Thoughts on the New Israeli Government

On the same day that the world erupted in joyous, teary-eyed celebration following the selection of a new pope, a slightly less climactic breakthrough was reached thousands of kilometres away as four Israeli political parties, nearly two months after elections, quietly decided to form a coalition government. Right away, the deal seemed like it might fall apart over a last-minute dispute regarding deputy prime ministerial appointments, but two days later, all differences have been ironed out and the coalition agreement signed.

The chances were never exactly high that Israel would bend far enough to conclude a successful peace agreement with the Palestinians any time soon. However, what little optimism I had gained after January’s elections has now dissipated almost entirely.

The most noteworthy feature in the new centre-right government is the complete absence of ultra-Orthodox parties for the first time in years, enabling the coalition partners to commit to ending draft exemptions and other privileges for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community. In itself, this is a good thing and should be celebrated by all who value secular government.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. In the Israeli political system, the settler movement has no greater friends, and the peace movement no greater enemies, than the secular and moderately religious right-wing nationalist parties, like Likud-Beiteinu and Habayit Hayehudi, which dominate the incoming government.

After the elections, there was some hope that the surprisingly strong showing by the centrist Yesh Atid party, with its relatively moderate views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, might push the government towards compromise. But Yesh Atid never prioritized peace talks as highly as it did domestic issues, and during coalition negotiations, party leader Yair Lapid aligned himself firmly with Habayit Hayehudi’s far-right rejectionist leader Naftali Bennett.

Also, one of the terms of the coalition agreement involves a plan to increase the electoral threshold for representation in the Knesset from the current two per cent up to four per cent. This will likely reduce the amount of time necessary for post-election negotiations and allow for greater government stability. But all this will come at the expense of the small Arab parties which could quite possibly be shut out from all future Knessets. Raising the electoral threshold may have the effect of even further marginalizing the Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The greatest hope for peace in the incoming government lies in its smallest coalition member, Hatnuah, a new centrist party composed of former Kadima and Labor members, which has made the renewal of peace talks its number-one issue. In addition to gaining a seat at the cabinet table, party leader Tzipi Livni will be made the government’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians.

It is worth remembering, however, that when Livni was foreign minister in a previous government, Israel killed 1400 Gazans in Operation Cast Lead. For her to be the new government’s strongest voice for peace is perhaps the most depressing development of all.

Israel’s Election Results and the Prospects for Peace

Yair Lapid

Well, that wasn’t quite as bad as I thought.

Sadly, Benjamin Netanyahu will almost certainly remain prime minister of Israel after his Likud party and its electoral partner Yisrael Beiteinu won a plurality of seats in Knesset elections today. But their share has gone down sharply since the last election. Even Habayit Hayehudi, an extreme right ultra-nationalist party that was widely expected to place a strong third or perhaps even second, suffered an upset with a fourth-place finish.

The Knesset now appears to be split almost in half between the right wing on one side and the centre, left, and Arab blocs on the other, which means Bibi will have to reach outside his comfort zone if he wishes to form a workable coalition. And the first door he will most likely knock on is that of Yesh Atid, which surprised everyone by coming in second ahead of Labor.

Yesh Atid, a centrist party I did not even mention in my post on the Israeli political landscape last week (I did not expect them to do so well), was formed only a year ago by popular journalist Yair Lapid as a place for Israelis who are frustrated by the traditional parties. As conditions for entering a governing coalition, Lapid has mentioned eliminating the ultra-Orthodox exemption from military service and peace talks with the Palestinians, and while I am doubtful that I would agree with all of his positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is at least nice to see that he takes the issue more seriously than Netanyahu.

Finally, the Arab parties all maintained their presence in the Knesset – Haneen Zoabi, for instance, will be returning, despite vicious and anti-democratic efforts by her opponents — while both Meretz and Labor, the Zionist left parties, improved on their 2009 election results.

I am still not holding my breath for any sudden breakthroughs on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the makeup of the new Knesset is at least considerably better than the projected worst-case scenario of continued unchallenged dominance by the rejectionist right. While it won’t be easy, it is conceivable that peaceniks in Israel and Palestine might have something to work with.

Update 24/01/2013: This post has been revised slightly upon the release of the final election results.

Fanatics, Zealots, Warmongers, and Peaceniks: Israel’s Crowded Electoral Landscape

Haneen Zoabi

Due perhaps to my Jewish identity and my family’s history, Israel tends to be the country whose politics I follow most closely apart from Canada’s and the United States’. Nevertheless, there is a giant gulf separating numbers one and two from number three. My understanding of Israeli parties, personalities, and issues is far from perfect, and when I observe the campaign leading up to the January 22 elections to Israel’s Knesset, I do so as an outsider.

There is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something that I feel very passionately about, as I strongly believe in Palestinian national aspirations, equal rights for Israel’s Arab citizens, and a just peace to the decades of bloodshed. But there are other issues too, issues regarding which I have less information: the 2011 social justice protests against high housing costs that have bestowed renewed importance upon socioeconomic matters in Israel, the perpetual debate over the role of religion in society and the relationship between the ultra-Orthodox and other Israelis.

Notwithstanding these few gaps in my knowledge, regular readers of this blog will be aware that I am compulsively prone to the projectile expression of opinions. They will also know that I display unnatural excitement towards elections of all kinds. So despite my acknowledged dearth of expertise, I would like to say a few things about Israel’s many political parties and to discuss my preferences — my endorsements, if I may put it that way — for the benefit of any Israeli readers who happen to be curious. Therefore, I hereby offer a non-exhaustive list of parties, divided into categories, presented in order from those I like most to those I like least.

(Any readers looking for more information on Israel’s political landscape can find some here and here.)

Arab parties

If I had the right to vote in Israel’s election this month, I would most likely choose Hadash, Israel’s communist party. While predominantly Arab, Hadash boasts a significant minority of Jewish members and supporters, thereby lending itself a certain binational street cred. And while I am not personally a communist, I recognize that Hadash tends to take exceptionally progressive and enlightened positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The party has also become known for its strong stances on the environment.

Balad, another secular left-wing Arab party, would be my second choice. Though Balad is more explicitly nationalistic, while Hadash officially expounds Marxist internationalism, both parties demand an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and equality for Israeli Arabs. Furthermore, the Israeli political establishment’s endless efforts to persecute Balad and its Knesset members — such as the inspiring Haneen Zoabi — if anything, makes the party even more deserving of support.

Unfortunately, neither Hadash nor Balad does particularly well in elections.

Zionist left parties

Within the Zionist mainstream, the choices are not all bad. Meretz, a small social democratic party with some experience in coalition governments, is the traditional choice of left-wing Jewish peaceniks.

Considerably closer to the centre is Labor, one of Israel’s two major historic political forces. Labor has tended to be ever-so-slightly more open to peace and compromise than its opponents on the right. Currently, it is focusing primarily on socioeconomic issues in the wake of the recent social justice protests, but voters looking for truly courageous leadership on the Israeli-Palestinian file are advised to skip over the Labor doves who appear to come by their dovishness with such reluctance.

Centrist parties

A new arrival in the increasingly crowded centre, Hatnuah was formed by former foreign minister Tzipi Livni and benefited from several defections from across the centre and left, including two high-profile former Labor party leaders. It presents as the main plank of its agenda the pursuit of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Kadima, creation of hawkish former prime minister Ariel Sharon and Livni’s one-time home, appears to be just about on its way out of the Israeli political scene. If I had to choose between the two, I would say the right one is headed into oblivion.

Right-wing parties

In the graveyard of unrepentant racists and warmongers on the Israeli right, the most moderate option is incumbent prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, a party that supports free market economic policies, can’t quite make up its mind on the two-state solution, and has never met a war it didn’t like. Partnering up in a joint list with Yisrael Beiteinu, led by downright fascistic ethnic cleansing advocate Avigdor Lieberman, Likud is almost guaranteed to win a plurality of seats in the coming elections.

Farther down the right side of the spectrum are a variety of small ultra-nationalist and fanatical religious parties (Habayit Hayehudi, Shas, United Torah Judaism). With an expected Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu victory, at least some of these parties are guaranteed spots in the governing coalition.

Which means things will probably get a whole lot worse before they get better.

Two-State Twilight

For many years, I have felt that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the death of the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were an exaggeration. Yes, Israel has been unyielding in its expansion of settlements in the West Bank in clear violation of international law, effectively dividing the already-slight territory into several isolated segments and making the creation of a viable Palestinian state nearly impossible. But Israel has withdrawn settlers from occupied territory before, in the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Unlikely as it may now appear, it could always happen again.

The above represents the optimistic perspective I have traditionally held. With every passing year, it becomes harder to maintain this optimism. Israeli settlers in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) currently number around half a million — far more than anything Israel has ever removed before. I do not know exactly how close the settlements are to a point of no return — or indeed if they have passed that point already — but what seems obvious to me is that if the two-state solution is not yet dead, it is clearly dying, and every decision to authorize or excuse settlement expansion in the West Bank diminishes its chance of full recovery.

This is the only lens through which to understand last week’s United Nations General Assembly vote granting Palestinians “non-member observer state” status. While Israel occasionally claims to be in favour of some form of two-state solution, as soon as the moment came to put its money where its mouth was, the country led a small number of other rejectionists (shamefully including my own Canadian government) in voting against Palestinian statehood. Then, in retaliation against Palestine for its victory at the UN, Israel announced plans for new settlement construction in a move that will further carve up the West Bank.

The occurrence of these events mere days after Israel concluded its brutal assault on Gaza and agreed to a truce with Hamas is especially disturbing. According to Palestinian parliamentarian and peace activist Mustafa Barghouti:

What worries me most today is that Israel is sending a message to the Palestinians that if you do non-violence, we will oppress you. If you do the most peaceful, non-violent act of turning to the United Nations, we will punish you. But if you use violence and guns, we will respect you. That’s the message that Palestinians are getting, and that’s a wrong message.

Furthermore, in addition to hurting Palestinians, Israel is hurting itself. If the two-state solution becomes impractical, Palestinians and their international supporters will not simply roll over and accept the eternal occupation of Palestine as a fait accompli. Rather, they will demand (and who can blame them?) voting rights in Israeli elections for all living under Israeli sovereignty. The two-state solution will die and be reborn as the one-state solution, featuring equal democratic rights for all people — Jewish and Palestinian — between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

For most Israelis, this is a nightmare scenario. I am not quite so pessimistic.

Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip together make up a natural social and economic unit, and if one accepts the right of return for Palestinian refugees (as anyone who believes in the universality of human rights must), then the pre-1967 borders are a rather arbitrary place to draw the partition line. The only good reason to defend the two-state solution is that it remains the path of least resistance. Majorities or pluralities among Israelis and Palestinians support two states, as does virtually the entire international community. Furthermore, after decades of violence and hatred, there may be some utility in at least temporarily giving each population its own state.

For these reasons, I have always supported an interim two-state period to allow tempers to cool, but have remained hopeful that eventually, after years of reconciliation, a single binational state might emerge.

Naive? Who’s to say? What is obvious, however, is that Israeli intransigence on settlements is eclipsing any possibility of an intermediate stage. A time will soon come — if it hasn’t already — when one state is the only choice left.

Montreal Gazette Letter

Joel Lion, Israel’s Consul-General in Montreal, wrote an op-ed in the Montreal Gazette detailing the virtuous lengths Israel goes to in order to avoid civilian casualties in its unrelenting bombardment of the Gaza Strip. At the urging of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, I submitted a short letter to the editor in response, which the Gazette was kind enough to publish on its website. Please click here to read my letter. It is succinct and — let us say — snippy.

Live From Gaza

Nothing cuts through the bullshit quite like live footage.

The following comes inadvertently from a CNN interview conducted with a Palestinian in Gaza and an Israeli in Ashkelon. I will let the video speak for itself:

An Open Letter to Israeli and Palestinian Hawks

Dear Israeli hawks:

What are you thinking?

I realize that you consider every destructive, civilian killing, infrastructure shattering air raid you launch on the impoverished people of the Gaza Strip to be an act of self-defence against the terrorism of Hamas and other militant groups, and that every cheap rocket fired at you from the Strip represents an existential danger. You have even managed to convince most of the mainstream media (at least in North America) of this rocket-and-retaliation narrative. But reality is considerably more complicated.

Forget for a moment the near impossibility of determining who “started” any given Israeli-Palestinian flare-up. If we wish to rise above the proverbial cycle of violence in search of root causes, we are left with three explanations: the blockade of Gaza, the occupation of the West Bank, and, to a lesser extent, the refugee crisis that has been ongoing since 1948.

Your blockade, enforced with Egyptian assistance, has never limited itself to purely military concerns. The import of fuel and construction equipment is heavily restricted, and your government has at times reportedly counted calories to determine how much food to allow into the Strip. From day one, the intent was to strangle the Gazan economy and pressure its long suffering civilians.

None of this excuses Palestinian violence, but the importance of these issues must be acknowledged. Context matters, and so does scale. As of this writing, the death toll from the current escalation is at least forty on the Palestinian side and three on the Israeli side. This ratio is fairly standard.

It is therefore incumbent upon you to accept an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and bring an end to the blockade of Gaza.

Dear Palestinian hawks:

You are not helping.

I realize that the humanitarian crisis brought on by the ongoing blockade or siege on Gaza fosters anger, desperation, and extremism, but you need to recognize that you will never defeat a nuclear-armed, American-backed regional superpower militarily. Not only are your constant rocket attacks ineffective; they are positively counterproductive. They produce an unreasoning impulse for revenge among Israelis no less than Israeli strikes do among you.

Furthermore, in addition to the above strategic considerations, any act of violence against civilians is morally reprehensible and a war crime. This applies both to your actions and to Israel’s. I do not mean to present a false equivalence; it is not even close. After all, context matters, and so does scale. But a death is a death is a death. Crimes cannot be justified simply because the other side is doing it more.

It is therefore incumbent upon you to accept an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.

Israeli Settlements and the United Church Boycott: Three Common Distortions

After months of controversy and negative media attention, the United Church of Canada, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, finally made it official. The church’s General Council voted today to call on its members to avoid buying products coming from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Presbyterian and Methodist churches in the United States have made similar calls.

Despite the tameness of such proposals (the full text of the United Church resolution can be found here and the report it is based on here), we may expect a continuation of the widespread and exaggerated complaints that have saturated the Canadian press. In the interests of honesty and clarity, I would like to address three common distortions.

Distortion #1: Why Israel? The world is full of tyranny and injustice. Of all the places and issues, why focus just on boycotting the Middle East’s only democracy? 

Three assumptions are packed into this distortion: that the United Church is boycotting Israel, that Israel’s critics routinely let others off the hook, and that Israel is a democracy. All three assumptions are false.

First, while it may be true that the United Church never previously boycotted any country other than apartheid South Africa, it is not boycotting Israel either. Its economic action is restricted only to Israeli settlements, not the country as a whole. Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, ratified by Israel in 1951, the settlements are illegal. To quote the Convention’s text: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” If international law means anything to us, then what else are we going to do? As far as proposals to pressure Israel go, the Church’s action is limited, moderate, and entirely non-violent.

Second, I am not sure who is responsible for the myth that the Palestinian solidarity movement is fine with atrocities not committed by Israel, but it has proven to be very persistent. Contrary to common right-wing talking points, the movement was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the Arab Spring revolutionaries trying to topple their authoritarian leaders, while the Israeli government has been consistently hostile to democratization in the region. The Canadian contingent of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza even named its ship the Tahrir.

As for the United Church itself, its General Council passed resolutions on numerous issues ranging from the Northern Gateway Pipeline to aboriginal rights. And within the last month alone, the Church condemned recent acts of violence around the world committed against other Christians, Sikhs, and yes, even Israelis.

Third, Israel is many things, but a democracy is not one of them. There are currently 10 to 11 million people living under its sovereignty, and 3 to 4 million of them (Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections. It almost seems ridiculous to have to explain this, but a country without universal suffrage is not a democracy. If Israel wishes to gain this status, it must either give the vote to Palestinians under occupation or relinquish all control over Palestinian land, airspace, and coastal waters so that Palestinians may form a state of their own.

Distortion #2: Why not Palestine? Isn’t it unbalanced to concentrate blame solely on one side in this longstanding conflict?

I wonder where the people making this objection were when Canada put Hamas on its list of terrorist groups and applied sanctions to the elected government that it led. Could it be that balance is not the priority after all?

I won’t discuss the merits of pro-Israel one-sidedness in its many unquestioned manifestations. The topic at hand is the United Church proposal on Israeli settlements. Is it true that the resolution (notwithstanding the explicit demand that both sides abandon violence) asks more of Israelis than of Palestinians? To some extent, yes. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and forced notions of neutrality (that are never applied consistently anyway) ought not to enter into the equation. Israeli settlements contravene international law and sabotage any reasonable shot at ending the conflict. Whoever defends them in the name of even-handedness clearly does not take such concerns seriously.

Distortion #3: In passing a resolution that singles out Israel for condemnation, the United Church is jeopardizing its ties to Canada’s Jewish community.

Most people are not slaves to their ethnic or religious affiliations, and Canada’s Jews are no exception. Despite attempts to sway us with infuriatingly inappropriate Nazi analogies, the caricature of Jews as monolithically supportive of Israeli military policy is false. Many of us are perfectly capable of thinking for ourselves without being blinded by oversimplified tribal loyalties. To claim otherwise is akin to labelling all criticism of Iran as Islamophobic, or all protest against China’s occupation of Tibet as anti-Chinese. Surely we must be beyond that.

And what about the clause in the United Church resolution expressing regret for a previous demand that Palestinians acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state? Here we must try to imagine ourselves in the shoes of Arab Israelis. In Israel (not including the Occupied Territories), 20 to 25 percent of the population is non-Jewish. How must it feel to members of this large minority, knowing that the state in which they live is not meant for them — that they are somehow lesser citizens than members of the Jewish majority? This would be like Canada officially identifying itself as a “Christian” or “European” or “white” state. Even in Israel today, there are calls for the country to become a “state of all its citizens.”

The real question is this: should Israel be held to the same standards as the rest of the world or not? Its backers claim that Israel is held to unrealistically high standards — that it is unfairly singled out for blame — and I do not want to see that any more than they do. But is equality really enough for them? Or do they want Israel to escape critical attention altogether — deserved or otherwise?

In passing a resolution calling on its members to boycott Israeli settlements today, the United Church is refusing to play this disingenuous game. And for that, in my opinion, it is to be applauded.

Update 21/08/2012: This post has been republished here on rabble.ca.

On Israel and Apartheid

Message on a wall at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Last month, university students and activists around the world marked Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual series of lectures and protests designed to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians. As usual, the condemnations were heavy and hyperbolic. Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, obscuring the purpose of the events, used the opportunity to urge “all Canadians to reject anti-Semitism and all forms of racism, discrimination and intolerance.” In 2010, Ontario legislator Peter Shurman commented, “The use of the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ is about as close to hate speech as one can get without being arrested, and I’m not certain it doesn’t actually cross over that line.”

To equate the mere mention of the phrase “Israeli apartheid” with anti-Semitism is just as absurd as charging Islamophobia whenever someone rightly accuses the Saudi Arabian government of gender apartheid. Surely it should be possible to discuss issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on their merits rather than just scoring points with debate stopping allegations.

Israel’s more rational defenders tend to point out that contrary to how South African blacks were treated under apartheid, Israel’s Arab citizens are allowed to vote, run for office, and participate in the judiciary. But this red herring neglects the most appropriate target of the apartheid analogy, the Occupied Territories. Despite being forced to live under Israeli sovereignty for more than four decades, the Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have no citizenship rights whatsoever. They are ruled by Israel without the benefit of being able to elect their rulers. And in a striking throwback to the original spirit of apartheid (which literally means “apartness” or “separateness” in Afrikaans), Palestinians are barred from the notorious “Israeli-only” roads, reserved for settlers, that criss-cross the West Bank.

In Israel proper, even though the apartheid analogy begins to break down somewhat, the system still might be termed “apartheid lite” on account of what is widely regarded as the second-class citizenship of Israeli Arabs. Yes, they do have de jure political equality, but they are subject to endless racial profiling and chronic municipal underfunding. The semi-governmental Jewish National Fund bars Israeli Arabs from leasing or buying its landholdings. And while Jews like me, even those who have no connection to the country, have the right to travel to Israel and immediately claim citizenship under its Law of Return, Palestinian refugees — many of whom were born in what is now Israel before being expelled in 1948, many of whom still have the keys and deeds to their houses — have for decades been denied their own right of return.

All this being said, the term “Israeli apartheid” may now have outlived its usefulness. The analogy remains essentially apt. In fact, many veterans of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle, such as Desmond Tutu, have noted the similarities. Sadly, however, it is not enough to be right. Israel’s apologists seem to be winning the public opinion war (at least in Canada), and reliance on the “apartheid” label may be doing the Palestinian solidarity movement more harm than good. Due perhaps to the habitual insularity and PR myopia of the activist left, Palestinian supporters have allowed their foes to disingenuously define anyone who applies the word “apartheid” to Israel as an irrational extremist.

So in the interests of effectively engaging those who currently sit on the fence, the time has probably come to think up some new rhetoric. Or better yet, to forgo flashy rhetoric altogether and just let the facts — which are damning enough on their own — speak for themselves.

Update 11/05/2012: This post has been reprinted here on rabble.ca.

Pushing the Envelope on Palestinian Sovereignty

There has not been much movement of late on the Israeli-Palestinian front. This may  partly be explained by the relative lack of violent activity by Palestinian groups. The conflict has dropped off the radar for most of the Israeli public, and the only constituency the government needs to worry about is that of the far-right pro-settler parties which hold the balance of power and effectively wield a veto over any potential moves towards territorial concessions. In other words, the political calculus of the Israeli government currently favours doing nothing on Palestine.

By contrast, if Palestinians were to reintroduce violent tactics in a major way, the conflict would certainly return to the forefront of Israelis’ minds. However, the political mood would not be one of peaceful accommodation, but one of revenge and bloodlust — especially if militants were to target civilians as they have in the past. And that doesn’t even touch on the obvious moral considerations.

So how do Palestinians move forward with their legitimate aim of self-determination given the apparent damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t circumstances in which they find themselves? I have a humble suggestion. In addition to diverse methods of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience (which some research shows to be more effective than violence), I would like to see them employ a strategy of asserting their sovereignty not just in the UN, but in Palestine itself.

They could establish a security force that is unified, disciplined, and democratically accountable — one that is operated and supported by the long sought-after Fatah-Hamas unity government. Ideally on the heels of an official UN recognition of the state of Palestine (but not necessarily, in case this bid fails), the security force could announce its sovereign authority over all the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem — including all Jewish settlements, Israeli military installations, and coastal waters off of Gaza. And once they are prepared to escalate from talk to action, carefully choosing the appropriate target at the appropriate time so as to minimize the chance of bloodshed, the security force could move in and attempt to arrest any soldiers or settlers who are found to violate laws passed by legitimate Palestinian institutions.

They would almost certainly fail in carrying out these arrests given the obvious imbalance of power. But just the attempt, in all its rich symbolism, and the professionalism with which it is undertaken, could generate publicity and awareness, demonstrate how serious Palestinians are about their lengthy quest for self-rule, and win over converts to the cause in Israel and around the world. If it is intelligently executed, their negotiating position in peace talks could strengthen dramatically.

I am not aware of the Palestinians ever having used a tactic like this before (if any readers have information to the contrary, please do let me know). It does not automatically solve every problem, nor does it even begin to tackle the crucially important refugee issue. But Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories have been seeking freedom for decades, with remarkably little to show for their struggle. Their political and humanitarian plight is in desperate need of attention. The tactic I recommend is at least worth a try.