“Whoever occupies territory is responsible for the needs of the population in it. That’s simply how it is” – this is the quote next to the photo of journalist Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps in an advertisement for the “Relevant” website. Why did Phelps-Elbaz bother to explain the obvious? Because Israel has invented an international ploy for itself: it is possible to occupy territory, control it security-wise, yet completely shirk responsibility for the needs of the occupied civilian population.

Although the ploy is not easy to execute, with a bit of creativity and chutzpah one can certainly become an invisible occupier. To achieve this, of course, one needs to find a partner willing to be dazzled by an original combination of flattery, false promises, and threats. This is what happened in 1993, when retired Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin met the legendary leader of the Palestinian people, Yasser Arafat. Rabin convinced Arafat to sign the Oslo Accords with the unwritten promise that one day the Palestinians would receive a state. Thus began the bloody saga that culminated on October 7, 2024.

The most terrible aspect of the Oslo Accords was that they tainted the word “peace.” Although Rabin, Peres, and Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, it was for an agreement that created a reality that did not fulfil the aspirations of either the Palestinians or the Israelis. In fact, the Oslo Accords provided fertile ground for the growth of the twin phenomena we have come to know: the extreme right in the form of Netanyahu and the settlers, and Hamas, which opposed Oslo for the opposite reasons. The Israeli right wants a Greater Israel, and Hamas wants Palestine from the river to the sea. Thus, for thirty years, extremists have taken over Israeli and Palestinian internal politics. The word “occupation” disappeared from the Israeli lexicon, and Israel disappeared from the Palestinian lexicon. Israelis and Palestinians stopped communicating, each side accusing the other of nationalist extremism.

While the Israeli left invented Oslo, the Israeli right, despite initial vehement opposition, did everything to maintain it, finally recognizing its advantages. The Israeli left fully supported Ariel Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, and the Israeli right vigorously opposed it. However, after Hamas expelled the Palestinian Authority from Gaza, the right again embraced this new arrangement: the existence of two separate, divided, and conflicting Palestinian entities eliminated any future danger of a political settlement.

The Israeli left also adapted to the new situation, and when Bibi’s right-wing brought “regional peace” with the Gulf states, it was the left that got excited about it, even though it came at the expense of a political solution with the Palestinians. Things reached a point where left and right united in the “government for change,” headed by Bennet-Lapid which lasted only one year. What characterized it was a mutual agreement to give up in advance on any “ideological” agreement, which is a euphemism for the Palestinian issue. They thought they could fight Netanyahu without a political programme and without ideology.

Another party that did everything to uphold the Oslo Accords was the Palestinian Authority. Without its consent the agreements could not have lasted until this very day. Thus, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) swallowed the bitter pills of settlement construction; the separation wall; checkpoints; the “hilltop” settler youth; the dispossession in south Hebron hills, and the severe violations of Palestinian human and civil rights. Abu Mazen repeatedly declared that security coordination with Israel was sacred. He quickly became a corrupt dictator, disconnected from his people, and primarily concerned with the privileges of his close associates.

It seems that the American perception dictates that whoever lives in the Middle East must come to terms with the existing autocratic regimes there when there is not a single democratic regime to be found.

Hamas also accepted the arrangement but demanded special conditions befitting its status. While Israel had full control over the West Bank, the disengagement from Gaza and the absence of an Israeli presence there created a unique situation where Hamas became the sole and all-powerful ruler under the envelope of Israeli occupation. Gaza did not separate from Israel; instead, Israel became entirely dependent on Hamas. It acceded to all its demands, from Qatari suitcases stuffed with money through close ties with Iran, the construction of an elaborate tunnel network, turning UNRWA into its executive arm, transforming schools into hotbeds of Islamic brainwashing, and every hospital into a military headquarters. Israelis became so addicted to Oslo that the commanders of the women surveillance soldiers on the Gaza border treated their warnings about Hamas’ invasion preparations with complete disdain and ignored them.

After October 7th, when Israel justly mourns the fate of the murdered, kidnapped, and displaced, when Gaza has become a battlefield with thousands of men, women, and children dead and wounded amidst an ongoing humanitarian crisis of immense proportions, both sides, the Israeli left and Hamas, want to continue maintaining the arrangement that led to this disaster. A long line of retired generals, speaking on behalf of the Israeli protest movement, emphatically tell the press that the war must stop. Retired general Israel Ziv said in an interview with Channel 12 what Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz have not yet dared to say explicitly, “It seems that Gaza will be controlled by some sort of coalition, and that unfortunately Hamas will be a part of it.”

This is in essence the proposal in dispute between Defence Minister Gantz and Netanyahu. Gantz expressed strong opposition to the establishment of an Israeli military government in Gaza, which he perceives as a national disaster. The alternative he proposes: “The day after Hamas can only be achieved through the control of Palestinian forces with international supervision, which would serve as an alternative to Hamas.” The problem is that any Palestinian faction that takes responsibility for Gaza will depend on Hamas’s consent, as described by Ret. General Ziv above.

This formula is promoted by the Biden administration, which sees it as a magic solution to all of Israel’s pains – releasing all the captives, normalization with Saudi Arabia, an agreement with Hezbollah in Lebanon and with Iran regarding its nuclear program and securing shipping routes in the Red Sea. It seems that the American perception dictates that whoever lives in the Middle East must come to terms with the existing autocratic regimes there when there is not a single democratic regime to be found. All that remains is to try to contain extreme Islam in its Iranian or Saudi version. This is the essence of American policy not only in the Middle East. According to this model, Zelensky will also have to come to terms with Russia’s occupation of Ukraine, because the US is not seeking wars and is willing to go to great lengths to prevent them.

And so, we find ourselves at the threshold of an imagined “upgraded” Oslo, based on an upgraded Palestinian Authority and with a supposedly “tamed” Hamas, and we must choose between an Israeli military government and the same magic solution that brings us back to the reality of October 6th. The truth is, neither the Americans nor the Israeli military and its representatives in the government have any real alternative to a military government. And since “whoever occupies territory is responsible for the needs of the population in it,” as Emmanuelle Elbaz-Phelps rightly said, Israel will have no choice but to establish a military government as the only realistic alternative to Hamas rule.

Apart from defending Israel as a democracy (albeit flawed) against the right wing’s attempt to impose an undemocratic coup, the Da’am Party has found itself at variance with the Israeli left at every historical juncture: we vehemently opposed the Oslo Accords in 1993, we also opposed the unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza in 2005, and we strongly oppose the current American plan for an upgraded Oslo. All of these agreements have served only to strengthen the right and wipe the left off the political map – witness the fate of the Labor and Meretz parties.

Each of these plans has been designed to perpetuate Israeli control over the Palestinian people and has only increased hostility between the two nations. In 1993, the opportunity to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel was missed. In 2005, the chance to reach an agreement with the Palestinians regarding the withdrawal from Gaza was also missed. Now, the left is working to revive the monster of the upgraded Oslo Accords to separate from the Palestinians at any cost, without considering their fate at all.

October 7 must become a lesson. The world is tired of the occupation, Hamas and Abbas are not partners for peace, and only a true pursuit of peaceful coexistence on an equal basis with the Palestinians will ensure both our and their survival in this region. The Israeli true interest is to encourage the growth of a democratic Palestinian movement, and the Palestinian true interest requires dialogue and cooperation with democratic and liberal Israeli forces. Unfortunately, the existence of military rule in Gaza will illustrate to Israelis that there are no shortcuts and no subcontracted occupation. The only way to exist here is on the basis of national and civil equality between the two peoples. Only with such an understanding can a political settlement be reached that will ensure the future of both Israelis and Palestinians.

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Defining Israel as an apartheid state has become trendy. In early 2021 B’Tselem used this term, moving the terrifying word from living room conversations to the world at large. And if B’Tselem says this—an Israeli organization, after all! —what will international human rights organizations say? In April 2021, Human Rights Watch published a report calling Israel an apartheid state. Amnesty International could not lag far behind.

True, it is impossible to disprove the reality reflected in Amnesty’s document. The Israeli legal system, from the Law of Return to the Nation-State Law, discriminates between Jewish and Arab citizens. And let’s not forget the occupied territories, where military law is the rule, although there is also a separation within it: Israeli law for settlers and military law for Palestinians. All of these create a distorted legal system that undermines Israel’s claim to be a democracy.

Unclear, however, is what these human rights organizations are trying to achieve: to dismantle Israel? End the occupation? Establish one state? Two states? Return Palestinian refugees to their homes and roll back the wheel of history? When Amnesty describes the political reality between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as apartheid, the clear intention is to bring about Israel’s end as a Jewish nation-state.

There is also the question of timing. After all, the reality described in the report has existed since the State of Israel was founded 74 years ago, while in the territories beyond the Green Line, Israel has been conducting an occupation regime for 53 years. The answer to the question is political: as long as the occupation was presented as temporary and the two-state solution was ostensibly on the agenda, it was problematic to call Israel an apartheid state. But in the reality of 2022, when there exists no possibility of a political settlement to guarantee Palestinian rights, the question remains, “What then?” Moreover, after the Likud’s fall from power, a government was formed that includes a broad political spectrum, including the Settler-Right, the Center, the Zionist left, and the Islamic movement. To form this government, it was decided to avoid any “ideological” issues. That is to say, the political issue is not on the agenda; there is no one to talk to on the Palestinian side, nor anything to talk about. Let’s say openly that Israel’s current political system, in which the Right has a solid majority, opposes an independent Palestinian state. The Labor Party and Meretz, which ostensibly do not exclude the principle of peace negotiations, have essentially given them up.

In effect, Israel does indeed stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, creating the reality documented in the Amnesty report. It does maintain a de facto apartheid regime, preferring to bury its head in the sand and affix the title “anti-Semitic” to anyone who holds up the mirror to what it has become.

Israel’s sins are visible to all, so in this respect, the Amnesty report does not say much that is new. As an organization with prestige and experience, however, we expected it to produce an objective report that would present the facts and their background in a way that would help people on the ground, here and throughout the world, to reach a balanced understanding and thereby lay the foundation for a progressive alternative to the existing regime. Instead, we received a biased report, which only partially describes the political background that led to apartheid. It states that since its founding in 1948, “Israel has pursued an explicit policy of establishing and maintaining a Jewish demographic hegemony.” Israel, whether we like it or not, was not just foisted on the world. It received international recognition from the UN, including the United States and the USSR, against the backdrop of the Holocaust. UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947 recognized the establishment of two states, one Jewish and one Arab, such that the definition of the state as Jewish received an international stamp of approval that exists to this day. Not only that, but recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish nation was recognized by all political parties in Israel, including the Communist Party with its Jewish and Arab members, who actively took part in the 1948 war.

Amnesty’s report is also guilty of distorting contemporary political reality. Although Israel is primarily responsible for apartheid, it is not the sole player in the arena. The existing system has a partner without which this reality could not exist. This partner is the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is the representative body of the Palestinian people.

Amnesty’s report also mentions the Oslo Accords, which it describes as arrangements that “divided the West Bank into three different administrative areas, with varying levels of Palestinian and Israeli military and civil jurisdiction, fragmenting and segregating Palestinians even further to Israel’s benefit.”  The problem is that the PA, which represents all Palestinian parties and factions including Hamas, was established under the auspices of the Oslo Accords. It continues to be committed to them, including close cooperation with Israel, on which its existence depends. The PA maintains security coordination with Israel, defined by none other than the head of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, as “sacred.” The Israeli governments, headed by Binyamin Netanyahu and even more so now by Naftali Bennett, as well as the international community, do all they can to sustain the PA, precisely because it serves as subcontractor of the occupation.

In addition, the Amnesty report completely ignores the fact that alongside the apartheid regime, a corrupt Palestinian entity has been created that systematically violates the human and civil rights of its residents. The Palestinian citizen suffers not only from injustices of the occupation, but equally from the PA, which denies basic rights with the support of Israel and the international community.

This is the picture. The apartheid regime exists on the basis of an agreement between the PLO and Israel. The PA has received the status of a state at the UN. Its head is called the “president” of a state that does not exist. Had such a state indeed existed, apartheid would have been abolished. In other words, apartheid takes place with the consent of the PA and the authority conferred on Israel by the international community.

The best salespersons of apartheid, Rabin, Peres and Arafat, received the Nobel Peace Prize for signing the Oslo Accords. Now add to this a new tier, the Abraham Accords, which many in the Arab, Western, and Israeli leftist worlds support.

As long as the elected representative of the Palestinian people maintains peaceful relations with Israel, and accepts the arrangements made in the Oslo Accords, there is no chance that Amnesty’s call for a boycott of Israel will be accepted by the international community. The Amnesty report describes an imaginary reality according to which the Palestinians “have been advocating for an understanding of Israel’s rule as apartheid for over two decades…and have been at the forefront of advocacy in that regard at the UN.” But in practice the situation is completely different. It is impossible to demand “an understanding of Israel’s rule as apartheid” and at the same time maintain security and economic ties with it. The PA suffers from such schizophrenia and tries to convince the world that it is possible, but it is not at all clear why an important human rights organization like Amnesty should give backing and legitimacy to this lie.

The greatest weakness of the Amnesty report, and of all those organizations shouting “Apartheid! Apartheid!” lies in the fact that there exists no Palestinian leadership and movement today that presents an alternative to the PA and Hamas. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian ‘Nelson Mandela,’ signed the Oslo Accords, and since then the two organizations that control the arena, Fatah and Hamas, have been at war with each other. They divide the Palestinians politically and geographically. The so-called liberal opposition is weak and cowardly, and—most importantly—the Palestinians shouting “Apartheid!” have not established a significant political force, nor have they created a coherent political platform as an alternative to the Oslo Accords and the illusion of two states.

An alternative leadership, if and when it arises, will have to know how to rise above the walls of narrow nationalism, appeal to the whole of Israeli society, and dare to offer one democratic state from the sea to the river with equal rights for all its citizens, regardless of nationality, religion or race. There is currently no significant Palestinian entity that will lead in such a direction. In its absence, Labor and Meretz members can join the Bennett government on the pretext that the political issue is not on the agenda, using the worn-out “two-states” card as a cover for their shame. True, apartheid has become a reality. Yet Amnesty’s demand that the international community recognize this and isolate Israel will not bear fruit until the Palestinians themselves rise up and remove the PA, which has acceded to the tragic folly for almost 30 years.

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Israel’s 70th Independence Day marked a change. What began with the establishment of the State of Israel by David Ben-Gurion is ending abruptly with none other than Donald Trump. Declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel was not just the “right and natural thing,” as Trump claimed, but an opening shot in a drastic, aggressive and uncompromising effort to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Even before the rollout of the “Deal of the Century”, its general guidelines are clear. Jerusalem is off the table; defunding UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) solved the refugee problem; a confederation with Jordan will replace Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank; and the closure of the PLO’s mission in Washington effectively removes the PLO as a partner for negotiations with Israel.

In Israel, Trump’s impulsiveness enjoys across-the-board approval. The ruling coalition is overjoyed, and the opposition is silent. After all, how can the latter oppose the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, or the sleight-of-hand trick to resolve the issue of the right of return? Why should the opposition oppose sanctions against the Palestinian Authority? Moreover, what Israeli could even contemplate the removal of an American president who fulfils the Zionist vision of a Greater Israel via his three wise men – Jared Kushner, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, along with the hawkish national security adviser John Bolton?

In fact, one finds it difficult to know where the Israeli government ends and the Trump administration begins. Trump promotes policies so far to the right that they probably wouldn’t make it through the Knesset or even the cabinet. He knows better than Israelis do how to conduct negotiations (The Art of the Deal!), and how to reach the finish line: power, more power, extortion, threats, fraud, and deceit are the accepted rules in Trump’s shadowy world.

Although Trump’s decisions receive wall-to-wall acceptance in Israel, in the United States Trump is perceived as a national security risk. His own administration is doing everything it can to thwart his agenda, especially with regard to foreign relations. Books such as Fearby Bob Woodward, or Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff reflect the terror that has taken hold of the American political, security and media establishment. Viewing Trump’s Twitter page suffices to show the depth of the crisis in American and global politics.

Investigations into and convictions of some of his close associates, his sordid sex affairs, his hallucinatory press conference with Putin in Helsinki (where he announced that he believed the Russian dictator and not his security services), and the incessant evidence of his impulsive nature and comprehensive ignorance testify to the nature of Trump’s strange decisions and distorted judgment. However, in Israel, as in the Philippines, Russia, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia, there are those who love Trump and view him as an asset, giving them an excellent opportunity to reinforce their political status. Usually, these tyrants and dictators maintain aggressive regimes and stamp out opposition.

Israel is not a dictatorial state. It still enjoys a democratic regime and a vibrant and critical press. This, however, raises the question: how is it possible that Trump’s delusional steps regarding the conflict with the Palestinians are accepted with such complacency? If the problem of Jerusalem could be removed from the negotiating table with such alacrity, why was it not done before? What was the problem that prevented the cancellation of the right of return by simply abolishing UNRWA? Why take the trouble to finance the Palestinian Authority if it can simply vanish by closing the money tap? How can it be that no previous US administration, conservative or liberal, Democratic or Republican, thought of this before? And why have Israeli governments lived with this situation for 70 years? Either Trump is the genius of the generation, or he is the fool of the century.

If we examine Trump’s policies, we will soon conclude that they are bad and will only aggravate the present situation. The PLO mission in Washington opened after the PLO recognized Israel and signed the Oslo Accords. From that moment on, the Palestinian Authority replaced the Israeli Civil Administration. The PA became Israel’s security sub-contractor in the occupied territories, especially in the densely populated cities of the West Bank and Gaza. Does Israel have another alternative—a more reliable partner to manage and maintain order in the occupied territories? It is true to say today that, despite the complete freeze in negotiations, the PA continues to provide economic and security benefits for Israel. According to Abu Mazen himself, there is a 99% agreement between him and Israel’s security service.

Does ending financial aid to UNRWA solve anything? American funding for the UN agency was never due to generosity, but to coldly calculated political considerations. The purpose was to “maintain” the refugees and keep them from becoming a factor that could shock and destabilize Arab countries, especially Jordan and Lebanon, as well as the West Bank and Gaza. Who will fund the education of almost a quarter million Palestinian children, and who will benefit if, instead of attending school, these youngsters roam the squalid refugee camps and throw stones at Israeli soldiers?

Trump’s latest moves reveal, more than anything does, the surrealistic nature of the Israeli Right and the weakness of the opposition. It is increasingly clear that not only Jerusalem has been taken off the negotiating table, but also the other sticking points of the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to be resolved in the final status negotiations. Now, interim agreements are frozen, and a permanent agreement is not on the horizon. There are no more topics to discuss, so there is no need to negotiate. That is the true meaning behind the closing of the PLO mission in Washington.

It seems that Trump and Netanyahu believe, and in this, they are probably right, that the PA’s political and economic interest to continue living off external handouts, and off the transfer of customs duties from Israel, is greater than its desire to end the occupation. Anyone who has watched the current series “The Oslo Diaries,” gets the impression that the PLO would have accepted any Israeli conditions that gave them a foothold, if only limited, in the occupied territories. Therefore, if the PA wants to continue to exist, even as a straw man, it must accept the situation.

The message of “The Oslo Diaries” is very clear: Likud and Hamas—the two players that today set the tone of the conflict—are living in a symbiotic relationship. The Baruch Goldstein massacre at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in 1994 was a trigger to the wave of terrorism by Hamas, and Yigal Amir finished the job with the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. Both Likud and Hamas rely on messianic religious doctrines – Israeli-Jewish religious law and Palestinian-Islamic extremism. They cannot defeat each other, even though the balance of power is always in favor of the Israeli side.

The Israeli Right has thus far succeeded in preserving economic well-being while conducting a cruel and bloody war of attrition. In the shadow of its futile war against the Palestinians, the Right has opened another front against Israeli liberalism, as expressed in its nation-state law, its measures to change the nature of the Supreme Court, and its steps to rein in human rights organizations. There is currently a Palestinian-Israeli consensus that this conflict has no foreseeable solution and that the occupation will continue along with the siege of Gaza. Therefore, Israel forfeits peace and democracy, and the Palestinians give up the possibility to live in dignity and freedom.

Thus, an American president who sees democracy as a danger and believes peace to be a simpleton’s pipe dream will continue to make new and delusional proclamations. The “Deal of the Century” remains unpublished, and it is doubtful whether it will ever be. However, published or not, it endangers the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.

* Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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The current wave of terrorism is a ‘promo’ of what will happen after the Palestinian Authority (PA) collapses. Most scenarios that deal with the day after its President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) leaves office predict a lack of orderly succession, an internal succession struggle, anarchy and the breakup of the PA. Israeli citizens, especially [settlers] in Judea and Samaria, will pay the price for anarchy in the PA. We must prepare for more difficult attacks. The collapse of the Authority is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’.” These are the words of the Minister of Immigrant Absorption, Ze’ev Elkin, the man with the highest IQ in the Knesset. The conclusion is almost banal. Elkin sees a direct link between the “stabbing intifada” and the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, and rightly so. Although the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are not interested in a confrontation with Israel, they are unable to stop the wave of attacks. This is a clear sign that the PA is losing what is left of its control over the Palestinian public.

To understand the full picture, you need to factor in the teachers’ strike in the West Bank, which has lasted two weeks, leaving 700,000 students outside the classroom. The strike shows a lack of confidence in the PA and suggests that Palestinian patience has reached the boiling point. The teachers’ demands are simple: Dismiss the heads of the Fatah-dominated teachers’ union, then raise teachers’ salaries to the level of PA officials and the security forces. The Palestinian government headed by Rami Hamdallah is threatening to take measures against the teachers. Masked Fatah gunmen have threatened the striking teachers with weapons drawn, accusing them of collaborating with an “Israeli plot” against Abu Mazen. Until now, these threats have been in vain: the strike continues.

The collapse of the PA is not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ because there is no justification for its existence. The message of young Palestinians going to their deaths clutching knives or scissors is clear: There is no way that Abu Mazen is going to liberate them from occupation, and the continued survival of the PA only represents their unending humiliation. In contrast, striking teachers are sending a message unrelated to the occupation but aimed at the conduct of the Authority. In their eyes, Abu Mazen is not seeking to end the occupation, and his corrupt management of the territories is equivalent to that of the illegitimate Arab regimes. Palestinian citizens are angry at Israel because of the occupation, but they are even more outraged at Abu Mazen because he is cooperating with the occupation and looking out for his cronies at the expense of the majority of citizens.

Zeev Elkin is right – there is no one to replace Abu Mazen, and Hamas is the only alternative. The reason is simple. Fatah is split, and not only because of doctrine, but because its share of the pie is shrinking. Thus Hamas stands to win every election in the foreseeable future. It’s obvious that no leader is acceptable to everyone, and an internal struggle is underway between vying factions in Fatah, as well as a highly-publicized struggle between Abbas and former Gaza strongman, Mohammed Dahlan. Israel must confront the fact that Abbas’s days are numbered. The PA is collapsing because it has ceased to function, it is corrupt, and it is providing no political horizon for improving the situation.

Elkin’s assessment strengthens the position of the Labor Party, which decided at its last convention to distance itself from the idea of two states. It now calls for unilateral action that would bring about separation from the Palestinians. The conviction that the two-state solution is no longer possible has become bon tonamong most parties in the Knesset, and what’s left is to figure out what to do with the 2.5 million West Bank Palestinians. Separation from the Palestinians is actually an across-the-board Zionist dream. The Right is willing to accept some of the population while annexing land, while the Left is ready to give up land in order to preserve Israel’s Jewish majority and to escape the fate of a binational state.

But it is not only the Zionist parties who believe that a two-state solution is no longer feasible. This assessment is shared by many Palestinians. The vast majority of them believe the Oslo agreements failed to serve as a road map to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite the huge gap between the occupier and the occupied, both parties must recognize certain facts that have been created during 48 years of occupation, and especially during the 20 years since the Oslo Accords, facts that render the two-state solution irrelevant. Since the international community has exhausted its efforts to reach this end and is now occupied with urgent issues like the Syrian crisis and waves of refugees banging on Europe’s doors, the establishment of a Palestinian state has fallen off the global agenda.

Elkin is also correct in his assessment that when the PA collapses, anarchy will spread throughout the occupied territories. The few services still under PA responsibility, especially education, health, and law enforcement, will collapse. Chaos will reign as gangs fight each other for succession, Fatah against Hamas, Fatah against Fatah according to regional divisions by clan or religion.

The solution proposed by Elkin is simple and ingenious: “We need to prepare in advance.” On the one hand, Israeli Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon thaws out $125 million in tax dollars collected on behalf of the PA as ordained by Oslo (dollars Netanyahu had frozen) and delivers them at last; in much the same spirit, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon issues more permits enabling Palestinians to work in Israel; and the head of Military Intelligence talks about the need to build a seaport in Gaza. On the other hand, Elkin, the level-headed genius, tells them that all such remedies amount to aspirin for a corpse. The time for economic stimulus is long gone, he says. The current wave of attacks proves that ameliorative measures are not effective and it is time to pass the reins to the army, which will have to cope with the chaos of the PA’s collapse.

It would be a mistake to believe that we can go back two decades to the occupation as it used to be and to the old ways of resisting it. History has shown that both negotiations and the Palestinian armed struggle only fueled the settlement enterprise, exacerbating destruction and violence. The future collapse of the PA and the consequent chaos will leave only one possible scenario: civil struggle to end the occupation, followed by the establishment of a single non-Zionist state on the territory comprising Israel and Palestine.

Two and a half million Palestinians well understand that the way to realize their rights is by demanding the same rights that Israelis enjoy, the very Israelis who have ruled over them for 48 years. The collapse of the PA will mark the end of the two-state era and, with it, the end of the concept of a Jewish and democratic state as conceived by the founders of Israel. Ironically, it is the Israeli right wing that is bringing about the end of the Jewish state.

It is not clear whether Elkin understands this, but, in his own way, he sets the stage for a pluralistic state on the ruins of the Jewish one. According to his vision, this future state will not be democratic, but that will come. It might take a long time, and its coming will be marked with anarchy and blood, but ultimately Israel will have to integrate into the region as a democratic state living in peace with its neighbors.

Anarchy has taken over large parts of the Middle East, but here we are talking about a revolutionary kind. The environment is changing despite the efforts of the Arab regimes to prevent it. The youth of the Arab world are ushering in a springtime that will transform racist, colonial Israel into an anachronism. Young Palestinians will also demand their share in a changing world – freedom, democracy, and social justice. No power on earth can stop them from realizing these desires. This is a possibility that Israeli society will have to prepare for… and tanks will be of no use.

• Translated from the Hebrew by Robert Goldman

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Since Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon’s last visit to Washington, tension between Israel and the White House has only increased. The State Department and the White House refused to have anything to do with Yaalon, who once accused Secretary of State John Kerry of having a “messianic fervor,” and he was left talking shop with his US counterpart, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel. For the others, he has become a persona non grata. This boycott of the Israeli defense minister caught most of the headlines, but the important interview Yaalon gave to the Washington Post, appearing on the paper’s website on October 24, was mostly ignored. This interview reveals that the Israeli government has buried Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to the two-state idea.

In the interview, Yaalon was explicitly asked if he believed in the two-state solution. His reply was military in its brevity: “You can call it the new Palestinian empire. We don’t want to govern them, but it is not going to be a regular state for many reasons.” When the interviewer asked what he meant by a Palestinian empire, Yaalon replied: “Autonomy. It is going to be demilitarized.” There are two reasons for this, according to Yaalon. Firstly, any territory vacated by Israel will be taken over by Hamas. Secondly, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is no partner for peace because he refuses to recognize the Jewish character of the State of Israel. Thus Yaalon takes us back 30 years to when Israel, under Menachem Begin’s leadership, held negotiations with Anwar Sadat’s Egypt over the establishment of Palestinian autonomy – without Palestinian participation.

Netanyahu’s vision

In his recent Knesset speech, Netanyahu substantiated Yaalon’s words. It turns out he is not in despair at all about the political dead-end; on the contrary, he is grasping the changes in the Arab world hungrily, and is greatly encouraged by the new regime in Egypt, which resembles Sadat’s regime: “Because there is hope, change is taking place, slowly but clearly, important change in the central states of the Arab world, who see eye to eye with Israel on many of the challenges we face. They understand that the greatest dangers for them and for us come from radical Islam. Together with them, we will continue to explore possibilities for advancing regional solutions, which can help solve our conflict with the Palestinians. It has always been said that an arrangement with the Palestinians would improve our relations with the Arab world, and there is something in that. But there is also another truth – an arrangement with the Arab world can help us settle our relations with the Palestinians. A regional settlement would benefit everyone.”

According to Netanyahu’s understanding of reality following the Arab Spring, Israel has enemies in common with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan: the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. The Brotherhood is the main enemy of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, while Shiite Iran aspires to regional hegemony at the expense of the Sunni states. In Netanyahu’s view, these are positive developments which may enable him to reach a regional settlement while skirting the Palestinian issue. Later, he will impose autonomy on them, as Sadat did.

Netanyahu’s understanding of reality is in direct opposition to that of Europe and the US, who see recent developments in the region as no less than a disaster. From their point of view, Saudi Arabia is trying to prevent democratic change in the region, as expressed in the Arab Spring, and was behind the military coup in Egypt and the murderous suppression of the Egyptian opposition. Media in the US publish information almost daily about serious human rights violations in Egypt and continuously condemn Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s regime, which has become Israel’s “strategic” ally. In the opinion of the West, the situation in Egypt suggests that Sisi’s fate will be no different from Sadat’s, and that he is leading the country to national and economic disaster.

From the Oslo Accords to autonomy

Netanyahu’s path has no international support because it relies on regimes which are waging a rearguard battle against the democratic forces of change. For this reason it is untenable. There is not a single state in the region or in the world willing to support the Netanyahu-Yaalon vision, because it means the death of the Oslo Accords and all that this entails. Oslo was a response to the Begin-Sadat autonomy plan, and it gave a partial but insufficient answer to the demands of the Palestinians during the first Intifada. Oslo was an interim solution which was to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, but Israel had no intention of fulfilling its side of the deal by reaching a permanent settlement: it has never indicated what the permanent borders of the future state would be, because the government was not prepared to confront the settlers, and it left other critical issues unsolved such as the fate of Jerusalem.

The Oslo Accords also determined the economic mechanisms that enabled the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which relies almost entirely on foreign aid. The US and Europe funded the wages of the police and civil service as well as economic development projects and infrastructure. But they did this only as long as they believed the aim was to pave the way towards a Palestinian state, and not to shore up autonomy under Israeli occupation. This arrangement was very convenient for Israel: the US trained Palestinian police officers who acted in “security coordination” with Israel, while the Israeli governments strengthened their hold on the West Bank undisturbed, through massive construction in the settlements. However, Netanyahu decided that his political survival was more important than anything else, and he’s killing the goose that laid the golden egg. By casting Abu Mazen in the mold of enemy of the Jewish people and supporter of terror, he has also cast doubt on the continued existence of the PA and of security coordination with Israel.

Now Netanyahu and Yaalon are aiming to go even further. Making the PA an “empire which means autonomy” – the mountain that gave birth to a mouse – puts an end to the idea of a Palestinian state and to the PA itself. So far, there has been no Palestinian leader willing to head an autonomous entity in the shadow of occupation. The separation barrier, separate buses for Jews and Palestinians, land expropriation, magnetic cards, limitations on freedom of movement and arbitrary arrests create a reality which no Palestinian leader can accept. Yaalon is fooling himself and all Israelis, since there is no way of compelling Palestinians to accept autonomy while not continuing to rule over them. Israel has been controlling the Palestinians for almost 50 years, from determining their ID numbers to controlling the water they drink and the electricity they use. The false reality it created through the PA is coming to an end.

In despair, Abu Mazen does all he can to escape Israel’s grasp by what are generally called “unilateral steps,” crawling towards the UN where he will meet the US administration, which will send him away empty-handed as usual. It will refuse to recognize a Palestinian state and refuse to compel Israel to leave the West Bank. The frustrated Americans have no option but to grit their teeth, curse Netanyahu, call him a spineless coward, and… veto Palestinian demands. The strategic alliance between Israel and the US has so far only perpetuated the conflict, and it is now bringing Abu Mazen’s political demise ever closer, together with that of the PA itself. Bankrolling states are warning that if this should happen, they will cease funding the PA. The bill for the occupation will have to be paid by Israeli citizens, who even now find it hard to make ends meet. It is true that Netanyahu benefits from the fact that he has no opposition within Israel, but he faces increasing international criticism as well as millions of Palestinians who are not willing to dance to his tune.

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

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In March, after Bibi Netanyahu forms Israel’s new government, U.S. President Barack Obama intends to arrive for a first historic visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Obama wants to talk with the Israeli people, but has nothing of note to tell them. First on the American president’s crowded agenda will be Iran, and then Syria. Last will be the Palestinian issue, concerning which he has no new initiative.

That Obama is distancing himself from the Palestinian question is unsurprising. He has already crashed and burned on that one, when he named George Mitchell his special envoy, in vain. In response to Obama’s demand, Netanyahu did freeze settlement construction for ten months, but then he renewed it with greater vigor. Meantime another term in office has passed, both in Israel and in the United States, without even the semblance of an Israeli-Palestinian political process, and four more arid years lie ahead. Netanyahu committed himself to the principle of two states, but his actions belied it – the settlements expanded and the would-be Palestinian state continued to shrink.

Economically bankrupt

On the Palestinian side of the Separation Barrier, senior members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are running around as if trapped in a maze, looking for any way out. Whether in the West Bank areas under PA control, or in Gaza under Hamas, a catastrophe is unfolding, in the fullest sense of the word. Yet this subject is absent from Israeli public discourse. Periodically we hear about what goes on in the West Bank, the account buried on an inside page of the newspaper, when some young Palestinian man or woman is killed by IDF fire under murky circumstances and an investigation is opened into the matter. The issue at the top of today’s agenda is “equal sharing of the burden” by the Ultraorthodox in Israel’s military and economy; no one is interested in “the conflict.” The Israeli middle class has wearied of funding the Ultraorthodox, and people are pleased to see Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid joining forces to make life easier.

Doubtless it will not be long until the unrest in the West Bank becomes palpable to the Israeli public on its side of the wall. The economic situation is bad. The PA is not paying salaries because its coffers are empty; since it employs 16% of the Palestinian workforce, the entire local economy is paralyzed. A Palestinian teacher earns NIS 3000 a month, and a laborer not more than NIS 87 a day. (Compare that to Israel’s minimum wage of NIS 182 per day.) According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, unemployment stands at 20%, reaching 34% among young people aged 15–25. What we’ve got is an active volcano, with the lava boiling over. Rather than do anything, Israeli leaders apparently prefer to hope that the lava won’t flow past the Separation Barrier.

What is causing the economic crisis in the West Bank? The EU and the Arab countries provide billions to the Palestinian Authority, hoping that the conflict will be resolved and the Palestinian State achieve economic independence. This arrangement has been around for 22 years now, and instead of serving the Palestinian people, it serves the Israeli occupation, which uses the time to expand the settlements. The Europeans respond to the stalemate by delaying grants and preparing a blacklist of settlement exports. The goal is to force the Israeli government to stop investing in the settlements and start resolving the conflict.

Israel for its part “punishes” the Palestinian Authority, holding up payments of tax money it has collected at customs points on imported goods entering PA territory. This further empties the already strained Palestinian treasury. One of the absurd outcomes of this mode of economic punishment concerns the supply of electricity to the PA, still provided by the Israel Electric Company (IEC). Without work and salaries, residents of the territories cannot pay their electric bills to the PA, so its debt to the IEC keeps growing. The Israeli government pays what the PA owes to the IEC and recoups those funds from the tax money the government is supposed to transfer to the PA. Thus the Palestinian economy is stuck, with no way out of these vicious cycles of the Occupation.

Abu Mazen and Hamas, politically bankrupt

Given this warped reality, Abu Mazen has struck out in every direction. First, he turned to the UN General Assembly seeking recognition of Palestine as an observer state. This was granted but, in the event, it only made things worse. As punishment for his UN initiative, the US Congress decided to delay financial aid to the PA. Once again, it became clear that the PA is totally dependent on Israel. Abu Mazen learned the hard way that declaring a state isn’t enough; one must also establish it – and without territory, without money and without an economy, the prospects for a sustainable regime are nil. Abu

Mazen’s UN initiative turned out to be no more than a political exercise, intended to show Palestinians that the PA is not sitting and twiddling its thumbs.

Meanwhile, Abu Mazen also turned to Hamas. This move was intended to display a united front and undermine Israel’s claim that, because of a rift between the PA and Hamas, it has no partner for peace. On February 8, Abu Mazen met with Khaled Mashal in Cairo, and they made the heads of all the Palestinian factions come along to Cairo too — to draw up a memorandum of understanding to end the divisions. At the conclusion of the talks they parted friends. No agreement resulted, however, and it’s doubtful one ever will.

Hamas rules Gaza with an iron fist and is not interested in new elections. Hamas fears, not without justification, that if it were to win the elections, neither Fatah nor the rest of the world would recognize the outcome. On the other hand, if Fatah were to win, Hamas would lose control of Gaza. Thus elections are not an option now, and without elections there is no way to overcome the internal Palestinian split.

The split arises from an absence of strategy about the way to establish a Palestinian state. On the one hand, after 22 years of futile talks, clearly the path of negotiation has been exhausted. On the other hand, the armed struggle by Hamas has also been exhausted, given that in the wake of Israel’s recent “Operation Pillar of Defense,” aka “Pillar of Cloud,” the Hamas government reached an agreement with Israel. The agreement included three points: an end to targeted assassinations by Israel, an easing of Israel’s blockade on Gaza, and an end to Gazan attacks on Israel.

This arrangement gives Hamas breathing room but it doesn’t solve the real problem: the continuing Occupation. Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi promised Obama to insure quiet in Gaza, in return for financial aid. But in order to enforce quiet, he needs conciliation between Fatah and Hamas, and as long as that is impossible, Gaza will continue to bleed.

To reach economic stability, Gaza must be liberated from dependence on Israel and have an open crossing between Rafah and Egypt. Control of the Rafah crossing, however, is mired in disagreement. Egypt made a commitment to the international community that the crossing into its territory would be under PA control with Israeli supervision. Hamas of course refuses to let Abu Mazen set foot in Gaza. Hence, without the presence of Abu Mazen, Egypt cannot open the Rafah crossing, and Gaza remains tied to the Israeli umbilical cord.

In despair, the Egyptians decided to flood the tunnels connecting Sinai and Gaza, to send a message to the Hamas leadership that they must be more flexible toward Fatah. Abu Mazen, for his part, began arresting Hamas members in the West Bank. This led Mousa Abu Marzook, Deputy Chief of the Hamas political bureau, to complain that the arrests are damaging Palestinian reconciliation and constitute proof that elections cannot be held (Al Hayat, February 14).

What Obama will discover on his visit

When Obama reaches PA territory, he will see that his policy of appeasing the Israeli right has nearly killed the PA. Perhaps he understands that his policy of appeasing the Mubarak regime in Egypt and Ben Ali in Tunisia eventually led to the Arab Spring. This script may be repeated in the PA territories: when the young people, the university graduates, do not find work, they will take to the streets in protest, and their anger will be directed above all at the PA, which is directly responsible for their situation. At the end of the day, it is the PA that is late in paying salaries, that is not creating jobs, and that cannot persuade Israel to negotiate.

One may reasonably assume that Obama also knows what the entire world knows: the new Israeli consensus, encompassing all the Zionist parties, accepts the doctrine formulated by Avigdor Lieberman, holding that the conflict cannot be resolved. What’s left, then, is to manage the conflict through negotiations, the declared goal of which is the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders. Having already experienced the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have already seen how the temporary becomes permanent, and there is no way they will accept this.

Obama is going to miss another chance to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Anyone surprised by this ought to remember that we have here the same Obama who missed a historic chance to repair American society, when he caved in repeatedly to the extreme right.

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In a recent TV appearance, Yossi Beilin voiced his hope that the Palestinians will carry out their threat to annul the Oslo Accords, which he helped design. Annulment would spell the end of the Palestinian Authority (PA), throwing direct responsibility for the residents of the Occupied Territories upon the shoulders of Israel.

The Palestinian threat to annul the Accords results from lack of progress toward peace and, in particular, from a financial crisis which has spurred angry demonstrations against the PA in the Palestinian cities. In sympathizing with this threat, Beilin finds himself in the same camp with leftwing activists who denounced the Accords twenty years ago, immediately after they were signed, claiming that they would not bring an end to the Occupation.

It is ironic that at the time of the signing, PM Yitzhak Rabin and the rest of the Labor Party, including Beilin, did not enjoy a majority in the Knesset. Having formed a government with the left-liberal Meretz as their only partner, Rabin had to rely on support from the Arab Knesset members, whom they did not dare admit into the coalition. He paid for this reliance with his life. Labor then lost to Netanyahu, who opposed Oslo and made every effort to prevent its implementation. Today, however, these positions are reversed. Beilin (who has since left Labor) is calling for Oslo’s annulment because, he says, the Accords perpetuate the Occupation, drawing Israel towards becoming a bi-national state. Netanyahu, for his part, holds tight to the Accords; he insists on maintaining the PA as a cover for continuing Israeli settlement and de facto control of the Occupied Territories.

Beilin’s call for annulment appears logical today, as do similar calls from the PA itself. Yet twenty years ago, this call sounded extreme and politically illogical. It was a foregone conclusion that Oslo meant peace. A bloc including most of the Israeli Left, the Arab parties and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) prevented any serious debate over this assumption. There was, however, a small group of activists—including the writer—who asserted, “Oslo offers nothing but formal peace as camouflage for the continued Israeli control of Palestinian territories.” We later formed the Organization for Democratic Action (ODA-Da’am), today known as the Da’am Workers Party (DWP). The above assertion appears in a document that formed the basis of our party’s agenda: “The Palestinian Question and the Socialist Alternative” (February 2000; available in Hebrew and Arabic; for excerpts in English, see hereand here). Looking back on this paper today, we find it extremely relevant in the light of the Arab Spring and the first signs of a Palestinian Spring.

The document deals with the main issues that concerned us during that dark period. The doors of hope and revolution seemed to have slammed in our faces. The USSR had crumbled. The Oslo Accords brought an end to a chapter in the Palestinian struggle for independence; they were the last nail in the coffin of the first Intifada, which had placed the Occupation on Israel’s political agenda. But the Accords were also an expression of a radical change affecting the entire globe, which raised difficult questions for workers’ movements, unions, and leftwing parties around the world.

The Accords reflected the PLO leaders’ belief that after the fall of the USSR, the US was the only remaining superpower. They had no choice, they reasoned, but to face reality and accept the little that was being offered – and this is exactly what the Palestinians received with Oslo. For us, though, many critical questions remained. The first was whether the victory of capitalism meant that socialism was an unachievable utopia. If it did not mean this, where would the next socialist revolution erupt? Would the nationalist program that lay behind the revolutions of China, Vietnam, Cuba, Algeria, Nicaragua and of course the Palestinian struggle for national liberation still be relevant in an era in which capitalism ruled supreme? Had Marx erred in writing that the socialist revolution would break out in the established industrialized strongholds of capitalism?

Coping with these issues was not easy; it required a search for the internal contradictions which, according to Marx, would lead to the collapse of capitalism. It seemed that globalization and neo-liberalism ruled incontestably, and capitalism was spreading over the world on the wings of the information and communication revolution. This revolution united the global market and enabled capital to grow to an unprecedented extent.

The more we studied the situation, however, the more convinced we became that capitalism would collapse. Today, after the financial crisis of 2008 and the smaller crises that preceded it, our analysis from the year 2000 seems justified.

Our most daring dialectic assertion appeared under the subheading “The collapse of the USSR will accelerate the collapse of the capitalist regime.” It was generally supposed that the Soviet collapse had demonstrated the strength of capitalism. Yet what we see taking place in the US today, following the neoliberal application of free-market doctrines and the dismantling of the welfare state, grants validity to Marx’s doctrines. In contrast to movements that emphasized “nationalist Marxism,” we championed the classic version, which foresaw that the crisis of capitalism would appear in the large industrial centers. Therefore the US became our focus. We declared that the fate of America would decide the fate of the world and, with it, of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Oslo is the solution that fits the current global situation, and so the annulment of Oslo depends on changes that will take place around the world,” we asserted in the document.

And so it is. The world is changing, as we see in the Arab Spring. In the same document of 12 years ago, under the subhead, “The Occupation must be confronted by confronting the PA,” the following words appear: “The creation of a political alternative to the PA must be based on the masses who have been directly harmed by the Oslo Accords.… Achieving this aim depends on the development of revolutionary alternatives in the Arab world. The Palestinian working class, exhausted by the long struggle against the Occupation, has lost its position as pioneer in the revolutionary struggle of the Arab world. The growth of a mass movement against the Arab regimes will influence the Palestinians living under occupation… A change of this nature is crucial because the PA, which relies on the capitalist system, is using the miserable condition of the Arab peoples to persuade the Palestinian workers that change is impossible.”

Twenty years ago, it was thought that the Arab nations would never change, that capitalism was gaining strength all the time, and that the entire world would enjoy the pleasures of the “global village.” But time has shown that those who gave up on revolution have led the Palestinian people to the brink of disaster, have shored up the Israeli settlement project, and have buried any chance of reaching peace.

“How long the path will be does not depend on our efforts alone, but on processes in the developed world, such as unemployment and cuts to welfare budgets. It also depends on processes in the Arab world, especially the growth of a movement against the corrupt, despotic regimes.” This understanding granted us the forbearance that is necessary for the long road.

Today we can say that we are entering a new, revolutionary era. The events unfolding in the streets of Madrid, Athens and New York, and the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and the Yemen, together with the heroic struggle of the Syrian people against that cruel regime, all herald the coming of the Palestinian Spring – and thus the Occupation will return to the center of the public agenda in Israel. The capitalist regime has been exposed in all its ugliness, leading to movements calling for change to a system that benefits only 1%. In light of all these developments, there is no place for further prophesy; now is the time to act – to work and struggle for social change, because the revolution has arrived.

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