CounterVortex

DARFUR AND SUDAN: A REVOLUTION IN THE MAKING

by Savo Heleta, Pambazuka News

In his review of recent events in the Sudanese Darfur crisis, Savo Heleta assesses the role of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebel group. With its explicit goal of overthrowing the current Omar Bashir regime, Heleta argues, the JEM represents a potentially revolutionary movement, one whose egalitarian, pro-justice manifesto will only come to fruition with the support of a broad range of regional players and influences.

In 2003, a conflict broke out in Sudan’s western province of Darfur between the mainly “African” rebels and the government forces and their proxy “Arab” militias. It is estimated that about 200,000 people have died in the conflict from fighting, disease, and starvation.

The UN and aid agencies estimate that over two million Darfurians, of a population of around six million, are living in refugee camps in Darfur and neighboring countries. Even though the majority of all deaths in Darfur occurred in 2003 and 2004, the conflict is nowhere near the end.

When the rebellion broke out, the two rebel movements, the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), declared that their primary goals were to end the economic, social, and political marginalization of Darfur, the Sudanese province that has been completely neglected and marginalized since 1917, when it was annexed by the British colonial forces and added to Sudan.

After a few years of fighting and human suffering, the Sudanese government and one faction of the SLM signed the Darfur Peace Agreement in 2006, while another SLM faction and the JEM refused to sign. The signing of the DPA, instead of bringing peace, only intensified fighting and caused the humanitarian situation in Darfur to deteriorate.

When the Darfur Peace Agreement failed to bring peace and the government refused to deliver any of the provisions it pledged to implement, such as disarmament of the Janjaweed militias, protection of civilians, ceasefire, and deployment of UN/AU troops, the main aim of the Justice and Equality Movement became regime change.

The JEM’s manifesto calls for “justice and equality in place of social injustice and political tyranny; radical and comprehensive constitutional reform that would guarantee the regions their rights in ruling the country; basic services for every Sudanese, and balanced economic and human development in all regions of the country.”

In late 2006, the JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim said “we cannot bring peace to Darfur unless we change this government.” The JEM leadership believes that the current Sudanese regime is “the main obstacle to finding peace to the whole Sudan problem, not only Darfur.” One of the JEM commanders said in a recent interview that the JEM’s goal is to change the regime and make dramatic changes in Sudan, adding that “power and wealth must be shared equally in all the marginalized areas.”

In Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, Gerard Prunier argues that the change of the central government is perhaps the only way of solving the Darfur conflict and decades of marginalization of Sudan’s peripheries.

In the beginning of May 2008, the JEM forces mounted an attack on the Sudanese capital, the first attack by a Darfur rebel group outside Darfur. The attack failed, but showed the JEM’s determination to change the regime. Many analysts emphasize “the psychological importance of the attack,” adding that this is the first time in many decades that the fighting has reached the capital. Even though the JEM’s attack did not succeed, it exposed the “weakness of security in Khartoum and the vulnerability of the regime.”

Alex de Waal, the leading international expert on Sudan, described the JEM’s attack on the capital as a “bid for power.” He added that he believes that other rebel movements in Darfur “don’t share that ambition…they want peace for their places rather than wanting power in Khartoum for themselves.”

In the aftermath of the attack, the JEM’s leader Khalil Ibrahim said that this was “just a rehearsal for the attacks to come, and we will continue to attack till we change this regime.” Alex de Waal believes that the aim of the attack “was nothing less than taking power” and adds that Khalil Ibrahim “seems truly to believe that he can instigate a popular uprising of Sudan’s black majority” against the ruling elite in Khartoum.

Analysts say that the JEM’s leader possesses grand ambitions and growing military strength. Sharing the same ethnic background as the leadership of neighboring Chad, the JEM has been the main beneficiary of Chadian support for the Darfur rebels. This support has been the main reason the JEM “has become, militarily, the most powerful faction on the ground in Darfur.”

Rebellion is an armed struggle against an oppressive regime. Revolutions involve a defeat of a current regime through violent means, replacement by a new regime, and implementation of major political and/or socio-economic changes to the system. Revolutionary movements aim to overthrow a ruling regime, take power, and fundamentally change the structure of a society.

While many movements in Darfur are typical rebel movements, the Justice and Equality Movement has evolved into a revolutionary movement with a goal of overthrowing the current regime and fundamentally changing Sudan.

Considering the fact that every post-independence government of Sudan has been ruled by the members of northern “Arab” tribes—which represent only about 5% of the entire population and have spent the majority of development funds on the northern part of the country—the change proposed in the JEM’s manifesto would indeed be a profound, fundamental, and revolutionary change.

Only time will tell if the Justice and Equality Movement will be able to bring about revolutionary change in Sudan. This will depend on many factors, such as the ability to attract support in other parts of the country, cooperation with other rebel movements, finance, military power, international support, and, in the event of their victory, the implementation of substantial political and/or socioeconomic changes in the country.

Darfur and its people never mattered to the rulers of Sudan, from the British-Egyptian Condominium to the northern Sudanese elites that have ruled the country since independence. Perhaps something radical and revolutionary has to happen at last to change this protracted marginalization.

—-

Savo Heleta is a postgraduate student in conflict transformation and management at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He is the author of Not my Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia (AMACOM, 2008).

This story first appeared Oct. 22 in Pambazuka News.

See also:

DARFUR: NOT A “CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS”
Global Capital Connives with African Genocide
by Ba Karang, The Hobgoblin, UK
World War 4 Report, November 2007
/node/4612

From our Daily Report:

Sudan: who abducted Chinese oil workers?
WW4 Report, Oct. 21, 2008
/node/6186

——————-

Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

BEHIND THE ECONOCATACLYSM

Globalization, Oil Shock and the Iraq War

by Vilosh Vinograd, World War 4 Report

On Sept. 29—perhaps to be remembered as Black Monday—a majority of House Republicans, and a minority of Democrats, voted down the $700 billion bailout bill. The stock market reacted with the first one-day trillion-dollar loss in Wall Street history—an 8.8% free fall, its biggest percentage decline since the 1987 crash. Only one stock in the index—Campbell Soup—finished higher.

Even the supposed pillars of stability which seemed poised to reap the gains of the recent turmoil were not immune. JP Morgan Chase—which had already acquired Bear Stearns investment bank and Washington Mutual savings & loan, with US tax-payers sweetening the deals to the tune of billions—closed $7.24 lower at $41, down 15 percent. Citigroup—the country’s largest banking institution, with JP Morgan in the number-two slot—was poised to acquire the banking assets of Wachovia Corp. in the big reshuffle. Wachovia lost more than 90% of its market value in the plunge. Bank of America—set to acquire Merrill Lynch—announced it was suing affiliates of the newly bankrupt Lehman Brothers for $500 million for failure to return money the bank provided as collateral. Global financier George Soros says the “global capitalist system… is…coming apart at the seams.”

Up to $3 trillion in financial assets have been wiped out in the crisis so far—and supposed free-market principles are being abandoned for a rapid centralization of power in federal hands to shore up the teetering edifice, a virtual melding of Wall Street and Washington. The Philippine radical academic Walden Bello writes in a primer on the crisis:

Wall Street [is] effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department making all the major strategic decisions in the financial sector and, with the rescue of the American International Group (AIG), the US government now runs the world’s biggest insurance company.

The bailout plan, drawn up by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, is dubbed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and is the centerpiece of the proposed Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. It would give Paulson or his successor unprecedented powers. Under the plan, any firm selling assets to the government would have to give Washington the right to take an ownership stake in the firm. It would give the Treasury Secretary similar powers to cut deals with foreign banks. The left is concerned that the bill would bail out Wall Street but not “Main Street”—and even Republicans have had to adopt this rhetoric. For the right it is an embarrassment: a crash reversal of the long-repeated mantra that the “free market” would solve all problems. After a generation of neoliberal dogma and corporate globalization, these supposedly sacred principles are being abandoned by the administration with a vertiginous rapidity.

Globalization: the God that Failed

On the surface, the crisis is the bitter fruit of frenzied speculation and labyrinthine trickery—the endless artifice of Wall Street whiz-kids to keep milking profit out of bad debts. Writes Bello:

Financial speculators outsmarted themselves by creating more and more complex financial contracts like derivatives that would securitize and make money from all forms of risk—including exotic futures instruments as “credit default swaps” that enable investors to bet on the odds that the banks’ own corporate borrowers would not be able to pay their debts! This is the unregulated multitrillion dollar trade that brought down AIG.

And, in what Bello portrays as a vicious cycle, the deregulation ethic which led to the current crisis was itself a response to the deeper underlying crisis of capitalism:

The Wall Street meltdown is not only due to greed and to the lack of government regulation of a hyperactive sector. The Wall Street collapse stems ultimately from the crisis of overproduction that has plagued global capitalism since the mid-seventies.

Financialization of investment activity has been one of the escape routes from stagnation, the other two being neoliberal restructuring and globalization. With neoliberal restructuring and globalization providing limited relief, financialization became attractive as a mechanism to shore up profitability. But financialization has proven to be a dangerous road, leading to speculative bubbles that lead to the temporary prosperity of a few but which ultimately end up in corporate collapse and in recession in the real economy.

Deregulation was part of the general neoliberal doctrine:

Neoliberal restructuring took the form of Reaganism and Thatcherism in the North and Structural Adjustment in the South. The aim was to invigorate capital accumulation, and this was to be done by 1) removing state constraints on the growth, use, and flow of capital and wealth; and 2) redistribute income from the poor and middle classes to the rich on the theory that the rich would then be motivated to invest and reignite economic growth.

The problem with this formula was that in redistributing income to the rich, you were gutting the incomes of the poor and middle classes, thus restricting demand, while not necessarily inducing the rich to invest more in production.

Next was the move to open new markets and resources in the process to become known as globalization:

The second escape route global capital took to counter stagnation was “extensive accumulation” or globalization, or the rapid integration of semi-capitalist, non-capitalist, or precapitalist areas into the global market economy. Rosa Luxemburg, the famous German revolutionary economist, saw this long ago as necessary to shore up the rate of profit in the metropolitan economies. How? By gaining access to cheap labor, by gaining new, albeit limited, markets, by gaining new sources of cheap agricultural and raw material products, and by bringing into being new areas for investment in infrastructure. Integration is accomplished via trade liberalization, removing barriers to the mobility of global capital, and abolishing barriers to foreign investment.

China is, of course, the most prominent case of a non-capitalist area to be integrated into the global capitalist economy over the last 25 years.

To counter their declining profits, a sizable number of the Fortune 500 corporations have moved a significant part of their operations to China to take advantage of the so-called “China Price”—the cost advantage deriving from China’s seemingly inexhaustible cheap labor. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, roughly 40 to 50 per cent of the profits of US corporations were derived from their operations and sales abroad, especially China.

One ironic fruit of this strategy is the emergence of Asia and particularly China in a position of (limited) power over the US. Writes Bello in an analysis of Asia’s role in the current crisis:

Trillions of dollars of Asian public and private money are invested in US firms and property, with the five biggest Asian holders accounting for over half of all foreign investment in US government debt instruments. Funds from Asia have become a key prop of US government spending and the middle-class consumption that have become the driver of the American economy.

Singapore’s Temasek pumped over $4 billion into Merrill Lynch a few months ago—after driving a hard bargain. The China Investment Corporation (CIC) invested $5 billion in Morgan Stanley last December, but refused the crippled investment bank’s desperate plea to increase its share of the firm. The Korean Development Bank turned down the overtures of Lehman Brothers a week before the latter’s historic collapse into bankruptcy.

China is not likely to call in the chips any time soon:

With so much of Asia’s wealth relying on the stability of the US economy, there is not likely to be any precipitate move to abandon Wall Street securities and US Treasury bills.

Nonetheless, faced with this vulnerability vis-a-vis Asia and especially China, the US under George Bush embarked on reckless gambit to shore up unrivaled global hegemony—using its still unparalleled military supremacy to acquire strategic control of the world’s most critical oil reserves in the Persian Gulf.

Over the Edge: It’s the War, Stupid!

The financial crisis was brewing anyway, but the Iraq war and resultant oil shock helped preciptate it. Writing in The Guardian earlier this year, Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz found:

Underlying the US’s financial woes are three distinct but related problems. First, a debt crisis, exemplified by sub-prime mortgages, with millions of Americans with mortgages greater than the value of their house.

Second, with so many bad debts, and such uncertainty about their magnitude, there is a credit crunch. Banks don’t even know the extent of their own problems; how then can they have much confidence in lending to others?…

The third problem is macro-economic. The US has been sustained by a housing bubble, leading to a consumer binge. Household savings rates have fallen to zero. The Iraq war—and the soaring oil prices accompanying it—has depressed the economy. Money spent on oil or on Nepalese contractors in Iraq is money that isn’t being spent at home; these dollars don’t provide much stimulation for the economy.

Writing with Harvard’s Linda J. Bilmes in the Washington Post in March, Stiglitz sounded a similar warning:

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and there is no such thing as a free war. The Iraq adventure has seriously weakened the US economy, whose woes now go far beyond loose mortgage lending. You can’t spend $3 trillion—yes, $3 trillion—on a failed war abroad and not feel the pain at home.

Some people will scoff at that number, but we’ve done the math. Senior Bush administration aides certainly pooh-poohed worrisome estimates in the run-up to the war. Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey reckoned that the conflict would cost $100 billion to $200 billion; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld later called his estimate “baloney.” Administration officials insisted that the costs would be more like $50 billion to $60 billion. In April 2003, Andrew S. Natsios, the thoughtful head of the US Agency for International Development, said on Nightline that reconstructing Iraq would cost the American taxpayer just $1.7 billion. Ted Koppel, in disbelief, pressed Natsios on the question, but Natsios stuck to his guns. Others in the administration, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, hoped that US partners would chip in, as they had in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, or that Iraq’s oil would pay for the damages.

The end result of all this wishful thinking? As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Iraq is not only the second longest war in US history (after Vietnam), it is also the second most costly—surpassed only by World War II.

Why doesn’t the public understand the staggering scale of our expenditures? In part because the administration talks only about the upfront costs, which are mostly handled by emergency appropriations. (Iraq funding is apparently still an emergency five years after the war began.) These costs, by our calculations, are now running at $12 billion a month—$16 billion if you include Afghanistan. By the time you add in the costs hidden in the defense budget, the money we’ll have to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and materiel have been greatly depleted, the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion.

But the costs to our society and economy are far greater. When a young soldier is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, his or her family will receive a US government check for just $500,000 (combining life insurance with a “death gratuity”)—far less than the typical amount paid by insurance companies for the death of a young person in a car accident. The stark “budgetary cost” of $500,000 is clearly only a fraction of the total cost society pays for the loss of life—and no one can ever really compensate the families. Moreover, disability pay seldom provides adequate compensation for wounded troops or their families. Indeed, in one out of five cases of seriously injured soldiers, someone in their family has to give up a job to take care of them.

But beyond this is the cost to the already sputtering US economy. All told, the bill for the Iraq war is likely to top $3 trillion. And that’s a conservative estimate.

And all of this has been exacerbated by the oil shock, which is in large part also a fruit of the war:

Another worry: This war has been particularly hard on the economy because it led to a spike in oil prices. Before the 2003 invasion, oil cost less than $25 a barrel, and futures markets expected it to remain around there. (Yes, China and India were growing by leaps and bounds, but cheap supplies from the Middle East were expected to meet their demands.) The war changed that equation, and oil prices recently topped $100 per barrel.

While Washington has been spending well beyond its means, others have been saving—including the oil-rich countries that, like the oil companies, have been among the few winners of this war. No wonder, then, that China, Singapore and many Persian Gulf emirates have become lenders of last resort for troubled Wall Street banks, plowing in billions of dollars to shore up Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and other firms that burned their fingers on subprime mortgages. How long will it be before the huge sovereign wealth funds controlled by these countries begin buying up large shares of other US assets?

The Bush team, then, is not merely handing over the war to the next administration; it is also bequeathing deep economic problems that have been seriously exacerbated by reckless war financing. We face an economic downturn that’s likely to be the worst in more than a quarter-century.

In a classic case of imperial overstretch, the stratagem to extend global supremacy may prove to have backfired horribly.

John McCain: Bogus Populist

Both Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his Democratic challenger Barack Obama loaned what the Washington Post called “cautious support” for the TARP. But McCain, sensing he is weak on the suddenly critical issue (having notoriously stated as recently as Sept. 15 that the “fundamentals of the economy are strong”), made a show of getting involved in the bailout negotiations. But his abrupt conversion from the deregulation dogma strikes many as hollow. Writing in Newsweek, Daniel Gross argues that “The Republicans killed the bailout bill—and McCain’s chances.” He mocks:

Sen. John McCain, who interrupted his campaign to deal with the crisis, claimed—via his surrogates—that he wielded great influence in improving the deal and making it palatable. Then he left town as it collapsed.

More scathing still is Rosa Brooks in the Washington Post, who points out that McCain connived with (illegal) financial shenanigans:

Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today’s dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent’s S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off.

That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. While he was courting McCain and other senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his depositors’ federally insured savings in risky ventures. When those lost money, Keating tried to hide the losses from regulators by inducing his customers to switch from insured accounts to uninsured (and worthless) bonds issued by Lincoln’s near-bankrupt parent company. In 1989, it went belly up—and more than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish.

Keating went to prison, and McCain’s Senate career almost ended. Together with the rest of the so-called Keating Five—Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), John Glenn (D-Ohio), Don Riegle (D-Mich.) and Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), all of whom had also accepted large donations from Keating and intervened on his behalf—McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and ultimately reprimanded for “poor judgment.”

But the savings and loan crisis mushroomed. Eventually, the government spent about $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to bail out hundreds of failed S&Ls that, like Keating’s, fell victim to a combination of private-sector greed and the “poor judgment” of politicians like McCain.

Barack Obama: the Post-Petrol FDR?

Obama has been quick to play Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Bush/McCain’s Herbert Hoover. As the House rejected the TARP on Sept. 29, he told supporters in Colorado that McCain has “fought against commonsense regulations for decades, he’s called for less regulation 20 times just this year, and he said in a recent interview that he thought deregulation has actually helped grow our economy.”

“Senator, what economy are you talking about?” Obama asked.

That same day he told a rally in downtown Detroit: “You can’t make up for 26 years in 26 days. For most of the 26 years, he’s been against the common-sense rules and regulations that could have stopped this problem.”

Daniel Gross in Newsweek concludes:

In general, I’ve found a lot of the analogies between the present situation and the Great Depression to be way off. But there’s one area in which the analogy might hold true. Just as happened in 1932, it’s possible that the Republicans’ incompetence and bullheadedness in managing a financial crisis could lead to Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress.

But after nearly a generation of bipartisan consensus on deregulation and “free markets,” it remains to be seen if Obama and the Democrats will rise to the mandate of history as FDR did—in the face of relentless opposition from conservatives—even if they make it into office. And while FDR inherited an isolationist America wary of foreign entanglements, Obama will find himself at the reins of a global military leviathan with tentacles hopelessly entangled in Iraq and Afghanistan. Cutting down the leviathan—anathema to the long-reigning bipartisan consensus on global empire—could be his greatest challenge, and one with a vital and little-appreciated link to staving off the impending financial collapse. The resources and human energy that FDR finally marshaled for the war effort, Obama will have to marshal for a crash conversion from the oil economy and a return to self-sufficiency, localization and the human scale. With luck, we will soon see whether or not the Democratic party is capable of breaking with—and standing up to—corporate power on addressing the fundamental contradictions that underlie the current crisis.

—-

RESOURCES

“Paulson Will Have No Peer” Peter G. Gosselin, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 29
http://www.truthout.org/092908S

“The $700 Billion Bailout’s Fine Print” by Nomi Prins, Mother Jones, Sept. 24
http://www.truthout.org/092308A

“Washington to Wall Street: Drop Dead” by Daniel Gross, Newsweek, Sept. 29
http://www.newsweek.com/id/161529

“Obama and McCain Express Cautious Support for Bailout” by Michael Shear,
Washington Post, Sept. 29
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/28/AR2008092802212.html?hpid=topnews

“A Primer on the Wall Street Meltdown” by Walden Bello
Focus on the Global South, Sept. 25
http://focusweb.org/a-primer-on-the-wall-street-meltdown.html?Itemid=1

“The Wall Street Meltdown: the View from Asia” by Walden Bello
Focus on the Global South, Sept. 24
http://focusweb.org/the-wall-street-meltdown-the-view-from-asia.html?Itemid=1

“A Deficit of Leadership” by Joseph Stiglitz, The Guardian, April 8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/08/thefinancialcrisisbeingfel

“The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More” by Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz
The Washington Post, March 9
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702846_pf.html

“Iraq war ’caused slowdown in the US'” by Peter Wilson, The Austrlian, Feb. 28
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23286149-2703,00.html

“Keating 5 ring a bell?” by Rosa Brooks, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 25
http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-brooks25-2008sep25,0,1039504.column

See also:

OIL SHOCK REDUX
Is OPEC the Real Cartel —or the Transnationals?
by Vilosh Vinograd, WW4 Report
/node/5024

From our Daily Report:

Latin America: markets react to financial crisis
WW4 Report, Sept. 25, 2008
/node/6070

——————-

Special to World War 4 Report, Sept. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

THE GREAT WALL OF BOEING

Corporate Power and the Secure Border Initiative

by David L. Wilson, MR Zine

On September 10 the US government acknowledged that its Secure Border Initiative (SBI) was behind schedule and over budget. Promoted in 2005 as a new way to block unauthorized immigration, the $2.7 billion project was supposed to create a 670-mile physical and “virtual” fence by the end of this year along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

After three years, the government’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has only completed 341 miles of the physical fence—187 miles of wire-mesh fencing to stop pedestrians and 154 miles of shorter barriers to block vehicles. The cost for the pedestrian barriers has risen to $7.5 million a mile from earlier estimates of $4 million; the cost for the vehicle barriers has gone up from $2 million to $2.8 million a mile. The physical fence is already $400 million over budget. The “virtual fence”—SBInet, an electronic monitoring system being constructed by Boeing Co., the giant military contractor—is now on hold. Its cost so far has been $933 million; the official estimates are that it will cost $8 billion through 2013, and that number may triple, according to the DHS inspector general. (WSJ, Sept. 10, 2008)

None of this is really news, of course. Who is surprised by delays and cost overruns from politically connected contractors? And no one could have believed the physical fence would cost just $2-$4 million a mile; the 14-mile fence near San Diego, started in 1990, ended up costing taxpayers $9 million a mile.

Moreover, none of these estimates include the expense of maintaining the fence. In 1999 the US Army Corps of Engineers estimated that the total cost of a border fence over 25 years—including construction and maintenance—would range from $16.4 million to $70 million a mile (adjusted to 2005 dollars). (Cited in Nuñez-Neto & Stephen R. Viña, 2008) The 670-mile physical fence could cost as much as $46.9 billion by 2030, and that’s not including the still nonexistent “virtual fence.”

Clearly these taxpayer-funded projects are a windfall for corporate CEOs and stockholders from Boeing and the numerous other companies contracting on them. But will these fences actually stop people from entering the country without authorization?

Even if a fence along the entire border would reduce immigration—and there’s no reason to think it would—it’s clear that a fence along one-third of the distance will simply “squeeze the balloon,” forcing migrants to cross through the more remote and dangerous unfenced areas, or to get across the border smuggled in trucks or train cars, or by bribing border guards.

In the 1990s, the government started blocking parts of the border, promoting these efforts with catchy names like “Operation Gatekeeper” and “Operation Hold the Line.” Between 1993 and 2006 the number of Border Patrol agents on the southwest border tripled from less than 4,000 to about 12,000; the Border Patrol’s annual budget quadrupled from $400 million to $1.6 billion. What was the result? The Border Patrol gauges the rate of border crossing by the number of arrests of people seeking to enter the United States along the Mexico border. By this measure, the increased enforcement has had virtually no effect: arrests fell from 1.3 million in 1993 to 1.2 million in 2005. (AP, Oct. 6, 2006; NYT, April 4, 2006; Hing, 2004, p. 161, 164) (It’s true that unauthorized immigration has dipped recently—just as it did during the 2001 recession, demonstrating the importance of economic factors in determining the flow of immigration.) (NAM, Aug. 4, 2008)

This not to say that stepped-up border enforcement has accomplished nothing. Some 4,700 migrants have died over the past 13 years as the new policies forced them to use riskier routes for entering the United States. And people now pay dramatically more to smugglers and guides to get across the border. From 1994 to 2005 the average cost of being smuggled in the San Diego area rose from $300 to $2,500. (Cornelius et al., 2008)

As stepped-up enforcement increases the hardships, dangers, and expense of crossing the border, undocumented workers are naturally more afraid of losing the investment they have made in getting to the United States. In the past many immigrants—especially those from Mexico—would work here for brief periods and then return home after they’d earned some extra money for their families or when work slowed down. Thanks to increased border enforcement, now they are much more likely to stay rather than to risk another crossing.

Some experts on border issues think that by discouraging return migration, increased border enforcement may actually have raised the number of undocumented immigrants in the country. (Cornelius et al.) A careful study by researcher Florian Kaufmann found that as a result of escalated border enforcement during the 1990s, Mexican migrant household heads on average increased their time in the United States by 18%, moved one fourth of their family dependents to the United States, and reduced the amount of income they sent back as remittances—thus inducing other Mexicans to migrate to the United States. (Kaufmann, 2008)

Increased border enforcement has another effect: it means immigrant workers are more likely to stick with low-paying jobs and less likely to risk deportation by joining a union or making complaints about workplace abuses. Immigration enforcement in the workplace, while advertised as a way to turn off the “job magnet,” ends up doing the same thing: slowing unionization drives and intimidating workers.

One of the main concerns working people have about unauthorized immigration—especially in a failing economy—is that an influx of immigrants can contribute to downward pressure on the wages of native-born workers. Politicians and pundits use this fear to sell their enforcement policies. But in large part it’s those same enforcement policies that produce the downward pressure—rather than the number of immigrants competing for jobs, as many people believe. Studies indicate that unauthorized immigrants are paid 15‑22% less than authorized workers with the same characteristics; it’s hard to believe that enforcement policies aren’t a major reason for this disparity. (Hinojosa Ojeda, et al., 2001; Phillips & Massey, 1999)

If border walls and workplace raids are only helping to keep wages down for everyone, and aren’t even slowing migration, why do we keep paying for them? Is this just another corporate bailout, for companies that aren’t even failing?

—-

David L. Wilson is co-author, with Jane Guskin, of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (Monthly Review Press, July 2007)

This story first appeared Sept. 27 in Monthly Review’s online MR Zine.

RESOURCES

“Virtual Fence for Mexico Border Is Put Off”
Wall Street Journal, Sept. 10, 2008

Blas Nuñez-Neto and Stephen R. Viña, “Border Security: Barriers along the U.S. International Border,” Congressional Research Service (CRS), Library of Congress, May 13, 2008, 33-34

Bill Ong Hing, Defining America through Immigration Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004)

Douglas S. Massey, “The Wall That Keeps Illegal Workers In”
New York Times, April 4, 2006

“New Wall Not Expected to Stop Migrants,” AP, Oct. 6, 2006

Walter A. Ewing, “Immigration Fairytales,” New American Media, Aug. 4, 2008

Wayne A. Cornelius, Scott Borger, Adam Sawyer, David Keyes, Clare Appleby, Kristen Parks, Gabriel Lozada, and Jonathan Hicken, “Controlling Unauthorized Immigration from Mexico: The Failure of ‘Prevention through Deterrence’ and the Need for Comprehensive Reform,” Immigration Policy Center, June 10, 2008

Florian Kaufmann, “Attracting Undocumented Emigrants: The Consequences of U.S. Border Enforcement,” presentation at the Center for Popular Economics (CPE) Summer Institute in Chicago, July 31, 2008

Raul Hinojosa Ojeda, Robert McCleery, Enrico Marcelli, Fernando de Paolis, David Runsten, Marysol Sanchez, “Comprehensive Migration Policy Reform in North America: The Key to Sustainable and Equitable Economic Integration,” North American Integration and Development Center, School of Public Policy and Social Research, University of California, Los Angeles, August 29, 2001, 28, 30; Julie A. Phillips and Douglas A. Massey, “The New Labor Market: Immigrants and Wages After IRCA,” Demography, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May, 1999), 244

From our Daily Report:

Homeland Security admits to cost, time overruns in border fence
WW4 Report, Sept. 12, 2008
/node/6016

Mexican diaspora gets bigger
WW4 Report, Sept. 28, 2008
/node/6080

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Oct. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

A MATTER OF JUSTICE

by Jane Guskin, The Huffington Post

Two Muslim men that our federal government has unfairly accused of supporting Palestinian terrorist groups celebrated victories last week. Both men are Palestinian immigrants who have been living legally in the US for many years and have been active in bringing together diverse communities, opposing religious extremism and working for social justice. Both have children who were born in the US, and both are devoted to their families.

In Paterson, New Jersey, an immigration judge ruled on September 4 that the federal government was wrong to try to deport local imam Mohammad Qatanani. The ruling upholds Qatanani’s petition for permanent legal residency, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had sought to deny by claiming he lied on his application about an arrest in Israel. (Like thousands of other Palestinian men, he was detained administratively there.) Immigration Judge Alberto Riefkohl was unconvinced by the government’s evidence: “FBI Agent Angel Alicea’s testimony has been found not credible…and will be disregarded as unreliable,” the judge wrote. “The court also finds DHS’s other evidence is insufficient,” he added. One of the government documents in the case is so sloppy that it repeatedly misspells the name of the group Hamas as “Ramas.”

Qatanani and his family were not detained while they fought their deportation, and his win in immigration court was touted by his many supporters—including rabbis, priests, FBI agents and elected officials—as a sign that the US justice system works.

In the case of Sami Al-Arian, the same US justice system showed how unjust it can be. Al-Arian, a former Florida professor and civil rights activist, was released on bail on September 2 after spending more than five and a half years in jail fighting a vindictive prosecution. Here’s a condensed timeline:

* February 20, 2003: Al‑Arian is arrested and charged with supporting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He is denied bail and placed in solitary confinement for two and a half years while awaiting trial. Amnesty International decries Al-Arian’s treatment as “gratuitously punitive.”

* December 6, 2005: The jury acquits Al-Arian on eight charges while deadlocking 10 to 2 in favor of acquittal on nine others. The government keeps Al-Arian jailed and threatens a retrial on the deadlocked charges.

* February 28, 2006: Al‑Arian doesn’t want to spend another three years in prison awaiting a retrial, so he pleads guilty to one conspiracy count, acknowledging that he helped people who the government claims were associated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and that he lied to a reporter about his knowledge of associations with the group. In exchange, he is offered “time served” followed by a speedy deportation. The government acknowledges that Al‑Arian’s activities were nonviolent and that his actions created no victims.

* May 1, 2006: Judge James S. Moody Jr. in Tampa ignores the plea agreement and gives Al‑Arian the maximum sentence: an additional 19 months in prison. Projected release date: April 11, 2007.

* October 2006: Although the plea agreement released Al-Arian from cooperating with government investigations, Gordon Kromberg, Assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, summons Al-Arian to testify before a grand jury looking into an unrelated case of alleged terror funding.

* November 16, 2006: Because he refuses to testify, Al-Arian is placed under civil contempt until December 21, 2006. The time spent under civil contempt doesn’t count toward fulfilling the remainder of his sentence.

* January 22, 2007: Al-Arian is again summoned to testify before a second grand jury. After refusing to testify, he is again placed under civil contempt—postponing his release for another 11 months.

* December 13, 2007: Judge Gerald Lee of the Eastern District of Virginia lifts the civil contempt order. New projected release date for Al-Arian: April 11, 2008.

* March 2008: Kromberg subpoenas Al-Arian to testify before a third grand jury. Al-Arian again refuses to testify.

* April 11, 2008: Al‑Arian is transferred into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after finally completing his sentence. Instead of deporting him as originally agreed, ICE keeps him detained.

* June 26, 2008: Kromberg indicts Al-Arian on two charges of criminal contempt for refusing to testify in March and October, even though Al-Arian provided two detailed affidavits [stating he had no knowledge of criminal activity], and repeatedly offered to undergo a polygraph examination. A few days later, Al-Arian is transferred to the custody of the US Marshals to await trial on the criminal contempt charges.

* July 10, 2008: Judge Leonie Brinkema orders Al-Arian released on bail. The government blocks his release on bail, claiming that ICE must detain him while preparing to deport him.

* August 8, 2008: Brinkema postpones the criminal contempt trial pending a Supreme Court ruling on Al-Arian’s appeal challenging the government’s right to compel him to testify.

* August 25, 2008: Al-Arian’s attorneys file a habeas petition demanding his release on bail. Brinkema gives the government until September 2 to explain why it should keep him jailed.

* September 2, 2008: ICE responds to Brinkema’s deadline by requesting that Al‑Arian be released from its custody. At last, Al-Arian walks out of jail.

Al-Arian is still not free—he is under house arrest awaiting trial. But he is finally reunited with his family, thanks to the intervention of one rational judge, thousands of people who sent messages protesting his detention, and a Norwegian filmmaker who has helped spread the word about his case with an award-winning documentary, USA vs. Al-Arian.

But does it redeem our system?

If the government can find a way, through abuse of power and by stretching the limits of the law, to detain you for five years—in solitary confinement for most of that time—without even enough evidence to convince a jury, is that justice?

—-

Jane Guskin is co-author of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (Monthly Review Press, 2007). Guskin also edits Immigration News Briefs, a weekly newsletter covering immigration issues. She lives in New York City.

This story first appeared Sept. 11 in The Huffington Post.

See also:

IMMIGRATION DETENTION: THE CASE FOR ABOLITION
by Jane Guskin, The Huffington Post
World War 4 Report, September 2008
/node/5969

From our Daily Report:

Civil rights activist Al-Arian released
WW4 Report, Sept. 8, 2008
/node/5995

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Oct. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

COMING IN FROM THE COLD

UN Membership for Eurasia’s Phantom Republics

by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom

The “Phantom Republics” has been the name given to the states demanding the status of independence after the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union: Abkhazia, Chechenya, Kosovo, Nagrono-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistra. The current conflict between Russia and Georgia has put the Abkhazia and South Ossetia conflicts at center stage of world politics.

The independence of Kosovo has been recognized by a good number of countries, but there is also strong opposition, and Kosovo has not been granted membership in the United Nations. Chechenya has been “pacified” by Russian troops, and it is unlikely that the Russian government is willing to reopen the issue. However, if the Phantom Republics supported by Russia—Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistra—were granted UN membership, it might be possible that Chechnyan independence would be a counter-weight and a sign of good will on the part of the Russian Federation.

Security should start with a “package deal” of membership for all the Phantom Republics in the United Nations as soon as possible. The UN General Assembly begins in late September, and membership should be a high priority. With UN membership, the danger of changing their status by force is lessened. Membership in the UN raises for some the spectre of “fragmentation” or “Balkanization” of the world into a multitude of tiny units to the disadvantage of world security. However, in this case, the recognition of independence is a necessary first step for security and a lessening of tensions. Once UN membership has been universally accepted for the Phantom Republics, new forms of regional cooperation can be undertaken in a calmer and clearer atmosphere. Once recognized through UN membership, it will be up to each of the Phantom Republics to create economic, social and political ties with its neighbors.

There are obviously oppositions to recognizing each of these states as independent, in particular opposition from the states of which they were once a part. Serbia has run a long campaign against the independence of Kosovo, citing history, the human rights of minorities, and territorial integrity. At one stage, I had thought that it might be possible to create a pan-Albanian cultural union with official links among the Albanians in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia while keeping a political status of autonomy within Serbia. However, governments like simple solutions—you are in or out, independent or not. Just as it is difficult to be partly pregnant, so it is difficult to be partly independent.

Thus, after long and bitter negotiations, Kosovo is an independent state which will have to create links with Albania and Macedonia but which cannot escape relations with Serbia, which remains the economic motor of the region. Each of the Phantom Republics is in a difficult position, and with good will and creative political imagination, other forms than independence guaranteed by UN membership might have been found. Alas, good will and creative political imagination have been in short supply.

In the case of Georgia, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, at least since 1993 there have been mediators from the UN and the Organizations for Security and Cooperation in Europe. There have been “track two” non-governmental meetings to discuss the issues. There have been detailed proposals set out to the former UN mediator, Swiss diplomat Edward Brunner—one by a colleague from the University of Geneva, Prof Giorgio Malinverni, who proposed a form of asymmetrical federalism for Georgia. While the plan was discussed, nothing seems to have come of it. Today, the issues in Georgia have resulted in tensions between the USA, Europe and Russia not seen since the end of the Cold War in 1990.

My proposal is a “package deal” in which all the Phantom Republics become UN members at the same time. Such a package deal resembles earlier package deals for membership when countries had been blocked by Cold War tensions. UN membership grants recognition of being part of the “international community.” It guarantees existing frontiers and is a wall against aggression. UN membership will also provide an elegant way for Russia to withdraw its peacekeeping troops from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and first from the “security zones” which are clearly in Georgian territory.

During the period of international control of Kosovo, prior to its independence, a shorthand term for policy was “standards before status.” In Kosovo, there should be at least minimum respect for the standards of the rule of law, safeguard of minorities, and a return of refugees, prior to discussions on its status of independence or autonomy within Serbia. One can discuss if these standards were in fact met prior to independence. However, in the case of the other Phantom Republics, the reverse policy is needed: status before standards. There needs to be universal recognition of the status of independence by UN membership before there can be any serious effort of establishing the rule of law and human rights. As long as a clear status is not established, the republics will remain politically and economically unstable. Without UN membership, there will always be excuses for the presence of Russian military forces.

Following the Kosovo precedent, the most stable outcome of the conflict in Georgia is independence for Abkhazia and South Ossetia with rapid membership within the United Nations. UN membership should be a sufficient guarantee against attack. There is probably no need for peacekeeping forces, especially not Russian peacekeeping forces. The United Nations should provide human rights monitors as well as providing help for economic planning with a regional focus. Independence with UN membership can provide a new and stable political-economic framework so that people may try to pull their lives together—which they have not been able to do since 1992, when armed violence and refugee flows broke out in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. UN membership for Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistra will help prevent these “frozen conflicts” from melting into new violence as well.

Thus, the Phantom Republics will join the UN to sit along with such small UN members as Andorra, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, and San Marino—states born with the restructuring of feudal Europe. It may take some time to turn Abkhazia into a Black Sea Monaco, but inevitably, for economic and social reasons, neighboring states learn to cooperate if they are not able to destroy one or the other by war.

—-

Rene Wadlow is a representative to the United Nations for the Association of World Citizens and editor of the on-line journal of world politics and culture Transnational Perspectives

This story first appeared Sept. 17 in Toward Freedom.

See also:

PHANTOM REPUBLICS
Kosovo’s Independence Reverberates Across Eurasia
by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom
World War 4 Report, March 2008
/node/5166

NAGORNO-KARABAKH:
Stalin’s Shadow Looms Over Trans-Caucasus Pipeline
by Rene Wadlow, Toward Freedom
World War 4 Report, April 2006
/node/1800

From our Daily Report:

Georgia: bomb attack in Abkhaz capital
WW4 Report, Sept. 27, 2008
/node/6077

World Court to review Kosova’s independence?
WW4 Report, Sept. 19, 2008
/node/6042

Our readers write: whither Kosova?
WW4 Report, March 29, 2008
/node/5305

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Oct. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

THE DISPOSSESSION OF THE PALESTINIANS

An Historical Outline

by Bill Weinberg

“Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers.”

—George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946

“Admitting honestly to the moral and political responsibility for the crime which the Zionist scheme has perpetrated against us is what will pave the way for a historical reconciliation between the two peoples—the Palestinian and the Israeli people.”

—Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian national poet, 1941-2008, spoken in Radio Palestine address on the 50th anniversary of the Nakba, May 15, 1998

Zionism was conceived as the Jewish national liberation movement, and attained control over Palestine just as the national liberation struggles of the colonial world were gaining ground in the aftermath of World War II. But to the Palestinians, Zionism was a new form of colonialism which ironically came to power in the era of decolonization. The more the state of Israel came to behave like a colonial power over the Palestinians, the more it came to serve as a proxy and regional extension of the neo-colonial powers of the West, serving to beat back and humble the rising tide of revolutionary Arab nationalism and, later, Islamist militancy.

Many indigenous peoples around the world have been dispossessed of their homelands by colonialist projects. But both the centrality of Palestine to the three great Abrahamic religions, as well as its proximity to the world’s most strategic oil reserves, gives the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a unique criticality to the question of world peace. If the international community, either at the level of nation-states or citizen initiatives, truly wants to promote peace, an understanding of the dispossession of the Palestinians must inform any action we take.

The Historical Background

While Zionism is a movement of modernity, both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeal to claims arising from past centuries and even millennia of contest over the territory, and any understanding of the contemporary crisis must begin with an overview of this history.

Palestine is the southern stretch of the western arm of the Fertile Crescent, whose eastern arm is the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, known in ancient times as Mesopotamia and today the heartland of Iraq. Between the two arms is the northernmost stretch of the Arabian deserts. Palestine is divided between a low and fertile coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea, and rugged uplands to the east—principally, the area now called the West Bank in reference to the Jordan River that forms its eastern border. The Jordan River flows south, through a comparatively fertile valley, into the inland Dead Sea; beyond the Jordan Valley is more hill country, and then the desert of the interior. South of the Dead Sea, the fertile lands end; a stretch of desert today known as the Negev reaches down to the Gulf of Aqaba, entrance to the Red Sea. (Nathan, p. 117-23)

From earliest times, the land that is now Palestine was inhabited by Semitic peoples who arrived out of these deserts to the south and east. The most significant and settled of these early inhabitants were the Canaanites (forebears of the Phoenicians, who would later maintain a powerful maritime trading empire just up the Mediterranean coast in what is now Lebanon). It is they who gave the land its earliest known name—Canaan. The Hebrews—led to the land by Abraham, according to biblical accounts—were one of several nomadic Semitic peoples who arrived sometime after the Canaanites. By biblical accounts the Hebrews originated in Ur in Mesopotamia, but they clearly had much in common with the Arabian nomadic peoples and almost certainly shared a common origin with them. Indeed, the words Hebrew and Arab are believed to both derive from the Semitic root-word abhar, meaning nomadic. Both peoples are traditionally held to be descendants of the biblical Shem, son of Noah (hence “Semite”). Both are also held to descend from Shem’s descendant Abraham—the Hebrews through the line of his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, the Arabs through the line of his son Ishmael. (Dimont, p. 30; Hitti, p. 24; Lewis, 1950, p. 10; Ludwig, p. 10-3; Roth, p. 3)

By the time the Hebrews arrived, other presumably Semitic peoples had established small kingdoms on the less fertile lands east of the Jordan River—Gilead, Ammon, Moab and others. Settled life slowly spread from Canaan’s seat in the hill country west of the river. But the region was far behind the two great centers of civilization—Mesopotamia across the desert to the east and Egypt’s Nile Valley across the Sinai Peninsula to the west. The Hittites, in Anatolia at the northern peak of the Fertile Crescent, were also building an empire that would make its influence felt. (Cohn-Sherbok, p. 2)

At approximately 1600 BCE, the Hebrews were among various Semitic nomads apparently driven by drought and famine in the Fertile Crescent into the rich Nile Valley. The rulers of Egypt at that time were a “foreign” dynasty, the Hyksos, themselves likely Semites who had arrived from the Crescent some years earlier. The Hyksos welcomed the Hebrews, who evidently held a privileged position in Egypt under their rule. (Dimont, p. 36-40; Roth, 5-8)

This began to change with the overthrow of the Hyksos and the restoration of a “native” dynasty to Egypt, cerca 1550 BCE, opening the most powerful period of its rule. The Hyksos and Hebrews alike were seemingly reduced to slavery by the Pharaoh Ramses II, “the Great” (1279-1213 BCE, Ozymandias to the Greeks). The name “Israelites” first comes into use with the biblical account of the Exodus from Egypt back towards Canaan, led by Moses and thought to have happened cerca 1225 BCE. After centuries in Egypt, presumably inter-marrying with Egyptians, it is uncertain that the Israelites who emerged were precisely the same people as the Hebrews who had entered. Israelite monotheism may have been influenced by the reign of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, 1353-1337 BCE), the Egyptian pharaoh who proclaimed the sun god Aten to be the sole deity. (Dimont, p. 36-40; Ludwig, p. 13; Roth, 5-8)

While the Hebrews/Israelites dwelt in Egypt, Canaan was contested by the pharaohs and the Hittite empire of Anatolia to the north. Pharaoh Thutmose III finally took Canaan cerca 1470 BCE, but Egyptian rule there was in decline by the time of the Exodus, having merely nominal loyalty of the Canaanite kingdom. (Ben-Sasson, p. 13-4, 27; Roth, p. 6-7)

The Old Testament tells of the Israelite leader Joshua’s conquest of Canaan upon arriving in the land inhabited by the Hebrews centuries earlier. By popular histories, the Israelites simply displaced the Canaanites, but in reality there was probably an amalgamation of the two populations, with the Israelites becoming dominant, especially in the south. After a period of rule by “judges” in a sort of legislative body known as the Sanhedrin (during which time Egyptian rule in the land collapsed completely), a monarchy was established by Saul cerca 1000 BCE. Saul’s successor David greatly expanded the kingdom’s borders—most significantly, taking the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites. This he made his capital, and established a temple on the slopes of a hill called Mount Zion within the city. At its height, the kingdom stretched from the Euphrates in the east to the Mediterranean in the west; from Phoenicia (modern Lebanon) in the north to the Gulf of Aqaba in the south. The heartland, however, remained the hill country around Jerusalem. The Philistines, a probably Greek-related people who inhabited the southern part of the coastal plain (and give Palestine its name), were subdued although not conquered. David was succeeded by his son Solomon cerca 965 CE, who greatly expanded the Temple, completing its construction cerca 953. (Dimont, p. 52; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 9; Ludwig, p. 20-2; Roth, p. 23-7)

But around 930 BCE, shortly after Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into the two entities of which it had really been a federation: Israel in the north, with its capital at Shechem (contemporary Nablus) and a temple at Bethel; and Judah in the south, with both capital and temple at Jerusalem. The outlying territories were mostly lost. It was at this time that composition of what would become the first five books of the Bible (the Torah) began in both kingdoms. Biblical scholars have for generations been parsing the text to determine which chapters were written in which kingdom—the scribes of Judah generally referring to God as Yahweh (“Jehova,” rendered as Lord in English translation) and those of Israel using the plural term Elohim (rendered in English as God). Scholarship is increasingly of the opinion that the inhabitants of the two kingdoms were separate peoples. The northern kingdom is generally considered to have been closer to the Baal-worshiping Canaanites, long ago pushed north by the Israelites. Starting in approximately 790, there was war between the two kingdoms. (Cohn-Sherbok, p. 13-4; Dimont, p. 54-7; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 15; Ludwig, p. 52-3; Roth, p. 32)

As the Hebrew kingdoms declined, new powers were arising in Mesopotamia, and making incursions into the western arm of the Crescent. Israel fell to Assyria in 722 BCE, and (by the biblical version) the population was deported to Mesopotamia. Judah, in an alliance with Egypt, maintained a precarious independence. Then Babylon superseded Assyria as the dominant Mesopotamian power and began a new thrust of expansion. Judah’s King Josiah at first supported Babylon as an ally against Assyria. When Egypt switched sides and sent an army to back Assyria against Babylon, Josiah attempted to block its passage through Judah—and was defeated at the Battle of Meggido (Armageddon), 609 BCE. Babylon nonetheless prevailed over Assyria, and then perceived that Judah had been precariously weakened. The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II took Judah in 597 BCE, sacking Jerusalem, destroying the temple, and again (by the biblical version) deporting the population. (In reality, it was likely only the political and priestly leadership class that was deported.) (Dimont, p. 58-61; Roth, p. 35, 43)

By the time of the Assyrian conquest, Israel had moved its capital to Samaria, and those Israelites from this region who were not deported became known as the Samaritans. There is still a small community of Samaritans living today in the vicinity of Nablus on the West Bank, keeping alive elements of the ancient Hebrew religion. (Jewish Encyclopedia; Roth, p. 35)

The deportations mark the beginning of the Jewish diaspora, as well as the point at which the name “Jews” (Yehudim, in Hebrew) first emerged—the exiled people of Judah, traditionally identified as the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. (By the biblical version, the exiles from the north kingdom of Israel—the ten “lost tribes”—were dispersed and disappeared from history.) The seeds of contemporary Judaism were also established in the Babylonian exile; with no temple, “houses of assembly” (beth ha-knesset, later rendered by the Greeks “synagogue”) were established as places of worship, with teachers (later to go by the title rabbi, or master) instead of priests. (Dimont, p. 68; Ludwig, p. 72; Roth, p. 62, 83)

In 539 BCE, Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great of Persia, who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple (although some remained in Babylon). Under the protection of Persia, Judah (called Yahud by the Persians) again prospered, although no longer as a wholly independent state. A council of elders known as the Gerousia ruled over local affairs. Synagogue and temple, rabbi and priest, now existed side by side—the common people more linked to synagogue and rabbis; the elite to the priests and temple. (Ben-Sasson, p. 191; Dimont, p. 68-73; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 19-20)

The fall of Persia to Alexander the Great in 332 BCE meant great change for the whole region, with a Greek ruling class imposed. Alexander’s empire stretched from Egypt to what is now Afghanistan, but fractured following his death in 323 BCE, divided among his leading generals. The land of Judah was for over a century contested between the Ptolemies, ruling from Egypt, and the Seleucids, ruling from Syria. In 198 BCE the Seleucids gained the final victory, taking Jerusalem from the Ptolemies. (Dimont, p. 87; Ludwig, p. 94)

The Greeks called the land Ioudaia (Judea). At first, the Gerousia system continued under Greek rule. But around 175 BCE, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes began a campaign of “Hellenization”—imposing Greek culture and taking measures against Jewish self-government. This led to the rebellion of the Maccabees, a Jewish revivalist movement, which in 141 BCE succeeded in establishing an independent kingdom under the Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmonean kings succeeded in winning back much of the territories ruled centuries earlier by David and Solomon. However, the kingdom was still precariously situated between the hostile Greek-dominated empires, and at times under official Seleucid sovereignty. Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus waged war against the Seleucids from 134-2 to maintain the kingdom’s independence. The Hasmonean dynasty was a theocracy, with no distinction between kings and priests. It was in this period that codification of the Old Testament was completed. (Ben-Sasson, p. 202-4, 218; Dimont, p. 87-90, 120; Ludwig, p. 107-8; Roth, p. 71)

A civil war in the Hasmonean kingdom between the Pharisees (populists who rejected Hellenization, and favored the rabbis and synagogues) and Sadducees (party of the elite who favored greater integration with the Hellenized world, and stood for the temple and priesthood) was finally exploited by the ascendant power in the region—Rome. (Dimont, p. 92-5)

Rival claimants to the throne appealed to outside powers. When the pro-Pharisee Hyrcanus II sought aid from the neighboring Nabateans, his brother, the pro-Sadducee Aristobulus II, sought aid from the Romans, who had recently completed their conquest of Syria. This was to spell the end of an independent kingdom. The Roman general Pompey skillfully played the brothers off against each other, finally switching sides. It was Hyrcanus who turned Jerusalem over to Pompey in 63 CE, and the followers of Aristobulus were massacred. (Dimont, p. 92-5; Ludwig, 114-5; Roth, p. 86-7)

Hyrcanus was installed as priest-king, but he ruled as a Roman vassal. Judah was officially renamed Judea by the Roman occupation. A Hasmonean restorationist revolt in 40 BCE was aided by the Parthian dynasty of Persia, and put down three years later by the Romans with the aid of the Idumeans (Edomites), a neighboring people who had been brought under Judean rule. Herod, a Judean leader of Idumean lineage, led the forces that retook Jerusalem when the revolt was put down, and was subsequently named “king” by Rome. But Romanization of Judea by this Rome-appointed Herod “the Great” (37-4 BCE) lead to continued unrest. After Herod’s death, Roman procurators (governors) ruled from the new capital the Romans established at Caesarea on the coast; Judea was made a Roman province in 6 CE and formally incorporated into the empire. A reduced Jewish kingdom was allowed to rule under Roman occupation in Galilee—the fertile area around the small inland “sea” of the same name in the north, from which flows the Jordan River. (Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great and ruler of Galilee, is the one encountered by the adult Jesus in the New Testament.) (Dimont, p. 100-5; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 29-34; Roth, p. 94-5; Schürer, p. 118-9)

The vestiges of local autonomy rapidly eroded, and Judea was even for a while annexed to the neighboring and much larger Roman province of Syria. In 66 CE, a Jewish revolt spread throughout Judea and Galilee. The revolution was crushed in 70 CE, with Roman forces under the general (later emperor) Titus sacking Jerusalem and destroying the temple. A band of Jewish partisans known as the Zealots held out at Masada on the Dead Sea for another three years before they too were crushed. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 36-7; Roth, p. 103-10)

In a subsequent rebellion under the leader Bar Kochba from 132-5, Jews succeeded in retaking ruined Jerusalem and the temple site. When the Roman Emperor Hadrian put down the rebellion, he changed the name of the province from Judea to Palestine (to de-emphasize the legacy of Judah), and deported the Jews en masse north to Galilee. There, they retained a degree of autonomy—no longer under a king, but a body of scholars known as the Patriarchate based in the town of Tiberias. Reconstitution of the culture there, and in the wider diaspora, lead to the basis of contemporary Judaism. (Dimont, p. 112; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 38; Roth, p. 111-9)

Contrary to the popular impression of a mass expulsion of the Jews from Palestine at this time, many remained in Galilee. There were now far more Jews outside Palestine than within, but this had been the case for at least a century before the deportation, due to Jews following trade routes. The most significant centers of Jewish culture were by then Alexandria in Roman-ruled Egypt and Babylon, where the descendants of Jews from the exile period remained under the protection of the Persian Sassanid dynasty. (Dimont, p. 125; Nathan, p. 35; Roth, p. 120-1)

Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem after the deportation and renamed it Aelia Capitolina. Jews were barred from living in the city, and were for many years forbidden to even enter it. After Emperor Constantine made Christianity the empire’s state religion in 324, the name Jerusalem was restored, and the city became an important Christian center—although secondary to Alexandria. When the Roman empire split into two following Constantine’s rule, Palestine came within the eastern sphere—the Greek-ruled Byzantine Empire, with its capital at Constantinople (formerly Byzantium and today Istanbul). (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 40-4; Nathan, p. 37)

Over the following centuries, Greek culture and Christianity became increasingly dominant under Byzantine rule. Those who clung to Jewish identity, chiefly around Galilee, dwindled. The Patriarchate was abolished in the fifth century. Jews were allowed again to reside in Jerusalem, but the city’s leading families were now Greek and Roman. A Samaritan revolt was put down in 529. (Ben-Sasson, p. 355; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 44-5)

The 614 invasion of the Sassanid Persians was for obvious reasons supported by the Jews. Under Sassanid rule, Jerusalem was restored to the Jews, who were armed to defend it. It wasn’t until 629 that the Byzantines succeeded in driving the Sassanids back and retaking Palestine. Jews were again barred from Jerusalem. (Ben-Sasson, p. 362; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 47)

But the Byzantine restoration was brief. The Arabs, a chiefly nomadic people of the deserts far to the south of Palestine, were on the cusp of an unprecedented expansion, inspired by Islam, the new religion brought by the Prophet Mohammad. There were already Arab peoples in the Fertile Crescent—the ancient kingdoms of Nabatea (in contemporary Jordan) and Palmyra (in contemporary Syria) were Arab. But from the distant desert towns of Mecca (the religious center) and Medina (the political capital), Arabs were now forging a centralized empire, uniting tribes for campaigns of conquest. (Lewis, 1950, p. 26-7)

The Byzantines virtually invited an Arab invasion of Palestine. They had long subsidized nomadic Arab tribes beyond the Dead Sea as a buffer military force. But after the routing of the Sassanids, they overconfidently ceased these payments. The tribes appealed to their kindred further south, who were just then forging a formidable fighting capacity. (Nathan, p. 42)

The Arabs invaded Palestine in 634 and took Jerusalem four years later. Although there had been a lengthy siege, the surrender of the city to the Arab armies was in the end peaceful and negotiated. Caliph Omar, the second successor to Mohammad, personally toured the city, now holy to three monotheistic faiths. The Arabs called Jerusalem al-Quds, the holy. Islam became the state religion, but Christians and the remaining Jews were tolerated as long as they paid a special tax, the jizya. As “people of the book,” they were considered dhimmis—followers of tolerated religions recognized as having a kinship with Islam. Jews were allowed once again to reside in Jerusalem. Jews, and other subject peoples who had been persecuted by the Byzantines, generally welcomed Arab rule. (Asali, p. 116; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 48-9; Lewis, 1950, p. 58)

Arabs became the new dominant class, soldiers becoming settlers with generous land grants. However, the Arabs took over only lands which had officially belonged to the Byzantine state, or to those who resisted them. Landowners who recognized the new government were allowed to keep their properties. There was again probably a general continuity with the pre-existing population in Palestine, with many Christians and perhaps some Jews converting to Islam, inter-marrying with Arabs, and adopting Arab culture. Arabic superseded Aramaic (the vernacular counterpart to the liturgical Hebrew) as the language of the land’s common people, and Greek as the language of administration. (Hebrew would survive as the liturgical language of the Jews; Aramaic still survives today as the common tongue of scattered Jewish communities in the Arab lands.) (Lewis, 1950, p. 57; Nathan, p. 43; Polk, et al., p. 241; Lewis, 1984, p. 76; Roth, p. 121)

The Fertile Crescent naturally became the new center of Arab power, although Mecca and Medina were still revered as holy cities. In 661, Palestine came under the Umayyad Caliphate, which ruled the Arab empire from Damascus, in Syria. It was in the early years of Umayyad rule that al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (Qubbat as-Sakhrah) were built on the Temple Mount, the site of the old Jewish temple—which had been turned into a garbage dump by the Byzantines. The Dome of the Rock protects the purported site of the biblical Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac. Al-Aqsa Mosque commemorates the Prophet Mohammad’s mystical “Night Journey,” in which he is believed to have visited Jerusalem. The complex on the Temple Mount—known as the Noble Sanctuary or Haram al-Sharif—became the third holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. Immediately below is the Western Wall, the last standing fragment of the Second Temple, and the holiest site for Jews. This remains the geography of the Temple Mount to this day. (Armstrong, p. 46; Hitti, p. 33; Encyclopaedia Judaica, 51-2)

In 750, the Umayyad dynasty was superseded by the Abbasid Caliphate, based in Baghdad, in contemporary Iraq. The following century was the height of the Arab empire’s glory. The empire’s local seat of administration was Ramleh, and Jerusalem’s significance was as a religious center. There was something of a recovery of Jewish culture in the city under the Abbasids, and the Talmudic Academy—Palestine’s most important center of Jewish learning—was moved there from Tiberias in the Galilee. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, 54-5; Lewis, 1950, p. 96)

Egypt gained increasing preeminence in Islamic world as the Abbasids began to decline, and in 878 Jerusalem was taken by the Egyptian ruler Ahmad ibn Tulun. From 941, another Egyptian dynasty, the Ikhshidids, ruled Palestine—again, with merely official loyalty to the Caliphate of Baghdad. In this period of decay, religious conflict emerged in Jerusalem. Episodes of Muslim violence against Christians (including the sacking of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, purported site of the resurrection of Jesus) occurred repeatedly in the 10th century. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, 54-5; Lewis, 1950, p. 96; Najeebabadi, vol. 2, p. 618)

In 969, the Fatimid Caliphate was established in Cairo by followers of the Ismaili Shi’ite “heresy,” and Palestine finally fell outside the orbit of the Abbisid Caliphate altogether. This brought a century of relief to the Christian and Jewish minorities. But the Fatimids lost Palestine to the Seljuk Turks in 1071. The Seljuks had begun their career as a mercenary force for the declining Abbisids, but were by now the real power in Baghdad—while still recognizing the caliph in name. A Palestinian revolt against the Seljuks was put down with great brutality. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 58-9; Najeebabadi, vol. 2, p. 622-3)

The Seljuks’ barring of Christian pilgrims from Jerusalem prompted the Pope of Rome, Urban II, to call the First Crusade, with knights recruited from across Catholic Europe to take the Holy Land. In 1098, with Crusader armies advancing, the Fatimids retook Jerusalem. But they lost it again in 1099, when Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders after a five-week siege. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 59; Riley-Smith, p. 2-10, 34)

This change of power was different: there was a general slaughter of the city’s populace, with Muslims and Jews massacred and burned alive in mosques and synagogues. In the aftermath, the city was closed to Muslim and Jewish worshipers. The Knights Templar, the most fanatical of the Crusader military orders, established their headquarters in al-Aqsa Mosque. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 60-1)

This period also saw the first major outbreaks of violence against Jews in Europe, who had by then long since arrived via the Mediterranean in France and England. Both these countries saw widespread attacks on Jews in the same paroxysm of zeal that mobilized the Crusades. The Crusaders gratuitously destroyed Jewish villages en route to Jerusalem as well. (Riley-Smith, p. 16-7)

In 1144, a Second Crusade was called to defend Christian Jerusalem as the fractured Islamic world began to gather forces for the counter-attack. The first serious threat to the Crusader state came from Zengi, ruler of Syria to the north. (Riley-Smith, p. 93)

But the real turn-around came in 1171, when the Kurdish warrior Salah al-Din (Saladin) ousted the Fatimids from Egypt, establishing the Ayyubid dynasty and restoring Sunni Islam (the majority tendency, that of the Abbasid Caliphate). The Ayyubids were officially loyal to the Abbasid Caliphate, but Cairo had now supplanted Baghdad as the center of Islamic power. Following the 1187 Battle of Hattin, Saladin drove the Crusaders from Jerusalem. Revenge killings were barred, and the city’s Christian inhabitants (by then overwhelmingly Frankish settlers) were granted safe passage to the rump Crusader state on the coast. A Third Crusade was promptly launched to re-take the city. (Hourani, p. 84; Riley-Smith, p. 84-5)

In 1191, Saladin made a peace deal with the rump Crusader state of England’s Richard the Lion-Hearted, allowing Christians and Muslims alike access to Jerusalem. This peace was broken following Saladin’s death in 1193, when new crusades were launched. (Riley-Smith, p. 118)

In 1229, a Sixth Crusade was organized at the Vatican’s urging by Frederick II, ruler of the Holy Roman Empire, the great confederation of German and northern Italian states. But this time the crusade was cut short by a peace deal between Frederick and Saladin’s successor, the Ayyubid Sultan al-Kamil. This pact established joint Christian-Muslim control of Jerusalem under Frederick’s official if distant rule—for which the Holy Roman Emperor was promptly excommunicated by the Pope. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 67; Hitti, p. 225-6; Riley-Smith, p. 149-51)

This peace persisted until the 1244 invasion of the Khwarazmian Turks, fleeing the Mongol irruption from Central Asia. The Khwarazmians overran Jerusalem, causing much destruction, but were turned back by the Ayyubids before they reached Egypt. However, the struggle against the Khwarazmians lead to the ascendance of the (mostly Turkish) Mamluk military slave caste within Egypt’s political elite. Palestine was meanwhile left in ruin and chaos, although Nablus and other hill towns provided some shelter for refugees from devastated Jerusalem. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 67)

In 1249, when a Seventh Crusade under Louis IX of France (St. Louis) invaded Egypt, the Mamluk “slave dynasty” finally took power, successfully repelling the Crusaders. Palestine was for some years contested by Mamluk Egypt and a rump Ayyubid state in Syria. But in 1258, the Mongols themselves arrived in the Fertile Crescent. The Mongol armies under Hulagu Khan destroyed Baghdad, overran Syria, and penetrated Palestine from the north. It was the Mamluks who turned them back at the battle of Ayn Jalut (En-Harod in Hebrew) before they could reach Jerusalem. Afterwards, Palestine finally came under firm Mamluk rule. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 69; Riley-Smith, p. 160)

The Mamluk Sultan Babyars next seized Syria, expelling both the Mongols and last of the Crusaders in a confused three-way war. The Abbasid Caliphate was formally transfered from destroyed Baghdad to Cairo. Peace was restored, but centralized rule weakened, and feudalism spread. Agriculture in Palestine had virtually collapsed, and settled peoples returned to nomadism. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 69; Najeebabadi, vol. 2, p. 589; Nathan, p. 46-7; Riley-Smith, p. 203-4)

Palestine slowly began to recover under the Mamluks, and Jerusalem was rebuilt. Heavy taxes were imposed on Jews and there were periodic episodes of persecution—the closing of synagogues and so forth. Still, a yeshiva (Jewish seminary) was maintained in Jerusalem, and Jews fleeing persecution in Europe even found refuge in Palestine, arriving on Italian merchant ships. Safed, in the Galilee, was also a significant seat of Jewish culture and learning. (Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 69-76)

In the closing years of the Crusades, European Jews again became a target—and this time in a far more systematic campaign. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council, overseen by Pope Innocent III, mandated that Jews wear identifying yellow badges. The situation worsened as the “Black Death” (bubonic plague) devastated Europe, and Jews were superstitiously blamed. In 1290 England became the first country to expel its Jews by decree. France and various German states would follow—generally amid much violence. While a small number came to Mamluk Palestine, far greater numbers moved east within Europe—to those German states that would have them, and then to Poland and Lithuania. Many would later come under Russian rule as borders shifted. By 1500, the center of Jewish culture had shifted from Western to Eastern Europe. Even where they were tolerated, Jews faced restrictions on where they could live—confined to walled ghettos in Poland and Lithuania. Their villages in Russia would later be confined to a limited “Pale of Settlement.” In the ghettos, they were allowed a degree of self-government. Effectively segregated from the Christian population, they would maintain their own language, Yiddish, a distinct tongue that evolved from German. Hebrew was of course maintained as the liturgical and scholarly tongue. (Ben-Sasson, p. 486-7; Dimont, p. 230-1, 248; Roth, p. 198, 334)

In 1400, a new Mongol irruption from Central Asia, this time under Timur Leng (Tamerlane), ravaged Syria. The Mamluks again successfully fended off the invader, so Palestine and Egypt were spared. But the Mamluk dynasty was greatly weakened by the struggle. (Lewis, 1950, p. 157)

In 1451, the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople, putting a final end to the greatly diminished Byzantine Empire. In 1517, the Ottomans under Sultan Selim I (“the Grim”) established Mamluk Egypt as a vassal state, and officially transfered the caliphate to Constantinople. Palestine, and most of the Arab world, now came under Ottoman rule. Mamluk sway over Palestine waned as the dynasty declined, and the Ottoman Turks became ascendant. (Kinross, 107-10, 170)

Ottoman rule brought another period of relative tolerance and reflorescence of Jewish culture. Sultan Bayezid II (“the Just”) welcomed Jewish exiles from Spain after the expulsion of 1492 to settle in Palestine or elsewhere in his empire. Safed reached its peak as a world center of Jewish learning. (Ben-Sasson, p. 632, 661)

The rebuilding of Jerusalem picked up pace, and Sultan Suleiman “the Magnificent” (1520-66) built a new wall around the city—largely to check the periodic raids of the nomadic Bedouin Arabs. A waqf (trust or endowment) was established to oversee the Haram al-Sharif and other Islamic holy sites, with land grants in the countryside to make it economically self-sufficient. The Temple Mount complex was renovated and the Dome of the Rock restored. After the centuries of turmoil, there was now a long period of peace. The Ottomans would be embroiled in many wars in Europe—chiefly with Austria and Russia—but these did not affect Palestine. (Asali, p. 200-1; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 77, 92-100)

Trade with Europe grew, and by the 18th century Palestine’s coastal plain was a major producer of cotton and citrus for export. But real Ottoman control did not extend far beyond the urban centers. There was little permanently settled Turkish class. The land remained largely in Arab hands, and Arabic remained the dominant language. (Asali, p. 214; Encyclopaedia Judaica, p. 91; Hourani, 252, 286)

As Palestine’s economic importance grew, the Ottomans began to take tentative measures to increase their control. But in 1703, after a Turkish governor had been installed in Jerusalem who imposed heavy taxes on the peasants and townspeople alike, an insurrection broke out, led by the prominent Husseini family. It was put down, but thenceforth the governors of Jerusalem were drawn from the local Arab elite, and the heavy taxes rescinded. The nearest center of direct Turkish administration, Damascus, interfered little in Palestine’s affairs. (Asali, p. 215-6)

In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte established an occupation of Egypt, precipitating a confused four-way war over the country among the French, British, Turks and Mamluks. Eager to extend his control to Syria, Napoleon invaded Palestine, sacking the Mediterranean port of Jaffa and besieging Acre, another port up the coast. In a precursor of later European imperial strategies in the territory, Napoleon appealed for Jewish support against the Arabs and Turks. On April 20, 1799, amid the siege of Acre, he had an order penned, declaring that when he conquered the territory, Jews—who he called the “rightful heirs of Palestine”—would inherit the land. The Jewish notables of Acre spurned the offer, and Napoleon was forced to retreat from Palestine. In 1801, his precarious hold on Egypt collapsed, and Ottoman-Mamluk rule was restored. Palestine remained under more direct Ottoman rule, although with broad autonomy for Arabs (Muslim and Christian alike) and Jews. (Fisher, p. 263; Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2011)

Zionist Colonization Under Ottoman Rule

By the mid-19th century, Palestine, like most of the Middle East, had been a part of the Ottoman Empire for nearly 500 years. People who lived there called the country Filastin, or by the Arabic phrase al-Ard al-Muqadassa—the Holy Land. (Gerner, p. 9)

For centuries, a high degree of local autonomy had been allowed. There was both cultural autonomy for the various religious and ethnic groups, and territorial autonomy for villages and districts. Under the millet system, Muslims, Christians and Jews each had their own leadership responsible for internal affairs within their own community and subject to their own laws. (Lewis, 1984, p. 125)

Village mukhtars (traditional elders) were treated as local administrators, given authority over local affairs in exchange for providing taxes and conscripts for the Turkish army. Informal village militias were also often maintained to protect against Bedouin raids, and tolerated by Turkish authorities. (Sayigh, p. 15)

Villages were generally self-sufficient, with families working subsistence plots of perhaps 100 dunums (25 acres) under a system of land tenure in which some fields were formally the domain of lords or mukhtars in a survival of feudalism, and others were explicitly for the use of common villagers. Wheat, barely, millet, sesame, lentils, olives, figs, citrus and melons were common crops, and most families had goats and other livestock. (Nathan, p. 184, 196)

1834 saw a new Arab uprising in Palestine, after the territory was seized by Egyptian ruler Mohammed Ali—a commander of Albanian origin who had been dispatched by Constantinople to finally oust the Mamluks, and then made his own bid for independence from the Ottoman Empire. Mohammed Ali’s excessive demands for conscripts and other encroachments on village autonomy were resented by the Palestinian Arabs. After he was forced to cede Palestine (and accept Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt), the traditional rights of the villages were restored. (Ayyad, p. 15)

This began to change in the 1840s, however, when the Ottoman Empire’s tanzimat reforms brought centralized administration and taxation, extending the control of the Ottoman capital, Constantinople. This saw the formal abolition of serfdom, with peasants freed from the authoritarian control of local mukhtars. Peasants were no longer bound to the land, or forced to work it as fiefs. But, as old patterns of land use were disrupted, this also resulted in an impoverishment of the villages, and the beginning of a slow movement of the population to the coastal towns. (Morris, 2001, p. 7; Nathan, p. 50)

An 1858 Land Law to regularize property deeds had the actual effect of centralizing control of communal agricultural lands—which had traditionally been worked by peasants without formal title—in the hands of a few wealthy, often absentee, private owners. Lands designated miri—arable lands controlled by the state after being removed from feudal authority—had been de facto communal village lands, and their titling as mulk (private) lands often meant the exclusion of peasant families that had worked them for generations. Musha lands were more formally for the common use of villagers, subject to repartition among families. These were also increasingly transfered to the mulk sector, as families were given the option of privatizing the parcels they had been working. Outlying uncultivated lands—known as mewat—were also claimed by the state and then privatized, even though they had been used informally for pasturing. Many of the new owners were Turks rather than Arabs, and often they were European—with the Ottoman state then under pressure from European powers to allow land ownership by foreigners. Arab peasants were increasingly reduced to the status of tenant farmers—an ironic outcome of their “liberation” from serfdom. (Dowty, p. 59-60; Nathan, p. 50, 184)

Nonetheless, a thriving citrus industry on the coastal plain remained in the hands of local Arabs—usually the effendis, or Arab gentry. And even under greater economic burden, the villages of the fellahin, or peasantry, remained largely self-sufficient. The system of communal apportionment of lands and water, known as masha’, actually survived the new land law—in part because many Arab peasants evaded land registration. While this helped preserve communal traditions, it would also make the villages more vulnerable, as many now lacked legal title to their lands under the new system. (Hadawi, 1963, p. 119; Polk, et al, p. 241; Sayigh, p. 27, 32)

At this time the population of Palestine was 462,500, of which 404,000 were Muslim, 44,000 Christian and 15,000 Jews—or 20,000 by some estimates, as some Jews were not considered Ottoman citizens and may have not been counted. The population was overwhelmingly rural, although the Jews were disproportionately urban, concentrated in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias. (Dowty, p. 13)

Events far from Palestine meanwhile gave birth to a movement which would change the land’s fate. European Jews had largely achieved “emancipation”—full citizenship rights, and an end to the ghettos—by the mid-19th century. Jewish emancipation was formally embraced by Europe’s Great Powers at the 1878 Berlin Conference. But this sparked a backlash, and the modern ideology of anti-Semitism emerged—viewing the Jews as an alien, un-assimilable and ultimately corrupting Semitic presence in Europe. As revolutionary upsurges threatened the continent’s old monarchies, Jews served as scapegoats, and an assimilationist solution to Europe’s “Jewish Question” seemed less tenable. In 1881, Russian pogroms (from word for “havoc” or “outrage”) began following the March 13 assassination of Czar Alexander II, with hundreds of Jewish villages attacked by right-wing mobs and paramilitaries. Following Alexander II’s reforms, which had allowed Jews access to higher education and posts in the bureaucracy, there was a period of backlash in which some 4 million Jews fled Russia. The reforms were overturned, and the pogroms actively encouraged by the authorities. (Ben-Sasson, p. 823-4; Gross, p. 651-7; Morris, 2001, p. 15-8; Dowty, p. 31, 33)

In the mass emigration of Jews from Russia and Eastern Europe that began at this time, most went to the United States. Some went to Britain, Canada and South Africa. But an organized movement to direct the exodus with the aim of establishing a Jewish national state emerged in response to surgence of anti-Semitism: Zionism. (Nathan, p. 52-3)

The Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) was founded in Poland, with a vision of establishing Palestine as a Jewish homeland. It organized chapters throughout Russia, Poland and Romania to raise funds for emigration. The allied Bilu—an acronym for “House of Jacob, Let Us Go”—was established in Palestine to organize settlements. The First Aliyah, or mass migration of Jewish settlers to Palestine, began in 1882—a year which also saw the publication in German of the first Zionist manifesto, Leon Pinsker’s Self-Emancipation. Aided by wealthy Jewish philanthropists in western Europe, the movement purchased some 100,000 dunams of land for the olim (settlers, “those who ascend”) by 1890, and 200,000 by 1900. Most of the olim lived in the coastal cities, particularly the new city of Tel Aviv that was established near Jaffa. But the program called for the establishment of agricultural settlements as quickly as possible. The Bilu evolved into the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association. (Ben-Sasson, p. 896; Cohn-Sherbok, p. 106-7; Morris, 2001, p. 15-8; Dowty, p. 31, 33)

In 1888, the Ottoman administrators took note of the Jewish immigration and Zionist designs, changing the region’s administrative districts to enhance Constantinople’s control. The entire region had until then been part of a province or vilayet ruled from Damascus, and was generally considered part of Syria. With the reorganization, Palestine was separated from Syria and divided into three districts, centered around Jerusalem, Nablus and Acre. The northern two districts were sanjaqs (internal districts) attached to the Vilayet of Beirut, while Jerusalem, encompassing the southern half of historic Palestine, became a mutasarriflik (independent district) administrated directly from Constantinople. The sparsely inhabited Negev Desert remained under Syrian administration. Officially, Zionist aims at this time were limited to establishing “a state within a larger state”—an autonomous Jewish territory within the Ottoman empire. (Dowty, p. 18, 33)

In 1896, following the Dreyfus Affair in France—in which a Jewish army officer was notoriously framed on treason charges—Theodore Herzl published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in Germany. The book, the first explicit aspiration of Jewish statehood in Palestine, actually made no reference to the Arab inhabitants of the territory. Elsewhere, Herzl wrote that he saw Zionism as bringing economic development to the Arabs of Palestine, and in 1903 publicly called for restraints on the purchase of Palestinian lands from absentee landlords in Beirut, arguing that “poor Arab [tenant] farmers should not be driven off their land.” (Morris, 2001, p. 20-1, 678)

But in 1895 he wrote in his diary: “We must expropriate gently… We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it in any employment in our country… Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.” (Morris, 2001, p. 21-2)

“A land without people for a people without land” became the Zionist slogan (actually originating in the memoirs of British politician Lord Shaftesbury). But Russian Jewish writer Asher Ginsberg (pen name Ahad Ha-Am) warned in a Hebrew newspaper in Russia after an 1891 visit to Palestine: “We abroad are used to believing that Eretz Yisrael [the Land of Israel] is now almost totally desolate, a desert that is not sowed… But in truth this is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed. Only sand dunes and stony mountains…are not cultivated… If a time comes when our people in Palestine develop so that, in small or great measure, they push out the native inhabitants, these will not give up their place easily.” (Morris, 2001, p. 42, 49; Davis, p. 7)

Ginsberg/Ha-Am favored a “Cultural Zionism” that emphasized the Hebrew language and Jewish cultural renewal in Palestine, and was skeptical of a rush to statehood. But the “Political Zionism” of Herzl, heedless of his warnings, became the mainstream position. (Davis, p. 7; Roth, p. 373)

Zionism was still a minority current within Jewish thought at this time, and Palestine but one option under consideration within Zionism. Jewish agricultural colonies were established in Manitoba, Argentina, Australia and South Africa. There was even a scheme to establish a Jewish state on Grand Island in the Niagara River, off Buffalo, New York. (AFSC, p. 15; Gross, p. 620)

This began to change as the movement was formalized. The World Zionist Organization was founded at the Basel Congress, held in Switzerland in September 1897. “At Basel, I founded the Jewish State,” Herzl boasted. When Ottoman authorities completely rejected establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the movement opened talks with Britain, which offered territory in East Africa. The Russian wing of the movement especially, led by the young Chiam Weizmann, was most vocal in rejecting the “Uganda Offer,” calling themselves “Zionists of Zion.” Those who were open to a homeland elsewhere than Palestine broke from the WZO to form the “Territorialist” tendency under the leadership of Israel Zangwill. The “Zionists of Zion” held sway over Herzl and the WZO. (Ben-Sasson, p. 901-2; Morris, 2001, p. 23; Dowty, p. 37)

Yusuf Diya Pasha al-Khalidi, patriarch of one of Jerusalem’s leading families, wrote to the chief rabbi of France, appealing to him to pressure for a halt to Jewish colonization, predicting it would lead to violent conflict. He wrote that there were “still uninhabited countries where one could settle millions of poor Jews… But in the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace.” (Dowty, p. 63)

Arabs had reason to fear European encroachment. European colonialism was at this time a growing force in the Arab world. In 1882, a British occupation of Egypt was established, with the Ottomans maintaining only nominal sovereignty there. Although the British had ostensibly intervened to put down an Arab revolt against the Ottoman administrators, they became the real power in Egypt. The Suez Canal—linking the Mediterranean and Red Sea through Egypt, completed in 1869 by a French-dominated company (using Egyptian forced labor)—made the region critically strategic. (Fisher, p. 286-91)

Jews were again scapegoated as revolutionary currents swelled in Russia, and a new wave of pogroms was unleashed in 1903. In the notorious Passover Pogrom, 50 were killed and scores injured and raped at Kishinev. The violence, paradoxically, succeeded in radicalizing Russian Jews, many of whom did embrace anarchism and other revolutionary ideologies. But many fled Russia, and embraced Zionism. The violence prompted the Second Aliyah movement—this one much larger and better organized. The new exodus from Russia brought some 34,000 Jewish settlers to Ottoman Palestine. (Avrich, p. 17; Morris, 2001, p. 25; Dowty, p. 36-7; Yivo Institute for Jewish Research)

The most anti-Semitic elements of the Russian government were pleased by the notion of a Jewish exodus from their country. In 1903, just before he died, Herzl actually received a letter from Interior Minister Viacheslav Plehve, notorious as the mastermind of the pogroms, in which he pledged the Czarist state’s “moral and material assistance with respect to the measures taken by the Zionist movement which would lead to the diminution of the Jewish population in Russia.” (Bober, p. 172-3)

The first kibbutzim (collective settlements) were established in Palestine, building on the moshavot of the First Aliyah, which had been based on private property and exploitation of cheap Arab labor. The kibbutzim were owned in common and sought to be self-sufficient. Menachem Ussishkin in 1904 delineated three methods by which land could be procured: “By force—that is, by conquest in war, or in other words, by robbing land from its owner… by expropriation via government authority; or by purchase.” (Morris, 2001, p. 38-9)

Although Constantinople curtailed Jewish land purchases, baksheesh (bribery) allowed de facto purchases to continue. The new Jewish owners offended local traditions of land use in various ways. Arab shepherds were denied the right of access to what had long been common pasturelands regardless of official ownership. Jews purchased land from effendis—members of the Arab land-owning elite—and then pushed out the poor tenant farmers who had been on the lands for generations. (Morris, 2001, p. 41, 46, 57)

The very first violent conflict between Arab Palestinians and Zionist settlers took place in this era—largely because of this refusal on the part of the settlers to recognize the peasants’ customary rights in the land. For instance, when settlers barred the peasants from grazing their herds on newly bought lands, this naturally provoked incursions, which then escalated to attacks. (Sayigh, p. 44)

The Second Aliyah olim were often socialists, anarchists, atheists and free-thinkers, but even the socialist Poalei Zion organization, led by Polish-born David Ben-Gurion, advocated exclusion of Arabs from the emerging Jewish economy, and a ban on hiring Arab labor. This policy was known as kibush ha’avoda or “conquest of labor.” (Morris, 2001, p. 46, 50-1)

Arab raids on settlements predictably became a constant problem, with houses vandalized and livestock seized. In 1908, the HaShomer (“guard,” or “watchman”) militia was founded to defend the settlements. (Morris, 2001, p. 53-4; Gee, p. 40)

In 1891, a group of Jerusalem Arab notables petitioned Constantinople to halt Jewish immigration: “The Jews are taking all the lands out of the hands of the Muslims, taking all the commerce into their hands and bringing arms into the country.” (Morris, 2001, p. 56)

Arab national aspirations were also emerging at this time. In 1905, Najib Azuri, a Lebanese Christian who had served in the Ottoman bureaucracy in Jerusalem, published in French The Awakening of the Arab Nation, calling for an independent Arab state stretching from Mesopotamia to the Suez. (Dowty, p. 65)

In 1907, the World Zionist Organization founded a Palestine Office in Jaffa to oversee land acquisition and distribution, headed by Arthur Ruppin, who wrote: “Land is the most necessary thing for establishing roots in Palestine. Since there are hardly any more arable unsettled lands…we are bound in each case…to remove the peasants who cultivated the land.” He advocated a “limited population transfer” of Palestinian peasants to Syria. (Morris, 2001, p. 59, 61, 140)

Yet the most ambitious Zionist statement actually foresaw the annexation of Syria itself. Max Nordau wrote that Zionism sought “to expand Europe’s moral borders to the Euphrates.” (Morris, 2001, p. 63)

In 1911, the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, in a bid to appease Arab protests, wrote: “We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites… But no nation, no government could open its arms to groups…aiming to take Palestine from us.” (Morris, 2001, p. 62)

A Palestinian-born Jew, Yitzhak Epstein, delivered a lecture on the “Arab question” in Basel in 1905: “We have forgotten one small matter: There is in our beloved land an entire nation, which has occupied it for hundreds of years and has never thought to leave it… We are making a great psychological error with regard to a great, assertive and jealous people. While we feel a deep love for the land of our forefathers, we forget that the nation who lives in it today has a sensitive heart and a loving soul. The Arab, like every man, is tied to his native land with strong bonds.” (Morris, 2001, p. 57; Palestine Remembered)

In direct response, Mose Smilansky wrote: “Either the land of Israel belongs in a national sense to those Arabs who settled there in recent times, and then we have no place there and we must say explicitly: The land of our fathers is lost to us. [Or] if the Land of Israel belongs to us, to the Jewish people, then our national interests come before all else… It is not possible for one country to serve as the homeland of two peoples.” (Morris, 2001, p. 58)

Smilansky was clear in advocating separation from the Arabs: “Let us not be too familiar with the Arab fellahin lest our children adopt their ways and learn from their ugly deeds. Let all those who are loyal to the Torah avoid ugliness and that which resembles it and keep their distance from the fellahin and their base attributes.” (Masalha, p. 7)

Ber Borochov, a prominent Marxist Zionist and founder of Poalei Zion, called for a “Semitic nationalism,” for the olim to learn Arabic, and recognize Arabs as “close to us in blood and spirit.” But such sentiments remained marginal. (Hertzberg, 352; Morris, 2001, p. 58)

As Zionism gained ground, so did Arab calls for independence—initially among the Lebanese Christian elite of Beirut, who launched the watan or “fatherland” movement. In 1877, a new Ottoman constitution had instated a parliament in Constantinople, with representatives from throughout the empire. When the new constitution was suspended following a conservative coup the following year, the hand of Arab independence advocates was strengthened. Many rallied to Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi, who had been exiled to Syria following a revolt against the French in Algeria. The movement was crushed, and the constitution revived when the reformist Young Turk tendency took power in Constantinople in 1908. But Arabs remained a minority in the parliament even though they believed they constituted a majority in the empire’s populace. The 1908 Ottoman parliament included 147 Turks, 60 Arabs and four Jews (as well as token numbers of Armenians, Greeks, Albanians and Slavs). (Lewis, p. 179; Morris, 2001, p. 26-9)

In Palestine, demographics were changing. By 1914, there were some 60,000 Jews in Palestine, compared to 657,000 Muslims (including Druze, a minority sect), and 81,000 Christians. Some 45 Jewish agricultural settlements had been established. (Morris, 2001, p. 83; Nathan, p. 52)

World War I and the Balfour Declaration

The outbreak of World War I—with Constantinople on the side of the Central Powers—brought disruption of the Ottoman Empire’s trade routes, and harsh privation to Palestine. Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish but non-Zionist US ambassador to the Ottomans, organized a dispatch of aid raised by American Jews to the Yishuv, or community of the olim. The aid was delivered by the US battleship North Carolina in October 1914. Morgenthau also applied diplomatic pressure when the Ottoman authorities began having Jewish settlers deported as enemy nationals later that year; the deportations were halted after several hundred had been shipped to British-held territory in Egypt. (Morris, 2001, p. 85)

Many Jews in Palestine believed that an Allied victory would improve their prospects for a state, and some actively collaborated with the British. In 1915, Jewish settlers established the NILI spy ring which reported to Britain on Ottoman forces in Palestine; two of its leaders would be hanged by Ottoman authorities. (Morris, 2001, p. 87)

One 1915 British parliamentary report read:

The Zionist leaders gave us [Britain] a definite promise that, if the Allies committed themselves to giving facilities for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine, they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause. [Thomas, p. 9]

The British Gen. Edmund Allenby invaded from Egypt in the spring of 1917—with the participation of a Jewish Legion made up of Zionist volunteers from Palestine, Britain and the US. The Turks, clearly no longer trusting the loyalty of the Jews, had Tel Aviv forcibly evacuated—under the guise of protecting the populace. The city’s mostly Jewish inhabitants took refuge in the Galilee and other inland rural areas. But Allenby took Jerusalem and expelled the Turks from the territory in December; the Jewish refugees returned to Tel Aviv. (Morris, 2001, p. 77; Segev, p. 19-20)

In April 1918, Allenby established the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration (OETA)—which, in a bid to win peace with the Arabs, made no overt moves towards implementing the Zionist policy, and actually curbed Jewish immigration. (Morris, 2001, p. 88-9)

As Allenby’s invasion was prepared, Britain’s rulers began debating the post-war fate of Palestin

IMMIGRATION DETENTION: THE CASE FOR ABOLITION

by Jane Guskin, The Huffington Post

On August 6, 34-year-old immigration detainee Hiu Lui Ng died in Rhode Island, in severe pain from a fractured spine and terminal cancer which went undiagnosed and untreated over the year he spent in federal lockups. Valery Joseph, another immigration detainee, died of an apparent seizure at the Glades County Detention Center in Florida on June 20, just two weeks shy of his 24th birthday. Ng had been living in the US for half his life, since he was 17; Joseph had spent two thirds of his life here, having arrived at age 8. The two men joined a list of at least 80 people who have died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since January 1, 2004.

Since May of this year, investigative stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and CBS News have exposed a pattern of serious medical neglect in the immigration detention system which appears to have been a factor in many of these deaths. (ICE denies the charges, unsurprisingly.)

By focusing on these compelling stories of human suffering, the mainstream media coverage has brought needed attention to the issue of mass incarceration in our immigration system.

Many concerned citizens are now demanding reform, saying that even people facing deportation have a right to basic medical care and humane treatment while detained. Others are less sympathetic, arguing that we shouldn’t spend taxpayer dollars on health care for immigrants.

The obvious question isn’t being asked: why are people detained at all? Why should we spend more than $1.2 billion a year to keep immigrants in prison? What purpose does immigration detention serve?

Officially, immigration detention is not supposed to be used as punishment; the immigration agency can only detain immigrants in order to more easily deport them, so that they don’t “abscond” and evade removal. In reality, the federal government uses immigration detention to punish people for fighting their deportation cases, to pressure them to give up and return to their country of nationality, and to discourage other people from coming to the US to seek asylum.

But these aren’t legally or morally acceptable justifications for detention.

Does it even matter whether people “abscond”? Is it really a problem if immigrants who are supposed to be deported end up staying here with their families—living, working, shopping and paying taxes? When we add up the cost in dollars, and in human lives, is it worth it to ensure that immigrants really leave the US?

On the other side of the globe, Australia has confronted the same question and has decided that the answer is no. On July 29, the Australian government announced it will stop routinely detaining asylum seekers while their immigration cases are pending; under the new policy, only adults who are considered a security risk may be detained—and even then, only as a last resort, and for the briefest possible time.

Back in the US, we seem to be heading in the opposite direction. In 1994, there were an average of 6,785 people in immigration detention on any given day; in 2008, that number is around 32,000 and growing. That’s an increase of more than 470% in less than 15 years.

Do you feel safer, knowing that 32,000 people are behind bars today for the sole reason that they were not born in this country and have been deemed “removable”? Are you satisfied to spend over $1.2 billion a year of your tax dollars keeping immigrants locked up while the prison industry’s profits soar?

Why can’t we just abolish immigration detention, the way debtor’s prison was abolished in the 1800s?

The solution is not “alternatives to detention” like the electronic monitoring devices some immigrants are forced to wear on their ankles. As the Catholic Legal Immigration Network points out, such devices are “overly restrictive in nature and constitute other forms of detention, rather than meaningful alternatives to detention.”

The alternative to detention is simple: no detention.

The government could end detention today by releasing the people who are fighting their cases, and letting everyone else—those who aren’t trying to stay here—choose voluntary departure with a six-month period to make arrangements and leave on their own. (The incentive? Voluntary departure means they could later apply to return here legally.)

How much tragedy would be avoided this way? How much money would be saved?

Debtor’s prison was considered normal once. So was slavery. But normal doesn’t mean right. When slavery was normal (and legal), some reformers advocated for slaves to be treated decently, and not beaten, whipped or otherwise abused. And other people, denounced as radicals at the time, believed slavery was an abomination and organized to stop it.

In the end slavery was abolished, and so was debtor’s prison. Immigration detention can also be stopped, if the voices of opposition become loud enough that Congress is forced to act.

Too many people have suffered for too long under our immigration detention system. How many deaths will it take before we end this abuse?

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Jane Guskin is co-author of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, published by Monthly Review Press in July 2007. Guskin also edits Immigration News Briefs, a weekly newsletter covering immigration issues. She lives in New York City.

This story first appeared Aug. 27 on The Huffington Post.

From our Daily Report:

Rhode Island: detainee dies in ICE custody
WW4 Report, Aug. 18, 2008
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23-year-old dies in ICE detention
WW4 Report, July 14, 2008
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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Sept. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution