This is the third post helping to contextualize the occupation of Palestine. The first post considered the divisions in the West Bank, excluding Jerusalem, and what these divisions mean for life in the West Bank. The second post considered what these divisions would look like if applied to the US State of Ohio, where I’m from. This third post addresses the situation in Gaza, and a fourth post will come next week discussing Jerusalem, where I’ll also discuss the troubling eviction of Nora Sub-Laban and her family and tell you how you can help the Sub-Laban family.
As in the earlier posts, I use the term “occupation” in its legal sense, meaning the effective control of a state's territory by a foreign state through its military, impacting the autonomy and daily life of those within the territory. There’s an entire set of laws that attach to this legal status but most notable is the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which addresses how occupying powers (in this case Israel) should treat occupied states (in this case, Palestine).
Understanding the conflict between Israel and Palestine requires understanding the history and the divisions within Palestine. Understanding how the occupation and its divisions impact land, water, jobs, family life, and travel is necessary if one is to understand why the conflict is still ongoing, and why violence has escalated in the past 16 days.
On Wednesday, I posted a bit about the current situation, but it appears that the western media is now reporting on the situation more frequently. Unfortunately, the media I’ve read has reported things without critical analysis or reflection on the driving forces of the conflict. It appears the media assumes that ethnic identity and religion are enough of a reason for spirally violence, as if stabbings and shootings are a natural reaction to different skin tones and prayer practices.
They’re not.
Ethnic identity and religion are certainly significant factors in this conflict, but I don’t believe they are the dominant factors. I think the more significant factor is how those divisions are used to determine access to resources and the protection of fundamental rights.
I realize that probably sounds like semantics, but it’s not.
It’s not the presence of ethnic, religious, or racial diversity that lead to conflict; it’s how politicians use or manipulate those differences to gain power and control. The differences become significant and likely to lead to conflict when one group is rewarded for its identity and another punished.
Rewards and punishments can happen by precluding some from voting, by recognizing only certain religious holidays or expressions, by allowing other religions and religious institutions to be co-opted, by allowing one group a right to participate in some industries while precluding other groups from the same.
And lest you think I’m just rambling out loud, there’s research to back me up on this, and a scientific term for these group-based divisions: horizontal inequalities. Thus far, four types of horizontal inequalities have been identified and found to be significant for determining when a conflict is likely: political, economic, social, and cultural.
It should not be shocking to anyone working in human rights that these four types match quite closely with the focus of international human rights law: civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. In the scientific literature on horizontal inequalities, civil and political rights appear lumped together under the umbrella of “political.”
Those who work in human rights know that while we have delineated rights into five “types,” these rights are now considered indivisible, interdependent, an interrelated.
With this background, it should not be surprising that conflict is most likely to emerge in situations where horizontal inequalities are experienced (real or perceived) across two or more of the four types identified.
To put it in simple, legally-based terms: conflict is most likely to occur when human rights violations are based on group identities, and those violations touch on multiple kinds of human rights.
(I know, half of my friends just went, “Um… yeah… obviously.”)
While I’ve not seen research directly on Israel and Palestine, the theory seems to bear out here quite clearly.
I’m starting to become convinced that while horizontal inequalities manifest themselves seemingly everywhere here, nowhere in Israel and Palestine bears the brunt of horizontal inequalities – and the attendant political attempt to use inequalities to gain power and control – as much as Gaza.
It should therefore not be particularly surprising that Gaza is often at the heart of the worst parts of the conflict here, including deadly protests this week. Understanding what’s underlying the conflict there is important.
Gaza: The World’s Largest Open-Air Prison
Gaza is often called the world’s largest open-air prison as people within Gaza are principally disconnected from the rest of the international community. With only 360 square kilometers / 139 square miles, and 1.816 million people, it’s one of the most densely populated areas in the world. 1.24 million of those Palestinians are refugees or displaced persons.
To give this some context, Columbus, the capital of my home state of Ohio, is roughly 578 km / 223 square miles, or 1.6x the size of Gaza. It houses 787,033 people, or less than half the number of people in Gaza.
Here’s a map of Israel and Palestine from Political Geography Now:
Gaza is that small part in the southwest corner. The BBC provides this map of just Gaza:
Since 2007, Israel has instituted a land, sea and air blockade of the Gaza Strip, reducing the area’s GDP by 50%.
With the limited construction and limited imports, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Gaza has an unemployment rate of more than 40%. Youth unemployment is over 60%.
More worryingly, the UN estimates that 73% of people in the Gaza Strip suffer from food insecurity.
The 2014 conflict between Hamas and Israel left an estimated 96,000 homes damaged or destroyed. Reconstructing these homes has been virtually impossible. As the UN explains, “basic construction materials (gravel, steel bars, and cement), along with a wide range of spare parts, computer equipment, and vehicles” are considered as “dual use” items by Israel, meaning they are both civilian and military in nature. Consequently, Israel severely restricts their import, and “[l]ess than 1% of the construct materials required to rebuild houses” had been able to enter Gaza by June 2015, almost a year after the conflict.
The cutting off of Gaza (which, again, started in 2007) has been effective – and deadly. Gaza is small and separated from the West Bank completely. The northern and eastern borders are with Israel, and the Southern border is with Egypt. To the West is the Mediterranean Sea. Let’s discuss each of these borders.
First, Israel provides for two primary points of entrance to Gaza: one on the north / northeast border; the other on the eastern border. People, including workers and humanitarian personnel, must use the Erez crossing at the north-eastern border. Goods, including food and animal feed, can be brought in only through the Karni crossing point to the East. There are no other routine or primary crossing points along the strip. Some maps will show you two extra entry points, but those are actually just alternative points that can be used, but rarely are.
Israel’s control of these points is not limited to a routine or formalistic check of passports and contraband material. Israel determines the amount of food, building supplies and medical supplies that can go in and out of Gaza, effectively controlling daily life in Palestine.
There’s a fence along the border of Israel and Gaza. Gazans are prohibited from coming within 300 meters (984 feet; .18 mile) of the fence. This means that a significant area is inaccessible even for farming, much less recreational use or housing construction.
This is a scaled map from the UN showing the no-go area around the fence.
To the West, Israel enforces a Naval embargo off the coast of Gaza. Under the Oslo Accords, Gaza’s fisherman are entitled to fish up to 20 nautical miles (approx. 37 km / 23 miles) off the coast. Since 2012, Israel has enforced a limit of 6 nautical miles (11 km / 6.9 miles), though at times it has been just 3 nautical miles (5.5 km / 3.5 miles). It also enforces a 1.5 nautical (2.7 km / 1.7 miles) mile no-fishing zone to the north, on the border with Israel. There’s also a 1 nautical mile (1.8 km / 1.15 miles) no fishing zone to the south, on the border with Egypt.
This has significantly damaged the ability of Palestinians to enjoy sustainable fishing.
To the South, there is supposed to be a crossing at Rafah. After Hamas won the 2006 election, Egypt agreed with Israel to close the Rafah crossing.
With US assistance, Egypt constructed a steel wall on the border between Egypt and Gaza. The area within Egypt that surrounds the crossing is now rife with members of ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, meaning Egypt frequently keeps the border closed.
There are also tunnels that are technically illegal, dangerous, difficult, and costly. Most recently, they appear principally controlled by ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood, and Egypt has attempted to destroy the tunnels.
The physical cutting off of Gaza has created economic and social inequalities, both between Palestinians (West Bank versus Gaza) and between Gazans and their Jewish Israeli neighbors.
Hamas’s Control
The blockades stem from Israel’s opposition to Hamas, which currently controls the Gaza Strip.
As I discussed on Monday, Hamas won the last national elections in 2006. The Charter of Hamas calls for the destruction of Israel.
That Charter has been in effect since 1988, and also says that “the land of Palestine is an Islamic [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon any part of it.” (I’m sorry – I’m not going to link to the Hamas Charter. Google works if you really must read it for yourself because you don’t believe me.]
That Charter makes negotiations between Hamas and Israel pretty unlikely, and you will often hear people cite to the Hamas Charter as a reason that Israel cannot engage in sustained peace negotiations.
But, and this is significant, in 2006, after the last national elections, Hamas indicated a willingness to accept and abide by agreements reached between past Palestinian leaders and Israel. Hamas’ leadership indicated it would accept a State of Palestine within the ’67 borders (those are the ones the international community believes are the appropriate boundaries) contingent upon Israel’s recognition of Palestine as a state.
The 2006 statements seemed to indicate that Hamas would recognize Israel’s right to exist, though in 2011, Hamas’ leadership seemed to walk this back significantly, accepting the ’67 borders for Palestine without actually recognizing Israel.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hamas’ past statements about Israel, and the decision by Hamas’ military wing to treat all Israeli citizens as military targets (a dangerous misapplication of international law that I’ll address in another post) led Israel to denounce the election of Hamas.
Israel and western governments chose to continue their recognition of Fatah, the party of Mahmoud Abbas, as the legitimate Palestinian government, ignoring the election.
Hamas and Fatah had long been rivals, and this chosen recognition / isolation exacerbated the division, and while there are times tentative steps to unity, for the most part Palestine is divided. Fatah controls the West Bank, and Hamas controls the Gaza strip.
I’ve heard from several people familiar with the situation there that Hamas would be unlikely to win an additional election there due to issues of corruption. I’m no longer fully convinced of this reality, not because Hamas has reformed but because I think people are disenfranchised with all the political leadership in Palestine.
From the people in Palestine, I often get a sense of political hopelessness, a feeling that their political leaders have all abandoned them.
But changing the political landscape is currently impossible due to the divided rule. The international recognition and continued rule of Fatah as the government, something Hamas is unwilling to accept, means that the two parties are currently unwilling to work together. The physical and political isolation between the two areas means that a national election can’t happen – and won’t happen until the two factions form a unity government. If you believe in coincidences (I do not), you would find it interesting that last year’s conflict between Israel and Gaza came about just as Hamas and the ruling Fatah party in the West Bank negotiated a unity government.
So people in Gaza have no ability to actively influence the political powers that control them. They cannot vote Hamas out – no matter how corrupt they believe it has become – and they cannot influence the political power in Israel. So they have nothing, while seeing that their Israeli neighbors have a great deal politically.
In case you missed it, that relates to the political horizontal inequalities here.
Though this month the West Bank has erupted more frequently than Gaza, this is a rather unusual situation. The confluence of social, economic, and political inequalities between Gazans and those in the West Bank, and Gazans and their Israeli neighbors, helps to explain why Gaza is often a flash-point in the conflict here. The humanitarian crisis – the lack of shelter, food, and often medical care within Gaza – is not simply a result of the conflict, but is also an underlying cause of its continued existence.
I’m not addressing the legal question of the occupation today. Sometime in the near future, I’ll discuss whether Gaza can legally be considered “occupied,” but even if you fail to consider it as such, the realities Gazans face are intertwined with the political decisions of Israel. Daily life here is controlled as much (if not more) from the outside as it is from the inside, and that kind of control coupled with unequal recognition of rights breeds resentment and hostility.
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