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WE TOLD YOU SO!

A commission of experts proves Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen right


15/07/2023

Unfortunately, that alone won’t be able to wrest 243,000 apartments from for-profit companies.

On 28 June 2023, when the experts’ report was made public, I heard no champagne corks popping in my neighborhood, despite the large number of activists who live there. Since 2019, 3,000 individuals citywide have campaigned against housing corporations that neglect their properties but pay investors good dividends. The Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen (DWE) initiative developed from many failed attempts to get a grip on Berlin’s skyrocketing rents. I’ve written about this in earlier articles.

In the last two years, it felt as if little was happening given the pandemic restrictions and election rerun needed after incredibly poor planning in 2021 had resulted in insufficient ballots, late poll openings, and voters being turned away. In late April this year the new conservative mayor, Kai Wegner (CDU) took office. Since then, Berlin politics seem to have taken a sharp right-wing turn, especially regarding transport and climate policies despite our laws—and common sense. Last week was the planet’s hottest. Ever.

Negative trends in housing have not slacked during this period: Although prices for apartments have slumped, construction, including affordable housing, has been slowed due to supply chain problems, building costs, and higher interest rates. Rents have continued to rise and tenants are threatened by the acceleration of several disadvantageous practices. I touch on these concerns in this article but concentrate on three initiatives related to Reichenberger Kiez in Kreuzberg, where I’ve lived for nearly 19 years: DWE, “Initiative Hermannplatz,” and “No Hype No Hide.”

For starters, the terms used by Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen. DWE used the German word for “expropriate” to great effect: politicians violently reacted to the mere thought and a lot of ink was spilled. Just saying the word was enough to cause an otherwise calm dinner partner to jump up and shriek their rejection. (That happened to me.) But once the initiative had gained momentum and the name was established, discussion turned to the “socializing” (Vergesellschaftung) foreseen in Art. 15 of Germany’s Basic Law. Sebastian Engelbrecht of Deutschland Radio explained the distinction: socialization applies to whole branches of industry, as per DWE, whereas expropriation refers to confiscation for specific projects, such as a farmer’s field for a highway (which must be reimbursed at market prices, a nonstarter for DWE).

To recap

On the evening of 26 September 2021, learning that one million Berliners had voted for the referendum—59.1 percent of eligible voters [1 ]—DWE activists did open lots of champagne bottles! With the DWE cheerleaders, we partied well into the night.

But true to her party’s ongoing support for the construction industry (which over decades has involved real sleaze), the new Social Democratic Party (SPD) Mayor Franziska Giffey rejected DWE’s approach. To buy time, the new SPD-Green-Left Party governing coalition proposed a 13-member “commission of experts” to study the referendum’s legality and feasibility.

In fact, a referendum represents the peoples’ will, which is to be followed. But acknowledging DWE’s novel approach and the years needed for a referendum to reach the ballot, the campaign had decided to not present a law. Instead, the DWE referendum called on the government to write one.

After lots of discussion, DWE agreed to “accompany” the commission, and used its right to name three people who were not part of its campaign to the commission: a human geographer and urban researcher, and two constitutional experts.

The commission worked for over a year. But the minutes were not always published, and Berlin’s lack of a land registry (Kataster) meant that the experts had no hard data on the quantity, value, or ownership of city real estate. In late June, the commission’s 156-page report was presented to Berlin’s current mayor, who begrudgingly accepted it, repeating his skepticism for the umpteenth time.

What’s in the report???

According to DWE’s summary for journalists, the report refutes virtually all the reservations about DWE. With respect to one of its most basic questions, the experts unanimously agreed that Berlin has the competency “to legally regulate a socialization of real estate holdings of large housing companies located in Berlin.” That is, DWE is in line with Art. 15 of the Basic Law. This issue was especially critical after Germany’s constitutional court ruled in April 2021 that Berlin lacked the authority to institute a rent cap­—a decision that immediately swelled the ranks of DWE supporters and contributed to the referendum’s success.

It’s worth looking at specific points.

The majority of the commission holds socialization à la DWE to be “proportional.”

The report says that socialization is a suitable approach to reduce those rents and to at least stabilize other rents throughout the city. In addition, Berlin would benefit from fewer people needing financial assistance to pay the rent.

Flatly rejecting the mantra “Bauen! Bauen! Bauen! (Build! Build! Build!)” and protests that socialization “does not create a single new apartment,” the commission wrote that “ramping up new construction is not an alternative for securing the permanent supply of affordable housing.” There’s no way around it: socialization is necessary.

As for the price tag, “Assessment can be based on the income from the non-profit management [2] envisaged by the project.” Exactly what DWE has been saying all along! Its “fair rent model” bases compensation on moderate rents—way below the €36 billion bandied about by naysayers.

Furthermore, considering the level of compensation, the commission decided that in ensuring affordable housing, tenant interests outweigh the profit-making interests of housing corporations. Socialization can be financed through promissory bills repaid by rental income. Berlin can decide what’s affordable and need not go into debt compensating the current owners. Four members opined that compensation should not be significantly below market value. But it need not be at the same level.

The commission agreed that the 3,000-apartment threshold per company is legally permissible “in view of the efficiency of such an approach in developing the required total portfolio.” That does not represent “unequal treatment,” and excluding coops, city-owned and non-profit housing enterprises is justified because they benefit the public.

Finally, most commission members are of the opinion that socialization can be practiced for all holdings of housing companies listed on the stock exchange, including private equity funds. Even more companies than DWE had envisioned. The initiative is jubilant: “This will allow us to capture more companies than expected, including private equity funds. We can tackle the root of the problem: housing speculation!”

New DWE posters proclaim its success: “Expropriation is doable. No more excuses!”

Now what?

It’s time to write the law!

Unfortunately, the CDU is instead planning a “framework law” which would not come into force for two years—because the conservatives want time to legally challenge their own law. However, in late May, the SPD base criticized the CDU’s maneuver. Perhaps that’s what led to the SPD senator for urban development, housing, and construction, Christian Gaebler, announcing on local TV that a socialization law would be developed in parallel with the framework law. (But the very next day, he said the opposite to Berlin’s parliament.)

This points to a fundamental problem: the expert commission was staffed by the government that was voted out in February! The CDU had no say in it: unsurprisingly, the dissenting minority voices are conservatives.

So what should we do? Lobby our elected representatives? DWE is concerned that they could draft a law—which would take a few years to be written and debated—that is designed to be rejected by the constitutional court.

The safer approach would be to stage a second referendum, this time with a specific law. (Put on your walking boots!)

DWE is discussing the next steps. It’s July and hot as hell, and schools, families, and the city government are on vacation. Over the summer, we’ve got to explain to Berliners what the report means. DWE should also draw attention to the danger that, as a pacification measure, the city could buy back more apartments for the city housing companies—at today’s astronomical prices. That would only further burden the city and reward speculation. We’ve been there and done that.

While waiting for the commission’s report, DWE produced podcasts, organized events, and published background information, while Kiezteams continued to meet and also addressed local concerns, including the end of the period in which private developers have to offer apartments at affordable rents: for up to 30 years. After that, they can charge market rents. Berlin entered this millennium with 430,000 subsidized apartments; in 2021, it had just 142,343 left. By 2025, subsidies will end for more than 50,000 additional apartments, and with prospective tenants no longer having to prove they need assistance, landlords will be incentivized to get rid of the old ones. Urban sociologist Andrej Holm calls this “publicly financed gentrification.”

But Hamburg recently passed a law forcing new social housing to offer affordable rents for 100 years. Anything Hamburg can do, Berlin can, too!

Another problem confronting many tenants whose apartments have been sold are claims of “Eigenbedarf” (personal need). Fortunately, Berlin’s law preventing a new owner from claiming to need their property for a period of 10 years was extended last month. However, according to Sebastian Bartels of the Berliner Mieterverein (BMV), the huge increase in such claims indicates the need for extra protection, including a total prohibition on Eigenbedarf in areas requiring special efforts to protect the current population mix (Milieuschutz), along with restrictions related to the length of a tenant’s lease and age.

In the past, the city has saved entire buildings in protected areas by pre-emptively purchasing those whose sales would likely cause tenants to be driven out. But in November 2021, Berlin’s Vorkaufsrecht, the tenant movement’s most powerful tool, was declared unlawful. The Liberals (FDP)—the same party that refuses to consider introducing a speed limit on highways to lower CO2 emissions—are stalling new legislation.

According to Katrin Schmidberger (Green Party speaker on Berlin’s housing, rents and budget policy), in an interview of 4 July in ND, the current CDU-SPD government rejects building more affordable housing within the S-Bahn ring. It’s also preventing districts from freely disposing of housing subsidies to protect tenants. In addition, districts that contest specific construction projects promoted by the CDU-SPD will lose authority over them—the same way jurisdiction for Karstadt on Hermannplatz [3] was transferred from Kreuzberg’s BVV (district parliament) to Berlin’s Senat (city government).

What IS happening with the plan to raze the department store on Hermannplatz and replace it with a version of the mammoth building from 1929?

There’s very little information available! It’s possible that the Signa Group—a holding with three separate companies, one of which owns Galeria—of Austrian billionaire René Benko (who has been convicted of corruption and accused of bribery, tax evasion, and illegal donations) is in financial trouble. Last October, Signa wanted another €234 million in state aid for Galeria (after getting €680 million in the last three years), before announcing—barely six months later—that almost half its stores would be closed within the year. With visions of deserted city centers (where Benko’s stores occupy prime locations) and 17,000 new jobless employees, the government caved in to his demands. Oddly enough, his creditors renounced around €2 billion, department store workers bit the bullet—and Signa paid out €450 million in dividends. [4]  This month, the European Central Bank is investigating all the banks doing business with Signa.

Some commentators consider that the Signa Group is too big to fail (it’s definitely much too convoluted to explain here!), while insiders assume that financial woes explain why Signa recently sold its unfinished 134m-high building and adjacent department store on Alexanderplatz. That was one of the three prestige projects—on Hermannplatz, Alexanderplatz, and Kurfürstendamm—that Signa was given the right to build in exchange for ensuring jobs in four Berlin department stores in a Letter of Intent (LoI) of August 2020. Not that the two are related. Incredibly, calls for the government to halt all collaboration with Signa because the corporation broke its word by closing local stores fall on deaf ears. Hunh?

Meanwhile, on Hermannplatz

Back to my neighborhood and the campaign regarding the future of the department store that Benko owns on Hermannplatz. This spring, citizens were invited to comment on the building plans—in an online, non-binding, “participation” farce. The energetic efforts of Initiative Hermannplatz to collect 7,000 signatures protesting Signa’s plans, along with rallies, demonstrations, and even a “presence” on Hermannplatz in the form of a small kiosk, have merely succeeded… in stalling the project.

To counteract widespread rejection of the plans by its low-income neighbors with mostly immigrant backgrounds, Signa mounted an extravagant social media campaign and nostalgic exhibit about the original building, and opened “Dialog Hermannplatz” with a café and bike route through the block. A banner appeared on Galeria’s façade: Nicht ohne Euch (“Not without You” in informal German) while nearby tenants were forced to remove their critical banners under threat of immediate expulsion. In response to the numerous objections, from sketches showing only white people enjoying themselves to the environmental damage caused by demolitions and the excessive use of concrete, Signa has repeatedly announced modifications and published pretty new plans. But it has never explained its real intentions.

In a recent event about the class struggle on Hermannplatz presented by the Berliner MieterGemeinschaft, Niloufar Tajeri, architect and prime mover of the Hermannplatz initiative, said that the Ver.di union representing Galeria workers continues to cling to the LoI, hoping against hope that it really will protect their jobs. But she pointed out that employees in other German cities have self-organized to save their stores and is confident that when push comes to shove, employees at Hermannplatz will also become active. She explained how the project threatens her neighborhood, describing it as not just about building and environmental concerns, but a plan with negative social ramifications as well.

Tajeri also cited two practical issues. The first is that the project conflicts with historical preservation regulations (pertaining to just a small part of the current building). But preservation is open to interpretation, and with jurisdiction over such matters recently transferred to the city administration in what Left Party speaker for urban development Katalin Gennburg calls “deregulation for investors,” such objections are unlikely to affect the plans.

However, a second matter has been gaining attention since a high-rise project on Alexanderplatz caused part of the subway’s subterranean structure to collapse last October. The significant damage will continue to prevent the U2 line serving Prenzlauer Berg and Pankow for many months to come, aboveground construction has been halted, and other subway lines at the station, including the U5, may also be affected.

With respect to Hermannplatz, according to Tajeri, not only do two subway lines cross there, but also the tunnel for transporting broken cars to the BVG workshop.

Hype & Hide in Reichenberger Kiez

Closer to home, luxury housing projects in Reichenberger Kiez backyards have reached new magnitudes. Arguably, the neighborhood’s gentrification began in 2010 with CarLoft, an apartment building with an elevator that allows tenants to park their cars at the door. (I’ve already railed about how gentrification serves to suburbanize cities… Does it get any crasser?) Vigorous protest, including paint bombs and even stones, did not stop the project, although the owner later admitted that he’d had to lower his selling price. Recently, however, a 263 m2, four-room apartment at Reichenberger Str. 80 was advertised for €2.9 million. OMG.

More recently, Kiez residents were incited to act by the audacity of the latest luxury project, “Hype & Hide.” Buyers are promised it’ll be like living “in a private park, embedded in an inspiring neighborhood marked by authentic charm.” In fact, with most of the trees chopped down for the builders, between €690,000 and €2.5 million buys you a view of the rear of a modest 1970s apartment block, with a parking area lined by spindly and browning arborvitae shrubs, likely planted to offset the noble trees that were felled.

My attention was drawn to a poster showing the addresses of nine luxury projects in the neighborhood. I knew it was incomplete because once construction is finished, new housing is hidden from sight and protected by locked and surveilled doors. I can no longer locate the two built near me just a few years ago.

When the first permit to build behind the apartment houses at Reichenberg Straße 140–42 and Lausitzer Straße 11–15 was granted in March 2017, the tenants appealed to Kreuzberg’s parliament (BVV). Building councilor Florian Schmidt promised to contact the developer and arrange a meeting for all involved. The project was never realized. But gradually the metal workers’ collective was forced to move and their buildings were razed. For years, the space was strewn with rubble and refuse. In 2022, when a new building permit was given, the neighbors confronted the BVV about the lack of citizen involvement promised two years earlier. They wondered how “Hype & Hide” fulfills the district’s stated aim of unsealing the ground and making the district greener, and how it addresses Kreuzberg’s housing crisis. The answer: The plans meet building code requirements; no citizen participation is foreseen. The only possible action is to spoil the developer’s marketing efforts. (That’s in the official response!)

With that in mind, “No Hype & No Hide” organized a first neighborhood walking tour that kicked off with an activist in the guise of a sparrow mourning her degraded environment after the garden was bulldozed and numerous trees felled for a different luxury project. (In fact, the new 5-story luxury building—“in the middle of Kreuzberg, yet shielded from all the hubbub”—will deprive the activist’s apartment of any direct sunlight.) The 40 or so participants then moved on to CarLoft, a few blocks away, leafletting passersby and dancing to DWE protest songs. We ended the walk by hanging our banner and a funeral wreath with handwritten condolences on the Hype & Hide site fence, while the Lauratibor chorus [5] sang the Kiez anthem [my English adaptation]: “What elixir is more potent than money? What unites us? Let’s go into the streets and find the potion of resistance!”

Berlin lacks 47,000 affordable apartments. Urban densification measures, which is widely regarded, though not accepted, as inevitable, are paving over gardens and chopping down trees. But destroying our environment for luxury buildings does nothing to alleviate Berlin’s housing shortage.

Things will just heat up further. “Buy luxury, buy trouble!”

Last month, the new rent index (Mietspiegel) was published: since 2021, rents in Berlin have gone up by 5.4 percent. Unfortunately, the index is based on the rise in consumer prices and doesn’t take into account the loss in real wages. But without it, landlords would compare apartments and make assessments, which would probably be less favorable for tenants.

Don’t be surprised when your landlord sends you a letter soon. Do check the proposed increase carefully and contest whatever is illegal: rent hikes of more than 15 percent in three years are not allowed. According to a BMV survey, private owners overcharge the most. Your greatest contribution to Berlin could well be helping to control rents by not accepting illegal increases.

Im the midst of these depressing developments, I find some relief in learning that the inimitable Museum der Dinge (Museum of Things), which lost its lease when the complex at Oranienstraße 25 (also home to the neighborhood institutions of the nGbK, “one of Germany’s most important and largest art societies,” and the Kisch & Co. bookstore), has found temporary new digs at Leipzigerstraße 54. The museum is scheduled to close in early November and reopen in its new premises in April 2024. Eventually the museum will find a permanent home in a building that hasn’t yet gone up. Visit now!

Unlike my earlier articles, I wrote this feeling depressed and overwhelmed. Two years ago, everything was still in flux. Now it seems that everything but rents are stagnating. The only approach that I see capable of helping ensure Berlin’s future as a livable city is education. But don’t just learn and get involved in the issues that directly affect you (possible rent increases and the owner’s claim to need your apartment, Eigenbedarf [6]) and your neighborhood (which could be luxury-housing projects or social service providers being chased away by excessive rents), but also Berlin as a whole (DWE)!

One of the most encouraging developments of recent years is that environmental issues are being linked to housing. According to figures presented by Daniel Dieckmann of the very long and ongoing fight for Habersaathstraße 40–48 (in Mitte), Germany’s building and construction sector alone consumes 90 percent of raw materials, produces 40 percent of CO2 emissions and 55 percent of the waste. Students at the University of Kassel have written an open letter to the Federal Minister for Housing, Urban Development, and Building, demanding a moratorium on demolitions and new construction so that Germany can meet its climate targets, and have even greater ambitions. DWE, Initiative Hermannplatz, and No Hype No Hide all emphasize climate concerns. Think about your part.

Well-informed Berliners will make a difference—or die trying. Take the potion of resistance into the streets.

We told you so! (By the way, my dinner partner came around to supporting DWE—even before we won.😉)

© Nancy du Plessis 2023

Footnotes

1 Had non-German residents been able to vote, the figure would have been much higher. Voting restrictions were addressed in the English-language “Right to the City” campaign.

2 DWE’s booklet (“Gemeingut Wohnen”) discussing the public service company (Anstalt öffentlichen Rechts, AöR) to manage the socialized apartments is available for free download (in German)

3 Karstadt was merged with Kaufhaus to become Galeria, the last big chain of German department stores.

4 Btw, in 2019, Benko bought Manhattan’s Chrysler Building: he likes Art Deco.

5 Reichenberger Kiez’s fantastic protest opera

6 For more information about Eigenbedarf, a pamphlet in German from the Mieter:innengewerkschaft Berlin (Berlin Tenants’ Union) is now online.

 

Antisemitism Definition Suppresses Palestine Solidarity in Germany

Interview with the European Legal Support Center’s Advocacy and Communication Manager Alice Garcia


18/06/2023

The European Legal Support Center (ELSC) defends and empowers advocates for Palestinian rights across mainland Europe and the United Kingdom through legal means. It released a groundbreaking report,“Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism – Violating the Rights to Freedom of Expression and Assembly in the European Union and the UK”. We interviewed the ELSC’s Alice Garcia about the report.

Can you describe what the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition is, and what the ELSC report tells us about it?

The supporters of the IHRA definition argue that it’s the only definition of antisemitism that fights what they call – Israel related antisemitism, or the “new antisemitism”. Basically, this means any anti-Zionism and criticism of Israeli policies and practices. This “new” antisemitism theory goes back a few decades. It was pushed by a few individuals and organisations who are aligned with the Israeli government agenda, such as Dina Porat, the head of Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry. It was funded by the Mossad, and members of pro-Israel advocacy groups such as the Community Security Trust in the UK, the Anti-Defamation League, the European Jewish Congress and B’nai Brith International. This is documented by Anthony Lerman, a former head of the word Jewish Congress’ institute of Jewish affairs. In 2006, the European Monitoring Center on racism and xenophobia (EUMC), adopted this definition to reconceptualize antisemitism. However it abandoned this because of concerns. The the advocates of the definition tried to find another organisation to give it legitimacy. Finally the IHRA – an intergovernmental organisation working on the remembrance of the Holocaust, adopted the definition in 2016. The history of this definition shows the original purpose – to suppress criticism of Israeli policies and practices. But it’s important to remember that criticism of Israel or Zionism is speech that is protected by freedom of expression. So, conflating it with antisemitism does not stand ground. It is a tactic to silence Palestine advocacy and to shield Israel from accountability for its violations of international law.

There’s already been a lot of writing about and criticism of the IHRA definition and the controversial examples of supposed antisemitism that are attached to it. What does your report bring that’s new?

The ELSC documented case studies through incident report forms and interviews, open source research and fact checking. Often we also provided legal support or advice to the individuals or groups affected by unfounded allegations. For the first time, we have a comprehensive document that presents case-based evidence of infringement on the democratic rights of individuals and groups caused by the implementation of the IHRA definition in the EU and UK. The report is based on 53 incidents alleging antisemitism that invoked the IHRA definition, in Germany, Austria and the UK. It also comprehensively documents how the definition was institutionalised at policy level by the EU. We expose the EU’s consistent ignorance or denial of the concerns; and warnings from many civil society actors regarding the political agenda behind this definition. We have been telling the EU for years that this is problematic for freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. In 2019 the EU Commission established a working group on antisemitism to work with affected communities. When European Jews for Justice in Palestine, representing various Jewish groups across Europe, applied to be a part of the group they were deemed not representative. Similarly, when the EU published their strategy to combat antisemitism in 2021, they ignored dozens of submissions from civil society actors criticising the IHRA definition. Our report also rebuts the Commission’s claims that the IHRA definition does not harm human rights. We therefore urge the EU to cease implementing the IHRA definition and to reconsider its endorsements and adoption, and the same for member states and institutions. We hope that this report is a tool to advocate against adopting or implementing the IHRA definition in other contexts. Because there is still a push to have it adopted as widely as possible. Currently, the UN is drafting its own plan to combat antisemitism, to be presented in September. 

Defenders of the IHRA definition claim that it clarifies between criticism of Israel and legitimate antisemitism, why is this not true?

There is a caveat in the definition, that criticism of Israel like that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. What does that mean? It’s very vague and problematic, because any country can be criticised for human rights violations. And Israel is often criticised because there are extreme violations happening there. So human rights groups will be targeted for having supposedly disproportionate scrutiny over Israel, but in reality they also criticise China, Russia, Hungary, and so on. Of course, some groups and individuals focus primarily on Israel-Palestine, so they do not make similar criticisms of other countries. Does that make them antisemites? No. Just like people people focusing on China are not Sinophobes. And one other thing, Israel is not ‘any other country’, it is occupying another nation and practising apartheid against a specific group of people.

There’s a growing conflation, where practically everything can be incorporated into antisemitism. Is this what you see in your cases?

That’s exactly what’s happening. Sometimes there is not even a link between the alleged antisemitic content of a statement and the examples of the definition that are raised to target this specific speech. For example. In one of the cases in the UK, not detailed in the report, a student faced complaints for alleged antisemitism. The complainants had scrolled her social media and complained because she’d liked a tweet criticising the alliance between Israel and the US. That was the whole content of the tweet. The complainant raised the IHRA definition and said that this was antisemitic. We have dozens of cases like this. People think ‘oh, I will take my magic tool, the IHRA definition’. And that’s enough to say that it’s antisemitic. It was enough for the university to open a formal investigation against the student, and a disciplinary proceeding that took months which eventually rejected the allegation, after legal intervention. The IHRA is also often used alongside other accusations, such as not respecting democratic values or being too political. For instance, in the Netherlands, universities place administrative burdens on students to prevent them from organising their events. We have a case where students wanted to organise a workshop on how to cook Palestinian hummus. For two years they are trying to organise this event, but are prevented because it’s said to be too political. Or, another tactic is to make unfounded allegations of support of terrorism; or alleging ties with groups listed as terrorist groups by the EU or other member states. Usually it’s about Hamas or PFLP, and the ties are not substantiated.

The IHRA’s proponents also claim that it’s not legally binding, and thus safe to use. This report debunks this with evidence. Can you explain how this claim that the definition is ‘non-legally binding’ isn’t representative of how it’s being used? 

This definition is constantly being branded as “non-legally binding”, whether in the definition itself, or by EU officials. This supposedly means it does not harm free speech. But actually, tools like the IHRA definition don’t have to be codified in law to have concrete effects on human rights. The report shows this. We explain how it has been adopted through policies and so-called non binding resolutions adopted in parliaments. As soon as these policies or strategies are treated as authoritative by the relevant institutions (whether a local council, a university, parliament, or a state) then it has a de facto binding effect on individuals. Someone who explained it very well is the former UN Special Rapporteur on racism. She published a report in October 2022, which we quote. From the moment that states use the IHRA definition as guidance for judges, police, law enforcement and teachers to determine what is antisemitic, then it has a binding effect. Also, the EU Commission itself expressed this in their 2021 handbook on how to implement the IHRA definition. It recommends referencing the IHRA definition in legislation, using it to train judges and police officers. How much more binding than this can it be?

Although this definition is supposed to help fight antisemitism, you argue that it’s actually implemented in a discriminatory manner. How so? 

In the documented cases, the allegations of antisemitism invoking the IHRA definition were overwhelmingly targeted at Palestinians, Jewish people, and organisations that advocate for Palestinian rights. And this suggests that the IHRA definition is being implemented in a discriminatory manner. We have no data about how the IHRA definition is being used against anyone else but Palestinian rights advocates. But the cases that came to our attention and are in the media all concern Palestinian rights advocates, and primarily Palestinians. Among the 53 incidents that we documented, 42 incidents involved the targeting of groups with members who are people of colour; or of individuals who are people of colour, and among them were 19 Palestinians. Then there were 11 incidents of Jewish groups or individuals targeted, in particular those with anti-Zionist views or sympathy to the Palestinian struggle. This data clearly shows potential discrimination in the way that the IHRA definition is implemented. The other component of how the IHRA definition is discriminatory is that it is a tool of anti-Palestinian racism. We look at the description of anti-Palestinian racism that was conceptualised by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association last year in the landmark report they published. They described it as a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes or dehumanises Palestinians or their narratives. It takes various forms, such as excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, or defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander, such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat or sympathiser, or opposed to democratic values. So it is very clear, as shown in our report, that the IHRA definition is a tool of anti-Palestinian racism. Because by allowing unfounded allegations of antisemitism against critics of Israel, the definition de facto silences advocates for Palestinian rights and therefore erases the narratives of Palestinians and their legitimate calls for justice.

On to Germany. There’s a lot of discussion about the situation here. You’ve considered Germany here as one of three case studies. How exceptional is the repression in Germany, and how is it similar to other countries?

Germany is definitely exceptional in Europe in the sense that anti-Palestinian racism is so institutionalised. Palestinians and their allies are preemptively banned from demonstrating in the streets to commemorate the Nakba, their catastrophe. It’s also one of the countries in Europe in which we received the most requests of legal support because of the extreme climate of censorship and repression against Palestinian rights advocates. The conflation of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel with antisemitism is completely normalised, and this for so called raison d’état. Berlin is also the city in Europe with the biggest community of Palestinians, yet their identities are completely erased and denied. Children in school are being reprimanded for even saying that they come from Palestine, the teacher will tell them ‘oh well this is not a country’ or ‘oh you mean Israel’. Also, Germany has systematised the use of anti-BDS resolutions. These resolutions concretely restrict activists rights in terms of renting spaces for events, or getting funding. So again, a non-binding policy that is often adopted through resolutions. These resolutions are adopted at a local level or regional or federal level to suppress any activity or events related to BDS. These anti-BDS resolutions are not unique, because Austria is similar. In France and Spain, there have been attempts to criminalise boycotts. And the UK is now on the way to propose its own anti-BDS bill. So, in that sense, Germany is more “normal”. And we have to remember that this is part of a global strategy, promoted by the Israeli government. Including through its Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism. But we could say that Germany has one of the most worrying patterns of repression in Europe right now.

So can you give us a concrete example from the report about how the IHRA definition has been used in Germany?

I think I have to mention the Nakba demos. The IHRA was mentioned in all but one of the prohibition orders of the demonstrations related to the commemoration of Nakba in Berlin. It happened in May 2023, but also in May 2022. They reference it, and then add that the organisations and individuals taking part in the demonstrations are anti-Zionist, and therefore antisemitic. I am not even talking about all the racist sentences that are in the prohibition orders. It’s very worrying that the police used this definition as a tool to legitimise what is an undue restriction of freedom of assembly based on extremely racist assertions, as we explained in a statement and a video.

You write that the IHRA definition was endorsed by the German Federal Government in 2017, as well as various Länder over the two years following that, and used widely in anti-BDS resolutions here. What can local activists do in the face of these resolutions?

Many activists already challenged these anti-BDS resolutions in court, and so far, they have been very successful. In four cities — Munich, Oldenburg, Bonn and Frankfurt — the courts ruled that the restrictive measures carried out by municipal authorities constituted violations of fundamental rights to freedom of expression, assembly, and equality. So the judicial system in Germany still tends to resist and to protect fundamental rights. These initiatives are, of course, a model for activists. But these cost money and time. These decisions took years to be issued. Ideally, in the face of this jurisprudence, local authorities should now revoke their resolutions. This is why the legal battle of the BT3P, a group of activists challenging the federal Bundestag’s anti-BDS resolution, is crucial. The complaint was filed in 2020 and is still in the court of appeal, but could create a national precedent that could have effects everywhere in Germany.

Your report describes the successes in the UK in challenging the IHRA in courts, but this comes at a high cost and lengthy trials, as we’re seeing as a result of the last two Nakba Days in Berlin. What risks come with this court-based approach, even if we’re often winning in the courtroom?

Judgments are not always in our favour. So there is a risk of having negative precedents for the movement. But so far, we can count mostly on victories, which is empowering and confirm that we are on the side of justice. But, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we will witness a change in the mainstream narratives in Germany or the rest of Europe. As well, German judges often depoliticize and don’t touch on the elephant in the room. That is the question of the right to criticise Israel and the silencing of Palestinian voices. Then, of course, proceedings are lengthy and expensive, and often an emotional burden to those concerned. But that is why strong movements and networks of support are really crucial. This pushing back works, and we have many victories to show that.

Some optimism, then. Can you provide an example of these victories? 

There is the case of Dr. Anna-Esther Younes, a Palestinian-German academic, which is still ongoing but so far really successful. Dr. Younes was surveyed and smeared by this organisation called RIAS Berlin, which claims to monitor antisemitism. RIAS sent a secret dossier to the organisers of a public event where Dr. Younes was supposed to speak in 2019. The day before the event she was disinvited because of this dossier smearing her as an antisemite, sexist, and a supporter of terrorism, etc. All this without substantiating the allegations. Upon receiving this the organisers, at the instigation of Die Linke Berlin and its leadership, disinvited her. So, Dr. Younes came to us. We filed a complaint against RIAS because they withheld the dossier which Dr. Younes requested access to (in line with European Data Protection Law), and the Berlin Data Protection Authority found that Dr. Younes’ right to access her personal data was denied. This decision followed a months-long public media campaign as well as a lawsuit brought against the Berlin Data Protection Authority for its inactivity. Dr Younes got access to the dossier and appealed to get the court to recognise the damage made to her reputation and that the preparation and transmission of the dossier was not legitimate.

What would be the implications of a victory in this case?

If RIAS is finally made accountable, which is what we aim for, then their surveillance of human rights advocates will stop. Remember that RIAS, in the  lawsuit against them, stated that they collected information on Dr. Younes in order to “identify her positions on Israel and BDS”. This group targets Palestinian rights advocates or academics writing about Palestine like Dr. Younes, then try to find things to frame as antisemitic based on the IHRA definition. They then send this information privately to other organisations and institutions. With concrete, terrible consequences on these people which can completely exclude them from academia, and damage their reputation. It also  violates data protection law. So if we are successful, then we hope that RIAS Berlin and others will stop this illegal practice. Because many activists fear being surveyed, and this gives a good precedent for their safety. 

You also write that section 46 of the German criminal code has been amended by a bill referencing the IHRA definition in regards to hate crime. Can you explain this?

A law was passed in 2021 against far-right extremism and hate crime. It amended paragraph 46 of the penal codes to include antisemitism among the motives and aims to be considered by courts in sentencing perpetrators. Section 46 doesn’t mention the IHRA definition. But the bill leading to this law amending the Code did mention the IHRA definition as a reference tool, for determining what is antisemitic conduct. It also references the examples attached to the definition. Even though this was in the bill and not the final law, it still entails risk; because preparatory works and materials are still used by courts when they interpret meanings and purposes of a law. So, a reference to the IHRA definition, even in the bill, could influence and mislead German courts. They may falsely interpret criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitism, which is subject to prosecution and punishment. It therefore exposing Palestinian rights advocates to criminal charges. This poses a serious threat to freedom of expression.

In Berlin where there’s such a large Palestinian community, many of them refugees, the right of return is often discussed. How does the IHRA definition’s claim that it’s antisemitic to question Israel’s right to exist, affect this Palestinian right of return?

We haven’t touched upon that question a lot, but the right of a state to exist is not a concept recognized by international law. There is a right to self determination in international law, but for people not for states. I can refer to two expert reports published on our website. These challenge this prevailing narrative around the notion of Israel’s right to exist from a legal perspective. It’s undeniable the state of Israel exists upon the expulsion and displacement of Palestinians. Perpetrating this displacement for Palestinians sustains the continued presence of the state of Israel. The criminalization of this criticism directly renders this right of return obsolete or a non-right. But in any case, we have observed several incidents of suppression of Palestinian rights advocacy where this notion of Israel’s right to exist is very broadly interpreted and instrumentalized to purport allegations of antisemitism. This is often used to repress anything related to the Nakba; or its’ advocates who carry banners in protests that show the map of historic Palestine; or people expressing the concept of settler colonialism of Israel.

“We should not give up on Germany”

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 75 years Nakba, the new Israeli protest movement, and discussing Palestine in Germany


04/03/2023

Questions: Phil Butland, Emily Baumgartner and Gregory Baumgartner

Hello, Ilan, thanks for speaking to us. Could you start by briefly introducing yourself?

My name is Ilan Pappe. I’m a professor at the University of Exeter in Britain, where I’m the director of the European Centre for Palestine studies. I’m also a historian, and a social and political activist.

The main reason we are talking today is that this year the 75th anniversary of the formation of the State of Israel. One of your books called the event, the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Could you explain what you meant by this?

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is actually the project of the settler colonial Zionist movement to take over the Palestinian homeland. At the right historical moment, from its perspective, it was able to take over much of the land and expel many of the native people from their land.

Before 1948, the Zionist movement did not have the power to implement such a massive expulsion of people. But once the British mandate was over, and they had built an adequate military capacity, they used the particular circumstances of the end of the British mandate to implement a huge operation of mass expulsion, or ethnic cleansing.

People were expelled in huge numbers because of who they were – Palestinians – not because of what they did. By the end of that operation, half of the Palestinian population became refugees. Half of their villages were demolished, and most of their towns were destroyed. In my understanding of the definition of ethnic cleansing, whether it’s a scholarly, legal, or moral definition, the planning, execution and ideology all justify describing the Israeli action in 1948 as ethnic cleansing.

In many ways, as I point out in the book, this has never ended, because the ethnic cleansing of 1948 was incomplete. And in many ways, it continues until this very day, if not on the same magnitude as the 1940s. But it still very much informs the Israeli actions against the Palestinians until today, wherever they are.

One of the tragedies for me about the Nakba is that the people who were doing the ethnic cleansing and creating refugees, were themselves refugees. People fleeing Nazi Germany, obviously didn’t want to stay in Germany, but they were also being largely denied access to the UK or the US. Did European Jews have any alternative to fleeing to Palestine?

The people who devised and oversaw the ethnic cleansing arrived in Palestine, much earlier – before the Holocaust. And when they arrived in Palestine in the 1920s, they still had options to go elsewhere.

It is absolutely true that since the rise of Nazism and fascism, Britain and the United States closed their doors, and quite a lot of the Jews who came from Central Europe and from areas that the Nazis occupied, had very few options. Palestine was one of the only places they could go to, but they were not the main force that decided on, and or perpetrated the ethnic cleansing. Most of the crimes committed in 1948 were committed by Zionists, many of whom, such as Yitzhak Rabin, Yigal Alon or Moshe Dayan, had been born in Palestine.

But definitely, one of the reasons that Jews came in large numbers in the 1930s to Palestine was that the West closed its gates for Jews who escaped from Europe. But I don’t think that most of the people who perpetrated this ethnic cleansing, were themselves victims of Nazi or fascist oppression.

Who were the people coming to Palestine? The Left was excited about communal Kibbutzim. After the Soviet Union was the first country to recognize Israel, many felt that there was something socialist about young Israel. How accurate was that belief?

The early Zionists were people came from Eastern Europe. And some of them were definitely inspired not only by the ideas of nationalism and colonialism, but also by the ideas of socialism and communism.

We know for example about the most important group that came to Palestine in the 1920s. This core group went on to grow the leadership of the Zionist community until the 1970s, and they were part of a more international socialist movement. Some of them even took part in the 1905 attempt to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia.

So yes, it was a fusion of three or four elements. One was socialism. The second was a nationalism which defined Judaism not as a religion but as a national identity. Thirdly, modernism. It was very important for them to build the idea of the modern Jew. No less important was colonialism – the idea that you are entitled to take any part of the world outside of Europe, regardless of who lives there.

But most of the Zionist settlers preferred not to live in socialist Kibbutzim, and therefore moved to the cities. By 1948, only a very small percentage of the Jewish settlers lived in those communes. But they were very powerful societies in terms of defining Zionist policies and strategy.

I think the most important thing was that they really believed–albeit wrongly–was that universal ideologies such as communism, and socialism, did not contradict settler colonialism. But of course, these two perspectives on life do not go together. One cannot be a socialist colonizer. Albert Memmi used to call it the Leftist Coloniser. And actually, you’re much worse in your criminal attitude because you are trying to use enlightened ideas to justify the actions on the ground.

How do you think they were able to square the circle? How could they justify to themselves this mixture of socialism and colonialism?

They still do it, it’s what we call the Zionist Left – which is not a force any more in Israeli politics, but used to be. This group squares not only socialism with colonialism, but also liberalism. The way you do it is by asking for exceptionalism. You say that in any other case, colonizing people, displacing them, and ethnically cleansing them is a crime. But in your case, there is a justification.

Whatever the justification is, you have to understand that there was no other way of doing it. At first, I am sure they found it difficult. But with inertia, and the educational system and indoctrination, they began to believe in it themselves.

No less important is the international reaction. Israelis might have felt differently, had the international socialist movement in Europe said to them: “wait a minute, that doesn’t work. In the age of decolonization, you cannot do what you’re doing”. Or if liberal Americans had said to them: “I’m sorry, but what you’re doing is against our moral values”.

However, they were lucky that the West decided that to accept this idea that you can have this exceptionalism when it comes to Israel and to Jews.

We are talking about a time when India and parts of Africa were being liberated. The Left stood firmly on the side of the anti-colonial movement. And yet–as you say–many of the same people turned a blind eye or even put Israel forward as a socialist paradigm. How did this happen?

In 1975, the United Nation finally had a huge membership of decolonized people. This was unlike the United Nations of 1947, which did not have one representative from the colonized world and legitimized the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine.

In 1975, the decolonized people were the majority in the United Nations. And one of the first things that they did was to pass a resolution which said, Zionism is racism. You cannot be a liberal or socialist Zionist. If you are a Zionist, then you’re not different from someone who supports apartheid in South Africa. That was the message of the United Nation resolution in 1975.

The big question was not what would African and Arab states do–instead focused on–how would the members of the United Nations coming from the West do vis-a-vis such an imposition? And, for whatever reason, Britain and France, and West Germany and later the EU, accepted the Israeli position. This position meant that you cannot treat Israel as a colonialist power, and therefore you cannot treat the Palestinian liberation movement as an anti-colonialist movement.

They accepted the Israeli framing of the Palestinian movement as a terrorist organization, and Israel as a democracy that defends itself. This changed the whole discourse about Israel and Palestine. And it extended the period in which the Left in Israel could think that it had found this amazing way of squaring the circle.

What is really interesting is what happened inside Israel. From 1977 onwards, the Israeli Jewish electorate says, “no, it doesn’t work. You really can’t be both democratic and Jewish”. And we see the result in the November 2022 election [which saw significant gains by the far right – editor’s note].

Israeli voters said: “no, you can either be a democratic state or the Jewish state. This whole idea that comes from Tel Aviv, or the Kibbutzim, that you can be both democratic and Jewish is nonsense.” Unfortunately for everyone concerned, their conclusion was “since we think that there are only two options, either you’re Jewish or democratic, we prefer to be Jewish one”.

That is, Jewish in the way that they understand Judaism, not the way I understand it. Their Jewish state is a theocratic, non-democratic, racist, apartheid state that needs all the power it has, because it still has a problem with the indigenous people of Palestine and those in the neighbourhood who support them.

This is something that leaders of the Left Zionist Movement never anticipated. They could not believe that their own electorate would say: “come on, it doesn’t work, stop, stop lying to yourself and to others. There’s nothing wrong in not being democratic. There’s nothing wrong with occupying someone else’s land and claiming it as yours. And there’s nothing wrong with using violent means in order to sustain your control.”

Do you think that the recent elections, and the new government, represent a qualitative shift in what’s happening in Israel?

It is a culmination of a qualitative shift that already started in 2000. There was a political force which was quite hegemonic in Israel until the late 1970s. They could come to the Social Democratic parties in Europe and say: “we are another social democratic country, no different from you”. And they were the hegemonic power in Israel until the 1970s.

But then the electorate said: “No, we don’t accept you”. Also, Arab Jews said that “because you are European Jews who are treating us in a very racist way, so we don’t want to be part of your version of a European country”. It seems that they are content with a more religious, traditional and racist state. This began in the late 1970s and took time to mature. Losing, or never winning, this Arab Jewish electorate (still 50% of the population) was the biggest failure of the Israeli Left.

From 2000 onwards, there was no social democratic power in Israel to talk about. There are parties who define themselves social democratic, but they don’t have any sizeable electorate behind them. And they have no influence in Israeli politics.

Since 2000, all the governments were either centre-right or right-right. If you look at the Knesset today, there are four members out 120, who define themselves as social democrats. There are more members who define themselves as Palestinian or anti-Zionist, but the vast majority define themselves as Zionists, and nationalist and religious. This is the face of Israel in 2022.

This is not an accident of history. It is an inevitable result of the whole idea of the settler colonial project.

One reaction to this lack of representation in parliament is the demonstrations in Israel which are barely precedented in terms of the size of mobilization against the government. At the same time, these demos clearly have nothing to say about the Palestinians. Do you think that they should be supported? And will they lead anywhere?

My Palestinian friends who are citizens of Israel discussed whether they should join the demonstrations. When consulted, my position was very clear. I said: “first of all, these demonstrators don’t want you there. They prefer not to see any Palestinian-Israeli citizen there. Secondly, the demonstrations are based on the idea that there is no connection between the occupation and the destruction of what is left of the Israeli democracy.”

This assumption of the demonstrators is totally wrong, of course. The two are connected and linked. The changes in the judicial system are meant to enable expansion of settlements and taking more severe actions against the Palestinian. This is the same package. It will take a bit longer for Israelis in Tel Aviv, and the high tech elite, who are worried about the way Israel is going, to see this. Hopefully they might see that there is a connection, but I’m not sure that they will. This is an internal Jewish debate that will have an impact on the Palestinians, but the Palestinians cannot impact that debate.

There is a misconception among some of the critics of Israel, that most of Israel’s money comes from the security services. That is not true. The most important income for Israel comes from high tech. Of course, some of that high tech is connected to security. But the high tech elite in Israel pays a sizeable percentage of the taxes and patriotically retains tens of billions of dollars in Israeli banks, as a statement of confidence in the Israeli economy. Since November 2022, they have begun to take the money out of Israel, and started to look for jobs outside of Israel.

This will undermine the Israeli economy very seriously, because it is a capitalist liberal economy which is based on such flow of money and human capital. It will be very interesting to see the impact on people who usually vote for the right wing, when their socio-economic conditions are affected.

The Israeli Central Bank has already increased interest rates eight times. This means that most Israelis who have mortgages are now paying three times more than they paid a few years ago. For many of them, three times more is half of their salary, and they have no chance of buying these houses.

So they will find it very difficult to pay their huge rent. And this government doesn’t have anyone there who has any capacity to deal with an economic crisis, which hasn’t happened yet, but will happen eventually.

How is the government justifying people having to pay these higher mortgages?

It is very difficult to answer this question logically. Today, the Knesset passed a law that allows Netanyahu to spend huge sums of money on renovating his house and his private aeroplane on the same day that people were told that their mortgage is being tripled. The people whose mortgages are being tripled, are generally people who vote for Netanyahu.

The people who don’t vote for Netanyahu are very well off. This change in the economy doesn’t bother them. But there is a certain psychology here which is not that easy to explain, and is not unique to Israel. Why do the electorate that suffer most from the economic and social policies of the government, continue to support the government?

So far one of the reasons that this occurs in Israel, is due to the government’s ability to tell its supporters that this is the necessary sacrifice for keeping the tribe and the nation together. This togetherness is necessary because we’re facing enemies from within and from without. That’s why they have to blow the Iranian danger out of proportion in order to cement support and divert attention from the socio-economic problems of the society.

So far, it has worked. Every time that they are overdoing these oppressive economic measures, we say to ourselves, okay, now it will burst out. We thought it burst out in 2011, with the social protest movement of half a million people demonstrating in Tel Aviv against the government’s policies on education and housing.

It was mesmerising to see how it petered out. A year later in 2012, Israel went to war in Gaza in order to make sure that the demonstrators will go to the army and go to the war and forget about the social protest. The government has no economic solution for the current crisis. It will try to find a way of diverting the attention–whether it’s a war or a crisis–it is hard to predict, but it is very worrying.

If you talk to the younger generation, they were educated in a particularly indoctrinated educational system. It is very difficult to change their perspective. And Israel de-Arabized many of the Arab Jews (the Mizrahim), giving them the sense that being not Arab is the ticket to be part of the new Israel, and something which will help to distinguish them from the “Arabs” of Israel, who were depicted as lesser persons or human beings, and therefore made them second-rate citizens. There is so much work to be done there, for anyone carving for a change from within Israel.

Some things are logical. We understand why some of the North African Jews moved to the settlements from the poor neighbourhoods of Jerusalem. That was understandable. They lived in a slum, and were offered a villa in the West Bank. So they went with the government’s support. The settlements for the Arab Jews in Jerusalem were built near Jerusalem, not inside the West Bank.

But nowadays, I’m not sure how far the Israeli government can go with this. They have no economic solution to the gap between those who have and those who haven’t. This is a situation that they themselves created. And frankly, they don’t even have the wizards of the liberal economy any more.

What you’re saying, indirectly at least, means that Israeli high tech workers and Palestinians have got a common enemy in Israeli capital. Does that mean that there’s a possibility of them coming together against the same enemy?

Not in the near future, because unfortunately, these high tech people are also indoctrinated by the racist Zionist view that the Palestinians are non-Europeans, and not equal partners. But it may shift. I don’t want to sound overly optimistic. but people who work in the Israeli medical system know that 50% of the physicians in Israel are Palestinians, and that many of the heads of the departments in hospitals are Palestinians. Maybe it will help to re-humanize the Palestinians in the eyes of the Ashkenazi elite of Israel. But we have to wait and see, as it has not happened yet.

The real hope for change lies elsewhere. There is a need, which now seems utopian, for an alliance between the Jews who came from Arab and Muslim countries and the Palestinians all over historical Palestine. I know this is not going to happen very soon, and I’m not sure if it’s going to happen at all. But I would invest most of my efforts there.

How can the Palestinians avoid taking the same path as South Africa? As a supporter of the Initiative for the One Democratic State, how would a single democratic state under capitalist conditions avoid just continuing the old power relationships in a different way?

The Initiative is trying to find bridges between the Left and some of the political forces that emerged in Palestine after the 1970s, including the political Islamic forces. We see that there is a lot of common ground, not only to liberate a place from colonization, but to build a new one, which is based on egalitarian social and economic policies.

What we don’t want, is the compromise that Mandela made in South Africa. In order to see the end of apartheid, Mandela was willing to allow the capitalist interests in South Africa to remain powerful in a way that did not solve the most fundamental problems of South African society and economy. It’s better than having apartheid, but it creates new issues.

The way to avoid this post-apartheid reality is to make sure that while you discuss the means for decolonization, you also develop a social and economic post-colonial vision. Applying the means used to decolonize, you might be able to build a more just society. Namely, just not only in terms of the of the relationship between Jews and Palestinians–which is the main aim–but also between classes, between the rural areas within the periphery and the centre, and so on.

It really behoves the Palestinian Left to redefine its identity and goals, and to openly and critically look at the mistakes it made in the 1970s. This is where this energy can come from. On the Left we believe in intellectual, organic intellectuals, and profoundly looking at the problems and finding solutions. But we also need to be in contact with movements and receive the support of the people themselves.

Who do you think has the agency to enforce change? I agree with you that the Palestinian Left needs a better vision. But Palestinians are largely excluded from the Israeli economy and merely going on demonstrations mean you run the risk of being shot by Israeli soldiers. What will it take to change the balance of power?

A lot of people know what needs to be done. But we all are very bad in knowing how to do this. We need to take into account that Palestinian society is the youngest in the world. 50% of the Palestinians are under 18. And this younger generation has some clear ideas of who they are and where they want to go.

Unlike the politics from above, whether inside Israel or in the Palestinian occupied territories where people are divided ideologically and politically, the younger generation is far more unified in its analysis of the reality and its vision for the future. These energies need to find their way into the structures of representation and leadership that can move all of us in the right direction.

We experienced this both in the West in 2008, and during the so called Arab Spring in 2011-2. People were very hesitant to put their energies into organizational issues. They felt that organization creates bureaucracies, and bureaucracies tame down the energy and become corrupt. This is what they see around them in the Arab world, and also in the West.

So there needs to be a fusion of the revolutionary energies that are there. I think the Left always realized that you need organization and representation. You may be influenced by anarchism, but it doesn’t always work as a transformative force on the ground. We can agree that knowing exactly how to transform things is not easy.

One of the most interesting initiatives, which I hope it will include the Palestinians in Israel, is either to re-organize the PLO, or to find a substitute. It is necessary for all of us to have a more accepted representative, democratic Palestinian leadership that will push us all in the right direction. This is easier said than done, of course.

How could a new State be forged, ideally with economic relations which are divorced from the last century of Zionist war-making? How would it function economically, if there’s no war to constantly generate profits?

That goes together with the whole decolonization process. First of all, you dismantle the racist colonialist institutions. These institutions are based in capitalism. The main problem is not so much the militarized high tech, but the question of decolonization.

The energy that would be needed would be in such a different direction to security, that I don’t think you have to worry about it too much. Because either people will go along with this, or they won’t. And if they do, the high tech community would also have to contribute its share for building a post-colonial state and prioritise for instance, projects of absorbing the Palestinian refugees (since the implementation of the right of return would be crucial for a just solution) and be part of the effort for redistributing land and property and working out a credible mechanism of compensation.

The entry point is really the dismantling of colonialist institutions. These institutions are now so closely connected to the capitalist system, that the very dismantling or weakening of them may also begin with changes to the economic nature of the state.

The 2011 protest movements in Israel showed both the potential and limitations. The movement was huge, but it fell apart as soon as anyone mentioned Palestine. It happened at roughly the same time as the Arab Spring, but there seemed to be zero connections made with what was happening in North Africa. Was this inevitable?

Let me put it this way. In order to change the reality on the ground, our greatest hopes are not for change from within the Israeli society. If someone wants to see a change in Palestine, it would not come from within the Jewish society, but from the ability of the Palestinians to be more unified, and for the Muslim and Arab world to stand behind them.

People or governments in the West standing behind the Palestinian Liberation cause can bring a change. But anyone that waits for change from within Israel as an important component in transforming the situation–will, unfortunately, be disappointed.

Having said this, things are more dialectical. If we see all these things that I talked about–a change in the Muslim world, and in the way that Western governments are acting–this can have an influence on the ability of Israelis to be more assertive and maybe contribute to the change.

I would be very surprised if the current movement will do this. It’s an impressive movement. 100,000 people surrounding the Israeli Knesset on Monday is a show of force. But these people will make sure that the Palestine issue is not connected to their agenda. They will make sure that Palestinian Israelis are not part of this protest movement. And that’s why they will fail.

Maybe one day they will realize that if you want to change the Israeli political system from within, it needs to be done through Arab-Jewish cooperation. You cannot do it without the Palestinians in Israel. But Israel has grown up to be such a racist society, that for the vast majority of Jews, this is an unthinkable scenario.

Who should socialists in Germany and elsewhere be making links with? You don’t see much hope in Israel, and Fatah and Hamas are falling apart with corruption. Who are our partners in the region?

There is a thriving civil society which needs the support from people from the outside. It is very well organized in the West Bank. Even under the Hamas in Gaza, it has enough freedom to act. The same is true about the Palestinian society inside Israel.

And there is a positive development. Jews are no longer creating their own civil societies. They understand the limitation of the power. So if you are an anti-Zionist Jew, you are now joining a Palestinian NGO instead of creating your own. Some of the Palestinian national movements inside Israel used to say: “let the Jews develop their own critical mass and we will develop ours.” Now there is an understanding that it has to go together.

You can see it in Balad, the most important national party inside Israel. Although it never prohibited Israeli Jewish citizens from joining now they’re actively recruiting Israeli Jews, both for the party and also through a network of civil society organizations that is connected with the party.

There is also a call from 150 Palestinian NGOs inside Israel and the occupied territories for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign, It is a very important call, and something that socialist and progressive forces in Europe are ready contribute towards. I know how difficult it is in Germany, because of the legislation and the declaration in the Bundestag. But nonetheless, that should not deter us.

There is also an interesting new initiative. The PLO has started international anti-Israel apartheid committees everywhere in the world. This can form a new energy for the BDS movement or enhance the BDS movement even further. I think these initiatives are very important. You cannot rest. They need to be maintained.

One last question. You will be speaking in Berlin again in May at the Marxismuss conference. The subject is 75 years Nakba, but it’s also an opportunity to addressing some of the problems that we have in Germany. Our problem is not just the Bundestag resolution, but a self-censorship and lack of self confidence amongst the German Left regarding Palestine. How important you think is it to talk raise the issue of Palestine with a German audience?

Very, very important. Germany plays a very important role in this whole question. Germany’s justified guilt is manipulated in order to immunise Israel. Germany is an extremely critical political force in Europe. But it does not dare to take any bold actions as a political system, that would benefit the Palestinians and alleviate their suffering under Israeli oppression.

It’s very important to find a way of convincing the German public that they should not be intimidated. I come from a German Jewish family. I know very well what happened in Germany. We should not be intimidated by that particular chapter in history. On the contrary, that chapter means the Germans should be even more sensitive to the suffering of the Palestinians.

Germany should not deny the past, but instead say that this past requires a moral position on Palestine, not just on Israel. The Palestinians are a link in the victimisation chain that began in 1933. People in Germany who produce knowledge about Palestine–academics, journalists pundits, and definitely politicians–cannot act like they are part of the Israeli propaganda.

I know they are intelligent scholars, journalists, and politicians. It really breaks my heart to see them saying things that they know are not correct. The only reason they’re saying it is because of political, academic, or journalistic utility. They don’t want to be condemned as antisemites. This is more important in Germany than in any other country.

We have a great assignment of convincing them that, supporting the Palestinians is being anti-racist and anti-colonialist, and therefore cannot be an antisemitic act based on the mistaken belief that antisemitism is racism. This is easier said than done. But I think that academics should play a very important role here–in being accurate, in being accurate professional, in not abusing what they do as academics.

Germany always respected its academics, journalists, writers, intellectuals–but when it comes to Palestine, they behave like people with no backbone avoiding the desire to seek out the truth. And this is something that I think they should contemplate. Hopefully we can help them in this process.

We’re nearly out of time. Is there anything you’d like to say before we finish?

We should not give up on Germany. I’m beginning to give up on on the chances of changing Israeli society, but I’m not giving up on the younger German generation. We should still look at Germany as a place where there are processes that have not yet matured. And Germany’s is building itself all the time.

Merciless defence against refugees at the Gates of the Empire

Lethal Border Regime. The sealing off of Europe shows its most brutal side in the case of the Spanish exclaves Ceuta und Melilla


13/11/2022

It was the most recent in a long row of incidents, which receive little more attention than the weather report: people die on the border. Again and again this is followed by – nothing. Or, worse, the victims are mocked.

It happened on 24th June: hundreds of victims, of which at least 37 died. According to the Spanish interior ministry, they died as 1,700  attempted to cross the border fence in Melilla.

What does Fernando Grande-Marlaska, the Spanish interior minister from the social democratic PSOE say, three months later? There was a “timely and proportionate use of violence by the Spanish and Moroccan security forces”. He accused the migrants of “trying to enter illegally”, and of showing “extremely violent behaviour”.

Merciless Repression

But an unexpected party said: “470 people were sent back, without observing national and international legislation”. So said the Spanish ombudsman (Defensor del Pueblo) Ángel Gabilondo on 14th October, after reviewing documents of the Spanish ministry of the interior and the ministry for integration, social safety and migration.

Gabilondo is not entirely independent: he was an education minister of the PSOE and also an election candidate for the Madrid region. He was appointed to his post (a constitutional monitor of the Spanish authorities) after his crushing defeat at the local election.

He concluded nevertheless: “The constitutional court has ruled that before people are turned back from the border, every individual must be checked and compliance with international obligations for full judicial control is guaranteed.”

The ombudsman demanded that “the foreign ministry provide the embassies and consulates with material and human resources, so that people who require international protection can visit them and are able to apply for asylum without risking their life or having to enter the country using irregular methods.”

Junge Welt reported that the NGO Spanish Commission for Refugee Help (CEAR) had already described prior statements about the tragedy of 24th June, from the interior minister and prime minister Pedro Sánchez – as “fully unacceptable, when you remember that this joint action caused the death of dozens of people.”

CEAR, founded in 1979, wrote the government tries to particularly emphasize “violence” from the migrants, so that it does not have to speak about the “deep desperation suffered by people like those who tried to cross the fence in order to find protection”.

On 21st September, Enrique Santiago, head of the Spanish Communist Party and Unidas Podemos MP, stated in parliament that Spain must finally enable possible asylum applications, in particular for people from Africa. The justifications by the interior minister reminded him of the discourse of the extreme right.

CEAR also noted that “access to legal assistance and translators” as well as “identifying people who find themselves in a precarious situation and could be advised to apply for asylum” – could not take place.  Since every person was “automatically sent back without having the possibility of identifying themself”.

Estrella Galán, general director of CEAR said: “people from countries South of the Sahara are thus systematically prevented from applying for asylum at the borders.” She asks: “what else can they do but jump over fences or risk their lives on the sea?”

We will see whether the tragedy of 24th June will be atoned. Until now, the Moroccan public prosecutor’s office has simply turned the tables and accused the migrants. This criminalisation again shows the dubious partnership between Morocco one one side, and Spain and the European Union on the other.

Resources flowing from Brussels to Morocco – around 500 million Euros until 2027 – are barely used to integrate asylum seekers, and much more for the ruthless repression of refugees. The relationship between Madrid and Rabat is such that, the weakest party – the migrants – suffer the most.

Strategic Places

Located on the African Mediterranean coast and surrounded by Moroccan territory, Ceuta and Melilla are the only “European” cities with a land border with Africa. Therefore they are a favourite destination for those  fleeing war, dictatorship, famine and climate change, aiming for a better and safer life in Europe.

Since the 17th Century, the Exclave Ceuta has belonged to the kingdom of Spain. The city numbering 85,000 inhabitants, was conquered in the 15th Century by Portugal under John I, following a battle during the Reconquista. In 1668, it was taken over by Spain, after Portugal lost the so called “restoration war”.

Melilla has been owned by Spain since 1497, and numbering 86,500 people, it is a similar size to Ceuta. Neither city are in the Schengen area, posing a big problem for arriving refugees, who find themselves, often for years without a decision on their asylum status. Their legal limbo leaves them neither knowing if they will be deported, or if they will be allowed European entry.

Morocco, a Spanish-French protectorate between 1912 and 1956, considers both cities to be part of its territory. But the Spanish state claims the historic right over the cities for Spain. They are among the poorest places under the Spanish flag. Unemployment has been for decades around 25%. Apart from fishing and shipbuilding, others survive in Melilla through money transfer.

According to Spanish polls, the majority of the population wants to remains in Spain. Not surprising considering the composition of the population. Most people who live in Ceuta were born there, and thus are Spanish citizens. In 2017, this was around 65% of the inhabitants. The remaining 35% includes many Spaniards from other regions.

The second largest ethnic group are people from African countries, in particular from Morocco, which provides 9,500 inhabitants. Melilla’s population distribution is very similar. It remains unclear whether the Spanish government wants to invest part of the EU Reconstruction Fund in both cities because of the conflict with Morocco.

But Morocco uses every opportunity to pursue its claims. In a letter addressed to the UN human rights council, in which Rabat discusses the event on 24th June, the government said that Morocco has “no mutual land border with Spain.” As reported by the news agency Europa Press, you “cannot speak of borders, but merely of a passage” between Melilla and the rest of the country.

Moreover the Moroccan population of both cities has been traditionally disadvantaged. In the early, 1980s, in the course of the Transición after Franco’s death, the Muslim population fought for their rights as Spanish citizens. Until then, the only identification document available to even third generation Muslim inhabitants was a so-called “statistical card” (Tarjeta estadística). Buying a flat was prohibited, neither a general work permit nor health insurance was available. Every journey to the Iberian peninsula, required application for permission. This discrimination was only removed in 1987 after protests.

Both places, in which different cultures have lived together for decades, have a high strategic value for Spain. Sánchez expects that they will be secured by NATO, as he told the summit of the Western war alliance in June in Madrid. This message was unambiguously aimed at Rabat, although Sánchez said, he is eager to pursue a “good partnership” in keeping migrants from reaching Spain, however much it costs.

Shortly after his visit to the Moroccan king Mohammed VI on 7th April this year, the Spanish premier announced a new Western Sahara policy in a letter. This led to a resumption of official diplomatic relations between the two States. With an eye on the autonomy plan for Western Sahara suggested by Morocco, the social democrat spoke in the letter of the “most solid, realistic and credible basis” for a solution of the conflict between Rabat and the Sahrawi independence movement.” This caused great outrage in Spain.

Many including the Spanish Left, regarded these statements as a betrayal of the former Spanish colony Western Sahara. Sánchez’s plans also provoked considerable annoyance from one energy provider. Algeria, which supports the government of Western Sahara in the war against Morocco, suspended relations with Spain.

For decades, Morocco and Western Sahara were at war since Spain withdrew its colonial troops in 1975/76. Morocco, and initially also Mauritania, largely occupied this territory. This was interrupted by a UN-negotiated ceasefire, which offered the Sahrawis a false hope of an independence referendum.

The Spanish press examined events of 17th March 2021 and the following days, when Morocco was not guarding the border to Ceuta. Their judgement Spain was being punished for allowing Brahim Ghali, head of the independence movement Frente Polisario to enter the country, for COVID treatment in a Spanish hospital. Within 48 hours, around 12,000 people crossed the border, mainly young Moroccans looking for work, including quire a few minors.

According to El Periódico de España, Morocco was apparently pursuing a new migration strategy  for Melilla. With the renewed opening of the iron ore mines in the mountains of Uixán/Iksane on the border with Melilla, the caves in which migrants had stayed in the past were cleared out.

The paper affirmed that in September, Moroccan armed forces had burned the tents of migrants. Reports from migrants and NGOs show that this is not a new approach, which includes regular baton attacks.

Fatalities again and again

Spain was shamefully, a European pioneer in the isolation of migrants. Already in the 1990s, Madrid had no other answer to refugees than militarisation. The root causes of this “problem” lie in the West.

In 1996, the Spanish army built an approximately 8 kilometre long wall around Ceuta. One year before, it put up barbed wire, to prevent migrants entering Spain and Europe. Three years later, the enclosure was extended. The Tageszeitung and El Pais reported then, the European Union subsidized the project with three million Euros.

Ten metres high and with three protective walls, the bulwark was equipped with NATO barbed wire. This is furnished with sharp blades, which led to many serious injuries. After persistent protests, the incumbent government dismantled the NATO barbed wire in 2019.

The fence around Melilla was erected by the government of José María Aznar in 1998. The social democratic government under Luis Rodríguez Zapatero augmented the barbed wire with sharp blades. While these were removed in 2003, they were re-fitted in 2017, before they disappeared in 2019. The twelve kilometre long double protective wall has cameras and motion detectors.

In the last quarter century, both facilities experienced “accidents” and “incidents”, euphemistically called. In September 2005, several hundred people in Ceuta tried to cross the fence. Five died, two from gunshots. More than one hundred were injured. At the time, El Mundo reported that an autopsy on Spanish soil revealed that the ammunition used was not officially used by the Spanish police.

In October of the same year, hundreds of people tried to cross the fence – this time in Melilla. Once more, they were shot at, and six died, said El País. The authorities spoke of self-defence, against the migrants carrying sticks and throwing stones at police.

According to victim statements, following this the Moroccan police packed 700 people into buses, and left them in the desert South of the city of Oujda – without food or water. Around 70 people were deported to Morocco, which was previously Spanish territory.

El País wrote: “The first migrants, who after crossing the fence in Melilla, had to return to Morocco, were 70 people from the Sahel state Mali.. afflicted by a plague of locusts in 2004.” An illegal deportation into a third country. One year later, both Amnesty International and Doctors of the World sharply criticized the Moroccan government for this “deportation into the desert”. In 2010 three more people died trying to cross the fence in Melilla.

On 6th February 2014, the man made “tragedy” reached a new peak: at least 15 migrants died and dozens were injured on the El Tarajal beach in Ceuta. They had been  attacked in the water by the paramilitary Guardia Civil with batons, tear gas and rubber bullets. The Guardia Civil denied this.

Around 400 people attempted to swim to Spanish territory. Twenty-three refugees were returned to Morocco without any examination. The human rights organisation European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) supports the victims of this pushback. “The behaviour of the Guardia civil was unlawful according to both Spanish and European law”, wrote ECCHR.

Nevertheless, investigations were stopped at least three times, and no survivor was called as a witness. Moreover the investigation magistrate ordered “a hearing for the Guardia civil servants about deaths by gross negligence and failure to render assistance.” This hearing still has not taken place.

The construction of the border fortifications in Ceuta and Melilla has substantially increased the number of refugees drowning in the Straits of Gibraltar, and not stopped migration. Until 2017, the Spanish interior ministry has spent 258 million Euros to militarise the border. A further 742 million Euros flowed to Spain from Frontex, the European agency for protecting borders and coasts. Large corporations like Indra and Ferrovial have also been paid to build bulwarks.

But the work of the Guardia Civil has “not been made any easier” by the fence from Ceuta and Melilla, as a worker for the NGO Fundación por Causa wrote  for El Salto. Officials were in a quandary: the lack of legal paths for migrants on the one hand, and the desperation of those trying to cross the fence, led to violent situations. Many were haunted by depression.

Even the former foreign minister José Manuel García-Margallo conceded that ultimately, they are witnesses and actors at one of the most heavily guarded and unjust borders of the world.

Anonymous Graves

The border between Morocco and the European Union is the deadliest border for refugees on the entire planet. The fences were only the first measure, control of the waters followed. This means that those desperately fleeing misery dare the even more dangerous route across the Atlantic.

It is estimated that in every year since 2014, around 4,00 people have drowned during transit. In 2021, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras, it was 4,404 people. The numbers are so exact because the NGO has set up a telephone for people in distress. Among the dead from 21 different countries, were 205 children last year.

The sheer horror tales place again and again. In May 2021, a boat was on the high seas for up to 22 days, when found 500 kilometres from the island El Hierro. On board were 17 dead, starved and dehydrated. Two children and one woman survived.

The media portal El Diaria reported the funeral. The dead were buried in the cemetery San Francisco de Igueste on Tenerife. On the burial niches were written three-digit numbers, no names. The burial was attended by two graveyard workers and a young man from Senegal who a few months earlier had arrived in a similar boat. The dead were not buried for a month because the local mortuary was overflowing. It is unclear whether family members know their fate. A project by the Red Cross attempts to find the names of the dead since last year.

Caminando Fronteras reports that after the events of 24th June in Melilla, the dead were buried in mass graves on the Moroccan side. Helena Maleno Garzón, the chairwoman of the NGO, who has worked for a long time in Morocco and been harassed by the Spanish and Moroccan authorities, has spent years denouncing the inhumane isolationist policy. Both Spanish officials and Frontex workers handed over a dossier about her to Moroccan judiciary. The helper is criminalized just as much as the refugees.

Until June this year, a verifiable number of 978 people have died trying to reach Spanish territory. It is estimated that around five die every day, including those who try to reach the Canary Islands. In 2017, the NGO Fondación Pro Causa calculated deaths on the flight to Spain via Morocco up until the late 1990s. For a good 20 years since the Transición, this came to less than 200 people.

Most migrants who now die, and whose corpses are found are not identified, their families are not informed, there is no burial ceremony. They are buried anonymously, in the cemeteries of Ceuta and Melilla, or in Andalusia and the Canaries, which contains the largest cemeteries for the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. They are given the reference “immigrant from Morocco” or “died on the run.” The corpses of more than 80 per cent of the dead are not found.

Clearly they count for little. This death toll does not result in a change of course – quite the reverse. The EU continues to adorn itself with its Nobel Peace Prize, transfer more money to its doorman Morocco and militarise the border even more strongly.

Meanwhile, those who are threatened with persecution and poverty do not receive the slightest chance of an asylum procedure. The doors remain shut to all those whose mistake is that they were born in the wrong part of the world.

This article first appeared in German in the junge Welt. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission

Why the Two State Solution for Palestine is Impossible

Only a Single Democratic Secular State can guarantee equality for everyone living in Israel/Palestine


27/08/2022

A significant number of the German Left believes that Two States is the only possible solution for Israel/Palestine. So, for example, on 13 May, 2021, leaders of die LINKE, Susanne Hennig-Wellsow und Janine Wissler, issued a statement saying that we “further believe that only a Two State Solution between Israel and Palestine will bring a life in safety for the Israeli and Palestinian people.”

A briefing paper of the parliamentary fraction of die LINKE proudly states that: “all parties represented in the Bundestag stand for a Two State settlement”.

Many liberal international forces also make the same demands.

For example, President Obama said in 2011: “the ultimate goal is two states for two people: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people and the State of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people.”

Earlier this year, new German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Jerusalem and called for a Two State Solution, saying: “people on both sides have the right to live in safety and dignity”.

Donald Trump also called for a “realistic Two State Solution for the middle East” in 2020. Admittedly, Trump’s opinion on Palestine remains unclear, and follows the same incoherent, contradictory pattern he exercised on most topics throughout his presidency.

In Palestine

Just as many western perspectives collectively promote the Two State Solution, a large part of the political leadership in Palestine make the same demands.

As far back as 1947, the Palestinian Communist Party accepted the partition that took place in 1948, which then led to the Nakba.

Following the 1967 war, Nayif Hawatmeh, leader of the Marxist-Leninist DFLP called for a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories.

In 1988, PLO and Fatah leader Yasser Arafat accepted UNO Resolution 242 and UNGA Resolution 181, otherwise known as the Partition Plan. He attempted to implement this partition in the Oslo Accords of 1993 and afterwards.

In 2000, Abu Ali Mustafa, der the new leader of the left wing PFLP implicitly supported the Fatah model. This led to a split in the Palestinian Left and in 2010, the PFLP called on the PLO to break off negotiations with Israel, to enable a One State Solution.

And in 2017, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal also accepted a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders. In the same year, a representative of the PLO dismissed any alternative to a Two State Solution as “painful bloodshed”.

With such resounding support for the Two-State Solution from what appears to be all sides, what’s left to discuss? I believe that there are many issues with the Two-State Solution that are often glossed over, which fosters misinformation and hinders progress for a realistic solution.

What’s it all about?

In order to approach the Two-State Solution, I want to put forward 3 main arguments:

  1. The Two State Solution was never a solution for ordinary Palestinians.

  2. Even if the Two State Solution was once possible, the extensive building of settlements in the last two decades means that it is no longer an option.

  3. Even if a Two State Solution was the only possible solution, it is not the job of the white German Left to tell the Palestinian resistance what form their resistance must take.

I would also like to address three of the most common arguments used in favour of a Two State Solution:

  • Argument 1: A state with a Jewish majority is necessary to protect Jewish people from antisemitism.

  • Argument 2: Two States is the only realistic solution. Everything else is utopian.

  • Argument 3: Two States may not solve everything, but something is better than nothing, and Two States offers an interim solution for the beleaguered Palestinians.

Once I’ve tried to address these arguments, I would like to make my contribution towards the discussion about how the problem should be solved.

Argument 1: A state with a Jewish majority is necessary to protect Jewish people from antisemitism

The Two State Solution concerns itself predominately with the need for a Jewish State. After the Holocaust, pogroms [the organised massacre of Jews, particularly in pre-Soviet Russia] and other known cases of antisemitism, a Jewish State is the only way in which Jewish people can live in safety. So goes the argument.

Let’s examine the reality of this logic. Is it really so, that Jews who live in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem are safer than those in New York or Berlin?

Despite the alarming rise of antisemitism in the US and Europe, Jewish people in these countries can still coexist in relative peace with others. In contrast, the State of Israel also continues in its present form by encouraging its inhabitants to live in a state of permanent fear.

Jewish people in Israel are treated as occupiers. The relationship between Jews and non-Jews in an occupied country means that Jews in Israel can never feel safe. There will always be some people who live on stolen land and others who want their land and property back.

Is Israel a democratic State?

The basic laws of Israel state that Israel is “a Jewish and democratic state”. Similarly, in the 1970s, the Israeli High Court ruled that “there is no Israeli nation separate from the Jewish nation”. [White, pp.12-13]

But can a state be Jewish and democratic? If Israel’s claims of democracy are true, then how can this democracy function if Jews inherently carry special rights?

Israeli politicians have clearly stated how they understand a “democratic” Jewish State to function. Former president Netanyahu made his position clear when he spoke out against migrants and refugees from Africa because they “threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”

Interior minister Eli Yishai offered an even clearer position, stating in 2012 that “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, the white man.”

Many Israeli right wingers express concerns regarding the “demographic time bomb” – pointing to the statistical fact that poorer populations tend to have more children. This could result in Palestinians being a majority in Israel.

The former Israeli President Golda Meir, for example verified this fear, expressing: “her sleep was often disturbed at the thought of how many Arab babies had been born in the night.“[Hirst, p369]

Where does such state racism lead? Here just one example from Ali Abunimah:

“There are also credible allegations that Israel may have engaged in the most noxious methods of ethno-racial population control. In 2012, a number of Ethiopian women said that they had been forced to take the long-acting injectable birth-control Depo-Provera before they were allowed to emigrate to Israel. The matter came to light when an Israeli journalist began to investigate an astonishing 50-percent drop in births among Ethiopian women over a mere 10 year period.“
[Abunimah, p34]

How are Palestinians excluded?

In the State of Israel, a distinction is made between citizenship and nationality. Civil and political rights are issued determined to nationality. Possible Nationalities are, for example, Jewish, Arab and Druze, and the nationality with the most privileges is Jewish.

Let’s examine some statistics from the Equality Index of Jewish and Arab Citizens in Israel. Just in Israel – that is the area which does not include the West Bank and Gaza – Jews live on average 4 years longer.

Child mortality is 7.7 per 1000 for Palestinians, around 3 per 1000 for Jews. In 2009, 17% of Israeli Jews lived in poverty, against 54% of Arabs. The poverty level for Palestinian children is 63%.

From 2014-2021, 77 percent of all indictments for incitement claims of violence and racism were filed against Palestinians, despite Palestinians accounting for only 20% of the entire population. 99% of the Palestinians facing convictions faced jail service, in stark contrast to only 46% of Israelis facing jail time.

Additionally, examples of systematic discrimination are peppered into Israel’s legal system.

In 2003, Israel introduced “temporary” laws, which deny residency or citizenship to Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza who marry Israeli citizens. By 2007, this law was extended to include people from Iraq, Syria or Lebanon. [White, pp. 12-13]

In 2008, Israeli medical schools raised the age of accepting new students from 18 to 20. That posed no problems for Israelis who must serve 2 years military service after leaving school. The decision disadvantaged Palestinian students who were forced either to move to a different country or to choose a different career. [Pappé, 2011, p166]

These are just a few of the many micro-aggressions which demonstrate that Palestinians are not welcome in their own country.

Jewish National Fund

Let’s now explore the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a non-profit organization which provides funding for land purchase and development in Palestine.

A Human Rights Watch report Discrimination in Land Allocation and Access declares the following: “Unlike most industrialized countries, which have widespread private land ownership and a free real estate market, in Israel the state controls 93 percent of the land. This land is owned either directly by the state or by quasi-governmental bodies that the state has authorized to develop the land, such as the Development Authority and the Jewish National Fund.”

A free real estate market may not be our first demand, but this imbalanced distribution portrays the qualities of a racist state. JNF housing and land are exclusively rented to Jews. This systematic discrimination leaves denies Arabs access to 80% of all public land.

Many of the houses and land which the JNF has expropriated once belonged to Palestinians who were forced to leave their homes and land during the Nakba. In other words, the JNF is an instrument facilitated by the State of Israel to acquire stolen Palestinian land and sell it to Israelis.

Bedouins, indigenous people which originate from the Negev desert are particularly affected by the rigid land ownership laws. Their indigenous land represents a quarter of the population in the Negev desert, yet Bedouin municipalities of jurisdiction of only 1.9% of the land in the region.

Why are these arguments important?

It is critical to showcase the depth and breadth of areas which reflect the true nature of the undemocratic Jewish state. The lifeblood of the State of Israel is the persistent exclusion of Palestinians and the robbery and reclaiming of property.

A Two State Solution does nothing to challenge these inhumane inequalities. It simply states that the inequality should continue to persist within different borders. If we believe that the State of Israel discriminates systematically against Palestinians, forming a Palestinian state next to Israel is no counterweight against this discrimination.

Argument 2: Two States is the only realistic solution. Everything else is utopian

Some liberal Zionists argue that one state could be nice in theory, but it would be impossible to implement such a solution in reality.

For example, Zach Beauchamp says: “As far away as it may seem, the two-state solution is still the best possible option available for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s in large part because the alternatives are even less plausible.”

But let us look at exactly how plausible Two States are in 2022. As said, I believe that Two States was never a sustainable solution, but if you propose a Two State Solution, you must explain how this would be possible under the current conditions, including the settlement of the West Bank.

The Settlements

According to Ilan Pappe: “large parts of the West Bank are already settled. It is physically impossible to set up a state there”.

The One Democratic State Campaign explains why:

“Israel governments going back to 1967 have rejected the notion of a viable, genuinely sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel, together with the very fact of occupation. Instead, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, has moved 700,000 settlers into the territory that would have been a Palestinian state, and confined 95% of the Palestinians to the tiny islands of Areas A and B in the West Bank, and a besieged Gaza.”

“In January 2020,Prime Minister Netanyahu announced that Israel would annex the Jordan Valley “and all the settlements,” in accord with Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” Nor is there any will on the part of the international community to sanction Israel or force it to withdraw from the Occupied Territory.”

The liberal Zionist Peter Beinart noted that the proposal from Trump and Netanyahu required the annexation of up to 30% of the West Bank. As a reparation, the Palestinians were offered half as much land in Israel – and most of this was uninhabitable desert land.

As a reminder, the West Bank and Gaza only account for 22% of historic Palestine. What is being offered here is around 15%, and this is before we talk about the land which has been gobbled up by the Apartheid wall and the excessive barriers surrounding it.

According to an Amnesty report“more than 80 per cent of the fence/wall is located on occupied Palestinian land inside the West Bank, rather than along the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank. The route of the fence/wall has been planned in such a way that it prevents access by Palestinian to areas of the West Bank which include some of the best access to water, notably the Western Aquifer.”

Additionally, there is land claimed for usage as the so-called “bypass roads” which only settlers are allowed to use, and the barracks for the soldiers who protect the settlers. Until now, no-one has suggested that these remnants of Apartheid should be eliminated under the Two State Solution.

That means that even less land is available for Palestinians.

Tanya Reinhart makes the following estimation: “if the settlements stay, of course, the Israeli army will stay as well to protect them, and thus the situation will remain as it is now – namely the Palestinian ‘state’ will consist of 42 per cent of the West Bank.”

In other words, this means just 10% of historic Palestine will be left for the Palestinians.

Access to Water

This brings us to the next problem for a viable Palestinian state. It is common knowledge that Israelis enjoy all of the luxuries of access to plentiful amounts of water such as swimming pools and lawn care, while Palestinians cannot drink or cook with their tap water.

Israelis consume at least four times as much water as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians in the West Bank use 80 litres of water per person per day, an amount which falls below the WHO recommendation of 100 litres of daily consumption.

Israelis reap major economic benefits with subsidies by US tax money. But the fact that they also control access to the most critical water sources means that even without these massive subsidies, they have material advantages over the Palestinians.

This is not just because the Israeli economy is subsidised by US tax money, making Israeli citizens better off. Israel also controls access to water sources.

According to a 2009 Amnesty report, 180,000-200,000 Palestinians in rural communities in the West Bank have no access to running water. Israel has deliberately destroyed water tanks.

Although the West Bank and Gaza formally have their own governments, Israel passed monumental Military Orders in 1967 and 1968 which granted the Israeli army full authority over “all water-related issues” in both region.

Palestinians are prohibited from building any new water installations or drill wells without permission from the Israeli army.

In Gaza conditions are even worse than in the West Bank, even though Israel formally withdrew from the area in 2005. The Israeli blockade of Gaza means that people have little access to water or electricity. Over 90% of water extracted from the one aquifer in Gaza is contaminated and unfit for human consumption.

In 2009, the UNRWA reported that: “Watery diarrhoea as well as acute bloody diarrhoea remain the major causes of morbidity among reportable infectious diseases in the refugee population of the Gaza Strip”

The only reliable source of clean water for people in Gaza is for them to buy it from Israel. But Israel’s protracted war with the people of Gaza means that it is not always prepared to even sell the water that is necessary to avoid such dangers to people’s health.

Argument 3: Two States may not solve everything, but something is better than nothing, and Two States offers an interim solution for the beleaguered Palestinians

There is still the argument that the current situation in the West Bank is so hopeless that the Palestinians can’t afford to wait for a utopian One State Solution. Something must be done now.

To see exactly how bad things are, let’s look at an Amnesty report, which says the following:

“Israel’s military rule disrupts every aspect of daily life in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It continues to affect whether, when and how Palestinians can travel to work or school, go abroad, visit their relatives, earn a living, attend a protest, access their farmland, or even access electricity or a clean water supply. It means daily humiliation, fear and oppression. People’s entire lives are effectively held hostage by Israel.”

Things are similar in Gaza. A recent report says that “since 2007, nearly 850 patients in Gaza have died after their permits to access hospitals in the West Bank and Israel were denied or delayed.”

There is a strong argument that Palestinians need more control in order to save lives. This argument does not say that Two States will necessary solve all problems, but will at least avoid the worst. And something is better than nothing.

The most convincing version of this argument comes from Tanya Reinhart, a historian and supporter of the Palestinians who I rate very highly. In 2002, Reinhart called for 2 States as an interim solution as follows:

“I believe it would be a great oversight to give up the concrete chance to get back much of the Palestinian lands now, in the hope that in the future one could get more. Whatever solution the two peoples arrive at in the future, it must be based on the Palestinians having land, resources, and the freedom to develop anyway. So the process of acquiring these basics should start now, regardless of the final vision.” [Reinhart, pp 228-9]

But will a Palestinian State really solve these problems?

The Amnesty report referenced above details the daily weight of occupation for Palestinians who can’t go abroad and have no access to electricity or clean water supplies.

But this is an exact description of the current situation in Gaza. And this situation will not significantly change if Gaza becomes an independent state. Ultimately Israel will continue to control the borders and access to clean water.

Haider Eid sees it as follows: “What we have ended up with in the Gaza Strip is an open-air, maximum security prison separated from the other prison in the West Bank. These two prisons cannot make a “sovereign, independent state”, unless one calls ‘la la land’ a state, or what the late revolutionary intellectual and freedom fighter Amilcar Cabral derided as ‘flag independence.’”

Edward Said has the following to say about such ‘flag independence’: “Israel and the United States are at bottom delighted to give us symbols of sovereignty, such as a flag, while withholding real sovereignty, the right of return for all refugees, economic self-sufficiency, and relative independence. I have always felt that the meaning of Palestine is something more substantial than that.” [Said, page xx]

Said notes that the Palestinian National Council also declared an independent state in 1988, although this declaration did not provide any meaningful change for the daily lives of Palestinians.

Bantustans?

Gaza could be immediately declared as a State, but this would not change the facts on the ground. A Gazan State under the current conditions would be equivalent to a Bantustan in Apartheid South Africa.

Black South Africans, born in Johannesburg or Pretoria, were suddenly informed that they were citizens of Tranket or Ciskei – artificial states, which had never been visited by many of their citizens. The Apartheid government even attempted to gain UN recognition for these “independent states”.

Bantustans had their own elections and parliaments. But Human rights, including safety, natural resources and control, were left out of the equation.

After the Oslo Accords, Tanya Reinhart noted: “To solve the water shortage in Gaza, the Palestinians will be allowed to buy water from Israel. Hence, the starting point for Gaza is worse than a Bantustan: neither water nor land.” [Reinhart, p238]

Before Israel’s prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered, he stated his vision for a future Palestine as “an entity less than a state”. Rabin is now feted as being one of Israel’s most progressive leaders. The current government is offering even less.

Right of Return – What will happen to the Refugees?

Ilan Pappe says: “The Two State Solution reduces Palestine to 22 per cent of historic Palestine, and the Palestinians to only those who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. As long as not all Palestinians and the whole of historic Palestine are included in a future solution, there is no chance for a viable and real reconciliation”.

We have already seen that the Two State Solution which has been offered so far actually reduces Palestine to 10% of historic Palestine, and says very little about the refugees who had to flee Israel in 1948 and after.

There are now at least 7 Million Palestinian refugees. Many live in refugee camps in Israel’s neighbours like Jordan and Lebanon. This includes grandchildren and great grandchildren of people who fled their homes during the Nakba in 1948 – nearly 75 years ago.

UN Resolution 194 states that: “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return.”

You might say that this is just a worthless paper resolution, but if UN resolutions can be ignored, who seriously believes that the Israelis will accept other solutions?

The refugees must go somewhere. But, based on the facts given earlier in this article, it is apparent that a future Palestinians state is barely viable even under the Two State Solution.

Additionally, many of the refugees are from 1948 Palestine, not from the West Bank or Gaza. Will these people will really be allowed to return to their homes?

What will happen to the Palestinians who live in “Israel”?

This brings us to the question of the 1.9 Million Palestinians who currently live in “Israel”. Will they be allowed to stay? And if so, with which rights?

There is a large danger that Two States will lead to a partition like in India in 1947-8. This was when 15 million people had to leave their homes, and travel either from India to the new state of Pakistan, or in the other direction. In the ensuing massacres, between 1 and 2 million people were murdered.

Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal called partition “the central historical event in twentieth century South Asia.” She went on: “A defining moment that has neither beginning nor end, Partition continues to influence how the peoples and states of postcolonial South Asia envisage their past, present and future.”

Jerusalem

And what will happen to the Palestinians who currently live in East Jerusalem? Many versions of the Two State Solution envisage East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state. But the devil is in the detail.

If you’ve ever been to Jerusalem, you will know East Jerusalem, also known as Al-Quds, as the liveliest part of town, the part with the old city and the Al-Aqsa mosque. Al-Aqsa is considered to be the third-holiest site in Islam.

The Website Islam ist describes Al-Quds as follows: “before Mecca became Muslim, the first direction of prayer was in no less than Jerusalem. This, and other important reasons, make Jerusalem an outstanding place for Muslims until today.”

But If we look at any discussions of a possible Two State Solution by either the Israeli or US government, if they mention East Jerusalem at all, they are not referring to Al-Quds. Instead, they propose taking the village of Abu Dis and renaming this as East Jerusalem.

Abu Dis lies outside the city limits of Jerusalem, and was described by Reuters Journalist Stephen Farrell as: “a relatively featureless urban sprawl on the old road to Jericho, it has little of the religious or cultural resonance of the historic city centre, which contains sites sacred to the three great monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”

The offer of Abu Dis instead of Al-Quds was already clear in the Camp David agreement of 2000. According to Phyllis Bennis: “the Palestinians would be offered some modicum of authority over the villages, one of which, Abu Dis, would be declared the “capital” of a Palestinian statelet. Palestinians would be “allowed” to call the dusty hillside village “Jerusalem.” Only problem is, everyone knows that Abu Dis is not Jerusalem. Redrawing municipal borders doesn’t make it so.”

In decades of negotiations, the Israelis mentioned Abu Dis as one possibility among others. Trump and Netanyahu’s “Deal of the Century” went even further. Al-Jazeera reports: “Trump has formalized the question of Abu Dis as the only possible PA capital in the future. Trump’s move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was meant to remove any hope for the reopening of negotiations on this question.”

One important question is rarely addressed. What will happen to the 372,000 Palestinians who live in Jerusalem? Will they also be expelled – to a village without infrastructure, without resources, without industry?“

 

So, what is the solution?

What will a democratic state look like?

Unfortunately, I can say very little to this question. The decisions about what a democratic state should look like should be made exclusively by the people who will live there.

Nevertheless, I can share some thoughts of Ilan Pappé. In an Interview with the German newspaper neues deutschland, Pappe spoke of: “a democratic state which accepts the Palestinian refugees who want to return, with equal rights for all, without discrimination based on religion, nationality, race, ethnicity or gender. One which distributes the country’s wealth according to the principles of social justices, compensation and equal opportunities for everyone. One which respects collective identity, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic conditions of “live and let live”, without any group using the state to enforce any supremacist ideologies.”

That’s not a bad start.

Comparison with South Africa

South Africa provides us with 2 examples – one positive, one negative, which show us what a joint state could look like.

Positively, there is the successful fight of a movement, which according to Haider Eid “mobilised international civil society around the idea of one person, one vote and the establishment of a secular democratic, non-racial, non-sectarian state.”

Eid sees the ANC’s fight in South Africa as something quite different, and much better, to the endless compromises of the PLO in negotiations with Israel.

The ANC’s victory was unexpected by many. In 1989, South Africa’s President de Klerk said that the ANC’s demands for equality were “unjust”. de Klerk “unequivocally rejected” the possibility of majority rule. Nonetheless, by the beginning of 1990, Nelson Mandela was free, and the negotiations for the end of Apartheid had already begun.

Those who say that a state for Palestine would be impossible because of settlers prepared to use violence, should think of Apartheid South Africa and the armed paramilitaries of the fascist AWB. The AWB was no fringe organisation. In 1986 alone their membership trebled to 100,000 people [Abunimah, p51]

And yet, when push came to shove, and white South Africans saw no alternative to peaceful coexistence, they accepted the inevitable.

The negative example of South Africa is the fact that Apartheid was overcome, but exploitation, oppression and capitalism remain. This year sees the tenth anniversary of the Marikana massacre when police controlled by the ANC massacred striking miners.

There is no space in this article to carry on this debate, but it does raise one important question: One State is the necessary solution, but is it sufficient?

Will Israelis and Palestinians accept a One State Solution?

One argument against a One State Solution is that Israelis would not accept it. For example, Zach Beauchamp argues that “The Israeli commitment to Zionism creates an insuperable political problem for a one-state solution.”

My first answer is “so what?” Apartheid was overcome in South Africa despite the commitment of white South Africans to racism, colonialism was beaten in India and Algeria against the will of the Britons and French occupiers.

It is much more important to ask whether Palestinians would oppose the idea. As I have already argued, it is not the job of the European Left to dictate to Palestinians how they should liberate themselves. This is true for Europeans who will only support Palestinians who support the Two State “Solution” but it also applies to us. Ultimately, this is not our decision.

There is an argument that says that after so many years of oppression and exclusion, the Palestinians will inevitably seek revenge. The example of South Africa demonstrates that this is not necessarily the case.

It is also true, that for a long time, the majority of Palestinians supported the Two State Solution, at the very least as an interim solution. I remember conversations in 2014 during the bombardment of Gaza with many Palestinians who had illusions – or let’s say hope” in Two States.

But the figures are changing. Gala Golan reports that Palestinian support for 2 States dropped from 71% in 2010 to 43% in December 2018. The reason was: “frustration and failures of Fatah’s preference for negotiations and compromise, under both Arafat and Abbas.”

Tanya Reinhart’s statistic are not identical – she says that at the high point, Palestinian support for Two States was 80%. [Reinhart, p53]. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that a majority of Palestinians are no longer convinced in the Two State Solution, not even as an interim solution.

Peter Beinart, who calls himself a liberal Zionist, and has advocated a Two State Solution for a long time, now says that it’s Two States which is an illusion. He goes on: “The right question is not which vision is more fanciful at this moment, but which can generate a movement powerful enough to bring fundamental change … A struggle for equality could elevate Palestinian leaders who possess the moral authority that Abbas and Hamas lack.”

So it is not just that One State is more practical. It is a demand which is more likely to raise a fighting opposition to the “same old same old”.

Who has the power to enforce change?

The last question is probably the most important, as if you wrongly identify the motor of change, you look for changes which are either impossible or unwanted.

The starting point for too many people – both Left and Right – is to ask what the Israelis (either the State or the people) are prepared to accept. Some push the question further by making their proposals dependent on what US Imperialism is prepared to allow.

Our starting point should be different. We want to build a mass movement in the whole region that overcomes the system of colonialism and exploitation. That means that what the settlers want, or what they are prepared to accept are irrelevant to us.

The USA and the EU are part of the problem. We should not appeal to them for justice. This March, the US House of Representatives approved a further $1 billion for Israeli “defence aid”. This is on top of the $3.8 Billion, which the USA donates Israel every year. This money financed the last bombing of Gaza – either directly or indirectly.

If the US government – any US government – were serious about peace in the Middle East, they could withdraw all financial support for Israel until Israel at least agreed to accept existing UN resolutions.

Israel – and the Israelis – are also part of the problem. Because of the tremendous amount of US financial support, there are material reasons for Israelis to support the occupation. Just as under Apartheid South Africa, individual occupiers may support decolonisation, but any effective movement for change must come from the Palestinians themselves.

A movement under Palestinian leadership which fights against all colonialism and imperialism does not have to stay with a solution which allows an unviable state next door to a state with much more wealth and resources, where the old exploitation continues.

If we want to build a movement that is strong enough to confront Israel and US Imperialism, why should we accept the crumbs of Two States, when we can take over the whole bakery?

 

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