* Israel/Palestine
Adam Keller of the Israeli Peace Bloc (Gush Shalom) explains the movement's boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Keller: This campaign has several aspects. The most basic one is to give Israeli peace activists a new way of being active. Those on the periphery of the Israeli peace camp are people whose activity is confined to a big demonstration once or twice a year. When something really terrible happens, a demonstration is called and Rabin Square in Tel Aviv is filled with protesters. It's very impressive so people feel they have done something and they go home and wait for the next big demonstration.
We try to offer something to those who will not come to a small vigil in front of the Defence Ministry to support some radical cause, and who will not come with us to confront the settlers trying to confiscate land in some village.
Instead, we give them a list of products produced in the settlements. When they go to the supermarket, we just ask them to be careful and not buy those products. • So the boycott call is basically addressed to Israeli consumers?
It started as a campaign inside Israel, addressed at the general Israeli public: those who do not often go to demonstrations. We wanted to offer them a new a new dimension of activism. It is a consciousness-raising measure, to tell the people that it is not very consistent if you hate the settlers, if you feel they're destroying the country, that they're destroying chances for peace, to then go to the supermarket and buy the food that the settlers produce, thus helping to finance them.
We distribute leaflets with the call for a boycott and a list of products. We have a basic list made up of some 20 of the commonest settler products most often seen in shops and supermarkets, and we have a more comprehensive list including some 150 products which we give to anybody who asks for it. We also have it on our Internet site [www.gush-shalom.org].
The second aspect of our campaign is directed towards entrepreneurs who are considering moving from Israel to the Territories, because of the subsidies and other advantages the government provides there. We give them the counter-arguments, letting them know that by going there, while they may get government subsidies, they may also lose customers.
• Are there any other sectors of Israeli society — like the trade unions -which are also putting pressure on employers not to invest in the Territories?
Definitely not the trade unions! The Histradut — the only trade union federation in Israel - would absolutely not touch this issue. You have to understand that this boycott is quite radical. The Histradut has within it all shades of political opinion. Quite a lost of the most militant trade unionists in Israel are Likud (Conservative) supporters.
The one sector we did succeed in getting — but quite recently, in July - is the Arabs in Israel. The official Israeli-Arab leadership decided to support the boycott and implement it. Of course, in Arab society in Israel a boycott like this can be implemented on a much broader scale than in Jewish society. In Jewish society it's basically a process of approaching individuals and influencing them about what they do personally. In the Arab community — if it's really implemented on a grassroots level, and that is yet to be seen -then it can be a truly communal act. The whole village, through its merchants and its communal organisations, can assure that goods produced in the settlements will just not get into that village.
It's not enough that the top leadership be convinced of the necessity of this boycott. We need to rely on grass-roots organisations in each village separately. And these organisations must benefit from support and confidence in their own community. The Communist Party has now taken up this issue and is pushing it... I hope it will really work out....
The government is putting a different kind of pressure on mayors of these communities, which make up most of the Arab leadership inside Israel. Municipalities depend on the government for funding and endure chronic economic difficulties, especially the Arab municipalities...
We also want to send a direct message to the settlers themselves, and to the political system as a whole. We insist that that there is no national unity in favour of the settlements. We have a lot of media attention on this. Unsurprisingly, the settlers are very angry about it. Their most common argument is that this is like the boycott of the Nazis against the Jews in
But there are also mainstream people (columnists, politicians, and even some people who define themselves as leftwing) who very emotionally expressed opposition to the boycott on Israeli TV. One famous columnist who is broadly labelled to be on the Left even said: "I'm against the settlers, against the settlements, which will have to go, otherwise there will be no peace. But you cannot do such a thing because after all they are our
It sounds ridiculous, but it's a very important political issue. The idea of national unity - the idea that Jews should stick together is something which has very deep roots in Jewish history, because of 2,000 years of persecution.
This has been transformed in Israel into the 'national unity of the people who come to live in a land, who took over the land from the original inhabitants, and we must be united, otherwise we will be defeated, as we have a common enemy? That is a very powerful feeling in the
For example, Israeli fascists would have much more difficulty in killing a leftist Jew than would a French fascist in killing a leftist Frenchman, or a German fascist in killing a leftist German. It's logical that they would have this feeling because they need national unity in order to assure the success of the settler
Aside from the direct economic consequences of our action, we are telling the settlers -with our boycott— that they are not our brothers. "There is no national unity; we are not behind you; you cannot count on our support; on the contrary, you can count us among those are against • What about the international ramifi-
That turned out to be the most important aspect. We have known for quite a long time that the European Union has been gradually moving towards some kind of action around the settlement products that are being exported to Europe. We have had contacts over the years with middle-ranking officials of the European Union. We sent a delegation to a conference in Brussels, which has held at the EU headquarters, but which dealt with other issues. We nevertheless established contacts with some of the officials. And we learned that they were becoming
The European Union has a very strong legal case. Not exactly for boycotting products from settlements, but for denying them tax exemptions. Because there is a trade treaty between the EU and Israel giving agricultural and industrial products many advantages to enter the European market. But this treaty is only relevant to Israel within its 1967 borders. It is not valid for any territory which Israel con-
quered in 1967: neither for the West Bank, nor for the Gaza Strip, nor for East Jerusalem, nor for the Golan Heights. Of course the Europeans have known for a very long time that many of the products marked "made in Israel" are in fact coming from the settlements. And they have found it convenient to "turn a blind eye".
There has been some kind of power struggle going on inside the European Union. Those middle-ranking officials have prepared quite an extensive dossier on exactly the way Israel is going about it, and on the amounts of products exported, which are considerable: 10% of total exports to Europe "made in Israel" in fact comes from the Territories.
And there is another related aspect, which has to do with the captive market. Before Oslo, as part of their support for the Palestinian economy, the Europeans were trying to encourage Palestinians to export independently to Europe. They signed a separate treaty with the Palestinian Authority, granting exemptions for the export of certain agricultural products from Palestinian areas to Europe.
What has been happening in practice is that since the exports have to go through Israeli harbours and airports, Israel started to systematically delay the shipments until they rotted, officially for security checks. And Palestinians who want to sell to Europe are forced to do so under Israel export quotas. So those products are also sold under the label "made in Israel. And the Palestinians have to pay quite high sums to Israeli exporting companies for the privilege of using their quotas. This practice is in fact an infringement of both the treaty between Israel and Europe, and the treaty between the Palestinians and • How can the European Community verify the origin of the products?
There are two things they can do. Firstly, they could themselves compile a list of products which come from the settlements. Then when they get something from Israel, they could compare the brand name with this list. Also, they obtained our list from Internet. Perhaps they need a little more research (we have only volunteer staff).
Secondly, they could require Israel to deliver a certificate of origin, attesting that the product comes from areas which are legally recognised as being part of Israel and not from the Occupied Territories. Of course, such a certificate of origin could be falsified and probably would be, but then if it's discovered, Israel would be in
There was in fact a kind of dress rehearsal at the end of 1997, as the Europeans discovered Israeli exporters of orange juice actually imported the juice from Brazil, and then sold it in Europe marked "made in Israel." That's a serious infringement of existing agreements. The Europeans made quite a big fuss about it and demanded quite strong guarantees from the Israeli side that this would not happen again.
From the point of view of international law, something which comes from the settlements of Gaza or the West Bank is just as much outside Israel as something • Apart from demanding guarantees, have there been any sanctions?
So far, what the Europeans have done is firstly leak to the Israeli press their intention to impose sanctions. That made big headlines. Two weeks later, the European Commission in Brussels officially presented quite a different posture on this incident. But this European Commission report is just a recommendation which has to be approved by the ministers of the Council of Europe, and it was supposed to be on the agenda on May 25th.
This made a really big outcry in Israel and was for several davs one of the main news items. There was a very stormy debate in the Knesset in which Gush Shalom was one of the main subjects, as we were accused of being the ones who caused the Europeans to do it. I think that was an exaggeration, but our actión certainly helped them.
Afterwards, the 19 European ambassadors met with the Israeli Minister of Finance and said that for the time being they are not going to impose sanctions. The last news we heard is that a Committee of Experts was appointed to draw up practical rules on how to examine these kinds of shipments, and the Committee is to make its report at the end of June. • The European Community is now a larger trading partner for Israel than North America is.
Yes. But I would like to say that European diplomats have hinted that it is in fact tied up to the current situation of the official peace process. There is now a big partnership between the United States and Europe - a lot more than ever before on these issues... We know that there is quite a lot of personal co-operation between President Clinton and the Foreign Ministers. We assume that this European effort is being used to pressure Netanyahu on the redeployment, which has been delayed for so long. So we can assume that if he agrees to carry out the American redeployment scheme, then we could expect the Americans to play a role. If there's a definite rupture, and the Americans announce that negotiations have collapsed due to Netanyahu's intransigence, then I think we could expect the European measure to be implemented. • Israel's Treaty of Economic Association with the EU has still not been ratified by France and Belgium. lis Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories a factor that European leaders take into consideration?
Yes, I think so. But there is a previous Treaty called an Interim Agreement, which has already been in force for many years, and which already accords quite a lot of privileges to Israeli goods on the European market. So if this new Treaty is not approved, then Netanyahu stands to lose additional privileges. He already has quite a lot of privileges. But if they demanded a certificate of origin for all Israeli goods, then the Israeli economy will have a difficult choice before it. They could either comply truthfully, thereby destroying the economic base of the settlements. The entrepreneurs who have invested there would then withdraw back to behind the
Or they could lie about it and send false documents. But I don't know if they could do that with everything that comes from the territories. And the more they do it, the greater the chances of being Adam Keller is the spokesperson and member of the Executive Committee of Gush Shalom (the Peace Block). He was interviewed by Richard Wagman, who visited East Jerusalem as a delegate of the French Jewish Peace Union to a conference organised by the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, entitled "1948-1998: 50 Years of Human Rights Violations" Contact: Gush Shalom, P.O. Box 3322, Tel Aviv 61033, Israel, Tel.: (972)-3-522-1732, Fax: (972)-3-527-1108. E-Mail: otherisr@actcom.co.il Web site: www.gush-shalom.org
27
Kabila's nasty reflexes
* Congo In May 1997, this magazine saluted the effort of those who overthrew the Mobutu regime. We do not regret doing so. Eric Toussaint The end of Mobutu's 30-year regime opened new possibilities for achieving the aspirations of the people.
But the new regime has not stimulated the self-organisation of the people. And, although Laurent Désiré Kabila's government has had a conflict of interests with major imperialist powers (France, and, to a lesser extent the USA), we can hardly say that the new regime does not support and uphold the capitalist order in Congo.
From the beginning, the Kabila regime has had very few foundations among the masses. The government's programme contained very few elements of progressive reform. State power was conceived in an authoritarian and paternalist way. Opponents faced limits on their rights to free speech and association. Kabila and his entourage were afraid of open political debate. Kabila kept a large part of Mobutu's state structures in place. And many Mobutists joined Kabila's AFDL front.
The regime went deliberately slowly in the creation of democratic projects aimed at meeting the population's health and education needs.. Many of the country's new leaders were seduced by the "good life". Including many of those who Kabila appointed to run nationalised mines and
Ordinary Congolese people were certainly relieved to see the end of the Mobutu regime, and the reduction in harassment and extortion which has occurred. But they were not active participants in the overthrow of the dictator, and they have not been able to become actors in the struggle to build a new Congo.
Needless to say, the industrial countries have done nothing to help rebuild the Congolese economy. They have mostly refused to support development efforts. According to Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman, "not only have the Congolese been deprived of the aid which they should have received after the departure of Mobutu, but the mining royalties and taxes collected by the new regime have been used to pay the foreign debt contracted by the super-rich former dictator." 1 Deception and frustration
The situation came to a head during the first half of this year. In the east of the country, the old discrimination against Rwanda-speaking Congolese (known as 28 International Viewpoint #304
Tutsis or Banyamulenge) re-emerged. Waves of often arbitrary arrests shook the political elite in February and May. Several ministers and high-placed civil servants were imprisoned. Rwandan military and civil advisors (who had helped Kabila to power) were suddenly sent
Kabila and Gaëtan Kakudji were systematically promoting people from their own region of the country.
The Rwandan and Ugandan governments were very unhappy with developments in Congo. They had given Kabila considerable aid when he was in opposition. They had expected that he would now ensure that their common border was secure, and that their armed opponents could no longer use Congo as a base. Rwanda was also concerned for the safety and human rights of Rwanda-speaking citizens of Congo.
Rwanda and Uganda had also looked forward to common economic and infrastructure projects in the border region. Projects like a road from the border to the Congolese town of Kisangani, which would give Congo's eastern neighbours access to the river Congo, which flows westward across the heart of Africa, and into the Atlantic. Or an agreement on the exploitation of the methane deposits under lake Kivu, which straddles the CongoMilitary logic
Rwanda and Uganda boycotted the regional summit which Kabila organised in Kinshasa in May 1998. The expulsion of Rwandan advisors, and the new wave of "troubles" in Kivu led them to give direct support to a military operation to replace Kabila. The rebels of the RCD had amazing early successes. But a massive intervention by Angola and Zimbabwe seemed to crush those rebels who had advanced into the western part of Congo.
Once again, the people of Congo were not actors in the process. Neither Kabila, nor his RCD opponents were able to mobilise popular support for the war effort.
What now? Kabila will presumably reinforce his authoritarian policies. How can Congolese socialists and panafricanists overcome the obstacles facing them? What will happen to the Rwanda-speaking and Banyamulengue citizens of eastern Congo? Is the country heading for de facto partition?
The logic of war and foreign intervention is likely to dominate the geo-strategy and politics of the region for years to come. And the imperialist powers can be expected to continue discreetly exploiting the contradictions between the countries of the region. An endless conflict in central