The
end of the road for unilateralism?
By Khaled Diab and
Katleen Maes
March 2006
Part I: Getting to
the grassroots of the Middle East conflict
Olmert
unveiled plans that, by 2010, Kadima will have settled Israel’s final borders.
Whether he will be able to do it in the probable absence of the
larger-than-life Sharon, and the narrow margin by which his party won the poll,
is open to question. The West Bank wall will represent Israel’s eastern border,
including Arab East Jerusalem, confirming earlier fears that the ‘security
fence’ would, one day, serve the dual purpose of setting Israel’s main de facto
frontiers.
Some West
Bank settlements will be evacuated while others will be “converged” into three
vast blocks, including some of the Holy Land’s richest farmland and water
resources. There will be a permanent severance between the West Bank and Gaza.
In addition, Israel will retain security control over the Jordan Valley. “It
will only be a civilian disengagement, not a military disengagement,” Avi
Dichter, former director of Israel’s Shin Bet security service and a top Kadima
official, told Israel Radio.
But there’s
seems to be disagreement amongst Kadima’s top brass about how to proceed.
Dichter is a firm believer in the myth perpetuated by former Prime Minister
Ehud Barak that there is no ‘partner for peace’ in the Palestinian camp.
“Israel will have to define, by itself, its final borders,” he argued.
Kadima’s
official position is that it will not impose but agree its final borders with
Palestine. But even its acting leader is wavering: “We will try to achieve this
in an agreement with the Palestinians... If not, Israel will take control of
its own fate, and in consensus among our people and with the agreement of our
friends in the world, especially US President George Bush, we will act,” Olmert
said in a televised speech.
Speaking at
the Arab League Summit in Khartoum, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned:
“This [election] result will not change [anything] as long as the agenda of
Olmert himself does not change and he does not abandon unilateral
arrangements.”
Khaled
Mesh’aal, the exiled head of Hamas’s political bureau, was more adamant in his
condemnation. “The Zionist position, be it that of Kadima or others, is one
that buries the peace process, negates its existence and does not give it a
chance. That position is a declaration of war against the Palestinian people.”
What this
underscores is that unilateralism has its limitations and, while it may buy
time for a while, it will eventually breakdown if not complemented by a
mutually acceptable and negotiated resolution. “We in the peace movement
maintained that the end of occupation had to be the beginning of peace,”
renowned Israeli novelist and peacenik Amos Oz wrote in The Guardian. “But what
the Olmert government seems to hold out is not ‘land for peace’ but ‘land for
time’.”
Also in The Guardian, columnist
Jonathan Freedland wrote: “There are enormous problems with [Kadima’s
unilateral] approach. First, it seeks to ignore the Palestinians completely; it
aims to shove them out of sight, behind a high wall where Israelis won’t have
to see or even think about them. The psychology that underpins both the wall
and unilateralism is ugly.”
Against the
will of the people
Ironically, this fixation on unilateralism
swims against the current of popular opinion on both sides. An Israeli-Palestinian
public opinion poll conducted by Harry S Truman Research Institute for the
Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University and the Palestinian Centre for
Policy and Survey Research between March 16 and 21 showed that on overwhelming
majority of people were in favour of a negotiated settlement rather than
continued unilateral disengagements. “Three-quarters of the Palestinians (73%)
and Israelis (76%) prefer to see further disengagements in the West Bank
negotiated between the PA and Israel,” the institute revealed.
“The relevant fact is not the result of this poll, this week, on this issue. It is the increasingly clear, consistent trend over time, among both warring publics, towards a negotiated, fair, legitimate peace accord,” a 29-March Daily Star editorial argued. “Palestinian, Israeli and other Arab leaders should be morally bound – if not also politically enticed – to respond to such popular majorities that clearly prefer a negotiated peace to perpetual war.”
Sheep without a shepherd
Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians
appear to have a leadership with the courage and determination to fulfil the
will of their war-weary and embattled peoples to reach a peaceful negotiated
solution to the endless conflict.
Describing Israeli-Jews as “sheep without a
shepherd”, Dan Bar-On, professor of psychology at Ben-Gurion University, wrote
in an article for the Common Ground News Service: “We need another
leadership… We need a leadership that can rid itself of a cheap sense of power…
We need a rooted leadership that can act with ‘sensitivity and firmness’… A new
leadership should talk differently to the Palestinians... We should learn how
to talk to them as respectable partners, sharing the same pain-ridden land,
sharing a long common tradition of family-oriented faith.”
Palestinians also lack an effective shepherd.
The late Yasser
Arafat failed to deliver them a homeland, compromised most of their rights,
and established a corrupt and authoritarian ruling authority which, rather than
improve life for the average Palestinian, often made it worse. The militant
groups and their violent resistance have also been ineffectual against the
occupation with its superior firepower and its dogged determination. This
resolve is rooted in the fact that, unlike other colonial powers, the coloniser
here has no distant homeland to return to once the temperature rises. Israelis
and Palestinians are stuck in the same boat together, so it’s best for all
concerned that they keep it afloat.
Walking and
talking peace
It is high time for Israeli and Palestinian
public to take matters into their own hands. The peace movement needs to get
‘militant’ and head for the safety of the moral high ground. Israelis need to
oppose vocally and in large numbers the abuses visited on the Palestinians on
their behalf. Palestinians need to declare openly and in large number that they
will continue to resist occupation, but peacefully, without further bloodshed,
and any Palestinian killed by Israeli fire would be Israel’s sole moral
responsibility and cannot be passed off as a ‘retaliation’.
Both Israelis and Palestinians can organise
campaigns of disobedience and mass public protest. They can organise, for
instance, a simultaneous march on the separation wall, coming at it from both
sides, and form a human chain that stretches from deep inside the Palestinian
territories, over the wall and into Israel. Such a march may only draw small
numbers at first but, with time, and if held at regular intervals, it can
galvanise mass support.
Another attractive option is for grass-roots
leaders from both sides, like ancient tribal chiefs, to negotiate a ‘people’s
peace deal’. For too long, the talking has been left to diplomats, politicians
and outsiders. Even the unofficial Geneva Peace Accords of 2003 were negotiated
by top-level former Israeli and Palestinian politicians under the auspices of
an international NGO. Now the time is ripe for ordinary Palestinians and
Israelis to show that they can do better than their leaders.
Some might criticise these suggestions and
argue that this is nothing more than fluffy peacenik talk that will appeal only
to ‘bleeding heart’ liberals but won’t get you very far among ordinary,
hardened people faced with the grim reality on the ground, not to mention the
ideological chasm separating both sides. Contrary to what many might intuit,
Orthodox Jews and Islamists are not necessarily the biggest obstacle to
progress, given the right approach.
“We assessed, in 1999, an Israeli-Palestinian
inter-religious dialogue held in Khan Unis, Gaza and found the most significant
positive changes occurring among participants [who were the] most religious and
considered most resistant to change,” wrote Ben Mollov, professor of political
science and conflict management at Bar-Ilan University, in an article for the Common
Ground News Service. “Why does this approach to dialogue – a cultural religious
approach – seem to offer possibilities where other forms of dialogue and peace
building might not? On a basic level one aspect is that of commonalty – no two
religions are more similar in structure and practice than Judaism and Islam.”
Mollov noted that Jewish civilisation in the
Holy Land took place long before the arrival of Islam, and that, for many long
centuries, the Jewish people were not the dominant political force in the area.
“Perhaps in such a dialogue we will begin to realize that each side will have
in some way to make accommodation for the other in their narrative and
worldview.”
Once people take their fate into their own
hands and let the politicians squabble amongst themselves, they will hopefully
arrive at the, at present, radical conclusion that the only feasible,
long-term, sustainable resolution to their conflict in such a small land is to
create a single
bi-national state. A one-state solution, probably operating in a federal
framework, would leave Israelis with their ‘Eretz Yisra’el’ intact and give
Palestinians back their complete ancestral homeland – the only catch is that
they need to learn to share it fairly between themselves. Together,
Palestinians and Israelis can integrate this war-worn land into the region and
turn it into a prosperous hub in the Middle East.
Part I: Getting to
the grassroots of the Middle East conflict
ã2006 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website
is the copyright of Khaled Diab.