Truthful lies, respectable murder

By Radwa Ashour *

Reading the joint statement of the Egyptian Peace Movement and the Israeli Peace Now movement, I could not help thinking of those blankets. The manipulation of words is advanced technology, a post-modern device, but in essence similar to colonial germ warfare.

The heading of the joint statement repeats the word "peace" four times. The repetition of the word in the title and throughout the statement, of course, is intimidating: who would dare to say "I am against peace"?

But the word peace as it is used these days deserves to be included in the glossary of colonial terms: the White Man's Burden, Manifest Destiny, the Israeli Defence Forces, Peace in Galilee... We need not draw upon our long-term memory: the recent past will do quite well. The Camp David Accords, to which the statement refers as "the momentous and courageous initiative taken by the late President Sadat and the late Prime Minister Begin" were followed by the invasion of Lebanon by the IDF in 1982, the occupation of Beirut and the mass killings in Sabra and Shatila and other Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon. The Oslo Accords and the peace treaty with Jordan, manifestations of Rabin, Peres and Arafat's farsightedness (according to the statement), was followed by another invasion of Lebanon and the Qana massacre. In between, and up to this moment, the shelling of Lebanese villages, the policy of breaking Palestinian bones, shooting Palestinian demonstrators and torturing detainees are all part of the daily Israeli routine.

This peace is contaminated. This is not empty rhetoric: we have lived the historical substance of the metaphor, we have paid for it in tens of thousands of human lives. Of course we want peace: a just solution which guarantees the withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied Arab land in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, the dismantling of the settlements and the right of return for the 1948 Palestinian refugees, a right supported by UN Resolution 194.

"The permanent settlement," says the statement, "will include a comprehensive solution to the problem of the refugees (from 1948) and the uprooted residents (from 1967). The Palestinian state will be entitled to absorb refugees within its borders according to its own considerations. A compensation arrangement for refugees will be agreed upon with international support. After this agreement is reached, the parties will categorically waive any further claims for the return of refugees, restitution of property rights or the right of settlement in the area of the other state."

The Gaza Strip and the West Bank constitute 20 per cent of historical Palestine. The Netanyahu administration is reluctant to hand over to the Palestinian National Authority 13 per cent of the territories occupied in 1967 -- i.e., 13 per cent of the 20 per cent. One need not be smart in arithmetic to realise that Israeli peace -- if Mr Netanyahu is feeling generous, that is -- will give the Palestinians 2.6 per cent of historical Palestine to accommodate more than seven million Palestinians. The peace statement, which claims to represent popular Arab aspirations, and Arab intellectuals above all, refers to the categorical waiver of "any further claims for the return of refugees or the restitution of property rights".

The Palestinians of Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Lydda, and those of the over 418 Palestinian villages destroyed and depopulated by Israel -- in short, all the Palestinians who survived the Israeli 1947-1948 massacres and were forced to flee, as well as their children and grandchildren -- are to remain permanently in exile or in refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. They are to keep their status as second-rate citizens, or squeeze themselves into 2.6 per cent of their homeland (probably with the help of Japanese know-how, which might successfully turn them into miniature humans, following its success with Bonsai technology).

Of course, the statement does not say that seven million Palestinians are to live in 2.6 per cent of Palestine, for it cannot say outright that, while the so-called "Egyptian Peace Movement" is willing to give up 97.4 per cent of historical Palestine, and the 1948 refugees' right of return, it cannot possibly ignore "facts that have been created on the ground" -- i.e., the new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Nowhere in this statement do we find a direct reference to UN Resolution 242, which calls for Israel's withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. Instead, there is a shy reference to "the pre-June 1967 [borders, which] will constitute the guiding line for the determination of the permanent borders between the State of Israel and the Palestinian state".

This is the kind of political language which Orwell once described as, "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind". This description applies to the whole statement, but the paragraph on Jerusalem is particularly illustrative: "Jerusalem will remain a united city permanently. The area of the city will be redefined and it will be accepted that both nations live in the city, and that both enjoy national and religious rights. Agreed and coordinated municipal frameworks will be established within the city borders in order to enable each community to manage its own internal affairs. Two capitals will exist within the municipal area: the capital of Israel in the Jewish areas, and the capital of Palestine in the Arab areas. The status of the holy sites will be determined through negotiations based on maintaining the religious rights and freedom of worship of all religions." Jerusalem will remain a united city, says the first sentence of the paragraph; and the last sentence of the same paragraph refers to two capitals in Jerusalem: the capital of Israel and the capital of Palestine.

"In our time," says Orwell, "political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of the British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the political aims of most parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial. or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die... in camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements."

Let me add: the occupation of Palestine, the destruction of Arab villages and the dispossession of the Palestinians: this is called the Israeli War of Independence. The occupation of Syrian and Lebanese territories and the systematic attacks on civilians in southern Lebanon: this is called defense measures. The struggle for national liberation: this is called terrorism. To say "whatever is, is right": this is called peace. To say that this is not peace: this makes you an enemy of peace.

Fortunately, the large majority of Egyptian intellectuals see things differently. Individual writers, artists, university professors, journalists, researchers, scientists, and their unions and associations -- the Egyptian Writers Union, the Artists Union, The Higher Council of Culture, the Journalists' Syndicate, the Lawyers' Syndicate, to name but a few -- have declared their position. They are not intimidated by words such as "peace", "normalisation", or "the new Middle East" -- words which sound increasingly obscene as Israel keeps bombing civilians in Lebanon, building new settlements, expropriating Arab land, demolishing Arab houses and claiming that withdrawing from 13 per cent of the territories acquired by military force in 1967 endangers its security.

The "gift" of the Cairo Peace Society and Peace Now is nothing but a contaminated blanket. We do not want it; we do not need smallpox; we have enough problems at hand.