Among the countless recent commentaries on the prospects and implications of the Palestinian leadership’s bid for membership at the United Nations, I find Rashid Khalidi’s “The Palestinians’ Next Move” exceptionally clear, concise, and convincing.
Among his “initial conclusions”:
1. ”the United States now is thoroughly out of touch with most of the international community when it comes to Palestine and Israel.”
2. “after two decades of the U.S. behaving as ‘Israel’s lawyer,’ the two-state solution is now dead.”
3. “the Palestinian leadership … has taken a long-overdue first step to re-internationalize Palestine’s struggle for liberty and self-determination and to take matters out of the hands of American diplomats who for decades have systematically advanced Israel’s interests at the expense of the Palestinians. The attempt to produce more objective stewardship of negotiations by taking the Palestinian case to the UN will clearly fail in the short term due to U.S. opposition. Nevertheless, it was relatively successful in galvanizing international support for the Palestinians almost everywhere outside of the fact-free bubble that is the DC beltway and much of the mainstream media.”While recognizing “significant changes in perceptions of the conflict at the grassroots level in the United States,” Khalidi is appropriately doubtful that U.S. government policy will change any time soon, given the power of the Israel lobby. Nor does he see any prospect of meaningful change in Israeli policies.
The best hope for the Palestinians, he concludes, lies in “a new long-term strategy for national liberation”:
The focus of this new strategy will have to return from a two-decade hiatus at a rigged negotiating table to its original and most representative form: popular, grassroots, nonviolent struggle on the ground and among Palestinians in exile. The good news for the Palestinians is that the infrastructure for such a struggle is already in place after years of nonviolent protest in the villages of the West Bank and could grow with the recently minted model of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions to consider. A highly coordinated and truly massive campaign of active nonviolence could shock the conscience of the world and energize Palestinians everywhere. The bad news for the Israelis—who have brutally repressed nonviolent protest in villages such as Bilin, Nilin, Nebi Saleh, Walaja and many other places over the past six years—is that, according to Ministry of Defense political-military chief Amos Gilad, “we [the Israelis] don’t do Gandhi very well.”
Beyond the merits of Khalidi’s analysis, it’s remarkable that it appears in the pages, or at least on the website, of The National Interest, a publication that long served mainly as an outlet for neoconservative luminaries. (It was founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol.) Its editorial board split in 2005, according to Wikipedia, and since then the publication has been dominated by more traditional conservatives and foreign-policy “realists.” According to its masthead page, Henry Kissinger is its “Honorary Chairman,” while James Schlesinger chairs its Advisory Council. The think tank that publishes it, the Center for the National Interest, was founded by Richard Nixon and used to be called the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom; its current chairman is Maurice R. Greenberg, former head of the insurance giant AIG.
Obviously, there’s no reason to suppose that many in that crew – aside from John Mearsheimer, who’s also listed as a member of the Advisory Council – share Khalidi’s perspective, but perhaps there’s some hope to be found in the fact that they published the piece.
Or perhaps Robert W. Merry, who took over as editor just last week after a long run at the head of the Congressional Quarterly, is in for a short term in his new gig….
“A highly coordinated and truly massive campaign of active nonviolence could shock the conscience of the world and energize Palestinians everywhere. The bad news for the Israelis—who have brutally repressed nonviolent protest in villages such as Bilin, Nilin, Nebi Saleh, Walaja and many other places over the past six years—is that, according to Ministry of Defense political-military chief Amos Gilad, “we [the Israelis] don’t do Gandhi very well.”
I presume now that the hopes of a settlement through negotiations is being formally dropped left and right, that leaves the Palestinians between a rock and a hard place., as this quote suggests (I believe protests are the right thing to do, I love Khalidi’s use of the term ‘hiatus’ here, that’s exactly what negotiations are, a hiatus away from doing things that may actually bear some fruits). Yet I too can sense violence and bloodshed coming the Palestinian’s way on a large scale in the case of the next plan of action being massive protests, and even moreso if the settler self-defence law gets passed. I can see so, so much room for abuse by the Israelis here, it might even play into their hands as the hasbara central spin du jour becomes “they violently attacked us and came to protests armed, now we need even more protection than we did before!11” to justify their various “security measures” (which involves much shooting and killing at sight, doubtlessly, as well as presenting a handy occasion to flip out yet more armaments, and erect yet more wire mesh fences, or install yet more checkpoints, and fragment the Palestinian territories yet further). More large scale physical confrontations mean a higher probability of violent clashes, after all it may be hard not to hit back, when an Israeli is about to beat your friend to a pulp with a nightstick. And we all know who the West is likelier to believe was the agitator, especially with that anti-Muslim / anti-Arab drip that’s been in the West’s veins for almost a decade now.
I ask myself, how many more dead at Israel’s hands? How many more lies will we have to hear in the coming years and decades? For how much longer will Israel continue to wrestle with guns from the position of its deathbed, kept alive only by Western life support and the favourable spin the west has graciously given the atrocities it commits?
Well, if two states is dead, that leaves us with binationalism.
I watched a debate the other day about whether the US should end its “special” relationship with Israel. There were two people opposed (an American and an Israeli) and two people for (Rashid Khalidi and a South African Jew).
What was interesting was the South African claimed that if the US didn’t end its unconditional support for Israel, it would lead to the end of the “Zionist dream,” and that worried him. In other words, he was afraid that at this rate, we will end up with one state where Palestinians will be the majority.
This is the sad discourse. Someone arguing on the Palestinian side, not because they care about Palestinians, but because they are afraid of them, and want them to go away…over there….on their side. It’s completely racist if you think about it.
The biggest obstacle to binationalism is Israeli fear…
khaladi’s right
the palestinian people rise up en masse (peacefully), which ignites the entire arab/islamic world
which catches on everywhere else (yes, eventuallt even in the u. s. of a.)
with the liberation of palestine remaining the key issue, but with other issues (economic/political/environmental) brought into the mix, varying from place to place
and all this carried out in the spirit of those eighteen magical days in tahrir square
thereby changing the world?
count on it!~
Looks like the armed resistance option is the only savior of Palestine.
And I ain’t talking just ‘Hamas’ here – I be talking regional armed resistance.
Israel doesn’t do Gandhi very well? I suppose that means the Israelis don’t respond well to non-violent protest. You can say that again.
But they DO DO BRITAIN very well. Recall Indians marching peaceably toward rows of British soldiers and, at an officer’s signal, being mowed down by rifle (or was it machine gun?) fire, and the rear ranks continuing to march forward, into death.
Israel does THAT Britain VERY well. However, Britain eventually got sick of the killing of peaceable protesters. I don’t see the Israeli government (nor do I see many of its people) getting tired of killing Palestinians whether peaceably protesting or even merely living their lives within Israeli-controlled territory (itself, perhaps, felt as a form of protest by many Israelis).