Eggs Fail To Recognize Omelette's Right To Exist

One of the Quartet's conditions for dealing with a Hamas-led government of the Palestinian Authority is that it must "recognize Israel". Quite often, this demand that Hamas recognize Israel morphs into the requirement that Palestinians must "recognize Israel's right to exist". This sounds similar superficially, but really is a quite different demand altogether. And it's one that even the most amenable, "moderate" Palestinian is unlikely to comply with, let alone Hamas.

"Israel's right to exist" is code for a very specific demand. It isn't asking the Palestinians to recognize that the state of Israel exists and has the right to security within mutually agreed borders (which is essentially what the PLO has accepted). And it doesn't mean that the Palestinians must recognize an Israeli state where Jewish and non-Jewish citizens alike enjoy full rights of citizenship (as proposed in the partition resolution of 1947, in which "Jewish Palestine" was essentially a binational state). When Israel and its supporters demand that Palestinians must "recognize Israel's right to exist" they specifically mean that Palestinians must acknowledge Israel's "right" to exist as a Jewish state on the lands of former Mandate Palestine.

Why would that be a problem for Palestinians? Well, bear in mind that when Zionists established their first settlement in Palestine in 1882, the population of the land that they proposed to turn into a Jewish state was not in fact Jewish, but 95% Muslim and Christian Arab. Bear in mind too that throughout the twentieth century, Palestinians maintained one of the highest birthrates on earth. So even though the proponents of a Jewish state managed in mid-century to create a Jewish majority by expelling large numbers of Arabs, within a couple of generations they are – even without allowing the expelled population to return - once again facing the prospect of a Palestinian majority. So creating a Jewish state in Palestine comes down to an endless battle to gerrymander a Jewish majority where one does not naturally exist.

There are various ways you can do this. You can do it by killing off or expelling the majority population, till it is reduced to a manageable size, as in 1948. (And then you can even afford to give the vote to the remnant left behind, and proclaim yourself a democracy, because you have made sure that the natives are so reduced in number they can never democratically bring about any change in their status). Or you can do it by simply disenfranchising large numbers of the "undesirable" population in the land you claim for your Jewish state, as is the current situation for millions of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. These ugly means are not an unfortunate by-product of an Arab propensity for "terrorism" or "anti-semitism", forced upon unfortunate Zionists who would otherwise have preferred to peacefully coexist; they are absolutely intrinsic to creating a Jewish-majority state in Palestine. They are simply what you have to do in order to create a regime that favours one kind of people over another, in a land where the "other" people are the majority. Presumably, for Zionism, the end goal of creating a Jewish state in Palestine is of such import that its benefits outweigh the "collateral damage" that this inevitably involves for the Palestinian population.

When you demand that Palestinians acknowledge the "right" of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, you are asking them to say that they too think Zionism is worth all this "collateral damage". You are asking them to acknowledge that it was and is morally right to do all the things that were and are necessary for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, even though these necessary things include their own displacement, dispossession and disenfranchisement. You are asking them to internalize the fact that they have less right to live freely on their own ancestral lands where they have lived in unbroken continuity for millenia, than an immigrant to the Middle East who, by an accident of birth, happens to have been born into a "preferred" religion.

While every nation's tragedies are unique, the fact is that the Palestinians are not the only people who have had their modern national consciousness shaped by catastrophe. African-Americans have been shaped by slavery, Jewish Israelis by the Holocaust, and present-day South Africans by apartheid. But Palestinians are the only people that are told they must recognize the "rightness" of the catastrophe that befell them. And we demand this because, in the U.S., Zionism is the prism through which we look at the Arab-Israeli conflict. For us, Zionism is worthy and normative, and it is very difficult for us to acknowledge that for the people who have been – and inevitably had to be – on the receiving end of it, Zionism is cruel, and violent, and racist. But try to imagine what you would think if you heard someone demand that – in the interests of reconciliation with their former oppressors – African-Americans must acknowledge not only that the slave trade existed, but that it had a "right" to exist. Or that black south Africans must recognize the "right" of apartheid to exist. Or Jews, the Holocaust. Just by describing the scenario, we can see that we would be demanding something grotesque. But we take it for granted that the Palestinians must do it; and condemn them for anti-semitism when they refuse.

Usually when you hear the Israeli government say, "Of course we want to talk, but first….", you are simply hearing excuses from a government that has no intention of ever entering meaningful talks with the Palestinians, and can always come up with one more precondition to ensure that they don't have to. But the demand, "first they must recognize Israel's right to exist", is a precondition of a different kind altogether. It goes much deeper than a desire to avoid negotiating, and arises instead from a need to avoid recognizing the original sin at the heart of Zionism, which is that it could be realised only by destroying the people already in Palestine.

I wrote in an earlier post – Islamofascists – about the tendency of Zionists to present Zionism as merely a project to establish a national homeland for the Jewish people, while leaving out the rather important point that it is actually a project to create a national homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, which already had an indigenous, non-Jewish population. For a long time, Israelis simply denied that there was a problem – maintaining a contradictory narrative that said that the Palestinians didn't exist, but also that (despite not existing) the Palestinians "left" in 1948 because they wanted to, not because they were expelled. But Israel's own New Historians put an end to those fictions, leaving Israelis with two choices. Either acknowledge the catastrophe that creating a Jewish state inflicted on the Palestinians, express regret for the suffering it caused, and discuss with them in good faith where both peoples can go from here. (And really, if you read the moderate kind of wording that the two sides were working on in Taba in relation to the refugee issue, you can see that nobody was asking Israel to rend its clothes or don sackcloth and ashes over this). Or deal with it by pretending you have nothing to regret, and beating the Palestinians as hard as you can in the hope that they will eventually tell you, "it's OK, it doesn't really matter"; which is what the "right to exist" precondition boils down to.

But the second option is not going to happen. No matter how much you hurt them, the Palestinians are never going to internalize the claim that their individual human rights and their collective national rights are inherently inferior to someone else's, merely because of their failure to have a Jewish mom. They are never going to tell you that it was all right to dispossess them, just because this will make you feel better about the nagging doubt over your own legitimacy that is eating away at you. Palestinians are willing to reach a negotiated settlement in which the two parties will agree on what terms they will coexist, then legally recognize the existence of each other and the right of each to live in security within the framework they have mutually agreed. That is the only kind of recognition that can realistically be demanded of the Palestinians. They are not going to become Zionists in order to save Israelis from having to confront the skeletons in their cupboard.

If Israelis feel such a crisis of national legitimacy that they need someone to hug them and tell them that what Zionism has done to the Palestinians doesn't really matter, they'd better find a therapist to do it, because the Palestinians won't. No Palestinian is ever going to tell them, "You're right, I am a lesser breed of human being, of course your rights are superior to mine" which, from a Palestinian perspective, is essentially what recognizing the "right" of Israel to exist as a Jewish state in Palestine entails.

lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2007/03/eggs_fail_to_re.html

Amid Mounting Pressure, Israel Asserts Hard Line

This is how Israel screws the peace process every time. They insist that Israel be given everything it wants FIRST, then they'll talk about maybe sorta kinda someday giving something back in return, or at least talking about it.

The problem is that Israel has already been offered recognition of their right to exist. All they have to do is recognize Palestine's right to exist. And here we come back to the basic problem. Israel wants for itself that which it refuses to give to others.

Further complicating the problem is that Israel still refuses to draw their borders on a map. Palestine cannot agree to recognize Israel because they cannot know what they are recognizing. If Palestine were to agree to recognize Israel there is nothing to stop Israel from declaring that all of what is now the remains of Palestine is already part of Israel, then Israel would have what it wants, ALL the land, recognition, and no Palestine in existence.

Israel affirms hard line on Palestinians

By JOSEF FEDERMAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Mar 18, 3:28 PM ET

JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday peace talks with the Palestinian coalition government would be impossible as long as it refuses to renounce violence and recognize
Israel's right to exist.

The Israeli Cabinet endorsed Olmert's hard line, urging the West to maintain harsh economic sanctions imposed with last year's election of the militant Islamic Hamas. Palestinians had hoped the new alliance between the moderate
Fatah and Hamas would lead Israel and Western countries to lift the sanctions, urging the international community to give their new government a chance.

"We can't have contact with members of a government that justifies resistance, or in other words, terror," Olmert said, according to meeting participants.

Palestinian officials urged Israel to reconsider.

"This statement continues the long-standing Israeli policy that says there is no Palestinian partner for peace," said Azzam al-Ahmed of Fatah, the new deputy prime minister. "Israel doesn't want to revive the peace process."

The new Palestinian platform appears to soften Hamas' militant stance. Though it refers to resistance "in all forms" to Israeli occupation, it also calls for consolidating and expanding a truce with Israel.

Olmert said he would maintain contacts with the moderate Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who was elected separately and is not part of the new Cabinet. But he said any talks would be limited to humanitarian issues.

Almost as soon as the government was sworn in, divisions began to emerge in the Palestinian coalition. Hamas issued a statement Sunday distancing itself from the government: "We call on the national unity government to support the choice of resistance against the occupation."

Israel has grown concerned that the tough international stance against Hamas could crumble following the group's power-sharing agreement with Fatah, and signs of that also began to emerge.

Norway, a major donor to the Palestinians, immediately agreed to resume aid. Britain and the
United Nations also signaled flexibility, while the U.S. and Israel said Sunday that their positions would not change.

"I think the Israelis have to reconsider their position," added Planning Minister Samir Abu Eisha, an independent with close ties to Hamas. "If they look at our program in a positive way, they'll find it positive."

Israel and the Quartet of Mideast peacemakers — the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia — imposed the sanctions last year after Hamas was elected to power, labeling the Islamist group with a history of suicide bombings a terrorist group. Despite widespread economic hardship, Hamas rejected the Quartet's conditions for explicit recognition of Israel.

The coalition platform, however, appears to implicitly recognize Israel by calling for a Palestinian state on lands the Israelis captured in 1967, in contrast with Hamas' past calls to eliminate Israel altogether.

It also pledges to "respect" previous agreements with Israel and authorizes Abbas to conduct future peace talks. Any future deal would be submitted to a national referendum, apparently taking away veto power from Hamas.

During Saturday's swearing-in ceremony, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said the Palestinians maintained the right to resist occupation but would also seek to widen a truce with Israel.

Abbas has said the deal is the best he can get from Hamas.

In Washington, White House National Security Adviser
Stephen Hadley said Haniyeh's comments were "a little troubling" and said the U.S. would watch the new government's deeds closely. He called on the Palestinians to free an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas-allied militants last June and to halt rocket attacks out of the
Gaza Strip.

In a break from the Israelis, Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem, said the U.S. would likely maintain contact with non-Hamas members of the new government.

Arab leaders, meanwhile, pledged support for the unity government. The Jordanian and Saudi kings expressed hope it would lead to Palestinian independence, and the Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa called for an end to international sanctions.

The creation of the new Palestinian coalition came ahead of a March 28 Arab summit, where Mideast leaders are hoping to build momentum for a resumption of the peace process with Israel.

In addition to their struggle for international legitimacy, the Palestinians could also crumble over ideological differences and lingering enmity between Fatah and Hamas.

Abbas on Sunday named a Gaza strongman known for leading a crackdown on Hamas militants a decade ago as his national security adviser, presidential aides said.

The appointment puts Mohammed Dahlan, a top official in Abbas' Fatah, in a sensitive position as Palestinian leaders try to reform their myriad and competing security services. Hamas still has rocky relations with Dahlan.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070318/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians