Archive for December, 2009

Did Obama take his eyes off the Palestine ball?

by Editors on December 31, 2009 in Politics with Comments Off

Daoud Kuttab - For a few minutes on Sunday I wondered what would have happened if I was reading rather than listening to US President Barack Obama’s statement from Hawaii. The US president took time off his Christmas vacation to speak about the incident that occurred on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Had I not heard his voice and seen his picture, I would have thought that the speaker was none other than former US president George W. Bush. What has happened to Obama in less than one year?

Unlike any of his previous speeches, Obama spoke totally out of script by using the word “terrorism” three times in a statement that lasted only a few minutes. Until this incident, Obama had preferred to use the word “radical” or “extremist” rather than much more emotionally loaded terrorists and terrorism.

What made the statement sound more like a Bush speech rather than an Obama one was the reference to the aim of the anti-American attackers. Obama had the following to say: “Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans.”

Obama clearly capitulated to forces on the right who have repeatedly described any attack against the US because of its foreign policy as attacks against America’s “open society” and American “values”.

What has happened to President Obama?

Is it simply that he was shocked that people around the world would dare attack America and American soil despite his own pro-world point of view? Is it that he is so angry that he is unable to realise that his own decision to ratchet up US presence in Afghanistan would inevitably produce anti-American violence?

During Obama’s visit to Cairo and his speech to the Muslim world, the attitude and tone of the son of an African-Muslim leader was widely welcomed. In fact worldwide reaction to Obama’s first months in office was extremely positive about the direction he plans to take on major foreign policy issues.

Obama’s appointment of Senator George Mitchell as his personal envoy to the Middle East and his call to close Guantanamo during his first year in office were seen as positive signs of a change. Obama’s public position as well as that of his secretary of state, in total opposition to any sort of Israeli settlement activities was seen as a breath of fresh air in Washington. But those signals would quickly crumble and US foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Palestine, would retract back to its tilt in the direction of Israel. This was clear with the way Obama and Hilary Clinton retracted the call for a total settlement freeze. It was also obvious when the US exerted political pressure on the Palestinian president in an attempt to quash the Goldstone report. One would have expected jurist and internationalist Obama to support rather than oppose actions of an impeccable South African war crimes lawyer such as Richard Goldstone.

A search of what happened to Obama since his early hopeful days can be found in the president’s own rhetoric.

One issue that Obama and his personal envoy clearly articulated during those crucial first months was the need for the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state. The language used in support of such a political resolution was unprecedented because of its repeated emphasis that the creation of a Palestinian state is in the “national interest” of the United States of America.

During the presidential election campaign, candidate Barack Obama attacked. Bush for what he considered the mistaken launch of the wrong war against Iraq. Obama repeatedly stated that in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush took his eyes off the ball by attacking Iraq rather than Afghanistan.

Surely Obama, who has been seen worldwide as having started on the right foot regarding the Middle East, was drawn away by the healthcare debates and the internal discussions on troop deployment. Others believe that Obama has allowed some pro-Israeli staff and advisers such Rahm Emanuel and Denis Ross to manage the Palestine-Israeli dossier. Adding more troops to an unwinnable war also doesn’t help to stem the motivations for continued attacks against Americans.

Observers of the Middle East conflict insist that the continuation of the plight of the Palestinians and the injustice they are suffering at the hands of the Israeli occupiers is a source of anger and frustration for millions around the world. Candidate Obama, as well as President Obama in his first 100 days, would not have taken his eyes off the ball. Preventing further attacks against American targets will not take place with hard power. Soft power and support of justice and neutrality in the Middle East will provide much better protection than body scanners and efficient intelligence work.

If 2009 is to be evaluated fairly in respect to the issue of Palestine, it would be safe to say that Obama took his eyes off an issue that is of national interest to the US.

 

What has happened to President Obama?

Is it simply that he was shocked that people around the world dare attack America and American soil despite his own pro world point of view? Is it that he is so angry that he is unable to realize that his own decision to ratchet up US presence in Afghanistan would inevitably produce anti American violence?

During President Obama’s visit to Cairo and his speech to the Muslim world, the attitude and tone of the son of an African Muslim leader was widely welcomed. In fact worldwide reaction to President Obama’s first months in office was extremely positive about the direction he planned to take on major foreign policy issues.

President Obama’s appointment of Senator George Mitchell as his personal envoy to the Middle East and his call to close Guantanamo during the first year in office were also seen as positive signs of a change. Obama’s public position as well as that of his secretary of state, in total opposition to any sort of Jewish settlement activities, was seen as a breath of fresh air in Washington. But those signals would quickly crumble and US foreign policy, especially vis a vis Palestine, would retract back to its tilt in the direction of Israel. This was clear with the way Obama and Clinton retracted on the call for a total settlement freeze. It was also obvious when the US exerted political pressure on the Palestinian president in an attempt to quash the Goldstone report. One would have expected jurist and internationalist Obama to support rather than oppose actions of an impeccable South African war crimes lawyer such as Goldstone. A search of what happened to President Obama since his early hopeful days can be found in the President’s own rhetoric.

One issue that President Obama and his personal envoy have clearly articulated during those crucial first months was the need for the creation of an independent and viable state of Palestine. The language used in support of such a political resolution was unprecedented because of its repeated emphasis that the creation of a Palestinian state is in the “national interest” of the United States of America.

During the election campaign for presidency, candidate Barack Obama attacked George W. Bush for what he considered the mistaken launch of the wrong war against Iraq. Obama repeatedly stated that in the aftermaths of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush took his eyes off the ball by attacking Iraq rather than Afghanistan.

Surely President Obama, who has been seen worldwide as having started on the correct foot regarding the Middle East, was drawn away by the health care debates and the internal discussions on troop deployment. Others believe that Obama has allowed some pro Israeli staff and advisers such Rahm Emanuel and Denis Ross to manage the Palestine Israeli dossier. Adding more troops to an un-winable war also doesn’t help in stemming the motivations for continued attacks against Americans.

Observers of the Middle East conflict insist that the continuation of the plight of the Palestinians and the injustice that they are suffering on the hands of the Israeli occupiers is a source of anger and frustration for millions around the world. Candidate Obama as well as President Obama in his first 100 days would not have taken his eyes off the ball. Preventing further attacks against American targets will not take place with hard power. Soft power and support of justice and neutrality in the Middle East will provide much better protection than body scanners and efficient intelligence work.

If 2009 is to be evaluated fairly in respect to the issue of Palestine, it would be safe to say that Obama took his eyes of an issue which is of national interest to the US.

Cross posted on The Huffingtonpost

For more of Palestine Note, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.   For inquiries, please contact Palestine Note at editor@palestinenote.com

Gaza: forsaken but not forgotten

by Editors on December 31, 2009 in The Territories with Comments Off

Jamal Dajani - They came in buses and cars from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and the Galilee: Palestinians, Israelis, and few international activists. They waved Palestinian flags and carried banners chanting in Arabic and Hebrew: “Break the Siege”, “Set Gaza Free,” and “Down with Netanyahu and Mubarak”.

“Welcome to Erez Crossing Point”, the sign reads in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The ultimate irony, as no one is allowed to cross in or out except for a lucky few, such as diplomats and aid workers, or the unlucky ones who suffer from terminal illnesses. The rest of the 1.5 million Palestinian inhabitants remain caged in like animals in the largest open air prison on earth called Gaza.

Eighty-six international activists were allowed to enter the Strip last night from Egypt through Rafah. We were told that they too, accompanied by hundreds of Gazans, were chanting and waving on the other side of the border, but we could not see or hear them. Between them and us were a few hundred meters, a wall, a steel gate, and armed Israeli soldiers.

2009-12-31-aa.JPG

More than a thousand activists from around 40 countries remained in Cairo after the Egyptian government declined them entry due to the “sensitive situation” in the Palestinian territory. When was it not a “sensitive situation” in Palestine?

Several of their members were forcibly detained in hotels around Cairo, as well as violently forced into pens in Tahrir Square by Egyptian police and security forces.

The scene in Erez was like something from a movie set: chanters to the left of the gate, reporters to the right, and the Israeli Police and Border Patrol in the middle. There were no scuffles or confrontations, except for an argument between a Palestinian from Jaffa and Bedouin manning the “Free Gilad Shalit” tent.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” yells the Palestinian, who called him a “house Arab”. A shouting match ensues, and the reporters, along with their cameramen shove and elbow their way to capture the scene.

Last year, I covered the war from the same vantage point. Journalists were prevented entry into Gaza by the Israeli military. I returned that evening to East Jerusalem where Palestinians huddled around television screens to watch the carnage in Gaza. On New Years Day, I awoke with a news hangover. Israeli jets were pounding Gaza for the sixth continuous day, and the Israeli military was building up its forces along the border in preparation for a ground incursion. I can still hear the sound of the jets screeching above.

The prison gate opens momentarily, and an old Palestinian man is being pushed on a wheelchair past the border guards for treatment at al-Makased Hospital in East Jerusalem. I ask before the pack of reporters attack him, “Hajj, how is Gaza?”

“It’s like hell,” he answers.

Cross posted on Huffingtonpost

For more of Palestine Note, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.   For inquiries, please contact Palestine Note at editor@palestinenote.com

 

Israel’s old left is dead; long live the new left

by Editors on December 31, 2009 in Israel with Comments Off

No more than several thousand people took part in what was billed
as Israel’s “first-ever Human Rights March.” Many of those who
attended the December 11 gathering in Tel Aviv were affiliated with
the several dozen Israeli NGOs that took part in organizing the
event. There were gay rights supporters, protesters against the
deportation of immigrants and refugees, a large contingent of Arab
Israelis and even a group representing fans of a Tel Aviv soccer
club.

The march’s call-to-action warned that “over this past year,
the very foundations of our democracy have been shaken.” It
demanded, among other things, “equal citizenship for all Israelis.”

Altogether, the event may not have seemed like much to passersby.
There weren’t traffic jams, even though the march took place during
the busy hours of Friday morning. Yet these thousands of marchers
represent the future and the hope of the Israeli left.

There is no escaping the truth: The old Zionist left is gone.
Labor is disintegrating; grassroots movements such as Peace Now are
being increasingly de-legitimized, and Meretz was reduced in the most
recent elections to an insignificant three Knesset seats. The
controversy over the diplomatic process is heating up, and the
tension between the government and the Arab minority is building, but
the voice of the Israeli left is almost completely absent.

Meanwhile, it is the Likud that has become Israel’s dominant
ideological and political power, in ways that Menachem Begin never
could have dreamed. The personal rivalry between opposition leader
Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hides the fact that
Likud people are actually in control of Israel’s three largest
political parties: Livni and Shaul Mofaz in Kadima; Avigdor Lieberman
and Uzi Landau in Yisrael Beiteinu, and Netanyahu at the Likud’s
helm. The Likud and the two parties that split from it currently hold
70 out of 120 Knesset seats, something even Mapai in the glory days
of David Ben-Gurion didn’t achieve.

What enabled the right’s current success was the ideological
turn it took. The last decade has seen all the right’s leaders -
from Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert to, finally, Netanyahu – accept
the left’s idea of a Palestinian state. They did so not because
they suddenly abandoned the desire to hold on to the entirety of the
Greater Land of Israel, nor because they realized how unjust the
occupation is. The only reason leaders from the right are today
willing to consider withdrawal from Hebron and even from East
Jerusalem is that one argument made by the Zionist left did strike a
chord with them: that a Palestinian state is the only way to keep a
clear Jewish majority in Israel.

By raising the flag of “the demographic battle,” the Jewish
left was able to win the debate over the West Bank and Gaza. But it
did so in a way that betrayed the same values the left has always
claimed to represent – humanism, equal rights and brotherhood.
That’s also where the left’s political fate was sealed. When the
left abandoned the hope for true partnership with the Palestinians -
on both sides of the Green Line – and became almost solely defined
by its focus on demography and ethnic separation, it opened the door
for Lieberman and his vision of an exclusionary Jewish state.

In fact, all Lieberman did was to propose taking the left’s
platform one step further: If we are to separate from the
Palestinians in the name of demography, why not redraw the borders so
that Israel’s Arab citizens are placed in the Palestinian state as
well? Livni and Netanyahu haven’t gone this far yet, but basically
they offer the public the same deal: In return for the withdrawal
from the West Bank, they pledge to preserve a clear Jewish majority
within the state’s borders, the implicit message being that this is
an opportunity to make Israel more Jewish.

This conception naturally comes at the expense of the state’s
non-Jewish minorities; it makes it clear that Israel is not their
country. This has helped set the stage for the current surge of
anti-Arab legislation and government measures – from the effort to
ban commemorations of the Palestinian Nakba to the order to replace
Arab place names on road signs. (In this xenophobic political
atmosphere, it is not

surprising that even providing refuge to the survivors of the
genocide in Darfur became a controversial issue.)

To all this, the left could have responded by opening its ranks to
Arabs and creating new coalitions with the non-Zionist parties and
grassroots organizations such as those that marched in Tel Aviv. No
other political coalition has the power to preserve Israel as a home
not just for Jews, but for all the people living in the country.
Instead, the left’s leaders and thinkers chose to engage in a
contest of ethnic patriotism with the right – one that they have no
hope of winning.

Right now, the Zionist left has nothing to offer the Israeli
public. Its leaders – the ones who didn’t desert or retire -
basically agree with Livni and Netanyahu on the nature of the
problems we are facing, as well as on the solutions. Their only claim
is that they will arrive at the solutions by different means. But the
public doesn’t buy it: If we are in the business of building walls,
Israelis think the Likud will do a better job. After all, it was the
founding father of the Zionist right, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who
famously urged the Jewish national movement to take an “Iron Wall”
approach to the Arab population.

The future of the Israeli left does not lie in the few seats it
could win back from Kadima, but rather with the people who are
waiting on the other side of the demographic wall. If the left is
truly committed to protecting Israeli democracy, it can’t go on
with its near-exclusively Jewish parties and arguments based on
demography, because they all lead in the opposite direction. If the
right is using the two-state solution for its goal of Jewish
superiority within the Green Line, the left should offer an
alternative model of true partnership with Israel’s Arab minority.

This will not be an easy task. The political divide between
Israel’s Arab public and the Jewish left is wide. Bridging it will
require some painful reconsideration of the State of Israel’s
values, symbols and laws. But that may be what’s required if
Israeli democracy is to be preserved, and if the Israeli left is to
rise anew.

This article was originally published in the Forward.

For more of Palestine Note, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.   For inquiries, please contact Palestine Note at editor@palestinenote.com

 

Teaching and learning at UPeace

by Editors on December 31, 2009 in Society & Culture with Comments Off

 

Mona Eltahawy - It was the end of a three-hour class I’d given on women and
Islamist movements. Why do women join such movements, which often bar
them from positions of power? Why would a woman who belonged to one
such movement tell a researcher “We don’t want equality. We want
justice”? Why would the majority of women who belonged to another
movement resist demands by fellow sisters that they gain
decision-making positions?

And most disturbingly, why would women offer to blow themselves up
for violent Islamist movements, whose misogyny outdoes the nonviolent
groups’? Is it any different when a woman blows herself than when a
man does? Why do women suicide bombers shock people more? Isn’t it
clichéd to think that all women are nurturing and less violent than
men?

I was spilling my guts out, I knew. Those were issues that
mattered to me not just academically or for my columnist’s eye but
personally too as a Muslim woman and a feminist. But then, every
class was a philosophical roller-coaster that left my students and me
alternately elated and drained from the intensity of our discussions.

As I packed up my papers and unclenched my spine at the end of
class, one of the Asian students shared an anecdote that made me want
to hug her. She told me that during her years as a television
producer in her country, her co-workers decided to go on strike and
would shave their hair as part of their labor dispute.

“I thought about it and realized that the men had no idea what
hair meant for women. In a month, the men would look the same but it
was very different for women,” she said. “I refused to shave my
hair. I was the only woman who refused and I came under a lot of
pressure but I refused.”

Clearly, I was learning as much as I was teaching.

The campus: the U.N.-mandated University for Peace. The class:
“Women and New Media in the Middle East,” which I was teaching to
graduate students from 14 different countries.

The country: Costa Rica, which became the first country to abolish
its armed forces in 1948. (Imagine! We all know what was happening in
the Middle East in 1948!)

The lessons walked home with us. The students would tell me of
hours of arguments and debates they’d have – face to face and
(apropos our class on how New Media gave women in the Middle East
unprecedented avenues for expression) via Facebook.

Spending a year studying alongside students from more than 70
countries brings the world to you; yes, it’s exhilarating, but it
also reminds you of how frustrating and unknown that world can be.
When you encounter for the first time ideas and ideologies that your
home country had sheltered you from or when you’re sitting just
across the room from someone whose values you’ve never contended
with before – either because you’re conservative and your
classmate across the room explains what it’s like to be bisexual or
because you’re liberal and the classmate across the room thinks
homosexuality is unnatural – nothing short of alchemy is at work:
nothing will be the same again.

I traveled as a child with my family. We left Egypt when I was 7
and I didn’t return till I was 21. Of my 42 years, I’ve spent
just 17 in Egypt. But I didn’t travel by myself until I was 27
years old. My solo journeys before that were intellectual and were
conducted not in a class of 14 nationalities but between the covers
of books. Books brought me the exhilaration and terror of new ideas
that helped me deconstruct and reconstruct Mona.

The youngest of my students was 22 and the oldest 33. Their
deconstruction and reconstruction was happening before my eyes.

My education at UPEACE continued at “home” too, in the hotel
where other visiting professors and I lived during the course.
Imagine the privilege of having dinner with one of the world’s
leading researchers and educators in nonviolent struggles. As a young
student, Mary E. King worked alongside the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. (no relation) in the U.S. civil rights movement and here
she was, the author whose many books include “Freedom Song: A
Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement,” giving me
goosebumps by telling me it was my duty to write a book.

And right over there at the next table, another dinner
companion/teacher: Jan Pronk, who spent almost 40 years as a Dutch
politician and diplomat, including four terms as a minister in Dutch
governments. He served for two years as Head of Mission for the
United Nations Mission in Sudan before Sudanese President Omar Bashir
effectively pinned a badge of honor on his chest by asking him to
leave Sudan after Pronk criticized a deal between Khartoum and a
Darfurian rebel group. The students got decades worth of experience
from professors like King and Pronk and I got them both for dinner.

But I was in trouble. Students under renovation and legendary
professors notwithstanding, Costa Rica – hands down the most
beautiful country I’ve ever been to – was messing with my head.
With every look at the stunning Central Valley vista laid before us
at the campus, I knew I’d lose my mojo (read: anger), if I stayed
here too long. It was impossible to be angry at anything.

So for the sake of my writing, I had to leave and, so, as soon as
I finished teaching my course, I left.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Report; cross-posted from Mona Eltahawy’s blog.

 

For more of Palestine Note, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.   For inquiries, please contact Palestine Note at editor@palestinenote.com

A slightly optimistic analysis of Israeli politics at the end of a lost decade

by Editors on December 30, 2009 in Israel, Politics with Comments Off

Almost two weeks of intense political maneuvering ended
yesterday. Many people on the Left were worried by Benjamin
Netanyahu’s effort to
split the opposition Kadima party or to have it join his coalition.
Both options, it seemed, would have made the prime ministe even
stronger, and everything that’s good for Netanyahu is surely bad
for the peace process. Or is it?

In general, I tend to oppose the policies of the Netanyahu
government. I consider myself to be a member of the Left; I believe
that the events of the past year have brought us closer to the end of
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank; and possibly also to the end
of the siege on Gaza. The current political circumstances are pretty
favorable, to the point that if I could have replaced Netanyahu with
other Israeli leaders – say Kadima leader Tzipi Livni or Labor
leader Ehud Barak – I probably wouldn’t want to.

To understand why, we need to dive into the depths of Israel’s
complex political dynamics.

——-

If left to do as he wishes, Netanyahu would not make one step to
end the Israeli occupation. His
ideological background is one that views the West Bank as part of
the Land of Israel; he believes that an independent Palestinian state
would endanger Israel’s national security; and his political base
has always been on the Israeli Right.

But political leaders have to consider political circumstances and
limitations, and Netanyahu – unlike two previous Likud prime
ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon – is extremely sensitive
to outside pressure. And pressure came from the first moment
Netanyahu entered his office.

First, there was the new approach from Washington. It’s not just
Obama, but the whole backlash against the Middle East policy of the
Bush administration. Furthermore, the world knew Netanyahu, and
remembered him as the man who succeeded Yitzhak Rabin and almost
single handedly buried the Oslo Accords. And if somebody was ready to
consider the idea of “a new Netanyahu”, along came the
appointment of Avigdor Liberman to the Foreign Office and fixed the
image of this government – quite rightly, I must say – as the
most extreme Israel ever had. Even Israel’s supporters have
encountered difficulties over the last year while explaining the
prime minister’s fondness for settling the West Bank, or defending
the daily
gaffe by the Foreign Minister.

And there was the war in Gaza. It’s hard to grasp the huge gap
between the opinion of the international community and that of
mainstream Israelis to Operation Cast Lead. Israelis see the war as a
justified, even heroic, act against Hamas’ aggression – which was
the Palestinian response to the good faith we showed in withdrawing
from the Gaza strip. Most of the international community see
Operation Cast Lead as a barbaric attack on (mostly) innocent
civilians.

And while the Goldstone Report might never be adopted by the UN
Security Council, the response it engendered made it clear that in
the near future – unless something very dramatic happens to change
everything (we always have to add this sentence in the post 9/11
world, don’t we?) – there won’t be another Cast Lead. The world
won’t allow it.

All these elements – the change in Washington, the suspicious
welcome the world gave Netanyahu and the respond to the war in Gaza -
are forcing Netanyahu to do something he never planned, at least with
regard to the Palestinians: he is being forced to act. That’s why
he announced the settlement moratorium, and that’s why he is
willing, according
to today’s reports, to negotiate a Palestinian state on the
1967 borders, and even to talk about the status of Jerusalem. And
this is the man who won the 1996 elections after he accused Shimon
Peres of agreeing to divide the Israeli capital city.

——-

Yes, I would have preferred a Hadash-Meretz government. But this
isn’t, and such a government won’t be an option in this
generation. Right now, the political leaders with a shot at the prime
minister’s office are Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, maybe Shaul Mofaz and,
God forbid, Avigdor Liberman. Next in line after them are people with
basically the same agenda.

I don’t trust Ehud Barak. I don’t know what drives him, I
don’t think anyone understands what his views are, and I believe he
has at least partial responsibility for the failure of the Camp David
summit and the negotiations with the Syrians – and all that
followed this failure.

With Kadima and Livni, it’s even worse.
Under Ehud Olmert, this party brought to perfection the art of
talking about peace and declaring wars. Olmert offered the
Palestinians, so it is said, just about everything; but in reality,
all they got from him were bombs. At the time, the international
community believed the Israeli PM was truly seeking peace, so it
didn’t look so harshly when he opened fire. With Netanyahu it’s
the other way around: the international community keeps a watchful
eye on every move he makes.

There is a point which must be understood regarding the
negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians: the currency Israel
is expected to pay in negotiations is land, so Israeli leaders will
always prefer talks to actual actions. The Palestinians are expected
to pay in legitimacy (to Israel), so for them, negotiating is the
problem. When they recognize Israel and sit at the table with its
leaders, they are already giving their part in the deal.

The State Department understood this recently. According
to a source there, the Palestinian leadership “wants a deal
with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership
“wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”

To break this dynamic, once negotiations start, there must be
constant pressure on the Israeli side to deliver the goods.
Otherwise, talks will go on forever. The pressure is more important
than the actual identity of the Israel prime minister. As I write
above, the current circumstances are leading the world to apply this
pressure on Netanyahu in a way it never did – and probably never
will – on the prime ministers from Labor or Kadima.

To that we must add the question of the prime minister’s
personality. I hope I won’t be proven wrong here, but from what I
observe, Netanyahu – unlike his image – is very careful with the
use of military power. During his previous term, when violent clashes
occurred between Palestinians and Israelis over the Kotel
Tunnel incident, Netanyahu went out of his way to stop the fire.
He even hugged Yasser Arafat. Compare that to Ehud Barak’s response
to the October 2000 events, or to the Olmert-Livni cabinet, which
started two wars.

Sometimes, we should judge leaders by what they do, not just by
what they say, and Netanyahu is the only Israeli prime minister
in almost two decades who did not start a wide scale military
operation against the Palestinians or a neighboring Arab country.
That includes
the six months Shimon Peres was prime minister, which was sufficient
time for him to start the 1996
operation in Lebanon. I hope Netanyahu’s record doesn’t
change. It’s actually nice to know we have a leader with a little
less blood on his hands.

——-

Another point to consider: only Likud governments evacuated
settlements (it happened twice – in the Sinai Peninsula and in
Gaza). It is no coincidence: with the Jewish public usually split on
such questions, and even slightly against territorial concessions, a
leader from the Left has to face enormous opposition for the
evacuation, while a leader from the Likud has only the extreme right
to fight.

——-

At this point it must seem like I’ve joined the ever expanding
Israeli cult of “former-lefties”, or at least the Netanyahu
fan club. Far from it. I still think that Bibi doesn’t want to
leave the West Bank, and even if he changes his mind, I’m not sure
he is up to this task, which already left one prime minster dead, and
possibly the other (Ariel Sharon) in a coma. It’s just that the
political circumstances, for the first time in this wasted decade,
are working in the right direction, and they might not work that well
if Barak or Livni were to be in Netanyahu’s place (*).

Yes, Gaza is
still under siege – but it wasn’t Netanyahu who initiated it.
Israel is still building settlements, but not at the rate previous
governments did. Some roadblocks are removed, the West Bank’s economy
improving slightly – and for the first time, the world is really
keeping an eye on Israel’s actions, even in East
Jerusalem. Things are far from perfect, even far from reasonable,
but at least in the West Bank, they are better than at any other time
this decade.

Even more importantly, there is finally some sense of urgency that
reached the Israeli politicians, media and even public regarding the
diplomatic process. Less than a year ago I
complained here that nobody cares about the occupation or the
peace process anymore. These days, statements from Ramallah,
Jerusalem and Washington are back on the front pages of the papers,
and politicians are promoting
their ideas for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. This is
something we haven’t seen in a long time. It’s not because
Israelis finally understood what’s
wrong with the occupation – it’s because the world is leaving
them no choice.

——-

My bottom line, and the reason for this post, is regarding what
needs to be done. The Israeli Left, and all those opposing the
occupation here and abroad, shouldn’t occupy themselves with hopes
of political change in Israel. Chances are it won’t happen soon,
and even if it does, it probably won’t help much, for the reasons I
explained.

But international pressure on Israel does help. In less than a
year, it achieved what four years of terror attacks did not. Activism
works. Internet campaigns, students campaigns, lobbying, civil and
human rights
campaigns, settlements monitoring project, UN and EU resolutions -
and yes, with all the
mistakes he might have made, one Barack Obama – all these make
Israelis remember that the international community doesn’t accept
the occupation anymore, and that their time is running out: either
they get out of the West Bank and have the Palestinians have their
civil rights in their own state, or they chose to stay there and let
them live as equal citizens in the State of Israel.

Israelis may complain of double
standards, ask why the world couldn’t pick on China or Sudan
(truth is it does), but in the end, the pressure gets to us. It makes
pundits suggest new ideas and politicians explore
new positions, since everybody fear that any solution forced by
the international community will surly be worse than the one we come
up with. And with time, this pressure might even cause the son of
Ben-Zion Netanyahu
make some surprising moves.

Happy New Year.

——-

* The real problem with Netanyahu’s government is its human
right record inside Israel and most notably, the
way it treats the Arab citizens, but for this New Year’s Eve,
let’s look on the bright side

 

For more of Palestine Note, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.   For inquiries, please contact Palestine Note at editor@palestinenote.com

← Older Entries