Features » August 18, 2005 » Web Only

Will Withdrawal Make Gaza a Frontier Ghetto?

By Neve Gordon

Now that the withdrawal from Gaza is underway, and the settlers being relocated have failed to transform their personal trauma into a national trauma, it is high time to ask whether or not the dismantlement of Jewish settlements and redeployment of troops will advance Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Published in 2003, James Ron’s thoughtful book Frontiers and Ghettos provides a convincing answer to this question. A sociology professor at McGill University and the Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Human Rights, Ron examines two spatial metaphors-ghettos and frontiers. He suggests that until the mid ’90s, the West Bank and Gaza Strip were Israel’s ghettos. Ghettos are densely institutionalized by the state, since they are within its legal sphere of influence, and serve as repositories for unwanted and marginalized populations. Lebanon, Ron maintains, was Israel’s frontier. Frontiers are distinguished from the state by clear boundaries, and are only thinly institutionalized arenas.

The crucial point is that these two different institutional settings determine the kind of violence employed by the state. Whereas in its ghettos the state typically uses ethnic policing, mass incarceration and harassment, at its frontiers the state is more prone to employ brutal and lawless violence.

These insights are important, even though the dichotomy that Ron poses between ghettos and frontiers can no longer be directly applied to the Occupied Territories. While Israel has in the past years substantially diluted its institutional presence in the territories, particularly in Gaza, it has also placed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in enclaves by surrounding the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank with fences and walls. Thus, from an institutional perspective the Occupied Territories have been transformed into a frontier, and from a spatial viewpoint more and more people have been placed in ghettos.

The crux of the matter is that if the thinning of the institutional system leads to the intensification of violence, then one can predict that the repertoires of violence Israel employs in Gaza will become more lethal following the withdrawal. This assumption was recently corroborated by the former head of Israel’s secret services. Quoted in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, he stated that the withdrawal will provide the military with much more freedom to act, by which he meant that Israel will be able to use forms of violence that it has previously hesitated to employ.

The change was already noticeable in the months leading to the pull out. According to the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, in the first 10 months after the official decision to dismantle the settlements, Israeli forces killed 563 Palestinians in Gaza, whereas during the previous 10 month period 264 were killed. In contrast to earlier periods, Israel is now more willing to employ brutal violence from afar in order to quell any resistance.

Alongside the change in the kinds of violence, Ron’s model suggests that one should expect to see a corresponding change in Israel’s sense of moral responsibility toward the occupied population. And indeed, it is no longer the case that Israeli liberals underscore their country’s ethical obligations toward their occupied neighbors, as they did during the first Intifada. The human rights of Palestinians are no longer part of the liberal agenda.

Insofar as this analysis is accurate, it is likely that at least in the near future the violence Israel employs in the Gaza Strip and West Bank will become more ferocious. Surely, the Palestinians will not sit still and their reactions will no doubt also be extremely bloody. The cycle of violence will, accordingly, intensify. Such developments are, in many respects, a direct consequence of Prime Minister Sharon’s unilateral approach, since without negotiations and an attempt to reach a just and comprehensive peace it is naïve to expect that the conflict will end any time soon.

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• Reader Comments

  Hmmm… think returning the land to the people who, you know, actually LIVED there before the ridiculous fiasco in the 50s tore it away from them would help? It’s so ironic with all the discussion about Iraq and the numerous security resolutions Hussein broke that no one seems to remember/care that Israel has broken more UN “resolutions” than Hussein could have ever dreamed!

  Posted by g-love on Aug 18, 2005 at 8:28 PM

  g-love is right. To date, Israel is in violation of 69 U.N. resolutions and probably many more had the U.S. not vetoed the others passed by the General Asembly in overwhelming majorities. I do not by this “disengagement” from Gaza as a concession to Palestinians. These ultra-right Jewish settlers are myopic in their assertion that they are the victims and there should be no disengagement. The only viable solution is a two-state solution with Palestininas in full control of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank with their capital in East Jerusalem. While Sharon is pulling out from Gaza, he is quckly annexing large swaths of the West Bank due to that “security fence” which has been declared illegal in the ICC. I support the Saudi position: an end to Arab hostilities to Israel if it returns to its pre-1967 borders. That way, Israel exists and the terrorists lose their major recruiting tool!

  Posted by Liberal on Aug 18, 2005 at 11:12 PM

  I, and most other Americans, think g-love and Liberal are right. But the entire American political class which includes the corporate media is arrayed against justice in the Middle East.

  Cindy Sheehan said : “You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you’ll stop the terrorism.”

  Let’s keep repeating that until, welling up as one voice, it redefines reality.

  Posted by John Francis Lee on Aug 19, 2005 at 4:19 AM

  I can see where Cindy Sheehan is going with the America out of Iraq/Israel out of Palestine, but to suggest that will end terrorism is innacurate. Peace between Israel/Palestine would be a huge step and it goes without saying that, someday, getting out of Iraq will pay dividends.

  But, as long as there’s a U.S. prescence in Saudi Arabia, there will still be terrorism a la Al Qaeda. Plus, there’s sick a-holes all over the world; if they’re not blowing themselves and others up for one thing, it’s for another.

  Posted by g-love on Aug 19, 2005 at 2:53 PM

  I never said that a just resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict would end terrorism but that it would eliminate a vast recruting base for Al-Qaeda in the Middle East. Al-Qaeda can only survive as long as it has a large group of young men to recruit from. Al-Qaeda capitalizes on their dissatisfaction with U.S. policies to get them to blow themselves up. Ending the Israeli/Palestinian conflict would take that recruting tool off the table and force Al-Qaeda to look for other issues. Remember, Al-Qaeda’s ambitions are only regional- we get taken off their hitlist if we demonstrate and even handedness with the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and show that we have no long-term ambitions in Iraq.
  Osama Bin Laden is no fool. He knows what he wants and has said he would not call for more attacks against the U.S. and its allies if they end their one-sided support for Israel, which really is not a radical proposal.
  Then we can forget about Al Qaeda. Hezbollah and Hamas no longer have a call to arms in the region. Thus these groups lose their base and disintegrate or get pushed back into the extreme where they originally were.

  Posted by Liberal on Aug 19, 2005 at 9:36 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 24 posts.

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