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The two
state solution, a cruel joke
Israel’s current delusional, myopic policies in the occupied
territories will render its people even more profoundly insecure,
for a state cannot live in peace and security by denying it to
others.
By Issa Khalaf
03/09/06 "ICH"
-- -- The interminable torment inflicted on the Palestinian people
by Zionism is in the active phase of yet another disastrous
historical culmination. The Palestinians’ role in this karmic
dialectic is as the obscenely oppressed victims who progressively
lose land, life, and livelihood. 1948 represents the mega
catastrophe, preceded by decades of unrelenting militant Zionist
intrusion protected by the reigning colonial power of the time. 1967
was of much lesser proportions in terms of its collective
consequences, but the decades since have led to that singular
Zionist goal supported by the superpower of the day: dispossession
of Palestine.
Today, we are witness to an unfolding disaster of gigantic
proportions in what is left of historic Palestine and its people.
The Israeli goal under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his
successors, short of another 1948 or 1967-like event that would
provide cover for further mass expulsions, is the complete political
and social annihilation of Palestinian will and society, leaving it
fragmented, pauperized, disoriented, and demoralized, severely
dividing it along geographical, local, factional, and ideological
fault lines, destroying its social cohesion, its demographic and
geographic continuity, its national identity, its nationalist
response.
Even though the much overdue cleanup of the stagnantly corrupt
Palestine Authority regime has been democratically realized, Hamas’
ability to offer a unified, effective political response to its
people’s horrific reality is limited by factors that have always
dogged the Palestinian people: their own factionalism in the face of
severe regional and international pressures that they simply cannot
manage; the chronic divisiveness, weakness, and authoritarianism of
the surrounding Arab states and their inability to mount a unified,
democratic response in support of the Palestinians; the aggressions
of colonial and imperial powers allied with pliant clients and
Israel; and that unremittingly hostile, exclusivist “political”
Zionism that covets land over coexistence, expansion over security,
oppression and denial over mutual respect, recognition, and peace.
The humane, “cultural” or socialist Zionism of long ago, informed by
thoughts of coexistence in a bi-national state, morally concerned
with the colonists’ disdain and cruel treatment of the indigenous
Palestinians and with the requisite foundations for Israel’s long
term survival in the region, has been marginalized in today’s
Israel.
The Israeli plan as it has been unfolding for the past five years is
crystal clear: avoid a negotiated settlement, based on international
law, relevant UN resolutions, and previous agreements such as Oslo
and the Road Map, in an effort to effect a maximum, permanent,
non-negotiable territorial annexation of the West Bank (including
Arab East Jerusalem), maintain the colonies, and control Palestine’s
precious water resources. The peace process died some time back; the
two state solution, a cruel joke. A viable and meaningful
nation-state, enjoying real sovereignty, independence, and
self-determination, is in the process of extirpation, its political,
social, and physical infrastructure already demolished.
The suffocation of Palestine, that is, the West Bank and its people,
its comprehensive divisions into tiny, disconnected population
islets whose movement of people and goods is crisscrossed and
controlled by Jewish-only roads, bypass highways, tunnels, bridges,
walls/barriers, passes, IDs, and checkpoints, is the antecedent to
the upcoming unilateral – (but “provisional,” to be sure, for this
serves a double purpose: it indefinitely protracts Zionism’s
absolute refusal to define territorial boundaries in the event of
future opportunities for full takeover of the West Bank while
disguising this unspoken goal with talk of security and missing
interlocutors) – withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Gaza
Strip, evacuated but economically and territorially throttled, was
the minimally sacrificial prelude to this larger, immoral scheme.
Once the (always tentative) West Bank colonial project is secured
and withdrawal is effected, then Israel’s obligations as an
occupying power under international law and the Fourth Geneva
Convention will no longer be operative; however, even though Israel
the occupier violates these laws with horrific impunity, withdrawal
relieves it of any pretense of legal obligation, leaving it free to
“retaliate” against Palestine, a neighboring “state,” without
restraint.
All this is being done with full US, and apparently Western
complicity. First came the demand for democracy and free elections.
Now that these elections materialized, the freely elected (Hamas),
just like Yasser Arafat’s PLO in the lead up to the Oslo peace
agreements fifteen years earlier, have to jump through endless
hoops: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, accepting a two
state solution, and so on.
The drama is already unfolding. American and Israeli policies are
actively undermining any genuine, fair, diplomatically symmetrical,
and mutually respectful negotiations. The first party is leading the
charge of pre-conditions in order to break Hamas’ independent will,
as it did the will of the Palestine Authority before it, and force
the Palestinian people’s acceptance of Israel’s kind of peace; the
second party, under acting PM Ehud Olmert, is implementing this by
refusing to talk with Hamas and, in fact, threatening its leaders
and mounting attacks on Nablus and Gaza in calculated moves to
elicit a violent Hamas response which will then be dubbed terrorism,
and to boost the new, Kadima party’s standing among Israelis before
the coming elections, a game consummately executed by Ariel Sharon.
Never mind that, even until this moment, Israel has not reciprocated
what it has demanded, and gotten, from the Palestinians and Arab
League: it has not defined or delimited its borders; refuses to
unambiguously accept the international consensus on the parameters
of a final settlement and the basis for peace as defined by
international law, UNSC resolutions (specifically 242 and 338), the
US, and the EU; has not recognized the Palestinians’ right of
national self-determination in a viable state or as equal partners
for peace; and has applied obscene levels of force and violence
against a defenseless population.
Zionism has not really, even after a century, countenanced or truly
accepted the humane or moral or practical reality of the Palestinian
people’s existence as a national group with legitimate claims over
their own land, with legitimate grievances and rights. It wants the
land without the people.
And herein lies the tragedy for all concerned. Israel will not
achieve the security it craves, the Middle East will be further
destabilized, and regional radicalization and terrorism will be
energized. To repeat: Israel’s current delusional, myopic policies
in the occupied territories will render its people even more
profoundly insecure, for a state cannot live in peace and security
by denying it to others. Herein, too, lies the fundamental issue
from its origins: the Zionist enterprise is ideologically animated
by an underlying messianic-nationalist impulse, its historical
project of a Jewish state over all of historic Palestine (the Land
of Israel), free of non-Jews, not yet fulfilled.
And there would be no moral or legal issue had the land indeed been
un-peopled. This reality of encounter, of a vital Palestinian people
with a well-defined nationalism, simply could not square with
Zionist fantasies, leading to a permanent state of denial and
violence. To be sure, existential fears are real enough, and were
heightened during the early phase of the 1948 war or the initial
thrust of Egyptian-Syrian forces in the 1973 war. Too, violence and
terrorism perpetrated by both sides is a depressing fact,
stereotypes, distortions, and hate, the outcome of decades of
conflict.
Yet truer still is the emerging scholarly consensus sustained by
voluminous evidence and historical record that largely support the
Palestinian narrative: the 1948 dispossession occurred essentially
from calculated ethnic cleansing; practically all Arab-Israeli wars,
including 1948, 1956, and 1967, were viewed as opportunities for
expansion by successive Israeli leaderships who were keenly aware of
their military capabilities in relation to their Arab neighbors. The
point is negotiations and peaceful relations regionally and with
Palestinians are subordinate to territorial expansion and narrow
ethno-religious nationalism.
Indeed, to what good, to what end, is this application of massive
military power supported by great power patronage and influence in
the US and in the western world being used? How are Israel’s
long-term interests and permanent existence being served by its
frenetic drive for annexation of large portions of the West Bank and
the imprisoning of the Palestinian people in their own land? The
consequences for Israel’s future, for Zionism, are ominous.
First and foremost is a continuation of the national security state
and attendant deleterious economic, political, and social
consequences for Israeli society, including deeply ingrained,
widespread, even pathological racist assumptions and attitudes
routinely voiced by the highest officials. Furthermore, the
institutionalization of such a state is a concomitant to constant
wars and distorted perceptions of enemies, including periodic
attacks on neighboring states in order to maintain undisputed
military primacy and exclusive possession of WMD arsenals.
Second, the permanent state of war will continuously give rise to
radicalized movements, whether secular or Islamist, bent on righting
the injustice of Palestine and stopping what they see as Israeli
aggression. This can only lead to eventual large-scale war and even
mass destruction through the use of nuclear weapons, which can
escalate into worldwide destruction. The deliberate Israeli
destabilization of the Middle East and the successful attempts by
Israel and its influential supporters in Washington to drive a wedge
between the US and the Middle East is extremely dangerous to US
national security and to world peace.
Third, normalization of all aspects of relations with the Arab
world, one of the most important factors in Israel’s integration
into the region, of partnering with the Palestinians as a gate to
the movement of goods, ideas, and people, including cooperative
social and cultural relations and even potential con-federal
arrangements, is the key to Israel’s survival. The US and the West
will not forever support and finance an aggressive Jewish state when
so much economic and geo-strategic interests are at stake.
Fourth, to maintain Jewish demographic purity and preponderance, no
solution is acceptable to the Zionist right, not a two-state
solution, not a bi-national state, not a unitary state, not a
con-federal state. The apartheid plan being implemented in the
occupied territories can only mean one thing: continuing mutual
violence, though directed disproportionately against the
Palestinians, suicide bombings, and simmering frustration and
discontent. This obviously is not a recipe for coexistence, but for
control, not for security but for war. It is neither moral nor legal
nor practical to quash the Palestinian people as a people, to break
their tenacity and persistence, short of physical annihilation or
expulsion en masse.
Fifth, and most important, Labor Zionists and progressive Israelis
fond of talking about Zionism losing its “soul” through the
continued occupation and oppression of Palestine are correct but
require further self-examination. How far this loss of soul has gone
is perhaps gauged by the incredible, copiously documented,
phenomenon of Israeli soldiers gratuitously killing Palestinian
children and civilians as if they were animals, experiencing no
remorse or humanity.
Zionism’s mythical soul cannot be regained only by the calculated,
pragmatic self-interest of relinquishing the occupied territories,
even though this is central to peace. Redemption requires a step
that extends outward, towards the sincere acknowledgement of the
wrongs and sins committed against the Palestinian people. This
releases both Israelis and Palestinians from that recurring death
grip. Zionist acknowledgement is a fundamental step towards its
liberation and emergence into those humanistic, romantic notions
that capture the imagination of many Jews worldwide; it is the path
to mutual embrace with the Palestinians and the foundation for
Israel’s permanent peace and prosperity.
The essential issue of Palestine-Israel is justice for the
Palestinians and the realization of their aspirations to live in
peace and dignity and freedom. The essential need of Israelis is to
live in peace and security. In terms of a practical solution, this
means withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories with minor
territorial adjustments, the dismantling of all colonies, the
imaginative sharing of Jerusalem in terms of sovereignty and
residence, and the integration of Israel into the wider region.
The Palestinians, as long as they are relieved of the oppression of
the Israeli occupation and achieve genuine independence and free
national and cultural expression, do not mind whether the solution
comes via a two state, unitary state, or bi-national state. Which
model is implemented, matters little to them in practice and in
principle, as long as it extricates them from their current hellish
existence.
For the Israeli public, as Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions, rightly maintains, moral imperatives mean
very little; they are unmoved whether the Palestinians live in a
viable state or an apartheid state or get “transferred” as long as
they have security and quiet. (“Beyond Road Maps and Walls,” The
Link, Vol. 37, Issue 1, Jan.-March, 2004.) Already, polls show a
large majority of Israelis support Ehud Olmert’s publicly announced
plan for unilateral demarcation of borders and his annexation of
additional portions of the West Bank (Jordan Valley).
No good will come out of the Holy Land because the key player, the
US, captive to the improbable worldview of the neo-conservatives who
currently govern it, lacking the will to nudge Israel along in the
right direction because of (ever present) domestic political
pressures and American public indifference, has integrated Israel’s
policies into its own foreign policy. Meanwhile, Islamist fanatics
and Zionist right wing extremists, now assuming a centrist identity,
are busy destabilizing the region, plunging it head long into wars
of the nightmarish kind.
Issa Khalaf, author of Politics in Palestine, holds a Ph.D. in
political science and Middle East studies from Oxford University.
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