Sons and daughters of Edward Said and Hanan Ashrawi

BY Kusum Wijetillake

Benjamin Netanyahu is on the brink; a centrist party and Yamina (right-wing coalition) are reported to have agreed to a strange alliance. A former journalist, Yair Lapid and Netanyahu’s (former) protégé, ex-Defence Minister Naftali Bennet lead the coalition partners; the latter is likely to be PM. Of course, never count ‘Bibi’ out.

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, a public intellectual, political scientist and former Sri Lankan Ambassador has observed the conflict closely for decades and played a key role in the successful battle for the admission of Palestine to UNESCO. He shares some thoughts on where the impasse might be heading.

KW – Israeli politics is in flux. Netanyahu is unable to form a coalition. Naftali Bennet is to the right of ‘BiBi’.

DJ

– “It is my hope and indeed my bet that Israeli society will not wish to be out of sync with mounting Western opinion. Netanyahu may hope that his friend Trump or someone with his views may make a comeback, but there’s been a seismic shift in consciousness which will never snap back. Jewish values are no longer preponderantly represented by Bibi Netanyahu and Benny Naftali. Three American figures of Jewish origin have contributed to this new, justice-centered consciousness: Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders and Richard Falk”.

KW – A number of resolutions and agreements on the two state solution do exist. How do the various resolutions, Oslo for example, affect the current status of the peace process?

DJ –

“On the face of it, the Israeli-Palestinian question is structurally intractable and irretrievably deadlocked. Note that I say ‘on the face of it’. As a formula the two-state solution is the best there is… builds on the logic of the original UN resolution of 1948, of two states, Israel and Palestine. It is the most reasonable solution. However, it was called into question from the beginning.”

“The Arab armies opened hostilities and the Israelis having beaten them soundly, did not stop at the borders traced by the UN resolution, which, with certain modifications due to strategic imperatives, would have been the most just and rational action. Instead, there was not only annexation but also eviction of Palestinian Arabs after the war had been won”.

“The Arabs erred by refusing to accept the UN resolution (which even Stalin’s Russia was an enthusiastic proponent of) and the legitimacy of the creation of the state of Israel – which was morally and historically irresistible after the Holocaust”.

KW – The two-state solution is under attack. Even during the Oslo Accords there was skepticism towards an acceptable two state solution.

DJ –

“The two-state solution has been rolled-back by cynical, systematic building of illegal Israeli settlements in the land that should belong to a future Palestinian state. In order to make the two-state solution viable again, those settlements would have to go, or there should be compensatory land-swaps. However, with each passing day, the Israelis leave less land to swap. It is difficult to envisage that the US will be able to mount enough pressure on Israel to roll-back the settlements”.

This leaves the one state solution. That has an interesting history. In recent years, the whistle was blown on the unviability of the two-state solution and a clarion call was sounded for a one state solution, firstly by Prof Richard Falk (Princeton University) the former UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestine. He is Jewish. I am proud to have him as a friend”.

KW – Writing as recently as 2019, Prof. Falk stated: “the zombie maneuvers of the past 20 or more years with continued advocacy of long-moribund two statenegotiations must end: the only question is what kind of state will emerge – secular or apartheid”.

DJ –

“The one-state solution was initially the slogan of the Palestinian Marxist Left, notably Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, though it was termed a ‘bi-national” state of Israelis and Palestinians possessing/exercising equal rights”.

“Given the apparent unviability of a two-state solution, the one-state solution is the only available default option. But that too is problematic. As President Barack Obama pointed out to the Israelis, who weren’t really listening, time is not on their side, because of demographics. Unless a surgical separation is effected by means of a two-state solution, Israel will be unable to exist as a democratic Jewish state. If it is to continue to claim to be the sole democratic state in the region and therefore the natural ally of the USA, it has to give citizenship, voting rights and equal rights in general, to all those who live within its borders. This would mean enfranchising all the Palestinians in the annexed territories. This in turn would change the demographic ratio, bringing into view the possibility that Israel would be democratic but no longer Jewish. Conversely Israel would remain Jewish by maintaining the status-quo but would be increasingly disqualified as democratic”.

KW – Oslo 1 was criticized for making unnecessary concessions without concrete proposals for a structure of a Palestinian State. The Status of Jerusalem, control of land and population registries, all postponed for later. The PLO legitimized itself as the representative of the Palestinians.

DJ –

“Edward Said, who had campaigned for and supported the recognition in the PLO Charter of the right of the state of Israel to exist also opposed the Oslo Accords but for a reason different from most critics on both sides. He opposed the calling off of the First Intifada (which unlike the second, was not an armed Intifada) by the PLO so as to arrive at the Accords. History has proved him right and today the Palestinians are back on the agenda precisely because of the recent uprising… Hanan Ashrawi was also a critic of the Oslo track as distinct from the Washington track in which she was the key PLO spokesperson. The Said-influenced discourse of Ashrawi, helped the PLO make headway in Washington, but the PLO hierarchy preferred the Oslo track and pretty much abandoned the Washington track”.

KW – There are some 500,000 settlers in the Palestinian Territories; illegal settlements per international law. Much of the Israeli political right supports expansion of these settlements.

DJ –

The Israelis sought to square the circle by accelerating settler-colonization and evictions, while remaining a western-style democracy within its core. That model was called out firstly and most audibly by former president Jimmy Carter, who defined Israel as increasingly an apartheid state—symbolized by its infamous walls and tight controls of every aspect of Palestinian life.

With Israel in no mood to dismantle its settlements or agree to land swaps (if those were possible anymore) so as to make for a two-state solution, or to extend democracy and equal rights to all the Palestinians within its self-proclaimed borders, the deadlock appears absolute.

KW – Could you comment on the ultra-religious, reactionary elements? Likud, while overtly secular, is linked to Herut who propose a ‘Land of Israel’, including present-day Jordan. The Shas Party, third largest in Israel, is ultra-religious and opposes a settlement freeze.

Hamas grew out of the Cairo based Muslim Brotherhood, is cloaked in Islamist ideology and explicitly calls for Israel’s destruction and the replacing of Palestine with an Islamic state.

DJ – “The Israelis erred by never accepting in their actions, the UN resolution and by succumbing at first covertly (under Labor Governments) and later overtly (under Likud) to an Old Testament notion of its borders”.

“Thus, secular, strategic and security imperatives, which were justifiable given the traumas of the holocaust, were overlaid by a Biblical mandate as it were, which made for expansionism and annexation. This zero-sum thinking on the part of both sides in 1948 was the Original Sin. It continues today, with the non-zero-sum political leaderships being marginalized on both sides. As for the Palestinians and the danger of a theocracy, Hamas will also have to evolve to retain the support of the new generation (which includes kids rapping in the rubble, in English!) and to win elections in the more sophisticated West Bank”.

KW – The mainstream media (MSM) is criticized for alleged one-sided cover age of the conflict. Palestinian activists say Israeli acts of aggression; evictions, settlement expansions, go unreported or that the Palestinian struggle is conflated with Hamas rocket fire.

Prof. Chomsky in a 2001 essay: “As in the rule of properly sanitized history, Palestinians carry out terrorism, Israelis then retaliate, perhaps too harshly. In the real world, the truth is often rather different” pointing out that Israeli terrorism is barely criticized in US media.

DJ – “The last time Israel fought a war against Gaza it went on for over 50 days. This time it stopped in 1/5th the duration. It was the first time ever that the mood on the Arab street coincided with the moral outrage on the American streets and in the US Congress, putting pressure on the US Government. From Gaza to New York and Chicago, from Jerusalem to Sydney, Palestinian flags are ubiquitous. One could not distinguish the coverage on CNN and the BBC from Al Jazeera. Israel lost the war of public opinion in the West, most significantly in the USA, and still more significantly, among the young American Jews. Another factor at work is the easy identification of Trump and Netanyahu in the minds of young Americans and young people in general the world over. The discourse and behavior of the Israeli rightwing mobs and the US Far Right which stormed the capitol on January 6th, are on a continuum. The ideology of the US Confederacy, revived by the US Far Right, and that of the Israeli religious Right, is easily recognizable as belonging to the same family”.

KW –In 2018, journalist Marc Lamont Hill was removed as a political commentator on CNN for a speech that was deemed anti-Semitic. Journalist Abby Martin’s event at a US University was cancelled because she refused to sign an anti-BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) pledge. She is currently suing the State of Georgia. Emily Wilder, a journalist at the Associated Press was terminated last month due to complaints from alumni at Stanford University regarding her ‘past activism on Palestine’.

DJ – “The international media is no longer ‘manufacturing consent’ for Israel. That is the biggest change that I have seen in the recent Gaza conflict. There has been a major shift in the consciousness of Western journalists and anchors, as a result of struggle against Trump and Trumpism, and the coverage of the George Floyd murder, Police shootings and the Black Lives Matter protests. While Western journalists have shifted, so also have the TV channels because their own audiences (apart from FOX) have shifted left. The Israeli-Palestinian question is therefore covered in a far more balanced way. Today, the headway made in positively impacting the international media and world opinion is because of the sons and daughters of Edward Said and Hanan Ashrawi, in terms of their discourse: they know how to address young Western audiences”.

KW – The US and UK share a ‘special relationship’. Given the military aid, diplomatic cover, intelligence sharing, perhaps it the US and Israel that have the really special relationship. Israel has certainly utilised US foreign policy to further its own objectives in the region. The Trump Administration shifted the US Embassy to Jerusalem, suspended aid to Palestine, unilaterally disengaged from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and assassinated General Qasem Solemani. The US also recognized of Israeli sovereignty over the water-rich Golan Heights while President Trump directly supported the re-election campaign of Mr. Netanyahu.

The Trump peace plan was criticized as one-sided. Obama did not make any headway and arguably further entrenched the US in the region. The new President has a history of support for Israeli objectives and has maintained the Trump position on the JCPOA. He is also under pressure from the progressive caucus of Senator Bernie Sanders.

DJ – “I remain an optimist… What we have seen around this Gaza war is something that would not and did not come as a surprise to Prof Richard Falk, who had long argued that Palestine can win a ‘legitimacy war’ while Israel can lose it– and therefore that Palestinians should wage such a legitimacy war on the battlefield of justice. That is what happened this time around. Two factors coincided. Firstly, the emergence of Generation Z Palestinians fluent in English and social media-savvy. Secondly, and most importantly, the change in the global zeitgeist, starting in the USA, with the fight against Trump and Trumpism, morphing into the massive mobilization led by Black Lives Matter, around the George Floyd murder. As Noam Chomsky noted, this was the biggest movement ever in American history and drew in as many young whites as it did blacks”.

“If Obama had the same favorable social consciousness on Israel-Palestine that exists now, he could have made more headway, but he didn’t. Though Secretary Kerry was progressive, Obama had to deal with the strong pro-Israeli lobby which included Hillary Clinton. So, all in all, I wouldn’t blame him too much”.

As for the Biden administration, it cannot but be sensitive to shifts in the Democrat base. But far more significantly, it cannot step up its competition with China while leaving itself open to criticism, even from its own ranks, for double standards on human rights, democracy and racial justice as exemplified by its stand on Israel/Palestine. This time, in the Security Council, China clearly stole a march on the US”.

“The impact of the George Floyd protest and Black Lives Matter on the Biden administration is best evidenced by the fact that US Secretary of State Blinken instructed US Embassies to fly the Black Lives Matter flag on the first anniversary of the George Floyd murder”.

KW – So, a possibly new coalition in Israel with Mr. Naftali as PM versus a

new US President out of step with his own party on the issue. Will the US actually utilize its considerable leverage over Israel? Will the media dynamics force the hand of Mr. Biden?

DJ – “The issue will finally be decided not by an abstract discussion over ‘two states vs one’, but by the real dynamics of history. Would Israel even have thought, that after the Abraham accords and the self-assurance, that the Palestinian issue had been peripheralized?… After exercising its military might, and despite the old propaganda magic wand of ‘terrorist rockets from Gaza’: the words Palestine and Palestinian are back in the consciousness of the world”.

“What is decisive is the moral-ethical factor and Israel has lost the moral high ground. I am certain that Israeli society will halt that drift someday, sooner rather than later, by evolving.

“My hope and belief is that Israeli society, culture and politics will change for the better, bringing Israel more into congruence with the West which it has contributed so much to. That, together with the emergence of an articulate younger generation in Palestine, the real vanguard of the struggle this time and the global voice of the Palestinian people, will break the deadlock”.

“In History, miracles do happen, and Israel/Palestine is the most obvious place for it”.