Temporary Measures
Zinaida Miller
The map of Palestine has been shrinking for decades. On 9 October, a ceasefire was declared in Gaza and Israeli forces redeployed to a new ‘Yellow Line’ that cleaves off more than half the territory into an Israeli-controlled zone. At least 93 Palestinians were killed in the first six days of the ceasefire for approaching or crossing the line.
The Yellow Line is supposed to be temporary, but history suggests otherwise. Under ostensibly transient arrangements, Israel has annexed Palestinian land, displaced large numbers of people and expanded its control. Each time, Palestinians are told to wait for the next stage of the plan, while Israel’s gains become the baseline for the next round of negotiations. And the waiting never ends. Each phase is temporary, but every loss is permanent.
Under international law, military occupation must be temporary to be legal. Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza since 1967, claiming that the occupation would end when its security was guaranteed. Yet, as the International Court of Justice has found, both the length of time that Israel has held the territory and its unlawful actions in establishing settlements there reveal an illegal agenda for permanent annexation.
The largest reorganisation of Palestinian governance since 1967 took place under the auspices of the Oslo Accords in the 1990s. The model launched there – temporary, limited Palestinian autonomy as a transition towards an ever-unrealised sovereignty – borrowed from the negotiations that followed the 1978 Camp David agreement between Israel and Egypt. As Seth Anziska has written, there is a direct line from the failed negotiations over Palestinian autonomy in the early 1980s to the truncated version of self-governance created by Oslo.
Signed in 1993, the first Oslo Accord was designed to be superseded within five years. An interim Palestinian Authority would govern Palestinians and co-ordinate security with Israel. International aid was indispensable. The map dividing the West Bank into Areas A, B and C gave Israel formal control over most of the territory while the Palestinian Authority took on the traditional duties of the occupier to provide for the welfare of the occupied population. The most critical issues – borders, settlements, Jerusalem and refugees – were deferred till undefined ‘final status’ talks.
Oslo was sold as a half-step towards peace, with the other half to come through further negotiation. Instead, Israel took a full step unilaterally, building more settlements and checkpoints across the West Bank and Gaza. The arrangements were not static – settlements grew, violence flared, the PA lost legitimacy – but neither were they transient. Thirty years later, discussion still revolves around ‘reviving the peace process’ rather than ending the occupation that Oslo was meant to replace.
In 2005, Israel disengaged from Gaza. It withdrew its settlers and troops and claimed that it therefore no longer occupied the territory despite still controlling its borders, airspace and waters. It also closed Gaza off from the world, claiming this was necessary for its own security. The isolation was framed as temporary, to be lifted once Hamas left or the rockets stopped – in other words, ending the Israeli siege was supposedly up to the Palestinians. It lasted until the attacks of 7 October 2023, after which it was replaced by a genocidal assault.
Palestinians now face yet another hollow promise of temporary governance. Nearly 60 per cent of Gaza is behind the Yellow Line, under direct Israeli control. Further withdrawal depends on Palestinian disarmament and an international force with a very vague mandate. A UN Security Council resolution adopted on Monday says that an international ‘Board of Peace’ will administer Gaza ‘until such time as the Palestinian Authority has satisfactorily completed its reform programme’. The language of trusteeship, self-improvement and conditional self-governance carries an eerie echo of Mandatory rule. Meanwhile, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza is contingent on Palestinian behaviour rather than its own legal obligations.
As Diana Buttu has observed, it is extraordinary for the victims of a genocide to be required to negotiate its end with the perpetrators. In any case what is being negotiated is not an end but a transformation: from one supposedly temporary governance framework of to another. Not for the first time, large-scale, spectacular violence has been paused, to be replaced with a form of transitional rule. The new arrangement re-entrenches different forms of violence – dispossession, displacement, slow destruction – under cover of being provisional, with permanent advantages for Israel and permanent transition for Palestinians.