 The fact that Israelactually benefits from violating international law and receives “red

carpet”treatment from the West means that we all have a role to play in ending
theinjustice that the Palestinians are facing. The injustice in Palestine hasramifications
throughout the world. From Ferguson to Athens, via Mexico,it is clear that many
governments are reproducing the tools that Israel usesto repress and oppress the
Palestinians.
 Palestinians arenow used as guinea pigs for experimentation.
 Palestine is slowly becoming global—a social issue that all movementsfighting for
social justice need to embrace.

Chapter One
The Old and New Conversations
Ilan Pappé
 we divided our conversation into three parts
1. a discussionon the past, focusing on understanding Zionism as a historical
phenomenon
2. a conversation about the present, with a particular focus on the validity
anddesirability of applying the apartheid model to Israel and on the efficacy
ofthe BDS movement as a major strategy of solidarity with the
Palestinianpeople
3. talking about the future, we discussed the choicebetween a two-state and a
one-state solution
 The fragmentation of the liberation movement itself,its apparent lack of clear
leadership, and the ambiguity that characterizesthe Israeli peace camp all contribute
to this dissension.

The Old Peace Orthodoxy and Its

Challengers
 These days the ever-growing camp of activists for peace and justice inPalestine is
facing several paradoxes that are hard to reconcile.
1. The first paradox is the gap between the dramatic change in world
publicopinion on the issue of Palestine on the one hand, and the continued
supportfrom the political and economic elites in the West for the Jewish state
on the other (and hence the lack of any impact of that change on the reality on
theground).
 While in the past, the activists could have attributed this gap to ameasure of
sophistication behind the Israeli actions that hid well theuncanny, and quite often
criminal, Israeli policies, this could not have beenthe case in our century.
 These days, it is very easy to expose not only the Israeli policybut also the racist
ideology behind it.
 The activists’ efforts and thisdeplorable policy produced a dramatic shift in Western,
includingAmerican, public opinion; but so far this shift has failed to reach the
upperechelons of society and therefore on the ground Israel continues—unabatedand
uninterrupted—its policies of dispossession and does not seem to bepaying a price for
its policies.
 2. The second gap, indeed paradox, is the one between this widely heldnegative
image of Israel on the one hand, and the very positive image itsown Jewish
society has of the state.
 Israel’s relative economic prosperitystill promises that the most isolated state in the
Organisation for EconomicCo-operation and Development is regarded by its own
Jewish citizens as athriving state that has ended the Arab-Israeli conflict and has only
tostruggle with residues of the Western “war against terrorism” in the form ofHamas
and Hezbollah (but even that is not deemed a crucial issue in thewake of the “Arab
Spring”).
 Israel does suffer from social and cultural riftsand cracks, but they have been muted
for the time being by the invention of a phony threat of an Iranian nuclear war and
other such scenarios that alsoensure the uninhibited flow of money to the army and
security services

a) This sense of success of course is not shared by the Palestinian citizensof Israel
in the Galilee and the al-Naqab (the Negev) who continue to sufferfrom
expropriation of their land and demolition of their houses and areexposed to a
new set of racist laws that undermine their most essential andelementary
rights.
b) The Palestinians in the West Bank are still humiliated ona daily basis at
checkpoints; arrested without trial, losing their lands tosettlers and the Israeli
Land Authority; and barred from traveling to nearbyvillages and towns due to
the systems of apartheid walls and barriers thatencircle their homes. Those
who try pay with their lives or are arrested.
c) Andthe people of Gaza are still subjected to the barbaric combination of
siegeand bombardment and shooting in the biggest open human jail upon
earth.
d) And of course one should not forget that millions of Palestinian refugeesstill
languish in camps while their right of return seems to be totally ignoredby the
global powers that be.

3. The third paradox is that while specific Israeli policies are severelycriticized
and condemned, the very nature of the Israeli regime and theideology that
produces these policies are not targeted by the solidaritymovement.
 There is no demonstration against Zionism,because even the European Parliament
regards such a demonstration as anti-Semitic. Imagine, in the days of supremacist
South Africa, if you werenot allowed to demonstrate against the apartheid regime
itself, but onlyagainst the Soweto massacre or any other particular atrocity committed
bythe South African government.

4. The tale of Palestine from the beginning untiltoday is a simple story of

colonialism and dispossession.
 the story of Palestine has been told before:European settlers coming to a foreign land,
settling there, and eithercommitting genocide against or expelling the indigenous
people. TheZionists have not invented anything new in this respect. But
Israelsucceeded nonetheless, with the help of its allies everywhere, in building
amultilayered explanation that is so complex that only Israel can understandit. Any
 interference from the outside world is immediately castigated asnaïve at best or anti-
Semitic at worst.
 These paradoxes at times have frustrated, understandably, the solidaritymovement
with Palestine. It is indeed difficult to challenge establishedpowers and interests when
they refuse to yield to the moral voice of civilsocieties and their agendas. But there is
always a need to think hard aboutwhether more can be done in those spaces and
areas in which non-elitegroups have the power to impact and change the conversation
in effectiveways.
 In 1982, in the wake of Israel’s first invasion of Lebanon, Edward Saidwrote an article
titled “Permission to Narrate” in which he called upon thePalestinians to extend their
struggle into the realm of representation andhistorical versions or narratives. The
actual balance of political, economic,and military powers did not mean, he asserted,
that the disempowered didnot possess the ability to struggle over the production of
knowledge.
 Academic Palestinian historiography and the “newhistory” in Israel has succeeded in
debunking some of Israel’s more absurd claims about what happened in 1948 and to a
lesser extent had been able torefute the depiction of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO) as apurely terrorist organization
 The new dictionary containsdecolonization,regime change,one-statesolution.
However, before presenting the entries in the new dictionary, I wouldlike to look more
closely at the waning of the old one still dominating theconversation about Palestine
among diplomats, academics, politicians, andactivists in the West. I call this discourse
“The Dictionary of the Peace Orthodoxy”.

The Challenge to Peace Orthodoxy

 The Dictionary of the Peace Orthodoxy sprang from an almost religiousbelief in the
two-state solution. The partition of the land of Palestine (byallocating 80 percent of
the land to Israel and 20 percent to the Palestinians)was thought to be a feasible
target that could be achieved with the help ofinternational diplomacy and a change
within the Israeli society.
 Two fullysovereign states would live next to each other and agree on how to solve
thePalestine refugee problem and would decide jointly what kind of aJerusalem there
would be. There was also a wish to see Israel more of astate of all its citizens and less
as a Jewish state that retains its Jewishcharacter
 This vision was clearly based on the desire to help the Palestinians onthe one hand and
on realpolitik considerations on the other. It was, and is,driven by oversensitivity to
the wishes and ambitions of the powerful Israeliside and by exaggerated consideration
for the international balance ofpower.
 Mostusers of the language that surrounds the two-state solution as the
idealsettlement are probably sincere when employing it.
 Expressionsand phrases like “a land for two people,” “the peace process,” “the Israel-
Palestine conflict,” “the need to stop the violence on both sides,”“negotiations,” or
“the two-state solution” come straight out of acontemporary version of Orwell’s1984.
Yet this language is advanced even by people who would find this kind of a settlement
morally repugnant andunsatisfactory, but who see no other realistic way to bring an
end to theoppressive Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the siege on the
GazaStrip.
  But this orthodox view is slowly losing ground in the activist world.
 The emergence of the BDS movement, through the call for such action byPalestinian
civil society inside and outside of Palestine, the growinginterests and support for the
one-state solution, and the emergence of aclearer, albeit small, anti-Zionist peace
camp in Israel, has provided analternative thinking
 The new movement, which is supported by activists all around the worldand inside
Israel and Palestine, is modeled on the anti-apartheid solidaritymovement. This has
become clear by the prominence of BDS as the maintactic on campuses during Israel
Apartheid Week—apartheidnow anacceptable and common term used by student
activists on behalf of thePalestine cause.
 Settler colonialism is a conceptual fine-tuning on the theories andhistories of
colonialism. Settler movements that sought a new life and identity in already inhabited
countries were not unique to Palestine. In theAmericas, in the southern tip of Africa,
and in Australia and New Zealand white settlers destroyed the local population by
various means, foremostamong them genocide, to re-create themselves as the owners
of the countryand reinvent themselves as its native population.
 The application of thisdefinition—settler colonialism—to the case of Zionism is now
quitecommon.
 This new model highlights the significant points of difference betweenthe peace
orthodoxy and the new movement.
 The new movement relates tothe whole of historical Palestine as the land that needs
support and change.In this view, the whole of Palestine is an area that was and is
colonized andoccupied in one way or another by Israel, and in that area Palestinians
aresubject to various legal and oppressive regimes emanating from the
zionism sameideological source: ZIONISM. It stresses particularly the link between theideology
and Israel’s current positions on demography and race as the majorobstacle for peace
and reconciliation in Israel and Palestine.
 Since 2010,the Israeli legislation in the Knesset—demanding loyalty to a Jewish
statefrom the Palestinian citizens, codifying (thus-far) informal discrimination
inwelfare benefits, land rights, and job hiring policies against the Palestinianminority—
clearly has exposed Israel as an overtly racist and APARTHEID STATE.
Apartheid  The Green Line that created different classes of Palestinians (those insideIsrael and
state those in the occupied territories) is slowly disappearing becausethe same policies of
ethnic cleansing are enacted on both sides of the line.In fact, the more sophisticated
oppression of the Palestinian citizens inside Israel looks at times worse than the
oppression of residents living underdirect or indirect military rule in the West Bank.
 The activist and the scholarly depiction of Zionism as a settler-colonialist movement
and the state of Israel as an apartheid state alsodetermine the mechanism of change.
For the orthodoxy that mechanism isthe peace process, as if Israel and Palestine were
once two independentstates and Israel invaded part of Palestine, from which it has to
withdrawfor the sake of peace.
 The new approach proposes the decolonization of Israel/Palestine andthe substitution
of the present Israeli regime with democracy for all.
 The new approach proposes a paradigm shift for thesolidarity movement, which
hopefully will gain credence among those inpower and in particular those who are
engaged with the question ofPalestine and peace.
 By adopting a new discourse, the activists can strengthen their commitmenttoward
struggling against the ideology behind the current Israeli abuses andviolations of
 human and civil rights, whether they take place inside Israel orin the Occupied
Territories
 I have divided the entries into three different temporal zones.
1. One zonerelates to the way the alternative activist perspective views the past
ingeneral with its particular focus on how to define Zionism and Israel’sactions
in the past.
2. The second zone relates to the new definition of Israeltoday, mainly as an
apartheid state, and the implications for activism, inparticular outside of Israel
and Palestine, of such a definition. This sparks avery relevant conversation
about the importance and role of the BDSmovement and the various Israel
Apartheid Weeks held on campusesaround the world.
3. The third zone relates to the future—what are thealternatives to the dismal
and ineffective attempts to move the peaceprocess forward on the basis of a
two-state solution

23/192

The New Dictionary: The Past

 The reassertion of the “Zionism as colonialism” equation is critica because
o it best explains the Israeli policies of Judaization inside Israel andsettlement in
the West Bank,
o it is consistent with the waythe early Zionists perceived their Project
 The Hebrew verble-hitnahelorle-hityashevand the Hebrew nouns hitanchalut and
hitayasvut were used ever since 1882 by the Zionistmovement and later the state of
Israel to describe the takeover of land inPalestine.
 Their accurate translation into English is “to settle,” “tocolonize,” “settlement,” and
“colonization,” respectively.
 After the 2nd World War, the Zionist movement and later the state of Israel looked for
waysof dissociating the Hebrew terminology from the colonialist one and startedto use
more universal and positive language to describe their policies.
 Inevitable comparison between the situations in Palestine and inSouth Africa.
 If this were to succeed (understanding of colonialism), the media wouldfollow suit. The
task is not easy, but if this message were conveyedeffectively, we could then hope that
every decent person in the West, as inthe time of colonialism, would not stand on the
side of the oppressiveideology and instead would identify with its victims and deem
their struggleas anticolonialist. This particular new discourse is likely to be branded by
the Israelis asanti-Semitic.
Antisemitismo
 any criticism, even a soft one, of Israel isregarded by the state as akin to anti-Semitism.
 Anyone who does not subscribe to the Israeli version of a two-state solution is
suspected of being an anti-Semite. TheIsraeli version is a Jewish state next to two
bantustans, divided into twelveenclaves in the West Bank, and contained in a huge
ghetto in the Gaza Strip,with no connection between the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip, and run by asmall municipality in Ramallah operating as the seat of
government.Official Israel insists that in the interest of national security a
Palestinianstate.
The Present: The Apartheid State of Israel
25/192