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The Quantum Mechanics of Israeli Totalitarianism
Abstract
This article argues that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory represents criminalized state behaviour at the most systematic, intricately planned and executed. Evoking the quantum physics of Israel's matrix of control, the article argues that to understand how it feels to live as a Palestinian today requires the mindset of a particle physicist, not a social scientist. Life in Israel/Palestine involves negotiating a host of forces over which the average Palestinian has as much control as the average electron or proton does over the nuclear and quantum forces determining its path. The power embodied in Israel's matrix of control lies in the state's ability to shift rules, tactics, amplitude and frequency of the forces, strategies and techniques and technologies of occupation. The article argues that the Occupation and the conditions it creates have become normalized, and that maintaining a situation of confusion and ambiguity is key to making the Occupation effectively permanent.
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For a discussion of Amnesty International's support for the continued NATO presence in Afghanistan, see Evans ( 2012); Human Rights Investigations (2012).
For the most comprehensive rehearsal of Tilly's seminal observations, see Tilly ( 1985); Tilly ( 1992).
A good discussion of how Israel recruits informants is Abu-Zahra and Kay ( 2013). The best Hebrew account is H. Cohen ( 2004). Also see Cook ( 2015).
For an interesting discussion of the problem of criminality in the context of liberal and liberalizing states, see Green and Ward ( 2008).
Author interviews with activists in Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine and Iraq, 2011–14.
The unprecedented levels of legal corruption in the US (as reflected in the 2007–present mortgage and banking “crisis”) as well as the increasing curtailment of one solid constitutional protection evidence the ubiquity of this reality in the “advanced democracies” as well as the autocracies of the developing world.
As Foucault points out, even in the most democratic of societies, the individualization of each citizen is “linked to the state” (Foucault 1982: 785), while “the development of the individual must foster the strength of the state” (Foucault 1979: 252). In all there is a deep interdependence of economic and police order, which the liberal state inherits from the police state. If states began to be understood as “existing in a field of forces”, we now understand that the state in fact does not merely exist in a field of forces, it is a field of forces, and that field includes all the people through whom the forces flow, either willingly or not, or most often a combination of both (Foucault 2009: 237, 294–96).
International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory , Advisory Opinion [ 2004] ICJ Rep. 136 (9 July 2004), at para. 78.
As no less an authority than Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali himself explained in 1992 (UN Press Release SG/SM/4718 of March 19, 1992, p. 11, and the clarification, DPI of March 20, 1992). Moreover, it should be noted that preambles do not have the same legal weight as the operational – that is, numbered – clauses of a resolution.
For a discussion of this argument, see Cavanaugh ( 2002).
A summary of the Sasson report in English is available as “Summary of the Opinion Concerning Unauthorized Outposts-Talya Sason, Adv.” at http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/aboutisrael/state/law/pages/summary%20of%20opinion%20concerning%20unauthorized%20outposts%20-%20talya%20sason%20adv.aspx, accessed 20 November 2015. The full Hebrew Language report, “מאחזים בלתי מורשים” is accessible at http://www.pmo.gov.il/SiteCollectionDocuments/PMO/Communication/Spokesman/sason2.pdf.
For the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, there are numerous reports, from major human rights organizations, both international, Israeli and Palestinian. The most recent report from Amnesty International documenting such behaviour is Amnesty International ( 2014). A list of the full range of international crimes is provided by Cohn ( 2014) (note that the accusation of genocide is far more contentious than the accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity). For examples of the smaller thefts, see, inter alia, Rishmawi ( 2006); Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor ( 2014); Ma'an News Agency ( 2015).
The legal regulations regarding occupations are drawn from many sources, including the fourth Geneva Convention, the UN Charter, Art. 51, the Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Co-Operation Among States in Accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, General Assembly Resolution 194, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid.
For Israel's High Court of Justice's opinions on the applicability of the fourth Geneva Convention, see Bassil Abu Aita v. the Regional Commander of Judea and Samaria 1983; Dinstein ( 1989). For two rather differing views on how the HCJ views the applicability of the fourth Geneva Convention, see Krezmer ( 2012) and Horton ( 2014).
The basic principles of occupation that it violates include the clear understanding that the occupation does not confer title to the territory and is exceptional.
For the illegality of colonialism, see the 1960 Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (the Declaration on Colonialism), UNGA Resolution 1514 (XV), 14 December 1960, available online at http://www.un.org/en/decolonization/declaration.shtml, accessed 30 March 2016.
Among the instruments of international law that codify colonialism are UN resolutions such as the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 of 1960). They also include violations of the territorial integrity of the Occupied Territories through the acquisition of territory by force and its fragmentation through the settlements and other aspects of the “matrix of control”, violations of Palestinian sovereignty over natural resources such as water and agricultural land, dominating the Palestinian economy, denying freedom of expression and other basic freedoms of Palestinians. Even more important, Israeli colonialism includes another inherently illegal act, ethnic cleansing, which violates a host of international laws and precedents, including the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal ( 1945), the Fourth Geneva Convention ( 1949, Articles 49(1 and 6) and 147) and the Rome Statute of the ICC ( 2002, Articles 7.1 (d) and 7.2 (d), 8.2 (a) (vii) and (b) and 8.2.15), as well as the case history of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). For a good summary of the legal documents related to these violations, see Tilly ( 2012); Birzeit University Institute of Law ( 2013).
The most succinct description of the unique aspects of settler colonialism is provided by Shafir ( 2007).
Timothy Mitchell, building on Foucault's analysis of the development of state power, provides a detailed analysis of the functioning of modern, particularly colonial state power, in Mitchell ( 1988), and Mitchell ( 2002). Also see LeVine ( 2005).
I discuss the Zionist mechanisms of control in LeVine ( 1994), and LeVine ( 2005).
For the use of these theorists, see Weizman ( 2015a) and Weizman ( 2015b). For a discussion of how these theorists can be used to critique state power, see LeVine ( 2005: introduction and chapters 1, 5, 7 and 8).
Halper describes the matrix of control in several writings, including “The Matrix of Control”, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions website, available online at http://icahd.org/get-the-facts/matrix-control/, accessed 5 December 2015; “The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control”, Middle East Report , #216 ( 2000), available online at https://www.radioislam.org/historia/zionism/216_halper.html, accessed 5 December 2015; “Dismantling the Matrix of Control”, Middle East Report , 11 December 2009, available online at http://www.merip.org/mero/mero091109, accessed 5 December 2015.
For the calorie counting by Israel, see Associated Press ( 2012); Hass ( 2012); Cook ( 2012).
See, inter alia, Mussolini ( 1932). For Ben-Gurion's concept of mamlakhtiyut , see Möller and Schierenbeck ( 2014: ch. 6), which quotes most of the relevant passages by and about Ben Gurion's use of the concept.
For an analysis of the wide gap between the promises and realities of Oslo, see LeVine ( 2009).
A good early summary of Israel's strategies of control over water resources is Stork ( 1983). A more recent analysis is Amnesty International ( 2009).
Udi Aloni, quoted in LeVine ( 2011).