First Published: Apr 14, 2008 at 09:00 PM
George W. Bush, who proposed the boldest peace initiative of any American president to solve the Palestine issue, managed to deliver only the most meager results during his two-term presidency. The Roadmap for Peace, developed by the United States in cooperation with Russia, the European Union, and the UN (the Quartet), was presented to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 30 Apr. 2003. Despite the proclaimed hopes, however, it has been a clear fiasco and anything but a roadmap to peace. Although the Bush administration, during its final year in power, organized the largest conference for Middle East peace ever assembled and again made the boldest promises, very few people are holding their breath. The Roadmap initiative is practically over, and all signs point to a dead-end.
Israel continues to confiscate more land and build more illegal settlements, while the Palestinians continue to hold onto their towns, villages, farmland, and houses with all the strength they can muster. All participants in this widening confrontation keep digging themselves into a deeper hole and bringing the world to the brink of disaster. The disparity between the parties is great, outside help is increasingly favoring one party over the other, and no honest broker or visionary leader has yet appeared to take a principled stand and advance a fair solution.
Not only did Israel fail to “establish the equality
of men and men,” as Sacher had hoped it would when he published his
vision of a Jewish Palestine nearly a century ago, it also failed to
“replace the broken tyranny of the Turk by a harmonious cooperation
between Jew, Arab, and Armenian.” Sacher the historian failed to
anticipate the extent of the Arabs’ and Muslims’ resistance to the
creation of an exclusively Jewish state. The reality is that since its
inception, Israel has been engaged in numerous hostile exchanges with
its neighbors. While it has managed to neutralize some old enemies, most
notably the PLO, Egypt, and Jordan, it has created new and even fiercer
ones, including Hamas, Hizbellah, and Iran.. Its peace with Egypt and
Jordan remains quite fragile, resting as it does on the ability of two
undemocratic regimes to keep their populations silent – populations
whose popular sentiments have always been pro-Palestinian.
George W. Bush, who proposed the boldest peace initiative of any American president to solve the Palestine issue, managed to deliver only the most meager results during his two-term presidency. The Roadmap for Peace, developed by the United States in cooperation with Russia, the European Union, and the UN (the Quartet), was presented to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on 30 Apr. 2003. Despite the proclaimed hopes, however, it has been a clear fiasco and anything but a roadmap to peace. Although the Bush administration, during its final year in power, organized the largest conference for Middle East peace ever assembled and again made the boldest promises, very few people are holding their breath. The Roadmap initiative is practically over, and all signs point to a dead-end.
Israel continues to confiscate more land and build more illegal settlements, while the Palestinians continue to hold onto their towns, villages, farmland, and houses with all the strength they can muster. All participants in this widening confrontation keep digging themselves into a deeper hole and bringing the world to the brink of disaster. The disparity between the parties is great, outside help is increasingly favoring one party over the other, and no honest broker or visionary leader has yet appeared to take a principled stand and advance a fair solution.
How did the search for peace bring us to this
sad state of affairs? Can the ongoing dynamic be changed from its
current state to one that promotes real hope and peace?
The Making of the Roadmap
In his 4 Apr. 2002 speech, Bush outlined his
formal position: a two-state solution that would result in an
independent Palestinian state living “side by side” with a Jewish state
in historical Palestine. "The Roadmap,”
he declared, “represents a starting point toward achieving the vision
of two states, a secure State of Israel and a viable, peaceful,
democratic Palestine. It is the framework for progress towards lasting
peace and security in the Middle East..." A year later, the State
Department produced a detailed plan
with specific phases and benchmarks to guide the peace process and set
2005 as the year for achieving a “final and comprehensive settlement.”
The results are well known: illegal Israeli settlements continue to grow
rapidly; the Palestinian Authority is divided in two; and Gaza is
subject to repeated military assaults, starvation, and economic
blockades by Israel.
The State Department’s
plan was in many ways an academic exercise, written with little
attention to the dynamics of the political conflict that gripped the
region for the last sixty years. The plan placed all the cards in the
hands of the Israeli authority, requiring the immediate and complete
cessation of hostilities by Palestinians while permitting the Israeli
military to continue its incursions into the Palestinian towns and
villages to arrest Palestinian activists and assassinate Palestinian
militants. Mahmoud Abbas, excited by the Roadmap and what he believed to
be a new commitment by the Bush administration to broker a new peace,
persuaded Hamas to commit to a truce. The truce lasted till August 21st,
when, Israel, using an American made Apache, assassinated Ismail
Abushanab. Abushanab was considered by many Palestinians to be moderate,
who strongly supported the negotiated truce.
The Bush administration
saw no need to pressure the government of Ariel Sharon to stop its
incursions into Palestinian territories, and to at least freeze
settlements as an important measure and first step to building trust.
President Bush insisted that the United States cannot pressure the two
parties to peace, and that future peace must evolve through negotiations
and the mutual agreements between the warring parties. This practically
gave Israel the upper hand in deciding the future of the Roadmap, as it
enjoyed overwhelming fire power.
The outcome of the
Roadmap sponsored by the Bush administration is no different than that
outcome of the Oslo accords sponsored by the Clinton administration:
more expansion and more resistance. The Israelis are determined to
pursue the goal of Greater Israel, and the Palestinians are increasingly
willing to take strong punishments and heavy casualties to hold unto
their land.
Moses' Mission and its Reenactment in Modern Times
The Jewish claim to
Palestine is based on the divine promise to Abraham, a prophet claimed
by the followers of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: "On that day, God
made a covenant with Abraham, saying: "To your descendants I have given
this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the
Euphrates. The land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonite, the Chitties,
Perizzites, Refraim, the Emorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and
Yevusites." (Genesis 15:18-21)
The Promised Land was
further specified during the time of Moses: "Now Moses went up from the
plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, which is opposite
Jericho. And the LORD showed him all the land, Gilead as far as Dan, and
all Naphtali and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh, and all the land of
Judah as far as the Western Sea, and the Negev and the plain in the
valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, as far as Zoar. Then the Lord
said to him, "This is the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, saying, 'I will give it to your descendants'; I have let you see
with your eyes, but you shall not go over there." (Deuteronomy 34:1-4)
This second promise given in Deuteronomy
evidently delineates a smaller expanse of land promised to Moses than
the one promised to Abraham. The promise was fulfilled during the reign
of Joshua, and reached its farthest expansion under Solomon when the
Israelite controlled much of Greater Syria and parts of Iraq and
southern Turkey.
Muslims do not disagree with the Biblical
claims, as the Qur’an reaffirms God’s promise to Moses that his
followers will be delivered from their Egyptian servitude to the Holy
Land. They do not, however, accept the claim that a Biblical promise can
be legitimately reenacted after thousands of years and used as a ground
for gathering world Jewry in Palestine and dispossessing its current
inhabitants of their ancestral land. Thus they consider such a deed to
be a blatant violation of universally accepted moral principles and
recognized international law.
The early pioneers of Zionist ideology,
consumed with obtaining the existing powers’ endorsement of their demand
for a Jewish homeland, hardly worried about Arab reaction. On 29 Aug.
1897, they met in Basel, Switzerland, to refine their plan to take over
Palestine. Imperial Europe, then expanding its colonial control into
Asia and Africa, was forging new countries out of old ones and
installing new regimes to replace fallen empires. In addition, the rise
of European nationalism and the subsequent desire of European nations to
affirm their national identity posed serious challenge to European
Jewry. Establishing a homeland in historic Palestine seemed to offer an
effective solution to Europe’s chronic anti-Semitism and fulfill the
centuries-long Jewish longing for the Holy Land.
On 2 Nov. 1917, the Zionist Organization
extracted the Balfour Declaration, which recognized Palestine as a
Jewish homeland. In 1919, it submitted a six-point proposal for
establishing a Jewish Palestine to the Peace Conference of Paris. Two
points were particularly notable: the boundaries of Palestine would “extend
on the west to the Mediterranean, on the north to the Lebanon, on the
east to the Hedjaz railway and the Gulf of Akabah,” and the League of
Nations was called upon to make Palestine a British mandate.
The prospect of a Jewish homeland brought
great excitement to Zionist leaders, as they realized that their dream
is being transformed into reality. Many Zionist leaders did not fully
grasp the direction of world history and the full consequences of
reliving an ancient prophecy in modern times. Zionist leaders
underestimated the reaction of the local population of Palestine, the
Arab Middle East, and the rest of the Muslim world, to the formation of a
Jewish State in the region. In an article by H. Sacher, published in
the Atlantic Monthly
in 1919 under the title “A Jewish Palestine,” the author, a Jewish
Historian, argued in support of the founding of a Jewish State, and
envisaged a harmonious and peaceful society in which all live together
well. Jewish Palestine, he insisted, “will do justice between all
the nationalities within its borders. It will establish the equality of
men and men, and work toward democracy, political and economic. It will
be one of the pillars of the League of Nations, and by its relationship
to all the scattered communities of Israel, it will forge powerful
links for the brotherhood of the peoples. In the Near East and the
Middle East it will strive to replace the broken tyranny of the Turk by a
harmonious cooperation between Jew, Arab, and Armenian.”
Sacher saw in Palestine a place for self expression of religious and national identity long denied to European Jewry. Sacher portrayed the impact
of an independent homeland on ordinary Jews in ways that revealed the
impact of the homogenizing modern state and culture. “There he
will see the Jewish faith developing freely,” he pointed out, “according
to the law of its being, distracted neither by opposition, nor by
surrender to an alien environment. There he will see the Jewish national
spirit expressing itself in a society modeled on the Jewish idea of
justice, in a Hebrew literature, in a Hebrew art, in the myriad
activities which make the life of a people on its own soil, under its
own sky.”
Reality Check and Emerging Demography
The sixty years that
passed since the founding of the State of Israel have been traumatic,
particularly for the Palestinian people, but increasingly to the world
community. The migration of European Jews to Palestine began in earnest
under the British mandate, and as the number of Jewish settlements in
Palestine multiplied, Palestinians revolted repeatedly against Britain,
in unsuccessful bids to gain independence. Independence was instead
handed to the Zionist organization, which in 1948 declared the birth of
the State of Israel. The war of independence, which was fought mainly
against Arab militias, led to the displacement of 711,000 Palestinians,
mostly in surrounding Arab countries.
Five years later, the two-state solution remains
elusive. Pragmatic Israeli leaders have not been able to revise the
logic of return. If modern Israel is a fulfillment of divine promise, it
is difficult to argue against Greater Israel. Many Palestinians, Arabs,
and Muslims have developed profound doubts as to Israel’s intentions
and final borders. Many in the Middle East suspect that Israel still
wants to fulfill the Biblical boundaries of Greater Israel, which extend
far beyond modern Palestine. The late Yaser Arafat and Hafiz al-Assad
are on record as protesting Israel’s design to expand its boundaries to
Lebanon, Syria, and even Iraq. In a special meeting with the UN Security
Council in Geneva in September 1988, Arafat produced a document that
“proved” Israel’s expansionist goals: "This document is a ‘map of
Greater Israel' which is inscribed on this Israeli coin, the 10-agora
piece." Describing Israel’s boundaries as they appeared on that map,
Arafat stressed that they include "all of Palestine, all of Lebanon, all
of Jordan, half of Syria, two-thirds of Iraq, one-third of Saudi Arabia
as far as holy Medina, and half of Sinai." (Middle East Quarterly,
March 1994).
Today, more than 5 million Palestinians live in
Diaspora mostly in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Significant Palestinian
communities also reside in the Gulf countries, Egypt, North Africa, and
North America. These Palestinians are the subject of a debate over the
“Palestinian right of return.” Israel continues to resist demands to
allow Palestinians who were forced out during this war, which Arabs call
al-Nakba (the Catastrophe), to return on the grounds that
doing so would disturb the existing “demographic balance” and make the
claim of a Jewish state unsustainable. Indeed, this fear seems to be the
main reason why Israel has been reluctant to formally annex the West
Bank and Gaza. Such an act would also violate international law. But
Israel has consistently violated UN Security Council resolutions that
clash with its own designs, such as its formal annexation of Syria’s
Golan Heights even though the UN considers such an annexation to be
illegal.
Despite exhaustive
negotiations for peace of the last two decades, Israel continues to push
towards achieving the Zionist dream of Greater Israel. The Roadmap
announced by Bush in 2002 and his attempt to reinvigorate it last month
during his visit to the Middle East, are the continuation of countless
rounds of negotiation during the nineties. Bill Clinton led a series of
negotiation as part of the Oslo agreement that aimed at establishing
Palestinian state. The negotiation failed in 2000, when it became
apparent that the outcome was far removed from the claims of a sovereign
state and contiguous territories. Camp David eventually gave the Palestinians a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control.
Throughout the last two
decades the Israelis negotiated with their Arab peace partners with bad
faith. They continued to build more settlements, confiscate more land,
and to strengthen their grab over the territories as they engaged
Palestinians in peace negotiations on the promise of Palestinian
independence. Between 1993 and 2006, the number of settlers in the West
Bank and Gaza doubled. The number of West Bank settlers increased from 11,600
in 1993 to 234,487 in 2004. 2006 statistics shows that the number of
settlers has exceeded 268,400. The number of settlers in Gaza jumped
from 4,800 in 1993 to 7,826 in 2004, to drop to 0 after the Israeli
government decided to withdraw unilaterally from the Gaza strip.
Jewish settlements in
the West Bank are illegal under International law. Article 49, paragraph
6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: "The Occupying Power shall
not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the
territory it occupies". The International Court of Justice has,
likewise, asserted in paragraph 120 of its Advisory Opinion of July 9,
2004 that the settlements are illegal.
Jewish settlements also
contradict the very spirit of Oslo and the Roadmap, which the United
States considers to be the basis for ending the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. The Roadmap document published by the State Department in 2003
insists that “The settlement will
resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and end the occupation that
began in 1967, based on the foundations of the Madrid Conference, the
principle of land for peace, UNSCRs 242, 338 and 1397, agreements
previously reached by the parties, and the initiative of Saudi Crown
Prince Abdullah – endorsed by the Beirut Arab League Summit – calling
for acceptance of Israel as a neighbor living in peace and security, in
the context of a comprehensive settlement.”
Palestinian Misery and Double Standards
Sacher’s vision of Israel that “will do justice
between all the nationalities within its borders,” has faded away.
Palestinians who live in the West Bank and Gaza are deprived of their
basic human rights, and subjected to a set of standards that is far
removed from the ones administered in the Israeli settlements. The
Israeli government applies Israeli law to the settlers and the
settlements, practically annexing them to the State of Israel. The
Separation Wall serves as an instrument for such annexation. The
resulting system is a regime of legalized separation
and discrimination. “This regime is based on the existence of two
separate legal systems in the same territory, with the rights of
individuals being determined by their nationality.” Palestinians who
apply for building permits are often turned down, and when they build
their houses without building permits are demolished by the Israeli
Civil Administration, even when the construction is done on private
land.
The Israeli Civil
Administration facilitates, on the other hand, the construction of
Jewish settlements and by-pass roads, even when these encircle
Palestinian towns and villages, and make movement in the West Bank
extremely difficult. In the last eight years, the numerous check points
that were constructed in the West Bank (and Gaza until the Israeli
Unilateral withdrawal) have made the life of Palestinians miserable, and
destroyed the already weak Palestinian economy.
The squeeze policy adopted by the Israeli
government against Palestinians did not stop at denying permits for new
housing, but extends to confiscation of Palestinian land. The
construction of what Israel calls Security Barrier, and what its critics
refer to as the Apartheid Wall, is being used to confiscate Palestinian
lands, and has often resulted in separating families, and occasionally
making commuting between Palestinian localities extremely difficult, if
not impossible.
Somaia Barghouti, Chargé d'affaires of Permanent
Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations, protested in a
letter to the UN Secretary General, on January 26, 2005, the continuous
confiscation of Palestinian land for no avail. “Israeli bulldozers have
been razing land,” Barghouti stressed, “confiscated by the occupying
Power from its Palestinian owners, in the area, including in the village
of Iskaka, for the construction of the Wall. Indeed, Israel continues
to construct the Wall despite the ruling by the International Court of
Justice, in its advisory opinion of 9 July 2004 (A/ES-10/273 and
Corr.1), on its illegality.” Barghouti went on to say “that Israel's
construction of the Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,
including in and around East Jerusalem, and its associated regime are
contrary to international law, and that Israel is under an obligation to
cease its construction of the Wall, to dismantle the structure situated
therein, to repeal or render ineffective all legislative and regulatory
acts relating thereto, and to make reparation for all damage caused by
the construction of the Wall. Regrettably, the occupying Power has been
doing exactly the opposite.”
Logic of History and Power
Modern Israel’s predicament is not easy to miss: a
nation created to liberate European Jewry from discrimination and
oppression is increasingly guilty of the very practices it sought to
escape. This reality has brought anguish even to many Jews. For decades,
Israeli leaders have tried to use the country’s military advantage to
force Arab and Palestinian compliance. This worked for a while, as the
early Zionist pioneers faced vanquished and illiterate Arab communities.
But the policies of iron fists and excessive force by successive
Israeli regimes have backfired. Israel is increasingly facing new
generations of Palestinians who are determined to reclaim their honor
and dignity and who are willing to risk their lives and pay a high cost
to achieve freedom and self-determination.
Some Israeli leaders have begun to realize that
traditional approaches aimed at forcing the Palestinians to surrender to
the Zionist project of Greater Israel no longer work. In a “New York
Times” (14 Aug. 2005) article,
Ethan Bronner quoted a senior Israeli official closely associated with
Likud leaders as saying: “The fact that hundreds of them are willing to
blow themselves up is significant," he said. “We didn't give them any
credit before. In spite of our being the strongest military power in the
Middle East, we lost 1,200 people over the last four years. It finally
sank in to Sharon and the rest of the leadership that these people were
not giving up.”
During Dec. 2003, then deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert told Nahum Barnea of “Yediot Aharonot”:
“Israel will soon need to make a strategic recognition ... We are
nearing the point where more and more Palestinians will say: ‘We’re
persuaded. We agree with [right-wing politician Avigdor] Lieberman.
There isn’t room for two states between the Jordan and the sea. All we
want is the right to vote.’ On the day they reach that point,” said
Olmert, “we lose everything. ... I quake to think that leading the fight
against us will be liberal Jewish groups that led the fight against
apartheid in South Africa.” Now serving as Israel’s prime minister, he
repeated his concerns, albeit in more ambiguous language, upon his
return from Annapolis Conference by telling “Haaretz” (28 Nov. 2007) that “the State of Israel cannot endure unless a Palestinian state comes into being.”
Commenting on Arafat’s argument, Daniel Pipes, the
neoconservative American historian, specialist, and analyst of the
Middle East, rejected the
contention that the Greater Israel espoused by modern Zionism
encompasses Syria and Jordan. Conceding that modern Zionist leaders and
historians, including Theodor Herzl, made references to Jewish
settlements in Syria and Jordan, Pipes insisted that these were personal
views and do not represent established views on Israel’s borders. Along
with many other conservative Jews, however, he insists that Gaza and
the West Bank must be within Israel’s borders.
While most Israelis are increasingly aware that
using force has certain limitations and seem willing to compromise with
Palestinians, a determined minority represented by the Likud and the
ultra-religious parties is bent on pushing all the way. Avigdor
Lieberman, leader of the Right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu
party, resigned from Olmert’s cabinet during January 2008 to protest
the renewal of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority that seek to
address Jerusalem’s final status. The Israeli Right’s position has
strong support in the United States. Conservative American Jewish and
Christian organizations have consistently backed the Likud and advocated
a Greater Israel that extends to the West Bank and Gaza.
In 1996, several leading American neoconservatives,
among them Richard Perle (Pentagon policy adviser [resigned February
2004] and former Likud policy adviser), James Colbert (communications
director, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs), Charles
Fairbanks, Jr. (former deputy assistant secretary, State Department),
Douglas J. Feith (former undersecretary of defense for policy), and
Robert Loewenberg (founder, Institute for Advanced Strategic &
Political Studies [IASPS-Jerusalem]), authored "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,"
which was published by the Israeli-based IASPS. This political
blueprint, meant for the incoming government of Benjamin Netanyahu,
rejected the Oslo peace process and reasserted Israel's claim to the
West Bank and Gaza. Furthermore, it called for rejecting the principle of trading land for peace,
established by the Oslo Agreement, and demanded the unconditional
Palestinian acceptance of Likud's terms (peace for peace), removing
Saddam Hussain from power, and reconstituting Iraq.
The two-state solution has another aspect: the 5
million Palestinians living in the Diaspora, well-organized and strongly
committed to their ancestral land, have organized their lives around
the dream of return. In an essay entitled “It Is Always Eid in Palestine,”
Yasmine Ali, a Palestinian-American who visited a Palestinian refugee
camp in 1999, describes her encounter with elementary students who have
never seen Palestine: “… what really caught my eye was the ‘Wall
Magazine,’ which consisted of writings by Shatila children. There were
several pages tacked to the bulletin board, listing qualities that the
children had, in their minds, attributed to Palestine: ‘Palestine is a
very, very beautiful land ... There is a sea of chocolate in Palestine
... Children are always happy in Palestine ... Women don't gossip in
Palestine ... The streets are very clean in Palestine ... It is always
Eid ["Feast Day"] in Palestine ... Parents don't die in Palestine.’ I
stared at that for a long time. It was indescribably poignant, how this
obviously reflected their situation in Shatila camp. It reminded me of
how the Jews in the ghettos of Poland and Germany and numerous other
countries used to imagine Palestine as the Promised Land -- indeed, how
it has been imagined by so many the world over for thousands of years.
And now by Palestinians themselves. Palestine, the Promised Land, once
and forever. The irony was too bitter.”
From Power Play to Common Principles
“[the Zionists pioneers believed that] the only language the Arabs understand is that of force,” wrote Ahad Ha'Am
the leading Eastern European Jewish essayist, upon returning from a
visit to Palestine in 1891. Throughout of its conflicts with neighboring
Arab countries, Israel has always had the advantage of superior
fighting force. It has for decades succeeded to advance its claims to
Palestine by creating facts on the ground. In addition of superior
military that has acquired a reputation of invincibility, the
construction zeal of Jewish settlements in the Holy Land has allowed
Israel to grow and expand. For decades, fighting and building was done
with great religious zeal.
Years of Israeli mastery over Palestinians and the
constant reliance on force to keep them in check have led to similar
perceptions among Palestinians: that force is the only option available
to counter Israeli expansion. The Israeli occupation has transformed the
Palestinians, bringing about a generation of angry and determined
militants convinced that the only language Israel understands is that of
force.
Force, however, does not bring a permanent and long
lasting solution to conflicts. Might does not make right, is a
principle borne by long, and regrettably repeated, historical
experience. “The strongest is never strong enough to be always the
master,” observed Rousseau in his Social Contract,
“unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.”
Israel has been expanding its domain not on the basis on any established
system of law, but by the overwhelming power it has over ordinary
Palestinians and its ability to create facts on the ground. The biblical
account and historical grievances stem from the experience of the
European Jewry, which is the basis of Western support, has not been
accepted by Middle Eastern societies. The people of the Middle East see
the divine promise as historically bound, and expect to be treated as
people with equal rights and dignity.
The impetus that drive the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is rooted in international struggle of the 18th and 19th
centuries Europe, and has nothing to do with the logic of international
relations based on the notion of right and international law expected
by the citizens of 21st century. The logic that guided the
establishment and expansion of Israel has focused more on the
affirmation of Jewish identity and power, and less on justice and the
right of Palestinians. This logic can be seen in the arguments of the
foremost Zionist leader of the 20th Century. "[T]hese days it
is not right but might which prevails,” noted David Ben-Gurion. “It is
more important to have force than justice on one's side," he added. He
went on to say that in a period of "power politics, the powers that
become hard of hearing, and respond only to the roar of cannons. And the
Jews in the Diaspora have no cannons." (Shabtai Teveth, p. 191)
Europe has already turned the page on its
nationalist politics and colonial ambitions, while the Middle East is
still engulfed in destructive wars rooted in religious differences and
national aspirations. Furthermore, the appeal to religion for
establishing political structures has inspired other actors to privilege
religious affiliation over a system of rights and law. The
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if not quickly resolved, threatens to
galvanize the world along religious lines and transform itself into a
global conflict.
Muslim militants throughout the world have already
used Palestine as a central issue to galvanize support, and far Right
groups in the West use the same issue to mobilize the West against Islam
and Muslims. There is a dire need to begin a rational debate on how to
address the Palestinian question calmly and on the basis the political
values of freedom, equality, democracy, and justice.
Globalization of the Conflict
Israeli leadership has been forced to view any
country in the region that express sympathy and support for the
Palestinians as a potential enemy. Israel is constantly working to make
sure that it is able to maintain a comfortable margin of military
advantage. As a result, Israel has also felt duty-bound to check the
rise of any military power in the region to ensure that its military
superiority is never challenged. This has led to preemptive wars and
strikes in the past against Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
Israel currently urging the United States to undertake a preemptive
military attacks against Iran if it does not stop enriching uranium for
fear it can be used for military purposes, and has threatened that it
will do so if need be.
In recent years, the Palestinian conflict has deepened the divide between predominantly Muslim and Western countries. A 2007 survey by Gallup
showed that 58% of Americans are sympathetic to Israelis with only 20%
expressing sympathy toward Palestinians. 44% thought that the United
State should not get involved in any diplomatic efforts to end the
conflict, unless Palestinians recognize Israel first, while 25% thought
the US should not do any thing about it. 57% thought that the US should
not give any support to the Palestinian Authority, while 30% thought
support must be contingent on recognizing Israel. This is quite removed a
position than the one found in Arab and Muslim countries who have made
repeated demands for immediate withdrawal of Israel from the territories
its occupied since 1967, and have frequently expressed resentment of
American support to Israeli policies and measures against Palestinians.
For five years, nightly news programs in the Middle
East have been bombarding their audiences with graphic pictures of the
life in the West Bank and Gaza. Raids by Israeli military on towns and
villages, home demolitions, confiscation of land, assassination of
militants, closures and blockades, impoverished and crowded
neighborhoods, and similar images fill the TV screens on a daily basis.
This has created deep bitterness and guilt as old and young helplessly
watch Palestinian suffering. The picture of the Middle East conflict is
almost diametrical opposite across the West-Middle East divide.
Silencing Voices of Moderation
There is little debate on the reality and
consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jimmy Carter pointed
out in his recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, that
the political debate about the policies of the Israeli government is
much more open and lively in Israel than it is in the US. “There are
constant and vehement political and media debates in Israel concerning
its policies in the West Bank,” Carter claimed, “but because of powerful
political, economic, and religious forces in the U.S., Israeli
government decisions are rarely questioned or condemned, voices from
Jerusalem dominate our media, and most American citizens are unaware of
circumstances in the occupied territories.”
Several American
political leaders and scholars blame the lack of political debate and
balanced media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the
Jewish Lobby, a loose coalition of pro-Israel organizations devoted to
promoting Israeli interests. Carter himself felt the brunt of the Lobby
upon the publication of his recent book on Palestine. The book was
deemed by conservative Jewish groups to be anti-Semitic because it
expresses sympathy to the plight of the Palestinians, and brought
attention to the Israeli politics that aim at fragmenting the Occupied
Territories and subjugating the Palestinian people.
Another courageous
attempt to stimulate the debate about Israel’s policies in the Occupied
Land and there consequences for the United States was made by the two
foremost political scientist in the United States, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. Their recent book, The Jewish Lobby, an expansion of a paper they published
under the same title, brings to the fore the strategies employed by
pro-Israel lobbyists, and unveils the extent of their influence on US
foreign policy towards the Middle East. One underlying strategy
illustrated by Mearsheimer and Walt is the “strong prejudice against
criticizing Israeli policy,” and that “putting pressure on Israel is
considered out of order.”
The Jewish Lobby provides examples of
pressure tactics employed by conservative Jewish groups to frustrate
efforts by prominent American Jews to balance the Israeli policies
towards Palestinian and to curb the Israeli excesses. The book
documents, for example, the backlash against Edgar Bronfman Sr, the
president of the World Jewish Congress, for writing a letter to
President Bush in 2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb
construction of its controversial “security fence”. His critics accused
him of “perfidy” and argued that “it would be obscene at any time for
the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the
United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of
Israel.”
Likewise, Seymour Reich the president of the Israel
Policy Forum, was denounced and accused of being “irresponsible,” for
advising Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a
critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip. His critics insisted that
“There is absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively
canvassing against the security-related policies . . . of Israel.” The
severity of the attacks forced Reich to announce that “the word
‘pressure’ is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.”
Prospects for Fair Solution
The conflict in Palestine threatens to destabilize
world politics and embolden fundamentalist demands for religiously
exclusive political states. The principle of rule of law has suffered
immensely under the climate of fear that followed the terrorist attacks
on the American homeland on September 11, 2001. Extremists in both the
East and the West are working hard to deepen the divide, and turn a
political conflict into a religious war. The Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is being used by the far right in both Muslim and Western
countries to justify bigotry and to demonize people on the other side of
the divide.
There is a dire need to use our creative
imagination and to find a just and equitable solution to the conflict.
The logic of “creating facts on the ground” and “might makes right” must
give way to the spirit of the age, of equal dignity and the rule of
law. It might be well the case that conflict might continue to play
itself out until complete victory or complete defeat is achieved. But
this would definitely be a tragic moment, as it would signal the triumph
of force over morality and rationality. It would be a tragic moment,
because by then, the conflict would have created overwhelming misery on
all sides that no human being would be willing to contemplate.
The solution to the conflict must not be based on
Jewish, Christian, or Muslim prophecies that would only inflame hate and
mistrust among the followers of the three religious traditions. It
should, rather, be based on the prophetic principles cherished by the
three religious traditions. It must be based on the shared committed to
the sanctity of human life, and the universally accepted principles of
equal dignity, freedom of religion, democracy, and the rule of law.
Will prophetic principles triumph over self-styled
and self-fulfilled prophecies? I am tempted by my own faith in the
power of transcendental principles and values to answer in the positive.
I do, however, equally believe that the answer to the question hinges
on the actions of members of the communities of faith. I do hope that
people of reason and deep faith do privilege the clear principles
demanded by their religions and international conventions over vague
prophecies interpreted by fallible and rationally limited and
emotionally charged human beings.
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