Said on Palestine with a comment on Serbia

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          Trying again and again
          By Edward W. Said
          
          THE last-ditch American effort to make Yasser Arafat 
          terminate his own people's sovereign existence bears the 
          heavy imprint not only of the US-Israeli lobby but of Bill 
          Clinton's political style. To say of Clinton's bridging 
          proposals, as they have been euphemistically called, that 
          they are a sort of fast food peace is to scant and even 
          underestimate their malevolent sloppiness.
          
          What in their all-purpose catchiness, their anti-historical 
          bullying, and the egotistical urgency of their manner they 
          most resemble is Clinton at his desk, one hand holding the 
          telephone to his ear, the other clutching at the pizza slice 
          he munches away at, even as his various staffers, funders, 
          fixers, cronies and golf-playing buddies mill around him 
          giving (and getting) favours, loans, grants, deals, 
          mortgages, gossip.
          
          This is then scarcely a fitting end for a struggle that has 
          cost hundreds of thousands of lives and untold treasure for 
          well over a century. Put forward in a language that 
          (speaking myself as a teacher of how language is used and 
          abused) fairly reeks of a dismissive silliness combined with 
          vagueness, Clinton proposes what in effect is a warmed-over 
          Israeli intention to perpetuate control over Palestinian 
          lives and land for the foreseeable future.
          
          The underlying premise is that Israel needs protection from 
          Palestinians, not the other way round. And there's the flaw 
          in the whole thing: that Israel is not only forgiven its 33 
          year old occupation, its 52 year old oppression and 
          dispossession of the entire Palestinian people, its 
          countless brutalizations and dehumanizations of the 
          Palestinians individually and collectively, but is rewarded 
          with such things as annexation of the best West Bank land, a 
          long (and doubtless inexpensive)lease of the Jordan valley, 
          and the terminal annexation of most of East Jerusalem, plus 
          early warning stations on Palestinian territories, plus 
          control of all Palestinian borders (which are only to be 
          with Israel, not with any other state), plus all the roads 
          and water supply, plus the cancellation of all refugee 
          rights of return and compensation except as Israel sees fit.
          
          As for the famous land swap by which Israel magnanimously 
          gives up a little bit of the Negev desert for the choicest 
          bits of the West Bank, Clinton overlooks the fact that that 
          particular Negev area earmarked by Israel just happens also 
          to have been used by it as a toxic waste dump! Besides, 
          given the peculiar divisions cutting up East Jerusalem - all 
          of which is illegally annexed land anyway - and the three 
          (instead of four) cantons into which the West Bank territory 
          ceded conditionally by Israel will be divided, all of what 
          has been described as an American breakthrough proposal 
          pretty much dissolves. What the Palestinians are left with 
          are material sacrifices which make Israeli "concessions" 
          look like child's play.
          
          The sacrifices demanded by Clinton are, of course, a 
          cancellation of the Palestinian right of return for 
          refugees, and just as great, a Palestinian declaration of 
          the end of the conflict with Israel. First of all, the right 
          of return for refugees (the right to a secure life in a 
          place of one's choice) is a right guaranteed not just by UN 
          resolutions but by the Charter of the UN and the Universal 
          Declaration of Human Rights.
          
          Clinton's formula for getting round this little problem 
          reveals the man's approach to the world: " I believe we need 
          to adopt a formulation on the right of return that will make 
          clear that there is no specific right of return to Israel 
          itself but does not negate the aspiration of the Palestinian 
          people to return to the area." To which area? Iraq, Jordan, 
          and Syria, for example, can easily be described as belonging 
          to "the area." Who does Clinton think he is fooling? So 
          then, why purposely and transparently try to confuse 
          Palestinians with the phrase "the area" if what is actually 
          meant is not allowing them a right to return to the country 
          from which they were in fact driven?
          
          As Clinton well knows (he is a lawyer by training) there can 
          be no negotiation at all when it comes to human rights; 
          according to the very laws which the US pretends to uphold 
          when it bombs some defenceless country like Sudan or 
          post-Gulf War Iraq, no one can therefore either modify or 
          negate any of the major human rights. Moreover it is 
          impossible, for example, to uphold rights against 
          discrimination or against the right to work, in some cases 
          and not in others. Basic human rights are not elements of a 
          menu, to be chosen or rejected at will: they are meant to 
          have the stability of universal acceptance, especially by 
          charter members of the UN. Granted that the implementation 
          of rights is always a major problem, but that has nothing to 
          do with the fact that as rights they exist whether or not 
          they are implemented, and therefore cannot be abrogated, 
          modified or, as Clinton seems to think, re-formulated. 
          Similarly, the right to choose one's place of residence as a 
          refugee: thattoo is unalienable and un-negotiable. Neither 
          Arafat, nor Clinton, nor certainly Barak has any right at 
          all to tamper with the right, nor to attempt by crude 
          bamboozling to "reformulate" it in a way that suits Israel 
          or renounces it in any way. Why must Israel always be an 
          exception and why must Palestinians always be required to 
          accept things that no people have ever been asked to accept 
          before them? It seems to me indecent for Clinton to have 
          gone to war, dragging all of NATO with him and destroying 
          Serbia in the process on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians' 
          right of return, and then ask Palestinians to renounce 
          theirs.
          
          A second point here is to recall that Israel, which 
          continues with unremitting obduracy to deny any 
          responsibility for Palestinian dispossession, maintains an 
          unchallenged Law of Return for any Jew anywhere. How it can 
          continue to do so and with a kind of ruffianly churlishness 
          refuse even to discuss a similar Palestinian right defies 
          logic, to say nothing of elementary fairness. There is also 
          the matter of compensation, not only for the enormous losses 
          of 1948, but for the thirty three years of spoliation and 
          exploitation that have come with the ever-present military 
          occupation.
          
          Bill Clinton wants all that dropped, as if by not mentioning 
          a word about reparations the whole subject would disappear. 
          It seems condescending to tell Palestinians that Israel will 
          mutter a few words about understanding or even recognizing 
          their suffering and get off without a single mention of 
          responsibility. Who is that typically l950s style propaganda 
          formula supposed to placate? Israel, or the Jewish Agency?
          
          But Arafat did indeed come to Washington in response to 
          Clinton's summoning, and because he is who he is, Arafat 
          will probably not refuse or accept outright. He will waffle, 
          and manoeuvre, and come and go, will conditionally accept, 
          as more Palestinians will have sacrificed their lives and, 
          almost as important, their livelihoods for nought.
          
          Over the past weeks I have tried in every way available to 
          me to get Arafat for once in his long domination of 
          Palestinian affairs to address his people honestly, 
          directly, in a straightforward way. But he persists in 
          silence. And his advisers and associates also flutter 
          around, powerless to influence him or to come up with 
          anything by way of alternatives. Yet again I want to say, we 
          need a new kind of leadership, one that can mobilize and 
          inspire the whole Palestinian nation; we have had enough of 
          flying visits in and out of Cairo, Rabat and Washington, 
          enough of lies and misleading rhetoric, enough of corruption 
          and rank incompetence, enough of carrying on at the people's 
          expense, enough of servility before the Americans, enough of 
          stupid decisions, enough of criminal incompetence and 
          uncertainty.
          
          It is clear that no matter what happens now, the 
          Palestinians will be blamed: unabashed Zionist prophets like 
          Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who has not one word 
          of criticism for Israeli brutality and keeps demanding that 
          Arabs must recognize his "organic" connection as a Jew to 
          Palestine without ever acknowledging that that right was 
          implemented in conquest and wholesale Palestinian 
          dispossession, will upbraid Palestinians for wrecking the 
          peace, and continue broadcasting his half-truths in the 
          American media, but all to no avail. Whether he and his 
          associates like it or not, Israel can only have peace when 
          the Palestinian right is first acknowledged to have been 
          violated, and when there is apology and remorse where there 
          is now arrogance and rhetorical bluster. Our first duty as 
          Palestinians is to close this Oslo chapter as expeditiously 
          as possible and return to our main task, which is to provide 
          ourselves with a strategy of liberation that is clear in its 
          goals and well defined in practice. For this we must at some 
          point have the partnership of likeminded Israelis and 
          diaspora Jews who understand that you cannot have occupation 
          and dispossession as well as peace with the Palestinian 
          people. South African apartheid was defeated only because 
          blacks as well as whites fought it.
          
          That the PLO has long thought that it could make peace with 
          Israel and somehow tolerate occupation is only one of its 
          numerous strategic as well as tactical mistakes. A new 
          generation is arising now that no longer respects the old 
          taboos and will not tolerate the lamentable "flexibility" 
          that has given Palestinian liberation the status of a 
          question mark rather than that of a beacon of hope.
          
          There are two contradictory realities on the ground on which 
          Clinton's Washington talks will founder. One is that the 
          energies released by the intifada are not easily containable 
          in any available form for the foreseeable future: 
          Palestinian protest at what Oslo has wrought is a protest 
          against all aspects of the status quo. The second reality is 
          that whether we like it or not historical Palestine is now a 
          bi-national reality suffering the devastation of apartheid. 
          That must end and an era of freedom for Arabs and Jews must 
          soon begin. It falls to us to try now to provide the 
          signposts for a new era. Otherwise it is easy to foresee 
          years more of fruitless and costly struggle.
          
          - Copyright Edward W. Said, 2000, also appears in The DAWN 
          Group of Newspapers, 2001
          
          



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