As human rights groups continue to call out war crimes committed by the Israeli military, we speak to the only U.S. diplomat to publicly resign from the Biden administration over its policy on Israel.
We first spoke to Hala Rharrit when she resigned from the State Department in April, citing the illegal and deceptive nature of U.S. policy in the Middle East. “We continue to willfully violate laws so that we surge U.S. military assistance to Israel,” she says after more than a year of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Rharrit says she found the Biden administration unmovable in its “counterproductive policy,” which she believes has gravely harmed U.S. interests in the Middle East. “We are going to feel the repercussions of that for years, decades, generations.”
Hamas only exists because of the Apartheid Occupation of Israel and the daily violence that has subjected Palestinians to for generations. Israel has always been the obstacle for peace.
De-development via the Gaza Occupation
The Israeli imposed closure on Gaza began in 1991, temporarily, becoming permanent in 1993. The barrier began around Gaza around 1972.
Between July 1971 and February 1972, Sharon enjoyed considerable success. During this time, the entire Strip (apart from the Rafah area) was sealed off by a ring of security fences 53 miles in length, with few entrypoints. Today, their effects live on: there are only three points of entry to Gaza—Erez, Nahal Oz, and Rafah.
Perhaps the most dramatic and painful aspect of Sharon’s campaign was the widening of roads in the refugee camps to facilitate military access. Israel built nearly 200 miles of security roads and destroyed thousands of refugee dwellings as part of the widening process.’ In August 1971, for example, the Israeli army destroyed 7,729 rooms (approximately 2,000 houses) in three vola- tile camps, displacing 15,855 refugees: 7,217 from Jabalya, 4,836 from Shati, and 3,802 from Rafah.
- Page 105
Through 1993 Israel imposed a one-way system of tariffs and duties on the importation of goods through its borders; leaving Israel for Gaza, however, no tariffs or other regulations applied. Thus, for Israeli exports to Gaza, the Strip was treated as part of Israel; but for Gazan exports to Israel, the Strip was treated as a foreign entity subject to various “non-tariff barriers.” This placed Israel at a distinct advantage for trading and limited Gaza’s access to Israeli and foreign markets. Gazans had no recourse against such policies, being totally unable to protect themselves with tariffs or exchange rate controls. Thus, they had to pay more for highly protected Israeli products than they would if they had some control over their own economy. Such policies deprived the occupied territories of significant customs revenue, estimated at $118-$176 million in 1986. (Arguably, the economic terms of the Gaza—Jericho Agreement modify the situation only slightly.')
- page 240
In a report released in May 2015, the World Bank revealed that as a result of Israel’s blockade and OPE, Gaza’s manufacturing sector shrank by as much as 60 percent over eight years while real per capita income is 31 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The report also stated that the blockade alone is responsible for a 50 percent decrease in Gaza’s GDP since 2007. Furthermore, OPE (com- bined with the tunnel closure) exacerbated an already grave situation by reducing Gaza’s economy by an additional $460 million.
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Page 402
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The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy
Blockade, including Aid
Hamas began twenty years into the occupation during the first Intifada, with the goal of ending the occupation. Collective punishment has been a deliberate Israeli tactic for decades with the Dahiya doctrine. Violence such as suicide bombings and rockets escalated in response to Israeli enforcement of the occupation and apartheid.
After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted.
The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.
- Amnesty International Report pg 26-27
Settlements, Occupation, and Apartheid
Israel justifies the settlements and military bases in the West Bank in the name of Security. However, the reality of the settlements on-the-ground has been the cause of violent resistance and a significant obstacle to peace, as it has been for decades.
The settlements are maintained through a violent apartheid that routinely employs violence towards Palestinians and denies human rights like water access, civil rights, etc. This kind of control gives rise to violent resistance to the Apartheid occupation, jeopardizing the safety of Israeli civilians.
The apartheid regime is based on organized, systemic violence against Palestinians, which is carried out by numerous agents: the government, the military, the Civil Administration, the Supreme Court, the Israel Police, the Israel Security Agency, the Israel Prison Service, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, and others. Settlers are another item on this list, and the state incorporates their violence into its own official acts of violence. Settler violence sometimes precedes instances of official violence by Israeli authorities, and at other times is incorporated into them. Like state violence, settler violence is organized, institutionalized, well-equipped and implemented in order to achieve a defined strategic goal.
Visualizing the Ethnic Cleansing
Peace Process and Solution
Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution
How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution
‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe
One State Solution, Foreign Affairs
Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.
During the current war, Hamas officials have said that the group does not want to return to ruling Gaza and that it advocates for forming a government of technocrats to be agreed upon by the various Palestinian factions. That government would then prepare for elections in Gaza and the West Bank, with the intention of forming a unified government.
In the Shadow of the Holocaust by Masha Gessen, the situation in Gaza is compared to the Warsaw Ghettos. The comparison was also made by a Palestinian poet who was later killed by an Israeli airstrike. Adi Callai, an Israeli, has also written on the parallels in his article The Gaza Ghetto Uprising and expanded upon in his corresponding video. I do genuinely think you should watch that video
I actually agree with that, except that Israel has always been the obstacle to peace. They were not when they were dismantling their illegal West Bank settlements after the Oslo Accords. Similarly with giving the Sanai Peninsula back to Egypt. If you avoided such an absolutist perspective I could fully agree with you.
I will give it a watch, thank you.
I appreciate that you genuinely care about sources and have an intellectual curiosity to engage with them.
Only thing I have to add is about the settlements and Oslo Accords. I think the Sinai disengagement can be seen in a peaceful light with Egypt, however I cannot say that extends to peace with Palestine.
Declassified Israeli documents show that the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip were deliberately planned before being executed in 1967:
This can be seen as an extension of the mass ethnic cleansing campaign of 1948 in respect to Settler Colonialism.
Israel may have dismantled some settlements after Oslo, but it is far eclipsed by the new settlements created after Oslo and has risen ever since.
In fact, as the Oslo Accords slowly broke down, Israel tripled its settlement building. Between 1993 and 2000, the Israeli population in the West Bank reached its fastest pace of growth ever, according to Dror Etkes, an Israeli peace campaigner.
(AJ source previously linked) (The Haaretz source talks more about Rabin and Oslo)
I would argue that Egypt agreed to the peace proposal in order to normalize relations economically and regain it’s territory, at the expense of the Palestinian people.
Excerpt from Ilan Pappe's findings about the Israel - Egypt peace settlement
Likud’s initial foreign-policy gambit surprised the world at large, as it responded favourably to another peace effort by Anwar Sadat. Begin’s first Likud government included some veterans from the old administration, such as Moshe Dayan. He and Ezer Weizmann, now a dove, pushed Begin into signing a bilateral peace agreement with Egypt in 1979. This agreement had won the support of the Israeli public after a dramatic surprise visit by Anwar Sadat to Israel in November 1977, a psychological ploy that weakened their siege mentality and intransigence. Sadat came to Jerusalem, disappointed with previous international efforts to solve the conflict, such as an attempt to convene an international peace conference, which had ended in failure. Incidentally, this last peace initiative could have helped the PLO, as the Soviet Union had insisted that its status, the problem of refugees and the occupied parts of Palestine, were to be central aspects of the negotiations. Jimmy Carter, the first American president to locate the Palestine question at the centre of the ‘peace process’, had fully endorsed this prioritization. It was forestalled by the Sadat initiative, which had been prearranged by senior Israeli and Egyptian politicians long before Sadat’s historic visit. The Egyptian president knew he would receive the whole of the Sinai Peninsula in return for normalization of his country’s relations with Israel.
The Egyptian president had promised the Palestinians that he would link the bilateral agreement to a settlement of the Palestine question, but never succeeded in doing so. Likud returned the Sinai so that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would be sidelined in the peace agenda. Both sides concurred on a new term, ‘autonomy’, as a strategic goal for settling the problem of the occupied territories, which in essence meant the status quo in those areas. For Egyptian civil society, left and right, secularists and Islamists alike, it was tantamount to betraying the Palestinian cause. They had the power to turn the peace with Israel into a ‘cold’ state of affairs, where much of the past hostility and enmity remained intact.
- A History of Modern Palestine pg 259
I don’t argue against the ethnic cleansing being deliberate, I’m well familiar with Plan Dalet. The primary crux of my argument is that this is very much a case of two sides trying to ethnically cleanse each other, with one succeeding and the other failing. The one that failed is rightfully upset, but it should not be seen in some more-innocent-than-the-other light. Recall, this all began because I said hamas and Hezbollah are themselves Jihadist, genocidal movements. Perhaps that’s been overshadowed in the modern day by mere survival, since actual ultimate victory has become so distant, but I don’t ignore those roots.
Liberation, reconquest/Jihad, ethnic cleansing, call it whatever you like, but if it is directed against a people living on land they were born to, it’s too late. The invaders became innocents at that point, due to being different individuals after the chronological passing of time. Descendents are not guilty for the sins of their fathers or countrymen, you cannot simply lump them all together as “colonizers” and subject to destruction, that is not right. If an individual colonized nothing, only their forebears or countrymen did, that individual is not a colonizer. The saddest thing about Oct 7th was how so many of the dead were pro-Palestinian progressives, fighting for the rights and dignity of Palestinians.
Now, that isn’t to say we shouldn’t continue to fight for human rights. But to say hamas or Hezbollah are even remotely on the “right” instead of co-equal and complicit with the IDF and Netanyahu in the ongoing destruction of the Palestinian people is wrong-headed in my eyes.
edit: Consider, after Rabin’s assassination, Netanyahu, a right-wing, ex-military strongman won the following election by a single percentage point. Do you recall the environment in Israel at the time, the regular suicide bombings in Tel Aviv? That is not how you achieve peace, it’s how you achieve war.
