David Baird’s Strategy Paper for Benedict DeDominicis
Israel has been engaging in a brutal military occupation of Palestinian
territory since a war in 1967, which it claims was defensive. Even so,
territorial gains from war are illegal under U.N. rules, whether the war was
aggressive or defensive(jfj,13). Israel has not only occupied their land, but
transferred 400,000 of its Jewish citizens onto it illegally. This has created
on the West Bank and in the Gaza strip a network of settlements connected by
Jewish-only bypass roads. They break up Palestinian society into islands which
people can often not travel between, or only by submitting to lengthy and
humiliating inspections at checkpoints. Personal and professional lives are very
disrupted, if not destroyed, by this difficulty..
Torture of Palestinians was only made illegal in 1999. Now, they are merely
subject to “moderate physical compulsion.”(The Nation) An example would be
filling a bag with cow dung, putting a Palestinian detainee’s head in it and
sealing it, then hanging him naked, by handcuffs, and torturing him with an
alternation of scalding hot and freezing cold showers of water. Another popular
example is putting a prisoner in a small box, where he has to be crunched up,
and can’t move, for days. And of course the more extreme forms remain, such as
torturing to death, despite the official denial. People have been tortured
simply for raising flags or throwing stones. There have been no recorded cases
of torture because of a “ticking bomb” scenario. The evil is justified because
of extracting confessions about things that have always already
happened(jfj,24).
David Ben-Gurion, a father of Israel, asked “Why should the Arabs make peace? If
I was an Arab leader, I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we
have taken their country…we came here and stole their country. Why should they
accept that?”(jfj,23)
Arafat has demanded that:
Israel withdraw its military and settlements from the illegally occupied
territories, as per U.N. resolution 242.
Israel support the formation of a Palestinian state, using all of its power to
help this project, including handing over the $420 million of tax revenues that
it has been withholding, and reparations for the value of the property within
Israel that Palestinians were forced off of during the 1948 formation of the
Jewish state, and the right of return for refugees.
The Israeli government and people acknowledge what they have done to the
Palestinian people, and turn over individuals accused of war crimes, such as
torture, to the new International Criminal Court.
The United States cease its undemocratic practice of vetoing every anti-Israeli
resolution which the U.N. Security Council creates, which it has done countless
times.
“Israelis like to believe, and tell the world, that they are running an
‘enlightened’ or ‘benign’ occupation, qualitatively different from other
military occupations the world has seen. The truth [is] radically different.
Like all occupations, Israel’s [is] founded on brute force, repression and fear,
collaboration and treachery, beatings and torture chambers, and daily
intimidation, humiliation and manipulation,” writes Israeli historian Benny
Morris(jfj,33). Why would Israel let itself degenerate to its current moral
level? Maybe it was never moral. “During the 1948 war, 750,000 Palestinians fled
in terror or were actively expelled from their ancestral homeland and turned
into refugees…This was the birth of the state of Israel”(jfj, 35).
The Israelis are criminal, and it turns out that Yasir Arafat is also a
criminal. The Palestinians are trapped in between. Arafat is interested in only
his own enrichment and survival, and the enrichment of his buddies and their
families, as this paper will show. The rest of the Palestinains can burn in
hell, as far as he’s concerned, if he bothered to think about them, which he
probably doesn’t do often. As far as making the Palestinian situation better,
Arafat is not motivated. The only thing that keeps Israel from eliminating him
is America’s request, because such an act could cause trouble for the Arab
allies needed in a war on Iraq. So although Arafat sided with Saddam during the
first Gulf war, ironically the prospect of Iraq’s destruction is now keeping him
from being assassinated or expelled by the Israelis.
Currently, to ensure his political survival, Arafat should continue his current
strategy of oppressing his own people and appeasing the Israeli demands as far
as possible. One more step in this direction, cooperating with Israel on
security, would ensure his success for the near future, although he faces danger
from militants if he goes too far. There is no way to stop Arafat and company
from going on like they are now with business deals, human rights abuses, and
incompetent negotiations. There is no alternative for them, because none is
available when they are so weak compared to Israel, the other Arabs, and the
United States, and because their personalities and organization allow no
alternative. Arafat is in a groove he cannot get out of, and it suits the Great
Powers perfectly. “Corruption, police brutality, and undemocratic life will
therefore remain. Arafat refuses to sign either a constitution or even a basic
law of the land.”(eopp,xvi)
The only power the Palestinians have is truth. Physically they are one of the
weakest peoples on Earth. When confronted with the basic, foundational lie about
Israel’s origin, that during the 1948 war, when the state of Israel was formed,
600,000 Palestinians chose to leave their homes, because their leaders convinced
them that Israel would be defeated, enabling them to then return home, Arafat
should attempt to communicate the reality to the actor who believes this:
This claim is a cheap lie…It is furthermore an utterly discredited lie, and one
that Israeli officialdom no longer cares to repeat. Israeli and Jewish
historians have exposed it time and again: Every Arab broadcasting station in
the region, in 1947 as well as 1948, was monitored and recorded and transcribed
by the BBC, and every Arab newspaper has been scoured, and not one instance of
such “incitement,” in direct speech or reported speech, has ever come to light.
The late historian and diplomat Erskine Childers issued an open challenge on the
point as far back as the 1950s that was never taken up and never will be. And of
course the lie is a Big Lie, because Expulsion-Denial lies at the root of the
entire problem and helps poison the situation to this day.(Hitchens,2)
A nation based on an immense crime could, if its people were somehow made aware
of the crime, come to atone for it. After all, the Israelis have extracted vast
sums of money from the Germans for the Holocaust. One would think their
long-suffering experience could teach them something about the suffering of
other peoples. Unless suffering doesn’t increase your morality—Jews (or at least
Jewish leaders) could be fundamentally as racist as the Nazis were.
If Arafat truly wants to foster a viable and vibrant society that can enter the
world community as an equal, he must allow entities other than his Authority to
flourish, and not be jealous of their growing importance. It is sad, but the
Palestinian Authority has openly declared its animosity toward NGOs—research
institutes, study centers, women’s and professional groups—which it considers
rivals for financial support and for political influence. Since it was formed,
the Authority has tried in many ways to destroy them, co-opt their budgets, and
in general to cause trouble for them.(eopp,xvii) But it is fortunate that the
NGOs continue to exist, as long as their funding and the commitment of their
members persists. The Palestinians show this much courage while being repressed
by two separate regimes. Imagine the patience and determination they could bring
to bear on their cultural advancement if they were treated with justice.
Arafat needs some perspective. He needs to realize that these vast powers that
he’s dealing with, Israel and the United States, have very complex motives,
which have nothing to do with his own people’s well-being. A healthy political
movement, among both the Palestinians under his authority, and the four million
refugees, is going to take some sort of collective effort of the will. It will
not come about by imposition from above. After Oslo, suddenly calling his entity
autonomous didn’t magically bring it closer to true sovereignty. Some serious
grass-roots work will need to be done, both within Palestinian society, and
between Palestinians and Israelis, Americans, the whole world. Oslo was meant to
depoliticize the Palestinians, to derail a possible long-range social movement
and replace it with empty nationalism.(eopp,xix) Corporate globalization, with
its supreme value being the market, and with society being secondary, was
allowed to integrate Palestine into its scheme. “Frantz Fanon was right when he
said to the Algerians in 1960 that just to substitute and Algerian policeman for
a French one is not the goal of liberation: a change in consciousness
is.”(eopp,xix) For Palestine to adopt the consciousness of global capitalism, an
other consciousness has to be suppressed—that of a collective destiny, a kind of
utopian vision, no matter how “unrealistic” it may seem now. Said says, “Unless
the group spirit remains fixed on the attainment of real liberation and real
self-determination—which themselves need to be clarified—we can quite easily
drown in the global market with our flag proudly flying over us.”(eopp,xix)
But Palestinians still have hope. Even if the probability of justice obtaining
is vanishingly small, or even non-existent, the option of rolling over and
letting the Israelis stomp all over them is not one a people with dignity and
dreams are likely to take. After all, what else is there to do, if your people
are being tortured, but struggle for some kind of better future? To transcend
the disasters of the past, and achieve a positive modernity, “a mission for
getting beyond the horrors of the past into a new relationship with the whole
world, not just with Israel and the Arabs, but with India, China, Japan, Africa,
Latin America, and of course with Europe and North America.”(eopp,xx)
Palestinians need to expand their horizons, to learn to be curious about all the
peoples of the world and their histories. They need, in short, to become
sophisticated intellectually. “Only this can enable Palestinians to transcend
themselves as a small people and to enter the ranks of the human vanguard along
with the modern South Africans, who did so with such effect because they linked
their struggle for justice to the entire world.”(eopp,xx) Linking a struggle
with the whole world will not be easy, given the fact that most of the links are
controlled by corporations very sympathetic to the dominant propaganda about
Israel. But Arabs do have publications. They do have friends and colleagues. And
the free peoples of the world, such as Americans, who come to learn about the
reality of the Palestinian disaster, also have communicational powers. There are
other problems in the world, and most people have personal problems of their own
to keep them busy. But I think for Americans especially, whose nation is based
on the genocide of a native population, what’s happening in Israel should have
special significance. Americans, and the rest of the world, can say, “This has
happened before, too many times. We won’t let it happen again.” It’s ultimately
a question of whether mere people can alter the course of States. But Israel is
democratic—theoretically a mass movement could change its fate.
Arafat is in a delicate situation. His survival is at stake. And he’s ruining a
whole people’s chances for freedom. Maybe he should acquire some common human
decency, which would at least give his people a chance, if not himself.
“Arafat’s model of rule is based entirely on coercion and personal gain: what he
does not like or he thinks opposes him must be blotted out, made to disappear,
put behind bars.”(eopp,53) A follower of Saddam Hussein, Arafat cannot see that
the world is not that simple. If you don’t like things, and your only strategy
is to try to destroy them, like he destroys people, actually tortures some to
death, and destroys free information—censoring books (like all of Edward
Said’s), you will eventually run into a limiting wall, at some point, when
nature or people can stand your abuse no longer. Arafat’s is a very small and
stupid view of what ‘the peace process’ is capable of being. But he is convinced
that to survive, he must abuse his people, to the extent that their lives are
worse now, after Oslo and under the Authority, then they were under direct
Israeli rule
Most people believe what those in authority tell them. And why not? If no
alternative sources of information exist, the public naturally comes to trust
the info being fed to them day after day. But this has disastrous consequences
for democracy, which depends on people knowing the truth and having rational
opinions about it.
Israeli propaganda has achieved an important success. It has made opposition to
its policies (including the closures, and military operations) seem tantamount
to opposing peace; it has convinced the world that it is striving for peace,
although of course it wages war; it has elevated itself and its four million
citizens to the central focal point of the Arab and Muslim world, which comprise
two hundred million and one billion respectively.(eopp54)
How can this work? A few million Jews more important than a billion Muslims? It
has to do with the major media in the West, which utilizes simplifying
techniques, in order to package “news”, or information content, into forms that
people can easily digest in front of the TV or newspaper every day. As we know,
real exploration of the world, real education about reality—real news-gathering
is not a frictionless process, to be done unconsciously for you by a TV.
Learning involves difficulty. But difficulty causes people to change channels,
if they’re not used to it. If they’ve been programmed to avoid it. If they don’t
know what it’s worth. It’s not that the truth wouldn’t sell. It’s that the media
refuses to give it a chance to sell. And so we are left with cartoon caricatures
of reality—“In five decades Israel has solidified its position as a peace-loving
state surrounded by vicious enemies who want to exterminate the Jews. Israel
never attacks; it ‘retaliates’ in ‘self-defense.’ Israel values human life;
Israel is a Western country; Israel is necessary for the defense of Western
values against fundamentalist, terrorist Islam.”(eopp,55)
Arafat is, to put it mildly, not who one would ideally want to have leading a
people out of great suffering, into some sort of future that one would find
desirable or at least minimally acceptable. Said talked to Yasir Abd Rabbo,
Minister of Information and Minister of Culture, about what it’s like to deal
with Arafat’s leadership. Apparently Arafat spends his days dealing with
paperwork detailing every single decision-making possibility that the Authority
faces. He is the ultimate power—nothing can happen without his stamp of
approval, from an employee’s request for a vacation, to a decision about the
maintenance of a car, to which two people should meet with the Israelis
tomorrow. Arafat is “lost in the now”—he is obsessed with the puzzle of how to
retain ultimate control today, and his sadly limited imagination cannot project
itself into the future, cannot create a vision for where the Palestinian people
need to be next year. Even for someone with an imagination, it would be hard to
utilize it if one hundred percent of his time, every day, was spent controlling
every single dollar spent by an entire government. But this is apparently what
he has to do in order to remain the supreme dictator—delegating responsibility
means sharing power, which means potentially allowing a situation in which he
would lose power. And he doesn’t only control the authority—all Palestinian
businesses must deal with him, and he is in business himself, and maintains
monopoly control on every commodity where this is possible. Rabbo explains that
he and the other ministers attempt to wake Arafat up to the horrible situation
they are in, but it’s no use.
Oslo was a sad, tragic event for the Palestinians. Arafat and his team were not
careful, to say the least, in their approach to getting anything positive from
Israel. Said writes,
Here I can only give two or three examples of how the future of Palestine was
negotiated. Bruck tells us that according to Arafat’s aides, the Palestinian
leader probably never read the agreements, relying on his assistants (who gave
him “a rosy picture” of its contents) or on a quick reading of the headings; Abu
Mazen told Bruck that for several months after the Washington ceremonies Arafat
did not realize that he was not getting a state, only autonomy. Furthermore,
Arafat regularly intervened in the negotiations, making it easier for the
Israelis to get concessions from him which his own people had already refused.
(eopp,115)
Arafat and his team of negotiators are the largest reason their people are in as
horrible a situation they are in. The Palestinians would be infinitely better
off if their fate were in the hands of a non-despot, perhaps a democratically
elected, competent, decent man or woman.
Said thinks that “Neither Israel not the United States has the slightest desire
to foster a peace process that guarantees Palestinian self-determination or
independent statehood.”(eopp,118) All the Palestinian struggle before Oslo, all
the blood spilled, was for nothing but “an agreement which is designed
specifically to keep Palestinians under the perpetual domination of the
Israelis.”(eopp,118) And why should the Israelis act otherwise, if the
Palestinians can’t do anything about it? Once police have you in handcuffs, they
tend not to want to take them off. Unless some third party forces Israel to give
the Palestinians justice, they won’t do it. Looking to America is not the
answer. Said says that “To depend on the United States for anything more than
wrestling further concessions out of us is, in my opinion, utter delusion.”
(eopp,118)
Sources:
Abbreviations: “jfj” = Jews for Justice. “eopp” = The End of the Peace Process
Hitchens, Christopher, “Wiesel Words”, The Nation,
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?I=20010219&s=hitchens , accessed 11.14.02.
Jews for Justice, “The Origin of the Palestine-Israel Conflict”,
www.cactus48.com/truth.html, accessed 10.11.02
Said, Edward, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, Pantheon, New York,
2000.