Palestine

THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR ON PALESTINE

Rashid Khalidi

When something is really really complicated, I try to simplify. In chess, for example, this means trading pieces of equal value so that I can understand the possible combinations of moves a little more easily.  The Story of Palestine/Israel is complicated.

I know the rules of Chess. I know some of the strategies of chess. I know that there is a lot about chess that I do not know. Palestine? Same! Israel? I know a little more. I don’t know how one would “exchange pieces of equal value” to simplify the game.

Thought experiment: One of my favorite books as a kid painted a history of the world if the Confederacy had achieved independence in 1863. For example, I have no doubt that over time, chattel  slavery would have ended — as it did in Brazil whose society had been as committed to slavery as any of the confederate states—I actually met a family whose ancestors moved to Rio de Janeiro where slavery was legal rather than live in a “free” United States after the Civil War.  In that setting, would we say that the Confederate States of America would be considered democratic? Western? I think yes. There would be elections, a congress, a president, it would be part of Western Culture—and yet, I have no doubt that given the history we witnessed in the Jim Crow South, that in the Confederate States of America, there would be easily identified second class citizens—could they vote? Own property? Serve on juries? Have access to good jobs? Be subject to random violence with no place to seek justice? We in the USA would be forever critical of that situation—but could we—would we— overlook it in our struggles with Nazis, the Soviet Union, larger economic needs, etc? Would we try to influence the independent Confederacy or leave it as a sovereign nation alone to do what it would with its own people? Having fought a war against each other, would antipathy rule the day for generations to come? We face this question with modern day Israel.  It has the vestiges of what we recognize as democracy—the forms and bodies—but at its heart, it is not democratic as we have come to define it—and from this, endless conflict.  I would argue that the starting point for both sides has become meaningless as Israel has stood strongly for three generations. Starting over as before it existed is not an option. What is important is how things stand now with an eye on a future.

From the referenced book which looks at the Palestinian movement and history through Palestinian eyes —-and which does give me pause:

1895 journal entry of Theodore Herzl, a father of the Zionist movement-

“We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

Herzl was a European with assumptions made given those times. While noting 95% of the population of Palestine was non-Jewish, he encouraged mass immigration of Jews to Palestine noting it would be, “good for the native inhabitants,” something European colonists have argued for centuries.

Our contemporary, an Israeli politician, offers a modern point of view directly evolved from the Zionist movement: (Likud Knesset member Miki Zohar)—“The Palestinian does not have the right of self-determination because he is not the proprietor of the land.  I want him as a resident because of my honesty, as he was born here, he lives here, and I would never tell him to leave. I regret to say it but they suffer from one major defect: they were not born Jews.”

This “Middle Eastern conflict” has been front and center my whole conscious life. Regarding Israel and Palestine: what do I really know? The above book presents a view of the last one hundred years of history with a Palestinian point of view. He leaves me reconsidering what I thought was straightforward.

Straightforward, how? I have prejudices: in fourth grade, my brother was reading voraciously and one of the topics was the Holocaust. At an impressionable age, I saw the great wrong, photos documenting atrocities, and I found myself sympathetic to, “those people.”  I personally knew no Jews. I had lots of company.

As an adolescent, I read Leon Uris voraciously and once more, in the setting of historic fiction and this terrible atrocity in Europe found myself emotionally supporting any cause that would right this wrong done to the Jews in Europe—it was aspirational and it was emotional and it was not well informed. It certainly did not consider non-Europeans affected by the movement.

I delivered newspapers in early High School and remember the 1967 “seven day war” through the headlines of the San Diego Union. The framing in the press and conversations in general was one of this underdog, never catching a break, always fighting for its freedom, surrounded by enemies with vastly larger populations, AND still coming out on top. Inspirational stuff not unlike the veteran war stories from WWII.  I was proud of their victory!

If you don’t recall, this was a “preemptive war,” ie the Israeli’s fearing imminent attack, struck first.  The author asserts that no Arab nation bordering Israel in 1967 had any desire nor the capacity or competence to seriously challenge the well trained and well armed Israeli army. The notion that the preemptive strike was done in self defense, he argues, was not real. The results of that war confirm his point. He would call it  a land grab, consistent with the long term goals of Zionism (a greater Israel or Eretz Israel) —and it was green-lighted by the US State Department whose vision was informed by concerns of the Cold War. Russia was nurturing relationships broadly with third world countries, former English colonies in the Middle East, specifically.

The Cold War guided our sense of right and wrong, effective and ineffective, our short term and our long term interests.

Part of my college experience was for the first time in my life, being immersed in dormitory life with many Jewish people (the reaction in the food line when I asked what a Bagel was remains epic). One friend in his first or second college summer took advantage of the Israeli Government sponsored free round trip to Israel and traveled the Middle East and Europe. When he came back, he regaled us with stories of travel in the Soviet Union (he would go on to be an economics professor at Berkeley) and Israel. I was surprised and shocked by his unsparing observations of some people he encountered in Israel—something along the lines of, “The men and soldiers in Israel are assholes! They are psychological and physical bullies and won’t hear of anyone else’s point of view!” I had my first visit with the notion that one can be fine with Jewish culture as I understood it in the US and concerned about Jewish nationalism as practiced in the  Middle East.

An Evangelical friend would relate to me his experience going to college in Israel and his sense that there was a very cynical “industry” pandering to Evangelicals who long for very specific experiences in the Holy Land. He was fully aware that to the Israeli citizens providing services to Evangelicals, there was no shared faith, or joy,  or sense of being allies. He left me with the impression this was a straightforward cynical. business opportunity that was exploited to the max—and I would add, the political ramifications are staring us in the face.

The case is made that coming from Europe/the West,  Israel has had talent and resources for making its case in our society: Congress, the press, and Hollywood. It has done this well. The Palestinian leadership has been fragmented, disoriented, not well educated regarding western politics and processes; he makes the case that all current Palestinian leaders with power are morally and politically bankrupt if not inept.

He believes the US and its overt alliance with Israel make any pretensions to a role as peacemaker is also bankrupt. Our government, in participating in celebrated negotiations (Madrid/Oslo) on this question assented to Israeli control over who could represent the Palestinians and which topics were allowed on the table. His point: these were not real, much less fair negotiations, and the Palestinian leadership failed its people participating on that basis.  There was no need for Israel to participate in such negotiations without the US in lock step with them. Any American negotiator suggesting a more equal footing as a basis for negotiations was quickly denounced as “anti-Israeli.”

If you are not with us, you are against us.

Of interest: he points out that the Palestinian leadership and cause have been on the ropes many times. Yet the cause persists.  There is broad and growing support in the world for “Palestine.” The force applied to destroying it (recurring wars, assassinations, exile, bribery, propaganda, failure to adhere to international or UN agreements) has in part contributed to the outcome we are watching on television. He goes on to observe that world wide—there is support for Palestinians because over time the appreciation for the fact that this was a colonial effort after the times when such efforts had a chance of success had ended, is failing. The nature of Israel’s using anti-democratic processes on a captive population within its control is another foundational problem. Difficult for American citizens, the words and history of Colonialism are much more impactful for the rest of the world than they are for us. We are the outlier here.

His suggestions and conclusions?  This book was written pre October 7. He points out that the leadership of Palestinians is decimated and bankrupt. He feels world opinion is increasingly in favor of a Palestinian state that should have full self determination and its own government,  and that the place it likely needs to be is within Eretz Israel. This being unacceptable to the preeminent regional power, Israel,  any reasonable solution will occur over many generations. The Palestinian leadership to come will come from disadvantaged circumstances—-isolated or exiled away from Palestine (Dubai, anyone?) o

r effectively in lockdown in the West Bank. The United States, being an overt ally of Israel, despite the cold war calculations no longer being pressing,  cannot be a viable part of the formal or fair resolution of this conflict in the foreseeable future, especially with our own legislative body in, “lock down.”