[Peace-discuss] Article by Palestinian Israeli MK

[David Green]

The introduction of this article, which is from Jewish
Voice for Peace, was written by Rela Mazali, a founder
of New Profile, an Israeli feminist peace group
(www.newprofile.org)

DG

[This essay, published a month ago by Azmi Bishara, a
member of Israel's Knesset (of the "Balad" party)
argues that the conception of peace currently
predominant in the Zionist left in Israel emanates
from an underlying racism. Despite the loaded meaning
of the term, the essay doesn't use it as an accusation
but rather proposes it as an analytical tool, a
central segment in an understanding of the
construction of Israeli statehood and of the way in
which its rationale is perceived among the majority of
Jews in Israel and abroad. 


It seems almost (though only almost) built-in
--conceived and established to harbor a specific group
from the racism and persecution central to its
historical experience, the resulting political entity
and ideology privileged that group and transposed the
racism onto a second group whose land and resources it
colonized. And believing that it established the state
to escape (a specific form of) racism, the Jewish
group remains blind to the particular brand of racism
involved in this states establishment and maintenance.



The consciousness of Jewish persecution serves to both
justify and erase Jewish racism. Drawing comparisons
with the models of South Africa and Algeria, Bishara's
piece highlights the specter of "demography" so
persistent in Israelis'  arguments for separation and
"peace" as clear evidence of the racism embedded in
current 'peace plans' or 'roadmaps,' and explains the
fallacy of assuming peace is possible without
confronting this reality. The essay offers an account
of what Bishara sees as systemic, structural problems
that remain largely unaddressed by political groups,
activists and speakers on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and which in fact determine the options for
reaching any resolution. 


Based on this structural analysis, Bishara recently
published an additional article ("Unilaterally racist:
In pulling out several settlements from Gaza, Sharon
is thinking in demographic terms," Al-ahram Weekly,
12-18 February 2004
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/677/op9.htm), focused
on Sharon's current plan for "unilateral separation."
The second piece isn't included below, due to the
length and more fundamental argument of the first. It
can be accessed at the address above. Its major
highlights, however, include Bishara's view that,
"Sharon ... wants to get rid of the roadmap while
portraying "unilateral withdrawal" as a daring step.
In doing so, Sharon is helped by the clamor the
Israeli right is raising about the evacuation of
settlements. The right, with nothing better to do, is
creating an "existential crisis" about the settlements
to be evacuated so as to protect other settlements." 


Thus construing Sharon's plan as one mainly designed
to divert attention from the de-facto Israeli takeover
of the West Bank, this later article also criticizes
the politics of both Arab states the Palestinians,
saying, "The Arabs need a common denominator,
something that keeps them united despite differences
on detail. ... Europe is not going to help the Arabs
unless the latter achieve a modicum of coordination." 


In this context, Bishara suggests that, "There is no
alternative for the Palestinian Authority and the
resistance groups but to agree on a political
programme and a common strategy for struggle. This
process should start within Fatah. There are delicate
moments ahead, for the restoration of order requires a
measure of confrontation with the spontaneous local
forces that remain committed to the cause. This may
open the door for some people to question the
leadership's ability to impose order, while trying to
bring about a political alternative acceptable to the
Americans. Yet, to leave matters as they  are now is
to invite disaster. A dialogue is needed, but ...
[t]he aim should be to determine the pace and type of
resistance and the framework of a political programme
binding on the negotiators. For starters, the
Palestinians should seek a bilateral, not unilateral,
cease-fire." -- RM] 


A short history of apartheid 


By Dr. Azmi Bishara 


http://www.amin.org/eng/azmi_bishara/2004/jan08.html 


Rhetoric about demography so dominates Israel's
political discourse that one might be tempted to
assume that Israel has abandoned its preferred
designation as the Jewish democratic state in favour
of the Jewish demographic state. The condition has
reached the stage where it might be diagnosed as an
advanced case of demographomania. The mania, of
course, is rooted in Zionist principles, in the need
to maintain a Jewish majority capable of implementing
a democracy that will absorb the Diaspora, accommodate
pioneer settlement and the assumption of a common
history, and that allows for the fetishisation of
military service. For without any of the above Israel
would have to practice government by the minority,
which inevitably leads to apartheid or racial
segregation, to government by a national minority that
sees the state as the embodiment of its legitimacy.
Such practices demand dual sets of legality. 


Because a state with a Jewish minority in Palestine
was never on the cards displacement always lay at the
core of the Zionist project for a Jewish state located
in a country with an Arab majority and in the midst of
an Arab region. It is no coincidence that the portion
of land that was initially supposed to host the Jewish
state was "ethnically cleansed" early. Along the once
flourishing Palestinian coast only two Arab villages
remain today. 


The first task, then, was to cleanse the areas of the
Jewish state -- as defined in the partition resolution
-- of Arab inhabitants. This was followed by the
displacement of Arabs from the Galilee and other parts
of the presumed Arab state. The result: a large Jewish
majority made it possible to impose the democratic
sovereignty of the Jews, albeit in a non-liberal
manner and with military and settler values. Thus did
Jewish democracy turn religious commitment into a tool
of national formation while it pillaged the Arab
Palestinian people. The uprooting of Palestinians in
1948 was an exercise in demographic separation through
displacement. 


Today's plans for demographic separation -- now called
peace initiatives -- invariably acknowledge the
impossibility of repeating that particular process.
That much, at least, was acknowledged by Igal Allon in
the Allon plan following the 1967 War. He then
suggested that populated areas be returned to Jordan.
Ehud Olmert spoke in similar vein in defending his
recent initiative on separation, or unilateral
disengagement. " Transfer is no longer possible. It is
neither morally defendable, nor realistic to start
with." 


So long as transfer is impossible, then, it becomes
necessary to find another model of segregation. Which
is why Israel's Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon has no
qualms describing the current phase as "the second
half of 1948". 


The displacement of 1948, and the post-1967 occupation
-- an occupation that shirks annexation by preferring
a formula that includes "the application of Israeli
law in the West Bank and Gaza" though without, of
course, granting citizenship and political rights to
the occupied -- are two cases of demographic
segregation undertaken on behalf of a Jewish majority.



The ugliness of the contradictory ideology of the
Israeli right may have been thrown into greater relief
by Sharon's statements of last year but the truth had
been there for all to see since Likud came to power in
1977. 


The Palestinians, apparently, live beyond the pale of
citizenry and political life. They dwell beyond a
political system based on a Jewish majority, and this
without the benefit of a wall. Once this society that
lived -- and still lives -- under occupation evolved
its struggle for national sovereignty and for
separation in an independent state comprising
Palestinian citizens Israel responded with plans to
separate from the Palestinians on its own terms. What
Israel wants to separate itself from is the largest
possible number of Palestinians living on the smallest
possible area of land. The self-rule plans negotiated
with Egypt in January 1980, the Oslo Accords, the Camp
David proposals, the unilateral withdrawal schemes by
Sharon and Olmert, the Geneva initiative by the
Zionist Israeli left, and the separation wall, are
merely different manifestations of such thinking. 


The flaw at the heart of all such initiatives, the
clear evidence that they are destined not to lead to
any real peace, is that they are rooted in a process
of separation made necessary by the demand to maintain
a large Jewish majority in the Israeli political
entity. 


This is the demographic context within which Zionism
deals with the question of land. For some reason
Zionist political culture and symbols are steeped in
an unwavering conviction that any unpopulated land is
ripe for confiscation and annexation. This assumption
is so blatant that Arabs feel guilty when they leave a
plot of land vacant for any vacant land is threatened
with confiscation, either to become part of a
settlement, a road to a settlement or a natural
protectorate. 


Any uninhabited land is land fit for carving off. Here
lies the iniquity of the demographic argument. On the
one hand it is racist. On the other it has nothing to
do with land. Segregation may take place without land,
as in the case of displacement. Or it may take place
on the smallest possible piece of land, as Sharon
wants. 


Some Arabs and Palestinians have internalised the
logic of Zionist demographic scare tactics to the
extent that they see the slur of "demographic bomb" as
something good. They boast of the Palestinian woman's
womb, for lack of anything better to boast. Is this
what our unified strategy has come to? Aside from the
primitiveness and backwardness of regarding women as
wombs the demographic factor is not, in itself,
conducive to righteousness. It embraces a racist
vision that is not driven towards just solutions.
Racism is the basic motive for separation. 


"They are there and we are here," Barak's electoral
slogan once announced. Struggle is being waged so that
the terms of this separation are not overly
comfortable for Israel, not terminally tragic for the
Palestinians living under occupation. 


That internalising the colonialist vision has led to
the cult of numbers, of quantity not quality, is
saddening. Often even progressive political and social
forces, people who want a truly better future, such as
a bi-communal state, use demographic scare tactics:
unless withdrawal is implemented to the lines of 4
June 1967, and unless the Palestinian state is
established within this border, we will become a
demographic majority, and you will have no alternative
but to agree to a bi-communal state. 


Those who want to persuade people of the merits of a
bi-communal state should not be scaring people with
the demographic argument. The argument is embedded in
racist soil. It can never sprout a healthy plant. 


Perhaps many Arab leaders are unaware that the idea of
racial segregation came first from the Labour Party.
The first to call for Israel's unilateral separation
from the Palestinians, under the highest possible
wall, was Hayim Ramon. Likud adopted the proposal and
went, literally, to the wall. The left is using the
demographic threat to scare Israelis. It is trying to
convince the Palestinians to abandon all other logic,
through a virtual agreement that serves the
segregationists. A worthier left would have sought
peace in power and fought racial segregation in
opposition. The left should fight the wall rather than
draw up virtual agreements. This is the litmus test. 


So long that the logic of any settlement remains
demographic, so long that it all boils down to
separation from the largest possible number of
Palestinians, land remains a secondary issue in the
creation of a Palestinian entity. 


Zionist colonialism inhabits the space between two
extinct models -- those provided by South Africa and
French practice in Algeria. It is not a blend of the
two, but rather a distillation of the worst in each. 


In South Africa, that pioneer of apartheid, racial
segregation was not absolute. It took place within a
framework of political unity. The racist regime saw
blacks as part of the system, an ingredient of the
whole. The whites created a racist hierarchy within
the unity, according to their own vision of the
universe. They interpreted Christian religious texts
accordingly. Blacks and whites, then blacks and whites
and coloureds, were given different ranks and legal
status within a frame of a unified system --
apartheid. 


Apartheid is one system for whites and blacks. The
whites did not think for a moment of creating
separation walls running along entire provinces.
Assaulting nature in such a pattern was unthinkable.
What they did was circumvent entire black towns,
ghettos, and squatter camps, and restrict the movement
of their inhabitants. The only walls they created were
those to their own private dwellings. Behind these
walls they retreated, in their gardens, with their
black servants. 


The struggle for freedom in South Africa was a
struggle against segregation and discrimination within
the same political entity. Demographic segregation was
not even considered. The entire logic of the struggle
was to fight racism and segregation -- the goal to
create one nation of blacks and whites, a South
African nation, a single democratic and sovereign
state. This endeavour is still underway and it is
premature to judge its outcome. Yet such is the
thinking behind it. 


French colonisation presented an opposite model,
replete with geographic, cultural and societal
separation between two entities, the occupier and the
occupied. Whereas the Boers saw South Africa as their
home and fought a ferocious war against what they
considered British occupation, the colonisers of
Algeria had a "mother county", an offshore home to
look to. The impulse of French colonialism was to
achieve unity within the separation between France and
Algeria, not separation within the unity, as was the
case in South Africa. 


This is why French colonialism was accompanied by the
hectic quest to give Algeria, and its inhabitants, a
French makeover. This is why the liberation movement
adopted pure separatist dogma, with a stress on
identity that still marks Algerian society. Even class
conflicts and domestic politics in Algeria resemble a
conflict of identity, one parodying the experience of
the struggle against colonialism. The separation
achieved through independence was a full one, of land
and people. Over a million settlers left the country,
even though they were given the choice of remaining as
Algerian citizens. 


The case of Palestine is not an attempt to achieve
separation within unity, as was the case with
apartheid, nor is it an attempt to unify what was
originally separate, as was the case in Algeria. The
Israelis identify with the land, but keep away from
the locals. The Israelis want to stay in the country
and deny citizenship to its inhabitants. Or they want
to be separate but hold on to the settlements.
Barriers and walls are the rule, not the exception. 


This unique type of colonialism does not seek to
"develop" the inhabitants, as other colonialists once
did in homage to the "white man's burden". This
colonialism displaces people, confiscates their land
or bypasses them (the term, often applied to roads, is
pertinent). It "develops" the land for settlement, but
not for the inhabitants. Because of this Moshe Dayan
and his aides adopted a policy of open bridges after
the 1967 War. They wanted the Palestinians to have an
economic and demographic outlet to Jordan, the Gulf
countries, and other parts of the region, so as to
free Israel from the economic and other
responsibilities commonly assumed by occupying
authorities. These open bridges helped the occupation
endure, and helped the people endure it. 


In all former colonies one comes across traces of
French, English, Dutch, Belgian, or Muscovite
architecture. One can find hospitals and
administrative offices, prisons, railways, even
universities built by the occupiers. Not in the areas
seized in 1967. Not one Israeli building, not even a
prison, is to be seen in Ramallah, Nablus or Gaza.
Everything there was built by Arabs. There is not a
trace of an Israeli building in
Arab areas, apart from the settlements and their
related infrastructure. 


Separation, within separation, is the logic of Zionist
colonialism, the thinking behind the wall of racial
segregation, where Israel continues its crimes of
barbarism. Separation is the logic underlying Sharon's
recent proposals for further obstacles east of the
wall, where Israeli forces will be stationed to
oversee the outskirts of Palestinian towns and
villages. 


It is difficult to describe the maze of walls and
barrier constructed around the villages in the
vicinity of Jerusalem. It is difficult to imagine the
ugliness brought about in the course of controlling
people and land: gates and observation towers, double
walls, barbed and electrical wires. What we have here
is a wide-scale recreation of the detention camp which
Giorgio Agamben called the essence of the modern
fascist state. This is a place where the exception
becomes the rule, and the state of emergency becomes
permanent, to use the words of Walter Benjamin. 



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