Occupation
by
Bureaucracy
By Saree
Makdisi
27/06/08
"Dissident
Voice" -- --
A cease-fire
went into
effect in
Gaza last
week,
offering
some respite
from the
violence
that has
killed
hundreds of
Palestinians
and five
Israelis in
recent
months. It
will do
nothing,
however, to
address the
underlying
cause of the
Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
Intermittent
spectacular
violence may
draw the
world’s
attention to
the occupied
Palestinian
territories,
but our
obsession
with
violence
actually
distracts us
from the
real nature
of Israel’s
occupation,
which is its
smothering
bureaucratic
control of
everyday
Palestinian
life.
This is an
occupation
ultimately
enforced by
tanks and
bombs, and
through the
omnipresent
threat, if
not
application,
of violence.
But its
primary
instruments
are
application
forms,
residency
permits,
population
registries
and title
deeds. On
its own, no
cease-fire
will relieve
the
beleaguered
Palestinians.
Gaza is
virtually
cut off from
the outside
world by
Israeli
power.
Elsewhere,
in the West
Bank and
East
Jerusalem,
the ongoing
Israeli
occupation
comprehensively
infuses all
the normally
banal
activities
of
Palestinians’
everyday
lives:
applying for
permission
to access
one’s own
land;
applying for
what Israel
regards as
the
privilege —
rather than
the right —
of living
with one’s
spouse and
children;
applying for
permission
to drive
one’s car;
to dig a
well; to
visit
relatives in
the next
town; to
visit
Jerusalem;
to go to
work; to
school; to
university;
to hospital.
There is
hardly any
dimension of
everyday
life in
Palestine
that is not
minutely
managed by
Israeli
military or
bureaucratic
personnel.
Partly, this
occupation
of everyday
life enables
the Israelis
to maintain
their
vigilant
control over
the
Palestinian
population.
But it also
serves the
purpose of
slowly,
gradually
removing
Palestinians
from their
land,
forcing them
to make way
for Jewish
settlers.
Just in
2006, for
example,
Israel
stripped
1,363
Jerusalem
Palestinians
of the right
to live in
the city in
which many
of them were
born. It did
this not by
dramatically
forcing
dozens of
people at a
time onto
trucks and
dumping them
at the city
limits, but
rather by
quietly
stripping
them, one by
one, of
their
Jerusalem
residency
papers.
This in turn
was enabled
by a series
of
bureaucratic
procedures.
While Israel
continues to
violate
international
law by
building
exclusively
Jewish
settlements
in East
Jerusalem,
it rarely
grants
building
permits to
Palestinian
residents of
the same
city. Since
1967, the
third of
Jerusalem’s
population
that is
Palestinian
has been
granted just
9 percent of
the city’s
official
housing
permits. The
result is a
growing
abundance of
housing for
Jews and a
severe
shortage of
housing for
non-Jews —
i.e.,
Palestinians.
In fact, 90
percent of
the
Palestinian
territory
Israel
claimed to
have annexed
to Jerusalem
after 1967
is today
off-limits
to
Palestinian
development
because the
land is
either
already
built on by
exclusively
Jewish
settlements
or being
reserved for
their future
expansion.
Denied
permits,
many
Palestinians
in Jerusalem
build
without
them, but at
considerable
risk: Israel
routinely
demolishes
Palestinian
homes built
without a
permit. This
includes
over 300
homes in
East
Jerusalem
demolished
between 2004
and 2007 and
18,000
Palestinian
homes in the
occupied
territories
demolished
since 1967.
One
alternative
has been to
move to the
West Bank
suburbs and
commute to
Jerusalem.
The wall
cutting off
East
Jerusalem
from the
West Bank
and thereby
separating
tens of
thousands of
Jerusalem
Palestinians
from the
city of
their birth
has made
that much
more
difficult.
And it too
has its
risks:
Palestinians
who cannot
prove to
Israel’s
satisfaction
that
Jerusalem
has
continuously
been their
“center of
life” have
been
stripped of
their
Jerusalem
residency
papers.
Without
those
papers, they
will be
expelled
from
Jerusalem,
and confined
to one of
the
walled-in
reservoirs —
of which
Gaza is
merely the
largest
example —
that Israel
has
allocated as
holding pens
for the
non-Jewish
population
of the holy
land.
The
expulsion of
half of
Palestine’s
Muslim and
Christian
population
in what
Palestinians
call the
nakba
(catastrophe)
of 1948 was
undertaken
by Israel’s
founders in
order to
clear space
in which to
create a
Jewish
state.
The nakba
did not end
60 years
ago,
however: It
continues to
this very
day, albeit
on a smaller
scale. Yet
even ones
and twos
eventually
add up.
Virtually
every day,
another
Palestinian
joins the
ranks of the
millions
removed from
their native
land and
denied the
right of
return.
Their long
wait will
end — and
this
conflict
will come to
a lasting
resolution —
only when
the futile
attempt to
maintain an
exclusively
Jewish state
in what had
previously
been a
vibrantly
multi-religious
land is
abandoned.
Separation
will always
require
threats or
actual
violence; a
genuine
peace will
come not
with more
separation,
but with the
right to
return to a
land in
which all
can live as
equals. Only
a single
democratic,
secular and
multicultural
state offers
that hope to
Israelis and
Palestinians,
to Muslims,
Jews and
Christians
alike.
Saree
Makdisi, a
professor of
English and
comparative
literature
at UCLA,
writes often
about the
Middle East
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