Not
An Intellectual Squabble
By Ramzy Baroud
11 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
In
a spacious yet fortified UN compound in Rome members of the Palestine
committee at the General Assembly repeated old mantras; they vowed support
for the Palestinians, issued a press release and then went to lunch.
The committee consisted of
several UN ambassadors, all well-intended, sympathetic and concerned;
they also knew well that their efforts were more or less futile. One
of the ambassadors, of a country not so friendly by American standards,
exclaimed: "No matter how hard we try, America blocks our efforts."
Things went fine, more or
less, until an Israeli activist, with a dishevelled beard and scattered
thoughts, shared some of his observations: he dreamed of a Middle East
in which Arabs and Israelis are integrated, living in seamless harmony,
sharing and benefiting from their economic leverage; a day in which
Israel is accepted as part and parcel of the entire region. As he gasped
for badly needed breath, another NGO person opted to bring such a fantasy
a step closer to reality; she suggested dialogue, between Israeli and
Palestinian parliamentarians. I fumed.
It is increasingly apparent
that the Palestinian crisis is losing its appeal on an international
level: it is neither urgent nor defined according to its proper parameters,
that between a colonial master that doesn't hesitate to commit the most
atrocious crimes to achieve his colonial project and an oppressed and
nationally disintegrated nation that has fought alone, using all means
to achieve its liberation.
"I too wish that the
Middle East could become an oasis of economic harmony and political
integration," I told the ambassadors. "In fact, I wish that
conflicts everywhere would cease in favour of a world predicated on
the principles of equality and justice. But until that happens, we must
carry on with our fight against injustice everywhere, and with whatever
means that are available to us."
Before we turn the suffering
of the Palestinians into the kind of benign topic that could easily
be solved through dialogue -- as if 60 years of killing, colonial settlement
and ethnic cleansing was a simple misunderstanding -- let's recall the
facts, harsh and pressing: a nation imprisoned and persecuted in the
occupied territories, another treated like second, if not third class,
citizens inside Israel and millions of others dwelling in refugee camps
across the Middle East.
The Libyan leader, Muammar
El-Qaddafi, was recently reported to have reached a decision to evict
all Palestinians from Libya, the rationale being they belong in Palestine.
Qaddafi's wisdom already caused thousands of Palestinians to be deported
following Arafat's Oslo agreement; they dwelled in the desert, my uncle
and his family included, between Egypt and Libya, before they were divided
between various countries. Qaddafi knows well the fate awaiting those
Palestinians if his decision actualises, but once a revolutionary always
a revolutionary, they say.
In Iraq the plight of the
Palestinians is deteriorating to the extent that it is now like a horror
story. Saddam, though he treated Palestinians well, blocked their attempts
to own property so that they wouldn't settle and thus concede their
right to return to their homeland. The result was that the moment his
statue came down, Iraqi landlords moved to evict thousands of Palestinian
families. To date over 500 Palestinians have been murdered in Iraq,
thousands more have been wounded and many of the rest are living in
tent cities in various parts of Iraq and near the Jordanian border.
In a recent onslaught Iraqi militias and US soldiers attacked Al-Baladiat
neighbourhood in Baghdad, killing and wounding many. Those lucky enough
to possess the cash exchanged the lives of their families for $250 per
person and were then forced to flee. They had nowhere to go but in circles.
Louise Morgantini, of the
European Parliament, informed me in Italy that the crisis that has befallen
Palestinian refugees in Iraq is being discussed at the UN behind closed
doors; one solution proposed thus far is to transfer them to South America.
She angrily demanded something be done to move them to the West Bank.
There was little I could do aside from writing about it. Palestinian
leaders are too busy squabbling about factionalism and splitting imaginary
political power.
These are not symbolic problems
that can be addressed via a well articulated Arab Peace Initiative or
that can be solved through dialogue. Israel understands well that a
Jewish state can only be established in a domain that is free of anyone
who fails to subscribe to such values. Joseph Weitz, who was appointed
by the Jewish Agency to head transfer committees in 1948 captured the
underlying essence of the Israeli project since day one: "Between
ourselves it must be clear that there is not room for both peoples together
in this country ... We shall not achieve our goal of being an independent
people with the Arabs in this small country. The only solution is a
Palestine without Arabs."
From the early days of Ben
Gurion's transfer to Vladimar Jobotinsky's Iron wall and on to today's
Separation Wall the impetus of the Israeli project has never lost momentum.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are in a constant state of transfer and re-transfer.
It is clear that Israel will not achieve peace out of benevolence or
through unconditional dialogue; it can only be pressured to do so. This
needs neither Arab initiatives nor joint parliamentary meetings in which
misunderstandings are smoothed over. We must either begin to think on
that front or quit wasting precious time in extravagant conferences,
symposiums and NGO meetings.
Ramzy Baroud is an author
and a journalist. His latest volume: The Second Palestinian Intifada:
A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London) is available
from Amazon and other book vendors.
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