This month, the partisan alliance between President Donald Trump and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reached a new level of intensity. Trump called on Netanyahu to bar the Democratic Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering Israel, and Netanyahu agreed to his demand, using a law that allows Israel to ban supporters of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. (Tlaib later received permission to visit her grandmother in the West Bank, on the condition that she not express her support for B.D.S., but declined the offer.) Trump went on to say to American Jews, “If you vote for a Democrat, you are very, very disloyal to Israel and to the Jewish people.” Since Trump took office, he has supported Netanyahu’s hard-right agenda, moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Netanyahu, in turn, has increased settlement construction and has promised that, if he wins the next election, on September 17th, he will annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
To discuss what Trump and Netanyahu’s alliance means for Israelis and for Palestinians, I recently spoke by phone with Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer, writer, and activist who co-founded the human-rights organization Al-Haq, and who has written extensively about the history of the conflict and the daily reality of life in the West Bank. Shehadeh’s latest book, “Going Home,” reflects on the history of Ramallah. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the decline of the Israeli left, how changes in the Democratic and Republican parties affect the fate of Palestinians, and why Shehadeh won’t speak about B.D.S.
The American-Israeli relationship has changed in the last couple of years, with the full embrace between Trump and Netanyahu. Is this something that feels important to the future of the Palestinians, or does it feel in some ways like a sideshow, because in fact nothing has fundamentally changed or is going to change?
Well, it is very important, in fact. However, for a very long time, the United States, which could have been a restraining force on Israel’s attempts at taking more land and building more illegal settlements, hasn’t really done so. The official line was always that the United States supports the two-state solution, but they didn’t do what would make that possible. They allowed Israel to continue with the illegal processes and accepted Israel’s refutations and blocked every attempt at censoring Israel in the United Nations or in other international fora. So there has not been a fundamental change. However, Israel has always been cognizant of what the United States thinks and wants and how strongly they will object to what Israel does, and this has been a deterrent, to some extent. With Trump in the White House, Israel has carte blanche to do anything it wants, and it has proceeded to do anything it wants.
So first it was Jerusalem, then it was the Golan Heights, and then building settlements at a great, great, great pace. Settlements have always been built, but the pace has been stepped up, as if to make the most out of Trump’s tenure in the White House. But, you know, this is from the Palestinian point of view. From the Israeli point of view, I would imagine, it is also bad for Israel to feel such laxness and such forgiveness from America about everything it does, because this is also harming Israel. The more they get involved in the occupation and accept the occupation as a reality that will not end, the worse it is for Israel.
Are there other things, besides settlements, where you think the reality on the ground has changed for the Palestinians, because of this lack of a restraining impulse from the United States?
There are many, many such differences. In the past, the Israelis would not behave in the way that they have been behaving now. For example, last month in Sur Baher, in Jerusalem, they demolished, all at once, a hundred apartments on the Palestinian side of the border, and they would never have done this in the past. They do it now because they realize America is not going to stand in their way, or does not censor Israel, or does not say anything. And, if the U.S. would say anything, it would just be a formality, rather than meaning it. And the inhumanity that we have been seeing has been on the increase: calling Palestinians wild beasts, shooting Palestinians without any second thoughts, and making a hero out of Elor Azaria, who shot this man in Hebron when he was dying. So many inhumanities have increased, and the fact that the Israelis can call the Palestinians terrorists en masse, as if they’re all one big terrorist group, and have this repeated in the U.S., is allowing Israel much more inhumanity towards the Palestinians than it has ever shown before.
This is bad for both people, because, ultimately, it’s not the question of managing the occupation, as Netanyahu keeps saying. It’s a question of ending the conflict and making peace in the region, which we are not getting anywhere closer to, thanks mainly to the United States and the support for Israel without any question.
How do you understand the decline of both the Israeli Labor Party and the Israeli left more broadly on the Israeli political scene, to a lower point than really any other time, I think, probably, in Israel’s history?
Well, I think that what happened was what was anticipated. Because, from sometime in the early nineteen-eighties, the late nineteen-seventies, it became clear that what Israel is after is taking more settlements and encouraging its people to move into the settlements, and this has been increasing. And I, for one, among many others, have been saying that the consequences of this are going to be that it’s very difficult to bring an end to the conflict. And what ended up happening is the lobby of the settlers became stronger and stronger, so the politicians, who unfortunately are not statesmen but shrewd politicians who want to stay in power, like Netanyahu and [the former Labor Party Prime Minister Ehud] Barak and others in the Labor Party as well, are intimidated and become controlled by or want to please that lobby. The settlers’ lobby has been building over the years in a way that anybody looking at the situation clearly could have anticipated.
On the other hand, I think that, basically, Israel’s problems arise from the fact it has been unwilling to recognize the Palestinians as a nation, and the consequences of that are seen today. Rather than recognize the Palestinians as a nation, rather than recognize that in 1948 there was a Nakba, which meant that the Palestinians were forced out of their country, they refuse to come to terms with that. You know, it’s been seventy-one years now; it’s about time that they come to terms with that. Israel is strong enough to be able to come to terms with that. They refuse to, and that I think is the original sin that is weakening everything and everybody and making these changes in Israel that we see today. I think that’s the more profound reason why we see the situation as it is today in Israel.
I think one thing the Israeli center and left would say in response is that, when leaders in Israel have taken steps to make peace, there has not been a Palestinian interlocutor, or the Palestinians show themselves unwilling to follow through, which has consequently cut the ground out from under the Israeli peace movement. What’s your response to that?
They’ve always said this, and gotten away with it. It’s absolutely not true. There are instances old and long of how Israel has not followed through with what it has said, but the most obvious one, and concrete example, is the Oslo Accords itself. At the time of the Oslo Accords, I was involved partially in the negotiations in Washington, D.C., and I could see both in Washington, among the negotiators, and in the West Bank, among people, and in Gaza, everybody—well, almost everybody, certainly the majority—was more than willing to make compromises and to come to terms with Israel and to make peace. And Israel did everything it could to consolidate its gains in the occupied territories and in the changes in the law that made possible the settlements and did not really follow up on peace. They speak about peace, but they do not really want peace.
There was also an increase in Palestinian terrorist attacks after Oslo. Do you think that had anything to do with Israel’s behavior?
Obviously violence is not going to settle anything or end the occupation or do anything of the sort. Let’s take the last thing that has happened in the settlement of Dolev. [After an Israeli was killed there last week, Netanyahu vowed to double the size of the settlement.] I used to walk in the hills where it was established. I knew from the start that this would bring about violence and complications. And, indeed, this is exactly what has happened. The settlement has affected our lives. I live about five kilometres away. They closed the roads. They shot at my wife in 1991 and almost killed her as they were driving from their settlement to another settlement. And it means complication after complication, violence in response to violence. A high-court judge lives in this settlement, so the possibility of resisting the settlement through legal means within Israel is nil. This means the only possibility is for the United States to help bring an end to settlements and occupation. But the existence of settlements is a cause for violence and more violence.
From a stance of wanting to continue to be at war and at arms and building more armies and power and so on to a stance of making peace is a big step that hasn’t been taken. And that big step to be taken—they have to start changing the education system. They have to start teaching people that Palestinians are human beings. People in Israel think Palestinians are not even human beings. Do I think the Palestinians want to make peace?
And do you think that their leadership either in the past or today wants to make peace?
Nobody wants to live in peace more than [Mahmoud] Abbas. I fought him on how he’s going about it, because he thinks that if we prove that we’ll act like good students—if we prove to Israel that we are good and able to control our people and control the more violent aspects of the people, and if we prove to be good neighbors—then they will come forward and want to make peace with us. And for this reason he’s been doing everything he can and even stopping the legitimate resistance against occupation, and yet Israel thinks of him as an obstacle, because he is calling for peace.
And they’ve been saying we don’t have an interlocutor from the very beginning of 1948. I’ve been reading my father’s papers these days. My father [Aziz Shehadeh, a prominent Palestinian lawyer] went to Lausanne [in 1949] to negotiate with the Israelis about peace, and they refused to even meet with the delegation that represented the Palestinian refugees. They said, “We only meet with states.” And they, from that time, had a policy of doing everything possible to reject peace.
I assume, then, that you don’t have much hope that even Netanyahu’s defeat in the next election would particularly change anything about the status quo. Is that correct or do you actually think—
It absolutely wouldn’t change a thing, because none of the other candidates have said anything about ending the occupation, about making peace with the Palestinians. There isn’t any alternative in Israel now, which is very, very distressing. It’s very distressing, but that’s a fact. And yet we cannot give up hope.
There are some in the Democratic Party who want to change the American relationship with Israel. Is that something that you view as a positive?
I think it’s very positive. I can’t speak about the United States, because I’m not there, but, from what I see from a distance, and, from what I’m told, there are many, many changes, and the Jewish community in the United States is beginning to see that this support for Israel “right or wrong” is wrong. And they realize that a country that they are concerned about is going toward fascism, and it’s very distressing and embarrassing. So, yes, there are changes, and the changes could make a difference.
You know, South Africa used to say that it doesn’t matter what the whole world thinks as long as the United States supports us. The United States stopped supporting South Africa almost overnight and then everything collapsed. The United States is supporting Israel in every way, and Israel stupidly is thinking that that support will be there forever. But the United States, after all, looks after its own interests. Israel is an ally and important for it, but that can change, and if that changes and Israel has all its eggs in one basket that’s not a very clever thing.
Many liberal Israelis who oppose the occupation are also opposed to a boycott. What do you think about the idea of a boycott?
I cannot speak about the boycott, my friend, because then I am barred from going back to Israel.
O.K., fair enough.
But I can say one thing. I can say that Israel is a very strong economy, a very strong country, and it would take a very long time for the boycott to really hit and make a difference. However, Israel is a country of human beings, ordinary people, who want to believe that they are doing right and that they are part of Europe and part of the West. So, some indication that the world is not happy with what they’re doing, through a boycott or whatever other means, is bound to make a difference. That’s as much as I can say.
