Mikey links to an article in the SMH on how the Irish peace process of power sharing gives hope for the Palestinian issue to be resolved. I was going to reply to his post in comments but it got a little long. This is not an examination of Mikey's post but a criticism of the article and a suggestion that even though it says one good thing, which Mikey picked up, it continues another bad thing, which he might have missed.
"Almost every armed struggle is underpinned by grandiose claims of ideological purity. Any engagement with the electoral process erodes those justifications, because it brings the would-be revolutionaries into the messy business of realpolitik, however reluctantly, and makes it more difficult for them to ignore the will of the broad mass of people, who are almost never as radical as the guerillas themselves.
Making peace with erstwhile violent groups is a delicate business: it requires not merely pressure or concessions, but a nerve-wracking combination of both. But now is the time to engage with the Palestinians.
The late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat used to talk about a "peace of the brave". He never showed that bravery. Neither Israel nor its friends in the West should be found wanting now."
Say what you like about Arafat's legendary corruption but he was prepared to accept the Oslo agreement which would have turned Palestine into a series of Bantustans connected by strips of Israeli held territory. He was prepared to give up the right of return for Palestinian refugees. He recognised Israel, despite the fact that Israel has never and will never recognise Palestine. He marginalised the kill 'em all radicals in the Palestinian govt. Even while radicals in the Israeli government (Netanyahu, Sharon) became prominent.
Gush Shalom describes Arafat's lack of bravery in negotiating with Israel.
All Arafat ever got for his trouble was constant undermining and closed doors. Starting with creation of Hamas by Israel to oppose his secular Fatah. The murders of moderate opponents of Israel in Palestine, the marginalisation of moderate voices and an endless supply of guns, money and political support from the west to Israel to terrorise him and his people. Not once did Israel or the west ever allow Arafat to go back to his people with something to say, "We have been heard." Every opportunity to humiliate and belittle him was taken. Even when Palestinians hold elections and the wrong people win we hold an entire nation hostage and slowly starve them to death simply for exercising the rights and values we spent decades screaming at them to exercise.
After all that he gets derided in an article purporting that, "all armed struggle is underpinned by grandiose claims of ideological purity". Goddamn right. Even when faced with an example of a leader forced to compromise and detested by many of his people for it, the author is unable to sully their ideological purity and entertain the concept that the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is not entirely Yasser Arafat's fault. Western purity rules demand that no Palestinian can be thought of as willing to make peace. All Palestinian demands are outrageous while Israeli demands are reasonable. When Palestinians accede to an Israeli demand Israel has no obligation to accede to one of theirs. All of this stems from the exact same ideological purity the author claimes to detest while busily employing it against Palestinians.
To sound like a broken record, it's nothing new. The same purity laws once applied to the notorious terrorist Nelson Mandela and his organisation the ANC. It was Mandela who didn't have the courage to make peace, the ANC whose demands were outrageous and apartheid that seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Practically every government in the world, including the one of this country, supported apartheid. Today, you can't find an apartheid supporter (I'm looking at you, John Howard) and this is something that hasn't even been dead for 20 years.
We have killed, marginalised and ignored anyone who would negotiate with us. We repaid attempts to talk with death and suffering. We have destroyed whole countries to preserve our right to change Arab leaders like light bulbs. All the while, even now, not once have we ever considered that we might be the ones adhering to intellectual purity laws that portray us as angels and our enemies as demons.
Am I wrong? Go back to the beginning of this post and look at the picture, examine your feelings and think about what you thought when you first saw it.
8 comments:
Interesting points. Certainly both sides had elements working against the process.
Not sure what you mean by Israel creating Hamas. Do you mean the conditions that allowed Hamas to rise up? Or actual hands on involvement in the organisation's gensis. Because the latter may be a stretch. I haven't seen anything along those lines to suggest that in reality.
Arafat did have a roll in intafada which he used as a neg point. It blew up in his face though. Of course because the US were uncritically supportive of Israel post the Bush election all the ground that had been relaid towards Oslo again was utterly ruined.
The conflict won't end until the US recognises Israel bears a large chunk of the blame and forces them back to the table that's for sure.
"Not sure what you mean by Israel creating Hamas. Do you mean the conditions that allowed Hamas to rise up? Or actual hands on involvement in the organisation's genesis. Because the latter may be a stretch. I haven't seen anything along those lines to suggest that in reality."
"Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel 'aided Hamas directly – the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),' said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic [and International] Studies. Israel's support for Hamas 'was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,' said a former senior CIA official...
In a conscious effort to undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization and the leadership of Yasser Arafat, in 1978 the government of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin approved the application of Sheik Ahmad Yassin to start a "humanitarian" organization known as the Islamic Association, or Mujama. The roots of this Islamist group were in the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, and this was the seed that eventually grew into Hamas – but not before it was amply fertilized and nurtured with Israeli funding and political support.
"
you are missing my point that in agreeing to oslo the palestinian govt. gave up 78% of the land originally granted as part of palestine. the palestinian govt. were willing to let israel annex 78% of their country so they could have peace. does that sound like a fair agreement to you?
my point was that the article completely glossed over the reality of the situation to portray arafat as unwilling to negotiate when he was willing to practically surrender all the while calling on current leaders to not be so ideologically hidebound. don't you see the irony?
Wow, I did not know that. I stand corrected. My account was based on the Clinton biog where arafat apparently said to him 'man I wish I had taken that deal' in relation to Oslo after everything went to shit.
Don't get me wrong. I think Israel may well have reacted in 67 to save themselves in the 6 day war but they never gave the land back and bought the shit down on themselves.
The middle east was fucked 100 years ago, and will be fucked 100 years from now.
the american political establishment is renowned for its genuflection toward tel aviv. we haven't even gotten to the primaries yet and every potential candidate is on record offering unconditional support to israel for whatever it might choose to do. i hardly think the biography of a us president is the best place to find an unbiased account of what happened at oslo, let alone what arafat thought of it.
you also really need to have a look at the six day war again. for a start, israel started it.
Yes they started it. It was a pre-emptive strike against three surrounding enemy countries seeking to come at them - Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. All three were marshalling to come at them. What Israel did in that attack could be argued as justified given if they'd allowed themselves to be attacked they would have lost far more lives.
Don't get me wrong. Israel holding on to that land is wrong. They gave back Sinai. They should give back the west bank. And they should give back East Jerusalem.
mikey, you didn't read that link.
"In 1964, Israel began withdrawing water from the Jordan River for its National Water Carrier. The following year, the Arab states began construction of the Headwater Diversion Plan, which, once completed, would divert the waters of the Banias Stream so that the water would not enter Israel, and the Sea of Galilee, but rather flow into a dam at Mukhaiba for Jordan and Syria, and divert the waters of the Hasbani into the Litani, in Lebanon. The diversion works would have reduced the installed capacity of Israel's carrier by about 35%. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) attacked the diversion works in Syria in March, May, and August of 1965, perpetuating a prolonged chain of border violence that linked directly to the events leading to war."
you're clinging to a high noon fantasy that frankly never existed. israel had been attacking its neighbours for some time before the war. they repeatedly attacked syria and jordan precipitating the mass buildup they used as a pretext for launching the preemptive war they'd been planning for years. just like the lebanon war from last year. sorry.
A good post Gam. Yes you are right, though I don't agree that we automatically look at Arafat and think 'bad guy/stubborn resistance leader' though at times he was both those things. For me I look at him an think 'conflicted leader of a difficult and highly volatile situation'.
The worst offence though is people like Hayden saying "the middle east was fucked 100 years ago, and will be fucked 100 years from now."
It's that kind of oversimplification that stops people realising just how many shades of grey there are in conflicts like Israel-Palestine and -- well -- all conflicts probably. If indigenous Australians hadn't been so easy to dominate you could just as easily be talking about Australia, Hayden. Nothing is that simple; compromise is always necessary in today's much higher population world than when genocide could be much more small-scale and easy.
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