Can There Be Politics in Tragedy? Or in Gaza?
I'm immersed in long-range writing and leave tomorrow for six months in Berlin, but the Gaza war provokes me to share a brilliant essay by Darry Li, a doctoral student in anthropology and Middle East Studies at Harvard and a student at Yale Law School who has worked in Gaza for Human Rights Watch, B'tselem (the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The essay appeared last February in Middle East Report, but it's making the rounds again because its clarity and comprehensiveness outweigh its blind spots. Below I post half of it with my comments, but click the link and read it all.
Li writes that Israel's promises to avoid a "humanitarian crisis" reflect its long descent from treating Gaza as a Bantustan to abandoning yet controlling it as a holding pen. He gets polemical at times, and some of his analysis is wrong. But he's right that Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza in 2005 is, not "a one-time abandonment of control" but "an ongoing process of controlled abandonment, by which Israel is severing the ties forged with Gaza over 40 years... without allowing any viable alternatives to emerge." This strategy seeks "neither justice nor even stability, but rather survival -- as we are reminded by every guarantee that an undefined 'humanitarian crisis' will be avoided."
A chilling charge. Li doesn't mention Israel's donation of greenhouses and housing it left behind in 2005, but he notes coldly that "Since its beginnings over a century ago, the Zionist project of creating a state for the Jewish people in the eastern Mediterranean has faced an intractable challenge: how to deal with indigenous non-Jews -- who today comprise half of the population living under Israeli rule -- when practical realities dictate that [Palestinians] cannot be removed and ideology demands that they must not be granted political equality."
This produced, he says, "the general contours of Israeli policy from left to right over the generations...: First, maximize the number of Arabs on the minimal amount of land, and second, maximize control over the Arabs while minimizing any apparent responsibility for them.
"On the first score, Gaza is a resounding success: Although it covers only 1.5 percent of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, it warehouses one out of every four Palestinians living in the entire country. But on the second count, Gaza's density has made it very difficult to manage and its poverty makes it an eyesore before the world community." That has "forced Israel to revise its balance of responsibility and control several times. Each phase of this ongoing experiment can be understood through spatial metaphors of increasingly constricted scope: bantustan, internment camp, animal pen."
Yes, I know. But keep reading.
"From 1967 to the first intifada of 1987-1993, Israel used its military rule to incorporate Gaza's economy and infrastructure forcibly into its own, while treating the Palestinian population as a reserve of cheap migrant workers. It was during this stage of labor migration and territorial segregation that Gaza came closest to resembling the South African 'bantustans' -- the nominally independent black statelets set up by the apartheid regime to evade responsibility for the indigenous population whose labor it was exploiting.
"During the Oslo phase of the occupation (1993-2005), Israel delegated some administrative functions to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and welcomed migrant workers from Asia and Eastern Europe to replace the Gazans. ... Permits for travel to Israel and the West Bank, once commonly granted, became rare. Ordinary vehicular traffic ceased..... Israel erected a fence around the territory and commenced channeling non-Israeli people and goods through a handful of newly built permanent terminals like the ones that have recently come to the West Bank.
"It was during this period that Gaza under Israeli management most resembled a giant internment camp. The detainee population was, to a certain extent, self-organized and appointed representatives to act on its behalf (the PA) who nevertheless operated under the aegis of supreme Israeli military authority, within the framework of agreements concluded by Israel and a largely defunct Palestine Liberation Organization (which are now basically agreements between Israel and itself).
"The failure of the settlement enterprise and the ferocity of the armed resistance during the second intifada beginning in the fall of 2000 undoubtedly contributed to the decision to remove settlements and withdraw soldiers." But "[D]isengagement did not change Israel 's effective control over Gaza and hence its responsibility as an occupying power under international humanitarian law.... Israel continued to patrol Gaza's airspace and seacoast, and ground troops operated, built fortifications and enforced buffer zones inside the Strip.... The taxation system, currency and trade remained in Israel's hands; water, power and communications infrastructure continued to depend on Israel; and even the population registry was still kept by Israeli authorities.
"Israel's response has been simple, if disingenuous: If responsibility for Gaza arises from Gaza's dependency on Israel, then it would be more than happy to cut those ties once and for all. And this is exactly what Israel started doing after Fatah's military defeat in Gaza at the hands of Hamas in June 2007.... In any event, in Gaza the Oslo experiment in indirect rule seems to be over. Israel now treats the territory less like an internment camp and more like an animal pen: a space of near total confinement whose wardens are concerned primarily with keeping those inside alive and tame, with some degree of mild concern as to the opinions of neighbors and other outsiders."
This is Li at his most polemical but also at his most factual: Read the complete essay to see his account of how the border crossings are run and what the consequences are.
Then he writes, "[T]he logic of "essential humanitarianism...." promises nothing more than turning Gazans one and all into beggars -- or rather, into well-fed animals -- dependent on international money and Israeli fiat. It allows Israel to keep Palestinians and the international community in perpetual fear of an entirely manufactured "humanitarian crisis" that Israel can induce at the flip of a switch (due to the embargo, Gaza's power plant only has enough fuel at any one time to operate for two days. And it distracts from, and even legitimizes, the destruction of Gaza's own economy, institutions and infrastructure.... The notion of 'essential humanitarianism' reduces the needs, aspirations and rights of 1.4 million human beings to an exercise in counting calories, megawatts and other abstract, one-dimensional units measuring distance from death.
"As Israel has experimented with various models for controlling Gaza over the decades, the fundamental refusal of political equality... has taken on different names.... During the Bantustan period, inequality was called coexistence; during the Oslo period, separation; and during disengagement, it is reframed as avoiding "humanitarian crises," or survival. These slogans were not outright lies, but they disregarded the unwelcome truth that coexistence is not freedom, separation is not independence and survival is not living."
Li argues that although "half of the people between the Mediterranean and the Jordan live under a state that excludes them from the community of political subjects, denies them true equality and thus discriminates against them in varying domains of rights. Israel has impressively managed to keep this half of the population divided against itself -- as well as against foreign workers and non-Ashkenazi Jews -- through careful distribution of differential privileges and punishments and may continue to do so for the foreseeable future."
Li concludes with a telling but "tacit reminder of the intimacy that persists through 40 years of domination. The people of the southern Israeli town of Sderot... were unpleasantly reminded of this intimacy when, one morning in 2005, they awoke to find hundreds of leaflets on their streets warning them in Arabic to leave their homes before they were attacked. The Israeli military had airdropped the fliers over neighboring parts of the northern Gaza Strip in an attempt to intimidate the Palestinians there, but strong winds blew them over the frontier instead."
Three things are rather obviously missing from Li's clear, cool assessment: The pre-1967 history of Israelis and Palestinians; the post-2009 future Li wants for the area; and the existence of Hamas, which, we are left to assume, is what it is because Israel's policies have been what they've been.
Well, Li can't cover everything in a 2800-word essay (and, if you've read this far, please do read all of what he wrote). But some contextual markers from him in these three areas would have advanced the discussion and perhaps his arguments. On the three areas I've mentioned, let me just note here that:
1. Li mentions Jewish history only with the words, "Since its beginnings over a century ago, the Zionist project of creating a state for the Jewish people in the eastern Mediterranean...." Correct, but, shall we say, minimalist, with a soupcon of a suggestion that they don't belong there. Perhaps Ashkenazi Jews who came to Palestine of the 1920s and '30s should have returned to the warm and welcoming bosom of Europe? Some of my Lithuanian-Jewish ancestors actually knew the geography of Palestine far better than they knew that of the Baltic provinces they finally fled.
Why was that? Does Li know why Immanuel Kant dismissed the Jews of his time as "These Palestinians who are living among us."? (On that, for the philosophically as well as historically inclined, I commend the Israeli philosopher Yirmiyahu Yovel's Dark Riddle: Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews.) Does Li know that 40% of Israel's Jews grew up speaking Arabic, or hearing their parents speak it, because after Israel's founding they became refugees from centuries-old homes in Algiers and Cairo and Baghdad?
2. If it is correct to reduce the Jewish historical context to a few words, as Li did in his essay, wouldn't it have been just as correct to note that Palestinian demands for liberal rights and for self-determination in a nation-state arose only as the Zionist demands did? Were there any such Palestinian demands under Ottoman rule? Doesn't Palestinian liberalism come from the 20th-century West, if not, indeed, from the Jews? Isn't that what makes this such a tragedy? If not, would Li tell us which Arab state wants a Palestinian state to exist even now?
True, the answers are more complicated than my questions imply, for most nations in the Middle East are post-colonial fictions, and that opens a door to a long and, for the left, a fraught debate about whether there should be nation-states at all, and, if not, what "national liberation movements" are for. Li quite rightly poses the broader, more urgent problem of political equality for Palestinians, both as individuals and as a community. Israel speaks with a forked tongue on the subject, and Li is justified and effective in spotlighting the "right" fork.
But what solution does he seek? What kind of Israeli responsibility, or Israeli-Palestinian interdependency, does he envision? This matters if we really want to end Israel's depredations in the occupied territories and, to a lesser but very real extent, among its own 1.5-million Arab citizens within the 1967 borders. Does Li seek Israel's dissolution in a bi-national, democratic state whose majority would be Palestinian? So I infer, but can he say with a straight face that, under Arab rule, justice would finally displace revenge, as it has not under Israeli occupation?
Li knows that Israelis, who've actually worked rather hard and suffered to build their hybrid Jewish/democratic state, insist they see no signs of any similar inclination among Palestinians. To what extent are they right when they say that? To what extent are they just racist? To what extent are they rationalizing their cruel, bone-headed obsession with their own security at the expense of everyone else's?
3. To sort out this question about Israeli perceptions -- and it always helps to read the scorching reportage and columns in Haaretz, Israel's New York Times, but with much more integrity than the Times -- we'd have to open a door to the third black hole in Li's essay: Hamas.
Suffice it to say here that, revolted though I am by young American-Jewish fanatics who move to Judea and Samaria because they think God promised it to them, I am no less weary of watching young American writers displace a cold, fine-spun rage at suburban America, however well-justified that rage may be, onto Israel as an implantation of that way of life into the Muslim ummah.
Somehow they never get around to imagining how the human rights and personal freedoms they champion would fare under Hamas or Hezbollah, even just for Muslims, even if every Jew returned to the warm and welcoming bosom of Europe.
Somehow, Hamas' apologists never get around to telling us whether the fence Israel put up around Gaza can possibly have had anything to do with the seemingly endless number of suicide bombings in Israel that Hamas supported.
This is a tragedy in every sense, and Israel's latest attempt to escape it is doomed, no matter the military outcome. Li is right to challenge Americans, and perhaps especially Jews, to take off the blinkers and see what Israel has been doing. But if he thinks that Israel can dissolve itself, or be dissolved by others, into a greater liberalism or humanism that he and a few noble advocates want to herald in the Middle East, let him sketch out for us how that might happen.
Let him tell Israel and its enemies how to climb back up the ladder from animal pen to internment camp to Bantustan, to....? It's not as if Hamas and Hezbollah, just because they have been providing social services and a certain kind of schooling, are showing us liberals the way. There are other ways, described best in Johathan Schell's The Unconquerable World, which acknowledges, however, that for every movement led by a Ghandi, King, Mandela, Havel, or Michnick, there are people's liberation movements that are as destructive and as doomed as their oppressors. Li side-steps that question. Sooner or later, he will have to answer for that omission.
"maximize control over the Arabs while minimizing any apparent responsibility for them."
That about sums it up.
Mr. Sleeper, the Israelis need to answer all your "but what's next?" questions. Not Li. Not America, or the "international community." Israelis.
January 4, 2009 7:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0194/9401035.htm
January 4, 2009 7:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
What's you point?
January 4, 2009 8:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Israel has very little to do with "Although it covers only 1.5 percent of the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, it warehouses one out of every four Palestinians living in the entire country"
January 4, 2009 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
re "Israel has very little to do with" the crowdedness of Gaza." Perhaps, but this Palestinian Ghetto DOES very much have something to do with Israel. If it were part of an independent state, instead of a concentration camp, its absurd and obviously unsustainable population explosion would be fundamentally the problem of that state, rather than the problem of the camp guards. But, an independent Palestinian state is not compatible with the interests of the Israeli-settler-plunderer-terrorists who have long had hugely disproportionate sway over the Israeli government AND (much more outrageously) the US CONGRESS!
January 5, 2009 7:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
The following is from the Jewish Agency for Israel website:
January 4, 2009 8:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am pleased to see that at least one person of the left, someone who reflexively opposes Israel's military decisions, is at least willing to grapple with some of the complexities involved.
What is remarkable in all the rage and protest about Israel's actions is the lack of any single viable idea for what it should do instead of military action to counter the rocket threat from Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. I heard Sari Nussebeh, a Palestinian spokesman, on the radio a few days ago get confronted with just this question. The interviewer asked him what alternatives Israel had to stop the rocket fire from Gaza. After the usual ritual denunciation of Israel's "crimes", he essentially admitted that he didn't have any idea.
This is the essential heart of the problem that the anti-Israel left refuses to confront. IF you accept Israel as a legitimate state with a right to defend itself, then you must confont the fact that Israel is attacked every day by Palestinian hostile action. Does the anti-Israel crowd think that the rockets will stop if Israel loosens restrictions around Gaza? Is Israel just supposed to endure these assaults and take heart that not too many people die from them (which is more or less what they've been doing for the past few years)? Is this penance they are supposed to pay for Zionism's sins?
It is perfectly legitimate to debate whether the cost - humanitarian, political etc. - of Israel's actions outweigh any benefits that will be gained. But I am waiting to hear someone suggest even a single alternative to military action aimed at halting the assaults on Israel. Any commentary that ignores this question is not, in my opinion, serious.
January 4, 2009 7:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
South Africa figured out a way to end apartheid. Why can't Israel?
January 4, 2009 8:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
They don't have apartheid no matter how many times
Jew haters repeat this libel.
January 4, 2009 8:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
January 4, 2009 8:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
I know what I see and what I see is apartheid. You are in denial.
January 4, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
You see what you want to see.
January 4, 2009 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
And you don't see what you don't want to see.
January 4, 2009 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
True.
January 4, 2009 8:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Brad - Good you are back so we can continue jousting. What would you call Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza if not apartheid? It could be called occupation but after 40 years an occupation gets instutionalized and really does become apartheid.
January 4, 2009 8:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Referring to the situation in Israel as "apartheid" is just a deliberately provocative labeling of a complex problem. It is meant to enrage and provoke, not explain.
January 4, 2009 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or maybe it's meant to bring "moral clarity" to an issue intentionally made complex by those who have an interest in obscuring some simple truths.
January 4, 2009 11:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Moral Clarity" is a luxury we reserve for lesser humans. For people we like, we concede that life is "complicated."
January 5, 2009 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's a fair point, but its from the train of thought that Israel uses to punt the Palestinian problem out to the rest of the world: "Well, what should we do???"
This is how Israel abdicates moral responsibility for the two Palestinian territories it dominates.
Israel can't pass that responsibility. It's theirs. It's not the U.S.'s job, the "international community's" job to fix this disaster for Israel. They need to be big enough people, and good enough people, and moral enough people to figure it out for themselves.
Despite the constant efforts to paint Israel and Hamas as somehow equal competitors, the truth is that Israel holds all the cards.
So don't ask me what I'm going to do to sort out your giant humanitarian morass. What are you going to do about it?
January 4, 2009 8:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another way of saying that Israel should just suck it up and do nothing. Or better yet, allow free and open movement in and out of Gaza, dismantle all the West Bank settlements, retreat to the 1967 borders and hey presto! the rockets will stop.
I assume you are intelligent enough to realize that this is beyond absurd.
I ask again: what is a reasonable, humanitarian, non-military way Israel can defend its territory from Palestinian terrorism? Continuing to suck it up is not an option.
January 4, 2009 10:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is no "reasonable, humanitarian, non-military way Israel can defend its territory from Palestinian terrorism" as long as it continues to hold the Palestinians in open-air prison camps. The whole question is absurd.
January 4, 2009 10:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Than you Bradthe dad, for raising the question that Rosenberg, levvy, Avashai, Gitlin and Clemons cannot and will not answer.
January 4, 2009 9:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, here is my blunt, simple-minded notion of a solution: Israel withdraws all of its forces and dismantles all of its settlements in the occupied territories. Jerusalem is divided into Arab and Israeli portions. A border is declared along the Green Line, and the international community recognizes that border. The occupied territories and Gaza are at that time recognized as the territory of the independent state of Palestine without further ado. Subsequent optional negotiations over territorial adjustments and other matters will then take place between two sovereign states, with sovereign governments, as soon as the Palestinians form such a government.
From that time hence, any rocket that is fired or stone that is thrown from the state of Palestine into Israeli territory constitutes an attack by one independent state on another, and Israeli defensive strikes will then be legitimate acts of defense against a foreign power, instead of ambiguous acts of violence against people engaged in resistance against colonialist occupiers.
I would have no problem at that point in supporting a US alliance with Israel, and having Israel's back against foreign aggression.
January 4, 2009 10:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
If tomorrow Hezbollah starts shelling Israel, what would be a proportional response that you would approve?
January 4, 2009 10:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
See, your priority is about the niceties of international law. My priority is Israel's security and survival. There is no way Israel can do what you are suggesting and not leave itself more vulnerable. You are saying that Israel should endanger its citizens so that the bien pensants can bless Israel's defense of its sovreignty. Sorry, the world doesn't work that way.
The Gaza operation going on now is instructive. Israel pulled its forces and settlements out of Gaza and immediately Hamas started the rockets. If Israel were to withdraw from the West Bank, the same thing is guaranteed to happen. Only this time, instead of hitting two-bit towns like Sderot, the missiles will be in range of Tel Aviv (about 10 miles away) and Jerusalem (right over the border). With that, Israel is certain to re-invade and we will be back to square one.
Leaving aside the complications of uprooting hundreds of thousands of Israelis from their homes, on security grounds alone, there is simply no way, given the current state of the Palestinians, that Israel will make territorial concessions now.
Sad as it is for those of us who believe in the importance of international law and legitimacy, it just can't be the priority now. Israel will have to suffer the disapproval of right-thinkers like you in order to protect its citizens.
January 5, 2009 12:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Brad,
You're right, but you forgot to mention that everything that Dan K puts forward as a precondition for his acquiescence to Israel's existence, and its support by the US has already been on offer from Israel (e.g. in Taba, minor adjustments here and there notwithstanding; not to mention the 1948 - 1967 status). There was still no deal by the Palestinians in Taba and later over the so called right of return (of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper), i.e. there was and is no consent of Arabs to a Jewish-majority state in the Middle East, which of course is an absolute imperative for the very existence of Israeli Jewish population. I think that the lack of explicit statement to that effect is a major drawback of Mr. Sleeper's otherwise reasonable post.
That is why the Palestinians were carefully maintained in the "animal pens" for 60 years since 1948 by their Arab brethren - to serve as canon fodder and human shields for their ultimate goal - destruction of a Jewish-majority state in the land they consider Muslim. That is why a two-state solution is the best hope for Israel security, as many reasonable people in Israel recognize. This is why Hamas and Hezbollah are so adamantly opposed to that solution. Lets hope they will be thoroughly defeated.
January 5, 2009 2:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're right, but you forgot to mention that everything that Dan K puts forward as a precondition for his acquiescence to Israel's existence...
I have no preconditions for acquiescence in Israel's existence, anatol. I have been a defender of a two-state solution for as long as I can remember, and have long accepted the nearly universal recognition by the world's governments of Israel's existence, and therefore regard its existence as blessed with international legitimacy. What I do not acquiesce in is Israel's colonies, and its expansion.
January 5, 2009 8:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
See, your priority is about the niceties of international law. My priority is Israel's security and survival. There is no way Israel can do what you are suggesting and not leave itself more vulnerable. You are saying that Israel should endanger its citizens so that the bien pensants can bless Israel's defense of its sovreignty. Sorry, the world doesn't work that way.
In fact, I think it does work that way, Brad the Dad. Although it is true that Israel's security and survival are not my top priority, I am still happy to see Israel survive and would like to see it normalize its security situation in a stable environment. And although Israel likes to strike a pose of being a self-reliant island with a willingness and ability to do whatever it has to, it is actually not a self-reliant island, but is dependent on others and lives in a world in which its actions are constrained. Each of these violent forays against its enemies extracts a global toll on its reputation, since many of its uses of armed force are seen as illegitimate. Pretensions of serene disregard for diplomacy aside, those diplomatic costs do prevent Israel from acting the way it would like.
If Israel did as I suggested, its actions would acquire a new legitimacy that they don't currently possess. It's Prime Minister would probably receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Similarly, the actions of Palestinian maximalists would be delegitimized. The number of global sympathizers with Palestinian resistance would shrink dramatically. Israel's foreign trade relationships would open up, and that would increase the number of foreign stakeholders in Israel. It might also be able to get itself off the US dole, which would mean that it could drop its extraordinary, and no doubt costly and time-consuming efforts at propagandizing the US public, efforts which appear to be having diminishing returns.
Israelis claim not to be influenced by the "proportionality" arguments. But in fact those arguments have a simple, comprehensible logic to most disinterested observers. The rocket attacks have produced, I believe, 10 to 20 Israeli deaths over several years, while Israel has already killed 500 people and injured a couple of thousand in one week of fighting. This new military venture is going to end up in the same place the 2006 Lebanon War did: with ambiguous military results, but another large chink hacked off of Israel's global reputation.
The diplomatic environment is changing. America doesn't possess the global military dominance it once did. As the petroleum era continues to unwind in what is likely to be an era of persistent oil-related crisis, and as the weakened United States begins to depend more and more on its ability to maintain good relations with the Muslim countries to Israel's east, the foundations of the special relationship will be strained and undermined. It is already clear from the last two wars that the scope and volume of anti-Israel voices in the US are much greater than they once were, and are mobilized much more rapidly. Israel needs to prepare now for the day when it will have no friends left if it continues on its current course.
January 5, 2009 8:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think most Americans, including a lot of us who are (quite rightly) very critical of Israel would be much more sympathetic to carefully targeted Israeli military action if the Israelis evacuated all the settlements and retired behind the Green Line and the Palestinians were uncooperative in trying to stop terror attacks. That's oversimplified, of course, but the point is that if Israeli policy was to treat ordinary Palestinians as human beings and not as obstacles to the acquisition of more real estate then people would probably sympathize much more with your argument. I suspect h under those circumstances you might even have help from Palestinian police. But talk about how badly some Palestinians might behave even if Israel did the right thing seems a little premature right now.
January 5, 2009 1:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Brad the Dad:
Welcome back. I think things are different this time. 12,000 people--mostly Jews who keep a relatively low profile in France (a subject I am intimately familiar with and should post about)--staged a pro-Israel rally in Paris, where the simple question you ask, (what about the missiles?) has inspired the remnants of European Jewry.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3650405,00.html
Here, in your sometimes caustic way, you ask that simple question: but what about the missiles?, and the conversation turns to apartheid. Your question remains to be answered by many at the cafe, as we enter the 11th day of that which pains us all (I, like many on both sides of this issue) have the disadvantage of not presuming that I am more moral than any of my other brothers and sisters who post on this crisis. This week, I've been told that I wish to kill Palestinians, and I've been asked leading questions about conditions in Gaza without foundation, and mocked for not playing that tit for tat nanny nanny poo poo version of debate, and it rolls off my back like a duck.
Welcome back Brad, and understand that this time, much of the garden-variety, cookie cutter attacks on the Jews of Israel ring somewhat hollow. Even Americans for Peace Now Brad that the question you ask is pertinent, it's fair, and it's just. Indeed, even the Israel Policy Forum of MJ Rosenberg, who has twisted himself into a pretzel this week in trying to explain where he is at and has even resorted to removing an essay for some unexplained reason after posting it here, has recognized that Israel's actions are just, with caveat:
http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/
I agree with Peace Now, and I disagree with AIPAC, which fails to consider the long-term implications of this incursion into Gaza, but for this morning I take solace in knowing that my position on this crisis is no different than APN's, which calls for a mutual ceasefire that works, and has teeth. APN, I submit, has answered your question. My good friends at the Cafe and who share this thread, and most of them are my good friends, have not answered your question.
Friends, support Americans for Peace Now, and accept that life is more than catchy slogans and linear logic about right and wrong, moral and immoral. I leave you with APN's Action Alert:
http://capwiz.com/peacenow/issues/alert/?alertid=12374481&type=CO
APN's money quotes:
"Israel has the right, and the obligation, to take measures to stop the terror of incoming fire from the Gaza Strip. This right and obligation poses tremendous challenges for Israel, given the nature of Hamas and its rule in Gaza".
"While Israel’s military can achieve short-term tactical gains in Gaza, it cannot destroy popular support for Hamas, stop all rockets from falling, or force the release of its captive solider, Gilad Shalit. Indeed, this escalation risks playing into the hands of extremists, while increasing dangers to both soldiers and civilians – Israeli and Palestinian – and getting Israel bogged down in an open-ended mission in Gaza. It also raises the specter of a two-front war, should Hezbollah decide to renew conflict on Israel’s northern border, with all the challenges to the Israeli military and the danger to Israeli civilians that this would entail".
"To succeed, a new ceasefire must have teeth and it must include two elements missing from the previous ceasefire: improvements in the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the re-emergence of a serious, productive political process. Absent these items, any ceasefire risks becoming merely an intermission to allow those attacking Israel to re-arm, re-trench, and enhance their military capability".
Makes sense to this proud and unapologetic Zionist whose heart bleeds as much as any armchair warrior on this website when a Palestinian child goes without milk (an unsubstantiated but frequent charge) or is killed by shrapnel from an Israeli mortar (a substantiated horror).
Alas, maybe it's easier to reduce life to slogans. Sometimes it's all that's needed. Not this time. Welcome back Brad, and let them call you names because some of us read you and the person who doesn't call you names but disagrees with you.
January 5, 2009 8:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
To clarify, Brad has not been called names on this thread, but he was chastized when he was here in the past because of his views, and my point here is that his question, his simple one, has not been answere.
January 5, 2009 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
And, again, I apologize for my sloppy editing. And now my Jewish guilt moves from sloppy editing to tardiness to work. Ciao.
January 5, 2009 8:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce, as always a very fair post, but please allow me to defend my answer to Brad's question that one alternative for Israel would be to end its apartheid system (or call it the more neutral "occupation" if you don't like the word "apartheid," the use of which I defend elsewhere in this thread but don't want to argue here).
The answer to Brad's question is simply--given the current status quo--that there is nothing at all Israel can do to end rocket attacks. Even Israel's current military response is unlikely to end the attacks for any signficant length of time (if at all, since the attacks continue today). All it does is give some satisfaction to the citizens of Israel (and to Israel's many supporters) that Israel is doing something to try to defend its people. If military intervention is to actually end the rocket attacks, it will likely have to be both a crushing and a constant intervention that clamps down on Gaza harshly and indefinitely. You can supress violent resistance with extreme force, but you can't crush the desire for that resistance and, as soon as you lessen force, the resistance is likely to resume. So military force--short of the most extreme--is unlikely to solve anything.
The real answer to Brad's question is not the one he wants--that Israel has no alternative to what it is doing. The only real answer is that Israel must do something serious to change the status quo--i.e., to end "apartheid" or "occupation" or whatever you want to call Israel's system for managing the Palestinian population under its control. Let's remember that the creation of the Jewish state and near-simultaneous dislocation of the Palestinian people took place in 1947 and Israeli occupation began in 1967. Hamas--the ostensible insurmountable obstacle to Israel's doing anything but what it's doing this week--did not emerge until the late 1980s, 40 years after the initiation of the problem and 20 years after the beginning of Israeli occupation. Palestinian suicide bombings did not begin until the 1990s, after almost 50 years of lack of resolution. And the Qassams date only to about 2001. All this time has passed--and keeps passing--while the situation festers and gets ever more difficult. Solving the problem isn't easy, but the status quo, broken by various outbreaks of violence, is clearly not an answer to anything.
So to answer Brad's question--and to make any serious progress in solving this long-festering Israeli-Palestinian problem--we need to get away from Brad's simplistic formula of responding to violence with more violence. We need to begin the difficult process of dismantling what I call--unapologetically--Israeli apartheid. This could be done by creating a viable two-state solution or a one-state solution (see my post elsewhere in this thread). But to do so will require significant leadership from the party with the most power in maintaining the current status quo--Israel.
So what could have Israel done differently this month when faced with continued rocket strikes? For one, it could have called an international conference to lead in the push for a fair and rapid solution to the problem. How about offering to sponsor a summit of the leaders of the so-called Quartet and the major Arab nations and Palestinian leaders to begin urgent negotiations toward a final status agreement? If such an offer had been made simultaneously with military action it would have at least signaled that Israel was serious about changing the status quo that forces the repeated use of violence. But Israel continues to simply blame the Palestinians for everything while it beats them into submission. I hardly see anything here that suggests Israel has any goodwill at all toward the Palestinians. Increasingly it appears to me that Israel's only goal is to make life as miserable as possible for the Palestinians while it slowly appropriates Palestinian land through settlement, all in the hope of seeing the Palestinians simply give up and disappear so Israel can maximize its land mass while minimizing its Arab population. I'd like to believe otherwise, but as long as Israel continues to increase settlements, blame the Palestinians for all lack or failure of negotiations, and continue to bomb, blockade, and otherwise destroy Palestinian lives and livelihoods I can draw no other conclusion about Israel's intentions than it wants to maintain an apartheid system until it can grind the Palestinians out of existence and out of its way.
January 5, 2009 10:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Purple State:
As usual, you offer a reasoned, and passioned explanation for your compelling perspective on what has happened, and what you think Israel is all about. My point is I guess a bit more simple, and that is that, even if it is fair or reasonable or productive or all three to call Israel an apartheid state, for the moment it doesn't matter to the extent that Israel is trying to prevent missiles from being fired indiscrminately at civilian targets inside the green line. I think it's also fair to say that the Gaza incursion with ground troops provides no long-term solution and may very well make things worse, but that is something that, for the moment, is beside the point. My bottom-line is that, if folks can't recognize that Israel has the fundamental right to defend against missile attacks, then the most I can say is that, with respect to my favorite fly fisherman, we have to agree to disagree.
Bruce
January 5, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce - You know I have great respect for you. I understand how you and most Israelis feel about the incoming Hamas rocket fire. It makes life intolerable and I have no short term solution other than what Israel is doing.
That being said - I have many criticisms of Israel and Arabs. The situation in Gaza is the result of MANY mistakes on both sides.
1 - For the period 1967 to 1987 I witnessed many peaceful demonstrations by the Palestinians in Gaza for either autonomy or something better than statelessness. Israel absolutely rejected any sort of self-government. Israel hoped that by giving the people of Gaza low paying jobs they would continue to meekly submit. This expectation was totally unrealtistic. Major mistake #1 by Israel.
2 - The first infitada turned more violent than just stones and words - mistake by Palestinians.
3 - The development and expansion of settlements. Ultimately the Israeli settlements covered 18% of Gaza with less than 1/2% of the population. This was a deliberate stick in the eye to Palestinians. Mistake by Israel.
4 - Oslo negotiations. I don't believe either side was serious about thses negotiations. The language was vague enough that each side thought they had manuvering room to make it come out favorable to their side. Mistake by both sides.
5 - Palestinian suicide bombers during the 1990's. Serious mistake by Palestinians that set back the their cause both in Israel and around the world.
6 - Wye River agreement. Bibi was cornered into this agreement and never had any intention of honoring it in either spirit or word. His and Sharon's call for the youths the next day to take more territory cost Israel any credibility it had with Palestinians and was a major mistake by Israel.
7 - Camp David any Arafat's refusal to do any negotiating but simply wait for Israel to make better offers was a major Palestinian mistake.
8 - The Second Infitada was the Palestinians most serious mistake in that it destroyed any momentum for peace and gave Israel carte blanche to play hard to get with repect to peace.
9 - The expansion of the west bank settlments is a tremendous mistake by Israel which tells the Palestinians in word and deed they can never have a viable state.
10 - The unilateral withdrawal of Gaza. This was a golden opportunity for Israel and the Palestinians to regain momentum for peace. Instead Sharon used it cynically to, in Dov Weinglass' words to formalydehyde the Palestinians in order to stop the peace process on the West Bank. Had he turned Gaza over to the Palestinian authority maybe things with Hamas would have turned out differently, maybe not. Instead Sharon locked the gates and threw away the keys. A major Israeli mistake.
I could expand this list almost ad infinitem but decided 10 would do. Both sides have made mistakes which now get reflected in the current Gaza War. The only way out of this 40 year misery is ALL parties (Hamas, Fatah, the major Israeli parties, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, the Gulf States, the US, EU, UN) to get locked in a room and continue to wrestle with the problem until agreement is reached.
January 5, 2009 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jim, Talk about a meat and potatoes post. The conundrum of the Enlightenment has always been this, whether to observe the rights of those who if allowed to participate would take those rights away. This for me is were liberalism falls apart.
As with the despotic upper class, part of me says "off with their heads". The world seems little more than a soup of contradictions. The only souls that flourish here are the one divorced from reality.....
January 4, 2009 7:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Is it not plain enough that the apartheid of Israel is the source of the problem? Other people have been defeated in war in the last half century, but they don't live under apartheid.
January 4, 2009 8:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, it's not.
January 4, 2009 8:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are in denial. To accept that Israel is practicing apartheid means cognitive shock about your self-concept. I can understand wanting to avoid that.
January 4, 2009 8:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tere is no flexibility for people like you or Rayyan. There is no chance, he said, that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. "Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God."
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/
January 4, 2009 8:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
The literal translation of "apartheid" is "apart-ness".
Facts are facts and the fact is that Israel is practicing apartheid or apart-ness. Quoting purplestate from another post:
I'm serving tea. Would you like some?
January 5, 2009 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
And what, exactly, do you know about what life is like among supporters of Hezbollah, Jim Sleeper?
Do not bother, in this forum, to post imaginary horrific scenarios gleened from extrapolation by their enemies.
Fair warning.
Welcome back, BtD. Your obtuse and one-sided commentary has been missed.
;~{)
January 4, 2009 8:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
This was an interesting post marred by the following:
The idea that there is any form of equivalence between "young American-Jewish fanatics" moving to the Occupied Palestinian Territories and young American writers with a "certain cold rage" who "never get around to imagining how the human rights and personal freedoms they champion would fare under Hamas or Hezbollah." The first group bears a high burden of blame for the continued occupation of the Palestinian Territories that has done so much damage to Israeli morality - and by implication those who continue to defend the occupation. The second group is, frankly, a non-existent straw man. I have very little doubt the likes of Mathew Yglesias, Spencer Ackerman and Ezra Klein - who came under attack recently from a bunch of Zionist bigots - are far better able to imagine and understand how their human rights and personal freedoms would be destroyed under Hamas or Hezbollah than are the young American-Jewish fanatics.
Hamas is not the cause of Palestinian suffering, however, it is a response. The best way to permanently reduce the influence of Hamas is to bring a successful end to this conflict that will allow Palestinian people to live with the same security, peace and freedom the Israeli people expect. But they are never offered that prospect - instead they suffer a relentless drip of doom. An end to the conflict will come when we start giving more credence to the voices pointing out where Israel has gone wrong in dealing with the conflict rather than those young American-Jewish fanatics who perpetuate it.
Let us not forget, however, that Israel has not merely removed the human rights and personal freedoms from hundreds of Palestinians in the last week - it has killed them. And that is a pattern repeated year after year in this conflict as a look at the statistics on the B'Tselem website would convince anyone.
January 4, 2009 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sleeper: :"Yes Yes, I know"
"The pre-1967 history of Israelis and Palestinians"And what exactly do you know?
You mean this?"[T]he post-2009 future Li wants for the area;"
"Does Li seek Israel's dissolution in a bi-national, democratic state whose majority would be Palestinian? "
I certainly hope so. Like Tony Judt does: a state of equal rights for all citizens regardless of ethnicity. It would take a lot of work. But Judt and others have thought about it a lot more than you have, because you don't want equality under law. You're with Livni: the Arabs should leave Racial purity has always been the point. Jews are still good Germans. And all the expulsions and refugee camps serve one purpose: A white majority country in dark man's land. The niggers of Europe offered the chance to be the white men of the middle east.
"The existence of Hamas"
Fostered by the Israelis as a force to undermine Fatah. And you don't pay enough attention to know the degree to which they've tried to be flexible. But then that's something you don't want to know.
So I'll remind you: there was no ceasefire. The blockade was a weapon The US backed a coup attempt.
Brad the Dad: "What is remarkable in all the rage and protest about Israel's actions is the lack of any single viable idea for what it should do instead of military action to counter the rocket threat from Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north. "
I suggest that you read some of the above links. But then if you were curious, you'd know the information in them already. Nothing in them is new. But this is
January 4, 2009 8:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I admit skimming this cesspool of a post. I missed what Colore Oscuro caught, though my response covered it to the extent of referring to Israel's support for Hamas as a means to undermine Fatah's authority. And Fatah of course is secular. But then there's this:
Actually it arose because they were thrown out of their homes and driven off of their land.The whole thing is disgusting.
January 4, 2009 9:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
And as a commenter on a milblog I read pointed out, while Israel was funding Yassin and Hamas, it expelled Mubarak Awad, a Christian pacifist, for trying to organize a movement for nonviolent resistance.
That about covers it.
I'm going to the movies.
January 4, 2009 10:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Seth, I was just thinking about the same paragraph you just commented on:
If it is correct to reduce the Jewish historical context to a few words, as Li did in his essay, wouldn't it have been just as correct to note that Palestinian demands for liberal rights and for self-determination in a nation-state arose only as the Zionist demands did? Were there any such Palestinian demands under Ottoman rule?
Sleeper's questions betray a remarkable lack of understanding, I think. Palestinians were accustomed to living under the Ottoman Empire and had political expectations in line with the traditions and practices of that empire and its predecessors. As far as we can tell, the Palestinians were generally content to continue living under this political order to which they were long accustomed. The British and the Zionists, however, imposed a new and foreign political order on the Palestinians. Once that new political order was imposed, the Palestinians had to adapt and therefore eventually began to adopt the language of nationalism and self-determination. But why on earth would they have adopted that language when they were living under a political order in which those concepts were alien and meaningless? I should also point out that the Ottoman Empire treated the Palestinians far better than the Israelis have done--certainly not driving them from their homes--so there also wasn't any grievance against the Ottomans that would require demands similar to those the Palestinians have asserted against their Israeli oppressors.
January 4, 2009 10:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
If it is correct to reduce the Jewish historical context to a few words, as Li did in his essay, wouldn't it have been just as correct to note that Palestinian demands for liberal rights and for self-determination in a nation-state arose only as the Zionist demands did? Were there any such Palestinian demands under Ottoman rule? Doesn't Palestinian liberalism come from the 20th-century West, if not, indeed, from the Jews? Isn't that what makes this such a tragedy? If not, would Li tell us which Arab state wants a Palestinian state to exist even now?
Well, presumably Palestinian Arabs never had much call to develop an extended bond of regional solidarity, or constitute themselves as a nation with an enlarged sense of collective identity, because the Ottomans never kicked them off their land and forced them into exile. The Ottomans ran a tribute empire, and tended to leave people alone as long as they sent their taxes and a few soldiers to to their imperial masters. And yet, why does this strike you as very important?
I am often taken aback in discussions with either Israelis or Jewish-Americans by how strong is their tendency to try to turn the Zionist-Palestinian conflict into a drama of dueling peoples or nations, and then denigrate Palestinians as a nation, lacking the magnificent national attributes of Jews. If I might be so bold, this strikes me as an particularly Jewish manner of conceptualizing the problem, bound up with intensely Jewish preoccupations with nationhood, tribal separateness and ethnic identity. It is to look at the problem too much in a Jewish intellectual mirror.
I suspect many of us don't care so much about Peoples; we just care about people. It doesn't matter much to me personally whether Palestinian Arabs constitute a significant nation, or are just a bunch of guys names Ahmed and Yassir, who had their goats killed and houses bulldozed, and who were run off their land by people with guns and tanks.
In fact, the more American Jews try to convince me how marginal and insignificant are Palestinians; the more they try to convince me how little Palestinians measure up to the Mighty Jews as a nation or a people; the more they try to convince me how dirty, or ignorant or bestial are Arabs in general or Palestinians in particular; then the more Palestinians appear to me as lowly underdogs in need of defense. I'm just too much of a lefty, I suppose. I like underdogs. I recoil at the spectacle of the wealthy and powerful trampling on the weak and miserable. If any people need defending, it is the wretched of the earth, not the great nations and powerful tribes. The less powerful and united some folks are, the more my hatred of their domination and oppression. I feel affinity with the weak and isolated.
While I do connect myself with important things that are larger than myself, and feel commitments to them, those things are not the sorts of things someone would generally regard as a nation, people or ethnic group. I have personally never experienced myself as having a "people". I feel a strong sense of affinity with the man whose identity is primarily tied up with the thoughts he thinks, the words he speaks, the house he dwells in, the wife he hugs and sleeps with and the child on his knee, and who doesn't care so much about his genetic stock, tribal ties or racial lineage.
I don't care if Palestinians want a liberal nation state, or if they just want to resist their dispossession, reclaim the land they lost, avenge their honor against the men who took what was theirs from them, and return to the small village that carried their father's name. And I don't care whether they are modern democratic liberals, with an exalted philosophical sense of human rights, or a craving for liberal "civil society". I especially don't care whether they think they belong to a glorious nation that occupies a midway point between God and the other, lesser, unclean human beings in the world.
I just want to help people speak against power, oppression, murder, thievery and dispossession, and against the cynical and ruthless scheming of large, powerful states, armies and nations, with their endless wars. But of course when people are wronged, that is an experience that leads to a deeper sense of human rights and justice, and of solidarity with others who have been wronged. If the Palestinians are latecomers to this sense of solidarity with fellow-victims in the cause of human rights, because the injuries in question are of recent historical vintage, then good for them.
The Free Gaza project has a statement of principles of unity, which includes the following:
We recognize the right of all Palestinian refugees and exiles and their heirs to return to their homes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories; to recover their properties, and to receive compensation for damage, dispossession and unlawful use of such property. This is an individual and not a collective right, and cannot be negotiated except by the individual.
They won't achieve this aim. Political reality and the needs and wants of powerful others won't permit it. But I respect the aim.
January 5, 2009 12:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
"I am often taken aback in discussions with either Israelis or Jewish-Americans by how strong is their tendency to try to turn the Zionist-Palestinian conflict into a drama of dueling peoples or nations, and then denigrate Palestinians as a nation, lacking the magnificent national attributes of Jews. If I might be so bold, this strikes me as an particularly Jewish manner of conceptualizing the problem, bound up with intensely Jewish preoccupations with nationhood, tribal separateness and ethnic identity. It is to look at the problem too much in a Jewish intellectual mirror"
Who has done that here. What Jewish-American on here has denigrated "Palestinians as a nation"? And, Dan respectfully, you're a good man with not a mean or racist bone in your body, and I would never accuse you of the contrary. I have read you for years, but please cut the bullshit about what you think you know about how Jews conceptualize problems. It's, a crock, a respectful one 'cause I respect you, but on this subject it's a crock and there's no place for it here.
January 5, 2009 8:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
To cut through any unwanted tension I may have just caused, perhaps Dan is not familiar with one of my Dad's best lines ever. He didn't invent this one, but the content is classic. When I was in law school in Madison, Wisconsin back in the early 80s, my Dad who could not understand why his lefty son would want to be in Madison, came to visit, and trying to impress him I said: "Dad, there's three synagogues by where I live". Dad said in his low-key way: "So? Everywhere you have two Jews you have at least three temples, mine, yours, and the one I would never step foot in".
January 5, 2009 9:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce - So true and I have not laughed so hard in weeks. In these troubled times, a good belly laugh is just what the doctor ordered.
January 5, 2009 9:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wrote a long reply to this Bruce. But it now seems best for me to save it until another discussion.
January 5, 2009 12:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I suspect many of us don't care so much about Peoples; we just care about people. It doesn't matter much to me personally whether Palestinian Arabs constitute a significant nation, or are just a bunch of guys names Ahmed and Yassir, who had their goats killed and houses bulldozed, and who were run off their land by people with guns and tanks.
In fact, the more American Jews try to convince me how marginal and insignificant are Palestinians; the more they try to convince me how little Palestinians measure up to the Mighty Jews as a nation or a people; the more they try to convince me how dirty, or ignorant or bestial are Arabs in general or Palestinians in particular; then the more Palestinians appear to me as lowly underdogs in need of defense. I'm just too much of a lefty, I suppose. I like underdogs. I recoil at the spectacle of the wealthy and powerful trampling on the weak and miserable. If any people need defending, it is the wretched of the earth, not the great nations and powerful tribes. The less powerful and united some folks are, the more my hatred of their domination and oppression. I feel affinity with the weak and isolated."
I'm one of the many.
January 5, 2009 5:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
A notable difference between my post and some of the long comments posted below it is that, try though they might, the commenters I have in mind can't disguise an animus that keeps them from grasping the dimensions of the tragedy -- and from remembering what "tragedy" means.
They therefore also don't grasp the fact that no one, on either side, can take any comfort from my post. Some of the commenters write as if they are still smarting from unpleasant experiences at dinner parties where the subject of Israeli-Palestinian relations came up. They encountered people who felt that the story does not have two sides.
But it does have two sides, with evil as well as good on both sides. Not all of the Israeli brutality can be rationalized as understandable if regrettable excess.
The Jew who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and the people who encouraged him and many of the settlers in Hebron and some other areas do not belong in civilized societies. How they got that way is a separate question from the more pressing one of how they should be quarantined.
Apologists for the Hamas and Hezbollah leaders and followers who countenance firing rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities or sending suicide bombers into them cannot pretend to be shocked when they reap what they have sowed.
But knowing all this doesn't solve anything. Both sides are clinging to old models of conflict and communal destiny that have no future. On this, I do recommend Jonathan Schell's The Unconquerable World. I also enclose an old Daily News column of mine on this. It shares a pdf with two other, only tangentially related short pieces. It's the last of the three on the pdf. http://www.jimsleeper.com/articles/signature-pieces/Blacks%20and%20Jews%20(Leonard%20Jeffries,%20LIRR%20massacre,%20Israel%20Massacre,%20early%201990s.pdf
January 5, 2009 6:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jim, the problem is complex, no doubt, and of course both sides have done bad things. But at some point action to resolve the problem may require a bit of simplification. The endless debates about who is right or wrong or what possible problems might exist with any possible solution simply delay a solution. The Palestinians have been in political limbo since 1948. Hamas didn't arise until 1987. Suicide attacks began in 1994. To date, the complexity of the problem has only caused delay in solving it, and during that delay the problem has only gotten more complex and more difficult to solve.
Creating a Jewish state when a large percentage of the population is Arab has always been impossible without disenfranchisement of the Arabs. That is a simple fact. I have argued that the Israeli system is the equivalent of apartheid. Of course there are differences in details between the South African version and the Israeli version of "seperateness" or "apartness" or "segregation"--however you want translate the Afrikanns word "apartheid." But the Israeli system is like the South African system in four key ways:
- A state has been created specifically for an immigrant ethnic group.
- The indigenous population (or a large portion of that population) is denied by one means or another citizenship in the state created for the immigrant ethnic group.
- The state of the immigrant ethnic group controls the indigenous population and does not permit true self-determination for that indigenous population.
- The laws, policies, and official and unofficial practices of the immigrant ethnic state favor the immigrant ethnic group and disadvantage the indigenous ethnic group.
These are the key characteristics of apartheid and, while Israel may not have intended initially to create an apartheid system, it is hard to argue that, after sixty years, the system that has evolved in anything but apartheid.
The true "tragedy" of the situation is that after six decades, there is no sign that the Israeli apartheid system is coming to an end any time soon. Until it does, violence will not only continue, but new and more complicating types of violence will arise. Hamas, suicide bombings, the increasing militancy of Jewish settlers (not to mention the continued expansion of settlements) have indeed made the situation far more difficult to resolve. As long as the current system is allowed to remain in place, however, the obstacles to just and peaceful resolution will only become more unsurmountable. And just as bad, the increase in obstacles will only make it easier to justify avoiding a resolution or, worse, seeking to resolve the problem by population transfer or genocide.
For all these reasons, it is essential to end this problem quickly. And to do that may indeed require some simplification of a problem made all too complex by parties who, quite honestly, don't want to see the problem resolved or at least would rather see the problem fester endlessly than see it resolved in a way that might require some sacrifice on their part.
Before I finish, I do think it's important to address solutions to the problem. And in doing so, I will contradict myself somewhat because one "solution" to the problem--the one, I fear, is truly the Israelis' solution--is to continue to delay a solution while making conditions increasingly worse for the Palestinians in the hopes the Palestinians will eventually disappear. Israelis (or at least some among their leadership) look at this conflict in a timeframe not of decades or even centuries but of millenia. The Jews have waited 2000 years to return to their historic homeland and, in that context, what is even a hundred or two-hundred years to wait out the Palestinians until they just disappear from the scene? Keeping the problem as complex and confusing as possible only helps advance this solution, of course. Those of us who would like to see a solution more just for the Palestinians have, increasingly, to be aware that some who argue for acknowledging all the complex realities of the situation may actually have an ulterior motive of preventing any solution in order to simply wear the Palestinians down through decades, even centuries, of misery.
The three other solutions, of course are:
- Partition into two states--this, of course, is the solution tried over and over again with no success and which increasingly gets more difficult as Israeli expansion continues through the settlements. I think it is still distantly possible, though to make a two-state solution truly viable, I think Palestinian needs will need to be accomodated more fully than has been proposed to date.
Rapid population transfer or extermination of the Palestinians(rather than the slow transfer by wearing down described above) -- this is not worth discussing.
A one-state or federated bi-national solution--this would require the dismantling of the current apartheid system, an integration of the Palestinians into the unified state or federation, a massive program of reconciliation, huge affirmative action programs for the Palestinians. A bi-national federation may actually allow a Jewish state to continue to exist. A one-state solution would, of course, require a different conception of Israel as a pluralistic state. Because of this, a federated solution appears more promising--at least in the shorter term--than a full one-state solution.
It is quite obvious that both of the two acceptable solutions (two-state and one-state) will not happen if urgency is not injected into the various "peace processes" we've seen to date. I'm afraid that the complexity of the problem, the continual deferral of "final status" issues, the endless quibbling about details, all leads to ongoing delay and lack of urgency. However, once the world community shows a sense of outrage--as it did with South Africa's apartheid--progress will be forced on the situation. Therefore I unapologetically am willing to call this spade a spade: apartheid it is, and allowing apartheid to continue is simply immoral.
January 5, 2009 7:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Purple,
It strikes me that you make this wonderful statement and then go on to do exactly that in your comment. It does not get anyone anywhere by continually stressing that which was caused by Israel's founding. That "simplification" leads nowhere, because like it or not, Israel exists now. It is an armed and strong state with people in it that actually exists, dealing with that reality is part of the solution and progress, arguing grievances about it is part of history.
Also I happen to believe that solutions to "intractable" problems like apartheid in South Africa and the troubles in Northern Ireland happened because some leaders took control that decided to basically "let bygones be bygones" in some way shape or form. To keep bringing up old wounds is part of the problem and not part of the solution. In actuality, much as some Jews like to push myths about it being a "homeland," Israel is in many ways an example of people who left old lands and deeds and state and cultural loyalties behind for alternate ones. Not everyone living there now can have their ancestor's land back now, it's just a simple fact, just like not every refugee of WWII Europe could get their land back. There is no solution available in continually bringing it up, likewise there is no solution available in Israelis continually bringing the Holocaust up.
(That the land is invested with such symbolic religious importance is always a big big extra added problem of history and memory, see Osama bin Laden on Andalusia or the Serbs on Kosova.)
If I were to pick someone on this thread to be an able negotiator, I would pick BradtheDad, not because of what prejudices he might have, but simply because he brings it to the here and now: what should Israel have done about the rocket attacks? Baby steps, baby steps, leave the history behind.
January 5, 2009 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
"A notable difference between my post and some of the long comments posted below it is that, try though they might, the commenters I have in mind can't disguise an animus that keeps them from grasping the dimensions of the tragedy -- and from remembering what "tragedy" means."
And what is it, Senator Lieberman, that keeps you from grasping the distinction between tragedy and "crime." When you're in Germany ask Berliners the meaning of "Ratlosigkeit."
You're defending the jailers at the Warsaw Ghetto, mourning the tragic necessity of murder.
And Josh Marshall this morning has the gall recommend a post examining how all the warnings were ignored and the messengers attacked before the economic crisis: "Ignoring the Oracles: You Are With the Free Markets, or Against Them."
In a few years we'll read this:
"Ignoring the Oracles: You Are With the Jews, or Against Them"
Remember your choice then.
January 5, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is such a great description, Mr. Sleeper, not only of comments on this thread, but of internet discourse on the I-P topic in general, and perhaps much discourse on it beyond. It has always struck me that it may be that the associated polemics are a serious part of the actual problem--that when parties do happen to manage to be dragged to a table, they don't talk actual practicalities and baby step solutions on a road to somewhere, but resort to the same old same old polemics. It often seems like this issue is one of those, yes, like apartheid in South Africa, "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia, where history and memory are not useful tools but enemies to progress.
January 5, 2009 12:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
OOPS -- The Daily News column I've linked in my comment just above this one is actually the fourth, not the third, on the pdf. It's called "Massacre in Israel Forces a Hard Look Inward," and it was written in March, 1994, after Baruch Goldstein, a fanatic from Brooklyn, assassinated 29 Palestinians at prayer.
January 5, 2009 6:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Jim Sleeper for the sobering posts. We should not be thinking in terms of Obama or America coming up with magic solutions to intractable problems made much more intractable by 8 years of dereliction and incompetence from the Cheney-Bush Administration rubberstamped by a spineless US Congress. No reason, though why (after Jan. 20) that Congress still needs to keep helping one of several co-perpetrators to the Mideast madness make matters worse, by endlessly regurgitating its propaganda.
January 5, 2009 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
The only reason that Congress will continue to support Israel is because most Members know Israel is right and Hamas is wrong, and because the vast majority of their constituents either agree with that assessment or don't care.
January 5, 2009 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
And they show great courage voting that way despite the all-powerful Palestinian-American lobby.
January 5, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
When facts (4 Israelis killed, hundreds of Palestinians killed in the latest Gaza conflict) and logic (when has there ever been a feud in history where all the blame falls on one side?) are against Likudnik mouthpieces, they resort to distortions. Israel must be always "right," because those who believe in "Israel right or wrong" tend to have few moral scruples and to be rude repetitive loudmouths.
Americans also did not give a damn about the Taliban before 9-11-01. Still, there ARE limits to the atrocities Israel can get away with just because a few semi-competent politicians there need to win some votes in an upcoming election, and because Americans have other problems to worry about while their government betrays their interests in the Mideast, war after war.
January 5, 2009 12:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Rapid population transfer or extermination of the Palestinians(rather than the slow transfer by wearing down described above) -- this is not worth discussing."
But why is it "not worth discussing"? Isn't that more or less precisely the idea behind the claims/ accusations of "disproportionality" in response? That it's evolving into rapid extermination under cover of "defense against terrorism"?
Just watching it unfold, who in the international community can say for sure that it isn't? Thus, the demand for a cease fire.
Or it that too "simple minded"?
January 5, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Sleeper, thank you for linking to Darry Li's excellent article, even if you argue that it is too "polemical."
I trust all the commenters above actually read it before posting.
It's tempting to join the "big-picture" discussion that's raging here, but let me instead zero in on one tiny quibble you had with Li's piece -- "Li doesn't mention Israel's donation of greenhouses and housing it left behind in 2005 ..."
You should know that Israel did nothing of the kind.
As it prepared its unilateral Gaza pullout, the government quite deliberately and ostentatiously gave the Palestinian Authority nothing -- not even the fig leaf of consulting with it over the logistics of orderly withdrawal.
Almost as if it sought to weaken the PA further in the eyes of Palestinians -- imagine that!
It was former World Bank president James Wolfensohn who stepped in to prevent the dismantling of the greenhouses, buying them from their settler owners for $14 million, which he collected in two days from mostly Jewish American donors. (He himself gave half a million dollars; Bill Gates is said to have given more than half the total.)
That gift was noble and well-intentioned, but Palestinian looters made off with vast amounts of equipment. Totally irrational and counterproductive, you might say. But try to wrap your mind around the emotional urge to scorn any and all Israeli-imposed infrastructure.
In any case, that year's crop died. Israeli cuts to water and power, coupled with draconian border closures, have ever since limited the project's output to the domestic market and slashed its economic benefits.
The single-family homes the 8,000 or so settlers left behind were mostly demolished, being totally inappropriate for one of the most densely populated strips of land in the world.
Why focus on this admittedly marginal aspect of your debate with Li? It's because, like so many defenders of Israeli policy, you cling to the idea that there was something positive, something praiseworthy, in the Gaza pullout.
There was not. It was pure realpolitik; the Gaza settlers were too costly (in blood and treasure) to defend. As it was, most were "resettled" in the West Bank, on land the government believes it has a more realistic hope of retaining, peace deal or not.
And the pullout removed the need for nuance in dealing with Gaza, which was quickly relabeled an "enemy entity."
Like "enemy combatants," "enemy entities" have no rights, so violating them carries no Geneva Conventions risk.
The other problem with a rosy picture of the 2005 withdrawal is that it lets Israelis ask, "Why are the Gazans so ungrateful for their freedom?"
Look, Israel (with Egyptian complicity) controls Gaza's land, sea and air borders, all ingress and egress, exports and imports. The occupation of Gaza did not end with the withdrawal of the settlers. The UN and international law are very specific on this. Israel is legally and morally responsible for Gaza's well-being -- or its misery.
I see today that Gaza's one power plant, which never returned to full operation after the 2006 bombardments, has been put out of commission again. The animal pen will be cold and dark again this winter.
January 5, 2009 6:22 PM | Reply | Permalink