On the Responsibility of the Weak: Jeffrey Isaac

Jeff Isaac's recent book is "Democracy in Dark Time"

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Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 09:09:22 -0500 (EST)
From: "Jeffrey C. Isaac" <isaac@indiana.edu>


On The Responsibility of the Weak, Or The Perils of Palestinian
Self-Righteousness


        I watched Hannah Ashrawi on C-Span last night. She was speaking
about Palestinian issues. This is what she said: that the Oslo peace
process was a flawed peace process, and there can be no going back to a
flawed process; that the current Intifadah was an authentic expression of
the will of the Palestinian people, and that it had once again turned the
Palestinian cause into an irrepressable cause of the Arab people as a
whole. And then she went further: she avowed that she still considered
herself in the minority (among Arabs), because she still believed that a
real peace process could produce a two-state solution; most (Arabs), she
said, now believe that this was no longer possible, and that only a single
binational state in Palestine could bring peace. But this, she allowed,
would mean much turmoil and conflict. And so she hoped it wouldnt come to
this.

        The words were astonishing. For Ashrawi was doing more than
declaring the definitive end to the Oslo peace process. She was declaring
that most Palestinians and most Arabs would only rest with the destruction
of the Israeli state, and implying that the only way to avert this outcome
was for an authentic peace to be aceded to by Israel, in other words, for
Israel to bow to the current demands of Arafat and Ashrawi.

        Dont get me wrong. The message itself was not astonishing, for
Ashrawi was only articulating the logic behind the current Intifadah
itself. What was astonishing was the temerity with which these words were
uttered. In the name of so-called freedom, dialogue, democracy, and peace,
Ashrawi was (implicitly) declaring war on Israel. And behind this was the
implication that Palestinians, the perpetual victims of a world enthralled
with victimhood, simply had no choice, that Israel had forced this upon
them and made no other choice possible.

        This, alas, is the intellectual and moral depths to which the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict has sunken.

        Let me be clear. I have always believed that the Israeli
Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza--Palestine if you will--is immoral
and unwise, and I have always supported peace negotiations leading to a
two-state solution, and likewise supported those forces within Israel,
associated with Peace Now!, that sought such a solution. I never believed
that peace would be easy, that it would be simple, or that it would usher
in a new age of harmony and complete justice. I simply believed that peace
was better than war and a perpetual state of war. And that a modicum of
justice is better than no justice at all.

        My views about peace were based on moral principle, but they were
also based on a political analysis of the costs of the status quo and of
the prospects for building constituencies for peace on both sides of this
tragic national conflict. While I believe in moral principles, and I
believe that politics should seek to promote and codify moral principles,
I also know that politics is a messy business and that in politics, to
paraphrase Hannah Arendt, the only final solution is death. Politics is a
realm of imperfections and frustrations. If we are lucky, politics can
mitigate these. But it cannot eliminate them.

        What is most deplorable to me about the current revival of the
Intifadah, with its Ashrawi-like veiled threats about a war to destroy
Israel, is the extraordinary hypocrisy being vaunted by Palestinian
spokespersons long purported to be reasonable seekers of a two-state
mutual recognition, and long presented to Western audiences as liberals of
a familiar sort.

        It is claimed that the Oslo process was flawed. It was flawed. But
what process is not flawed? In spite of its flaws, and because the
alternative was greater bloodshed and misery for all concerned, the
PLO--emboldened no doubt by the first Intifadah, but also weakened by its
preposterous support for Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War-- seemed to
commit itself to this process. It appeared as though the peace option was
recognized as the only option. And yet the recent volte face indicates
that appearances can be deceiving. It is now claimed that Oslo did not
solve the Palestinian refugee problem. But there is no simple way
definitively to solve this problem. Barak made some concessions. These
were by no means beyond challenge. But they were diplomatic concessions
made as part of a diplomatic process. The Palestinian response--an
escalation of rhetoric about a Palestinian right to return to original
Palestine, i.e., to Israel. In other words, no diplomatic response at all.
The same with Jerusalem. What was offered by Barak was not fully
satisfactory to the Palestinians. Nor was it fully satisfactory to most
Israelis. But it was more than any previous Israeli ever put on the table.
And it was a diplomatic offer that might have been the basis of
compromise. But no compromise was forthcoming.

        And why? The bottom line, repeated again and again by Palestinian
spokespersons and by their supporters abroad, is that Israel bargains from
strength and that this is unacceptable or, in the words of some propaganda
handed to me yesterday, there can only be peace among equals. Now, this is
a wonderful slogan, no doubt intended to lift the spirits of the wretched
of the earth, but it is obstructionist and it is false. If there could
only be peace among equals then there would never be peace at all. It is
very rare that in world politics peace between states is negotiated from a
position of parity. Peace is negotiated between antagonists, sometimes
combatants, sometimes after one party has been defeated, sometimes after
both parties become exhausted by the fight. But to insist that there can
only be peace between equals is to insist that there can be no peace. And
it is to treat a possible and hopeful result of a prospective peace--a
more equitable and mutually agreeable relationship--as its precondition.
This is absurd. The Palestinians can have a peace of the brave if they
wish, by being brave enough to settle a nasty and tragic conflict by
giving up on the idea of a complete restoration of the Palestinian nation,
which is nothing but a myth; but they cannot have a peace of the strong,
for they are not strong. They are under Israeli military occupation. That,
alas, is the problem.

        What this all boils down to is this. After seven years during
which the Palestinian leadership participated in a flawed, halting, and
unfair peace process--the only game in town--this self-same leadership
responded to the most recent Israeli diplomatic gambit by--repudiating the
basic premises of the process, by fanning the flames of popular violence,
and by promoting maximalist rhetoric about the restoration of
Palestine--sometimes referring to the West Bank and Gaza, but sometimes
referring, and the slippage is deliberate, to the entire territory covered
by the UN Partition Plan of 1947--to the Palestinians.

        It is true that the Israelis had the upper hand. It is true that
the Occupation has continued to be unjust even in the midst of the peace
negotiations. The continued building of settlements, the demolition of
Palestinian homes, etc.--this was and is wrong, and it deserves to be
criticized. It is also true that Barak was politically weak among his own
constituencies in Israel, and that he was a poor tactician, and that he
was perhaps too indulgent to Sharon. And that the Israeli right-wing has
tried hard to scuttle the peace process, and bears great responsibility
for the current crisis for having done so. Further, all of these things
made the peace process harder to sell to the Palestinian people, and
contributed to the delegitimation of Arafat and of the process. This is
all true. This made it hard for the Palestinian leadership to continue
negotiating. But it does not absolve this leadership of responsibility for
its decision to stop the negotations and to foment uprising. Nor does it
absolve this leadership of failing to repudiate a wave of bitter and
vicious anti-Zionist passion that clearly has long simmered beneath the
surface of Palestinian society. For recent events have made it clear that
there does not exist among the Palestinians a real and deeply rooted peace
camp analogous to the Israeli one, nor does there exist a real plurality
of opinion about politics. Instead, there has surfaced a frightening
anti-Israeli conformism. In the name of bowing to the will of the people
the Palestinian leadership has simply succumbed to this anti-Zionist zeal
rather than seeking truly to lead. This stance may seem democratic or
popular to some. But it is in fact demagogic and populist in the worst of
senses.

        There was a flawed peace process that might have produced a more
tolerable situation. The Palestinian leadership did not like the pace of
this process and it did not like Baraks proposals. Instead of countering
them it chose to end the process. The violence that has followed
throughout the West Bank and Gaza is deplorable, but it is also
predictable. The Intifadah, contrary to the rhetoric of its supporters, is
not a civil disobedience campaign. It is an insurrection, and its weapons
include stones that can split open a persons skull, explosive devices, and
automatic weapons that fire live ammunition. The Israeli Defense Forces no
doubt might have initially responded to the uprisings differently. The
Occupation is unjust and it has promoted a hardened attitude on the part
of many Israeli soldiers who, after all, are not a civilian police force
but an occupying army. It was wrong when the IDF responded
disproportionately to violent civilian demonstrations following Sharons
visit to the disputed Jerusalem holy sites. But it is also hard--and more
than a little disingenuous-- to expect young soldiers to hold their fire
when they are being attacked, even if by civilians who outnumber them. And
even if those civilians are only throwing stones at their heads and only a
few of them are firing weapons, while the crowds all the while call in
unison for death to the Israelis. The Palestinian leaders are correct when
they insist that these Israeli soldiers dont belong there in the first
place and that if they werent there the violence would not be taking
place. But what they fail to also say is that this is exactly why there
was a peace process, to negotiate the terms under which these soldiers
would go home. But it is disingenuous to scuttle the process that is
negotiating their withdrawal, then to attack them, and then to condemn
them for defending themselves.
        
        This brings me back to the question of power. The Israeli state is
more powerful than the Palestinians. And while the Israeli government was
willing to negotiate the terms of the Occupations end, it was not and
cannot be expected to be willing to respond to the Palestinian scuttling
of the negotiations by aceding to Palestinian demands. If the Palestinian
leadership wishes to see the peaceful end of the Occupation, then the only
way for it to seek this worthy goal is by trying to limit and moderate the
violent popular upheaval that it is now fomenting, and to seek to reenter
negotiations.

        The Palestinians are a dominated people. They have been allotted a
raw deal by history. But they are not thereby absolved of responsibility
for their own fate. It is precisely because of the tragic situation in
which they find themselves that their leadership should feel responsible
to work toward peace based on compromise. For there is no good alternative
to compromise, with all of its imperfections and limits and frustrations.
But this leadership cannot savage peace and then condemn their adversaries
for responding to their own calls for violence with violence. If the
Palestinians do not want violence, then they should cease to practice
violence. 

        On one thing Ashrawi is right. There can be no going back. There
can only be, perhaps, going forward. This will be difficult. Very
difficult. But it is not impossible. Unless the Palestinians mean what
they say when they talk about binationalism, and seek to go back to 1947.
If they do this, then, alas, their dispensation will be the same result
that was won for them the last time the Arab world sought to put an end to
Israel--defeat. And the defeat will noones fault but their own. The
prospect of such a defeat should give succor to noone. Let us hope that at
some point soon there emerges, miraculously, a Palestinian leadership
truly brave enough to put an end to the hyperbole and to seek a realistic
and peaceful process of negotiating a more tolerable and just solution.

Jeffrey C. Isaac
Department of Political Science
Indiana University, Bloomington