Intentional hype?
The only accomplishment of the roadmap so far has been the release of detainees -- at best a dubious achievement. Azmi Bishara warns that the real issues might be forgotten
Inexplicably, the way a defeatist mindset challenges reality is by denying its very existence. Either it sees any attempt to deal with actual circumstances as capitulation -- as an internalisation of defeat -- or, under the guise of pragmatism, it retreats in the face of power, and thus heightens the arrogance of the powerful.
Some Palestinians and Arabs promote defeatism, acting as though what we have is a conflict between evenly matched armies and forces, as though the struggle against occupation were not a just cause, and as though Israel were already the victor. Some Palestinians justify the truce by saying "We have been defeated." Those who say that we have been "defeated" are just as wrong as those who declared that we "triumphed" against Sharon in Beirut in 1982. Those who claim that we were "defeated" basically agree with Minister Shaul Mofaz when he claims that the Palestinians accepted the truce because Israel was victorious owing to its resolve to make the Palestinians understand that it was better for them to give in. But one mustn't read much into the military advantage occupiers have over those living under occupation.
Defeatists go out of their way to point out achievements, and, in doing so, they rewrite the nation's goals. They forget all about the people and the cause that gives the political quest any meaning. However, that does not change the simple facts: our land has been stolen, our people live under occupation and our cause is liberation. Now, you may want to turn the discussion to behind the scenes talk and the US fascination with this or that personality, and the occasion in which the US president smiled or even laughed. You may want to focus on how the US reacts differently to the matter of the wall in the presence of Palestinian and Israeli guests. But all that only takes you away from the real issue. The legitimacy of a political dialogue, undertaken under conditions of occupation, is lost amid the hype. A party has been thrown, the band is playing, and the dance floor is full, but what exactly is the occasion?
How can we call the release of Palestinian prisoners, in the manner in which it took place, an accomplishment? For one thing, Israel is in the habit of rounding up people as bargaining chips. The world, naturally, has no time to figure out that many of the detainees were going to be released shortly in any case, because Israel never managed to charge them, not to mention the fact that its prisons are overcrowded. Presumably, we should be grateful that Israel hopes the release of the prisoners will increase the popularity of the new Palestinian leadership among its own people. "We understand how sensitive the detainees' issue is for them," is the line commonly voiced by Israeli officials after talks with Palestinian representatives.
The goal has thus been redefined. It is to consolidate the standing of the Palestinian leadership that is entrusted with following up on the roadmap. In this sense, the release of detainees is an achievement. And the White House visit is another achievement. Why? Because these are flickers of hope signalling the beginning of a process that intimates the possibility of an upcoming US-Palestinian honeymoon.
Time was when Palestinian political quarters boasted that Yasser Arafat was one of the more frequent international visitors to the White House. It didn't matter what intimate liaisons the host was busy pursuing in the Oval Office while the guest delegations were waiting for their audience. The honeymoon is now over. While it lasted, the Palestinian leadership was too busy contemplating the significance of White House invitations to assess the political gains achieved from the visits. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Since the Palestinians so unconditionally accepted the roadmap, those who desperately look for signs of progress amid all the shenanigans have little to speak of aside from visits made and funds offered. One particular visit has been seen as an accomplishment of the existing government, a boosting of its diplomatic status and international legitimacy, with the aim of helping it to implement its part of the roadmap. Aside from that, there is no other accomplishment. And, unlike Arafat, the new Palestinian government is well aware of what is going on. Arafat failed to understand that the aim of the visits was to reward him for changing and to encourage him to change more. The visits were not a sign that the White House is changing, nor that Arafat is becoming a favoured interlocutor. As soon as Arafat balked at Camp David, his visiting privileges were revoked.
Needless to say, the promised funds serve a similar purpose to that of the visits. For one thing, they should help the new government to create security services capable of preserving "law and order". Also, these funds would help create jobs for some people in an economy gripped by an appalling recession.
These accomplishments, all of them geared towards enabling the Palestinian leadership to survive, have come at a price. This price is to reduce the Palestinian national project to accepting a state with limited boundaries and powers. The rhetoric has been changed from a Palestinian National Authority on any liberated land, to a state on any liberated land, to a state within the borders of 4 June 1967 with Jerusalem as capital, to two states for two peoples with the right of return (regardless of the contradiction in terms the phrase may contain). Now what we have is the state of Sharon and Bush. And one of the conditions to create this state is to admit that Palestinian resistance is a form of terror that should be addressed through Palestinian dialogue and Israeli repression, the hope being that the Palestinian Authority would be able to impose its control before Israel's patience runs out.
According to George W Bush, the Palestinian state is the reward -- the light at the end of the tunnel -- that awaits the Palestinians if they comply with Israeli and US dictates. But if the Palestinians do so, they may abdicate their right to decide on the nature of the state, its borders, the matter of its coexistence with the settlements, and its relations with the Arabs. The United States and Israel, alone, will determine the borders of the future state.
For Israel's part, the so-called Palestinian pragmatism is a victory for Sharon and his policies. In the absence of an alternative vision from the Labour Party (the apartheid wall aside), Sharon continues to reap the fruits of recourse to force. Meanwhile, the Palestinians seem to have no clear vision for attack or retreat. This all suits Sharon just fine, for despite his underlying security and economic failures, the Israeli prime minister looks better with every step the Palestinians take back. The Palestinian retreat does not seem motivated by tactical considerations or by unfavourable international conditions, but by the sheer desire to jettison a worn-out discourse. That the Arabs beat a scattered and unjustified retreat on the Palestinian issue following the Gulf War of 1991 has not improved things. Since the 11 September attacks, Sharon has been desperate to link Palestinian resistance with terror. His efforts had been in vain, until the Palestinians gave in to his point of view.
It is curious how some people see Israel's satisfaction with recent developments as a sign of change in its political discourse. Israel's satisfaction with the current Palestinian leadership is only a sign of the change in Palestinian political discourse. As for the mutual dissatisfaction that appears in media reports as Israeli criticism of Palestinian leadership, or that is vented in the cancellation of one meeting or another, it is merely a sign of impatience on the part of the Israeli government. The Israelis want the Palestinians to act more promptly to rehabilitate security services and begin dismantling the armed groups that the roadmap labels as terrorist. (The Palestinian leadership has not contested this labelling, judging by the statements it makes in English.) The Palestinian leadership has accepted unconditionally the roadmap, in which they undertake to disarm the resistance, and is only annoyed when Israel does not give it enough concessions to take back to the Palestinian people.
The Israelis, meanwhile, want the Palestinian leadership to show enough "maturity" to qualify for Israeli concessions (releasing tax money, freeing detainees, easing the arrival of monetary assistance, facilitating the rehabilitation of security services, and handing over the administration of certain towns). Such concessions would restore the situation to something resembling what existed before October 2000, allowing for the creation of a long-term interim Palestinian state on 40 per cent of the West Bank, in return for the Palestinians' abdication of the right of return. Other Palestinian rights would not be accepted by Israel, of course, but the Palestinians would not be asked to abandon them for the coming 15 years or so.
The future will be decided by the realities of the tense interaction between the Palestinian state, with its burgeoning security apparatus and the need to maintain security, on the one hand, and the Israeli settlements on the other. This interaction will shape the realities of the next decade or so. And what we will end up with is a Palestinian state that does not address even the question of settlements.
Pragmatists, or those who claim to be so, warn that unless the Palestinians take what they were offered in Oslo, and what the roadmap now offers, time and settlements will leave nothing for them. They argue that the longer the Palestinians wait before reaching a deal, the more settlements will be created. In actual fact, the Palestinians have accepted what was an offer, and yet settlements have grown on an unprecedented scale -- redoubling since Oslo. The ongoing events are not going to reverse this trend.
Unless the promised Palestinian state resolves the most important elements of the Palestinian issue, unless it compensates the Palestinians for the historic injustice inflicted on them, what purpose exactly does it serve in terms of the Palestinian national endeavour? Is the current struggle over the Palestinian state any different from the usual strain of power struggle anywhere? What the current struggle has so far done is obscure further the issue of justice for the Palestinians.
None of the above has anything to do with whether the struggle is violent or not. Struggles for power can be violent and bloody. Struggles for the state could be peaceful, in conditions where imperialism has run out of steam, or when public opinion in the imperialist power is enlightened (the British in India). Struggles can be violent, radical, and bloody in their methods, but conservative, reactionary, and "moderate" in their goals. The question is not about the methods of struggle against Israeli occupation. These have to be determined according to the nature of goals, the balances of power, the type of occupation, and public opinion. For example, is the occupation a colonial one that intends to stay on at any cost? What matters is the nature of the Palestinian national project. The state currently offered by the Americans and Israelis -- the only one on offer in the roadmap -- is not a national project of liberation in any sense. This is the proverbial forest hidden behind the trees, the story lost in media hype, the image blurred by excessive detail.
