1ac peace process adv

Advantage 1: Peace Process

Arms sales to Israel sanction the occupation of Palestinian territory --- current policy poisons
the peace process toward a two-state solution
Tolan 16 [Sandy, associate professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and
Journalism at the University of Southern California, best-selling author, and an award-winning
radio and print journalist who reports on and comments frequently about Palestine and Israel,
author of the international best-seller, The Lemon Tree, an acclaimed history of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict, writes currently for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, The Daily Beast, Truthdig,
The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Al-Jazeera English, “American Weapons Are Blocking
True Peace Between Israel and Palestine,” The Nation, October 18, 2016,
https://www.thenation.com/article/american-weapons-are-blocking-true-peace-between-
israel-and-palestine]

Washington has finally thrown in the towel on its long, tortured efforts to establish peace
between Israel and the Palestinians. You won’t find any acknowledgement of this in the official record. Formally,
the United States still supports a two-state solution to the conflict. But the Obama
administration’s recent 10-year, $38 billion pledge to renew Israel’s arsenal of weaponry, while
still ostensibly pursuing “peace,” makes clear just how bankrupt that policy is. For two decades,
Israeli leaders and their neoconservative backers in this country, hell-bent on building and
expanding settlements on Palestinian land, have worked to undermine America’s stated
efforts—and paid no price. Now, with that record weapons package, the United States has made
it all too clear that they won’t have to. Ever. The military alliance between the United States and Israel has long
been at odds with the stated intentions of successive administrations in Washington to foster peace in the Holy Land. One White
House after another has preferred the “solution” of having it both ways: supporting a two-state
solution while richly rewarding, with lethal weaponry, an incorrigible client state that was
working as fast as it could to undermine just such a solution. This ongoing duality seemed at its most surreal
in the last few weeks. First, President Obama announced the new military deal, with its promised delivery of fighter jets and other
hardware, citing the “unshakable” American military alliance with Israel. The following week, at the United Nations, he declared,
“Israel must recognize that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land.” Next, he flew to Israel for the funeral of
Shimon Peres, and in a tribute to the Nobel Prize–winning former Israeli president, spoke of a man who grasped that “the Jewish
people weren’t born to rule another people” and brought up the “unfinished business” of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
(Peres is remembered quite differently by Palestinians as an early pioneer of settlement building and the author of the brutal
Operation Grapes of Wrath assaults on Lebanon in 1996.) Not long after the funeral, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu brazenly approved a new settlement deep in the West Bank, prompting the State Department to “strongly condemn” the
action as “deeply troubling.” Such scolding words, however, shrivel into nothingness in the face of a single number: 38 billion. With
its latest promise of military aid, the United States has essentially sanctioned Israel’s impunity,
its endless colonization of Palestinian land, its military occupation of the West Bank, and its
periodic attacks by F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters using Hellfire missiles on the civilians
of Gaza. Yes, Hamas’s crude and occasionally deadly rockets sometimes help provoke Israeli fire, and human rights investigations
have found that both sides have committed war crimes. But Israel’s explosive power in the 2014 Gaza war, fueled in large part by
American military aid and political support, exceeded that of Hamas by an estimated 1,500-to-1. By one estimate, all of Hamas’s
rockets, measured in explosive power, were equal to 12 of the one-ton bombs Israel dropped on Gaza. And it loosed hundreds of
those, and fired tens of thousands of shells, rockets and mortars. In the process, nearly 250 times more Palestinian civilians died
than civilians in Israel. Now, with
Gaza severed from the West Bank, and Palestinians facing new waves
of settlers amid a half-century-long military occupation, the United States has chosen not to
apply pressure to its out-of-control ally, but instead to resupply its armed forces in a massive
way. This means that we’ve finally arrived at something of a historic (if hardly noticed) moment. After all these decades, the
two-state solution, critically flawed as it was, should now officially be declared dead—and
consider the United States an accomplice in its murder. In other words, the Obama administration has handed
Israel’s leaders and the neoconservatives who have long championed this path the victory they’ve sought for more than two
decades. THE CHAOS KIDS Twenty years ago, the pro-Israel hard right in America designed the core strategy that helped lead to this
American capitulation. In 1996, a task force led by neocons Richard Perle (future chairman of the Defense Policy Board), David
Wurmser (future senior Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney), Douglas Feith (future undersecretary of defense), and
others issued a policy paper aimed at incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for
Securing the Realm” advocated that Israel walk away from its embrace of the Oslo peace process and Oslo’s focus on territorial
concessions. The
paper’s essential ingredients included weakening Israel’s neighbors via regime
change in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and “roll back” in Syria and Iran. The authors’ recommendations turned out
to be anything but a wish list, given that a number of them would soon hold influential positions in the administration of George W.
Bush. As journalist Jim Lobe wrote in 2007: [T]he task force, which was chaired by Perle, argued that regime change in Iraq—of
which Feith was among the most ardent advocates within the Pentagon—would enable Israel and the U.S. to decisively shift the
balance of power in the region so that Israel could make a “clean break” from the Oslo process (or any framework that would
require it to give up “land for peace”) and, in so doing, “secure the realm” against Palestinian territorial claims. In other words, as
early as 1996, these neocons were already imagining what would become the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003. You could argue, of
course, that neither the neocons nor Netanyahu could have foreseen the chaos that would follow, with Iraq nearly cracking open
and Syria essentially collapsing into horrific civil war and violence, civilians stranded under relentless bombing, and the biggest
refugee crisis since World War II gripping Europe and the world. But you would, at least in some sense, be wrong, for certain of the
neocon advocates of regime change imagined chaos as an essential part of the process from
early on. “One can only hope that we turn the region into a caldron, and faster, please,” wrote Michael
Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute in National Review during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. (In 1985, as a consultant to
the National Security Council and to Oliver North, Ledeen had helped broker the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran by setting
up meetings between weapons dealers and Israel.) “The war won’t end in Baghdad,” Ledeen later wrote, in The Wall Street Journal.
“We must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus.” The neocons got so much more than they bargained for in Iraq, and so
much less than they wanted in Syria and Iran. Their recent attempts—with Netanyahu as their chief spokesman—to block the
Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, for example, went down in flames. Still, it’s stunning to think just how much their strategy
of regime change and chaos helped transform our world and the Greater Middle East for the worse, and to be reminded that its
ultimate goal, at least in those early days, was in large part to keep Israel from having to pursue a peace deal with the Palestinians.
Of course, there were other benefits the neocons imagined back then as part of their historic attempt to redraw the map of the
Middle East. Controlling some of the vast oil reserves of that region was one of them, but of course that didn’t exactly turn out to be
a “mission accomplished” moment either. Only the Israeli part of the plan seemed to succeed as once imagined. So here we are 20
years later. All around the Holy Land, states are
collapsing or at least their foundations are crumbling, and
Israel’s actions make clear that it isn’t about to help improve the situation in any way. It visibly
intends to pursue a policy of colonization, permanent human rights violations, and absolute rule
over the Palestinians. These are facts on the ground that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Netanyahu, the Israeli right
wing, and those American neocon visionaries fought so hard to establish. A succession of leaders in Washington—at least those who
weren’t designing this policy themselves—have been played for fools. In the two-plus decades since the 1993 Oslo Agreement,
which some believed would put Israel and the Palestinians on the path to peace, and that “Clean Break” document which was
written to undermine it, the West Bank settler population has grown from 109,000 to nearly 400,000 (an estimated 15% of whom
are American). The would-be capital of a Palestinian state, East Jerusalem, is now surrounded by 17 Jewish settlements. Palestinians
nominally control a mere 18% of the West Bank (also known as Area A), or 4 percent of the entire land base of Israel/Palestine. The
Palestinians’ would-be homeland is now checkered with military bases, settlements, settlers-
only roads, and hundreds of checkpoints and barriers—all in a West Bank the size of Delaware, our second-
smallest state. An estimated 40 percent of adult male Palestinians, and thousands of children, have seen the insides of Israeli jails
and prisons; many of them languish there without charges. Israel
has, in essence, created a Jim Crow–like separate
and unequal reality there: a one-state “solution” that it alone controls. The United States has done almost
nothing about this (other than carefully couched, periodic State Department words of complaint), while its ally marched forward
unchecked. Notsince James Baker was secretary of state under the first President Bush before—
notably enough—thesigning of the Oslo accords has any US leader threatened to withhold funds
unless Israel stops building settlements on Palestinian land. The phrase “friends don’t let friends drive drunk”
no longer applies in US-Israeli relations. Rather, what we hear are regular pledges of “absolute, total, unvarnished commitment to
Israel’s security.” Those were, in fact, the words of Vice President Joe Biden during a 2010 visit to Israel—a pledge offered, as it
turned out, only a few hours before the Netanyahu government announced the construction of 1,600 new apartments in East
Jerusalem. “Unvarnished commitment” in 2016 means that $38 billion for what Obama called “the world’s most advanced weapons
technology.” That includes 33 of Lockheed’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets, at $200 million per jet, part of a troubled $1.5 trillion
weapons system subsidized by US taxpayers. Other deadly hardware headed for Israel: cargo planes, F-15 fighter jets, battle tanks,
armored personnel carriers, a new class of warships whose guided missiles would undoubtedly be aimed directly at Gaza, and more
of Lockheed’s Hellfire missiles. If recent history is any indication, you would need to add fresh supplies of bombs, grenades,
torpedoes, rocket launchers, mortars, howitzers, machine guns, shotguns, pistols, and bayonets. As part of the agreement, US arms
manufacturers will soon supply 100 percent of that weaponry, while Israeli weapons manufacturers will be phased out of US military
aid. “It’s a win-win for Israeli security and the U.S. economy,” a White House aide cheerily told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. THE
(TRUMP) WHITE HOUSE AND ISRAEL Current
policy, if that’s the right word, could perhaps be summed up
as weapons, weapons, and more weapons, while Washington otherwise washed its hands of
what was always known as “the peace process” (despite that fig leaf still in place). Today,
functionally, there’s no such process left. And that’s unlikely to change under either a President Clinton or a
President Trump. If anything, it may get worse. During the Democratic primary campaign, for instance, Hillary Clinton promised to
invite Netanyahu to the White House “during my first month in office” in order to “reaffirm” Washington’s “unbreakable bond with
Israel.” In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which labels itself “America’s pro-Israel lobby,” she was
virtually silent on the Israeli settlement issue, except to promise to protect Israel against its own violations of international law. She
attacked Trump from the right, denouncing his once-expressed wish to remain “neutral” on the issue of Israel and Palestine. In the
1990s, as first lady, Clinton had stirred controversy by uttering the word “Palestine” and kissing Yasser Arafat’s widow, Suha, on the
cheek. Now she fully embraces those who believe Israel can do no wrong, including Hollywood mogul Haim Saban, who has donated
at least $6.4 million to her campaign, and millions more to the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic National Committee. Saban,
an Israeli-American whose billions came largely from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers franchise, describes himself as “a one-issue
guy, and my issue is Israel.” Last year, he convened a “secret” Las Vegas meeting with fellow billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the
bankroller of a panoply of Republican candidates and a huge supporter of Israel’s settlement project. Their aim: to shut down, if not
criminalize, the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS. That boycott movement targets cultural
institutions and businesses including those that profit from the occupation of the West Bank. Its approach is akin to the movement
to impose sanctions on South Africa during the apartheid era. With Saban’s millions destined for her campaign war chest, Clinton
wrote to her benefactor to express her “alarm” over BDS, “seeking your thoughts and recommendations” to “work together to
counter BDS.” Yet it’s a nonviolent movement that aims to confront Israel’s human rights abuses through direct economic and
political pressure, not guns or terror attacks. Would Clinton prefer suicide bombers and rockets? Never mind that the relatively
modest movement has been endorsed by an assortment of international trade unions, scholarly associations, church groups, the
Jewish Voice for Peace, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. At the root of BDS, Clinton has hinted darkly, is anti-Semitism.
“At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world,” she wrote Saban, “we need to repudiate forceful efforts to malign
and undermine Israel and the Jewish people.” As for Trump, some Palestinians were encouraged by his statement to MSNBC’s Joe
Scarborough that he might “be sort of a neutral guy” on the issue. He told the AP: “I have a real question as to whether or not both
sides want to make it. A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal—whether or not Israel’s
willing to sacrifice certain things.” Yet Trump subsequently fell in line with Republican orthodoxy, pledging
among other things to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, a litmus test for supporters of the
hard right in Israel, and a virtual guarantee that East Jerusalem, at the center of the Palestinian
dream of statehood, will remain in Israel’s hands. In the short term, then, the prospect for an
American-brokered just peace may be as bleak as it’s ever been—even though US officials know full well
that a just solution to the conflict would remove a primary recruiting tool for jihadists. For the next four to eight years,
American leadership will, by all indications, shore up the status quo, which means combining all
that weaponry and de facto acquiescence in Israel’s land grabs with, perhaps, the occasional
hand-wringing State Department statement.

Peace process failure makes nuclear war structurally inevitable --- ensures conflict between
Israel and neighbors
Nawash 9 [Kamal Nawash, director of the legal department at the American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee and attorney at the Nawash Law Office in Washington, D.C.,
“Israel/Palestine Conflict May Lead to Nuclear War”, Jan 10, 2009,
http://www.arabisto.com/article/Blogs/Kamal_Nawash/IsraelPalestine_Conflict_May_Lead_to_
Nuclear_War/28363]

Before HAMAS was created, Israel fought five major wars and numerous other battles. Moreover, before HAMAS there were the
PLO, Fatah, PFLP, PFLP-GC, 15 May Organization, Abu Ali Mustapha Brigades, Al-'Asifah, Arab Liberation Front, Force 17, Black Hand ,
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - Special Command, Popular Resistance Committees, Popular Revolutionary Front for
the Liberation of Palestine, Black September, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Doghmush, Omar Ben al-Khatib
Warriors, Palestinian Liberation Army, Palestinian Popular Struggle Front, Palestinian fedayeen, Swords of Truth, Rejectionist Front,
among other organizations. Today most of the above organizations have been destroyed or just vanished. However, the conflict has
not ended as the above organizations have been replaced by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Holy Jihad Brigades, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam
Brigades, Army of Islam, As-Sa'iqa, Tanzim, Al-Quds Brigades, among others. The point here is that even if Israel destroys
HAMAS, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians would not be solved and it would only be
a matter of time before a new group forms to replace HAMAS. Israelis and Palestinians must realize that
what they have done for the last 70 years will never bring peace to either Palestine or Israel
under the best of circumstances. Under the worst of circumstances this conflict may lead to an all out
nuclear war where millions will die and this is no longer an exaggeration.
To summarize, Israel and its neighbors have fought numerous wars and no side has given up on their
fundamental claims. For the last 20 years, both sides have tried to separate by creating two separate
countries but this approach has failed because all sides have attachments to Israel and Palestine.
The only solution that has a record of success is integration as demonstrated by the Palestinians who are
citizens of Israel. If peace is not found then the day may soon come when the governments of the
Middle East maybe overthrown by people who want to directly intervene on behalf of the
Palestinians. If an uprising erupts throughout the Middle East then nuclear war may soon follow.
Therefore, the choices are between total annihilation or equality for Palestinians and security for Israel.
There are no other choices.

Arms sales embolden Israeli hardliners to undertake aggressive military actions against both
regional rivals and Palestinians
Lachmann 19 [Richard Lachmann, professor of sociology at the University at Albany, Feb 27,
2019, “How to Build a Socialist Foreign Policy,” Jacobin,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/02/socialist-foreign-policy-bernie-sanders-us-military]

For more than forty years the

United States has used Israel as its enforcer in the Middle East. Israel, in
return for arms and diplomatic support, has intimidated and waged war when necessary on Syria,
Lebanon, Iran, and on leftists in Jordan and elsewhere while quietly assisting Egypt and Saudi Arabia in their repression of
domestic opponents. US arms sales have served to embolden the most militaristic and intransigent
elements in Israel, encouraging aggression rather than negotiation with Palestinians. The
United States tips the scale in favor of the most reactionary elements within Israel and toward
policies rejected by a majority of Jews in the United States and around the world. Sanders and other left politicians need to be clear
that departing from the establishment policy on Israel is not antisemitic. Since the United States is the biggest supporter of Israel’s
policies, it is the United States and not Jewish people who are responsible for the oppression of Palestinians. Neither
Iran nor
Venezuela pose a threat to the United States. Their militaries are tiny in comparison to ours. The
people of those countries should be able to decide on their own government without US interference. Nor should we
encourage neighboring countries to attack. An Israeli attack on Iran or an invasion of Venezuela by any
of its neighbors would lead to regional war and create massive numbers of refugees, further
destabilizing those regions.

Israel will annex the West Bank in an attempt to permanently thwart the peace process ---
escalates to broader war
Koplow 19 [Michael J. Koplow, BA in history from Brandeis, a JD from NYU, a masters in Middle
Eastern Studies from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in political science from Georgetown, Israel Policy
Forum's Policy Director, based in Washington DC, regular contributor to Foreign Affairs and
Foreign Policy magazines, was the founding program director of the Israel Institute from
September 2012 through September 2015, , “Israel Is on the Brink of Disaster. Trump Just Made
Things Worse,” New York Times, March 22, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/trump-israel-golan-heights.html]

On April 9, Israelis will go to the polls to choose their next government. The campaign has largely been a referendum on whether
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should remain Israel’s leader in light of his expected indictment in three corruption cases for
bribery and breach of trust. With those scandals front and center, policy disagreements have largely been ignored, leaving Israeli
voters at risk of unwittingly bringing an avoidable disaster on themselves by annexing territory in the West Bank. President Trump
just raised that risk. How so? On Twitter on Thursday, he wrote that “it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s
Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!”
It is the latest, and most important, signal from Washington that Mr. Trump is ready to acknowledge Israeli control of the Golan
signals are also being read by the Israeli right wing as an encouragement to pursue
Heights. But those
annexation of territory in the West Bank — a far more dangerous step that would present
Israel with an unparalleled existential threat to its Jewish and democratic character. To be sure, there is a big
difference between the two territories, both of which came under Israeli control in the 1967 war. The sparsely populated Golan
Heights, seized from Syria and annexed by Israel in 1981 in defiance of international criticism, were being used by Syria to bombard
Israel’s Galilee region below. The West Bank, on the other hand, is densely populated and its future has been
the most intractable issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1967. Annexing it would foreclose
independence for a Palestinian nation, and risk inflaming the entire Middle East. That threat is
not beyond the horizon any more. The young, charismatic New Right party leaders Naftali Bennett
and Ayelet Shaked, both ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition government, lead the annexation movement, and
their zeal has seeped into Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party as well. Of the 29 Likud legislators running for re-election, 28 are
on record as supporting annexation of at least a part of the West Bank, as is the Likud Central Committee. Most significantly, the
speaker of the Knesset, Yuli Edelstein, who is No. 2 on Likud’s electoral slate behind Mr. Netanyahu, said on Sunday that a
description of the Golan Heights as “Israeli-controlled” in the recent annual report of the United
States State Department — a shift from previous reports that called it “Israeli-occupied” — represented an
important first step toward recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. Reaching that
goal, however, would create challenges as harrowing as any Israel has faced since its war of
independence. As cataloged by the Israeli group Commanders for Israel’s Security, annexation would cost billions
of dollars annually, would create virtually indefensible borders because of the spider web of
Israeli-governed territory within the larger West Bank that most supporters of this plan want to
annex, provide ammunition to the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,
and destroy Israel’s foreign relations with a host of countries. It would also ensure that the
partisan split emerging in the United States over Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians
becomes a chasm. It might even open a rift between Mr. Netanyahu and his stalwart ally President Trump, who thinks himself
able to devise an ultimate deal between Israelis and Palestinians, by making any such deal impossible. Most important, annexing
the West Bank — whether just the 60 percent of it that Israel controls now, or its entirety — would bring the collapse
of security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and likely cause the
demise of the authority, forcing Israel to take over all of the West Bank, like it or not. Israel
would then have to grant citizenship to the 2.5 million Palestinians living there, giving itself the
choice of no longer functioning as a Jewish state, or destroy its democracy by denying the
Palestinians political equality. If anything can truly threaten Israel, the region’s pre-eminent
military and economic powerhouse, it is that. While Mr. Netanyahu himself has been the sole Likud leader not
explicitly supporting annexation in the West Bank, his political predicament might well pull him into the annexationist camp. His
legal problems create a strong incentive to form a government that will pass a law barring the
indictment of a sitting prime minister. Voter surveys suggest the election next month will result in an almost even split
between the Netanyahu-led bloc of Likud and its allied parties, and an opposition bloc led by Benny Gantz. That means Mr.
Netanyahu will remain in power at the whim of his preferred right-wing coalition partners,
whose leverage over a prime minister seeking to stay out of jail will be enormous. And the item
at the top of their wish list is extending Israeli sovereignty to the West Bank. Most worrisome, Israelis
have been barely paying attention. As the Israeli journalist Aluf Benn points out, this is a campaign that won’t turn on any issues but
on Mr. Netanyahu himself. And to the extent that Israelis are paying attention to policy, they are concerned about terrorism and the
cost of living, with only 9 percent listing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as their top concern and just 2 percent listing the future of the
West Bank. Even though only 15 percent of Jewish Israelis support annexing the West Bank, a core of right-wing activists are poised
to overrun the preferences of a much larger but less ideologically dedicated majority. Should Mr. Netanyahu emerge victorious once
again, the prospects of Israel taking this path are alarmingly high. The pro-annexationists have never put forth a detailed proposal of
what annexation will entail. Israeli voters may be about to rush headlong into quicksand that they don’t even realize exists.
Only strict enforcement can deter Israel from violating Palestinian rights --- the plan both
demonstrates and establishes US political will for the peace process
Kane 18 [Alex Kane, “American Laws Can Help Stop Israeli Massacres in Gaza,” The Nation, April
13, 2018, https://www.thenation.com/article/american-laws-can-help-stop-israeli-massacres-in-
gaza]

The videos that have streamed out of the Gaza Strip over the last two weeks are disturbing, digital testaments to extreme force and
terror. In one widely circulated video taken on March 30, on the first day of what has been dubbed the “Great Return March,” 19-
year-old Abdul Fattah al-Nabi can be seen running with a tire, his back turned to the Israeli snipers who have perched on hills
overlooking Gaza. Then a shot rings out and al-Nabi falls to the ground, becoming one of 17 people killed that day by Israeli snipers
who gunned down Palestinians as they protested Israel’s blockade of the enclave and demanded their rights as refugees. In another
clip, taken on April 6, Palestinian journalist Yasser Murtaja is seen using a video camera to film Palestinian demonstrators as smoke
from burning tires envelops the area he is in. In the next scene, Murtaja, who was wearing a vest marked with the words “PRESS,” is
being carried by colleagues while he bleeds from an Israeli gunshot wound. He later died. As the first of these images began to
circulate, the Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem launched a media campaign with a simple message aimed at those tasked with
responding to Gaza’s ongoing protest encampment. The organization took out ads in Israeli newspapers with the words “Sorry
commander, I cannot shoot”—an attempt to encourage snipers to “refuse to open fire on unarmed demonstrators,” as the group
put it in a statement. Thus far, however, B’Tselem’s campaign hasn’t worked. Israeli snipers have continued to shoot down unarmed
Palestinians protesting near the fence that cages in Gaza, a practice human-rights groups say is a crime under international law. And
as the Great Return protest heads into the third of its planned six weeks, rights advocates fear more deaths and more bloodshed at
the hands of the Israeli military. Already, some 1300 Palestinians have been shot and wounded, and more than 30 killed. But
there’s another strategy for stemming the bloodshed, one that does not rely on the conscience of soldiers—
and it starts in the United States. Palestinian-rights groups here have begun urging Congress to
demand an investigation into alleged Israeli violations of US laws governing arms exports, and
they are calling on the State Department to enforce those laws and cut off the flow of US
weapons to Israel. These efforts parallel calls by the Palestinian Boycott National Committee to implement a global arms
embargo against Israel, and a call by British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn for a review of UK arms sales to Israel, but they keep a
tight focus on Israel’s most munificent ally. The
United States gives Israel over $3 billion in annual military
aid and, under the terms of US-Israeli agreements, 75 percent of that aid must be spent on US-
made weapons. At the same time, laws governing the sale of US-made weapons to foreign countries
require that these countries do not misuse this weaponry on civilians. Human-rights groups say strict
enforcement of these laws would send a statement that the US-Israel alliance is predicated on
respect of Palestinian human rights. They also believe that strict enforcement of these laws could
deter future Israeli human-rights violations. “The United States could send a very strong
message to the Israelis about the unacceptability of these human-rights abuses by simply
making it clear that there’s no blank check when it comes to military support if they engage in
behavior like this,” said Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. The US Campaign is
among the chief groups calling for accountability and has been encouraging activists to contact members of Congress and call for “an
investigation to hold Israel accountable for violating” laws that prohibit US-manufactured arms from being used to violate human
rights. Other groups demanding an investigation include the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee as well as prominent
human-rights organizations like Amnesty International USA, whose Middle East and North Africa advocacy director, Raed Jarrar,
explained to The Nation: “The fact that live ammunition has been used against unarmed Palestinian protesters might not only be in
violation of international law, it might also violate US law: US
military aid cannot be used by recipient forces to
violate human rights.” Amnesty and the US Campaign have focused their calls around two laws in particular: the Foreign
Assistance Act, which prohibits US assistance to countries that consistently violate human rights,
and the Leahy Law, a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act that prohibits the United States from sending
arms to individual units of foreign security forces that commit gross human-rights violations. The
Leahy Law is narrower, but could ultimately prove more effective, some advocates have
suggested, since it may be easier to cut off aid to singular units that misuse US weaponry than to
a whole army. It also helps that Leahy himself has said, in a statement issued by his office to another publication, that he
wants to know whether his law applies to the Israeli military units who killed protesters in Gaza. While it is difficult without
investigation to determine what role, if any, US aid and weapons played in the recent killings at the Gaza border, experts who
monitor US assistance to Israel told me, for a story published previously in The Intercept, that US aid “of one type or another” is
assumed to benefit virtually all Israeli military units. At a minimum, images released by the Israel Defense Forces show some of the
rifles that soldiers on the Gaza border are equipped with, and at least two seem to have a US provenance. According to Sarit
Michaeli, who tracks Israeli weapons as the international advocacy officer for B’Tselem, one photo shows an Israeli soldier surveying
Gaza while holding a Remington M24 sniper rifle, a gun made in the United States by the New York–based company Remington
Arms. In another photo, a soldier holds what looks like an SR-25 semiautomatic sniper, a gun made by the Florida-based Knight’s
Armament Company. The Nation asked the Israeli army about whether it was using US-manufactured weapons like the Remington
or SR-25. An army spokesperson did not respond to those questions, and only said: “The IDF uses means such as warnings, riot
dispersal means, and, as a last resort firing live rounds in a precise, measured manner. The IDF is committed to preventing
infiltration into Israeli territory and threats against its troops and Israeli citizens.” In theory, a
finding by the State
Department that the Israeli army extrajudicially killed Palestinians in violation of international
law—as human-rights group allege—could lead the United States to cut off the flow of arms to
Israel. The problem is that theory and practice rarely, if ever, meet when it comes to the application of laws governing the sale of
US-made weapons. There is too much pressure from the defense industry and other interest groups, and too little political
will, to enforce these laws—on Israel or on any other allied country the United States supplies with
weaponry, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, both of whom also use US weapons to fire indiscriminately on civilians. “Recipients of US
weapons understand that they’re very unlikely to be held accountable for [a use of] US equipment [that
results] in civilian casualties,” said Brittany Benowitz, an expert on arms-exports laws who worked as a defense adviser to former
senator Russ Feingold. “This is creating a perception around the world that the US is indifferent to
human suffering.” There have been occasional exceptions, moments when legislators and even
presidents have made moves, however small, to stanch the flow of arms to flagrant perpetrators.
President Barack Obama, for instance, temporarily halted the flow of Hellfire missiles to Israel during the
country’s deadly assault on Gaza in 2014. (No other US-made weapons were stopped, however.) The Obama
administration also criticized Israel over the Israeli army’s killing of civilians during that assault. But such interventions are
rare, and, in the case of Israel, have grown even less likely under President Donald Trump, who has
fully aligned US policy with the wishes of Israel’s far-right government and promised not to publicly
air disagreements with Israel. Indeed, the Trump administration has said nothing about Israel’s use of
deadly force against unarmed civilians. Instead, Jason Greenblatt, the White House envoy in charge of Israel/Palestine,
criticized the Palestinian protesters. As for Congress, only a handful of members have criticized Israel’s
actions. The State Department did not respond to requests for comment from The Nation on whether it was concerned about
Israel firing on unarmed civilians in Gaza, in possible violation of US law. “That sends a message to the Israelis that
the United States is fully behind the use of lethal force on protesters. That is dangerous,” said Munayyer,
the head of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “That the American administration is shielding an Israeli
military engaged in those kinds of brutally repressive acts is a new low.” Still, Munayyer told The Nation
it remained important to press the United States to enforce its arms-export laws as they apply
to Israel. “This is an opportunity for people to communicate with their representatives and
demand action on this front, because it is a question of whether or not US law has been
violated,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for accountability.
 1ac set col
Advantage 2: The Settler
In 2019, the US continues to pump billions of dollars’ worth of arms into Israel.
These weapons are used continuously by the Zionistic Israeli police state to
murder innocent Palestinians, placing the American people and government in
immediate implicity to the destruction and violent takeover of culturally and
historically significant Palestinian land. This turns into cyclical perpetuation of
settlement and colonialism, exacerbated by “back-scratching” and special
privilege leveraged between America and Israel, covered up by Trumpian
rhetoric, excused by the American military industrial complex, and turned
deadly on a genocidal scale by arms exports.
Badillo 19 – Anna, research analyst at Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East,
focus on Palestinian-Israeli affairs and int’l law. “The US-Israel ‘special relationship’ subsidizes
American military industry and Israeli colonialism,” https://thedefensepost.com/2019/04/09/us-
israel-arms-sales-opinion/

In the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan
Heights, we are seeing a continuation of the Trump’s administration’s flat-out rejection of
international law on the status of occupied territories held by Israel since 1967. The timing is significant
because it is an attempt by Trump to meddle in the Israeli elections on April 9 which ultimately could
benefit Benjamin Netanyahu’s chances for re-election. The Trump administration seems to care very little about
international consensus and international law on the status of the occupied territories. Instead, it
has sabotaged the American government’s standing as an “honest broker” and effectively encouraged support for the continuation
of Israeli colonization of Arab land. Until
now, no country had recognized Israel’s act of plunder in the
Golan Heights. Following the Six Day war in 1967, Israel expelled 130,000 Syrians from the Golan
Heights. 14 years later, in 1981, Israel annexed the territory – in violation of international law. The United Nations
member states, including the U.S., immediately declared Israeli efforts to change the Golan Height’s
status “null and void.” A small population of Syrian Druze are the only survivors of that ethnic
cleansing operation. Greg Shupak, author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, argues that “American
foreign policy and Israeli settler-colonial capitalism shape what happens across historic
Palestine.” We recently saw this unfold when Trump issued his Jerusalem decree to recognize the
city as the Israeli capital, which goes against the international community’s consensus of
Jerusalem as a final status issue in negotiations and, again, violates international law. While the
U.S. Embassy was moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 15, Israeli snipers were
massacring 60 Palestinians protesters in the Great March of Return at the Gaza fence. This is not the first
time we have seen U.S. foreign policy and Israeli settler-colonial enterprise interfere with the
international community’s consensus on Palestinian-Israeli affairs. The Jerusalem Basic Law of
1980 and the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 were highly controversial because of their timing
and their political and legal implications, according to Michael Zank, a professor at Boston University. Both laws were
enacted during times when the international coalition was making progress with the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. U.S.
President Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat had signed the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty with Israel and
Egypt in 1979; consequently, the Jerusalem Basic Law endangered the peace process and negatively impacted the ongoing
negotiations. The Jerusalem Embassy Act was signed into law shortly after the Oslo Accords were concluded and greatly affected the
final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that were held at Camp David in 2000. Both these legislative
acts created a binding relationship between Israel and the U.S which ultimately changed the status quo. But
to fully
conceptualize the U.S.-Israel special relationship we need to unpack the the preferential arms
trade agreements that allows for this relationship to continue at the expense of the
indigenous population in the occupied territories. Max Ajl, a PhD candidate in development sociology at Cornell
University, writes: “U.S. ‘military assistance,’ more accurately understood as a circular flow through
which U.S. weapons firms profit off the colonization of Palestinian land and Israeli
destabilization of the surrounding states, is a long-term structuring element of the U.S.-Israel
‘special relationship.’” U.S. military loans started arriving in Israel in November 1971, when the Nixon
administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel to build up its domestic industrial-arms sector through technical
and manufacturing assistance. Grants started to replace loans in 1974. The U.S. government shortly
afterwards started to permit Israel to spend 26% of the annual military grant on purchases in
Israel – a unique arrangement, since by U.S. law recipient countries must spend all of their foreign military financing in the U.S.
According to Ajl, “the Israeli military industry often relies on U.S. technological inputs, and the U.S.
forbids Israel from manufacturing crucial heavy weaponry, such as fighter jets, in order to
maintain control over Israel.” U.S. military grants to Israel were often quid pro quo, as Israel
increasingly took on the work for which the U.S. could not publicly take responsibility, given
popular unease in the States over aid to fascist dictatorships. As the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
noted in their report, Israel’s Worldwide Role in Repression, in the 1970s, Israel armed the brutal military regime
of the Argentinian junta that imposed seven years of state terrorism on the population. Israel also provided most
of the arms that Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza used in the last year of his dictatorship to oppose
the revolution, a conflict that killed tens of thousands of Nicaraguans in the 1970s. By the 2000s, the
Israeli military-industrial complex had produced an industry capable of competing in small-arms and high-end security
technology on a worldwide scale. Israel started to export arms that have been refined through high-
technology colonial policing of the Palestinian population, especially in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank. In recent years, Israel has risen to one of the top 10 arms exporters in the world. Last May Haaretz reported, “Israel’s
defense-related exports in 2017 totalled $9.2 billion, an all-time record and whooping 40% increase over 2016 – when defense-
related transactions totaled $6.5 billion.” The
Obama administration adjustments to Israel’s military aid
package came amidst a shifting geopolitical environment, both within the U.S. and Israel. There was a shift
in original MOU that would slowly phase out the provisions through which Israel could spend up to 26% of its funding package
within Israel, to Israel spending more of this funding on the advanced military capabilities that only the United States can provide –
as much as $1.2 billion per year, according to Ajl. In addition, this MOU locked in $500 million annually for missile defense.The MOU
mandates Israel update its fighter aircraft fleet, which is a direct investment into the U.S.
military-industrial complex, given that fighter-jet factories are exclusively based in the United
States. Not only does U.S. foreign policy and Israeli-settler colonialism shape what happens
across historic Palestine, it also shapes what happens across the Middle East region. The firm
establishment of Israel’s military defense industry also provides an excuse to sell ever-more-
sophisticated weapons to other regional U.S. allies, especially Saudi Arabia. As long as Israel has the
latest U.S. technology, other countries can buy older models, again to the great profit of the
U.S. defense industry. Israel thus is the spark plug for an entire region-wide weapons bazaar,
while also providing such countries the means to destroy and dismantle even poorer countries
like Yemen. This keeps the entire region aflame, oppressed and desperate, and thus unlikely to
upset hierarchical regional and international social structures. Ajl suggests that one of reasons the
United States pushed through this MOU before Obama left office is the rising discontent within
the U.S. population over ongoing support for Israeli colonization of historic Palestine and the
surrounding region. Frida Berrigan, author of Made in the U.S.A.: American Military Aid to Israel, writes that a major barrier
to any shift in American policy towards Palestine-Israel is “financial pressures from a U.S military industrial complex accustomed to
billions of dollars in sales to Israel and other Middle Eastern nations locked in a seemingly perpetual arms race with each other by all
buying American and using Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to pay the bills.” The United States is the primary source of Israel’s far
superior arsenal. Israel’s dependence on the U.S. for aid and arms means that the Israeli military relies on spare parts and technical
assistance from the U.S. to maintain optimum performance in battle. During the Bush administration, from 2001 to
2005, Israel had actually received more in U.S. military aid than it has in U.S. arms deliveries. Over this time period, Israel
received $10.5 billion in FMF – the Pentagon’s biggest military aid program – and $6.3 billion in U.S. arms
deliveries. According to Berrigan, the most prominent of those deals was a $4.5 billion sale of 102
Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel. Unlike other countries, Israel receives its Economic Support Funds in one lump sum
early in the fiscal year rather than in four quarterly installments. While other countries primarily deal with the Department of
Defense when arranging to purchase military hardware from U.S. companies, Israel deals directly with U.S. companies for the vast
majority of its military purchases in the United States. Other countries have a $100,000 minimum purchase amount per contract, but
Israel is allowed to purchase military items for far less, according to Berrigan. Today,
Israel has been the beneficiary
of approximately $125 billion in U.S. aid. An unimaginable sum, more than any other country since
World War II. U.S. aid is projected to further increase to $165 billion by the end of the new 10-
year package, in 2029, according to Charles D. Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser. U.S. aid
constitutes some 3% of Israel’s total state budget and about 1% of its GDP, a highly significant
sum. Moreover, U.S. aid constitutes some 20% of the total defense budget, 40% of the budget of
the Israel Defense Forces, and almost the entire procurement budget, according to Freilich. Israel’s
dependence on the U.S. is not limited to financial aid and weapons sales. According to Freilich, the U.S.
provides technologies for the development of unique weapons systems that Israel needs, such as
the Iron Dome and the Arrow rocket and missile defense systems. It mans the radar deployed in Israel, which is linked to the global
American satellite system. Fredilich writes, “There is simply no alternative to American weapons, and our
dependence on the United States is almost complete; the bitter truth is that without the
United States, the IDF would be an empty shell.” The United States is Israel’s largest trading partner, at least
partially due to their bilateral free trade agreement, the first the United States signed with any country. The U.S.-Israel
special relationship is rooted in preferential arms trade agreements as a way to subsidize the
U.S. military industry and reinforce support for Israeli colonialism. This special relationship is
locked into an arms trade cycle where both the Israeli and American elite class benefits, at the
expense of the indigenous population. The U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over
occupied territories provides a boost for Israeli colonialism. We must ask ourselves, “If Trump
has consented to Israeli illegal seizure of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem, why not also the
West Bank?” Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank if
he is re-elected, which will likely be considered as the final blow to the so called possibility of a two-state solution. The Trump
administration is expected to announce his “ultimate deal” following the Israeli elections and after a new government is formed. It
is only a matter of time till the Trump administration decides to follow suit and recognize Israeli
sovereignty over the West Bank, which will drive the final nail into the coffin of the Palestinian-
Israeli peace negotiations and solidify Israeli apartheid.

But arms transfers have to be viewed in the context of a larger project of settler
solidarity, in which we support those who are like ourselves to avoid thinking
about who we are – our foreign policy is complicit in the exploitation of natives
because our society is built off of the genocide of indigenous people
Johnson, writer, 14
[Jimmy, Nov 30 2014, CiCo3, “American ‘Moral Bankruptcy’ and Israel Policy”,
https://cico3.com/tag/settler-normativity/, accessed 7/8 dwrs]

Like Israel, the United States is a settler colony. Both simultaneously establish themselves and
eliminate indigenous sovereignty along with, in one way or the other, indigenous populations .
Reductively put, every five acres of the United States is five acres less of Turtle Island.* The
elimination is carried out through physical extermination, expulsion, disarticulating native
indigeneity (for example trying to make Palestinians into ‘Israeli Arabs’ or removing
indigenous children to raise them in the settler society) and more. In the United States, Canada,
Israel, New Zealand and many other settler colonies, combinations of all of the above are used to
ends certainly no less ‘morally bankrupt’ than the U.S.’s Israel policy. To the point of this essay, settler
colonies recognize each other and use that recognition to build solidarity. The Myths & Facts website
is a project evolved from the Myths and Facts texts AIPAC began publishing in the 1970s. In the website’s “The U.S.-Israel
Special Relationship” series, Eli Hertz notes “the affinity between Israel and the United States draws
on the fact that both countries are democracies and share a host of other enlightened values,
including a similar defining ethos as nations of immigrations,” (After a time, all settler societies call
themselves ‘nations of immigrants’ and not ‘nations of settlers’). He continues, “both nations were
built by waves of refugees or persecuted immigrants who sought religious, political, or economic
freedom.” U.S. President Barack Obama made a similar appeal to U.S.-Australian solidarity during a 2011
address in Darwin, Australia. “The bonds between us run deep. In each other’s story we see so much of
ourselves. Ancestors who crossed vast oceans – some by choice, some in chains. Settlers who
pushed west across sweeping plains. Dreamers who toiled with hearts and hands to lay railroads
and to build cities. Generations of immigrants who, with each new arrival, add a new thread to
the brilliant tapestry of our nations.” A more crude (honest?) version is that of former Israeli ambassador to Australia
Naftali Tamir. In a 2006 interview calling for closer cooperation between Australia and Israel Tamir said, “Asia is basically the
continent of the Yellow race. Australia and Israel do not belong to it – we basically belong to the White race.” Further, “Israel and
Australia are like sisters in Asia. We are located in Asia but without the characteristics of Asians, our skin is not yellow nor are our
eyes slanted.” In
addition to calls for solidarity with other settler societies based on the mere fact
of being settlers themselves, settler discourse also points to other settler colonies to
determine who will be allowed to join the colony. Walt’s Harvard University colleague George Borjas writes in
The Washington Post, “While the United States has proven cautious about addressing [what kind and how many immigrants does it
want], several other ‘nations of immigrants’ (including Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have far more proactive approaches to
immigration: They have devised systems that are designed to favor people who will contribute economically to the country and who
will assimilate quickly.” Borjas’ 2001 article is predated by around a century by the various anti-Asian policies that South Africa,
Australia (under the banner of “White Australia”), the United States (especially in California) and Canada (especially in British
Columbia) developed to restrict Asian immigration. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds examine in depth the how the various White
settler colonies’ anti-Asian policies influenced each other in their 2008 volume Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s
Countries and the Challenge for Racial Equality. Judd Yadid offers a liberal version in a 2013 Haaretz article about Australian Jewish
hostility to South African Jewish immigration. “Those Australian Jews that criticize the influx and eccentricities of their South African
brethren should show more empathy, and be mindful of the fact that they themselves are the offspring of immigrants. In fact, the
entire non-indigenous population of the great southern land were once newcomers.” Yadid’s examination looks beyond Australian
Jewish prejudice against South African Jews to critique Australia’s racist immigration policies. Yet by the article’s end
he
manages to use a critique of xenophobic racism to declare permanent settler colonialism.
Most mainstream and liberal migrant justice discourse in settler colonies does this, again
under the banner of ‘nation of immigrants’. This mutual recognition that ‘they are like us’
amongst White settler colonies breeds frequent solidarity and joint political action. A full
accounting of such actions would narrate a significant part of the 20th century but a few
examples of this Settler International in action are in order. In numerous United Nations General
Assembly votes on the question of Palestine, Israel is nearly alone in voting against the
resolutions. Among the very few countries that regularly vote the Israeli side are Australia,
Canada and the United States. The United States and Israel were two of the few countries that
supported settler rule in South Africa nearly until the end. Both supported the apartheid regime
with arms and trade assistance while Israel also contributed troops for combat fighting. John
Collins – whose engagement of Benjamin heavily influences mine above – in his book Global Palestine narrates how the famous
1948-49 Berlin Airlift was carried out by “a who’s who of settler colonialism,” (United States,
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK, the latter managing settlement in
Northern Ireland and Southern Rhodesia). The list goes on. Settler colonies, apart from the secular
far Right-wing, rarely pronounce or conceive of their solidarity in phrasings openly recognizing
indigenous removal and doing so is unnecessary. Settler colonialism is an organization of
power like capitalism, patriarchy or White supremacy. Its power is not just political and
geographic, but also discursive producing a settler normativity – what Elizabeth Povinelli
described as the “organization of sociality on the basis of the naturalness of a civilizational
displacement.” It need not be spoken or even consciously thought in hegemonic discourse. It
is basic to settlers’ understanding of the world, often too basic to notice. A common example in the
United States is the popular NFL football team the San Francisco 49ers. The original ‘forty-niners were populist genocidaires. The
historical formation of the ‘forty-niner is inextricably tied to genocide and the conquest of California’s indigenous populace. Yet the
football team is discursively divorced from the practices of the actual ‘forty-niners. Indigenous
removal is so basic to
the settler cosmology that its daily celebrations of the genocidaires – on currency, in street,
school and team names, on monuments, in holidays, etc. – pass unnoticed. Settler normativity
is as much part of foreign policy as it is domestic as noted above in the appeal to fellow
‘nations of immigrants’. Settler colonialism is a baseline of U.S. policy, whether foreign or
domestic. Without the Israel Lobby, it’s still difficult to imagine the United States being
predisposed to solidarity with an indigenous people against another White settler colony
when it has resisted doing so in every other case, even if eventually taking somewhat critical
positions on Southern Rhodesia, Northern Ireland and South Africa.

This violence isn’t abstract or theoretical – we can isolate specific examples of

the way that arms from the US led to the slaughtering of Palestinians.
Greenwald, Public Service Pulitzer Price award winner, 14
[Glenn, co-founding editors of The Intercept, received the George Polk Award for National
Security Reporting; the Gannett Foundation Award for investigative journalism and the Gannett
Foundation Watchdog Journalism Award; the Esso Premio for Excellence in Investigative
Reporting Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013. 8-3-
2014, Intercept, "Cash, Weapons and Surveillance: the U.S. is a Key Party to Every Israeli Attack",
https://theintercept.com/2014/08/04/cash-weapons-surveillance/ 7-6-2019, dwrs]

The U.S. government has long lavished overwhelming aid on Israel, providing cash, weapons and
surveillance technology that play a crucial role in Israel’s attacks on its neighbors. But top secret
documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden shed substantial new light on how the U.S.
and its partners directly enable Israel’s military assaults – such as the one on Gaza. Over the last
decade, the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli
counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to
monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the
British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC. The relationship has, on at least one
occasion, entailed the covert payment of a large amount of cash to Israeli operatives. Beyond
their own surveillance programs, the American and British surveillance agencies rely on U.S.-
supported Arab regimes, including the Jordanian monarchy and even the Palestinian Authority
Security Forces, to provide vital spying services regarding Palestinian targets. The new
documents underscore the indispensable, direct involvement of the U.S. government and its key
allies in Israeli aggression against its neighbors. That covert support is squarely at odds with the posture of helpless
detachment typically adopted by Obama officials and their supporters. President Obama, in his press conference on Friday, said
“it is heartbreaking to see what’s happening there,” referring to the weeks of civilian deaths in
Gaza – “as if he’s just a bystander, watching it all unfold,” observed Brooklyn College Professor Corey Robin.
Robin added: “Obama talks about Gaza as if it were a natural disaster, an uncontrollable biological
event.” Each time Israel attacks Gaza and massacres its trapped civilian population – at the end of
2008, in the fall of 2012, and now again this past month – the same process repeats itself in both U.S. media and
government circles: the U.S. government feeds Israel the weapons it uses and steadfastly
defends its aggression both publicly and at the U.N.; the U.S. Congress unanimously enacts
one resolution after the next to support and enable Israel; and then American media figures
pretend that the Israeli attack has nothing to do with their country, that it’s just some sort of
unfortunately intractable, distant conflict between two equally intransigent foreign parties in
response to which all decent Americans helplessly throw up their hands as though they bear
no responsibility. “The United States has been trying to broker peace in the Middle East for the past 20 years,” wrote the
liberal commentator Kevin Drum in Mother Jones, last Tuesday. The following day, CNN reported that the Obama administration
“agreed to Israel’s request to resupply it with several types of ammunition … Among the items being bought are 120mm mortar
rounds and 40mm ammunition for grenade launchers.” The new Snowden documents illustrate a crucial fact: Israeli
aggression would be impossible without the constant, lavish support and protection of the
U.S. government, which is anything but a neutral, peace-brokering party in these attacks. And the
relationship between the NSA and its partners on the one hand, and the Israeli spying agency on the other, is at the center of that
enabling. Last September, the Guardian revealed that
the NSA “routinely shares raw intelligence data with
Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens.” The paper published the full top
secret Memoranadum of Understanding between the two agencies governing that sharing. But the NSA/ISNU relationship extends
far beyond that. One newly disclosed top secret NSA document, dated April 13, 2013 and published today by the Intercept, recounts
that the“NSA maintains a far-reaching technical and analytic relationship with the Israeli SIGINT
National Unit (ISNU) sharing information on access, intercept, targeting, language, analysis and
reporting.” Specifically, “this SIGINT relationship has increasingly been the catalyst for a broader
intelligence relationship between the United States and Israel.” Moreover, “NSA’s cyber
partnerships expanded beyond ISNU to include Israeli Defense Intelligence’s [Special Operation
Division] SOD and Mossad.” Under this expanded cooperation, the Americans and Israelis work
together to gain access to “geographic targets [that] include the countries of North Africa, the
Middle East, the Persian Gulf, South Asia, and the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union.” It
also includes “a dedicated communications line between NSA and ISNU [that] supports the exchange of raw material, as well as daily
analytic and technical correspondence.” The
relationship has provided Israel with ample support for both
intelligence and surveillance: “The Israeli side enjoys the benefits of expanded geographic access
to world-class NSA cryptanalytic and SIGINT engineering expertise, and also gains controlled
access to advanced U.S. technology and equipment via accommodation buys and foreign
military sales.” Among Israel’s priorities for the cooperation are what the NSA calls
“Palestinian terrorism.” The cooperation between the NSA and ISNU began decades ago. A top secret agreement between
the two agencies from July 1999 recounts that the first formal intelligence-sharing agreement was entered into in 1968 between
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, and informally began in the 1950s. But the relationship has
grown rapidly in the last decade. In 2003 and 2004, the Israelis were pressuring the NSA to agree to a massively expanded
intelligence-sharing relationship called “Gladiator.” As part of that process, Israel wanted the Americans to pay hundreds of millions
of dollars to fund Israeli activities. The specific proposed “Gladiator” agreement appears never to have been consummated, derailed
by Israeli demands that the U.S. bear the full cost, but documents in the Snowden archive pertaining to those negotiations contain
what appear to be two receipts for one or more payments of $500,000 in cash to Israeli officials for unspecified purposes: The
surveillance-sharing relationship with Israel has expanded to include the NSA’s British and
Canadian counterparts, GCHQ and CSEC, both of which actively participate in feeding the Israelis
selected communications data they have collected. Several documents from early 2009, at the
height of the Israeli attack on Gaza called “Cast Lead” that left more than 1,000 people dead,
detail some of this cooperation. One top secret 2009 GCHQ project named “YESTERNIGHT”
involved “Ruffle,” the British agency’s code name for ISNU. According to the document, the
project involved a “trilateral (GCHQ, NSA and Third Party RUFFLE) targeting exchange agreement
covering respective COMSAT accesses.” One of the “specific intelligence topics” shared between
the parties was “Palestinians”, although the GCHQ document states that “due to the
sensitivities” of Israeli involvement, that particular program does not include direct targeting of
Palestinians and Israelis themselves. Another GCHQ document from February, 2009, describes
“a quadrilateral meeting for RUFFLE, NSA, CSEC and GCHQ.” The British agency noted in early
2009 that it had been spying on emails and telephone numbers specifically requested by ISNU,
“and they have thanked us many times over.” The NSA and GCHQ receive intelligence about the
Palestinians from many sources. The agencies have even succeeded in inducing the U.S.-supported
Palestinian Authority Security Forces (PASF) to provide them with surveillance and intelligence about other Arab groups in the
region. One July 2008 GCHQ document states: Jordanalso feeds surveillance data about the Palestinians to
the NSA. One classified NSA document from 2013 describes how “NSA’s partnership with EWD
[the Jordanian Electronic Warfare Directorate] is a well established, long-standing and trusted
relationship dating back to the early 1980’s.” Specifically, the two agencies “cooperate on high-
priority SIGINT targets of mutual interest” that includes the Palestinian Security Forces. The
document continues: “EWD provides high-interest, unique collection on targets of mutual
interest, such as the Palestinian Security Forces; EWD is the sole contributor to a large body of
NSA’s reporting on this target.” [image omitted] But even as the NSA and its partners are directed by
political branches to feed the Israelis surveillance data and technology, they constantly
characterize Israel as a threat – both to their own national security and more generally to
regional peace. In stark contrast to the public statements about Israel made by American and
British officials, the Snowden archive is replete with discussions of the Israelis as a menace
rather than an ally. NSA documents previously published by the Guardian stated that “one of
NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel.” Another notes
that the National Intelligence Estimate ranked Israel as “the third most aggressive intelligence
service against the U.S.” British officials have a similar view of the Israelis, describing them as a “very real threat to
regional stability.” One top secret GCHQ planning document from 2008 notes that “policy makers remain deeply concerned over the
potential threat that Israel poses to a peaceful resolution of the Iran problem, and to some of Israel’s less desirable activities in the
region.” Moreover, “Israel’s thinking on the long-term threat offered by Iran to its fundamental foreign policy strategy of armed
deterrence may create very real threats to regional stability in 2009.” The
NSA’s 2007 Strategic Mission List,
identifying priorities for surveillance targeting, repeatedly identifies Israel as one of the leading
threats in a diverse range of areas, including: “Combating the threat of development of weapons
of mass destruction” and “delivery methods (particularly ballistic and nuclear-capable cruise
missiles).” The “focus area” for that concern is “WMD and missile proliferation activities,” and
one of the leading threats is listed as “Israel (cruise missiles).” The NSA internal discussion from
that document regarding “Mastering Cyberspace and Preventing an Attack on U.S. Critical
Information Systems” includes a subheading on “FIS [financial/banking system] threats.” The
nations identified as the leading FIS threats include India, North Korea, Cuba and Israel.
Similarly, Israel appears on the list of countries believed by the NSA to be “Enabling EW
(producers/proliferators).” Another section of the threat assessment document is entitled
“Foreign Intelligence, Conterintelligence; Denial & Deception Activities: Countering Foreign
Intelligence Threats.” It is defined as “Espionage/intelligence collection operations and
manipulation/influence operations conducted by foreign intelligence services directed against
U.S. government, military, science & technology and Intelligence Community.” The countries
posing the greatest threat: “China, Russia, Cuba, Israel, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, France,
Venezuela, and South Korea.” Asked about its cooperative relationship with Israel, an NSA
spokesperson told the Intercept: “We are not going to comment on specific intelligence
activities and relationships. The fact that intelligence services sometimes cooperate in a lawful
and appropriate manner mutually strengthens the security of both nations. Whenever NSA
shares intelligence information or technology, we comply with all applicable laws and rules.” A
GCHQ official refused to comment on the record beyond the agency’s standard boilerplate
claiming its activities are legal and subject to “rigorous oversight.” Legal or not, the NSA’s
extensive, multi-level cooperation with Israeli military and intelligence agencies is part of a
broader American policy that actively supports and enables Israeli aggression and militarism.
Every Israeli action in Gaza has U.S. fingerprints all over it. Many Americans may wish that the
Israeli attack on Gaza were a matter of no special relevance or concern to them, but it is their
own government that centrally enables this violence.

Structural violence outweighs all other impacts. You as a judge have an ethical
responsibility to choose a solution to a real issue. Structural issues are ongoing
and present, large scale impacts directly trades off
Jackson 12 Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, the University of
Otago. Former. Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University (8/5/12, Richard,
The Great Con of National Security,
http://richardjacksonterrorismblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/05/the-great-con-of- national-
security/) EL
It may have once been the case that being attacked by another country was a major threat to the lives of ordinary people. It may
also be true that there are still some pretty serious dangers out there associated with the spread of nuclear weapons. For the most
part, however, most of what you’ve been told about national security and all the big threats which can
supposedly kill you is one big con designed to distract you from the things that can really hurt you,
such as the poverty, inequality and structural violence of capitalism, global warming, and the
manufacture and proliferation of weapons – among others. The facts are simple and irrefutable: you’re far more
likely to die from lack of health care provision than you are from terrorism; from stress and overwork than Iranian or North Korean
nuclear missiles; from lack of road safety than from illegal immigrants; from mental illness and suicide than from computer hackers;
from domestic violence than from asylum seekers; from the misuse of legal medicines and alcohol abuse than from international
drug lords. And yet, politicians and the servile media spend most of their time talking about the threats
posed by terrorism, immigration, asylum seekers, the international drug trade, the nuclear programmes of Iran and North Korea,
computer hackers, animal rights activism, the threat of China, and a host of other issues which are all about as equally unlikely to
affect the health and well-being of you and your family. Along with this obsessive and perennial discussion of so-called
‘national security issues’, the state spends truly vast sums on security measures which have
virtually no impact on the actual risk of dying from these threats, and then engages in massive
displays of ‘security theatre’ designed to show just how seriously the state takes these threats –
such as the x-ray machines and security measures in every public building, surveillance cameras everywhere, missile launchers in
urban areas, drones in Afghanistan, armed police in airports, and a thousand other things. This display is meant to convince you that
these threats are really, really serious. And while all this is going on, the rulers of society are hoping that you won’t
notice that increasing social and economic inequality in society leads to increased ill health for a growing
underclass; that suicide and crime always rise when unemployment rises; that workplaces remain highly dangerous and kill and
maim hundreds of people per year; that there are preventable diseases which plague the poorer sections
of society; that domestic violence kills and injures thousands of women and children annually;
and that globally, poverty and preventable disease kills tens of millions of people needlessly
every year. In other words, they are hoping that you won’t notice how much structural violence there is in the world. More than
this, they are hoping that you won’t notice that while literally trillions of dollars are spent on
military weapons, foreign wars and security theatre (which also arguably do nothing to make any us any safer,
and may even make us marginally less safe), that domestic violence programmes struggle to provide even minimal support for
women and children at risk of serious harm from their partners; that underfunded mental health programmes mean long waiting
lists to receive basic care for at-risk individuals; that drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes lack the funding to match the
demand for help; that
welfare measures aimed at reducing inequality have been inadequate for
decades; that health and safety measures at many workplaces remain insufficiently resourced;
and that measures to tackle global warming and developing alternative energy remain hopelessly inadequate.
 1ac plan
The United States federal government should substantially reduce Foreign
Military Financing and Direct Commercial Sales of arms appropriated to the
Government of Israel. The quantity of arms sales reduced should be determined,
in part, by whether or not the Government of Israel complies with peace
process objectives.
 Solvency

The plan reduces arms sales to Israel, but it determines the extent of reduction by whether or
not Israel complies with peace process objectives like halting settlement activities and
allowing border crossings in the West Bank and Gaza
Reubner 12 [Josh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director, US Campaign to End the Israeli
Occupation, a national coalition of nearly 400 organizations working to change U.S. policy
toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality, former Analyst
in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service, his analysis on U.S. foreign policy
appears often in the media, including NBC, ABC Nightline, CSPAN, MSNBC, USA Today, The Hill,
Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press, Huffington Post, Middle East Report and more, “U.S.
Military Aid to Israel: Policy Implications & Options,” March, 2012]

Policy Option #3: Use

U.S. Military Aid to Israel to Promote a Freeze on Israeli Settlements Since 1967,
every U.S. Administration has upheld the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories, decried them as obstacles to peace, and urged Israel not to expand
settlements. Despite this stance, Israel has continued to build and expand settlements in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem. During the Oslo “peace process,” the number of Israeli settlers
doubled. Currently, 650,000 Israeli settlers live in more than 150 illegal settlements in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem, making a contiguous and viable Palestinian state impossible. On
numerous occasions, Israel has pledged to halt the expansion of settlement building, most recently in
the 2003 “road map,” at the 2007 Annapolis peace conference, and during a 2010 self-defined limited “moratorium.” Yet these
promises have gone unfulfilled as Israel continues to expand its illegal settlements. Members of
Congress should hold Israel to its pledge to halt settlement activities and back the Obama
Administration’s position on settlements by inserting the following language into the FY2013 budget line-item for FMF to Israel:
“Amounts appropriated under this bill shall be disbursed only in quarterly installments after the
Administration delivers to Congress a report verifying that during the previous quarter Israel has
fulfilled its commitments under the ‘road map’ and Annapolis peace conference to halt the
building of new settlements in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem and to freeze the
expansion of existing settlements in these areas, including socalled ‘natural growth’ of these
settlements. Israel shall be ineligible to receive a quarterly installment of this appropriation if
the President reports that Israel has undertaken any form of settlement expansion during the
previous quarter.” Policy Option #4: Use U.S. Military Aid to Promote the Lifting of Israel’s Illegal Blockade of Gaza Since 2006,
Israel has maintained a full-scale land, sea and air blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip in an
illegal act of collective punishment against the 1.5 million Palestinian civilians who reside there.
This blockade has led to a dire humanitarian crisis and debilitated the economic life of the
region. In January 2009, President Obama declared that “Gaza’s border crossings should be open to
allow the flow of aid and commerce.”94 Members of Congress should support this important policy goal by insisting
that no military aid to Israel be disbursed until the blockade is eased and that the borders of the Gaza Strip remain open to
humanitarian aid, civilian travel, and normal economic activities by inserting the following language into the FY2013 budget line-item
for FMF to Israel: “No amounts appropriated under this bill shall be disbursed prior to the President
certifying in a public, writ ten report to Congress that Israel has ended its blockade of the Gaza
Strip and that its borders are open to the free flow of civilians in and out of the area,
humanitarian aid, and for all normal economic transactions, including imports and exports of materials, and
that all provisions of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access are being implemented. Amounts appropriated
under this bill shall be disbursed thereafter only in quarterly installments after the
Administration delivers to Congress a report verifying that during the previous quarter Israel has
not reestablished its blockade of the Gaza Strip nor violated the terms of the 2005 Agreement
on Movement and Access.” As an immediate step toward achieving the U.S. policy goal of
establishing a just and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace, Members of Congress and the President should
induce Israel to freeze settlement growth, end the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and end the human
rights abuses associated with its military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip by enacting these
provisions. These provisions can successfully leverage U.S. influence over Israel through its FMF
appropriation. Blank checks to Israel have not succeeded in modifying its behavior to
accomplish U.S. policy goals of promoting human rights and establishing peace. In fact, just the
opposite is true. When the United States has leveraged its influence over Israel by either
threatening to withhold aid or sanctioning it, Israel has changed its policies and behaviors to
comport with U.S. policy objectives. The continuation of the current policy of “all-carrots-no-
sticks” will bring only the same failed results and policy frustrations. The time for change is
overdue.
As long as US weapons flow to them, Israel will happily ignore any attempt to negotiate a
process --- only the plan’s establishment of a reduced arms sales program can alter Israel’s
incentive structure
Reubner 11 [Josh Reubner, National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli
Occupation, a national coalition of more than 350 organizations working to change U.S. policy
toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality, former Analyst
in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service, “US Weapons Sales to Israel,” April 11,
2011, Counterpunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/04/22/us-weapons-sales-to-israel/]

Israel may be forgiven for failing to realize the current fiscal woes of the United States. After all, U.S.
military aid to Israel
not only sailed unscathed through last week’s passage of the 2011 budget, but reached the
record level of $3 billion. The United States additionally provided Israel $415 million for procurement, research and
development of joint U.S.-Israeli missile defense projects, including $205 million to fund Israel’s newly-deployed Iron Dome system.
This anti-missile battery already has altered significantly the strategic balance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when Israel
successfully shot down incoming rockets fired from the Gaza Strip earlier this month. With the assured diplomatic backing of the
United States to prevent Israel from being held accountable by the international community for its illegal blockade, Iron Dome will
embolden Israel to tighten its siege and escalate its attacks on the occupied Gaza Strip by providing its citizens with additional
protection against retaliatory fire. U.S. funding of Iron Dome is but one example of many of how U.S.
weapons transfers to
Israel privilege Israeli military dominance over Palestinian freedom and create perverse
economic disincentives for Israel to defy U.S. policy goals such as halting Israel’s colonization of
Palestinian land, ending its collective punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and
negotiating in good faith a lasting peace agreement. As long as U.S. weapons continue to flow,
Israel will feel free to disregard the Obama Administration’s mild blandishments and half-hearted attempts to
bring Israel to the negotiating table. Unfortunately this disincentive structure is set to be
reinforced over the coming years. Under a Bush-era agreement, U.S. weapons transfers to Israel are scheduled to total
$30 billion from 2009-2018, an annual average increase of 25 percent above previous levels. With this 2007 Memorandum of
Understanding, the United States solidified Israel’s position as the largest recipient of U.S. military aid this decade. In line with
increases proposed under this arrangement, President Obama asked for a record-breaking $3.075 billion of weapons for Israel in his
2012 budget request. A new online database—”How Many Weapons to Israel?”—casts doubt on whether the United States can
afford, either morally, financially or politically, to continue transferring weapons to Israel at taxpayer expense without examining the
ramifications of this policy. From 2000-2009,
the United States licensed, paid for, and delivered to Israel
more than 670 million weapons and related equipment, valued at nearly $19 billion, through
three main weapons transfer programs (Foreign Military Sales, Direct Commercial Sales, and Excess Defense
Articles). These weapons transfer programs accounted for nearly 80 percent of the more than $24
billion in military aid appropriated to Israel during these years. The bulk of the remaining money was spent
by Israel on its own domestic arms industry, a unique exemption written into law for Israel. All other countries receiving U.S. military
aid are required to spend the whole sum within the United States. Military aid to Israel ran the gamut from the
patently absurd—one used food steamer valued at $2,100—to the lethal—93 F-16D fighter jets valued at a total of nearly
$2.5 billion. With nearly 500 categories of weapons transferred to Israel, the United States is pervasively, intricately,
and comprehensively involved in arming its military. These weapons transfers also make the United States
deeply complicit in almost every action the Israeli military takes to entrench its illegal 43-year military occupation of the Palestinian
West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip and the apartheid policies that undergird its government’s stance toward Palestinians.
From September 2000-December 2009, roughly the same period during which the United States transferred these 670 million
weapons to Israel, the Israeli military killed at least 2,969 Palestinians, of whom 1,128 were children, who took no part in hostilities,
according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. For example, Israel killed 446 unarmed Palestinians, including 149
children, with missiles fired from helicopters. The Pentagon classifies the number, types, and value of missiles transferred to Israel;
however, the United States gave Israel nearly 200 AH-64D Apache, Sikorsky CH-53, and Cobra helicopters from which at least some
of these lethal missiles were fired. It was likely one such U.S.-supplied missile from a U.S.-supplied helicopter that Israel fired in the
Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip on December 29, 2008, which killed five sisters, Jawaher (age 4), Dina (age 7), Samar (age 12),
Ikram (age 14), and Tahrir Baulusha (age 17) during an attack on a nearby mosque. Israel’s misuse
of U.S. weapons to
commit human rights abuses like these against Palestinian civilians should trigger sanctions
against, rather than increasing amounts of military aid to, Israel. The Arms Export Control Act
limits the use of U.S. weapons to “internal security” and “legitimate self-defense.” Israel’s occupation
of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip is defined by the U.S. government as a foreign military occupation, and
the killing of thousands of unarmed civilians in support of a military occupation cannot be justified as legitimate without distorting
the meaning of self-defense. In addition, the
Foreign Assistance Act strictly prohibits U.S. foreign assistance
to any country that “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally
recognized human rights.” The State Department’s recently released 2010 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
documents amply, if not comprehensively, Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians. As Washington now considers raising the
debt ceiling and making even more substantial cuts to the 2012 budget, the moral, financial, and political costs of arming Israel can
no longer be ignored.
If the Obama Admininstration is serious in its efforts to resolve the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict and genuine in its stated commitment to the universality of human rights, then it must utilize the
significant leverage the United States wields over Israel through its military aid program. By
terminating weapons transfers to Israel at least until Israel upholds its obligations under U.S.
and international law, ends its illegal military occupation of Palestinian land, and negotiates in good faith a just
and lasting peace with Palestinians, the United States can create an incentive structure to
achieve its frustrated policy goals.
The 1AC stands in solidarity with Palestinians reproducing important
epistemological framing of settler-colonialism in Palestine. Breaking down
these barriers through analytical discussion is the first step towards destroying
ancient colonial structures and ending the oppression of Palestinians.
Bhandar and Ziadah 16– Brenna and Rafeef. Bhandar is a Senior Lecturer in Law at SOAS
and a co-editor for three books on settler-colonial intersectionism between racism and
segregation, as well as a freelance journalist on property politics, critical race theory and
indigenous activities. Ziadah is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of London, SOAS with Mid-
East projects, and a PhD in Political Science from NYU. “Acts and Omissions: Framing Settler
Colonialism in Palestine Studies,” https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/32857

Over the past several years, there has been renewed interest in the use of the settler colonial
analytic to study the ongoing occupation of Palestine. While the Oslo accords are continuously
pronounced dead, their impact on Palestinian life lingers, fragmenting the Palestinian people,
land and economy. Understanding Israel as a settler colonial state is one means of opposing
this fragmentation. It helps us to move beyond the Oslo narrative of conflict resolution and
dialogue between two equal sides to a serious analysis of the Zionist project in Palestine. That
project is rooted in dispossession, and maintained through a sophisticated matrix of apartheid
policies against Palestinians everywhere, not just in the territories occupied in 1967… At the American
Studies Association Conference in Autumn 2015, a panel took stock of settler colonialism as an emerging field of academic study.[1] Panelists and
audience members raised many pertinent issues, including the distinction between settler colonialism as an analytic and as a political discourse.
Panelists and audience members spoke of the ways in which
as an analytic, settler colonialism is being constructed
into a new legible field of study within Western academe and described how the constitution of
a field in this sense is at the same moment a boundary drawing exercise. The results, inevitably, are exclusions.
What is identified as “settler colonial” scholarship and what is left out? Several participants commented about the politics of producing knowledge in
this emergent field. A politics of citation is developing that reinscribes different forms of gender-race privilege. It often marginalizes scholars who have
been writing about the effects of settler colonialism for decades, but perhaps not using the analytic of settler colonialism to describe the colonization
and occupation of their land. One can glimpse a similar form of intellectual amnesia in the contemporary resurgence of work on “intersectionality.”
Such writing often omits reference to the decades of feminist scholarship that addressed the same themes using different conceptual tools. At issue are
not the specific authors that are often cited in more recent scholarship on settler-colonialism within Palestine Studies (for example, Patrick Wolfe or
Lorenzo Veracini), rather it is the loss of the rich scholarship by Indigenous scholars which does not fit neatly into scholarly boundaries. In the context of
using the settler colonial paradigm to analyze and understand the occupation of Palestine, these concerns have a particular resonance. In some
instances, recent discussions of Israel as a settler colony tend to ignore the rich historical scholarship on the colonization of Palestine and reference
only the most recent accounts. Indeed, early
Zionists from the late nineteenth century onwards were explicit
about characterizing their endeavors in Palestine as settler colonial in form and substance. The
strength of using a settler-colonial framework in Palestine Studies, is precisely its ability to
historicize the colonization of Palestine as a process that began long before the 1948 Nakba. Such historicization can
account for and build upon the earlier scholarship of, for example, Maxime Rodinson (1973), Gershon Shafir (1989), Nira Yuval-Davis and Daiva Stasiulis
(1995), Nahla Abdo (2011), and the body of Palestinian anti-colonial writings that have not necessarily used the settler colonial analytic, but in
substance have created the foundation for contemporary research on land appropriation (Naseer Aruri (1985), Raja Shehadeh (1988), Walid Khalidi
(1992) George Bisharat (1994); border controls and surveillance, political economy and displacement (Yusif A. Sayigh (1986), (Elia Zureik (2001), (Leila
Farsakh (2005), (Rosemary Sayigh (2007), (Nadia Abu El Haj (2001)), among others. The editors of the special issue Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in
Palestine assert that the
settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse in Palestine studies in
the wake of the Oslo accords. This both reflects and exacerbates a tendency towards a
“piecemeal approach to the establishment of some kind of sovereignty under the structure of
the Israeli settler colonial regime.” In turn, they set out an optimistic agenda that centers on the promise of a revivified engagement
with the settler colonial analytic for Palestine studies, politically and intellectually (Salamanca, Qato, Rabie and Samour, 2012). To their credit they
point in the introduction to the
long history of scholarship that analyzed Israel as a settler colonial
project. We share their view that the settler colonial analytic is an essential lens to understand the
myriad forms of dispossession experienced by Palestinians from the late nineteenth century. However, despite
these efforts, several of the Palestine focused academic conferences and discussions we have attended over the past five years in the United Kingdom
and Palestine, have reinforced certain myths about the realities of settler colonialism in Canada, Australia, the United States and elsewhere,
establishing a temporal distinction that posits settler colonialism in Canada, for example, as something that happened to First Nations, and continues to
happen in Palestine. Thereby presenting Israel as the exceptional and “unfinished” settler colonial project. That somehow their “past” is Palestine’s
“present.” We argue that a “comparative” approach must attend to the political-economic and
juridical formations that subtend colonization as a process and benefit from the nuanced
scholarship on the realities of settler colonialism in Canada, the United States, Australia, and for that matter, Palestine by
Indigenous scholar-activists. Taking up the settler colonial analytic in a ‘comparative’ perspective: academic practice and political praxis The

clearest scholarship on Israel’s status as a settler colony, when placed in a comparative

perspective, should draw on detailed analysis of the history and ongoing colonization of Canada,
Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Informed scholarship can thus challenge the colonial trope of the “dead Indian” or the notion that First
Nations were for the most part eliminated, along with, presumably, their cultural practices, legal systems, languages, and forms of self-governance…
Beyond delegations to Palestine which have generated very important discussions among academic-activists over
the last few years, political practices that create meaningful forms of solidarity often go
unexplored in academic settings. But developing a settler colonial analytic ought not to be
merely an academic comparative exercise. The misunderstanding of current realities and struggles across settler colonial
contexts and the internalization of the discourse of the “defeated Indian” hinders solidarity between Palestinians and other Indigenous communities.
As the above quote from Mahmoud Darwish highlights, Columbus “is carrying out his deadly war even from the grave.” Settler colonial projects
function precisely by erasing the struggles of Indigenous peoples, by pronouncing their defeat as they are continuing to resist colonialism. Some
Palestine scholars continue to insist on the exceptionalism of Israel as the only “unfinished” settler colonial project, and some activists proclaim
Palestine the “last colonial occupation.” However, Indigenous communities in other settler colonial contexts continue to assert their rights in myriad
ways, and continue to be subject to the violent and brutal mechanisms of settler colonialism, including struggling for sovereignty over their lands. In
Canada, Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activists tried to build solidarity with Indigenous
communities and activists. On 28 February 2006, the Six Nations of the Grand River community engaged in a land reclamation near
Caledonia, Ontario. The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), an umbrella organization of Palestine

solidarity groups based in Toronto and other Palestine solidarity organizations from across Ontario, supported the Six Nations of the Grand
River. CAIA raised funds for the reclamation, cooked meals for those on the blockade, organized

support delegations to the site, and engaged their contacts in the trade union movement for
support. Within the first week, and at the request of the community, a Palestinian flag was flying at the reclamation site. During various
Israeli Apartheid Week events, organizers invited Indigenous speakers to speak on their
struggles. Palestinian delegations visiting Canada on speaking tours went to the reclamation site and met with Indigenous activists.
They had open discussions about the Apartheid Wall in Palestine, the similarities of land encroachment mechanisms, the role of the prison system in
both places and importantly the impact of cultural oppression on children in Indigenous communities and in Palestine. This
organizing was
an intentional attempt to go beyond the mainstream focus on “big actions” by Indigenous
communities, to foster an understanding of the daily resistance practices within communities
that include creative elements of cultural preservation… There was hesitation on the part of Palestinian community
organizations (some funded by the Canadian state) to openly support Indigenous land reclamations for fear of government reprisal. This fear was not
unfounded. The Canadian state often targeted Palestinian community organizations by slashing their funding and through police intimidation of leading
activists. In practice, joint organizing and public support was not a given – activists who fought for it cultivated this form of joint struggle. They had
witnessed how the settler colonial project is perpetuated by segregating Indigenous communities and marginalized migrant communities from one
another. It is crucial we counter this segregation by rejecting the idea that Indigenous struggles are a thing of the past, by seriously studying multiple
settler colonial contexts and forging solidarity with First Nations and Indigenous communities. It is Indigenous and women of color activists who are
patiently and persistently doing this work. Between the language of indigeneity and nativity? The politics of using the settler colonial analytic in the
legal realm The language of indigeneity, as explored above, has important political currency in creating meaningful solidarity movements. The recent
deployment of indigeneity in the legal realm raises a host of political challenges for the “comparative settler colonial” studies approach. At a recent
presentation in London, Adalah lawyer Suhad Bishara spoke cogently and critically of attempts to use the Indigenous rights paradigm as the basis for
Bedouin land claims in the Naqab. She pointed out that the legal definition of Indigenous people (as established in the UN Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples) and the concept of Aboriginal title (as established in caselaw such as Mabo v Queensland (No.2) [1992] HCA 23), might ultimately
reinforce a fragmentation of Palestinian political identity. The claim for the legal recognition of Indigenous rights may not be appropriate for
Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Jerusalem or elsewhere. Other settler jurisdictions have acknowledged Indigenous rights to land in the
form of Aboriginal title (in Canada and Australia, and in the post-colonial context India, and in the post-apartheid context, South Africa).[2] It may thus
be tempting to set Israel apart from these examples since that is not the case there. In recent adjudication, the Israeli Supreme Court refused to
acknowledge any Bedouin ownership interests over their land, or for that matter, the fact that the claimants have a long historical and contemporary
presence on the land that at a minimum warrants their consideration. While it is true in a prima facie sense, that settler colonial states such Canada and
Australia have recognized Indigenous rights to land and resources whereas Israeli courts have refused any such acknowledgments, the conclusion that
Israel is exceptional in its steadfast denial of Palestinian land rights ignores the cunning of recognition evident in this growing jurisprudence of
aboriginal rights. It has developed on the basis of denying First Nations’ sovereignty and reaffirming Crown (colonial) sovereignty. In the Australian
context, this amounts to recognizing the “radical underlying title” of the Crown. The “jurisprudence of regret” that characterized the Australian High
Court’s decision in Mabohas developed into a “regrettable jurisprudence” as Alex Reilly argues, with the political potential of native title increasingly
limited by subsequent judgments. It took many decades of litigation and political struggle in Canada before advocates achieved an actual declaration of
Aboriginal title. Consider that only in 2014, was the Tsilhqot’in First Nation in British Columbia recognized as holding Aboriginal title to a portion of their
traditional territory While not diminishing this important political and legal victory, it should be noted that the Canadian Supreme Court recognized that
titled based on forms of customary land use within the world of the somewhat suspect anthropological category of the ‘semi-nomad’. That is to say,
even when recognizing forms of land use that exceed the boundaries of Anglo-Canadian concepts of property, it takes place on the basis of a western
anthropological discourse of nomadism. Perhaps the category of the “native” as Fanon, Césaire, and other anti-colonial writers critically deployed,
avoids the strictures and weight of the juridical language of indigeneity. It could be that using the dichotomy of the colonizer/colonized is more closely
attuned to histories of political solidarity between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), the National Iberation Front – Algeria (FLN) and and
the African National Congress (ANC). Yet perhaps the similarities in colonial techniques of dispossession between Australia, Canada, and
Israel/Palestine render the language of indigeneity potentially useful as a political language in which to articulate resistance. Patricia Monture-Angus, a
renowned Indigenous scholar and activist, preferred to use the name of the Nation she belonged to, the Mohawk First Nation, to describe herself. She
believed that the terms “native,” “Aboriginal ” and “Indigenous” were all colonial impositions. In any case, Bishara seemed to be rejecting the use of
the language of indigeneity, more than anything else, on the same political basis that Monture-Angus, and some Bedouin, and some First Nations in
Canada, have rejected the need for colonial recognition of their rights to their land. It is their land and the recognition of a settler legal and political
system of their “Indigenous” title and rights has no bearing on this fact. Settler Colonialism and Racial Capitalism The
forging of a new
academic field of settler colonial studies risks potentially creating unnecessary binaries between
studies of colonialism and settler-colonialism. It is clear that techniques of colonial dispossession
traveled throughout networks of trade and leisure established during and throughout the British
Empire. Such tools include the surveillance and criminalization of colonized populations, land
appropriation, resource extraction, the perversion or indeed, attempted erasure, of native legal
systems, and control over the mobility and political citizenship of colonized populations. English
colonial administrators and freelance entrepreneurs traveled, during the nineteenth century, between the Indian subcontinent, Australia, Canada, New
Zealand, the Caribbean, the United States, the African continent, and of course the United Kingdom. They imported and exported the legal and political
 With the advent of the Mandate system, Palestine
infrastructures required for colonial modes of expropriation.

became another scene of exchange and implementation of European colonial modes of

governance tested elsewhere. While many scholars have revealed the formative influence of
European models of nationalism and colonial ideology on early Zionist movements (Raz-Krakotzkin 2007;
Lloyd 2012), the detailed work of excavating the way in which the political and legal techniques of

dispossession travelled between different colonial sites remains underexplored. (Although see Lowe,
2014 an Saldaña-Portillo 2016 for exemplary exceptions to this claim). Another binary inherent to the settler colonial

analytic is that between the colonizer and colonized. While adopting a settler colonial framework
is critical to analyzing Israel’s modus operandi as a colonial power, there is a need to
contextualize Israel’s settler colonial project within the particular class and racial differences
inside Israel and amongst Palestinians. Ella Shohat’s critical work on the racial hierarchy within Israel’s settler society is a strong
example that highlights the historical marginalization of the Mizrahim, Jews of Arab origin. Racialized immigrants occupy both the position of settler in
relation to Indigenous communities and the subaltern in relation to the dominant place of the white European settler. Some scholars in North America,
and particularly in Hawai’i have grasped how the
racialization of particular immigrant communities in settler
states complicates the settler colonial framework. On the other hand, a settler colonial framework must also contend
with the emerging class differences in Palestinian society exacerbated by the impact of the Oslo Accords. This is especially relevant when contending
with the question of how Palestinians can challenge the logic of the Oslo process while the Palestinian Authority, adhering to a fundamental neoliberal
agenda (Hanieh 2013), remains intact. The Palestinian Authority continues to formulate Palestinian liberation in terms of truncated statehood on small
sections of Palestinian land and celebrates symbolic acts such as raising the Palestinian flag at the United Nations while prospects of Palestinian
sovereignty over land continue to diminish daily. Sadly, the PA’s focus continues to be building a neoliberal state apparatus as a way to “convince”
Israel and international donors that Palestinians are able to run their affairs. For all intents and purposes, Israel
has succeeded in
outsourcing its military occupation to a segment of Palestinians - this is evident in the
relatively large budgets of the security forces of the PA and the continued security
coordination with Israel. In our view, such differences within both the settler society and the
colonized need to be brought out and fully incorporated into the settler colonial analytical
framework. Racially inscribed dispossession and the capitalist modes of accumulation that
subtend expropriative practices have developed in spatially and temporally differentiated ways
in the colonies, as elaborated by scores of post-colonial theorists. In other words, capitalist
development in the colonies has not mirrored the transition from feudal economies to capitalist
ones in Europe. The terms “postcolonial capitalism” and “racial capitalism” both denote ways of understanding capitalist forms of
dispossession that profit from, and reinforce class hierarchies, patriarchal formations, and racist ideologies lodged in colonial imaginaries that persist
into the present. These terms do not neatly fit into a settler-colonial framework and yet are critical to understanding the political-economic, juridical
and social complexities across various sites of inquiry. Forcing
them into a single analytical category risks losing this
richness and undermining forms of political solidarity across colonized spaces. Darwish’s masterful poem,
“The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man” begins with an epigram from the Duwamish Chief Seattle. The dispossession of native land
that Columbus’ ill-fated voyage inaugurated, binds together the fates of Native Americans and Palestinians, who resist colonial dominance over land,
time, history, memory, and place. As Chief Seattle asserts, “there is no Death here, there is only the change of worlds.” We in turn are looking for our
own counter-narration, a language to explain the ongoing violence of dispossession in multiple contexts. We are reminded of the words of Mike Krebs
and Dana Olwan: We want to build solidarity without reproducing and enacting the same colonial
logics and asymmetric relationships of power on which settler colonialisms hinge. We believe
that our futures are connected and that we are especially powerful when we enact solidarity
by words and actions. To expect solidarity, we must be willing to give it, share it, and maintain
it. To do otherwise is to risk producing solidarity on the very colonial terms that our
movements seek to challenge and undo. If this sounds easy and obvious, then my writing has failed you. Listen: you will need
to remember this when you are accused of destruction. Attach a pacemaker to the heart of those machines you

hate; make it pump for your decolonizing enterprise; let it tick its own countdown. Ask how,
and how otherwise, of the colonizing machines. Even when they are dangerous.