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March 18, 2003
The revolving doors of diplomacy have stopped turning. We are all slouching to Baghdad and trying to forget about the monster of history. As we do so we become aware that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict presses itself increasingly into the foreground. This provides both Israeli and Palestinan comment on the recent power sharing in the Palestinian Authority and so it offers a different from the war talk of say Silent Running
In Australia Ken Parish has posted on this Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his Middle East Dilemnas post here Ken says:
"To the extent that Israel's legal system fails to protect the property rights of Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza, and instead protects Jewish settlers who seize and retain their land by force, it cannot claim to be a liberal democratic state (as its apologists are in the habit of proudly boasting). Instead, it is a state which condones and practises serious institutional discrimination based on race and religion. That fact doesn't in any sense justify suicide bombings of innocent Israeli men, women and children, but it does help us begin to comprehend the bitterness and despair that lead to such desperate acts of callous butchery."
That post is five months old. Since then the elections within Israel have witnessed a shift towards a nation-state based on ethnicity and religion. This is a good and informed description of the political shift, as signifed by the electoral shift in support for political parties. This event supports Ken's claim that a question marke needs to be placed next to Israel claim to be a liberal democratic state.
There are four things highlighted by this report that indicate the historical movement of Israel away from a liberal democratic state. First we have the acceptance of the forced movement of a people from the nation state.
"All settlers vote in their settlements: they are citizens of Israel, and their settlements are part of the Israeli democratic state. They voted en masse for the Right, of course, mainly for the parties that solicit 'transfer', which is the term for the expulsion of the Palestinians."
Secondly, it is blind to the effects of occuption or colonization:
"Israelis, in general, are deaf to Palestinian suffering - this isn't just a 'tactic' and a 'strategy', but a way of life. Mainstream Israeli literature was never militarist or chauvinist, but except for a few rare cases it never dealt with the Palestinian tragedy."
This deafness----the non-existence of the Palestinians in the Israeli consciousness----is part of the Israeli view that the Palestinians are a danger. So they have to be excluded from Israeli territory. This turn towards a form of separation now involves is a process of apartheid which is becoming more entrenched:
"....if one travels to see those parts of Palestine already 'separated' by the fence (the town of Qalqilya), one can see how it separates Palestinian towns and villages not only from Israel but from the rest of Palestine as well. And of course the separation is one-sided. Israelis have the right to enter the Palestinian side, but Palestinians cannot enter our country. The same logic works everywhere here. The 'separation roads' have always meant separation not between Israel and Palestine but between Palestinian and Israeli destinations. And now, as the process of apartheid becomes more entrenched, Palestinians cannot drive on those roads or indeed on many other roads in the West Bank. The 'separation roads' create a real continuity between Jewish settlements, while simultaneously destroying any form of Palestinian territorial continuity."
Third, ethnicity is primary form of identification and political ethnicity is no longer deemed to be unacceptable:
"Since 1967, Sharon, and before him Binyamin Netanyahu, and before him Menachem Begin, have been offering the 'new Israelis' a simple way of identifying with the state: by hating the Arabs. This requires a brief explanation. The East-West divide is deeply traumatic for us. There is no part of Israeli life where this tension does not threaten to erupt. Jews from Iraq, or Egypt, or Yemen, or Morocco, in order to be Israelis, must first become 'Eastern Jews' - that is, have a common 'Eastern' identity which did not exist prior to their being Israelis. Then they have to become 'Israelis' - i.e. having become 'Easterners', they immediately escape this definition. The hatred that the state - and even more so the Right - offers them has always been the hatred of one minority for another."
And lastly there is no seperation between church and state:
"This is a state where no one can marry outside the religious establishment. But will Shinui bring about a change in the legislation? Of course not. Most laws have a political, even racist, objective: to define Israel as a Jewish state, and to define Judaism in religious terms. Not one Jewish party supports a real democracy, where the state is the state of all its citizens."
Israel is in transformation away from its roots in western liberal democracy.
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Gary,
You I live in a multicultural nation of fairly like-minded citizens. We have our Pauline Hansons and Michael Branders,etc preaching intolerance and perhaps hate, but they are a miniscule minority, which can be laughed off and tolerated as largely irrelevant. They dont threaten the mainstream core values of society(although the sudden rise of One Nation certainly caused some consternation in political circles)Should their views start to approach electoral majority, some of us might begin to clean our rifles and stock up on the ammunition however. Look out civil society then.In this respect I am accutely aware that it is sometimes a tenuos thread that binds us, when I read about the Middle East's problems.
What you allude to, is simply more confirmation that civil, democratic societies cannot exist in a state of civil war. Truth and decency vanish with constant hatred and bloodshed. How will bloodshed and hatred stop and civil society begin? IMO in only 2 ways- either the protagonists tire of war and start reasoning with each other, or some circuit breaker begins the process. Let's assume the Middle East protagonists haven't totally tired of war yet, what could break the cycle of war for them?
Have you considered seriously my suggestion that Palestine be partitioned along the democratic choice lines, I outlined? Could this policy be sold to the protagonists as an appropriate circuit-breaker to war?
It seems to me that IF it could, then the protagonists may very quickly have to mend their more obnoxious views and ways, in order to appear attractive to prospective citizenry. Could open hostility toward each other dissolve into more peaceful and productive rivalry for hearts and minds?
I must confess the attraction of this as a valuable circuit-breaker has been growing on me. I tire of all the hand wringing and name calling. These people desperately need civil societies like ours.