Dear Friends,
As you may know, after discussion, the ICAHD UK Executive Committee, the ICAHD USA Board, the Directors of ICAHD Germany and we at ICAHD headquartered in Jerusalem took the decision to remove the reference to “Israel” in ICAHD. It’s been something we have talked about for some time, but the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and its extension into the West Bank, has made it clear that we can no longer identify ourselves as an Israeli organization.
The Background
The name The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions made sense when we settled on it back in 1997 – and in some ways it still does. At that time, after Netanyahu’s election witnessed a resurgence of house demolitions and all the other repressive and violent acts and policies of the Occupation, a number of us from different Israeli peace groups came together to discuss how we could re-engage in opposing what was happening. At the urging of our Palestinian partners, we decided to focus on the issue of house demolitions. Each of us represented a different organization with an agenda of its own, but at the same time we felt the need for a more effective collective presence “on the ground.” And so, we created the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the idea being that instead of starting a new organization, ICAHD would focus on house demolitions, and would mobilize the other groups to come together for actions around that issue.
We called ourselves “Israeli” for reasons that remains legitimate: We were/are Israelis living in a country called “Israel” that was/is oppressing another people, the Palestinians, with whom we aspired to achieve a just political settlement. Whatever we thought of the Oslo process and the two-state solution, the PLO under Yasser Arafat had accepted that “solution” and it was the Palestinians’ political program at the time. Thus, we saw ourselves as Israelis whose political responsibility was to support the Palestinians’ program for a state of their own in the Occupied Territory and thus oppose the Occupation – which in activist terms meant to us opposing and soon resisting Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian homes.
ICAHD’s First Mission – Active Resistance “On the Ground”
ICAHD, then, began as simply an activist group; indeed, one of the first Israeli organizations to work closely with our Palestinian colleagues and communities on the ground. Many of the activist groups that followed us grew out of ICAHD and its activities learned their way around the OPT and developed contacts with local Palestinians through our pioneering efforts. Over time, however, as we got to know the “lay of the land,” we began to feel that activism was not enough; we had learned a lot – What is behind Israel’s demolition policy in general? How does it fit into occupation and Israel’s long-term goals? Why this family, this village or neighborhood? – and we felt the need to share our unique perspective.
ICAHD’s Second Mission – Operational Analysis
That is where ICAHD’s second mission arose: to amplify the voices of Israeli activists. As we learned more of how Israel operated in the OPT, what its political intentions were and how all that impacted the Palestinians, we began developing explanations and authoritative analyses based on our experiences “on the ground” with Palestinian families as together we resisted the demolition of their homes and joined with them in rebuilding as political acts of resistance – over the past three decades ICAHD has hosted thirteen international work camps and has rebuilt almost 200 Palestinian homes.
As Israelis, of course, we also possess a deep understanding of where our own government and society are coming from, which makes our analysis all the more cogent. From this comes the slide presentations, films, maps, reports, articles and books, webinars, conferences and speaking tours for which ICAHD is so well known. More than any other group, ICAHD translates the grounded experiences of activists into political analysis, without losing the personal stories of the Palestinians with whom we work. We have become a political organization dedicated to ending Israeli oppression and collaborating with the Palestinian people in its struggle for its national rights.
The Struggle for Liberation
Under the “conflict” model that was dominant in the early days, which viewed two states as a natural and just outcome, the idea of an Israeli Committee Against House Demolition’s made sense, since Israel would remain a state and Israeli Jews, no matter how much in solidarity with the Palestinians, would remain a separate people in an Israeli state. Over the past decade or so, as the realization has grown that we are engaged not in a conflict between two “sides” but in a struggle for liberation against a settler colonial state whose claims to the country are exclusivist and whose very existence is unjust, indefensible and unsustainable. In that context the struggle for a single post-colonial state and society becomes a joint one. National identities remain important, of course, but they assume a cultural expression within the framework of the shared civil state, which “belongs” to its citizens rather than to a particular national group. We aspire to the rise of a new civil “national” identity, like British or American or South African, based on common citizenship.
Why We Must Change Our Name
In the one-state program, “Israeli” has no political legitimacy
That has led us to a one-state program in which there is no “Israeli” component in the political sense of a national group with the right to a state of its own. Since “Israel” is a settler colonial entity with no political legitimacy that will be replaced by the post-colonial polity, the term “Israeli” loses the political signification it had when ICAHD was formed. To the degree that ICAHD still represents critical Israeli Jewish voices that in the present context still have a role to play, it will continue to amplify them, important as they are. We will not be known as the Israeli Committee, however, since that implies the acceptance of an Israeli political nationalism that continues to support the existence of a “Jewish” state, which ICAHD does not.
The term “Israeli” has become toxic
An additional reason for removing the term “Israeli” from our name is that it has become toxic, even to its Israeli and Jewish members. We can no longer justify, let alone represent, a genocidal state even as we work towards its end. Nor can we expect our Palestinian partners, the Palestinian people as a whole or progressives everywhere to cooperate with an organization that defines itself as “Israeli.” For both these reasons, the anti-colonial nature of ICAHD and the justified inability of other organizations to work with an “Israeli” group, we have removed the term.
We have not changed our acronym – ICAHD has become a brand name with a long and proud history that we are dedicated to continuing – but we have not found a suitable name change. (The natural choice, the International Coalition Against House Demolitions, while true with all our branches and affiliates, does not by itself locate us in Palestine/Israel.) And so, we will remain simply ICAHD, defined by our strap line: Resisting Apartheid, Constructing a Shared Democracy in Historic Palestine.
If people ask what ICAHD means, we can refer them to our political history, which itself is instructive. But our name change reflects what we truly are: a political organization dedicated to decolonization and the rise of a just and inclusive post-colonial state and society in historic Palestine, one that evolves as the political situation demands.
ICAHD continues its critical political work. We call on you to continue supporting ICAHD!
Together in the struggle,
Jeff Halper
Director, ICAHD