Mondoweiss, July 9th—Today marks the five-year anniversary of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion which found Israel’s Separation Wall in the West Bank to be “contrary to international law.” Although the Court called for Israel to cease construction, dismantle the parts of the Wall that had already been built, and offer reparations for damages caused, none of this has been done. Instead, Israel has continued to build the structure which effectively annexes Palestinian land and furthers the Israeli colonization of the West Bank.

The UN has recognized the five year anniversary by demanding that Israel implement the ICJ ruling. Oxfam UK has marked the occasion by releasing a new scathing 30-page report – Five years of illegality: Time to dismantle the Wall and respect the rights of Palestinians. Jeremy Hobbs, Executive Director of Oxfam International, explains how the inability of the international community to respond to the Court’s opinion puts the entire peace process in doubt:

“For five years now, different Israeli governments and the international community have turned a deaf ear to the appeals by the General Assembly of the United Nations and have refused to respect and observe the opinion of the International Court of Justice. This inaction gives the wrong signal: that international law can be violated without accountability. For the sake of Palestinians and Israelis alike, it is time for the rule of law to triumph. If not, it will be very difficult to achieve a just, negotiated, and durable peace in the Middle East”

But today is not only the five year anniversary of the ICJ opinion, it is also the four year anniversary of the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The call for BDS was initiated after watching a year of inaction among the international community to the ICJ opinion. It was quickly obvious that Palestinians would not be able to rely on other governments to hold Israel accountable, even with the ICJ opinion. Instead, it would be left to civil society to leverage the power they have, even if it’s just on a personal level. The Bethlehem-based BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights issued a statement on the fifth anniversary of the ICJ ruling, both to mark the anniversary and to renew the call to hold Israel accountable. From the statement:

The ICJ ruling should have been a victory for the forces demanding respect for and implementation of international law. Instead it has become a symbol of Israel’s disrespect for international law and of the international community’s failure to hold Israel accountable to its crimes; despite the devastating consequences such impunity has upon the lives of Palestinians who continue to be displaced from their homeland.

The wall has definitively created six ghettos throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories containing 98 enclaves with 312,810 Palestinians surrounded by barbed wire, walls and control towers. At least 14,364 persons have been displaced in the 145 localities through which the wall passes with some 90,000 Palestinians directly threatened by displacement as the Wall’s construction is completed.

Without recourse to an adequate non-partisan mechanism to implement the ICJ ruling, Palestinians are left with few options to defend their rights and to resist displacement. While weekly grassroots protests continue in villages like Bil’in, Ni’lin, and Ma’sara whose lands continue to be robbed, they have so far lacked the sufficient leverage to resist Israel’s sheer military might and the accompanying impunity provided Israel by the international community.

In this context, there is no substitute to advancing the broad, international civil society struggle to boycott, divest and sanction Israel as called for by Palestinian civil society since 2005. Such a campaign has the moral authority and power to counter balance the forces supporting Israeli apartheid. Those who pay taxes to governments that support Israel; those who handle Israeli products whether as vendors or consumers; and those who engage in international academic, cultural and sports fora that normalize Israel’s regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid – all have within their hands the power to stop the machine that makes Israeli apartheid politically viable and materially profitable.

Four years later, the BDS movement is quickly growing. Today is a useful reminder of why it’s necessary.

On June 13th about 35 folks gathered at the Friends Meeting Hall in Duluth to hear a presentation by anthropologist and feminist Dr. Smadar Lavie, Hubert H. Humphrey Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Islamic World and the Middle East at Macalester College. To do complete justice to all she covered would be impossible, so let me focus on just two major aspects that are likely to be new to many readers–the nature of the Mizrahim population and why it has pushed Israeli politics to the right.

The Mizrahim are Jews whose origins are North Africa and the former Ottoman Empire margins of Europe. They make up 63% of the Jewish population of Israel and 50% of the total population of the state of Israel when one includes the Palestinian citizens of Israel. Though the majority, they are generally socially and economically at the bottom of Israeli society. On the other hand, the Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern and Central Europe, though numerically a minority, form the economic and cultural elite of Israeli society and represent the familiar European face of Israel typically seen by the rest of the world.

From 1948 till the present, the Mizrahim have been settled in the border zones of Israel by the politically powerful Ashkenazim. The Ashkenazi right wing’s policy of settlements has been a boon to the economically disadvantaged Mizrahim, who have received good affordable housing and other benefits in return for their political allegiance to the right. Thus, they have been the major contributing factor to the rightward drift of electoral politics. According to Lavie, the Mizrahim are considered “true Israelis” only when they become cannon fodder on border zones or pawns to replace expelled Palestinians in order to make impossible their legitimate right of return.

The ultimate irony is that, being of Middle Eastern origin and economically disadvantaged, the Mizrahim have the greatest potential for dialogue–if not coalition–with the Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians at large. It’s their manipulation by the elite Ashkenazi minority that prevents this. Netanyahu’s current government is only the latest manifestation. In Lavie’s view, putting the Mizrahim in settlements is not unlike the movement of poor landless Scots to Northern Ireland by the British.

Much more could be said and sadly I have not at all covered the complexity of how feminism within the various groups figures in the equation. Mizrahi feminism is inspired by US feminists of color while Ashkenazi establishment feminism reflects the limitations of their class status.

Given the circumstances, Professor Lavie’s conclusion is that the clock is ticking on a just solution to the problem of Palestine. For her, a just and lasting peace would only be accomplished through a secular one-state solution because only such a state could encompass all the social class, religious and cultural variation within Palestinian, Mizrahi and Ashkenazi cultures.

In any case, no solution is possible without an understanding of the social class, economic and power disparities between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews. Potential US or European intermediaries have to speak directly to the concerns of the Mizrahim and not just talk to their Ashkenazi manipulators.

T o say the least, the challenges are daunting.

Bob Kosuth, Duluth MN BBC, rkosuth [at] hotmail.com

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