"In Germany it is not possible to openly discuss the causes of conflict between Israel and Palestine and to analyze critically the social conditions in Israel, and that is distressing. I do not make that experience in Israel", says Michael Warschawski – co-founder and co-chairman of the board of the "Alternative Information Centre" that since its foundation supports a peaceful solution of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict on the basis of coexistence, laicism and democratization – at a discussion on the occasion of the presentation of his recently translated book "Sur la frontière" (Edition Stock 2002) in Frankfurt am Main. His laconic comment was not unsubstantiated at least concerning the situation at the presentation. The last half hour of the event was shaped by battles – limited to a "merely" verbal arena – between members of the Jewish community and partisans of a radical solidarity with Palestine that concentrated on bringing up the victims of Israeli bombardments against Palestinian suicide attackers and the in each case, thereby, derived the necessity of "armed defense". The argument seemed to be not so much about the pointless question of a standard for a justified killing raised in this substitute discussion – after all, the political site of all participants has been ‘on German ground’ – than about the entitlement to criticize Israeli politics at all. The background of this debate on this German ground is still Anti-Semitism in its historical consequence – the assassination of European Jews during national socialism.
Two years ago Moshe Zuckerman voiced a similar judgment in front of approximately 600 participants at a discussion meeting about the conflict of the middle east organized by the Bundeskoordination Internationalismus (BUKO: an NGO that coordinates about 150 groups on issues concerning international solidarity). He could prevent a further escalation of the mutually provoking audience contributions that can hardly be described as a culture of argument – alas, at the price of embarrassed silence. It became apparent, not only that the way these issues are discussed in Germany has more to do with the political conditions in this country, with the socially unsolved question of the cause and therefore also the continuity of conditions that made Auschwitz and national socialism possible than with the social and political conditions in Israel, but also that the latter are not of primary concern in these debates.
So much for the experiential background of a journey. With 13 union representatives from seven European countries, the TIE (Transnational Information Exchange) educational institution, an international network of union activists, were requested to catch up on site on a subject that initially seems to have little in common with the above mentioned problem, if it does not seem negligible at all: We had been invited to examine the working conditions in the construction industry as a "test case" for the overall labor market situation and employment policies in Israel. The objective of the journey and the assignment of this deputation had been to write a report on the economical and socio-political developments that are particularly manifest and in an exceptionally pointed way in this area. The reports were supposed to help the organizers in making their work better known on site and in the context of international union work. Last but not least, the intention was an exchange of experiences with problems of labor migration and the precarization of working conditions as well as searching for possibilities to support workers in this sector in their struggles for rights and wages.
The journey had been initiated and organized by the "Workers Advice Centre" (WAC; Arabic: ma’an). Above all the WAC supports the union organizing of groups that are subject to extraordinary severities and discriminations in the labor market: Arab workers in Israel, labor from the Palestinian territories as well as migrant workers from other countries. On the basis of this seemingly very specific topic it is possible to discuss problems that are of increasing importance not only in the national context of Israel but for the union representation of interests and accordingly the labor movement worldwide: the heightened competition that wage laborers are facing due to internationalized, racist segmented and – via temporary employment agencies – precarized labor markets. WAC’s work furthermore opens the way for a more thorough understanding of the social and political conditions in Israel that often disappear behind the debate focusing on terrorism, Israel’s threatened right to exist and the necessity of self-defense.
Apparently, the emphasis on the threatening situation for Israel as a state and for its inhabitants makes taking a close look at the social conditions in Israel as well as in Palestine redundant.
However, this perspective is more than ever called for, since beyond this logic of threat and subsequent escalation nothing much seems to change at present. At Camp David, the summit meeting of Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat led by Bill Clinton in July 2000 that was intended to carry forward the stagnating development of the Oslo-accords and to strengthen, implement and expand on the – in the respective individual treaties of the Oslo-accords already settled – tentative steps towards an "autonomization" of the Palestinian territories and the withdrawal of the Israelis from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip had failed. The visit of Ariel Sharon, at that time chairperson of the Likud party and today Israel’s prime minister, at Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif in September 2000 was meant and experienced as a provocation that set off a wave of riots and demonstrations and has been regarded as the trigger of the second Intifada. Since then the series of deadly assaults, assassinations and bomb attacks on both sides have not come to a halt. And since then all efforts made by different parties to come to a peaceful solution have failed:
- the recommendations of the Mitchell commission in May 2001 that included taking security measurements on the Israeli and the Palestinian side at the same time as well as the order that Israel stops the housing development and other building activities in the Occupied Territories
- the ceasefire plan of the US-American CIA director George Tennet from July 2001
- the of 22 Arabic states for a mutual recognition and constitution of a Palestinian state within the borders of 1967 devised in the beginning of 2002
- the equally, at the beginning of 2002, presented "Roadmap for Peace" by the "Middle East Quartet" (UN, USA, Europe, Russia) proposed to establish two states by 2005 on the basis of UN resolution 1397
- the so-called Geneva Accords from autumn 2003, elaborated in cooperation with the former Israeli Minister of Justice Jossi Beilin, the author Amoz Os and the Palestinian Minister of Information and Culture Yassir Abed-Rabbo, which provides for a peaceful two-state solution
The situation of constant threat for Israel served as the main argument to refuse its consent to these plans and to justify the perpetuation of the status quo as necessary "self-defense". Self-defense in this case includes not only adhering to the present settlements in the Occupied Territories, but also an expansive use of the "green line", i.e. the ceasefire line of 1967 and the forced settlement politics in the Palestinian territories. For the time being the results of this logic climaxed in the construction of a 650 kilometer long "separation wall" (also called the "fence" although it will for the bigger part be built as a wall) that will often overstep the "green line". It can hardly be assumed that this, with 3,4 billions US-dollars apparently the most cost-intensive construction project ever to be started in the history of Israel, is a temporary measurement quickly to be revised in case of successful negotiations about a peaceful two-state solution.
Two events that occurred shortly before the journey raised doubts whether, at any rate, it makes sense to travel to Israel in this situation. After the assassination of the spiritual leader of the Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, by the Israeli army, the leaders of the Hamas, the al-Aqsa-Brigades and the Islamic Jihad sought revenge. Ten thousand Palestinians demonstrated their grief whereupon Israel reacted with the total (at the close of this report in June ongoing) isolation of the Occupied Territories and announced further "targeted" killings of those held responsible for terrorism – including Yasser Arafat. Only just a month later Ariel Sharon presented his unilateral disengagement plan in the US that entailed Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the abandonment of all its settlements there and some in the West Bank. At the same time, bigger settlement blocs and the necessary infrastructure should be extended in the West Bank. While the plan received harsh criticism from the world public because it undermined the obligation to mutual negotiations with the Palestinians that hasn’t been put into question since the Oslo accords, it gained the support of George Bush despite its unilateral character. Apart from its contents, the form alone is an affront against the political representations of the Palestinians and those among them that regarded the US not as a neutral mediator but as an "interested party", if not an enemy, felt assured by it.
Roni Ben Efrat, who as a chairperson of the Workers Advice Center and editor of the magazine "Challenge" had been one of the initiators of the journey and our hostess, reacted surprisingly calm to the alarmed question of some participants of the delegation whether regarding the due escalation – that actually did not occur – the journey will take place: In Israel one has to take into account these developments, there was no reason to call off the journey, our security will be provided for.
The significance of security in Israel had already become clear at the entry: those who did not verifiably enter as tourists or for religious motives were facing controls and questioning that lasted for hours. The German participants of the delegation – besides myself, a member of the works council at BMW and a lawyer, both members of the IG-Metall work group ‘internationalism’ in Berlin – had some difficulties in explaining to the customs and security forces why they wanted to attend to a conference on the labor market situation in Israel. They demanded details on the exact conference site and program which eventually did nothing to alleviate their suspicions. A comprehensive reading of the substantial program caused distrust especially with the titles of papers that addressed the situation of Arab labor in Israel and labor from the Occupied Territories in the Israeli labor market. Our reassurance that this was a journey of trade unionists seeking to study comparable situations in Israel and their own countries did not make things better but led to the question what a trade union is anyhow. Even the Histadrut, the General federation of Labor in Israel, was not known to the – very young – security forces and produced a puzzled shrug.
The balance of the contributions (and a phone call to the manager of the conference hotel) finally seemed to be the decisive factors to let us go. On the program were on the one hand the apparently distrust causing meetings with Arab workers and union organizers in the Nazareth and Um al-Fahem branches of the Workers Advice Center, on construction sites in Tel Aviv, as guests in their home in Kufr Quara or in the community center of the refugee camp Shu’afat next to Jerusalem, as well as a discussion with representatives of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) in Ramallah. On the other hand there were meetings with representatives of human rights organizations (for example the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the Kav La’Oved, Workers Hotline), an association of lawyers advising the Knesset on issues of labor migration (Israeli Bar Association, Legislative Committee on Foreign Labor), representatives of independent research institutions like the Adva Center for Social Research, that operates an extensive data base and does research on sociopolitical issues, as well as with professors at the universities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem who examine the developments of the labor market and the effects of labor migration. And we should get the opportunity to talk with government representatives and members of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Industry and Trade about their perspectives on the problems.