Road
Map To Nowhere
By Eric Hazan
03 October, 2006
Counterpunch
Your new book, Roadmap
to Nowhere, covers the history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine
in the last three years, a period dominated by Ariel Sharon's leadership.
You argue that during this period it became evident that in Israel,
decisions are taken by the military, rather than the political echelons.
Can you elaborate?
Israeli military and political
systems have always been closely intertwined, with generals moving from
the army straight to the government, but the army's political status
was further solidified during Sharon's ascendancy. Senior military officers
brief the press (they capture at least half of the news space in the
Israeli media), and brief and shape the views of foreign diplomats;
they go abroad on diplomatic missions, outline political plans for the
government, and express their political views on any occasion.
In contrast to the military
stability, the Israeli political system is in a gradual process of crumbling.
In a World Bank report of April 2005, Israel is found one of the most
corrupt and least efficient in the Western world, second only to Italy
in the government corruption index, and lowest in the index of political
stability. Sharon personally was associated, together with his sons,
with severe bribery charges, that have never reached the court. The
new party that Sharon founded, Kadima, and which now heads the government,
with Olmert as Sharon's successor, is a hierarchical agglomeration of
individuals with no party institutions or local branches. Its guidelines,
published in November 22 2005, enable its leader to bypass all standard
democratic processes and appoint the list of the party's candidates
to the parliament without voting or approval of any party body.
The Labor party has not been
able to offer an alternative. In the last two Israeli elections, Labor
elected dovish candidates for prime ministry--Amram Mitzna in 2003,
and Amir Peretz in 2006. Both were initially received with enormous
enthusiasm, but were immediately silenced by their party and campaign
advisors and by self imposed censorship, aiming to situate themselves
"at the center of the political map". Soon, their program
became indistinguishable from that of Sharon. Peretz even declared that
on "foreign and security" matters he will do exactly as Sharon
(but he will also bring a social change). Thus these candidates helped
convince the Israeli voters that Sharon's way is the right way. In the
last years, there has never been a substantial left-wing opposition
to the rule of Sharon and the generals, since after the elections, Labor
would always join the government, providing the dovish image that the
generals need for international show.
With the collapse of the
political system, the army remains the body that shapes and executes
Israel's policies. During the recent Israeli attack on Lebanon (not
covered in the book), it became common knowledge in Israel that the
military is leading the government, with Peretz, now Defense minister,
often appearing on tv looking like a puppet operated by the generals
surrounding him.
Sharon is widely
viewed in Israeli and Western discourse as a leader who has undergone
a transformation from a philosophy of eternal war to moderation and
concession. This is not quite the picture that emerges from your book.
One of the questions in the
book is how it happened that Sharon, the most brutal, cynical, racist
and manipulative leader Israel has ever had, ended his political career
as a legendary peace hero? The answer, I argue, is that Sharon has never
changed. Rather, the birth of the Sharon myth reflects the present omnipotence
of the propaganda system in manufacturing consciousness.
During his four years in
office, Sharon stalled any chance of negotiations with the Palestinians.
In 2003 - the road map period -the Palestinians accepted the plan and
declared a cease fire, but while the Western world was celebrating the
new era of peace, the Israeli army, under Sharon, intensified its policy
of assassinations, maintained the daily harassment of the occupied Palestinians,
and eventually declared an all-out-war on Hamas, killing all its first
rank of military and political leaders. Later, as the Western world
was holding its breath again, in a year and a half of waiting for the
planned Gaza pullout, Sharon did everything possible to fail the Palestinian
president, Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected in January 2005. Sharon declared
that Abbas is not a suitable partner (because he does not fight terror)
and turned down all his offers of renewed negotiations.
The daily reality of the
Palestinians in the occupied territories was never as grim as in the
period of Sharon. In the West Bank, Sharon started a massive project
of ethnic cleansing in the areas bordering with Israel. His wall project
robs the land of the Palestinian villages in these areas, imprisons
whole towns, and leaves their residents with no means of sustenance.
If the project continues, many of the 400.000 Palestinians affected
by it will have to leave and seek their livelihood in the outskirts
of cities in the center of the West Bank, as happened already in northern
West Bank town of Qalqilia. The Israeli settlements were evacuated from
the Gaza Strip, but the Strip remains a big prison, completely sealed
from the outside world, nearing starvation and terrorized from land,
sea and air by the Israeli army.
Sharon's legacy, as it unfolds
in the period covered in this book, is eternal war, not just with the
Palestinians, but with what the Israeli army views as their potential
network of support, be it Lebanon now, or Iran and Syria tomorrow. At
the same time, what Sharon's legacy has brought to perfection is that
war can be always marketed as the tireless pursuit of peace. Sharon
proved that Israel can imprison the Palestinians, bombard them from
the air, steal their land in the West Bank, stall any chance for peace,
and still be hailed by the Western world as the peaceful side in the
Israel-Palestine conflict.
Did the Road Map
plan of 2003, with which your book opens, offer any real prospect for
peace?
To answer this question,
it is necessary first to refresh our memory regarding what the conflict
is about. From Israeli discourse one might get the impression that it
is about Israel's right to exist. On this view, the Palestinians are
trying to undermine the mere existence of the state of Israel with the
demand to allow their refugees to return, and they are trying to achieve
that with terror. It seems that it has been forgotten that in practice
this is a simple and classical conflict over Palestinian land and resources
(water) that Israel has been occupying since 1967. The Road Map document
as well manifests complete absence of any territorial dimension. In
the final, third phase, of the plan the occupation should end. But the
plan's document doesn't put any demands on Israel at this third phase.
Most Israelis understand that there is no way to end the occupation
and the conflict without the Israeli army leaving the territories and
the dismantlement of settlements. But these basic concepts are not even
hinted at in the document, which only mentions freezing settlements
expansion and dismantling new outposts, already at the first phase of
the plan.
Nevertheless, the road map
plan is substantial and important because of what it determines should
happen in its first phase. This phase repeats the cease-fire plan proposed
by then CIA head George Tenet, in June 2001. The essence of this phase
is that to restore calm, a cease-fire should be declared, to which both
sides should have to contribute. The Palestinians should cease all terror
and armed activity, and Israel should pull its forces back to the positions
they held before the Palestinian uprising, in September 2000. This is
a substantial demand of Israel, because in September 2000, there were
large areas of the West Bank that were under Palestinian autonomous
control. Implementing the demand to restore the conditions that existed
then, should mean also lifting the many road blocks and army posts that
Israel has placed in these areas since that time.
There is no doubt that fulfillment
of this demand would contribute greatly to establishing some calm, and
creating, at least, conditions for negotiations. But, as I mentioned,
Israel refused to accept even that much, and stalled the road map in
the same way that it had stalled the Tenet plan before.
A central event that you cover in the book is the Gaza pullout
and the evacuation of the Gaza settlements. But your analysis of what
went on behind the scenes of the pullout is quite different than the
way it was perceived even in critical circles.
A prevailing view in critical
circles is that Sharon decided to evacuate the Gaza settlements because
maintaining them was too costly, and he preferred to focus efforts on
his central goal of keeping the West Bank and expanding its settlements.
There is no doubt that Sharon openly used the disengagement plan to
expand and strengthen Israel's grip of the West Bank. But I argue that
there is no evidence that he decided to give Gaza up because keeping
it proved too costly.
Of course, the occupation
of Gaza has always been costly, and even from the perspective of the
most committed Israeli expansionists, Israel does not need this piece
of land, one of the most densely populated in the world, and lacking
any natural resources. The problem is that one cannot let Gaza free,
if one wants to keep the West Bank. A third of the occupied Palestinians
live in the Gaza strip. If they are given freedom, they would become
the center of Palestinian struggle for liberation, with free access
to the Western and Arab world. To control the West Bank, Israel had
to stick to Gaza. From this perspective, the previous model of occupation
was the optimal choice. The Strip was controlled from the inside by
the army, and the settlements provided the support system for the army,
and the moral justification for the soldiers' brutal job of occupation.
It makes their presence there a mission of protecting the homeland.
Control from the outside may be cheaper, but in the long run, it has
no guarantee of success.
Furthermore, since the Oslo
years, the settlements were conceived both locally and internationally
as a tragic problem that, despite Israel's good intentions to end the
occupation, cannot be solved. This useful myth was broken with the evacuation
of the Gaza settlements, which showed how easy it is, in fact, to evacuate
settlements, and how big the support is in Israeli society for doing
that.
I argue that Sharon did not
evacuate the Gaza settlements out of his own will, but rather, that
he was forced to do so. Sharon cooked up his disengagement plan as a
means to gain time, at the peak of international pressure that followed
Israel's sabotaging of the road map and its construction of the West
Bank wall. Even then, there are some indications that he was looking
for ways to sneak out of this commitment, as he did with all his commitments
before. But this time he was forced to actually carry it out by the
Bush administration. Though it was kept fully behind the scenes, the
pressure was quite massive, including military sanctions. The official
pretext for the sanctions was Israel's arm sale to China, but in previous
occasions, the crisis was over as soon as Israel agreed to cancel the
deal. This time, the sanctions were unprecedented, and lasted until
the signing of the crossing agreement in November 2005.
But currently there
is no sign of any U.S. pressure on Israel?
Yes, U.S. pressure ended
right with the evacuation of the settlements, and Israel was given a
free hand to violate all the agreements signed ceremonially in November
2005, under the supervision of Condoleezza Rice. Since then, the U.S.
has given full backing to Israel, as it turned the Gaza strip into an
open-air prison, and began to starve and bombard the besieged Palestinians.
We should note that at no stage, did Sharon take a commitment to actually
give up the full Israeli control of the Gaza strip. From its outset,
the disengagement plan, as published in Israeli media in April 16, 2004
determined that Israel would maintain full military control of the strip
from the outside, as before the pullout.
From the U.S. perspective,
its goal was achieved with the evacuation of the settlements. As long
as international calm is maintained, Palestinian suffering plays no
role in US calculations. To maintain the Iraq occupation, while preparing
its next steps in the "war on terror", It was important for
the U.S. to appease the world's sentiment that something should be done
to end the Israeli occupation. This goal was achieved for the time being.
The Western world, or at least its leaders and media, were euphoric
with the new turn in the Middle East. The dominant world-view in the
Western media is still that Israel has done its part, and now it is
the Palestinians' turn to show their peaceful intentions. With the victory
of Hamas in the Palestinian elections, this view has even strengthened.
Israel's eternal claim that it has no partner for peace is now having
a renewed impact. Those who have accepted for years Israel's claim that
Arafat was not a partner, and then that Abbas was not, are certainly
willing to hear also that Hamas is not.
Since the end of 2005, the
Bush administration has seemed determined to move its planned "Iranian
campaign" into high gear, so Israel's stocks have been rising again.
In its concerted campaign to prevent international recognition of the
new Hamas administration, and to impose tough sanctions on the Palestinians,
Israel has been exploiting the Islamophobic atmosphere that resurfaced
in the US. Israeli security officials flooded the West with reports
on the dangers of Hamas' future ties with Iran and Syria, painting a
disturbing picture of a global fundamentalist Islamic threat. The conditions
were ripe for such propaganda. On February 3, the Pentagon released
its 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), where it lays out its vision
for what it describes as a long war: "Currently, Iraq and Afghanistan
are crucial battlegrounds, but the struggle extends far beyond their
borders. With its allies and partners, the United States must be prepared
to wage this war in many locations simultaneously and for some years
to come".
With the drums of the long
war banging, Israel's line on Hamas has been well received. The US administration
urged European and Arab countries to freeze direct aid to the Palestinian
Authority,and on February 15, the U.S. congress started moves in the
same direction. Israeli security officials had been involved for quite
some time before in urging the U.S. administration to increase its operations
in Iran, including covert acts of regime change - efforts that were
yielding their fruits in 2006. As was disclosed by Seymour Hersh and
others, during Israel's recent war on Lebanon, the U.S. administration
has viewed this as preparation, and a "test" for the option
of an attack on Iran.
What has been the
role of the Pro-Israel lobby in shaping U.S. policies?
Interestingly, in 2005, during
the whole period of U.S. heavy pressure on Israel, AIPAC (the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee) and other lobby groups were completely
silent. As I detail in the book, this compliance was helped by the investigation,
and later the indictment of two AIPAC officials - its policy director,
Steven Rosen, and Iran specialist Keith Weissman. It transpired that
the powerful Pro-Israel lobby could be silenced easily, if the White
House so desired. This confirms what Chomsky and others have been arguing
for years - that the Pro-Israel lobbies are powerful only as long as
their pressure is in line with U.S. policies.
But the renewed wave of Islamophobia
has also bolstered AIPAC's newfound self-confidence. Its annual policy
conference in March 2006 was held in an atmosphere of neocon celebration,
with star appearance of several of the most hard-line administration
officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Ambassador to the
United Nations John Bolton. The Jewish newspaper Forward noted at the
time that AIPAC "appears to be out of step with the American Jewish
community on Iraq... 70% of American Jews oppose the Iraq war, according
to a poll commission by the American Jewish Committee at the end of
2005." But regardless of the opinions of the Jewish community they
are supposed to represent, the leaders of the Pro-Israel lobby "are
optimistic that, paradoxically, the drop in Bush's approval ratings
in American public opinion will force him to adopt the hard line advocated
by AIPAC and Israel".
Despite the grim
events described in the book, the overall feeling that comes through
is that of hope. Why?
I argue that the reason that
the U.S. exerted even limited pressure on Israel, for the first time
in recent history, was because at that moment in history it was no longer
possible to ignore world discontent over its policy of blind support
of Israel. This shows that persistent struggle can have an effect, and
can lead governments to act. Such struggle begins with the Palestinian
people, who have withstood years of brutal oppression, and who, through
their spirit of zumud--sticking to their land - and daily endurance,
organizing and resistance, have managed to keep the Palestinian cause
alive, something that not all oppressed nations have managed to do.
It continues with international struggle--solidarity movements that
send their people to the occupied territories and stand in vigils at
home, professors signing boycott petitions, subjecting themselves to
daily harassment, a few courageous journalists that insist on covering
the truth, against the pressure of acquiescent media and pro-Israel
lobbies. Often this struggle for justice seems futile. Nevertheless,
it has penetrated global consciousness. It is this collective consciousness
that eventually forced the U.S. to pressure Israel into some, albeit
limited, concessions. . The Palestinian cause can be silenced for a
while, as is happening now, but it will resurface.
You note that since
2003, a new form of struggle has been formed along the route of the
West Bank wall?
Largely unreported, there
is a growing non-violent popular struggle aimed at stopping, or at least
slowing down, Israel's massive work of destruction that, once completed,
will disconnect 400,000 Palestinians from their land and means of sustenance.
In the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948, 730,000 Palestinians
were driven out of their villages. But rather than waiting for the history
books to tell the story of the second Palestinian Nakba, the Palestinians
along the wall are struggling to save their land. Armed only with the
marvelous spirit of people who have held to their land one generation
after the other, they stand in front of one of the most brutal military
machines of the world. An amazing development of the last three years
is that Israelis have joined the Palestinian struggle. For the first
time in the history of the occupation, we are witnessing joint Israeli-Palestinian
struggle.
For almost two years now,
the center of struggle has been the village Bil'in, in the center of
the West Bank, whose lands are being transferred to the Israeli settlement
of upper Modi'in. Every Friday there is a central demonstration that
gathers the whole village as well as Israelis and internationals. The
army has used brutal force to try to stop the protest, but the demonstrations
continue. Along with Israel of the army and the settlers, a new Israel-Palestine
is forming along the route of the wall. In the last chapter of the book
I survey in detail the development of this joint struggle--the history
of the people, which emerged along the history of the powerful.
Tanya Reinhart
is a Professor of Linguistics at Tel Aviv University and the author
of Israel/Palestine: How to End the War of 1948 and The Roadmap to Nowhere.
She can be reached through her website: http://www.tau.ac.il/~reinhart
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