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5. Before Gaza, After Gaza Examining the New Reality in Israel/Palestine Sara Roy In the nineteen years since the Oslo process began, Palestinians have suffered losses not seen since the beginning of Israeli occupation and arguably since the nakba, the losses of 1948. The scholar joseph Massad has compellingly argued that it is wrong to think of the nakba as “a history of the past”; rather, it is “a history of the present,” a historical epoch that remains a living, ongoing reality without end.1 yet, what has changed is the conceptualization of loss itself, which has assumed altogether new dimensions . For now it is less a matter of defining losses that demand redress than of living in an altered, indistinguishable, and indeterminate reality in which those losses have no place, no history, and no context, where reclamation is, in effect, meaningless, without purpose or justification. This altered reality has been shaped and defined over the last few years by certain critical paradigmatic shifts in the way the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is conceptualized , understood, and addressed. I will touch upon some of these shifts, ending with a brief reflection on the changing socioeconomic reality in Gaza. Key Paradigm Shifts: Reconfiguring the Defining Conceptual Framework since the beginning of Israeli occupation there has always been an implicit and often explicit belief among Palestinians, many Israelis, and members of the international community that the occupation can and will end, and that Israel’s expansion into Palestine will be stopped. This was how many under- 104 sara roy stood the Oslo process. The belief that occupation is reversible and should be reversed was largely unquestioned and uncontested and was the catalyzing force behind many social, economic, and political initiatives. This belief has itself been reversed and is powerfully illustrated in the formalization, institutionalization, and acceptance by Israel and the international community of Palestinian territorial and demographic fragmentation and cantonization . This represents a key paradigmatic shift in the way the conflict is understood and approached. The changes imposed on Palestinians over the last two decades have shown that the occupation cannot be stopped, at least not in the short- or mediumterm . If occupation has changed over time it is in the sheer nature of its expansion and force, not in its mitigation, contraction, or inversion. The etiology and imperative of expansion remains unchallenged, and it is doubtful that it could be stopped even if the Israeli leadership wanted to stop it, which they do not. Perhaps the most powerful illustration of occupation’s power lies in the continued expansion of Israeli settlements and their infrastructure and in the building of the separation barrier or wall. The effect on Palestinians has been extremely damaging. not only have lands and the use of those lands been lost—at least 38 percent of the West Bank is under Israeli control and inaccessible to Palestinians2 —but arab lands are being incorporated and consolidated into a new spatial and political order that aims to eliminate any physical separation between Israel and certain (and increasing) areas of the West Bank, diminishing the presence of Palestinians and precluding the emergence of any viable entity that could be called a Palestinian state (even on the eastern side of the barrier). The denial of territorial contiguity and the reality of territorial and demographic fragmentation were facilitated by the physical isolation of the West Bank and Gaza, which was largely complete by 1998, illustrating that their separation had long been an Israeli policy goal. according to the Israeli journalist amira Hass, The total separation of the Gaza strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel’s military superiority. . . . since january 1991, Israel has bureaucratically and logistically merely perfected the split and the separation: not only between Palestinians in the occupied territories and their brothers in Israel, but also 23.172.252] Project MUSE (2024-04-23 18:14 GMT) Before Gaza, After Gaza 105 between the Palestinian residents of jerusalem and those in the rest of the territories and between Gazans and West Bankers/jerusalemites.3 Indeed, the Israeli economist shir Hever revealed that on 20 april 2007, in a lecture delivered at the van Leer Institute, Brigadier General yair Golan, then commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank, stated that “separation and not security is the main reason for building the Wall of...

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