Israel's Twilight Years
By Khalid Amayreh • May 15th, 2008 at 21:10 • Category: Analysis, Culture and Heritage, Israel, Khalid Amayreh, Nakba and Right of Return, Newswire, Our Authors, Palestine, Zionism
Illustration by Abdul-Rahman Modallal, Tulkarem from the Badil Poster Contest
As Israel ostentatiously celebrates the passage of 60 years since its creation in Palestine in 1948, more than nine million Palestinians at home and in exile are commemorating the Nakba, the violent seizure of their ancestral homeland by Zionist Jews and the dispossession, expulsion and dispersion of the bulk of Palestinians to the four corners of the globe.
This year, activities are taking place in many parts of the world where Palestinian refugees and expatriates reside, dreaming of and awaiting a return to their homeland that appears nowhere on the horizon of political reality.
Palestinians, irrespective of their political affiliations, are not only reasserting the legal and moral status of their right to return to the homes and villages from which they were expelled at gunpoint, or otherwise made to flee 60 years ago, but are also emphasising to all who will listen, including their own leaders, that the right of return remains — and will always be — the heart, soul and centrepiece of the Palestinian issue.
To the chagrin of most Palestinians, the commemoration of the Nakba this year coincides with the ongoing crisis between Fatah and Hamas, which some Palestinian intellectuals are already referring to as the "second Nakba". Fortunately, however, and despite all differences, the national rift between Fatah and Hamas has not shaken national consensus on the paramount importance of the right of return.
But while the "second Nakba" looks more or less reversible, ostensibly at least, the first Nakba is something entirely different, given its historical and strategic dimensions and the indelible physical realities it created and keeps creating, even today, 60 years later. Many Israelis and Palestinians believe that the Nakba is still ongoing. The deadly Israeli blockade of Gaza, along with daily killings by the Israeli occupation army of ordinary Palestinians, is déjà-vu for elderly Palestinians who lived the nightmare of mass murder, mass terror and ethnic cleansing in 1948.
With Israel continuing the process of annulling whatever prospects still remaining for a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, many Palestinians are quietly turning to the one-state option. In reality, the one-state solution has been the Palestinians' unconscious and undeclared baseline for years.
This week, Ahmed Qurei, head of the Palestinian negotiation team, revealed that he told visiting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently that the Palestinians would "resort to the one-state option if Israel refused to withdraw to the pre-June 1967 borders."
Qurei said he didn't know if ongoing talks with Israel would lead to a breakthrough. "The overall situation is very difficult and discouraging. The Israeli position is rapacious, the Palestinian position is weak, the international community is hypocritical, and the Arab world is nearly impotent."
Al-Ahram Weekly asked Qurei if the occasional evocation of the "one-state solution" was a tactic used by the Palestinians to get Israel to be more forthcoming, or whether it was a serious option. Qurei replied: "It is not a tactic. One doesn't have to be a great expert in politics to realise that if the two-state solution failed, the only remaining alternative would be the one-state solution. There is no other alternative, apart from the occupation, apartheid and colonisation, which are unsustainable."
Qurei, who came under a barrage of criticisms lately for engaging in "endless" negotiations without determining how the "endgame" would look, said he didn't know whether Israel was really interested in peace with the Palestinians. He pointed out that Israel has reached a critical point where it has to choose between being a Jewish state or a bi-national state in which at least half its citizens are non-Jews.
Qurei's incertitude about negotiations is drawing the ire of a growing sector of Palestinian intellectuals, encompassing elites from across the Palestinian political and ideological spectrum. This week, the Palestine One State Forum formulated a manifesto for the one-state solution, which calls for the creation of a unitary democratic state in all of mandatory Palestine from the Mediterranean to the River Jordan, and where Israelis and Palestinians would live as equal citizens.
The manifesto, published Thursday 15 May, comprises six points:
- Palestine: The historical land of Palestine is the patrimony and motherland of the Palestinian people which in the context of a durable and comprehensive settlement would accept Israelis as equal citizens in a unitary democratic state.
- The right of return: Every Palestinian forced to flee his homeland (Israel proper) has an inalienable right to return as well as receive compensation and reparations for the psychological, economic and social losses he or she incurred.
- Zionism: Zionism is an exclusionary ideology and part of the international colonialist movement, which created and consolidated a racist state for Jews at the expense of the Palestinian people, resulting in the murder and expulsion of over half the Palestinians. Hence, we see that this ideology must be declared illegal and the political infrastructure based on it dismantled.
- One state for all: The creation of one state in historical Palestine is the most just, realistic, moral and humane solution of the Palestinian question which would guarantee peace and stability in the region. The creation of a unitary democratic state encompassing Israelis currently living in Israel and Palestinians, on the basis of equality as citizens and justice for all regardless of religion, race or sex, is the ideal way of resolving this conflict that has been raging since the outset of the 20th century.
- Historical reconciliation: The one-state solution would serve as the beginning of a historical reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians that would erase the destructive effects of decades of occupation and colonisation. However, the process of reconciliation would have to be preceded by genuine acknowledgement of and apology by Israel for the historical injustices and losses inflicted on the Palestinian people. Moreover, Israel along with the international community would have to compensate the Palestinians for their suffering and losses.
- This vision requires the concerted efforts of the Palestinian people everywhere as well as the efforts of peace-loving Israelis and Jews and all men and women of good will around the world.
Such ideas are anathema for Israel, Zionism and the vast bulk of Jews, since they imply the ultimate dismantling of Zionism and the creation of a bi-national state where Palestinians would eventually have a numerical majority. They also represent a jolt to collective Palestinian thinking, long inured in the idea of Palestinian statehood.
But as Qurei pointed out, the one-state solution will become the Palestinian option not as a matter of choice, but rather because all other alternatives have been effaced. Continued Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank, coupled with shrinking political prospects for a viable Palestinian state, is already presenting Palestinians with a dilemma, namely to face national dissolution (i.e. the Jordanian option in the West Bank and the Egyptian option in the Gaza Strip), or embark on a lengthy re-evaluation towards adopting the one-state solution.
The Weekly asked two prominent Palestinian intellectuals if they thought the two-state option was still valid. Nasser Al-Qidwa is the former Palestinian representative to the UN. He says that, "time is really running out for the two-state solution" in light of the changing realities on the ground in the occupied territories.
"What the Palestinians ought to do now is to reassert the essence of the conflict, which is the Israeli military occupation of our country. We must also take a decisive stand on the issue of Jewish settlements; we simply can't negotiate while Israel is stealing more of our land.
"The other thing is that we must stop babbling about creating a state. Instead, we must demand national independence, independence from foreign military occupation."
When asked how he would imagine the future of the conflict with Israel if the two-state scenario failed, Al-Qidwa said the alternative would not be good for anyone, the Israelis, the Palestinians, the region and the world at large. "There would be a lot of violence, turbulence, and bloodshed the scope of which is difficult to predict now."
Azzam Tamimi is founder of the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London and author of several books on the Palestinian issue. He believes that Israel has already reached its zenith and is beginning a downward slide as a racist entity that would end with its dissolution and disappearance.
"I don't know for sure how many years Israel will survive. However, Israel will definitely get smaller. The trend since Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 has been the decline of the Zionist project and the shrinkage of its territorial colonialism. It is likely that a few heavily fortified areas will remain under Zionist control, but it is more likely that Israel as a Zionist state will disappear."
Tamimi, who recently wrote a book on Hamas, said he didn't think that any conceivable Palestinian state on all or parts of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem would be viable.
"An entity created on any part of the territories, even if called a Palestinian state, will simply be a dependent unviable entity whose purpose is to prolong Israel's life. There is the possibility that unilateral withdrawals by Israel from here or there will leave the Palestinians with no option but to emulate statehood, but that prospect can never be a viable state."
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Khalid Amayreh is a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura.
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Could you kindly comment, whether my details are correct in a dissident essay in
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm ?
E.g. "…Tel Aviv – The Silicon Wadi?
Tel Aviv (literally: Dumb-Hill of Spring) was plain desert at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, in the advent of her 100th year celebrations in 2009, it is the Silicon Wadi (Valley) of the Mediterranean since 1990's.
It is United States that profits from Israel, rather than the opposite. Israel gets nearly 3 billion USD from USA annually, but open brain drain is its prerequisite. Astonishing number of 25% of the Israeli researchers have moved to the United States – and this figure does not yet include the people with double citizenship. The next largest drain of researchers are 12.2% from Canada, 4.3% from Netherlands, and 4.2% from Italy.
Before the Second Intifada, there were nearly 200 Israeli companies listed in the Nasdaq, at the Intifada the count dropped to 70. (The number is still greater than from all the European countries combined). It is said that the dollars are green since the Americans pull them down from the tree raw and fresh. The start-ups are imported straight from the garage, and scaling up of production in the "conflict hotspot" has been considered impossible. But the new Millennium has brought a change in tide.
In Israel, 20% of citizens possess a higher decree from the university. Over half of the export from Israel are High tech products (32 $ billion in 2007), compared to the 25% average of the OECD countries. Israel's GDP is about $200 billion. She exhibits second highest output of new book per citizen and more patents per person than any other nation. Nobels, by definition, are awarded to the people who have made services to the whole world, and 21% of the prizes have gone to this population of less that 17 million, taking both Eretz Israel and galut (diaspora) into account.
The population of Arabs under the Israeli government increased ten-fold in only 57 years. Palestinian life expectancy increased from 48 to 72 years in 1967-95. The death rate decreased by over 2/3 in 1970-90 and the Israeli medical campaigns decreased the child death rate from a level of 60 per 1000 in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000 at the Westbank. (An analogous figure was 64 in Iraq, 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan, and 22 in Syria in 2000). During 1967-88 the amount of comprehensive schoold and second level polytechnic institutes for the Arabs was increased by 35%. During 1970-86 the proportion of Palestinian women at the West Bank and Gaza not having gone to school decreased from 67 % to 32 %. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in West Bank and Gaza increased in 1968-1991 from 165 US dollars to 1715 dollars (compare with 1630$ in Turkey, 1440$ in Tunis, 1050$ in Jordan, 800$ in Syria, 600$ in Egypt. and 400$ in Yemen).
Also, the biggest generic drug factory in the world was recently established in Israel. Generating US$7 billion in annual revenues, Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA) is the world's largest generic pharmaceutical company. That is: to cure people with less money. TEVA makes generic versions of brand-name antibiotics, heart drugs, heartburn medications, and more – in all close to 200 global generic products, 700 compounds, and more than 2800 dosage forms and formulations. TEVA's pharmaceuticals are used in some 20% of U.S. generic drug prescriptions. Examples of TEVA's generics include lower-cost equivalents of such blockbusters as anti-depressant Prozac and cholesterol drug Mevacor. Nevertheless, in biotechnology and original drug development, about 400 experimental Israeli drugs have been approved or accepted in clinical phases.
As an example, the supranational Intel transferred the mass production of Centricon-processors to Israel, where ~20% of citizens possess university decrees (ranking 3rd in the world) but where the environment respects patents and are not plagiating every item they produce to others like the rocketting China.Intel was also offered an overall tax rate of 10%, which is about three times lower than that of US.
How has the United Nations reacted to such an impact especially in the field of medicine and health care? One-fourth of the judgements of the Human Rights Commission strike Israel.
There is a pious smoke screen on the industrial countries mediating peace to the Middle East. A collaboration between the Jews with their technology and science and Arabs with their oil and loyality has been a great nightmare for the Western countries. The intimate friendship between the cousin "races", as officially declared by Chaim Weizmann and Emir Feisal in Versailles peace conference, was deliberately mutilated. The Second Intifada could be called The Oslo War.
Aviv is Hebrew for "spring", symbolizing renewal, and tel is an archaeological site that reveals layers of civilization built one over the other. The Jewish population has been such a layer of native culture not only in the Palestine, and the expulsion of the native Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews from various Muslim countries since 1948 has been al nakba, catastrophe, for these societies…"
Pauli Ojala, evolutionary critic
Biochemist, drop-out (MSci-Master of Sciing)
As an excuse to that earlier post, I just had a hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of the brain. Now recovering. All the more motivated to put my money and remaining strenght on the unfair media war against the Israel in the industrial countries, not on academic envy and scholar reference cheating.
With all those wonderful accomplishments, who can possibly be concerned about such trifles as mass theft and genocide? Anyone who has the bad taste even to mention them must obviously be a raving anti-Semite.
Pauli Ojala:
Traducteur stole much much of my thunder. However, if Israel is such a tremedous success, why is still receiving well in excess of $3 billion each and every year from American hard-pressed taxpayers. Also, why have nearly one million Israeli Jews emigrated elsewhere and why has immigration to Israel virtually dried up?
Also, the following renowned Jewish Israelis vehemently disagree with your assertion Arab Jews were "expelled" from Arab countries:
(1) Historian Avi Shlaim, born into an affluent and influential family in
Baghdad: "We are not refugees, nobody expelled us from
Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted. But we
are the victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict."
(Ha'aretz, August 11, 2005)
(2) The late Yisrael Yeshayahu, speaker of the Knesset:
"We are not refugees. [Some of us] came to this
country before the state was born. We had messianic
aspirations."
(3) Shlomo Hillel, former minister and speaker of the
Knesset: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from
Arab lands as that of refugees. They came here because
they wanted to, as Zionists."
(4) During a Knesset hearing into the matter, Ran Cohen,
member of the Knesset: "I am not a refugee….I came
at the behest of Zionism, due to the pull that this
land exerts, and due to the idea of redemption. Nobody
is going to define me as a refugee."
(Ha'aretz, October 8, 2004)
Any Jew of Arab origin who feels he or she has a legitimate grievance against an Arab country should pursue it under international law. Significantly, for obvious reasons, the state of Israel opposes such an initiative while the Palestinian refugees (again, for obvious reasons) would welcome it. I also remind you that any suffering Arab Jews experienced at the hands of Arab states (following the expulsion of 800, 000 Palestinians in 1947/48; a further 25,000 just before and during Israel's 1956 invasion of Egypt – in collusion with Britain and France; and hundreds of thousands more driven from their homes by Israel during and after the 1967 war; the Lavon Affair; the Cohen spy affair etc.) was not inflicted by Palestinians.
The two issues are entirely separate.