[News] Hollow visions of Palestine's future - Israeli 'Peace' Movement

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6068.shtml

Opinion/Editorial
Hollow visions of Palestine's future
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 20 November 2006

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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 à 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.


<http://www.jkcook.net>Jonathan Cook is a writer 
and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His 
book, 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745325556/theelectronic-20>Blood 
and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and 
Democratic State, is published by Pluto Press.


Related Links
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6001.shtml>The 
Anatomy of a Beautiful Soul, Raymond Deane (9 November 2006)



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