I guess I don't have what it takes to be a day-to-day political blogger. See? That thing called "life" keeps butting in, killing my blogging spirit and blocking me from writing all the eloquent tomes that the world deserves to read.
So this is what happened most of August - so much to write about, so little time. So I didn't. Considering that this week I have just started a new and demanding full-time job, September doesn't look much "better" either. Darn it.
....anyway.... I finally found the time to browse this corner of the I-P universe, and discovered that Meteor Blades is treating his appointment as DKos I-P mentor in classic Obama style. We are urged to get going, think of our positive vision for the end of the conflict and lay it down in a diary - with the express purpose of seeing how much we all have in common.
I will hereby oblige. In my own way. In fact, this is a teaching moment and I thank MB for providing it.
Please follow me.
A teaching moment: So what IS the Problem?
In principle MB is right. Most I-P Kossacks have pretty closely aligned world-views, as far as general politics are concerned. And when asked for a "solution" to I-P, we are not only politically close but also subject to very similar cultural, media and mental conditioning.
So perhaps not surprisingly, everyone from Lefty Coaster to Karmafish produces similar "solution" blueprints. But before we jump to "solutions", perhaps we should first ask: what is the problem, or at least, what are the major problems?
As a hint that this is where we need to start, consider soysauce - a relatively new, refreshing, much-needed, amazing Palestinian voice here. A true blessing to the local I-P scene. She has repeatedly refused to play "fantasy negotiator" on behalf of Palestinian refugees, and has been reluctant to outline a "solution".
No one their right mind would deny that soysauce is thoughtful, intelligent, peace-loving, and far more well-informed about I-P than the average participant in this ongoing debate. So what to make of this? In other words, how can we craft and draft "solutions" when even the most ideal of Palestinians, even our very own Palestinian Kossacks, are not coming on board?
(...I may sound like a Bibi hack for a second here...) No. Rule out right-wing conspiracy theories about the devious schemings of Palestinians (theories that, I'm afraid, are have become quasi-official state religion in Israel since 2000). The stumbling block is elsewhere.
We, and the rest of the Western world, have been hypnotized by the search for "solutions" - solutions for the problem as Israelis see it. Not as Palestinians see it.
For Israelis, the problem is that we have no peace. In this respect, we Israelis are in a far better situation than we were a generation ago: back then we had no peace with any of our neighbors, and were boycotted by much of the world. Nowadays, it really only boils down to the Palestinians (Syria is a piece of cake in comparison, and Lebanon is completely contingent upon Palestine and Syria).
Other than that, our lives are refreshingly normal. I mean, still a small stressed and crazy place, but there is a lot of charm in the particular form of craziness called "Israeli life." Indeed, what strikes most uninitiated visitors to the land is how normally Israelis manage to live their lives.
Since the West hears from Israel that the problem is no peace, and since the Western media, especially the American, portrays the conflict as between equal-status nations, the Western mind immediately "connects the dots" in a misguided manner - concluding that the main problem is the territorial dispute. Hence, the West's intellectual preoccupation with borders and maps.
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Over to Palestine. Clearly, Palestinians have neither peace nor security. But that's the least of their problems; in fact, it is a side-effect of their main problems. I am not a Palestinian. But I think that if you will ask most Palestinians what are the main problems from their perspective, they will answer with two numbers: "1948" and "1967".
So, dear Meteor Blades and fellow I-P Kossacks, before we rush to "solutions" I suggest you spend a few moments understanding what exactly lies behind those numbers.
"1948": the turning of Palestinians from an ordinary third-world indigenous nation, into an archipelago of impoverished refugees and distressed communities, ruled by an assortment of hostile foreign regimes. AND the setting of this catstrophe in stone by the world powers.
(Procedural note: I am not assigning blame here, except for the world powers. I am describing the problem.)
"1967": the falling of the largest chunk of Palestinians remaining on their lands, the Palestinian heartland if you will - under an Israeli military regime. A regime bearing all the classic hallmarks of a dystopian police-state dictatorship:
- persecution and "deletion" of leaders,
- suppression of all civil rights,
- a bureaucracy designed to oppress, harass and dispossess rather than to serve,
- a kangaroo-court system,
- a secret police deploying an intrusive network of collaborators and a wide array of torture techniques,
- routine military and police brutality up to and including assassination squads,
- a healthy dose of corruption and theft in various forms,
- and last but not least - plundering of the subjects' proprety and natural resources, to benefit the ruling elites and their cronies.
In short: "1967" is an unlivable reality. As many a Palestinian have said, this is not a life.
(Procedural note: it is pretty clear, at least to me, who is the main culprit here. But again, this is not the point: I am describing the problem as Palestinians experience it)
So while we scratch our heads at the entertaining 4-D Rubik's cube puzzle called "finding a solution" to the Israeli problem of no peace, and imagining that reality passively waits for us to "solve" the territorial puzzle - the Palestinians are getting buried deeper and deeper under the weight of "1948" and "1967".
In fact, "1967" has by now eaten up not just Palestine but also Israel. Which brings me to my next point.
Which to Solve First?
One of the few positive outcomes of the lousy 9 years I-P has experienced since fall 2000, is that now the West, and Israelis like me, are forced to face "1948" and not just "1967". The revelation that the refugees are still around, that they were just ordinary people stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time, and therefore it is ***really*** hard to deny they have some rights while pretending to be an honest and decent person, etc., has been important.
But do we put "1967" aside until we deal with "1948"? Or do we have to solve them both at once? This seems nearly impossible.
Here is my personal perspective. I will lay it here with little detailed discussion and explanation. I think that there is a wealth of information to be found, e.g., on the sites linked to my blogroll.
I see I-P as a pair of Siamese twins. "1948" is like an amputated limb on the Palestinian side. It was amputated badly (and needlessly), and it has never quite properly healed.
But "1967" - namely, the Occupation regime and its symbiotic settlement project - are like a cancer that, while originating inside the majority-Palestinian part of the body, has long since metastasized to the entire two-person body, and threatens to eat it all up. Pretty soon - if we don't get off our asses and start treating it.
For me there is no question. Step One in any solution to I-P, is to dismantle the Occupation.
If you still think that "1967" is only Palestine's problem not Israel's, that Israelis and some of their cheerleaders can keep pretending that this is some sort of "bargaining chip" we can play around with indefinitely, consider the few points below (out of about, say, 5000 points I could make on this issue):
- Pre-Occupation Israel only existed 18 years: from mid-1949 (when the 1948 war really ended) till mid-1967. And the first 5+ years of those, Israel was more giant refugee camp than a modern nation-state. So the state has only 12-13 years' worth of experience as a functioning non-Occupation entity. Compare with 42+ years post-Occupation. Not to mention that most present-day Israelis were either too young back then, or had not yet immigrated, or weren't even born.
- The Israeli military has become so indoctrinated to see control of civilian Palestinians as its main goal, that it has forgotten how to prepare against real threats. In 2006 it failed to defeat a force roughly equivalent to a single infantry/anti-tank regiment.
- Not just the state and the military, the economy itself has no living memory of the pre-1967 years. In fact, the Jewish-Israeli urban working class has been swiftly replaced post-1967 by Palestinian labor. Then when this labor force became too "risky", we started importing foreign labor from all over the world - a quarter-million people. Recently the state has been trying to get rid of them too; it is not as easy as they thought. And we still use at least 100k Palestinian laborers. We do not have our own skilled labor anymore.
- Israelis keep complaining about the frightening rise in political corruption. Yesterday, two senior ministers in Israel's former cabinet started their prison terms - each for a separate corruption scandal. One of them was finance minister and a close associate of ex-PM Olmert, who is himself being indicted now. In fact, all Israeli PMs since 1996 have been under some sort of major corruption investigation. But tell the average Israeli that it's the Occupation that helps breed all this corruption, and they'll think you are nuts.
So? What to do
I promised to meet MB's challenge, and I now will. My belief is, once we understand what's at stake, that we will find the task simpler than thought. Not easy. Not by a long shot. Regimes, especially tyrannical ones, don't like to be dismantled. The only Israeli PM who seriously tried to sort out this Occupation mess, was murdered by an Israeli wingnut after two years of rabid personal attacks that are eerily reminiscent of what Obama endures now.
If you ignore the Occupation and pretend that it's all territory, borders and movement of settlers - no matter what agreement will seem close at hand, invisible forces will derail its implementation, and will more likely kill it before it is born.
But if we understand that we need to dismantle a regime - rather than just draw a borderline, or even "just" move settlers back to Israel - then at least we know the type of steps to take.
Critical Steps - Top Priority - Immediate
(a partial and improvised list)
In his own peace plan, Karmafish generously suggested a "Marshall Plan" after all is said and done. No. The "Marshall Plan" is where we need to start. But both nations should be subject to it. Here goes:
- Free movement of people and goods between West Bank and Jordan. Palestinians live a third-world reality. There is no real future for Palestinian economy, if its businesses continue to pay above-Israeli prices for goods and raw materials.
By free I mean absolutely no Israeli intervention. Rather, international monitors appointed for a set amount of time can help in the transition. They will have authority to search people and shipments, but will not take any marching orders from Israel. In fact, Israel will remove all its forces from the West-Bank/Jordan border. Same deal for opening the Gaza-Egypt border. And for Gaza's port and for both regions' airspace.
If any Israeli general/colonel/"analyst" throws a hissy fit, open a treatment center for them. Whatever weapons some Palestinian militants might transfer, are completely dwarfed by what Israel holds (and the Israeli military arsenal is a major, albeit unintentional source of arms to Palestinian militia).
- In conjunction, of course, Hamas will sign the long-term ceasefire which it was ready to sign several times during Olmert's tenure, but Olmert balked each time. Israelis will get their peace; this is the easiest piece of the puzzle.
- Some sort of transportation route between West Bank and Gaza that requires no Israeli intervention will be built.
- Wherever Palestinians live and work will become a no-entry zone for Israeli forces. Not by day, not by night, not under cover. Nada. Also, no-fly zone over their heads.
- The intra-West-Bank roadblock and checkpoint regime will be dismantled, not temporarily and conditionally, but forever. A Palestinian traveling from Ramallah to Nablus will know that no Israeli "security" person can stop him.
- Even more critically: the Shin Bet secret police (known in I-P as "Shabak") will cease and desist from its insidious control of Palestinian life. No more arrests, no more interrogations, no more torture, no more webs of collaborators. They will simply have zero jurisdiction over Palestinians from now on. The CIA will appoint special people that will oversee the weaning of Israel's national-security apparatus from the methodology and mindset of the Shtasi.
- As quickly and extensively as possible, the world will help Palestinians develop their own infrastructure. For example, Palestine can take advantage of having been deprived of late-20th-century energy systems, and leap-frog to decentralized solar/wind electricity generation. For this part of infrastructure that still requires collaboration (and I'm afraid water belongs to this category), there will be a shared and equal management rather than top-down Israeli control. A third party will mediate the transition.
- The vast majority of the roughly 10,000 Palestinian "security prisoners" held illegally outside of their Occupied territory, will be released. Most of them were convicted under "legal procedure" that are shameful to even describe - if they were convicted at all. Needless to say, Gilad Shalit will be released as well.
- Jerusalem is more complicated, but the 30-foot walls splitting the Palestinian side of the city in two will need to come down during this early stage as well. Jerusalem will be open to both nations. Israel will or course be allowed to have security personnel guard its Jerusalem residents (same goes for Palestine), but detention of Palestinians inside Jerusalem will be restricted to clear offenses, and not to "he looks Arab." If Israel wants to control Palestinian movement into its territory beyond Jerusalem, it will need to create some sort of monitoring system on the city's western exits. This is not super-complicated: the city has only two road exits that don't lie in the West Bank.
You get the idea. Borders can wait. As to settlements, Israel will help decide during this first stage. Since the military will not be allowed to penetrate as deeply anymore, it means some settlements will lose their nearby military cover. Israel can decide whether to remove them immediately (and provide compensation), or give settlers the choice to remain without that cover (and lose the right to be compensated). It is a fairly safe guess that there will be a snowball effect - especially from the Jordan Valley where settlers are not quite the hardcore wingnuts the media loves to broadcast.
Longer term, much longer term (i.e., when my body rots somewhere six feet under), I'd like to see the Middle East go the way of the EU and start dissolving all borders and sending all "security" jerks regardless of nationality to go find a life. If the Europeans could do it, so shortly after destroying the entire continent twice - we can do it even faster.
But first we need to completely, swiftly transform I-P's reality. Most Occupied Palestinians have no idea what it means to live a normal life. How can they sit at the table and discuss "final borders" in this situation? Once Israelis get into their heads that they can live without controlling Palestinians; once Palestinians really have a chance to be in charge of some of their lives, and therefore can really be held accountable for how they run their lives, we can sit around some table and patiently finish healing "1948" and whatever remains of "1967".
Before "1967" kills us all.
Mandatory "Wow the Rec List?" Update, 9 AM PDT -----
No. Really wow. This is encouraging. American hearts and minds are beginning to tune into this issue.
Some sort of "it's-the-Occupation-silly" diary has been circulating in my mind for months and months. I am truly grateful to be able to finally write it in the present "challenge" framework. I don't have a link to MB's original post here, but look up the latest diaries of Karmafish and Lefty Coaster.
The critical-steps list was drawn up in an hour's thought, max. See, we in Israel's anti-Occupation camp are so busy convincing fellow Israelis and the West that the Occupation even exists and explain what it is, that there is no time, and little seeming hope, to actually affect the practical steps that will hopefully be taken. Arguably, one of the main obstacles to healing Israel from the Occupation is that the patient refuse to acknowledge the disease!
I forgot to add one important step, regarding currency. Palestinians dependent upon the Israeli Shekel make no sense. I suggest, to prevent immediate meltdown, to allow Palestinians to use the Euro for a few years. The Euro zone is big enough to absorb anything that happens to Palestine; Israelis can easily use Euros they'll get from Palestinians; and God knows Europeans have a moral debt to Palestine (as well as to Israel, of course).
That's it. Sorry, I will brace myself and not look up this diary once I get to work. Thanks again.