Ilan Pappe, israelsk historiker. Fra Al-Ahram
http://web1.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2002/581/inv4.htm
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Break the mirror now
Ilan Pappe* warns that we are running out of time
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---- The recent events in Palestine take us back to distant and more recent destinations. The strongest sense is the recurrence of the 1948 catastrophe, the Nakba. More than 50 years on, there is a sense that the future of mandatory Palestine was not as yet decided, and that its future was to be determined by force and not by negotiations. In 2002, the question has different geographical dimensions. The focus is on who will control the only 22 per cent of Palestine which was not part of the state of Israel in 1948. Israel in 1948 was built on 56 per cent of Palestine allocated to it by the UN, and an additional 22 per cent occupied by force. Most of the Palestinians living in the newly formed state -- roughly 900,000 -- were expelled by force, their villages destroyed and their city neighbourhoods settled by Jewish immigrants. Israel's creation was thus enabled by military power, ethnic cleansing and the de-Arabisation of the country.Since 1967, and more so since 1987, the future of the remaining 22 per cent is the main issue on the local, and to some extent regional, agenda. Until 1993, the various Israeli governments wished to keep all the area under their full control, short of formal annexation, while expanding Jewish colonisation and executing a policy of slow transfer. Any popular or armed resistance was brutally squashed and yet the first Intifada led the Israeli government in 1993 to be content with direct control over only part of the 22 per cent, while allowing for the creation of a bantustan in the rest. This map, together with a demand to forego the Palestinian right of return, was presented as a dictate to Arafat in Camp David in the summer of 2000. His refusal and a chain of by now known events led to the outbreak of the second Intifada.
The margin between what Arafat was offered in Camp David and the vision of Ariel Sharon in 2002 is very narrow. The difference is in the number of square kilometres to be allocated to the bantustan, but the same principle guides both former generals. That principle is a Palestinian political entity devoid of any significant sovereignty and independence, with an "end of conflict" situation in which the Palestinians give up their right of return and aspirations for a capital in Eastern Jerusalem. Sharon is not alone; he has the full support of the Israeli Labour party, not only in his vision of the future but also in the tactics he employs to reach his goals. By his war against the Palestinian Authority and the creation of what he calls "security zones," Sharon wants to impose by force a new map on Palestine and Israel. Such a map should ensure, as the Zionists hoped in 1948, Israeli control over as great an area as possible with as few Palestinians as possible. Massive jailing, transfer and intimidation were and will be used to redraw the map of Israel. Double talk and failing any real chance at negotiations, in the few lulls in the fighting that opened such opportunities, are also part of the same strategy.
This is where the second, more recent, déjà vu, that of Lebanon in 1982, appears. It was the same Sharon, believing then as now that it is within his power to impose new political realties. He wanted to create a "new Lebanon." Today he thinks he has the power to create a new Israel and Palestine by moving a population, killing thousands and de-Judaising additional parts of Palestine.
But history's repetitions are sometimes worse than the original events and less acceptable instances of human folly and cruelty. Israel's power and the power it is willing to employ are far more destructive than in the past. The systems that mobilise public opinion inside the Jewish state are far more sophisticated and effective than in the past; hence, the voices of dissent are fewer and weaker.
America is still behind Israel, as it was in 1948 and 1982, but at least part of Europe is not. The Arab world is committed, but as in the past mostly in word and not in deed. The Palestinians are alone against a powerful enemy poised on destroying them, as in the past. Israel's means vary with time, but the intention is still there. Many Jews in Israel, nonetheless, still adhere to noble aspirations such as the wish to build a democracy, maintain a very modernised economy and spread the wonders of Jewish and Hebraic culture and existence. But all these aspirations are dwarfed, indeed defeated, by the decision to sustain every achievement at the expense of the indigenous population of Palestine, whatever the price.
Other states opting for a similar policy and strategy would have been defined as pariah states long ago. But a European guilt complex (understandable given the horrors of the holocaust) and a strong Jewish lobby in the United States have thus far absolved politicians like Sharon from facing a fate similar to that of Slobodan Milosevic.
In the past two weeks Israel's amazing immunity has led some elements in global civil society to question its extraordinary status for the first time -- even while Israel's war on media coverage of the army's actions in the West Bank still dissimulated the full extent of the havoc.
Despite the attempted cover-up, some basic facts have emerged about the IDF's actions and Sharon's basic strategy. The Israeli army is poised to destroy not only the Palestinian Authority, but also the infrastructure for independent, or even autonomous, Palestinian existence in the West Bank. If it succeeds, it will create a vacuum Sharon wants to fill with a mixture of two old Israeli notions of how to "rule" Arab areas: Israeli officers who will control life in areas deemed crucial by Israel, and a network of collaborators, modeled on the Village Societies Sharon tried to establish in vain in 1981 as a substitute for the PLO. Such a new regime can be imposed in one of two ways: either Sharon will reach an agreement with a local Palestinian leadership, sponsored by some Arab states, Europe and the US; or, more likely, force will be used again, but more subtly, to "dilute" (borrowing from Israel's inhuman and de-humanised new political dictionary for a moment) the West Bank population. With whatever means the government finds, it will "encourage" Palestinians to move to Gaza and Jordan.
Sharon has about 10 ministers in his government who endorse the plan openly, and a few in the Labour Party who implicitly take similar positions. As the next Israeli general elections approach, the Labour Party may leave the government, only to return afterward as a member of yet another unity government. But this should not blind us to the responsibility the Labour Party leaders share for the destruction of the Palestinian social, economic and political infrastructure in the West Bank, and maybe later in the Gaza Strip. This destruction has been accompanied by humiliating acts and human rights abuses on a massive collective scale, as well as on a very symbolic level, toward Palestinian leaders -- up to the top, to President Arafat. Massacres and physical destruction of houses and roads, too, are all part of a punitive mission disguised as "war on terrorism."
Very few in Israel seek alternative interpretations of the "war against terrorism." Shocked by the human bombs that have produced a sense of personal insecurity and a rising death toll, the Israeli public in general is unable and unwilling to look through the catastrophic plans of the man they have elected democratically by an unprecedented majority. His posturing also caters to the dormant racist and ethnocentric attitudes of the vast majority of Jews, nurtured over the years by Israel's educational and cultural systems.
A coalition of groups opposing the war is trying to offer an alternative explanation to the bombs exploding in Israel and to the general Israeli policy. This coalition is made up of two blocs. The major one, led by Peace Now, has very little chance of providing a significant alternative. It holds, and is genuinely convinced, that Barak made the most generous offer possible to the Palestinian side and that Arafat disappointed them. Their most common attitude is that "notwithstanding Arafat's unforgivable conduct, we have no other option but to conclude peace with this awful man." What they have in store is, again, the equation Barak made between Israeli withdrawal and peace. They never clarified to themselves or to the Jewish public what "peace" entails. As far as one can tell, it does not involve a solution to the refugee problem, a change in the status of the one million-strong Palestinian minority in Israel (on whose vast support Peace Now relies for its demonstrations) or full sovereignty for the future Palestinian state. The evils of occupation are recognised, but mainly as corrupting Jewish society, not as crimes against the local population, and definitely not as a continuous evil that began with the ethnic cleansing of 1948.
Still, this is the only coalition capable of organising massive demonstrations that elicit outside pressure on Israel to end its military operations, and one should not underestimate the urgency of such a development; but I doubt its ability to produce the change in Jewish public opinion necessary to opening the way for peace and reconciliation. This element within the anti-war coalition widens the margins of public debate in Israel at a time when the media have silenced debate or reports that question the government's policies. Even so, these margins remain narrow as far as the attitude to the Palestinians, their plight and rights are concerned.
The smaller group in this coalition is not even legitimised by the major component. It is centred around non- Zionist Jewish organisations and most of the Israeli- Palestinian parties. It offers a genuine alternative explanation and a way forward. But it is marginalised and fought, not only by the establishment, but also by the major component in the new peace and anti-war coalition. Its importance lies in its contacts with regional and global organisations that can empower both local and external action against occupation and in support of peace. This small component in the Israeli public space, as long as it is not totally silenced, can underline the wider set of issues which construct the oppressive nature of Zionism and Israel: the apartheid characteristics of policies toward Israel's Palestinian minority, the historical context of Israeli actions against the Palestinians in the occupied territories and Jewish society's need to acknowledge then reconcile with the crimes committed from the ethnic cleansing of 1948 until the "Defensive Wall" of today. The name is reminiscent of "Peace in Galilee," Israel's 1982 operation in Lebanon: two euphemisms for two destructive wars.
On a more personal note, I would add a personal déjà vu. As in 1993, during the heyday of Oslo, today the same despairing frustration about the future seeps in. I argued then, as I argue today, that even Peace Now is part of a single Zionist outlook, which does not allow recognition of past evils or of the need for genuine reconciliation with the Palestinian victims of Zionism and Israel. I am convinced today, as I was convinced then, that a far more fundamental and structural change has to occur in Jewish society for that to happen. Ten years ago, I pointed out apprehensively that we could no afford to let another decade pass, for more tragedies were in store. Now, the sense that there is no time for long-term transformation is even more acute. We are running out of time, for the dangers of transfer and even genocide are hovering above us. Strong international intervention and pressure are necessary, so that the Israeli state and Jewish society alike may understand the moral and political price they will have to pay.
People abroad, reading what I -- and my friends with similar views -- write, think mistakenly that we scribble these analyses and predictions easily. In fact, a very long process of hesitation, deliberation and articulation took place before these positions were formulated. Our views place us in a very precarious position in our society. We are treated as insane at best, and at worst as traitors, even by those who claim to uphold the values of free speech and opinion in Israel. I am analysing such a posture not from the point of view of risk or retribution, but rather from that of effectiveness. How can people like myself, so alienated by their own society and so revolted by what it and its government are doing, be effective in changing local public opinion? It sounds a quixotic exercise. But then I remember all the Jews who joined the ANC, the civil rights movement in the US and the anti-colonialist movement in France. I remember the brave Italians and Spaniards who did not succumb to the lure of Fascism and I draw courage from all these examples to go on telling my own people, from within, to break the mirror that shows them a superior moral body. They must replace it with one that exposes the crimes they, or on their behalf their various leaders and governments, are committing against humanity and the Palestinian people.
* The writer is professor at Haifa University and member of the Jewish-Arab Democratic Front for Peace and Equality.
BENEATH THEIR SKINS: The Israeli army has many ways of heightening Palestinians sense of vulnerability; young men comply with Israeli orders to expose their midriffs as they surrender to the Israeli army, while a Palestinian girl covers her ears as she runs from sniper fire in Bethlehem (photos: AFP, Reuters) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----
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