Arab unrest: perspectives - XXXVIII

"The late Eqbal Ahmad, who was certainly one of the two or three most brilliant analysts of contemporary history and politics that I ever knew, always drew attention to the fact that successful liberation movements were successful precisely because they employed creative ideas, original ideas, imaginative ideas, whereas less successful movements (like ours, alas) had a pronounced tendency to use formulas and an uninspired repetition of past slogans and past patterns of behaviour," Edward W. Said writes in Al-Ahram and Al-Hayat, December 2000.
Said died in September 2003. Both the scholars of international acclaim are therefore not witness to what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East in the shape of popular revolts against despotic regimes. To the great satisfaction of the late Said in particular, the Palestinians seem to have drawn a lesson out of his life-long lament and moved to the United Nations. Their action is said to be characterised by their willingness to employ creative, original and imaginative ideas.
Now the Zionist state is still in a state of vexation if not shock caused by no perceived slight or indignity but Palestinians' UN statehood bid. Although, Israel terms Palestinians' historic decision to go to the world body a huge impediment towards the resolution of the 64-year-old conflict, the Palestinian leadership offers an opposite perspective. In an exclusive interview with the RT TV channel of Russia, Palestine Authority President Mahmud Abbas has said that he cannot understand why the Palestinian bid for full UN membership and peace negotiations with Israel should not happen in parallel.
"[O]ur actions cannot be compared to the construction of settlements on Palestinian territory. This is a unilateral action, whereas our bid to the UN is not. Furthermore, we do not want to challenge the legitimacy of the state of Israel. Israel is a valid state and we have recognised it...The US and Israel say our action [statehood bid] is unilateral. This is exactly why we have applied to the Security Council. Let's just wait and see."
If US defence secretary Leon Panetta's remarks that Israel is increasingly becoming isolated in the region and that Tel Aviv is required to improve its relations with Cairo, in particular, in the midst of the Arab Spring are any guide, the Zionist state is facing the "nervous thrust of a modern creation". The Palestinians' resolve to get full UN membership has not only made Israel-a country whose own conduct is characterised by impulsive behaviour-increasingly wary, the US too faces the prospects of massive damage to its image particularly at a time when popular revolts in the region are giving birth to new policy dynamics. The unfolding events encompass processes of policy change taking into account context influences such as crises, societal drivers and innovations.
Writing in The National Interest, a US-based foreign policy journal, Henry Siegman, a resident of the US/Middle East Project, offers a highly informed and incisive perspective on how Palestinians have declared "independence from the US" through their UN statehood bid. According to him, "the real meaning of the Palestinians' decision to defy the United States is that they will no longer accept their occupier's [Israel's] role in their quest for statehood. They demand national self-determination as a right-indeed, as a "peremptory norm" that in international law takes precedence over all other considerations-and not as an act of charity by their occupiers."
He terms American insistence on aborting the Palestinian initiative and forcing their participation in a peace process in which their fate remains dependent on Israel shameful. "It stains America's honour. It will not succeed, for the Palestinian decision to defy the American demand is itself a declaration of independence; that genie cannot be returned to the bottle," he argues.
In order to examine the Israeli strategy viz-a-viz the Middle East conflict it will be imperative to refresh our memories on the events that greatly contributed to Benjamin Netanyahu's election loss against Ehud Barak in 1999. Ahron Bregman in his Elusive Peace-How the Holy Land Defeated America seeks to provide readers with some insights into those events.
"[H]e [Netanyahu] signed the Wye River Memorandum-after all, he did not want to be blamed by the US for blowing the talks-but on his return to Israel he started to backtrack, fearing the wrath of his far Right supporters. Now both Right and Left alike attacked him: the Right because he had betrayed them-after all at Wye Netanyahu was willing to give away parts of Eretz Yisrael; while the Left blamed him for dragging his feet, saying the Prime Minister never really intended to live up to promise made at Wye.
"The coup de grace came on 4 January 1999, when Left and Right joined forces in the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) to produce an overwhelming majority of 81 in favour of dissolving the Knesset and forcing a new general election. The election took place on 17 May 1999 and resulted in a stunning victory for Ehud Barak of Labour over Netanyahu. The Left rejoiced as did the Palestinians, and with good reason."
In the introduction to his book, Bregman makes a sardonic comment in a sour or bleakly world-weary, but not necessarily ironic, way. According to him: "[A]nd always in the background was the world's only superpower - the United States. Under President Clinton, from 1999 to 2001 it tried to lend a hand to the parties in brokering peace, but failed disastrously. Then it simply gave up. When George W. Bush came to power, America stood back, intervening only when faced with no other option. Indeed, in some respects, the Holy Land has defeated America."
In a roundtable with bloggers on the sidelines of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York a week ago, former US President Bill Clinton sounded pessimistic in relation to Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to him, "on the ground, little will be changed by a UN affirmation of Palestinian statehood. But nothing will be the same again in the Palestinians' dealings with Israel and the United States. The notion that Israel will decide where negotiations begin and what parts of Palestine it will keep is history. It is sad that America, of all nations, has failed to understand this simple truth, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. Sadder still is Israel's continuing blindness not only to the injustice but also to the impossibility of its colonial dream. That dream may now turn into a nightmare as the international community increasingly sees Israel as a rogue state and treats it accordingly."
Bill Clinton has described the reluctance of the Israeli government to accept the terms of the Camp David deal brokered by him and a highly significant demographic shift which is making the Israeli public less amenable to peace as two major reasons behind the lack of a comprehensive peace today.
"[T]he Israelis always wanted two things that once it turned out they had, it didn't seem so appealing to Mr Netanyahu. They wanted to believe they had a partner for peace in a Palestinian government, and there's no question -- and the Netanyahu government has said -- that this is the finest Palestinian government they've ever had in the West Bank," Clinton said.
"[Palestinian leaders] have explicitly said on more than one occasion that if [Netanyahu] put up the deal that was offered to them before -- my deal -- that they would take it," Clinton has been quoted as saying. According to Clinton, "but the Israeli government has drifted a long way from the Ehud Barak-led government that came so close to peace in 2000. He has argued that any new negotiations with the Netanyahu government are now on starkly different terms -- terms that the Palestinians are unlikely to accept".
Clinton's observations, however, remain a matter of great debate precisely because a lot of water has flown under the bridge since then. But his remarks lend some valuable credence to arguments of those analysts who have consistently doubted Washington's sense of innate fairness. Undoubtedly, Edward W. Said was one of those great sceptics as he always instinctively and habitually doubted, questioned, disagreed with assertions or generally accepted conclusions.
In another essay titled The Price of Camp David carried by Al-Ahram and Al-Hayat in July 2001, Said says: "[C]linton had always been an opportunist first and last, a Zionist second, and a clumsy politician third. The Palestinians were the weakest party [at the Camp David]; they were badly led and poorly prepared. Clinton surmised that because his (and Barak's) terms in office were ending, he could produce a peace ceremony based on Palestinian capitulation, a ceremony that would forever enshrine his presidency by erasing the memory of Monica Lewinsky and the developing scandal of Marc Rich's pardon. This great plan, of course, failed completely."
to be continued