or How to
Preserve the Status Quo
By Jennifer Loewenstein 7 February 2006 Oxford, UK
A recent United Nations “presidential
statement” passed unanimously on 3 February 2006 by the 15-member
Security Council reiterates the concerns expressed by Israel, the United
States and Western European donor nations that the new Palestinian government
remain “committed to the Road Map, previous agreements and obligations
between the parties, and a negotiated two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.” It also calls upon the new Hamas-backed Palestinian government
to renounce violence and recognize Israel, though it politely refrains
from mentioning Hamas by name. Stating that “major donors have indicated
they will review future assistance to a new Palestinian Authority government”
against that government’s willingness to abide by these conditions,
the authors echo the apprehension broadly expressed in the West since
democratic elections on 25 January gave Hamas a 74-seat majority in
the Palestinian Legislative Council. In and of themselves these
demands are not unreasonable. In the broader context of international
relations, however, they come across as curiously lofty, while with
particular regard to Israel they resonate with hypocrisy. Contrary to
the commonly voiced concern that Israel is being held to a higher standard
than that to which other nations are held, what is apparent here is
that the Palestinians –a people with neither a state nor independent
political institutions—are being asked to abide by principles that
other nations routinely ignore and that Israel has disregarded since
its inception. When China recognizes Tibet
and Taiwan, when the US recognizes Cuba and abandons its tactic of “regime
change” in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan; when Russia
recognizes Chechnya and Dagestan, when India and Pakistan leave Kashmir
to itself; when Turkey and Syria recognize Kurdistan, when Indonesia
gives the Acehnese national rights; when Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo,
Macedonia and Greece exchange diplomats and set up embassies in each
other’s capitals, and when all of these nations and many more agree
to renounce violence –then perhaps it will be suitable to demand
that Hamas formally recognize Israel and put away its weapons, but only
after Israel agrees to stop killing and imprisoning Palestinians and
recognizes their right to a sovereign and independent Palestine something
it has refused to do for 58 years. The fact is, by imposing such
demands on the new Palestinian government, the real aim of Israel and
its friends is to prevent any movement away from the status quo; i.e.,
to prevent the possibility of genuine Palestinian statehood. This can
be easily achieved by capitalizing on Hamas’ very real and bloody
record of suicide bombings, by publicizing the wording of its antiquated
and self-destructive charter and its steadfast refusal to annul it.
The effects of negative campaigning on behalf of Hamas have already
borne fruit in the United States where it has long been declared a terrorist
organization. It remains to be seen whether Hamas will have the political
savvy to counter this image both with an equally effective use of information
and with a conscious and publicly stated shift in strategy and tactics,
notably an end to the morally indefensible killing of civilians.
Already the most significant
features of Hamas’ rise to power have been lost in the media: it was
Hamas, not Israel that abided by an 11-month-long unilateral truce despite
repeated and gratuitous provocations by the Israeli military; equally,
it was the leadership not of Israel but of Hamas that recently stated
its acceptance of a two-state solution based on the territory occupied
by Israel in the 1967 war. Israel has taken no equivalent steps, adhering
instead to its well-honed policies of violent repression, random and
targeted killings, closures, incursions, travel restrictions, arrests,
home demolitions, continued settlement building, the building of the
750km long ‘security barrier,’ and the appropriation of Palestinian
land and resources. Like others, Israel will skilfully
highlight the Islamist nature of Hamas and spread fear about the rise
of Islamic states (democratically elected or not) and the further decline
of human rights in the Middle East never bothering to question its status
as a Jewish state whose non-Jewish members live precariously as unequal
citizens or as an unwanted and mistrusted minority, and whose migrant
laborers are among the most poorly treated in the world. It will hold
solemn memorial ceremonies and screen television documentaries for the
victims of suicide bombings in order to justify its occupation policies
without telling its audiences that the first suicide bombing in Israel
took place in April 1994 forty days after the Jewish fanatic Baruch
Goldstein opened fire on worshippers at a mosque in Hebron killing 29.
The suicide bombing also took place three years after the imposition
of “closure” on the territories, which devastated the economies
of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; and fully 27 years after the beginning
of this occupation, a fact that flies in the face of the claim that
Israel’s policies are a response to, rather than a cause of, Palestinian
terror. A comparison of the number of civilian casualties as the result
of occupation policies versus suicide bombings will also reveal some
disturbing information for those convinced of the righteousness of Israel’s
cause or that its methods constitute forms of “self defense.” But
it will unfortunately require much more than columns of statistics to
prove the point that it is Israel’s US-backed intransigence –not
Hamas’ heretofore marginal role in Palestinian domestic affairs –that
is holding up a just solution to the region’s longest festering conflict. Because it was democratically
elected to power by Palestinians living in the occupied territories,
Hamas must be given the chance to govern and must be supported and encouraged
to do so with the best interests of its people in mind. The most proactive
and concrete way to do this is to see to it that the PA continues to
receive badly needed funding, and to demand that Israel abide by the
same principles being demanded of Hamas—namely that it renounce violence,
engage in bilateral negotiations with the Palestinians, abide by international
treaties and conventions, and recognize the right of Palestine and Palestinians
to exist within secure and internationally accepted borders. Unless or until the “international
community” (largely a euphemism for the US and Western Europe) ceases
its hypocritical support for Israel, Hamas will be rendered as useless
as its Israeli and US-backed overlords wish it to be. Dov Weisglass,
a top advisor to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, expressed the attitude
of the Israeli ruling establishment succinctly when he stated that the
unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip was but another technique
for ensuring there would never be a real peace process; that any process
would be put in “formaldehyde” until Palestinian statehood had been
rendered impossible. “The significance of the disengagement plan is
the freezing of the peace process,” Weisglass told Haaretz’
Friday Magazine on 6 October 2004. “And when you freeze that process,
you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent
a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively,
this whole package called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails,
has been removed indefinitely from our agenda. And all this with authority
and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification
of both houses of Congress….The disengagement is actually formaldehyde,"
he said. "It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary
so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians." It would do well to remember
this quote. With their latest demands, Israel aims to put Hamas in formaldehyde
as well –lifelessly preserved in time and space, unable to do much
more for its people than its Fatah predecessors whose cronyist, self-interested
elite made its living off the self-same occupation they allegedly worked
to oppose. Hamas’ acceptance of the conditions demanded of it by the
“international community” would be akin to its agreeing to nullify
itself. Acquiescence would lead to the same useless pattern of greater
and greater concessions –land, resources, dignity and survival—in
return for nothing other than the effective removal of Palestinians
from the map of living human communities. Where seemingly enlightened
principles are demanded of only one party –in this case the lesser
offending party—an entrenched form of racism is almost always detectable.
Honesty would compel most in the pro-Israel camp to admit that their
demands represent one key objective: to turn the Palestinian people
into souvenirs reminiscent of the Cherokee, the Navajo and other nearly
forgotten indigenous peoples whose crafts can be purchased at tourist
stops and added to one’s quaint collections of folk art. The leadership of Hamas would do well not to fall into the trap of its predecessors; to hold out for real concessions by the Israelis and to offer their people a way into the 21st century that does not involve giant steps backward in the realm of human and civil rights. If the Kadima party wins in Israel’s March elections, as it is currently poised to do, and if a new Ariel Sharon wannabe steps into his role as Prime Minister, their first concerted action will be to declare Hamas irrelevant: to put it in formaldehyde and to refuse all negotiations with it. That way, continued strife and the suffering of millions will be guaranteed –as will the strategic aims of the United States and its Israeli satellite. |