Israel and Palestine: Alternative Perspectives on Statehood

397 Pages·2016·11.93 MB·English

by  John Ehrenberg

Israel and Palestine

Israel and Palestine
Alternative Perspectives on Statehood
Edited by John Ehrenberg and Yoav Peled
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BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationInformationAvailable
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Names:Ehrenberg,John,1944-author.|Peled,Yoav,author.
Title:IsraelandPalestine:alternativeperspectivesonstatehood/JohnEhrenbergandYoavPeled.
Description:Lanham:Rowman&LittlefieldEducation,2016.|Includesbibliographicalreferences
andindex.
Identifiers:LCCN2016013463(print)|LCCN2016014452(ebook)|ISBN9781442245075(cloth:
alk.paper)|ISBN9781442245082(electronic)
Subjects:LCSH:Arab-Israeliconflict--1993---Peace.|Israel--Politicsandgovernment--1993-|Pal-
estinianArabs--Politicsandgovernment--1993-
Classification:LCCDS119.76.E3952016(print)|LCCDS119.76(ebook)|DDC956.9405/4--dc23
TMThepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirementsofAmerican
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PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
Contents
Introduction vii
JohnEhrenberg
PartI:Overviews 1
1 FacingtheMusic:Israel,Palestine,andthePoliticsofPartisan
Delusions 3
StephenEricBronner
2 MakingSenseoftheNakba:AriShavit,BaruchMarzel,and
ZionistClaimstoTerritory 17
IanS.Lustick
3 IsraelandtheClosingoftheAmericanJewishMind 41
RichardSilverstein
4 TheRootCausesofEnduringConflict:CanIsraelandPalestine
Co-exist? 63
JeffryA.Frieden
5 ReclaimingHumanRights:AnAlternativeApproachtothe
Israeli-PalestinianConflict 77
MichelineIshayandDavidKretzmer
PartII:TwoStates 95
6 NotExactlyApartheid:TheDynamicsofSettlerColonialism
andMilitaryOccupation 97
HonaidaGhanim
7 TheOne-StateDelusion 115
AssafSharon
v
vi Contents
8 ToWhatExtentReconciliation?:AnAnalysisoftheGeneva
AccordbetweenIsraelisandPalestinians 133
YoavKapshuk
9 OneCountryTwoStates:PlanningtheAlternativeSpatial
RelationsbetweenPalestineandIsraelFromBacktoBackto
FacetoFace 159
RassemKhamaisi
PartIII:TheOne-StateAlternative 185
10 TheWayForwardintheMiddleEast 187
HoritHermanPeledandYoavPeled
11 TheOne-StateSolutionandtheIsraeli-PalestinianConflict:
PalestinianChallengesandProspects 201
LeilaFarsakh
12 AOne-StateSolution?:Froma“StruggleuntoDeath”to
“Master-Slave”Dialectics 223
RaefZreik
13 PastandPresentPerfectofIsrael’sOne-StateSolution 243
MosheBehar
14 TowardaSharedVisionofIsraelandIsrael/Palestine 271
OrenBarak
15 NeitherOnenorTwo:ReflectionsaboutaSharedFuturein
Israel-Palestine 279
LevGrinberg
16 BetweenOneandTwo:ApartheidorConfederationforIsrael/
Palestine?TranscriptofAddresstotheConference“OneState
betweentheMediterraneanSeaandtheJordanRiver—ADream
orReality?” 305
OrenYiftachel
17 BeyondTraditionalSovereigntyTheoryinConflictResolution:
LessonsfromIsrael/Palestine 337
AmalJamal
Conclusion:OutoftheDarkness 365
JohnEhrenberg
Contributors 371
Index 377
Introduction
John Ehrenberg
THEPICTURE
On November 9, 2004, Visam Thiem, a twenty-eight year-old Palestinian
music student at Al-Najah University in Nablus, left his home in the Al-
Farah refugee camp in the West Bank to go to a violin lesson in a nearby
village. As he entered the Beit Iba checkpoint near Nablus, Horit Herman
Peled was there with other members of the human rights group Mashsom
(Checkpoint) Watch as part of their campaign to document and monitor the
conduct of Israeli troops. While army officers inspected Thiem’s papers, he
said, they asked him to “play something sad to match their mood.” Ms.
Herman Peled,arenownedIsraeli mediaartist,academic, andcontributorto
thisvolume,capturedamomentofthetwo-minuteencounterinaremarkable
video that caused a sensation in Israel and beyond. A haunting image from
herfilmgracesthecoverofthisbook.
Hopingthathecouldgetthroughthecheckpointandmakeittohislesson,
Thiem played. As he did, Ms. Peled’s picture captured other people who
were squashed between the electronic gate behind them and the soldiers in
front. The blindfolded face of an incarcerated young Palestinian man was
visible through the rusty bars of a tiny cell. Out of camera range, an open
shack was crammed with young men whose identification papers had failed
to satisfy the soldiers. It was all familiar and banal, an everyday occurrence
intheOccupiedTerritories.
Two weeks after Ms. Herman Peled posted the video on her website, it
was picked up by an Israeli newspaper and was reproduced internationally.
The resulting debate in the print media, on talk shows, and on dozens of
Internet blogs lasted almost a month—a long time in this day and age. Like
vii
viii Introduction
thepictureitself,theflurryofactivitypeeledbacklayersofmythandreality,
dreamandmemory,factandfiction,pastandpresent.
An Israeli Defense Force spokesman initially claimed that Thiem had
volunteered to play for the guards. The incident occurred toward the end of
the Second Intifada, and the army was understandably nervous about the
violin and its case. But the media clamor about the incident forced a recon-
sideration, and the Israeli Defense Force’s subsequent acknowledgment that
the soldiers had been “insensitive” but “deal with a complex and dangerous
reality”atthecheckpointsfailedtosettletheissue.
On the surface, the incident was just another moment in the tangled
relations between Israelis and Palestinians. But there was much more to the
picture, and to the reaction it generated, than meets the eye. Some Israelis
denouncedtheguardsforpersonifying thedaily harassmentsthat are part of
life in the Occupied Territories. Others called attention to the routinized
“sadism” that comes from policing an unwilling population. But the truly
suffocating Israeli criticism had nothing to do with the Occupation. Not
directly,atanyrate.
Checkpoints and border guards immediately raised the memory of the
Holocaust—thepermanentcenterofgravitythatliesattheheartoftheState
ofIsrael.TheimageofdoomedmusiciansbeingforcedtoplayfortheirNazi
tormentorsisapowerfulimageinthevastarrayofHolocaustimagery,andit
turned out that someof thearmy’sIsraeli critics weremore interestedin the
sanctityofJewishvictimhoodthaninwhathappensintheOccupiedTerrito-
ries. Indeed, The Guardian reported that some critics worried that Jewish
suffering had been diminished by the Army’s humiliation of Mr. Tayem. It
quoted Yoram Kaniuk, the distinguished Israeli author, who wrote in an
Israelinewspaperthatthesoldiersresponsibleshouldbeputontrial “notfor
abusing Arabs but for disgracing the Holocaust. Of all the terrible things
done at the roadblocks,” he said, “this story is one which negates the very
possibility of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. If [the military] does
not put these soldiers on trial we will have no moral right to speak of our-
selvesas astatethat rosefromtheHolocaust.Ifweallow Jewishsoldiersto
put an Arab violinist at a roadblock and laugh at him,” he continued, “we
have succeeded in arriving at the lowest moral point possible. Our entire
existenceinthisArabregionwasjustified,andisstilljustified,byoursuffer-
ing;byJewishviolinistsinthecamps.”
Legitimizingnarrativesthatdrawonadeepwellofvictimizationarenota
monopoly of any particular group, and Palestinian organizations are just as
proneastheIsraelistatetousepastinjuriesasjustificationforpresentobsti-
nacy.Thepastisoftenmarshalledtolegitimizethepresent,andtheNakbaof
1948 serves much the same purpose as the Holocaust in preventing either
party from moving toward a negotiated solution to the longest and most
destructive conflict in contemporary world politics. For Israelis, sanctifying
Introduction ix
the Holocaust creates an immovable rock that can be called upon to justify
whateverthestatedoes.The dispossessionandexpulsionof 1948serves the
samefunctionforPalestinians.Bothhavebeennormalizedassacredmemo-
ry,legitimizingnarrativesthatconferrighteousnessandblockresolution.For
Israel, the memory of Jewish suffering in the past trumps the reality of
Palestiniansufferingin thepresent. Foritsopponents, thememoryof Pales-
tinian expulsion in the past trumps the reality of Israeli existence in the
present. The deeply held conviction of the Israelis that they stand alone
against the hordes who would exterminate them is mirrored by the equally
powerful Palestinian conviction that they must stand alone against a world
that has abandoned and betrayed them. What changes is the environment.
The dialectic of history can transform victims into victimizers, victimizers
intovictims.
Little has changed in the years since Ms. Peled’s picture was taken, and
the cover picture is still a metaphor for Israelis and Palestinians alike. More
than that, it serves to introduce an urgent debate among Israeli Jews, Israeli
Palestinians, and Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories about the
contours of the present and the possibility of reframing the issues for a
settlement that could be acceptable to the contending parties. That debate is
anongoingone,andtheintensitywithwhichitiscarriedonisatestamentto
the accumulated sense of grievance—and to the importance of the imagined
stakes for everyone. It takes place in a variety of venues and features a
variety of participants. Sooner or later, all these debates have to engage
fundamental questions of state formation and state legitimacy that offer a
possiblepathtoresolutionevenastheyposethemostserioustheoreticaland
practicalobstaclestopeace.
But to say that there’s a debate doesn’t mean that it’s going anywhere.
Indeed,there’snotmuchofadebateatthemoment.Theentiresituationisat
a frozen impasse, the parties dug into old positions, the Obama Administra-
tionallbutadmittingthatitwillbeunabletobrokerabreakthroughbeforeit
leaves office, the international community preoccupied by a different set of
problems.Thepresentvolumeoriginatedinthismomentofdeadlyparalysis.
On May 17, 2011, The Public Sphere, a Hebrew journal published by the
PoliticalScienceDepartmentatTelAvivUniversity,organizedaconference
whoseproceedingswerelaterpublishedinaspecialissue(No.6).“OneState
Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River—Reality or Dream?”
sounds like a typical title for a scholarly meeting, but the participants were
anythingbuttypical.IsraeliJews,IsraeliPalestinians,andPalestiniansliving
in the Occupied Territories took part—a group of respected activists and
scholars whose collaboration at this meeting was remarkable. The series of
essays that emerged from the conference raised basic questions of possible
stateorganizationatamomentwhentherushofeventsseemstobesweeping