November 3, 2001

ISRAEL'S TOOLS FOR CONTROL OF PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

Jeff Halper sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a differently shaped prism, and the view isn't rose-colored.

The American-born Israeli, who teaches anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, is also coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and editor of News From Within, a monthly magazine opposing Israeli government policies toward Palestinians.

Halper briefed the group of American journalists with whom I traveled to Israel in October on the way that housing policy, including the threat of demolitions, is used as an instrument of political control. He also helped arrange our trip to Beit Jala, Bethlehem and Hebron on the West Bank.

Though I'll tell you how he sees the situation, I am not endorsing his conclusions. It seems to me that if Israel were to halt all the actions it has undertaken in the name of security, many of which are morally troubling, it would passively invite its own destruction as a democratic Jewish state. He, instead, believes that Israel invites destruction to come upon it if it doesn't stop.

We could, of course, both be right.

Halper calls Israel's overall policy toward the West Bank and Gaza ``the matrix of control.'' The term covers actual territorial questions, such as land annexations, expropriations, settlements and roads, but it also includes the tightly woven mesh of bureaucratic red tape constraining Palestinians at every turn -- zoning restrictions, building permits, travel documents, work papers and the like.

And ultimately, when the combined frustrations erupt in violent resistance, control means military intervention in the name of security.

When then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat met at Camp David in July 2000 for talks brokered by President Clinton, the proposal Barak put on the table -- at least, as summed up in press reports -- would have offered Palestinians sovereignty over more than 90 percent of the West Bank, along with other unprecedented Israeli concessions. But Arafat turned it down.

That's not how Halper sees it. First, he says, it was never a proper offer, just some ideas to talk about.

More substantively, even 95 percent (the quoted number varies) is not as good a deal as it sounds. Halper likens it to a prison.

``If you look just at the blueprint of a prison,'' he says, ``it looks as if the prisoners own the place.''

They have their rooms, the common areas, the dining hall, the exercise facilities, the library, the bathrooms, even much of the prison infrastructure, such as kitchens and laundry.

``The warders have only 4 to 5 percent'' but that's enough for them to exert control.

In the West Bank, 4 to 5 percent of land could include key intersections, the network of controlled-access highways in their strips of cleared land and strategically placed settlements.

``The structure of occupation, displacement and apartheid has been systematically constructed around the Palestinian population of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem'' for more than 30 years, Halper has written. ``It is designed to ensure Israeli control and de facto annexation of more than half the Occupied Territories, while confining its 3 million Palestinians to an archipelago of small, crowded, impoverished and disconnected bantustans.''

But would such an archipelago be ungovernable as a sovereign state? Not neceesarily. There's a little chunk of unincorporated Arapahoe County entirely surrounded by Denver, bracketing a stretch of Interstate 25 between Evans and Hampden avenues. Nobody much cares, if they even know; there are no concrete roadblocks on Yale Avenue or Holly Street to remind drivers that they are leaving and re-entering Denver.

But suppose -- I have to stretch this analogy to the shrieking point, because there are no true domestic parallels -- someone who lived in that enclave had seen his grandfather's pumpkin patch disappear under highway concrete, and when old resentments flared most acutely took to the roof to pick off passing motorists.

If the county couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it, the city would have to.

So when cross-border relationships are reliably peaceful, when all the sniping is verbal and all the battles are fought in court, neither party needs to worry much about exactly where the border lines run; when borders are unpeaceful, the fight over their location is literally, as it is now in Israel, a fight to the death.

(714 words)