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NEWS & LETTERS, NOVEMBER 2003EditorialTwo states for two peoplesThe conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians continues to grind onward with a relentless persistence. The level of animosity between the two peoples is at an unprecedented level. Since the provocative visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount in 2000, the rapid downward spiral of relations has virtually extinguished any memory of the conciliatory period of the Oslo Accords. Events since those days have seemed to confirm the most dire fear of each side. The Palestinians now believe that the Israelis never intended to curtail the building of settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, let alone dismantle and abandon the numerous and far-flung existing ones. For their part, many Israelis now believe that the Palestinians never relinquished the demand for the unconditional right of those who left or were forcibly removed from their homes in the war of 1948--and their descendants--to return. The government of Ariel Sharon bears the lion’s share of responsibility for the level of acrimony that has been reached. Far from having been given an incentive to seek a peace by the American overthrow of Saddam in Iraq, Sharon’s government continues to press on with an extremely heavy-handed occupation. The everyday humiliating tactics of the occupation include the curtailment of the freedom of movement from place to place, the collective punishment of home demolitions, and the destruction without compensation of vineyards and orchards that are deemed to be too close to strategic military checkpoints. More recent innovations in the conflict include assassination by air-to-ground missile--an action that regularly kills more than solely the targeted figure and often levels entire apartment buildings as well. These oppressive measures have turned the villages and towns of the occupied territories into places where unemployment is the norm and resentment against the occupier smolders. SHARON'S WALL The newest and most devastating development of this period is the wall. Sharon has launched the construction of an enormous wall to divide the West Bank from Israel. Long resistant to such a move because of his concern that a wall would physically separate Israel proper from the settlements he supports so fervently, Sharon has overcome his reluctance by plotting a course for its construction that will take the wall deep into the West Bank to include many settlements on Israel’s side. The wall will not only diverge from Israel’s 1967 eastern border, but will also run far to the west of the Jordan River. The completion of this barrier will literally make prisoners of most of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. This period of the second intifada is further marked by a retrogression on the Palestinian side. The abhorrent tactic of the suicide bombing against unsuspecting Israeli civilians, introduced by the Islamic fundamentalists, has been adopted by the secular Palestinian nationalists. The Islamic fundamentalists and the secular groups have even carried out coordinated actions, blurring the distinction between them. Even secular women have perpetrated mass murder by bombing. The degeneration of the conflict has also had ramifications among the international supporters of the Palestinians. Young people in the U.S. have taken up the Palestinian cause along with anti-war and anti-globalization efforts. Many have visited the West Bank and Gaza to see first-hand the effects of the occupation and to protest shoulder-to-shoulder with the Palestinians. One activist, Rachel Corrie, lost her life there. Yet the language and arguments of the Palestinian solidarity movement here are marked by a lack of clarity about the nature of the conflict and the future of the region. For example, the official summation of the recent New Jersey Palestinian Solidarity conference that gained attention for being barred from its original location at Rutgers University, is typically over-burdened with the repetitive use of the term “Zionism” as the object of its critique. The reality is that the Zionist project was achieved in full with the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the beginning of the occupation, the question has not been about the nature of Zionism or its aims, but instead the kind of state the citizens of Israel want it to become. Do Israelis want their country to continue as an oppressive occupier in which fundamentalist Judaism increasingly erodes the state’s original democratic and secular character and further alienates its substantial Arab minority, or do they want a different path altogether? Does Israel want to become a state that walls up a whole country that needs work only to import labor-power from all over the world to cultivate its fields and build its houses? POSSIBLE PEACE PLAN? The only welcome development in the region has been word of a peace plan worked out between elements close to the Palestinian Authority and representatives of former members of Israel’s Labor government and activists of the peace movement. The plan--referred to as the Geneva Accords--reportedly takes the end of the Barak government’s negotiations as its point of departure. It is premature for any show of enthusiasm for a yet-unreleased plan that was developed entirely without the participation of an Israeli government that has considerable public support. Yet any such initiative should be received by international friends of the Palestinian people with an open mind. Despite the turn that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians has taken since 2000, two states for two peoples with no wall between continues to be the only political solution for the region. |
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