Summary
Falk’s term in “The Politics of Language and the Israel–Palestine Discourse” (November 25, 2010), in Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope: the argument that the “neutral” vocabulary of diplomacy — “occupation” as temporary, violations as discrete instances — obscures the annexationist, cumulative character of Israel’s control, and that the time has come to “call a spade a spade”.
Details
- A neutral terminology for the abusive occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza seems consistent with accommodation and reconciliation, “but it also clouds the mind and obscures the daily ordeal of the Palestinians”, enduring multiple privations with no end in sight after more than forty-three years of occupation and some sixty-two years of dispossession. If negotiations might yield a just outcome, avoiding inflaming rhetoric might be best; if they are far more likely to lead nowhere or entrap the Palestinian side, “it seems preferable to call attention to what seems to have taken place under the misleading rubric of temporary belligerent occupation, a presence that seeks and acquires no longevity” (PDF p.252-253).
- The cumulative effects of multiple severe violations of international humanitarian law, human rights law and criminal law make it misleading to treat them as discrete instances disconnected from broader consequences — whether designed by intention or the natural outcome of accumulating “facts on the ground”. Israel is the stronger party in all diplomatic settings and enjoys unconditional U.S. support; unlawful behaviour that starts out as “facts” is deliberately transformed over time into “conditions” treated as essentially irreversible — at minimum the “settlement blocs” and the “separation wall” (PDF p.253).
- Falk’s conclusion: “the time has come to “call a spade a spade” and use such terms as “annexation,” “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” “colonialist,” “settler colonialism,” and “criminality.”” Admittedly emotive and requiring a court finding to be legally conclusive, such language “more accurately describes the unsavory realities of the occupation at the present time than does the more neutral-seeming language beloved by diplomats”. “The language litmus test in the relationship between Israel and Palestine is the infamous G-word, which I am not ready to apply as a moral, political, or legal term of art, but if the more ambiguous “genocidal” is invoked to identify the tendencies implicit in this kind of prolonged and invasive occupation, I would not disagree.” (PDF p.253)
- The Part 7 headnote frames the post as addressing “a particularly neglected topic” and generalises its point: pro-Israel Western media distort the conflict’s discussion (e.g. rocket fire discussed in isolation from Israeli provocations, without comparative casualty statistics, with disproportionate attention to Israeli-side trauma and “complete inattention to the far greater trauma experienced by the Gazan civilian population”); and UN public discourse, “legalistic and technical in ways that obscure the realities”, speaks of “occupation” as if temporary since 1967 — obscuring its annexationist character — and of the West Bank’s military administration without noting its discriminatory application between settlers and Palestinian residents — occluding “the apartheid nature of the governing regime”. “Language can either be disclosing or obscuring, and sometimes it is a mixture.” (PDF p.251-252)
- An earlier Part 5 instance of the same argument: Falk’s three shortcomings of Human Rights Watch’s Separate and Unequal — on Time, Criminality and Language — conclude that “It is “annexation,” not “occupation”; it is “ethnic cleansing,” not “house demolitions”; not just “land seizures” but “settler-only roads”; not constraints on “mobility,” but “settler colonialism.”” (PDF p.170, as noted in part 3)
Related pages
Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing, Settler Colonialism, Politics of deflection, State Terrorism, Separation wall