Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 03:13:17 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: An article by Musa Budeiri


No, we are not who you thought we are

By Musa Budeiri
>From ha-aretz, 24.10.2000

In democracies, soldiers - characterized by a Teutonic
mindset - are not usually reincarnated as political
leaders. This is another area in which Israel does not
conform to the dominant West European model. Perhaps
this explains the ease with which the state opens fire
on and kills its own citizens, and the near total
consensus of its citizens with regard to the
righteousness of such actions.What is even more
puzzling is the inability of Israel's political
leaders - whether they are embarking on murder
missions (Barak in Beirut) or on negotiated
settlements (Barak at Camp David) - to comprehend the
Palestinian "other." 

After more than a century of Zionist emigration to a
land without a people - with discoveries at various
historical junctures that there are indeed forms of
human life in this pocket-sized piece of territory,
only to be followed by lapses of memory - there seems
to be a sense of shock and betrayal pervading all
shades of the political spectrum in light of the
discovery that over the past seven years, the
erstwhile enemy hesitantly transformed into a "peace
partner," very unlike the partner it was perceived to
be. The shock is real; the wound is deep!

Barak and the rest of the Zionist "peace camp" are
indeed correct. The Palestinians are not who they
thought they were. Some 50 years after the expulsion
from Palestine and its dismemberment; 33 years after
the onset of the occupation and the colonial regime
instituted by the Jewish state; 18 years after the
onslaught on Beirut, the siege and the bombardment;
and eight years since the beginning of the Oslo
process, which appeared to be the only practical
alternative to Gaza refusing to "sink into the sea,"
the Palestinians are still the same.

Whether in Jerusalem, Nablus, Acre, Damascus,
Nazareth, Beirut or Amman, and whether traditional or
modern, religious or secular, faithful or adulterous,
left or right, apathetic or political, middle of the
road or lunatic fringe, pragmatists or seekers of
paradise, straight or gay, they have not become
Zionists nor have they acquiesced to their own
dispossession and dehumanization.

Their grudging support for the peace process,
initiated at Madrid and Oslo, was their acceptance of
a historic compromise to partition Palestine and to
afford Israel and Israelis the opportunity to
integrate themselves into the neighborhood.
Notwithstanding the frequent disparaging references to
the "unsuitability" of the neighborhood, Israelis are
well advised to remember that they were not invited
guests, but arrived here on the tailcoats of British
bayonets. Those who are fond of referring to their
aversion to the neighborhood are obviously suffering
from historical amnesia.

The nature of the Central and Eastern European
neighborhood from where their parents originated was
the very reason that forced them to leave that
particular neighborhood in the first place. To be
sure, most went to "the new Jerusalem," but some made
their way to Palestine, embarking on a colonial,
nation-building project under the banner of a secular
religion, Zionism, which was meant to liberate them
from the shtetl and its medieval shackles. In any
case, an earthquake soon overtook their original
neighborhood and it was no more.

The perception of the Palestinians' current "betrayal"
and consequent disqualification as "peace partners"
says more about the substance of the "peace process"
Israel wishes to impose both on the Palestinians and
the region than all the proposals and agreements that
have been circulating since a short-sighted and
opportunistic Palestinian leadership acquiesced to
Israeli dictates at Oslo.

Israeli politicians of all hues, buttressed by an
ideological media reminiscent of the
conformist-peddlers and opinion-enforcers of the
recently-departed authoritarian regimes of Eastern
Europe, do not tire of repeating, parrot-style, the
Barak/Ben-Ami line about the generosity of Israel's
"for a limited time only" offer at Camp David. This
has been handed to the Palestinians in the form of an
ultimatum, with the implied, and often stated, rider
that this is more than they justly deserve.

Israeli self-perception is that it is giving of
itself. Whereas Palestinians perceive it as a
compromise between Israelis and that the only serious
negotiations in which the Israelis are prepared to
indulge are negotiations among themselves. 

What is on offer is Sharon's plan of autonomy: no
sovereignty, no territorial contiguity, the permanence
of settlements, window-dressing in Jerusalem and, in
effect, the establishment of a Palestistan, with a
free option for the Palestinians to call it a state or
even an empire if they so choose.

Israel, variously characterized as "the only democracy
in the Middle East," an ethnic democracy and a
garrison democracy - among other laudatory titles - is
openly transforming itself into an apartheid state.
This is clearly evident in its treatment of its
Palestinian minority, a million strong, who for fifty
years were "tolerated" by a secular Zionist mindset,
only to be redefined as "a cancer" and "a fifth
column" the moment they dared express their identity
as a Palestinian national minority in a state in which
the intellectual elite are celebrating the arrival of
multi-culturalism and post-Zionism.

The Palestinians are not who you thought they are.
Surprising or even shocking as it may appear, their
perceptions of a peace settlement do not stem from the
needs and requirements of Israeli security or the
ever-lasting debate over the Jewish character of the
state.

Perhaps foolishly, they view themselves as victims,
initially of superpower rivalries and European
conflicts. Since 1948, and in an age of nation states,
they alone were deemed to be non-deserving. 

Having arrived at Oslo, still foolish, they assumed
that their acceptance of a two-state solution and
their making do with less than a quarter of the
territory of historic Palestine would satisfy Israeli
demands for recognition and legitimation. This was the
historic compromise and "peace of the brave" that
would satisfy Israel and enable them to begin the
reconstruction of their national life, shattered since
1948. All that was left was to negotiate the
modalities of ending the occupation.

What transpired in the seven years since has made
Palestinians realize that the Israelis are not who
they thought they were. The Israeli search for a peace
partner was confined to candidates within the Israeli
political spectrum - the Likud, and perhaps the
National Religious Party or Shas. 

>From an Israeli perspective, the task was not to end
the occupation of the territories conquered in June
1967, but to reach a set-up that would enhance
Israel's security by getting rid of the maximum number
of Palestinian Arabs while retaining the maximum
amount of Palestinian territory. 

Authority over the Palestinians would be handed to
Palestinians who would be entrusted with the task of
safeguarding Israel's security, without being hampered
by democratic niceties, contradictory as this may
seem, in that Israel is probably the only country in
the world which has legally sanctioned the use of
torture and where assassination squads operate openly.

The sense of betrayal felt in light of the
Palestinians' refusal to continue with the charade of
a peace process, the guiding light of which is the
preponderance of military might and the use of force
to pound the "peace partner" into submission, would be
laughable, were it not for the tragedy it portends for
all the inhabitants of the region.

Israelis could do worse than re-read Hannah Arendt's
trenchant critique, written as far back as 1945: "It
will not be easy either to save the Jews or to save
Palestine in the twentieth century; that it can be
done with categories and methods of the nineteenth
century seems, at the very least, highly improbable."



(Dr. Budeiri lives in Jerusalem and teaches political
science at Bir Zeit University 


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