend events organised by institutions outside of Israel. PACBI asks that academics and artists boycott these events — or be excluded in the case of Israelis — on the grounds that their presence ‘normalises’ Israel’s apartheid society. [7] In contrast, CfP regards its opposition to the occupation as being anti-normalisation but says nothing about PACBI. It occludes this issue through having no position on BDS. Furthermore, CfP has no formal position on the right of existence of a Jewish ethno-state, meaning that it does not publicly challenge that right.
While CfP does not officially designate the state of Israel as an apartheid and settler colonial regime, from the perspective of the state of Israel[8] specific public statements by CfP officials defended the Amnesty International Report designating Israel as an apartheid regime, supported the BDS campaign against Israel, reflected a bias towards the Palestinian narrative (through its Nakba commemoration ceremonies), called on the International Criminal Court (2022) to advance its investigation into the situation in Palestine, and condemned Israel’s 2022 designation of six Palestinian organisations as ‘terrorist organisations’. Thus, even while CfP officially eschews a critique of Zionism as apartheid and settler colonialism and is distanced from BDS as a form of power against the state of Israel, some CfP individuals have expressed the discourse of the state of Israel as an apartheid regime and supported campaigns that BDS supports.
Post-Zionist political and economic vision/principles
CfP explicitly supports a two-state solution, although it adds the caveat about any other mutually agreed upon solution. Under the sub-heading ‘Policy and Practice of Likud’ in my earlier-referred-to article, I also noted a view that Israel has consistently foreclosed on the possibility of an independent Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, leading to what is widely regarded as the political impossibility of the two-state solution. The fact that CfP does not address this issue but simply posits the two-state solution as its main objective is a reflection of its avoiding to bring an analysis of social power relations into its stated mission. Logically this is linked to it eschewing the terms ‘settler colonialism’ and ‘apartheid’ in favour of ‘human rights’ seen universally rather than being understood in specific historical and spatial contexts.
CfP’s mission is to build the social infrastructure necessary for ending the conflict and the occupation. Some of the social infrastructure to end the conflict is economic in nature, providing material compensation for communities dispossessed of their land and marginalised economically. But CfP is silent on these issues, as it focuses exclusively on the ‘how’ and says very little if anything about the ‘what’, i.e. the structural political and economic objectives for a transformed social formation. Likewise, in my review of ‘Shattering Zionist Myths’ I raised the question of the underlying class interests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and referred to the seeming absence of economic principles and a post-liberation economic vision from their struggle statements. I think the same could be said of BDS. In contrast, the manifesto of the recently constituted One Democratic State initiative refers to the need to address decades of exploitation and discrimination which have sown deep socioeconomic gaps, with the most unequal income distribution in the world. It says that ‘a State seeking justice must develop a creative and long-term redistributive economic policy to ensure that all citizens have equal opportunity to attain education, productive employment, economic security and a dignified standard of living’.
Armed struggle and non-violence
CfP and BDS share a commitment to non-violent strategies of social change, whereas Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) include armed struggle as part of their resistance to the state of Israel and Zionism.
CfP has two rationales for this position: first, to build bridges of communication rather than wars between previous combatants; and, second, because the CfP Mission identifies non-violent means as the most effective way to achieve just change and (ultimately) peace, linking to a 2014 TED talk presenting research to demonstrate this.[9] The vast imbalance in military power between Israel and the Palestinians reinforces this view,[10] as does the view of anti-Zionist activist and scholar Norman Finkelstein, who characterizes the rockets that Hamas fires from the Gaza Strip into Israel as the symbolic exercise by a beleaguered people of their right of self-defense against a vastly superior militarily occupying power — Israel. A similar view is implied by Firoz Osman and Suraya Dadoo in the chapter titled ‘The Armed Struggle: Martyrdom Operations’, in their book Why Israel?, where they explore the reasons given by a Palestinian martyr (Hujayra al-Arabi) calling for ‘human bombs’ (usually reported as a ‘suicide attacks’).
Thus, while armed resistance alone — or as the primary thrust — might not be effective in changing the structures of domination and oppression, there are deeper ethical reasons. Based on the Quranic Arabic word for martyr, Osman and Dadoo argue that human bombs are a tactic introduced in the face of genocide (perpetrated by Israel’s practices that result in humiliation, degradation, demolition of homes, eviction, uprooting of trees, lack of access to water, electricity, employment, schools, clinics and hospitals): ‘there is nothing left for Palestinians except their resistance’.[11] A similar view was expressed by Miko Peled, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who lost his teenage niece to a human bomb — he refers to his sister, the grieving mother, saying that she did not want to avenge the death of her daughter but blamed the policies of the state of Israel. In 2018 a reviewer of the argument by the author of the TED Talk (referred to above) commented ‘I’ve never believed that pacifism is an adequate answer to a world of atrocities that — in truly exceptional cases — call out for an armed response. But there’s an awful lot of evidence for caution — and reason to give peace a chance’.
Yet it would be simplistic to ignore certain impacts of the armed resistance to Zionist colonial expansionism. Finkelstein (referred to above) argued that the defeat of the IDF in Lebanon by Hizbullah, created an incentive for Israel to inflict terrible casualties on Gaza in order to re-establish the myth of Israeli invincibility and therefore ‘deterrence’. A 2014 report notes that as in the case of Hizbullah in Lebanon, in Gaza the Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters have learnt and developed techniques characteristic of conventional armies, and the IDF only has limited military impact mainly through inflicting civilian casualties. Likewise, the recent emergence of armed resistance in the West Bank, leading to a massive IDF assault on Jenin, was characterized by Peled (referred to above) as demonstrating the effectiveness of the armed resistance because it required hundreds of IDF soldiers to take out two Palestinian fighters.
At this time of writing news has just come in of Hamas forces successfully breaching the fence surrounding Gaza and attacking IDF soldiers and capturing some tanks and armed equipment. They have reportedly also killed up to 200 Israelis including civilians from nearby settlements and captured many, and rockets fired have caused some damage to buildings in Ashkelon and even as far away as Tel Aviv. Israel has started to bomb Gaza in response and it raises a question whether the IDF will launch a full scale ground attack and risk the loss of many of its soldiers in the process. In line with Osman’s, Dadoo’s and Finkelstein’s points above, Tony Greenstein has supported the successful breakout of the Palestinian forces from the Israeli-imposed ghetto, Gaza, and likened it to the uprising of beleaguered Jewish forces in the Warsaw ghetto.
This article raised the question of armed and non-violent resistance, and although focused on CfP these questions are also relevant to BDS. The successful Hamas military exercise — and the already Israeli bombing consequences — have highlighted two issues referred to in the conclusion to this article. First, splitting off non-violent practices from armed resistance is problematic ethically if it results in casting a negative judgement against those who resist by force of arms, being crushed. In other words Hamas has a moral right to have broken the ring of blockade that has been making Gaza unlivable for its approximately two million inhabitants. Secondly, it is problematic to assume that non-violence is ipso facto the more effective strategy. In the short and medium term the response of non-violent movements like CfP and BDS to the current battle victory is likely to depend on the extent to which Israeli society will unify around the issue of ‘Israel’s security’ or whether some of the fissures that have opened up with the conflict between liberal Zionists and the right-wing government will create space for more dissident voices to emerge.
Paul Hendler, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 08 October 2023
[1] Many of the participants in CfP are said to be former armed combatants.
[2] CfP’s website claims to have achieved more than 5 700 public meetings, more than 3 000 tours and more than 100 bi-national meetings.
[3] See my articles ‘We shall not perish …. Israel’s right to exist’ and ‘Jewish right not to be invested in Israel’ for my emphasis on the power of ideology, a la Gramsci’s war of position. See also my article ‘Is Mandla Mandela an antisemite?’ about the way ideological positions are projected as power. The narratives of the commemoration events denote and connote specific meanings about the objectives of the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians.
[4] Liberal Zionist ideology, emanating from the labour Zionist movements Mapai and Mapam (in which Ben Gurion played a leading role) articulates the position that Israel is both a Jewish and a democratic state.
[5] This undermines the official Zionist narrative that the Palestinians rejected the hand of peace that the Zionists extended to them.
[6] The 1967 Six Day War and its aftermath of ethnic cleansing, continued the process started with the 1948 Nakba, resulting in a further 200 000 Palestinians forcibly relocated to Jordan. Hidden in these numbers is the extreme collective and individual suffering expressed in a quote in Hirst’s The Gun and the Olive Branch, of a person from a Palestinian community forcibly relocated from its West Bank living place to Jordan.
[7] See my articles ‘Corporatised universities and academic boycott: an anecdote and strategic reflections’ and ‘Academic freedom VS academic boycott?‘ for a detailed example (a 2018 conference at Stellenbosch university) of a PACBI campaign against inviting Israeli academics. PACBI guidelines permit attendance of Israeli academics, artists and cultural workers if they speak out in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
[8] This perspective is presented by anecdotes in NGO Monitor, the only ones I could find about CfP interacting with and supporting the global BDS movement. According to Media Bias Facts Check, NGO Monitor is a pro-Israel Jerusalem-based organisation that monitors and provides information on non-governmental organisations in order to promote accountability. That said, I have taken the anecdotes from the NGO Monitor assessment of CfP at face value.
[9] The organisation World Beyond War (WBW) also bases itself on what it says is the proven efficacy of non-violence as a change strategy (see excerpt from WBW critique of the myth that war is necessary).
[10] This imbalance is reflected by a 2009 Institute for Middle East Understanding Fact Sheet, which presumably still applies.
[11] Osman, F and Dadoo, S 2013 Why Israel? The Anatomy of Zionist Apartheid — A South African Perspective, Media Review Network/Porcupine Press, pages 89 to 90.
