Isaac Chotiner
The New Yorker / August 15, 2023
Could the widespread protests against Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul change the status quo in the West Bank ?
In January, shortly after Benjamin Netanyahu swore in Israel’s new government, I spoke by phone with Raja Shehadeh, the Palestinian lawyer and activist who co-founded the human-rights organization Al-Haq. Shehadeh was concerned about many of the extremists who had joined Netanyahu’s coalition, but he also predicted that the government’s impact was likely to register more strongly among Israelis than Palestinians, who have been living under occupation for decades. Netanyahu has now overseen parts of a judicial overhaul that opponents characterize as a profound threat to Israeli democracy, as well as an expansion of Israeli settlements. There has also been an increase in violence by settlers, which—combined with the actions of Israeli security forces—has resulted in the deaths of more than a hundred and fifty Palestinians; Palestinian attacks on Israelis have caused more than twenty deaths. Amid this increase in violence, the Palestinian Authority has struggled to maintain order in the West Bank.
Shehadeh and I spoke again recently about what the most right-wing government in Israel’s history has meant for Palestinians, whether the protests in Israel against the Netanyahu government could expand to address the occupation, and Shehadeh’s despair over the impossible choices facing the Palestinian people. Our conversation, edited and condensed for clarity, is below.
Isaac Chotiner: The last time we spoke, you predicted that Netanyahu’s new coalition—at least in terms of its relationship to Palestinians—would represent a difference in degree rather than in kind from previous Israeli governments. That the situation was already so dire that it wasn’t clear how much things were actually going to change. How do you view the situation today ?
Raja Shehadeh: I was right about the fact that there wasn’t going to be much structural change, but I didn’t take into account the avarice of the settlers—their unlimited greed in using their power to the furthest extent possible. I also didn’t realize that what they did would have an effect on Israel, too, as seen by the big protests that are taking place there now.
The settlements have existed since the beginning of the occupation, and the structure that enabled the takeover of land and building of settlements has not changed. Generally, the Israelis were tolerant of all this. But the new right-wing government wanted to do even more than what was already happening. For example, the structures that were in place did not allow settlements over private land, but the settlers have been encroaching on it anyway. The Palestinians can resort to legal action, but the settlers wanted to stop that possibility through the court. This is one reason that the government has been trying to curb the powers of the High Court. It’s not the only one, of course, but it’s part of the goal.
Another thing that the settlers are trying to do is drive as many Palestinians out of the area as possible, and take over land that they couldn’t take before because it was planted land. They cut trees; hundreds of trees have been cut on Palestinian land, and house demolitions have been continuing on a large scale. And, the thing is, there is total government tolerance of these activities. The Army supports settlers, and the settlers know this.
It sounds like there’s been a fair amount of vigilante violence. Is that correct ?
Yeah. Recently, settlers attacked the village of Burqa, and shot a man named Qusai. Then they played the victim and said they were attacked when in fact they were the ones who had come to attack the village. [In a statement, the Army said that Israeli settlers came to herd sheep nearby and got into a confrontation with Palestinians from the town, during which both sides began to throw rocks. The settlers then started shooting, and killed Qusai Matan. The suspected assailant was recently placed under house arrest but hasn’t yet been charged with a crime.]
One of the critiques of the Israeli protest movement against changes to the judiciary is that it hasn’t focussed enough on the rights of Palestinians, and has focussed instead on Israel’s democracy vis-à-vis Jewish Israeli citizens. Do you think that’s a fair critique? It seems like you were hinting in your last answer that you did think the state of the judiciary was in some sense intimately connected to the state of Israeli-Palestinian relations.
I think that Israelis, by and large, aren’t aware that they can’t have democracy in Israel while there is no democracy for the millions of Palestinians they are controlling in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Some of my Israeli friends have assured me that, yes, there is much more awareness of this now, but I think it’s a very small number.
When you say there can’t be democracy in Israel while there’s no democracy in the Palestinian territories, is that a moral statement or a practical one? Are you essentially saying that it enrages you that Israelis grant themselves some form of democracy and won’t grant it to Palestinians? Or are you saying that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is going to corrode Israeli democracy to the extent that, practically speaking, Israeli democracy cannot really work if the occupation continues ?
It’s the second. All along, I’ve been proposing that the actions which law enforcement and the Army are taking in the West Bank will eventually affect the Israelis in Israel. And this is exactly what is happening. The lack of law enforcement and rule of law in the occupied territories and the oppression that is taking place is definitely corroding the Israeli way of life and Israeli enforcement of the law.
The Israeli government’s attack against the High Court has to do with the role of the High Court, to some extent, in the occupied territories. That’s not to say that the High Court has been great for the Palestinians in the occupied territories: it has allowed house demolitions, and has been generally responsive to the claim that all that is taking place is done in the name of security. But, still, it has sometimes played a positive role. And, in order to stop that, the forces on the right are trying to curb the power of the High Court, which affects Israel of course, very much. This is one way that what’s happening in the West Bank is corroding the situation in Israel.
Obviously, things have worsened in the settlements, and I’m curious how that’s changing Palestinian internal political dynamics.
We have to go back, really, to the beginning of the Oslo Accords. Oslo was an attempt by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel to resolve the situation through negotiation, and Oslo failed because Israel didn’t follow up with the promises that it made to the Palestinians. The argument that it’s possible to negotiate a settlement has become very unpopular.
And so the P.A., the Palestinian Authority, has now become very unpopular and weak because its policies toward Israel, which were conciliatory and geared toward negotiations, have failed. There has also been no progress toward getting the case against Israel in the International Criminal Court to move any further. As a result, the argument is that the only way is through struggle—unfortunately, armed struggle. The policy of the Palestinian Authority to use international law to gain recognition for Palestine has failed. And so this very much affects the popularity of the Palestinian Authority.
But these are critiques of the Palestinian Authority that you could have heard prior to the past six months.
That’s right. But, now that the settlers are so much more active against Palestinians, the question of defending oneself against the settlers—there’s no answer to that. People have become much more radicalized because of the settlers’ activities and their brutality toward Palestinians. So we are moving closer to a possibility of armed resistance in the form of an intifada, which would be a disaster for the Palestinians, because any armed struggle would definitely be in favor of the Israelis. They’re the stronger party, and the extremist settlers are moving in that direction in order to get the opportunity to drive away the Palestinians or kill as many as possible. Because they don’t want Palestinians in the greater land of Israel.
If a third intifada would be disastrous, and if the approach taken by the Palestinian Authority in previous generations did not get what was intended or hoped for in terms of concessions from the Israelis, what would a better strategy be? What would you recommend to Palestinian political leaders in that case?
It’s very difficult to recommend anything because they’re in a bind. The Israeli government is very bent on destroying the Palestinians and punishing them and not giving any concessions or leeway. So it’s very difficult to see how to move forward. But I think that the important thing is for the Palestinians to stay put and to perhaps realize that we will be the first victims in the demise of Israel—if that’s what’s happening—and the untangling of the Israeli state. It will not be favorable to us because we are the weaker party; we’re going to be suffering the most in the case of any dissolution of Israel or Israeli institutions.
I thought you were going to say that chaos in Israel over these protests was the only thing the Palestinians could hope for, since the status quo was so bad. But it sounds like you’re saying the opposite—that the Palestinians should maybe hope for the judicial reforms to fail, but that any kind of large-scale shakeup within Israel or dissolution of Israel as a governing state would also be bad for them.
Oh, yeah. It’s going to be very bad because we’ll be the first victims of any disintegration within Israel.
You’re laying out a pretty bleak scenario, in which violent political action will fail, dissolution within Israel will fail, and a more passive posture is also going to fail and has failed.
Yeah. And the problem is that there are so many guns available in the Palestinian territories—which Israel of course seems to have allowed somehow. And that is disastrous because it’ll lead to armed struggle, and armed struggle means that we are going to be the ones to suffer more than anybody else.
Why do you think the Palestinian Authority, given its weaknesses, has been able to hold on to the degree it has for as long as it has ?
Hamas is very careful; they won’t try to take over until the time is opportune. And the time is not opportune for them now. They’re gaining popularity, but they won’t take control of the government. The Palestinian Authority is against elections because they know they will not win, and Hamas is not going to force anything because the Palestinian Authority takes care of the civil matters of health and education and so on; there are plenty of expenditures that Hamas would be burdened with. And, of course, with the international boycott of Hamas, they won’t be able to get the money to carry on with these matters, which will mean that they will lose, because the Palestinians need these things and Hamas will not be able to provide them. So it’s better for Hamas to have the Palestinian Authority provide education and health and social welfare, et cetera.
I know that you’re not hoping for the dissolution of the current state, because you think it will lead to chaos, which will hurt the Palestinians. But what are you hoping for in these protests, and do you see any hope that the energies within the protest movement could be directed to other causes more explicitly concerning the Palestinians? And, if so, what would that look like ?
You know, I’m not in Israel; I’m in the occupied territories. But I talk to friends and reporters, and I hear two conflicting opinions. One from friends who are on the left who say that, more and more, Israelis are becoming conscious of the effect of the occupation and its impact on Israel, and that they will connect these protests to the situation in the West Bank and the occupied territories. But some of the people saying this have not been to the West Bank, really. They’ve been against the occupation, but they are bystanders, so to speak.
Then I hear from people who have been involved in reporting on the occupation, and on the settlements and settlers and so on. And I hear from them that there’s no likelihood at all that the protesters in Israel will come and be involved in the West Bank. They’ll stay away from it because they think that, if they get involved, they will lose popularity in Israel among the people who are participating in the protests. So I’m inclined to believe that there is a very slim likelihood that the protesters in Israel will get involved in the settlements and in the West Bank.
But there is certainly more openness among Israelis to see the role of the settlements in the corruption of Israel itself. There’s much more willingness to hear about that and realize that the illegal things the settlers have done in the West Bank definitely have an impact on Israel and on Israelis. And this wasn’t the case before at all. Before, Israelis had a total separation between the settlements and their life in Israel. And, as long as the settlements flourished and didn’t have any embarrassing actions that were heard about in the rest of the world, they didn’t care what the settlers were doing, and how they were doing it.
Now there is much more willingness to listen. So, for example, there was a pogrom in Huwara, and the settlers burned houses with people inside them. This was an embarrassment for many Israelis because it was reported all over the world. The word “pogrom” was used, and that was a shock for many Israelis—Jewish people, who have been subjected to pogroms in their history, are now subjecting others to pogroms nearby. And that became an embarrassment, and they didn’t want to hear more of such cases. But what did they do to stop that? They haven’t done anything to stop that from happening again.
Raja, how old are you? What year were you born ?
I was born in 1951. I’m seventy-two.
We’ve talked before. I’ve been reading you for a long time. I have maybe never heard you quite express the feeling that the status quo is unchangeable. I’m curious if you feel like that’s true, and about how you would characterize this moment more broadly.
I think we’re in a very dangerous moment; I feel that the settlers are consciously pushing Palestinians toward action that will result in a very bad conflict, which will be much worse than anything that we’ve lived through before. I’ve lived through two intifadas now, and if there is a third it’ll be much worse than anything I have seen. And that makes me very worried and afraid for our future.
Now that I’m seventy-two, I’m thinking of those of us who have been writing—maybe we didn’t write enough, didn’t do enough, didn’t try enough, or try hard enough. And maybe if we had tried hard enough, we could have reached the Israelis and reached the world. I’m not sure if that is true or if I’m being unfair to myself by saying this. But I think, also, that the Western media did not help make our voices heard. And this is always an important factor in Israel—the U.S. reaction to what is happening in Israel. Now there is a little more reaction in the States as far as I can tell, but it doesn’t go far enough toward making any real difference.
The other thing is that Israel has become so strong economically. What is happening there is going to affect the economy, but it’s not going to have such an effect that it’ll be very quickly felt and make people in Israel want to really change. If it’s going to be affected, it will take a long time.
But there is something that rightly worries Israelis—which is the demographic trend toward more religious people becoming more involved in the government. That will make it possible for the right-wing government to be even stronger than it is now. And that’s something that concerns many Israelis and is forcing many of them to consider leaving Israel, because they think the future is not good for the liberals who want to live a decent life and not be controlled by the religious Jews. But that is a long-term thing. And, again, all these negative things in Israel are not necessarily good for us in the West Bank.
Isaac Chotiner is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he is the principal contributor to Q. & A., a series of interviews with public figures in politics, media, books, business, technology, and more
