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Now
Now that the Palestinian civil war long
sought by Israel, the U.S. and the EU appears on the verge of
breaking out, it may be timely to examine the justification put
forward by Israel, the U.S. and the EU for their collective punishment
of the Palestinian people in retaliation for their having made
the "wrong" choice in last January's democratic election
-- the refusal of Hamas to "recognize Israel" or to
"recognize Israel's existence" or to "recognize
Israel's right to exist".
These three verbal formulations
have been used by media, politicians and even diplomats interchangeably,
as though they mean the same thing. They do not.
"Recognizing Israel"
or any other state is a formal legal/diplomatic act by a state
with respect to another state. It is inappropriate -- indeed,
nonsensical -- to talk about a political party or movement, even
one in a sovereign state, extending diplomatic recognition to
a state. To talk of Hamas "recognizing Israel" is simply
sloppy, confusing and deceptive shorthand for the real demand
being made.
"Recognizing Israel's
existence" is not a logical nonsense and appears on first
impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgement
of a fact of life -- like death and taxes. Yet there are serious
practical problems with this formulation. What Israel, within
what borders, is involved? The 55% of historical Palestine recommended
for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78%
of historical Palestine occupied by Israel in 1948 and now viewed
by most of the world as "Israel" or "Israel proper"?
The 100% of historical Palestine
occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as "Israel"
on maps in Israeli schoolbooks? Israel has never defined its
own borders, since doing so would, necessarily, place limits
on them. Still, if this were all that were being demanded of
Hamas, it might be possible for it to acknowledge, as a fact
of life, that a State of Israel exists today within some specified
borders.
"Recognizing Israel's
right to exist", the actual demand, is in an entirely different
league. This formulation does not address diplomatic formalities
or simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral
judgment.
There is an enormous
difference between "recognizing Israel's existence"
and "recognizing Israel's right to exist". From a Palestinian
perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference
between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened
and asking him to acknowledge that it was "right" that
the Holocaust happened -- that the Holocaust (or, in the Palestinian
case, the Nakba) was morally justified.
To demand that Palestinians
recognize "Israel's right to exist" is to demand that
a people who have for almost 60 years been treated, and continue
to be treated, as sub-humans publicly proclaim that they ARE
sub-humans -- and, at least implicitly, that they deserve what
has been done, and continues to be done, to them. Even 19th century
U.S. governments did not require the surviving Native Americans
to publicly proclaim the "rightness" of their ethnic
cleansing by the Pale Faces as a condition precedent to even
discussing what reservation might be set aside for them -- under
economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever
pride they had left and conceded the point.
Some believe that Yasser Arafat
did concede the point in order to buy his ticket out of the wilderness
of demonization and earn the right to be lectured directly by
the Americans. In fact, in his famous statement in Stockholm
in late 1988, he accepted "Israel's right to exist in peace
and security". This formulation, significantly, addresses
the /conditions/ of existence of a state which, as a matter of
fact, exists. It does not address the existential question of
the "rightness" of the dispossession and dispersal
of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for
another people coming from abroad.
The original conception of
the formulation "Israel's right to exist" and of its
utility as an excuse for not talking to any Palestinian leadership
which still stood up for the fundamental rights of the Palestinian
people are attributed to Henry Kissinger, the grand master of
diplomatic cynicism. There can be little doubt that those states
which still employ this formulation do so in full consciousness
of what it entails, morally and psychologically, for the Palestinian
people and for the same cynical purpose -- as a roadblock against
any progress toward peace and justice in Israel/Palestine and
as a way of helping to buy more time for Israel to create more
"facts on the ground" while blaming the Palestinians
for their own suffering.
However, many private citizens
of good will and decent values may well be taken in by the surface
simplicity of the words "Israel's right to exist" (and
even more easily by the other two shorthand formulations) into
believing that they constitute a self-evidently reasonable demand
and that refusing such a reasonable demand must represent perversity
(or a "terrorist ideology") rather than a need to cling
to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings
which is deeply felt and thoroughly understandable in the hearts
and minds of a long-abused people who have been stripped of almost
everything else that makes life worth living. That this is so
is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian
population which approves of Hamas' steadfastness in refusing
to bow to this humiliating demand by their enemies, notwithstanding
the intensity of the economic pain and suffering inflicted on
them by the Israeli and Western siege, substantially exceeds
the percentage of the population which voted for Hamas in January.
It may not be too late to focus
decent minds around the world on the unreasonableness -- indeed,
the immorality -- of this demand and of the verbal formulation
on which it is based, whose use and abuse have already caused
so much misery and threaten to cause more.
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.
