An interesting article, though it reveals a bias that I suspect is as profound as anything found in the subject of the review. There were an awful lot of “yes, but” moments there, and much information omitted. I suspect that the omissions were intentional, as many involved information that the author certainly has at his disposal. I was struck by Morris’s objection to the book’s “almost compulsive evenhandedness”: that’s something I’ve seen here before, and it’s an interesting concept. The idea that a historian should not attempt to be evenhanded reflects a bias so deep that it rejects any attempt even to set bias aside for a moment. Certainly Morris cannot be accused of evenhandedness; he wears his bias proudly.
I’m not going to challenge the points one by one: I know what the response would be and whence it would come, and it would just be a repeat of past debates. Some points Morris raises have almost eerie echoes, though. It’s hard to read his description of the difference in content between the statements Palestinian leaders make to foreigners and the ones they make to Palestinians without remembering the similarly radical difference between the statements early Zionists made to the press and the documents that passed among their own circle.
I agree with Morris on a fair number of points. I have no doubt whatsoever that both the Palestinian leadership and the majority of the people are at this point basically rejectionist: their formal goal is the destruction of Israel and any other goal would be viewed as a step in that direction. I also suspect that if you were able to repeat that poll at various points in history you would see that the leadership would be consistent in its rejectionism, while sentiment among the masses would vary according to the political and security climate at the time the poll was taken. In relatively peaceful times rejectionism would be less strong, in violent times it would peak. That’s simply the nature of popular opinion. We’ve talked about this in relation to the Iraqi response to American invasion: it is ALWAYS specious to talk about what “the people” in any context want. They don’t all want the same thing. With almost any question, there will be vigorous yes, vigorous no, qualified yes, qualified no, uncommitted, and various others. The curve skews differently according to conditions at the time.
This fundamental characteristic of populations gives a clue to what I think is the only viable long-term solution to the problem. There has to be a formal acceptance of Israel and renunciation of the right of return on the part of the Palestinian leadership. There also has to be a two-state solution, meaning that the Palestinians would have to get a geographically contiguous and economically viable area to be their state.
Would this eliminate rejectionism? Obviously not. It wouldn’t eliminate violence either, at least not immediately. Once there is a state, though, there can be, with sufficient external support, an economy. There can be jobs, and houses, and schools, and some semblance of normal life. The economy would have to be externally subsidized, probably for decades, but we’re not talking about a huge number of people, and subsidizing the economy of a Palestinian state would be much cheaper than dealing with continuous hostility.
As long as the bulk of the Palestinians live in environments where their dominant occupations are survival and hatred, moderates will always be marginalized. This is an environment in which demagogues thrive, and if you create and sustain such an environment, demagogues will rise and flourish. If you kill or arrest the old demagogues, all you will get is new ones. I suspect that the only way to reverse the situation and marginalize the demagogues and the militants is to change the basic social environment to one that will allow people to become preoccupied with the normal realities of day to day life. I know very will that in the initial stages, both leaders and followers would see this as a means to a greater and more violent end. That end would necessarily be distant, though, since the means to attain it would not exist. I believe that after some years of relative normality, this passion would wane to the point where only a few firebrands would even remember it.
There are three keys: a state, jobs, and schools. Until the first exists, the others can’t exist with any security. Once a state exists, an industrial base has to be created. I don’t care if it’s farcical. I don’t care if we have a factory to assemble widgets at one end of the country and another dismantling them at the other end, shunting the pieces in between. What’s important is that every male resident has a place that he has to go after breakfast, and some money in his pocket on the way home. Schools, the same. Build ‘em and staff ‘em, whatever the cost. Create an ordinary pattern of life, a life where people have things to do and immediate things to think about. It doesn’t have to be prosperous life, just functional life. It’s very hard to sustain widespread radicalism in this kind of environment, and I don’t think the formal goal of Israel’s destruction would last very long.
Won’t happen, of course. Nice dream, though.
One item in the article that did strike me article is this:
“Israel can never concede the "right of return… The concession of such a "right" would inevitably lead to the creation of an Arab majority in Israel. Israel would cease to be a Jewish state.”
This is true, of course, but it is insufficiently acknowledged that this formulation also has a reverse side: the dispersal of a large part of the Arab population was from the beginning an essential part of the Zionist program. The goal of a Jewish State made it necessary: the Jewish State could never exist with an Arab majority.
I’ve believed for a long time (and it’s nice to see that Morris, despite his vigorous bias, implicitly agrees), that the formal goal of the Jewish State made violent confrontation between Zionist and Arab inevitable. |
