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CounterPunch
November
9, 2002
Sharon's Appendix
The Bankruptcy of Israel's "Peace Camp"
by ALI ABUNIMAH
It is the traditional role of the Israeli Labor
party to pose as the "peace party," a notion that in
the past some Palestinians, "moderate" Arab states,
and the wider international community have accepted out of a
mixture of naivete, wishful thinking and political expediency.
Whenever Labor wins, however, lofty words, are replaced with
policies that more resemble than contrast with the "hard-line"
they were supposed to replace.
In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister,
following the "hawkish" Yitzhak Shamir. This lead to
the signing of the Oslo accords, but it also heralded the biggest
colony construction binge since Israel's occupation of the West
Bank and Gaza Strip began, designed to solidify Israel's control.
For Palestinians it marked the beginning of the period in which
Israel was free to continue all the practices of military occupation,
except now with a veneer international legitimacy.
When Barak came to power in 1999 it was
with promises that Labor would restore things to their intended
course, from which the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu had supposedly
derailed them, and bring quick peace with the Palestinians. Yet,
Barak's vision, offered at Camp David, was not for a genuine
Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, and the creation
of a sovereign Palestinian state, but for nominal statehood within
a greater Israel. Since the Camp David summit ended, Barak and
his ilk have been repeating the myth that the Palestinians turned
down an amazingly generous offer, refused further negotiations,
and launched the Intifada.
Now, after twenty months of the Sharon-Peres-Ben
Eliezer coalition, leading lights of the Israeli Labor party
and self-styled "peace camp" have begun to trot out
the old line that only they can offer a solution. The cornerstone
of their claim is that they know the path to peace with the Palestinians.
In recent articles, Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin (a Rabin disciple
and former justice minister), and Shlomo Ben Ami (a former foreign
minister), offer up their visions. It is hard to imagine a more
bankrupt collection of ideas and assertions.
Most brazen is Peres, who after twenty
months as Sharon's foreign minister and defender-in-chief of
Israel's war crimes, offers the way forward in an Ha'aretz commentary.
Peres writes that he supports President Bush's "vision"
of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. To show just how serious
he is, he states that as one of the conditions to achieve this,
"New settlement construction must
be frozen and we must announce that we are ready to include removal
of settlements in any permanent agreement, as proposed by President
Clinton at Camp David." ("Because of the Stammering,"
Ha'aretz, 6 November 2002)
Who is this supposed to persuade? Certainly
not Palestinians who will surely recall that it was the Rabin-Peres
government of 1992 that invented the idea of a "freeze"
on "new" settlements, so that Israel could continue
massive expansion and "natural growth" in "existing"
settlements while at the same time appearing to yield to American
pressure. Even now, Peres is still not willing to call for a
genuine freeze and the removal of all of Israel's settlements
from the occupied territories, but offers only a vague commitment
to possible removal of some settlements. Where? How many? Peres'
appeal to the Camp David proposals does not suggest a promising
answer since Barak envisaged eighty percent of the settlers remaining
under Israeli rule right where they are. Clinton's later proposals
included the formula that as far as Jerusalem is concerned what
is Jewish will be ruled by Israel, while what is Palestinian
will be ruled by the Palestinians. In other words, what Israel
has stolen since 1967 it can keep, and what is left, the Palestinians
might get. Since Israel defines municipal Jerusalem as including
massive areas of settlements, including the largest, Maaleh Adumim,
under this formula removing many if not most of Israel's settlers
is ruled out in advance.
Peres' justification of his participation
in Israel's government of assassins, ethnic cleansers and war
criminals that "the right wing tried -- and we tried to
help it -- achieve peace," bespeaks a furious political
and verbal promiscuity that is unrivalled anywhere in the world.
Yossi Beilin, long a champion of Oslo,
and a leading Labor "dove" tells readers of The Guardian
that the Israeli election is an opportunity for the "peace
camp" to regain the ascendancy if the Labor party seizes
it. To do this, the party must offer "a clear message,"
that the "the Israeli-Palestinian border will be determined
either by means of an agreement or unilaterally if the negotiations
are not successful. All the settlements beyond the border, as
shall be determined, will be evacuated." ("Vote offers
new opportunities for peace camp," The Guardian, 6 November
2002)
This is another masterful example of
"clarity" without substance or commitment. Nobody,
not even Sharon, disagrees that the Israeli-Palestinian border
should be negotiated. The disagreement is about where it should
be. Sharon has often spoken about a Palestinian "state"
whose borders would no doubt run very close to those of "Area
A," the tiny spots of land once controlled by the Palestinian
Authority. Netanyahu proposed a similar "state" when
he was prime minister. The Palestinians, backed by international
law and the United Nations, believe the border should run along
the 1967 lines, with some minor adjustments to remove anomalies.
What does Beilin believe? Well, of course he doesn't say, except
that the Israelis and Palestinians should agree. And if the Palestinians
do not agree to what the Israelis want then Israel can impose
its own border. As far as settlements are concerned, Beilin,
like Peres makes no commitment to removing them. He only says
that those beyond the eventual border may be evacuated. If the
Palestinians are forced to agree to a Camp David-style border
which keeps most of the settlements within Israel, or Israel
imposes such a border, then few or no settlements would be evacuated.
Hardly a breakthrough and certainly not a "clear message."
The most confused of the three is Shlomo
Ben Ami, who writing in The Financial Times, calls on the Labor
party to find the "courage to form a much-needed opposition,"
and "to design a road map leading to the future." Labor
should, he continues, try to
"constitute a solid political axis
around which the centre-left could rally and mobilize the great
number of grassroots organizations that have emerged throughout
Israeli society in the past year, in a desperate search for a
way out of this dangerous impasse of bloody hopelessness and
unprecedented economic decline." ("Israel needs a Labor
opposition," Financial Times, 6 November 2002)
Ben Ami does not even attempt to get
beyond these platitudes and provide a single concrete suggestion,
let alone recognize the need for a quick end to Israel's occupation
as the most obvious and important element in ending the bloodshed.
Instead, he casts vitriolic blame at the Palestinians and excuses
Israel's destruction of Palestinian society as the overreaction
of "a nation determined to defeat terrorism and to repel
the Palestinian homicidal campaign away from homes, shopping
centers, buses and kindergartens."
Unable to accept any responsibility for
the disaster, Ben Ami asserts that the Palestinians are guilty
of "imposing on Israel a war it did not want," without
mentioning that for decades Israel has imposed on the Palestinians
a military dictatorship, a regime of murder, destruction and
dispossession they certainly do not want and have every right
and every reason to resist.
Ben Ami's anger reaches a fever pitch:
"Yassir Arafat's murderous flirtation
with terrorism and his obsession with missing one peace opportunity
after another is the sin that fatally undermined the peace camp
in Israel. But if Mr. Arafat committed the sin, the rise of Mr.
Sharon was the punishment."
So not only is Israel's "peace camp"
blameless -- the only evil ones are the Palestinians and the
Israeli right -- but this is quite a change of tune even for
Ben Ami who had previously refused to peddle the official propaganda
that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations stopped with Arafat's rejection
of Barak's "generous" Camp David offers in July 2000.
In fact, Ben Ami, who participated in the negotiations which
continued in Washington DC, and in Taba, Egypt, until Barak broke
them off in early 2001, once described them as "the most
fruitful, constructive, profound negotiations in this phase of
the peace process." ("Mideast Talks End With Gain But
No Accord," New York Times, January 28, 2001) Now they are
just another "missed opportunity" on the part of Arafat,
the serial bungler.
Beilin too repeats the old cliche that
"the Palestinian partner will need to prove that missing
opportunities has not become its second nature."
It is an irony that the Palestinians,
who by agreeing to two states and recognizing Israel in 1993
have relinquished their claim to seventy eight percent of the
country in which they were until fifty years ago an overwhelming
majority, are the ones accused of intransigence and "missing
opportunities" even by these members of the "peace
camp."
The greater irony though is that the
chief attraction of the two-state solution is that it allows
Israel -- at least until the tendency of human beings to have
babies gets the better of it -- to preserve its "Jewish
and democratic" character. For Israeli Zionists, therefore,
the two state solution is a gift they should eagerly seize while
praising their good fortune. For Palestinians it is an enormous
and painful sacrifice which the vast majority willingly embraced
for the sake of a lasting peace.
Yet if even three leading members of
the "peace camp" can recognize none of this it should
come as no surprise that an increasing number of Palestinians
are concluding that appeasing Israel has brought them nothing
but more colonies and less freedom. The obvious corollary is
to look for a solution that provides everyone, Palestinians and
Israelis, with equality, and freedom in a single democratic state.
Although such ideas are usually dismissed
as a plot to destroy Israel, at least one prominent Israeli,
Meron Benvenisti, has broken the taboo, writing that he is:
"Starting to think about what appears
to be heretical and fantastic, such as, perhaps a binational
solution," which he thinks may "create less friction
than separation and partition?" Benvenisti concludes that,
"perhaps an open debate about binational arrangements, even
if it's only theoretical, will do more for reconciliation than
sticking to ethno-nationalist separation." ("The binational
option," Ha'aretz, 7 November 2002)
When mainstream Israeli commentators
like Benvenisti are willing to give serious consideration to
binationalism and democracy, as opposed to Jewish ethno-nationalism,
the bankruptcy of Israeli political discourse is laid bare. The
bankruptcy of Sharon's policy of seeking to crush the Palestinian
will to resist through brute force was obvious within weeks of
his election. At the other end of the mainstream Israeli political
spectrum, the "peace camp" is offering ideas that are
just as implausible and irrelevant.
What unites Peres, Beilin and Ben Ami
is that they are calling for a rapid resumption of a journey
along a road that leads only to a dead end. They offer no new
ideas, and no incentives for Palestinians who want true reconciliation
and coexistence to build a peace front with them. Their goal
is to preserve Israel as a Jewish-dominated state through ethno-nationalist
separation at the expense of any one but the shrinking Labor-voting
elite they represent, be it the Palestinians or the settlers.
At the same time they will use anyone,
no matter how unsavory to try to achieve their goals, whether
it is Arafat or Sharon. Because of the record of failure and
the bankruptcy of ideas, Labor's chances in this election are
as slim as ever. All predictions suggest that the best Labor
can hope for is to act as kingmaker between the "mainstream"
right represented by Sharon and Netanyahu and the openly pro-ethnic
cleansing faction whose voice and strength is growing every day.
Unless the Israeli "peace camp" finds leaders and ideas
not compromised by Oslo, it will play a role as irrelevant to
Israel's body politic as Sharon's appendix is to him.
Ali Abunimah
is one of the founders of ElectronicIntifada.net.
He can be reached at: abunimah01@yahoo.com
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