Collectivism, the analysis of society based on groups as opposed individuals, is ingrained within modern political and historical dialogue. We have come to view classes, nations, and religions as real, living, breathing entities separate and distinct from those individuals whom constitute their membership. These subjective entities have come to dominate political and social discourse. This tendency is particularly acute in historical analysis, for example, it is common to hear in casual, as well as in academic conversation, such collectivist accounts of history as “the Germans killed the Jews in WW2”, the “British colonised the Irish for 800 years” or “the Arabs attacked the Jews in 1948”.
Since the rise of nationalism and the nation state, nations have become the primary means of categorising individuals. Our national identity is often how we define ourselves and how we are defined by others, and can be a source of shame or pride in differing contexts. This was not always the case but has become so as the nation state has become the building block for the international state system. Governments must now claim to be the representative of a coherent distinct national entity to have legitimacy as a state. The challenge of creating coherent unified national entities, often out of thin air, is the main problem facing state elites in newly created nation states. This project often involves creating a common historical narrative, language and culture, often with the aid of mass media and compulsory public schooling.
The Central Role of Nation in Zionism
This challenge is especially apparent in the state of Israel, who has aimed to create national ties and a common historical narrative between individual Jews from highly diverse cultures and backgrounds, few of them with roots in the area currently occupied by the state of Israel.
Israel is highly unusual in the world of nation states in that it doesn’t recognise any such distinct entity as an “Israeli nation" . Instead, the Israeli state recognises only the “Jewish nation” of which is made of up of subgroups of Jewish peoples such as European “Ashkenazy” Jews, North African and Mediterranean “Sephardic” Jews and Middle Eastern “Mizrahi” Jews, amongst over one hundred others.
Uniquely among the international state system, those who hold Israeli citizenship, including around one and half million Palestinians, are not automatically entitled to nationality. As such, Palestinians and their descendants who remained in Israel after the mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Mandate Palestine by Zionist forces in 1948 and afterwards, are not entitled to nationality and the many state benefits that are given to Israeli nationals.
Framing the Debate
What is the reason for this? Well, one crucial aspect of creating the “self” is to create the “other”; there can be no “in” group unless there is an “out” group. In Israeli historical and political discourse the “other” is “the Arabs”. Who are “the Arabs”? Well they are certainly not the one million or so Arabic speaking Jews from Arab countries that came to Israel between 1948 and the early 1970’s. Nor are they the Jews who lived in relative peace with their Muslim and Christian brothers for centuries in Historic Palestine. Jews are Jews and cannot therefore, according to Zionist thought, also be Arabs. The Arabs include all non Jewish people of Arab background and, most importantly for Israeli purposes, include the Palestinians.
Now those that have travelled to Palestine as well as the broader Middle East will know that, while Palestinians indeed view themselves as Arabs, they have their own very distinct culture and political outlook, one that has been historically liberal and fiercely democratically minded. The lazy reference to Palestinians as simply “Arabs” is an Orientalist view of the Middle East as being a homogenous mono cultural megalith with little in the way of local tradition or diversity. But classifying Palestinians as such also serves a practical purpose.
It is no accident that the huge cultural and political differences between Palestinians and other Arab countries are ironed over by Israeli historians, educators and media. It is not some simple exercise in taxonomy but serves certain political propaganda functions. The aim in doing so is to frame the debate to one which Zionist thinkers feel they are better equipped to win. If Palestinians can be forced, like a square into a round hole, into a simplified and often ill fitting political entity, they easily slot into the Zionist narrative of Israel’s foundation and raison d’être; which claims that “the Arabs” attacked Israel in 1948, “the Arabs” did not accept the partition and “the Arabs” are barbarous and backward people who have no concept of democracy or human rights.
You will often hear, for example, Israeli commentators claim that “the Palestinian Israeli conflict is a front for the Arab Israeli conflict”. This is because the reality of the foundation of the state of Israel is far more nuanced then the “Israel versus the Arab world” account which Israel likes to present. Individual actor’s roles ranged from hostility to the foundation of Israel, as in the case of Syria, to outright collaboration in the case of Jordan.
Looked at individually, however, the position of Palestinians in the 1948 and 1967 conflicts was clearly that of victim. Relative to the size of the population, the ethnic cleansing of Mandate Palestine during the Nakba is one the worst cases of mass disposition in recent history. To this day the relationship of Palestinians to the state of Israel is entirely asymmetrical: one of colonised and coloniser, oppressor and oppressed. To speak of any meaningful “conflict” in Israel and Palestinian is to mistakenly suggest there are two combatants of relatively equal strength, when there is, in fact, only one. Instead of having to face these realities, Israeli apologists have sought to frame the Israel Palestine conflict in a way more amiable to the David and Goliath story of Israel versus the Arab world.
Collective Responsibility and Punishment
One important aspect of framing the debate in such a way is to put collective responsibility on Palestinian individuals for the perceived misconduct of other Arab leaders. Unfortunately, however, collective entities do not have bank accounts to pay fines or bodies to imprison; they are nonexistent as responsible cognisant actors. As such, the buck for collective responsibility, as conceived by whomever it is that’s passing the buck, is individuals within that collective, however it is envisioned. Whole nations of individuals, under such collectivist logic, can be held responsible for the crimes of “their” nation or group, irrespective of their personal involvement. By identifying Palestinians as simply “Arabs” they become more open to be held responsible for the perceived misconduct against Israel of the broader Arab world.
To give some examples, bellow are the three most common Zionist arguments using the above logic of collectivist responsibility and my attempt to debunk them;
“The Arabs rejected the 1948 partition plan for Palestine and attacked the newly created Israeli state. Why should Palestinians be given rights of national self determination when they rejected Israeli determination in 1948?”
If we accept this argument it would imply that a Palestinian child born this very day is responsible for the decision made by individuals hundreds of miles away, of no relation, from different backgrounds over 60 years ago. This responsibility would not be passed down on the basis of blood ties but on the basis of some loose collective affiliation with a broader entity, not as understood by him or her, but as understood by a hostile state, Israel.
“The Arabs already have several states, why should they be given another one?”
However, for Palestinians the fact that there are several other Arab nation states is irrelevant to the fact there is no Palestinian one. Palestinian refugees in neighbouring Arab states face significant discrimination and are often considered alien both socially and legally, as in the case of Lebanon . That Egyptians or Jordanians or Syrians have a state is no comfort to Palestinians who lack self determination in their places of origin.
“The Arab states exiled Jews after the creation of Israel in 1948 and do not recognise their right to return, therefore the Arabs should not be allowed return to their homes of origin in what is now Israel”
The right of return for Palestinian refugee’s is an individual right held by every displaced Palestinian person and is recognised as such under international law . Such a right is non alienable and is not dependent on the actions of others.
“But what about the holocaust”
The argument here almost suggests that Jewish people as a collective have gained up human rights abuse “credits” from the horrors of the Holocaust that can be spent as needed: in this case on the Palestinians. The reality is that the any attempt to dichotomise as antagonistic the Jewish experience of the holocaust with the ongoing Palestinian Nakba is crass and illogical. Both the Nakba and the Holocaust stand together as immense injustices; one could not logically be used to justify the other.
Of course Israel uses collective punishment on a smaller scale as it sees fit. Whole neighbourhoods have been flattened by Israeli bulldozers as punishment for the actions of individual Palestinian fighters and activists and commonly the family home of activists were regularly targeted for demolition during the second intifada, leaving whole families destitute.
Conclusion
Categorising whole groups of people is often a useful and necessary activity to better understand history and society. Since we cannot understand history, society or politics without analysing broader groups and group ties we must be certain to be as exact as possible in identifying relevant actors and what their relationship is with each other and the rest of society. It will always be, however, an inexact science that simplifies individual experiences and relationships to certain events. Israel’s war has been largely against Palestinians: the Israel state and the Palestinian people are the two principle groups in the Middle East conflict and it is on that basis we should discuss the both the conflict and responsibility.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
The Left In Knots, Part 2: The free market is based on greed. We should replace it with the state.
The statist left claim that it is the free market, and not anything inherent to human beings, that creates selfishness within individuals. Put another way, that greed is a systematic result of the private ownership of the means of production in a profit seeking free market economy. However, what the left cannot explain is how selfishness is overcome by replacing the market with state planning or regulation.
Decisions politicians and regulators make affect themselves, their political base, their constituency, their private investment interests and their donors while also affecting others. All regulatory policies inherently favour one group at the expense of another and in any single regulation there are often millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of profit on the line. Regulations, in the form of state granted licensure or health and safety regulations, can have the effect of wiping out unwanted competition in any one industry leaving the market captive to a monopolist with massive potential earnings. Corporations, knowing this, take huge advantage of state power by offering politicians and policy makers’ bribes, campaign donations and cosy jobs upon retirement.
What this amounts to is that, as opposed to a free market, the state planner must provide nothing of worth to society to enrich themselves or those in their favour. The effort required to enrich oneself as a politician is multiple times lower than that of a free market where one must offer a good or service that individuals want. As such incentives towards selfishness are multiple times higher for state officials.
The left may claim the state can be restricted from enriching itself by laws restricting, for example, politician’s incomes, corporate donations or corruption; but it ultimately up to the state itself to enact and enforce these. When one party to a contract has a monopoly of power (the state), it can behave in any way it wants without any threat of redress for the victims (society).
Neither will the state, on balance, attract the sort of character necessary to resist the temptation for personal advancement at the expense of society. What is unique about wealth gained through profit, as opposed power, that it attracts such a relatively unethical type of person? If individuals do not behave like angels in seeking profit through the market why will they do so in seeking profit through power?
Decisions politicians and regulators make affect themselves, their political base, their constituency, their private investment interests and their donors while also affecting others. All regulatory policies inherently favour one group at the expense of another and in any single regulation there are often millions, if not billions, of dollars worth of profit on the line. Regulations, in the form of state granted licensure or health and safety regulations, can have the effect of wiping out unwanted competition in any one industry leaving the market captive to a monopolist with massive potential earnings. Corporations, knowing this, take huge advantage of state power by offering politicians and policy makers’ bribes, campaign donations and cosy jobs upon retirement.
What this amounts to is that, as opposed to a free market, the state planner must provide nothing of worth to society to enrich themselves or those in their favour. The effort required to enrich oneself as a politician is multiple times lower than that of a free market where one must offer a good or service that individuals want. As such incentives towards selfishness are multiple times higher for state officials.
The left may claim the state can be restricted from enriching itself by laws restricting, for example, politician’s incomes, corporate donations or corruption; but it ultimately up to the state itself to enact and enforce these. When one party to a contract has a monopoly of power (the state), it can behave in any way it wants without any threat of redress for the victims (society).
Neither will the state, on balance, attract the sort of character necessary to resist the temptation for personal advancement at the expense of society. What is unique about wealth gained through profit, as opposed power, that it attracts such a relatively unethical type of person? If individuals do not behave like angels in seeking profit through the market why will they do so in seeking profit through power?
Saturday, November 5, 2011
The Left In Knots, Part 1: Inequality and Consumerism
This blog post will be the first in a series on “statist left contradictions”, where I will seek to look at the major areas that those on the statist left run into difficulties in their analysis and their prescriptions for social ills. I hope to show that, often, the prescriptions the statist left proscribe are contradictory to their analysis of the problems in modern society.
This is not to say that I disagree with either the statist left analysis or antidote in all individual incidences. It is to say, however, that the left has further to go in questioning the foundations and consistency of their own analysis. It should also be emphasised that I use basic stereotypes of state leftist ideology that does not apply to all state leftists.
Inequality and Consumerism
One such area that the left have drawn themselves into confusion is their parallel attack on both consumerism, understood as "a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts and material inequality" (Wikipedia), and economic inequality.
Intuitively it might seem that wealth inequality and consumerism seem a natural pair of bedfellows to fight against. Both benefit corporations and the rich who make money from consumers buying ever more consumer goods and whom sit at the top end of the unequal society. But is a criticism of both inequality and consumerism consistent?
Firstly, it would seem the statist left are right to make criticisms of consumerism. As it turns out, inequality of wealth does not automatically result in inequality of happiness despite increased consumption of those things advertisements suggest will make us happy. The recent trend of research into what makes people happy, as opposed sad, has confirmed the findings of anti consumerists that happiness is largely to be found in finding a sense of meaning in life and ones attachment to your community around you.
However, the lefts distaste for flashy consumer goods somewhat jars with its criticism of inequality of wealth, that is, inequality of enjoyment of consumer goods. If happiness lays not in material goods but non material goods such as spirituality, family, friends, health and recreation then the complaint that some have more material goods then others seems strange. If the rich want to shackle themselves with flashy objects the anti consumerist statist left should be happy to let them do so.
The enjoyment of non material goods such as family, friends, spirituality and recreation often requires nothing but the opportunity cost of time: which the richest often make available to the rest of us by spending all of theirs figuring out ways to save us more of ours. Anybody that likes to spend their free time on more spiritual matters will be thankful to whoever invented the dishwasher.
State leftists may answer these critiques by saying that it is the creation of artificial desires through consumerism and the subsequent unequal distribution of the object of those desires that is objectionable. Even if we ignore the presumption that desires can be created out of thin air through advertising, (this is probably false considering the amount of money corporations spend on market research on what people actually want), the argument still does not hold much water. A doctor who sees a patient hooked on a substance that makes him sick, for example, will not advocate a government programme to redistribute wealth so the patient can have more of it. The doctor will instead to try to convince the patient to stop consumption of that good and look for fulfilment elsewhere. This is exactly what the anti consumerist left should be doing.
N.B The arguments here only apply to non essential consumer goods. An inequality of essential consumer goods such as food and shelter in which the poorest are bellow subsistence is a different topic.
This is not to say that I disagree with either the statist left analysis or antidote in all individual incidences. It is to say, however, that the left has further to go in questioning the foundations and consistency of their own analysis. It should also be emphasised that I use basic stereotypes of state leftist ideology that does not apply to all state leftists.
Inequality and Consumerism
One such area that the left have drawn themselves into confusion is their parallel attack on both consumerism, understood as "a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods and services in ever greater amounts and material inequality" (Wikipedia), and economic inequality.
Intuitively it might seem that wealth inequality and consumerism seem a natural pair of bedfellows to fight against. Both benefit corporations and the rich who make money from consumers buying ever more consumer goods and whom sit at the top end of the unequal society. But is a criticism of both inequality and consumerism consistent?
Firstly, it would seem the statist left are right to make criticisms of consumerism. As it turns out, inequality of wealth does not automatically result in inequality of happiness despite increased consumption of those things advertisements suggest will make us happy. The recent trend of research into what makes people happy, as opposed sad, has confirmed the findings of anti consumerists that happiness is largely to be found in finding a sense of meaning in life and ones attachment to your community around you.
However, the lefts distaste for flashy consumer goods somewhat jars with its criticism of inequality of wealth, that is, inequality of enjoyment of consumer goods. If happiness lays not in material goods but non material goods such as spirituality, family, friends, health and recreation then the complaint that some have more material goods then others seems strange. If the rich want to shackle themselves with flashy objects the anti consumerist statist left should be happy to let them do so.
The enjoyment of non material goods such as family, friends, spirituality and recreation often requires nothing but the opportunity cost of time: which the richest often make available to the rest of us by spending all of theirs figuring out ways to save us more of ours. Anybody that likes to spend their free time on more spiritual matters will be thankful to whoever invented the dishwasher.
State leftists may answer these critiques by saying that it is the creation of artificial desires through consumerism and the subsequent unequal distribution of the object of those desires that is objectionable. Even if we ignore the presumption that desires can be created out of thin air through advertising, (this is probably false considering the amount of money corporations spend on market research on what people actually want), the argument still does not hold much water. A doctor who sees a patient hooked on a substance that makes him sick, for example, will not advocate a government programme to redistribute wealth so the patient can have more of it. The doctor will instead to try to convince the patient to stop consumption of that good and look for fulfilment elsewhere. This is exactly what the anti consumerist left should be doing.
N.B The arguments here only apply to non essential consumer goods. An inequality of essential consumer goods such as food and shelter in which the poorest are bellow subsistence is a different topic.
"Peace, Not Surrender"
As I recently walked along the Israeli Separation Wall, being constructed inside the 1967 borders between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, my attention was brought to one of the many slogans daubed on the Palestinian side of the wall. It read, “Peace, Not Surrender”. Giving it further thought, the statement got me thinking about how we think about peace and justice and how these two terms, whilst related, can often be very much opposed depending on interpretation.
What the statement “Peace, Not Surrender” urged was peace as understood correctly, that is, not just the absence of immediate physical violence but a real peace born from justice. For the person that scrawled the slogan on the Separation Wall, peace is not merely the silencing of guns, bombs, tear gas and stun grenades. Peace is the freedom of the individual to what is rightfully his or hers. Where an individual or group of individuals have resigned themselves to the denial of their rights under threat of force, there is no peace.
Though such relationships between ruler and ruled can give the impression of tranquillity in the absence of violence, when we look closer and analyse the underlying relationship we see a very different story. We see a peace not mutually agreed upon, not marked by a relationship of mutual cooperation, but one of unilateral aggression, of resignation of the vanquished to their situation. Not peace, but only the absence of self defence by one party in the face of violence by the other.
The statement “Peace, Not Surrender” is challenging as many of us who find peace to be fundamental are often unwittingly willing to forgo justice for the sake of “peace”. Many of us may have written “Peace is Not Surrender”. However, our clamour for an end to immediate hostility can often result in our simply burying that hostility, of regularising it or giving it sanction through peace treaties or legislation. In turn, future generations who seek to break out of the prisons imposed on them in the name of peace are accused of breaking the contract or of ripping up the agreement. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is instrumental in highlighting the effect on outcomes those opposing interpretations of peace can have.
A total of 700,000 Palestinians were exiled from their homes during the 1948 Middle East War and a further 300,000 during the 1967 “Six Day War”, as part of a pogrom of non-Jews from an area that was earmarked for a Jewish homeland by Zionist political thinkers. Human rights law as well as international law are explicit on the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their property, for which many of the original Palestinian owners still have ownership deeds and keys to their homes.
Israel, however, refuses to allow those refugees and their descendants return to their properties. The repercussions of Israel allowing right of return would undermine Israel as a Jewish state. A return of what are today 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their properties in Israel, with full voting rights to the Israeli parliament, would be the death knell for the Israel constructed by the Zionist political movement.
Of course Israel, in the current political situation, holds all the cards. With multibillion dollar annual unconditional military aid from the United States, Israel can impose any solution they see fit. Given this, in lieu of a just solution, many who wish to see peace in the Middle East have resigned themselves to the “realistic solution”. That is, an Israel and Palestine based on 1967 borders with no right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Such a “peace” was outlined by President Obama in his recent speech to the State Department on the topic. According to Obama there was to be no return of refugees who lost their homes in Israel; Israel is the homeland of the Jews and its character as a Jewish state should be recognised as such by Palestinians. Israel, for its part, was to return to its 1967 borders and Palestinians were to get “their” state.
In his later speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama relented further to the Israeli position and said there did not, in fact, have to be a return to 1967 borders. “Mutual land swaps” would dramatically alter any future borders. Obama seems to have forgotten, or ignored, that “mutual” has never been a characteristic of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A precondition that any settlement of the conflict would involve “mutual land swaps” essentially gives veto power to Israel to any change in the current situation. After all, why agree to mutual land swaps when you already have all the land?
In recent documents leaked to al-Jazeera there was a tiny glimpse at the concessions Palestinian leaders are themselves willing make in the hunt for that all elusive “peace”. The 1,600 leaked documents showed the Palestinian Authority, in a desire to secure their own Bantustan state, was willing to make massive concessions on all issues including Israeli settlements, control of holy sites and, of course, the right of return of Palestinian refugees. The papers showed that Palestinian negotiators were willing to cede that only 10,000 of the some 5 million Palestinian refugees living abroad could return to their homes in what is now Israel. By all means it would have been “Surrender, Not Peace”. Despite this, Israeli negotiators still threw the concessions back at the Palestinians.
It seems that, much to the dismay of the individual who painted his message on the Separation Wall, the world, the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli state are seeking to impose the “realistic” solution on Palestinians in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory and those living abroad: Surrender. The only thing such a peace agreement will serve is the regulation and normalisation of force against Palestinian refugees and to repackage it as peace. The Palestinian Authority has no authority to sign away the rights of Palestinians to their homes in Israel for the sake of any “peace” agreement. Such a peace is not peace for those who are excluded. For them, it is simply perpetual force that keeps them from what is rightfully theirs, sanctified by their “leaders” and “representatives”. Though Palestinians may accept their fate, it does not change the reality that their rights are being trampled.
Violence and force have becomes so regularised in our thinking regards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that we have begun to lose sight of where self defence and aggression begin and end. Israel has been so successful in moving the goalposts of justice that the media often fail to recognise self defence by Palestinians when they see it. This was clear in media reports concerning the Nakba Day events on 15 May of this year, on which thousands of Palestinian refugees marched from their current homes in Syria and Lebanon in an attempt to return to the homes they were forced to leave in 1948 and 1967. Sixteen people were brutally killed by live gunfire from Israeli troops that day, who were supposedly defending the state of Israel from what the media were happy to report as infiltration and aggression. Yet the protesters’ actions, given their right to return to their property, were nothing but peaceful self defence, an attempt to return to what is theirs. Given the historical and moral context, the fences, the barbed wire and the Israeli thug state were the aggressors and continue to be so long after the gunfire has quieted down.
Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to their property and must be recognised as equal citizens in an Israeli state. The fences that keep people out of their homes must be taken down and the guns lowered. The Palestinian Authority and their negotiators have no right to sign away the rights of Palestinian refugees to return, and any peace treaty that does so is illegitimate. We must not flinch from demanding justice in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. We want real peace, not surrender.
What the statement “Peace, Not Surrender” urged was peace as understood correctly, that is, not just the absence of immediate physical violence but a real peace born from justice. For the person that scrawled the slogan on the Separation Wall, peace is not merely the silencing of guns, bombs, tear gas and stun grenades. Peace is the freedom of the individual to what is rightfully his or hers. Where an individual or group of individuals have resigned themselves to the denial of their rights under threat of force, there is no peace.
Though such relationships between ruler and ruled can give the impression of tranquillity in the absence of violence, when we look closer and analyse the underlying relationship we see a very different story. We see a peace not mutually agreed upon, not marked by a relationship of mutual cooperation, but one of unilateral aggression, of resignation of the vanquished to their situation. Not peace, but only the absence of self defence by one party in the face of violence by the other.
The statement “Peace, Not Surrender” is challenging as many of us who find peace to be fundamental are often unwittingly willing to forgo justice for the sake of “peace”. Many of us may have written “Peace is Not Surrender”. However, our clamour for an end to immediate hostility can often result in our simply burying that hostility, of regularising it or giving it sanction through peace treaties or legislation. In turn, future generations who seek to break out of the prisons imposed on them in the name of peace are accused of breaking the contract or of ripping up the agreement. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is instrumental in highlighting the effect on outcomes those opposing interpretations of peace can have.
A total of 700,000 Palestinians were exiled from their homes during the 1948 Middle East War and a further 300,000 during the 1967 “Six Day War”, as part of a pogrom of non-Jews from an area that was earmarked for a Jewish homeland by Zionist political thinkers. Human rights law as well as international law are explicit on the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their property, for which many of the original Palestinian owners still have ownership deeds and keys to their homes.
Israel, however, refuses to allow those refugees and their descendants return to their properties. The repercussions of Israel allowing right of return would undermine Israel as a Jewish state. A return of what are today 5 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants to their properties in Israel, with full voting rights to the Israeli parliament, would be the death knell for the Israel constructed by the Zionist political movement.
Of course Israel, in the current political situation, holds all the cards. With multibillion dollar annual unconditional military aid from the United States, Israel can impose any solution they see fit. Given this, in lieu of a just solution, many who wish to see peace in the Middle East have resigned themselves to the “realistic solution”. That is, an Israel and Palestine based on 1967 borders with no right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Such a “peace” was outlined by President Obama in his recent speech to the State Department on the topic. According to Obama there was to be no return of refugees who lost their homes in Israel; Israel is the homeland of the Jews and its character as a Jewish state should be recognised as such by Palestinians. Israel, for its part, was to return to its 1967 borders and Palestinians were to get “their” state.
In his later speech to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama relented further to the Israeli position and said there did not, in fact, have to be a return to 1967 borders. “Mutual land swaps” would dramatically alter any future borders. Obama seems to have forgotten, or ignored, that “mutual” has never been a characteristic of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A precondition that any settlement of the conflict would involve “mutual land swaps” essentially gives veto power to Israel to any change in the current situation. After all, why agree to mutual land swaps when you already have all the land?
In recent documents leaked to al-Jazeera there was a tiny glimpse at the concessions Palestinian leaders are themselves willing make in the hunt for that all elusive “peace”. The 1,600 leaked documents showed the Palestinian Authority, in a desire to secure their own Bantustan state, was willing to make massive concessions on all issues including Israeli settlements, control of holy sites and, of course, the right of return of Palestinian refugees. The papers showed that Palestinian negotiators were willing to cede that only 10,000 of the some 5 million Palestinian refugees living abroad could return to their homes in what is now Israel. By all means it would have been “Surrender, Not Peace”. Despite this, Israeli negotiators still threw the concessions back at the Palestinians.
It seems that, much to the dismay of the individual who painted his message on the Separation Wall, the world, the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli state are seeking to impose the “realistic” solution on Palestinians in Israel, the occupied Palestinian territory and those living abroad: Surrender. The only thing such a peace agreement will serve is the regulation and normalisation of force against Palestinian refugees and to repackage it as peace. The Palestinian Authority has no authority to sign away the rights of Palestinians to their homes in Israel for the sake of any “peace” agreement. Such a peace is not peace for those who are excluded. For them, it is simply perpetual force that keeps them from what is rightfully theirs, sanctified by their “leaders” and “representatives”. Though Palestinians may accept their fate, it does not change the reality that their rights are being trampled.
Violence and force have becomes so regularised in our thinking regards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that we have begun to lose sight of where self defence and aggression begin and end. Israel has been so successful in moving the goalposts of justice that the media often fail to recognise self defence by Palestinians when they see it. This was clear in media reports concerning the Nakba Day events on 15 May of this year, on which thousands of Palestinian refugees marched from their current homes in Syria and Lebanon in an attempt to return to the homes they were forced to leave in 1948 and 1967. Sixteen people were brutally killed by live gunfire from Israeli troops that day, who were supposedly defending the state of Israel from what the media were happy to report as infiltration and aggression. Yet the protesters’ actions, given their right to return to their property, were nothing but peaceful self defence, an attempt to return to what is theirs. Given the historical and moral context, the fences, the barbed wire and the Israeli thug state were the aggressors and continue to be so long after the gunfire has quieted down.
Palestinian refugees must be allowed to return to their property and must be recognised as equal citizens in an Israeli state. The fences that keep people out of their homes must be taken down and the guns lowered. The Palestinian Authority and their negotiators have no right to sign away the rights of Palestinian refugees to return, and any peace treaty that does so is illegitimate. We must not flinch from demanding justice in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. We want real peace, not surrender.
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