I will confess that over the years I have moved from a strong support of the Israeli side to a disgust so deep that it is almost existential. I am not so self-righteous, so sure of my Gandhi-nature, to think that if I had been born in Palestine, as a Palestinian, that I would be committed to a non violent solution.
People don’t seem to get it. Most Palestinians have never known anything but occupation. They have never known anything but curfews, residences being bulldozed, travel passes and settlers moving in increasing numbers and taking the best land, along with access to water.
They have never known anything but a boot in the face. It’s that simple.
And the Israeli army, once the finest in the world, has been, as all armies are, coarsenened by the occupation. The Israeli state bemoans suicide bombers, then kills Palestinian opposition leaders with rockets – rockets they know will cause collateral damage (a phrase that means “will kill innocents”). They have complete access to the country and could easily assassinate people cleanly, without collateral casualties – they choose not to. They could arrest those same people, again easily. They chose not to. The blood is on their hands as much as those of the innocent Israeli citizens killed by Palestinian suicide bombers and rockets.
But there is much more blood on their hands. Much, much more. As with the narcissism that is America bewailing its losses (oh, you’ve lost 2,500, eh? How many have the Iraqis lost?) Palestinian losses are much higher than Israeli, and like Israeli they are predominantly innocent civilians who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But I find it funny too, in a dark sort of way. My cold hard calculation is that the odds favouring Israel’s survival as a Jewish state have never been worse. Over time demographic realities will end the possibility of a two state solution. They will come to be an ethnic and religious minority ruling over bantustans full of Muslims who can’t vote, who are subject to attack, who are not allowed enough water for agriculture, who require passes to trvel from one part of Palestine to another – people who are clearly disenfranchised second class citizens.
Failure to make peace with Palestinians; greed for more and more of Palestine; the constant undermining of any faction capable of actually delivering a peace (ie. what is happening to Hamas right now); refusal to negotiate until the Palestinians have given up most of the items on the table prior to negotiation – all of these have doomed Israel to turn into South Africa.
Oh, none of this is to say that Palestinians bear no blame, let alone all the Muslim nations who have chosen to use the Palestinian situation as a political football. There have been despicable acts on both sides. But Israel chose to occupy Palestine – they chose to rule over non-citizens, and to keep them down with a military boot. They are the ones with the most power in the relationship – and in the end it is their dream of a safe Jewish state which is going to be destroyed by their own actions.
For the two-state dream is dying. Failure to achieve it leaves Palestinians clearly under Israeli rule. The majority of them have never known anything but Israeli rule.
What do you call a person who is subject to the authority of a country, who was born in land that country rules, who does not have a vote?
The failure of a two state solution, the insistence that Israel has the right to do anything it wants, including arresting cabinet ministers of a foreign government, in their own country, makes it clear that Palestine is not a separate country.
And if it is not a separate country, then it is part of Israel. And in the end it will be recognized as such.
Soon enough America is not going to be able to afford to continue massive subsidies of Israel. Soon enough protectionism and isolationism is going to be on the upswing. Soon enough other powers, like Europe and China, will find their relative power growing.
Soon enough, Uncle Sam isn’t going to be enough.
Soon enough, Israel is going to find itself all alone, locked in a country with a mjority of the population being Palestinian – Palestinians who have every reason to hate their occupiers.
And they will be faced with a series of horrible choices, choices that will either see the end of Israel as a Jewish state, will see them turn to ethnic cleansing, or will require them, at long last, to face what occupying another people’s country has done to their noble dream.
Originally Written June 29th, 2006 at the Agonist. More true now than it was then.
