Syria is being torn apart by a bloody civil war. Turkey is experiencing intensifying social and political protest against Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime which, it must be admitted, has nonetheless presided over Turkey’s economic resurgence and assertive foreign policy. The recent elections in Iran highlighted the growing uncertainty about its future.
Momentous revolutionary events are taking place in Egypt, where prolonged physical occupation of a given public place has become the de rigueur 21th century form of political protest; and where the multi-million march or the unprecedented masses at political rallies have become the common expression of a citizenry in revolt.
With all these events and rapid developments, one may be forgiven for being somewhat fixated on the drama regularly informing these events. And for ignoring the much older drama that the Arab-Israeli conflict regularly produced, and that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict never fails to revive, lest we forget.
It is a testament to the sad and tragic nature of the Israeli Palestinian encounter that it has more often than not been described as having given rise to a never-ending conflict, than having raised hope of settlement or expectation of peace.
This has led to an unfortunate reality: One has intellectually become almost subconsciously trained to lower expectations of success, to predict failure of agreement, and to bemoan the absence of peace. It is also a sign of the intractability of this conflict that the cynical approach to its analysis has more often than not proven to be the right one.
It is therefore with this in mind, and with the momentous events that are sweeping the region in the name of democracy and its constituent values of freedom, liberty and equality, that a most cogent question arises: Why has Israel been exonerated from the burden of having to answer the question of why it has kept the Palestinians in captivity for over 45 years denying them the basic human rights that obtain in democracies? Somehow inexplicably Israel seems to have been exonerated from any sense of culpability. In fact, the answer may not be as inexplicable as it may seem.
There are in fact several plausible answers to this question: Firstly, and as strangely as it may seem, Israel is automatically excluded by Washington (where it most matters) from the list of oppressive regimes. Washington relies on cognitive dissonance, which leads to falsification of the reality and to the following false argument: 1. Democracies do not oppress their people; 2. Israel is a democracy; 3. Therefore Israel does not oppress its people.
The truer reality may be expressed thus: Despite being a democracy, Israel oppresses the people under its occupation. Israel is often, and inaccurately, praised as the ‘only democracy’ in the Middle East. Since democracies do not oppress their people, it is assumed that Palestinians living in Israel have no complaints to make about inequality; and those living under occupation have no complaints to make about freedom and liberty. In fact, both groups do have reason to complain, and have regularly complained. In the case of the Palestinians under occupation, they protested most vehemently against
the oppression of the occupation and the denial of freedom and liberties. Their protests were called the First Intifada and the Second Intifada — in 1987 and 2000 respectively — and foretold the Arab Spring.
The second explanation for the failure of the Palestinian Spring is the sheer brute force used by the occupying power to punish, and to deter.
Moreover the complicity of the corporate media has been equally effective in stifling the cries of people oppressed under occupation. It is fair to say that the influential media has practically never drawn a parallel between the Palestinian Spring and the Arab Spring, on the one hand, or an analysis of the Palestinian Spring and Israel’s response to it
It is therefore with the benefit of the lessons of history that we must lend cautious support to the resumption of the Israeli Palestinian talks planned for next week. Supporting the talks is no longer an option; it has become a necessity longtime ago, since the brutal suppression of the Palestinian Spring; since the shameful surrender at Oslo, and subsequent concessions the Palestinian leadership — reported by WikiLeaks — has made with little or nothing in return.
US Secretary of State John Kerry who is bringing the parties to the negotiating table, may or may not be aware that the Oslo Agreement, which is being used as the frame of reference for the talks scheduled for next week, has been destroyed by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He may not be aware of Netanyahu’s famous boast (available on You Tube) that he deceived the Americans in order to destroy Oslo.
How likely is it therefore that an agreement that saw the Palestinians make unilateral concessions, and that was destroyed by the Israelis, will lead to a just and lasting peace? But what is the alternative, you may rightly ask. One state in which the Jewish majority can preserve its Jewishness, protect the minorities and their civil, religious and cultural rights, as well as political rights.
This after all was the condition upon which the 1917 Balfour promise whereby England undertook to help found a home in Palestine for the Jewish people — provided this did not violate the rights of the non-Jewish populations of Palestine — over 90 per cent at that time. It is true that Balfour did not specifically mention political rights, but these rights were protected by the League of Nations mandate for Palestine, which declared Palestine provisionally independent.
Adel Safty is distinguished visiting professor and special adviser to the rector at the Siberian Academy of Public Administration, Russia. His book, Might Over Right, is endorsed by Noam Chomsky and published in England by Garnet, 2009.
