Earlier this week, Rashid Khalidi– who was close to Barack Obama back in Chicago and is lately the author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East— spoke to Michael Brown of the Institute for Middle East Understanding about Obama’s visit. Here’s a summary of his statements:
“Expectations are and probably should be very very low,” Khalidi said. Obama will bring no new initiative and won’t dare mention apartheid: “The dreaded a word will certainly be absent from his vocabulary. Whether he will hint at it I don’t know, I rather doubt it.”
It is a good thing that Obama will have to see the wall on his trip to Bethlehem but the trip is being cast as a “reassurance tour for the Israelis,” and therefore:
“Unfortunately for someone who knows a great deal about discrimination and inequality, the fact that his seeing this horrible wall… this hideous wall that disfigures Bethlehem probably will not lead to his saying anything. I hope it does. I rather doubt it.”
Notice that the first New York Times headline from the trip echoes Khalidi: “Arriving in Israel, Obama Seeks to Offer Reassurance.”
The Columbia professor of modern Arab studies said Obama’s pattern in office merely replicates the pattern of every president from Carter on, with the exception of George W. Bush. They all begin their presidencies by trying to get Israel to rein in settlements. Then they end up backing down and underwriting the illegal enterprise. So Khalidi doubts that Obama will say much about settlements, though he hopes that he will lay down “some markers” of US policy: “Israel is going down this path that is not only foolish but contrary to our interests.” And therefore the U.S. will withdraw its support if the conduct persists.
So what do we face in Israel and Palestine, Brown asked: Apartheid? Or a struggle for one state with equal rights for all?
Khalidi said that the current one-state situation was constructed consciously by Israel. “There were two visions from the 70s onward. One was the two state solution, one was greater Israel.” In researching his book, he found that Prime Minister Menachem Begin managed to forced the US to back down on opposition to settlements, and his successors merely enforced the same regime.
“The two state solution has been in my view buried by the actions of Israeli prime ministers over 3 decades and the complacence and ultimately complicity of U.S. presidents with that. We have a one state solution right now.”
And this is all we are likely to see in the near future: one sovereign state with exclusive control over historical Palestine, allowing “various Palestinians various subordinate rights.” And for anyone who supports two states, they must ask themselves, Is it possible to change this situation? And if it is not:
“Is it time to recognize that the US has helped successive Israeli governments to make such a solution impossible. And that we have to look at some resolution of this which involves equality and equal rights, within the context of the situation that Israeli planners and bulldozers and cementmixers have wrought.”
What about Palestinian leaders, Brown asked — when will they come round to this reality? Khalidi said that “no self-respecting Palestinians should in my view be involved in a situation where the Palestinian Authority is a prop” to the settlement enterprise. Right now, their actions contribute to the “consecration of the status quo.”
Brown asked about the right of return, and Mahmoud Abbas’s stated willingness never to return to his childhood home, Safed.
Khalidi reminded Brown that the majority of Palestinians live outside Israel and the occupied territories. They are descendants of 1948 refugees, and the older ones are themselves refugees; more than half the Palestinian population was expelled in 1948; and if we want a just and lasting agreement, their rights must be honored. As it is, the right of return is “constantly denigrated… pooh-poohed… [and] downplayed” by Israel and by the U.S., echoing Israeli views. “That is a terrible mistake.” We should not speak of a token amount of returnees as a means of solving the matter.
The issue “has to be addressed in terms of historical responsibility, in terms of compensation, and the return of those people who desire to do so.” Those who desire to return should have the right and the choice, Khalidi said. “Where they go and how that would be organized would have to worked out.” And short of that process, “there wont be a settlement.” There will only be “a resolution of one part of it.”
“If we’re a capitalist society and we believe in the sanctity of private property, that should be something that’s not even discussable. These people have a right to their property or a right to compensation.”
Brown asked Khalidi about his personal view of Obama, and Khalidi described Obama as a “pragmatist and a realist” who has evolved– especially after a “very harsh lesson in the realities of American domestic politics.” The lobby and the Republican right had forced him to back down on settlements, even though American Jewish voters by and large would support his stance.
For all the changes in attitudes toward the conflict, today we are years away from any political change, he said, due to the voices of “rightwing elderly affluent elements in the Jewish community” and right wing evangelical hawkish Republicans drowning out the grassroots. So while Khalidi praised the activism and intelligence of churches, unions, boycott groups, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace, their views are not reflected in mainstream politics, though they are beginning to be reflected in media and film. 5 Broken Cameras, Gatekeepers, and The Law in These Parts are three of the best films ever made about the Israel/Palestine conflict, he said, and two are by Israelis.
Khalidi turned to the Israeli governing coalition. The elevation of Moshe Ya’alon to Defense Minister “is going to produce… outcomes on the ground that are going to immeasurably worsen the situation…. [For] Ehud Barak was no dove, but Ya’alon is much much much more hawkish.” Settlers now control the Housing Ministry as well. “It’s easy to predict that things will get immeasurably worse.”
And what can the U.S. do? Treasury could throw a switch tomorrow and categorize aid to the settlers as non-charitable contributions. For how is it “charitable” to provide funds to “racist settlers armed to the teeth [who] systematically brutalize Palestinians.”
Brown and Khalidi agreed on one bright spot of the visit: Israel won’t announce new settlements timed to the Obama visit. Referring to his historical research, Khalidi said that Menachem Begin began a pattern of expanding settlements whenever American officials showed up.
“Begin was determined to demonstrate to the U.S. that it could not control him on this issue… and in fact Secretary Baker once said, every single time I got there, I’m greeted by another settlement. Every time I got there I basically get another slap in the face.” Khalidi pointed to a document in his latest book, citing four visits by Baker where he got the treatment.
He warned that Netanyahu will undertake his usual “bait and switch” with the Americans, talking up Iran’s threat, supported by his “Amen chorus on Capitol Hill,” which includes many Democrats, so as to divert the discussion from the Palestinian issue.
These tactics are consistent with longstanding Israeli policy. Looking back on the documents of the peace process, Khalidi said, the Israeli lines have not changed over 30 years. Even after Rabin came into office, the Israelis imagined unlimited settlement activity accompanied by limited Palestinian autonomy on the West Bank and Jewish control of Jerusalem. “Tragically,” the US government accepted these red lines, though they produced not peace but subjugation.
“To call it a peace process I call Orwellian,” Khalidi said. “On this issue a consensus of idiocy led us into a situation that is immeasurably worse than in early 90s.”
Today the Palestinian leadership should not undertake negotiations, he said, without a commitment to divide Jerusalem and end settlements. Otherwise, “there’s nothing to talk about.” And therefore all talking will do is “consecrate” the occupation, giving it Palestinian cover.
Lastly, Khalidi spoke about the pointlessness of failing to include Hamas in any negotiations. At the outset of the Obama administration, he said, by appointing former Senator George Mitchell as his mediator, the president sent an implicit sign that the same kind of approach that Mitchell had successfully pursued in northern Ireland, of eventually talking to the IRA, would apply to Hamas. But Mitchell “was very quickly brought to order by Congress,” which said that under no circumstances was Mitchell to talk to Hamas. And so Mitchell was forced to backtrack. Talking to Hamas is still the right thing to do– “but I’m not sure Kerry has the stomach for that.”
I find it absolutely mind boggling that people who deny Palestinians the right of return to a place they were expelled from within living memory can at the same time support the right of return for Jews whose ancestors may have lived there several thousand years ago!
“And therefore the U.S. will withdraw its support if the conduct persists.”
LOL.. and that will happen when pigs fly.
Nope, the US zionist and Israel-US ‘status quo’ will roll on toward it’s Waterloo some where down the road.
Cynical ..or realistic? Yea, I know concerned people are trying to head off this thing, but it’s a few decades late, now it’s like trying to turn the Titantic before it hits the iceberg.
Yes, once you give-in to lawlessness, and especially if you back it up and support it, as the USA has backed Israeli settlement project, it becomes harder and harder to correct. The FOI in the USA expect USA compliance/complaisance and get all hot-and-bothered if there is a whiff of a hint that USA’s policy might someday change. And Israel’s project rolls along, these days increasingly in high gear.
Notice how those who supported the Iraq war when it was started now find it very hard to reqind he tape and say they were wrong, they were misled, etc. Same with support for Israel.
Israel’s learned and USA’s pols copy them: an iron fist in a velvet glove. The IRON is for the Palestinians, the VELVET is for human-rights audiences, including Jewish audience in USA.
VELVET: Ohh, Israel is so nice, so soft and cuddly, sort of like those squeeze toys little kids are always carrying around with them. And so needy of reassurance because so (rightfully) fearful!
IRON: Burn it to the ground, leave nothing for the Palestinian usurpers who dare to call Palestine their homeland, nasty brutes. And shoot them when they sneeze.
RE: “At the outset of the Obama administration, he said, by appointing former Senator George Mitchell as his mediator, the president sent an implicit sign that the same kind of approach that Mitchell had successfully pursued in northern Ireland, of eventually talking to the IRA, would apply to Hamas. But Mitchell “was very quickly brought to order by Congress,” which said that under no circumstances was Mitchell to talk to Hamas. And so Mitchell was forced to backtrack. Talking to Hamas is still the right thing to do– “but I’m not sure Kerry has the stomach for that.””
Yeah, even though the USA has the Irish as the second most numbers in the USA after the Germans in terms of (white) US demography, way more than the 2% Jewish Americans, that Mitchell was forced to backtrack, shows just how powerful The Sheldon Adelsons are, even if the are called Soros. This is because Irish Americans are actually assimilated. The degree of assimilation of Irish v Jews in America, is the difference. You disagree? Why?
Haneen Zoabi, explains why Palestinians are probably best to run their own affairs, we must talk about ’48….
http://youtu.be/IWoSgis3MHM