The rally was a rare show of unity between different factions (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Around 30,000 ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) demonstrators, many more than anticipated, showed up for a mass rally against the planned induction of Yeshiva students outside the Israeli army’s recruiting offices in Jerusalem Thursday night. The government plans to revoke a special exemption given to these ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, part of plan to “equalize of the national burden” orchestrated by Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennet. Rabbis on stage declared the government’s plans as “decrees of destruction” and said they are part of a “religious war” being fought between the regime and “believers,” calling on all good men to join the struggle.

“There is no room for compromise,” said Rabbi Israeli Zikerman, “just like you cannot compromise by having one eye plucked out instead of two. No child of ours will go to the army. We would rather go to prison.” Another speaker said that the rally should have taken place inside an army base, as “soldiers know that we are the ones protecting them with our studies and prayer.” The rally was attended almost solely by men, while a few women stood in small groups on its outskirts.

Rabbis called the new draft initiative a “religious war.” (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The rally was an unusual show of unity within otherwise rival sectors of the Ultra-Orthodox community: the extreme anti-statist and utterly anti-Zionist Ashkenazi faction of Edah HaChareidim was joined by one of the two larger and more mainstream Ashkenazi factions of the Misnagdim, who usually cooperate with the state, as well as by several prominent Sephardic rabbis and their pupils. An ultra-Orthodox journalist at the rally told me the new unity might have significant implications for the entire community, as draft laws could push moderates into extremists’ hands.

Dozens of youth set trash cans alight and confronted police. (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Throughout the rally, a group of several dozen youths heckled police and at times threw stones, concrete blocks, dirty diapers and metal bars at riot police, while also setting trash cans on fire. Whereas a Palestinian demonstration would have been attacked after the first stone, police stood idly by through three hours of speeches, with two of them getting injured.

Police arrest an ultra-Orthodox man at the mass demonstration against plans to draft haredim into the Israeli army. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

The second that a speaker on stage announced the rally was over, however riot and border police stormed in. Officers arrested ten people, beat up and pepper sprayed others, and used horses, batons and stun grenades to disperse the crowd. Protesters responded by torching more trash cans and throwing bottles, while speakers on stage attempted to send de-escalating messages to both sides.

Once the rally was over, police stormed in with horses and batons. (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Parallel to the central demonstration, a small group of thirty post-J14 activists affiliated with the more radical and anti-militarist faction of the social justice movement calling themselves ”Democracy or Rebellion,” demonstrated in support of the ultra-Orthodox. They decried “ongoing incitement (against the ultra-Orthodox) by the oppressive regime,” and the “divide and rule policies that are aimed to prevent the sons and daughters of the land from uniting as a civilian and multi-cultural society and fulfilling their rights,” as their leaflet stated. Police prevented the secular demonstrators from joining the religious rally.

“Citizens – not soldiers, Rights – not orders”. Post-J14 activists show support. (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

On the sidelines of the rally, the question of the occupation also led to minor confrontations. The social activists (and I myself) were asked by many why they were supportive of the ultra-Orthodox cause. While some were happy to hear the anti-militarist (and anti-Zionist) discourse, others were enraged, yelling that they want no help from “treacherous leftists who love Arabs.” They explained, “we need an army to fight our enemies and you have to serve in it while we support the cause through study and prayer.” Within the rally itself, small fist fights broke out between pro-Palestinian extreme factions and pro-state mainstream factions. These ended fairly quickly but served as a good indication of the unsolved tensions between the newly allied ultra-Orthodox camps. Their joint struggle is likely to continue in the coming weeks, and all parties announced they would hold more protests.

Tel Aviv Municipality officials showing an asylum seeker out of his resturant (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

A group of municipal officials led an operation to close African asylum seekers’ illegal businesses in the south Tel Aviv neighborhoods of Neve Sha’anan and Shapira at around 7 p.m. Sunday night. The municipal officers were accompanied by Border Police officers, a photographer and several large moving trucks complete with African workers.

Splitting into groups, the law enforcers went to several bars, restaurants and grocery stores owned by asylum seekers. As their legal status in Israel forbids them from either working or owning a business, most Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers are forced to make a living illegally, which leads authorities to chase them down and either punish their employers or close down their shops.

A policeman and an attack dog watch over African workers emptying an asylum seeker’s store (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Such was the case Sunday evening. All the goods, furniture and other equipment in all the businesses were inventoried and confiscated, and the doors were welded shut. In none of the locations photographer Oren Ziv and I visited was there any resistance by the shop owners and the armed policemen (and one police attack dog) were left without much to do. Several Israeli bystanders cheered the officials for helping pushing foreigners out, while other muttered insults at them for enforcing racist policies.

Workers emptying a bar in south Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Estimates have it that asylum seekers are running hundreds of small businesses in south Tel Aviv, mostly serving their own communities and naturally, authorities cannot possibly close them all down. However, owners often complain about police brutality, as Border Police patrols force people out of bars at midnight, at times using batons and even pepper spray. The municipality, too, is working hard at combating this small world of business and leisure, but operations on today’s scale are not a common sight.

Welding a shop’s door shut (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

It is possible that Mayor Ron Huldai’s administration pushed the operation forward as part of preparations for the upcoming October municipal elections. Many Israeli residents of south Tel Aviv are likely to be supportive of such actions, as the feeling is that asylum seekers are burdening the already weak physical and social infrastructure and poor services provided to the mostly working or lower-middle class population in the neighborhoods. This feeling is strengthened as some asylum seekers are pushed into criminal activities and the press gives extensive coverage to the criminality. Tensions between the communities has already led to several individual and mob attacks on asylum seekers by Israelis.

Municipal officials and private movers take a fridge out of an asylum seeker’s resturant (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

UPDATE, May 13, 10:30 a.m.:

Aladin Abaker, a Sudanese refugee, published pictures from Sunday night’s raid showing municipal Ministry of Health inspectors pouring bleach into pots of food in a restaurant, allegedly because the establishment is “a danger to public health.” He writes the following:

Friends meet in this place, the most delicious restaurant with a smell of home, to eat and remember our families in Darfur. Suddenly health inspectors and police forces swarmed in and destroyed the food we had ordered and the food in the pots, with no sensitivity to the people whose culture sees food as a sacred thing to be treated with respect. We tried to tell them that this place has been open for four years now, it’s where we eat all our meals, and not once has anyone gone ill. Even whites come to eat here…

Everybody present was in tears. The waitress told us: “I’ve seen some horrible things in my life, including torture in Sinai, but this has humiliated me more than torture.” I told her they were doing it to make our lives miserable and try to encourage us to return to Africa “willingly.”

Offical pouring bleach into food as Sudanese restaurant (Photo: Aladin Abaker)

Thousands on the streets of Tel Aviv last night (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Back on the streets. It was probably the largest demonstration for social justice and against austerity in the past year, if not since the Israeli ‘Summer of 2011.’ More than 12,000 protestors blocked the streets of central Tel Aviv Saturday night to protest against the government’s proposed new budget. Hundreds also took to the streets in Haifa, Modi’in and Jerusalem, while about 250 others demonstrated outside the Ramat Gan home of Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom, demanding that the natural gas found off Israeli shores remains here for local use, and not sold off abroad.

The central demonstration started out on Rothschild Boulevard, the birthplace of 2011′s #J14 movement, and proceeded with great energy through much of central Tel Aviv, ending up back at the same location. There was a feeling of anger in the air, much greater than in 2011, which might indicate that this will not be a one-time event.

Demonstrators in central Tel Aviv (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Meanwhile in Ramat Gan, protestors clashed with police and one person was arrested – and then de-arrested by activists. While marching toward the central demonstration, activists also shortly blocked the Ayalon Highway, where police reportedly utilized more violence and used pepper spray on demonstrators. After the two demonstrations were united and the masses began heading home, a group of about 200 people went on to block another road, and were dispersed by police. InHaifa, the windows of a Yesh Atid party branch were smashed. No other irregular events were reported.

Police arresting activist outside Silvan Shalom’s house (Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

Pushed forward by Finance Minister Yair Lapid, the planned budget carries with an across the board income tax hike for all workers, a cut in child support credits, subsidies, other government expenditures, a postponement of promised salary benefits for public employees (in coordination with the Histadrut labor federation), a new tax on fruits and vegetables and more. While corporate and business taxes are also expected to rise, demonstrators are claiming Lapid has not done enough to take the burden off the middle and lower classes and assert the government should tax the rich more intensely by introducing an inheritance tax, cutting tax benefits to international corporations and other measures.

Not liking Lapid’s new budget (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The demonstrations yesterday were attended by several opposition MKs, but while party flags of Hadash, Da’am, Meretz and Labor were visible in the crowd – the large mass of protesters showed up without any demonstrated political alignment. It will be interesting to see what happens next with the #J14 movement: what forms of action it will take (more demonstrations, renewed tent encampments or something completely new), how it will be organized, and if it dares take on the occupation and the regime’s inherent racism – or limit its focus on the social justice struggle for (mainly Jewish) citizens.

After nearly a month of weekly protests outside the house of Yair Lapid, the new finance minister – numbering about 400 people each and organized by post-#J14 groups for public housing – a much bigger demonstration is planned for Saturday night with more than 10,000 people declaring they will attend on the Facebook event page.

The protests are erupting as Lapid promotes a new budget, which looks much like the one planned by the previous government. It was ultimately public pressure that led the government to scrap the budget and call for elections, in which Lapid got massive support on the ticket of “defender of the middle class.” Lapid supporters feel betrayed by the former TV presenter and columnist, who is about to raise taxes and cut subsidies and government spending instead of tackling the banks, massive corporations and large-scale capitalists. On Saturday they are likely to join opposition forces out on the streets.

Demonstration outside home of Lapid, Thursday night (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The revival of larger public protests for social justice is accompanied by the same old questions that hung over #J14 in the summer of 2011. While the official event is targeting not only capital but the settlements in the West Bank, and while leftist parties are preparing to make their presence felt on the streets, some are once again calling for the protests to be “a-political” (that is: not to mention the occupation) so as to “allow a wider base of support.” Tensions might also arise between the old and somewhat centrist leadership of the movement and other leaders from the social periphery, who have been constantly active since July 2011. It remains to be seen how these differences will be played out this time around and whether the protests could be hijacked by militarism once again. Saturday night might be a serious test for all these questions, as well as for the movement’s ability to get the masses back out on the streets.

“Closing a paper = a damage to democracy”. Journalist facing guards at the offices of one of Ma’ariv’s owners (Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

One thing is certain: personally, it’s been a hell of a ride. About 18 months ago the new Union of Journalists in Israel (UJI) was set up and I quickly joined. It took us a couple of months of hard work until April 22, 2012 when the UJI announced it was officially representing journalists in 10 media organizations; I was appointed chair of the union (or Father of the Chapel) of the Ma’ariv daily newspaper. Little did I — or anyone else — know that within four months, what was once one of the largest newspapers in Israel, owned by one of the country’s strongest capitalists (Nochi Dankner), would collapse altogether. Around 2,000 workers were left at risk of losing their jobs without the paper paying what it owed them.

For more than two hot summer months the paper’s journalists and workers flooded the streets in protest. They blocked Tel Aviv’s main roads, stormed the 41^st floor of the Azrieli Towers, where Dankner’s headquarters is conveniently located, marched on the owners’ houses, visited the Knesset, took strike actions and utilized the paper and its website (NRG) as part of a struggle against the paper’s closure and mass layoffs without compensation.

It was a hard struggle but in part, we won. The paper was not closed but rather sold to Shlomo Ben-Tzvi, owner of the religious right-wing paper Makor Rishon. More than half the jobs were saved, full compensation was promised to all and a new collective bargaining agreement was signed, guaranteeing the rights of those who remained. It was the first such agreement in the private media sector for nearly 20 years (the old Journalists Association had become obsolete and ineffective for anyone outside government-owned television and radio, including for Haaretz journalists).

But there was also a personal price to pay. As the new owner came in, he chose not to hire me, and I was left unemployed. The union is still fighting the management in court over their choice, deliberate as the union has it, to sack the head of the union.

Channel Ten journalists in protest against political pressure to silence them (Oren Ziv / Activesitlls)

The new Journalists’ Union, which now has more than 2,000 members and is representing journalists in most of the large media organizations, brought back organized labor to the world of journalism after it was disintegrated by publishers during the nineties. It has not been the only place where organized labor is making a comeback. More than 30,000 Israeli workers joined unions over the past two years, some of them the first ever in their field. Such was the case of the high-profile struggle of thousands of Pelephone workers, who were the first-ever workers to unionize in an Israeli cellular company, and who had to lead a three-week-long strike in order to win recognition. This opened the door for other workers in their industry to join the union train. New locals were set up in countless companies, and teachers, social workers, doctors and nurses and factory workers went on strike for their rights.

Each and every company where workers choose the union has its own set of circumstances, be it the collapse of Ma’ariv or the dramatic change of legislation that opened the cellular market for competition last year. However, I believe that the phenomenon as a whole derives from the J14 protests that flooded the streets of Israel’s cities in the summer of 2011, including the largest demonstration in the history of the country.

The linkage between the protests and the unions can often be found in the rhetoric of union leaders and the activists themselves. Pelephone workers often referred to the J14 slogan, saying that the union is the only way to achieve true social justice. At Ma’ariv, as with the founding of the UJI as a whole, I felt that journalists had a new perspective on capitalism, worker rights and what proper journalism should be about; they themselves took part in the protests against the rising cost of living and demanding decent salaries and working conditions.

Ha’aretz journalists blocking a road outside their desk (Oren Ziv / Activesitlls)

So while J14, its banners, encampments and mass rallies disappeared over time, and although the splits in the movement were partly behind the election of Yair Lapid, its spirit lingers on in small activist groups, the sprouting of new cooperatives all over the country and especially, the return of organized labor.

There are, of course, many obstacles in the way. Unions are at times depicted as an extension of the de-legitimized radical left, or more often as powerful monopoles that are the cause of the rise in cost of living. In recent weeks there has been talk in the government of pushing forward anti-strike legislation and a possible cancelation of the labor courts, in addition to indefinitely postponing salary raises in the public sector, which were promised following several strikes in the past two years. However, the unions are already preparing for battle. Thus, May Day 2013 is a good day to celebrate our victories, as well as a day to recognize the challenges ahead.

Related: 
The price of turning Israel into another Scandinavia

Egyptian draft refuser Mohamed Fathy and peace activist Lulu Loren (Photo: No to Compulsory Military Service)

A small group of young Egyptians gathered in downtown Cairo for a vigil yesterday, the likes of which have probably never before been seen in any Arab country. The group held signs calling for the release of Israeli draft resister Natan Blanc, who was recently sent to prison for a record-breaking ninth consecutive sentence. According to Israeli movement Yesh Gvul, the gesture was highly appreciated by Blanc’s family.

The Cairo vigil is part of a new type of cooperation between the Israeli feminist and anti-militarist movement New Profile (in which I myself am an activist) and the Egyptian group, No to Compulsory Military Service – a movement which was started by Maikel Nabil Sanad, the first known Egyptian conscientious objector. Nabil Sanad was imprisoned briefly in 2010 and once again right after the revolution for criticizing the army in his blog (he was only released following a hunger strike and public and international pressure).

In the joint message published by the two groups, they write:

We confirm our support of peace and of conscientious objectors in both countries, re-affirming the human right to freedom of conscience, faith and self-determination. We condemn the way both our governments treat conscientious objectors […]

The right to conscientious objection is one of the basic human rights, as the right to freedom of expression and life, and is recognized in international charters on human rights such as The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (both signed and ratified by bothEgypt and Israel). Therefore, the movements No to Compulsory Military Service and New Profile call on both governments to respect international laws and meet their obligations to which they committed themselves in view of the international community, and to recognize the right of Natan Blanc, Emad el Dafrawi and Mohamed Fathy to conscientious objection to military service.

While Blanc has been in prison for more than 130 days, the Egyptian draft resisters are free. But according to local activists, “for more than a year they have been living without most of their civil rights. They are not allowed to work, study or travel. They are not even allowed to hold a travel document.”

Cairo vigil for Natan Blanc (Photo: No to Compulsory Military Service)

It should be noted that such joint statements and actions are extremely rare, as Egypt’s mainstream and elite politics is by far more opposed to normalization with Israel than are many other countries, including Palestine. Nabil Sanad has himself been highly criticized, even within the Egyptian anti-militarist left, for his willingness to cooperate with Israelis. He was especially criticized when he broke the Palestinian academic and cultural boycott call by visiting Israel and lecturing at official university events here. It will be interesting to see whether this new cooperation between the two movements has any effect on the chances of a wider exchanges of ideas and support across the border, 31 years after the last Israeli soldier left the Sinai Peninsula to make way for a cold yet stable peace.

Soldiers arresting youths in Nabi Saleh, 2013 (Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

The issue of Israel’s treatment of detained minors has been gaining more and more attention in recent weeks. Aside from ongoing parliamentary debates in the UK, Israel’s Channel 2 News aired a story on the nighttime arrests of child stone-throwers in the Al-Arub Refugee Camp (Hebrew), and we at +972 published Samar Hazboun’s beautiful and horrific photo essay of children’s testimonies from their detention.

Both of these were preceded by a UNICEF report published last month, which has gained much attention for its criticism of Israel’s policies towards minors in the occupied territories. Israel differentiates between Israeli and Palestinian minors by law, offering them different sets of rights, subjecting the Palestinian youths to a military court system, and often denying them basic rights in interrogations in an attempt to extort confessions. The UNICEF report concluded that “ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized.” Harsh words indeed.

However, it now appears that even these words have been scrutinized and carefully picked, intentionally leaving out words such as “torture,” reportedly due to Israeli pressure on the UN body. Research published this week by John Lyons, Middle East correspondent for The Australian, alleges that attempts were made by UNICEF to blur the severe implications of its own findings. Lyons describes the press conference in which the report was released, and writes about how the room was surprisingly empty due to the agency’s intentional inviting of few journalists following what one UNICEF official reportedly called intense “pressure to cancel this event.”

Things got even stranger when journalists were told they could only film and quote the first five minutes of the press conference, during which Israel was praised for its cooperation and willingness to act upon the report’s recommendations. Only after cameras and microphones were turned off did the officials start elaborating on their actual findings. One official “said children sometimes were told they would be killed or that they or members of their families would be sexually assaulted if they did not confess, usually to stone-throwing,” writes Lyons, while “another said there was ‘a systemic pattern of abuse and torture.’”

Lyons then goes on and reads the report, finding out that the word “torture” is not used directly throughout the report even though practices described in it amount to as much. “The report even deleted ‘torture’ when it quoted relevant sections of international law and substituted it with ‘duress’,” he writes, and compares Article 15 of the Convention Against Torture as it appears in the original and in the report. When he tried to get anyone in UNICEF to comment on these issues, Lyons says he was bounced back and forth between the Jerusalem branch and the New York head office, in what he describes as a “circle of unaccountability”.

Sodier arresting child in Beit Omar, 2010 (Anne Paq / Activestills)

Read also:
Detained: Testimonies from Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel
Resource: UNICEF report on Palestinian children in Israeli military detention
Hope ends here: The children’s court at Ofer Military Prison

Speakers call for the implementation of UN resolution 194. (Haggai Matar)

The march was organized by the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Displaced People (ADRID), and was attended mostly by Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (dubbed “’48 Palestinians”) and a few Jewish Israeli activists. Aside from the speeches, the rally included a cultural festival with book and food stands, and Palestinian flags and accessories and “Free Samer Issawi” shirts were sold in mass numbers. The event ended with a performance by singer Walaa Sbeit, himself a descendant of the displaced from Iqrit, who gained a large round of applause when he mentioned the outpost he and his friends have been holding for nine months now on the old village lands.

Thousands march through the village lands. (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

A small counter demonstration of about 40 Israeli flag-wavers welcomed the marchers to Khubeizy’s lands. Within the Palestinian protest itself, two arguments caused rifts within the crowd: one small group near the stage pulled out Syrian flags in support of Assad’s regime and against the “American-Zionist plot” to topple it, despite the request by organizers not to bring any party sign nor signs of support for either side of the Syrian civil war (arguments within the group almost turned violent). Another small group resented the fact that a Jewish Israeli, Dr. Gerardo Leibner of the Tarabut movement, was invited to speak on stage. Leibner himself responded to critics and said that unity between Arabs and non-Zionist Jews was important for the struggle.

Some of the young were showing off horse riding tricks. (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

The village of Khubeizy, named after the edible plant (Malva, in English), is located in north Wadi Ara, about 40 kilometers southeast of Haifa. In 1948 it was home to 350 residents, who according to ADRID did not put up a fight when occupied. However, the village was demolished and villagers dispersed to nearby towns within Israeli territory, as well as to refugee camps in Jenin and Jordan.

Flags, books and “Free Samer Issawi” T-shirts were sold around the festival. (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

About a million Israelis celebrated Independence Day, in parallel to the annual March of Return, with the traditional barbecues and trips to nature reserves and beaches.

Related:
Israel’s Memorial Day: A day of mourning and militarism
On Memorial Day, I stand for Tomer<

Jerusalem (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

Last year I published a 12-part series analyzing the repercussions the Wall has had on various aspects of Israelis’ and especially on Palestinians’ lives. I described the wall’s history, its effects on the peace process, on Jerusalem, on villages on both sides and the popular struggle that started in those villages and its results. None of these have dramatically changed in the year that passed.

Regarding the issue of Palestinian workers, which I mentioned in the series, Israel launched a new segregated bus line a few weeks ago. This measure both normalizes the wall and its checkpoints and strengthens segregation between Israelis and Palestinians, even within Israel proper. The devastating implications the wall will have on Battir and Wadi Fukin are still looming over the two serene villages, and recently the Defense Ministry offered the High Court to build a fence instead of the planned wall in that area – a compromise the villagers are rejecting. Lastly, plans to resume construction of the miles-long gap in the wall around the Gush Etzion settlement bloc (south of Bethlehem) have since been put on hold once again following pressure from settlers against the wall. Since the series came to its end, it also won me the Anna Lindh Mediterranean Journalist Award, which was a great honor indeed, and a very exciting experience.

But perhaps the most important development in the story of this gigantic geo-political construction project came just a couple of days ago, when former Defense Minister Moshe Arens told Ma’ariv he supports tearing down the wall altogether. That call, interestingly enough, was supported by settler representatives in the Knesset, while Zionist left-wingers came to the barrier’s defense, as Dimi Reider pointed out and explained. Arens supports a claim previously made by others and presented in the series, saying that the wall has little or no security value for Israel. By the way, it’s interesting to see how the wall’s critics, including Arens and his mates, use the term “wall,” while its defenders are usually the ones to call it a “fence.”

This is the first serious challenge to the wall’s existence from within mainstream Israeli politics, and it is coming from the political camp which grew stronger in the latest elections. Parts of that camp are starting to discuss — with more and more confidence — the notion of annexing the West Bank and giving all its inhabitants certain civil rights (to various extents, usually still denying Palestinians the right to vote).

Clashes near the wall as Aida refugee camp, last week (Anne Paq / Activestills)

Earlier today Mairav Zonszein wrote about a new poll which indicates that a majority of Jewish Israelis wish to annex territories west of the wall (which was defined at the time of its construction as a temporary security measure, with no political implications). In addition, almost one in four support annexing the entire West Bank while maintaining an Apartheid regime.

To me all of this indicates the process of the wall’s normalization and consolidation. This process includes the end of an era of construction. It ends an era of petitions against the route of the wall, leading the High Court to intervene (or more typically not intervene) against its route, the strengthening of civilian infrastructure around the wall (such as the segregated bus lines), and the apparent decision to give up on ever completing the three main gaps along the barrier, thus maintaining it as even more of a dubious project in terms of its contribution to Israeli security. And as the wall is stagnant, no longer an ongoing project, it starts to earn its fair amount of internal criticism, after all external critics have been rejected or ignored by Israel.

Any possibility of the wall coming tumbling down still seems far away, either as part of a peace process or a unilateral right-wing-led annexation, both of which would erase this quasi-border. However, the likelihood of the wall coming to an end is rising, and along with it comes the hard questions the Israeli leadership will be forced to answer: Was this project (to a certain extent) no more than an unbelievably huge PR trick? To what extent was it all planned for the expansion of settlements on expropriated Palestinian lands? Did it work? Why was the public told that security is the only reason for its construction and for its precise route when politicians meant all along for it to be political? Was it worth all the billions of dollars spent at a time when state spending on social benefits and services is falling back? And how about the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who paid, and are still paying, the price of the wall?

It might take much more than a year or two for these questions to be answered, but it is my feeling that we might be much closer to that point now than we could have believed we would be a year ago.

The Wall, 10 years on – The full project

Unionist murals in Belfast (Haggai Matar)

“No two conflicts are alike, and a solution that fits one conflict could never be copied successfully to anywhere else.” The same sentence, in minor variations, was said to me by countless members of the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly, as well as journalists, academics and political activists during my short visit to Belfast about a month ago (which resulted in a piece published in Haaretz in Hebrew today). Had it not been coming from people who disagree on pretty much everything else and who support rival political parties, one might even assume they were all simply stating the party line.

All of them have a lot of experience talking to people like myself. Over the past couple of years most of them have either hosted or have been hosted by politicians, NGOs and journalists from conflict zones around the world trying to learn something from the model that put an end to the three decades of bloodshed during “The Troubles,” and the hundreds of years of conflict that preceded that period. But while it is true that one cannot simply copy and paste the Good Friday Agreement (signed this week 15 year ago, full text in PDF here) in order to create world peace, there is nothing wrong with tapping into the world of knowledge and experience the people of Northern Ireland have gained in order to try and rethink our own troubles here.

Republican mural of MP Bobby Sands, who died during a hunger strike in prison (Haggai Matar)

The first interesting thing about the GFA from an Israeli perspective is that it does not offer an end to the conflict. Our own history and bitter lessons learned from the Oslo Accords suggest that a temporary solution which avoids the fundamental core issues is a dangerous path leading possibly to nothing more than the maintenance of oppression in new and more sophisticated tools. This is not the case in Northern Ireland. Although the small stretch of land remains under British rule and the Republic of Ireland has changed its constitution to renounce all territorial claims to the north of the island, it is up to the people of Northern Ireland themselves to decide upon their own future in periodic polls. Devout Republicans are certain that time and the political process will bring forth a united Ireland.

At first glance this might appear to be more of a lose-lose situation than anything else. After decades of fighting “the long war,” the Republic Republicans have agreed to remain subordinate to the Crown, and after a hundred years of trying to trample any possibility of change in the status quo, Unionists have agreed to allow their enemies into power in what one day might force them to salute the tricolor flag.

But that is just what is so beautifully fascinating about the process both sides seem to be so committed to. The heart of the agreement, as I read it, rests on three principles: complete and utter mutual legitimacy to all forms of national or other identities and future aspirations (as long as these do not manifest in violence), a political power-sharing system that allows all parties to the conflict to be represented, and a joint recognition of the need for full civil equality and human rights for all under any current or future solution.

One of Belfast’s “Peace Walls”. Almost twice as high as the one in Israel-Palestine (Haggai Matar)

This means that Republicans can call themselves Irish, use the Irish flag, speak their language and promote their culture through state-sponsored schools, go on advocating a “one island – one state” solution in peaceful ways, sit in both the joint Assembly and Executive, promote cross-island policies in a ministerial council of North and South, all the while knowing that they will not suffer from discrimination for their politics or for being Catholics.

At the same time Unionists get to keep their own British identity, knowing that no border change will come without their consent and that their rights as civilians and as Protestant Brits will be safeguarded even if a united Ireland does come about one day. While it should be said that Unionists are feeling they got the raw end of the deal (the privileged and ruling powers always have more to give up on in peace than the oppressed), in return for sharing the power and giving up on certain privileges they had, they – as all people of the land – also gain an end to violence. So far, it seems that the majority of them are willing to accept that this better than having bombs go off in the city center on a regular basis.

In between the two polarized and equally legitimate identities peace is also gradually creating a new mixed identity, neither British nor Irish, but rather Northern Irish – an identity which 21 percent of the population now define themselves by. Although there is a fairly legitimate criticism of the GFA from the socialists – that the agreement forces the identity discourse and cross-community tensions to be an integral part of Northern Ireland’s politics, thus pushing aside the more important economic and class-based struggles that the poor of both sides should be conducting together – one might hope that time and new merged identity might bring about a new kind of politics that is not centered solely around “the conflict” (even though national sentiment is, as always, especially strong in the lower classes).

A new joint identity? End sectarianism (Haggai Matar)

Taking the three-legged temporary agreement and trying to import parts of it to Israel-Palestine is not an easy thing to do, but it is worth the try. Putting the exact political structure aside, the foundations of such an agreement would have to be full equality and civil rights for all those living in the same stretch of land and under the same regime (be it one, two or more separate regimes), an ongoing political process to discuss the core issues around a negotiating table whereon all parties to the conflict that are willing to put aside their arms are represented (including Hamas, including settler groups, including civil society, perhaps including representatives of the two diasporas, perhaps including Arab states), and the coming to terms by all parties that we may find ourselves living together for a long time, calling the same places in different names, waving different flags, speaking different languages – without being petrified to death each of the others’ will and aspirations. Wouldn’t that be an interesting (re)start to the long journey for peace?

Solidarity with Palestinian prisoners Khader Adnan and Hana Shalabi on Republican walls (Haggai Matar)