A Palestinian official on the radio today, when asked about the motives driving the latest wave of violence (including knife attacks on Israelis by a small number of Palestinians, followed by Israeli response), said the motives lay in 48 years of illegal occupation, coupled with feelings of hopelessness on the part of the younger generation. The official compared this incipient 'third intifada' in that respect to the Arab Spring, and he compared Netanyahu to Mubarak.
Whatever one thinks of that suggested analogy or parallel, there is one obvious, glaring difference: the anger of the Egyptian protesters from 2011 on was directed at their own government, whereas that of Palestinians, as in the present moment, is directed outward, toward a government of occupation, a government not their own in any sense. Hidden in this very obvious distinction is an implication one wonders whether Israel's leaders have ever fully grasped: namely, that once a sovereign Palestinian state is established, it would become the target at which its citizens would be most likely to direct whatever anger and frustration they might have about unfulfilled hopes or promises. The longer that Israel continues the occupation, the longer the Palestinians exist in a basically stateless condition, the longer it will be before there comes a time when Palestinians' anger is directed, in the first instance, where anger is typically first directed: i.e., at one's own government.
I wonder, in other words, whether Israeli leaders have ever taken an unabashedly pragmatic, self-interested view of a sovereign Palestinian state as an absorber of anger, which is what, among other things, it would be. After an initial period of euphoria, once the state got down to the difficult business of governing and trying to improve its citizens' lives, it would become responsible or accountable in a way that the Palestinian Authority, despite its degree of autonomy in certain spheres, has never been. This is presumably just one of several ways in which the establishment of a sovereign, universally recognized Palestinian state would benefit not only ordinary Palestinians (in psychic if not necessarily material terms), but also ordinary Israelis.
Added later: Lest the opening of this post give the wrong impression, I assure readers that I'm fully aware that (individual) Israelis have committed violent acts against (individual) Palestinians (including recently) and not just the other way around; on the level of individuals, the violence has flowed both ways, even while on the level of collectives it has been highly asymmetrical and unequal. My basic position on the conflict should be fairly clear from previous posts; those readers in search of posts that consist solely of impassioned denunciations might be well advised to look elsewhere, since although I sometimes appreciate impassioned polemic, I don't do it all that often here.
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7 comments:
You are probably right about the direction Palestinian anger would take. But Israelis have also or weigh what direction the anger of their own factions would take. My former IR professor once commented that the alternative to occupation was an Israeli civil war, and I think there is some truth in that.
Peter,
Your former IR professor's comment assumes that a pretty large section of the Israeli public is committed in a v. strong way to the occupation and opposes the two-state route. Despite Netanyahu's voting bloc, I think that may exaggerate the strength of the Israeli Right -- but I don't know, as I can hardly claim to follow Israeli politics closely.
Btw, in the current issue of Boston Review there is a piece by an Israeli academic criticizing 'one-statism' as it's being purveyed in some circles and defending the two-state route; I haven't read it properly yet.
No. I think there is a significant bloc committed to territorial expansion (and so, in the end, to expelling Palestinians), a larger bloc willing to go with rather than confront them (if only for electoral reasons), and only a small group actually prepared to relinquish control, pull settlers out and risk the confrontations that would ensue. There was minor argy-bargy over Gaza; the West Bank would be much worse, and East Jerusalem and the surrounding settlement blocks almost impossible.
And any "pull-out" that left West Bank Palestinians in the Gaza situation (effectively an open-air jail with little water, minimum rations, no jobs and subject to Israeli raids at whim) would not improve things. Yet this is pretty much what is on offer (Palestinians can have a state subject to Israeli control of water, borders, air space, internal roads and the Jordan Valley....)
Peter,
I disagree with a fair amt of the above, but I made the mistake of writing a reply before logging in to my Blogger acct, and in the process of logging in, the reply was "eaten" in an error, which occasionally happens. So I think now I will postpone replying until later in the day or tomorrow.
...Palestinians can have a state subject to Israeli control of water, borders, air space, internal roads and the Jordan Valley.
Accepting for the sake of discussion that this is what's been on offer (I'm not sure it's a completely accurate description, but put that aside), I still think the Palestinians might be well-advised to take it. The reason is that once they have, in Krasner's terms, 'international legal sovereignty' (i.e. formal and mutual recognition as a state), they will then be in a position to (perhaps gradually) increase their degree of 'Westphalian sovereignty' (i.e., the exclusion of Israel or other outside actors from matters that should properly be within their 'domestic' authority). The situation is always going to have unusual aspects, I would think, but formal statehood offers a baseline from which to work toward actual change and improvement. The alternative, it seems to me, is indefinite continuation of the unacceptable status quo.
(For Krasner's typology, see his Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton Univ. Press, 1999).
LFC
I think you are right that they would be well-advised to take it. I am not at all certain, though, that Israel in its current political state is prepared to offer even that much.
The Netanyahu government probably isn't, so the sooner he's out of office the better.
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