The
Politics Of Pragmatism
By Remi Kanazi
17 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The
latest back and forth between Israel and the Palestinian unity government
(and its regional interlocutors) will not bring peace to fruition. Many
respected commentators in the Middle East have accused Israel of rejecting
peace, primarily due to its refusal to fully embrace the Arab peace
initiative. Yet this initiative, when entered into the international
community’s trash compactor of “pragmatism,” will
leave the Palestinian people with nothing more than an old, albeit neatly
packaged, version of the Oslo Accords. These commentators’ near-sighted,
almost desperate view, which is predicated on the notion that anything
is better than the squalor Palestinians are living in today, will only
further devastate the Palestinian people. It is one thing to compromise
on the implementation of the rights of Palestinians, but it is quite
another to diverge from one’s principles based on “new realities”
imposed on the conflict by one’s adversary. We must never forget
the lessons of the Oslo period, nor can we forget that after 40 years
of compromise and conciliatory action, Palestinian suffering has been
exponentially magnified. The professed pragmatist line only diminishes
the rights of the oppressed, strengthens the oppressor’s position,
and makes a mockery of institutions (i.e. the United Nations) whose
many functions ostensibly include the protection of persecuted peoples.
Many proponents of Palestinian
rights naively argue, as is laid out in the Arab peace initiative, that
all will be well once there is a full withdrawal from the occupied territories.
But territorially, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and yet the conditions
inside Gaza reflect how autonomy alone is not independence. Israel continues
to control Gaza’s imports and exports, its territorial waters,
and its airspace—leaving 1.4 million people to suffocate in an
open-air prison. Compounded by the sanctions slapped on 3.8 million
occupied people, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem continue
to economically wither away, while the world sits idly by. It is not
enough to demand autonomy, the preservation of the right to self-determination,
and the right of return. Policy must be put in place by Israel and the
West that ensures the economic sustainability for the Palestinian people.
No people should be expected to recover after 40 years of imposed suffering
without eventual restitution.
Assuming that full withdrawal
is deemed unrealistic, what would semi-withdrawal mean for Palestinians?
If Israel were too keep parts of the West Bank settlements (supposing
the Apartheid wall was torn down), Israel would claim it to be “necessary,”
as it did at Camp David in 2000, to effectively control half of the
West Bank. If even one settlement were to remain, Israel, for “security”
purposes, would not give up control of the Jordan Valley, and surely
would maintain the “need” for Jewish-only roads, checkpoints,
and a complete army apparatus that would further subjugate the Palestinian
people to the oppressive measures of occupation. Israel is right on
one point: a long-term hudna (Arabic for cease-fire), as proposed by
various Hamas officials, is insufficient, because the two peoples will
never get passed a hudna if there is not an end to Israel’s matrix
of control.
Detractors of the Palestinian
plight have continued the tired policy of blaming the victim. Capitalizing
on US President George Bush’s “war on terror” and
the fight against “Islamic fundamentalism,” a multitude
of pro-Israel commentators have criticized the rising religiosity in
Palestinian society. Yet this rush to conservatism emanated from the
failure of Fatah, which led a corrupt secular government that had done
little for its people or the political establishment. Furthermore, the
significant alternative forces within Palestinian society, which preach
non-violence, an end to corruption, and a democratic environment that
ensures the rights of all its citizens (socially, religiously and economically),
have been silenced and stunted by their compatriots (namely Fatah during
the Oslo years). Disturbingly, these alternative voices remain purposely
ignored by Israel and the West. The impetus for this outright rejection
stems from the fact that recognition of the Palestinian people, under
the tenets of equality, is seen as a cancer for Israel’s “Jewish
democracy.” For far too long, Yasser Arafat and his corrupt thugs
in the Palestinian Authority, toed the line for Israel and cowered to
the demands of the West, squandering the social energy and political
capital of the first Intifada.
There is a direct correlation
between the rise of conservatism in Palestinian society and Israel’s
heightened policy of starvation and collective punishment, a policy
that intensified during the Oslo years. During this period, like Ariel
Sharon’s subsequent policy of “disengagement,” Israel
passed off its actions to the international community as “peaceful”
and “propitiative” measures that gave Palestinians autonomy.
The separateness policy of Oslo, however, further ghettoized the Palestinian
economy. A concerted effort was made to hinder Palestinian exports,
stunt their labor force, increase travel restrictions, and back a corrupt
Fatah force, which effectively operated as a proxy police force for
Israel. The post-Oslo period, which was followed by economic instability
and communal anger due to the “peace process” being exposed
as a hoax, saw conservative groups continue to gain popular support
within Palestinian society. Furthermore, the Fatah led government became
evermore corrupt, while Israel and the West increasingly cultivated
a hard-line approach to the conflict.
This leads back to the Arab
peace initiative. There are already signs of Hamas being corrupted by
the pragmatist line to ensure its power in the occupied territories.
This is not to say that negotiations can’t and shouldn’t
take place, but at this point, on all five sides (Hamas, Fatah, Israel,
the US, and the Quartet), intention substantively matters more than
words and action. The “disengagement” of Gaza led to widespread
suffering, settlements doubled during the Oslo years, and after free
and fair democratic elections, sanctions were placed on the Palestinian
government. This goes to show how seemingly positive actions, when combined
with sinister ulterior motives, can be even more damaging than the status
quo. If steps are taken to improve the lives of Palestinians on a permanent
basis, it should be welcomed, but neither Hamas nor Fatah should be
tempted by calls for negotiations in return for, what would be, short-term
political capitalization.
The Palestinian government
will be facing some tough decisions in the coming months. While Olmert
has rejected the totality of the Arab peace initiative, he has embraced
its concept and seems willing to engage with the region diplomatically.
Nonetheless, why would Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the strongman
who rationalized the devastating bombing campaign of Lebanon, want to
engage in any kind of peace process with the Palestinians and its regional
partners? Simply put, this is Israeli politics par excellence—if
hard-line policy fails, champion supposed “peacenik” politics;
if “dovish” policy fails, champion hard-line politics. Israeli
Defense Minister Amir Peretz is an apt example. The once “peacenik”
turned hard-liner is feverishly trying to revert back to his “dovish
ways.”
While the world craves a
quick resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it is just not
realistic. Without reconciliation based on justice for both peoples,
peace will just be an idea pushed for by so-called pragmatists and the
politically weak: both groups who have done more damage to the conflict
than hard-liners on either side.
Edward Said wrote in his
book, Peace and its Discontents, “[W] e must restore Palestine
to its place not simply as a small piece of territory between the Mediterranean
Sea and the Jordan River but as an idea that for years galvanized the
Arab world into thinking about and fighting for social justice, democracy,
and a different kind of future than the one that has been imposed on
it by force and by an absence of Arab will.” His words, eleven
years later, still ring true, yet they do not apply only to the people
of Palestine, but rather for both peoples, Israeli and Palestinians:
for if we are to see this conflict resolved, it must be based on mutual
understanding and acceptance as well as a breakdown of racism and supremacy
in all its forms.
Remi Kanazi
is a Palestinian-American poet and writer based in New York City. He
is the co-founder of
www.PoeticInjustice.net and the editor of the forthcoming
anthology of poetry, Poets for Palestine. He can be contacted at [email protected]
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