11.30.06
Israel/Palestine
From Rad Green
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11435
ZNet 11/17/06
Hollow visions of Palestine’s future
Peace will need more than David Grossman — or Uri Avnery
By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth
David Grossman’s widely publicised speech at the annual memorial rally for
Yitzhak Rabin earlier this month has prompted some fine deconstruction of
his “words of peace” from critics.Grossman, one of Israel’s foremost writers and a figurehead for its main
peace movement, Peace Now, personifies the caring, tortured face of Zionism
that so many of the country’s apologists — in Israel and abroad, trenchant
and wavering alike — desperately want to believe survives, despite the
evidence of the Qanas, Beit Hanouns and other massacres committed by the
Israeli army against Arab civilians. Grossman makes it possible to believe,
for a moment, that the Ariel Sharons and Ehud Olmerts are not the real
upholders of Zionism’s legacy, merely a temporary deviation from its true
path.In reality, of course, Grossman draws from the same ideological well-spring
as Israel’s founders and its greatest warriors. He embodies the same
anguished values of Labor Zionism that won Israel international legitimacy
just as it was carrying out one of history’s great acts of ethnic cleansing:
the expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians, or 80 per cent the native
population, from the borders of the newly established Jewish state.(Even critical historians usually gloss over the fact that the percentage of
the Palestinian population expelled by the Israeli army was, in truth, far
higher. Many Palestinians forced out during the 1948 war ended up back
inside Israel’s borders either because under the terms of the 1949 armistice
with Jordan they were annexed to Israel, along with a small but densely
populated area of the West Bank known as the Little Triangle, or because
they managed to slip back across the porous border with Lebanon and Syria in
the months following the war and hide inside the few Palestinian villages
inside Israel that had not been destroyed.)Remove the halo with which he has been crowned by the world’s liberal media
and Grossman is little different from Zionism’s most distinguished
statesmen, those who also ostentatiously displayed their hand-wringing or
peace credentials as, first, they dispossessed the Palestinian people of
most of their homeland; then dispossessed them of the rest; then ensured the
original act of ethnic cleansing would not unravel; and today are working on
the slow genocide of the Palestinians, through a combined strategy of their
physical destruction and their dispersion as a people.David Ben Gurion, for example, masterminded the ethnic cleansing of
Palestine in 1948 before very publicly agonising over the occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza — even if only because of the demographic damage that
would be done to the Jewish state as a result.Golda Meir refused to recognise the existence of the Palestinian people as
she launched the settlement enterprise in the occupied territories, but did
recognise the anguish of Jewish soldiers forced to “shoot and cry” to defend
the settlements. Or as she put it: “We can forgive you [the Palestinians]
for killing our sons. But we will never forgive you for making us kill
yours.”Yitzhak Rabin, Grossman’s most direct inspiration, may have initiated a
“peace process” at Oslo (even if only the terminally optimistic today
believe that peace was really its goal), but as a soldier and politician he
also personally oversaw the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian cities like Lid
in 1948; he ordered tanks into Arab villages inside Israel during the Land
Day protests of 1976, leading to the deaths of half a dozen unarmed
Palestinian citizens; and in 1988 he ordered his army to crush the first
intifada by “breaking the bones” of Palestinians, including women and
children, who threw stones at the occupying troops.Like them, Grossman conspires in these original war crimes by prefering to
hold on to what Israel has, or even extend it further, rather than confront
the genuinely painful truth of his responsibility for the fate of the
Palestinians, including the hundreds of thousands of refugees and the
millions of their descendants.Every day that Grossman denies a Right of Return for the Palestinians, even
as he supports a Law of Return for the Jews, he excuses and maintains the
act of ethnic cleansing that dispossessed the Palestinian refugees more than
half a century ago.And every day that he sells a message of peace to Israelis who look to him
for moral guidance that fails to offer the Palestinians a just solution –
and that takes instead as its moral yardstick the primacy of Israel’s
survival as a Jewish state — then he perverts the meaning of peace.Another Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, diagnoses the problem posed by
Grossman and his ilk with acute insight in a recent article. Although
Grossman wants peace in the abstract, Avnery observes, he offers no
solutions as to how it might be secured in concrete terms and no clues about
what sacrifices he or other Israelis will have to make to achieve it. His
“peace” is empty of content, a mere rhetorical device.Rather than suggest what Israel should talk about to the Palestinians’
elected leaders, Grossman argues that Israel should talk over their heads to
the “moderates”, Palestinians with whom Israel’s leaders can do business.
The goal is to find Palestinians, any Palestinians, who will agree to
Israel’s “peace”. The Oslo process in new clothes.Grossman’s speech looks like a gesture towards a solution only because
Israel’s current leaders do not want to speak with anybody on the
Palestinian side, whether “moderate” or “fanatic”. The only interlocutor is
Washington, and a passive one at that.If Grossman’s words are as as “hollow” as those of Ehud Olmert, Avnery
offers no clue as to reasons for the author’s evasiveness. In truth,
Grossman cannot deal in solutions because there is almost no constituency in
Israel for the kind of peace plan that might prove acceptable even to the
Palestinian “moderates” Grossman so wants his government to talk to.Were Grossman to set out the terms of his vision of peace, it might become
clear to all that the problem is not Palestinian intransigence.Although surveys regularly show that a majority of Israelis support a
Palestinian state, they are conducted by pollsters who never specify to
their sampling audience what might be entailed by the creation of the state
posited in their question. Equally the pollsters do not require from their
Israeli respondents any information about what kind of Palestinian state
each envisages. This makes the nature of the Palestinian state being talked
about by Israelis almost as empty of content as the alluring word “peace”.After all, according to most Israelis, Gazans are enjoying the fruits of the
end of Israel’s occupation. And according to Olmert, his proposed
“convergence” — a very limited withdrawal from the West Bank — would have
established the basis for a Palestinian state there too.When Israelis are asked about their view of more specific peace plans, their
responses are overwhelmingly negative. In 2003, for example, 78 per cent of
Israeli Jews said they favoured a two-state solution, but when asked if they
supported the Geneva Initiative — which envisions a very circumscribed
Palestinian state on less than all of the West Bank and Gaza — only a
quarter did so. Barely more than half of the supposedly leftwing voters of
Labor backed the Geneva Initiative.This low level of support for a barely viable Palestinian state contrasts
with the consistently high levels of support among Israeli Jews for a
concrete, but very different, solution to the conflict: “transfer”, or
ethnic cleansing. In opinion polls, 60 per cent of Israeli Jews regularly
favour the emigration of Arab citizens from the as-yet-undetermined borders
of the Jewish state.So when Grossman warns us that “a peace of no choice” is inevitable and that
“the land will be divided, a Palestinian state will arise”, we should not be
lulled into false hopes. Grossman’s state is almost certainly as “hollow” as
his audience’s idea of peace.Grossman’s refusal to confront the lack of sympathy among the Israeli public
for the Palestinians, or challenge it with solutions that will require of
Israelis that they make real sacrifices for peace, deserves our
condemnation. He and the other gurus of Israel’s mainstream peace movement,
writers like Amos Oz and A B Yehoshua, have failed in their duty to
articulate to Israelis a vision of a fair future and a lasting peace.So what is the way out of the impasse created by the beatification of
figures like Grossman? What other routes are open to those of us who refuse
to believe that Grossman stands at the very precipice before which any sane
peace activist would tremble? Can we look to other members of the Israeli
left for inspiration?Uri Avnery again steps forward. He claims that there are only two peace
camps in Israel: a Zionist one, based on a national consensus rooted in the
Peace Now of David Grossman; and what he calls a “radical peace camp” led by
… well, himself and his group of a few thousand Israelis known as Gush
Shalom.By this, one might be tempted to infer that Avnery styles his own peace bloc
as non-Zionist or even anti-Zionist. Nothing could be further from the
truth, however. Avnery and most, though not all, of his supporters in Israel
are staunchly in the Zionist camp.The bottom line in any peace for Avnery is the continued existence and
success of Israel as a Jewish state. That rigidly limits his ideas about
what sort of peace a “radical” Israeli peace activist ought to be pursuing.Like Grossman, Avnery supports a two-state solution because, in both their
views, the future of the Jewish state cannot be guaranteed without a
Palestinian state alongside it. This is why Avnery finds himself agreeing
with 90 per cent of Grossman’s speech. If the Jews are to prosper as a
demographic (and democratic) majority in their state, then the non-Jews must
have a state too, one in which they can exercise their own, separate
sovereign rights and, consequently, abandon any claims on the Jewish state.However, unlike Grossman, Avnery not only supports a Palestinian state in
the abstract but a “just” Palestinian state in the concrete, meaning for him
the evacuation of all the settlers and a full withdrawal by the Israeli army
to the 1967 lines. Avnery’s peace plan would give back east Jerusalem and
the whole of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians.The difference between Grossman and Avnery on this point can be explained by
their different understanding of what is needed to ensure the Jewish state’s
survival. Avnery believes that a lasting peace will hold only if the
Palestinian state meets the minimal aspirations of the Palestinian people.
In his view, the Palestinians can be persuaded under the right leadership to
settle for 22 per cent of their historic homeland — and in that way the
Jewish state will be saved.Of itself, there is nothing wrong with Avnery’s position. It has encouraged
him to take a leading and impressive role in the Israeli peace movement for
many decades. Bravely he has crossed over national confrontation lines to
visit the besieged Palestinian leadership when other Israelis have shied
away. He has taken a courageous stand against the separation wall, facing
down Israeli soldiers alongside Palestinian, Israeli and foreign peace
activists. And through his journalism he has highlighted the Palestinian
cause and educated Israelis, Palestinians and outside observers about the
conflict. For all these reasons, Avnery should be praised as a genuine
peacemaker.But there is a serious danger that, because Palestinian solidarity movements
have misunderstood Avnery’s motives, they may continue to be guided by him
beyond the point where he is contributing to a peaceful solution or a just
future for the Palestinians. In fact, that moment may be upon us.During the Oslo years, Avnery was desperate to see Israel complete its
supposed peace agreement with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. As he
often argued, he believed that Arafat alone could unify the Palestinians and
persuade them to settle for the only two-state solution on the table: a big
Israel, alongside a small Palestine.In truth, Avnery’s position was no so far from that of the distinctly
unradical Oslo crowd of Rabin, Peres and Yossi Beilin. All four of them
regarded Arafat as the Palestinian strongman who could secure Israel’s
future: Rabin hoped Arafat would police the Palestinians on Israel’s behalf
in their ghettoes; while Avnery hoped Arafat would forge a nation,
democratic or otherwise, that would contain the Palestinians’ ambitions for
territory and a just solution to the refugee problem.Now with Arafat gone, Avnery and Gush Shalom have lost their ready-made
solution to the conflict. Today, they still back two states and support
engagement with Hamas. They have also not deviated from their long-standing
positions on the main issues — Jerusalem, borders, settlements and refugees
– even if they no longer have the glue, Arafat, that was supposed to make
it all stick together.But without Arafat as their strongman, Gush Shalom have no idea about how to
address the impending issues of factionalism and potential civil war that
Israel’s meddling in the Palestinian political process are unleashing.They will also have no response if the tide on the Palestinian street turns
against the two-state mirage offered by Oslo. If Palestinians look for other
ways out of the current impasse, as they are starting to do, Avnery will
quickly become an obstacle to peace rather than its great defender.In fact, such a development is all but certain. Few knowledgeable observers
of the conflict believe the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines is
feasible any longer, given Israel’s entrenchment of its settlers in
Jerusalem and the West Bank, now numbering nearly half a million. Even the
Americans have publicly admitted that most of the settlements cannot be
undone. It is only a matter of time before Palestinians make the same
calculation.What will Avnery, and the die-hards of Gush Shalom, do in this event? How
will they respond if Palestinians start to clamour for a single state
embracing both Israelis and Palestinians, for example?The answer is that the “radical” peaceniks will quickly need to find another
solution to protect their Jewish state. There are not too many available:* There is the “Carry on with the occupation regardless” of Binyamin
Netanyahu and Likud;
* There is the “Seal the Palestinians into ghettoes and hope eventually they
will leave of their own accord”, in its Kadima (hard) and Labor (soft)
incarnations;
* And there is the “Expel them all” of Avigdor Lieberman, Olmert’s new
Minister of Strategic Threats.Paradoxically, a variation on the last option may be the most appealing to
the disillusioned peaceniks of Gush Shalom. Lieberman has his own fanatical
and moderate positions, depending on his audience and the current realities.
To some he says he wants all Palestinians expelled from Greater Israel so
that it is available only for Jews. But to others, particularly in the
diplomatic arena, he suggests a formula of territorial and population swaps
between Israel and the Palestinians that would create a “Separation of
Nations”. Israel would get the settlements back in return for handing over
some small areas of Israel, like the Little Triangle, densely populated with
Palestinians.A generous version of such an exchange — though a violation of
international law — would achieve a similar outcome to Gush Shalom’s
attempts to create a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel. Even if
Avnery is unlikely to be lured down this path himself, there is a real
danger that others in the “radical” peace camp will prefer this kind of
solution over sacrificing their commitment at any price to the Jewish state.But fortunately, whatever Avnery claims, his peace camp is not the only
alternative to the sham agonising of Peace Now. Avnery is no more standing
at the very edge of the abyss than Grossman. The only abyss Avnery is
looking into is the demise of his Jewish state.Other Zionist Jews, in Israel and abroad, have been grappling with the same
kinds of issues as Avnery but begun to move in a different direction, away
from the doomed two-state solution towards a binational state. A few
prominent intellectuals like Tony Judt, Meron Benvenisti and Jeff Halper
have publicly begun to question their commitment to Zionism and consider
whether it is not part of the problem rather than the solution.They are not doing this alone. Small groups of Israelis, smaller than Gush
Shalom, are abandoning Zionism and coalescing around new ideas about how
Israeli Jews and Palestinians might live peacefully together, including
inside a single state. They include Taayush, Anarchists Against the Wall,
Zochrot and elements within the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions
and Gush Shalom itself.Avnery hopes that his peace camp may be the small wheel that can push the
larger wheel of organisations like Peace Now in a new direction and thereby
shift Israeli opinion towards a real two-state solution. Given the realities
on the ground, that seems highly unlikely. But one day, wheels currently
smaller than Gush Shalom may begin to push Israel in the direction needed
for peace.Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His
book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State
is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net