22 - 28 March 2001
Issue No.526
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 22 - 28 March 2001 Issue No.526 |
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An alternative discourse
If 'equality needs no reason,' writes George Naggiar*,then let us speak its language
There has been much discussion in the past weeks of the utter absurdity, not to mention hypocrisy, of Ariel Sharon's speaking about reaching a settlement with the Palestinian people. How, it has been asked, can the perpetrator of the worst crimes imaginable against the Palestinians possibly now speak of making peace with them? Even worse, how is he being taken seriously in the West? While these are good questions, perhaps the more important question, and the one that we should be asking ourselves, is how we let it happen. The answer to that lies in the realm of discourse.
During the Oslo period, the Palestinians and Israelis used the same language -- that of peace -- while understanding it to mean entirely different things. While Israel has understood peace to mean getting rid of the "Palestinian problem," and even legitimising the denial of Palestinian rights under international law, the Palestinians have understood peace to mean historical justice and, precisely, the achievement of equal rights. In addition to stifling any genuine discussion of different conceptions of our past and future, sharing the language -- indeed, the malleable concept -- of peace has placed our different conceptions on an equal moral and political footing. This is because we share the discourse of peace, which in turn reflects our inability to produce an alternative. But the lack of an alternative discourse did not start with peace, and the end of Oslo has not produced one in its stead.
Prior to and after Oslo, we have spoken (usually after various qualifications) of our opposition to Zionism. It is that stance that has given us definition. We have attempted to give Zionism some negative moral and political standing, often calling it apartheid or racism, and then have articulated why we are against it, thus defining ourselves as anti-Zionists (not anti-Jews or anti-Semites). But this particular self-definition has inherent problems. For one, it places us in a defensive posture, and forces us to explain why we are opposed to Zionism -- the bestowal upon the world's Jews of a homeland in historical Palestine. We are compelled to explain why Zionism consists of a wholesale denial of equal rights for Palestinians. Further, this self-definition has exposed us to constant charges of anti-Semitism. Not only do we have to make the case as to why Zionism constitutes anti-Arab racism, we also have to prove that we are not racist. This problem has perpetually harmed our political position in the West and emerges because we have always situated ourselves within Zionist discourse rather than presenting an alternative discourse of our own.
When we have sought to present an alternative, it has usually been that of justice or liberation. But these concepts have either never been clearly defined or have never encapsulated the whole of the Palestinian experience, and have never acquired universal appeal. Justice, like peace, is a malleable concept, easily hijacked and shaped by anyone to mean what one wants it to. The liberation of Palestine has too easily been painted as implying the destruction of Israel. Further, it somehow fails to enfold all aspects of the Palestinian experience. (Will the refugees be liberated from their refugee status?) Finally, neither has placed Palestine within the broader context of modern human endeavour.
Where these discourses fail, the discourse of equal rights succeeds. Given content by modern history and international law, and moral and political power by the emerging political morality of universal human rights, the discourse of Palestinian equal rights encapsulates the whole Palestinian experience and presents a positive alternative picture that is, by definition, the antithesis of Zionism.
Equal rights discourse brings together the distinct aspects of the Palestinian experience and gives content to Palestinian aspirations. First, equal rights speak to Israel's Palestinian citizens, and their entitlement to the same rights as the Jewish citizens of Israel. Second, equal rights refer to the Palestinians in the occupied territories -- their right, under international law, to the self-determination enjoyed by the rest of the nations of the world. Third, equal rights entail the Palestinian refugees' human right under international law to return to their home. Just as the world has embraced that right for Jews in the past century (on more tenuous grounds), and Kosovars within the past five years, equality means recognising and seeking to advance the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their home.
The discourse of equal rights also changes the presumption of guilt. If one is defined not as a Zionist, but as anti-Palestinian equal rights, then he or she must explain why he or she is not a racist, rather than the Palestinian equal rights advocate having to provide such an explanation; indeed, the latter's position is deemed natural and non-controversial. As Isaiah Berlin put it, "the assumption is that equality needs no reason, only inequality does." If, by virtue of their humanity, people are given human rights under international law, and it is a violation of international human rights law to build a settlement in occupied territory, then how can one tolerate settlements being built in the occupied territories without denying Palestinian humanity? If the Jews and Kosovars could return to their "homelands," how can one deny Palestinians the same without implying that they are not entitled to equal treatment?
Finally, by employing the discourse of equal rights and defining equality by the standards of international law and modern history, we link our fate to that of the rest of the human race and to the emerging political morality of universal human rights. Palestinian equal rights stop being an Arab or Muslim issue, and become an issue with universal appeal -- particularly in the United States and the West, where it has not been so, even though the equality of each human being and human rights are two of the cornerstones upon which the political culture purports to be built.
Western societies came to oppose apartheid and their own forms of institutionalised racism precisely because those systems came to stand for the denial of equal human rights. And that opposition had less to do with the status of the peoples involved than with the fact that Western societies did not want to view themselves as defying their own moral and political values in their relations with these groups. So it can be with the Palestinians. It falls to us only to make the case that those same values are being undermined. The discourse of equal human rights marks the first step in doing so.
* The writer is the head of the US-based organisation Americans for Palestinian Equal Rights.
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