Impressions from Israel and the West Bank
Earlier this month I travelled to Israel and the West Bank. It was a very powerful experience. It challenged nearly every notion I’d had about the situation and how to solve it.
As it was my first visit, these are my first impressions. No doubt as I learn more some of them will unravel!
There’s no one ‘view’
One Israeli we met told us that it’s a common joke, that if you get one Israeli in a room you’ll get ten opinions. That was certainly my experience. An experience that made a mockery of the broad sweep of generalisations often put forward when this complex topic is debated in the UK.
It’s worth stating the obvious here: there is no agreement among Israelis about how peace should be pursued; there is no agreement among Palestinians; and there’s certainly no agreement between them. As in any society, and especially in any debate that is both complex and controversial, there is a multiplicity of views. Some of the views are contradictory.
There is no peace that can please everyone.
Identity politics
The more an identity is threatened, the more it matters. The more identity is threatened, the more it becomes a key influencer of people’s reactions to politics. The more identity is threatened, the more it can pull politics to dark places.
Being in Israel and the West Bank really crystallises how identity comes to matter so much in politics.
For many Palestinians and Israelis, it is more than just their identity; their actual being is threatened. Sometimes very immediately by sectarian violence. Sometimes on a less immediate, but equally pernicious, basis. People on both extremes talk about destroying the others’ national identity. Sometimes this is learned behaviour — if an Israeli nightclub is attacked or an IDF solider kills a Palestinian, it’s easy to blame the other.
For people in the UK Labour Party who don’t get identity or are uncomfortable with it, you could do worse than spend a few days here. Identity, good and bad, is the paradigm through which every conversation is had.
Understanding how identity asserts itself in Israel, Palestine and for both beyond their borders, appears to me to be a key building block to being able to understand the situation and possible solutions.
Speaking to people on both sides of the green line, and across the political spectrum, essentially about identity, really brings home how some who are engaged in this debate are willing to use and abuse Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim and Zionist identities to suit their own ends. I really hadn’t realised just how exploitative the appropriation of identities in this debate is — or how pervasive it is
Peace, and its absence, is all comsuming
Our delegation mostly consisted of local politicians, so we spent time with our counterparts from Israeli local government. But the national (and international) situation permeated every conversation. Not in the way that all politicians like a good gossip session about who’s up and down. And not just that the national politics and geopolitics of Israel/Palestine are both fascinating and very immediate for most of the people we met. But that the nature of the situation is all pervasive.
Provision of municipal services becomes very political. Water, healthcare, electricity, road cleaning and waste collection all end up contested as part of the much bigger debate about securing peace — or not.
As a committed localist, I’m used to be being able to use local service provision as a starting point to bring disparate groups together to build communities and develop mutual understanding. But that’s in part because of lot of services in UK local government, while contested, are not matters of life and death and can be viewed through a more benign lens that is just a starting point for a conversation.
Despite this, I was left with the impression that Israelis and Palestinians may be able to work together at a municipal level, and doing so may contribute to peace building. Partly because some of it is very basic. It should be feasible to run secondment and training programmes. Formal twinning could build relationships and share skills, knowledge and the best ideas. Israeli municipal government could use its procurement processes to support economic development in the West Bank. It would be interesting to try to pursue it.
But it’s also possible I’m simply hopelessly naïve about the nature and scale of the challenge.
Petty bureaucracy trumps violence on a day to day basis
In the UK we see the violence. It’s news. The day after we left two soldiers were killed on Temple Mount. When we were there it was serene and beautiful.
Violence isn’t necessarily the daily experience of most Israelis and Palestinians, at least not most of the time.
What is ever present are the bureaucratic encroachments on freedom. You can see the petty control of life everywhere. We all know about the check points. But there’s so much more.
Before the second intifada there was much greater freedom of movement. Now Palestinians are restricted travelling into Israel and vice versa. When we left Ramallah, we drove a longer way to a different check point in part the West Bank that has Israeli security as well as Palestinian security. We did this so our Israeli host could get out of the West Bank without question. It wasn’t impossible to move around. It was just made a bit more difficult. A bit more inconvenient. So, it becomes easier not to. It’s pathetic really.
From restricted access to jobs to the lack of medical supplies, the negative impacts of lack of free movement on Palestinians are well covered in the UK media. The impact on Israelis and the impact on the prospects for peace are less reported.
Before the restrictions, Israelis used to regularly travel in to the West Bank for nights out or shopping, or to see friends. The restrictions have quite literally taken Israeli money out of the pockets of Palestinians. But, they’ve also weakened old friendships and prevented new ones from forming. This obviously undermines how well the communities understand and know each other, and can only add to the fear. The draconian restrictions on free movement are a very real block to peace.
As you cross the green line from Israel to the West Bank you enter what’s known as the seam zone. This is perhaps the most striking example we saw of administrative sectarianism. It was dirty, it was dusty and buildings were unregistered and unsafe. So, your first experience as you drive into the West Bank is that you are entering a developing country, that is unable to deliver basic services like street sweeping. But then you leave the seam zone, further in to the West Bank and things are much better. There’s basically a line where there’s no longer dirt piling up on the pavements and in the gutters.
The seam zone is subject to additional Israeli security on Palestinian territory. So, the Palestinian Authority say Israel should provide municipal services. Obviously, Israel says different.
But there’s one more kicker to this tale. We were told that people who live in the seam zone’s filthy streets and unregistered buildings have more rights to work in Israel than those who live elsewhere in the West Bank. So, despite the dirt and the paucity of services, an address in the seam zone is desirable.
The set up and administration of the West Bank seam zones create real problems for the people who live there and for people who aren’t allowed to. But in Gaza the problems are worse.
Hamas, who run the government in Gaza, don’t pay their electricity bills. The Palestinian Authority won’t pick up the shortfall and eventually (as happened again in June) ask Israel to reduce supply. Fridges can’t keep food, medical care can’t be provided. People die. To shore up their own support, Hamas blames moderate Palestinians and Israel. And round we go again. Politics layered on politics. Wheels within wheels. At some point the merry go round will be punctuated by the sound of Hamas rockets and Israeli retaliation — most recently in 2014. And then the rest of the world will take an interest. So much so, there’ll be anti-Semitic graffiti outside Camden’s synagogues and ‘urgent’ motions at political meetings, although nothing will change as result of the malign or ridiculous.
But, eventually it’ll quiet down. Until the next time.
Weariness may be the biggest block to peace
I’m not sure I can convey the level of weariness I experienced from Israeli politicians. It feels like Sisyphus would probably be more optimistic about achieving his task.
From the, admittedly small, sample of people we spoke to, I got the impression that the last time there was widespread optimism for the prospects of peace was around the time of the Oslo Accords. That was 1993.
For some, weariness gives way to cynicism and mistrust.
It’s difficult to see how peace can be achieved if people within don’t believe it can come from them.
One of the people we met suggested the UK or the US take the role of literally ‘knocking heads together’. And maybe that could help. But it would take a hell of a lot to convince me that peace can be delivered by an external agent. Even one as powerful as the US. People need to want peace in the first place and need to want work at maintaining peace thereafter.
Outside in — Israel’s nuisance neighbours
Peace isn’t only about Israelis and Palestinians. Israel is surrounded by states who have been or are actively hostile to their very existence. There’s no doubt this contributes to the weariness.
We spent time on the borders with Lebanon and Syria.
The cease fire agreement with Lebanon bans Hezbollah activity from the border areas, and yet increasingly, they are overtly displaying their presence. We saw their flag and were told by the IDF border patrol that it was a new but growing phenomenon.
While there is, rightly, concern about Hezbollah among many in the UK it’s worth noting that they are part of a very carefully calibrated coalition government in Beirut. If the UK government proscribes Hezbollah, they potentially undermine the government of a fragile state which is already on the front line of the fallout from the Syrian civil war.
I simply don’t know enough about it to know what I think about the rights and wrongs of this. But, on the Syrian border we saw and heard the violence. While I heard only hostility to Hezbollah from Israelis — as you’d expect — it’s difficult to see how it’s in Israel’s interest to have a second northern neighbour descend in to internecine disarray and given the history, you’d have to assume violence.
Hezbollah are an awful, terrorist promoting, anti-Semitic organisation. By rights, of course they should be banned. But this situation is the very definition of realpolitik with life and death consequences. It’s in a region already blighted by some very extreme violence. I can’t blame people for being cautious about igniting further violence. Although as I said, I don’t know enough to know if that fear about the fragility of the government in Beirut is right.
What about refugees?
I’ve been to a refugee camp before. In Peshawar in Pakistan near the Afghan border. Al Amari in Ramallah is better than that. But better is a relative term. Refugee camps are places of stasis. Competing forces compel refugees to a half-life of inertia. Camps should be a temporary harbour. A port of safety, and a starting point for a journey to a new life.
Instead, too often and for too many people they’re a life sentence.
In the case of Palestinian refugees, the life sentence is multigenerational. For 70 years, no solutions have been found and the number has been growing. In part because of an additional displacement due to the Six Days war. But to a much greater degree because the refugee status passes down the male line. An absurdity that doesn’t exist for the rest of the worlds refugees who are registered by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). But like much about this country, these refugees are different and have their own agency — the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA doesn’t have finding a ‘solution’ in its remit.
So, they wait. For generations.
As the generations pass, the population grows and the less easy it becomes to think of solutions.
Consider the numbers: Israel has a population of just over 8m. The West Bank has a population of about 2.7m. There are over 5m registered Palestinian refugees. With numbers that would increase the size of the Israeli population by two thirds or treble the population of the West Bank, there is no solution in either territory. No state has that absorptive capacity.
Even if you only take the numbers still in the camps you’re talking about 1.5m people. The Palestinian Territories are small and fragile. Gaza is outright dangerous (although also home to camps).
Amari is like a small town in any developing country. Cement buildings thrown together in a ramshackle and incremental way. But it has shops and internet cafes and street stalls selling sweets. The sewage ‘system’ leaves a lot to be desired. Children play in the streets that the raw sewage seeps in to. UN vehicles drive up the alleys and ‘roads’ wide enough for their gleaming, oversized 4x4s.
Speaking to the people who live there, it’s hopeless.
But because of the stasis, the people who live there are allowed to dream impossible dreams. One person we spoke to, the child of a ’48 refugee, just wanted to go ‘home’ to his father’s farm. Of course his father’s farm has long since been swallowed up by the urban sprawl of the now Israeli town it was on the outskirts of. But no one will show the leadership required to tell him he can’t go home. Partly because, given that he can’t go home, no one has any idea what to do with him, or countless others like him.
The UN renews UNRWA’s mandate every so often. No requirement to find an answer is ever added. A generation from now some other British councillor might visit and observe the gleaming UN 4x4s trundling round the camp. And the grandson of a ’48 refugee will recount his dreams to return ‘home’ to his grandad’s farm. The inertia obviously creates opportunities for radicalisation of refugees by extremists. Despite layer upon layer of problems with the camps and for the refugees, there is no answer. So people wait.
I do not blame the Israeli government for this. I do not blame the Palestinian Authority for this. The international community can act to help solve this situation and in my view has a moral obligation to do so.
In Al Amari, I saw wasted lives. And I’m angry about that.
Some hope…
Despite the very bleak picture I’ve painted there is hope. Our last visit of the trip was to the Shimon Peres Centre for Peace. They work with Palestinian organisations to bridge the divide, build relationships and help develop the next generation of leaders committed to peace. They use anything and everything at their disposal from facebook to football to help build bridges. There are many other organisations also working to build understanding and help take the incremental steps toward peace.
Despite the weariness, most of the politicians we met did believe a two state peace was achievable. And a desire for it was expressed by people we met in the refugee camp.
When I got back to London, I set about contacting the people we’d met to thank them personally. They range from refugees, via local government, to very senior former cabinet members and government advisors. One striking aspect of these interactions has been the warmth — even with people who know I disagree with them, and a real generosity in helping me to understand more. While people want to share their knowledge and experience, and want to help other people understand their views of their situation, I believe there’s hope for peace.
About the trip
The trip was sponsored by an organisation call BICOM. They are a pro-Israeli think tank who work toward a two state solution. The trip therefore focused on Israel. They were transparent about their agenda but open to questions and challenge at all times.
I am now trying to find an organisation who can give me the Palestinian perspective as well.