Bantustans and Bypass Roads: The Rebirth of Apartheid?

Jeff Halper is an anthropologist and co-ordinator of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (www.icahd.org).

The Oslo Declaration of Principles agreed by Israel and the Palestinians in September 1993 opens with the following statement:

The Government of the State of Israel and the P.L.O. [Palestine Liberation Organisation] team … representing the Palestinian people, agree that it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict, recognize their mutual legitimate and political rights, and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation through the agreed political process.

“Operation Defensive Shield”, Israel’s ferocious incursion into Palestinian areas in March and April, 2002, ostensibly to “destroy the infrastructure of terrorism”, represents not only a repudiation on Israel’s part of the vision of Oslo (not to mention the implementation of its various agreements), but a return to the pre-Oslo notion of “autonomy”, rejected by the Palestinians from the time it was first proposed by Menachem Begin in the late 1970s. The notion of autonomy does not address Palestinian rights of self-determination, of course, but leaves Israel in control. Nor does it dislodge Israel’s occupation, which is why autonomy is preferable for Israel to a Palestinian state that is coherent in territory, economically viable and truly sovereign.

In hindsight, it is clear that Israel never really moved beyond the concept of autonomy, never actually entertained the idea of an independent country called Palestine. This is evident from a reading of the most significant Oslo document of them all: what Israel did “on the ground” during the seven years of negotiations (1993–2000). It doubled its settler population in the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem) to two hundred thousand, adding close to 100 new settlements (some amounting to large cities). It constructed a system of twenty-nine massive “security” highways, 250 miles in length, that bypasses Palestinian communities, facilitates settler movement, presents impenetrable barriers to Palestinians and, in the end, incorporates the West Bank irreversibly into Israel proper. It imposed a “closure” that (aided by massive military strikes) impoverished the Palestinian population and destroyed its infrastructure, then imported hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to replace Palestinians in the Israeli workforce. It “cleared” thousands of acres of Palestinian farmland, uprooted around three hundred thousand olive and fruit trees, expropriated the most valuable agricultural land for settlements and denied the Palestinians water for either drinking or irrigation.

The smashing of Palestinian resistance in the March–April incursions, combined with the destruction of the civil infrastructure of Palestinian society and its governing Authority, seems to have goals far beyond the mere ending of terrorism. It is an attempt to defeat the Palestinians once and for all, to force them to submit to a mini-state (or worse, to a set of cantons), to dictate a “peace” that could not be obtained through negotiations. It is clear that the “occupation” is not merely a situation imposed on Israel (although the opening of the front with Jordan that led to the conquest of Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967 was imposed): it is a proactive policy of claiming the entire country between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean exclusively for the Jews—and of displacing the Palestinians in the process.

Only One Side

The Israeli government’s commitment to its occupation, the ferocity of its response to both intifadas that have challenged its occupation, and the impunity it displays in violating Palestinian human rights in order to suppress resistance, derive essentially from the way Zionism views the Palestinian people.

Although it contains elements of Western democracy (Israel’s Declaration of Independence speaks of it being a country “of all its inhabitants”), Zionism derives more from tribalistic eastern European notions of nationalism (hence the opening sentence in the Declaration of Independence that defines Israel as a “Jewish state”). The Israeli geographer Oren Yiftachel characterises Israel as an “ethnocracy”, a country that “belongs” exclusively to one particular people, the Jews. Only Jews are the rightful claimants to the country, in the view of Zionism. Jews living abroad, whether they actually immigrate or not, possess a citizenship, a “right” to live in and rule the country, that does not extend to non-Jews (Palestinians), whose residency in the country is by sufferance and not by right. Since patrimony is based on the “return” of the Jews to their historic homeland, they are the true natives, even if they arrived in the country from Minneapolis, Minsk, Buenos Aires or Aleppo in the last few years.

By contrast, Palestinians living in the country for generations are “intruders”, resident aliens (toshav ger), whose rightful place is somewhere else, but not in the land of Israel. Thus, when Israel speaks of “Judaising” the Galilee or Jerusalem—a concept that would have racist overtones in any other pluralistic democracy—it simply “makes sense” to Israeli Jews. “This is a Jewish country,” they would say. “Of course we want to ‘Judaise’ it. That’s the whole point.”

Not Israel, its pre-state Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) or the Zionist movement as a whole has ever recognised the Palestinians as a distinct people with national rights who possess legitimate claims of their own to the country. Israeli Jews, who seldom use the word “Palestinian”, view them as merely “Arabs”, part of an undifferentiated Arab mass that should live in one of the “other” twenty-two Arab countries, but not in “ours”. In terms of the conflict, there is only one “side”, that of the Jews. They represent the only people in the country with legitimate national claims. They are the exclusive heirs to the land. Theirs is the responsibility not only to “redeem” it from non-Jews who ruled (and ruined) it for so long, but to “occupy” (a biblical term) it exclusively—and especially the West Bank (“Judea and Samaria”), which constitutes the very heart of the historic land of Israel.

There is, then, no other “side”, only a mass of intractable “Arabs” with whom Israeli Jews must deal in one way or another. If the “Arabs” submit to “Jewish” claims and rule, Israel can be generous, “giving” them considerable parts of the land (parts of the West Bank, Gaza and even Jerusalem) for a Palestinian mini-state. If they insist on asserting their national rights and challenging those of the Jews, then Israel is free to deal with them as harshly as it chooses. The choice is Israel’s alone, its prerogative. A practical “solution”, yes; recognition of Palestinian rights to the country, no.

Thus, the same 60 per cent of Israeli Jews who favour ending the occupation for practical purposes also favour “transferring” the Arabs out of the country if that will bring peace and quiet; anything that “works”. This denial of Palestinian nationhood and national rights to the country underlies the impunity with which Israel treats the Palestinians (inside Israel as well as in the occupied territories). There is no symmetry, no “two sides”. Practicalities aside, the inexorable movement is towards Jewish repossession of the entire land.

Reoccupying the West Bank

On 12 May 2002, the central committee of Israel’s Likud party voted by acclamation against the establishment of a Palestinian state in any form. This flowed logically and smoothly from “Operation Defensive Shield”. The islands of Palestinian rule that had experienced siege, impoverishment and “selective military actions” since the outbreak of the intifada in September 2000 were now reoccupied. The Sharon government believed it had defeated the Palestinians once and for all. While attacks on “the infrastructure of terrorism” extended to cities, towns and villages throughout the occupied territories, the devastation of Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank became emblematic of what Israel considered to be the final and decisive military defeat of the Palestinians, the crushing of their resistance, even the end of the conflict. Israel is convinced that the Palestinians have nowhere to go. Their infrastructure of resistance has been demolished, and given Israel’s suffocating control over the occupied territories, the Palestinians will never be able to regroup. There may be isolated terrorist incidents, but these have been reduced to a problem of manageable proportions.

The destruction of the Palestinians’ civil infrastructure in Ramallah—the government ministries, hospitals and clinics, the land registry office, the courts and banking system, businesses, non-governmental organisations and research institutes, including their records and data banks—destroyed the Palestinian Authority’s ability to govern. This has enabled Israel’s “Civil Administration” (as its military government is called) to step into the breach. Palestinians wishing to leave the country, or even to travel to neighbouring towns, now need a special permit to pass through the eleven “security zones” that segment the West Bank and Gaza into isolated islands. And we must not miss the other “messages” left for the Palestinians by Israel: the demolished homes (more than two thousand since the start of the intifada); the “Death to Arabs” graffiti scrawled with excrement on walls; the excrement and urine spread throughout offices and homes in Ramallah by Israeli soldiers; the systematic destruction of the Old City of Nablus, precious to the Palestinian cultural heritage. Messages of disdain; messages saying, “You have no place at all in this land.”

Yet Israel needs a Palestinian state, and has not fully reinstalled its institutions of occupation. Without a Palestine state Israel faces two unacceptable options. If it annexes the occupied territories and grants citizenship to their three million Palestinian inhabitants, it creates de facto a binational state of five million Jews and four million Palestinians (not counting the refugees), an option that would end the Zionist enterprise. If it continues its occupation, it inevitably creates a system of outright apartheid, an untenable option in the long run. From Israel’s point of view, then, the trick is to find an arrangement that would leave it in control of the land, but relieve it of responsibility for the Palestinian population—a kind of occupation-by-consent.

This is what apartheid South Africa called a bantustan, or “black homeland”. The perceived need to confine the Palestinians to a bantustan while leaving Israel in de facto control of the entire country is the programme that unites the broad coalition of Israel’s national unity government. Indeed, the only notable disagreement between Likud and Labour is over the bantustan’s size.

Likud, contemptuous of Palestinian claims and attached to the goal of a “Greater land of Israel”, advocates a Palestinian state on 42 per cent of the West Bank and on pieces of Gaza—just enough to rid Israel of the Palestinian population without endangering its network of more than two hundred settlements. Labour also accepts the notion of the bantustan (there is no evidence on the ground that Labour prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres or Ehud Barak ever contemplated anything else throughout the years of Oslo). But Labour argues that a Palestinian mini-state must be larger, on perhaps 85–95 per cent of the West Bank, pieces of East Jerusalem and all of Gaza. Labour worries that if the Palestinian entity is not provided with a modicum of territory, sovereignty and economic viability, it will be non-sustainable and the burden of supporting the impoverished population will fall on Israel.

Labour also recalls South Africa’s inability to win international recognition for its bantustans. To establish a Palestinian state that does not relieve Israel of the Palestinian population is simply counter-productive. Finding the formula for territorial concessions, continued Israeli control, an Israel unburdened of the Palestinian population, and the creation of an entity that Israel could sell to the international community—this was the essence of the “Oslo dance” and remains so today.

The reoccupation thus offers the Palestinians two choices: (1) if they continue to resist Israeli claims to the entire country, they will find themselves incarcerated in impoverished and disconnected islands or, as a last resort, expelled from the country altogether; (2) if they finally submit to the only option acceptable to Israel, a bantustan bestowing on them the outward symbols of statehood—territory (albeit truncated), self-government (albeit less than fully sovereign), a decent standard of living (if not a viable economy of their own) and a flag (membership in the United Nations and a right to participate in the Olympics)—they will enjoy what Israel calls “autonomy plus, independence minus”. In Israel’s view, those are the only options. Missing is the one option the Palestinians desire: the creation of a viable, sovereign state. But since there is only one legitimate side to the conflict, that of the Jews, it has the right to dictate terms. The Palestinians’ role is to accept these terms, or suffer the consequences.

The Palestinian Bantustan

Sharon is a man of grand schemes. Some of them work, such as the system of settlements, of which he was a chief architect. Others fail massively and tragically, such as the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, whose goal was to push the PLO into Jordan where it would establish a Palestinian state, thus allowing Israel to retain the West Bank. Sharon has been considered an extreme “hawk” throughout both his military and political career, but his vision of a Greater Israel has always been far sharper and more coherent than the often confused and vacillating policies of Labour. David Ben-Gurion, who left the political scene in the mid-1960s, was the only Labour politician whose clarity of purpose matched Sharon’s, and in many ways their visions do not significantly differ. Indeed, the two men share another crucial similarity: both were able to transform their plans into policies and “facts on the ground”.

Sharon enjoys wide support from the political establishment, including Labour “hawks” (Peres, Barak, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer), his own Likud party, and the secular and religious right-wing parties that represent the settlers. Elderly and portly, Sharon has also seen his popular image mellow into that of a kindly old grandfather, someone who does not frighten, and who even mollifies, the wider Israeli public.

In the wake of the reoccupation, Sharon’s national unity government (which is likely to continue after the elections in early 2003, whether or not Sharon himself is re-elected) has formulated yet another grand scheme for creating a Palestinian bantustan, including a sop to Palestinian independence that will give the international community an excuse to move on to other issues. Sharon’s believes he has found the solution to the problem that eluded South Africa’s apartheid regime: how to create a bantustan that can be maintained and “sold” to the international community.

The first part of Sharon’s plan is that Gaza will become the centre of a Palestinian mini-state. The Oslo process—as well as simply a “common sense” look at the map—suggested something else: a Palestinian state centred on the West Bank, with tiny Gaza as an appendage. Consequently, the main problem over the last decade has been how to create enough territorial space on the West Bank so that a viable Palestinian state can emerge, with the Israeli presence significantly reduced or even eliminated. The reoccupation fundamentally altered that map. By laying waste to the West Bank, Israel will force the Palestinian administration to move to Gaza, which it has left more or less intact. At some point, probably when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat leaves the scene and a more compliant figurehead can be found, Gaza will become the heart of the Palestinian state as a sop to international demands for Palestinian independence. Sharon already characterises Gaza as “the PLO prison”.

The West Bank will then be divided into three or more separate and disconnected cantons defined by Israeli settlement blocs and Israeli-only highways, together with the wall (“defensive fence”) being built along the West Bank/Israeli border. Ongoing Israeli settlement activity suggests a northern Palestinian canton emerging around the city of Nablus, a central one around Ramallah and a southern one in the area of Hebron. Each would be connected independently to Israel, with thin Israeli-controlled links between them. Canton residents could be granted Palestinian citizenship without endangering Israeli control.

The Strategy

Could Israel pull this off? Could it create a new apartheid system more than a decade after the fall of South African apartheid, confining the Palestinians to a bantustan? How could it sell such a system to the international community, let alone to the Palestinians themselves? Israel’s strategy of long-term control has several components:

A Campaign of Attrition

This has steadily eroded the Palestinians’ ability to resist the occupation. The demolition of hundreds of Palestinian homes, continuing land expropriation, an ongoing “closure” that has turned into a tight military siege of all Palestinian communities, prolonged curfews and the ever-expanding use of collaborators in order to assassinate and arrest key activists—all these measures are intended to break the Palestinians’ will and force them to agree to a mini-state.

Massive Military Actions

Directed against the fragile Palestinian infrastructure and population centres using the most sophisticated and powerful of US conventional weapons—tanks and artillery, F-16 fighter planes, Apache and Cobra helicopters equipped with laser-guided missiles—as well as ground troops, Israel’s military assaults culminated in the reoccupation of the West Bank in the summer of 2002 and the current mopping-up operations. Although presented as responses to Palestinian terrorism, these military actions are proactive, exploiting terrorist attacks to achieve political goals through military means.

“Reforming” the Palestinian Authority and Delegitimising Arafat

Arafat’s willingness to play Israel’s dutiful policeman in the occupied territories during most of the 1990s, arresting and even assassinating Hamas leaders and activists, ironically made him a liability to those wide circles in Israel’s political/military establishment which sought to maintain Israeli control. His co-operation lent legitimacy to the aspirations for Palestinian independence that he symbolised, jeopardising Israeli claims to control based upon “security”. A peaceful Arafat was dangerous indeed.

Plans for ousting Arafat, known as “Fields of Thorns”, were drawn up as early as 1996. In mid‑October 2000, just after the start of the second intifada but before the beginning of the terrorist attacks, Israel’s security services reported to then–prime minister Barak, “Arafat, the person, is a severe threat to the security of the state and the damage which will result from his disappearance is less than the damage caused by his existence.”1 Various schemes have been devised to eliminate Arafat in favour of an even more compliant leader who will sign up to a bantustan. The latest is the US and Israeli demand for “reform” of the Palestinian Authority, supposedly motivated by concerns over corruption or poor administration. While many Palestinians recognise Arafat’s shortcomings and share a desire to see far-reaching reforms in the way the Palestinian Authority operates, they grasp the thrust of the seemingly innocent “reforms”. The fact that they have begun with a CIA-supervised overhaul of the Palestinian security services has not been lost on them.

Creating Irreversible Facts on the Ground

While presenting itself as the peace-seeking victim of Palestinian aggression, Israel has never paused for a moment in its efforts to foreclose the establishment of any viable Palestinian state. It continues to expand its settlements and infrastructure in the occupied territories. Once it completes its highway and “bypass” road system incorporating the settlements into Israel proper, Israel’s hold on the occupied territories may be irreversible. The physical parameters created by the settlements and roads, Israel’s “matrix of control”, are intended to define the future Palestinian cantons.

Selective Induced Expulsion

“Transfer”, a form of ethnic cleansing advocated by several government ministers and finding currency in mainstream Israeli political discourse, is Israel’s answer to the issue of how the submission of the Palestinian people to a bantustan can be maintained. Israel does not have to expel masses of Palestinians to ensure control; inducing the emigration of the educated middle classes is sufficient to render the society weak, leaderless and easily controlled. Since the outbreak of the second intifada, it has been estimated that some 150,000 Palestinians have left the occupied territories, the vast majority of them middle class (including many Christians from the Bethlehem and Ramallah areas), the only sector of Palestinian society with the means to begin new lives elsewhere.

Economic Trickle-Down

Removing political and social leadership by inducing emigration of the middle classes requires that Israel improve the economic wellbeing of the average Palestinian wage-earner in order to counteract any tendency towards renewed resistance. Enough of Israel’s first-world economy will be allowed to penetrate into Palestine to give its workforce a stake in maintaining the status quo. This is the rationale behind the building of seven (of a planned twelve) industrial parks on the seam between Israel and the occupied territories, funded mainly by the Peres Centre for Peace.

Can Israel Get Away with It?

Will Israel succeed in confining the Palestinians to a cantonised mini-state? Sharon thinks so, as do what Israeli scholar Tanya Reinhart calls Israel’s “political generals”—former army officers who have become politicians. Israel’s trump card is the US Congress, which is all it needs. Uncritical congressional support protects Israel not only from other international actors—Europe (which refuses to assert an independent policy), the Arab countries, the United Nations and human rights bodies—but also from slightly critical US administrations. Blanket congressional support is guaranteed by Jewish influence over the Democratic party and the Christian right’s influence over the Republicans. But it also receives a powerful boost from the interests of many members of Congress in the US jobs and revenues generated by Israel’s acquisition of US military hardware. This unreserved support found its most explicit expression in the 2 May 2024 resolution passed in the wake of Israel’s onslaught on Jenin and coinciding with Sharon’s visit to Washington. That resolution supporting Israel’s campaign to destroy “the terrorist infrastructure” and fiercely condemning the Palestinian Authority passed the Senate by 94 votes to 2 and the House by 352 votes to 21.

The Role of Civil Society

Israel’s ongoing and ever-deepening occupation poses a bold challenge to the international community, be it the governments that constitute it or its civil society as represented by non-governmental and faith-based organisations. In an era of global transparency, mass media, instantaneous news coverage and the Internet, can a new Berlin Wall be built that locks millions of Palestinians behind massive fortifications—Israel’s $100 million “security fence”? (In fact, Israel’s “defensive fence” is twice as long and several metres higher than the infamous Berlin Wall.) Decades after the end of colonialism and more than a decade after the end of South African apartheid, will the international community sit passively by while a new apartheid regime arises before our very eyes? And in a world in which the ideal of human rights has gained wide acceptance, can an entire people be imprisoned in dozens of tiny, impoverished islands and denied its fundamental right of self-determination, with all of us powerless to act?

Whether we will achieve a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians or witness the rise of a new apartheid situation depends to a large degree on international civil society. This is perhaps the only countervailing force that, together with the Palestinian public and the small Israeli peace movement that supports it, can prevent the subjugation of the Palestinian people. We have considerable power, even if it is as yet not quite mobilised. Linked by the Internet and modern travel, once localised grassroots organisations are today capable of mounting effective international campaigns. We have, moreover, new instruments of universal justice at our disposal: human rights covenants and a corpus of international humanitarian law endorsed by the international community, plus a growing body of institutions that give teeth to human rights, in particular the incipient international criminal court. We are not governments. We do not have the power to make policy or impose peace. But we do have the power to monitor the situation, to oppose human rights violations and to keep any renewed peace process honest.

This means keeping the political process focused on ending the occupation and establishing a viable Palestinian state. It means ensuring that, in contrast to Oslo, a renewed peace process includes the following elements:

● An explicit declaration that the eventual goals of the negotiations are a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state, together with security and regional integration for Israel (a position very close to the Saudi plan endorsed by the League of Arab States in March 2002).

● Making a direct connection between the negotiations and the realities on the ground. Oslo was formulated so as to defer discussion of the “hard issues” (i.e., those most crucial to the Palestinians) until the final stages of the negotiations, which were never arrived at. Jerusalem, borders, water, settlements, the fate of the refugees—all these issues were put off during the seven years of negotiations. Although Article IV of Oslo’s Declaration of Principles talks about preserving the “integrity” of the West Bank and Gaza during negotiations, it did not prevent Israel from creating facts on the ground which, as we have seen, completely prejudiced the talks.

● Reference to international law and human rights. In Oslo, almost every protection and source of leverage the Palestinians possessed—including the Geneva Conventions and most UN resolutions—were set aside in favour of power-negotiations in which Israel had a tremendous advantage. Virtually all the elements of the occupation constituting Israel’s aforementioned matrix of control—its oppressive system of “security” and bureaucratic measures, its settlements and bypass roads—stand in violation of international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention in particular, signed and ratified by Israel, protects civilians living under occupation. Because it defines “occupation” as a temporary situation that will eventually be resolved through negotiations, it prohibits occupying powers from making their presence permanent—which is precisely what Israel’s matrix of control does.

● Dismantling the matrix of control. If the object of negotiations is a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, the fundamental issue is one of control, not merely territory. The strategic 5–15 per cent (at least) of the West Bank that Israel intends to keep in any solution agreed with the Palestinians would allow it to maintain three or four major settlement blocs containing more than 90 per cent of its settlers, create an Israeli-dominated “Greater Jerusalem” and continue to control movement throughout the area. Unless the issues of control, viability and sovereignty become formal elements in the negotiations, a non-viable and dependent Palestinian mini-state will be the result. Understanding the matrix of control is essential to comprehending the sources of the present conflict, to suggesting effective ways of ending the occupation and to ensuring that negotiations conclude with a just peace that is in everyone’s interest.

● Refugees. Some 70 per cent of the Palestinian people are refugees. No resolution of the conflict is possible without addressing their rights, needs and grievances. Israel must acknowledge its active role in creating the refugee problem and recognise the refugees’ right of return. Once that is done, the Palestinians and the wider Arab world that endorsed the Saudi plan have indicated their willingness to negotiate a mutually agreed actualisation of that right. Such an actualisation would be based on several elements: settlement of refugees in the Palestinian state, compensation for those wishing to remain where they are, resettlement in other countries, and the return of a certain number of refugees to Israel itself.

Holding Israel Accountable

Israeli rule over Palestine threatens to bring into being another apartheid regime at a time when we were all convinced that the former South African system had been discredited forever. Zionism and the image of Jews as powerless victims to whom the world owes a moral and political debt lend Israeli policies a legitimacy—or at least constrain countries from actively opposing them—that South African apartheid never had. International isolation and economic and cultural sanctions, so effective against South Africa, have proven impossible to mount against Israel, not least because of Jewish and Christian support for Israel in the United States and Europe.

Again, international humanitarian law provides a way out of the conflict. Indeed, Israel need not be demonised or even ostracised as white-ruled South Africa was. If Israel were made merely to comply with existing human rights covenants which it itself has signed, in particular the Fourth Geneva Convention, the occupation would be dismantled of its own accord and a relationship of equality and peace between Israelis and Palestinians would emerge.

Israel will not voluntarily give up its occupation, and internal Israeli public opinion is neither sufficiently crystallised, nor sufficiently able to influence its political leaders, to end the occupation from the inside. Nor are foreign governments or international bodies willing to act. Without prodding by non-governmental and faith-based organisations, trade unions and activist political groups, an end to the occupation may be far off. Global civil society must be mobilised to insist that Israel be held accountable to international law. That is possible. Aided by modern communications and supported by a growing set of institutions and legal frameworks, international civil society is having an increasingly important influence on the privileged world of governmental decision-making—witness the anti-apartheid movement, anti-globalisation campaigns, the prominence of non-governmental organisations at the 2001 Durban summit on racism and the 2002 Johannesburg summit on sustainable development, together with the rapidly expanding World Social Forum network.

Beyond the localised issues at stake, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict represents the historical moment, and the issue, that will test the effectiveness of international civil society, its very relevance. Having shed the naivety of Oslo, it must follow the up-coming political process with eyes wide open and critical. The Israeli government or others must not be allowed to succeed in selling schemes of autonomy, mini-states or apartheid to a gullible public. The goal must be to see a viable, sovereign Palestinian state emerge in all the occupied territories. It is up to us to serve as effective advocates for a just peace.

Endnotes

1. Details of this security service report were published in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv on 6 July 2001.