Edward W. Said
The
last-ditch American effort to make Yasser Arafat terminate his own people’s
sovereign existence bears the heavy imprint not only of the US-Israeli lobby but
of Bill Clinton’s political style. To say of Clinton’s bridging proposals, as
they have been euphemistically called, that they are a sort of fast food peace
is to scant and even underestimate their malevolent sloppiness.
What
in their all-purpose catchiness, their anti-historical bullying, and the
egotistical urgency of their manner they most resemble is Clinton at his desk,
one hand holding the telephone to his ear, the other clutching at the pizza
slice he munches away at, even as his various staffers, funders, fixers,
cronies and golf-playing buddies mill around him giving (and getting)
favours, loans, grants, deals, mortgages, gossip.
This
is then scarcely a fitting end for a struggle that has cost hundreds of
thousands of lives and untold treasure for well over a century. Put
forward in a language that (speaking myself as a teacher of how language
is used and abused) fairly reeks of a dismissive silliness combined with
vagueness, Clinton proposes what in effect is a warmed-over Israeli intention to
perpetuate control over Palestinian lives and land for the foreseeable future.
The
underlying premise is that Israel needs protection from Palestinians, not the
other way round. And there’s the flaw in the whole thing: that Israel is not
only forgiven its 33 year old occupation, its 52 year old oppression and
dispossession of the entire Palestinian people, its countless brutalizations and
dehumanizations of the Palestinians individually and collectively, but is
rewarded with such things as annexation of the best West Bank land, a long (and
doubtless inexpensive)lease of the Jordan valley, and the terminal
annexation of most of East Jerusalem, plus early warning stations on Palestinian
territories, plus control of all Palestinian borders (which are only to be
with Israel, not with any other state), plus all the roads and water
supply, plus the cancellation of all refugee rights of return and
compensation except as Israel sees fit.
As
for the famous land swap by which Israel magnanimously gives up a little bit of
the Negev desert for the choicest bits of the West Bank, Clinton overlooks
the fact that that particular Negev area earmarked by Israel just happens
also to have been used by it as a toxic waste dump! Besides, given the peculiar
divisions cutting up East Jerusalem – all of which is illegally annexed land
anyway – and the three (instead of four) cantons into which the West Bank
territory ceded conditionally by Israel will be divided, all of what has
been described as an American breakthrough proposal pretty much dissolves. What
the Palestinians are left with are material sacrifices which make Israeli
"concessions" look like child’s play.
The
sacrifices demanded by Clinton are, of course, a cancellation of the Palestinian
right of return for refugees, and just as great, a Palestinian declaration of
the end of the conflict with Israel. First of all, the right of return for
refugees (the right to a secure life in a place of one’s choice) is a
right guaranteed not just by UN resolutions but by the Charter of the UN and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Clinton’s
formula for getting round this little problem reveals the man’s approach to the
world: "I believe we need to adopt a formulation on the right of return
that will make clear that there is no specific right of return to Israel itself
but does not negate the aspiration of the Palestinian people to return to the
area." To which area? Iraq, Jordan, and Syria, for example, can easily be
described as belonging to "the area." Who does Clinton think he
is fooling? So then, why purposely and transparently try to confuse Palestinians
with the phrase "the area" if what is actually meant is not allowing
them a right to return to the country from which they were in fact driven?
As
Clinton well knows (he is a lawyer by training) there can be no negotiation at
all when it comes to human rights; according to the very laws which the US
pretends to uphold when it bombs some defenceless country like Sudan or
post-Gulf War Iraq, no one can therefore either modify or negate any of
the major human rights. Moreover it is impossible, for example, to uphold
rights against discrimination or against the right to work, in some cases and
not in others. Basic human rights are not elements of a menu, to be chosen
or rejected at will: they are meant to have the stability of universal
acceptance, especially by charter members of the UN. Granted that the
implementation of rights is always a major problem, but that has nothing
to do with the fact that as rights they exist whether or not they are
implemented, and therefore cannot be abrogated, modified or, as Clinton seems to
think, re-formulated. Similarly, the right to choose one’s place of
residence as a refugee: thattoo is unalienable and un-negotiable. Neither
Arafat, nor Clinton, nor certainly Barak has any right at all to tamper with the
right, nor to attempt by crude bamboozling to "reformulate" it in a
way that suits Israel or renounces it in any way. Why must Israel always be an
exception and why must Palestinians always be required to accept things that no
people have ever been asked to accept before them? It seems to me indecent for
Clinton to have gone to war, dragging all of NATO with him and destroying Serbia
in the process on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians’ right of return, and
then ask Palestinians to renounce theirs.
A
second point here is to recall that Israel, which continues with unremitting
obduracy to deny any responsibility for Palestinian dispossession, maintains an
unchallenged Law of Return for any Jew anywhere. How it can continue to do so
and with a kind of ruffianly churlishness refuse even to discuss a similar
Palestinian right defies logic, to say nothing of elementary fairness. There is
also the matter of compensation, not only for the enormous losses of 1948, but
for the thirty three years of spoliation and exploitation that have come
with the ever-present military occupation.
Bill
Clinton wants all that dropped, as if by not mentioning a word about reparations
the whole subject would disappear. It seems condescending to tell Palestinians
that Israel will mutter a few words about understanding or even recognizing
their suffering and get off without a single mention of responsibility. Who is
that typically l950s style propaganda formula supposed to placate? Israel,
or the Jewish Agency?
But
Arafat did indeed come to Washington in response to Clinton’s summoning, and
because he is who he is, Arafat will probably not refuse or accept outright. He
will waffle, and manoeuvre, and come and go, will conditionally accept, as
more Palestinians will have sacrificed their lives and, almost as important,
their livelihoods for nought.
Over
the past weeks I have tried in every way available to me to get Arafat for once
in his long domination of Palestinian affairs to address his people honestly,
directly, in a straightforward way. But he persists in silence. And his
advisers and associates also flutter around, powerless to influence him or to
come up with anything by way of alternatives. Yet again I want to say, we
need a new kind of leadership, one that can mobilize and inspire the whole
Palestinian nation; we have had enough of flying visits in and out of
Cairo, Rabat and Washington, enough of lies and misleading rhetoric,
enough of corruption and rank incompetence, enough of carrying on at the
people’s expense, enough of servility before the Americans, enough of stupid
decisions, enough of criminal incompetence and uncertainty.
It
is clear that no matter what happens now, the Palestinians will be blamed:
unabashed Zionist prophets like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who has
not one word of criticism for Israeli brutality and keeps demanding that Arabs
must recognize his "organic" connection as a Jew to Palestine without
ever acknowledging that that right was implemented in conquest and wholesale
Palestinian dispossession, will upbraid Palestinians for wrecking the
peace, and continue broadcasting his half-truths in the American media, but all
to no avail. Whether he and his associates like it or not, Israel can only
have peace when the Palestinian right is first acknowledged to have been
violated, and when there is apology and remorse where there is now arrogance and
rhetorical bluster. Our first duty as Palestinians is to close this Oslo chapter
as expeditiously as possible and return to our main task, which is to provide
ourselves with a strategy of liberation that is clear in its goals and
well defined in practice. For this we must at some point have the partnership of
likeminded Israelis and diaspora Jews who understand that you cannot have
occupation and dispossession as well as peace with the Palestinian people.
South African apartheid was defeated only because blacks as well as whites
fought it.
That
the PLO has long thought that it could make peace with Israel and somehow
tolerate occupation is only one of its numerous strategic as well as tactical
mistakes. A new generation is arising now that no longer respects the old taboos
and will not tolerate the lamentable "flexibility" that has given
Palestinian liberation the status of a question mark rather than that of a
beacon of hope.
There
are two contradictory realities on the ground on which Clinton’s Washington
talks will founder. One is that the energies released by the intifada are not
easily containable in any available form for the foreseeable future: Palestinian
protest at what Oslo has wrought is a protest against all aspects of the status
quo. The second reality is that whether we like it or not historical Palestine
is now a bi-national reality suffering the devastation of apartheid. That must
end and an era of freedom for Arabs and Jews must soon begin. It falls to us to
try now to provide the signposts for a new era. Otherwise it is easy to
foresee years more of fruitless and costly struggle.
–
Copyright Edward W. Said, 2000, also appears in The DAWN Group of Newspapers,
2001