25 - 31 January 2001
Issue No.518
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 25 - 31 January 2001 Issue No.518 |
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The beginning at the end
The point of departure of the long and tortuous road of the peace process was an attempt to move away from the fundamental fact of Palestinian dispossession -- to avoid a settling of accounts with the colonial and racist nature of the Israeli state.
Mr Yaacov Hayman, an American Jew from Hollywood, would thus continue to enjoy an unlimited right of "return" to the land of his Biblical ancestors, whenever whim or inclination took him that way. Why he would do so is irrelevant. It could be a failed marriage, a brilliant career that never quite took off, mere anomie or an intense bout of Zionist zeal. Twelve years ago, Mr Hayman did "return." When we first learn of his existence, it is on Itamar, a Jewish hill-top settlement near Nablus in the West Bank; Palestinian peasants had been dispossessed of their land and livelihoods so that Mr Hayman could find a nice home waiting, with a well-watered lawn and perhaps a little swimming pool, on this parched land. Then there are the massive byways, connecting roads and security installations -- for Mr Hayman must come and go as he pleases in his ancestral homeland, his "security" protected from its faceless inhabitants.
When Mr Hayman appears on the world stage, the Al-Aqsa Intifada is in full swing and the Itamar settlers have just shot and killed a Palestinian peasant working in his olive grove at the foot of the settlement. He does not hate the Arabs, Mr Hayman from Hollywood tells the British Independent's correspondent on that grim occasion; he just does not want to "share" the land with them.
At an early stage in their peace trek, the Arabs adopted the "land-for-peace" formula as a slogan and a founding principle for the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This catch phrase-turned-founding principle of the peace settlement-turned-peace process clearly embodies the fundamental flaw in that process -- all the more so since it is the Arab side that holds it as a mantra, while Israel appears to concede it reluctantly. In the land-for-peace spin, the slate is wiped clean, the reality of Palestinian dispossession erased, the "conflict" made to begin in May '67, at most. The June War becomes a defensive war; Israel's occupation of Arab land is motivated not by expansion and colonial conquest, but by a desire to live in peace with its neighbours. The Arabs become the aggressors, who must be made to pay the price. Israel wants peace; the Arabs seek the land Israel occupied -- to promote peace -- in June '67. The fundamental fact -- one people oppressing and dispossessing another -- is made to disappear. All we have is a bazaar: so much "peace" for so much "land."
The brilliance of this spin lies in that, while fully affirming the Zionist myths about the origins, history and nature of the conflict, it has given the Arabs a stake in perpetuating these very myths. The Arabs had fought for Palestine; they could go on bemoaning and/or boasting of the "sacrifices" they made for the Palestinian cause, blame it for the many ills of their regimes and, even as they were surrendering the Palestinian cause piece by piece, go on using the Israeli threat as justification for an authoritarian imperative of "national unity." Moreover, they had an effective bargaining card, which presumably Israel had been seeking desperately from its very inception: they could give it peace.
Because of the overwhelming preponderance of ideology over reality in the construction of the Arab-Israeli conflict, such obvious rubbish has been all-pervasive. The Arabs never fought seriously for Palestine (at least, not outside the realm of rhetoric and dissimulation) and Israel never seriously wanted peace (not, that is, outside the same realm). The "peace" part of the apparent barter was, in fact, a code word signifying a large package of concessions. Recognition of Israel's "right to exist" became contingent not only upon conceding for all time the dispossession of the past, but also upon "guaranteeing Israel's security" into the future. Insatiable and ever precarious, Israeli security, it would become increasingly clear, was contingent upon reaffirming, consolidating and legitimising the colonial and racist nature of the Zionist state and project. To deny it would be to deny Israel's right to exist, and to deny Israel's right to exist as a colonial and racist state would be to deny the Jews' right to exist, to threaten them with another holocaust. Peace, ultimately, signified security and legitimacy for a colonial and racist project. Land, however -- and here is the rub -- is an essential security guarantee for a colonial project. Hence Mr Hayman's "return." The trade-off turned out to have been a tautology.
In 2000, weary and dispirited, we reached the end of the road. Lo and behold: that which we had been moving away from for over a quarter of a century was sitting there waiting. The colonial and racist nature of the Zionist project was staring us in the face.
The real question is not one state, two states or a federated state. A Palestinian/Arab strategy that does not directly come to grips with the racist and colonial nature of Zionism is doomed from the start.
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