19 September 2005
In this article I would like to
explain why Zionism, as a political ideology, is a major obstacle to
resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Let me stress that I am concerned
here with Zionist ideology rather than with the practice of
the Zionist project. That the latter is an absolute obstacle to resolution
of the conflict is self-evident: it is a colonizatory
project, an implantation of settlers, which has - necessarily - been
implemented at the expense of the mass of indigenous people and by denial
of their national rights. Indeed, the Zionist project is the root cause of
the conflict.
Zionist ideology is clearly
unacceptable from the perspective of the Palestinian Arab people. But here
I propose to consider the case against Zionism from a somewhat less
obvious perspective - that of the settler nation.
How may the conflict be resolved?
Let us first ask ourselves what we
mean by 'resolution of the conflict'.
I have argued elsewhere[1] that the
Zionist colonization of Palestine - unlike the colonization of southern
Africa, for example - was not based on exploiting the labour power of the indigenous people, but
has aimed, quite consciously and deliberately, at their elimination.[2]
In several other settler states
belonging to the same species of colonization, the settlers have succeeded
in eliminating the entire indigenous population or in reducing it to small
and relatively insignificant remnants. The conflict between colonizers and
colonized ended with the overwhelming and virtually total victory of the
former, and was in this sense 'resolved'.
Such an outcome is very unlikely in
the case of the Israeli settler state. To be sure, the historical record
suggests that Israel's Zionist leaders will exploit any opportunity
(she 'at kosher in Zionist parlance) for further territorial expansion
and ethnic cleansing. Moreover, the more daring among them will attempt
actively to create such opportunities. But however far this process may
realistically be pushed, Israel will always find itself surrounded by
Arabs, by the Arab nation, of which the Palestinian Arab people is a
constituent part.[3]
In the end, the conflict in this
case can only be resolved by accommodating the two national groups
directly involved: the Palestinian Arabs and the Hebrews.[4] And
no accommodation can be a true resolution unless it is based on equality
of group (collective) rights between these two national groups (as well as
equality of individual rights to all). This is a minimal necessary
condition because its absence means, by definition, that one of these
groups will be underprivileged and oppressed. National oppression
inexorably leads to national struggle - the very opposite of resolution.
Note that I am not specifying any
state-institutional framework for an equality-based resolution. In
principle, many alternative frameworks are possible. I do not wish to
enter here into the controversy between those who support the so-called
'two-state solution' and those who advocate a single 'secular' state.[5]
In my opinion, this controversy, in the way it
is actually conducted, is a diversion. Given the present balance of power,
no true resolution is possible in the short or medium term. In these
circumstances a 'two-state' settlement is bound to be a travesty: a
nominally independent Palestinian 'state' that is in reality a
disconnected set of Indian Reservations policed by corrupt elites acting
as proxies for a dominant Israel - a regional hegemonic nuclear
super-power, in its turn a local hatchet man for the global hyper-power. A
one-state setup will be no better: an extension of direct military
occupation and subjugation.
The regional context
But no balance of power lasts
forever. A proper resolution will become possible in the longer term,
given a radical socio-political transformation of the Arab world and some
form of unification of the Arab nation (of which the Palestinian Arab
people is a component). In such circumstances a resolution of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict will necessarily be embedded in a regional
constellation, a confederation including the entire Arab East. For this
reason it is, in my opinion, an error to think of a resolution of the
conflict within a framework confined to the borders of Palestine/Israel
(whether as a single state or as divided into two states) in isolation
from its regional context.
The impossible as enemy of the
difficult
Let me return to the main theme: an
accommodation of the two national entities, based on equality of
collective national rights.
We must not underestimate the
enormous difficulty of such accommodation.
The Hebrew nation will have to give
up its long-standing dominance and the privileges that go with it.
That this is just doesn't make it easy. Indeed,
it can only become realistic given a balance of power very different from
the present one.
But precisely in such circumstances
it will be very difficult for the Palestinian Arabs to accept that the
Hebrew nation, created in the Palestinian homeland as a consequence of
Zionist colonization, ought to be accommodated and granted equal national
rights.
The great difficulty that this
represents for mainstream Palestinian nationalism is made clear by
arguments put forward by Fateh (the dominant
component of the PLO led by the late Yasir
Arafat) as far back as 1970, advocating its call for a 'Secular Democratic
Palestine'.[6] By that time, mainstream Palestinian nationalism
was coming to terms with the painful realization that the Israelis were
there to stay, and had to be accommodated in a future free Palestine. But
it denied the highly inconvenient fact that Zionist colonization had given
birth to a new Hebrew nation - a fact that is
indeed an enormously complicating factor in the conflict. The adjective
'secular' in the formula 'Secular Democratic Palestine' encoded this
denial. In a programmatic article - unsigned, but to my certain knowledge
written by Nabil Sha'ath
(then one of the main Fateh ideologues and now
a senior minister in the Palestinian Authority) -
Fateh explicitly rejected the idea of a bi-national
Palestine as a 'misconception': '[t]he call for a non-sectarian Palestine
should not be confused with ... a bi-national state'. It argued that in
the reality of Palestine 'the term bi-national and the Arab-Jewish
dichotomy [are] meaningless, or at best quite
dubious'. Moreover, the article stresses that '[t]he liberated Palestine will be part of the Arab
Homeland, and will not be another alien state within it'; and looks
forward to '[t]he eventual unity of Palestine with other Arab
States'.[7]
In the programmatic formula
'Secular Democratic Palestine' proposed at that time by
Fateh, the adjective 'secular' was inserted
not in opposition to 'theocratic' (a theocratic democratic state is in any
case a nonsensical concept) but in opposition to 'bi-national'. The
intention was to present the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in religious
terms and to propose a future Palestine in which Jews would have
individual equality and freedom of religious worship in a country whose
nationality would be Arab.
Yet without accepting the fact that
a Hebrew nation exists, and without according it national rights equal to
those of the Palestinian Arab people, the conflict cannot be resolved. Let
me repeat:
inequality
is oppression, the opposite of resolution. It will be the delicate task of
the most progressive political forces among the Palestinians (and in the
region as a whole) to persuade the Palestinian masses of this.[8]
It is at this point that Zionist
ideology constitutes a major obstacle. For Zionism - like a father denying
the existence of his unwanted child - denies the existence of a Hebrew
nation, newly created in Palestine/Israel.[9] It shares this
denial with mainstream Palestinian nationalism (as illustrated by the
programmatic article quoted above), but for a very different reason.
According to Zionist ideology, all the Jews around the world constitute a
single nation. The true homeland of every Jew is not the country in which
s/he may have been born and in which his or her family may have resided
for generations. The homeland of this alleged nation is the Biblical Land
of Israel, over which it has an ancient inalienable — indeed God-given -
national right. Non-Jews living in the Jewish homeland are mere foreign
interlopers. Zionist colonization is justified as 'return to the homeland'
- a right possessed by Jews but denied to those foreign interlopers, the
Palestinian refugees, who have been legitimately evicted from the Jewish
homeland. There is no Hebrew nation but merely members of the worldwide
Jewish nation who have already returned to their homeland, an advance
guard of their brethren in the Diaspora, who have a right - indeed a
sacred duty - to follow the vanguard and be 'ingathered' in the Land of
Israel.
Now, my argument is quite simple.
In an eventual accommodation, in the framework of a resolution of the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Hebrew nation can legitimately claim
acceptance as an actually existing nation. The only justification of this
difficult claim is the pragmatic one, that otherwise the conflict cannot
be resolved. But it cannot possibly make and justify this claim while it
is in thrall to an ideology that denies its own national existence and
instead claims a right over the whole Land of Israel on behalf of an
alleged worldwide nation. No accommodation, no resolution, will be
possible so long as Israelis subscribe to a claim that demands from the
Palestinians (and from the Arab nation as a whole) not only retroactive legitimization of past Zionist colonization,
but, in effect, an acceptance of an alleged continuing right to
future further 'ingathering' - which implies further colonization and
expansion. Such an impossible claim precludes a true resolution of the
conflict.
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