Reclaiming Palestine

Empowering the marginalized (the social and economical reconstruction of Palestinian society under foreign occupation)

Dar al Janub Union for Antiracism and Peace Policy

• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783743179783
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9783743133150
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Austrian organisation, Dar al Janub - Union for Antiracism and Peace Policy, conducted a number of visits to Palestine between 2006 and 2017. After organising an international conference in Vienna, a development project - We are Nablus - was launched in partnership with The Social Charitable Center Society of Nablus in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The 24-month project included the latest of Israels wars on Gaza, and was focused on the improvement of the capacities and roles of women, the encouragement of sustainable economic activities and independence from foreign donors, as well as the altering of Western perceptions of the role of women in Palestinian society. This publication describes the background, goals and outcomes of the project along with essays that analyse a number of key social, economic and political developments in the OPT. The specific situation of the OPT is examined in a number of scholarly papers, which cover economic and social developments in a society under occupation, including the roles of civil society and its organisations, of foreign aid and NGOs, as well as of the impacts of the Intifadas, of the Oslo Accords (including the founding of the Palestinian Authority), and of the split in Palestinian society into Fatah and Hamas factions. This publication also illustrates the obstacles and difficulties that arise, particularly in the German-speaking world, whenever Palestine is the focal point. The initial and concluding conferences of this project occasioned polemical interventions, which are documented in this publication.

THE “OSLO SYSTEM” AND THE WAR ON GAZA

Helga Baumgarten

Bir Zeit University

From early July to late August 2014, Israel's war on Gaza raged: For 50 days, from July 7 to the ceasefire on the evening of August 26, the Israeli army bombed and shelled the Gaza Strip in the longest war ever fought by Israel. During this time, the Palestinian armed organizations, led by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, fired what were usually homemade rockets at Israel, reaching as far as Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and even Eilat. The victims in Gaza were mainly civilians - between 70% and 80% of the more than 2,100 killed. On the Israeli side, 66 soldiers were killed in direct clashes with Palestinian militants, while Palestinian rockets killed six civilians. The asymmetry of this war is reflected in the numbers and needs no further explanation.

September 2014 marked the 21st year of the signing of the Oslo Accords. On September 13, 1993, Israel and the PLO agreed to end the decades-long Israeli–Palestinian conflict and pledged to reach a solution within 5 years. All pending problems were to be resolved through negotiation.

Such a solution has not been reached, and its chances of success now seem more unlikely than ever. Several Israeli Army (IDF) attacks on Palestinian territories and the three wars waged against the people of the Gaza Strip within 7 years (2008/9, 2012, and 2014) make such an outlook seem even less realistic.

This paper analyses the relation between the “Oslo system” and the Gaza war of 2014.

THE “OSLO SYSTEM”

There is not just one Oslo, but rather three Oslos.

Oslo I stands for the hope and the desire for peace. Oslo I always remained wishful thinking, although it is set at the center of the Palestinian political and public discourse, the discourse of the international community, and that of political representatives worldwide. But Oslo I has never been implemented, not even in a rudimentary way.

The term Oslo II refers to the agreements between the declaration of principles on September 13, 1993 and the signature of the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum on September 4, 1999. There is no space to get into the details here, but from a Palestinian perspective, they were disastrous: Oslo II did not contain the notion of a Palestinian state, did not define a strategy for the actual implementation of the agreements (i.e. an acceptable negotiation mechanism), and, above all, it did not create a mutually acceptable set of advantages to be gained through compliance with the agreements, let alone a timeframe in which those measures could be implemented.¹

Oslo III, the “Oslo System” as I shall call it, will be examined in more detail. This analysis will show how the recent war on Gaza is related to this system and why it is the only way to explain the war as such. So, what exactly is the “Oslo System?” In the following, I shall analyze six of the key pillars of Oslo III.

1. The occupation of Palestinian land is maintained, and the colonial settlements remain in place and expand continuously; new settlements are built under the cover of the expansion of older ones. The underlying principle is simple: Only the occupation allows Israel to build and expand the settlements, and this, in turn, necessitates the perpetuation of the occupation.
2. The Oslo System forces the PA (Palestinian Authority, known as the “Sulta”) to pointless and countless new rounds of, obviously unfruitful negotiations with the Israeli government.
3. The Oslo System forces the PA to participate in a so-called “Security Cooperation.” Put simply, his means that the PA actively polices the Occupied Territories for the occupier, as stated in the Declaration of Principles of September 1993 and expounded in more detail in the 1995 Interim Agreement. Thus, the occupied, the Palestinians, help their occupiers, the Israelis, to maintain and perpetuate their occupation. This situation is unique in the history of national liberation movements, as Edward Said critically assessed as early as 1993.²
4. Meanwhile, the process of fragmentation imposed on Palestine and its society is driven to new heights.³ Along with the geographic and social fragmentation, the Oslo System added the fragmentation of the political landscape of Palestine, which was successfully prevented after the first summit conference of Camp David in 1978. This fragmentation emerged with the beginning of the Oslo agreements in 1993. It was implemented systematically in the following years and is maintained until today.
5. The implementation of the Paris Agreements and the associated integration of the Palestinian economy into the neo-liberal international monetary system, and its extreme dependence on the Israeli economy created a permanent economic crisis. These mechanisms benefit an almost obscenely rich economic elite while the majority of the population has become impoverished and is increasingly dependent on bank loans. Thus, the gap between the rich and the poor is growing constantly.⁴
6. The progressive international integration through the recognition of Palestinian statehood marginalized Palestine in the region. The Palestine conflict, which continues to be the central problem in the region, is overshadowed by other conflicts such as the Arab uprisings since 2011, the “Iran problem,” the new “Cold War,” and the expansion of Islamic State ISIS.

COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS REQUIRE THE OCCUPATION AND THE OCCUPATION REQUIRES COLONIAL SETTLEMENTS TO MAINTAIN LEGITIMACY

The Oslo system allows Israel to strengthen its control over the entire West Bank both figuratively and physically. The life of every Palestinian is controlled by the occupation, including the:

• Freedom of movement within and out of the occupied territories;
• Problem of papers/documents: The “registration office” is in Israeli hands; thus an Israeli institution decides who is granted residence and who is not;
• Legal system: Israeli military courts try Palestinians who are accused of “security breaches”;
• Building permits and house demolitions;
• Control over water consumption: Referring to the current debate on this topic, the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, held a speech in the Knesset in February 2014 in which he drew on accurate numbers to heavily criticize Israeli policies. This led to a predictably harsh reaction from Knesset MPs. When we examine the total consumption in agriculture, industry, and drinking water, an Israeli citizen uses almost five times as much water as a Palestinian: precisely 646 liters per day compared to 133 liters. If we only consider the water used in agriculture, the Israeli consumption (368 liters) is six-and-a-half times higher than that of Palestinians (57 liters). Daily, an Israeli consumes 278 liters of drinking and industrial process water, while a Palestinian has only 77 liters, which is 3.6 times less. The World Health Organization considers 100 liters of drinking water per day as the minimum for a decent life.⁵

This system of occupation is maintained by Israel with all its military might. Again, I want to present a few numbers to illustrate this. In the year 1993, at the beginning of the Oslo negotiation process, the Israeli state allowed 112,000 people to settle in the West Bank and another 153,000 in East Jerusalem, which is a total of 265,000 settlers that year alone.

In the year 2000, the year that Oslo II should have produced a solution to the conflict, the number of settlers had almost doubled, reaching 193,000 in the West Bank and 172,000 in East Jerusalem, which brings the total to 365,000 settlers.

The year 2010/11 saw a further massive increase in settlers. Their number in the West Bank increased to 328,000 and in East Jerusalem to 200,000 - a total of 528,000. Today, the estimated number of settlers is 350,000 in the West Bank and slightly more than 200,000 in East Jerusalem. This amounts to 550,000 settlers. To contrast these figures, there are about 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and an additional 300,000 in East Jerusalem. (Until 2005, about 7,500 settlers lived in Gaza; today, 1.7 to 1.8 million Palestinians live there.)⁶

Even this quick look at the demographic data shows that Israel is systematically undermining Oslo I, the Oslo of peace and hope, and turning its initial purpose upside down. Instead of using the Oslo System to achieve the Two-State Solution, it is using ther System to make it impossible. On the economic level, the same pattern is repeated. Instead of handing over occupied land to the Palestinians, settlements expand. To put this into numbers: 20 years after Oslo, 61% of Palestinian land is economically inaccessible, creating an annual loss of $3.5 billion (according to a World Bank report of October 2013) - a figure that represents 35% of Palestinian GDP.⁷

Without the complicity of United States, the EU (which has not strictly enforced the guidelines adopted in July 2013), and other international actors this expansion of the Oslo System would never have been possible.

SECURITY COOPERATION AND POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION

The Oslo System forces the PA to maintain security cooperation with Israel. In effect, they engage in policing their population for the occupation. Thus, the aim of this cooperation, and the main objective of the security services of the PA, is to control any opposition to the occupation. This inevitably leads to a permanent conflict with other major political actors such as the largest political movement, the Hamas.

This conflict is therefore of a systematic nature and inherent to the Oslo System. A short look at inter-Palestinian relations illustrates this. In 2003, at the end of the 2nd Intifada, all Palestinian organizations, led by Fatah and Hamas, decided to embrace the notion of the primacy of politics over violence. This led to a period of elections in the Occupied Territories: the local elections in 2004–2005, the presidential elections of January 2005, and the parliamentary elections of January 2006.

Immediately after the parliamentary elections, the inherently conflict-oriented Oslo System began to come into effect. Hamas won the elections with a program aiming to achieve Palestinian statehood within the borders of 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital and the recognition of Israel. Fatah refused to submit to the government ...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• We are Nablus
• An Economy under Occupation and Apartheid: Abdul-Jabbar Khalili
• The Economic and Social State of Nablus: Adnan Odeh
• The need to Reshape and Rebuild Palestinian Civil Society: Nadia Abu Zaher
• The “Oslo System” and the War on Gaza: Helga Baumgarten
• Documentation of the Controversy about the "Reclaiming Palestine" Event in the Aai (Afro-Asian Institute)
• Thanks to the following individuals and institutions
• Copyright