April 28, 2007
[This piece was written in January 2001 in response to an article by an Israeli peace activist, Uri Avneri. It has become a basis for the anti-apartheid movement that distinguishes itself from the traditional demand to stop occupation. One of the reasons for its creation was the bankruptcy of the traditional approach to the Jewish-Palestinian problem.- Israel Shamir]
A few weeks before the eruption of the second Palestinian intifadah, I wandered over to Cinemateque square, a middle-class Tel Aviv neighbourhood. In the cool breeze of the late afternoon a few dozen retirees with their families were having a nice outing. The old ladies knitted while kids drew flags on big sheets of paper. This peaceful gathering was the commemoration by the Israeli peace camp of the seventh anniversary of the Oslo accords. The keynote speaker was Uri Avneri.
This handsome man with a noble head of white hair invoked, as he always does, his vision of two states co-existing in the Holy Land, an independent Palestine next to the Jewish state. Every word sounded right, but it was as exciting as yesterday's news, as entertaining as a re-run of an old TV serial. Not surprisingly, there were no young activists, as the traditional peace camp no longer attracts new, dynamic blood. Mr. Avneri is recycling the same tired speech over the Net these days, calling for the two-states solution.
Please don’t misunderstand me. Uri Avneri is a man of good intentions, a brave supporter of Palestinian rights, an activist doing more than his share and an efficient organizer. It’s just that his political agenda is as dead as a dodo bird.
Let us face the hard facts on the ground: the idea of two states in Palestine is, and has always been, a bluff. After being partitioned for only nineteen years, Palestine has been united for thirty-three years. No Israeli or Palestinian under the age of forty even remembers the `partition years’ between 1948-1967. It is a period of time that Mr. Avneri latches onto as some kind of Paradise Lost. No Israeli politician, including the late lamented Mr. Rabin, has ever seriously considered relinquishing any part of historical Palestine. The endless negotiations have been a sideshow designed to mollify the public. Thirty years ago, the Israeli singer Arik Einstein was assuring us that “The talks will be resumed soon”. They are still singing the same old song.
In the meantime, behind the smoke screen of ‘temporary military occupation’, the hard-nosed Israeli leadership has confiscated Palestinian fields and houses to make room for Jewish settlements, and imprisoned and killed thousands of Palestinians. A succession of leftist and rightist Israeli regimes perpetuated this legal fiction in order to deny the civic rights of the conquered population. It was a brilliant idea, worthy of the Jewish genius: to carry on negotiations forever while giving lip service to the idea of two states.
Honesty forces me to tell my Palestinian and Israeli friends: you’ve been duped. Our wise men played a cruel game with you, teasing you with empty promises like the stale old `tale of two states’ narrated by Mr. Avneri. There have always been only two paths for the Palestinians to emerge from serfdom. One is to beat Israel; the second is to join it. The third option, of a new partition, is just an illusion: a juicy but unreachable carrot dangled for the donkey.
If I were a fan of conspiracy theories I could well imagine that these good people of the Israeli peace movement intentionally supplied this left leg to our shaky apartheid structure. By continually re-painting the [old armistice] Green Line, they have endorsed the non-citizen status of the Palestinians in their own land. By calling some lands `occupied territories’ they have exempted themselves from the need to battle against the exclusion of Palestinians from the country’s political life. By combating the annexation of the territories they have helped to concoct the fraud of independent Palestinian Bantustans.
But the idea of such a conspiracy is just too mind-boggling. I do not think Mr. Avneri and the peace camp received their briefings in the offices of the Shabak[i]. They were just too keen to believe that the Israeli generals would conclude a fair peace with the Palestinians.
Even a kid watching James Bond movies eventually understands that the hero won’t be eaten by crocodiles and won’t die in the flames, and that there is no reason for expecting these eventualities. There is even less reason for expecting that an Israeli government will sign a just peace with the Palestinians. They will always deploy an exit- strategy in the `peace process’.
II
Exactly what sort of ‘peace’ might Israel offer? In an article published in that popular keeper of the Zionist faith, the New York Times[1], a good American Jew named Richard Bernstein recommended to President-elect Bush a recent book by another pundit of that ilk, Robert Kaplan. He disclosed the real Israeli peace plan:
For decades I have heard that there would be either a Greater Israel, or a Palestinian state. It turns out there will be both: a Palestinian mini-state, without control over its skies or main highways, situated within a dynamic Israel that will continue to attract workers from across the border, making it the stabilizing force of Greater Syria.
Thank you, kind Bernstein and gentle Kaplan, for clarifying that Israel and its American Zionist allies intend to keep the Palestinians forever locked in reservations and competing with their brethren from Jordan and Syria for work from their Jewish masters. That is the peace that Israeli doves have been cooing about.
Should it work, perhaps the US could adopt the idea and grant independence to the Afro-Hispanic US population, with a capital in the South Bronx. The new state could consist of five hundred enclaves circled by super-highways and miles of reinforced concrete walls, and could contain all the US's non-whites. If that be peace, I choose war.
The more I think about it, the less inclined I become to giving the peace camp the benefit of doubt as to their intentions. Too often, they use that pesky phrase, ‘the Jewish state’. It’s easy enough to understand why: Zionism came of age in the years of the crude biological racism that was part-and-parcel of the ideologies promoted by Weininger, Nordau, Chamberlain and Hitler. Zionists believe that a person belongs to a nation by virtue of blood. For them, a Jew is always and forever a Jew, thus the notion ‘two states for two nations’. The peace movement is, first and foremost, still about preserving a `Jewish state’. The second of these two states, the remainder of Palestine, is just an incidental by-product of the process.
III
A ‘bi-national state’ is a misnomer, too. There are no two nations, Jews and Arabs, as they want us to believe. Rather, there are a number of communities: the Moroccans of Ramle, the Russians of Ashdod, the software wiz-kids of Hertzliya Pituah, the millionaires of Caesarea, the settlers of Tapuah, the scholars of Mea Shearim, the Ethiopians of Ophakim. These, and the no-less-diverse native Palestinian communities could form the beautiful mosaic of the Holy Land. These communities constitute two nations only in the imagination of the Zionist establishment, the pre-’48 settlers and their aging children. This ‘First Israel’ has good reason for clinging onto this flight of fantasy, as this minority still monopolizes power over the other communities and retains all its perks.
No outsider has ever succeeded in getting anywhere close to the centre of power. There is hardly a Russian (20% of the electorate) or a Moroccan (30%) in an independent position of power and influence in Israel. When an Oriental Jew was elected to the ceremonial post of President, the 'First Israel' went into mourning.
An unfortunate problem for the dominant elite is that they have run out of talent and ideas. They took exclusivity to its extreme and turned respect of the military into idolatry. The farce of General Sharon battling for power with General Barak, and the ancient murderer of Kana, Shimon Peres, as the Great White Hope, is surely adequate proof of the bankruptcy of the `First Israel’. The Zionist idea has collapsed; only blood and war keeps the Golem in motion.
IV
Behind the smoke of racist realities and illusions we already live in a united Palestine. The Green line exists only in our minds, while the sea of apartheid splashes on both sides of it. It is in our common interest to abolish the fiction completely and establish equality before the law for everybody in all of Palestine (Israel), from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Then we can enjoy one law for both the native son of the land and the newcomer, as the Bible commands us: the same law for the kibbutznik of Afikim and for the fellah of Yatta.
It could have happened years ago if the Israeli left had not nurtured the illusions of partition. Jerusalem is a suitable case to consider. The Palestinian population of the city – one-third of United Jerusalem – is entitled to participate in the municipal elections and can send their deputies to the City Council. But they accepted the silly advice of the Israeli peace camp and boycotted the elections in order to sustain the Green Line. It was a ruinous decision, and one they should re-think. Remember that Israel would not be able to demolish houses in Jerusalem; the Palestinians of the East Jerusalem would live better if they participate in elections. Their vote would remove Ehud Olmert, the racist and elected-by-Jews-only ‘Mayor’ of Jerusalem, and good riddance. Even for this purpose alone we should ask Palestinians to vote.
Without the Green Line, the horrors of occupation would have ended long ago, in the same fashion that military rule in Palestinian Galilee was ended in 1966. The 40% of the Knesset Members elected by Palestinians would have been able to cancel all discriminatory laws, including the Law of Absentee Property and the present Law of Citizenship.
In a representative state, the return of Palestinian refugees does not have to be traumatic. If the refugees from Deheishe were to return to Sataf and Suba, it would be a short ten-mile relocation. If the peasants of Deir Yassin come back to their ancient homes, nobody will suffer. The peasants of Sheich Munis will have to settle for hefty compensation, at the expense of Tel Aviv University, which is built on their land. Maybe they will use their compensation money to build new houses next to the university, or just buy flats in Ramat Aviv Gimel. We can borrow a leaf from the Polish book of law: Poland restored the property to Jewish refugees, but did not permit the expulsion of the current tenants.
The removal of the Green line will actually be good for all of us, even for the settlers. They should be able to remain and live in safety and security like equals in our commonwealth. Without the army to enforce their superiority, they will have to either mend their evil ways and become good neighbours, or go back to Brooklyn.
So how do we get to the Promised Land? We're already there! Historical Palestine is unified, but apartheid is not dismantled yet. We already have one state, but we have no democracy. Stop the empty rhetoric of occupation and two states. We need no tricks, no ‘creative solutions’, just good old universal suffrage, the `One Man, One Vote’ principle. We demanded it for our grandfathers in Eastern Europe. They received it from the Gentiles one-hundred-and-fifty years ago; it is the right time to pass this most basic of rights to the Palestinian natives of this land.
Dreams of Israeli withdrawal will anyway remain dreams: the Israeli establishment will never give up its holdings. But we can utilise its avarice. If it can not give, let it take – and lose its positions of superiority.
It is useless to shout to the drowning moneylender “Give me your hand!” He does not know how to give. Instead, shout: “Take my hand!” and he will clutch at it.
This was the advice of the Sufi sage, Haji Nasr ad-Din. We should say, ’Annex the territories, but give the Palestinians full equality’. It does not mean that the struggle against military occupation is wrong. Au contraire, occupation is wrong, as the military rule of Nazareth and Acre in 1948-1966 was wrong. But the way out of it is not partition but absorption and equality.
In 1948, Sir John Glubb, the British
commander of the Arab Legion, was forced to cede to the
Jewish state the lands of the Triangle containing the
villages of Taibe and Umm el Fahm. He insisted on one thing:
the peasants should remain and receive full rights in the
state of Israel. As a result, we have these rather
prosperous communities, and their dwellers do not want to
become part of the proposed Palestinian state. It is the
best proof that absorption is better than partition.
Source: shamireaders