The votes are in. In the most predictable electoral result ever, Mahmoud Abbas has won the Palestinian elections. And, predictably, headlines all over North America (that might be overblown – I’ve only seen the headlines in my own city and I am working by induction) are declaring a victory for peace.
It’s not a victory for peace.
The votes are in. In the most predictable electoral result ever, Mahmoud Abbas has won the Palestinian elections. And, predictably, headlines all over North America (that might be overblown – I’ve only seen the headlines in my own city and I am working by induction) are declaring a victory for peace.
It’s not a victory for peace.
Nothing that happens in Palestinian society can be a victory for peace, absent Israel and the United States. You see, the thing about this ‘conflict’ between Israel and the Palestinians is that (thanks largely to the US) Israel has all the power. Israel has all the power to destroy. And Israel has all the power to make peace.
If Israel wanted a victory for peace, it could withdraw its military and its settlers from the occupied territories. That would be a victory for peace, a first step towards peace, the kind of thing that would build confidence for a long-term peace in which the rights of refugees and the religious and cultural rights and freedoms of everyone were protected.
All this noise about victory for peace in the media assumes the reverse: that the Palestinians have the power and can decide that they want peace. In fact even if Palestinians were to unconditionally surrender, Israel would not accept: Israel wants the land without the people. The goal is explicitly ethnic cleansing. That would be utterly obvious to anyone with a handle on the basics – the walls, the fences, the starvation, the checkpoints, the humiliation, the incursions, the assassinations, the denial of medical care, the sieges, the closures, the prisons, the child prisons, the legal machinations…
The only victory for peace would be a complete reversal of this goal on Israel’s part. So long as Palestinians are being ethnically cleansed, they will react. And, of course, Israel will follow the colonial practice of mass reprisal, which has led to a Palestinian death toll 4 or 5 times higher than the Israeli toll in recent years even ignoring the starvation and the (see above paragraph).
As that starts to happen, you can expect media outlets to wag fingers and shake heads. We thought Abbas was a man of peace, they will say. We thought he had renounced terror, they will say.
But they won’t say what everyone really needs to understand: that it’s not, was not, and never will be, in Abbas’s hands.
wellll….
when you put it
wellll….
when you put it like that, it almost sounds bleak….
😉
cheers bro…
wish i could say you’re wrong, but unfortunately, it’s the absolute truth of the matter…
ty
Justin,
Thanks for the
Justin,
Thanks for the powerful piece. I have two questions: you use the term ethnic cleansing, I wonder if you would elaborate on A) what the evidence is (additional to what you cite above), and B) whether there are comparative examples of it similar to the present case.
I’m not sure that what you cite as evidence of ethnic cleansing intrinisically is, I could foresee, for instance, the US doing very similar things in Iraq (if they’re not already doing so) – but I wouldn’t then say that the US is trying to ethnically cleanse the iraqi population. Rather I would say the US is trying to have things its own way, and to hell with what anybody who gets in the way.
Fraser, the main evidence is
Fraser, the main evidence is of course – above what I mentioned – the settlements. 400,000 and continually expanding, Israelis settling in the West Bank and Gaza, with exclusive rights to most of the best land, driving on Israeli-only roads, committing violence against Palestinians with the impunity of military support.
Books on this: Baruch Kimmerling’s ‘Politicide’, Tanya Reinhart’s ‘Israel/Palestine’, Finkelstein’s ‘Image and Reality’. All have written lots online too.
I believe that one of the reasons US colonialism in Iraq and elsewhere (Vietnam for example) is both so brutal and so unsuccessful is because it comes out of a collective experience of settler-colonialism – most of the US wars were wars of ethnic cleansing and extermination, and that’s a military and cultural tradition that doesn’t go away easily. In addition, in Iraq they had a lot of advice from Israel (influence does go both ways – check Seymour Hersh’s new book for some evidence). Only now, with the ‘Salvadorean option’ (see empirenotes.org today) are they trying to adapt to more indirect (if no less vicious) methods: silence some communities by co-optation and demonstration elections, and then focus vicious repression on another.
Thanks for this response.
I
Thanks for this response.
I guess I wasn’t thinking specifically of the settlements policy, expansion and so on.
The comments on empire notes today about the salvadorean option are the most worrying thing I’ve heard about Iraq recently.
When there is not enough
When there is not enough room, ie, water, food, energy. for all the people ,they will fight over it. There are waaaaaaay too many people in the world. If we would start working on birth control and taking care of those that are here we might make some progress. If the Isreal needs water and land, and has the strength to take it , they will. We need to work on the underlying problem, which is population control. (by lessining births, not by killing people who are already here.)