blog | Elephants: Part II

While certainly agreeing with the core of Shalom’s analysis – that the tension between “Jewish”, “democratic”, and physical and political realities on the ground is climbing to its inevitable breaking point – I would contest the fatalism of his final scenario. I certainly accept that  Kenya or Algiers are hints of one possible outcome, although here I would add the Yugoslavian and Rwandan models, with the majority state attempting to resolve its tensions with the minority by trying to deport it or get rid of it. But either kind of a violent super-escalation of the conflict is the most likely prognosis, considering the conduct of our major political players and public opinion in general. It’s hard not to agree with Noam Sheizaf, who writes today that

…The Israelis, both the leaders and the public, prefer things to stay the way they are. The Palestinians desire a change – though not at all costs. This is a none-symmetric situation, and as long as it stays this way, the instability will go on, and there will be no meaningful negotiations.

My argument, however, would be that other scenarios are still possible. Conflicts considered no less intractable than ours have actually managed to  find their way into the post-violence stage, and to channeling themselvses into democratic frameworks. I’m thinking here first and foremost about Northern Ireland, where, despite a number of recent violent incidents, the conflict is now being managed through a system of power-sharing, and a return to full scale violence is unpopular in the extreme on both sides of the divide .

Noam goes on to offer a way forward, saying in the same post:

The most effective way would be a clear demand by the international community- accompanied by diplomatic and even economic pressure – to give the Palestinians full civil rights and replace the military authority in the West Bank with a civilian one. This will make it clear to Israelis that we are already moving on a road that will lead to a bi-national state, in which they won’t have the current super-majority and will be forced to share power with the Arab population on a more equal basis.

This sounds, in a way, like a win-win formula (at least for non-nationalists), with a one-state democracy if the move suceeds and the much coveted (at least by nationalists) two-state solution if the Israelis are alarmed enough to get a move on. It certainly seems the most likely next step, too, as the Palestinian struggle for exclusive self-determination has been bled white by the Intifada, and the settlements appear more unmovable than ever. What I hope, though, is that Noam is not offering it as a conflict resolution program. First, because I personally agree with some of my teachers in Northern Ireland that conflicts are at best managed, not “resolved”; and second, because a popular movement along the lines of Noam’s proposal would first and foremost inject new energy into and become a new phase of the conflict, with bi/non-nationalists fighting nationalists and nationalists happily resuming the fight between themselves.

Then again, it seems that a new round of the conflict is coming anyway, and perhaps of all possible aims and aspirations to struggle over – violently or non-violently – Noam’s proposal is better than  most.

In my personal opinion, one possible way forward – in the very, very long term -towards managing the tensions in a non-violent manner is power-sharing. Despite the numeric imbalance in the long run, I really don’t see the Israeli Jews becoming a passive minority “deprived  of the right for self-determination”; even if/when Shalom’s scenario does come to pass, I would still see it as a phase in the ongoing conflict, rather than the permanent status quo –  there’s no reason to believe Jewish nationalists will prove any less combative than Palestinian ones, especially if their community is pushed to grant them popular support. Moreover, they quite simply have nowhere else to go – they’re allied to the land, not to some overseas power like the pied-noires, and here is their only home.

Power -sharing, by contrast, would allow each side to express its national aspirations, while, necessarily, acknowledging the similar aspirations of the other side. In other words, rather than having twin versions of political Zionism – two exclusivist nation-states – we should be striving for something like a twinned Balfour declaration, a Palestinian national home alongside a Jewish-Israeli national home, in the same interdependent political union, with ample gaps between the two for people who don’t primarily define themselves by a single nationality. And as a side note, I really don’t think that such a political entity would be instantly overrun by pan-Arabism and get swallowed up by neighbors; see Lebanon vs Syria, for instance.

With pain, existential fears, mutual exhaustion and loathing, the road there will most certainly not be an easy one – and the time-frame I’m talking about is decades, at least. But for all this even to become possible, Israel’s radical left would have to acknowledge the existence, and, shock/horror, the legitimacy of Jewish-Israeli national identity and right for cultural (and some degree of political) self determination; while the right wing groups on either side will have to acknowledge that they share certain values (such as return from exile), and can therefore find some way of mutual respect. If this was reached after 400 years of conflict in Northern Ireland – and I’m talking here about the single fact of mutual recognition of Unionists and Republicans, as the internal and external factors that brought them there merit a separate article – is it really all that impossible for something similar to be reached here?

All I can say for sure is that it seems we’re heading for interesting times, folks.

blog | A guest post on elephants, and some notes on power-sharing

For some time now, a debate long underway in Israeli and Palestinian political circles, began surfacing in the English-speaking blogosphere. The premise of the debate is that the two-state solution is dead or dying; the debate is on what will happen next. Will it be an uneasy union of Israel and semi-autonomous Palestinian enclaves? Or maybe a generic liberal state of all its citizens, that will not manifest nationalism of either the Jewish or the Palestinian kind?

As far as analysis of the current stalemate and its long-term consequences  goes, I wanted to share  a brilliant article by Shalom Boguslavsky, originally published on the  George’s Friends (perhaps the only Israeli blog rightly claiming to the tradition of Orwell’s unsparing political essays).  In my humble opinion, the article is possibly the finest, clearest introduction yet to the burgeoning post-two-states discourse. It’s published here with Shalom’s kind permission. Here is the article in full, translated by myself and edited by Lisa Goldman.  My own take on Shalom’s analysis and scenarios is further below.

The elephant in the living room / Shalom Boguslavsky

Translated by Dimi Reider  | Edited by Lisa Goldman

Listening to the clichés and narrow commentary that somehow pass for “public discourse” in Israel, one might think we’ve got all the time in the world on our hands. Despite our fears and paranoia, we ease back into our couches and painstakingly parse Netanyahu’s latest speech, or whine about the Goldstone Report.

No one is talking about the enormous elephant looming in our collective living room. Occasionally Tzipi Livni or Benjamin Netanyahu will examine its hind leg and talk about the “Jewish state.” Others may describe its trunk as “the cost of the occupation.” And still others are feeling its tail and discussing the relationship between Israel’s Jewish majority and Arab minority. Another part of the beast, the debate over the settlements, has degenerated into shallow legalistic bullshit about property rights and construction permits. And the cultural war between secular Israel and religious Judea is rarely discussed, except perhaps when there are riots over Jerusalem parking lots staying open on the Sabbath.

So, ladies, and gentlemen, permit me to introduce the elephant.

The question is not whether “land for peace” is a good deal or not, and certainly not “who’s right” or “who was here first.” Our problem is that when Israel was first established, we promised to the world, in exchange for legitimacy, that the state will be “Jewish and democratic”; and this is also how most of us like it best.

The trouble is that the state is only “Jewish” because most of its citizens are Jews, and the reason the state is “democratic” despite being defined as Jewish is, well, because most of its citizens are Jews who want to keep it that way. Ours is a low-quality democracy and the state is not particularly Jewish, but this is a compromise most people can live with. Or, rather, could have lived with – if we could make it work, and hadn’t settled hundreds of thousands of Jews in a territory populated by millions of Palestinians.

And we cannot absorb those Palestinians into our society without losing the Jewish-democratic arrangement, which, like we said, rests exclusively on the population of Israel being largely Jewish.

The bottom line is this: We want three things – the Land of Israel, a Jewish state and a democratic state – but can only have two of them. The whole debate is about which two.

This dilemma pushed most of the secular to traditional public to adopt, theoretically, the two-state solution. These are the Israelis who do not want to give up the “Jewish and democratic” state. They want democracy part because they want to be part of that elite club known as “the west,” and they want the Jewish part because it’s important for them to identify themselves as “Jews” – despite the fact don’t bother to fill their “Jewish” identity with cultural or spiritual values and practices. To them, what makes them “Jewish” is their citizenship in a “Jewish” state.

For these Israelis, all we need are Jewish state symbols, fewer non-Jews to intermarry with, universal army service and an inherited narrative of persecution, with the IDF filling in for God as the Rock of Israel, plus a loudmouthed Persian midget filling in for Hitler as the current “Amalek”.

The religious Right is correct in saying that all this is a rather sorry excuse for Jewish nationhood. But they avoid offering us their alternative (see below) for a fairly simple reason:  the clock is ticking, and every day passing without progress towards the two states, brings us, in their minds, closer to their solution. So why let the public get in the way?

By contrast, the secular Right, led by Ariel Sharon, came up with a solution of its own as early as the 1970’s: Israel would go on controlling Judea and Samaria, and the Palestinians would have autonomy in little enclaves, which Sharon himself then called “Bantustans”.

When Sharon finally became prime minister he began working on his plan – secretively, as was his habit. Judea and Samaria were chopped up into three enclaves, with the aid of the settlement blocs and the separation fence. The disengagement created the Gaza Bantustan, which is also being used as a scarecrow to frighten those who might support further “concessions.” With the creation of Kadima and the consequent breaking of Likud and Labor, we ended up with a political system virtually bereft of opposition. What we have now is a large “centrist” block and small handfuls of “radicals” from the left and right.

The de-jure opposition leader, Tzipi Livni of Kadima, has all but blended into that centrist block (the frequency of her Knesset speeches notwithstanding), and the current Prime Minister, Netanyahu, calls his take on Sharon’s legacy “economic peace.”  Netanayhu’s idea is that the Palestinians in the enclaves will get autonomous rule and give up their full political rights in exchange for economic growth. International support for this preposterous scenario is supposed to be achieved with the eternal and mythical power of the “hasbara.”

Incredible it may seem, but it’s true: the secular Right is actually building its entire political agenda on the assumption that some Holocaust clichés and cries of anti-Semitism will persuade the world leaders to support a late-South African style model in the Palestinian territories.

But if you thought that basing your policy on propaganda was a bizarre idea, how about leaning it on the bearded guy in the sky?

Enter the religious Zionists, who see Israel as part of God’s plan of redemption. As far as they are concerned, you don’t need a Jewish majority to keep the state Jewish; all you need is Jews to control it and to run it according to Jewish religious law. All the non Jews are welcome to stay as resident aliens and mind their own business, as long as they know who’s the boss and hew our woods and draw our waters without complaining.

Importantly, this is also the idea behind the settlement project – making the two-state project unfeasible. And who said that the one state will be what they want it to be? Well, just leave it to God (although some have already thought about encouraging Him to interfere, by, say, blowing up the Dome of the Rock to bring about an apocalypse and the coming of the Messiah).

The two-nation-states solution seems to be no longer possible. It’s not likely that any Israeli government will be able to evict hundreds of thousands of settlers. They can’t stay in Palestine, either, because even in the unlikely scenario that they will be decently treated, some will still insist upon wearing a yellow star as they go on a rampage and get filmed being beaten up by mustachioed Arab policemen. Then the IDF will be back in the West Bank to “defend” them, and we’ll be back where we started.

Furthermore, the partition into two states will not resolve the question that motivates it to begin with – that of Israel’s “Jewishness” – because Israel’s own minorities are no longer willing (.pdf) to accept the deal. And it doesn’t look like we or the Palestinians will have a government capable of signing an agreement any time soon. Forcing an agreement from the outside – an idea fascinating the Left here recently – is not a reasonable scenario either.

But failing to achieve partition does not mean the status quo will remain. Quite the contrary: The conflict will escalate; the Israeli Arab minority will become more radicalized and assert its Palestinian identity with increasing urgency and conviction; and conflicts within Jewish society will grow. Ultimately, we’re looking at Israeli society disintegrating from within, and at the same time, losing support and legitimacy from without. In case you haven’t noticed, this process is already in full swing.

So once it becomes clear that the left-wing model of two independent states will not be supported by Israel, and that a Jewish state alongside a demilitarized, non-contiguous Bantustan-state will not be accepted by anyone but Israel, the public here will have to decide between two models of the one state: the theocratic apartheid model of the settlers; or the secular-democratic model slowly gaining popularity among local and foreign intellectuals.

Since even Micronesia wouldn’t be caught dead supporting a theocratic Jewish apartheid state, and even God wouldn’t succeed in making it look acceptable, the first scenario is unrealizable – which, unfortunately, will not deter its proponents from trying to realize it by any means necessary.

So we’re left with the bi-national, democratic model. This is a more pleasant alternative than the first. Sadly, though, it is not much more practical. It is unlikely that a society of two nationalities with a century-long history of conflict, each of them with a heavy burdenof ongoing internal conflicts and none of them equipped with a consistent and committed democratic tradition, will be able to contain its own contradictions.

The likeliest outcome of it all is a bloodbath, which will result in one large Palestinian state with a large Jewish minority, probably deprived of its right for self determination. No fun at all. Anyone with a creative but practical solution is welcome to step up.

PS Ethnic cleansing and alien invasions are not “practical”.

(See “Elephants: part II” for my thoughts on Shalom’s article)

liveBlog | Yom Kippur in contested cities, ‘09

Update: A belated retraction and wrap up – it seems that the deaths mentioned below were not confirmed, and furthermore, the wide-scale violence some (myself included) feared never took place.  So I guess it’s good news ;) the bad news, though, is that the tensions around Temple Mount persist – and while hardly capable to spark a full flung Intifada, will definitely keep feeding the unrest.

I’ve decided to open a live-blogging thread for the next 24 hours or so, in case last year’s sectarian violence repeats itself. Refresh the page to see if anything turns up, and follow me on Twitter ->

11:05pm (GMT+3) Apart from Jerusalem, nothing (thankfully) seems to be happening tonight – and if it is, it’s very difficult to know since media here has ground to a complete standstill. Jaffa is tense but no violence; same for Akko and Lod. There’s apparently heavy police presence everywhere – even at my fairly remote vintage point on the quiet, residential south edge of Jaffa I can see a police car passing every 15 minutes. If anything’s up in Jlem as late into the night as this, it’s hard to tell – and pretty hard to find out. I’m hitting the sack, seduced with the persepective  of enjoying the only /completely/ motorless morning of the year. Hope to have nothing dramatic to report, tomorrow, either :)

8:10pm (GMT3) Apparently, 2-4 people were killed in the Jerusalem tonight. Sources – Al-Jazeera and friends’ relatives in East Jerusalem who saw two funerals depart.

7:55pm(GMT+3) So far, no reports of violence in Akko or Lod, but Jerusalem riots appear to continue. I’ll soon be off on a walk to Jaffa – will report on Twitter (on the right)  if anything’s up.

4:55pm (GMT+3) - There have been riots in Jerusalem since the morning, when a group of tourists tried to pray (does anybody know in which persuasion?) on Temple Mount. The original disturbances quieted down, but now YNET reports that a Palestinian crowd tried to set fire to a gas station in the mixed French Hill neighborhood near the Hebrew University. Different accounts speak of around 25 Palestinian injured and 12 policeman/soldiers through the day.

op-ed | If you marry a Jew…. part 2

My op-ed on the anti-assimilation as is up at the Guardian. I’m being told, incidentally, that “miscegenation” is a better translation for התבוללות (hitbolelut) in our case. While that’s certainly true for the narrow specifics, I think  assimilation still taps into the wider social, psychological and historical trends of the phenomenon…