The Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems more stuck
than ever. In the present stalemate, recent efforts by several foreign
governments – including South Africa and Denmark – to insist on a
clear distinction between products originating in Israel and those
from settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are
significant. These efforts can help pave the way to peace.
In May, the South African and Danish governments
announced their intention to prevent goods produced in settlements
from being labelled as ‘Made in Israel’, following the United Kingdom,
which has requested its supermarkets to label settlement goods
differently since 2009. The Swiss retail chain Migros has now also
decided to do so.
These actions should be applauded and other
governments and companies should follow suit. Why? Because the
settlements are not Israel. They are built on occupied land outside
Israel’s internationally recognised borders and are illegal under
international law. Labelling produce from settlements as ‘Made in
Israel’ misleads the consumer and implicitly condones the expansionist
policy of Israel’s right-wing government led by Binyamin Netanyahu.
Right now the Palestinian West Bank is being
gobbled up by growing settlements, erasing the Green Line – the
internationally recognised pre-1967 line which is the only viable
basis for peace. At the time of the signing of the Oslo peace accords
in 1993 we had around 2,50,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied
territories. By 2000, when I was director general of the Israeli
ministry of foreign affairs, the number stood at 3,90,000. Today it is
over 5,50,000. Following Prime Minister Netanyahu’s rejection of US
President Barack Obama’s plea to freeze settlement growth, we have
seen a major acceleration in settlement construction. Only last month
Netanyahu announced plans to build another 851 settler homes, many of
them deep inside Palestinian territory.
It seems that we Israelis have come to the
conclusion that we no longer need peace. Behind the separation wall
and with the army’s might, we are more or less safe without peace. The
economy is growing and Tel Aviv is booming. The occupation is not a
source of great moral discomfort to us. Except for the minority which
does combat military service, the military oppression of Palestinians
is out of sight and out of mind for the average Israeli. Many of us
tend to believe that the conflict can be managed forever and Israel no
longer has a "Palestinian problem".
However, this is pure self-deception. The
continuing settlement expansion threatens to make a two-state solution
to the conflict impossible. Israel is sliding into a situation where,
short of apartheid or expulsion of the Palestinians, a one-state
solution with equal rights for all could become the only possible way
out of the conflict. This is the South African model.
As Israel’s past ambassador to South Africa, I feel
able to venture a view on the applicability of that model to
Israel-Palestine. Unlike in South Africa, where urbanisation brought
black people to the cities in such numbers that they eventually became
the majority, in Israel, there is substantial territorial separation
and significant replacement of Palestinian labour by foreign workers,
especially from Asia. Whereas in South Africa, almost every white
child was cared for in infancy by a black "nanny", there is little
contact between Israelis and Palestinians at all.
Despite my deep admiration for the way South Africa
brokered its own peace, a "South African-style" solution for
Israel-Palestine would be the end of the Jewish state. The two-state
model remains the only way to fulfil this dream of at least the last
four Jewish generations.
So if we want to stick to the two-state solution
then we must begin to seriously tackle the settlement expansion which
poses an existential threat to it. Here lies the relevance of the
symbolic act of preventing settlement products from being marked as
‘Made in Israel’. By denying this label to settlement products,
international governments protect and reinforce the pre-1967 border.
Moreover, they give their own consumers the free choice of whether to
buy products from settlements.
This simple act reminds us that settlements are a
grave violation of international law and an instrument in a dangerous
project of de facto annexation. By defining and promoting the
conflict’s solution along the pre-1967 line, the international
community confirms that the goal is two states, not an Israeli
apartheid state.