Israel as a colonial venture
By Irfan Husain
SOMETIMES things have to get worse before they can get better. Palestine is currently at this juncture: the election of a war criminal like Sharon as prime minister of Israel will sharpen the contradiction between the dictates of a lasting peace and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
Conventional wisdom has it that Sharon's rise to supreme power in Israel will end any chance of a peaceful settlement of the festering dispute. In reality, what it will end is any lingering false hope that the Oslo accords could lead to a lasting peace. It has become clear that despite the huge disparity between Israeli and Palestinian military, political and economic strength, a settlement imposed through sheer might and diplomatic arm-twisting cannot long endure.
While Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority may have a vested interest in accepting a fragmented chunk of territory as a means to acquire the trappings (and personal financial benefits) of statehood, the common Palestinian, seeing no benefit in such an arrangement, has strongly rejected it.
For years, the 'peace process' has meandered on, promising little and delivering even less. The Israelis were in a win-win situation: the longer it took to reach a final settlement, the longer they could retain their conquered territories and fill them with more Jewish settlements. Even when they signed a peace accord, they would retain large swathes of territory on the pretext of 'security' as well as for roads connecting their settlements with each other and with Israel.
There has been great concern in the West, most notably in America, over the Palestinian refusal to accept Barak's proposals. Clinton went to the extraordinary extent of blaming Arafat's obduracy for this impasse that, in turn, has resulted in the on-going bloodshed. An impression has been created in the West that Barak was being very generous in his offer. Actually, he was offering nothing more than to return only some of the territories captured by force. By some trick of logic and morality, Iraqi occupation of Kuwait cannot be tolerated, but Israeli occupation of Palestine is perfectly all right.
Let us see just what the Palestinians were being asked to accept: according to the western media, they would get back 95% of their land. This is not true as the actual figure is around 83% since a large area of the West Bank was annexed to Jerusalem years ago, and this would naturally go to Israel, together with most of the holy city. Then, in return for about 5% of their fertile land on which settlements have been built, Palestinians were being asked to accept arid land near the Gaza strip.
An indefinite military presence in the West Bank near Jordan was part of the bitter pill on offer, as was the Israeli right to fly over Palestinian airspace. And to put things in clearer perspective, we need to remember that the West Bank and Gaza represent only 22% of the original, pre-Israel Palestine.
These restrictions on sovereignty, when combined with the Israeli settlements and road network in the occupied areas, will give some idea why the intifada is seen as the only option left for the Palestinians. Barak's insistence on retaining Israeli control and sovereignty over the Muslim holy sites of Jerusalem was simply the last straw. Clearly, statehood under these terms would have been unacceptable to any people anywhere.
Now that the mask of peace is off, we can see Israel for what it has really been all along; a colony created out of conquered land. The problem is that it came into being in a period that saw the end of colonization. And while it was recognized and legitimized by the United Nations, its fundamentally colonial nature did not change: it displayed the same conqueror's arrogance towards the Palestinians that it did towards its neighbours. Because of its overbearing attitude and its reliance on open-ended American military and diplomatic support, it has always been perceived as a western outpost forcibly planted in the Middle East to secure western political and economic goals.
No matter how good the relations between colonialists and subjugated people, there comes a point in time when the latter decide to throw off the yoke and gain independence. Most ex-colonies have received external material and moral support in their struggle, but in the case of Israel, the true nature of the conflict was blurred by the Zionist claim to Palestine on mythical and religious grounds. Add to this European and American guilt over the genocide of Jews committed by the Nazis, and it is easy to see why the rights of the victims have been largely overlooked in the West.
David Hirst, probably the most well-informed and perceptive journalist writing about the Middle East today, wrote in a recent issue of the Guardian: "...the risk is... that sooner or later the success it [Israel] has achieved will be challenged and, in the end, instead of being the exception in the annals of European colonialism, it will suffer the same fate as all the rest." He goes on to quote Rami Khouri, a Jordanian columnist as writing that the longer the intifada continues, "the more self-evident it becomes that the underlying policy of colonial occupation - outdated, counter-productive, morally and politically rejected by the entire world - is unsustainable and nearing its end."
The current low-intensity guerilla warfare being waged by the Palestinians does not present a military challenge to the mighty Israeli war machine. Instead, it erodes its image abroad, and its morale at home. As the contradictions between Israel's need to be accepted and recognized by its neighbours and its insatiable appetite for Palestinian land become more apparent, any acceptable peace accord recedes into the realm of the impossible. Even if Arafat were to sell out his people and accept whatever the Israelis offer him, this would not result in a lasting settlement.
There is now a broad consensus that a viable Palestinian state must emerge with its capital in Jerusalem. Anything short of this is a non-starter. The problem is that the majority of Israelis, encouraged by successive governments to think that their might would automatically result in security, settlements and legitimacy, are not prepared to accept an agreement based on equality with, and respect for, the Palestinians. With the typically colonial and racist attitude of superiority and arrogance, they remain confident that their firepower and the unlimited American support they enjoy will prevail.
This easy confidence is reminiscent of French and British attitudes towards their colonies and their subjects: until the very end, Europeans could not come to terms with the intensity of the feelings their subjects harboured. The Colonel Blimps sat in their clubs, nursing their chota pegs, complaining about the ingratitude of the natives, until they had to pack their bags and go home. Now, the Raj lives on only in romantic movies and books. How long before the Israeli venture meets the same fate?
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