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From The Belly of the Beast Lessons to peace-making from Israel/Palestine

[This is a unique kind of report of a lecture. Instead of producing the text, here the readers will find a plan of how Oren Yiftachel wanted to proceed with the subject of his lecture that evening interspersing his presentation with autobiographical references, maps, and slides.]

Aims: what I shall try and do in the next hour:

  • Explore some theoretical elements, especially, the nature of ethnocratic regimes; 'unpack' these elements and hopefully use them to study, critique and transform other cases of intractable ethnic conflicts;
  • Elaborate on Israel/Palestine: histories, trajectories, strategies, recent failed 'peace' efforts and the al-Aqsa intifada (in brief)
  • Draw lessons from the painful experience of Israel/Palestine; explore possibilities for the way forward.
  • A personal note of caution: as much as I attempt to give you a cold realistic and critical analysis - my voice emerges from my specific location of 'thick' involvement over many years with efforts for Israeli-Palestinian peace; growing up in the Galilee, where Arabs formed a majority; involvement with projects, programs and politics of improving arab-jewish relations; if you like - a position from the belly of the beast, or as perhaps recently best described by the eloquent Arundhati Roy: a site of mental exile in one's own homeland.

Let us start the difficult journey into Israel/Palestine, with an anecdote:

  • In February this years - light planes - sprayed with poisonous chemicals, 12,000 dunams fields cultivated by Bedouin-Arabs (citizens of Israel), on land they claim as theirs and their ancestors;
  • The responsible minister, Avigdor Lieberman, claimed:"our first priority is to restore law and order into our land system; we must fight illegal invasion; into our state lands; this has become their never-ending habit; we must stop it by all means at our disposal; every normal state would do the same; if we don't, we face losing our lands forever!"

A fierce debate ensued, where most Arabs and leftists jews (the few that remained) pointed to the fact that under existing law, Bedouins cannot build any legal housing (given their residence in vast areas from which the state wishes to evacuate them, and the lack of approved plans for these 'open spaces')

But much less attention was paid in the debate to the following structural questions: if Bedouins are state citizens, as they are, why are they allocated state land like other citizens to satisfy their needs? How come an immigrant, like Lieberman (who arrived from the former Soviet Union) can evict people from the land of their forefathers? And finally, Lieberman is a West Bank settler, contravening many international laws and conventions in residing in the occupied territories. One should ask then, who is actually the 'invader' here? The indigenous Bedouin of the immigrant-settler who feels he has (literally) a God-given right to control this land?

I began with this incident, which at a time of open violent conflict between Zionists and Palestinians, which has claimed over 2,500 lives during the last 22 months, seem almost mild, in order to show that the oppressive practices of ethnocracy, especially as regards the use and control of land, operate at a hegemonic, everyday level, to the extent that most people don't even question the severe contradictions which underlie such practices. But as we know, these contradictions do eventually surface, with severe destructions and dislocations, and worse, with on-going waves of violence and mass sufferings.

Theory:
Let us begin with a short detour and think of the basic building blocks, which have shaped Israel/Palestine; what are the 'engines' of making the place as we know, it? (Their delineation may serve for useful comparisons):

  • Colonialism - two levels - external and internal; past and present; (unfortunately, we can hardly speak of postcolonialism)
  • Religion - the basis of national time and identity; still - the meta narrative; the promised salvation; as Chatterjee well articulated in his opposition to Anderson's sharp distinction of nationalism and religion.
  • Ethnicity - born of religious myths of divine selection and prescribed difference, drawing people by mythical origins and blood connections, and gaining a life of its own, through:
  • Nationalism - the highest of present day moral project, the destiny of the people, the ends which justifies all means - as defined by Henry Lefebvre - "nationalism is the ultimate production of space through sanctioned, organized violence directed against territory"; Lefebvre, with Gramsci, still among the greatest theoreticians on territory, identity and politics, do not let us forget a further element:
  • Materiality: the actual land, with its towns, villages, workplaces, employment and services; the flow of capital, development, resources - the quiet but powerful mover and shaker; the infrastructure of "geographic violence", settlement, boundaries and wars; but also - the infrastructure through which globalization seeps through into the veins and souls of ordinary people; and finally, leading us to the last conspicuous element:
  • Partition: the secret hand of national geography; constantly casting a dark shadow, introducing a (now truly global) logic of ethnic-territorial purity, now profoundly embedded in the lives, thoughts and worse of all - the imaginations - of generations of Zionists and Palestinians, Croats and Serbs, Tamils and Sinhalese, Hindu and Muslims, Punjabees and Kashmirees, Russians and Latvians, Turks, Kurds and Armenians, Tutsi and Hutu - all dreaming of their purified spaces of uni-ethnic heavens, only to discover that the path to their ethnic paradise is not only syziphious, but replete with the worse cases of collective violence, expulsions, killings and, finally, genocide; it is the path of the greatest disasters human kind has ever known; larger even than Hiroshima and Nagasaky; all stemming from the distorted protocols of deadly dialectics of partitioned space which declare once and again: "our homeland, and ours only!"

And further, in our short search of 'exportable elements' from Israel/Palestine, we must consider another, troubling, aspect:

  • The (deafening) Silences: the person, the woman, the poor, the marginal, justice, fairness, needs…these perennial issues of our great traditions, histories and philosophies are present absentees; they are barely mentioned as lip-service, by the choir of voices, which constantly chant 'our nation', 'liberation', 'history', 'security', 'homeland', and 'honor', singing as they are the daily jingles of exploitation, aggression and violence.

My main points/arguments in the lecture are as follows:

  • The world's geopolitical order has built a logic of partition, (that is, ethnic spatial control and purity) into every layer of politics; in the name of 'independence' and 'freedom' it endowed ethnic and military elites with enormous violent, legal and economic powers, to be 'legitimately' exercised over 'their' partitioned space, constructed as 'their' homeland, according to the pervasive Wilsonian nation-state myth: "every nation to a state; and a state to every nation"
  • But the never-ending act of partition is self-defeating, esp. in multi-ethnic lands;
  • Rather than signaling an 'end', a 'solution', partition constitutes a license for ethnic domination and cleansing, the fuel to the engines of oppression and stratification, and the recipe for the next conflict and, perhaps, the next partition;
  • The act of partition, then, is the birth of 'ethnocracy' - a regime promoting a main project of ethnic control and expansion;
  • Ethnocracies, speak in the language of nation-states, but work daily to undermine it, as so well articulated by Michael Mann's 'dark-side of citizenship'; they work to 'ethnicize' contested lands, distort space (in representation, development and possession), and create the settings for deadly dialectics of 'majorities' and 'minorities';
  • Ethnocracies subtly use the discourses of 'rights' and 'international law'; but in reality build profound obstacles to genuine peace, and to lasting stability;
  • This is mainly because the politics of ethnic control are never settled, they are in constant search for a new 'frontier' for a new 'other'; they trap, fracture, colonise, or isolate minorities; they seek to blur borders and boundaries, while securing their privileged position as the 'founding', 'charter' or 'pure' ethno-classes; they wage a ceaseless struggle against the equal civil body of the 'demos', that is, against democracy itself;
  • Hence: ethnocracies create agendas of conflict and confrontation; diffuse their mystified logic of 'our homeland', 'our identity' and 'our honor', to the detriment of peace, equality and coexistence;
  • And the way forward? Let me suspend this for a minute, and venture again into the hot cauldron awaiting there at the heart of the Middle East.

IN ISRAEL/APALESTINE:

  • We may begin at any point in time (Abraham, Jacob, Canaanites, Joshua, David, Philistines, Jesus, Muhammad, Salah a-Din, Ben-gurion, Haj Amin Husseini etc. etc.) - all in that little corner of the world
  • The present conflict begins with the British which both (a) demarcate Palestine/Eretz Yisrael for the first time as a political unit; and (b) make the bal four declaration;
  • But Zionism was a small movement for several decades; e.g. in 1933, it was still only 14% of Palestine's population are jews, forming but 2% of world jewry; but jewish flight from Europe and later from the arab world, fleeing the widespread ethnocratic oppression and marginalisation they had later created in their new land;
  • This flight enormously strengthened the Zionist colony (within two decades jews increase from 250,00 to over 2 million); their movement can be described as a colonialism of refugees - intransigent, desperate, determined, a collectivity with nowhere to go; all this, in the wake of the greatest genocide of all times - the holocaust.
  • Hence land, settlement (and immigration) became the main methods of creating a jewish space and presence; 8-9 decades later, this has remained so until today (with the same tool in operation, albeit with less desperation);
  • Here we can see that nationalism and the homeland may have a light side, a more humane, protective quality; although the tendencies of national elites is to quickly extend and manipulate this moment of 'humane and defensive nationalism', into beasts of militancy and expansion.
  • In the meantime, Palestinians - a slowly modernizing and gradually industrializing agrarian society, assuming gradual in-situ transition into a nation-state as in other arab states; but this process was brutally disrupted;
  • Both movements develop a vision of the same homeland as 'theirs' - Zionists ignore the Arabs, but not vice-versa
  • The 1947 partition plan - drawing the lines of violence; legitimacy to a jewish state in a non-jewish territory - legitimacy of ethnic cleansing (theoretically, let us remember - this could have gone in either direction);
  • 1947-49: the nakbah - the disaster; the catastrophe; 700,000 or 60% of Palestinians become stateless refugees, tens of thousands die; the nakbah was led, as it was, by the 'lessons' of postwar Germany/Poland, Greece/Turkey, or India/Pakistan, to name but a few examples; here we can see the deeply injuring embodiment of 'modernity', 'statehood' and 'sovereignty' and the rule of 'law', as exclusively interpreted by ethnic elites over 'their' exclusive homeland;
  • But a major difference existed: Palestine was never established, but rather conquered by Israel, Jordan and Egypt; the refugees were left in mid-air, until today; and the loss homeland has since echoed in the cry of Palestinian authors, singers and poets, as in the following words, known to every Palestinian, near and far:
  • Israel: formal democracy, but 'beneath' a thorough Judaisation program, through main regime bases: land and planning, immigration, the law, the military, culture and capital flow;

O/H MAP OF SETTLEMENTS; THE LAND SYSTEM

  • 18 million dunams of land transferred to Israeli/jewish hands, 700 settlements; regional councils; Arabs - 2.5 percent - invention of 'unrecognised villages' - 20,000 home demolitions 1950-1998.
  • Echoing the on-going culture of 'internal colonialism' - seeking control, development, movement, political mobilisation (much like Malaysia, SL, NI, Serbia etc.).
  • A frontier culture; songs, plays, names and 700 settlements - a massive program of internal colonialism;

1967 - occupation of the entire Palestine/Eretz Yisrael (still the geobody, in winichakul's suggestive language) - but no annexation

  • Ethnocracy at its highest peak
  • The frontier apparatus is applied to the OT (including Sinai)
  • Land - 52% of WB - state land - regional councils
  • The 'geobody' is reinscribed in public discourse
  • The creeping institutionalization of Apartheid, which has a clear geography - homelands and enclaves, with various degrees of closeness - the 'demos' has been totally fractured - democracy has retreated… the totalizing ethnos is victorious, but for how long?

1987 - 1993 first intifada: for the first time: the identity-territorial, and economic logics begin to clash; forces of globalisation and a growing peace camp - cracks appear in the ethnocratic logic, between economy and identity;

  • Palestinians strategy - sumud and civilian resistance
  • The high point of arab-jewish cooperation in the grassroot peace movements;
  • OSLO AGREEMENT: mutual recognition; Palestinian recognition in Israel; planned three-phase withdrawal;

But Oslo - failure to address any substantial issue - luxurious de-colonisation; still heavily favoring Zionists - keeping all settlements and enlarging them; three withdrawals not complete; main problem: vagueness, constructed initially as 'creative', allowing everybody to square their own circles; but very quickly presenting an opening to the extremists, who managed (through calculate use of violence), eventually, to derail the fragile, ill-constructed, process (Goldstein, feb 1994 - Hamas - deadly revenge - cycle after cycle - Rabin's assassination).

Palestinians: later in 1994 enter: Arafat, PLO military leader over a genuine civil society built 'from below' during the 1980s and early 1990s - brewing friction; a corrupt, highly centralized, apparatus is built; mainly as israel's security agent 'by proxy'. A weak regime, with little legitimacy 'on the ground'; had to turn to hostility and violence at the time of internal crisis;

[Note: all 'peace initiatives', have worked against the Palestinians: 1947-1977-1982; 1991-93; 2000 - the four failed partitioned of Palestinian]

Camp-David (after great delay in time-table - three withdrawals not implemented): the cards were on the table for 'final solution' - Israel wishes to keep 80% of settlers, and create a Palestinian state without even the basis of sovereignty; nor discussion of the refugees, a 'luxurious peace', with no legitimacy among Palestinians.

Al-Aqsa intifada: Palestinian street losing patience with Israel and Arafat's regime; militias spring into (pre-planned?) action; also called intifadat al-awdah, (uprising against the denial of the Palestinian Right of Return) or intifadat al-mustawtanat (uprising against the Jewish settlements) - two main unresolved issues - the refugees and the settlements - 'the street' reminds their leaders, violently, that these issues will not go away; these - let us remember - are the children of the ethno-geographic logic, seeking control over 'our pure' homeland' ours only.

But organized violence - a disastrous move for Palestinians - morally and strategically; inviting certain defeat and pervasive destruction; allowing extremists - jewish and Islamists -- to determine the Palestinian and Israeli agenda - and bringing about the rise of Sharon.

[the building blocks of religion, ethnicity, homeland and a demonized other, find it too easy to rupture the thin surface of 'peace'; which never managed to get any 'thickness' of legitimacy; given its tilted, uneven, and coerced nature.]

Taba Talks: following the Clinton offer, there was still some hope, serious progress, but too late? - Barak, fearing a Jewish civil war, retreated. He forewarned: "all agreement are written on ice", and added "I shall always be a soldier of the homeland" on retirement in 2001, after attempting to join the newly elected Sharon government; casting serious doubt over his previous peace-leaning moves;

At the same time, with repeated terrorist attacks, Arafat was chanting "li-al-quds rayechin; shuhada bimalai'n"; these are the putative leaders of peace!

After Sharon - and much to his liking and design, intensifying cycles of violence and terror; Sharon, backed by 'ethnicised public' a master of the politics of violence; gradually leading to siege, blockades, closures, curfews, mass unemployment, incipient hunger - all in the name of security and peace (with total ineffectiveness), following his Orwellian election campaign - "only Sharon will bring peace".

Sharon's policies: ethnocracy, which has been tempered, returns in full swing - a backlash against the left, universities, Arabs in Israel, and total domination of the colonialist right. cycles of terror; September 11 -

March 2002 - Likkud center decides in a large majority - "there will be no Palestinian state"; a renewed agenda of settlements and land seizure, both sides of the green line, campaigning against Arabs in Israel, to exclude them from meaningful politics; spraying their fields with poisonous chemicals in the name of 'law and order'...

[But paradox: if there is no Palestine, there is no Israel - open apartheid, and majority of Palestinians losing interest in a state, opting for a south-African struggle - Israel may have lost its time…]

In 2002, then, territory and land remains major issues, at all levels of politics and organizations:

  • Land control: inside Israel: who controls the land - the Bedouins incident, and elsewhere as well.
  • Sovereignty: OT - who will be sovereign?
  • Borders? Will they change? Will J-M be divided?
  • Political community - will the refugees return? To where? Will Jews continue to migrate?

Israel/Palestine are in a deep state of flux; the failed partition put in motion processes of ethnicisation, essentialisation and dispossession on massive scale; the violence of the ethnocratic logic has engraved the land and its people with deep injuries, hate and vengeance.

What are the options: three main possibilities:

  1. Meddling through: business as usual - gradual decline; apartheid institutionalized further; guerilla war continues, terrorism and economic decline;
  2. Two states: recreating Israel; evacuating settlements, no right of return; a possible measure, but only temporary;
  3. One state, two peoples; a most moral position; full return of refugees; Jewish settlements remain; increasing support among Palestinians; very little support among Jews.

FINAL WORDS:

  • We have shown the unfolding, disastrous consequences, of the main logic shaping the world's political map during the last century - drawing lines, and hence defining 'homelands', legitimizing internal colonialism, constructing ethnocracies which are built on self-righteous violence, oppression, marginalisation and endless, horrific conflicts; Israel/Palestine is an embodiment of these elements, which surface and resurface in every corner of the world.
  • But, needless to say, there are counterforces; we, as 'organic' intellectuals and activists, in the Gramscian sense, know that there is always a weakness to exploit, a crack to open, and a distortion to straighten, through the raising of new consciousness and through our own politics;
  • The way forward is complex and troublesome; riddled with confrontations, which run against the grain of what has been established as 'common sensical' and hence hegemonic knowledge. Nevertheless, I suggest the way forward should take us, in all our practices, discourses and imaginations, in all levels, local, state or international, through the following:

1. Demystification: of land, homeland, genetic origins, caste affiliations and demonisations;

2. De-territorialisation of collective identities and politics: when the goals of purifying 'our' space are no longer a viable political project; stifled by mobility, porous borders and boundaries (external and internal), and stronger rights of the marginal and the poor.

3. Humanization: refocus on people, communities, women and their needs; recreate a new professional and political discourse of need, a discourse of civil agendas, a discourse indifferent to blood, caste or origins;

4. Mobilisation: against the inevitably essentialising logic of ethnicity, race, and segregation; creating new spaces for cross-community politics, initiating agendas of collegiality, regionalism and redistributions;

5. Internationalization: by-pass the logic of the ethnic state; create cross-border coalitions; mobilize international, or cross-national activism; activate the notion that human rights know no borders; harass states from above and below; and show them that, at the end of the day, some people prefer life beyond the self-producing logic of 'us' and 'them'; life of dignity, life of peace.

6. Democracy: let us borrow from some of the positive protocols of globalisation; one of which must be the spread of democratic discourses, if not always practices; there is no escape from the direct link between lasting, just peace, and the principles of democracy: empowerment, accountability, civil rights, non-violence, equality and dialogue; the great advances of recent decades in promoting these ideals (albeit, with great difficulties), is a light at the end of the tunnel; let us move from ethnocracy, and the global Apartheid, it had created, to democracy and the openings it offers; and back to Israel-Palestinian:

7. Binationalism: develop a framework as part: both geographically, economically, environmentally and politically, for long-term management of the small land; gradual opening of borders; this will defeat the current 'demographic phobia', as both communities will be secure in their identities and rights, regardless of numbers; the land will, I believe, eventually defy the logic of ethnocratic partition, and -in the words of two of the best intellectual minds to come from this injured land - Martin Buber and Edward Said -- return to be what it should have been to start with: one land for two peoples, coexisting in peace.
 

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