Sari Nusseibeh is a Palestinian professor of philosophy and president of the al-Quds University in Jerusalem.
In a recent interview to Akiva Eldar (Haaretz, August 16, 2008),
Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh made several interesting remarks concerning
the "one-state/two-states" discussion. Unlike many others, Nusseibeh
puts at the core of the discussion the dimension of time. Politics is not a
supermarket in which each one can choose what s/he likes, according to his/her
personal taste, but is a struggle of the people over what they believe to be
worthwhile to fight (and sometimes to die) for. Struggling people often change
their political objectives according to changing relation of forces and what
they believe to be or not be realistic. In that sense, there is no serious
political strategic thought that does not include the dimension of time.
In the 1980s-1990s, the Palestinian national liberation movement decided
that the regional and international context rendered possible, in the
relatively short-term, the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in
the West Bank and Gaza,
and fixed this perspective as a strategic objective. Like most of the Palestinian
leaders, Nusseibeh endorsed the political perspective of a Palestinian state in
the West Bank and Gaza:
"The primary motivation (for a two-state solution) is to minimize human
suffering. […] If there will be a one-state solution, it will not come today or
tomorrow. It's a long, protracted thing." Moreover, unlike the others, Nusseibeh
even expressed readiness to trade the right of return of the refugees in
exchange for Palestinian statehood, a stand that was perceived by many as close
to treason. In his interview to Akiva Eldar, Nusseibeh expresses concern about
the readiness of the Israeli leadership to negotiate with good faith for the
establishment of a Palestinian state: "I still favor a two-state solution
and will continue to do so, but to the extent that you discover it's not
practical anymore or that it's not going to happen, you start to think about
what the alternatives are. […] There is the sense that we are running out of
time, that if we want a two-state solution, we need to implement it quickly.
But if we are looking at what is happening on the ground, in Israel and in
the occupied territories, you see things happening in the opposite direction."
The conclusion of Sari Nusseibeh is that the failure of the two-state
option will result in a new struggle, for a "one-state solution”: "we
can fight for equal rights, rights of existence, return and equality, and we
could take it slowly over the years and there could be peaceful movement—like in
South Africa. I think one should maybe begin on the Palestinian side, to begin
a debate, to re-engage in the idea of one state."
As expected, this fairly realistic analysis of Sari Nusseibeh provoked
angry reactions among many Israelis who had in the past hailed his moderation
and realism. Like, for example, Yossi Alpher, the co-editor of Bitterlemons
and former director of the Jaffe Center at Tel
Aviv University.
In a typical Israeli-Left patronizing style, he accuses Nusseibeh of generating
"indifference or even hostility" among the Israelis, by even
mentioning the option of a one-state solution. Once again, the Palestinians
will be responsible for the Israeli lack of readiness to negotiate the
two-state solution! According to Alpher, the Palestinians have no right to raise
alternatives, if and when the two-state solution seems in a deadlock, because,
for the Israelis, it is the only way out of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute,
and raising alternatives will provoke (sic) a rightwing turn in the Israeli
peace camp. The fact that 15 years after Oslo,
the Israeli occupation is continuing and colonization is developing as never
before should have no effect on the Palestinian community; they must be patient
and wait until the Israelis will understand that a Palestinian state is also
their interest.
Yossi Alpher is right when he criticizes those who speak about the
"irreversibility of the situation" and argue that the "realities
on the ground" make the perspective of a Palestinian state impossible. No
realities on the ground are, in and of themselves, irreversible, as the fate of
old and modern empires has confirmed: if
the Roman Empire and Soviet Union were
reversible, no reason to believe that Efrat or Qedumim are not! Alpher is right
too when he writes: "Discussion of (one state, three states) often
reflects despair…" The colonization of the West Bank is still reversible,
and the end of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza remains the core
objective of the Palestinian national movement, and, therefore of the
solidarity movement in Israel and abroad.
What Yossi Alpher is writing further in his article, however, is much
more problematic.
First, by mixing together the perspective of one democratic
(bi-national) state and the "three-states" plan, he is making an outrageous
manipulation: while the one-state solution is a Palestinian option, supported
by some groups and individuals outside Palestinian society, including in
Israel, the so-call "three states" solution is an Israeli-US stupid
plan aimed at dividing the Palestinian people and its national liberation
movement, a plan rejected almost unanimously by the Palestinian people and
therefore doomed to fail. In fact, the dream to divide between Gaza
and the West Bank is as old as the Israeli occupation, from the very days Yossi
Alper, then Director of the Intelligence office named Jaffe Center,
was preparing scenarios to "resolve", i.e. to neutralize, the
Palestinian issue. No decent person on earth has ever considered a "three
states solution."
This manipulation is, however, minor compared to what one reads next,
and raises the ethical perversity one often finds among Left-Zionists. “Hypothetically,
if for some cataclysmic reason they could no longer live in a Jewish,
democratic state in their historic homeland, they would prefer renewed
dispersion and Diaspora to life in a bi-national Arab-Jewish (essentially
Muslim-Jewish) state […] that would almost certainly quickly relegate Jews to
the status of a persecuted minority.”
Let’s analyze the assumption behind this sentence: (European) Diaspora,
where only 70 years ago, long after the French Revolution and emancipation,
millions of Jews were massacred, would necessarily be more secure than the
Muslim world in which the Jews have been able to live (with very few exceptions) peacefully for more than twelve centuries. Either
Alpher has no basic historical culture or he is expressing the vulgar, well
established racism dominant in Israeli society. I tend to believe that the
former director of Yaffe
Center is not ignorant.
In fact, the racist dimension behind his argumentation appears in
another part of his article, where he writes: “Hamas can perhaps be tolerated
in Gaza, but certainly not in the West Bank.” In other words, the Gaza Strip with its
almost two millions civilians, including a majority of children, is “a hostile
entity,” against which one has the right and the duty to use any means,
including starvation and what the UN rapporteur on Human Rights calls “latent
genocide,” but the West Bank is not. And what
is the West Bank, according to Alpher? An
Israeli colony in which WE decide which government to tolerate and which not.
Mahmoud Abass is certainly happy to learn from his friend Alpher that he is
President of the Palestinian Authority not because he has been chosen by his
people in democratic elections, but because he was approved by the Israeli
Security Services. In Europe, where Alpher
would like to live if, for “some cataclysmic reason (he) could not live in a
Jewish, democratic state,” the name of such a President would have been
Quisling!
Yossi Alpher was among those who strongly advocated free elections in
the Occupied Palestinian Territories but, by electing a strong Hamas majority,
the Palestinian people disappointed him, and there thus exists an urgent need
to correct the results of a democracy that doesn’t fit with what the Zionist Left
(amongst others) wanted.
At the very end of his article Alpher writes: “True, there are a few
Israeli Jews on the fringes of society who either advocate or would comply in a
one-state solution. They include anti-Zionist Leftists and ultra-orthodox. […]
I would not recommend to Palestinians that they rely on these fringe Jews as
potential partners.”
As an Anti-Zionist Leftist (who use to be also ultra-orthodox), I would
like to plead guilty to the “fringe-charge.” Here too it is a matter of
history, maybe even genetics! All my ancestors were on the fringe of society.
During Nazi occupation, my father was doubly on the fringe: against his will,
as a Jew, and by choice, as an anti-Nazi Resistance fighter. In every society
where evil is committed, the Just are, at the beginning, a tiny
fringe-minority… until they become, or not, a majority. Like former German
Canceller Willy Brand said it once, testifying about himself: “there is a time
where to have to disconnect from the majority, and to choose to be a minority,
even to be perceived as a traitor to your own country.”
Majority and fringe are dynamic realities: in the seventies and the
beginning of the eighties, while Alpher was, as usual, the majority, we were a
fringe-minority to advocate the recognition of the PLO and a Palestinian state.
Later on, these positions became majority-positions, and Alpher joined them. As
Sari Nusseibeh said in his interview, the one-state solution may become soon
the only option on the table for an Israeli-Palestinian peace. I bet that Yossi
Alpher will oppose it… until the majority of the Israelis will change their mind
and understand that they have missed the two-state option, and only a joint
democratic and bi-national state will guarantee their personal and national
existence in this area.
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