Every person is endowed with a certain denial mechanism they can use to avoid the shame, fear, guilt and pain involved in coping with their improper actions. Instead of facing their failure, accepting reality and dealing with it, they simply enter a state of denial.<\/p>\n
But denial extracts a heavy price from the denier. The mental effort involved in self-deception causes serious mental harm. Someone who denies facts is declaring that he has a mental problem. He needs treatment.<\/p>\n
For 46 years we have been in this situation. We are denying one of the most significant phenomenon of our national existence, if not the most central one: the occupation.<\/p>\n
We can use the well-worn metaphor of the huge elephant in the room, whose presence we deny. Elephant? What elephant? Here? We tiptoe around the elephant and avert our gaze so we won\u2019t have to look at it. After all, it doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n
We are ruling completely over another people. This influences every sphere of our national life \u2014 our politics, our economy, our values, our military, our legal system, our culture and more. But we don\u2019t see \u2014 and don\u2019t want to see \u2014 what is going on only a few minutes\u2019 drive from our homes, over the black line known as the Green Line.<\/p>\n
We have become so accustomed to this situation that we see it as normal. But the occupation is intrinsically an abnormal, temporary situation.<\/p>\n
Under the law of nations, an occupation is said to occur when one state conquers the area of another state during wartime and then holds it as an occupier until peace is achieved. Because of the temporary nature of an occupation, international law imposes severe restrictions on the occupying state. It is not permitted to transfer its own citizens to the occupied area, it is forbidden to build settlements there, it is forbidden to seize lands, and so on.<\/p>\n
Israel has invented something unprecedented: eternal occupation. In 1967, because no pressure was brought to bear on Israel to return the occupied territories, Moshe Dayan came up with a brilliant idea \u2014 to continue the occupation forever. If Israel had annexed the territories, it would have been forced to grant civil rights to the occupied population. But in a state of occupation, it could maintain control without giving the conquered people any rights at all \u2014 not human rights, not civil rights and certainly not national rights. A real egg of Columbus.<\/p>\n
We are a moral people \u2014 in our own eyes, at least. How do we resolve the contradiction between our extreme morality and our blatantly immoral circumstances? Simple: We go into denial.<\/p>\n
\u201cPower corrupts,\u201d said the British statesman Lord Acton. \u201cAnd absolute power corrupts absolutely.\u201d The occupation is the most absolute power there is. It has corrupted everything good about us \u2014 it has corrupted the army that maintains the occupation, the soldiers who are forced to terrorize the civilian population every night, the government institutions that bypass the law in the dark, the courts that implement the occupation laws, and the entire country, which is violating international law every day.<\/p>\n
If we ask ourselves what has happened to our country, we simply have to open our eyes and look at the elephant.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe who confesses and forsakes finds mercy,\u201d the book of Proverbs tells us. It isn\u2019t enough to admit and recognize that a sin has been committed; we must abandon the wrong path we\u2019ve taken. In our case, to save our souls and our state, we must forsake the occupied territories.<\/p>\n
But before we can forsake, we must first admit and recognize that something is wrong.<\/p>\n
URI AVNERY<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch\u2019s book\u00a0The Politics of Anti-Semitism<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n