PALESTINE: Separation or unity? - Azmi Bishara

[sukant....@gmail.com]

Separation or unity
Azmi Bishara, Al-Ahram Weekly

The first and second Intifadas in the West Bank and Gaza steered the
Palestinian liberation project away from unity with the rest of
Palestine. In his second instalment on Israel's historic options, Azmi
Bishara argues that there is no reason now why that unity cannot be
recaptured

March 28, 2008

Negotiations on the "two-state solution" have been voided of all
substance. The Palestinian national liberation movement has lost all
its sources of strength as a liberation movement, including its
ability to rely on the Arab community instead of the "international
community". It lost and forfeited its sources of strength before ever
becoming a state and securing national sovereignty. It became the
Palestinian Authority, an entity totally dependent upon negotiations,
America's and Israel's good intentions, Israeli public opinion and
other such factors. Negotiations over the Palestinian state have been
reduced to a process of blackmail in which concessions are demanded
and offered and fundamental rights are bartered away.

From the attitude that negotiations are an alternative to resistance,
as opposed to the culmination of resistance, a new Palestinian
leadership was born, a leadership so bound to the negotiating process
that it is existentially dependent upon it. Israel knows that; we know
that. Moreover, in this process, what is most essential to the concept
of negotiation has been drained and replaced by Israeli handouts and
the tokens of good intention that this leadership needs in exchange
for laying siege to, hunting down and killing those Palestinian forces
that have chosen and adhered to the path of resistance.

As a result, things that were taken as givens under occupation, such
as electricity, water, freedom of movement, jobs, food and medicine
have become aspects of the negotiation process. They have become
prizes flaunted in the face of those forces that "provoke" or "upset"
Israel by "exposing themselves and their society to a blockade" for
their refusal to give up on resistance, thereby depriving their
society of those "great achievements" that, in fact, had been the
legal responsibility of the occupation to provide.

In the national liberation struggle phase, Palestinians who offered
themselves as intermediaries with the occupation, for the issuing of
travel and work permits, or distribution of electricity and fuel
supplies, would be regarded as agents. They were seen as lending
themselves to an Israeli strategy for creating an alternative
Palestinian leadership to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO),
which at the time was viewed as a national resistance leadership
because it refused to accept services as a solution, instead insisting
on the end of the occupation itself. In the current phase of
negotiating over the creation of a state, the provision of fundamental
services has become an Israeli-Palestinian instrument for rewarding a
moderate leadership that deserves to be supported by such services and
punishing an extremist leadership by withholding these services from
Palestinians in order to force them to turn against this leadership
because it adhered to the path of resistance.

However, while the Palestinian state component of the "two-state
solution" is being voided of all substance, the Palestinian resistance
front, which currently consists, for the most part, of forces -- such
as Hamas and the Palestinian Jihad -- that espouse an Islamist
ideology, does not appear inclined to a democratic alternative that
would offer a choice to Israelis, such as the "one-state solution".
The idea of a single democratic state for all its citizens, Arabs and
Jews alike, has never been taken up in a serious, practical way in the
history of the struggle. The Arabs, rightfully, regarded Zionism as a
colonialist movement and they saw Zionists, who were not indigenous
inhabitants in Palestine, as colonisers bent on the goal to found a
state on a land belonging to another people. The Balfour Declaration
was no secret and the Zionist project to create a Jewish state in
Palestine had been declared for all to hear.

There would also have been some practical conceptual problems. Zionism
in practice meant, as it still does, drawing as many "pioneers" as
possible to settle in Palestine; the boundaries of who would qualify
for citizenship in a single state were never clear. Equal citizenship
is the basis and essence of the idea of co-existence in a single state
not dominated by Zionist ideology. It is also the message the Arabs
should send out in order to offer Jewish society an alternative to the
concept of a Jewish state, this alternative being the prospect of
legitimising that society's presence in Palestine on the grounds of
the principles of citizenship.

This is the message of co-existence; it is the antithesis of genocide,
expulsion, or "throwing the Jews into the sea" (that famous quotation
that is harped on by -- and to a large extent the invention of --
Zionist propaganda when, in fact, it is Israel that threw the
Palestinians into the sea and the desert). But for the Arabs to try to
pinpoint a specific cut-off date after which immigrants should not be
considered legitimate residents is not only unrealistic, it is an
unacceptable, and indeed absurd, way to define the boundaries of
citizenship.

On the other hand, and more importantly, the Zionist movement has
always insisted upon the framework of a Jewish state in Palestine as a
solution to the Jewish question. This is how Zionism has historically
defined its existence. The creation of a Jewish state was its banner
and its ultimate aim throughout its campaigns, among Jewish opinion in
the Diaspora, let alone to win the support of the Great Powers, to
obtain the Balfour Declaration, and to push the settler drive. This
state project was intended to rise from the ruins of Palestinian Arab
society and never envisioned life together with the Arabs in a single
political entity.

But there was one notable short-lived exception: the call by Hashomer
Hatzair (The Youth Guard) for a bi- national state. Nevertheless, this
stance must be seen against the backdrop of this movement's settler
activities in the 1930s and the way these conflicted with the rights
and interests of the indigenous population.

It is foolish to think that Zionism of any stripe, or Israel and any
of its political parties or even major social components, would now
accept the idea of a single democratic state as the framework of a
solution. It is simply not a subject for negotiation in the context of
current balances of power and in the sense the word "solution" is
understood these days. When the idea was suggested for a brief period
by Fatah, for example, in the 1970s, it was interpreted in Israel as
synonymous with "the destruction of Israel". The PLO had also proposed
the one-state solution, couched in the formula of a "secular
democratic state in which full equality of rights would be guaranteed
for all its inhabitants: Muslims, Christians and Jews". The PLO thus
addressed the question of religious affiliations in the state without
addressing national identity. However, it did not suggest any
mechanisms for transforming the idea into a political programme
carried out through joint Jewish-Arab efforts, for example -- indeed,
through the liberation of Arab Palestine. In all events, the idea did
not stay in circulation long.

The single democratic state is different from the bi- national state
solution currently being aired by some Arab and Jewish intellectuals
and, as noted above, first proposed by the socialist Hashomer Hatzair
movement in the 1930s. The difference is that this idea acknowledges
the existence of two national groups in Palestine, each of which would
form a distinct entity within a single state. It thereby fulfils each
group's demand for national expression, but within the boundaries of a
single state that recognises them both. Historically, Hashomer Hatzair
dropped this idea quickly and never picked up on it again. It was
rejected both by Palestinians and by Zionists, even if it echoed
faintly here or there in Hebrew University corridor and among some
prominent, albeit very few, Jewish intellectuals before 1948 within
the framework of the Brit Shalom movement.

The bi-national model, which acknowledges the existence of two
national identities, one indigenous, the other exogenous, is closer to
the Palestinian reality than the South African model. In new South
Africa, as reconstructed after the collapse of apartheid, the concept
of nationalities was ignored in favour of the concept of cultural,
linguistic, religious and ethnic plurality within the framework of a
single citizen state. Otherwise put, the process of reconstructing
national identity in South Africa (as opposed to the French model, for
example) overtly recognises diverse ethnic, tribal, linguistic and
cultural affiliations, but it is not a multinational framework.

But even if the bi-national solution is closer to the reality in
Palestine because it addresses the indigenous/ exogenous dichotomy (in
contrast to the immigrant models of the US, Australia and New Zealand,
in which nationality is defined by citizenship with no reference to
ethnicity and diverse national expressions), it has no more chance of
being entertained diplomatically than does the single-democratic-state
solution. Not only does the current balance of power in Palestine work
against it, the current direction of the Palestinian national movement
does too. In South Africa, the national liberation movement, as
embodied by the African National Congress, actively espoused the
course of national liberation through the pursuit of a single multi-
cultural state founded upon the concept of equal citizenship. The
Palestinian national liberation movement, by the end of the 1970s, had
set its sights on the creation of a separate Palestinian state.

Because of this, the first and second Intifadas in the West Bank and
Gaza were steered away from, rather than towards, unity with the rest
of Palestine. Because of this, too, the Palestinian political map
today may be divided over many issues but it is still pushing towards
the creation of a separate Palestinian state. That this should be the
case, however, does not mean that the fact that some democratically
minded Palestinian intellectuals have recently begun to advocate the
single- democratic-state option should not be taken seriously; indeed,
there is every reason that this concept should be discussed seriously.
I do not believe that there are great ideological or structural
obstacles to this solution from the Palestinian standpoint. It is also
in the interest of the Palestinian people to espouse a democratic
programme that includes the right of return, insists on certain
inalienable rights, and gives Jews in Israel reasonable cause to
espouse this solution, too. If the Palestinians adopt it, then there
can be no serious Arab obstacle to it.

Clearly it is pointless to wait for large segments of Israeli society
to come around to this stance. No people willingly gives up its
privileges, and for the Jews this is what the one-state solution would
mean, to a greater extent in the secular citizen state formula than in
the bi- national federal formula. There is, thus, very little prospect
of the rise of a socio-political movement in Israel advocating a
solution that conflicts with the concept of the Jewish state. The most
one hears from the Zionist left is a call to make a separate
Palestinian state out of the West Bank and Gaza. The Palestinian right
of return continues to be rejected out of hand.

The problem is that those who have recently begun to espouse the "one-
state solution" have done so out of conviction that there is no hope
for the "two-state solution" (based on pre-June 1967 borders and the
principle of the right of return), rather than by way of perceiving an
opportunity for a one-state solution to succeed. But the failure of
the two-state solution does not, in itself, furnish the conditions
necessary for the success of the one-state solution.

As much as I believe that the one-state solution is the worthiest in
that it best meets the conditions for the fulfilment of Palestinian
rights and extends a democratic message to Israeli society, in the
currently prevailing language and mindset of negotiated solutions it
doesn't stand a chance. This is primarily because Israel refuses so
much as to even contemplate the idea and because there is not a single
Israeli political force capable of elevating it as a serious item on
the public agenda, unless of course the objective is to frighten
public opinion away from retaining total hegemony over the
Palestinians. Indeed, this is how the one-state idea has been wielded
so far in Israel: negatively, as a means for intimidating public
opinion into agreeing to let go of densely populated Palestinian
areas, such as Gaza. Moreover, it is in this spirit, by way of a fear
that realities may develop in a way that would propel towards the "one-
state solution", Israel has begun to come around to the "two-state
solution".

Unfortunately, the formula that Israel is currently proposing in this
regard, as couched in the Bush and Sharon "visions", has so little to
do with the actual creation of two sovereign states living side-by-
side that it effectively proves the futility of the two-state
solution. Worse yet, the Palestinian elite born from the "peace
process" along with Arab regimes that are itching to put this burden
behind them are helping Israel to market the rhetoric and stage the
scene so as to make it appear as though the creation of a Palestinian
state within the framework of a two-state solution is really on the
cards. So for the time being we will be hearing a lot more about "land
swaps" (without Jerusalem), "recognition of the right to return"
without the exercise of this right, the creation of an entity without
full sovereignty but called a state, and other such devices and
euphemisms of which there seems to be an endless supply.

Would such a settlement bring peace, even if not a just peace? An
answer to this question will be offered in the third episode.