All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest is Roy Moore.
He's an activist for social rights and human rights in Israel and Palestine.
Lives in Tel Aviv, has written for Ynet, Haaretz, and the Jerusalem Post, as well as several NGOs, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and planners of planners for human rights.
He has a regular blog at 972magazine.
That's 972mag.com.
Welcome to the show, Roy.
How's it going?
Hi, how are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
I probably said your last name wrong, right?
It's Roy Moore.
Roy Moore.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to continue to screw that up.
Sorry about that.
That's quite fine.
Okay.
Well, anyway, I appreciate you joining us on the show today.
Very important essay here.
Preeminent Israelis to support Palestinian state, 1967 borders.
Seems like maybe finally something's going to happen.
Somebody's sick of the status quo over there?
Well, actually I'm a bit more pessimistic on this issue.
Yes, people are very concerned about the status quo, but they've been concerned about it for many years now.
And it seems to me that the pinning of hopes on the Palestinian state or Palestinian statehood is currently not a very relevant direction to get out of the serious situation that we have.
Well, how prominent are these 17 Israel prize holders?
So what does that really mean?
I think prize is a very significant thing in Israel.
It's the highest civilian honor that a person can get.
And it's given to people who have had extraordinary accomplishment in scholarship or public affairs or literature.
And these are very dignified and serious people that are involved in that.
However, they're the usual suspects in that sense.
They're not a very surprising group of people to endorse this notion.
Their action is very symbolic.
They held an event in front of Israel's Independence Hall, where Israel independence was proclaimed in 1948 in order to symbolize their support for a similar state for the Palestinians.
So this is not a trivial event.
But again, I'm just not so sure the question of whether the Palestinians will have a state or not is the really critical issue right now.
The issue is who will be in control.
There's a difference between having a state in the formality and having a genuine comoranity and ability to control their lives.
Indeed.
Well, so where does that really leave everybody except right where they were, huh?
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I think that the real question is how long can the pretense that it currently exists can go on.
Right now, Israel is in effect in full control over all the aspects of Palestinians lives.
But still, it continues to proclaim that the occupation is either doesn't exist or is about to end at any moment.
And it's proof.
It shows that Palestinians are in control of their cities and of Gaza.
But in effect, everything has to go through Israel.
And so this instead of driving us towards a solution, this is actually a tool to maintain the status quo, as you said, to maintain things as they are.
I'm concerned that the Palestinian state is proclaimed that even if it's recognized by the world, but the reality on the ground doesn't change.
And Palestinians don't get their land, farmers don't access to their land.
Movement is not free in the Palestinian areas.
Then it will just be an excuse to continue the problem that we have right now.
Well, you know, it's interesting to me that I think, and I'm just guessing, I suppose, but I think most Americans really don't have much of an idea that what you're talking about, you know, the idea that this occupation must end at some point, that the Palestinians have to have self-rule of some kind or another, whatever that kind of thing is the consensus of the entire planet Earth, except for their government.
I don't think Americans really understand that they would probably think, well, okay, so there's another left wing activists saying this or that about Palestine.
I've heard that before.
But this is, you know, all kinds of European parliamentarians have come forward and European governments, current and former in South America, I think some countries are already declaring that they recognize Palestinian statehood or whatever.
It's really the Israeli government, the American government versus what pretty much everyone else on Earth thinks, right?
Yeah, and even even the current prime minister of Israel, which is a very hard line right winger, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that he in principle supports the Palestinian state.
Obviously, his idea of a Palestinian state differs substantially from what the Palestinians or elements in the international community think of as a Palestinian state.
But still, to present this very notion as controversial is completely out of step with both the reality in Israel and in the world.
So I think that when when the American public thinks of this issue, they often or at least some prominent Americans often align themselves with positions which in Israel itself are considered to be extremely far right.
And that is in many ways an absurd situation.
Now, in some ways, Americans or some Americans are more extreme than Israelis themselves.
Right, yeah, and there's a strange kind of transmission built there on the right wing, too, where it's Americans, I think, that donate most of the money to the Likud party and then the Likud party, which insists on the Israel lobby in America always representing their interests over what the United States wants and usually to the right of whatever the American government is pushing for.
You know, like when Bush tried to start up some negotiations after September 11th, that got shot down by the Israel lobby immediately in this country.
And so they just rely on each other.
But it's like some Christian Zionists and some very right wing Jews who in America who really are financing both ends of this thing in both countries.
Yeah, yeah, I think that is part of the story.
And I think that an important part of the story is that there is a misperception in the United States among many well-meaning people, people who consider themselves pro-Israel and want to protect Israel's interests.
And they think that continuing the situation as it is or taking any position that is against the Palestinian interests is protecting Israel's interests.
But that is a very narrow and one-dimensional view of the situation.
Many of the policies that Israel enacts on the Palestinian issues and are defended by Israel's leaders or people who consider themselves pro-Israel in the United States are actually very detrimental to Israel's own interests and own security.
And when you see this group of prominent Israelis and many other public figures in Israel coming out and saying, we're not supporting this because of our concern for Palestinians, we're supporting this because of our concern for Israel.
We don't think that this is a zero-sum game where everything that the Palestinians gain, we lose.
We think that this situation currently both sides lose and have to change.
Yeah, well, and that's a very important point because, you know, and it's not just the situation in Palestine.
Seems like the entire stance of the Likud government over there is one of confrontation with all the neighbors.
And if Israel is supposed to last for whatever, hundreds and hundreds of years into the future, you know, like Americans want to believe America is going to last into the future, that kind of thing.
Well, you've got to have peace with your neighbors.
You can't just have a strategic dominance and whatever forever.
Yeah, and you have to think of yourself as part of the region.
And I think that when you look at the Israeli stance, it's a very paranoid stance.
It's very tending to see everything through the sniper's sight.
And I think that that is a very dangerous view of the situation, which has a tendency to escalate the situation.
And I think that although Israel has serious security issues, you often find that its policies don't promote security at all.
All right, hold it right there.
It's 972Mag.com.
Roy Moore.
We'll be right back.
All right, welcome back to the show.
San Si War Radio.
Talking with Roy Moore, whose name I'm mispronouncing, unfortunately, but that's the best I can do.
He writes for 972Mag.com and we're talking about the piece Preeminent Israelis to Support Palestinian State 1967 Borders and How Meaningless It All Is.
You know what?
As long as you've got an American audience here, I'm pretty sure it's a safe bet that they really don't know.
Can you tell them a little bit about what's going on with the occupation in the West Bank, for example, and how it is that kids grow up there and what is it with this occupation?
A lot of people don't even know what the West Bank is.
It's called the West Bank because it's the West Bank of the Jordan River.
But you know how often they explain that in America on TV?
Never, ever.
Yeah, absolutely.
The West Bank is part of the Holy Land.
And again, it's very confusing because it is the eastern part of the Holy Land.
But the Western Bank of the Jordan River and its territories that are adjacent to the Israel and its internationally recognized borders, which were formed in 1948.
And in 1967, Israel went to war against several Arab states.
And during the course of that war, it took over those territories and has been controlling them ever since for the past 44 years.
Now, Israel hasn't annexed those territories except for part of East Jerusalem.
Instead, it's keeping the people who are living there, now almost 3 million people under military occupation, which has lasted for 44 years.
Now, the military occupation that we think about, like Japan after World War II or Germany after World War II, lasted a couple of years.
This has been going on for 44 years.
This has been going on for 44 years.
The military is basically running all of the people's lives there.
Now, one of the major problems of this situation is that Israel has decided to build a string of Jewish settlements inside the West Bank, inside Palestinian populated areas.
And it has transferred hundreds of thousands of people to live inside the West Bank among the Palestinians.
Now, these settlements take up a huge portion of the West Bank's territory, even though the settlers are only a small minority of the population.
And this denies a lot of Palestinians access to land and to movement between their own towns and their own villages in ways that are massively disruptive of everyday life in those territories.
Now, part of the reason for the problems that this creates is that there has been Palestinian activity which targets the civilians and is horrendous and reprehensible.
But the settlement project long precedes any of that.
It continued even when there was a period of quiet in the West Bank.
And right now, for example, for over a year, there have been only very few terrorist attacks.
So the situation that's been created in the West Bank is that millions of Palestinians are living in a great level of distress with serious restrictions of freedom of movement, serious restrictions on access to their own private lands, in many cases, and serious hinderance to any kind of opportunity for employment or development.
Even if the Palestinians want to build a new city in their own area that's not even close to an Israeli settlement, they still need permission from Israel for their access roads and for dozens of things they need to develop their own nation.
And the thing is that they're under Israeli control now for half a century almost, and almost everybody there was born under Israeli rule, but they don't get a vote.
They don't vote for the Israeli parliament.
They don't vote for the Israeli government.
So basically, they are controlled and ruled by a government which they have no influence over and no part in informing.
And that's a basic infringement of their democratic right.
Yeah, well, and as you say, it's been going on for a long time.
Now, if I understand it right, at the end of the 67 war, Jerusalem was basically divided in half.
Is that right?
Yes.
What happened was that it was divided in half when Israel was formed.
And then in 1967, Israel took over the other half of Jerusalem and annexed it.
So the people there, at least the Palestinians there, at least they received residency in Israel.
But the vast majority of Palestinians outside of Jerusalem, though, are not even resident in Israel.
They're living under military occupation.
Well, yeah, and it seems like in the West Bank, as well as in Jerusalem, not so much in Gaza now, but I guess we'll see.
But in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, it's a slow motion ethnic cleansing, right?
With just, well, sorry, your apartment building is condemned.
And so we're going to tear down and build one of our own there instead.
And this just goes on year after year after year until I don't know how far are we, do you think, from Jerusalem just being a completely Jewish city controlled completely by Israel?
Well, I think that it is far from that.
There are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still living in East Jerusalem and the population there is still growing.
But it is true that they don't get any permits to build homes or to build new houses.
And although the population in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem has grown at a very fast rate, the level of housing that Israel allows them to build is far below what they need.
And it's actually shrinking over time.
So this is creating a huge amount of distress for Palestinians.
And indeed, in some areas, it's causing Palestinians who have just no other option and no place else to live to to just move away.
Some of them move abroad, but most of them move to to other Palestinian areas.
But they often find it very hard to find a job or build a home over there.
And obviously, it is creating a sort of slow movement of forced migration of people from areas that Israel wants to control.
And in the process of creating massive distress for a lot of people in Jerusalem, you have people living in basements, people living in shops because they don't have any other place to live.
And in Israel, do people who agree with you have any power really at all to do anything about this?
I mean, Ehud Barak is the leader of the Labor government or the Labor Party, and that's the most powerful liberal party, right?
And he's a warmonger.
Yeah, actually, the situation, the political situation in Israel has become very complex over the past decade.
A decade ago, you could talk about left and right and design parties very clearly along the spectrum.
But over the past decade, the whole system has shifted very drastically to the right.
And people and politicians have moved between positions in a very rapid pace.
So the system is very chaotic and hard to explain directly.
But I think that there is a huge mismatch between the opinions of most Israelis who are not interested in the West Bank, who want to end the conflict with the Palestinians and are willing to give serious concessions in order to achieve that goal.
Maybe not all that the Palestinians want, but a lot.
They're willing to give a lot and their leadership, which is very reluctant to give those concessions.
And what's happening is the leadership is using the security issue as a way to convince the people that, no, we cannot give any concessions because it will endanger your security and lead to terrorist attacks.
And this has been proven in many cases to be a false and baseless argument, which is contrary to the fact.
But that's what's preserving this bizarre situation in which there is a general willingness in Israel to support concessions.
But Israelis are saying, no, it will endanger our security.
We can't do that now.
And again, this has been going on for over four decades now.
Yeah.
Well, it's been going on here in America for about 300 years.
So, yeah, pretty much same story, though.
All right.
Well, thanks very much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
It's been a good interview and I really appreciate your blog here.
All right, everybody, that is Roy Mayor.
I'm sorry again for saying your name wrong.
It's 972mag.com.
It's R-O-I-M-A-O-R.
Between the Lines is the name of his blog.
And we'll be right back.
