On Monday the prominent Middle East historian Avi Shlaim came to Cambridge (or Ye Olde Cambridge to you guys) to speak on the ‘history and historiography of the Israeli-Arab conflict’.
He gave a brief overview of the conflict to date and sketched the development and subsequent split within the ‘New Historians’ (a group of Israeli historians – notably Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim and Tom Segev – who challenged the official Zionist account of the events surrounding the Nakba and the creation of the State of Israel). Nothing he said will come as a surprise to either of this blog’s [i.e. mine] readers, but it’s worth summarising a few of his key points.
First, he insisted that the conflict originated in a clash of nationalisms, not in a ‘clash of civilizations’, or a religious holy war, or a tribal conflict as old as time itself. While religion has in subsequent years come to play a greater role in the conflict, due primarily to the "brutality of the Israeli occupation" and the failure of secular nationalism to confront it, it is "completely irrelevant to the origins of the conflict". Claims to the contrary are designed to obscure rather than illuminate. The reality is much more straightforward: the only way to establish a state with an overwhelming Jewish majority in an area populated overwhelmingly by non-Jews was to expel a large proportion of the non-Jewish population. Thus the success of Zionism necessarily came at the expense of the Palestinians. As Benny Morris observes, Palestinian hostility to Zionism was therefore based not on antisemitism but on a perfectly rational "fear of territorial displacement and dispossession".
Shlaim was refreshingly blunt on the Balfour Declaration, describing it as a "colonial document" that supported the right of Jews to a state of their own in Palestine despite the fact that they constituted less than 10% of the population of Palestine at the time. His treatment of the 1947 UN Partition Plan was less satisfactory. While accepting that it was "unfair" and possibly "immoral", he nonetheless claimed that it was "legal" and thus established Israel as a legitimate state within the 1967 borders. He was repeatedly challenged on his acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy by questioners, and each time he referred back to the Partition Plan, arguing that one cannot pick and choose between UN resolutions: either all are binding, or none are. This is an overly simplistic binary (in fact, just as a matter of course, some are binding and some are not), which apart from anything else assumes that the UN has the right to take a people’s land and allocate it to someone else. But even setting that aside, Shlaim failed to consistently adhere to his own standards: when asked whether he supported a Palestinian right of return based on UN 194, he answered in the affirmative – with the qualification that the "return" would be to a future Palestinian state, not to Israel itself. But that isn’t what international law or UN 194 demands: Palestinians have the right to return to their "homes", not somewhere near their homes.
After having dealt with the origins of the conflict, Shlaim moved to a discussion of the present political situation. Here he was very impressive. Referring to his debate in the ‘90s with Edward Said on the merits of the Oslo process (Said was perhaps Oslo’s strongest critic, describing it as "an instrument of Palestinian surrender"), he conceded that, in retrospect, "I was wrong and Edward Said was right". Oslo was a "failure", a fact he blamed largely on the 1996 Netanyahu government. In my view this is still a misunderstanding of both Oslo and Edward Said’s critique of it. As Norman Finkelstein has argued, Oslo was never about starting a political process that would culminate in the creation of a Palestinian state. Indeed, Rabin was explicit in his rejection of any such possibility. Rather, Oslo was about grooming a Palestinian collaborator class to run the occupation on Israel’s behalf:
‘"One of the meanings of Oslo," former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote, "was that the PLO was ... Israel’s collaborator in the task of stifling the [first] intifada and cutting short what was clearly an authentically democratic struggle for Palestinian independence." In particular Israel endeavored to reassign Palestinians the sordid work of occupation. "The idea of Oslo," former Israeli minister Natan Sharansky observed, "was to find a strong dictator to ... keep the Palestinians under control." "The Palestinians will be better at establishing internal security than we were," Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin informed skeptics in his ranks, "because they will allow no appeals to the Supreme Court and will prevent [groups like] the Association for Civil Rights in Israel from criticizing the conditions there ... They will rule by their own methods, freeing, and this is most important, the Israeli soldiers from having to do what they will do."’ (Finkelstein)
In this respect Oslo was largely a success story.
Rejecting the myth of Barak’s "generous offer" at Camp David in 2000, Shlaim placed the blame for the collapse of the ‘peace process’ squarely on Israel, which "reneged on its side of the deal". The line trotted out by Clinton and Barak that there was no ‘Palestinian partner for peace’ was an inversion of the truth, and the success with which they propagated this fiction provided the basis for the subsequent ascendency of the right in Israeli politics (Shlaim claims that a ‘Palestinian partner’ has existed since at least 1993 – in fact the Palestinian leadership and the Arab states have been calling for a two-state settlement since the late 1970s). More generally, he argued that to blame Palestinian rejectionism for the continued conflict is "completely inadequate and self-serving". Instead, he identified the primary obstacle to achieving a negotiated settlement of the conflict as "Israeli land-grabbing linked to unilateralism, refusal to negotiate and heavy reliance on military force".
Last year’s assault on Gaza was, he said, a culmination of those tendencies. He condemned the "one-sided carnage" as "immoral" and "completely unnecessary", pointing out that if Israel had been genuinely concerned stopping the Qassam rockets it would have observed the June 2008 ceasefire, which was scrupulously adhered to by Hamas. The "savage, insane assault on the Palestinians in Gaza" was aimed not at self-defence but at "regime change" in Gaza. More broadly, Israel’s policies are geared towards "politicide": "the denial to the Palestinians of any independent existence in Palestine".
One member of the audience attempted to challenge this account by citing Israel’s 2005 ‘disengagement’ from Gaza. In fact, as Shlaim pointed out, the disengagement was a "unilateral" response to Hamas resistance in Gaza, which made the price of occupation too high. The ‘withdrawal’ was an explicitly "aggressive" act, designed as a prelude to Israel further "consolidating ... [its] control over the West Bank". Shlaim could have cited Dov Weisglass, senior advisor to Ariel Sharon, in support of his argument. In an interview with Ha’aretz Weisglass explained that the purpose of the disengagement was to prevent "a political process with the Palestinians" and thereby "prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state ... indefinitely".
One point that bugged me throughout Shlaim’s talk was his continued isolation of the Israeli Right – specifically, the Likud – as the source of Israel’s rejectionism. In fact Israel’s entire mainstream political class is explicitly rejectionist, and Labor and Kadima have been no less complicit than the Likud in Israel’s "colonial project" (Shlaim’s words) in the West Bank:
One exception to this minimisation of the role of the centre and centre-left in prolonging the conflict was when he was criticised the fundamental dishonesty of ‘Labour Zionism’. Labour Zionism has always been disingenuous with regards to the Palestinians, he argued, and has tended to fill the gap between its idealism on the one hand and the realities of its treatment of the Palestinians on the other with "humbug and hypocrisy". The Right on the other hand tends to be more upfront about its expansionist and colonialist ambitions, and thereby "at least ... has the merit of being honest".
Shlaim was insistent that ultimately Israel would have choose between its Jewish character and the democratic ideals valued by many of its citizens. In practical terms this entails a choice between expulsion, apartheid, some form of single or binational state or the international consensus two-state settlement. He said the first two were morally unacceptable and he didn’t have a problem with either of the latter two. Realistically, however, given the lack of support for a single or binational state in the constituencies that matter, the only realistic solution is a two-state settlement.
Israel, he concluded, must choose between territorial expansionism and peace. Thus far it has made its decision very clear: since 1967 Israel has been "systematically destroying the basis for a Palestinian state", and is continuing to do so, most notably with the construction of the illegal wall in the West Bank, which is a prelude to the annexation of 10% of the most fertile land in the West Bank. The only power that could force Israel to change this position – the US – has refused to do so. Obama has not broken with this trend: he gave a good speech in Cairo (for my more critical take on Obama’s speech, see here) but has otherwise been a huge "disappointment", continuing to facilitate Israeli expansionism in practice.
Shlaim concluded with a call for the international community to force Israel to pay the price for its rejectionism and treat it like a "rogue state", in the manner of apartheid South Africa. He also expressed the hope that US public opinion will eventually shift to the point where US leaders are no longer able to support Israel’s occupation.
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Shlaim himself was impossibly cute (he reminded me strongly of a tickling slow loris) and very likeable. He was also surprisingly funny. Here are a few of his best zingers:
- Anita Shapira’s classic apologia for the Zionist movement, Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881-1948, should more accurately be titled ‘Anita in Wonderland’. Bu-dum-psh!
- "Zionism was the second greatest PR success of the century – after the Beatles." Hah!
- Referring to one example among many of inept Palestinian leadership: "The Mufti muffed it". Groan!
- ‘Some critics accuse me of charging Israel with "original sin". I don’t think Christian theology has any place in these discussions, but if they want to bring it in, it is they who are pretending that Israel’s birth was an immaculate conception." Ba-da-boom!
OK, so there's no upset predicted at next year's Edinburgh Fringe, but I rofld.