Michael Walzer is a hugely-influential voice in the Jewish community. He can bring a lot of the New Republic crowd and the liberal interventionists and even leftleaning intellectuals along with him wherever he goes. Well, here is an important new piece by the political theorist in Dissent, saying that the U.S. must pressure Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories for the sake of the two-state solution.
The piece is notable for its frankly realist thrust, one I share: give them a state, goddamnit, that's how the world works! And Walzer's concession that the Gaza war didn't work. You have to wonder what that does to his neat calculations at the start of the war, finding it was just fine. Now he talks about the "awfulness" of the Gaza war. Awful for who?
I wonder if Walzer, while sharply critical of the Palestinians, is not on the same road so many other Jews are on: waking up to Israel's soulless militarism. I said at the start of Gaza that this was the end of the Israel lobby. Walzer's piece affirms this truth. Walt and Mearsheimer–whom Walzer, word had it, refused to debate/share a stage with–have been making many of these points for years, and right now Walzer needs Walt and Mearsheimer and the realists a lot more than he needs Malcolm Hoenlein, the ZOA or the ADL.
Let's celebrate Walzer's fresh thinking:
[E]ach side needs more than a little help from its friends. Israel and the Palestinians need heavy and continuous pressure to address the obstacles in their own camp. Clinton and his team tried too hard, I now believe, to bring the two sides together before either of them was ready. Arafat, who probably believed in terrorism as a strategy, was less ready than Barak, who apparently was prepared to challenge the settlers—but not quite yet. It would have been better in the 1990s, and it would be better now, to work on each side separately. A division of labor might make sense, with the Americans concentrating on Israel and the Europeans (with help, perhaps, from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) on Palestine, but the interventions would have to be equally strong and the external partners equally committed to their tasks: the repression of terror by the PA and the defeat of the settler movement by the Israeli government. Perhaps the awfulness of the Gaza war will produce a new sense of urgency, if not in Israel and Palestine, then in the United States and Europe. Note that this external assistance could have no other goal than two states.
Related posts:
{ 10 comments }
Walzer:
"…But Hamas is obviously not “ready” for negotiations and not ready to get ready. Its refusal to recognize Israel and its commitment to terrorism are, for now at least, central features of its identity. So, I am afraid, is its rabid anti-Semitism: the Hamas Charter reiterates an ancient hatred that long predates the Zionist project and the wars of 1948 and 1967. It solemnly insists that the Jews as a people are responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and for the two World Wars. And that’s part of the message delivered every day and every week in Hamas schools and mosques—which is not a sign of readiness. Perhaps we need to think about a three state solution, with only two of those states—Israel and the PA’s West Bank—preparing themselves for peaceful co-existence"
I agree with Walzer. Hamas is far from being ready for peace.
Walzer says –
There isn’t any other solution [than the two-state one]; this one is unique. People keep coming back to it because there’s no other way to go. It survives, therefore, I guess, it’s viable.
In the international system, states can help make new states and give them legitimacy; they can’t abolish states to which they have already given legitimacy (as Israel would have to be abolished for the sake of a one-state solution).
————
This is just laughable. Apartheid South Africa said an eleven-state solution (white South Africa plus ten bantustans) was 'the only way to go.' It turned out to be a joke — bad economics, bad politics, no international recognition. I remember a woman from Denmark, in front of me in the Customs line, openly mocking a Transkei border guard — 'Why do I have to present my passport to be stamped at your silly internal border?' Then the whole Rube Goldberg contraption came clattering down.
Just as apartheid South Africa was reconstituted with all its land area, and redefined as a one-person/one-vote democracy, there is no reason that the Israeli state and the occupied territories can't be likewise geographically and politically reconstituted. The preceding Palestinian protectorate had defined boundaries; Israel doesn't. Walzer's so-called 'international system' is just so much smoke-blowing sophistry.
Where has Walzer been for the last forty years, while the settlements were inexorably expanded? Better late than never, but he's still making unrealistic, grudging concessions in a futile effort to retain a zionist dream which has already been overtaken by events. As well as imagining that America and Europe are going to bully the parties into his imagined solution, much as he 'air-conducts' Beethoven's Ninth in his claustrophic little living room. Silly, silly scribbler.
Like 19th century Americans, who simply couldn't imagine Negros participating in government as cultural or intellectual equals, Walzer is a closed-minded supremacist Jew whose ingrained prejudices preclude ever co-existing with Arabs. That such bizarre antiquarian eugenicists even get a public platform in the 21st century is a major reason why 22nd century commentators will regard us askance as exotic, benighted primitives. Oh well, at least we had rhythm.
The PA has repressed terrorism in the territories it controls. Fat lot of good its done them.
Its done a great deal of good for their own order.
Urgency is relevant.
I don't see that Israel will be able to forcefully remove 250,000 or even 50,000 if 80% willingly return to Israel.
50,000 could stay as citizens of Palestine. Maybe that prospect would motivate them to take up the offer to resettle in Israel.
Its NOT a simple problem.
Another element of it is the question of opportunist taking of developed real estate in a yard sale.
In Germany, when Jews were forcefully removed from their homes, with a couple weeks to sell, the claim was that they were recent immigrants that it was not their home in any meaningful way and that the forced taking was legal.
In opposition to a likely illegal forced taking of land, is it just to propose a forced taking of land and building?
Nice post, Jim
Another element of it is the question of opportunist taking of developed real estate in a yard sale
I have absolutely no doubt if the settlers leave the IDF will blow up everything that is left behind. How was it handled in Gaza?
I often read in Nazi laws concerning the Jews. The legal department here has a complete collection. I absolutely doubt the claim was "they were recent immigrants".
Concerning Jewish business which started earlier the process was called Aryanization. A forced expropriation, business had to be sold much under value. Basically the made a difference between citizens and citizens of the Reich early (Reichsbürger – Staatsbürger) what you allude to must have to do with this basic differentiation, Jews obviously didn't have the rights of the "Reichsbürger". I guess the trick was to make them pay for their deportation. Many profited from the sales. The surviving files surfaced really late, I remember.
But interesting that you immediately compare the settlers with the forced expropriation of Jews in Nazigermany. Couldn't the Palestinians talk about expropriation too?
Malcolm Hoenlein and the rest of the Jewish establishment have proven to be bad for the Jews and bad for Israel. They are corrupt and their main driving force is their ego's. Why do they even appear in such articles. Malcolm Hoenlein has lost all of his Jewish credibility, and will soon be long forgotten.
BTW- Did anyone hear about the Friends of the IDF paying millions of dollars to a consultant? That is a complete misuse of charity money. The worst part is nobody is speaking out against these shameful acts by various Jewish organizations and the notorious Malcolm Hoenlein.
LeaNder read my mind. Will Witty respond? Ball in his court.
I have absolutely no doubt if the settlers leave the IDF will blow up everything that is left behind. How was it handled in Gaza?
Posted by: LeaNder | March 08, 2009 at 08:45 PM
In accordance with the democratically elected government of the palestinian people:
ISRAEL will destroy the 1,200 houses to be vacated when the Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip are evacuated this summer, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, said yesterday.
Israel had feared the symbolism of Hamas flags flying from the red-roofed bungalows, but the Army was reluctant to demolish the houses because it would put soldiers’ lives at risk.
Palestinians say they want the houses to be replaced by high-rise blocks to alleviate overcrowding among the 1.3 million population in Gaza.
“It was their choice,” Mark Regev, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said. “If they wanted (the houses), they could have had them.”
Details of the demolition have yet to be worked out with the aid of James Wolfensohn, the American economic envoy, but the houses are likely to be demolished immediately after the withdrawal, while the Palestinian Authority will remove the rubble to create temporary jobs.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article535345.ece
Comments on this entry are closed.