The Mistake Obama Must not Make

Politics for Joe
Saturday, September 17 2011
By: Hubert O’Hearn
For: Lake Superior News

It’s been awhile, but when I decided to write these columns I promised myself that I wouldn’t file unless I actually had something fresh to add to the debate. There are so many important things to read out there that I hate to waste your time.  But as a result of some fairly intensive reading and author interviews in the last two years, I’ve had the experience equivalent of taking at least a third year or possibly a Masters level course in Political Studies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I refer you in particular to a very recent interview I did with David Berlin, an Israeli-Canadian writer who has written the quite brilliant memoir the Moral Lives of the Israelis. You can find it at bythebookreviews.blogspot.com .

The point is, as much as one would like the notion of a one-state solution to the Palestinian issue, it is a pipe dream. The tragedy of the region is that Jew and Arab alike living side by side and developing the land in a secular, multi-ethnic democratic state could have happened. It actually was and is the opinion of the most Orthodox Israeli Jews who thought that the religion had no business running a state. They seem to be correct. Theocratic states haven’t had a good run of it as peaceful international partners, unless it’s the Vatican, small and unarmed except by men in colourful garb carrying spears. Monaco would be more of a threat if it loaded its dice.

Then again, one of the often ignored facts of the supposed centuries-long conflict is that at one historical point the Jews and Ottoman/Arab Muslims were not only friendly but actually had a victim-protector relationship. That was in the 16th and 17th centuries when the bored and restless Knights of Malta, disgruntled that they weren’t going to be invading Jerusalem any time soon, took to piracy and the kidnapping of Jews. This of course was going on under the kerchiefed eyes of the Doge of Venice as well as yes, the Vatican. Perhaps I underestimated its threat in the paragraph above. In any event, the refuge for Venetian and other European Jews was - Constantinople - under the guard and complete freedom granted by the Caliph. At that time, the Caliph’s word was the only ruling word in the Muslim world.

So the notion that Jews and Arab Muslims ‘can’t get along’ is equally defeatist language, ignorant of history, and likely insidious as it encourages a state of simmering war and outright apartheid to go on forever. That said, I have no confidence in a one-state solution. It would only result from an even further cordoning and squeezing of West Bank Palestinians to a point where they could never, ever be an electoral force. In short, a one-state solution as a result of eliminating the potential second state.

We are about to witness perhaps the single most important diplomatic event since either the peaceful evaporation of the Cold War, or perhaps the Camp David Accords. This week, the Palestinian Authority will place its request before the UN Security Council to be recognized as a state. The President of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, makes the point (obviously I’m paraphrasing) that after decades of various talks the only result has been the walling off of the Palestinian people, fresh Israeli settlements built on supposedly debated territory whose ownership was a central topic of these decades of talks … it’s not working. Let’s try something different.

Given that the understandably urge to ‘try something different’ might have otherwise involved suicide bombers and other forms of indiscriminate murder, taking a run at a diplomatic solution through the United Nations seems to me to be a pretty sensible idea. The quote en-quote fear of the resolution is that it also calls for the boundaries to be set pre-1967. That would require the removal of 500,000 Jewish settlers.

Of course, would those settlers even have to move? The walls would come down certainly. That will also have the pleasant effect coming from it being easier to like someone if you can actually see them. More seriously, if the Palestinian State was secular and non-theocratic, there would be no reason to not grant Jews living in Palestine the same democratic rights and freedoms as any other citizen. Oh yes, allow citizenship too - which the Palestinians currently living in Israel are currently denied. That might be part of the negotiations.

And there will be negotiations if the resolution passes. No one realistically expects the outcome to be instantaneous - it’s not like your apartment was sold to a condo owner so pack your bags Charlie. Abbas too is aware of this, yet feels and hopes that these negotiations would be different. For one thing, any Israeli military incursion into the area, except in self-defence, would be an act of war. That is one of many reasons why Israel opposes the UN resolution.
But it - or in combination with anything else - is a damn lousy reason for the U.S. to adamantly insist it will veto that request for statehood. The eternal frustration with American foreign policy is that it has absolutely no sense of historical resonance to its rhetoric. For instance, to this day there has been no official recognition that perhaps, in Afghanistan, it might have been advisable to note that neither Great Britain at its greatest, nor the Soviet Union at its most brutal were able to quell the ‘ tribal chieftains.’ You cannot conquer a people without at least some tacit agreement that they are willing to be conquered.

But, to their impending doom and loss of their last shred of credibility in the region, so does the United States agree to vote on the behalf of Israel. The Americans intend to veto the resolution. Welcome to Suez, with Obama playing the part of Anthony Eden. 

I never said, Simon Says

I’ve actually been waiting for ‘the Suez Moment’ where the US passes from the role of world arbiter to that of eminence grise. I haven’t awaited it eagerly. Say what you will (or I will) about the US, name me the country you would rather hold hegemony over the world? Surely not Russia, rapidly speeding back to Stalinism; and surely not China which has warped the already warped standards of capitalism into forms that only a heavily-wired Dr. Timothy Leary could ever imagine in their wildest nightmares. Exactly.

The worst of it is that this veto comes on the distant yet still click-echoing heels of Obama’s May speech where he said that the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palesinian conflict would be a two-state solution based on a return to pre-6 Day War/1967 boundaries. Which is pretty much exactly this resolution.

The danger, why this is the day America gets demoted, is that the Arabs have heard this song before. They heard it when Britain promised the Hashamite kingdom an independent state in return for their active participation in World War One. (The House of ibn-Saud, which ended up with Saudi Arabia and 37% of the world’s oil, chose not to take sides in that conflict.) They have heard the great speeches which were really false appeasement too many times. They will not get fooled again. Do not think for a a second that Britain, France, Russia, Germany and China will not fall in line behind the Palestinians. They have no need for the slavish supplication to ‘the Jewish vote’ (to which the most racist statement possible is that ‘Jews’ all vote in lockstep based on Israel’s needs). Europe and Asia will crave for appeasement because it’s good business (and good ethics, but very secondarily). An isolated and distrusted U.S. will prove to be the sad puppy outside the window. Of all the things Obama has flip-flopped on, this veto must be flipped in favour of the man who was elected in 2008 and gave the two-state speech in May 2011. Because without the flip, you’re left with the flopped.

Be seeing you.