Issue No. 607
Opinion
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10 - 16 October 2002 Issue No. 607 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
A laboratory for peace
The world cannot afford a rogue state that behaves like an empire, or an empire that acts like a rogue state, writes Marwan Bishara*
The Israel/Palestine conflict is swiftly becoming a microcosm of our world. Centre stage are Israel and the US, anxious, vulnerable and increasingly adventurous, their growing strategic and cultural convergence rendering today's dramatic events in the Holy Land mere previews of a world that is simultaneously drawing both closer and further apart.
Since 11 September 2001, the region has witnessed an Americanisation of Israel's self perceptions and an Israelisation of America's strategic conceptions. Increasingly, the client state is behaving like a superpower, and the empire is behaving like an irresponsible client.
Israeli regional hegemony and America's world dominance are creating equally dangerous challenges. The Israeli bombardment of Palestine and American threats to attack Iraq in the context of its new "axis of evil" policy are undermining international law, which should be a guarantor of international civility in the 21st century.
Israel has less than 5 per cent of the population of the US, makes up a quarter of the Middle East region's economy, and spends more than a third of the regional total military expenditure. Both Israel and the United States reserve to themselves the right to unilateral deterrence, preemptive attacks, developing weapons of mass destruction and limitless projection of force, while denying all this to their opponents. Both have military installations outside their internationally recognised borders. For Israel, the aim is to build a Greater Israel, for the United States, a Greater Empire.
Israel's domination of Palestinian land and economy, while separating itself from Palestine by erecting new barriers, is creating a new form of Apartheid not so different from that which is emerging internationally, where Apartheid in a new guise is decreasing freedom of movement and heightening inequalities. This is policy for the North and police for the South.
Like in Palestine, segregated ghettos are mushrooming in the impoverished developing world. America, and the West in general, is erecting barriers of fear around itself and around the rich Western democracies. The present cultural and political gulf separating North and South has grown so wide that it is no longer surmountable by negotiations, least of all by public relations or by the clichés of reform and the free market.
However, that gulf cannot be kept in place through war, and advanced Israeli and American arsenals are not equipped to deal with the new threats. In Israel's case, geographical proximity to the Palestinians is rendering its formidable military machine incapable of defending either its cities or its reputation from neighbours driven to suicide in the defence of their rights. A world with sky-rocketing disparities cannot be calmed by means of enhanced security alone: F16s have not secured Israel's security, and nor will nuclear weapons.
For decades, growing underdevelopment in Palestine and in the South in general has diminished local populations' access to education, employment and healthcare. Dictated liberal economics has resulted in social chaos, corruption and shadowy, informal economies. Such developments, the "grey areas" of globalisation, serve as the basis for terrorism, particularly in failed states such as Somalia or Afghanistan.
Thus far, state-building by remote control in such areas of conflict has not been productive, and it cannot be, either in those countries or in Palestine. Instability and war have only aggravated already precarious situations. Only real, long-term regional and local commitment involving real sacrifices by all concerned can bring about stability.
Washington's support for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the context of the "war on terrorism" has diminished the chances for peace in the region. After 35 years of occupying Palestine and two decades of occupying southern Lebanon, Israel is now providing the Pentagon with a laboratory-style example of 21st-century warfare. In return, Israel is exploiting the 11 September drama to destroy Palestine's polity and wreck its economy, while Washington looks the other way.
Throwing in geo-theology to rally the people around the flag has added fuel to the fire. Theological justification for Israel's colonisation of Palestine, which has theologised Israeli society and empowered its religious fundamentalists, has meant that today such religious fundamentalists make up a quarter of Israeli legislators and almost half of the government, in turn strengthening Palestinian Islamists' calls for a religious war.
Likewise, a new American crusade backed by the Christian Right is targeting the Islamic World and supporting Israel. America's cultural imperialism is acting to fulfill its own prophecy about the "clash of civilisations". Recent American complaints about a world that "hates us", making America unconcerned about how it is judged abroad, have an awfully familiar ring. Israel's leaders often similarly believe that it is not important what the Goyim, the non-Jews, say about what Israel does.
A besieged mentality in America is breeding a hostile nationalism unconcerned by what the rest of the world says or thinks. The US has abandoned, or refused to ratify, a number of important international treaties and conventions, Bush most recently declining to attend the Johannesburg Conference on Sustainable Development.
The world does not hate the Americans or the Israelis. Rather, the world fears America's and Israel's fears. Dividing the planet into good and evil, terrorist and anti-terrorist, does not help the people of either country to understand the challenges ahead or to deal with them better.
The lesson of 11 September is not the one that has been drawn by Sharon in Palestine or Bush in Iraq. Religious fundamentalism, like other forms of fundamentalism, whether ideological, national or economic, is threatening to all civilisations.
Today, the strategic overhaul of regional and international institutions should be considered. There should be new brakes put on the use of force and new gears installed for political solutions. There should be new transmission lines from military to economy and from aid to development, as well as better safety measures and new shock absorbers to ease the rough ride of globalisation.
As the logic of war and violence takes hold, one can only hope that America will act as a superpower and Israel as a client, not the other way around. If Palestine has to be a laboratory, let it be one for peace, not war.
* The writer teaches at the American University in Paris and is the author of Palestine/Israel: Peace or Apartheid.
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