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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 June 2000 Issue No. 485
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Post-Zionism
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
For some time now, I have been calling for the need to adopt an entirely new approach to the issue of peace in the Middle East, one going beyond the parameters established in Madrid. As I see it, real peace entails not only Israel's withdrawal from Arab territories occupied in 1967, ie, not only the land-for-peace tradeoff as envisaged in Security Council Resolution 242, but also serious efforts on Israel's part to convince the Arab parties, by deeds and not only by words, that its presence in the region can be more beneficial to them than its absence. Such a notion goes against a deeply-ingrained Arab conviction that peace with the alien body thrust in their midst is an unattainable goal, and that the only way out of what is basically an irresolvable conflict is a return to the pre-1948 situation. In this scenario, the Zionist enterprise is a transient phenomenon that will go the way of the Crusades before it.
The fact is, however, that in a shrinking planet governed by the globalisation process, reversibility in history is a quasi-impossible undertaking. The effects of the communication and information revolution cannot be wiped away and the erection of walls between peoples is no longer possible. It is not only the Arabs who are required to adapt to this new rationale, but the Israelis as well.
According to Ilan Pappé, one of Israel's 'new historians', "Zionism is bound to change with the unfolding of the peace process and will tend to develop into two contradictory trends: 'neo-Zionism' and 'post-Zionism'. The former will be based on the premise that Israel's future depends on its understanding that peace is impossible, and that, consequently, to ensure its survival, Israel must retain absolute military superiority over all Arab armies taken together." Pappé believes neo-Zionism could be more belligerent than traditional Zionism. In his view, neo-Zionism is Netanyahu's school of thought. As to Barak, his actions so far seem to place him in the same camp as his predecessor.
The term 'post-Zionism' is used by Pappé to describe the school of thought in Israel which proceeds from the assumption that peace is unavoidable. According to him, it is the Zionist path conducive to a settlement, the path that postulates that the peace process presently underway will not resolve the conflict and reach a mutually acceptable peace.
However, the number of 'new historians' in Israel who think like Pappé are very few, and, while they are beginning to have some impact on intellectuals, university professors, writers, journalists and film directors, have so far had none whatsoever on politicians. Pappé is a professor of history and political science at Haifa University. He took part in the 1973 war on the Golan front, then studied for three years at the Hebrew University. There he frequented a number of Arab Israeli students side by side with the Jewish students. He then went to Oxford and mingled with Arab scholars and British orientalists such as Albert Hourani and Roger Owen and also with fellow students from a variety of Arab countries. Pappé is not a Communist but joined Haddash (the former Communist Party) on the grounds that it is the only party in Israel open to all Israeli factions without discrimination. Recently, Pappé published a book on Palestine's Husseini family to belie the Zionist allegation that, until it was settled by Jews, Palestine was a 'land without a people'.
But Pappé's most important book is The 1948 War in Palestine: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which was banned in Israel when it first appeared several years ago. Pappé's central argument in the book is that the point of departure for the peace process must be the events of 1948, not 1967. In other words, the key issue is not the elimination of the effects of the 1967 defeat, not the future of the West Bank and Gaza, but Israel's legitimacy in the eyes of the region's original inhabitants, ie, the legitimacy of the Jewish settlement of Palestine and what the Zionist state has to pay in counterpart to be accepted by the Arabs.
According to Pappé, the first requirement for reaching mutual understanding is a common effort to remove contradictory readings of the events that brought Israel into existence in 1948 and which have been at the origin of the intensification of the conflict ever since. A prerequisite for mutual understanding is the readiness to see the viewpoint of the adversary. Actually, Pappé's book is the first Israeli work that accepts Palestinian readings of some of the major events of that early period.
The second requirement is a readiness to assume responsibility for mistakes. In Pappé's eyes, it is Israel which must assume the greater share of responsibility for the mistakes of 1948. At the same time, he does not absolve the Palestinian leaders and the British administration of part of the blame, while "American President Truman was more concerned with how to ensure his reelection than with the situation in the Palestinian camps."
Pappé's approach is, of course, unusual for Israelis, because by making 1948 and not 1967 the frame of reference, he accepts the UN General Assembly's Partition resolution (the two-state solution, one Jewish and one Arab; and eventually, a democratic secular one-state solution, in case coexistence between Jews and Arabs can be reached) as the basis for an overall settlement. It is true that the Arabs rejected the partition of Palestine in 1948, while Israel used the partition resolution as the basis for its legitimacy as a state, but nobody today rejects the two-state solution a priori.
Indeed, some of the most intractable problems can have a solution if Pappé's approach is endorsed. One example is the issue of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Lebanon shelters 350,000 Palestinian refugees at a time the Lebanese civil war, a side-product of Lebanon's involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, drove 450,000 Lebanese out of the country. Most of these would now like to return, but cannot do so without a solution of the Palestinian refugee problem. If 1948 is taken as the point of departure in the peace process, the Palestinian side in the negotiations would not be limited to the inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank, but would include representatives of the various Palestinian communities in exile, as well as representatives of Palestinians who have now become Israeli citizens because they did not emigrate in 1948. That would bring about a very different map of the conflicting parties in the Middle East.
In such a context, a solution of the Palestinian problem is conceivable, not only because it will oblige Israel to assume its responsibilities towards the Palestinians and reconsider its refusal to accept the return of any Palestinians whatsoever to what is now Israel proper, but also because it will force the Arab parties to assume their own responsibilities towards the Palestinian refugees, on the grounds that a solution of their problem should not be based on balance of power considerations, but on a principled stand involving all the protagonists.
Of course, this approach to a settlement will come up against formidable obstacles, not least the fact that no party is ready to give up Resolution 242 as the basis for an overall agreement. For example, the Palestinian Authority would be understandably reluctant to concede the gains it has managed to build up with great difficulty without any guarantee whatsoever that the alternative will yield better results.
But however justified the argument that the boycott of Israelis is necessary as long as the settlement they insist upon is by no means a fair deal and closer to capitulation than to anything else, Israelis like Ilan Pappé offer grounds for hope. Although so far his is a voice in the wilderness, we must stretch our hands out to him, and to the handful of Israelis who think like him, for the common good of all the protagonists and the cause of a just peace in the region.
