However, in recent weeks a clearer Israeli strategy towards the Gaza Strip’s future has emerged and it is part of the overall new thinking about the fate of the occupied territories in general. It is in essence, a refinement of the unilateralism adopted by Israel ever since the collapse of the Camp David ‘peace talks’ in the summer of 2000. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his party Kadima, and his successor Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, delineated very clearly what unilateralism entailed: Israel would annex about 50 percent of the West Bank, not as a homogeneous chunk of it, but as the total space of the settlement blocs, the apartheid roads, the military bases and the ‘national park reserves’ (which are no-go areas for Palestinians).

This was more or less implemented in the last eight years. These purely Jewish entities cut the West Bank into 11 small cantons and sub-cantons. They are all separated from each other by this complex colonial Jewish presence. The most important part of this encroachment is the greater Jerusalem wedge that divides the West Bank into two discrete regions with no land connection for the Palestinians.

The wall thus is stretched and reincarnated in various forms all over the West Bank, encircling at times individual villages, neighborhoods or towns. The cartographic picture of this new edifice gives a clue to the new strategy both towards the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The 21st century Jewish state is about to complete the construction of two mega prisons, the largest of their kind in human history.

They are different in shape: the West Bank is made of small ghettos and the one in Gaza is a huge mega ghetto of its own. There is another difference: the Gaza Strip is now, in the twisted perception of the Israelis, the ward where the ‘most dangerous inmates’ are kept. The West Bank, on the other hand, is still run as a huge complex of open air prisons in the form of normal human habitations such as a village or a town interconnected and supervised by a prison authority of immense military and violent power.

As far as the Israelis are concerned, the mega prison of the West Bank can be called a state. Advisor to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abed Rabbo, in the last days of February 2008, threatened the Israelis with a unilateral declaration of independence, inspired by recent events in Kosovo. However, it seemed that nobody on the Israeli side objected to the idea very much. This is more or less the message a bewildered Ahmed Qurei, the Abbas-appointed Palestinian negotiator, received from Tzipi Livni, Israel’s foreign minister, when he phoned to assure her that Abed Rabbo was not speaking in the name of the PA. He got the impression that her main worry was is in fact quite the opposite: that the PA would not agree to call the mega prisons a state in the near future.

This unwillingness, together with Hamas’ insistence of resisting the mega prison system by a war of liberation, forced the Israelis to rethink their strategy towards the Gaza Strip. It transpires that not even the most cooperative members of the PA are willing to accept the mega prison reality as ‘peace’ or even as a ‘two state settlement.’ And Hamas and Islamic Jihad even translate this unwillingness into Qassam attacks on Israel. So the model of the most dangerous ward developed: the leading strategists in the army and the government embrace themselves for a very long-term ‘management’ of the system they have built, while pledging commitment to a vacuous ‘peace process,’ with very little global interest in it, and a continued struggle from within, against it.

The Gaza Strip is now seen as the most dangerous ward in this complex and thus the one against which the most brutal punitive means have to be employed. Killing the ‘inmates’ by aerial or artillery bombing, or by economic strangulation, are not just inevitable results of the punitive action chosen, but also desirable ones. The bombing of Sderot is also the inevitable and in a way desirable consequence of this strategy. Inevitable, as the punitive action cannot destroy the resistance and quite often generates a retaliation. The retaliation in its turn provides the logic and basis for the next punitive action, should someone in domestic public opinion doubt the wisdom of the new strategy.

In the near future, any similar resistance from parts of the West Bank mega prison would be dealt with in a similar way. And these actions are very likely to take place in the very near future. Indeed, the third intifada is on its way and the Israeli response would be a further elaboration of the mega prison system. Downsizing the number of ‘inmates’ in both mega prisons would be still a very high priority in this strategy by means of ethnic cleansing, systematic killings and economic strangulation.

But there are wedges that prevent the destructive machine from rolling. It seems that a growing number of Jews in Israel (a majority according to a recent CNN poll) wish their government to begin negotiations with Hamas. A mega prison is fine, but if the wardens’ residential areas are likely to come under fire in the future then the system fails. Alas, I doubt whether the CNN poll represents accurately the present Israeli mood; but it does indicate a hopeful trend that vindicates the Hamas insistence that Israel only understands the language of force. But it may not be enough and the perfection of the mega prison system in the meantime continues unabated and the punitive measures of its authority are claiming the lives of many more children, women and men in the Gaza Strip.

As always it is important to be reminded that the west can put an end to this unprecedented inhumanity and criminality, tomorrow. But so far this is not happening. Although the efforts to make Israel a pariah state continue with full force, they are still limited to civil society. Hopefully, this energy will one day be translated into governmental policies on the ground. We can only pray it will not be too late for the victims of this horrific Zionist invention: the mega prison of Palestine.

Ilan Pappe is chair in the Department of History at the University of Exeter.

The way to recommend boycott as a strategic act has first to go through defining clearly the aim of any outside pressure on the state. The overall objective is to change a policy not the identity of the state. Although I dream of bringing an end to the oppressive nature of the state of Israel and make it, together with Palestine, one democratic secular state – I do not think this can, or should be, achieved through the means of boycott. In a similar way I would not suggest, despite my overwhelming support for the Palestinian right of return, to employ boycott for affecting a change in Israeli policy on the question of refugees.

The device of external pressure should be employed to change a policy of destruction, expulsion and death. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was always oppressive and inhuman, but ever since October 2000, and particularly since April 2002, it became a horror story of abuse and callousness. Every passing day brings with it demolition of Palestinian houses, confiscation of land, poverty, unemployment, malnutrition and death. The trend is for worse to come, with a sense of an Israeli government that feels it has a ‘green light’ from the US to do whatever it wishes in the occupied territories (including the reoccupation of the Gaza Strip). This free license atmosphere has legitimized the discourse of transfer in Israel and could herald the making of another Palestinian Nakbah in the form of a partial or massive ethnic cleansing in Israel and in Palestine. Israel is also developing genocidal tendencies as the daily killing of Palestinians (including many children) has become a normal and accepted facet of life for most Israeli Jews. There is an urgent need to stop this suffering and prevent future Israeli plans of inflicting more massive and irreversible damage on the Palestinian people and their society.

This is the aim of any human rights and peace activists interested in, and committed to, the Palestinian cause. There are three options of bringing an end to such a brutal chapter. One is an armed struggle. This has been adopted as the exclusive agenda by many Palestinians, and it has been a subject for internal debate inside the Palestinian society with regards to its productivity. It is not difficult to see why from a humanist and universal point of view, suicide bombs or military operations have not yielded an end to the occupation and are not likely to bring it in the future. Such action led to more innocent victims to be drawn into the conflict, hence entrenching rejectionist positions within the Israeli society, as can be seen from the election and re-election of Sharon in 2001 and 2003. Now in the new post-Sharon era, his party Kadima emobdies this inflexible position of the consensual position in the Jewish society. The military balance also cast doubt on the Palestinian chances for success in the near future.

The second option is change from within the society of the occupier. There is of course an impressive reawakening of the dormant Israeli peace camp. But it is nonetheless still a story of few thousands activists divided between dozens of NGOs and with very few parties in the parliament representing their agenda. In many ways, this line of action, despite its vitality and necessity, is even more hopeless than the military action.

This brings us to the third option, which in any case is suggested not at the expanse of the other two, but in completion. It does not offer death and violence as means of ending the Israeli mechanism of destruction and is not based on the internal and local balance of power. It is a call from the inside to the outside to exert economic and culture pressure on the Jewish state so as to bring home the message that there is a tag price attached to the continuation of the occupation. This means that as many Israeli Jews as possible should realize that their state has become a pariah, and will remain so, as long as the occupation continues, or more concretely until Israel withdraws to the September 2000 lines.

I am not deluding myself about the formidable obstacles on the way of such a strategy. While there is a chance of recruiting the European civil societies and governments, there is very little hope of achieving the same results in the US. However, this line of action was not attempted before and I was impressed when in April 2000, Noam Chomsky told a conference in Boston that in the 1970s despite his and others’ effort it was difficult to convince the PLO to begin a PR campaign in the US, since Arafat thought that having the Soviet Union on the Palestinian side was enough. It think it was a mistake then and it is crucial to start working in the US today. As in the case of boycott on South Africa, there is a need to begin in the grassroots level and NGO spheres of action with the hope of eventually affecting the higher political echelons. But even with partial success, there is much to be gained in generating a trend of ostracizing the Israeli official presence abroad. This can empower the inside opposition to the occupation, persuading hesitating voices and maybe convincing more to join the soldiers’ and reservists’ refusal movement.

This brings me to the question of a more specific boycott on the Israeli academia. I think by now it is clear from this article that such a discrete action has value only if it is part of a call for an overall campaign for external pressure. Within such a call, it makes no sense, for an activist like myself, to call on sanctions or pressure on business, factories, cultural festivals etc., while demanding immunity for my own peers and sphere of activity – the academia. This is dishonest. It should be recognized that activists for boycott themselves are likely to suffer if the campaign they call for succeeds. In fact it makes more sense to try and affect the economic, political, cultural and academic elites on the way to a policy change. The socio-economic realities are such that if you affect the life of the wealthy and influential, you get results, not if you add misery to those who are already deprived and marginalized.

How exactly should academics around the world show their discontent and dismay at both the Israeli policy and the lack of moral courage in the Israeli academia in the face of the continued atrocities, is a question that should be directed to those who are willing to take the move. We in Israel should first voice our moral support for such an act. This is the significance of adding one’s name, as I did, to a list of European academics calling on the EC to reconsider the preferred status granted to the Israeli academia. It is of course paradoxical for one to ask someone to boycott him. A call from within Israel is merely an affirmation that in our eyes as Israeli Jews this is a legitimate and ethical move, even if it can impact us as members of the Israeli academia.

For the success of such an initiative I think that it is important to distinguish between institutional and individual action. I also think there is much reason in a gradual action that examines in every stage how successful was the campaign. Its basic purpose should not be forgotten: to bring as fast as possible to as many Israelis as possible the message that the international community would not tolerate the occupation (remembering that had it not been Israel, or another American proxy, the Jewish state could have risked military actions against her, if all other means to force it to end the occupation would have failed).

I conclude by coming back to the opening somewhat banal sentences. Yes, it is difficult to call for such a move. No wonder very few Israeli academics openly endorsed such an action. But for us inside Israel, despite the charges directed against us as traitors and worse, this is the only effective way for expressing our total rejection of the daily cruelties imposed by our government on the Palestinians. This is a very clear and convincing way of trying to put across the message that crimes against humanity are being committed in our name and we would like to join forces with anyone willing to bring an end to it, without violence or terror, but through pressure and persuasion.