4 -10 April 2002
Issue No.580
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 -10 April 2002 Issue No.580 |
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Toward Palestinian independence
The way out is not the way back, writes Marwan Bishara: a solution must be imposed
These are tough times to be an educator, and when it involves teaching use of force and conflict resolution, the Middle East is an academic Pandora's box. Waging illegal wars in the name of peace and undermining diplomatic solutions in the name of security are the lessons in the new manuals on how to violate international law and compromise universal values. That is why one needs to break away from the dramatic images of tanks, children and suicide bombings to analyse political and historical dimensions.
Reducing the century-old conflict into one between democracy and terrorism has gained currency since 11 September, but is intellectually insulting. Moreover, depicting retail suicide bombings by Palestinians against Israeli civilians as terrorism and the use of wholesale violence by an elected Israeli government against Palestinian civilians as self-defence is morally bankrupt. This argument has also encouraged Ariel Sharon to act with total impunity.
Palestinians maintain that they are exercising their right to self-defence as occupied people. The UN Charter enshrines their resistance to the illegal Israel occupation. While Yasser Arafat condemns them, it is obvious that suicide bombings introduced a new "balance of terror" with Israel, whose army has long terrorised Palestinian cities. If life under occupation becomes impossible, the price of maintaining the occupation must become unbearable.
The political motives for the escalation lie in Israeli and Palestinian attempts to achieve by force what they could not attain through diplomacy. The Palestinians aim to achieve independence from Israel in the territories occupied in 1967, while Israel reserves for itself the right to determine the nature and borders of the Palestinian entity within the constraints of its security imperatives and national interests.
If someone told the Jewish population that made up 10 per cent of Palestine that one day they would have a state spreading over 78 per cent of the country with 80 per cent of Jerusalem as its capital, fully recognised by all its Arab neighbours, they would have responded: "A beautiful dream!" So why, when the Zionist dream became a reality after last week's Arab summit, did Ariel Sharon turn it into a nightmare by ordering the reinvasion of the Palestinian autonomous regions?
If the Palestinians -- once 90 per cent of the population -- had been told that three quarters of their number would be expelled and turned into refugees, that the rest would be forced to give up three quarters of their land, and peacefully accept a demilitarised quasi-state over the fragmented remainder, or to live on ten per cent of their homeland carved up like a Swiss cheese by some 200 illegal Jewish settlements protected by nuclear weapons, they would have responded: "A nightmare." And when the nightmare began to unfold, they chose suicide. Like the Biblical Samson, increasing numbers of Palestinians are prepared to bring the temple down on the Israelis and themselves.
Instead of dealing with the causes of this alarming change, Sharon exploited it to implement his nightmare scenario. Enter a vicious cycle of retaliatory violence.
This is a typical response from Israelis who reckon that, in a hostile neighbourhood, military means are a safer bet than diplomatic efforts. Israel's failure to translate its numerous military successes into political gains through peace agreements with the Palestinians has made its occupation of three and a half million Palestinians a growing source of insecurity.
Since 1991, not one Israeli prime minister has finished his term, because none of them could make peace while maintaining occupation and the settlements. Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres promised peace; the first was assassinated and the second was voted out. Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak promised "peace and security;" they, too, were voted out.
Ariel Sharon, like his mentor Yitzhak Shamir, promised security with or without peace, and the result has been unprecedented Israeli insecurity. His government failed on all levels: deterrence, prevention and projection of force. But when assassinating Palestinian leaders, F-16 bombardments and invading Palestinian cities failed utterly, producing the opposite results, Sharon's logic of force necessitated... well, more force.
Sharon believes that illegal Israeli settlements and peace are not incompatible, even as his fantasy of a Greater Israel becomes Israelis' worst nightmare. His new war is meant to defend not Israel, but rather Israeli settlers in the occupied territories.
As for the Palestinians, their political identity has been molded by continuous political disappointments and military losses. Arafat's PLO came to existence in the aftermath of the Arab failure in 1967, two decades after the plight of the refugees had fallen on deaf ears. Subsequent PLO failures to improve their situation, and Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, led to the first popular uprising against the Israeli occupation in 1987. That ended with the beginning of the peace process.
A decade of open-ended negotiations in stages and implementation in phases narrowed down to Israeli security concerns and caused more Palestinian disappointments. The settlements doubled in size, and Palestinian economic and social conditions worsened during the next decade of peace regression.
Eventually, the peace process's utter failure to deliver liberty and dignity left the Palestinians at the mercy of Israeli might. American identification with Israel, European indifference and Arab disunity all drove the Palestinians to their last option: defying the occupation.
Israel, however, has an alternative. It has traditionally divided its wars into wars for existence and optional wars, and the current war against the Intifada clearly falls into the latter category -- not so different from Sharon's 1982 war in Lebanon. Because the Arabs and the Palestinians have emphasised their readiness to live in peace alongside Israel in its pre-1967 borders, Sharon's attempt to portray Israel's war on the Intifada as an extension of Israel's 1948 war of independence is misleading. Twenty years after his occupation of Beirut, he is leading the region into another explosion.
While the Israeli army intensifies its assault on cities and camps, the Palestinian leadership can no longer promise to protect Israeli civilians, or the settlers. If the leaders say otherwise, they are lying. As victims of occupation, they should not be asked to protect their occupiers. That is common sense.
The way out is not the way back. The parties must be forced to go beyond a cease-fire and seize the opportunity provided by the Arab League to end the conflict through peaceful separation of the two peoples. Israelis would do well to accept an internationally guaranteed peace that ensures their security and Palestinian sovereignty. Otherwise, like Israelis, Americans and other peoples before them, the Palestinians will eventually use all the means at their disposal to attain freedom and independence.
* The writer teaches at the American University of Paris and is the author of Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid.
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