How did tensions between Palestinians and Israelis reach the devastating breaking point of October 7? Our panelists will offer crucial background on recent history and events leading up to the attack on Israel and the war in Gaza. This forum will follow along the lines of a “teach-in” to educate and review what is known about the current situation—with the shared value of conveying compassion rather than blame. Scholars of Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East will share their insights on the forces that have shaped the war and how it is experienced on the ground.
MELANI CAMMETT: And last, I will turn to Professor Berda.
YAEL BERDA: Hi. Thanks so much. I just want to acknowledge the dramatic moment that we're in.
So some Israelis are calling this the 60th of October because the mindset is still on the 7th of October. And I want to remember the victims, and the hostages, and the bleeding, the wounded, and those without homes. I also want to acknowledge the civilians in Gaza under the bombardments right now.
And I want to acknowledge that we can acknowledge both. And when we move forward, we move with everyone. Sorry for the tears. I know, in the academic setting, it's less popular. But I think this moment calls for being who we are.
I want to just-- before I go-- and I'm going to-- we talked a lot about violence, and I want to talk a little bit about politics because I think the politics of this moment are very important and also much less known. And so I will talk a lot about internal Israeli politics, even though I have a lot to say about occupation. I have a lot to say about the question of national versus colonial framing and about many other things, but I'm just going to try and shed light on the political moment inside Israel right now.
And just before I do that, I have to thank you so much, Derek, for opening the way you did, talking about that moment going back to confederation. We actually do have that type of solution back on the table. It doesn't have a lot-- I mean, the percentages that support a confederation are still limited. But a Land For All, which I'm also involved with-- and if anybody wants to know more about us, look it up-- is talking about the Confederation as reopening up the possibilities of acknowledging both the moments of 1948 and 1967 as imperative for a solution.
But we're going to go back to the majority of Israelis and where they were on the 6th of October. So I'm going to talk about that period. So about a year ago, on the 1st of November, 2022, Israelis elected the most right-wing government in Israel's history. And in that sense-- so I think one of the things that people sometimes gets lost in the story because, for Palestinians, it's very important to tell a story that is linear from 1948 about the inability of finding a way out, which, in many ways, I can agree with. But it's very important to understand that this year was different, and it was different because the government that was elected was a government that, in its coalition agreements, had decided to turn the basic law, the nation state Israel as a nation state law Israel as the Jewish state-- to turn that into its directive.
And what importance do we have there? I have to explain that a bit. So part of the debate in Israel-- and it's a debate that-- let's talk about it from 1967-- is this question about, what does Israel want to be? Does it want to be a liberal state? Does it want to be a democratic state? Is it a Jewish state? And the answer was all of the above. The answer was all of the above.
And the politics reflected this all of the above, trying to make things work within that framework. And part of the identity of liberal Israel was with its perception of itself as having a rule of law, separation of powers, and a Supreme Court that did also a very important thing. It's separated between the territories.
It's separated between the territories of 1948, that Israel proper, and the occupied territories. And while we can all debate what the Israel Supreme Court did or did not or what it enabled or didn't enable, what it did was it kept this straight line. Basically, the only place where there was a real border between 1967 and 1948 was the Supreme Court.
And the Supreme Court was the target of this government that proposed a judicial reform, which many of us in the protest movement, which I'm part of, and I mean, a lot-- and directly, many people in academia, many people, which are also targeted directly by the judicial overhaul, we call it the regime coup-- so the judicial overhaul/regime coup, depending whose side you're on.
And so the attack on the Supreme Court was also attack on keeping that boundary between the occupied territories and Israel proper. Why was it so important? Because for the settler movement-- and this is very obvious in the coalition agreements. I urge you all to read it with caution, but read it.
And in it, what you see is basically an intention for annexation of the West Bank-- an annexation of the West Bank, dismantling of the power of the Supreme Court over parliament and government, mainly in order to be able to do all the things that have kept the territories apart. Basically, like some people had voiced, bringing the occupation into Israel or, through annexation, bringing Israel into the territories and making it one territory.
And so now, for the first time in Israel's history, there were the largest protests ever. It was the most popular movement ever. Huge numbers-- 270 different organizations.
Involvement-- it was like someone called it a giant course in civics. At some point, instead of people in coffee shops, we're talking about the committee to appoint judges and how that would work. Or what does separation of powers really mean? And what is democracy? I mean, literally, you had this whole shift, a complete shift in the way people saw the government, some of the history of the country, and many questions that arose with it.
And then, there's always the question that I was asked during this whole 10 months. Were people also protesting the occupation? And the truth was that the vast majority of the protest movement was not protesting the occupation. There was a small contingent called the anti-occupation bloc that was very present and fought to be part of the protests in this kind of questioning way, in a very weak alliance, but an alliance that said, we can't protest for democracy as long as there's an occupation. But more and more, the questions around occupation were coming up.
There's also the aspect of religion that I will not have time to come into, but it always is a very important aspect of both Israeli politics and the perceptions of the conflict. So what you'll have-- so one of the things that the settler parties are trying to promote is a belief that this is a religious war, that this is about Jihad, and that this has nothing to do with the territory or the rights of the Palestinian people. It's about radical Islamism and about anti-Semitism, and it has nothing to do-- and it has-- so it's not about the national, and it's not about the colonial. This is about religion.
But also, from their perspective, settling the entirety of the land is a religious priority. This is not the public. We have to remember.
I just need one more minute. We have to remember to make the differentiation always between the leadership, as extreme as it can be, and the public. This is very, very important if we want to move forward.
The last thing I want to say about this is that the clash in Israel on October 6 was huge. What happened on October 7, which also included a deep failure of all systems-- military, civil, all governmental systems-- a gap that was filled in part by the organizations of the protest movement that acted almost instead of the government. This is something that people don't talk-- don't understand enough outside.
But what was decided was that everything would be discussed after the war, and that everything includes a state that was, for many people, on the brink of a civil war. So we have to put that in perspective of what's happening now.
And I want to-- one more warning because I think it's important. There are parts of the settler movement whose whole motivation for the judicial overhaul was actually going back to Gush Katif, going back to Gaza. They represent a very stark danger to any possibility of coming out of this with a beneficial solution for everyone that will stop the violence and put us on a path to life-giving solutions. That's it. Thank you.