When Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violent resistance (satyagraha) is invoked in the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, it is invariably as a propaganda weapon intended to undermine the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance and shift the blame for the continuing occupation on to its principal victims.
Leaving such dishonest rhetorical jabs aside, the question of whether any of Gandhi’s teachings can be usefully applied in Palestine is a serious one that merits careful consideration. In a fascinating essay (and talk) based on an extensive reading of Gandhi’s writings, Norman Finkelstein concludes that the application of satyagraha – that is, a mass campaign of non-violent civil resistance – could yield tangible results in the occupied territories.
His argument is detailed and nuanced, and I won’t attempt to summarise it all here. Its central claim is that the Palestinian struggle against the occupation fulfills the conditions Gandhi suggests are required for non-violent resistance to succeed. Non-violence relies on the accumulation of ‘moral force’ to “quicken the conscience” of the wider population and even of the oppressor him/herself by confronting violence unarmed, often enduring terrible suffering as a result. However, for non-violence to work this “innocence of means” is not enough – there must be “innocence of ends” as well. That is, a movement’s objective, and not just its methods, must be perceived as legitimate for non-violence to work:
“Were the ‘pro-life’ half of the American population to engage in civil disobedience or even a fast unto the death, the ‘pro-choice’ half would hardly be converted by such a spectacle. For, it is not suffering alone that touches but suffering in the pursuit of a legitimate goal. The recognition of the legitimacy of such a goal presumes however a preexisting consensus according to which what the victim seeks he justly deserves. Gandhi accordingly referred to the victim’s ‘innocence.’ It is innocence in a double sense: of means—the victim’s suffering results from unilateral violence inflicted by others—and of ends—the victim seeks a right that cannot in good conscience be denied because it jibes with the ‘normal moral sense of the world’; the more incontrovertible the ends, the more self-suffering as a means will resonate with ‘enlightened public opinion.’”
In the case of Palestine, this ‘legitimacy of ends’ exists, indeed to a remarkable degree. For over 30 years there has been a virtually unanimous international consensus on how to resolve the conflict, as Finkelstein and others have extensively documented. The Palestinians’ central demands command the overwhelming support of the most representative political body in the world, the highest judicial body in the world and the international human rights community (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and so forth), and enjoy extensive popular support throughout the world. Given this broad legitimacy and given the failure of violent resistance to secure any of the Palestinians’ political goals it would be wise, Finkelstein argues, to pursue a strategy of non-violent resistance instead.
Breaking the siege
I find the argument persuasive, but here I want to focus on a specific attempt to apply the doctrine of satyagrahi to Palestine.
A coalition of Palestinian solidarity activists are currently organising a global march on Gaza, scheduled for January 2010, in opposition to the Israeli siege:
“The event will aim to bring thousands of demonstrators from around the world to march alongside Gazans as they breach the blockade imposed upon the population since the election of Hamas in 2006.
‘This march draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi,’ said a draft statement of purposes and principles written by the ‘Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza,’ obtained by The Daily Star. ‘Those of us residing in the United States also draw inspiration from the civil rights movement,’ it added.
The statement also outlines plans for the march, which will take place on January 1, 2010. ‘We will march the Long Mile across Erez checkpoint alongside the people of Gaza in a nonviolent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade,’ it said, adding that ‘We conceive this march as the first step in a protracted nonviolent campaign … If we bring thousands to Gaza and millions more around the world watch the march on the internet, we can end the siege without a drop of blood being shed.’
Finkelstein, who is one of the organisers, talks about the project here:
In my view this tactic stands a good chance of success, if enough people get involved. The reasons are twofold.
Firstly, the suffering being inflicted upon the civilian population of Gaza is so immense, so palpably unnecessary and cruel, that when presented with the facts reasonable people will find it impossible to support.
In Gaza we have seen 1.5 million people “intentionally reduced to abject destitution”. We have participated in the calculated manufacture of an “unprecedented … humanitarian implosion” [.pdf] that has pushed an entire society to the brink of survival. Today over 70% of Gazans live in poverty, 40% in deep poverty. 96% of the population now depends on international food aid for mere survival. Almost all the factories have shut down, with many key industries totally decimated. The official unemployment rate is approaching 50% (some have put the figure at 70%) and 90% of economic activity is devoted to smuggling. Chronic malnutrition is soaring, with malnutrition-induced stunted growth affecting 10% of all children in Gaza, rising to 30% in some areas. Some 46% of Gazan children suffer from acute anaemia. There is a constant “shortage of basic medicines”, while millions of litres of raw sewage are pumped daily into the Mediterranean, where children swim and play, because Israeli border restrictions mean Gaza’s authorities are unable to treat it. Around 10% of the population was still, as of April, without tap water. In the course of its invasion earlier this year Israel destroyed thousands of houses, hundreds of businesses and the bulk of Gaza’s agricultural industry (as well as 80% of its crops). Thousands of families are still living in tents because Israel has refused to allow any reconstruction to take place. Some people have resorted to building houses from mud, or living in cemetaries.
The Red Cross reports that “[t]hose worst affected” by the siege “are likely to be children, who make up more than half of Gaza’s population”.
As a result of all this – and this is the second point – the ‘legitimacy of ends’ required by Gandhi is there. The Gaza closure [.pdf] has been almost unanimously condemned as a violation of international law. The UN special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied territories has called it a “crime against humanity”; his predecessor likewise concluded [.doc] that it “violates a whole range of obligations under both human rights law and humanitarian law” and constitutes “a gross form of collective punishment”. UN agencies and human rights organisations have unanimously condemned [.pdf] the siege as “collective punishment”, “illegal under international humanitarian law”, “an unmitigated violation of international humanitarian law” [.doc], “illegal, improper, and immoral”. Various senior officials and respected public figures have decried Israel’s “assault on human dignity” – the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, for example, has branded it an “abomination”, while former President Jimmy Carter has criticised the international community for its complicity in this “terrible human rights crime”, doing nothing or worse while “the citizens of Gaza are being treated more like animals than human beings”. Even the Quartet, G8 and the EU (which has described Israel’s policies as “collective punishment”) have called for the blockade to be lifted.
In short, Israel’s siege has almost no defenders. The goal of the march – to end the siege – is almost universally viewed as a legitimate one. As Finkelstein observes, the marchers will not be breaking the law, they will be enforcing it.
What we can do
The planning for the march is still in its early stages. For anyone who’s interested in playing a role and who lives in the New York area, the first organisational meeting is being held next Monday:
Everyone else can keep track of the project through Norman Finkelstein’s website. You can also urge your representatives to take action to end the siege, and educate yourself and others about Israel’s policies in Gaza, which continue to be decisively supported by the US and European governments.
ReliefWeb, IRIN and the UN OCHA are invaluable sources for updates on the humanitarian situation, while UNISPAL tracks developments at the UN.
Filed under: Activism, Israeli / Palestinian, Videos | 34 Comments
Tags: Activism, blockade, collective punishment, Gandhi, Gaza, non-violence, Norman Finkelstein, protest, siege
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Heh – just got this in the mail:
Christ there are some loons out there.
Yeah, this is an idea which has been kicked around for a few years. The major problem is how to get close enough to Gaza to engage with the march. I can’t really see either the IDF or the Egyptians being too keen for this to happen.
On the other hand, provoking a response from the authorities is obviously the intention.
I need to think some more about this Gandhian concept of ‘innocence of ends’, outwith of this particular issue obviously.
Thanks for this post. This would be an amazing, but very difficult thing to pull off successfully. Look at what’s happened with the Free Gaza boat. Besides a few stories at CNN and other places about their initial encounter with the Israeli Navy, their effort has had little impact. Cynthia McKinney is one of the best-known individuals on the boat, but she’s a pariah in the mainstream media and she is often (I think sometimes rightly) seen as anti-Semitic. Calling Dershowitz and the counter-march organizers ‘loons’ won’t get us anywhere either… the media and wider population will already be pre-disposed towards seeing the march, with Finkelstein’s name attached to it, as controversial. Marchers will need to do everything they can to avoid being labeled ‘angry’ or ‘confrontational.’ And the majority of them will need to be Palestinian and Israeli.
ansel, those are good points. As it happens I made precisely the same points to Norman the other day, including about Cynthia McKinney. The organisers need to put as much emphasis as possible on being inclusive and non-alienating to the mainstream, and that means stressing that the march is specifically against the siege (as opposed to ‘Zionism’ or ‘Israel’ or whatever), keeping it strictly nonviolent and constantly pointing out that it is simply an attempt to enforce the law and the international consensus. My impression is that the organisers do understand this point – for example, Finkelstein writes:
Plus if the likes of Chomsky, Tutu, Mandela and Carter can be persuaded to lead the march that should go a long way to giving it credibility.
Well, the idea is to have 5,000 or so internationals leading 500,000 Palestinians from Gaza. I’m sure Israeli peace groups will send contingents.
There is almost certainly no counter-march, and there is no such thing as the ‘Coalition Against Palestinian War Crimes’. It was just some random loony, as far as I can tell. (See, e.g. here).
The internationals will struggle to get into Israel in the first place surely? Or are they ‘doing a Galloway’ through Egypt and up?
Are you in NY at the moment?
The plan at the moment is to enter Gaza through Rafah (so from Egypt), then join with Palestinians to walk across Erez. But it’s still in the early stages and the logistics of the thing haven’t been fully worked out yet.
Unfortunately I’m not in NY – I’m still in Feltham, which has all the smells of NY and none of the attractions.
Don’t get me wrong, Jamie, I think this is a great initiative. But I find the arguments for satyagraha per se unpersuasive.
For one thing, regarding just ends, I think you’ll find that an awful lot of people, perhaps most people in The West, the US in particular, are for house demolitions, Jews-only roads, and Jews-only settlements. While the same people will proclaim themselves unequivocally against ethnic cleansing, torture, and discriminatory laws, they will deny anything Israel is doing or has ever done qualifies, or make an exception in this case. Even if they agree that what Israel is doing to Gaza is a siege, they will justify it, claiming that the people of Gaza deserve it because they voted for Hamas and are therefore complicit in the dastardly Hamas plan to drive the Jews into the sea, or that all that is asked of Hamas to lift the siege is to accept their own dispossession by recognising ‘Israel as the state of the Jewish people’ and relinquish the right to attempt to defend themselves.
For another, if the action’s objective is to break the siege, that’s fair enough. If it is to promote The International Consensus, then it would be pursuing a blatantly unjust outcome – one that leaves the racist ethnocracy intact, the Palestinians in two disconnected Bantustans, the refugees in limbo, and the Israeli Palestinians in a more precarious situation than ever (http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/06/how-many-states.html).
As for just means, the very people who keep squawking ‘Why is there no Palestinian Gandhi?’ will condemn the anti-Semitic violence of taking any kind of action that aims to constrain Israel’s ‘right to defend itself’.
How then to explain the fact that Israel is one of the most unpopular states in the world, in Europe as well as the Middle East? I think you’ll find that there is very little support for, say, the settlements – even in the US most of the population feels Israel hasn’t done enough to achieve a peace.
Some people will try to justify the siege – the mountains of demonising propaganda surrounding Hamas has muddied the waters for many – but I think most people recognise it as an injustice, and the march (if enough people join in) will help bring that home, particularly if it is headed by the likes of Mandela, Tutu and Carter.
Firstly, yes, as I understand it the march will be specifically against the siege. Secondly, I agree with you that a two-state settlement is unjust (we’ve had this discussion a couple of times already, if I remember rightly), but in my view (and in Finkelstein’s view) it is the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future, and it’s not a bad first step to something better.
Some will, no doubt. Others, those who genuinely dislike Israeli repression but who (understandably, given the level of propaganda and misinformation) are under the impression that it would stop the minute Palestinians cease their “terrorism”, would I think seriously reconsider their position were Palestinians to engage in mass non-violent civil disobedience instead of firing rockets that do nothing but undermine their cause.
Far be it from me to take opinion polls at face value, but Rasmussen found in January that 56% of Americans blamed ‘the Palestinians’ for ‘the current situation’ in Gaza and just a couple of weeks ago, they reported 81% said ‘Palestinian leaders [should] be required to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state’. It wouldn’t surprise me if you’d found contradictory results in other surveys, but it would be good if you could link to them.
The 2006-07 BBC/PIPA poll found 56% across a range of countries thought Israel had a ‘mostly negative influence in the world”. In the US, a plurality of 41% thought its influence was ‘mainly positive’. I don’t know if that’s what you mean by ‘unpopular’.
If we’re going by impressions, from the people I talk to and the stuff I read, opinion ranges from ‘Yeah, but Israel has a right to defend itself’ to ‘Fuck the Arabs’. Bear in mind that the media don’t just cynically form opinion, they also reflect it.
We have indeed discussed related matters before. I understand that you think The International Consensus is the best we can hope for in the foreseeable future, and it’s not a bad first step to something better. But I don’t recall you arguing the case. For one thing, full withdrawal to the Green Line is not on anyone’s agenda. What we can realistically expect to see in the foreseeable future, and it’s not anything to hope for, is a withdrawal to the Wall, with the settlement corridors, bypass roads, and the rest of the matrix of control remaining in place.
For another, you haven’t explained how a sectarian Palestine, even on the full 22%, alongside a sectarian Israel, can lead to something better, at least for the Palestinians. Once Palestinians ‘have their own state’, whatever its geographical contours, Israel will almost certainly insist, with the support of The International Community, that it is up to that state to absorb the refugees. After all, why would they want to go anywhere else than to their own state? And I am quite sure that it will exacerbate pressure on Palestinian Israelis to realise their national aspirations in their own state, too, even if the eventual settlement doesn’t actually annex areas of Israel with concentrations of Palestinians to the Palestinian state.
As I’m sure you’re well aware, mass non-violent civil disobedience has been going on the whole time, without achieving the anticipated effect. Rocket attacks and suicide bombings, which I’m inclined to agree are counterproductive, were only resorted to fairly recently, after all else had failed.
I’ve been trying to think and apply the lessons of Gandhian satyagraha for a while. The problem is that the Gazan situation is different to British India and even the civil rights protest in the USA.
For one thing, as Gaza is a fully enclosed enclave, you have to get co-operation to even get in. A couple of years ago I was talking to a fairly famous Gaza activist about the mooted Free Gaza movement. I didn’t believe that they would ever be allowed to dock – my friend said that they would but would be prevented ultimately from doing anything truly substantive. Essentially I think he has been proved right.
To backtrack a little, in India millions were held in poverty by a few thousand soldiers and civil servants. Gandhi gambled that even if they were to violently react to the protestors, the character of the British would mean that they would not be able to do that for very long against the unarmed.
The civil rights movement in the USA was obviously different, but eventually had the federal law on their side.
Whilst there are 1.5 million Gazans and there is international law on their side, the problem is that the IDF is strong and is supported by the USA. I’m not clear that even a march by Tutu and the others would be enough to persuade the Egyptians, the Israelis and the USAmericans. More likely, it seems to me, they would just be blocked from taking part.
Dunno. I know I’m not offering any other ideas, but I am wrestling with the concept.
I can’t help be see things more from ernie’s point of view. By now I just think that two states is not going to happen and is not realistic. In fact I’m coming to the point where I think a bi national state is actually less unrealistic than two states. But even Olmert saw that, in the event of the final abandonment of partition (two states), and things morphing into a more clear cut struggle for equality in one state: “”The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us,” Olmert said, “because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.” ”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/929439.html
But anyway, all that aside, I of course support this initiative, but I have grave doubts about the logistics. Mainly because of the (Israel-allied) Egyptian regime. I don’t see them letting thousands of us into Gaza. I don’t see happening at all. The experience of the Boats has been pointed to: I wouldn’t say they achieved nothing, but yes: essentially the first few were let in, because Israel did not quite know how to respond, but since the Gaza massacre, they have now been blocked.
Anyway, I hope I’m wrong and thousands get in.
p.s. and what’s this stuff about Cynthia McKinney’s alleged anti-Semitism? Really? Or is this just more ADL propaganda?
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2009/07/starvers-of-gaza-meet.html
Sounds like her father claimed an election loss was due to the ‘Jews’ (generic) and some incidents with the New Black Panther Party – which don’t put her in a particularly good light.
Interesting comments folks – sorry for not replying sooner, I was out all day today. I’ll get to them tomorrow. I will address the issue of two-states vs. one-state, though not extensively enough to satisfy you ernie, because a) i’ve had this discussion (not just with you) so many times, including very recently, that I can’t bring myself to do it all over again just yet, and b) persuading ‘one-staters’ to my point of view isn’t particularly high on my priorities list, not least because to some extent they help advocates of the two-state settlement by shifting the terms of the debate to the left and by exposing certain myths propagated by Israel and its apologists (chiefly that of Palestinian rejectionism).
As regards Cynthia McKinney, there are the incidents you mention joe, and there’s also the interview she did with this racist site. I only listened to about half of Part 1, but already the interviewer made some blatantly anti-Semitic assertions that McKinney did not challenge, thereby accepting them legitimate premises for the questions.
I’m glad you see things my way, Asa.
Regarding logistics, when I first read of the proposal, what I imagined the intention was would be for Gazans to march along the Gaza side of the fence and the internationals on the Israeli side, joining up at Erez Crossing. Forewarned and forearmed, I don’t expect the Israeli immigration authorities to make it easy for participants to enter Israel. Finkelstein himself, of course, has already been declared persona non grata. If the intention is to infiltrate internationals into Gaza via Rafah and lead a march through Erez, I reckon it would be even more difficult.
Now I wouldn’t want to ask you to repeat yourself, Jamie. For reference, in a nutshell, the position I’ve been articulating is that:
• The International Consensus is manifestly unjust and requires its advocates to relinquish important principles. It would, for instance, legitimise the ethnic cleansing of 1947-49 and the annexation of territory acquired by force beyond the UN’s 1947 partition lines. More importantly, it would hang the Israeli Palestinians and the refugees out to dry.
• It would not result in a viable Palestinian state. In particular, there is no feasible way to secure the corridor connecting Gaza with the WB in the absence of Israeli good will.
• It is neither more nor less probable an outcome in the foreseeable future than a unified or binational state.
• It is a step away from, not towards, something better.
• Under the circumstances, it is counterproductive to demand partition. Because there is widespread support for partition among people who object to the siege and other Israeli attacks on Palestinians and who we shouldn’t make a point of excluding, it is preferable for the movement not to take a position on the number of states.
I think we agree on the first two points. What I’m asking you to explain is first, why you think partition can lead to ‘something better’; and second, why, given what you know about Israeli public opinion ion general, and settler opinion in particular, and the positions of the current and former Israeli and US administrations, you think a full Israeli withdrawal to the Green Line, evacuating 500,000 settlers, relinquishing East Jerusalem, and the other aspects of The International Consensus is a realistic possibility.
If you’ve enunciated these arguments elsewhere, I’m sorry I missed them and would be perfectly satisfied with a link.
Right. ernie, I did acknowledge that the American public are a bit of an exception in this case, although not all polls paint such a depressing picture. Elsewhere support for Israeli policies is quite low – I’m not aware of any recent polls that have been conducted on the topic in Britain, but judging by the massive wave of activism and public opposition (the protests, the student occupations, other activism, and so on) public opinion in Britain was opposed to ‘Cast Lead’ and to the collective punishment of Gaza’s population. And I’m sorry, but the fact that the BBC poll found Israel to be the least popular country in the world, and that this unpopularity extends well beyond the Middle East, does tell you something.
I think public opposition to the siege is certainly substantial enough to give this initiative a reasonable chance of success, and may even persuade those who currently support the siege or are not sure about it to our side, given that the reason many people will hold such views is an unrealistic view of Hamas and the Palestinians generally as violent and unreasonable, rather than as engaging in non-violent protest to secure their legal rights.
We do agree on the injustice of a two-state settlement. I’m not sure I agree that a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza is necessarily unviable. There are mechanisms that would allow for at the very least transportational contiguity between Gaza and the West Bank, and presumably whatever factors that would have led Israel to withdraw from the West Bank would also lead it to respect these mechanisms. In the long run having two separate states west of the river doesn’t make much sense, since Israel and the future Palestinian state would have to cooperate and have close relations with each other on a whole range of issues, and the hope is that once the violent conflict ends people will start focusing more on getting on with their daily lives, the intense mutual animosity will slowly subside and cooperate between the two states will increase, perhaps even to the point of developing some federal-type arrangement, or even beyond that.
I don’t see the possibility of any such reconciliation happening while the occupation remains and the violence continues. Israeli Jews overwhelmingly view Palestinians as a threat to their lives, and view the continuation of Israel as a specifically Jewish state as central to their security (and most Palestinians similarly want a state of their own, rather than a single state in all of Palestine). These attitudes, which are to a significant extent the product of decades of conflict, are, to put it mildly, not conducive to the democratisation of Israel and the creation of a single democratic state for all its citizens, and the only way they’re going to substantially change is if the violence and occupation is brought to an end and some reasonably stable situation replaces it. That’s what a two-state settlement can, hopefully, accomplish.
So that’s your first question answered. As for your second, while Israeli Jewish attitudes do not currently support the international consensus two-state settlement, they are far nearer to a two-state settlement than to a one-state settlement. It will be a lot harder to convince Israeli Jews (and the US) to abandon the idea of a specifically Jewish state altogether than to abandon the occupation of the West Bank. The settlers don’t need to be forcibly evacuated: if Israel just withdraws the IDF to within the Green Line the vast majority of settlers will follow it, and the few who don’t can remain where they are under Palestinian sovereignty. Of course it will take an awful lot for any Israeli leader to order this, which is why serious international pressure is a prerequisite for a genuine peace settlement to achieved. Actually the talks at Taba weren’t light-years away from a settlement the Palestinians could accept, and there are significant (though minority) elements in both the US and Israeli establishments that recognise the folly of the occupation. It will be difficult, but it can be done, if international pressure is brought to bear on Israel in a serious way.
I don’t think a two-state settlement is a “realistic” possibility – in my view the most likely outcome is something like a continuation of the status quo for a long a while yet – but it is, for the reasons explained above, the most realistic possibily that can be achieved in the foreseeable future. Every argument for why a two-state settlement is unrealistic applies twofold to a single state. A broad international consensus has been painstakingly developed for a two-state settlement, and for us to throw it all away now in favour of something that has no international support, zero support within Israel, minority support among Palestinians, no basis in international law and no possibility of being realised in an acceptable time-period would, in my view, be to give Israel and its apologists the greatest gift they could have ever asked for.
Finally, the concerns about the feasibility of getting people into Gaza through Rafah are of course valid. All I can say in that regard is I assume the organisers took this into account when planning the thing, and I hope they’ve found some way to deal with this. I can’t tell you anything more than that, though – we’ll have to wait and see, I guess.
Thanks for addressing yourself to the issues I raised, Jamie. And thanks for the links to those two interesting polls. I can’t imagine how I missed them. The link from the Greenwald article, BTW, is broken, but I managed to find the report and questionnaire on the WPO site (http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/jul08/WPO_IsPal_Jul08_packet.pdf). The May 2003 Roadmap poll, however, is probably of limited relevance in the here and now. As you’re probably aware, I’m quite particular about how to interpret opinion polls. If you reckon thinking Israel has a ‘mostly negative influence in the world’ is a proxy indicator of unpopularity, that seems plausible enough to me, but it’s still a position that needs to be argued explicitly.
As I mentioned earlier, the view of Palestinians as violent and unreasonable appears to be independent of whether they engage in non violent forms of resistance or not. Who knows? Maybe it will be different this time?
The OneVoice poll (http://onevoicemovement.org/programs/documents/OneVoiceIrwinReport.pdf) late last year found that 69% of Israelis, including Palestinian Israelis, deemed the prospect that ‘Settlers can stay in Palestine/a future Palestine if they take up Palestinian citizenship’ ‘unacceptable’, while 49% said it was ‘essential’ (37%) or ‘desirable’ that ‘All the settlements on the Israeli side of the security wall should be part of Israel’. So I wouldn’t be too optimistic about your military withdrawal only scenario. Furthermore, the diehards who insist on staying are unlikely to accept Palestinian sovereignty, are well armed and highly motivated to kill and die for Eretz Yisra’el. Hardly the kind of stability that you seem to envisage.
One of my principal concerns is that The International Community and the PA will accept a two state ‘solution’ along the lines of Olmert’s Hitkansut plan rather than The International Consensus and that a movement that is married to partition will just go along with that fiction and deflate rather than persevere for a just outcome. Indeed the Taba Summit itself countenanced land swaps and restrictions on the right of return that the PA might have been willing to accept, but remember that the PA, even as constituted in 2001, represented only a minority of Palestinians – those in the WB and Gaza.
Ultimately, I think where we differ is that I don’t expect the level of good will towards the Palestinian people as a whole that would make partition on the basis of The International Consensus a realistic possibility exists among any of the major relevant players – the Israeli state, Israeli Jews, the US, the Arab states, or the PA. You think there is more than enough for Hitkansut but not enough for unification – just the right amount for Israel to relinquish the settlements, abandon the hardcore settlers, cooperate economically with the Palestinian state, and respect its ‘transportational contiguity’.
Sorry about the broken Greenwald link – see here and here. As for my second link, it’s not to a single poll but to a summary of multiple polls, albeit ones that were carried out several years ago. But look, I freely acknowledge that public opinion in the US is pretty frightening on this topic, I only suggest that the picture might not be quite so bad as is often assumed.
True, and that’s a result of awful media coverage and decades of propaganda. My experience in debating the topic with American liberals is that the view of Hamas as irredeemably rejectionist, racist and violent is the key factor that leads otherwise reasonable people to have doubts about the legitimacy of Israeli repression, or even to wholeheartedly support it. It’s not that they like the siege, it’s that they’ve been convinced that there’s no reasoning with Hamas and that Israel has little choice but to deal with the problem militarily. Clearly this picture is so far from reality as to be laughable, but one can’t be too hard on people for simply believing what they’re constantly told by the media, politicians and commentators from across the mainstream political spectrum.
What we need to do is debunk this propaganda, and organising nonviolent protests and stressing the fact that Palestinians are merely demanding that their legal rights be respected seems to me to be a good way of doing this.
Like I said, I’m not “optimistic” about it and I recognise that current Israeli attitudes are not where they need to be. That doesn’t change the fact that Israeli Jews are far closer to accepting a withdrawal from the West Bank than they are to accepting the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state.
The people you’re referring to are relatively small in number, widely opposed within Israel and could be dealt with by the IDF, international forces or Palestinian forces should the need arise (and I doubt it would; in the past these guys have mostly been all talk).
I highly doubt that the PA would accept such a thing – even Arafat and Abbas couldn’t do it, despite their collaborationist tendencies. To be sure, the PA has agreed to minor landswaps and a restriction on the right of return, but it wouldn’t (couldn’t) go so far as to accept a bantustan settlement. The reason is that Palestinians simply wouldn’t accept it. The ‘international community’ no doubt would, although it has been unable to force Palestinians to comply thus far and I doubt it ever will. But again, I think it will be far easier for activists to pressure the US to support (in practice as well as words) a genuine two-state settlement, as opposed to Olmert’s fiction, than it would be to pressure to the US to try and dismantle Israel as a specifically Jewish state. Once again, all the objections to the practicality of a two-state settlement apply twofold to a single state.
That’s true, and Hamas has conditioned its compliance with any settlement agreed to by the PA on it passing a referendum of Palestinians in the territories and the diaspora (how practical such a poll would be is, however, less clear).
Not at all – plainly right now there is very little good will whatsoever. What I said is that it will be easier to pressure Israel to accept a (genuine) two-state settlement than it will be to pressure it to dismantle itself. That’s not the same as saying that a two-state settlement will be easy to achieve, or that it likely will be achieved. But if we face the choice between an impossible solution and a highly unlikely one, it seems to me that we should put everything into the latter until it’s absolutely clear that there is no chance whatsoever of achieving it (in other words, that there is as little chance of realising it as there is of realising any of the alternatives).
Sorry if I wasn’t clear – it was the link FROM the Greenwald article to WPO that was broken. BTW, if you follow the sidebar links to the report and questionnaire, I think you’ll find your second link was to a single poll conducted 14-18 May 2003 that asked questions about a bunch of related topics
I’m not being hard on people for not knowing what’s going on, at least not in this thread. I’m just dubious that the factors that have precluded understanding what’s going on in the past will be any different on New Year’s Day.
Sorry if I’ve caricatured your position, but I don’t agree that it’s a ‘fact that Israeli Jews are far closer to accepting a withdrawal from the West Bank than they are to accepting the dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state’. Unless you mean exactly the kind of partial, contingent withdrawal that Olmert envisaged and Obama still envisages and that we both reject. Sometimes you reckon they’re twice as likely to accept partition along the Green Line and so forth as unification, sometimes that unification is impossible; I reckon they’re equally unlikely to accept either. It’s obviously not something we can resolve by argument, but I haven’t seen any evidence that more than a handful of Israeli Jews is prepared to countenance an outcome that doesn’t involve annexing the major settlements. If I’m right, I think it’s clearly better to endorse the implausible scenario that doesn’t entail tying ourselves into conceptual contortions than the implausible scenario that does. If you’re right, well, maybe. But I’d still be seriously disinclined to provide retrospective legitimation to ethnic cleansing and so forth, even if I thought The International Consensus stood a real chance.
One thing I’m quite sure of is that whatever form a Palestinian state may take, short of unification of the area of Mandatory Palestine, it will be, strictly speaking, a Bantustan.
ok ernie, I think we’ve both made our positions clear and I’m glad we had this discussion – I found it useful, at any rate. Just a couple of points:
There is a link to that poll, but the other links on that page contain summaries of several polls (see, e.g. ‘US Role in General‘).
That’s an important concern, but I think it can be at least partly overcome if we are clear the basis on which we suport a two-state settlement – i.e. not because it is just but because it is unfortunately the best we can hope for at the moment. That way we can still talk about the injustice of the ethnic cleansing, and in fact doing so would help emphasise how much of a compromise the two-state settlement is for Palestinians (thereby helping to debunk the myth of Palestinian rejectionism).
This is a good discussion.
Disappointed to hear that McKinney had an interview with that ridiculous website of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. I listened to half of the first part of the interview too, and it’s not clear to me that she was on the line or heard the introductory remarks with all the stupid conspiracy theories in it. Regardless: the best case scenario is that she was duped and should know better.
You’re right that that Khanists have been mostly all mouth and no action when it comes to their separatist talk (a state of “Judea and Samaria” in the West Bank) but I wouldn’t underestimate a) how very well armed they are, especially in Hebron and around Nablus; b) how their influence within the mainstream army is growing; c) how different withdrawal from the West Bank will be from Gaza. In the case of a fake bantustan “solution”, withdrawal from the isolated outposts to the major blocs, which would have the support of the majority of Israelis: they would still resist, but yes, could be isolated to the point of making it futile. An actual withdrawal from Ariel and East Jerusalem: I don’t see it happening at all. There would be a civil war that could split the army.
ernie: “One of my principal concerns is that The International Community and the PA will accept a two state ‘solution’ along the lines of Olmert’s Hitkansut plan rather than The International Consensus and that a movement that is married to partition will just go along with that fiction and deflate rather than persevere for a just outcome”
I agree, and this is why I think in the long term this debate will become moot.
“to pressure to the US to try and dismantle Israel as a specifically Jewish state”
This would not be the strategy. Two of the main points underpinning the logic of the bi-national state are: a) “the Palestinian people” is not just the West Bank and Gaza — indeed they are not even a majority. And if one were to take a poll of the entire Palestinian people (which no one ever does, partially for logistical reasons, but mostly for ideological reasons) there are reasons to believe you’d find more support for a democratic state than two states (especially now after 16 years of fruitless negotiations); b) the focus would change from negotiating with and pressuring the US government for a messy separate state, to a far more simple moral quest for equal rights, appealing instead, directly to the populations of influential countries, the justice of which will be impossible to refute . Propaganda against it would have to rely on more and more explicitly racist rationale.
Jamie, I’m not gonna stop buggin you till you read Abunimah’s “One Country”
You might find it more convincing than you expect.
We can only speculate about what the results of a poll of all the Palestinian people would be, although like I say the actual holding of a comprehensive referendum on the question wouldn’t be a simple matter (because, for example, some Palestinian refugees are citizens of other countries, and would not necessarily want to be exposed to the charges of dual loyalty such an initiative would bring).
It may be easier to advocate for one state than for two states (although I think experience rather conclusively demonstrates the opposite), but there is simply no way Israel will be persuaded or even, realistically speaking, coerced into dismantling itself. The US establishment isn’t particularly invested in the continuation of Israel’s occupation, and even within the Israeli elite there are currents that view the occupation as more a liability than a gain. By contrast there is no establishment support whatsoever for a one-state solution, and for Israeli elites and the Israeli Jewish population an end to the Jewish state is unthinkable; it’s not even up for debate (unlike the occupation). Similarly, while the Israeli and American populations do not support the international consensus, their positions are far closer to it than to supporting a single state, which the overwhelming majority vehemently oppose.
Gah, I’m repeating myself again.
Well dagnammit, I might just have to read it then. But I warn you, if that book forces me to make a humiliating climbdown, shattering my aura of infallibity once and for all, I’m blaming you.
er, that would be ‘infallibility’. I’m gonna go eat some ice cream now.
Jamie – It made me climb down, it wasn’t pretty. I think your point above – that this debate itself moves things onto our territory, is very important – nothing like a productive tension!
That’s a very important point about settler influence in the military, Asa. From what I’ve read, it has now reached a point where I don’t think it goes without saying that Israel can rely on its own army to evacuate WB settlements, even if the political cadre really wanted them to. I don’t know what would happen if international forces or troops from the demilitarised Palestinian state attempted their removal, but I doubt Israel, much less the settler dominated army, could just stand by and watch the Goyim forcibly evict Jews. As I recollect, Virginia Tilley also anticipated a civil war in such circumstances, and I think she is more right now than she was when she wrote her book.
Speaking of which, if you haven’t read Abunimah or Tilley, Jamie, you really ought to. Not that you’ll find their arguments persuasive – I certainly didn’t – but because you need to know what they are. As I read them, the basic argument is that facts on the ground and the matrix of control have rendered a viable Palestinian state impossible and that a unified state of some description is transparently more just and actually solves problems that partition can only exacerbate. Abunimah also argues, somewhat more persuasively, that the de fact situation is already one state, and what the struggle needs to focus on is democracy and civil rights rather than partition and self determination, a point Saree Makdisi (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-makdisi11-2008may11,0,7862060.story) also makes and Olmert explicitly appreciates. If I recall correctly, like Ghada Karmi, whose book I never finished, but I’ve heard her speak, they expect the one state solution to prevail in due course just because it is a better idea. Where I differ from them is that in my view a viable Palestinian state has never been a realistic possibility, that the South African parallel they rely on is quite different in crucial respects from the situation in Palestine, and that having a better idea is not a strategy for its realisation. There’s a somewhat fuller critique at the beginning of ‘How many states’, which I’ll shamelessly link to again: http://bureauofcounterpropaganda.blogspot.com/2007/06/how-many-states.html.
A survey or plebiscite of all Palestinians is not out of the question. In 2003, the Palestine Centre for Policy and Survey Research surveyed refugees in the OT, Jordan and Lebanon (http://www.pcpsr.org/survey/polls/2003/refugeesjune03.html). If memory serves, their sample was restricted to the camps, but UNRWA has records of refugees outside the camps, as well, although I doubt they are absolutely comprehensive. I think if a plebiscite were widely advertised, those Palestinians in the broader diaspora who wanted to participate would make themselves known. I’d be surprised if they could manage to include every single Palestinian in the world, but a procedure along those lines would be reasonably fair.
I had no idea eating ice cream could prevent typos. I’ll have to try that.
Dude, don’t even worry about it. I’ve recently been reading through Edward Said’s collected essays since 1993 (“Peace and its Discontents”, “The End of the Peace Process” and now “From Oslo to Iraq and the Roadmap”) and even he changed his mind. Despite being one of the very earliest proponents of two states within the PLO, from about 1996 onwards he occasionally wrote in favor of bi-nationalism, abandoning the strategy for a separate state and focusing on democracy and equal rights instead (he often writes with admiration about Azmi Bishara). This was a logical extension of his work in a way as he spent the majority of his efforts in the Arabic language press (before the outbreak of the second intifada anyway) mercilessly criticising Arafat and the lack democracy in the PA.
Refugee and diaspora Palestinians are traditionally more often against two states, for obvious reasons. Factor in the Palestinian-Israelis, and a future equivalent of the ANC (a “New PLO” if you will) that explicitly articulated bi-nationalism and democracy and you’d have a pretty solid majority in favour in my opinion.
Ernie: I’m finding “How many states?” a good read: thanks. Long though! Taking me a while to get through it.
I’m delighted you like it. Sorry about the length. I was trying to articulate all the stuff I’d been thinking about for a long time. One of the reasons I don’t post much anymore is that I’ve said most of what I have to say. Sometimes I wish the hasbaristas would come up with something new to demolish. It can get tedious refuting the same old rubbish all the time.
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Just so people know, I’m 99% sure this isn’t really deborah fink. I’ll delete it when I find out for sure.
The previous comment was not left by myself and was probably left by an imposter who has a tendency to impersonate campaigners for justice in Palestine.
I expect it is also the same imposter who sends out hoax news releases and adopts different personas, e.g. Rev. Charles Edgbaston, Batsheva Waley al-Mutawakil and her ‘husband’, Dr. Muhsir al-Mutawakil, Clyde Strombopolous, Hilton Anderson and Badlev Singh. In all cases, the headers of the emails can be traced to Canada, though they indeed may be forged.
Thanks, deborah. I’ve now deleted his comments.
oh sir thats great that you thought of great inspiration to the people who fight against oppression and supressions great idea of non voilent march i wish you and all all the best will try to be your part