16 - 22 August 2001
Issue No.547
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 August 2001 Issue No.547 |
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Snapshots from the edge of reason
Mohamed El-Sayed Said enters the theatre of the macabre
The Oslo accords allowed it to conceal its bellicosity, at least for a while, but today Israel is back in full military regalia. Its ugliest face -- a colonialist settler regime -- can no longer be concealed. In the past two months, Israel has launched attacks on Syrian troops in Lebanon and ordered its soldiers to shoot and kill Palestinian demonstrators in the occupied territories. The Palestinian victims of Israeli violence now number over 1,000 dead and almost 20,000 wounded.
Obviously, Israel never made up its mind to conclude a true, viable and lasting peace with the Palestinians or the Arabs in general, unless this peace means the continuation of the same old colonial practices. Israel has never really reconciled itself to the inevitability of implementing international law as a pre- condition for lasting peace. The motive for a shift to "normal civil society" was very strong, however, not only because the Israelis are tired of protracted wars, but also because the economic logic of normalisation seemed compelling. So what aborted hopes of normalising state and society?
Somehow, Israel was convinced that it could eat its cake and have it too. In other words, Israel really wanted peace, but the peace it wanted amounted to a legitimisation of the status quo, with some cosmetic improvements. What happened is this: the Palestinians are as determined as ever to obtain their basic, inalienable rights. Simply put, the Palestinians have not accepted the perpetuation of the colonial situation by other means.
What, then, if Israel had been forced to make a real choice: between becoming a civil society by accepting international law as the only possible way to end the conflict, and maintaining the status quo? What prevented it from choosing the first option?
The first and most crucial factor in its failure to do so is the imperial stupidity syndrome Israel shares with the only super- power in the world today. What else could have motivated the US, at the exact moment when it reached the summit of its global power, to unleash a new arms race through its missile shield project? An imperial power, seeing no real challenge from any competitor, chooses to destabilise the system atop which it sits by projecting uncontrolled power. Some attribute this choice to the interests of the military-industrial complex, which has an intrinsic drive to destabilise the global arena. Another theory invokes not the economics of arms sales but legal and political culture and ideology. A truly stable global order would have entailed the US's compliance with international law. A state obsessed by the belief in its uniqueness cannot allow itself to abide by any rules except its own. This is in fact the explanation American officials cite when rejecting the many treaties that form the foundations of the new international system, such as the Kyoto protocol on the environment and the Rome treaty on the international criminal court.
The same syndrome is evident in Israeli ideology and culture. Its very foundation rests, in theory, upon its exceptionalism. It simply cannot conform with international law, since the only way it can enter that framework is to apologise for the havoc and destruction it has brought the Palestinian people. Yet Israel cannot apologise for the circumstances of its birth and the original sin present at its inception without altering some of its most fundamental features. An apology would compel it, for instance, to recognise Palestinian refugees' right of return and the need for their compensation. Instead, it excludes itself from UN resolutions regarding repatriation and compensation because it wants to preserve its "Jewish identity." The US, on the other hand, cannot share these motives; so why does it continue to deny the Palestinians their inalienable rights?
Certain conditions common to the birth of the two countries as recent settler colonial societies that conferred upon themselves a sense of religious uniqueness and godly entitlement may be relevant to this point. The US Congress, for instance, perceives as anomalous not acts of conquest but the resistance of the indigenous population. This frontier mentality leads Congress and other lobbies to regard occupied Arab territories as legitimate objects of conquest. This is why Congress forms the spearhead of the battle against the Palestinian and Arab struggle for justice. The same mentality also explains the recent imposition of sanctions against the Palestinian people. The Palestinians are portrayed as terrorists because, by definition, they negate Israel's claim that it can freely plunder the land and holy places of the "aborigines." Ultimately, the factor militating most effectively against Israel's transition to normalcy is the coincidence of "peace diplomacy" in the Middle East with imperial stupidity syndrome in the United States.
Yet another factor has also played a part. In recent years, several groups have arisen within Israeli society, renewing the Zionist fanaticism that had begun to wane. First, the massive wave of Soviet Jewish migration to Israel in the past decade was characterised by pure, vulgar economism. Second, some young ruling-class American Jews led a swelling wave of missionary zeal, and found meaning only in the assertion of their role in conquering the frontiers ideologically defined by Eretz Israel. Finally, many Oriental Jews are asserting majority power while fighting to sustain the religious character of the state. Middle- ranking army officers often belong to this trend. Equally important is the settlement movement jointly undertaken by these new sectors of Israeli society. These activities have expanded under Labour governments, and especially after Oslo.
Interestingly, the Mitchell report blames Israel only for its settlement-building activities. But US diplomacy has systematically parried orders to cease these activities, and given Sharon the right to determine when Palestinian "violence" has ceased entirely. General Sharon can always make sure that Palestinian violence does not stop. He considers peaceful demonstrations by Palestinians to be a form of violence, and these demonstrations will never stop as long as the occupation continues. He also maintains a policy of assassination, knowing that this violence will produce reactions, thereby justifying claims that Palestinian violence continues.
All these developments exacerbate the tradition of insane brutality interwoven with the very fabric of the state. Israel is deploying the full range of centrist and right-wing Zionist traditions in its war on the Palestinians. By pushing them to the wall and filling them with despair through systematic, savage violence, the Israeli political elite thinks that it can drive them to unconditional surrender. Coincidentally, this is the strategic doctrine closest to the heart of the American military.
The root cause of all this is simple: racism. Popular expressions of Zionist racism include such themes as the chosen people, Jewish genius and racial purity. The universal opposition between Jews and gentiles is a favourite trope of Zionist ideology. In political structure and action, racism is incarnated in the notion of a Jewish state that entailed the destruction of the Palestinian people through forced exile and expulsion, the theft of Palestinian property inside the 1948 borders, the law of return (which gives Jews everywhere an automatic right to citizenship), denial of the right to return for the original inhabitants of the land (who were forced out by extreme violence), the law making Jerusalem the eternal, indivisible capital of Israel and the property of the Jewish people, and, finally, systematic discrimination against Arabs in Israel.
The state's racist character is also demonstrated in the vision of the final status of Palestinians in the occupied territories. The notion of separation between Jews and Arabs is itself strongly coloured by racism, since it is justified domestically by the notion of religious purity. Those who still deny the right to statehood would refuse Palestinians in the occupied territories equal rights in a unified secular state, as well as any status as an independent political community entitled to self-determination. Even those who, like Barak, see separation as the only solution want the Palestinians to be "contained" within reservations, with statehood reduced to mere self-administration.
"Moderate" Israelis, playing with figures during the final- status negotiations, spoke of withdrawal from 95 or 96 per cent of the occupied territories. Detailed maps showed what they really had in mind: jamming the Palestinians into far less than 20 per cent of Mandate Palestine, and keeping the rest for themselves. The offer was based on the belief that the Palestinians cannot be equated in terms of worth, let alone human dignity, to the Jews.
The US denies that the Zionist project as manifested in the making of Israel is racist. But if the features outlined above are not regarded as racism, how should racism be defined?
Would Americans accept the transformation of their country into a state for Christians? What would be the position of American Jews in such a state? Why excuse Israel or exempt it from the same obligation that makes the United States a country for all its citizens, regardless of religion? If the United States became a "Christian state," would the Jews be placed in refugee camps? Would their assets be termed "state property" and confiscated? Expelled, dispossessed, and deprived of their right to return -- would their situation remind them of anyone? Demonstrating their opposition to their new status, they would be shot by American soldiers, while Christians marching for their own causes would be treated with kindness and consideration. Why is Israel not described as racist, since it does all this and worse to the Palestinians?
By mobilising all its power to prevent the condemnation of Israel as a racist state, the US is fighting the universally accepted definition of racism, and thus isolating itself utterly from the very international community it claims to lead.
Hundreds of Palestinians are killed in cold blood and thousands are wounded by the Israeli occupation army. About 128 Israelis are also killed. An interesting feature shared by Israeli and American propaganda is the refusal to admit that these two facts are linked. The connection between Israel's assassination policy and Palestinian suicide bombings is thus obscured. In other words, the Americans are ordering the Palestinians to stop the violence, while encouraging the Israelis to kill as many Palestinians as they want.
American diplomacy has thus focused exclusively on the total pacification of Palestinians in the occupied territories. A chain of diplomatic missions to the region reduced the conflict to the single issue of security cooperation between the PNA and the Israeli murder machine. Politics is evacuated, and diplomacy is reduced to assisting police operations. The great suffering of the Palestinian people during more than 30 years of occupation is simply overlooked and Israel's shoot-to-kill policy is given official American support.
While the Americans keep ignoring the connection between Israeli terrorism and suicide bombings, the Israelis themselves cannot. They think that re-invading area A is the ultimate guarantee of "an end to Palestinian violence." A simple review of Israeli plans, or even the names given to these plans, is horrible enough. Yet these plans anticipate the loss of many Israeli lives. Killing many Israelis, in the context of the re-invasion scenarios, is therefore seen as the way to save many Israelis from being killed. Obviously, the lessons of the invasion of Lebanon will never bring wisdom to the bloodthirsty general perched at the peak of the Israeli government.
As if all this were not sufficient, various plans for military attacks on the region have been leaked and even declared publicly. Syria is, of course, a favourite target. Egypt is also an interesting possibility. The threat of regional war, according to many Israelis, is the way out of the present dilemma. So what do the Americans think?
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