I have been thinking a lot, as you have, about what’s to come – and as with you, I’m asking questions about whether we’ll have breathable air, drinkable water, jobs, houses, the kind of health care that lets us keep those houses, or retirements to live on?
But lately, I’ve had something else on my mind: I’m worried that we don’t really understand just how badly we’ve blown it in the Middle East.
I can recall when we could deal with Israelis and Palestinians as “honest brokers”, trusted by both sides to be acting in the interest of World Peace, or something equally valid; of course now…well, Israel trusts us, anyway – and even then, only up to a point.
But I don’t think many Americans understand why so many folks in the Middle East hate us so very much; today we’re going to engage in a thought exercise designed to help you understand just where Palestinians are coming from.
You’re not gonna like it that much – but I’ll bet by the time we’re done, you’ll see things just a bit differently.
Nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument of this kind, which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry and superstition, and free us from their impertinent solicitations. I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures.
--From “On Miracles”, by David Hume
So if we’re going to think about the Middle East, there is no better place to start than the troubles between Israel and Palestine; with that in mind, let’s take a look at how things appear if you’re a Palestinian.
Al-Nakba is a term Palestinians use to describe the events that surround the initial formation of Israel in 1948; here’s how the al-Nakba Awareness Project website describes the time:
The central piece denied and evaded by Israel is the Nakba ("catastrophe" in Arabic) of 1948, when Palestinians were ruthlessly attacked, massacred and driven from their homes into refugee camps by Zionist terror groups, and never allowed to return in violation of international law. This is the deeply flawed foundation upon which Israel was established and upon which its entire subsequent society remains structurally unsteady, morally corrupt, legally culpable, and psychologically damaged. Israel has inevitably suffered from a "spoiled identity" (a concept of sociologist Erving Goffman) against which it defends by outright lies, hysterical accusations of "anti-Semitism" and other tranparent [sic] defense mechanisms, and the consequences to its Palestinian victims remain tragic and ruinous.
This pathological system has been aided and abetted by the United States, which stands alone in the world as a supporter and defender of Israel. Without understanding this pathological relationship, leading to an alteration in US policies toward Israel, no just or enduring solution will be possible.
This conflict is typically framed as a contest between "two sides" or "two narratives" that either blames the Palestinians as "terrorists" or implies a non-existent symmetry: equivalence of violence, blame for the conflict, suffering, legitimacy of claims, and responsibility for finding a solution.
In truth, the Palestinians are an invaded, dispossessed, occupied, brutalized, blockaded, and segregated people who have the right to resist under international law and have steadfastly done so for many decades in largely non-violent ways.
The landscape of Palestine (and now Israel) was radically changed after Israel’s formation in 1948. You may not realize that about ¾ of the Palestinian towns and villages that existed then don’t exist now; within the Palestinian community this is often described as “ethnic cleansing”.
Many people also don’t realize that one of Israel’s most famous Prime Ministers, Menachem Begin, was once the leader of a Jewish terrorist group (The Stern Gang) that bombed British military installations during World War II; eventually the group moved on to kidnappings, including snatching a British judge out of a Tel Aviv courtroom, truck bombings in non-Jewish Arabic residential neighborhoods, and an armed assault on Acre Prison.
After Israel’s formation in 1948 Palestinians became, in large part, a refugee community, as they are to this very day; that’s because they had either lived in now-destroyed villages or newly “occupied” Jewish land. (Some of these folks became refugees within Israel, some within Palestine, others in countries far and wide, particularly Jordan.)
I want you to read the next couple of paragraphs and then think about how displacement and the refugee camps in which generations of Palestinians have found themselves have affected the population today. The comments are from the website of the Palestine Liberation Organization:
Palestinian refugees have tended to remain as close as possible to their homes and villages of origin based on the assumption that they will return with the cessation of conflict. In 1948 an estimated 65 percent of Palestinian refugees remained in areas of Palestine not under Israeli control – i.e., the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During the 1967 war the majority of Palestinian refugees found refuge in Jordan. Information on the distribution of Palestinians displaced within and from the occupied territories since 1967 is less well documented.
Despite the changes in the pattern of distribution of Palestinian refugees over the last fifty years, however, the majority of the refugees still live within 100 km of the borders of Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip where their homes of origin are located. Palestinian refugees residing in host states in the region comprise approximately the same percentage of the total combined population (6 percent) of the area as they did following the first wave of massive displacement in 1948. Palestinian refugees have also been displaced within and from host countries.
More than one and a quarter million Palestinian refugees reside in 59 official refugee camps located in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. There are a smaller number of unofficial refugee camps. The large number of Palestinians remaining in camps after more than five decades of exile can be explained by several factors: family and village support structure in the camp; lack of resources to rent or buy alternative accommodation outside the camp; lack of living space outside the camp due to overcrowding; legal, political, and social obstacles which compel refugees to remain in the camp; physical safety; and, the refugee camp as a symbol of the temporary nature of exile and the demand to exercise the right of return.
The end of that last paragraph brings us to an issue that’s among the most difficult we’ll be dealing with today: the “right of return”.
Lots of Palestinians feel that they have a right to go back to the place they were kicked out of, and, frankly, a lot of us can probably relate to that attitude.
But the thing is, a lot of time has gone by, and for many Israelis the idea of giving up that land just doesn’t make sense. (There are additional lands and displaced persons as a result of the 1967 Six Day War. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 requires Israel to return that additional land and demands all parties recognize Israel’s right “to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.")
Beyond that, Israel seeks to remain a Jewish State, and the non-Jewish Israeli Arab population is growing faster than the Israeli Jewish population. (The non-Jewish Arab birthrate has been higher).
This is causing great consternation within the Israeli Jewish community, and for many of those same Jews allowing millions of Palestinians a “right of return” guarantees the destruction of Israel as a uniquely Jewish State. (Resolution 242, which Palestinians believe Israel ignores if it’s convenient, also affirms the necessity of “…achieving a just settlement of the refugee problem”.)
And that brings us to the next “big problem”: settlements. There has been a lot of “expulsion and construction” over the years on land that used to be either farmed or inhabited by Palestinians but isn’t anymore; Israelis would tell you that this is a natural result of population pressures in a growing country, but Palestinians would tell you this is a concerted effort by Israel to “lock up” desirable land and water resources so that they can’t be reclaimed later.
A “Security” (or “Separation”) Wall (depends on who you ask) is a recent development which is making a lot of enemies on the Palestinian side; the Palestine Monitor website would tell you this:
Settlements are built on less than 3 percent of the area of the West Bank. However, due to the extensive network of settler roads and restrictions on Palestinians accessing their own land, Israeli settlements domi-nate [sic] more than 40 percent of the West Bank.
Here’s another big issue: the disposition of Jerusalem.
Unless you’re of an ancient Mezo-American lineage, Atheist or Agnostic, a Druid, you come from a Shamanic culture, your family’s been living on some island in the Pacific Ocean for 1000 years or so, or your religious history incorporates the word “Vedic” in there somewhere, the odds are near 100% that some vitally important landmark from your religious heritage can be found in Jerusalem.
Jews, Christians, and Islamic folks are constantly fighting over the city and its eventual disposition; both Israel and Palestine seek to incorporate Jerusalem into their own territories.
All of this came to a head recently as the Palestinians presented their request to be recognized as the newest Member State of the United Nations.
The Palestinians say they’ve been negotiating with Israel in an effort to achieve peace through a “two-state solution” for quite some time now, with no success, and they feel that declaring Statehood gets them more international respect and, perhaps, a better deal from Israel; in fact, all of this may be correct.
The Israeli Government is 100% against this unilaterally declared form of Palestinian Statehood; they’re counting on the US to kill the request by veto if it ever makes it to the UN Security Council for a vote.
But if we do that the US is gonna be hated, big-time, by a big chunk of the population of pretty much every country from Morocco to Pakistan that isn’t Israel. That could push back the success of any Middle East peace process for a decade or more; it will also probably be of immense value to Iran, who is now suffering the consequences of being on the wrong side of most of the Arab Spring.
In an effort to make things easier for their American friends, about a week ago, almost at the exact moment Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was asking Palestinians to “table” their Statehood request and sit down for immediate, high-level negotiations, the Israeli Government also announced they’re building 1100 more settlement housing units, locking up land right in the very portion of Jerusalem that a future Palestinian capitol would occupy.
As you might expect, that did not actually make things easier for Israel’s American friends, nor did it positively influence the Palestinian people.
And that’s pretty much where we are today: in Gaza and the West Bank the Camp David Accords are a long-distant memory, Palestinians see themselves as folks who do not have a light at the end of their 65-year-old tunnel if they continue to negotiate with what appears to be an intransigent Israel, and the United States Government seems to have done everything they possibly could to support that intransigence, to the detriment of the Palestinians.
And if you’ve read all this and you’re having trouble seeing how we can possibly move forward from this impasse…welcome to the world of International Diplomacy, which, despite what you may have heard, is a whole lot more than just sweet and sour shrimp.