Recently Ben & Jerry’s made headlines by announcing it would not sell its ice cream in West Bank settlements. This has ignited a healthy debate over the issue of the Occupation. It is still unclear how the company’s announcement will affect the contract with its Israeli plant, or its NASDAQ shares, and whether this move will eventually lead to the termination of its operations in Israel. What is clear is that the Israeli issue arouses strong emotions throughout the United States, and probably also among Trump-hating ice cream connoisseurs.

We don’t know how much the American public knows about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is certain that it knows enough to identify Trump with Netanyahu, Netanyahu with the Occupation, and the Occupation with the settlements. If the “social” ice cream stands with the tens of millions opposing Trump, this is a sign that it has a healthy sense of smell for business. Ben & Jerry’s is an ice cream powerhouse, recognized in 37 countries. Its revenues last year totaled $860 million, and it holds the second-largest market share in the giant UK and American ice-cream markets.

The Ben & Jerry’s business model is so successful that its parent company, Unilever, agreed to sign a clause allowing its board of directors freedom of decision on issues of a “social” nature. It turns out that Unilever also has a well-developed sense of smell for business, otherwise it would not have acquired Ben & Jerry’s as early as the year 2000. Just as Ben & Jerry’s is an ice cream powerhouse, so Unilever is a global food powerhouse, employing 180,000 worldwide. It is in fact an oligopoly: one of the ten international companies that monopolistically control the global food market. In letting itself be bought, while “preserving its social character,” Ben & Jerry’s in fact sold its soul to the devil, joining Unilever’s predatory capitalist machine.

Wearing its social cap, Ben & Jerrys at first intended to boycott Israel entirely while adopting the position of the BDS movement. Its official announcement, limiting the boycott to West Bank settlements, stemmed from a compromise with Unilever. The latter, which also operates in Israel, employs 2500 Israeli workers here; it controls dozens of companies in food and cosmetics, such as Strauss ice cream and Thelma. Unilever was not about to shoot itself in the foot, so Ben & Jerry’s position eventually came out tasting “half tea, half coffee.”

Half tea, half coffee is also the position of the Zionist Left, which today, for example, projects the illusion of a future, vague “political process” like a fig leaf over its participation in the Bennett-Lapid government, continuing to sell us two-state solution. MK Michal Rosin (Meretz) appeared on the program “Six o’clock with Oded Ben Ami” to defend the Ben & Jerry’s boycott of the settlements while sparing their creator, Israel. For this purpose, she harked back to the decision of the Netanyahu government to sign a “Horizon 2020 agreement with the European Union, which excludes settlements from any investments that are made through the plan.” Therefore, Rosin argued, the one who harms the State of Israel is “the one who conflates people who oppose selling in the settlements with people who oppose selling in Israel.” Meretz and the EU continue to promote the two-state solution, even though in practice they do nothing to advance it, as evidenced by Meretz’s participation in the Bennett-Lapid coalition.

Comparing Ben & Jerry’s with the European Union is like comparing ice cream and gazpacho. Both are cold, but that sums up the similarity. The EU, like Israel, is formally committed to the Oslo Accords, which do nothing about the settlements, leaving them as a bone of contention.

Ben & Jerry’s is another story altogether. First, it is a business venture and not a political one, and there is no diplomatic connection between it and the State of Israel. It is not committed to a two-state solution or any solution. It is simply protesting the Occupation by boycotting the settlements. Moreover, the July 22 headline of Yedioth Aharonot, “The Anti-Israel Brain Behind the Ice Cream Boycott,” leaves no room for doubt. Beside the headline was a picture of the chairperson of the company’s board, Anuradha Mittal, with several of her Tweets. Ms. Mittal adopts the BDS principle of boycotting not just the settlements but Israel as a whole, including Israelis who fight for justice toward the Palestinians.

Despite Michal Rosin’s claims, the decision to boycott settlements does not stem from support for a “Jewish and democratic” Israel, but from an aversion to the apartheid regime. Therefore, without getting into political gibberish designed to market the two-state program (which has long since disappeared from the political agenda), we may ask where BDS is heading. This is a legitimate question for any political activist operating against the Occupation, whether the action takes place in Israel and or the Occupied Territories. On this issue, BDS is silent. It wants to emulate what was done to South Africa, that is, to boycott Israel until apartheid collapses, without offering a political alternative. The solution in South Africa was “one man one vote.” Of this we hear nothing from BDS.

The so-called Palestinian equivalent of the South African ANC is the PLO, which ended its historic role when it signed the Oslo Accords and agreed to autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza, thus perpetuating the settlements, whose fate remains outside the agreement.

In fact, the number of settlers more than doubled after Oslo, but this did not stop the Palestinian Authority from continuing its cooperation with Israel in all areas, including security. Thus we are witnessing an absurd situation: while BDS is calling for a boycott of Israel, it is not calling for a boycott of the Palestinian Authority that cooperates with it. It is convenient for BDS to skip over reality, over the PA, and attack Israel, which, by the way, maintains overt or covert diplomatic relations with most Arab countries.

Before boycotting or taking any action to oppose the Occupation and the settlements, the right thing to do is to determine the political alternative to the Occupation and thus delineate the path of struggle. We agree with most of the BDS movement that the two-state solution is no longer viable. We also agree that Israel maintains apartheid in the Territories, and discriminates against Arab citizens within Israel. We also agree that action must be taken to change this reality. But at this point the question arises: What is the solution?

Here, the Da’am Party bids boycotts goodbye. Da’am advocates one democratic state between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River for all who live there, Jews and Palestinians. To achieve this goal, we oppose the boycott of the Palestinians by the Israeli Right, and we equally oppose the boycott of Israelis, which is what BDS and many Palestinians do in the name of rejecting “normalization.” The solution will not take place through mutual cancellation, but through constant cooperation and dialogue between democratic forces on both sides.

We look to the progressive movement in the United States, which advocates racial equality and multiculturalism, upholds democracy against autocracy, condemns blind nationalism and white supremacy, and favors climate and social justice. This movement can play an important role in bringing Israeli and Palestinian democratic forces together for the construction of a common future. Boycotting Israel and Israelis will not do this. Ben & Jerrys’ position has the good effect of reviving the issue of the Occupation, but it tastes too much of BDS.

The post BDS-flavored ice cream first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

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.

The post What’s left on the Palestinian side of the Separation Barrier? first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

Declaring Ariel a university may meet academic criteria, but it does not meet the criteria of international law. Ariel is a settlement in occupied territory in every way; a settlement established in order to annex the West Bank to Israel, to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. Moshe Dayan put forward the idea, and Menachem Begin carried it out.

Since then, rivers of blood have been spilled and the conflict has become, according to PM Benjamin Netanyahu and the Labor Party’s Shelly Yachimovitch, “insoluble”. Israel came up with the term “settlement bloc” to make the settlements kosher, but the world stubbornly refuses to recognize the settlements, especially the “settlement blocs,” precisely because their purpose is to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state with territorial continuity. Former PM Ehud Barak, who came up with the expression “there’s no partner,” led Israel towards disaster and left behind him a bleak reality which benefits Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Naftali Bennett alone. They lead us on towards calamity and the opposition is silent.

But this is no time for silence. We need a clear voice in the Knesset, a voice willing to speak the unspoken: the settlement blocs are a disaster, and the logic of Ariel leads to Apartheid. Israel has no future as long as the occupation continues. On Ariel’s victory, it has been said: “Another such victory and we are undone.”

Translated by Yonatan Preminger

The post Ariel University’s victory is a disaster for both nations first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.