Uri Gordon’s book, Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto Press, 2008) remains one of the best recent essays, in the English language, on anarchist practice and theory. His voice, if we can express it this way, is one of lucidity, free of the ideologically induced ills of excessive optimism and/or pessimism.
In a late chapter of the book (Chapter 6) – “HomeLand: Anarchy and Joint Struggle in Palestine/Israel” – Gordon takes up the place of anarchism in the history of Palestine/Israel (which would no doubt call for an update, which he himself has stated in more recent work and interviews), as well as, the very difficult question, for anarchists, of nationalism and anti-colonialism, both in the face of Israeli settler-colonialism and more broadly.
We share below the last two parts of Chapter 6 from Gordon’s Anarchy Alive!, followed by a transcript of a recent interview with him – originally given in Greece – , published by Freedom News, on the more recent violence in Palestine/Israel.
ANARCHISM, NATIONALISM AND NEW STATES
With the conflict in Palestine/Israel so high on the public agenda, and with significant anarchist involvement in Palestine solidarity campaigns, it is surprising that the scant polemical anarchist contributions on the topic remain, at best, irrelevant to the concrete experiences and dilemmas of movements in the region. At their worst, they depart from anarchism all together. Thus the American Platformist Wayne Price (2002) descends into very crude terms when proclaiming:
In the smoke and blood of Israel/Palestine these days, one point should be clear, that Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinian Arabs are the oppressed. Therefore anarchists, and all decent people, should be on the side of the Palestinians. Criticisms of their leaderships or their methods of fighting are all secondary; so is recognition that the Israeli Jews are also people and also have certain collective rights. The first step, always, is to stand with the oppressed as they fight for their freedom.
Asking all decent people to see someone else’s humanity and collective rights as secondary to anything – whatever this is, this is not anarchism. Where does Price’s side-taking leave the distinction between the Israeli government and Israeli citizens, or solidarity with Israelis who struggle against the occupation and social injustice? These Israelis are certainly not taking action because they are ‘siding with the Palestinians’, but rather out of a sense of responsibility and solidarity. For the anarchists among them, it is also clearly a struggle for self-liberation from a militaristic, racist, sexist and otherwise unequal society. Price’s complete indifference to those who consciously intervene against the occupation and in multiple social conflicts within Israeli society rests on vast generalisations about how ‘blind nationalism leads each nation to see itself and the other as a bloc’. However, people who live inside a conflict are hardly that naive – the author is only projecting his own, outsiders’ black-and-white vision onto the conflict, and the side tagged as black is subject to crass and dehumanising language (see also Hobson, et al. 2001). Unfortunately, this kind of attitude has become a widespread phenomenon in the discourse of the European and American Palestine-solidarity movement and the broader left, representing what anarchist critics have been highlighting as a typically leftist form of Judeophobia or anti-Semitism (Austrian and Goldman 2003, Michaels 2004, Shot by both sides 2005).
Meanwhile, Price is so confident about having insight into the just and appropriate resolution that he permits himself to issue elaborate programs and demands, down to the finer details: unilateral Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, a Palestinian state and the right of return, ending up in ‘some sort of “secular-democratic” or “binational” communal federation’ with ‘some sort of self-managed non-capitalist economy’. Meanwhile ‘we must support the resistance of the Palestinian people. They have the right to self-determination, that is, to choose their leaders, their programs, and their methods of struggle, whatever we think’.
A blank cheque, then, to suicide bombings and any present or future Palestinian elite. The statement’s imperative tone also begs the question: to whom, precisely, are Price’s ‘we’ supposed to be issuing such elaborate demands? To the Israeli state, backed perhaps by the potent threat of embassy occupations and boycotts on academics, oranges and software? Or maybe to the international community, or to the American state for that matter? In all cases this would be a ‘politics of demand’ which extends undue recognition and legitimation to state power through the act of demand itself – a strategy far removed from anarchism.
Myopia towards what is happening on the ground is also a problem for Ryan Chiang McCarthy (2002). Though taking issue with Price’s failure to distinguish between peoples and their rulers, McCarthy’s call for solidarity with libertarian forces on the ground is unfortunately extended only to struggles which fall within his prejudiced Syndicalist gaze: ‘autonomous labor movements of Palestinian and Israeli workers … A workers’ movement that bypasses the narrow lines of struggle … and fights for the unmediated demands of workers’. Besides being entirely detached from reality – the prospects for autonomous labour movements are as bleak in Israel/Palestine as they are in the rest of the developed world – such a workerist fetish is also directly harmful. It reproduces the invisibility of the many important struggles in Palestine/Israel that do not revolve around work, and in which most anarchists happen to be participating. Meanwhile, stubborn class reductionism demarcates no less narrow lines of struggle than the ones which it criticises, and does the protagonists violence by forcing their actions into artificial frameworks. Thus Palestinians and Israelis are first and foremost ‘workers … manipulated by their rulers to massacre one another’; army refusal is a ‘sparkling act of class solidarity carried out across national lines’ (most refuseniks are middle-class, and self-declared Zionists to boot); while ‘the nationalist poison … drives Palestinian proletarian youth to destroy themselves and Israeli fellow workers in suicide bombings’. This may still be anarchism, but it is of a fossilised variety that forces obsolete formulas of class struggle on a reality that is far removed from such orientations.
The root of the problem displayed by these writings is that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict introduces complexities that are not easily addressed from a traditional anarchist standpoint. The tension between anarchists’ anti-imperialist commitments on the one hand, and their traditionally wholesale rebuttal of the state and nationalism on the other, would seem to leave them at an impasse regarding the national liberation struggles of occupied peoples. The lack of fresh thinking on the issue creates a position from which, it would seem, one can only fall back on the one-size-fits-all formulae. In order to understand why this is so, let me now look at anarchist critiques of nationalism.
Prevalent in anarchist literature is a distinction between the ‘artificial’ nationalism constructed by the state on the one hand, and the ‘natural’ feeling of belonging to a group that has shared ethnic, linguistic and/or cultural characteristics. Michael Bakunin (1953: 1871: 324) argued that the fatherland (‘patria’) represents a ‘manner of living and feeling’ – that is, a local culture – which is ‘always an incontestable result of a long historic development’. As such, the deep love of fatherland among the ‘common people … is a natural, real love’. However, the corruption of this love under statist institutions is what anarchists commonly rejected as nationalism – a primary loyalty to one’s nation-state. On this reading, nationalism is a reactionary ideological device intended to create a false unity of identity and interest between antagonistic classes within a single country, pitting the oppressed working classes of different states against each other and averting their attention from the struggle against their real oppressors. Thus for Bakunin ‘political patriotism, or love of the State, is not the faithful expression’ of the common people’s love for the fatherland, but rather an expression ‘distorted by means of false abstraction, always for the benefit of an exploiting minority’ (ibid.).
The most elaborate development of this theme was made by Gustav Landauer, who used the term ‘folk’ to refer to the type of organic local and cultural identity that is suppressed by state-sponsored nationalism and would return to prominence in a free society. He saw folk identity as a unique spirit (Geist) consisting of shared feelings, ideals, values, language and beliefs, which unifies individuals into a community (Landauer 1907). He also considered it possible to have several identities, seeing himself as a human being, a Jew, a German and a southern German. In his words,
I am happy about every imponderable and ineffable thing that brings about exclusive bonds, unities, and also differentiations within humanity. If I want to transform patriotism then I do not proceed in the slightest against the fine fact of the nation … but against the mixing up of the nation and the state, against the confusion of differentiation and opposition. (Landauer 1973/1910: 263)
Rudolf Rocker adopted Landauer’s distinction in his book Nationalism and Culture, where a folk is defined as ‘the natural result of social union, a mutual association of men brought about by a certain similarity of external conditions of living, a common language, and special characteristics due to climate and geographic environment’ (Rocker 1937: 200–1). However, Rocker clarifies that it is only possible to speak of the folk, as an entity, in terms that are specific to a given location and time. This is because, over time, ‘cultural reconstructions and social stimulation always occur when different peoples and races come into closer union. Every new culture is begun by such a fusion of different folk elements and takes its special shape from this’ (346). What Rocker calls the ‘nation’, on the other hand, is the artifi cial idea of a unified community of interest, spirit or race created by the state. Thus, like Landauer and Bakunin, it was the primary loyalty to one’s nation-state that Rocker condemned as ‘nationalism’. At the same time, these writers expected that with the abolition of the state, a space would be opened for the self-determination and mutually fertilising development of local folk cultures.
These attitudes to nationalism, however, had as their primary reference point the European nationalisms associated with existing states. The issue of nationalism in the national liberation struggles of stateless peoples received far less attention from anarchists. Kropotkin, for one, saw national liberation movements positively, arguing that the removal of foreign domination was a precondition to broader social struggle (Grauer 1994). On the other hand, many anarchists have argued that national liberation agendas only obfuscate the social struggle, and end up creating new local elites that continue the same patterns of hierarchy and oppression.
This tension comes very strongly to the fore in the case of Israel/ Palestine. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians want a state of their own alongside Israel. So how can anarchists reconcile their support for Palestinian liberation with their anti-statist principles? How can they promote the creation of yet another state in the name of ‘national liberation’? The attempt to distance oneself from support for Palestinian statehood is what motivates McCarthy’s workerist stance, as well as the British syndicalists of the Solidarity Federation who declare that ‘we support the fight of the Palestinian people … [and] stand with those Israelis who protest against the racist government … What we cannot do is support the creation of yet another state in the name of “national liberation”’ (Solidarity Federation 2002).
But there are two problems with such an attitude. First, it invites the charge of paternalism since it implies that anarchists are somehow better than Palestinians at discerning their real interests. Second, and more importantly, it leaves anarchists with nothing but empty declarations to the effect that ‘we stand with and support all those who are being oppressed by those who have the power to do so’ (ibid.), consigning anarchists to a position of irrelevance in the present tense. On the one hand, it is clear that the establishment of a capitalist Palestinian state through negotiations among existing and would-be governments would only mean the ‘submission of the Intifada to a comprador Palestinian leadership that will serve Israel’, as well as neo-liberal exploitation through initiatives like the Mediterranean Free Trade Area (Anarchist Communist Initiative 2004). On the other hand, by disengaging from concrete Palestinian demands for a state, the same Israeli anarchists are left with nothing to propose except ‘an entirely different way of life and equality for all the inhabitants of the region … a classless anarchist-communist society’ (ibid.). This is all well and good, but what happens in the meantime?
While anarchists surely can do something more specific in solidarity with Palestinians than just saying that ‘we need a revolution’, any such action would appear to be hopelessly contaminated by statism. The fact that anarchists nevertheless engage in solidarity with Palestinian communities, internationally and on the ground, requires us to grip this particular bull by its horns. Here, I believe there are at least four coherent ways in which anarchists can deal with the dilemma of support for a Palestinian state.
The first and most straightforward response is to acknowledge that there is indeed a contradiction here, but to insist that in this given situation solidarity is important even if it comes at the price of inconsistency. Endorsement of Palestinian statehood by anarchists can be seen as a necessary pragmatic position. It does nobody any good to effectively say to the Palestinians, ‘sorry, we’ll let you remain non-citizens of a brutal occupation until after we’re done abolishing capitalism’. A point to be made here is that states have a track record of hostility to stateless peoples, refugees and nomads. The Jews and the Palestinians are two among many examples of oppressed stateless peoples in the modern era. While many Jews were citizens (often second-class citizens) of European countries at the beginning of the twentieth century, an important precondition for the Holocaust was the deprivation of Jews’ citizenships, rendering them stateless. As a result, anarchists can recognise Palestinian statehood as the only viable way to alleviate their oppression in the short term. This amounts to a specific value judgement whereby anti-imperialist or even basic humanitarian concerns take precedence over an otherwise uncompromising anti-statism.
A second, different response argues that there is no contradiction at all in anarchist support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. This is simply because Palestinians are already living under a state – Israel – and that the formation of a new Palestinian state creates only a quantitative change and not a qualitative one. Anarchists object to the state as a general scheme of social relations – not to this or the other state, but to the principle behind them all. It is a misunderstanding to reduce this objection to quantitative terms; the number of states in the world adds or subtracts nothing from anarchists’ assessment of how closely the world corresponds to their ideals. Having one single world state, for example, would be as problematic for anarchists as the present situation (if not more so), although the process of creating one would have abolished some 190 states. So from a purely anti-statist anarchist perspective, for Palestinians to live under a Palestinian state rather than an Israeli state would be, at worst, just as objectionable. A Palestinian state, no matter how capitalist, corrupt or pseudo-democratic, would in any event be less brutal than an occupying Israeli state.
A third response, informed by Kropotkin’s view mentioned above, is that anarchists can support a Palestinian state as a strategic choice, a desirable stage in a longer-term struggle. No one can sincerely expect that the situation in Israel/Palestine will move from the present one to anarchy in one abrupt step. Hence, the establishment of a Palestinian state through a peace treaty with the Israeli state, although far from a real solution to social problems, may turn out to be a positive development on the way to more radical changes. The reduction of everyday violence on both sides could do a great deal to open up more political space for economic, feminist and environmental struggles, and would thus constitute a positive development from a strategic point of view. The establishment of a Palestinian state could form a bridgehead towards the fl owering of myriad social struggles, in Israel and in whatever enclave-polity emerges under the Palestinian ruling elite. For anarchists, such a process could be a signifi cant step forward in a longer-term strategy for the destruction of the Israeli, Palestinian, and all other states along with capitalism, patriarchy and so on.
A fourth and final response would be to alter the terms of discussion altogether, by arguing that whether or not anarchists support a Palestinian state is a moot point, and leads to a false debate. What exactly are anarchists supposed to do with their ‘support’? If the debate is to resolve itself in a meaningful direction, then the ultimate question is whether anarchists can and should take action in support of a Palestinian state. But what could such action possibly be, short of declarations, petitions, demonstrations and other elements of the ‘politics of demand’ that anarchists seek to transcend? One can hardly establish a state through anarchist direct action, and the politicians who will eventually decide on creating a Palestinian state are not exactly asking anarchists their opinion. Seen in this light, debates about whether anarchists should give their short-term ‘support’ to a Palestinian state sound increasingly ridiculous, since the only merit of such discussion would be to come up with a common platform. On this view, anarchists may take action in solidarity with Palestinians (as well as Tibetans, West Papuans and Sahrawis for that matter) without reference to the question of statehood. The everyday acts of resistance that anarchists join and defend in Palestine – e.g. removing roadblocks or defending olive harvesters from attacks by Jewish settlers – are immediate steps to help preserve people’s livelihoods and dignity, not a step towards statehood. Once viewed from a longer-term strategic perspective, anarchists’ actions have worthwhile implications whether or not they are attached to a statist agenda of independence.
For one thing, Israelis taking direct action alongside Palestinians is a strong public message in itself. The majority of the public certainly views Israeli anarchists as misguided, naive youth at best and as traitors at worst. The latter response happens because the joint Palestinian-Israeli struggle transgresses the fundamental taboos put in place by Zionist militarism. Alongside the living example of non-violence and cooperation between the two peoples, the struggle forces Israeli spectators to confront their dark collective traumas. Israelis who demonstrate hand-in-hand with Palestinians are threatening because they are afraid neither of Arabs nor of the Second Holocaust that they are supposedly destined to perpetrate. Notice how everything comes out when the anarchists are vilified by other Israelis: the fear of annihilation, the enemy as a calculated murderer, and victims’ guilt expatiated through the assertion of self-defence and just war as unexamined axioms. And this is threatening on a deeper level than any hole in the fence – but then again, anarchists didn’t get their reputation as trouble-makers for nothing.
ALTERNATIVES
In closing this chapter, I would like to take a more general look at the role of place-based identity and belonging in anarchist theory, and see whether any of it can apply to Israel/Palestine. While anarchists have traditionally rejected nationalism, the construction of the concept of the folk by writers such as Landauer and Rocker also has its limitations. For the idea of the folk assumes at least some degree of homogeneity, even if the term can be extended (as Rocker argues) to accommodate folk identities created by the mixing and fusion of cultures and population shifts over time. But in today’s world it is questionable how useful this concept is. The idea of collective local identity based on shared culture, language and spirit is irrelevant in many regions of the world, where centuries of colonialism and immigration have created multicultural populations that share very little in these terms. Can anarchists endorse a different form of belonging that can address this situation while resonating with their broader political perspectives?
Here, the idea of bioregionalism presents itself as a promising alternative. Bioregionalism is an approach to local identity that has achieved much currency in the radical environmental movement, and is based not on ethnic or political divisions but on the natural and cultural properties of a place. A bioregion is commonly defined as a continuous geographic area with unique natural features in terms of terrain, climate, soil, watersheds, plants and animals, as well as the human settlements and cultures that have developed in response to these local conditions. A bioregion is thus also a terrain of consciousness, as can be seen in indigenous peoples’ accounts of their connection to the land and in local knowledge and customs. As a result, the bioregionalist approach stresses an intimate relationship between people and their natural environment, promoting sustainability and local self-reliance instead of the alienated and monocultural lifestyles pervasive in modern industrial societies (Berg 1978, Andruss et al. 1990, Thayer 2003). According to Kirkpatrick Sale (1983),
To become ‘dwellers in the land’ … to fully and honestly come to know the earth, the crucial and perhaps only and all-encompassing task is to understand the place, the immediate, specifi c place, where we live … We must somehow live as close to it as possible, be in touch with its particular soils, its waters, its winds. We must learn its ways, its capacities, its limits. We must make its rhythms our patterns, its laws our guide, its fruits our bounty.
Since the early 1970s, bioregionalism has become the agenda of numerous organisations, communities, farmers, artists and writers. The Planet Drum Foundation in San Francisco was among the fi rst pioneers of the bioregional approach, publishing literature on the application of place-based ideas to environmental practices, cultural expression and politics. Other early organisations were the Frisco Bay Mussel Group in northern California and the Ozark Area Community Congress on the Kansas–Missouri border. Currently there are hundreds of similar groups in North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia (Berg 2002). Since 1984, ten North American Bioregional Congresses have taken place in the US and Canada (see www. bioregional-congress.org), and there is even a popular ‘BioRegional Quiz’ (Charles et al. 1981), with questions like:
• Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.
• Name 5 edible plants in your region and their season(s) of availability.
• How long is the growing season where you live?
• Name five resident and five migratory birds in your area.
• What species have become extinct in your area?
As can be seen, the bioregional approach is mostly concerned with ecological awareness, environmental restoration, local self-reliance and similar agendas. However, it also poses a powerful alternative – at least potentially – to both nationalist and ‘folkist’ approaches to identity. An identity based on connection to a local area does not contain any essentialist factors – it does not stipulate anything about the content of the personal and collective identities that can flourish within and alongside it. The only requirement is that such identities should be genuinely local and that they cohere with sustainable relationships between people and the land. As a result, individuals and groups can experience bioregional belonging while still holding multiple personal and collective identities in terms of occupation, language, ethnicity, lifestyle, spirituality, cultural taste, gender, sexual preference and so on. Bioregionalism is thus in line with anarchist demands for self-realisation and for the celebration of multiple and shifting identities.
The strongly decentralist and devolutionist agendas of bioregionalism should also make it immediately attractive to anarchists. Bioregions do not recognise arbitrary political boundaries and are unsuitable for control from above. The organisation of social and economic life according to bioregional principles calls for a high degree of local autonomy, as eco-feminist Helen Forsey argues:
Community people have a common urge to make their own decisions, control their own destinies, both as a group and as individuals … if control of decisions or resources is imposed from the outside, the balance and cycles of the community’s life are likely to be disrupted or destroyed. Without implying isolation, there needs to be a degree of autonomy which will permit the community to grow and fl ourish in the context of its own ecofeminist values. (Forsey 1990: 84–5)
However, bioregional proposals do not imply a parochial and separatist attitude. Since bioregions do not have clear borders but fl ow and melt into each other, a bioregional model is more likely to promote an ethos of cooperation and mutual aid in the stewardship of regional environments, based on both commonality and diversity. Bioregionalism, in sum, offers a viable and attractive alternative to both nationalist and ‘folkist’ approaches to collective local identity, while strongly resonating with broader anarchist perspectives.
Can any of this be seriously applied to the situation in Palestine/ Israel? The creation of a bioregional society is difficult enough as it is, since it requires a massive transformation in the way society is organised. After all, bioregionalism is incompatible not only with war and occupation but also with capitalism, racial and religious bigotry, consumerism, patriarchy and any number of other trenchant features of hierarchical society. Like anarchism itself, full-blown bioregionalism could only come about through some form of social revolution. But the prospects look especially bleak in a context like Israel/Palestine, where decades of occupation and armed conflict have left a heavy deposit of mutual fear and suspicion that would have to be overcome before the peaceable and gentle ideals of bioregionalism could come anywhere near realisation.
Amid the daily horrors of death and humiliation, and of mutual ignorance, fear and hatred on both sides, it is tempting to say something positive about the prospects for ‘real peace’ in the region. Perhaps the mould of ‘constructive direct action’ could be extended from building alternatives to capitalism to something like ‘grassroots peacemaking’ – projects that build community-to-community dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Is this not an attractive idea? After all, even for dovish Israeli Jews the notion of peace is strongly associated with separation – ‘us here, them there’. This is why the Israeli government calls it the ‘separation’ barrier – and most of the Israeli ‘peace camp’ would be satisfied if the separation were only to overlap with the Green Line. In contrast, couldn’t direct dialogue and shared projects – ecological ones for example – go against the grain of separation, bypassing politicians to build peace from the bottom up? There are already, in fact, numerous and sometimes well-funded initiatives for dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli children, shared exhibitions of Palestinian and Israeli artists and the ‘Peace Team’ of Israeli and Palestinian footballers that became famous for its miserable losses in friendly games against champion European clubs. Inside Israel, the network of organisations for Jewish–Arab ‘coexistence’ already lists over 100 organisations, from lobbying and advocacy groups through educational and artistic projects and on to local citizens’ forums in mixed cities and regions.
Unfortunately, there are special complications that surround even the best-intentioned attempts of this kind. These are more serious than the fact that they can easily fall into the role of civil society initiatives which supplement rather than challenge basic political and social structures. The deeper problem, as seen by many Palestinian human rights groups and Israeli dissidents, is that such projects mask the realities of the region and present equality where there is none. In vain attempts to remain neutral, coexistence and dialogue projects end up using a language in which the situation seems to be a conflict between two peoples fighting over the same piece of land, and peace the result of a territorial compromise and safe face-to-face encounters between Palestinians and Israelis, especially youth. These coexistence initiatives, launched by Israeli NGOs and backed by international foundations, seem harmless at worst until we remember that this ‘outstretched hand for peace’ is coming from the citizens of the occupying power. However well-meaning, projects that aim to overcome mutual ignorance and suspicion and to heal collective traumas put the cart before the horse. They amount to a call for normalisation of relations between Palestinians and Israelis as if the occupation was already over. This is not only paternalistic, but also doomed to practical failure.
Can this Radical’s Catch 22 be transcended? It would seem that the practice of joint struggle does offer an alternative to the quaint helplessness of coexistence projects. American-Israeli anarchist Bill Templer (2003) tries to evoke one way out of the problem, in an article heavy with the catchwords of anti-capitalist language:
Reinventing politics in Israel and Palestine means laying the groundwork now for a kind of Jewish-Palestinian Zapatismo, a grassroots effort to ‘reclaim the commons’. This would mean moving towards direct democracy, a participatory economy and a genuine autonomy for the people; towards Martin Buber’s vision of ‘an organic commonwealth … that is a community of communities’. We might call it the ‘no-state solution’.
Templer’s optimism for such a project rests on the perception of a widespread crisis of faith in ‘neoliberal governmentality’, making Israel/Palestine ‘a microcosm of the pervasive vacuity of our received political imaginaries and the ruling elites that administer them … [but which] offers a unique microlaboratory for experimenting with another kind of polity’. While acknowledging the inevitability of a two-state settlement in the short term, he traces elements which are already turning Palestine/Israel into ‘an incubator for creating “dual power” over the middle term, “hollowing out” capitalist structures and top-down bureaucracies’.
Templer’s speculations may involve more than a bit of wishful thinking, but the relevant point is that unlike coexistence and dialogue for the sake of it, joint struggle does not imply normalisation. This is because it is clearly infused with antagonism towards the commanding logic of both the Israeli state, and the Palestinian parties and militias who condemn any dealings with Israelis. So while the creation and fostering of spaces which facilitate mutual aid between Palestinians and Israelis is indeed required, only such spaces which are ones of rebellion and struggle can honestly stand up to the charge of false normalisation and ‘coexistence’.
The joint struggle in the villages of the West Bank not only managed to crack the unquestioned consensus around the Segregation Barrier in the Israeli public. Far more significant cracks may have appeared in the intractable image of the conflict in the eyes of many Israelis. Israeli–Palestinian cooperation in militant but non-violent action is inherently powerful because it enacts a dramatic, 90-degree flip of perspective: the ‘horizontal’ imagery of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is displaced by the ‘vertical’ one of struggle between people and government. The Mas’ha camp was by itself an example of such a transformation. The encounter between Israelis and Palestinians engaging in a joint struggle against the construction of the segregation barrier in the village became a protracted face-to-face encounter, where members of both communities could meet each other as individuals and create a genuine, if temporary, community with no illusions about the impossibility of ending the occupation through grassroots action alone. For both sides, joint struggle can be an intense experience of togetherness, which by extension could create a model for future efforts – as these quotes from a Palestinian and an Israeli participant demonstrate (Sha’labi and Medicks 2003):
Nazeeh: We wanted to show that the Israeli people are not our enemies; to provide an opportunity for Israelis to cooperate with us as good neighbors and support our struggle … Our camp showed that peace will not be built by walls and separation, but by cooperation and communication between the two peoples living in this land. At Mas’ha Camp we lived together, ate together, and talked together 24 hours a day for four months. Our fear was never from each other, but only from the Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Oren: The young Israeli generation realizes that the world has changed. They saw the Berlin wall come down. They know that security behind walls is illusionary. Spending some time together in the camp, has proven to us all that real security lies in the acceptance of one another as equals, in respecting each other’s right to live a full, free life … [we struggle] to topple walls and barriers between peoples and nations, creating a world which speaks one language – the language of equal rights and freedom.
In contrast to both the logic of separation and harmless dialogue initiatives, joint resistance in Palestine/Israel remains an open arena for extending and pushing the boundaries of Israeli–Palestinian cooperation, in a struggle that despite its very imperfect conditions can still momentarily manifest the hope that Jews, Palestinians and others might one day live in this land together without classes, states or borders.
(All bibliographic references can be found in the full edition of Uri Gordon’s Anarchy Alive!, available at libcom.org.)
A lot of despair right now: Interview with an Israeli anarchist
Analysis, Oct 22nd
Below, Freedom reproduces a transcript of a talk with Uri Gordon on the current situation in Palestine and Israel organised by Infolibre Thessaloniki.
Uri Gordon is an Israeli anarchist who organised, among others, with the Dissent! Network, Indymedia, People’s Global Action and Anarchists Against the Wall. He is the author of Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory.
Freedom News mildly edited the following transcript.
Uri Gordon: Right now, the Gaza Strip is being starved, especially of fuel. I am still hopeful that there can be a ceasefire, de-escalation and a return of the hostages. Amongst the hostages are foreign nationals, including Americans, Germans, and other countries. Hopefully, those countries will do something to prevent any reckless ground assault that will result in the death of their own hostages, in addition to the suffering caused in Gaza already. The number of casualties in the Gaza Strip has far exceeded the number of Israelis killed on October 7th. There is a serious humanitarian crisis in the Strip, while sadly, in Israel, there is a mentality of revenge – many support this inhumane way of getting back at the whole population of Gaza.
Infolibre: After the Hamas attack and the call for revenge from the Israeli state, there is a blackmail of “taking sides” (=Hamas or IDF). Has this blackmail prevailed everywhere? Both amongst Arabs-Palestinians and amongst Israelis? As far as Palestinians are concerned, what is the currency of this polarisation in the West Bank, in Israel and in Gaza? And what is the situation for the Israelis in Israel? How are they responding?
Uri Gordon:This blackmail has now prevailed everywhere, both amongst Arab Palestinians and Israelis. Yet the war has polarised people. Israelis, despite the anger at their government and despite blaming it for what happened, those who only half-support or don’t support Netanyahu are now giving free rein to their genocidal fantasies. On social media, there is talk of “erasing Gaza”, that “Palestinians are ISIS, they are Nazis”. There is a belligerent atmosphere amongst Israelis. […] Israeli forces have arrested several hundred in the West Bank. The border with Lebanon is getting hotter; more fighters are being killed, which is all part of a broader scenario. There is a concern amongst Israelis that a ground assault will fall into a trap set by Hamas and supported by Hezbollah, that it would cost the lives of hundreds of soldiers and that it is very doubtful that it would lead to the rescue of the hostages. There have already been some directed attacks against the positions of Hamas leaders in addition to the much more widespread bombings of civilian areas in Gaza. But right now, talking about Palestinian citizens of Israel, I think there are fewer protests than before. They are feeling the extreme anger of the Jewish population at Hamas and, by extension, at all Palestinians.
Infolibre: In our country [Greece], the Jewish community was almost annihilated in the Second World War, and the remaining Jews have strong connections with the Israeli state. What about countries where there used to be progressive Israeli and Palestinian diaspora communities (e.g. the US) and they worked together? How are they dealing with the current situation?
Uri Gordon: I don’t know of any significant joint work being done by diasporic Jewish and Palestinian communities in the US. The communities are separated and scattered all over the US. There has been a demonstration of peace activists in Washington who demonstrated for a ceasefire, and I am sure there are actions on the micro level. Again, while there is on the ground a bi-national peace movement, it is small; you can find peace voices also amongst the families of the hostages, but all this is far from prominent.
Infolibre: Are there joint antiwar initiatives by Palestinians and Israelis? We saw limited coverage and only a few images of antiwar demonstrators. What are their demands? How can we support them?
Uri Gordon: There was a demo in Tel Aviv for the return of the hostages; it was relatively small. Then, a demo opposite the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv called for Netanyahu to quit. The father of a family who had been held hostage is now holding a permanent vigil in front of the building with some supporters and families. It has become a kind of protest camp.
Infolibre: What about the internal situation in Israel, where Netanyahu was confronting a huge popular unrest? Is there any organised plan by people who stand against the war that can change the dynamics and possibly lead to the de-escalation of the current situation?
Uri Gordon: In the centre-left and some other sections of society, there are all kinds of anger at the government. There is an awareness of the government’s incompetence, of the fact that it is filled with criminals and has decimated all public services, wasting money on settlements and ultra-Orthodox institutions. So it is clear that when we come out of this, and there are elections, the Far Right will be done with. It’s something like what we’ve seen in Poland recently. But before that happens, there will be a lot of suffering if this doesn’t escalate into something even worse.
Infolibre: How does the current situation affect the army objectors and court cases of Israeli anarchists on trial for solidarity actions for Palestinians (e.g. Jonathan Pollak)?
Uri Gordon: I don’t think there has been any direct effect on army objectors in Israel and court cases of people like Jonathan Pollak. Again, the objectors are just a few individuals at the moment. These are not prominent issues in the public sphere or in Israeli media. The levels of army refusal are much lower today than they were maybe twenty or fifteen years ago.
Infolibre: There is a ton of fake news being produced about the war. We have the feeling that 972 mag is a good source of information. Do you agree? Any other sources?-Which is the primary information that people from Israel have access to? Can they find out about the casualties in the Gaza Strip?
Uri Gordon: 972 mag is a pretty good source of information. You get reports from Oren Ziv, Ruwaida Kamal and other Jewish and Palestinian writers. They have people in Gaza, and you can see what’s going on in the West Bank on their website (61 Palestinians killed there in the past week). I also look at Reuters, AP, and Al Jazeera for everyday developments.
Infolibre: Are you afraid that the current developments are part of a broader framework of interstate conflicts and regional geopolitical antagonism? Which countries have shown interest in the escalation of the conflict to profit from the war? Are there any countries against the mass killings?
Uri Gordon: It falls into what we know as the current axes of power in the world. All this is related to the tensions between the US and Iran, and Iran’s links to Russia. Internationally speaking, the Hamas attack can also be seen to function as sabotage of the US-Israel-Saudi triangle that Biden has been trying to develop in the last months – it looks like the Hamas succeeded in doing that- and yes, Iran probably feels emboldened now. It is crucial that this doesn’t escalate into a wider conflict involving Lebanon, the US, Iran, Russia, and, of course, if there is further massive loss of life in Gaza, if there is some settler outrage in the West, all of this will contribute to an escalation. Let’s see if the superpowers, together with Egypt and Jordan, will intervene to broker an immediate ceasefire to prevent further death and destruction in Gaza, and stop the conflict from escalating into a war with Israel and Lebanon. But we are on the brink of an explosive situation that could escalate. Because of the scale of the conflict, almost everyone knows someone affected – killed, injured, having lost someone.
Q & A with the audience
Q: Can we speak of any significant contacts in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank between Jews and Palestinians that show a way forward?
Uri Gordon: Nothing passes across Gaza. There are exceptions. I know personally that one of the women who Hamas took hostage was in direct contact with women in Gaza. Some individuals have cross-border connections created years ago, and there haven’t been any opportunities for individual meetings. There are, of course, Israeli solidarity activists in the West Bank, like the Rabbis for Human Rights, people who used to be involved with the Anarchists Against the Wall and other solidarity initiatives, especially in the eastern part of the West Bank where there have been a lot of settler incursions into pastoral lands, and attacks on Palestinian shanties as well. But it is a tiny movement. What used to be, until about 15 or 20 years ago, an impressive, consistent, daily direct-action movement in the West Bank is not really there anymore. Now, it’s all rather about documentation, but the settlers and the (IDF) army have gotten away with their ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
The only alternative is a binational Arab-Jewish movement. But there is a lot of despair right now, and there is a sense that almost nobody wants to listen to the other. Yet one thing worth mentioning is spontaneous mutual aid springing up where the government is not there. The State is not fulfilling its function anywhere. The response to the Hamas attack was an absolute Israeli fiasco in terms of intelligence; it took 8 hours for the army to respond, people were completely abandoned, the whole thing was a total mess, and people were scared. So the people themselves organised and set up kindergartens and helped each other. That was something very anarchistic. I am not saying the people are anarchists, but here are the seeds of mutual aid, which is something to be positive about. I think there is an absolute loss of legitimacy of the Netanyahu government – he is not taking any responsibility, and they continue with lies and fake news – the government will pay the price.
Q: What has happened to the unrest and the protests against Netanyahu over the last few months?
Uri Gordon: Demos are suspended for now, but the anger is still there. People called for military reserve duty continue to live through the way; they also continue to be very angry at the government and Netanyahu. It is not that they suddenly understand Palestinian human rights or that a ground assault would be a total disaster. It’s hard to tap into “public opinion” right now; it depends on which corner of the media you are looking at, but it seems that there will be a massive backlash against the Far Right.
Q: Gaza was already an open prison. What about now?
Uri Gordon: The situation is dire. Israel has cut off fuel supplies needed to run hospitals and water desalination works. There are food shortages, thousands of people have been killed, and entire neighbourhoods have been flattened. The Far Right is spewing fantasies of flattening Gaza and sending them all to Egypt… let’s hope it won’t happen. Let’s hope there is a ceasefire and no further escalation and exchange of hostages before the Israeli army proceeds to commit atrocious crimes in even more extreme ways.
There has been massive displacement. Hundreds of thousands of people have already moved to Gaza’s South. As far as I know, there are still 100,000 in the city of Gaza, so there is potential for more loss of life and civilian casualties. At least, I hear some food supplies are being transported to the Strip through the Egyptian border.
Q: You said the Far Right will pay the price. What about the political currency of Hamas right now? What will be the political future of the Gaza Strip in the case of a ceasefire?
Uri Gordon: We have to remember it has always been an explicit policy of the Israeli government to maintain Hamas in Gaza, to continue passing money to Hamas in Gaza, to maintain the split between Hamas and Fatah, and to prevent any Palestinian unity and the establishment of any kind of Palestinian state. Netanyahu is on record having said in government meetings that whoever wants to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state has to maintain Hamas and strengthen Hamas. I think the idea that Hamas can just be wiped out for some other regime to be installed in Gaza is impossible without some comprehensive, internationally brokered peace settlement, or at least a longer-term settlement. But I don’t know of any superpower with the ability or the interest to impose it right now.
I have no sympathy for Hamas, a theocratic organisation that has no qualms about attacking civilians. It is by no means worthy of any kind of support. Their inability to differentiate between civilians and armed gangs that rule over them, whether recognised by the state or not, is a fundamental problem that international public opinion is concerned about.
Whether there can be some long-term political solution goes against the grain of the direction of the Israeli government. I don’t know what to tell you. In all likelihood, you will still have Hamas in Gaza in some form, whether there is a ceasefire or an escalation. Unless this all ends in Armageddon.
Q: Is there any force in Israel that can ensure that the prospect of cleansing diminishes?
It’s hard to say anything concrete as I am not on the ground. I don’t think there will be an order for the army to just enter and flatten the place. They might send soldiers in, but in a limited way – which will still be a disaster. Two ex-chiefs of staff of the centrist party have entered the government. So, there is a restraining force there, but it is tough to predict anything in operational terms.
Q: Protests as we speak?
Uri Gordon: At this moment, there aren’t a lot of protests. There are rocket sirens, a lot of horror and apprehension of what might be coming, and a desire for all this to end.
Mainstream common sense is much more right-wing than before, but there is also a lot of anger in Jewish society. There is, as I said, mutual aid and a common bond. The current government is right-wing on many levels. They have privatised and imposed wild neoliberal measures everywhere, which is also a reason for the backlash they will face soon.
Q: Palestinians are not allowed to pass into Egypt. What does this mean?
Uri Gordon: Evacuation into Egypt is what Israelis would want. Jordan accepting more refugees and emptying Gaza would be successful ethnic cleansing because it wouldn’t be temporary. Egypt refuses to accept refugees because the Palestinians would never be allowed back.
Q: Is there any political force that could overthrow the apartheid regime?
Uri Gordon: No. A centre-left government would still be Zionist, even if it might move in some progressive direction, do a prisoner exchange, accept negotiations, PA elections and some two-state solution or a confederation -that would all have to be internationally brokered by the superpowers. I don’t see how a government would not be a Zionist one. But there is now such a rift between the settler ultra-Orthodox and the centrist secular public that the centrist political forces have no appetite for being kept hostages of the settlers, to be constantly hijacked by the settlers’ willingness to keep the settlements going and putting so much effort money and forces into them.
But it’s hard to predict what will happen, not before the US elections, in any case. If Trump is back, it will be an even greater disaster. The war in Ukraine is still going on, right? It might all go nuclear before any of that is relevant. The result I’ll be satisfied with is no nuclear war this year.
Uri Gordon: The national question in Palestine/Israel (and trying to read events after October 7)
Uri Gordon’s book, Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto Press, 2008) remains one of the best recent essays, in the English language, on anarchist practice and theory. His voice, if we can express it this way, is one of lucidity, free of the ideologically induced ills of excessive optimism and/or pessimism.
In a late chapter of the book (Chapter 6) – “HomeLand: Anarchy and Joint Struggle in Palestine/Israel” – Gordon takes up the place of anarchism in the history of Palestine/Israel (which would no doubt call for an update, which he himself has stated in more recent work and interviews), as well as, the very difficult question, for anarchists, of nationalism and anti-colonialism, both in the face of Israeli settler-colonialism and more broadly.
We share below the last two parts of Chapter 6 from Gordon’s Anarchy Alive!, followed by a transcript of a recent interview with him – originally given in Greece – , published by Freedom News, on the more recent violence in Palestine/Israel.
ANARCHISM, NATIONALISM AND NEW STATES
With the conflict in Palestine/Israel so high on the public agenda, and with significant anarchist involvement in Palestine solidarity campaigns, it is surprising that the scant polemical anarchist contributions on the topic remain, at best, irrelevant to the concrete experiences and dilemmas of movements in the region. At their worst, they depart from anarchism all together. Thus the American Platformist Wayne Price (2002) descends into very crude terms when proclaiming:
In the smoke and blood of Israel/Palestine these days, one point should be clear, that Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinian Arabs are the oppressed. Therefore anarchists, and all decent people, should be on the side of the Palestinians. Criticisms of their leaderships or their methods of fighting are all secondary; so is recognition that the Israeli Jews are also people and also have certain collective rights. The first step, always, is to stand with the oppressed as they fight for their freedom.
Asking all decent people to see someone else’s humanity and collective rights as secondary to anything – whatever this is, this is not anarchism. Where does Price’s side-taking leave the distinction between the Israeli government and Israeli citizens, or solidarity with Israelis who struggle against the occupation and social injustice? These Israelis are certainly not taking action because they are ‘siding with the Palestinians’, but rather out of a sense of responsibility and solidarity. For the anarchists among them, it is also clearly a struggle for self-liberation from a militaristic, racist, sexist and otherwise unequal society. Price’s complete indifference to those who consciously intervene against the occupation and in multiple social conflicts within Israeli society rests on vast generalisations about how ‘blind nationalism leads each nation to see itself and the other as a bloc’. However, people who live inside a conflict are hardly that naive – the author is only projecting his own, outsiders’ black-and-white vision onto the conflict, and the side tagged as black is subject to crass and dehumanising language (see also Hobson, et al. 2001). Unfortunately, this kind of attitude has become a widespread phenomenon in the discourse of the European and American Palestine-solidarity movement and the broader left, representing what anarchist critics have been highlighting as a typically leftist form of Judeophobia or anti-Semitism (Austrian and Goldman 2003, Michaels 2004, Shot by both sides 2005).
Meanwhile, Price is so confident about having insight into the just and appropriate resolution that he permits himself to issue elaborate programs and demands, down to the finer details: unilateral Israeli withdrawal to 1967 lines, a Palestinian state and the right of return, ending up in ‘some sort of “secular-democratic” or “binational” communal federation’ with ‘some sort of self-managed non-capitalist economy’. Meanwhile ‘we must support the resistance of the Palestinian people. They have the right to self-determination, that is, to choose their leaders, their programs, and their methods of struggle, whatever we think’.
A blank cheque, then, to suicide bombings and any present or future Palestinian elite. The statement’s imperative tone also begs the question: to whom, precisely, are Price’s ‘we’ supposed to be issuing such elaborate demands? To the Israeli state, backed perhaps by the potent threat of embassy occupations and boycotts on academics, oranges and software? Or maybe to the international community, or to the American state for that matter? In all cases this would be a ‘politics of demand’ which extends undue recognition and legitimation to state power through the act of demand itself – a strategy far removed from anarchism.
Myopia towards what is happening on the ground is also a problem for Ryan Chiang McCarthy (2002). Though taking issue with Price’s failure to distinguish between peoples and their rulers, McCarthy’s call for solidarity with libertarian forces on the ground is unfortunately extended only to struggles which fall within his prejudiced Syndicalist gaze: ‘autonomous labor movements of Palestinian and Israeli workers … A workers’ movement that bypasses the narrow lines of struggle … and fights for the unmediated demands of workers’. Besides being entirely detached from reality – the prospects for autonomous labour movements are as bleak in Israel/Palestine as they are in the rest of the developed world – such a workerist fetish is also directly harmful. It reproduces the invisibility of the many important struggles in Palestine/Israel that do not revolve around work, and in which most anarchists happen to be participating. Meanwhile, stubborn class reductionism demarcates no less narrow lines of struggle than the ones which it criticises, and does the protagonists violence by forcing their actions into artificial frameworks. Thus Palestinians and Israelis are first and foremost ‘workers … manipulated by their rulers to massacre one another’; army refusal is a ‘sparkling act of class solidarity carried out across national lines’ (most refuseniks are middle-class, and self-declared Zionists to boot); while ‘the nationalist poison … drives Palestinian proletarian youth to destroy themselves and Israeli fellow workers in suicide bombings’. This may still be anarchism, but it is of a fossilised variety that forces obsolete formulas of class struggle on a reality that is far removed from such orientations.
The root of the problem displayed by these writings is that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict introduces complexities that are not easily addressed from a traditional anarchist standpoint. The tension between anarchists’ anti-imperialist commitments on the one hand, and their traditionally wholesale rebuttal of the state and nationalism on the other, would seem to leave them at an impasse regarding the national liberation struggles of occupied peoples. The lack of fresh thinking on the issue creates a position from which, it would seem, one can only fall back on the one-size-fits-all formulae. In order to understand why this is so, let me now look at anarchist critiques of nationalism.
Prevalent in anarchist literature is a distinction between the ‘artificial’ nationalism constructed by the state on the one hand, and the ‘natural’ feeling of belonging to a group that has shared ethnic, linguistic and/or cultural characteristics. Michael Bakunin (1953: 1871: 324) argued that the fatherland (‘patria’) represents a ‘manner of living and feeling’ – that is, a local culture – which is ‘always an incontestable result of a long historic development’. As such, the deep love of fatherland among the ‘common people … is a natural, real love’. However, the corruption of this love under statist institutions is what anarchists commonly rejected as nationalism – a primary loyalty to one’s nation-state. On this reading, nationalism is a reactionary ideological device intended to create a false unity of identity and interest between antagonistic classes within a single country, pitting the oppressed working classes of different states against each other and averting their attention from the struggle against their real oppressors. Thus for Bakunin ‘political patriotism, or love of the State, is not the faithful expression’ of the common people’s love for the fatherland, but rather an expression ‘distorted by means of false abstraction, always for the benefit of an exploiting minority’ (ibid.).
The most elaborate development of this theme was made by Gustav Landauer, who used the term ‘folk’ to refer to the type of organic local and cultural identity that is suppressed by state-sponsored nationalism and would return to prominence in a free society. He saw folk identity as a unique spirit (Geist) consisting of shared feelings, ideals, values, language and beliefs, which unifies individuals into a community (Landauer 1907). He also considered it possible to have several identities, seeing himself as a human being, a Jew, a German and a southern German. In his words,
I am happy about every imponderable and ineffable thing that brings about exclusive bonds, unities, and also differentiations within humanity. If I want to transform patriotism then I do not proceed in the slightest against the fine fact of the nation … but against the mixing up of the nation and the state, against the confusion of differentiation and opposition. (Landauer 1973/1910: 263)
Rudolf Rocker adopted Landauer’s distinction in his book Nationalism and Culture, where a folk is defined as ‘the natural result of social union, a mutual association of men brought about by a certain similarity of external conditions of living, a common language, and special characteristics due to climate and geographic environment’ (Rocker 1937: 200–1). However, Rocker clarifies that it is only possible to speak of the folk, as an entity, in terms that are specific to a given location and time. This is because, over time, ‘cultural reconstructions and social stimulation always occur when different peoples and races come into closer union. Every new culture is begun by such a fusion of different folk elements and takes its special shape from this’ (346). What Rocker calls the ‘nation’, on the other hand, is the artifi cial idea of a unified community of interest, spirit or race created by the state. Thus, like Landauer and Bakunin, it was the primary loyalty to one’s nation-state that Rocker condemned as ‘nationalism’. At the same time, these writers expected that with the abolition of the state, a space would be opened for the self-determination and mutually fertilising development of local folk cultures.
These attitudes to nationalism, however, had as their primary reference point the European nationalisms associated with existing states. The issue of nationalism in the national liberation struggles of stateless peoples received far less attention from anarchists. Kropotkin, for one, saw national liberation movements positively, arguing that the removal of foreign domination was a precondition to broader social struggle (Grauer 1994). On the other hand, many anarchists have argued that national liberation agendas only obfuscate the social struggle, and end up creating new local elites that continue the same patterns of hierarchy and oppression.
This tension comes very strongly to the fore in the case of Israel/ Palestine. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians want a state of their own alongside Israel. So how can anarchists reconcile their support for Palestinian liberation with their anti-statist principles? How can they promote the creation of yet another state in the name of ‘national liberation’? The attempt to distance oneself from support for Palestinian statehood is what motivates McCarthy’s workerist stance, as well as the British syndicalists of the Solidarity Federation who declare that ‘we support the fight of the Palestinian people … [and] stand with those Israelis who protest against the racist government … What we cannot do is support the creation of yet another state in the name of “national liberation”’ (Solidarity Federation 2002).
But there are two problems with such an attitude. First, it invites the charge of paternalism since it implies that anarchists are somehow better than Palestinians at discerning their real interests. Second, and more importantly, it leaves anarchists with nothing but empty declarations to the effect that ‘we stand with and support all those who are being oppressed by those who have the power to do so’ (ibid.), consigning anarchists to a position of irrelevance in the present tense. On the one hand, it is clear that the establishment of a capitalist Palestinian state through negotiations among existing and would-be governments would only mean the ‘submission of the Intifada to a comprador Palestinian leadership that will serve Israel’, as well as neo-liberal exploitation through initiatives like the Mediterranean Free Trade Area (Anarchist Communist Initiative 2004). On the other hand, by disengaging from concrete Palestinian demands for a state, the same Israeli anarchists are left with nothing to propose except ‘an entirely different way of life and equality for all the inhabitants of the region … a classless anarchist-communist society’ (ibid.). This is all well and good, but what happens in the meantime?
While anarchists surely can do something more specific in solidarity with Palestinians than just saying that ‘we need a revolution’, any such action would appear to be hopelessly contaminated by statism. The fact that anarchists nevertheless engage in solidarity with Palestinian communities, internationally and on the ground, requires us to grip this particular bull by its horns. Here, I believe there are at least four coherent ways in which anarchists can deal with the dilemma of support for a Palestinian state.
The first and most straightforward response is to acknowledge that there is indeed a contradiction here, but to insist that in this given situation solidarity is important even if it comes at the price of inconsistency. Endorsement of Palestinian statehood by anarchists can be seen as a necessary pragmatic position. It does nobody any good to effectively say to the Palestinians, ‘sorry, we’ll let you remain non-citizens of a brutal occupation until after we’re done abolishing capitalism’. A point to be made here is that states have a track record of hostility to stateless peoples, refugees and nomads. The Jews and the Palestinians are two among many examples of oppressed stateless peoples in the modern era. While many Jews were citizens (often second-class citizens) of European countries at the beginning of the twentieth century, an important precondition for the Holocaust was the deprivation of Jews’ citizenships, rendering them stateless. As a result, anarchists can recognise Palestinian statehood as the only viable way to alleviate their oppression in the short term. This amounts to a specific value judgement whereby anti-imperialist or even basic humanitarian concerns take precedence over an otherwise uncompromising anti-statism.
A second, different response argues that there is no contradiction at all in anarchist support for the establishment of a Palestinian state. This is simply because Palestinians are already living under a state – Israel – and that the formation of a new Palestinian state creates only a quantitative change and not a qualitative one. Anarchists object to the state as a general scheme of social relations – not to this or the other state, but to the principle behind them all. It is a misunderstanding to reduce this objection to quantitative terms; the number of states in the world adds or subtracts nothing from anarchists’ assessment of how closely the world corresponds to their ideals. Having one single world state, for example, would be as problematic for anarchists as the present situation (if not more so), although the process of creating one would have abolished some 190 states. So from a purely anti-statist anarchist perspective, for Palestinians to live under a Palestinian state rather than an Israeli state would be, at worst, just as objectionable. A Palestinian state, no matter how capitalist, corrupt or pseudo-democratic, would in any event be less brutal than an occupying Israeli state.
A third response, informed by Kropotkin’s view mentioned above, is that anarchists can support a Palestinian state as a strategic choice, a desirable stage in a longer-term struggle. No one can sincerely expect that the situation in Israel/Palestine will move from the present one to anarchy in one abrupt step. Hence, the establishment of a Palestinian state through a peace treaty with the Israeli state, although far from a real solution to social problems, may turn out to be a positive development on the way to more radical changes. The reduction of everyday violence on both sides could do a great deal to open up more political space for economic, feminist and environmental struggles, and would thus constitute a positive development from a strategic point of view. The establishment of a Palestinian state could form a bridgehead towards the fl owering of myriad social struggles, in Israel and in whatever enclave-polity emerges under the Palestinian ruling elite. For anarchists, such a process could be a signifi cant step forward in a longer-term strategy for the destruction of the Israeli, Palestinian, and all other states along with capitalism, patriarchy and so on.
A fourth and final response would be to alter the terms of discussion altogether, by arguing that whether or not anarchists support a Palestinian state is a moot point, and leads to a false debate. What exactly are anarchists supposed to do with their ‘support’? If the debate is to resolve itself in a meaningful direction, then the ultimate question is whether anarchists can and should take action in support of a Palestinian state. But what could such action possibly be, short of declarations, petitions, demonstrations and other elements of the ‘politics of demand’ that anarchists seek to transcend? One can hardly establish a state through anarchist direct action, and the politicians who will eventually decide on creating a Palestinian state are not exactly asking anarchists their opinion. Seen in this light, debates about whether anarchists should give their short-term ‘support’ to a Palestinian state sound increasingly ridiculous, since the only merit of such discussion would be to come up with a common platform. On this view, anarchists may take action in solidarity with Palestinians (as well as Tibetans, West Papuans and Sahrawis for that matter) without reference to the question of statehood. The everyday acts of resistance that anarchists join and defend in Palestine – e.g. removing roadblocks or defending olive harvesters from attacks by Jewish settlers – are immediate steps to help preserve people’s livelihoods and dignity, not a step towards statehood. Once viewed from a longer-term strategic perspective, anarchists’ actions have worthwhile implications whether or not they are attached to a statist agenda of independence.
For one thing, Israelis taking direct action alongside Palestinians is a strong public message in itself. The majority of the public certainly views Israeli anarchists as misguided, naive youth at best and as traitors at worst. The latter response happens because the joint Palestinian-Israeli struggle transgresses the fundamental taboos put in place by Zionist militarism. Alongside the living example of non-violence and cooperation between the two peoples, the struggle forces Israeli spectators to confront their dark collective traumas. Israelis who demonstrate hand-in-hand with Palestinians are threatening because they are afraid neither of Arabs nor of the Second Holocaust that they are supposedly destined to perpetrate. Notice how everything comes out when the anarchists are vilified by other Israelis: the fear of annihilation, the enemy as a calculated murderer, and victims’ guilt expatiated through the assertion of self-defence and just war as unexamined axioms. And this is threatening on a deeper level than any hole in the fence – but then again, anarchists didn’t get their reputation as trouble-makers for nothing.
ALTERNATIVES
In closing this chapter, I would like to take a more general look at the role of place-based identity and belonging in anarchist theory, and see whether any of it can apply to Israel/Palestine. While anarchists have traditionally rejected nationalism, the construction of the concept of the folk by writers such as Landauer and Rocker also has its limitations. For the idea of the folk assumes at least some degree of homogeneity, even if the term can be extended (as Rocker argues) to accommodate folk identities created by the mixing and fusion of cultures and population shifts over time. But in today’s world it is questionable how useful this concept is. The idea of collective local identity based on shared culture, language and spirit is irrelevant in many regions of the world, where centuries of colonialism and immigration have created multicultural populations that share very little in these terms. Can anarchists endorse a different form of belonging that can address this situation while resonating with their broader political perspectives?
Here, the idea of bioregionalism presents itself as a promising alternative. Bioregionalism is an approach to local identity that has achieved much currency in the radical environmental movement, and is based not on ethnic or political divisions but on the natural and cultural properties of a place. A bioregion is commonly defined as a continuous geographic area with unique natural features in terms of terrain, climate, soil, watersheds, plants and animals, as well as the human settlements and cultures that have developed in response to these local conditions. A bioregion is thus also a terrain of consciousness, as can be seen in indigenous peoples’ accounts of their connection to the land and in local knowledge and customs. As a result, the bioregionalist approach stresses an intimate relationship between people and their natural environment, promoting sustainability and local self-reliance instead of the alienated and monocultural lifestyles pervasive in modern industrial societies (Berg 1978, Andruss et al. 1990, Thayer 2003). According to Kirkpatrick Sale (1983),
To become ‘dwellers in the land’ … to fully and honestly come to know the earth, the crucial and perhaps only and all-encompassing task is to understand the place, the immediate, specifi c place, where we live … We must somehow live as close to it as possible, be in touch with its particular soils, its waters, its winds. We must learn its ways, its capacities, its limits. We must make its rhythms our patterns, its laws our guide, its fruits our bounty.
Since the early 1970s, bioregionalism has become the agenda of numerous organisations, communities, farmers, artists and writers. The Planet Drum Foundation in San Francisco was among the fi rst pioneers of the bioregional approach, publishing literature on the application of place-based ideas to environmental practices, cultural expression and politics. Other early organisations were the Frisco Bay Mussel Group in northern California and the Ozark Area Community Congress on the Kansas–Missouri border. Currently there are hundreds of similar groups in North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia (Berg 2002). Since 1984, ten North American Bioregional Congresses have taken place in the US and Canada (see www. bioregional-congress.org), and there is even a popular ‘BioRegional Quiz’ (Charles et al. 1981), with questions like:
• Trace the water you drink from precipitation to tap.
• Name 5 edible plants in your region and their season(s) of availability.
• How long is the growing season where you live?
• Name five resident and five migratory birds in your area.
• What species have become extinct in your area?
As can be seen, the bioregional approach is mostly concerned with ecological awareness, environmental restoration, local self-reliance and similar agendas. However, it also poses a powerful alternative – at least potentially – to both nationalist and ‘folkist’ approaches to identity. An identity based on connection to a local area does not contain any essentialist factors – it does not stipulate anything about the content of the personal and collective identities that can flourish within and alongside it. The only requirement is that such identities should be genuinely local and that they cohere with sustainable relationships between people and the land. As a result, individuals and groups can experience bioregional belonging while still holding multiple personal and collective identities in terms of occupation, language, ethnicity, lifestyle, spirituality, cultural taste, gender, sexual preference and so on. Bioregionalism is thus in line with anarchist demands for self-realisation and for the celebration of multiple and shifting identities.
The strongly decentralist and devolutionist agendas of bioregionalism should also make it immediately attractive to anarchists. Bioregions do not recognise arbitrary political boundaries and are unsuitable for control from above. The organisation of social and economic life according to bioregional principles calls for a high degree of local autonomy, as eco-feminist Helen Forsey argues:
Community people have a common urge to make their own decisions, control their own destinies, both as a group and as individuals … if control of decisions or resources is imposed from the outside, the balance and cycles of the community’s life are likely to be disrupted or destroyed. Without implying isolation, there needs to be a degree of autonomy which will permit the community to grow and fl ourish in the context of its own ecofeminist values. (Forsey 1990: 84–5)
However, bioregional proposals do not imply a parochial and separatist attitude. Since bioregions do not have clear borders but fl ow and melt into each other, a bioregional model is more likely to promote an ethos of cooperation and mutual aid in the stewardship of regional environments, based on both commonality and diversity. Bioregionalism, in sum, offers a viable and attractive alternative to both nationalist and ‘folkist’ approaches to collective local identity, while strongly resonating with broader anarchist perspectives.
Can any of this be seriously applied to the situation in Palestine/ Israel? The creation of a bioregional society is difficult enough as it is, since it requires a massive transformation in the way society is organised. After all, bioregionalism is incompatible not only with war and occupation but also with capitalism, racial and religious bigotry, consumerism, patriarchy and any number of other trenchant features of hierarchical society. Like anarchism itself, full-blown bioregionalism could only come about through some form of social revolution. But the prospects look especially bleak in a context like Israel/Palestine, where decades of occupation and armed conflict have left a heavy deposit of mutual fear and suspicion that would have to be overcome before the peaceable and gentle ideals of bioregionalism could come anywhere near realisation.
Amid the daily horrors of death and humiliation, and of mutual ignorance, fear and hatred on both sides, it is tempting to say something positive about the prospects for ‘real peace’ in the region. Perhaps the mould of ‘constructive direct action’ could be extended from building alternatives to capitalism to something like ‘grassroots peacemaking’ – projects that build community-to-community dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. Is this not an attractive idea? After all, even for dovish Israeli Jews the notion of peace is strongly associated with separation – ‘us here, them there’. This is why the Israeli government calls it the ‘separation’ barrier – and most of the Israeli ‘peace camp’ would be satisfied if the separation were only to overlap with the Green Line. In contrast, couldn’t direct dialogue and shared projects – ecological ones for example – go against the grain of separation, bypassing politicians to build peace from the bottom up? There are already, in fact, numerous and sometimes well-funded initiatives for dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli children, shared exhibitions of Palestinian and Israeli artists and the ‘Peace Team’ of Israeli and Palestinian footballers that became famous for its miserable losses in friendly games against champion European clubs. Inside Israel, the network of organisations for Jewish–Arab ‘coexistence’ already lists over 100 organisations, from lobbying and advocacy groups through educational and artistic projects and on to local citizens’ forums in mixed cities and regions.
Unfortunately, there are special complications that surround even the best-intentioned attempts of this kind. These are more serious than the fact that they can easily fall into the role of civil society initiatives which supplement rather than challenge basic political and social structures. The deeper problem, as seen by many Palestinian human rights groups and Israeli dissidents, is that such projects mask the realities of the region and present equality where there is none. In vain attempts to remain neutral, coexistence and dialogue projects end up using a language in which the situation seems to be a conflict between two peoples fighting over the same piece of land, and peace the result of a territorial compromise and safe face-to-face encounters between Palestinians and Israelis, especially youth. These coexistence initiatives, launched by Israeli NGOs and backed by international foundations, seem harmless at worst until we remember that this ‘outstretched hand for peace’ is coming from the citizens of the occupying power. However well-meaning, projects that aim to overcome mutual ignorance and suspicion and to heal collective traumas put the cart before the horse. They amount to a call for normalisation of relations between Palestinians and Israelis as if the occupation was already over. This is not only paternalistic, but also doomed to practical failure.
Can this Radical’s Catch 22 be transcended? It would seem that the practice of joint struggle does offer an alternative to the quaint helplessness of coexistence projects. American-Israeli anarchist Bill Templer (2003) tries to evoke one way out of the problem, in an article heavy with the catchwords of anti-capitalist language:
Reinventing politics in Israel and Palestine means laying the groundwork now for a kind of Jewish-Palestinian Zapatismo, a grassroots effort to ‘reclaim the commons’. This would mean moving towards direct democracy, a participatory economy and a genuine autonomy for the people; towards Martin Buber’s vision of ‘an organic commonwealth … that is a community of communities’. We might call it the ‘no-state solution’.
Templer’s optimism for such a project rests on the perception of a widespread crisis of faith in ‘neoliberal governmentality’, making Israel/Palestine ‘a microcosm of the pervasive vacuity of our received political imaginaries and the ruling elites that administer them … [but which] offers a unique microlaboratory for experimenting with another kind of polity’. While acknowledging the inevitability of a two-state settlement in the short term, he traces elements which are already turning Palestine/Israel into ‘an incubator for creating “dual power” over the middle term, “hollowing out” capitalist structures and top-down bureaucracies’.
Templer’s speculations may involve more than a bit of wishful thinking, but the relevant point is that unlike coexistence and dialogue for the sake of it, joint struggle does not imply normalisation. This is because it is clearly infused with antagonism towards the commanding logic of both the Israeli state, and the Palestinian parties and militias who condemn any dealings with Israelis. So while the creation and fostering of spaces which facilitate mutual aid between Palestinians and Israelis is indeed required, only such spaces which are ones of rebellion and struggle can honestly stand up to the charge of false normalisation and ‘coexistence’.
The joint struggle in the villages of the West Bank not only managed to crack the unquestioned consensus around the Segregation Barrier in the Israeli public. Far more significant cracks may have appeared in the intractable image of the conflict in the eyes of many Israelis. Israeli–Palestinian cooperation in militant but non-violent action is inherently powerful because it enacts a dramatic, 90-degree flip of perspective: the ‘horizontal’ imagery of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is displaced by the ‘vertical’ one of struggle between people and government. The Mas’ha camp was by itself an example of such a transformation. The encounter between Israelis and Palestinians engaging in a joint struggle against the construction of the segregation barrier in the village became a protracted face-to-face encounter, where members of both communities could meet each other as individuals and create a genuine, if temporary, community with no illusions about the impossibility of ending the occupation through grassroots action alone. For both sides, joint struggle can be an intense experience of togetherness, which by extension could create a model for future efforts – as these quotes from a Palestinian and an Israeli participant demonstrate (Sha’labi and Medicks 2003):
Nazeeh: We wanted to show that the Israeli people are not our enemies; to provide an opportunity for Israelis to cooperate with us as good neighbors and support our struggle … Our camp showed that peace will not be built by walls and separation, but by cooperation and communication between the two peoples living in this land. At Mas’ha Camp we lived together, ate together, and talked together 24 hours a day for four months. Our fear was never from each other, but only from the Israeli soldiers and settlers.
Oren: The young Israeli generation realizes that the world has changed. They saw the Berlin wall come down. They know that security behind walls is illusionary. Spending some time together in the camp, has proven to us all that real security lies in the acceptance of one another as equals, in respecting each other’s right to live a full, free life … [we struggle] to topple walls and barriers between peoples and nations, creating a world which speaks one language – the language of equal rights and freedom.
In contrast to both the logic of separation and harmless dialogue initiatives, joint resistance in Palestine/Israel remains an open arena for extending and pushing the boundaries of Israeli–Palestinian cooperation, in a struggle that despite its very imperfect conditions can still momentarily manifest the hope that Jews, Palestinians and others might one day live in this land together without classes, states or borders.
(All bibliographic references can be found in the full edition of Uri Gordon’s Anarchy Alive!, available at libcom.org.)
A lot of despair right now: Interview with an Israeli anarchist
Analysis, Oct 22nd
Below, Freedom reproduces a transcript of a talk with Uri Gordon on the current situation in Palestine and Israel organised by Infolibre Thessaloniki.
Uri Gordon is an Israeli anarchist who organised, among others, with the Dissent! Network, Indymedia, People’s Global Action and Anarchists Against the Wall. He is the author of Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory.
Freedom News mildly edited the following transcript.
Uri Gordon: Right now, the Gaza Strip is being starved, especially of fuel. I am still hopeful that there can be a ceasefire, de-escalation and a return of the hostages. Amongst the hostages are foreign nationals, including Americans, Germans, and other countries. Hopefully, those countries will do something to prevent any reckless ground assault that will result in the death of their own hostages, in addition to the suffering caused in Gaza already. The number of casualties in the Gaza Strip has far exceeded the number of Israelis killed on October 7th. There is a serious humanitarian crisis in the Strip, while sadly, in Israel, there is a mentality of revenge – many support this inhumane way of getting back at the whole population of Gaza.
Infolibre: After the Hamas attack and the call for revenge from the Israeli state, there is a blackmail of “taking sides” (=Hamas or IDF). Has this blackmail prevailed everywhere? Both amongst Arabs-Palestinians and amongst Israelis? As far as Palestinians are concerned, what is the currency of this polarisation in the West Bank, in Israel and in Gaza? And what is the situation for the Israelis in Israel? How are they responding?
Uri Gordon: This blackmail has now prevailed everywhere, both amongst Arab Palestinians and Israelis. Yet the war has polarised people. Israelis, despite the anger at their government and despite blaming it for what happened, those who only half-support or don’t support Netanyahu are now giving free rein to their genocidal fantasies. On social media, there is talk of “erasing Gaza”, that “Palestinians are ISIS, they are Nazis”. There is a belligerent atmosphere amongst Israelis. […] Israeli forces have arrested several hundred in the West Bank. The border with Lebanon is getting hotter; more fighters are being killed, which is all part of a broader scenario. There is a concern amongst Israelis that a ground assault will fall into a trap set by Hamas and supported by Hezbollah, that it would cost the lives of hundreds of soldiers and that it is very doubtful that it would lead to the rescue of the hostages. There have already been some directed attacks against the positions of Hamas leaders in addition to the much more widespread bombings of civilian areas in Gaza. But right now, talking about Palestinian citizens of Israel, I think there are fewer protests than before. They are feeling the extreme anger of the Jewish population at Hamas and, by extension, at all Palestinians.
Infolibre: In our country [Greece], the Jewish community was almost annihilated in the Second World War, and the remaining Jews have strong connections with the Israeli state. What about countries where there used to be progressive Israeli and Palestinian diaspora communities (e.g. the US) and they worked together? How are they dealing with the current situation?
Uri Gordon: I don’t know of any significant joint work being done by diasporic Jewish and Palestinian communities in the US. The communities are separated and scattered all over the US. There has been a demonstration of peace activists in Washington who demonstrated for a ceasefire, and I am sure there are actions on the micro level. Again, while there is on the ground a bi-national peace movement, it is small; you can find peace voices also amongst the families of the hostages, but all this is far from prominent.
Infolibre: Are there joint antiwar initiatives by Palestinians and Israelis? We saw limited coverage and only a few images of antiwar demonstrators. What are their demands? How can we support them?
Uri Gordon: There was a demo in Tel Aviv for the return of the hostages; it was relatively small. Then, a demo opposite the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv called for Netanyahu to quit. The father of a family who had been held hostage is now holding a permanent vigil in front of the building with some supporters and families. It has become a kind of protest camp.
Infolibre: What about the internal situation in Israel, where Netanyahu was confronting a huge popular unrest? Is there any organised plan by people who stand against the war that can change the dynamics and possibly lead to the de-escalation of the current situation?
Uri Gordon: In the centre-left and some other sections of society, there are all kinds of anger at the government. There is an awareness of the government’s incompetence, of the fact that it is filled with criminals and has decimated all public services, wasting money on settlements and ultra-Orthodox institutions. So it is clear that when we come out of this, and there are elections, the Far Right will be done with. It’s something like what we’ve seen in Poland recently. But before that happens, there will be a lot of suffering if this doesn’t escalate into something even worse.
Infolibre: How does the current situation affect the army objectors and court cases of Israeli anarchists on trial for solidarity actions for Palestinians (e.g. Jonathan Pollak)?
Uri Gordon: I don’t think there has been any direct effect on army objectors in Israel and court cases of people like Jonathan Pollak. Again, the objectors are just a few individuals at the moment. These are not prominent issues in the public sphere or in Israeli media. The levels of army refusal are much lower today than they were maybe twenty or fifteen years ago.
Infolibre: There is a ton of fake news being produced about the war. We have the feeling that 972 mag is a good source of information. Do you agree? Any other sources?-Which is the primary information that people from Israel have access to? Can they find out about the casualties in the Gaza Strip?
Uri Gordon: 972 mag is a pretty good source of information. You get reports from Oren Ziv, Ruwaida Kamal and other Jewish and Palestinian writers. They have people in Gaza, and you can see what’s going on in the West Bank on their website (61 Palestinians killed there in the past week). I also look at Reuters, AP, and Al Jazeera for everyday developments.
Infolibre: Are you afraid that the current developments are part of a broader framework of interstate conflicts and regional geopolitical antagonism? Which countries have shown interest in the escalation of the conflict to profit from the war? Are there any countries against the mass killings?
Uri Gordon: It falls into what we know as the current axes of power in the world. All this is related to the tensions between the US and Iran, and Iran’s links to Russia. Internationally speaking, the Hamas attack can also be seen to function as sabotage of the US-Israel-Saudi triangle that Biden has been trying to develop in the last months – it looks like the Hamas succeeded in doing that- and yes, Iran probably feels emboldened now. It is crucial that this doesn’t escalate into a wider conflict involving Lebanon, the US, Iran, Russia, and, of course, if there is further massive loss of life in Gaza, if there is some settler outrage in the West, all of this will contribute to an escalation. Let’s see if the superpowers, together with Egypt and Jordan, will intervene to broker an immediate ceasefire to prevent further death and destruction in Gaza, and stop the conflict from escalating into a war with Israel and Lebanon. But we are on the brink of an explosive situation that could escalate. Because of the scale of the conflict, almost everyone knows someone affected – killed, injured, having lost someone.
Q & A with the audience
Q: Can we speak of any significant contacts in Gaza, Israel, and the West Bank between Jews and Palestinians that show a way forward?
Uri Gordon: Nothing passes across Gaza. There are exceptions. I know personally that one of the women who Hamas took hostage was in direct contact with women in Gaza. Some individuals have cross-border connections created years ago, and there haven’t been any opportunities for individual meetings. There are, of course, Israeli solidarity activists in the West Bank, like the Rabbis for Human Rights, people who used to be involved with the Anarchists Against the Wall and other solidarity initiatives, especially in the eastern part of the West Bank where there have been a lot of settler incursions into pastoral lands, and attacks on Palestinian shanties as well. But it is a tiny movement. What used to be, until about 15 or 20 years ago, an impressive, consistent, daily direct-action movement in the West Bank is not really there anymore. Now, it’s all rather about documentation, but the settlers and the (IDF) army have gotten away with their ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.
The only alternative is a binational Arab-Jewish movement. But there is a lot of despair right now, and there is a sense that almost nobody wants to listen to the other. Yet one thing worth mentioning is spontaneous mutual aid springing up where the government is not there. The State is not fulfilling its function anywhere. The response to the Hamas attack was an absolute Israeli fiasco in terms of intelligence; it took 8 hours for the army to respond, people were completely abandoned, the whole thing was a total mess, and people were scared. So the people themselves organised and set up kindergartens and helped each other. That was something very anarchistic. I am not saying the people are anarchists, but here are the seeds of mutual aid, which is something to be positive about. I think there is an absolute loss of legitimacy of the Netanyahu government – he is not taking any responsibility, and they continue with lies and fake news – the government will pay the price.
Q: What has happened to the unrest and the protests against Netanyahu over the last few months?
Uri Gordon: Demos are suspended for now, but the anger is still there. People called for military reserve duty continue to live through the way; they also continue to be very angry at the government and Netanyahu. It is not that they suddenly understand Palestinian human rights or that a ground assault would be a total disaster. It’s hard to tap into “public opinion” right now; it depends on which corner of the media you are looking at, but it seems that there will be a massive backlash against the Far Right.
Q: Gaza was already an open prison. What about now?
Uri Gordon: The situation is dire. Israel has cut off fuel supplies needed to run hospitals and water desalination works. There are food shortages, thousands of people have been killed, and entire neighbourhoods have been flattened. The Far Right is spewing fantasies of flattening Gaza and sending them all to Egypt… let’s hope it won’t happen. Let’s hope there is a ceasefire and no further escalation and exchange of hostages before the Israeli army proceeds to commit atrocious crimes in even more extreme ways.
There has been massive displacement. Hundreds of thousands of people have already moved to Gaza’s South. As far as I know, there are still 100,000 in the city of Gaza, so there is potential for more loss of life and civilian casualties. At least, I hear some food supplies are being transported to the Strip through the Egyptian border.
Q: You said the Far Right will pay the price. What about the political currency of Hamas right now? What will be the political future of the Gaza Strip in the case of a ceasefire?
Uri Gordon: We have to remember it has always been an explicit policy of the Israeli government to maintain Hamas in Gaza, to continue passing money to Hamas in Gaza, to maintain the split between Hamas and Fatah, and to prevent any Palestinian unity and the establishment of any kind of Palestinian state. Netanyahu is on record having said in government meetings that whoever wants to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state has to maintain Hamas and strengthen Hamas. I think the idea that Hamas can just be wiped out for some other regime to be installed in Gaza is impossible without some comprehensive, internationally brokered peace settlement, or at least a longer-term settlement. But I don’t know of any superpower with the ability or the interest to impose it right now.
I have no sympathy for Hamas, a theocratic organisation that has no qualms about attacking civilians. It is by no means worthy of any kind of support. Their inability to differentiate between civilians and armed gangs that rule over them, whether recognised by the state or not, is a fundamental problem that international public opinion is concerned about.
Whether there can be some long-term political solution goes against the grain of the direction of the Israeli government. I don’t know what to tell you. In all likelihood, you will still have Hamas in Gaza in some form, whether there is a ceasefire or an escalation. Unless this all ends in Armageddon.
Q: Is there any force in Israel that can ensure that the prospect of cleansing diminishes?
It’s hard to say anything concrete as I am not on the ground. I don’t think there will be an order for the army to just enter and flatten the place. They might send soldiers in, but in a limited way – which will still be a disaster. Two ex-chiefs of staff of the centrist party have entered the government. So, there is a restraining force there, but it is tough to predict anything in operational terms.
Q: Protests as we speak?
Uri Gordon: At this moment, there aren’t a lot of protests. There are rocket sirens, a lot of horror and apprehension of what might be coming, and a desire for all this to end.
Mainstream common sense is much more right-wing than before, but there is also a lot of anger in Jewish society. There is, as I said, mutual aid and a common bond. The current government is right-wing on many levels. They have privatised and imposed wild neoliberal measures everywhere, which is also a reason for the backlash they will face soon.
Q: Palestinians are not allowed to pass into Egypt. What does this mean?
Uri Gordon: Evacuation into Egypt is what Israelis would want. Jordan accepting more refugees and emptying Gaza would be successful ethnic cleansing because it wouldn’t be temporary. Egypt refuses to accept refugees because the Palestinians would never be allowed back.
Q: Is there any political force that could overthrow the apartheid regime?
Uri Gordon: No. A centre-left government would still be Zionist, even if it might move in some progressive direction, do a prisoner exchange, accept negotiations, PA elections and some two-state solution or a confederation -that would all have to be internationally brokered by the superpowers. I don’t see how a government would not be a Zionist one. But there is now such a rift between the settler ultra-Orthodox and the centrist secular public that the centrist political forces have no appetite for being kept hostages of the settlers, to be constantly hijacked by the settlers’ willingness to keep the settlements going and putting so much effort money and forces into them.
But it’s hard to predict what will happen, not before the US elections, in any case. If Trump is back, it will be an even greater disaster. The war in Ukraine is still going on, right? It might all go nuclear before any of that is relevant. The result I’ll be satisfied with is no nuclear war this year.