Some might blame the growing influence of Islamic extremism for the increased violence between Israelis and Palestinians. It is certainly true that this conflict has taken on increasingly religious overtones, making a resolution even more problematic. But Gordon argues that other factors have been at work. A shift in Israeli policy from normalising ‘the colonisation’, to indifference to the lives of the colonised population while continuing to exploit their land and water, he writes, accounts for the ‘surge in lethal violence’. In its early years, the occupation had hints of a welfare mentality. In 1968, for example, Israel helped Palestinians in the Gaza Strip plant 618,000 trees. Later, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2003, Israel destroyed more than ten per cent of Gaza’s agricultural land, uprooting more than 226,000 trees. In exploring the occupation, Gordon details the way that Palestinian lives were bound up in the system of Israeli permits. Reclamation of one’s own land, if it involved bulldozing a piece of property in order to remove rocks, boulders or any other obstructive material to make it more cultivable, was forbidden unless the farmer obtained a permit from the military authority. Military orders rendered it illegal to plant new citrus trees, replace old non-productive ones or plant fruit trees without permission. All forms of transportation for the transfer of goods, including donkey carts, needed a licence.

Certainly, Israeli permits enabled tens of thousands of Palestinians to work, mainly as agricultural and other labourers. The benefits flowed to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Gordon argues, however, that the fact that Palestinian livelihoods depended on permits liable to be revoked produced a ‘profound sense of insecurity’. Moreover, a positive response to a request for permit, whether it be for access to medical treatment, family unification, building a family home or opening a business, was sometimes linked to the ‘applicant’s willingness to collaborate. Without the permit régime, it would have been extremely difficult to recruit so many collaborators.’

Some Israelis and their supporters have taken umbrage at comparisons between the Jewish state and apartheid South Africa. One of their notable targets was Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, (which I reviewed in the March 2007 issue of ABR). Yet the dual legal system operating in the territories daily reminded Palestinians of their decidedly second-class status. Settlers and other Israeli residents travelling to the territories were subjected to Israeli civilian law, which was granted an extraterritorial status. Israel, Gordon argues, ‘managed to create a situation whereby two ethnic groups sharing the same space have actually been subjected to radically different legal systems’. The arbitrariness created both by the lack of transparency and the gaps among the different legal frameworks ‘was used to secure the services of certain individuals and to manage the population through the production of endemic uncertainty’.

Gordon is highly critical of the Oslo peace process of the 1990s, arguing that it merely normalised and outsourced the occupation. It is true that the Palestinian Authority under the quixotic leadership of Yasser Arafat was more a name than an entity with any real clout. But for a brief time the Oslo process appeared to offer a way of breaking the mould of the conflict. It failed not just because of Arafat’s behaviour and the tragedy of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination by a Jewish fanatic in 1995. It failed, too, because of Israel’s relentless programme (including under Rabin) of building settlements on Palestinian territory. Gordon notes that it is both ironic and telling that, even as Jewish settlers rejected Oslo, the Oslo years were by far the best for the settlement enterprise, with the Jewish population living in the West Bank increasing from 110,00 in 1993 to 195,000 in 2000.

The excesses and contradictions of Israeli policy and practice, Gordon argues, help to explain the increasing popular support for Hamas, an ‘extremely tragic development for all those who have fought for the establishment of a secular democracy in Palestine’. The sectarian clashes in Gaza in 2006 between Hamas and Fatah highlighted the social and political disintegration of Palestinian society. Israel’s success in fragmenting Palestinian society, Gordon writes, ‘is inimical to its own interests’. One has ‘to be extremely short-sighted not to see how the absence of a united Palestinian leadership will undermine all efforts to bring about a local and a regional peace’. The key to resolving the conflict is to address ‘the structural incongruities of the occupation’. In non-academic parlance, this means stop pretending that there can be a resolution without real Palestinian sovereignty over Palestinian land.

Israel’s Occupation was published before Obama’s election. We should be cautious about imagining that much will change under the new administration. In 2007, Obama told the leading pro-Israeli lobby group, the America–Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that America should ‘never seek to dictate what is best for Israelis and their security interests’. Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, is on record as having ‘never wavered from the notion’ that the only time progress has been made in the Middle East is when the Arab world knows that there is ‘no daylight’ between the United States and Israel. If Obama really wants to change the Middle East, his administration will need to take a different approach over settlements than the often limp-wristed admonitions of its predecessors. It will need to drive home the fact that Israeli settlements threaten the long-term security of the Jewish state, and that settling Jews on Palestinian territory presages an eventual single state solution in which Jews are a minority.

By acts of both commission and omission, Israel has helped to fracture Palestinian society and politics. That fracture can easily be trotted out as an excuse for inaction on the peace front. But can anyone seriously argue that Israel’s long-term security is best achieved by a deal with ‘tame’ Palestinians in the West Bank which leaves the Gaza Strip locked up and festering? Obama will need to frame Israel’s security in the only context that can help it in the longterm: that is, a US commitment to a genuine two-state solution encompassing pre-1967 Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This would involve major compromises by both parties, notably settlements and the security wall on the Israeli side and the ‘right of return’ on the Palestinian one. Certainly, the United States should remain committed to ensuring Israel’s security. But it is now in a unique position to provide Israel with a reality check, not a blank cheque. Neve Gordon provides a valuable account of the physical and mental complexities of the task ahead.