11 - 17 April 2002
Issue No.581
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 April 2002 Issue No.581 |
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The war against Palestine
Palestinians struggling for survival are also fighting for democracy in Israel, writes Tikva Honig-Parnass*
The Israeli army's current brutal military offensive against the Palestinians, titled "Defensive Wall" (typical of Israel's Orwellian doublespeak), indicates that a new stage has opened in the long process aimed at destroying the Palestinian national movement and "endeavouring to liquidate the existence of the Palestinian people on the land of Palestine" (as Haidar Abdel-Shafi said in an interview with Yossi Algazi, Ha'aretz, 2 April).
The former stage of the Oslo process is now over. The central assumption upon which the bantustan plan of the Oslo framework was founded -- namely, that the Palestinian Authority, headed by Arafat, would fulfil the function of repressing opposition to this plan -- actually entailed an attempt to end the Palestinian national movement and to bring about the "Kurdisation of the Palestinian question," as Azmi Bishara once noted. This assumption has proven entirely baseless. The Intifada, which erupted in the wake of the Palestinian refusal of Clinton's and Barak's humiliating proposals at Camp David, indicates the awakening of popular forces that seemed dormant during the seven years since Oslo. During this time, all the territories occupied in 1967 were covered with colonies that acted as the central condition for the implementation of the fragmented bantustan state. Now, the Intifada, which is led by all Palestinian political organisations including Fatah, and supported by the entire populace, marks the breaking away from the Oslo process and an endeavour to establish an alternative to Oslo's agenda, which proved to be but a cover for the continuity of the Israeli occupation.
If we keep in mind that destroying the Palestinian national movement has been the strategic aim of all Israeli governments, supported by the US, the analysis of the current situation and the prospects for ending the inhuman attacks on Palestinian activists and society at large become clear. The professed aim of "dismantling the terrorist infrastructure" has nothing to do with the intentional, systematic destruction of the minimal means of carrying on daily life: PA ministries and institutions, roads, hospitals, schools and electricity and water networks.("Israeli officers have expressed their shock at the destruction in Jenin," Ha'aretz, 9 April). Israel has declared total war on the Palestinians as a civic and national entity, not just on "Arafat and the PA," who are accused of "contamination with terror." It is not Arafat, as a person who failed to deliver the goods, who is under siege before deportation. The very Palestinian nationalism that he embodies is the target of Israel's present war to the bitter end. Thus, as Sharon and the chief of staff have repeatedly announced, they do not seek a "cease-fire" but rather "the uprooting of terror." As the nature of operation "Defensive Wall" reveals, they are after the Palestinian national movement.
Sharon has shrugged off US President Bush's demand to stop the operation immediately. His flippant response indicates that within the parameters set up by the US for Israel's polices, Israel has a relative free hand in selecting the time and methods of implementing the two countries' joint strategic goals.
In his 8 April speech to the Knesset, Sharon declared that he is determined to pursue the operation until "the infrastructure of terror is dismantled." Only in places where missions are "completed" will Israeli troops "withdraw to defined security areas, in a way which will allow them to return and hit those who continue to attack us." Thus, in the post-Oslo era, Israel is returning to a version of direct colonial rule. This time, however, Israel is cunningly attempting "to take over security responsibility in Area A" (since Areas B and C -- 82 per cent of the West Bank -- are already subject to Israeli security control), thus leaving the Palestinians to try and fulfil their daily needs under the strangling conditions Israel imposes. As Sharon emphasises, this situation will continue until "an alternative responsible Palestinian leadership is found"; and this condition, apparently, can be satisfied only after the elimination of the Palestinian national movement. The opening of Sharon's government to the extreme-right National Religious Party (now headed by the fanatic messianic Efi Eitam), and to David Levi, together with the forthcoming re-entry of the right-wing extremist Avigdor Liberman, aims at ensuring a majority in the government for the implementation of the re-conquest plan, with or without the Labour Party.
The current Israeli military operation, which the majority of the Israeli population supports wholeheartedly, is also supported to this very moment by Labour Party ministers -- all in the name of the "war on terror," which the prevailing Israeli discourse presents as "the war for defence of the homeland," and for "Israel's very existence."
This discourse indicates that a majority of Israelis have recently retreated to the pre-Oslo years when the predominant issue was a solution to the 1967 occupied territories. It also indicates that the lack of any Israeli political solution acceptable to the Palestinian national movement pushes them back even further, to the dilemmas confronted before and during the '48 War. We are thus witness to a growing "concern" within Israeli society for the existing "demographic problem," which did not find a solution in 1948. Ideas and even concrete suggestions for "transfer," namely for the expulsion of the Palestinians, have therefore become legitimate topics of discussion in the Israeli media and among different circles of academics.
These plans include the expulsion of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, whose Palestinian national identity and solidarity with the struggle for liberation of their 1967 brethren have been growing rapidly. Moreover, a total change has been taking place in their demands regarding relations between the Palestinian citizens and the Jewish-Zionist state, and inspired by the positions of the Tajamu movement, headed by Azmi Bishara. No longer are they content with calling for equality in civil rights; they also demand the recognition of their collective rights as a Palestinian national minority. This demand constitutes a genuine challenge to the definition of Israel as a "Jewish state," which almost the entire Jewish population of Israel perceives (rightly so) as the essence of Zionism. Even those termed "the left" wholeheartedly adhere to and identify with this definition.
The interpretation of this definition as a numerical majority of Jews, furthermore, is doomed to bring its followers, including the "left," to support different versions of transfer or policies of oppression aimed at encouraging transfer (see recent articles by Israeli "peace-seekers" author Amos Oz and historian Benny Morris).
The total war against the Palestinian national movement, which Israel has recently re-declared openly, will strengthen even the undemocratic hegemonic political culture that has been prevalent in Israel and served as a major resource for mobilising its population to support the colonialist project. Therefore, the daily struggle of 1948 Palestinians and those in the 1967 occupied territories is at the same time a battle for the radical democratisation of the Jewish Zionist state -- which is the condition for a just and progressive peace here and in the entire region.
* The writer is co-editor of the monthly English-language journal "Between the Lines" (www.between- lines.org).
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