Posted on May 16, 2015, by & filed under News.


The essence of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is displacement. For the past century Zionism has worked diligently and systematically to turn Palestine into the Land of Israel. On the way it has aspired to appropriate all the country’s land and resources and, ultimately, to drive the remaining Palestinians out, or at least to confine them to tiny enclaves. This project, officially called “judaization,” is today entering its final phase, and nothing demonstrates it more graphically than Israel’s policy of house demolitions.

 

ICAHD’s “Judaizing Palestine” Campaign makes the point that the Zionist dream of conquering the entire Land of Israel has been accomplished. Whether official Israeli policy supports a two-state solution, aspires to perpetuate its present control of the entire country in a kind of de facto apartheid or is in fact working towards expulsion of the Palestinian middle classes and the warehousing of the rest, one reality prevails: Israel has turned the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River into one state. On the way to formulating a one-state solution that will turn the present reality into a single state of equality where all the inhabitants’ collective and individual rights are respected, the “Judaization” Campaign will document the current one-state reality and begin the process of viewing the country as it is and will be: a single polity. It will also serve another important function: to make the crucial point that it was Israel that eliminated the two-state solution. Since apartheid/warehousing is unacceptable, a bi-national, democratic state is the only option Israel has left us with.

 

One graphic way to present this reality is by providing a comprehensive picture of house demolitions since 1948. According to figures we and others have compiled, Israel has demolished, since 1948, well over 120,000 Palestinian homes – at least 50,000 in 1948 and the years immediately following, thousands more within Israel since that time (we have no exact figures as yet) and some 60,000 in the Occupied Territory from 1967 until today. And not only individual homes; entire villages, towns, urban neighborhoods and cities have been uprooted and destroyed, the very fabric of Palestinian society. This ongoing process of ethnic cleansing continues today on both sides of the “Green Line.” The effect of Israel’s judaization policy and process will be the subject of an exhibit mounted by ICAHD and its partners entitled “We Never Finished 1948.” It will be developed as an interactive online “exhibit,” whose materials can be downloaded and transformed into a physical exhibit which groups could mount in their own communities. It will be accompanied by new maps showing the emergence of a single state, informational materials and a short film.

– By Jeff Halper, 30th April, 2015.