What
You're Missing in Our Subscriber-only CounterPunch Newsletter
Special Investigation:
Have Journalists Been Deliberately Murdered in Iraq by the US
Military?
Our new
CounterPunch newsletter, just out, Christopher Reed examines
the growing body count of journalists in Iraq and documents numerous
incidents where US troops have deliberately targeted reporters.
Charles Glass offers a
stark comparison of the uprooting of Palestians in the Galilee
during the 1948 war to the lush compensation of Israelis living
on the same land who were displaced by the war on Lebanon. Remember, we are funded
solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this
website by buying a
subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you
won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the
cost of this online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now
On November 27, Ehud Olmert responded
to frantic international pressure and US hand signals by delivering
what was billed as a "landmark" policy speech. The
BBC has raised a faint cheer for the "new mood" it
seems to signal. But the occasion, an annual memorial for Ben
Gurion, was appropriate: in silky language, Mr. Olmert baldly
reiterated the same terms and conditions that have blocked all
progress toward Middle East peace for years.
Talks with the Palestinian
Authority, Mr. Olmert declared, will begin only after
a newly elected Palestinian government "renounces violence",
recognizes Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, abandons
the right of return on behalf of the entire Palestinian people,
and agrees that the large urban Israeli settlements that now
dismember the West Bank will be permanently annexed to Israel.
After this abject betrayal
of all Palestinian national aspirations and social needs, Mr.
Olmert said, Israel will then open "negotiations" with
the new government (unless Israel doesn't like that government),
"significantly diminish the number of roadblocks" (how
many does Israel consider "significant"?), "improve
the operation of the border crossings to the Gaza Strip"
(what does "improve" mean?), and release Palestinian
VAT funds that Israel is illegally withholding.
In this dubious context, what
about progress toward a regional peace agreement? Of the Arab
states' 2002 peace initiative, which offered Israel a full peace
upon its withdrawal from the West Bank, Mr. Olmert says that
"some parts" are "positive" but responds
only with diplomatese: "I intend to invest efforts in order
to advance the connection with those States". Well then,
how about talks with the Palestinians? He hopes the Arab states
will "strengthen their support of direct bilateral negotiations
between us and the Palestinians." But the Palestinian Authority
and Fatah have been scraping their knees asking for bilateral
talks with Israel, so this is meaningless - unless it means that
the Arab states should pressure the Palestinians to capitulate
to the model he is proposing, which even Arab quisling governments
cannot successfully do.
Israel will also "assist"
the new Palestinian government "in formulating a plan for
the economic rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip and areas in Judea
and Samaria," which might sound promising until we consider
that "assist in formulating a plan" does not mean Israel
will assist in implementing any plan. But "areas
in Judea and Samaria" is especially ominous wording. First,
"Judea and Samaria" are biblical-era terms for the
West Bank used by Israelis to conceptualize the West Bank as
an intrinsic part of Israel. Using them in diplomatic language
regarding peace negotiations signals that Mr. Olmert is now so
secure in this notion that he is willing to deploy it casually
as a political given. Second, Israel will evacuate only "areas"
(plural) of the West Bank. Later, Mr Olmert again uses the plural
form when he says that Israel "will agree to the evacuation
of many territories and communities which were established
therein". To everyone else, the West Bank is one territory.
Now carved up by Israeli settlements, it is several territories
only if those settlements remain.
In other words, we are back
to Olmert's old Convergence Plan, already combusted on the altar
of Lebanon. The entire speech was a stale reiteration of the
same old hogwash.
Israel-Palestine sits at the
eye of the Middle East blood-bath that now rightly obsesses world
security debates. No serious analyst of Middle East politics
believes that regional stability, and therefore world stability,
is remotely obtainable without resolving this conflict. Yet the
best Israel can offer are talks for which no legitimate Palestinian
government can conceivably qualify, which cannot achieve
anything, and that, given the prerequisites, cannot even be launched
in the first place. Instead of the serious emergency summit we
so urgently need, we have a tableau of foolery: Mr. Olmert scraping
to save his hollow leadership; a compliant media bleating again
about "hope"; Mr. Abbas shuffling and grinning.
The bankruptcy of Mr. Olmert's
speech did accomplish one useful task: it highlighted and capped
the current state of world paralysis. In fact, no one knows what
to do. Daily in the West Bank, land is taken, people are confined,
jobs are ruined or lost, families are divided, hopes are crushed.
Daily in Gaza, conditions are far worse, as close to a million
people face starvation while mortars, bulldozers, and tanks grind
up people's lives. Anguished cries from Beit Hanoun "why?
why?" - receive no answer from Israel or anyone else.
As one commentator noted, no one notices Gaza as long as the
Palestinians' daily death toll remains in the single digits.
We leave the Palestinians only the job of dying more dramatically
to get any attention at all.
Flailing for direction, some
eyes still turn mechanically to the US hegemon: e.g., Zahi Khouri
(San Diego Union-Tribute), who insists that "America
alone has the influence" to do something. But the "do-something"
mantra cannot be sensibly directed toward the Bush administration
now that it has openly urged Israel to smash Lebanon and Gaza
both. The spotlight turns to the Democrats, but what hope is
there for a party that takes every chance to pronounce on Israel's
outrages by ritually enthusing over Israel's "right to defend
itself"? Kathleen and Bill Christison have put it flatly:
"The Democrats don't care". Indeed, the Bush administration's
only response to meltdown in Palestine and Iraq is to argue for
bombing Iran, on the idiot notion that this trauma will trigger
regime change and solve the Palestinian problem by cutting off
its regional support networks. Hence the whole world remains
hostage to the absurd neocon and Zionist fantasy that Hizbullah
and Hamas oppose Israel only because they are paid to do it.
But indeed, few still ask or
expect the US to act on Israel-Palestine. Getting the imperium's
shredded talons out of Iraq will be hard enough.
As for Europe, its moral bankruptcy
is emblemized by the UK official who admitted that Israel's blasting
a sleeping eighteen-member Palestinian family into fragments
was "hard to defend." (One wonders what she might have
said if a Palestinian rocket barrage had smashed eighteen Israeli
Jewish citizens to bloody fragments in their beds. "Hard
to defend" seems unlikely.)
Still, some things are happening.
The Palestinians are slowly winning the propaganda war, at terrible
cost. Israel's stunning crimes in Lebanon and Gaza have turned
the tide: Israel has never been such an international pariah
in all its years. The Arab states finally ended the financial
boycott of the Hamas government that they should be ashamed before
their families and clans that they ever deployed in the first
place. The heroic new international boycott movement, finally
standing up to shrieking Zionist slander and charges of anti-Semitism,
expands rapidly through cyber-space and into serious and principled
activism. Hopeful eyes turn to Ireland's victories and bold statements
from Canada.
But direction is lacking, and
that lack is dangerous. "End the occupation" is an
empty call as Israeli city-settlements drape ever more broadly
over the West Bank. Solidarity movements focus mainly on negative
goals - trying to stop Israel from bombing helpless Palestinian
civilians or bulldozing their houses. Lacking positive goals,
activists remain in reaction mode and exhaust themselves battling
Israel's defenders in the "letters" columns of newspapers.
Worn-out editors eventually close their forums to these wars,
leaving activists fuming to each other in cyberspace.
We know the agents of this
debacle: the complicit US government and the brilliant Zionist
lobbying machine; dithering Europeans; legless Arab states; a
rhetorically heated but intimidated and divided global South.
But to sort out what to do, we need to consider how we got here.
First, let's finally face it:
The two-state carrot, dangled before the diplomatic donkey for
the past fifteen years, has led us straight to this debacle.
The Oslo and Road Map processes
were not only fruitless. They were deceptions. Preying on collective
hopes for a Palestinian state, Israel never actually agreed to
one. The Oslo Accords, which Israel signed, never mentioned a
Palestinian state. The Road Map explicitly called for one, but
Israel signed onto it only with fourteen "reservations",
the first of which precluded any Palestinian state. Before it
would lift a finger toward its own obligations, Israel required
the PA to ensure complete cessation of all Palestinian resistance,
collect and turn over all "illegal" weapons, stop all
smuggling of arms (how?), "dismantle" Hamas and the
other militant groups "and their infrastructure" (how?),
submit all Palestinian resistance fighters to arrest, detention,
and interrogation, support a system of laws that ensures their
continuing arrest, detention, and interrogation, cease "incitement"
(what is that?) and "educate for peace" (again vague
- instil an ethos of surrender in Palestinian youth?). Complete
success in all these measures was required to proceed even within
the Road Map's three stages. Moreover, the Palestinians must
give up the right of return and any claim on Jerusalem.
Since no rational observer
can consider these conditions workable, they clearly signified
Israel's intention not to comply with the Road Map. That a wilfully
gullible world has pretended that this sham was meaningful, and
therefore placed a moral and legal onus on the Palestinians to
fulfil their obligations to the Road Map, is only more shame.
No wonder Israel bombed Lebanon
to smithereens. Its leadership was fatuous with victory.
Second, Israel's sovereignty
in Mandate Palestine has moved into a new stage. Israel has long
controlled the airspace, sea, ports and border controls, economy,
land, water, infrastructure, and the social management of the
entire territory's population. But Israel has also become sovereign
in Max Weber's famous sense: "a state is a human community
that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use
of physical force within a given territory." Of course,
Israel's claim to a monopoly on violence is not "successful"
as long as the Palestinians continue to resist it. And certainly
Israel's brutal methods are not considered "legitimate"
by the Palestinians or by anyone with moral sensibilities the
world over. But consider: the international community has endorsed
Israel's insistence that Hamas and all Palestinians are required
to "abandon terror" and "recognize Israel".
These conditions signal that continuing Palestinian resistance
to Israeli occupation is now considered illegitimate.
This shift is immensely important.
The right of a population to resist occupation is enshrined in
the UN Charter. Resistance to occupation becomes illegitimate
only if and when the occupier is recognized as the legitimate
sovereign. Of course, the international community has not admitted
openly that Israel is sovereign in all of Mandate Palestine,
because that would wreck the already-shaky collective pretence
that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are territories from which
Israel can be expected to withdraw someday. But denying Palestinians
the right to resist occupation demonstrates that Israel's occupation
itself has been tacitly redefined.
Israel's own model is not occupation.
The word "occupation" rarely appears in Israeli government
parlance. (Ariel Sharon used it once or twice, but it caused
an enormous stir, and it appears now only in the formula "Israel
ended its occupation of Gaza", patently untrue in any case.)
Israel's model regarding the West Bank is openly one of sovereignty.
Jewish-Israeli settlers potter about peacefully in their gardens
in the West Bank because they know it is "Israel".
The big settlements around Jerusalem, which divide the West Bank
in half, are called "neighbourhoods". Israeli government
maps of the country still do not show the green line. The West
Bank, as we know it, is not there for Israel.
In sum, Israel has used the
Road Map only to mask its own one-state program: retain sovereignty
over all the land and exclude the native people. Israel is even
being treated like a sovereign power. But here is the trick:
Israel is getting away with its astoundingly brutal treatment
of the Palestinians and Israeli Jewish citizens sustain
their impressive immunity from caring about it - only through
the collective fiction that Israel is not sovereign.
Israel evades any open claim
to sovereignty over all Palestine because its hands would then
be tied. No government that styles itself a democracy could get
away with slaughtering and terrorizing its own citizens this
way or, alternatively, refusing to enfranchise parts of its territory's
permanent population this way. Israel excuses its treatment of
the Palestinians on grounds that they are, in fact, aliens. The
world has accepted this formula, viewing the territory's native
people as citizens of some other country that exists only in
the future, in territory that no one can find. Israel is understood
to be "at war" with this nonexistent country, represented
by these aliens. (That the native people have no weapons worthy
of the term "war" is an inconvenient fact very poorly
veiled by nuclear Israel's thumping accusations that the impoverished
Palestinians, with their automatic rifles and hand-painted homemade
rockets, still stubbornly want to "destroy Israel".)
Political power often lies
in defining the situation. Right now Palestinians are in the
grip of Israel's definition. Israel does not claim openly to
have consolidated sovereignty over all Palestine because it would
then face the logical consequence: the moral and legal onus of
abandoning racial exclusion and making the native people citizens.
In Israel's dual model, the Palestinians remain aliens in their
own country, who have no rights. Their politicians are legitimate
only when they collaborate. Their fighters, lacking uniforms,
are "illegal enemy combatants" to whom Israel owes
only bullets and torture.
The way out? Change the definition
to suit the facts. Right now, one state power is sovereign in
Palestine and that state is Israel. It is an apartheid state
because it excludes the territory's indigenous people from citizenship
solely on the basis of ethnicity. For let us remember: The Palestinians'
original sin - the "failing" has consigned them collectively
to expulsion, dispossession, exile, and a cruel and humiliating
occupation - is not bad leadership, missed opportunities, stubborn
insistence on their demands, Arafat, or any of the usual shibboleths.
It is that they are not Jewish.
And, just as apartheid did
in southern Africa, Israel's fearful and zealous commitment to
racial exclusion of the indigenous people is tearing the entire
region apart.
What do we get from recognizing
this fact? We may take clues from public indications that Ariel
Sharon before his stroke and Mr. Olmert after him have been terribly
anxious that we not do so. For what can Israel do if it is truly
held accountable for denying its territorial population the right
to vote? How can it exclude its native people from equal citizenship
if they ask for it? The common defence, the need to preserve
Jewish statehood, will instantly ring hollow. For Israel styles
itself a western-style democracy. Yet no western democracy is
presently attacking its own territory's population with mortar
barrages and helicopter gunships solely because of their ethnic
identity. No western democracy is blasting whole families to
bits with mortars solely because their ethnicity is unwelcome.
No western democracy is now encircling millions of people within
walled cantons solely on the basis of their religion or ethnicity.
Like "White Australia"
and apartheid South Africa before it, Israel is attempting to
be racial state and a democratic state at the same time. No western
democracy has survived the obvious contradictions of this formula:
they all had to give it up. And apartheid Israel will not survive
it if we call the shots as they are. Like the US, South Africa,
New Zealand, and "White Australia" before it, Israel
must admit its Muslim and Christian population as citizens and
then grapple with the ensuing tough work of pluralist democracy
like the rest of us.
This was the hard-won South
African solution, where the state now represents everybody. Seventeen
languages and differing historical narratives are recognized
and dignified. Whites have retained their property and wealth,
while black Africans are rising rapidly to join the middle and
upper classes. After some early economic missteps, the government
has launched new social policies and steered booming trade with
the African continent that are channelling wealth and rapid growth
throughout the country. The press is free and vibrant. Is South
Africa still struggling for racial equality and economic justice?
Sure. Is it plagued by the racial legacy of settler colonialism?
Sure. But ongoing struggles for equality and mutual respect are
the human condition and the noble burden of democracy. South
Africa is a vigorous, growing, vital society. And there is peace.
John Dugard, the eminent South
African legal scholar and UN Special Rapporteur on the Question
of Palestine, wrote frankly in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
that racial oppression in Israel is worse than it was in South
Africa. But his assessment also offers hope. Identifying that
we presently have a one-state solution - Israel's apartheid version
- allows us to affirm a different one: a unified secular-democratic
state, in which everyone is equal in dignity and rights, and
where the Jewish and Palestinian national homes can share the
land as they should. With that shared goal, disparate activist
struggles around the world can find, at last, true direction.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
