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December 31, 2003
Obligatory Seriousness on the Question of Israel
Israel. Middle East. Palestinian. Intifada. All keywords I shut out. Why? Because they fall below the level of one Lynch Factor. In a short time, however, it is likely to exceed a matter of 3000 deaths. But that doesn't change how many dBs the volume has been turned up on every injury sustained in that part of the world.
I am upset and I will continue to be upset at the focus maintained upon Israel and Palestine. American media coverage of their problems wildly distorts the perspective of injuries. We know, with Mad Cow precision, when every Israeli dies in this interminable conflict. But we have no equal in covering other nations. This is intolerable for me not because I believe 'jews control the media' but because it is a distortion of the priority in matters of human rights throughout the world in the interests of the American Empire and its role in global pacification. We have focused too long and a problem we have been unable to solve multilaterally, unilaterally or ass-backwards. If 100 people die in Liberia tomorrow, we won't hear about it. If 100 people die in the Gaza Strip, we'll hear about it for weeks. We will send billions to Israel and save no lives the IDF couldn't save themselves. We send nothing to Liberia where thousands of lives might have been saved. The math is simple 1 soul = 1 soul. Where are we saving souls? Certainly not in Israel or Palestine.
We used to hear about the Bakaa Valley as a harboring ground for terrorist. It used to be this way in Beirut, Lebanon. Hmm, maybe that was because Israeli forces were there.Now we don't care. My complaint is simple. The focus is undeserved and it distorts our world view.
I understand that my willingness to dismiss the prospects for Israel and Palestine will be met with fury. So I will say this once loudly, I have no reason to be anti-semitic in this stance, that is not the reason and you may conspire as many theories as you please to justify such a label. I refuse it and I barely have the patience to digifiy it here.
During my entire passive consideration of the questions of Middle East Peace it has always been the case that I believed in the appropriateness of a two state solution. Of course Israel has a right to exist. Nationalism is the paradigm and people have every right to soverienity. That right extends to the Palestinians as well.
However recently, try as I may to ignore this, I am confronted with a twofold reality. The first is in sympathy with the prosecution of occupation over lands Palestinians claim. I have few doubts that in the main, the IDF is being as reasonable and civilized as possible given their overwhelming military superiority. I think as well, that their achievement of assassinations can be justified on a strictly military basis. Politically, I think it stinks to high heaven and is an absolute disgrace. But I understand that keeping collateral damage to an absolute minimum is precisely equivalent to murder for hire. Wouldn't we like to know how the Israeli parliament picks such military targets? Ick! So on the whole, if you are at war with people, you might as well do it like the Israelis because on the whole, over the years they've killed only a few thousand Palestinians which is lightweight by any national standard.
The second part of this reality is that the Palestinians cannot, whether by attrition by the militant occupation or by inconsequential international support, or by reason of a lack of pacifist will, muster a standing government which is capable of handling diplomatic issues, controlling radical elements or a solid majority of factors necessary to move beyond (dare I say it?) tribalism. Of course it's more complicated. But what's Hamas, an NGO?
Hate me for the paragraphs OK, but it's all I can stand to think about the situation.
I hold Israel to a higher standard than the PLO. I would like to hold Israel to the standards I hold for any democracy, better yet, nuclear power. But I cannot. They don't deserve it in my eyes. I can go look for specific reasons, and something tells me that I may have to start reading all of the missives I've been getting from my subscription to Bitterlemons lo these many months. But I'm sure it will only depress me further. Perhaps it is better to be depressed and right, than willfully oblivious, especially if I'm going to have to answer to comments at Cobb.
I have said, jokingly, that I would rather have three Jewish states than one. We could aid one, bomb one and ignore the third. (I did so in a comic, and so therefore cannot find it in a text search.) But there is only one Israel and wishing it were not so doesn't help matters. So the combination of these two factors makes me think that perhaps between the Israelis and the Palestinians they could come up with one state.
Given that I have little faith that between them they would be able to negotiate a permanent peace between them as states, perhaps they might do so as citizens. It seems impossible to me that as nations they could ever resolve the property disputes between them without war, and while it is almost certain that Israeli law would give little or no recourse to nationalized Palestinians dispossessed of their properties, in the long run that may be preferable to war. If Israel were to grow up and grandfather the Palestinians what are the chances that they would continue their current course as a Civil War? On the other hands what are the chances that they would grant Palestinians full and equal civil rights?
This is something the Israelis have no impetus to do at the current moment, and it is for this reason that I heap shame upon them. But they are within their rights as a nation. Yet Arab Israelis certainly feel second-class pressures upon them as their families are split across the lines drawn and redrawn as checkpoints.
I believe a one state solution requires Israelis to be more respectful of Palestinians than they ever would be otherwise. I wonder if they could maintain their national conscription if it meant arming Palestinians. So long as there is a border, there are xenophobic excuses for civil rights abuses.
Mr. Sharon, tear down that wall.
Posted by mbowen at December 31, 2003 05:48 PM
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Comments
Cobb, you don't have to answer to anyone for your opinions about Israel and Palestine. And you're right that it's a damned shame that the world knows about every Israeli raid or Palestinian bombing but a million people can die in the DRC and nobody cares. It's bad for the Israelis and Palestinians too - if the whole world didn't try to stick an oar in, maybe they would have been able to work things out by now.
With that said, I couldn't disagree with you more about the solution to the conflict. Combining Israel and Palestine into one state makes exactly as much sense as reuniting Yugoslavia or rejoining India and Pakistan. If you take two groups of people who hate each other like poison and put them in the same country, what you get is Bosnia - a state that works only until the minute the peacekeepers leave. I've written about the idea here and here if you're interested, although I'm willing as always to be proven wrong.
At any rate, don't tear down the wall. Build it high and strong (but along the Green Line rather than the route planned now), get the Israelis out of the Palestinians' shit and vice versa, and set up something that both parties can live with until they're ready to come back to the table. The basic idea of two states is sound even though the parties screwed it up on the first try.
BTW, in case I haven't said so before, you've got a great site - you're one of my daily reads.
Posted by: Jonathan Edelstein at January 2, 2004 03:23 PM
On the contrary, and as a matter of fact I believe that I have to answer to you Mr. Edelstein, because I admire what I've read of your thinking on the matter. And I think it is precisely because of what I percieve as your ability to make sense of the matter that I am willing to try to have a more cogent and detailed opinion. But I am up front about my sentiments and don't apologize for them in the slightest. The question is whether I or anyone will be ruled by sentiment. I've gotten tired of making excuses for my willful ignorance.
Granted the one state solution is overly ambitious. It's a higher standard than I think the two sides can muster. But I cannot believe that the two states would do anything but war with each other given my understanding of their history.
So perhaps their great property disputes will end up in a court beyond their own choosing, which will only prove their self-determination was perhaps a mistake. That augers poorly for Jews, given the excuses many folks look for to justify their anti-semitism. Nobody respects Palestinians anyway - the Albanians of the middle east.
Again. It's part of my resolution to get better about this. My reasoning has to do with the fact that as an American, my focus is what it is. I'd like to be evenhanded in human rights matters, but that is wishful thinking. The analogy was me as a medical student complaining about my little sister's whining about her toothache. How am I going to be a heart surgeon if all I can hear at study time is your toothache? She replies, how will you save hearts if you're too distracted to deal with my little tooth. So I'll deal with the Israeli/Palestinian mess and not resent the fact that it's in my face. At least that's my New Year's Resolution....
Posted by: Cobb at January 2, 2004 03:40 PM
I cannot believe that the two states would do anything but war with each other given my understanding of their history.
But there are wars and there are wars. If Israel and Palestine are two states with a clearly marked border between them, there's a good chance that the I-P conflict can become a phony war like Israel and Syria have had since 1973 or Israel and Jordan from 1967-94. With one country and no border, you have the same war as before, except now it's a civil war.
The right two-state setup might eventually lead to other things. Case in point: Cyprus. From 1960 to the 1974 partition, Greek and Turkish Cypriots were at each other's throats. Now they all want to get back together, but it's taken 30 years of separation (complete with a wall) for them to get to that point. I think Israelis and Palestinians will need a similar cooling-off period with no suicide bombers, no lunatic settlers and no IDF on the Palestinian side before they're ready for real cooperation, whether that takes the form of unification or a warm peace. Sometimes walls have to go up before they can come down.
So perhaps their great property disputes will end up in a court beyond their own choosing, which will only prove their self-determination was perhaps a mistake.
There's no such thing as complete self-determination - if we haven't learned that over the past year, then we're pretty poor students. No nation can ignore other nations, and any solution to the I-P conflict will probably be a regional one.
What nations really have is maximum self-determination within a framework of interdependence, and the trouble starts when they try for more. Both the Israelis and Palestinians have tried for more.
Posted by: Jonathan Edelstein at January 3, 2004 09:52 AM
Can't tear down the wall. It's keeping the barbarians out, like the Great Wall of China.
Posted by: IB Bill at January 4, 2004 03:52 PM