Lawrence of Cyberia

A Roger Maris Democracy

In the last edition of my alumni magazine, there was a summary of an interesting lecture at my former university, about the prospects for democracy in the Middle East. The speaker was fairly optimistic, not about change imposed from the outside, but about the possibility of democratic developments from within. He cited how there are already countries in the region that one could call "democracies in the making", like Jordan (which doesn't have the full range of democratic institutions, but allows all sectors of the electorate equal access to those that exist), and Israel (which does have a full range of democratic instutions, but reserves the full benefits of those institutions to only one race among the electorate, i.e. to Jewish citizens).

So, naturally, in this month's edition, there is the obligatory letter from a Friend of Israel, reminding us that we should support Israel because it's "the only democracy in the Middle East. All Muslim states might emulate Israel's example."

I'm not going to go into what kind of democratic nation rations out the benefits of democracy in accordance with the race of its citizens, and regards citizens of the "wrong" race to be a threat, or candidates for expulsion, not because of anything they do, but just because they exist. And I'm not going to go into what kind of democracy you have when you spend 37 years slowly annexing lands that are not yours, denying even the most basic democratic rights to the people who live there, simply because if you absorb the people as well as their land into your "democracy" they would mess up your ethnocracy by declining to vote to keep the ruling race in its position of privilege.

Because there's a much more fundamental flaw with Israel's democracy, and it goes back not to 1967, but to 1948. To be blunt, Israel was created a democracy only because it used violence and the threat of violence to forcibly reduce the civilian Arab population to such a small minority that its vote could not effect political change. And Israel can afford to remain a democracy today only by continuing to pretend that those it expelled, and who have a legal right to return (and thence to vote!), simply don't exist.

Think of it this way. I live in a small town in rural Maryland. I could stand for Mayor here, and I'm pretty sure that I could be elected....if I were allowed to expel from town anyone who wouldn't vote for me. And, if I were to forcibly prevent my expelled neighbors from returning to their homes for year after year, decade after decade, election after election, I could be re-elected just as often as I want. Mayor-for-life! By ignoring the very existence of that dissenting would-be majority, I could even call myself the "democratically-elected" Mayor-for-life. But just saying I'm democratic wouldn't make it so to anybody who understood just how my "democracy" was founded and perpetuated.

At least Israelis have lately begun to acknowledge that their state was created out of ethnic cleansing, even if they can't decide yet whether that is a bad thing (a la Ilan Pappe) or a good thing that just wasn't done efficiently enough (Benny Morris). But, as the absolute inability to talk rationally about the right of return illustrates, Israel is very far from coming to terms with 1948. And until it does, Israel will be a "Roger Maris Democracy": a democracy that appears in the history books with a perpetual asterix after its name, reminding us that what Israel means by "democracy" is not necessarily what the rest of us understand by it.

Happy Birthday

Who on earth remembers what they were doing exactly ten years ago today?

Well, I do. I was busy, producing this.

Happy tenth birthday to the oldest of the Cyberia offspring!

(She gets her table manners from her father).

Trading Places

"Tired of Racists" [1]

Gideon Levy poses a hypothetical to his Israeli readers: What would happen if a Palestinian terrorist were to detonate a bomb at the entrance to an apartment building in Israel and cause the death of an elderly man in a wheelchair, who would later be found buried under the rubble of the building? The country would be profoundly shocked. Everyone would talk about the sickening cruelty of the act and its perpetrators. The shock would be even greater if it then turned out that the dead man's wife had tried to dissuade the terrorist from blowing up the house, telling him that there were people inside, but to no avail. The tabloids would come out with the usual screaming headline: "Buried alive in his wheelchair." The terrorists would be branded "animals."

Of course, that incident didn't actually happen. What really happened was that the IDF killed wheelchair-bound Mahmoud Halfalla, 70, by demolishing his house on top of him, despite the efforts of his wife to warn the bulldozer driver that the house was occupied. Palestinian life has become so cheap in Israel that this killing did not even warrant a mention in the leading mass-circulation daily newspaper, which led Levy to pose his question, and left him wondering how Israelis can be so vocal against real or perceived anti-semitism, yet tolerant of the pernicious racism in their midst.

Levy wonders how loud would the cries of protest be in Israel if a European country tried to ban Jewish children from parochial schools, or to build roads that Jews were forbidden to drive on, or to deny their Jewish citizens access to medical treatment; or if their government ministers should express distaste for those "hooked nose Jews", or if their anti-Semites should poison the drinking water of a Jewish neighborhood?

Those incidents didn't happen either; at least not in Europe, and not against Jewish people. They did all happen, however, in the Occupied Territories or in Israel, where the populace reacted with profound indifference, seeing as the perpetrators were themselves Jewish Israelis and the victims (for the most part) Palestinian Arabs. Only in Israel, Levy concludes, could people so sensitive to racism abroad blithely inflict it on others at home and justify it to themselves by falling back on Golda Meir's maxim: "[A]fter what the Nazis did to us, we can do whatever we want".

Footnote:

[1] The photograph, Tired of Racists, depicts mixed (i.e. Jewish-Palestinian) Israeli families protesting the Knesset's 6-month extension of Israel's citizenship law. Under this law, Israeli citizens who marry a Palestinian are faced with the choice of leaving Israel or living apart from their spouse. The photograph was taken by Shabtai Gold, whose "Arabs to the Crematoria" photo provided jolting evidence of the depth of anti-Arab racism among some Israelis when it was featured in Ha'aretz. Shabtai has now launched a daily fotolog, showing his artistic and evocative images of daily life in Israel, and in the Palestinian Territories (where he works as a photographer for Israel's Physicians for Human Rights). The result is an album of beautiful images, showing the range of experiences in daily life for ordinary Israelis and Palestinians.

From the vivaciousness of carnival in Israeli West Jerusalem (click to enlarge)

... to the glory of the sunset over the beach at Tel Aviv.

With affirmations of the common humanity of Jewish Israelis in Tel Aviv...

... their Palestinian-Israeli compatriots in the Negev...

... and their Palestinian neighbours in the refugee camps of the occupied West Bank.



All interspersed with illustrations of the ugliness of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation...



... and reminders of what Palestinians endure out of sight, just 30 minutes from the beauty of the beach at Tel Aviv.

Anyone with an interest in Palestinians and Israelis, or in beautiful photography, will probably enjoy visiting Shabtai Gold's fotolog, "On the turning away". Access it here, or through the sidebar link (right).

Quote Of The Week

During Shock and Awe, I wondered which of the megaton bombs Jesus, our President's personal saviour, would have personally dropped on the sleeping families of Baghdad. I wondered, 'Does Jesus understand collateral damage?'

-- Meryl Streep, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 2004.

The Class Of 2004

Everyone has the right to education. -- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.

The occupying power shall, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children.
-- The Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 50, 1949.

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to education. Education is both a human right in itself and an indispensable means of realizing other human rights.
-- International Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Article 13, 1966.

In one of its earliest public opinion polls, the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center asked residents of the Occupied Territories, "What is the worst thing that could happen to a you, as a Palestinian?". Three answers tied for first place:

1. To die in exile.

2. To be labelled a 'terrorist'.

3. To be unable to provide an education for my children.

Answer 3 doesn't really fit in with the propaganda we hear in this country about Palestinians, does it? "They don't love their children like we do", "they send their children out to die for them", "they let their children get killed so they can make propaganda out of it"...etc, etc. But the importance of education is a recurrent theme when Palestinians are asked about their priorities. Of all the institutions in Palestinian society, schools and universities are the most trusted, and academics are the most respected of all professional people. When Palestinians are asked to prioritize where PA funding should be channelled, the clear winner - well ahead of healthcare, or building the institutions of a Palestinian state, or safeguarding democracy and human rights, or even providing immediate financial support to the neediest families - is education.

So no doubt there were plenty of proud parents witnessing the graduation ceremony pictured below, of the Bir Zeit University graduating class of 2004. All the more so since graduating from Palestinian universities today requires a determination and a commitment to education that those of us who meandered aimlessly through our university years and took it for granted that higher education was our divine right, cannot begin to imagine.

Graduating from Bir Zeit University, nr Ramallah, 3 July 2004. (via PalBlog)

Ever since the first intifada, one of the commonest collective punishments imposed on Palestinians has been the closure of schools and universities(PDF file). (Why do Arabs need education anyway, when they are destined under Israeli rule to serve as "woodcutters and waiters"? [1] ). Because of closures, and associated obstacles preventing access to schools and colleges, some of the new graduates in this photograph will have been studying for as many as seven years in order to complete their Bachelor's degree. And even when the university is open, Bir Zeit students face the daily challenge of trying to pass through the Israeli checkpoint at Surda which controls access to their classes. On good days, the checkpoint is unmanned, and students can make the 60-minute journey from Ramallah to Bir Zeit by scrambling through the piles of dirt and rubble and mud that comprise the Surda checkpoint. On bad days, they are faced with interminable delays, arbitrary rules on who may pass, and needless humiliations at the hands of IDF soldiers: like the lout who on 25 October 2003 detained 200 students attempting to go to class, and decided that the rule du jour was that only those wearing hair gel should go to university. "Today, gel will buy you an education", he announced...

The Israeli organisation, Rabbis for Human Rights, is currently cooperating with Bir Zeit to replenish the resources of the hard-pressed University Library. Bir Zeit has posted an online wishlist of books it needs in order to continue providing students in the Ramallah area with the kind of first-rate education they would otherwise have to seek overseas, or more likely give up on all together. If you would like to contribute a book, simply make a purchase for Bir Zeit at your preferred online bookseller. Have it sent direct to:

Rabbis for Human Rights,
Yitzhak Elhanan 2,
Jerusalem, 92141
Israel

with the message “a gift for Bir Zeit University Library”, and Rabbis for Human Rights will hand over your purchase directly to a Bir Zeit representative at the Surda checkpoint. With books on the wishlist starting at less than $20, it's an affordable and convenient way for those of us whose education involved no more serious challenge than grumpily dragging ourselves out of bed for 9:00am lectures, to give practical support to students and their families who struggle every day for the right to learn.

[1] "We shall reduce the Arab population to a community of woodcutters and waiters." -- Uri Lubrani, Israeli Prime Minister Ben-Gurion's special advisor on Arab Affairs. Cited in: "The Arabs in Israel", by Sabri Jiryas.

Reforming Dahlanistan

Some emotive words get so misused in U.S. political discourse that after a while they begin to lose their meaning. Words like “freedom”, “democracy”, “patriotism”, “terror” (and many more) have become so loaded that you have to know who is speaking, in what context, and with what agenda before you can be sure that you are understanding the word as your speaker intends. The same phenomenon is apparent in discourse about the Palestinians, with the most mangled word in the Palestinian political lexicon undoubtedly being “reform”. Our news media happily report on the need for “reform” of the Palestinian Authority, as if this term has a single meaning and as if the average U.S. viewer has any idea at all what that meaning might be. The reality is, however, that “reform” in a Palestinian context has a number of extremely specific, and self-interested meanings, which vary depending on who it is that is calling for “reform” at any given time:

1. When the Israeli government says that the PA must “reform” before Israel can talk peace, the exact area to be reformed is often nebulous, but the bottom line is always the same: the Likud does not believe in an independent Palestine, and will always be able to find one more area in need of reform/one more hoop that the Palestinians must jump through before talks can begin.

2. When the U.S. says the Palestinians must “reform”, it means that they must unify their various security services under a U.S. approved strongman, i.e. not President Arafat. This “reformed” security service must be trained by the CIA to control internal (i.e. Islamist) dissent and provide security for Israel, and must work in close coordination with the security services of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, similarly trained by the CIA to stamp out dissent in their respective countries.

3. When the European Union demands that the PA “reform”, it means that it must introduce transparency and accountability into its financial affairs. (The EU is the major source of PA funding, and the Europeans have a not unreasonable interest in being sure that their money is going where they intend).

4. When Palestinians call for "reform", they want democratic elections that will establish the institutions that will be the basis of an independent Palestinian state. They are not going to get elections, however, as long as the U.S. and Israel fear that Arafat will win another term in office:

The real reason why the Israeli authorities, with the support of the United States, will not permit Palestinian elections is that they do not want Arafat to be reelected….So the PA can go on making all the preparations and its senior officials can talk as much as they wish about democratic processes and procedures, but as long as it’s clear that Arafat will win, elections are not likely to take place.

-- Danny Rubinstein, The Other Elections; Ha’aretz, 16 Nov 2002.

(This point refers back to my opening sentences, about words like "democracy" not necessarily meaning what we think they mean when they are used in American political discourse).

So, what are we to make of the current unrest in the Gaza Strip where, according to our mass media, Fatah “reformers” are challenging the “corruption” of Arafat-appointed cronies. Which category of “reform” do the Gaza reformers belong to?

Well, inconveniently, the “reformist” gunmen who last week attacked the most visible symbols of Arafat’s rule in the Gaza Strip (Generals Ghazi Jabali and Musa Arafat), and torched PA police stations there in an apparent protest against “corruption”, don’t necessarily fit into any of the above categories. Although western media tend to present the unrest as protest by “reformers” against corrupt Arafat cronies, Palestinian analysts and informed Israeli commentators emphasize that this is not a struggle between innocent reformists and corrupt conservatives. It is rather a face-off between strong men in positions of power, in which the issues of reform and corruption are simply being used to lend legitimacy to those who wish to challenge Arafat's entrenched leadership.

Among Palestinians, the current “intrafada” in Gaza is generally believed to be the handiwork of supporters of Mohammed Dahlan, former head of the PA’s Preventative Security Service in Gaza, and still the local strongman there. As Amira Hass has pointed out, it’s a little ironic that Dahlan should be riding the wave of popular discontent at Arafat’s cronyism, patronage and disregard for the rule of law, when his own rise to prominence has been fuelled by, well cronyism, patronage and – during his tenure as head of the PSS – disregard for the rule of law. (Dahlan’s record on human rights and respect for the law was so poor that local Gazans referred to the Strip as “Dahlanistan” when he was in power there).

When the armed followers of Mohammed Dahlan call for “reform” they too have their own specific meaning for the term (which I suppose would be number 5 on the list of definitions above). Reform for Dahlan means:

1. In line with American demands, unifying the PA’s various security services under a U.S. approved strongman; that strongman being (surprise, surprise) Mohammed Dahlan. This “reformed” security service to be trained by, and coordinate closely with, the CIA (with whom, coincidentally, Dahlan has maintained a close relationship ever since the creation of the PSS in 1994. In fact, Dahlan’s relationship with his U.S. security counterparts is so close that he is nicknamed “Condoleezza” in the Palestinian Territories, though I suspect not to his face).

2. Holding elections: not on a national level, but within Fatah, in order to displace the older generation of Fatah officials who returned from exile with Arafat and remain entrenched at the highest level of Fatah institutions. (Coincidentally, Dahlan is believed to enjoy the support of at least 70% of Fatah’s younger members in the Gaza Strip, and would expect to be the prime beneficiary of elections to the Fatah Central Committee and Revolutionary Council).

And why is Dahlan’s challenge to Arafat coming to a head now? Well, Dahlan has been out of government since the fall of Abu Mazen last September, but the prospect of Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip has brought him back into the spotlight. Arafat might not trust Dahlan, and may suspect the younger man is seeking to sideline (if not replace him), but as Dahlan remains probably the most powerful single security figure in the Gaza Strip, Arafat cannot ignore him. As one Fatah official put it, at a time when the Gaza Strip is the focus of Israeli-Palestinian relations, Dahlan’s continuing shows of strength there are a forceful reminder to President Arafat: "Either I play, too, or there will be no game."

All of which is a very long-winded introduction to the fact that the long-awaited biography of Mohammed Dahlan is now online. Access it here, or through the Palestinian Biographies link on the sidebar (left).

Update, 27 July 2004: Also updated the existing biographies of Haidar Abdel Shafi, Sari Nusseibeh, Jibril Rajoub, Abdul Aziz Rantisi and Saeb Erekat.

Quote Of The Week

Israel would be stronger if she were able to stand up and announce that she was made at the cost of a great injustice to the Palestinian people. It would conform not only with the facts, but with 30 centuries of Jewish humanity and wisdom. It would make her not less Jewish, but more Jewish. It would resolve a terrible conflict in her past that hamstrings her present and perhaps her future. I think that would be a good start towards making peace, a peace that would last.

-- Richard Ben Cramer, discussing his recently published book "How Israel Lost", which explores "how the occupation of Palestinian land has corrupted the soul of the Jewish state".

(Cartoon: Malcolm Evans)

Housekeeping

1. Added a second update to Purity of Arms II, providing a link to photographs of the position from where an IDF sniper shot dead Asma Mughayer (16) and her 13-year-old brother, Ahmed, on 18 May 2004.

2. Added an update, Israeli officers demoted for murder, to my post on the shooting death of Arafat Yakub. Two of the IDF officers whose troops carried out the shooting have been demoted, a third has received a reprimand.

3. Added two additional articles: Imperial Misconceptions by Roni Ben Efrat and The Second Intifada - An Israeli Strategy to Footnote 2 (Associated Articles) of “No-one to talk to” , which discusses Israel’s misuse of IDF Military Intelligence as an excuse to abandon negotiations with the Palestinians.

4. Nope, still haven't finished the promised bio of Mohammed Dahlan.

The Geneva Map

Leila at Dove's Eye View links to a slideshow (Palestine Israel 101) that has been created by the American Task Force on Palestine, and is an useful introduction for an American audience to the I/P conflict and the two state solution.

One of the slides in the presentation includes this map of the land swaps envisaged by the Geneva Accord.

I found it particularly interesting because to be honest I found the maps attached to the Accord really unfathomable, and it was useful to see things simplified here.

"Land swap" was a principle suggested by the Palestinian side during Camp David II (and further developed at Taba) to minimize the number of Israelis who would be uprooted from illegal Jewish settlements in the Palestinian Territories on the signing of a final peace accord. The vast majority of Jewish settlers live in settlements that abut the Green Line. These settlements would be annexed to Israel, and only the intrusive blocs - e.g. Ariel, Gush Etzion, Kiryat Arba (click thumbnail, left) - would be evacuated. In return, the Palestinians would receive Israeli land equal in size and quality to what had been ceded to Israel, particularly to widen the desperately overcrowded Gaza Strip.

So at the end of the day, 75% of Jewish settlers would be repatriated to Israel without ever leaving their homes, and the new Palestine would be entirely settlement-free. Who says the Palestinians never came up with anything at Camp David?

Breaking The Taboo

The danger with broadening the definition of "anti-semite" to include just about anyone whose views on Israel lie to the left of Ariel Sharon's, is that before long the term will become so broad that it doesn't really mean anything distinctive anymore.

You know you've gone pretty far down that road, when even Israeli government ministers start throwing the "anti-semite" term at each other. Justice Minister Tommy Lapid and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom did just that in a 27 June 2004 Cabinet discussion about the lack of recognition by Israel's religious establishment of Reform and Conservative Judaism:

Shalom cut [Lapid] off, saying heatedly: "I've had it with listening to you... Every time we discuss Jewish issues, you come with your attacks on Judaism..."

Lapid then told Shalom, "You're an anti-Semite"...

Shalom responded: "You're an anti-Semite, a racist and a clown".

To which Lapid replied: "You're an anti-Semite, a racist, a clown and a poopyhead!"

Shalom, rising angrily from his chair countered: "Oh yeah? Well, I might be an anti-Semite, a racist, a clown and a poopyhead, but at least I don't have cooties!"

Hang on a minute, I'm getting a bit carried away here. I made up that last bit - about the cooties and poopyheads - but the anti-Semite exchange is actually real, and no less absurd.

Quote Of The Week

According to United Nations figures, less than 600 of the 10,000 houses demolished since the occupation began in 1967 involved security suspects. The rest — 94 percent — were simply houses of ordinary people who were in Israel’s way.

-- Dismantling the Fortresses of Fear by Jeff Halper, coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)

A Palestinian woman cries holding family picture in front of the her house, after it was demolished by Israeli bulldozers in al Brazil at the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza, May 21, 2004. (REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic)

A Palestinian boy cries in the rubble of his family house after it was demolished by Israeli bulldozers during a raid in al Brazil, at the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza Strip, May 21, 2004. (REUTERS/Suhaib Salem)

Worth A Thousand Words

Ha’aretz is reporting this morning that overnight IDF soldiers killed a disabled 70-year-old Palestinian man when they demolished on top of him the “uninhabited” house in Khan Younis where he and his family lived.

A wheelchair-bound Palestinian was killed as the IDF destroyed or seriously damaged a dozen houses in Gaza's Khan Yunis refugee camp in the early morning hours on Monday. The IDF claims the houses were uninhabited and used by gunmen to fire at the neighboring Gush Katif settlement bloc.

Palestinian sources said that large numbers of IDF troops entered the west side of the camp with bulldozers, tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Around 4 A.M. the tractors destroyed a house in which Mahmoud Halfalla, 70, resided, Palestinian sources said. The wheelchair-bound man did not manage to escape from the house. After the IDF left the area, Halfalla's body was found in the wreckage, the sources said.

-- Palestinians: Man crushed to death after IDF destroys home

Now, there are a few things I might query in the way that story is reported. Firstly, I think it was more likely a bulldozer than a "tractor" that demolished Mahmoud Halfalla's home. The IDF entered Khan Younis under cover of darkness to destroy Palestinian houses, not to plant vegetables.

Secondly, as Mahmoud Halfalla is now dead, those houses were clearly not "uninhabited", regardless of what the IDF claims. And even if they were, doesn't it strike you as odd that, seeing as the Gaza Strip is the most densely populated piece of real estate on earth, and seeing that UNRWA is currently accomodating thousands of Gazan Palestinians in tents because IDF house demolitions in just the first 6 months of this year have left over 12,000 local people homeless, the houses that the IDF demolishes are so often "uninhabited"? Perhaps a little contextual information, on the lengths that the IDF goes to to make life unliveable in those areas it wishes to cleanse of Palestinians, so that they will "voluntarily" leave the homes that Israel wishes to destroy, might have been useful here.

And finally, that headline's not quite accurate, is it? "Man crushed to death after IDF destroys home"? Unless Mr Halfalla was incredibly unlucky and happened to be crushed to death by an unrelated phenomenon shortly after the IDF demolished his home on top of him, it's probably more truthful to say "Man crushed to death while IDF destroys home"; or perhaps dispense with the passive altogether and just come out and say it: "IDF crushes man to death by destroying home on top of him".

The real kicker in this story however is not in the words, but in the photograph that Ha’aretz uses to accompany its report. They took it from Reuters and, from perusing the news photos currently available of last night's demolitions in Khan Younis, it appears they had several appropriate pictures to choose from. They could have used any of these:

A Palestinian woman collects the belongings of her house after it was demolished by Israeli troops at the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza Strip, July 12, 2004...

(Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)

A Palestinian boy searches in the rubble after Israeli army bulldozers demolished his house....

(AFP/Said Khatib)

Palestinians look at the wreckage after an Israeli army operation in the Khan Yunis refugee camp...

(AFP/Said Katib)

Palestinians collect their belongings from the rubble of a destroyed house at the Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip , Monday, July 12, 2004...

(AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

But the picture that Ha'aretz apparently considered most suitable to illustrate the story of a Palestinian 70-year-old crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer was, unbelievably, this:

Masked Palestinian militants march during the funeral of two militants after their car exploded in Gaza July 11, 2004. (REUTERS/Suhaib Salem).
(You can see the photo in context here).

What exactly is Ha'aretz's angle here? "Oops, our army crushed to death an elderly, disabled, civilian but we really don't want you to think about that. So here's a scary picture instead of a masked man at a funeral who has no connection to this story and is not referenced anywhere in our report. LOOK A TERRORIST!". That's pathetic.

Ha'aretz manages to run photos (and often pen portraits) of virtually every Israeli victim of Palestinian violence, and quite rightly so. Every person killed in this conflict should be humanised with a name and a face and a life story. So why not humanise the murdered Palestinians too, especially when its your own army that's killing them? It would have been easy to use a relevant photo: even a general picture of the destruction in Khan Younis (like those shown above) would have been OK. A photo of the victim himself would have been better journalism. Best of all, a serious newspaper might have provided some meaningful context by including pictures of other innocent people murdered in exactly the same way, like Noha al-Makadama (a.k.a. Nuha Sweidan) who was 9-months pregnant and asleep in her home with her husband and eleven children when the IDF destroyed their house, crushing her under a wall and also killing two boys, aged 13 and 16.

Wouldn't any of those alternatives have been a more relevant photograph to accompany this story? Apparently tracking down an appropriate picture was beyond Ha'aretz's capabilities, so let me do it for them. How about this one:

Palestinians carry the body of seventy-year-old Ibrahim Mahmoud Khalafallah, during his funeral at the Khan Younis refugee camp in southern Gaza Strip (news - web sites) July 12, 2004. An Israeli bulldozer crushed him to death when it demolished his Gaza Strip home on Monday, witnesses said. The demolition was during a raid to demolish homes the army described as militant gun posts. (REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa)

I don't want to brag, but you have to admit that my photo is a lot better than theirs, inasmuch as it actually has something to do with the story. And it was easy to find too, seeing as it comes from the same Reuters that provided the "I'm-totally-unrelated-but-look-at-me-I'm-a-terrorist" photo that Ha'aretz actually used. All you need is internet access and Google. Oh, and the willingness to show that the victims of IDF atrocities in Gaza are human beings too, no more and no less than the victims in Ashdod and Tel Aviv and Sderot.

Judgement Day

Separating Israel from Palestinian suicide bombers? The Separation Wall on the outskirts of Jerusalem: separating the occupied Palestinians of Abu Dis village (upper half of picture) from, well, the occupied Palestinians of Abu Dis village (lower). (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

This afternoon, the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) at the Hague will publish its Advisory Opinion on Israel's West Bank Wall. The court will undoubtedly rule in favor of the Palestinians, condemning those parts of the barrier that effectively annex Palestinian land, and calling for its dismantling in the Occupied Territories. (It will not of course comment on the small sections of the barrier that actually follow the Green Line: Israel may legally build whatever security structures it wants to defend itself on its own territory, it just can't build them on stolen land to secure an illegal occupation of that land). The Palestinian case is so powerful in international law that its ruling may even be unanimous. (The only sadly predictable exception might be the U.S. judge on the presiding panel - let's face it, if U.S. jurists can advise the Bush Administration that ramming glo-sticks up Iraqi asses doesn't contravene the Geneva Conventions on the rights of P.O.W.s, then we shouldn't perhaps be surprised if they turn a blind eye to blatant contraventions of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of Occupied Peoples). With or without the U.S., the judgement will undoubtedly be overwhelmingly in favor of Palestine. I blogged in an earlier post - Liberty and Justice for Some - about the fact that the Israeli government was unwilling to present its case before the I.C.J., simply because it knew it had no case for the Wall as it is being built.

Israel will of course declare that it has no intention of obeying this ruling, and will shout Security! Security! Security!, hoping that if it shouts loud enough no-one will point out that a wall built for Israel's security would actually have been built between Israeli and Palestinian land, not between Palestinians and their fields, schools, jobs, medical service, and family members. The U.S. too will ignore the ruling, and will effectively shield Israel at the U.N. from the usual consequences of such a damning judgement. (The usual consequences being international sanctions, as the U.N. Security Council imposed in 1971 after the I.C.J. ruled, in a similar case to today's, against apartheid South Africa's illegal occupation of South-West Africa - now Namibia). So this ruling isn't going to bring an immediate change: the Wall isn't going to come tumbling down (yet), and the international community is not going to finally find its voice and present a united and effective front against the Occupation (yet).

But today's ruling matters nonetheless. For all that it claims not to care, Israel is passionately concerned about world opinion, and expends huge resources in manufacturing favorable international coverage, especially in the U.S. Ever since the Wall was referred to the Hague, Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid has been having kittens over the international repercussions of defeat at the I.C.J. In a leaked speech to the Israeli cabinet, he warned in January 2004 that unless the route of the Wall is changed to follow the pre-1967 border, the I.C.J. court hearing will be the beginning of a process that will turn Israel into an apartheid-era South Africa [which] will be boycotted in every international forum. And for the past week Israeli officials have been secretly seeking reassurances from the U.S. that it will use its veto to prevent any effective sanctions being imposed at the U.N. to force compliance with the law. A nation that doesn't care about international opinion doesn't lobby this hard to shield itself from the will of the international community.

Furthermore, international new agencies have until now been falling over themselves trying to balance both side's claims when reporting the on Wall, coming up with convoluted descriptions like "Israeli authorities say the barrier, made up of fences, razor wire and stark concrete walls, is needed to keep Palestinian militants and suicide bombers out, while Palestinians, whose lives are disrupted by the barrier, claim it's a land grab". Now that an impartial legal body has given an authorative ruling on what the barrier really is, they no longer have to do that. The Wall can be fairly described now as simply Israel's illegal West Bank Barrier, and every mention of that in international coverage will be a reminder to world opinion of the occupation and land theft that it represents.

The I.C.J. ruling is also important because of the pressure it puts on Israel's unquestioning defenders. It is today more of an embarassment than ever to be an apologist for Likud policies that a respected international legal forum is about to declare illegal. Of course this doesn't mean that the U.S. is suddenly going to stop covering for Israel at the U.N. But every American veto that frustrates the otherwise unanimous opinion of the U.N.S.C. on the Israel-Palestine issue costs the U.S. diplomatic goodwill, and the cost will go up when this judgement is announced. The cost will go up for Israel, which will be expected to be more visibly cooperative with the U.S. on (cosmetic) issues like outposts, to recompense the U.S. for the increased flak it is taking on Israel's behalf. And the cost will go up for the U.S., at a time when its need for international support (e.g. in Iraq) is greater than ever and its diplomatic standing lower than ever. Need support from France, Germany, Russia, China, Pakistan, Turkey and a hundred other nations on Iraq, North Korea, Syria and Iran? Of course Mr Bush... now what are you going to give us on Israel? That's how it works: every veto costs.

So, from a U.S. perspective, rulings like the I.C.J.'s are helping to transform Israel from a strategic asset that strengthens American interests in the Middle East into a strategic burden that tars our name in the region by associating us with illegal, expansionist, and racist policies that are anathema to our own professed national values and fuel the terror we are supposedly at war with. And from an Israeli perspective, the harsh reality is that when you have mortgaged your future on cultivating just one friend in the world, it's really not in your interests to become a perennial millstone round the neck of that friend.

Thirdly, the I.C.J. ruling is important as an expression of solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are suffering the effects of the illegal Wall, and with the many thousands of Palestinians (and Israelis) who have been involved in unarmed protest against it over the last few months. They don't get much coverage in the U.S., where Palestinians are generally not news unless one of them has exploded a bomb, but demonstrations against the Wall - often in the face of beatings, tear gas and on five occasions lethal live fire - have become a daily feature in the Palestinian villages around Jerusalem...

such as A-Ram and Biddu...

...and Az-Zawiya...

International solidarity with the Palestinians might not seem to count for much if the two countries it excludes are the world's major power and the Middle East's major power, but it matters. Less than 20 years ago, apartheid South Africa had few friends in the world, but those it had were powerful. I still remember the confidence with which President Reagan and Mrs Thatcher thought they could fend off international pressure against their friends in the National Party. Now, ten years after the fall of apartheid, having a few powerful allies against world opinion doesn't look like such a sure thing.

Finally, this ruling matters because it raises awareness of the reality of the Occupation in those parts of the world where our news coverage is generally Israel-centric. (Is that a word?). Most of us get our news from TV reports that focus on terror as something that happens in a vacuum free of historical context: free of Nakba, and Occupation, and martial law and expropriation and daily humiliation and death at the hands of the IDF. Our coverage is dominated by news of Israeli deaths, as if the deliberate killing of civilians "like us", in restaurants and shopping malls like the ones were frequent, matters more than the far more frequent deliberate killing of civilians not quite like us in squalid slums and refugee camps. When even the vaunted coverage of the BBC leaves its viewers utterly ignorant of the basic facts of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and more likely to believe that it is the Palestinians who are illegally settling on occupied Israeli territory than vice versa, a ruling such as this, which demands some reporting of causes of the conflict and not just its symptoms, can only help.

So for all those reasons, the ruling that the I.C.J. will make today is important. It won't change anything immediately, and every change it does evoke will come grudgingly with foot-dragging and reluctance. But one day when the wall is dismantled, as it will be, we will nevertheless look back and recognise today as a turning point for all of those - Palestinians and Israelis alike - who understand that there is no future for any of us in treating the Arab-Israeli conflict as a zero-sum game.

In the meantime, a small selection of thought-provoking articles from Israelis (and there are many of them) who recognise the Separation Wall for the illegal landgrab that it is, and welcome international intervention to halt what Israelis themselves have failed to stop:

1. Down and out in The Hague
Yoel Marcus contrasts Israel's willingness to make political capital from its terror victims in demonstrations outside the I.C.J., with its reluctance to defend its behavior inside the court. He comes away with the uneasy feeling that Israel wants the world's pity as a victim of terror, while evading discussion of the injustice that gives rise to the terror in the first place:

At their demonstrations, the Palestinians could pull out photographs of more than 3,000 victims. As for playing on the emotions, they could easily flaunt their suffering. They could dwell on their destroyed homes and the torment they endure at army checkpoints. But instead of harping on their misfortunes, they have focused on Israel's occupation policies and the security fence. They have appealed to the world's sense of justice, while we seek the world's pity.

2. Cry, our beloved country
Gideon Levy welcomes the consternation that the I.C.J. referral is causing for those Israelis who have determinedly ignored the progressive imprisonment of their Palestinian neighbors behind the Wall. He hopes that the international hearing might begin the kind of change that I.C.J. intervention began for South Africa:

The hope that international institutions will rescue Israel from its evil doing is very problematic. But when the institutions of law and justice of the state fail, there is no recourse but to turn to the international one. Just like it would have been better had the whites in South Africa understood themselves that their regime was based on evil, it would have been better if those in power in Israel understood finally that our occupation regime is based on terrible evil that should have ended a long time ago.

When this does not happen, when 37 years go by and the occupation only becomes more brutal, when the Israeli consciousness is not being "seared" and does not internalize the enormity of the wickedness, there is no choice but to turn to the world for help.

3. What really influences the High Court
Amira Hass considers the reasons why the Israeli High Court spoke out last week against the Wall's route in the Jerusalem area, and comes to the hopeful conclusion that the small and isolated protests by Palestinians and Israelis are finally causing a rippling effect that is undermining the Israeli public's previous apathy on the route of the barrier and the devastation it causes:

Every demonstration, every protest, every organized tour along the fence including the tours organized by the Peres Center or the supporters of the Geneva initiative, every appearance by the women of MachsomWatch [Checkpoint Watch] at a locked gate in the separation fence created a noisy focus in Israeli society. It was noise in the silence of the uniform consensus. No matter how marginal, how distant, how remote, every noisy focus creates small ripples of public attention, and the ripples expand and broaden...

Joint Israeli-Palestinian protests and joint Jewish-Arab actions create in Israel particularly loud "noise." Every anarchist risking being shot by an Israeli soldier has parents and cousins; every activist at MachsomWatch has relatives and colleagues at work; every architect from Bamakom, the non-profit organization that provided expert counsel to the petitioners regarding the route of the fence, has a partner and contractors with whom he or she works. Thus broadens the circle of Israeli cognizance of the impossible reality created by the separation barrier.

4. Yoel Esteron doesn't just want the West Bank barrier moved to a legal route on the Green Line, he wants it removed altogether. On whatever route it is built, the Wall is a tool for managing the terror that arises from the continuing occupation of the Palestinian territories, when the truth is that the only way Israelis will be free from that terror is by making peace.

Life without a fence was terrible, but at least it created a sense of urgency; that we have to do something to stop the killing; to solve the conflict; to make peace. The fence creates an illusion that we can "manage" the conflict instead of resolving it, another dubious invention of recent years.

...Anyone who wants to live without terror, to live in peace, has to oppose the fence. Not when peace, or the messiah, comes. Now.

Anyone who doesn't oppose the fence is in effect accepting Sharon's fence. The result will be more and more terror that circumvents the fence; the longer the occupation continues, the more horrible the terror. The fence will not stop it for long, it will only make it more sophisticated and more terrible. Here is an urgent proposal to the agenda for Israelis from the center and leftward: Let's dismantle the fence.

Quote Of The Week

In the past six months I have lectured in four continents to many thousands of people. What brings them together is Palestine and the struggle of the Palestinian people which is now a byword for emancipation and enlightenment, regardless of all the vilification heaped on them by their enemies. Whenever the facts are made known, there is immediate recognition and an expression of the most profound solidarity with the justice of the Palestinian cause and the valiant struggle by the Palestinian people on its behalf....

Remember the solidarity here and everywhere in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia, and remember also that there is a cause to which many people have committed themselves, difficulties and terrible obstacles notwithstanding. Why? Because it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights.

-- Prof. Edward W. Said, "The Meaning of Rachel Corrie; 26 June 2003

South Korean activists hold a protest in front of the Israeli embassy in Seoul June 29, 2004. Dozens of activists demanded the Israeli authority stop attacking the Palestinian people. (REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won)

The Enemy Of My Enemy...

"Antisemites are not your friends". That was the message that Uri Avnery and Yossi Sarid told their respective audiences as they watched the spectacular box-office success of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ”. The interesting thing is that their message was identical, but their intended readership was very different.

Israeli MK and former Meretz leader, Yossi Sarid, was addressing his comments to the readers of Ha’aretz, particularly those Jewish readers who welcome the support that American Christian fundamentalists give to the Israeli government in its conflict with the Palestinians, but turn a blind eye to the reasons why those fundamentalists offer it. (Namely, because they believe that only when the Jews of the diaspora are ingathered to a Muslim-free Greater Israel can Jesus return to establish his rule on earth; at which point a Jewish remnant will see the error of its ways and acclaim Jesus as Messiah, while the rest of Judaism will perish. No, really.) Sarid cautions Israeli Jews about accepting the support of those whose endgoal is Jewish extinction:

The "Passion" is on its way to becoming Hollywood's number one blockbuster. From the outset, it would never have made it to the big screen unless it had a sure chance of becoming a major hit. Gibson is familiar with the American soul, with the world's soul, and he also knows for sure that a movie like this, at this time, will ride on the high waves of Christian fundamentalism in his country and in others. Without supportive surroundings, Gibson, who is not exactly known as a modern-day Shakespeare, would not have dared make this movie.

Within these surroundings are to be found the best friends of Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu, Beni Elon, Nathan Sharansky and Effi Eitam, who are fighting fiercely, as we all know, against anti-Semitism. Sharon, Netanyahu, Elon and their friends have long entered into a blood pact, of ketchup, with the more anti-Semitic Christian groups in America, who pretend to be sworn friends of Israel….

The Israeli government's battle against anti-Semitism is hypocritical, because it is selective. We are ready to join forces with anti-Semitic zealots, even with certain Holocaust deniers, if they are just willing to support the policies of the Sharon government… With friends like these, who vote en masse for Haider and flock en masse to see Gibson's movie, there's no need for enemies; because enemies such as these friends are hoping to inherit this land in a war of Armageddon, whose advent, if it is taking time, maybe needs to be sped up.

-- Hypocrisy and anti-Semitism

On the other hand, Uri Avnery (chairman of Gush Shalom), directed his comments on “The Passion” to the Palestinians, in the form of an open letter to Yasser Arafat. He warned Arafat not to try to make political capital out of a movie that resurrects the blood libel of the Jews as “Christ-killers”: firstly, because it is not “the Jews” who are the enemy of the Palestinians, and secondly, because anti-Semitism hurts not only Jewish people, but has been a disaster for the Palestinians too. He reminds Arafat:

You, Mr. President, as an Arab and a Muslim, are proud of the fact ‎‎that for more than a thousand years the Muslim world was a model of ‎‎tolerance, toward both Jews and Christians. The Muslim world has ‎‎never known mass expulsions and pogroms, that were a regular feature ‎‎in Christendom, not to mention the terrible Holocaust.‎ The blood-bond between Muslims and Jews runs through history… Let us not allow the present bitter conflict between our two peoples, ‎‎with all its cruelty, to overshadow the past, because that is the basis for ‎‎our common future.‎

The present sufferings of the Palestinian people - which we, as ‎‎Israelis and Jews, oppose and fight against - have no connection with ‎‎what happened - or not - some 1973 years ago. If there is any connection at all, it is the other way round. Without ‎‎modern Christian anti-Semitism, the Zionist movement would not have ‎‎been born at all… ‎‎Anti-Semitism was and is the force that drives the Jews to Palestine.

Without anti-Semitism, the Zionist vision would have remained an ‎‎abstract idea. From the pogrom of Kishinev, through the Holocaust to ‎‎the anti-Semitism in Russia that has recently driven more than a million ‎‎Jews to Israel - anti-Semitism was and remains the most dangerous ‎‎enemy of the Palestinian people. There is much truth in the saying that ‎‎the Palestinians are "the victims of the victims".

‎On top of all the moral reasons, this is an additional argument ‎‎against a statement about the crucifixion that can be construed by ‎‎anti-Semites as an encouragement for their cause. When peace comes, we shall all meet in Jerusalem, Jews, Christians ‎‎and Muslims.

-- A Letter to President Arafat

So the message of both Sarid's and Avnery's articles, to Palestinians and Israeli Jews alike, is that no matter how badly you think you need friends right now, there are some friends you never need.

Why bring this up now, when "The Passion" is mercifully dropping from the radar? Well, I was reminded of it this week as I read a post by Mohsan at Je Blog, about a military cemetery being desecrated in Haguenau, northeastern France. I must admit when I read about neo-nazi graffiti being sprayed on gravestones, I assumed that I was looking at another sad story of a Jewish cemetery desecrated by followers of the far-right, as happened just a few weeks ago in nearby Colmar. But then I read Mohsan's linked story:

Les profanateurs en série ont trouvé leur terre d'élection : l'Alsace. Après — entre autres — les 50 tombes musulmanes taguées d'inscriptions néo-nazies le 13 juin dans un cimetière de Strasbourg et la profanation de 127 tombes au cimetière juif d'Herrlisheim, près de Colmar, fin avril, une cinquantaine de tombes musulmanes du cimetière militaire de Haguenau (Bas-Rhin) ont été recouvertes d'inscriptions racistes, de croix gammées et de sigles nazis tracés à l'encre rouge dans la nuit de mercredi à jeudi. Des dizaines de stèles ont aussi été jetées à terre dans ce cimetière abritant des «combattants musulmans morts pour la France» pendant la Première ou la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

Trans: The serial desecrators have found their preferred turf: Alsace. After - among others - the 50 Muslim graves sprayed with neo-Nazi inscriptions on 13 June in a Strasbourg cemetery and the desecration of 127 graves in the Jewish cemetery in Herrlisheim, near Colmar, at the end of April, about 50 Muslim graves in Haguenau military cemetery (in Bas Rhin) have been defaced with racist slogans, swastikas and Nazi symbols, written in red paint on Wednesday night [23 June]. Tens of gravestones were also overturned in this cemetery, commemorating "Muslims soldiers who died for France" during the First and Second World Wars.

-- original story here (in French); or read an English-language report from The (UK) Independent

If Sarid and Avnery were looking for a photo to get across their point that "these people are not your friends", they need look no further than Colmar and Haguenau cemeteries. This is what anti-semites think of Jews...

and this is what the same people really think of Muslims:

When Abu Nidal, formerly head of the PLO-General Command, died in Baghdad in August 2002 ("committed suicide by shooting himself several times in the head" as the Iraqi press agency laconically put it), Time Magazine noted that he had successfully disproved the old maxim that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". In the west, Abu Nidal was notorious for bloody and spectacular attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets, but in the Arab world he was known for his hatred (and murder) of those PLO members who favored negotiations over force and for the fratricidal bloodletting that tore his own Palestinian faction apart. In death, he achieved the rare feat of being equally unmourned by Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Perhaps by the same token, Israelis and Palestinians might look at the photos from Haguenau and Colmar, and learn the same lesson that Abu Nidal once taught them: that sometimes the enemy of my enemy is...well, still the enemy.

Quote Of The Week

Our problem in the state of Israel is not to liberate the Palestinians, but to liberate the Israelis from this accursed domination through violence.

(Reuters)

-- Yeshayahu Leibowitz, formerly Professor of Science and Philosophy, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

"No-one To Talk To"

There were calls last week by legislators for an inquiry into whether their country was led into war unnecessarily, on the basis of manipulated intelligence data. No, it's not American, British, Australian or Micronesian lawmakers questioning the invasion of Iraq, it's members of the Israeli Knesset questioning the rationale behind the Israeli government's policy of pursuing a solely military solution to its conflict with the Palestinians, and eschewing negotiations on the grounds that "there is no-one to talk to".

The failure of the Camp David Summit in July 2000 was bound to be a watershed in Israeli-Palestinian relations, but it didn't have to lead to a bloody war of attrition. It had to be a watershed because it marked the end of the road for Israeli attempts to have the Palestinians settle for "autonomy" rather than full independence. Palestinian autonomy under ultimate Israeli control had been the preferred outcome for Israel in the Occupied Territories ever since the first Camp David Summit that brought peace to Israel and Egypt in 1978. Camp David II was the culmination of that process, as it represented probably the most generous offer that Israel could make to the Palestinians, without finally giving up control over them. If the Palestinians could not be induced to accept the autonomy that was on the table at Camp David (which they couldn't), then there was no autonomy that they were going to sign on for, period.

With autonomy finally rejected as an end goal of negotiations, Israeli policy towards the Palestinians could go one of two ways:

1. Israel (and the US) could finally come to terms with a genuine two state solution based on two fully independent nations and the implementation of international law. This was the direction that President Clinton moved in, when he prepared the Clinton Parameters that were the basis of the Taba talks and, subsequently, the basis of the Geneva Accords.

2. Armed with overwhelming military superiority, Israel had the option of holding the Palestinians solely responsible for the failed peace process, and attempting to impose upon them by force the kind of autonomous arrangement that they would not voluntarily sign up for at Camp David. For PM Ehud Barak, the option of blaming Arafat was attractive because it allowed him to evade any responsibilty for the failure of Camp David: "It was convenient for him to explain his failure by a distorted description of the reality", as the former head of Israeli Military Intelligence put it. Although that didn't save Barak in the Feb 2001 elections, it did allow him to preserve his political career (he apparently sees himself returning to the Israeli premiership in 2006). For Barak's successor, Ariel Sharon, this option was appealing as Sharon has never believed in a two state solution anyway. It allowed him to evade negotiations, which he knew would lead him somewhere he had no intention of going, and to resort instead to the imposition of a unilateral "one-and-a-half-state solution". And for those Israelis who wanted peace, but were not truly reconciled to the fact that this really did demand an end to Occupation, this alternative had its attractions too.

Justification for resorting to the military option over negotiations relied on two myths: "The Generous Offer" and "We Have No Partner For Peace/No-One To Talk To". The logic goes like this: "Barak offered the Palestinians at Camp David everything they said they wanted in an independent state alongside Israel. Arafat turned it down and resorted to violence instead, by launching the intifada. By turning down Barak who offered him everything, Arafat showed he did not want the two state solution, but wants it all. You cannot negotiate with someone whose real goal is the destruction of Israel, therefore we have no-one to talk to. So negotiation is pointless, and we have no choice but to use force".

So the two myths are separate, but part of a single rationale. This is the rationale that has dominated Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians, and been the dominant view in Israeli public opinion, for the last three-and-a-half years.

I'm not going to dissect the "Generous Offer" here, as this post deals specifically with the "no-one to talk to" myth. Besides, the "Generous Offer" has been debunked amply elsewhere, including these online offerings:

Camp David: The Tragedy Of Errors by Robert Malley; The New York Review of Books, 9 Aug 2001

Fictions About the Failure at Camp David by Robert Malley; NY Times, 8 July 2001

The Real Deal: Israel's View That Arafat Missed A Chance For Peace Under Barak Is Dangerously Deluded, by Ewen McAskill; The Guardian, 14 Apr 2001

Was Arafat The Problem At Camp David 2000? by Robert Wright; Slate, 18 Apr 2002

The Palestinian Peace Offer by Jerome M. Segal; Ha'aretz, 1 Oct 2001

Misrepresentation Of Barak's Offer At Camp David As "Generous" And "Unprecedented" by Nigel Parry; ei, 20 Mar 2002

Generous To Whom? by Mustapha Barghouti; al-Ahram, 10 May 2001

Just Half A Loaf For Arafat by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray; The Hindu Business Line, 2 Aug 2000

The Israeli Camp David II Proposals for Final Settlement; Mid East Web, 2002

Camp David Peace Proposal of July, 2000: Frequently Asked Questions, by the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, 26 Jul 2001

The Reality of Barak's "Generous" Offers (Flash); by Gush Shalom

Ending the Death Dance by Richard Falk; The Nation, 29 Apr 2002

The Brilliant Offer Israel Never Made by David Clark; The Guardian, 10 Apr 2002

Camp David Diaries by Saeb Erekat; Al-Hayat/Al-Ayyam, 9 Aug 2000

A Different Take on Camp David Collapse by Lee Hockstader; Washington Post, 24 Jul 24, 2001

This Peace Offer Is An Insult To Palestinians by Scott Burchill; The Australian, 12 Oct 2000

The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control by Jeff Halper; Middle East Report #216, Fall 2000

So much for the "Generous Offer".

The second myth, "no-one to talk to", has its roots in the intelligence assessments prepared by Israeli Military Intelligence (MI) on the subject of Arafat’s strategic goals and negotiating aims, as briefed to the Israeli Cabinet in the run-up to Camp David and through to Taba by the then-head of the MI Research Division (and second-in-command of MI), Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad. Gilad briefed successive Israeli governments that Arafat was a strategic threat to Israel, who never believed in the two-state solution, but in the destruction of Israel through terror and an unrestricted right of return; he entered negotiations only as a ploy to deceive Israel, not as a genuine interlocutor seeking a solution to the conflict.

This assessment by MI was not undisputed. Israel's General Security Service (GSS/Shin Bet) disagreed with the claim that Arafat was seeking the destruction of Israel through demographics rather than a two-state solution by negotiation, as well as with the assessment that the intifada was deliberately launched to try to bring this about. The GSS warned as early as the Netanyahu government of 1997 that if Arafat seemed reluctant to take on Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it was not because he shared their strategic goal of the destruction of Israel, but because the Netanyahu government was very visibly backsliding on its own Oslo obligations: Arafat had no incentive to cooperate with Israel on fighting terror, if Israel at the same time was reneging on its own commitments and boosting incentives for Israelis to settle the land that was supposed to become the Palestinian state (Schiff: "A Flaw in Strategic Thinking", Ha'aretz 14 Nov 97; cit. Shlaim "The Iron Wall", Ch 15 note 12). Taking on Hamas and Islamic Jihad under these circumstances would have simply made Arafat in the eyes of his own people a security contractor for Israel's ongoing occupation of the Palestinian Territories.

Throughout the Oslo years, Israeli journalists such as Amira Hass of Ha’aretz also warned repeatedly that the peace process looked very different to Israelis (whose quality of life generally improved) than it did to Palestinians, for whom the “peace” years saw greater illegal settlement of their land than the previous 20 years of occupation had done, and who were subject to a much more intrusive military regime of restrictions, permits and closures than they had experienced at any time since 1967. Danny Rabinowitz took up the theme of the intifada as a grassroots uprising against this reality, rather than a ploy by the Palestinian leadership, in Before and after Oslo, commenting:

Many people in Israel and elsewhere believe that the Oslo process was a correct step that failed because of unworthy Palestinian leadership and increasing religious extremism. This view, which depicts the 1990s as an interlude of peace between two blood-soaked periods, requires reexamination.

..[A]part from the elite around Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, most Palestinians have not experienced Oslo as a peace process. Instead of hope, they received militaristic strangulation from Israel, a corrupt self-government that depends on Israel in a humiliating way, and prolonged poverty. The long and the short of it is that the Palestinian hope for peace and independence had collapsed long before September 2000. The movement of tanks into positions in the slopes of the cities was for them a direct continuation of a process that began in 1994.

The possibility that the intifada came as a reaction to fundamental flaws in the Oslo process, and not as Palestinian madness that truncated an era of peace and roses before its time, is interesting not only as an intellectual exercise. It is also important for the purpose of more successful planning of a peace process in the medium and long run. And it is no less important in the immediate run in order to understand the absence of any connection between the Sharon-style unilateral disengagement and peace.

And, in the wake of the Knesset’s investigation into the poor quality of MI assessments of Iraqi capabilities immediately before Gulf War II, Uzi Benziman wondered in December 2003 about the possibility that ideologically-driven intelligence was driving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He pointed out that the very same intelligence “experts” who produced the false estimates of Iraq's non-conventional weapons capability were responsible for keeping Israel’s political leadership informed about prevailing trends in the Palestinian Authority. These officials enjoy a presumption of credibility, professionalism and objectivity in Israeli society, and are assumed to deploy highly sophisticated means of keeping tabs on what's going on with the enemy. And yet,

[t]he very same officials who concluded emphatically that Saddam possessed chemical-biological weapons, and who even warned about the possible use of such weapons against Israel, warn today that Yasser Arafat's master plan is to destroy Israel. The same officials who forecasted definitively that the "ground will shake" when American troops reach Iraq and uncover weapons of mass destruction are today warning, with great internal conviction, that Arafat views himself as a latter-day Saladin, whose purpose is to drive the Jews from the Holy Land.

The layman assumes that such emphatic diagnoses of Arafat's aims are based upon wiretapped recordings, systematic analyses of his statements, and reliable leaks about his conversations with associates. The same measure of credence was in effect when people believed that intelligence estimates of the threat posed by Iraq had a solid evidentiary foundation; but it now turns out that these estimates about Iraq had no empirical basis. Rather than being founded on solid information, the estimates relied on probability and circumstantial evidence. This experience regarding Iraq raises questions about the empirical foundations of intelligence reports that purport to unveil Arafat's inner world, his aims, goals and hopes.

-- Uzi Benzimann, When The Army Takes Off Its Uniform

So there have been Israeli voices raised in opposition to Amos Gilad's "no-one to talk to" axiom over the past four years, but not many of them. In the heightened tension of the intifada, "no-one to talk to" has been readily accepted by an Israeli public receptive to an explanation that demonizes Arafat as the source of all Israel's woes, and it has been wholeheartedly embraced by a Likud government that has no use for peace talks anyway, and therefore requires no partner for peace. In the words of IDF General Amos Malka: "What Gilad said suited them better, and therefore they adopted it." The result is that "no-one to talk to" has become so established in Israeli thought, it even has it's own epithet in the intelligence community: it is simply the konseptzia (the concept).

This near-consensus view was recently rudely broken, however, by the aforementioned Gen. Malka, who was head of Military Intelligence (and therefore Gilad’s superior) during the last days of peace negotiations and the first days of the intifada. He publicly revealed on 11 June 2004 that the apocalyptic view of Arafat and the Palestinians that Gilad apparently briefed to the Israeli Cabinet was not actually based on the professional assessments of MI at all, but on Gilad’s own hardline political opinions, which were readily adopted by Prime Ministers Barak and Sharon because they fit so well their respective political needs. Malka accused Gilad of presenting his own views as being the professional assessment of MI, when in fact they were diametrically opposed to what MI’s official assessments really indicated. Gilad’s oral presentations to the Cabinet were much more influential than MI’s written reports, because in the Israeli Cabinet only the PM and Defense Minister had access to the written reports, while everyone received Gilad’s briefings.

So, according to Gen. Malka, what was the official MI assessment of Arafat at the time when Gilad was insisting that Arafat had deliberately sabotaged the peace process and resorted to violence to destroy Israel? Malka indicated that MI’s considered opinion was that “Arafat prefers a diplomatic process”. He is not intrinsically opposed to using limited violence as a shock tactic when all diplomatic avenues are closed (e.g. as Shin Bet noted, he would not clamp down on Hamas while the Netanyahu government systematically failed to meet its Oslo obligations), but he had no strategic plan for a violent confrontation with Israel. He was primarily interested in making real progress through negotiations, and far from trying to destroy Israel through an unlimited right of return, was willing to settle for a token return of refugees so long as this was within the context of an overall agreement. When the intifada erupted, MI believed it to be spontaneous, and not planned by the Palestinian leadership. Arafat may have hoped to exploit it as a shock tactic, but if so he misjudged it, because within two or three days the intifada had gained so much momentum from pent-up grassroots anger that it would have been impossible for Arafat to oppose the street by trying to fight it.

MI believed that a negotiated agreement with Arafat was eminently possible: "We assumed that it is possible to reach an agreement with Arafat under the following conditions: a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital and sovereignty on the Temple Mount; 97 percent of the West Bank plus exchanges of territory in the ratio of 1:1 with respect to the remaining territory; some kind of formula that includes the acknowledgement of Israel's responsibility for the refugee problem and a willingness to accept 20,000-30,000 refugees. All along the way ... it was MI's assessment that he had to get some kind of statement that would not depict him as having relinquished this [ie the right of return], but would be prepared for a very limited implementation." In other words, MI’s professional assessment was that Arafat was seeking exactly the kind of deal that was being crafted at Taba when those talks were suspended, and whose contours were subsequently outlined in the Geneva Accord.

Malka insists that MI always believed that Arafat wanted a negotiated deal: its assessment was not altered by the outbreak of the intifada, and was shared by other Israeli agencies including Shin Bet, the Mossad, the Foreign Ministry and the office of the coordinator of activities in the Occupied Territories. Malka is convinced that today too, if Israel offers Arafat a state in 97 percent of the territories, with East Jerusalem/al-Quds as the capital, exchanges of territory and the return of 20,000-30,000 refugees, he will accept. Malka asserts, in conclusion: I say, with full responsibility, that during my entire period as head of Military Intelligence, there was not a single research department document that expressed the assessment that Gilad claims to have presented to the prime minister.

And what was Maj. Gen. Gilad’s response to Malka’s accusations that Gilad’s briefings represented only himself and not the intelligence community whose views he was supposed to be presenting? "I would have no problem if 1,000 people thought differently than I. That still doesn't mean that they're right.”

Well, 1000 people didn’t come forward to accuse Gilad, but on 13 June IDF Colonel Ephraim Lavie spoke out. Lavie was the head of the Palestinian section in the research division of MI (and therefore Gilad’s direct subordinate) from 1998 to 2002, and was closely involved in all the stages of the final status negotiations, and in formulating MI’s intelligence assessments, right through to the collapse of the political process and the outbreak of the intifada. Lavie’s comments were devastating to Gen. Gilad, backing up in every respect Gen. Malka’s claims that in his briefings to the Israeli cabinet Gilad had manipulated MI’s intelligence findings to suit the political preferences of the government of the day.

Lavie commented:

During the last three years we have developed as an axiom the concept that Arafat rejected Israel's generous offer during negotiations and went to a war that Arafat planned and initiated as part of a plan exposed at Camp David and in the intifada - to defeat Israel through the right of return and the demographic advantage and constitute `Greater Palestine.' Based on that concept, Israel set its policies toward the Palestinians, with the general result being a political and security deadlock with the Palestinians.

The question is whether that concept is really based on credible, accurate foundations.

I can unequivocally state that the written, official assessments of the research division, as formulated during my service from the summer of 1998 to February 2002, there was no intelligence foundation for the prevailing concept nowadays.

In fact, MI’s considered opinion of Arafat’s intentions was in direct contradiction to the line that Gilad was pushing, and indicated that the goal of the Palestinian leadership was not a strategic conflict with Israel but was: “to get what could be gotten out of the political process, to reach a two-state solution as based on the known Palestinian position determined by the PLO in 1988: a state in the 1967 borders, including Arab Jerusalem, on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and a fair solution to the refugee problem on the basis of UN General Assembly decision 194.” In other words, MI believed that Palestinian intentions towards Israel and the peace process were exactly what the Palestinians maintained they were. Even as late as the Taba talks, MI assessed that Arafat was hopeful of negotiating a peace deal before Barak and Clinton left office; and after the Taba talks were suspended, Arafat still aspired to continue the negotiations from where they left off, with the new Israeli administration.

Lavie also confirmed it was MI’s view that Arafat believed limited violence was a legitimate tactical move, but he did not launch the intifada as a strategic weapon to destroy Israel through terror, as conventional wisdom insists. Arafat shared responsibility for the escalation of the intifada, because he did not throw his full weight behind an end to the conflict while it was still in its earliest stages. He did not however plan or launch the violence – As in the case of the first intifada, this one also broke out at the grassroots level, as a result of anger toward Israel, toward Arafat and toward the Palestinian Authority - but simply rode on its back once it quickly generated a momentum of its own.

Col. Lavie maintained that MI was not immediately aware that Gilad was briefing Ministers with his own opinions rather than hard intelligence:

Only over time did we learn to understand that there were gaps between what the reports prepared and documented by division and what was presented to the decision makers, and that was because in most case, things were said in closed session of the General Staff and the political echelon….

… Sometimes, and apparently this is what happened in the Palestinian case, the assessments that were presented were departures from the official assessments and included statements that were the fruit of personal impressions alone, not based on precise intelligence information….

…That could turn into a real failure in light of the fact that most of the ministers are not allowed to read MI written reports while those who do get the material are limited in time and in their ability to delve deeply into it, and therefore they are more influenced by the appearance of the intelligence officer. If we add to that the forceful manner of the officer, then we have a case of real danger that there will be distortion of intelligence work, and maybe even tendentiousness. That risk worsens when it's a consistent process.

…The result of the process under conditions I described could be disastrous. A mistaken concept can take hold, which will mislead the leadership when the time comes to formulate policy. Moreover, there is also the risk that the mistaken concept will fit the leadership's political and diplomatic considerations and therefore [it will] adopt the concept unhesitatingly, to the satisfaction of the intelligence officer. From there on, it's a very short road to the research becoming a tool for the leadership to explain its policy or support it.

Three days after Lavie spoke out in support of Malka’s accusations against Gilad, Danny Rubinstein interviewed Mati Steinberg, an expert on Palestinian affairs who served as adviser to the head of Shin Bet through the peace process, and relinquished that position only last year. In contrast to Gilad’s alarmist assessments of Palestinian intentions towards Israel, Steinberg’s professional assessment of Arafat’s behavior throughout the years of negotiations was that Arafat was indeed committed to the diplomatic route to a settlement, and had displayed a commitment to the two-state solution (and a flexibility on the right of return) that had earned him considerable suspicion and criticism from the less-flexible parties in the Palestinian spectrum. Steinberg concluded, in support of Malka and Lavie, that Amos Gilad’s “no-one to talk to” mantra had no factual basis; he also opined that Amos Gilad, as an intelligence professional, should have based his views upon professional criteria, rather than personal political inclination.

With such senior members of the military intelligence establishment maintaining that their professional assessments had been misused for political ends, several opposition MKs called for an investigation into the “erroneous” intelligence evaluations that Amos Gilad had passed off as MI assessments in his briefings to the Cabinet. Labour leader Shimon Peres characterized the issue as extremely severe, and noted that Gilad’s “stupid, exaggerated theories” had had huge repercussions, contributing to a large extent to the defeat of the Labour government in 2001 and the victory of the Likud, and providing a rationale for PM Sharon’s determination to employ unilateral solutions to the Palestinian conflict, and a justification for his refusal to enter into negotiations. Malka, Lavie and Steinberg all support the call for a thorough investigation into how personal opinion managed to get passed off as military intelligence at the highest levels of government, and with such far-reaching consequences.

So why does any of this matter? Nearly four years after the collapse of the peace process and the beginning of the intifada, why do a post mortem to deconstruct the myths and assess why it really went wrong?

Well, firstly because sooner or later Israelis and Palestinians will have to return to peace negotiations, and they are going to relive the failures of the Oslo process if they don’t get beyond demonizing Arafat and assess honestly what the real causes of the failures were. As Danny Rabinowitz put it:

The possibility that the intifada came as a reaction to fundamental flaws in the Oslo process, and not as Palestinian madness that truncated an era of peace and roses before its time, is interesting not only as an intellectual exercise. It is also important for the purpose of more successful planning of a peace process in the medium and long run.

Most independent analysts who look back at Oslo would probably agree that its major failing was that it put off to an unspecified future date all the issues that really mattered (especially to the Palestinians) – sovereignty, borders, refugees and Jerusalem. For most of the Oslo years (i.e. after the fall of the Peres government), Israel was led by PMs who had not supported the signing of the Oslo Accords: MKs Netanyahu and Sharon voted against Oslo; Barak as Chief of Staff abstained. Seeing the rapid expansion of settlement activity that these three leaders carried out in the Occupied Territories, and in the absence of written guarantees in the Oslo Accord that they were really heading for independence, Palestinians quickly began to wonder whether Israel was using the peace process to end the occupation, or to entrench it. That was the origin of the disillusionment that eventually erupted in the form of the intifada. If a successful peace process is to be resurrected, this time it will need to specify from the beginning that its end goal is a genuine two state solution and an end to occupation, and there will have to be a clear timetable of when these things are going to take place. That kind of peace process is not going to come about without a recognition that it was the lack of these elements in Oslo that were a disaster to the peace process, rather than the evil machinations of the demonized Arafat.

Secondly, Israel needs to know if its intelligence was misused, because the integrity of its entire military intelligence process is in question. MI is meant to be a professional and reliable source of hard intelligence, that decision-makers can rely upon in making life-and-death decisions. It is not meant to be cherry-picked or manipulated as a PR tool for the more hawkish elements of Israeli government. If intelligence information is uncovered that conflicts with existing conceptions, it is the conceptions need to be reconsidered, not the intelligence that needs to be massaged. Otherwise, there will be an inevitable and growing disconnect between the prevailing dogma and reality, and that is not in Israel’s own national interest (nor in the interest of the region as a whole, as Israel is the dominant power). Col. Lavie illustrated how dangerous this situation can be for Israel by citing the example of the run-up to the 1973 War. At that time, there was also a prevailing konseptzia, i.e. that Egyptian President Anwar Sadat would never dare to attack Israel. This idea was so dominant that hard intelligence about his preparations for war were disregarded by the Israeli government du jour, right up until Yom Kippur 1973, when Sadat launched the invasion that eventually cost 3,000 Israeli lives.

Malka, Lavie and Steinberg all pointed out too that the gap between dogma and reality is particularly dangerous in an asymmetric relationship such as that between Israel and the Palestinians, because the party that holds the power to a large extent creates the reality. Once Israel was convinced by Gilad’s dire assessments that it was facing in the intifada not a grassroots protest, but a war for survival, it launched a massive military response, bringing war about anyway, whether the Palestinians were really seeking one or not. Furthermore, because the prevailing concept was that Arafat was intent upon the destruction of Israel, the Israelis directed their assault against his (moderate) PA, leaving a vacuum in the center of Palestinian society that has been filled largely by Hamas, i.e. by a movement that really does seek the destruction of Israel! Steinberg remarks that by buying the mistaken claim that the Palestinians were not seeking peace but launching an existential war against Israel, the Israelis inevitably turned the claim into “a self-fulfilling prophecy”. Even when the Palestinians offered Israel a comprehensive peace settlement on the basis of the Arab League statement of March 2002 (i.e. full normalization of relations between Israel and the Arab world, in exchange for a withdrawal from the Occupied Territories), Israel did not offer any serious consideration to what should have been a landmark offer, because it did not fit the dominant preconception that there was “no-one to talk to and nothing to talk about”. Steinberg concludes:

Because it [didn’t] fit the mistaken conception, it was subjected to the `delete button'.... A change which one refuses to recognize as a change is not a change - that is because you are the side which decides…Once you uphold a mistaken view you become captive to it, and a vicious circle perpetuates reality. The only way to escape from it is to review the mistaken conception critically, and to replace it with a conceptual framework which, I believe, is better suited to the facts, and whose implications are more tenable.

The third, and most urgent, reason why Israel needs to come to terms with the speciousness of the “no-one to talk to" myth is that PM Sharon is right now using that same discredited axiom to justify his annexation of half of the West Bank, under the cover of “unilateral disengagement”. As Rabinowitz puts it: The possibility that the intifada came as a reaction to fundamental flaws in the Oslo process, and not as Palestinian madness that truncated an era of peace and roses before its time, is…important in the immediate run in order to understand the absence of any connection between the Sharon-style unilateral disengagement and peace.

Ariel Sharon has always believed in a bantustan system rather than a two-state solution; he has been saying for 20 years that the right model for the Palestinians is to confine them to South African-style “tribal homelands” , on the 40% or so of the West Bank where they are most concentrated. Sharon is willing to give up the Gaza Strip (which is demographically a lost cause for Israel), if in return he can annex the most productive 55% of the West Bank, leaving the Palestinians divided, impoverished and enclosed behind walls and fences in the remaining 45%. This, not the security of Israel, is the purpose of the Wall, and the land theft, and the home demolitions that have become the hallmark of his premiership. The annexation of so much occupied land is of course the end of the possibility of the two state solution and Palestinian independence, and there is no Palestinian leader (or international forum) that will ever agree to it. That is why Sharon has to avoid negotiations - bilateral or international - at all cost, and that is where “we have no-one to talk to” has come in very useful for him. As Yoel Marcus summed it up:

In practice, the plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza is an attempt to retain our hold on most of the West Bank. Sharon rejects Arafat as a partner for dialogue not because army intelligence whispered in his ear that the guy is a bastard. It's because he knows the conditions for an agreement with Arafat (or any other Palestinian leader) are the same as those insisted on by Sadat - withdrawal to the `67 borders and saying goodbye to the settlements. And that is not on Sharon's agenda, even in his worst nightmares.

Hence from Arafat's perspective, Sharon is not a peace partner either. Sharon is focused on Gaza, and he is not preparing the Israelis for the great exodus that will enable the two peoples to live side by side in peace.

-- Yoel Marcus, Don't knock the power of words

And that is why it is most important to establish just how and why Israel’s military intelligence was manipulated to provide a justification for making war over negotiating peace. An inquiry will not be able to do anything for the 4,000 people killed in the three-and-a-half years since negotiations were abandoned because “there is no-one to talk to”. But it’s not too late to stop the same lie that underpinned their deaths from being used to destroy the hope of a negotiated two-state solution and to entrench the Occupation for yet another generation, with all the death and misery that that is going to entail for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Endnotes:

1. This post is by necessity a brief introduction to a complex issue. The interviews cited are well worth studying in full, and are linked here:

-- Popular Misconceptions by Akiva Eldar (Interview with Amos Malka) Is Yasser Arafat really aiming for the destruction of Israel, rather than a solution to the conflict? This perception has been turned into conventional wisdom in Israel - but many in the intelligence community just don't believe it...

-- Following the stretch from concept to dogma to axiom by Yoav Stern As head of the Palestinian section in the research division of Military Intelligence, Col. (res.) Ephraim Lavie accompanied the peace process - and its collapse. He now joins the demands to investigate the `no partner' for talks concept.

-- The stronger side creates reality by Danny Rubinstein. Interview with Mati Steinberg: with useful insight into Palestinian priorities for a final settlement, and the radicalising effect that Israel's resort to force alone has had on Palestinian political movements. (This article contains two important typos. 1. The answer to the question, "Were these assessments accepted in the period that preceded...?" should read "Personally, I thought that the moment PM Ehud Barak decided not to carry out the third phase withdrawal... and 2. The second half to the last answer should read, "Because it didn't fit the mistaken conception...". i.e. there is a negative missing from each sentence).

-- A Jewish state? "Definitely" by David Landau and Akiva Eldar. Arafat is ready to sign an agreement that would give Palestinians 97 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza - with the rest in a land swap, and the right of return of not all, but at least some refugees. In a free-ranging interview with Haaretz, conducted in the carefully preserved ruins of the Muqata, the PA Chairman also spoke of the historical family bonds between the two peoples...

Associated articles:

-- Confronting Myths and Deadly Power by Amira Hass

-- Foreign Affairs panel MK: Gilad didn't shun Arafat as partner

-- Opposition demands probe of Gilad's "erroneous" evaluations

-- More than a million bullets by Reuven Pedatzur

-- Sharon and Hamas Dream Together by Jackson Diehl; Washington Post, 10 Dec 2001

-- Irreversible Mental Damage by Uri Avnery

-- Imperial Misconceptions by Roni Ben Efrat; Challenge magazine, 13 Jul 2004

-- The Second Intifada - An Israeli Strategy by Khalid Amayreh; Al-Jazeera, 4 Jul 2004

-- Helping Israel on a False and Dangerous Course by Ira Chernus

-- Who needs concepts? by Doron Rosenblum (via Jewschool)

-- The collaborator of Amos Gilad from within the Zionist Left, by Yehudith Harel. A condemnation of how quickly Israel's "peace camp" adopted the "no-one to talk to" mantra after Camp David.

2. The "inside" version of Camp David II is best told in Charles Enderlin's Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002, which is based on the notes and recollections of the negotiators who participated there. Shattered Dreams was also made into a 3-hour documentary (La Reve Brisee) for French TV. A cut-down 2-hour English-language version was made into a Frontline documentary for a US audience. Unfortunately, the Frontline version includes only interviews that support the official "generous offer" version of Camp David: the 60 minutes that were cut from La Reve Brisee to make Frontline's 2-hr documentary included those interviews that offered the counter-argument.

3. Lia at Haramlik has already summarised the key points of the "no-one to talk to" Israeli Military Intelligence scandal, in a 17 June 2004 post: Camp David 2000 e la demonizzazione di Arafat. (In Italian)

Sorry...

My apologies for the lack of entries on the blog this week. I have been working on an entry that turned out waaaaay longer and more involved than I anticipated, and other posting just fell by the wayside. Things should be back to normal here by the end of the week.

Bi-national Alternatives

After fifteen years as the consensus solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the two state solution is no longer the only game in town. The Sharon government is working towards the one-and-half-state solution of “unilateral disengagement”, in which Israel keeps most of the occupied Palestinian land but “disengages” from the Palestinian people who are to be confined by walls and fences to isolated islands on the parts of the Territories not annexed to Israel. At the other end of the spectrum, the idea of a one state solution is gaining supporters among Palestinians and Israelis.

In the current issue of Middle East Report, Gary Sussman of Tel Aviv University explains why the two state solution is losing popularity, and the one state solution is increasingly in vogue. He identifies who is backing the one state solution (and why), and describes the possible models a united Israel/Palestine could follow: whether it be a form of bi-national state in which two distinct peoples share power in confederation (the Northern Ireland solution), or a single, secular democracy which does not institutionally distinguish between citizens on the basis of religion or race (the post-apartheid South African model).

The Challenge to the Two-State Solution is an excellent, comprehensive survey of the possibilities for the one-state solution. Read the full article online here.

The Arabic Knot

This is my grandad, or taid, as they say in Welsh. He was born and died in Wales (Footnote 1) and - apart from a short spell as a conscript in Ypres and the Somme, and a longer spell in a Liverpool hospital recuperating from being shot while on the Somme - he lived his whole life there. His first language was Welsh, and he grew up in a village that was monolingually Welsh in all aspects except one, which was public schooling.

Although it seems hard to believe, only two generations ago people like my granddad were not allowed to speak their native language in school. Welsh was officially regarded as a language of backwardness, English was the language of the future and, to ensure that the next generation grew up English-speaking, Welsh was not to be used in school, even on the playground. The policy was known informally as “Welsh – Not!”. In my grandad’s time, it was enforced by means of a knotted rope: a child heard speaking Welsh in school would wear the rope round his or her neck, until another child was reported to the teacher for speaking Welsh, and the rope would pass to him or her. At the end of the day, the child wearing the knotted rope got a beating with it. The rope was called the “Welsh Knot”. It was a play on words, see? A “Welsh Knot” to enforce the “Welsh - Not!”!!! Very funny.

So my grandad learned English at school. And he learned it in the wider community too, where road signs and town names were written in English, and only in English, even where the roadusers following the signs spoke Welsh. And if he had official business to attend to, he had no choice but to do it in English, as official forms were available only in English. And should he fall foul of the law, he’d better find an English-speaking lawyer, because a Welsh speaker in Welsh-speaking Wales would still be tried in English.

Of course it’s not like that any more. The grainy black and white TV pictures of civil rights protestors getting fire-hosed in Alabama created ripples in unexpected places, including the UK. Catholics in Northern Ireland, like John Hume, asked why couldn’t they have civil rights too, and took to the streets of Derry demanding “One Person, One Vote”. (And what a shock it was to many people in mainland Britain to be confronted with the uncomfortable fact that one of the peoples of the United Kingdom was systematically denied the right to One Person, One Vote. Wasn’t that something that only dark-skinned, colonized people had to worry about?). In Wales, organizations like Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg/The Welsh Language Society asked why Welsh speakers, living in Wales, shouldn’t be able to conduct their normal, everyday business in Welsh, and conducted a campaign of civil disobedience to make their point. Since the 1970’s, the policy of English-only has been abandoned, and the Welsh language has officially enjoyed equal status in Wales with the English language. It is now officially OK for people like my granddad to say that they come from “Cymru”, or “Wales”. They have a choice. One doesn’t negate the other, they both exist: nobody is confused by it, and nobody takes offence at what name you choose to use.

My grandad didn’t really get the benefit of the government U-turn that acknowledged – after denying it for centuries - that he and his language and his culture still existed, and had a right to exist equally alongside the language and culture of the anglo-Welsh. He lived almost all his life in "English-only" Wales, and died shortly after Welsh was officially rehabilitated. The funny thing is that no matter how determinedly Welsh was ignored in his lifetime, and no matter how officially anglicized Wales became, his Welshness persisted. He spoke in Welsh (and cursed impressively in it); he wrote in Welsh; when he went to shop in the nearest big town, he went to "Caergybi", even if the roadsigns directed him to "Holyhead"; and when he travelled to visit relatives in "Mold" or "Ruthin", he knew they were actually in "Yr Wyddgrug" or "Rhuthun", regardless of what the bus or train timetable told him. He didn’t stick to the Welsh words because he wanted to annoy English speakers. In fact, he wasn’t deliberately sending a message at all. It just never occurred to him that he should deny his native language, history and culture all because the Ministry of Transport put up road signs saying that his native "Ynys Mon" had only the English name "Anglesey".

So, what does my grandad have to do with anything?

Well, I thought of him as I read the comments of Reuven Erlich, director of Israel’s new "Museum of Terrorism". Mr Erlich described for Reuters why a traditional piece of Palestinian embroidery, showing a map of historic Palestine with the Arabic names of its towns and villages, is among the exhibits: The problem is that Jaffa is marked but not Tel Aviv. There are Arab cities but no Israeli cities. This is the message of delegitimising Israel.

Well, let’s leave aside the irony that a citizen of Israel - whose founding fathers displaced 750,000 Palestinians and systematically razed their towns and villages so that no trace of Palestinian history and culture should remain (2), and whose former leader warned that even the word “Palestinian” must never be uttered because that would be to admit that the land had a former population whose rights predate those of the Zionist movement (3) – should complain at the thought of any people’s nationhood and identity being delegitimised.

The fact is that unless he has personally heard it from the Palestinian (presumed) woman who created the piece, Mr Erlich doesn’t really know what message that embroidery was meant to communicate. He only knows the message that his own preconceptions attach to a map that dares show the towns and villages of Palestine. Maybe the person who made that map was the most rabid, unforgiving Palestinian nationalist who ever lived, and hoped with a passion that every last Israeli would be driven into the sea. And maybe she was just a Palestinian who, like my granddad, never thought for a second that the arrival of another culture in her land required her to pretend her own history never existed. I don’t know, and neither does Mr Erlich, because the embroidery alone doesn’t tell us enough about its maker.

The fact that a map of Palestine should be an exhibit in an Israeli “museum of terrorism” in fact tells us less about the person who made the map than it does about the people who put it in the museum. People who cannot bear to even hear the names of the towns upon whose ruins their own country is built, are people who are deeply ambiguous their own nation’s legitimacy; who would desperately like to believe they settled “a land without a people” (4), but suspect that this was never true, and do not know how to acknowledge that two peoples who share the same land have equal rights to that land. Only people who are uneasy about the legitimacy of Tel Aviv, would label the mere act of remembering Jaffa an example of Palestinian "terror".

Footnotes:

(1) For those who don’t know, Wales is a small principality in the west-central part of Great Britain, and is historically famous for coal- and slate-mining, organised labour, sheep-farming, music, poetry, rugby union, and having a national soccer team that, every four years, almost but not quite makes it to the finals of the European football championships.

(2) "Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages.You do not even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population".
- Israeli Gen. Moshe Dayan, from a speech to the Haifa Technion, reported in Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969.

(3) "My friend, take care. When you recognize the concept of ‘Palestine’, you demolish your right to live in Ein Hahoresh. If this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, then you are conquerors and not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If this is Palestine, then it belongs to a people who lived here before you came."
- Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, from a speech to the residents of kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, reported in Yediot Aharonot, October 17, 1969.

(4) "A land without people, waiting for people without a land".
- Israel Zangwill’s description of Palestine, in The Return to Palestine, New Liberal Review II, Dec. 1901, p.627.

Further reading: The history of Zionism’s systematic denial of Palestinian existence and identity is examined at length in Muhammad Hallaj’s Palestine--The Suppression of an Idea, available online at Americans for Middle East Understanding