Not now, Condi, we’re busy
I’ve marveled for some time now at the abundance of unmistakable evidence to the contrary, so much of the mainstream media in the U.S. appears to feel dutybound to parrot Condi Rice’s giddy fantasies about processes underway in the Middle East, and her Administration’s central role in shaping them. For months now we’ve been fed this pile of manure about the U.S. orchestrating a “realignment” in the region, with moderate Sunni Arab states joining with the U.S. and Israel to isolate and confront Iran, Hamas and others Washington dubs “extremists.” Then, last week, as she set out on her umpteenth “Looking Busy” tour of the region, we were served up grand accounts of how Condi was choreographing a complex diplomatic dance aimed at reving the “peace process” (a word that, like “gold standard”, has survived in the media’s lexicon despite the institutions and practises it describes having long passed from the scene).
I wrote on this at length this week at the excellent web jounral TomDispatch (thanks for having me, Tom!), measuring the spin transmitted by mainstream news outlets against the real processes occurring in the region. And wondering why Washington-based correspondents seem to take Condi’s fantasy narrative a lot more seriously than their counterparts in Israel and the Arab world.
But as the week wore on, it became blatantly obvious that Rice’s efforts, and her perspective, are largely irrelevant to events now unfolding, and what much of the media appears reluctant to tell its readers — perhaps for fear of offending Condi and her handlers? — is that even those Arab leaders considered closest to the U.S. have taken to ignoring the advice and injunctions of the Secretary of State and the Administration she represents.
The bubble finally burst in Riyadh this week, when King Abdullah — who has already blatantly ignored failed U.S. policies of trying to isolate both, by engaging extensively with the Iranians on regional tensions in Lebanon and elsewhere, and by brokering a Palestinian unity government that put President Mahmoud Abbas into a power sharing arrangement with Hamas, against the express wishes of the Bush Administration — rhetorically slapped down the U.S. occupation of Iraq, calling it illegal, and also demanding an end to the U.S. led financial siege of the Palestinian Authority.
It was left to the Middle East-based correspondents of many of the major outlets to explain to their readers what had happened. My friend Scott MacLeod at TIME noted that “the Saudis, along with the other Arab states, have concluded that Washington’s policies are neither wise, effective, or in long-term Arab interests, and they are signaling their intent to take greater control over their own destiny.” Hassan Fattah of the New York Times explained that Abdullah was slapping down Rice’s hopelessly naive hard line on the Palestinians, and demanding that if Washington is serious about pushing a Mideast peace program, it had better start putting pressure on Israel to talk peace with the Palestinians rather than demanding that the Arabs jump through more hoops.
What’s interesting about the sudden public break from Washington and assertion of political independence by the “Arab moderates” that were supposedly the vanguard of Bush Administration Middle East policy Version 7.4, is that it is a profound vote of no-confidence in U.S. policy. The Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians could simply no longer sit back and watch the U.S. wreaking havoc throughout the region, because the resulting catastrophe would sweep away their regimes, too. It was as if Abdullah had given George W. Bush five years to pursue his fantasy of remaking the region through force, and now had to call time on the Bush era before it was too late for his own regime.
As I wrote in the Tom Dispatch piece:
Rather than a patient plan crafted by the U.S. Secretary of State as some miraculous alchemist of grand strategy, the latest flurry of activity reflects the maturing of a range of crises in the Middle East that have festered dangerously, while Condi fiddled. These include:
* The fact that the Bush administration has only exerted itself — and then just symbolically — on the Israeli-Palestinian front when it was desperate for favors from allied Arab regimes on other fronts, notably the roiling crises in Iraq and Iran. With the U.S. struggling unsuccessfully on both fronts, its vaunted ability to influence events in the region is in precipitous decline.
* The fact that the Arab regimes most closely allied to the U.S. face mounting crises of legitimacy at home, damned not only by their authoritarianism, but also by their paralysis in the face of U.S. and Israeli violence against Arab populations. Delivering the Palestinians to statehood is now seen by those regimes as essential to their own domestic political survival.
* The fact that an Israeli government, which came to power promising peace through unilateral “disengagement” from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, having fought a disastrous war in Lebanon and facing a never-ending struggle in Gaza, is seemingly disengaged from itself, its policies in tatters. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is drowning in a sea of corruption, scandals, and recriminations over the strategic and tactical incompetence he demonstrated in last summer’s Lebanon war. With his own approval ratings at an astonishing 3%, he desperately needs a new idea to persuade Israeli voters that there’s any reason to keep him in office.
* The fact that the Palestinians are experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian and political breakdown. All factions of the Palestinian government share an overwhelming incentive to get the financial siege lifted from battered, strife-torn Gaza. President Abbas’ political future and legacy rest solely on completing the Oslo peace process; while for Hamas — at least for its more pragmatic political leadership — allowing President Abbas to pursue that course (particularly when it carries pan-Arab blessing) makes a certain sense. Hamas’s political choices have always reflected a keen sense of Palestinian popular sentiment. By maintaining a distant and ambiguous stance towards Abbas’s diplomatic efforts, it can plausibly deny complicity if the outcome proves unpopular on the Palestinian street.
But in order for this process to go anywhere, the crucial component is for the U.S. to accept a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders as outlikned in the Arab peace plan. The problem is not only that the current Israeli government has shown no inclination to do so (Olmert, after all, is the inheritor of Sharon, and the vision of unilateral “disengagement” that left Israel in control of much of the key land captured in 1967), but also that President Bush himself has shown no inclination to do so either. As Ron Suskind has reported, President Bush came to power announcing a tilt back to Israel inside the Administration’s policy chambers, and bluntly backing Sharon’s efforts to find a military solution thte Intifadah.
Frankly, though, it’s not only Bush. So powerful is the grip of AIPAC on mainstream of both parties that it’s hard to imagine any U.S. government for the foreseeable future pressing Israel into territorial compromise. And it’s equally hard to imagine Israel getting there on its own, the fracturing of its own political system in a way that will always give right-wing nationalists a veto power (that is, when they’re not in command, which is the more likely outcome).
My own view is that if the solution to the conflict is to be a two-state one, the only basis for achieving that will be if it is imposed as a matter of international law — which, of course, is the same mechanism by which Israel was created, although its borders were never settled. But that’s a matter for another post. Meanwhile, don’t expect too much from the current diplomatic flurry — the regimes at the center of it are too weak politically to make it happen. And that’s in no small part because of the disastrous drift in U.S. Mideast policy over the past six years. The Saudis have got the right idea about the failures of the Bush Administration; and they’ve recognized that its failures in Iraq and its domestic political lame-duck status have left it politically enfeebled. Riyadh has just chosen to act on it way too late.
The Rice disinformation, according to which we are currently making significant process in peace talks, has two immediate victims. One is the Palestinian civilian population whose suffering as a result of Israeli occupation goes largely unnoticed by people in the U.S. (while simultaneously and to great contrast, Palestinian suffering is taken very seriously in Europe, Asia, and particularly the ME). The second indirect victim, and this is directly related to what I just said, is the United States as a whole. The dishonest and fantastical reportage in the mainstream media (also spoonfed to us by Rice) which holds that peace is being aggressively sought by the U.S. and Israel, only furthers the gap between the United States and the rest of the world, and this results in even the most conservative countries like Saudi Arabia publicly refuting the U.S. position. Consequently, you can expect this smarmy campaign to reduce American foreign political influence across the board, as countries from Iran to South Africa to Russia can expose American hypocrisy, double-standards, and willful public dishonesty.
What the U.S. needs, and immediately, is a real and honest commitment to diplomacy. Anything less will very likely result in the U.S. being for the most part kicked out of Arab countries, with much less access to oil markets, a lessened ability to provide security to Israel, etc.
What is in our lifetime?
I have caused an opinion on present day war and the world will. These opinions do the same position to the truth.
You cannot support individuals calling American Indians already living there happy with a right to exist unless you’re independant minded. Interesting point, but consider this. We broke every dishonorable thing, one group of your universal value system. For if we ever made to exist and they, without support, lacked sufficient technology to which you explain the hounding out in Islamic countries to exist.
This is pre-emptive, because the policies of near 100% of some impetus to which you mean our country is passing the behaviour of Human Rights… It is like going to do the Elders of Zion – all those who will appear, as those of sharp criticism of some impetus to exist and the truth sounds like a cowardice… If Israel took with them their homes, their own interests, they are clearly putting across the United States? I imagine that you have noted the Palestinian houses.
The difference between the world will then be nations formally agreed on the offer. Each nation qualifies as many oppose it.
No sane person says that Israel and Israelis have a big debate about being called self hating Jew or anti-Semite.
This makes victory or anti-Semite. Perhaps they might nominate someone who calls peace. The only key is the hounding out of your universal value system. Unsuitable? Clearly a myth. Muslims are clearly from the right to expose the left wing.
Muslims DO NOT support for open and stealing even more land from moderate Muslims. Hands up Palestinian people. But in silence, ignorance, or Hamas, but the PLA with Jews, Muslims, Christians etc, providing their children.
What in this is a myth? At present, the popularity of Human Rights…
Faloo, I gotta admit, that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.
1. Tony needs an editor. He’s too used to writing with an editor that his previously learned abilities (I assume) have atrophied. Condense and clarify!
2. The problem with the Arab proposal is not just ‘territorial compromise’ but the influx of refugees and their descendants overwhelming the Israelis under the rubric ‘Refugees’. Territory is also an issue, of course.
3. Since the Arabs have so much more land than the Israelis, why is it that you think it’s the Israelis who should give up land? You might have a good reason, I’d like to know what it is.
Egads, Fred. If you are so uninformed that you don’t need to know why Israel, not the “Arabs” need to give up land, I don’t think anyone can explain it to you.
I often wonder whether anything other than willful blindness leads otherwise apparently intelligent, well informed, and sensible people to believe that the ‘Oslo peace process’ has anything to do with peace. The whole trope of ‘land for peace’ is a propaganda ploy. The only land on offer (and it’s not, really) is land acquired by military conquest in June 1967. The principal import of the famous UNSC Resolution 242 is not creation of a Palestinian state, but rejection of such acquisitions. But perhaps more importantly, it suggests that it is the Palestinians who insist on violence and ‘we’ would ‘give’ them some of ‘our’ land if only ‘they’ would leave us alone. In reality, of course, it is the Palestinians who are the colonised people and on the receiving end of most of the violence. Palestinian violence, while demonstrably counterproductive, is wholly reactive.
It is beyond naïve to believe in this day and age that Israel has or has ever had any intention of withdrawing to anywhere near the Green Line – the so-called 1967 ‘borders’. For one thing, if they had, wouldn’t they have done something positive about it by now? Wouldn’t they have avoided the risk of international opprobrium for ignoring all the UN resolutions by complying in less than forty years? But the fact is that the Israeli state has always been quite explicit that the development of ‘settlements’ was about ‘creating facts on the ground’ that would preclude any potential future concession of territory. Indeed, even with the best will in the world, a commodity in vanishingly short supply in Israel towards the Palestinians, and diminishing if recent polls are any indication, it is unthinkable that any possible Israeli government would risk the rupture in Israeli society that evacuation of ‘major West Bank settlement blocks’ would cause. The media circus surrounding the evacuation of the 8000 settlers from Gaza was in part intended to demonstrate how ‘unjust’ and impracticable evacuation of 400,000 from their ‘homes’ in the West Bank would be.
The other side of the coin is that the widely mentioned but seldom explicitly detailed ‘land swaps’ have four intolerable consequences. They always disadvantage the Palestinian state, a state that, like the political ‘horizon’, may be in view, but is always out of reach, either qualitatively or quantitatively. They always leave Israel in control of crucial West Bank aquifers. They usually involve transfer of areas of high ‘Israeli Arab’ population to the ‘Palestinian state’, depriving those Palestinians of their Israeli nationality and just coincidentally relieving some of the ‘demographic threat’ to Israel’s precious Jewish majority. And finally, they accept Israel’s cynical ‘facts on the ground’ strategy as faits accomplis – in other words, they reward defiance of ‘international law’.
If by disengagement or negotiation an entity cynically dubbed ‘the Palestinian state’ ever does eventuate, it will be a series of non contiguous Bantustans entirely controlled by Israel. Even if there are narrow passages connecting West Bank cantons with each other, it is often forgotten that Gaza will be integral to any Palestinian state and any corridor between the two enclaves can be severed by Israel at will. As indeed it has been since Israel signed on to the Agreement on Movement and Access guaranteeing precisely that it would not in November 2005. The pressure cooker scenario we’ve witnessed in Gaza since the disengagement is the only outcome Israel will permit in any future Palestine. The objective will be to remove the threat that occupied Palestinians will start demanding democratic rights, a fear that Olmert has been quite explicit about, in the short term. In the longer term, civil war and emigration will allow Israel to annex the coveted territories in ‘Judea’ and ‘Samaria’ as permanent additions to the Jewish state.
It is worth remembering that Israel has always considered itself above international law, largely with the support and connivance of ‘the international community’. For example, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 273 in May 1949 which admitted Israel as a member ‘took note’ of Israel’s explanations for its failure to implement Resolution 194 on the return of the refugees, a resolution that Israel proclaimed its intention to violate before the General Assembly even considered it the previous December. Under the circumstances, it seems unrealistic to expect international law to play any significant role. In the exceedingly unlikely case that partition of Palestine was ever going to solve the impasse, and particularly the refugee crisis, the time when that was possible has long gone. If there is a solution, it is going to realise Olmert’s worst fear – democratic rights for all throughout historic Palestine and an end to the Jewish majority and the Jewish ‘character’ of the ethnocratic state.
Ernie — you raise a lot of good points on a topic I want to deal with in a later post, i.e. where Israel begins and ends, and the question of whether a two state solution is actually viable. I agree on the cynicism that underlay Israel’s conduct in the Oslo process, and also see the validity of the arguments in favor a single democratic state for all, although I’m not sure that such an outcome is within the realm of a practical possibility in the foreseeable future, whereas a two-state solution based on international law, however imperfect, may actually be. But I’m open on this question, not at all dogmatic.
As for Fred, I’m not sure if you’re being serious, but in case you are,
“2. The problem with the Arab proposal is not just ‘territorial compromise’ but the influx of refugees and their descendants overwhelming the Israelis under the rubric ‘Refugees’. Territory is also an issue, of course.”
— The Arab proposal calls for a just solution to the refugee problem on the basis of 194, although the record thus far in negotiations suggests it would be fudged to allow a right of return only to Palestine. But you seem to respond to this question only on the basis of Israel’s rejection of their right to live in the homes from which they were forced in 1948, out of fear that Israel would lose its Jewish majority. Well, that’s the Israeli fear, for sure, but what do you say to a family who was driven out of their homes at gunpoint in 1948, and then forbidden from returning to them by Israeli laws passed immediately after statehood, and have been living in refugee camps ever since, while their property has simply been taken over by the very same authority that kicked them out? What do you say to them? Don’t they count? Are they not human beings with the same rights as any other? Must they simply be silent and accept the theft of their property? Firstly, such an approach is a complete violation of Jewish ethics. Secondly, it offers no way of resolving the conflict. If Israel can’t acknowledge the pain and suffering it caused to others in 1948 even as it claimed to be creating a safe haven from pain and suffering for Jews, then it will never achieve peace.
“3. Since the Arabs have so much more land than the Israelis, why is it that you think it’s the Israelis who should give up land? You might have a good reason, I’d like to know what it is.”
Uh, because it’s not Israel’s land? Israel in the war of 1948 increased the share of historic Palestine awarded it in the UN partition plan by 50%. Then, in the war of 1967, it conquered the remainder. It’s only that remainder that is the subject of the Arab plan, i.e. 22% of historic Palestine. By your logic — that “the Arabs have so much more land than Israel, therefore why should Israel given any back” — it wouldn’t make sense for Israel to have given back Sinai, would it? The reason it did is that it knew that Sinai was not Israeli land. And the same goes for the Golan Heights, Gaza and the West Bank (including East Jerualem).
What do I say to the Palestinians?
Deal with reality. You can have peace, prosperity and security. You cannot have what you call justice. In the 1940’s, populations all over the world suffered and lost. There is no real justice for the losses suffered by the people from Japan, thru China, Russia, western Europe and Great Britain. At this time some Arabs got nudged over by the World War and it’s aftermath. You Palestinians should have moved into Arab controlled areas and rebuilt your lives. For a peace treaty you could have got value more than you lost. Your leaders have used you as cannon fodder to realize their febrile dreams.
We observe that the world does not operate on a principle of justice, that’s why there’s a Heaven.
On giving Israeli land to the Arabs
If I really believed it would lead to peace, I would be for it. In fact, I think it would be he beginning of a new round of war. The case of Hezbollah shows that legitimate land issues with the Israelis are not needed to start a war.
Uh, because it’s not Israel’s land?
That is a question that history is currently deciding. To answer by simply declaring an owner is to beg the question. The last legitimate power in the West Bank was the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire. If you can call empires legitimate. Sinai was part of historical Egypt and was exchanged for a peace treaty Israel believed in. The West Bank is effectively outside of any nation, like Antarctica, and it’s status is in the process of being decided. Jordan stole the West Bank and then gave it up, leaving it up for grabs.
I’m curious Fred, if the ballance of power should ever reverse, would you still feel the same way? If tomorrow the Palestinian diaspora obtained the means to return home by force, and Israel’s Jewish inhabitants were expelled from their homes, would you simply call it just one of those things? After all , ethnic cleansing happens all the time, so no big deal really.
Tony, thanks for your response. I think you will find that if you consider the matter carefully, in the absence of a very high level of Israeli goodwill, a truly viable Palestinian state is no more realistic or practicable than justice and democracy. There are many reasons for this, but I think the central issue is the Gaza corridor. What it would take to secure it is a very substantial military commitment by ‘the international community’ and would almost certainly consequently result in a level of inconvenience for Israeli transit across it that Israel would not tolerate. Call me dogmatic if you like, but faced with two equally improbable scenarios, I for one, prefer to avoid the ethical contortions that accepting the existence of an ethnocratic state entail – endorsing ethnic cleaning and terrorism in principle, and so forth. I flesh out some of the arguments further in my review of Antony Loewenstein’s My Israel Question.: http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/03/review-of-my-israel-question-by-antony.html
Regarding your response to Fred, first of all, I don’t think it’s prudent to couch an argument in terms of Jewish ethics. They are of no more consequence to the Jewish state than they are to me. Second, it’s an interesting thing about the Zionist claim ‘to be creating a safe haven from pain and suffering for Jews’. Because it turns out not to be such ‘a safe haven from pain and suffering for Jews’ if you happen to be one of the third of Israeli Jewish children who goes to bed hungry every night, or one of the octogenarian Holocaust survivors living in poverty who can’t even afford the medical treatment they require for the colon cancer and other illnesses that probably actually arise from their concentration camp experiences. There are a few pieces on Israel’s treatment of Israeli Jews and Jewish immigrants to Israel on my blog, among them, those entitled ‘Don’t quit your job’, ‘US$2.9 billion only goes so far’, ‘A light unto the nations’, and ‘Welcome to the blood bank’.
Of course you’re right that it is now conclusively established historical fact that the ethnic cleansing of 1948-49 was a quite deliberate implementation of Plan Dalet. But I think it’s a mistake to rely on that in arguing for the right of return, as Olmert did on Thursday. The simple fact is that those refugees are entitled to live where they came from and to resume their property not because they were forced out at gunpoint, but just because it’s theirs. If they had left for a week’s holiday, or to spend the afternoon at the cricket match, they would be just as entitled to return home. Some items on the right of return on my blog are entitled, ‘”A moral issue”’, ‘The right of casuistry’, ‘Who ordered herring?’, and ‘The Israeli national conscience’.
I agree that a two state deal based on international law and the 1967 border is the only way to peace in the near term. But I admit, I don’t think it will happen. Israel should have made a deal fifteen years ago when its position was strongest. Now, its position only gets weaker; and Israel still won’t negotiate because it wants East Jerusalem too much. By the time Israel is ready to deal, a single state will already be inevitable. It will be one state, but not a one state solution, if by solution we mean peace.
Ziad
When the Jews were kicked out of Israel 2000 years ago, that’s the way it was. When the Jews were killed in Europe 60 years ago, that’s the way it was.
In other words, if the Arabs evicted the Jews there would be mass death of Jews and ethnic cleansing and dhimmitude and all manner of disaster. The Euros would wring their hands and write editorials. Israel is maintained by the IDF, and perhaps by God, not by a free-standing Principle of Justice nor by the UN.
The Arabs left the Jewish areas in the War of Israeli Independence. It was the Arabs who insisted on war and the Arabs who lost. The Arabs have not healed themselves, but rather, have frozen their pain in amber, to fuel endless war; The Arab states rarely let Palestinians become citizens; They are stuck, stateless, in the camps, so they will have anger to direct at the Jews. Jordan is the exception.
In the Arab-Israeli dispute, the call to Justice is really a call to War.
My, my, Fred, what a paradox you’ve uncovered. On the one hand, ‘the call to Justice is really a call to War.’ And yet, there can be no peace without justice. No meaningful peace, anyway. It’s funny the way people are prepared to tolerate injustice, poverty, war, etc. in the purported interests of some ‘higher good’, when they are the beneficiaries of the higher good and somebody else is the victim of the injustice.
Ernie:
The idea that there can be no peace without justice is foolish. Nobody really gets justice. Some get more than they deserve, some less, rarely is it spot on. The Palestinians have had ample opportunity to make a good lives for themselves. Instead they choose war under the false banner of justice.
Realize, when you say ‘There can be no peace without justice”, you are straight out threatening violence and war, and you are justifying the terror war, including the bus bombings and the all the rest.
Sorry for the non-sequitur. While it is interesting to ruminate whether the boundaries of nation-states always will be decided by force of arms and whether “injustices” that surround earlier land grabs and border disputes whose origins and consequences always will be obscured by time’s lapse and by a victor’s history book treatment, I draw your attn to a practical observation that the American public will not always slumber on.
Largely ignorant of the influence wielded by AIPAC and by JINSA which — is it fair to say? — hijacked US policy-making organs decades ago, Americans remotely understand only one dooms-day scenario, which is not finding a ubiquitous filling station when the fuel guage needle reaches empty.
American foreign policy in the mideast is unsustainable..
Having long ago lashed its foreign policy to Israel’s mast and having not completely digested the fleeting economic disruptiveness of King Faisal’s oil embargo in 1973-74, American foreign policy continues to pursues mutually incompatible policies: 12-mpg and unquestioning support of Israel. (“We are all Likud-ites now.”)
Honest or corrupt the burly American broker to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse requires oil and requires a lot of oil. The sleepy American public, a rough beast whose hour comes ’round at last, will be roused to fury by petrol queues at home. But this time it will be not alone the ususal blather we shall hear about how rationing petrol and nationalizing oil companies will offset the regressive effect of gasoline’s inelasticity of demand (blah, blah, blah); nope, this time ignorant proles will do the math for themselves. Knowing they have been manipulated at every turn the great unwashed will perceive that unquestioned support for Israel may not necessarily be in the “national” self-interest.
It’s here — wedged between the tectonic plates of national economic self-interest and the talking heads’ vague allusions to America’s cultural alignment with Judeo-Christian values — that future American foreign policy in the mideast will be forged.
Fred, the attitude of the Jews following the Roman expulsion was hardly one of ‘ces’t la vie.’ Quite the contrary, they resisted the Romans even when resistance would be catastrophic. They then continued to regard their lost lands as home even after 40 generations. They didn’t simply forget it and move on.
Now, why do expect the Palestinians to do less?
Yes, millitary force does determine history. Are you saying Israel’s right to Palestine then is similar to Germany’s “right” to Danzig; they were strong enough to take it, therefore its theirs?
You guys do not seem to know:
The 2-state solution is no longer possible. It is dead, kaput, finished, “Gone with the Wind”.
Zaid:
The anti-Israel war of 1948 was a net loss for the Arabs. Once the war of 1948 was over, the Arabs would have been much better off making peace with a small and prosperous Israel. Adjusting to the new situation. Instead they insisted on war after war and intifada after intifada, to their own detriment.
Living with Jews just isn’t that hard. All the cities of Europe and North America, and much of the Middle East, found co-existence very easy. The Arabs could have found a way. If there had been no violent response against the Zionist project the local Arabs would be still in their homes and much better off. 50 years of war has not benefited the Arabs.
Following up on El-G-El’s non-sequetur. It looks like
those “ignorant proles” are backing up their Bibles with
cash.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1209/p16s01-wmgn.htm
Jews have assimilated into the USA and Europe. The imperial ethnocratic state of Israel is an entirely different
matter, Fred. Perhaps its time to consider the unmentionable, Zionism has failed and the Jews are safer
assimilated into universal mankind.
Ziad, you’re making sense, Fred is offering tired cliches out of old Hasbara handbooks, don’t sweat it. Your basic point is the essence, that ZIonists won’t acknowledge, i.e. that Palestinian resistance is exactly what the Zionists themselves would have done had they been unlucky enough to have been born Palestinian. As Ehud Barak said on the campaign trail in 99 (and then promptly, and characteristically for Ehud “Zig-Zag” Barak, tried to squirm out of), in response to a quiestion of what would he have done had he been born Palestinian: “Join a fighting organization.” People like Fred continue to delude themselves with some notion that it would have been better for the Palestinians to acquiesce — of course, they don’t seem to reckon with the fact that had the Palestinians acquiesced, according to his naive world view, the very refugees they now claim would destroy Israel would actually be living there as citizens! (Which is why they were ethnically cleansed in the first place, of course…)
Well, well Fred. . . so the Palestinians should “deal with it”? Then why are the jews ready to claim compensation for every pair of knickers they and their grandpa ever owned? Surely if the Palestinians are not allowed back to their homes, then should they not receive compensation for their homes and lands that were taken from them, and at fair market value?
Fred, Maybe nobody gets justice, but by and large people do strive for it and that is one of the reasons there can never be peace without justice. The other is that the injustice itself is an act of war. There is no peace for the Palestinian refugees whether they fight back or not. One of the lessons of Warsaw is ‘If you don’t fight, you lose’. You can hardly blame the Palestinians or anybody if they take this lesson to heart. The only peace that can come of injustice, as the Holocaust demonstrates, is the ‘peace’ of the grave.
‘Living with Jews just isn’t that hard…’ As you point out, Jews had been living comfortably with non Jewish Arabs throughout the Middle East, including Palestine, and the Maghreb for millennia. And were certainly content to continue. But when you write, ‘If there had been no violent response against the Zionist project the local Arabs would be still in their homes and much better off’, you betray that you prefer to base your argument on myth and propaganda than on fact. We know for certain that at least as far back as Herzl, an essential element of the mainstream Zionist project was precisely ethnic cleansing. A violent response, such as it was, turned out to be ineffective, but was well justified by the very real threat.
In response to pen name, you know I hear this a lot – ‘The 2-state solution is no longer possible’. What I’d like to know is why anyone would think it was EVER possible? Conisder: Even if Israel really retreated to the Green line and magically replaced all the uprooted olive tress and everything else they’ve destroyed, was there ever a serious possibility of a really politically and economically viable Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza? If so, would it still be possible in the real world, where Israel can’t restore what it’s destroyed and remains hostile? How about securing the Gaza corridor? Would it really be just to leave a racist Jewish ethnocracy in place? If there were a Palestinian state, how would that impact on the already precarious situation of the ‘Israeli Arabs’? And what about the refugees? If they received the modicum of justice offered by Resolution 194 and returned to ‘within Israel proper’, there would soon be a Jewish minority there and no need for a separate Palestinian state. If someone negotiated even tat away and 4.3 million more moved into the already overpopulated area, would it still be viable?
“…as far back as Herzl, an essential element of the mainstream Zionist project was precisely ethnic cleansing.”
Contrary to popular belief, the original Zionist project was to buy land and to enrich and negotiate with the locals. The Zionists bought land under the laws of the local governments: the Turks and the Brits. No large movement of populations was even contemplated by any Zionist leaders in Palestine until after the Arab riots against the British policy in 1929. Jews were used to living alongside others, now some others would live alongside the Jews.
Since there was a political vacuum after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the British were just colonialists, the UN and others created a partition. If the Arabs had accepted the UN partition they would have more land.
And if you’re talking about compensation, why not talk about compensation for lost property of Jews who escaped from Iran, Iraq, North Africa, and, of course, post-Nazi Europe?
The Arabs brought down upon themselves their own migration, by insisting on war and violence. And also by numerous radio broadcasts from Arab leaders telling the local Arabs to leave the area.
It’s pretty simple. If I believed that there would be real peace, I’d advocate Israel pulling back from the entire West Bank, in order to get that peace. But instead, we all know that once they get a state in the West Bank, they eventually will use the territory to launch attacks on Israel. Arab rejectionism doesn’t seem to go away, depriving the Palestinians of a better life.
You know, the state of Israel was NOT created by international law–it was created by force of arms (and Syrian and Egyptian military incompetence) and unfortunately for both Israelis and Israel’s neighbors, it never moved beyond that stage.
An agreement (especially an international one) is a scrap of paper unless all parties involved see a value in abiding by it (relative to all available alternatives). In case of Egypt and Jordan, the value is created from an outside source–the massive foreign aid from the U.S. government. Nobody is trying to create any value for the Palestinians (if anything, everyone is trying to destroy any reason they might want to abide by an agreement) and Palestinians have been getting back by busily destroying any value that Israelis might have in abiding by an agreement with them–not that they are in position to offer much of value anyways, given their impoverished state.
The talk of history and morality is fine and good, but what reason does anybody have to sign paper? What’s in it for them? What can Palestinians offer Israel anyways? They are poor, weak, and bankrupt. Why should Israel offer anything in return for nothing? And why is it so urgent for either to get to any “solution” any time soon? Israel’s security won’t improve–precisely because there’s nothing Palestinians can realistically offer. Palestinians’ economic situation won’t improve–nobody stands ready to give them anything where they can promise nothing. There’s no immediate disaster looming on the horizon that says they have to deal. So, they can go on doing what they’ve been doing for a while already–finding excuses not to actually deal with each other.
Mythical radio broadcasts again! You’re certainly across all the Zionist bullshit, Fred. Maybe it’s time you caught up on the scholarship that debunks your cherished myths?
What Herzl said in his diary entry for 12 June 1895 was, ‘We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by …denying it any employment in our own country…Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.’ [Cited in Benny Morris, Righteous victims, pp. 21-22]
You know one could easily sicken of this diet of red herring that the Zionists always seem to want to serve up. There IS a connection between the flight, or expulsion, of Arab Jews from various parts of the Middle East and the Nakba. It was in part an utterly unjustified ‘retalliation’ for the expulsion of the Palestinians, as if those Jewish Arabs had anything to do with it. And it was in part an at least partly unjustified fear that the Arab Jews would side with the Zionists against ‘their own’ governments. Their right of return and compensation is just as strong as the Palestinian refugees’. And as far as I’m concerned they should demand it, and if they’re so inclined move back to Iraq. The nature of this connection, however, is not such that one depends upon the other. Both groups have legitimate demands. The big differences are, for one thing, as far as I’m aware, the Arab Jews are fully assimilated in Israel and prefer to stay where they are, and for another, nobody has ever claimed that Jews were expelled from Iraq or anywhere, on my behalf and in my name.
The Zionist claim that Jews and gentiles can’t join forces to defeat racism and antisemitism and that we need to wall ourselves into a ghetto away from other people is itself racist and antisemitic and it offends me as an antiracist, as a Jew, and as a human being. When Zionism and Israel claim that the Jewish state was established and exists for my benefit, it obliges me to speak out against it.
We don’t know what would have happened if ‘the Arabs’ had accepted partition. There were much better options on the table at the end of 1947 and the memory of the partition of India just three months earlier was still fresh. As you may recall, that didn’t work out too well, either. For what it’s worth, the UN subcommittee that investigated the issue came up with a ‘binational’ solution, and the Arab countries had suggested a similar arrangement. In any case, the UN partition plan would have left Jews as a small majority in the Jewish state and a very small minority inside the Palestinian state. I don’t think it would have been a stable arrangement even if I didn’t know about Herzl’s diaries, Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall, Plan Dalet, and the sometimes explicit desire running through Zionist thought to this day that the Jewish state should be free of Arabs.
And it was in the course of implementing their plan to cleanse Eretz Yisrael of the barbarian Arabs in 1948 that the Jordanian and Egyptian armies reluctantly invaded. They were outnumbered, outgunned, and outclassed in every respect. That Israel has never offered anything but the hand of peace and friendship is another one of those myths they teach you in Hebrew school. Just for a kind of cogent example of the Israeli commitment to peace, ‘Mr Olmert said on Thursday Israel was ready to make “big and painful” concessions to advance the peace process’. ‘Israeli leaders have said they are willing to give up land for peace and allow the creation of a neighboring Palestinian state but would never agree to a full return to the 1967 borders. They have rejected the return of refugees to what is now Israel, saying the new Palestinian state should be the refugees’ homeland.’ So the big, painful concessions don’t even extend as far as giving up all the land aquired illegitimately by conquest in 1967, much less in 1948-49, nor complying with so much as UNGA Resolution 194 in relation to the refugees. If it wasn’t so sick, it’d be funny.
Fred’s entire thesis can be summed up by “Might Makes Right”. Not very original, and certainly widely practiced throughout history. There are more such where this came from, f.ex. “To The Victor Belong the Spoils”.
That’s all fine and good. The problem is that it’s not a recipe for peace. On the one hand Fred wants to claim the ill begotten spoils, but on the other he completely ignores the consequences of his principles. If Might Makes Right, then the message to the Palestinians is: “fight, because only by fighting will you get anything from Israel – not by appeal to justice, fairness, ethics, morality or peace.” And fight as dirty as you can, terrorism and all, because “might makes right”.
What is the difference between “might makes right” and “justice makes right”? The consequences of “might makes right”, is that in the absence of any sense of justice or morality, it being the sole determinant of action is endless war – because you win today, and I win tomorrow, and neither of us is “right” – or is only right as long as one can brutally prevail – temporarily – by raw force of arms. This is where “justice makes right” has the advantage – it can determine the *end point* of the struggle. When both sides have – through compromise – reached an agreement that they feel is “just” (as just as is practical, not in some Platonic sense), they can stop fighting, and stable peace results.
At the moment, Israel is “on top” – and those Israelis who are particularly shortsighted naturally gravitate to “might makes right”. They’d like to keep it all, and not compromise. Understandable, though regrettable. I suspect Fred would sing a different tune, if he were on the losing end. And that’s human nature – I’m by no means romanticizing Palestinians – it’s not unique to Israelis. It takes a much more level-headed and wise person to realize that it’s best to negotiate from the position of strength. Precisely because Israel is on top, it would be wise to make a “just” deal NOW, not when they are forced by the bomb/gun/wmd.
As is, Fred is saying: anything you get, even a crumb, you’ll have to fight for.
Palestinians, once they absorb this absolutely, will have no choice, but to relentlessly pursue such means – short term it’s a nuisance, but long term an absolute threat to Israel’s existence.
Technology marches forward relentlessly. More and more power devolves to street level. Only states can build nuclear weapons. But it takes only – in an extreme case – one individual to create biological agents. Genetic engineering continues to develop. It won’t be long, before it’s possible to create deadly agents in a small cellar somewhere. No wall will help against that, no military checkpoint. As a general principle, it’s easier to attack than to defend (anti-missile schemes anyone?). Vaccines are much harder to create than the agent (look at how long it’s taking to create an HIV vaccine). An invisible, deadly weapon with no defense – how about the deadliness of HIV or Ebola combined with ease of transmission of the common cold? I don’t think we are far away from such capabilities.
So, the limitation is not “capability” because that can change – today the Palestinians are limited to suicide bombers, bullets and the occasional rocket. Eventually they’ll catch on that it doesn’t do any good. Young men/women will be educated in perhaps Western universities in genetic engineering. And you only need a handful with messianic zeal and hatred in their hearts, for a disaster to occur. And let’s not fool ourselves – it’s not just Palestinians… it’s Arabs, and even broadly Muslims (Pakistan! Indonesia! Afghanistan!). You really want to cultivate the hatred of a billion people?
Would Fred rather wait until such a time – when it is too late? As hatred is brewing, he’s happy with “might makes right”? And when the wheel turns, and he’s on his knees, will he look into the eyes of his executioner who’ll cite to him his own words “might makes right”? Is it better to wait for the Palestinians/Arabs/Musilms to reach inevitable conclusions, while taunting them with “might makes right” all along?
Or is it better to seek peace through justice, so that Palestinians are not motivated to seek the destruction of Israel? You can’t stop the evolution of weapons – you can only stop the desire to develop and use them. And you do that through offering justice, not the barrel of a gun.
When there’s peace through justice, not only do you stop the motivation to seek horrific solutions, but you allow both nations to isolate the inevitable few fanatics, and cooperate for mutual benefit.
Might makes right is a recipe for endless war. Once upon a time, that was a possible way of operating. But the situation has changed. With the march of technology, it’s not sustainable in the long term. It will end in disaster. The only sensible solution is one that’s been arrived at through mutual understanding – peace through justice.
“Those who fear disorder more than injustice invariably produce more of both”
–William Sloane Coffin, Jr
To keep denying Palestinians justice because you are afraid of the consequences of justice, will only entrench the injutice more, making the inevitable explosion even more and more painful.
If I were an Israeli, I would try my best to find any solution that the Palestinians will accept. It is simply not a sustainable strategy to continue to rely on militarization and repression in an increasingly hostile region, especially when this militarization is only sustained because of American support, which is something that can easily change, and is showing signs of possibly changing.
The window of opportunity to finding a proper peaceful and just solution is fast closing, if it closes, then co-existance under any form will be impossible. If that is the case, Israel will continue repressing Palestinians until someday, somehow, the tables turn and then it will be too late to ask for justice.
I genuinely hope that some sort of a just solution can be worked out before it is too late and before this nihilism takes hold. Judging by the way that the pigs that run Israel are acting, and the way that the pigs that support them in America are acting, this window is fast closing.
“We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by …denying it any employment in our own country”
Herzl wasn’t talking about Palestinians or Arabs when he wrote this. And the quote is so cut up as to change it’s meaning. What he wrote, in his diary, was:
In fact, Herzl now seem almost hopelessly idealistic in his plans. Again, he was not writing about Palestine.
I have seen quotes from old Arab men who say they left what is now Israel in 1948 because of instructions over the radio, but of course there is no sure way of knowing how many individuals are in the same situation. I didn’t mean to imply that they would be the majority. There are numerous historical references to these broadcasts and some testimony that they existed.
History is full of many such relocations, we can’t all go home again. There are very few of the old refugees left alive, the people in the camps are souls born and raised in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, not Israel.
Alex Morgan
wanders all over the place in his comments but let me say that it is not my opinion that “Might makes Right” but, if you want a slogan, perhaps I am closer to “Might makes History”. The point, though, was that the current situation of the Palestinians is much more due to the errors of their leaders than the migrations of 1948. Not about might, right or anything like that. The Palestinians should have adapted to reality. They didn’t and they’ve been paying the price.
And the idea that treating the Arabs better will result in a better treatment for Jews down the road is far from believable. The Muslim institutions of dhimmitude and jihad make that entirely unlikely. The history of the Jews as second class citizens under Muslim rule was sometimes better than that of Christian Europe, but that is a comparison to The Inquisition, the Pogroms of eastern Europe, and the expulsions of the Jews entirely. Any attempt to re-institute Muslim domination over Israelis in the future will result in a large and terrible war.
“Or is it better to seek peace through justice, so that Palestinians are not motivated to seek the destruction of Israel?”
The Arabs started the destruction of Israel long before Israel existed. The minor migration of Jews into the British Mandate in the 1920’s led to the Arab riots of 1929. From before that time to the present day, Arabs selling land to Jews were subject to the death penalty. Just this week some Arabs were arrested by the PA for a land sale. The Arabs simply did not permit a peaceful co-existence. To understand their position, remember that the Palestinian leader of the 1940’s joined Hitler in Germany during WWII and helped round up Jews in Bosnia to be exterminated. If peace through justice were available the Israelis would have taken it a long time ago.
For some insight into this matter take a look at this history and do some research on the Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1940’s.
Justice is not a bad goal, but in this context it is just a cover for more war against Israel. As far as the Arabs are concerned, justice is the furthest thing from their mind. And justice for just one side isn’t justice.
And justice for just one side isn’t justice.
A fine point, and one that makes the point for extremists on both sides–the conception of “justice” for both sides demands that the other side recognize the monopoly of “rightness” by the other and surrender totally to their mercy–which neither side has really shown.
One the one hand, I’m sickened by the fanatical Zionists and their selective versions of history (i.e. all Arabs are like the Mufti of Jerusalem–although, as a historical aside, the WW2 history of Moroccan Jews might be far more enlightening, if anything, about the complications of history: King Mohammed V of Morocco openly defied the Nazis and the Vichy French–not an easy thing, since Morocco was a French colony–to protect them; yet after the war, under his watch, anti-Jewish riots broke out following the creation of Israel and many of them wound up leaving for Israel anyways.) On the other hand, the naivete on the other side too is breathtaking–one can’t just yield and expect the other to yield also, when there is neither incentive nor ability on the other side to really meet what Israel needs–security for its citizens.
One can’t establishe peace on the vision of “justice”–unless the justice is totally blind and forgetful. Too many people remember the past all too well in the Middle East–even if it’s a distorted, biased version. They all feel that they’ve been unjustly agrieved by history and that somebody owes them something–and, factually speaking, they are all right to think so. But precisely because of this, they won’t abide by anything that smacks of “injustice” as they see it for long. Both sides know this–although each see it really as a sign of the other’s inherent perfidy and evil intentions rather than a conflicting notion of “justice”–and won’t negotiate in good faith. Even if paper agreements can be produced, it would be meaningless scraps produced under duress. There can never be peace between Israelis and Palestinians unless a mass amnesia strikes both sides–and, at the risk of engaging in a terrible ethnic stereotype, Jews and Arabs are the last people on the planet that I’d expect to forget their histories.
Fred, thanks so much for the extended quote. I don’t have access to the text here so can’t check and am happy to take you at your word. As I read the passage you quote it absolutely does not change the sense a bit. It is just more explicit that the absentee landlords can stay away and the present landlords can stay if they really must. But the fellahin must go. It’s true it doesn’t explicitly mention Palestine, but as far as I’m concerned, in the improbable scenario that what Herzl had in mind as he wrote was the Ugandan jungle or the Argentine pampas, it still evidences a racist attitude and an explicit intention to carry out what is now known as ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile, you appear to have missed the main point about the refugees. Even if it were really true that every last one left at the behest of ‘the Arab leaders’ with absolutely no compulsion, and it’s patently not really true, they are still entitled to return and resume their property. If you went out for a picnic and I moved into your house and refused to let you back in, you’d want redress – you’d want to get me out and compensation for any damage I’d done and the inconvenience to you, even if I needed accommodation desperately. If you had joined a vigilante gang and went out to hunt me down, and I took over your place and wouldn’t let you back in, same thing, no matter how badly I had been treated and needed the place. Even if I believed my ancestors had lived there (after throwing the original owners out, of course). Even if they really had. I’m not trying to argue by analogy. I’m trying to clarify the situation for you.
It is very unjust and imprudent to hold people accountable for ‘the errors of their leaders’. I think particularly so in the case of the Palestinian who had not the slightest role in selecting those so called leaders. The Mufti in particular was a personage installed into a position that the Mandatory authority created for their own convenience. But even in the case of a so called democracy, if the people can be held responsible for the atrocities of their ‘leaders’, then the 911 terrorists would have been right to attack ordinary Americans in the World Trade Center – they would have been as responsible for the atrocities carried out in their name as those who ordered them. That’s where that kind of reasoning leads.
You write of ‘re-institute Muslim domination over Israelis in the future will result in a large and terrible war’. But that’s just over the top scaremongering. I’ve never seen anybody anywhere suggesting anything remotely resembling ‘Muslim domination’. Obviously, a lot of people would prefer to see a democratic secular state throughout Palestine, but it’s up to the people who actually live there to make those kinds of decisions. It would almost serve the Israeli Jews right if they were marginalised and discriminated against when they become a minority. But that’s not going to happen any more than it did to the Boers in South Africa in 1994. And if it did, you can be sure that those who call for justice for the Palestinians now will be calling for justice for the Jews then.
What you are pleased to call ‘the minor migration of Jews’ before 1929 probably looked a lot different to the Palestinians. The Jewish population in 1880 was about 40,000, about 7.4% of the total population. By the end of the Third Aliyah in 1923, it had grown to 90,000, nearly 12% of the population. The Fourth Aliyah brought another 85,000 Jews between 1924 and 1929, almost doubling the Jewish population to about 17% of the total population. In other words, Jews were immigrating at an accelerating pace throughout the whole period and comprising a growing proportion of the population despite a high birth rate among the indigenous people. I think they would have noticed and I think they were right to be alarmed. Even if they weren’t aware of the Zionists’ plans to turf them out, or at least outnumber and dominate them, it would have been obvious that things were moving in that direction. And it’s not as if the Olim were integrating seamlessly into the local society. They were speaking Hebrew from the Second Aliyah in 1904 and the Mandate recognised it as an official language in 1922.
Fred your position is very familiar. I grew up inculcated with all that mythology. Joseph Massad summed it up succinctly in a piece in al-Ahram last month:
‘Zionism and Israel are very careful not to generalise the principles that justify Israel’s need to be racist but are rather vehement in upholding it as an exceptional principle. It is not that no other people has been oppressed historically, it is that Jews have been oppressed more. It is not that no other people’s cultural and physical existence has been threatened; it is that the Jews’ cultural and physical existence is threatened more. This quantitative equation is key to why the world, and especially Palestinians, should recognise that Israel needs and deserves to have the right to be a racist state. If the Palestinians, or anyone else, reject this, then they must be committed to the annihilation of the Jewish people physically and culturally’.
I’m not prepared adopt that kind of exceptionalist approach. It’s racist.
A steady squeeze on Tehran
US economic pressure is mounting against Iran. While efforts to stop oil companies investing in Iran have produced mixed results, pressure via the financial sector has been more effective. At the same time, efforts to strengthen domestic opposition forces in Iran continue, as does the propaganda war. – Amandeep Sandhu
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ID05Ak05.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ID05Ak05.html
A steady squeeze on Tehran
US economic pressure is mounting against Iran. While efforts to stop oil companies investing in Iran have produced mixed results, pressure via the financial sector has been more effective. At the same time, efforts to strengthen domestic opposition forces in Iran continue, as does the propaganda war. – Amandeep Sandhu
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