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New Realities of Israel/Palestine in the Trump Era: Settler Colonial Destinies in the 21st Century

25 Jan


[Prefatory Note: This post modifies and updates an interview with Mohammad Ali Haqshenas, a journalist with the International Quran News Agency, published under its auspices on January 22, 2025. It is affected by the assumption of the US presidency by Donald Trump and the early days of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement negotiated during the Biden presidency more than seven months earlier.]  

1. How do you assess Donald Trump’s public and behind-the-scenes efforts as the U.S. President-elect to advance the ceasefire agreement and prisoner exchange?

For Trump a major incentive of achieving the ceasefire and prisoner exchange was to show America that he gets things done as contrasted with Biden who let this same ceasefire agreement sit on the shelf for more than six months.

The ceasefire is publicized as a demonstration of Trump’s and US leverage with respect to Israel when it actively seeks results rather than merely wants to make a rhetorical impression, but there is more to this ceasefire that is immediately apparent. In addition to a promise to Netanyahu of unconditional support, Trump may well have given confidential assurances of backing Israel’s high priority strategic ambitions. Number one would be to give cover if Israel chooses to annex all or most of the West Bank. Almost as important would be Trump’s promise that it would do his best to persuade the government of Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. This would represent a continuation of the arrangements brokered by the US to induce the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morrocco at the end of first presidential term in 2020 to reach normalization agreements with Israel.

It is also significant that numerous Washington officials in the Trump entourage have unconditionally promised to support Israel if the ceasefire arrangements collapse regardless of which side is at fault. There is not even a pretension of being objective in the sense of seeking to discern where the evidence of responsibility points.

Netanyahu is rumored to have given his hardline cabinet members, Ben Gvir and Smotrich, assurances that the military campaign will resume at the end of the six-week first phase. These assurances were probably necessary to avoid the collapse of Israel’s

shaky governing coalition.

2. How do you view the relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, as well as U.S. political considerations, in light of this ceasefire?

I think the relationship of these two autocratic leaders is based on their shared transactional style, ideological agreement, and shared strategic interests. Both leaders are defenders of the West against the rest, being especially hostile to Islamic forces in the Islamic world. The Palestinian struggle is on one level the core expression of this geopolitical rivalry, with all the complicit supporters of Israel coming from the white dominant countries, that is, the European colonial powers and the breakaway British colonies in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. On the Palestinian side, except for Iran, which is indirectly supportive of the Palestinian struggle, the political actors siding with the Palestinians are Islamic non-governmental movements and militias in the Middle East, most militantly the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both materially and diplomatically aided by Iran. Islamic governments in the Arab world have condemned Israel for committing genocide but have refrained from acting materially or even diplomatically in ways that might exert pressure on Israel. The alignments in this ‘clash of civilizations’ correspond closely to the political vision of Trump and Netanyahu, and recall the prophetic pronouncements of Samuel Huntington shortly after the end of the Cold War.    


3. Previous ceasefire agreements between Israel and Hamas were violated due to clashes between the two sides and ultimately failed. Do you think this agreement signifies a permanent end to the war or merely a temporary halt in conflicts?

I believe that Israel will not end the conflict until it satisfies at least one of its two strategic goals, both of which are outside of Gaza—the primary goal of Israel is the annexation of the West Bank coupled with a declaration of Israel’s victory over the Palestinians, signified by the formal establishment of Greater Israel as an exclusivist Jewish state from ‘the river to the sea.’ The secondary goal is to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia as a political foundation for the formation of an aggressive coalition that adopts policies to achieve regime change in Iran. Israel seems prepared to risk a major war in the course of doing so, while Saudi Arabia appears more cautious. The Trump presidency is clearly disposed to join Israel if it makes such an effort, indirectly if possible, directly if necessary. General Keith Kellogg, appointed by Trump as his Special Envoy to Ukraine in keeping with such conjectures is publicly advocating the revival of a policy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran as a priority of American foreign policy under Trump.

I think the Hamas side will do its best to uphold commitments to release hostages and abide by the ceasefire while Israel will pragmatically weigh its interests as the process goes forward, but seems far more likely to break the ceasefire agreement after the first 42 days, perhaps as Netanyahu’s way of keeping his coalition from collapsing, or even before as several violent incidents provoked by Israeli military forces have already occurred.  Nothing short of a total Hamas political surrender including the willingness to give up whatever weapons the resistance movement possesses might induce Israel to give temporily up its unmet goals of annexation and Saudi normalization by way of a peace treaty. Even if the ceasefire is more or less maintained in its first phase, Israel seems unlikely to remain within the ceasefire framework once the six weeks of phase one is completed, which means that the latter two latter phases of ending the campaign and IDF withdrawal phases of the ceasefire will never happen. In this event, it is all but certain that Israel would then resume the full fury of its genocidal campaign, provoking Hamas to react. Israel would then use its influence with mainstream media and support in Washington to shift blame to Hamas to avoid any responsibility for the breakdown in the courts of public opinion while resuming its genocidal campaign in Gaza that never was truly abandoned despite the claims made on behalf of the ceasefire diplomacy..

4. The Israeli finance minister, referring to his discussions with Netanyahu, stated that Israel has not yet achieved its objectives in the war. Can it be argued that this agreement will undermine Israel’s security?

I believe the Israeli response was never primarily about security. It was main about land and demography, more specifically about gaining sovereignty over the West Bank, and giving the settler militants a green light to make life unlivable for the Palestinians so that they would die or leave. This anticipated and indulged settler rampage has gathered momentum with its undisguised agenda of dispossessing and killing enough Palestinians so as to restore a Jewish majority population. By such means, settler violence serves an undisguised prelude to the incorporation of the West Bank into Israel, likely with Trump’s endorsement.

Prior to October 7, Palestinians and Israelis were almost evenly split in the overall population of 14 or 15 million inhabiting Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. The higher Palestinian birthrate means that it is only a matter time until a majority of Palestinians are living under Israeli apartheid control and long dubious claims made by Israel to being a democracy would become delusional.

In the background pf my response is the growing evidence that Israel allowed the October 7 attack to happen because it wanted to initiate massive violence against the Palestinians with the justification of acting in a retaliatory mode that would excuse the death and  expulsion of large number of Palestinians, a lethal process more or less repeating the expulsions of an estimated 750.000 Palestinians in 1948, what is known to Palestinians as the nakba or catastrophe.

The Israel government received several extremely reliable warnings preceding the October 7 attack, including from US intelligence sources. In addition, Israel possessed advanced surveillance capabilities throughout Gaza to monitor Hamas resistance moves. These technical capabilities were reportedly reinforced by informers making the supposed ‘surprise’ nature of the attack hardly possible to believe. Under such circumstances it is inconceivable that Israel, at the very least, should have prepared to defend its borders and nearby Israeli communities. This is not to say that Israel was necessarily privy to the details or scope of the attack and might have been genuinely surprised by its sophistication and severity. This might explain the widespread support in Israel and indulgence throughout the world for an excessive military retaliation that lasted for several months. During this period protests were small and were hardly noticed despite the genocidal features of the Israeli attack. As the violence and denial of the necessities for Palestinian subsistence went on month after month civil society opposition grew more intense and widespread, an impression furthered by agitated by repeated Israeli lethal interferences with humanitarian aid deliveries and accompanying aid workers, including even the targeting of ambulances, rescue vehicles, and the supplies sent for the relief of desperately hungry, sick, and injured Palestinians. 

5. The release of prisoners is a critical step in the course of the war. Israel has incurred significant costs by agreeing to release Hamas members and individuals convicted of violent actions, which has sparked disputes within the Israeli cabinet. In your view, what challenges will this stage of the ceasefire face?

I think the main humiliation for Israel was not the release of so many Palestinian prisoners, but the need to negotiate as equals with Hamas to recover 33 hostages in a military campaign justified from the beginning as dedicated to the destruction and elimination of Hamas as a political actor and the reconfiguring of governance in Gaza.

Anyone following these events would also have hardly known from the one-sided media coverage that Palestinian prisoners were being released as the near exclusive media focus, especially that of the leading platforms in the West, was on the plight of the ‘hostages,’ while ignoring the far worse plight of the civilian population of Gaza or the many Palestinian women and children subjected to far worse treatment while under confinement. The release of more than 90 Palestinians prisoners on the first days of the ceasefire, many of whom had endured extremely abusive treatment and were innocent of any involvement in the October 7 attack was deemed hardly newsworthy. By the end of the six-week Phase One of the Ceasefire Arrangement nearly 2,000 Palestinians are scheduled for release. True, it is a direct violation of the law of war to hold innocent civilians or even captured enemy soldiers as hostage, but considering the disparity of weaponry and given the long history of Israel’s violence against civilians in Gaza, it becomes understandable why the Hamas resistance would seek at least the so-called

‘bargaining chip’ of hostages.

This underlying disparity in the relation between the hostage release and prisoner release reinforced the long-nurtured Israeli discourse that Israel values the life and freedom of its citizens so much than does Hamas that it is willing to make to agree to an unequal exchange with its enemy. Such state propaganda is consistent with the reverse disparity in media treatment, showing a human interest in each Israeli hostage released while viewing the Palestinian prisoner releases as a purely impersonal matter of statistics, a portrayal movingly contradicted by the crowds in the West Bank celebrating the prisoner releases, heeding their words of anguish about their detention experience (often held for long periods without charges) and their joyous embrace of ‘freedom.’

Those of us with experience of the two political cultures are struck by the closeness of Palestinian families and the absence of any sacrificial ethos comparable to Israel’s Hannibal Directive that instructs IDF soldiers to kill Israelis at risk of being captured rather than allowing them to become prisoners who will be traded for a disproportionate number of Israels. Living under conditions of an apartheid occupation or oppression allows Palestinians few satisfactions in pattens of existence most of us would regard as a life of misery other than personal intimacy of family and friendship.


6. How do you evaluate the future of Palestine, particularly the Gaza region? Some observers believe that Gaza’s current generation of children, who have lost their homes and families in this war, might take action against Israel in the future. What is your analysis?

Given the present correlation of forces, including the Trump assumption of the US presidency, I see little hope for a just resolution of Palestinian grievances soon. A further period of struggle, including a continuing process of Israeli delegitimation is underway. Israeli as a result of the Gaza genocide has been rebranded as a pariah state whose lawlessness has undermined it sovereign rights, and even drawn into question its entitlement to remain a member of the UN that its leaders regularly defame as ‘a cesspool of antisemitism.’ Israel also faces increased pressures from the impact of a rising tide of global solidarity initiatives generated by civil society activism, and taking the form of boycotts, divestment, sanctions, taxpayer revolt, and reinforce by reductions of trade with and investment in Israel. Such developments are bound to have economic and psycho-political impacts over time on the quality of life in Israel. Few doubt that such a campaign caused apartheid South African elites to experience the anguish of being excluded from international sporting events or of by having lucrative invitations refused by performing international musicians.

If the dynamics of delegitimation lead a significant number of Israelis to leave the country, choose to live elsewhere it would be a signal of the imminent collapse of Zionism as the state ideology of Israel, if not of Israel itself. Suddenly, the phantasies of veteran residents of Palestinian refugee camps are becoming real political possibilities. In other words, the Palestinians are winning the nonviolent Legitimacy War as measured by the Palestinian capture and global control of the high moral and legal ground of the conflict, and by the vitality of its national resistance under the most extreme pressures exerted by Israeli recourse to apartheid and now genocide. The dynamics of delegitimation may take decades of further suffering for Palestinians to feel vindication by the success of their prolonged resistance, above all by its translation into a political outcome that finally realizes Palestinian self-determination in a form that the Palestinians favor, and not by an arrangement pre-packaged and imposed by the UN or outside forces.

If this path to the realization of basic rights is effectively blocked by Israel’s apartheid tactics of domination, even should the genocidal jagged edges no longer are present, it will undoubtedly stimulate armed Palestinian resistance especially from survivors of the Gaza genocide who lost parents and children, and in some cases, whole families, or are living as amputees or with maimed bodies. It is impossible to imagine the depths of grief, which over time will give way to a sense of rage and resentment that will seek political expression in the form of violent anti-Israel acts and movements, as well as fuel global surges of genuine antisemitism, the opposite of the weaponized variants used so opportunistically to shield Isreal from criticism, censure, and sanctions.


7. From the international law perspective, what can be done to stop the Israeli occupation, which is basically the source of years-long conflicts in Palestine?

As should have become clear after decades of Israeli efforts to convert Palestinians into persecuted strangers in their own homeland, there is no path to a secure Israeli future even if the oppressor maintains its harsh apartheid regime. If that does not achieve political surrender or at least sullen acquiescence, then as a final effort to deal with resistance, then the settler elites are quite likely to engage in a last-ditch recourse to genocide. Israel is following the same path that the colonial West chose when compelled to deal with native peoples in the countries settled, who were dehumanized, slaughtered, and permanently marginalized. These pre-modern aggressions were most often rationalized by international law that until the last century generally legitimated colonial conquest and claims of sovereignty. In contrast, international law has since 1945 formally declared apartheid and genocide as high international crimes, but such a reclassification has proved inadequate in the face of Israeli defiance reinforced by the geopolitical complicity of the West, especially as led by the US.

The test of Palestinian resistance may emerge shortly and can be reduced to whether the remarkable steadfastness (samud) of the Palestinian people can withstand a final Israeli effort to transfer, eliminate, or kill the resident Arab population. There are already indications that the Trump leadership favors bizarre ethnic cleansing operations such as that mentioned by Trump’s newly appointed Middle East Envoy, Steve Witkoff. He recently proposed transferring a portion of the surviving population of Gaza to Indonesia.  Even if such a bizarre proposal is discounted as mere rhetoric it exhibited an intention to aid, abet, and facilitate Israel’s version of ‘a final solution’ that left the Jewish state in unobstructed control of historic Palestine. If we assume the Israeli willingness to implement such a plan and Indonesia agreeing in exchange for being lavishly subsidized, the very idea of such a proposal contradicts the proclaimed ethos of the 21st century. Channeling Trump, Witkoff is talking as if the world of states was a chess board on which the US could shift the pieces at will, an assert of hegemonic prerogatives.

  

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The Middle East: Geopolitical Battleground

18 Apr

[Prefatory Note: The following text is based on a series of questions posed on the basis of my memoir by the Egyptian journalist, Bassem Aly, to be published in Al-Ahram Weekly and Ahram Online on 20 April 2021. The interview covers several distinct issues that involve interpretations of major foreign policy concerns in the Middle East.]

  1. Your memoir, Public Intellectual thoroughly explains your experience in Vietnam. In your view, did costly interventions as those of Vietnam, and others in Iraq and Afghanistan, limit the US appetite for repeating them during the past decade?

Unfortunately, the real lessons of involving Iran are interwoven with the Vietnam War and both remain unlearned. The fundamental failures were repeated as your question suggests later in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would add Libya, and less directly, Yemen and Syria. 

The U.S. Government did attempt to make some adjustments: in reaction to defeat in Vietnam. It ended reliance upon conscripted armed forces obligating the general citizenry to do military service. Instead, it established entirely professionalized armed forces who were recruited on the basis of career opportunities within the military sphere of the public sector. This adjustment was based on the partially misleading assumption was the Vietnam War was lost, not in Vietnam, but in American living rooms where families watched on nightly TV coffins carrying dead young American men home from a distant war that seemed remote from national security. With further support from a middle class anti-war movement, the public withdrew political support, and this influenced most political leaders to defer to public opinion. In American society a long war cannot continue without the support of the public support, which will not be patient if middle class children are being forced to participate. With Afghanistan, a war lasting at least 20 years, those in open combat enduring casualties were either hardened professionals or persons of color with little voice in American politics. 

A second type of adjustment was to replace traditional combat troops and ground warfare with high technology interventions that could be carried out largely from the air, relying on more and more sophisticated weaponry, exemplified by the increasing reliance on attack drones equipped with missiles directed from remote locations often thousands of miles away from the combat zones. Some attempt was also made to neutralize criticism in the media by ‘embedding’ journalists with combat forces, hoping that their outlook would be more sympathetic to the military mission underway if they could be made to feel part of it. In effect, the post-Vietnam approach was to rely on innovative technology that reduces dependence on soldiers fighting on the ground and neutralizing critical media accounts of how the war was going from the perspective of American intervenors.

There has been some reaction against these costly inconclusive interventions, even aside from concern over casualties and the effectiveness of military approaches to conflict resolution. As Vietnam showed, and these other interventions reinforced, it is almost impossible for external actors to prevail in internal struggles for power by relying on their military superiority. This explains why these struggles are increasingly called into questions as ‘forever wars’ that do not serve the national interests of the United States or the West generally, and such major commitments as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are being gradually terminated. 

At the same time, domestic forces in or connected with the United States government bureaucracy and the private sector continue to encourage the belief that military engagements seeking to control the outcome of foreign internal struggles are essential to uphold the global security system that the U.S. and NATO have established and sustained since after World War II. The ongoing quest of strategic planners in the U.S. is find ways to inject military power from sea, air, cyber sources that are becoming the features of postmodern forms of warfare. These operations are reinforced through modalities of  covert operations conducted by ‘special forces’ that carry on their destabilizing activities as secretly as possible and by drone warfare, sanctions, threats, and economic coercion. Part of this continuing militarization of foreign policy has to do with maintaining the public acceptance of the idea that American security, economic interests, and standard of living are under threat from multiple actors around the world, and only a wartime military budget will enable the government to protect the prosperity and security of the American people, and that of close allies. 

2. You argued that the “dynamics of self-determination” should serve as the basis of the US-Iranian ties. But Joe Biden’s administration refuses to re-join the nuclear agreeement that Donald Trump withdrew from, for the former wants to include Iran’s Middle East strategy in the deal. Do both Republicans and Democrats now see this Obama-sponsored agreement as a mistake?

The issues involving Iran are interwoven with the special relationship that the U.S. has with Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the degree to which the pro-Israeli lobby in America wields disproportionate influence in Congress, and within Biden leadership circles. Restoring the JCPOA with Iran serves the real interests of Iran and the U.S., but since it antagonizes Israel and Saudi Arabia, it has become a treacherous rite of passage for the Biden presidency. Biden above all quite reasonably does not want to risk weakening public support for domestic priorities associated with overcoming the COVID challenge, restoring the American economic, and reforming immigration policy. In this sense, the nuclear agreement is not evaluated on its own but in the context of these regional relationships, which are obsessive in their intent to confront Iran. Israel and Saudi Arabia seek to discourage U.S. renewed participation in the nuclear agreement, but insist that if the US again participates in JCPOA it should demand that Iran imposes limits on its missile capabilities, especially with respect to range, numbers, and precision. They also are exerting pressure on Washington to curtail political alignments between Iran and such non-state regional political forces as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis as the political price of ending U.S. sanctions, which are blamed for disrupting the regional status quo.

U.S. policies have long been distorted, and regional stability has collapsed as a result. From the perspective of the Middle East, the most sensible development would be to push for denuclearizing arrangements and mutual non-aggression pledges. A dramatic sensible stabilizing step would be to establish a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone, but this would require Israel to eliminate its nuclear weapons stockpile and limit the enrichment capabilities of its centrifuges. It is notable that every important countries in the region including Iran has favored such a development, with the notable exception of Israel. 

Because of this exception, the U.S. will not even consider such steps despite their immediate major proliferation and stability benefits, as well as for once demonstrate that American leadership is committed to conflict reduction in the diplomatic sphere, and is not any longer relying on the flexing of its geopolitical muscle.

3. Turkey has recently clashed with the West on many levels, including its purchase of Russian missile system, attacking a French navy vessel in the Mediterranean, threatening the EU to send migrants or militarily intervening in the conflicts of Libya, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh. How would this impact the future relations between Turkey and the West? 

These conflictual issues are real, but are all on a secondary level as compared to the shared interests in re-centering American global policy on a reenergized NATO and an approach that associates the primary security challenge to the West as emanating from China, and secondarily from Russia. In this sense, despite the tensions with Europe and the U.S., Turkey remains an important player in the Biden scheme of things, which highlights on intensifying geopolitical rivalries and reviving Western alliance diplomacy in conjunction with its traditional European allies. Turkey also plays a key role in mitigating the flow of refugees and migrants from the Middle East,  especially Syria, which in turn is viewed as essential if Western European countries are to remain politically moderate enough to retain membership in the liberal democratic camp.

It should be remembered, as well, that since the failed Turkish coup of 2016 seeking the overthrow of the Erdogan government, there has been a concerted anti-Turkish international campaign that has linked Kemalist, Fetullah Gülen, Kurdish, and Armenian, which has been strongly encouraged behind the scenes by Israel and Saudi Arabia. In effect, there are contradictory relations between Turkey and the West—both an anti-regime coalition seeking to exert pressure on the Erdogan leadership of Turkey and a traditional NATO worldview that relies on Turkey as an alliance partner.

4. Concerning the seven-decade, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, in your view, which factors have prevented a comprehensive settlement to it? 

Most of the explanation for the persistence of the struggle relates to Israel, and its enactment step by step of the maximalist Zionist program, which makes it increasingly clear that there is no willingness to reach the sort of negotiated agreement based on a political compromise that would lay the foundations for a sustainable peace. The Palestinians have long made it very clear, including representations by Hamas, that they would accept an interim peace arrangement of indefinite duration if Israel would withdraw to 1967 borders. The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, and even the earlier 1988 expression of willingness by the PLO to normalize relations with Israel if such a withdrawal were to be coupled with an acceptance of Palestinian statehood, the basis of the two-state diplomacy that underpinned the Oslo Framework since 1993, having been implicit in international thinking ever since the UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 in 1947. Such an approach also underlay the unanimous UN Security Resolution 242 adopted after 1967.

It is also important to acknowledge that the Palestinians have not acted effectively in promoting their struggle for basic rights in several important respects. Above all, in all these years, there has never been a clearly articulated Palestinian authoritative peace proposal put forward. Palestinian peace diplomacy has been reactive and seemingly passive. It seems that Palestine has never achieved sufficient political unity to put forth a position that represents the Palestinian people as a whole, exhibiting splits in its political factions between secular and religious elements and between Palestinians living under occupation and confined to refugee camps in neighboring countries. This failure of the Palestinian movement to put all differences aside until achieving political independence in a viable form has disclosed a crucial weakness of their diplomacy. It has allowed Israel to move toward achieving their goals by implementing a politics of fragmentation with to the Palestinian people combined with their own relentless push toward territorial expansion and the legitimation of Israel as an ethnocracy, openly avowed, after decades of denial, in its Basic Law of 2018.

From the perspective of the present, the Palestinian struggle for basic rights and self-determination seems to be blocked. Neither the UN nor traditional international diplomacy, led by the U.S., has been able to fashion a solution, and perhaps never strongly motivated to do so. Continuing lip service to the two-state approach is almost an admission of U.S. failure given Israel’s unmistakable opposition, taking into account its own territorial ambitions, and its largely irreversible encroachments on occupied Palestine, substantively highlighted by the scale and dispersion of its unlawful settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. With these considerations in mind, the future for the whole of Palestine (that is, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea) is almost certain to be governance as a single state, which is presently the de facto reality. In practical terms, this means either a continuation of a single apartheid Israel one-state outcome or a secular democratic singly state based on ethnic equality and the diligent observance of human rights, which in effect rolls back Zionist ambitions from a Jewish state to the original pledge of a Jewish homeland.

Given the failure of the UN and inter-governmental diplomacy after decades of futile maneuvering, prospects for peace rest almost entirely on Palestinian resistance and global solidarity initiatives of civil society, giving Israel the choice between pariah status and peaceful coeexistence based on human rights for all. The combination of forces that led to the collapse of South African apartheid could lead to a similar outcome for Israel/Palestine. It is this earlier experience of overcoming a long period of oppressive governance that should inspire hope among Palestinians and their supporters and haunt the sleep of Israel’s leaders and its Zionist supporters within the country and around the world.

5. The Palestinians will vote for a new parliament and president in May and July respectively. To what extent would the polls contribute to the finalization of the intra-Palestinian, reconciliation process?

At this time, there is little reason to be hopeful that these three scheduled elections will produce either reconciliation among Palestinians or the kind of dynamic leadership that could create Palestinian unity and robust international support for Palestine’s struggle to achieve self-determination on the basis of arrangements that produced a negotiated peace arrangement that was widely accepted as fair and reasonable for both people given the surrounding circumstances. The most likely outcome of the election if held at all is to reinforce current divisions, including a renewal of the electoral mandate of existing leaders and the protection of the entrenched interests of Palestinian elites. In fairness, the elections are being conducted under conditions of apartheid governance with undisguised Israeli interferences designed to prevent results that would strengthen the quality of Palestinian leadership and governance potential. So far, Israel seems unwilling to allow the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to vote because Israel claims territorial sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem as a result of formal annexation in 1967. 

If serious peace prospects are to emerge in coming years, it will result from Palestinian resistance, augmented by a growing international solidarity movement rooted in civil society activism and likely featuring the BDS Campfaign. Such pressures from within and without might over time induce the Israeli leadership to recalculate their own interests in such a way as to replace the Zionist conception of Israeli statehood based on Jewish supremacy by a scaled back willingness to settle for a Jewish homeland as constitutionally implememted in a democratic secular state based on an ethos of collective and individual equality. Although such a solution to the Palestinian struggle and appropriate political arrangements between Jews and Palestinians based on ethnic equality seems ‘impossible’ from the standpoint of the present, it seems the only alternative to ongoing resistance combined with oppressive rigors of apartheid governance. 

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Border Control: Blocking Uncivil Comments

11 Jul

On Blog Despair

 

Once again I feel deeply frustrated by the lack of civility in the flow of comments on this website, especially relating to Israel-Palestine, and the broader relations between Islam and Judaism. And again I feel that those who seem to have chosen as a vocation the validation of Israeli behavior however far it strays from international law and minimal ethical standards are determined to personalize the debate via the submission of defamatory and demonizing comments. There are also disingenuous attempts to engage me in senseless discussion where a cascade of questions will follow upon whatever responses I try to provide to the initial inquiry. I have been down that weary road before, and don’t intend to be so foolish as to attempt once more to explain what is self-evident to those committed to unconditionally justifying whatever Israel chooses to do or to claim. My interest is in dialogue, not argument or polemics. And I must say that the rabbi who often submits lengthy comments has no trouble finding severe fault with whatever I have to say, and manages to construe even posts far removed from the Israeli-Palestine battleground as evidence of my supposed ‘hatred’ of everything Israeli, alleging that I harbor an intention to destroy Israel. The only exception of any merit to such defaming allegations is that he encouraged me a while ago to write in detail and in the public sphere so to elaborate upon my mention in a post that it is time for Hamas to revise its Charter.

 

It seems that those who defend Israel to the outer limit are unable to refrain in their comments from repeatedly attacking me and others who hold similar views, or lecturing me as if I am their wayward pupil. I have been lax of late in blocking such comments, partly because there are often substantive issues also present, but I now re-commit myself to doing so, and also to those so deeply offended by such comments that they deliver their own insulting broadsides directed at those who seem so intent to attack my character and reputation. I appreciate this support, but do not wish it to take this form on this website.

 

I make no secret of my dislike of Israel’s policies and practices in relation to Palestine and its people. I believe these policies and practices are the root cause of decades of Palestinian suffering and of the failure to achieve sustainable peace. I take this opportunity to affirm my support for the growing global solidarity movement seeking the full realization of Palestinian rights. Israel’s disregard and defiance of international law has been so flagrant and persistent that the country stands shamefully alone in the world today.

 

Having said that, I remain comfortable with my Jewish identity, and always have. I believe that all ethnic identities touch the deepest wellsprings of our experience as human beings, and I regard them as all worthy of respect and even love, although sometimes tough love that interrogates and sharply criticizes to ensure conformity with ‘our better angels’ and in support of human wellbeing. After all, it is the tough love of the Old Testament prophets that makes this ancient biblical text live so vividly in our minds, hearts, and souls today.

 

As I have said often in the past, despite the disproportionate injustices done to the Palestinians for more than a century, I believe that the two peoples, along with other identities inhabiting the Holy Land, need to find ways to embody peace-with-justice in their modes of living together. Now they live together in the most wretched imaginable manner, essentially characterized by oppression, violence, and exploitation on one side and victimization and resistance on the other side. Regardless of ethnic identity if we align ourselves with the nonviolent quest for justice and dignity, we must given the lopsided relations between Israelis and Palestinians in my opinion side with the Palestinians. Also, bear in mind that what most Palestinians and their designated representatives have been willing to accept since the 1980s is moderate, modest, and reasonable, and what Israel has offered is the opposite, oblivious to Palestinian rights and scaled back expectations.

 

For those who reject this statement of unabashed political and spiritual faith on my part, I would urge them to abandon this website, and find a more congenial setting, especially if their assessment of the conflict rest on either or both of these two premises: (1) the Israelis are basically right, have sought a fair peace in the past, are victims of Palestinian terrorism, and do what any sovereign state will do to uphold its security; (2) both Israelis and Palestinians have prevented the end of the conflict, and are both essentially and more or less equally responsible for the present terrible circumstances. 

 

As I have long indicated, I welcome and believe in the give and take of substantive discussion so long as it is not accompanied by insulting language and nasty innuendo. Please relieve me of this odious role of acting as monitor and censor! I fully understand that my fiercest critics detest my views, and seem unable to disentangle their content from my authorship. The idea that I should be told by a comment writer to show my good faith by denouncing this or that is also unacceptable. This is a forum of opinion, not a political platform; I have neither power nor influence, and have no ambitions in these directions, and never have had. If dissatisfied, go elsewhere!

 

Again, I thank those who have found the posts of interest, and have remained loyal, despite the many (who like me) dislike the daily skirmishes. My hope remains to continue writing on a range of themes, and to invite dialogue pro and con, and in between, hoping to realize occasional moments of illumination, even aspiring to spiritual excess.

 

Let me end by observing that given the Israeli violence against besieged Gaza that has occurred in recent days, continuing the appalling orgy of collective punishment inflicted on the Palestinian people that has followed upon the terrible crime of kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli teenage boys on June 12, it feels almost indulgent to be concerned about blog civility. Yet I feel that harsh incivility in discourse wherever it occurs is not unrelated to the official and unofficial forms of Israeli incitement to violence that is taking place as I write, and that in some ways, the mentalities blend, producing tragic results, especially for those living under the heels of an oppressor.

 

 

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