THE
PROBLEM WITH ISRAEL
Jeff
Halper
November 16, 2006
Let’s be
honest (for once): The problem in the Middle East is not the Palestinian people, not
Hamas, not the Arabs, not Hezbollah or the Iranians or the entire Muslim world.
It’s us, the Israelis. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the single greatest
cause of instability, extremism and violence in our region, is perhaps the
simplest conflict in the world to resolve. For almost 20 years, since the PLO’s
recognition of Israel within the 1949 Armistice Lines (the “Green Line”
separating Israel from the West Bank and Gaza), every Palestinian leader,
backed by large majorities of the Palestinian population, has presented Israel
with a most generous offer: A Jewish state on 78% of Israel/Palestine in return
for a Palestinian state on just 22% – the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. In
fact, this is a proposition supported by a large majority of both the
Palestinian and Israeli peoples. As reported in Ha’aretz (January
18, 2005):
Some 63
percent of the Palestinians support the proposal that after the establishment
of the state of Palestine and a solution to all the outstanding issues
-including the refugees and Jerusalem -a declaration will be issued recognizing
the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian state
as the state of the Palestinian people...On the Israeli side, 70 percent
supported the proposal for mutual recognition.
And if
Taba and the Geneva Initiative are indicators, the Palestinians are even
willing to “swap” some of the richest and most strategic land around Jerusalem and up through Modi’in for barren
tracts of the Negev.
And what
about the refugees, supposedly the hardest issue of all to tackle? It’s true
that the Palestinians want their right of return acknowledged. After all, it is
their right under international law. They also want Israel to acknowledge its role in driving
the refugees from the country in order that a healing process may begin (I
don’t have to remind anyone how important it is for us Jews that our suffering
be acknowledged). But they have said repeatedly that when it comes to
addressing the actual issue, a package of resettlement in Israel and the Palestinian state, plus
compensation for those wishing to remain in the Arab countries, plus the
possibility of resettlement in Canada, Australia and other countries would create
solutions acceptable to all parties. Khalil Shkaki, a Palestinian sociologist
who conducted an extensive survey among the refugees, estimates that only about
10%, mainly the aged, would choose to settle in Israel, a number (about 400,000) Israel could easily digest.
With an
end to the Occupation and a win-win political arrangement that would satisfy the
fundamental needs of both peoples, the Palestinians could make what would be
perhaps the most significant contribution of all to peace and stability in the Middle East. Weak as they are, the Palestinians
possess one source of tremendous power, one critical trump card: They are the
gatekeepers to the Middle East. For the Palestinian conflict is emblematic in the Muslim world. It
encapsulates the “clash of civilizations” from the Muslim point of view. Once
the Palestinians signal the wider Arab and Muslim worlds that a political
accommodation has been achieved that is acceptable to them, and that now is the
time to normalize relations with Israel, it will significantly undercut the forces
of fundamentalism, militarism and reaction, giving breathing space to those progressive
voices that cannot be heard today – including those in Israel. Israel, of course, would also have to
resolve the issue of the Golan Heights, which Syria has been asking it to do for years.
Despite the neocon rhetoric to the contrary, anyone familiar with the Middle East knows that such a dynamic is not
only possible but would progress at a surprisingly rapid pace.
The
problem is Israel in both its pre-and post-state
forms, which for the past 100 years has steadfastly refused to recognize the
national existence and rights of self-determination of the Palestinian people. Time
and again it has said “no” to any possibility of genuine peace making, and in
the clearest of terms. The latest example is the Convergence Plan (or
Realignment) of Ehud Olmert, which seeks to end the conflict forever by
imposing Israeli control over a “sovereign” Palestinian pseudo-state. “Israel will
maintain control over the security zones, the Jewish settlement blocs, and
those places which have supreme national importance to the Jewish people, first
and foremost a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty,” Olmert declared at
the January 2006 Herzliya Conference. “We will not allow the entry of
Palestinian refugees into the State of Israel.” Olmert’s plan, which he had
promised to implement just as soon as Hamas and Hezbollah were dispensed with,
would have perpetuated Israeli control over the Occupied Territories. It could not possibly have given
rise to a viable Palestinian state. While the “Separation Barrier,” Israel’s demographic border to the east,
takes only 10-15% of the West Bank, it incorporates into Israel the major settlement blocs, carves
the West
Bank into
small, disconnected, impoverished “cantons” (Sharon’s word), removes from the Palestinians
their richest agricultural land and one of the major sources of water. It also creates
a “greater” Israeli Jerusalem over the entire central portion of the West Bank, thereby cutting the economic,
cultural, religious and historic heart out of any Palestinian state. It then
sandwiches the Palestinians between the Wall/border and yet another “security”
border, the Jordan Valley, giving Israel two eastern borders. Israel would retain control of all the
resources necessary for a viable Palestinian state, and for good measure Israel would appropriate the Palestinians’
airspace, their communications sphere and even the right of a Palestinian state
to conduct its own foreign policy.
This plan
is obviously unacceptable to the Palestinians – a fact Olmert knows full well –
so it must be imposed unilaterally, with American assistance. But who cares? We
refused to talk genuinely with Arafat, refused to speak at all with Abu Mazen
and currently boycott entirely the elected Hamas government, arresting or
assassinating those associated with it. And if “Convergence” doesn’t fly this
time around, well, maintaining the status quo while building settlements has
been an effective policy for the past four decades and can be extended
indefinitely. True, Israel has descended into blind, pointless
violence – the Lebanon War of 2006 and, as this is being written, an
increasingly violent assault on Gaza. But the Israeli public has
accepted Barak’s line that there is no “partner for peace.” So if there is any
discontent among the voters, they are more likely to throw out the “bleeding
heart” liberal left and bring in the right with its failed doctrine of military-based
security.
Why? If
Israelis truly crave peace and security – “the right to be normal,” as Olmert
put it recently – then why haven’t they grabbed, or at least explored, each and
every opportunity for resolving the conflict? Why do they continually elect
governments that aggressively pursue settlement expansion and military
confrontation with the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors even though they want
to get the albatross of occupation off their necks? Why, if most Israelis truly
yearn to “separate” from the
Palestinians,
do they offer the Palestinians so little that separation is simply not an
option, even if the Palestinians are willing to make major concessions? “The
files of the Israeli Foreign Ministry,” writes the Israeli-British historian
Avi Shlaim in The Iron Wall (2001:49), “burst at the seams with evidence of
Arab peace feelers and Arab readiness to negotiate with Israel from September 1948 on.” To take
just a few examples of opportunities deliberately rejected:
• In the
spring and summer of 1949, Israel and the Arab states met under the
auspices of the UN’s Palestine Conciliation Committee (PCC) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Israel did not want to make any
territorial concessions or take back 100,000 of the 700,000 refugees demanded by
the Arabs. As much as anything else, however, was Ben Gurion’s observation in a
cabinet meeting that the Israeli public was “drunk with victory” and in no mood
for concessions, “maximal or minimal,” according to Israeli negotiator Elias
Sasson.
• In
1949 Syria’s leader Husni Zaim openly declared his
readiness to be the first Arab leader to conclude a peace treaty with Israel – as well as to resettle half the Palestinian
refugees in Syria. He repeatedly offered to meet with
Ben Gurion, who steadfastly refused. In the end only an armistice agreement was
signed.
• King
Abdullah of Jordan engaged in two years of
negotiations with Israel but was never able to make a
meaningful breakthrough on any major matter before his assassination. His offer
to meet with Ben Gurion was also refused. Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett
commented tellingly: “Transjordan said – we are ready for peace immediately. We said – of course, we too
want peace, but we cannot run, we have to walk.” Three weeks before his
assassination, King Abdullah said: “I could justify a peace by pointing to
concessions made by the Jews. But without any concessions from them, I am
defeated before I even start.”
• In
1952-53 extensive negotiations were held with the Syrian government of Adib Shishakli,
a pro-American leader who was eager for accommodation with Israel. Those talks failed because Israel insisted on exclusive control of
the Sea of
Galilee, Lake Huleh and the Jordan River.
•
Nasser’s repeated offers to talk peace with Ben Gurion, beginning soon after
the 1952 Revolution, finally ended with the refusal of Ben Gurion’s successor,
Moshe Sharett, to continue the process and a devastating Israeli attack (led by
Ariel Sharon) on an Egyptian military base in Gaza.
• In
general, Israel’s post-war inflexibility was due to
its success in negotiating the armistice agreements, which left it in a
politically, territorially and militarily superior position. “The renewed
threat of war had been pushed back,” writes Israeli historian
Benny
Morris in his book Righteous Victims. “So why strain to make a peace involving
major territorial concessions?” In a cable to Sharett, Ben Gurion stated flatly
what would become Israel’s long-term policy, essentially
valid until today: “Israel will not discuss a peace involving
the concession of any piece of territory. The neighboring states do not deserve
an inch of Israel’s land…We are ready for peace in exchange
for peace.” ln July, 1949, he told a visiting American journalist, “I am not in
a hurry and I can wait ten years. We are under no pressure whatsoever.” Nonetheless,
this period saw the emergence of the image of the Arab leaders as intractable
enemies, curried so carefully by Israel and representing such a powerful part
of the Israeli framing. Morris (1999: 268) summarizes it succinctly and
bluntly:
For
decades Ben-Gurion, and successive administrations after his, lied to the
Israeli public about the post-1948 peace overtures and about Arab interest in a
deal. The Arab leaders (with the possible exception of Abdullah) were
presented, one and all, as a recalcitrant collection of warmongers, hell-bent
on Israel’s destruction. The recent opening of the
Israeli archive offers a far more complex picture.
• In
late 1965 Abdel Hakim Amer, the vice-president and deputy commander of the Egyptian
army invited the head of the Mossad, Meir Amit, to come to Cairo. The visit was vetoed after stiff
opposition from Isser Harel, Eshkol’s intelligence advisor.Could the 1967 war
have been avoided? We’ll never know.
•
Immediately after the 1967 war, Israel sent out feelers for an
accommodation with both the Palestinians of the West Bank and with Jordan. The Palestinians were willing to
enter into discussion over peace, but only if that meant an independent Palestinian
state, an option Israel never even entertained. The
Jordanians were also ready, but only if they received full control over the
West Bank and, in particular, East Jerusalem and its holy places. King Hussein
even held meetings with Israeli officials but Israel’s refusal to contemplate a full
return of the territories scuttled the process. The annexation of a “greater” Jerusalem area and immediate program of settlement
construction foreclosed any chance for a full peace.
• In
1971 Sadat sent a letter to the UN Jarring Commission expressing Egypt’s willingness to enter into a peace
agreement with Israel. Israeli acceptance could have prevented
the 1973 war. After the war Golda Meir summarily dismissed Sadat’s renewed
overtures of peace talks.
• Israel ignored numerous feelers put out by
Arafat and other Palestinian leaders in the early 1970s expressing a readiness
to discuss peace with Israel.
•
Sadat’s attempts in 1978 to resolve the Palestine issue as a part of the Israel-Egypt
peace process that were rebuffed by Begin who refused to consider anything
beyond Palestinian “autonomy.”
• In
1988 in Algiers, as part of its declaration of Palestinian
independence, the PLO recognized Israel within the Green Line and expressed
a willingness to enter into discussions.
• In
1993, at the start of the Oslo process, Arafat and the PLO
reiterated in writing their recognition of Israel within the 1967 borders (again, on
78% of historic Palestine). Although they recognized Israel as a “legitimate” state in the Middle East, Israel did not reciprocate. The Rabin
government did not recognize the Palestinians’ national right of
self-determination, but was only willing to recognize the Palestinians as a negotiating
partner. Not in Oslo nor subsequently has Israel ever agreed to relinquish the
territory it conquered in 1967 in favor of a Palestinian state despite this
being the position of the UN (Resolution 242), the international community
(including, until Bush, the Americans), and since 1988, the Palestinians.
•
Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity of all was the undermining by
successive Labor and Likud governments of any viable Palestinian state by
doubling Israel’s settler population during the seven years of the Oslo “peace
process” (1993-2000), thus effectively eliminating the two-state solution.
• In
late 1995, Yossi Beilin, a key member of the Oslo negotiating team, presented Rabin with
the “Stockholm document” (negotiated with Abu Mazen’s team)
for resolving the conflict. So promising was this agreements that Abu Mazen had
tears in his eyes when he signed off on it. Rabin was assassinated a few days
later and his successor, Shimon Peres, turned it down flat.
• Israel’s dismissal of Syrian readiness to
negotiate peace, repeated frequently until this day, if Israel will make concessions on the
occupied Golan
Heights.
•
Sharon’s complete disregard for the Arab League’s 2002 offer of recognition,
peace and regional integration in return for relinquishing the Occupation.
• Sharon’s disqualification of Arafat, by
far the most congenial and cooperative partner Israel ever had, and the last Palestinian
leader who could “deliver,” and his subsequent boycott of Abu Mazen.
• Olmert
declared “irrelevant” the Prisoners’ Document in which all Palestinian factions,
including Hamas, agreed on a political program seeking a two-state solution
–
followed by attempts to destroy the democratically-elected government of Hamas by
force; and on until this day when
• In
September and October 2006 Bashar Assad made repeated overtures for peace with Israel, declaring in public: “I am ready
for an immediate peace with Israel, with
which we
want to live in peace.” On the day of Assad’s first statement to that regard, Prime
Minister Olmert declared, “We will never leave the Golan Heights,” accused Syria of “harboring terrorists” and,
together with his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, announced that “conditions are
not ripe for peace with Syria.”
To all
this we can add the unnecessary wars, more limited conflicts and the bloody attacks
that served mainly to bolster Israel’s position, directly or indirectly, in its
attempt
to
extend its control over the entire land west of the Jordan: The systematic
killing between 1948-1956 of 3000-5000 “infiltrators,” Palestinian refugees,
mainly unarmed, who sought mainly to return to their homes, to till their
fields or to recover lost property; the 1956 war with Egypt, fought partly in
order to prevent the reemergence onto the international agenda of the
“Palestine Problem,” as well as to strengthen Israel militarily, territorially
and diplomatically; military operations against Palestinian civilians beginning
with the infamous killings in Sharafat, Beit Jala and most notoriously Qibia,
led by Sharon’s Unit 101. These operations continue in the Occupied Territories and Lebanon until this day, mainly for purposes
of collective punishment and “pacification.” Others include the campaign,
decades old, of systematically liquidating any effective Palestinian leader;
the three wars in Lebanon (Operation Litani in 1978,
Operation Peace for the Galilee in 1982 and the war of 2006); and more.
Lurking
behind all these military actions, be they major wars or “targeted assassinations,”
is the consistent and steadfast Israeli refusal (in fact extending back to the
pre-Zionist days of the 1880s) to deal directly and seriously with the
Palestinians. Israel’s strategy until today is to bypass
and encircle them, making deals with governments that isolate and,
unsuccessfully so far, neutralize the Palestinians as players. This was most
tellingly shown in the Madrid peace talks, when Israel only allowed Palestinian
participation as part of the Jordanian delegation. But it includes the Oslo “peace process” as well. While Israel insisted on a letter from Arafat
explicitly recognizing Israel as a “legitimate construct” in the Middle East, and later demanded a specific
statement recognizing Israel as a Jewish state (both of which it
got), no Israeli government ever recognized the collective rights of the
Palestinian people to self-determination. Rabin was forthright as to the
reason: If Israel recognizes the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, it
means that a Palestinian state must by definition emerge – and Israel did not want to promise that (Savir
1998:47). So except for vague pronouncements about not wanting to rule over
another people and “our hand outstretched in peace,” Israel has never allowed the framework for
genuine negotiations. The Palestinians must be taken into account, they may be
asked to react to one or another of our proposals, but they are certainly not
equal partners with claims to the country rivaling ours. Israel’s fierce
response to the eruption of the second Intifada, when it shot more than a
million rounds, including missiles, into civilian centers in the West Bank and Gaza
despite the complete lack of shooting from the Palestinian side during the
Intifada’s first five days, can only be explained as punishing them for
rejecting what Barak tried to impose on them at Camp David, disabusing them of
the notion that are equals in deciding the future of “our” country. We will
beat them, Sharon used to say frequently, “until they get ‘the message’.” And what is the
“message”? That this is our country and only we Israeli Jews have the
prerogative of deciding whether and how we wish to divide it.
Non-Constraining
Conflict Management
The
irrelevance of the Palestinians to Israeli policy-makers is merely a localized expression
of an overall assumption that has determined Israeli policy towards the Arabs since
the founding of the state. Israel, Prime Ministers from Ben Gurion to
Olmert have asserted, is simply too strong for the Arabs to ignore. We
therefore cannot make peace too soon. Once we get everything we want, the Arabs
will still be willing to sue for peace with us. The answer, then, to the
apparent contradiction of why Israel claims it desires peace and
security and yet pursues policies of conflict and expansion has four parts.
(1)
Territory and hegemony trump peace. As Ben Gurion disclosed years ago, Israel’s geo-political goals take
precedence over peace with any Arab country. Since a state of non-conflict is
even better than peace (Israel has such a relationship with Syria, with whom it hasn’t fought for 34
years, and is thereby able to avoid the compromises associated with peace that
might threaten its occupation of the Golan Heights), Israel makes “peace” only with countries
that acquiescence to its expansionist agenda. Jordan gave up all claims to the West Bank and East Jerusalem and has even ceased to actively advocate
for Palestinian rights. Peace with Egypt, it is true, cost Israel the Sinai Peninsula, but it left its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank intact. Differentiating between
those parts of the Arab world with which it wants an actual peace agreement, those
with which it needs merely a state of non-conflict and those which it believes
it can control, isolate and defeat creates a situation of great flexibility,
allows Israel to employ the carrot or the stick according to its particular
agenda at any particular time. Israel can pursue this strategy today only
because of the umbrella, political, military and financial, provided by the United States. This is rooted in many different sources
including the influence of the organized Jewish community and the Christian fundamentalists
on domestic politics and the Congress most obviously. Bipartisan and unassailable
support for Israel, however, arises from Israel’s place in the American arms industry
and the US’ defense diplomacy. Since the
mid-1990s Israel has specialized in developing
hi-tech components for weapons systems, and in this way it has also gained a central
place in the world’s arms and security industries. One could look at Israel’s suppression of the Intifadas, its
attempted pacification of the Occupied Territories and occasional combat with the
likes of Hezbollah as valuable opportunities in almost laboratory-like
conditions to develop useful weaponry and tactics. This has made it extremely
valuable to the West. In fact, Israel is among the five largest exporters
of arms in the world, and is poised to overtake Russia as #2 in just a few years (based on
Jane’s assessment, May 2, 2006). The fact that it has discrete
military ties with many Muslim countries, including Iran, adds another layer of rationality
to its guiding assumption that a separate peace with Arab states is achievable
without major concessions to the Palestinians. If any state significantly
challenges Israeli positions, Israel can pull rank as the gatekeeper to
American military programs, including to some degree the US defense industry,
and thus to major sources of hi-tech research and development, a formidable position
indeed.
(2) A
militarily defined security doctrine. Israel’s concept of “security” has always
been so exaggerated that it leaves no breathing space whatsoever for the
Palestinians, thus eliminating any viable resolution of the conflict. This
reflects, of course, its traditional reliance on overwhelming military
superiority (the “qualitative edge”) over the Arabs. So overwhelming is it
perceived – despite its near-disaster in the 1973 war, its failure to pacify
the Occupied Territories and, most recently, its failure against
Hezbollah in Lebanon – that it precludes any need for
accommodation or genuine negotiations, let alone meaningful concessions to the
Palestinians. Several Israel scholars, including exmilitary
officials, have written on the preponderance of the military in formulating government
policy. Ben Gurion’s linking the concept of nation building with that of a nation-in-arms,
writes Yigal Levy (reviewing Yoram Peri’s recent book Generals in the Cabinet
Room: How the Military Shapes Israeli Policy), made the army an instrument for maintaining
a social order that rested on keeping war a permanent fixture.
The
centrality of the army depends on the centrality of war…But the moment the
political leadership opted to create a ‘mobilized,’ disciplined and inequitable
society by turning the army into the ‘nation builder’ and making war a
constant, the politicians became dependent on the army. It was not just
dependence on the army as an organization, but on military thinking. The
military view of political reality has become the main anchor of Israeli statesmanship,
from the victory of Ben Gurion and his allies over Moshe Sharett’s more conciliatory
policies in the 1950s, through the occupation as a fact of life from the 1960s,
to the current preference for another war in Lebanon over the political option (Ha’aretz
August 25, 2006).
Ze’ev
Maoz, in an article entitled “Israel’s Nonstrategy of Peace,” argues
that
Israel
has a well-developed security doctrine [but] does not have a peace
policy…Israel’s history of peacemaking has been largely reactive, demonstrating
a pattern of hesitancy, risk-avoidance, and gradualism that stands in stark
contrast to its proactive, audacious, and trigger-happy strategic doctrine…The
military is essentially the only government organization that offers policy
options – typically military plans – at times of crisis. Israel’s foreign
ministry and diplomatic community are reduced to public relations functions, explaining
why Israel is using force instead of diplomacy to deal with crisis situations (Tikkun
21(5), September 2006: 49-50).
Again,
this approach to dealing with the Arabs is not recent: It is found throughout
the entire history of Zionism and has been dominant in the Yishuv/Israeli
leadership from the time of the Arab “riots” and the recommendations for
partition from the Peel commission in 1937 until this day, with a few very
brief interruptions: Sharett (1954-55), Levi Eshkol (1963-69) and, perhaps,
Rabin in his Oslo phase (1992-95). Sharett labeled it the camp of the military
“activists,” and in 1957 described it as follows:
The
activists believe that the Arabs understand only the language of force...The
State of Israel must, from time to time, prove clearly that is it strong, and
able and willing to use force, in a devastating and highly effective way. If it
does not prove this, it will be swallowed up, and perhaps wiped off the face of
the earth. As to peace – this approach states – it is in any case doubtful; in
any case very remote. If peace comes, it will come only if [the Arabs] are
convinced that this country cannot be beaten….If [retaliatory] operations…rekindle
the fires of hatred, that is no cause for fear for the fires will be fueled in
any event (Morris, 1999: 280).
Feeling
that its security is guaranteed by its military power and that a separate peace
(or state of non-conflict) with each Arab state is sufficient, Israel allows itself an expanded concept
of “security” that eliminates a negotiated settlement. Thus Israel defines the conflict with the
Palestinians just as the US defines its War on Terror: As an us-or-them
equation where “they” are fundamentally, irretrievably and permanently our enemies.
It is no longer a political conflict, and thus it has no solution. Israel’s security, in this view, can be
guaranteed only in military terms, or until each and every one of “them” [the
Palestinians] is either dead, in prison, driven out of the country or confined
to a sealed enclave. This is why rational attempts to resolve the conflict
based on mutual interests, identifying the sources of the conflict and
negotiating solutions has proven futile all these years. Israel’s guiding agenda and principles
have nothing whatsoever to do with either the Palestinians or actual peace. They
are rooted instead in an uncompromising project of creating a purely Jewish
space in the entire Land of Israel, with closed islands of
Palestinians. Even Israel’s most ardent supporters –
organized American Jewry, for instance – do not grasp this (Christian
fundamentalists and neocons do, and its just fine with them). The claim made by
these “pro-Israel” supporters and, indeed, by Israel itself, that Israel has always sought peace and has
been rebuffed by Arab intransigence, is actually the opposite of the case. Again,
Israel is seeking a proprietorship and regional
hegemony that can only be achieved unilaterally, rendering negotiations
superfluous and irrelevant. Like the Zionist ideology itself, Israel’s security doctrine is
self-contained, a closed circuit. That’s why peace-making efforts over the years,
Israeli as well as foreign, have failed miserably. If the assumption –
encouraged by Israel – is that the conflict can be
resolved through diplomatic means, then Israel can justly be accused of acting in
bad faith. Israel and its interlocutors are
essentially talking past each other.
The
prominence (one is tempted to say “monopoly”) of the military in political policy-making
explains the mystery of why Labor in the post-Ben Gurion era chose territorial
expansion over peace. Uri Savir, the head of Israel’s Foreign Ministry under Rabin
and Peres and a chief negotiator in the Oslo process, provides a glimpse into
this dynamic in his book The Process (1998:81, 99, 207-208). After the
Declaration of Principles between Israel and the Palestinians was signed on
the White House lawn in September 1993;
Rabin
chose a new team of negotiators. Led by Deputy Chief of Staff Gen. Amnon
Shahak, it was composed mostly of military officers. When the military grumbled
bitterly at having been shut out of the Oslo talks, Rabin…did not reject the
criticism...That Israel’s approach should be dictated by the army invariably
made immediate security considerations the dominant one, so that the
fundamentally political process had been subordinated to short-term military
needs.
In Grenada, Peres had painstakingly explained
to Arafat Israel’s stand on security, especially
external security and the border passages. “Mr. Chairman, I’m going to give you
the straight truth, without embellishment,” he said…We will not compromise on
the operational side of controlling the border passages [to Jordan and Egypt]. We’re concerned about the
smuggling of weapons. Ten pistols can make for many victims,” he stressed. “This
is absolutely vital to our security.”
Arafat,
who translated this straight talk into a vision of Palestinians caged in on all
sides, replied: “I cannot go for a Bantustan….”
In the
end, Israel’s security doctrine generally prevailed. Would
compliance with Arafat’s demand for more power and responsibility have improved
Israel’s security? The truth is, we will never know….
Now the
bureaucrats and the officers who ruled the Palestinians had been asked to pass
on their powers to their “wards”…Some of these administrators found it almost
unbearable to sit down in Eilat with representatives of their “subjects.” We
had been engaged in dehumanization for so long that we really thought ourselves
“more equal” – and at the same time the threatened side, therefore justifiably
hesitant. The group negotiating the transfer of civil powers did not rebel
against their mandate, but whenever we offered a concession or a compromise,
our people tended to begin by saying” “We have decided to allow you…”
“Security”
became ever more constrictive as right-wing soldiers and security advisors began
moving into the highest echelons of the military and political establishments during
the years of Likud rule. Fourteen of the first fifteen Chiefs of Staff were associated
with the Labor Party; the last three – Shaul Mofaz, Moshe Ya’alon and Dan Halutz
– are associated with the right wing of the Likud, a mix of ideology and
militarism that reinforces a concept of security that, even if sincerely held,
cannot create the space needed for a viable Palestinian state.
(3) Israel as a self-defined bastion of the
West in the Middle
East. Israel’s European orientation, including a
view of the Arab world as a mere hinterland offering Israel little of value, explains why Israel does not place more importance
pursuing peace with its neighbors. Israel does not consider itself a part of
the Middle
East and
has no desire whatsoever to integrate into it. If anything, it sees itself as a
Middle Eastern variation of Singapore. Like Singapore, it seeks a correct relationship
with its hinterland, but views itself as a service center for the West, to
which its economy and political affiliations are tied. (Israel, we might note, has built the
Singaporean army into what it is today, the strongest military force in Southeast Asia.) That means it lacks the
fundamental motivation to achieve any form of regional integration, as
evidenced by its off-hand dismissal of the Saudi Initiative of 2002 that, with
the backing of the Arab League, offered Israel recognition, peace and regional
integration in return for relinquishing the Occupation. And finally,
(4) The
immaterial Palestinians. Israel believes that it can achieve a
separate peace with countries of the Arab and Muslim worlds (and maintain its
overall strong international position) without reference to the Palestinians. Not
with the peoples, it is true; that would require a degree of concession to the
Palestinians “on the ground” beyond which Israel is willing to go. Knowing this yet
having little interest in either the Palestinian people or the Muslim masses,
Israel is willing to limit its state of peace/non-conflict with governments –
Egypt, Jordan, an emerging Iraq (although Israel is arming the Kurds), the Gulf
states, the countries of North Africa (Libya included), Pakistan, Indonesia and
some Muslim African countries. In the view of Israeli leaders surveying with
satisfaction the political landscape, the notion that Israel is too strong to ignore seems to
hold true. Though it has sustained some serious hits in Lebanon, at the moment Israel is flying high with its central
place in the American neocon agenda of consolidating American Empire, its key
role in what the Pentagon calls “The Long War” to ensure American hegemony,
remains, despite growing doubts over Israel’s ability to “deliver.” Whether or
not US policy has been “Israelized” or the “strategic
alliance” between the two countries merely rests on perceived common interests
and services Israel can offer the US, the Bush Administration has
provided Israel with a window of opportunity it is exploiting
to the hilt. Despite the Lebanese setback, Israeli leaders still believe they
can “win,” they can beat the Palestinians, engineer Israel’s permanent control over the Occupied Territories and achieve enough peace with
enough of the Arab and Muslim worlds. That is what Olmert’s “Convergence Plan”
(now temporarily shelved) is all about, and why he has resolved to implement it
while Bush is still in office. Israel’s security, then, rests in that broad
sphere defined by military might, services provided to the US military, the
uncritical support of the American Congress, its military diplomacy including
arms sales, Israel’s central role in the neocon agenda, its ability to parley European
guilt over the Holocaust into political support, its ability to manipulate Arab
and Muslim governments and its ability to suppress Palestinian resistance.
So
what’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, unless one truly wants peace, security
and “the right to be normal” – and unless considerations such as justice and human
rights enter into the equation. From a purely utilitarian perspective, Israel is a tremendous success. Perhaps
the most hopeful sign of Israel’s “normalization” is its acceptance
by most of the Arab and Muslim world, best illustrated by the very Saudi Initiative
Israel so summarily ignored. But this also pinpoints the problem. The Saudi/Arab
League offer was contingent upon Israel’s relinquishing the Occupation, something
it is not prepared to do. True to form, Israel responded to the offer “on the ground”
rather than through diplomatic channels. Sharon carried out his plan of “disengagement”
from Gaza explicitly to ensure Israel’s permanent and unassailable rule over
the West
Bank and East Jerusalem, while his successor Olmert
vigorously pushed a plan under which the Occupation would be transformed into a
permanent state of Israeli control. All this conforms to Israeli policy going
back to Ben Gurion which asserts that if Israel limits its aim to achieving a modus
vivendi with the Arab and Muslim worlds rather than full-fledged peace, it can
ensure its security while retaining control over the land west of the Jordan River. To be sure, occasional spats will
erupt such as those in Gaza or with the Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel might even be called upon to do America’s dirty work in Iran, as it played its role (limited as
it was) in Iraq. But those (or at least this was the
thinking before the Lebanese debacle) are easily contained, American co-opting
of Egypt and Jordan providing the necessary cushion.
This
Israeli realpolitik rests on an extremely pragmatic approach to the conflict akin
to what the British termed “muddling through.” If Israel’s goal was to resolve the conflict
with the Palestinians and seek genuine peace and regional integration, it could
easily have adopted policies that would have achieved that, probably long ago. The
goal, however, is conflict management, maintaining the “status quo” in
perpetuity, and not conflict resolution. Muddling through well suits Israel’s attempt to balance the unbalance-able:
expanding territorially at the expense of the Palestinians while still maintaining
an acceptable level of security and “quiet.” It enables Israel to meet each challenge
as it arises rather than to lock itself into a strategy or set of policies that
fail to take into account unexpected developments. Yesterday we tried Oslo; today we’ll hit Gaza and Lebanon, tomorrow “convergence.”
It may
not look rational or neat, but conflict management means going with the flow;
staying on top of things, knowing where you are going and having contingency plans
always at the ready to take advantage of any opening, and dealing with events
as they happen. Not long-term strategies but a vision implemented in many often
imperceptible stages over time, under the radar so as to attract as little
attention or opposition as possible, realized through short-term initiatives
like the Convergence Plan which progressively nail down gains “on the ground.”
If this
analysis is correct, Israel is willing to settle for peace-and-quiet rather
than genuine peace, for management of the conflict rather than closure, for
territorial gains that may perpetuate tensions and occasional conflicts in the
region, but do not jeopardize Israel’s essential security. Declaring “the right
to be normal” becomes a PR move designed to blame the other side and cast Israel as the victim; it is not something
that Israeli leaders sincerely expect. Indeed, their very policies are based on
the assumption that functional normality – an acceptable level of “quiet,” the
economy doing well, a fairly normal existence for an insulated Israeli public
most of the time – is a preferred status to the concessions required for a
genuine, and attainable, peace.
What
About the Battered And Exhausted Israeli Public?
The
Jewish Israeli public only partially buys into all this. It would prefer actual
peace and normalization to territorial gains in the Occupied Territories, though it definitely prefers
separation from the Arab world to regional integration. If Israelis prefer
peace to continued conflict with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors,
why, then, do they vote for governments that pursue the exact opposite, that
prefer conflict management and territory to peace? Mystification of the
conflict on the part of Israeli leaders plays a large role, just as it does in
the “clash of civilizations” discourse in other Western countries. Since Israel’s strategy of enduring a certain
level of conflict as an acceptable price for territorial expansion would not be
tolerated if it was stated in those terms, successive Israel governments from Ben Gurion to
Olmert instead convinced the public that there is simply no political solution.
The Arabs are our intransigent and permanent enemies; we Israeli Jews, the
victims, have sought only peace and a normal existence, but in vain. And that’s
just the way it is. As Yitzhak Shamir put it so colorfully: "The Arabs are
the same Arabs, the Jews are the same Jews and the sea [into which the former
seek to throw the latter] is the same sea." Israel effectively adopted the clash of
civilizations notion years before Samuel Huntington.
This manipulative
framing of the conflict also fashions discourse in a way that prevents the
public from “getting it.” Israel’s official national narrative
supplies a coherent, compelling justification for doing whatever we like
without being held accountable – indeed, it renders all criticism of us as
“anti-Semitism.” The self-evident framing which determines the parameters of
all political, media and public discussion goes something like this:
The Land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people;
Arabs (the term “Palestinian” is seldom used) reside there by sufferance and
not by right. Since the problem is implacable Arab hatred and terrorism and the
Palestinians are our permanent enemies, the conflict has no political solution.
Israel’s policies are based on concerns for security.
The Arabs have rejected all our many peace offers; we are the victim fighting
for our existence. Israel therefore is exempt from
accountability for its actions under international law and covenants of human
rights.
Any
solution, then, must leave Israel in control of the entire country. Any
Palestinian state will have to be truncated, non-viable and semi-sovereign. The
conflict is a win-lose proposition: either we “win” or “they” do. The answer to
Israel’s security concerns is a militarily strong Israel aligned with the United States.
One of
this framing’s most glaring omissions is the very term “occupation.” Without that,
debate is reduced solely to what “they” are doing to us, in other words, to
seemingly self-evident issues of terrorism and security. There are no “Occupied Territories” (in fact, Israel officially denies it even has an
occupation), only Judea
and Samaria, the heart of our historic
homeland, or strangely disembodied but certainly hostile “territories.” Quite
deliberately, then, Israelis are studiously ignorant of what is going on in the
Occupied Territories, whether in terms of settlement expansion and other
“facts” on the ground or in terms of government policies. One can listen to the
endless political talk shows and commentaries in the Israeli media without ever
hearing a reference to the Occupation. Pieces of it yes: Settlements, perhaps;
the Separation Barrier (called a “fence” in Israel) occasionally; almost never house
demolitions or references to the massive system of Israel-only highways that
have incorporated the West Bank irreversibly into Israel proper, never the Big Picture. Although
Olmert’s Convergence Plan, which is of fundamental importance to the future of
Israelis, is based upon the annexation of Israel’s major settlement blocs, the
public has never been shown a map of those blocs and therefore has no clear
idea of what is actually being proposed or its significance for any eventual
peace. But that is considered irrelevant anyway. When, very occasionally,
Israelis are confronted by the massive “facts of the ground,” they invoke the
mechanism of minimization: OK, they say, we know all that, but nothing is irreversible,
the fence and the settlements can be dismantled, all options continue to be open.
In this way they do not have to deal with the enormity of what they have
created, one system for two peoples, which, if the status quo cannot be
maintained forever, can only lead to a single bi-national state or to
apartheid, confining the Palestinians to a truncated Bantustan. While the official narrative
deflects public attention from the sources of the conflict, minimization
relieves Israelis of responsibility for either perpetuating or resolving it.
Framing,
then, becomes much more than a PR exercise. It becomes an essential element of
defense in insulating the core of the conflict – the Occupation itself, the
proactive policies of settlement that belie the claims of “security,” and
Israel’s responsibility as the occupying power – from both public scrutiny and
public discussion. Defending that framing is therefore tantamount to defending Israel’s very claim to the country, the very
“moral basis” of Zionism we Israelis constantly invoke. No wonder it is
impossible to engage even liberal “pro-Israeli” individuals and organizations
in a substantive and genuine discussion of the issues at hand.
One
result of such discursive processes is the disempowerment of the Israeli public.
If, in fact, there is no solution, then all that’s left is to hunker down and
carve out as much normality as possible. For Israelis the entire conflict with
the Arabs has been reduced to one technical issue: How do we ensure our
personal security? Since conflict management assumes a certain level of
violence, the public has entered into a kind of deal with the government: You
reduce terrorism to “acceptable” levels, and we won’t ask how you do it. In a
sense the public extends to the government a line of credit. We don’t care how
you guarantee our personal security. Establish a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories if you think that will work; load
the Arabs on trucks and transfer them out of the country; build a wall so high
that, as someone said, even birds can’t fly over it. We, the Israeli Jewish
public, don’t care how you do it. Just do it if you want to be re-elected.
This is
what accounts for the apparent contradiction between the public will and the
policies of the governments it elects. That explains how in 1999 Barak was
elected with a clear mandate to end the conflict, and when he failed and the
Intifada broke out, that same public, in early 2001, elected his mirror
opposite, Ariel Sharon, the architect of Israel’s settlement policies who
eschewed any negotiations at all. Israelis are willing to sacrifice peace for
security – and do not see the contradiction – because true “peace” is considered
unattainable. In fact, “peace” carries a negative political connotation amongst
most Israelis. It denotes concessions, weakness, increased vulnerability. Israel’s unique electoral system, in which
voters cast their ballots for parties rather than candidates and end up either with
unwieldy coalition governments incapable of formulating and pursuing a coherent
policy, only adds to the public’s disempowerment and its unwillingness to entrust
any government with a mandate to arrive at a final settlement with the Arabs.
Because
the “situation,” as we call it, has been reduced to a technical problem of personal
security without political solution, Israelis have become passive, bordering on
irresponsible. They have been removed from the political equation altogether. Any
attempt
to actually resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict (and its corollaries) will
have to come from the outside; the Israeli public will simply not make a
proactive move in that direction. While the government will obviously oppose
such intervention, the Israeli public may actually welcome it – if it is
announced by a friend (the US), pronounced authoritatively with little space
for haggling (as Reagan did over the sale of AWACs surveillance aircraft to
Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s), and couched as originating out of concern for
Israel’s security. Israeli Jews may be likened to the whites of South Africa during the last phase of apartheid.
The latter had grown accustomed to apartheid and would not themselves have
risen up to abolish it. But when international and domestic pressures became
unbearable and de Klerk finally said, “It’s over,” there was no uprising, even
among the Afrikaners who constructed the regime. I sincerely believe that if cowboy
Bush would get up one morning and say to Israel: “We love you, we will guarantee
your security, but the Occupation has to end. Period,” that you would hear the sigh
of relief from Israelis all the way in Washington.
As it
stands, the Israeli leadership thinks we are winning, the people are not so sure
but are too disinformed and cowed by security threats (bogus and real) to act,
and the peace movement has been reduced to a pariah few crying out in the
wilderness. Given the support Israel receives from the US in return for services
rendered to the Empire, Europe’s quiescent complicity and Palestinian
isolation, the question remains whether Israel’s strategy of conflict
management has not in fact succeeded – again, considerations of justice,
genuine peace and human rights aside. Say what you will, the realists can point
to almost sixty years during which Israel has emerged as a regional, if not
global superpower in firm control of the greater Land of Israel. If Olmert succeeds in implementing
his Convergence Plan, the conflict with the Palestinians is over from Israel’s point of view – and we’ve won.
Yet so
overwhelming is our military might, so massive and permanent have we made our
controlling presence in the Occupied Territories, that we have fatally overplayed
our hand. Ben Gurion’s formula worked. We now have everything we want
– the
entire Land of Israel west of the Jordan River – and the Arab governments have sued
for peace. But four elements of the equation that Ben Gurion (or Meir or Peres,
or Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, Olmert and all the rest) did not take into account
have arisen to fundamentally challenge the paradigm of power:
(1)
Demographics. Israel does not have enough Jews to
sustain its control over the greater Land of Israel. (Indeed, whether Israel proper can remain “Jewish” is a
question, with the Jewish majority down just under 75%, factoring in the Arab
population, the non-Jewish Russians and emigration.) Zionism created a strong
state, but it did not succeed in convincing Jews to settle it. The Jewish
population of Israel represents less than a third of
world Jewry; only 1% of American Jews made aliyah. In fact, whenever Jews had a
choice – in North
Africa,
the former Soviet Union, Iraq, Iran, South Africa and Argentina, not to mention all the countries
of Europe and North America – they chose not to come to Israel. And it is demographics that is
driving Olmert’s Convergence Plan. “It's only a matter of time before the
Palestinians demand 'one man, one vote' -and then, what will we do?", he
asked plaintively at the 2004 Herzilya conference. Olmert’s scheme retains
control of Israel and the Occupied Territories (in his terms Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem) while doing the only thing
possible with the Palestinians who make up half the population – locking them
into a truncated Bantustan on a sterile 1520% of the country.
(2)
Palestinians. Israel’s historical policy of ignoring and
bypassing the Palestinians can no longer work. Palestinians comprise about half
the population of the land west of the Jordan River, all of which Israel seeks
to control, and will be a clear majority if significant numbers of refugees are
repatriated to the Palestinian Bantustan. Keeping that population under control
means that Israel must adopt ever more repressive policies, whether prohibiting
Israeli Arab citizens from bringing their spouses and children from the
Occupied Territories to live with them in Israel, as recent legislation has
decreed, or imprisoning an entire people behind 26-foot concrete walls. Despite
Olmert’s assertion that Israelis have a right to live a normal life, normalcy
cannot be achieved unilaterally. Neither an Occupation nor a Bantustan nor any other form of oppression
can be normalized or routinized; it will always be resisted by the oppressed. Strong
as Israel is militarily, it has not succeeded in
pacifying the Palestinians over the last 40 years of occupation, 60 years since
the Naqba or century since the Zionist movement claimed exclusive patrimony
over Palestine and begin to systematically dispossess the
indigenous population. The Palestinians today possess one weapon that Israel cannot defeat, that it must one day
deal with, and that is their position as gatekeepers. Until the Palestinians signal
the wider Arab, Muslim and international communities that they have reached a satisfactory
political accommodation with Israel, the conflict will continue and Israel will fail to achieve either closure
or normalcy.
(3) The
Arab/Muslim peoples. The role of Palestinians as gatekeepers reflects the rise
in importance of civil society as a player in political affairs. Israel’s lack of concern over the Arab and
Muslim “streets,” its reliance solely on peace-making with governments, indicates
a major failure in Israel’s strategic approach to the
conflict: Its underestimation of the power of the people. Sentiments such as
“We don’t care about making peace with the Arab peoples; correct relations with
their governments are enough,” ignore the fragile state of Arab governments
created by the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, which in turn has been fueled in
large part (though not exclusively, of course) by the Occupation. If Hezbollah
has the power to create the instability is has, imagine what will happen if the
Muslim Brotherhood seizes power in Egypt. The disproportionate bias towards Israel in American and European policies
only fuels and sharpens the “clash of civilizations,” while Israel’s Occupation effectively prevents
progressive elements from emerging in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The strategic
role played by Palestinians as gatekeepers has a significant effect upon the
stability of the entire global system. The Israel-Palestine conflict is no
longer a localized one.
(4)
International civil society. As we have seen, Israeli leaders, surveying the international
political landscape as elected officials do, take great comfort. They believe that,
with uncritical and unlimited American support, their country is “winning” its conflict
over the Palestinians (and Israel’s other enemies, real and
imagined). Like political leaders everywhere, they don’t seriously take “the
people” into account. Yet, The People – what is known as international civil
society – have some achievements under their belt when it comes to defeating
injustice. They forced the American government to enforce the civil rights of
black people in the US and to abandon the warin Vietnam. They played major roles in the
collapse of South African apartheid, of the Soviet Union and of the Shah’s regime, among
many others. Since governments will almost never do the right thing on their
own, it was civil society, through the newly established UN, that forced them
to accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and
a whole corpus of human rights and international law. With the International
Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court at our disposal, as well
as other instruments, and as civil society organizes into Social Forums and
other forms of action coalitions, major cases of injustice, such as Israel’s Occupation, are becoming less and
less sustainable. As the Occupation assumes the proportions of an injustice on
the scale of apartheid – a conflict with global implications – Olmert may convince
Bush and Blair to support his plan, but the conflict will not be over until two
gatekeepers say it is, the Palestinians and the people worldwide.
The Only
Way Out: Forcing Israel To Take Responsibility
Israel
has only one way out: It must take responsibility for its actions. No more
blaming Arafat and Hamas and the Arabs in general. No more playing the victim. No
more denying Occupation or the human rights of a people just as lodged into
this land as the Jews, if not more so. No more using the military to ensure
“our” security. No more unilateralism. Instead, Israel must work with the Palestinians to
create a genuine two-state solution. No Geneva Initiative whereby the
Palestinians get a non-viable 22% of the country; nor
convergence/realignment/apartheid. Simply an end of Occupation and a return to
the 1967 borders (in which Israel still retains 78% of the country) – or, if a
just and viable two-state solution is in fact buried forever under massive
Israeli settlement blocs and highways, then another solution. And a just
solution to the refugee issue. Over time, the Palestinians – who are greater
friends of Israel than any Israeli realizes – might even use their good offices
to eventually enter into a regional confederation with the neighboring states
(see my article in Tikkun 20[1)]17-21: “Israel in a Middle East Union: A
‘Two-stage’ Approach to the Conflict.”).
This is
a tall order, and it will not happen soon. The military’s mobilization of Jewish
Israelis has created a remarkably high consensus (85% support the construction
of the Wall; 93% supported the recent war in Lebanon), making it impossible for truly divergent
views to penetrate. Some of this has to do with overpowering feelings of self-righteousness,
combined with the perception of Israel as the victim (and hence having no responsibility
for what happens, a party that cannot be held accountable). Disdain towards
Arabs also allows Israel to harm Palestinian (and again
Lebanese) civilian populations with impunity and no sense of guilt or
wrongdoing.
Although
Israel has a small but vital peace movement and dissident voices are heard
among intellectuals and in the press, the combination of mystification (“there
is no partner for peace”), disdain, vilification and dehumanization of the
Palestinians, a self-perception of Israelis-as-victims, the supremacy of
all-encompassing “security” concerns, and a compelling but closed
meta-narrative means that little if any space exists for a public debate that
could actually change policy. Because the Israel public has effectively removed
itself as a player – except in granting passive support to its political
leaders who pursue a program of territorial expansion and conflict management –
a genuine, just and sustainable peace will not come to the region without
massive international pressure. This is starting to happen as the Occupation
assumes global proportions and churches, together with other civil society
groups, weigh campaigns of divestment and economic sanctions against Israel – forms of the very nonviolent
resistance that the world has been demanding. The Israeli Jewish public,
unfortunately, has abrogated its responsibility. Zionism, which began as a
movement of Jews to take charge of their lives, to determine their own fate,
has ironically become a skein of pretexts serving only to prevent Israelis from
taking their fate in their own hands. The “deal” with the political parties has
turned Israeli government policies into mere pretexts for oppression, for
“winning” over another people, for colluding with American Empire.
The
problem with Israel is that, for all the reasons given
in this paper, it has made itself impervious to normal political processes. Negotiations
do not work because Israeli policy is based on “bad faith.” If Israel’s actual agenda is territorial
expansion, retaining control of the entire country west of the Jordan and foreclosing any viable
Palestinian state, then any negotiations that might threaten that agenda are
put off, delayed or avoided. All Israeli officials and their surrogates – local
religious figures, representatives of organized Jewish communities abroad,
liberal Zionist peace organizations, intellectuals and journalists defining
themselves as “Zionist,” “pro-Israel” public figures in any given country and
others – become gatekeepers. In effect – deliberately or not their essential
role is not to engage but to deflect engagement, to “build a fence” around the
core Israeli agenda so as to appear to be forthcoming but to actually avert any
negotiations or pressures that might threaten Israel’s unilateral agenda.