KAMRUL IDRIS
The promise and perils of Palestine

2009/11/24

A: It is a very clear case where the international community is aware and involved in the policies that have produced this ordeal for the civilian population of one-and-a-half million trapped inside this crowded, impoverished area.

You rarely have a situation that is so defined by a government's explicit policy of not allowing basic necessities to reach the people -- the blockade aspect of it -- with the clear sense that a modern military state was attacking a defenceless population that was supposed to be under its protection.

And all this was under the eye of journalistic coverage. The UN witnessed what was happening on the ground and yet nothing was done.

It really showed that legal rights and moral principles are subordinate to geopolitics. It is hypocritical to rely on international law only when you're dealing with weaker countries. The integrity of a legal order is based on treating equals equally.

So what Gaza crystallises is that you can do terrible things if you have geopolitics on your side. If it's not on your side, then you are subject to legal and moral standards.

Q: If, globally, the Palestinian cause is successor to the anti-apartheid movement, why has it not gained ground?

A: The Israeli attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and on Gaza have shifted the perception of many people worldwide from Israel as victim to Israel as perpetrator. This has made people feel that solidarity with the Palestinians is in the interest of justice, that governments and the UN will not act effectively, and it is up to civil society to promote the policies that seemed to be unexpectedly effective in relation to South Africa -- boycotts, divestments, sanctions.

You do have a lot of examples in the last 10 months of companies breaking contracts with Israel, of labour unions refusing to unload or load cargo bound for Israel. You also have cultural events, sporting events, that have been cancelled. The cumulative effect of this activity is hard to calculate; you never know when you reach the tipping point.

Of course, the dominant groups will hide the impact of such tactics until they're ready to give in. Whether it will gain enough ground to change the climate of political opinion, that we can never be sure.

The challenge will be for the Palestinians to find a way to translate their victories in the legitimacy war into a political outcome. And that will depend largely on what happens in Israel and the United States.

Q: How do you see Hamas' role in the conflict? Will there be a resumption of the armed struggle and a marginalisation of the moderates now that the peace process is stuck?

A: It is hard to predict how Hamas will react. If they make a correct political analysis, they will realise that armed struggle plays into Israeli hands. It weakens the Palestinian success in the legitimacy war and provides Israel with a pretext for using its own violence. There is some evidence that Hamas has learnt the lesson of other similar organisations like the IRA in Northern Ireland that you get more by a political struggle than a violent one.

Hamas were encouraged to enter into the electoral process in Gaza; they succeeded in a fair election. They proposed a unilateral ceasefire and maintained it for a year even when Israel engaged in provocative activity, such as assassinating their leaders. They agreed to a ceasefire in the middle of last year even though Israel was blockading the Gaza Strip.

They proposed extending it to 10 years, which Israel ignored because I don't think Israel wanted a diplomatic alternative -- it had other reasons to attack, having to do with Israeli internal politics with the Israeli Defence Forces seeking to overcome the defeat in Lebanon and wanting to do something while George W. Bush was still US president.

Hamas is becoming a genuine political actor. It should be allowed to participate politically. An increasing number of Israelis agree to this. Israel has never really been interested in Gaza. They are interested in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They want to get as much of that part of the original Palestine mandate as possible. In a way, Gaza is a sideshow.

Q: The roadblock to negotiations is Israel's refusal to stop settlement building in the Occupied Territories. Can this be overcome?

A: It is very difficult. It was difficult even before the defiant response of the Netanyahu government to President Barack Obama's putting forth this idea of a temporary freeze in settlement growth as a precondition to peace negotiations.

I don't perceive any willingness of the Israeli government to compromise on the crucial issues for the Palestinians. Israel insists on having Jerusalem as its capital. It is not willing to give in at all on the rights of refugees. Jews have the right to come to Israel no matter where they live, whatever their connection to Israel might have been, while Palestinians, who had homes in the former Palestine mandate, are not allowed to come back.

It is instructive to realise that even if Israel were to give up the occupation, the West Bank and East Jerusalem is only 22 per cent of historic Palestine. The Palestinians have given up a lot, before negotiations even begin. If these settlements are allowed to remain, the Palestinian state will be confined to 14 to 11 per cent of the original area. That does not appear to be a viable state or a recognition of the Palestinian right of self-determination.

More and more people feel that the only solution is a unified state that incorporates both peoples. That would be the end of the Zionist project but is more appropriate in the 21st century. Can you really have a Jewish state with a minority of 1.3 million Palestinians living in it as second-class citizens? How do you reconcile human rights with this kind of ethno-religious state that is being claimed as Zionist aspiration?

In my view, you have to have a one-state solution. If you allow two states to emerge at this point, you will have two illegitimate states -- a Jewish state that is illegitimate because of its ethnic character, and a Palestinian state that is not given full sovereignty and independence, that is not given a viable basis for sustaining its economic and political life.

Q: The Palestinians are moving to apply to the UN Security Council for recognition of a Palestinian state. Will it get anywhere?

A: It is a questionable tactic because it runs the risk of saying, well, yes OK, you have a Palestinian state, stay where you are, there is nothing more to negotiate. It would be a Bantustan that would mean no progress towards compromise on refugees, Jerusalem, water, boundaries, removing the separation wall. There are a lot of other issues that need to be considered.

Q: You describe the blockade of Gaza as a crime against humanity. Why has there not been more protest in countries, such as the US, that purport to champion human rights?

A: There is more support now for the Palestinian struggle even in the US, even among the Jewish community. You have the formation of organisations like the J-Street group of prominent Jews who oppose this unconditional support for Israel.

Governments and the UN are very deferential of geopolitical realities. The circumstances are such that they don't regard it as plausible to challenge the US and to some extent the European Community because they cannot do anything effective.

The only country that tried to break the blockade was Libya, which sent a ship with medical and humanitarian supplies. It was stopped by the Israeli navy and the effort was abandoned. Civil society activists have started the Free Gaza Movement and sent boats from Cyprus to Gaza, and that is the only thing that broke the blockade, at least symbolically.

It made two statements. Firstly, that civil society is the most hopeful battlefield for the Palestinian struggle. Secondly, governments are unwilling to do what civil society is at least attempting to do. It shows the impotence of the UN, the inter-governmental system and the Arab world.

Q: What is the geopolitical status quo that the Western powers are so anxious to protect?

A: The Middle East combines a number of concerns for the US, particularly in the post-9/11 world. One of them is Israeli security. Another is the containment of political Islam, which is seen as a threat to Western interests in the region. Third is the interest in oil. Fourth is the avoidance of nuclear proliferation, especially in Iran, which would inhibit the uses of Israeli and American military power in the region.

There is a confluence of interests that helps explain why the Middle East has become the main contested arena of world politics in the way Europe had been in the 20th century. Oil is fundamental in the sense that if the West lost preferred access to the reserves in the Persian Gulf, its status in the world would be jeopardised and its economies would be undermined.

Q: It has been said that resentment and rage in the Occupied Territories are reaching levels similar to 1987 at the start of the intifada. Would a third intifada be able to jolt the peace process forward?

A: The second intifada was different from the first. It turned into a much more violent confrontation. The probable impact of a third intifada would be to remobilise Palestinian commitment to the struggle and to convey it in the legitimacy war that is going on globally.

It may be that the Israelis will do their best to convert it into a violent encounter because the second intifada started off non-violently until Israeli snipers killed a group of Palestinians demonstrating against Ariel Sharon's visit to Temple Mount (in September 2000). At that point, some Palestinians began to shoot back.

Israel would try not to allow a third intifada to look like the first but rather make it seem like the second. So it is tricky in many ways.

Q: The Palestinians are divided, at least between Hamas and Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority has not made a difference to living standards in the Territories, though it may not be entirely to blame for this. Will international support tire of this lack of progress?

A: Certainly, one of the weaknesses of the Palestinian movement is its inability to produce effective leadership. Israel, of course, has contributed to this failure. They did their best to undermine Yasser Arafat in the late years of his life.

The psychological effects of prolonged occupation are also part of the story. You put people in this pressure cooker for decades and it is hard to expect rational, coherent politics to emerge.

It is a lot to ask of the Palestinians that after 42 years of occupation they will somehow be able to present a rational and humane face for the world to see. It is a weakness of their movement that their representation at international level is not really reflective of the interests of the Palestinian people. They are divided. This also serves Israeli interests.

Q: You do not sound optimistic about Obama. Why?

A: He inherited a difficult situation generally but in relation to this conflict particularly. For one thing, you have an extreme right-wing coalition of forces in Israel. I don't think they are prepared to reach any viable solution, nor do they feel any real pressure to do so.

He does not have an Israeli partner for peace and he has to juggle the effort to change the policy towards Israel with all the other priorities he has set for his administration. It may seem from a political point of view futile to try to do too much.

At the same time, he appointed a group of advisers, important foreign policy decision-makers, who seem content with the earlier relationship with Israel. He himself kept affirming the unconditional nature of the American commitment to Israel.

Even though the Cairo speech of June 4 seemed to say that he felt that the Palestinian situation was intolerable and should be changed, there was no real indication that he would do much to make that happen.

It is true that (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu has been so defiant that it could trigger a backlash in Washington, even from those supportive of Israel who are angry that Obama has been made to look bad. Maybe that will lead to a renewed effort.

If it were my decision to make, I would shift from the settlements to the blockade and say that if Israel wants to be regarded as a government interested in peace, it must end the blockade of this civilian population whose mental and physical health has been constantly deteriorating for over two years now.

I would recognise the importance of dealing with Hamas. If Obama were willing to do these two things, it could at least temporarily alter the tone and atmosphere of American engagement in the region.

Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and visiting distinguished professor in global and international studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was expelled from Israel on Dec 14 last year.

Richard Falk says Hamas is becoming a genuine political actor and must be allowed to participate politically