By Tony Klug
Opening Statement at a panel hosted by the
U.K. Liberal Synagogues
12 January 2009
TonyKlug@compuserve.com
These are difficult and emotional times and I speak from the perspective
of someone who has been writing about, and otherwise engaged in, the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict for some 40 years. The situation is
precarious and could sharply deteriorate and I hope you`ll forgive me if I
speak bluntly, even at the risk of upsetting some people, which is not my
intention.
When I was young, I learned about the quintessential Jewish values of
justice, peace and truth from the distinguished rabbis that taught me at
the orthodox Jewish school - the Hasmonean - that I attended from the ages
of 5 to 18. Fast forward to today and, equipped with these same values,
what are we to make of an advanced, modern state - forget for the moment
its identity or declared motive - that is bombarding, from land, sea and
air, an impoverished, entrapped, defenceless people, causing widespread
death and destruction, not to mention generating new waves of hatred
around the world and renewed calls for revenge, isolation and boycott?
What has happened to the Jewish psyche since I was a youth that some Jews
today - although certainly not all - seem barely to bat an eyelid at this
carnage, if they aren`t actively supporting it? Is there no limit to what
they will tolerate being done in our name? - even if there is horrendous
provocation in the form of the indiscriminate rocketing of hundreds of
thousands of Israelis who live in daily fear of the missiles fired by
Hamas and other armed groups which, like Israel`s actions, has been widely
condemned by human rights groups as a war crime.
Many people from my generation, Jewish and non-Jewish, feel seriously let
down - betrayed even - by what Israel has slowly but steadily developed
into since its astounding military feat in 1967. I am, sadly, among them.
As a student activist at the time, I believed in the justice of Israel`s
cause and its right to self-determination and independence, free of
threat. And for many years I fought the good fight, defending Israel`s
corner - not necessarily to my personal or political benefit - at the
local, national and international student levels. Our passionate arguments
- that Israel was not expansionist, that it desperately yearned for peace,
that it was eager to withdraw from the occupied territories, that it was a
good friend of the Palestinians, that it did everything it possibly could
to avoid civilian casualties, and so on - have all been exposed, one by
one.
It`s not that these arguments were necessarily false from the very
beginning. But little by little they were usurped by the triumphalist mood
that infected the country following the 1967 war and the hubris the
resounding victory gave rise to. Such characteristics are of course not
unique to Israel. They are common to conquering powers and have frequently
led to their eventual downfall.
The dreadful things that are happening today in Gaza are not an
aberration. The Israeli military assault is merely the most recent in a
rolling sequence of onslaughts that have previously pounded towns and
villages in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza itself. It all stems from
Israel - as well as other parties - not having a peace strategy. The only
real hope is that immediate advantage will be taken of this crisis by
formulating a coherent peace strategy, to be swiftly advanced once the
fighting comes to an end.
So what would an Israeli peace strategy look like?
The most important component would be a genuine commitment to withdraw in
full from the occupied West Bank, subject to agreed land swaps, in
exchange for a comprehensive regional peace based on two viable states as
proposed by the Arab Peace Initiative. An unequivocal Israeli pledge of
this nature, by opening up the space, could trigger a new momentum.
Without such a territorial commitment, all other efforts are hollow.
While it is true that Israel is rhetorically committed to a two-state
solution, a proposal I put forward myself in the early 1970s when there
were some 5,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank - and I fully expected to
see implemented before the decade was out! - the authenticity of the
Israeli commitment to this end is contradicted by the evolving facts on
the ground. Today, there are roughly 250,000 settlers there, or double
that number if you include East Jerusalem and the surrounding areas that
Israel has illegally annexed. To this day - urged on by the powerful but
generally unpopular settler lobby - the land confiscations and the
settlement expansion continue apace, gobbling up what`s left of the
putative Palestinian state.
A peace strategy would start by freezing immediately all further
settlement expansion and it would recognize, even if reluctantly, that
both Fatah and Hamas - in or out of government - are integral parts of the
Palestinian national movement and reflect significant political currents
among the Palestinian people, however distasteful some of Hamas`s official
policies may be. Destroying the `terrorist infrastructure` is a euphemism
for excluding one of these major currents from involvement in determining
the end game, just as eradicating the `Zionist entity` is code for
dismantling the state of Israel as the embodiment of a Jewish national
movement. Neither aim is achievable in the foreseeable future, but a
strategy based on either of them promises nothing but further rounds of
mutual atrocities.
The irony is that when Hamas was established in 1987, it was encouraged by
the Israeli government as a more acceptable alternative to the PLO and
Fatah, which Israel then regarded as terrorist movements. Today, this
policy has been stood on its head. But sooner or later, Israel will have
to do a deal with Hamas, as it eventually did with the PLO. In the
meantime, Hamas - the victor in an internationally authenticated
democratic election - needs some breathing space to develop politically
and for its own internal tensions and divisions to crystallize and mature.
If forced from power, it may abandon the political path altogether and
revert to its more belligerent demands and violent deportment. Or it may
give way to `jihadist` forces, including al-Qaida whose advances it has so
far rejected.
A peace strategy would have entailed Israel responding positively to
Hamas`s perfectly reasonable demand to end the strangulating blockade of
Gaza as part of a renewed ceasefire, which hitherto it had more or less
observed. This would have been a far less gory and much more effective way
of achieving Israel`s perfectly legitimate demand for an end to the
missiles. None of the bloody mayhem was necessary, and if it weren`t for
the looming elections in Israel and the quasi interregnum in the US, it`s
unlikely it would have happened. In the end, the same deal will probably
be cut although, by destroying so much of the civilian infrastructure in
Gaza meanwhile, including the police force, and dramatically raising the
temperature, Israel has made it a lot more difficult for any Palestinian
party to enforce the terms of an eventual truce.
In the absence of a Palestinian government of national unity, a peace
strategy would see Israel encourage a tacit agreement between Fatah and
Hamas not to interfere in the territory currently ruled by the other,
while Israel and Hamas observed a state of non-belligerency, pragmatically
ensuring the basic needs of the Gaza population were properly met. These
two rudiments would free Israel and the PA president Mahmoud Abbas to
negotiate the modalities of Israel`s withdrawal from the West Bank and
promptly implement them with the establishment of an independent
Palestinian state there. The subsequent inclusion of the Gaza Strip would
then be essentially an internal Palestinian matter, to be determined
between the parties in due course.
So, inside this maze, is there a moral dilemma? I would suggest there`s a
simple test. How would we, as Jews, nurtured with strong humanitarian
instincts based on traditional Jewish values, have reacted to the dreadful
toll of civilian deaths and the staggering devastation and fear if the
perpetrator were any state other than Israel? It`s a rhetorical question.
But there is a different dilemma. Between the ethic and the ethnic.
Between our sense of what is right and wrong, and tribal loyalty. And it
is the latter, I believe, that explains the reflex support of many Jews
around the world for Israel`s otherwise indefensible and counterproductive
actions. Yet even tribal loyalty is not what it was. It was very simple
years ago when there was virtually no dissent in Israel. Today there is
growing dissent. And the protest movements will for sure continue to
expand as the true horror of what has happened is revealed in the period
ahead. It is no longer a question of whether to support Israel. But which
Israel? Its very future, and the standing and welfare of the Jewish people
globally, may depend on the answer. It isn`t a pretty picture, but can we
turn it around? Well, in the new, forward-looking Obama era, let`s hope
the answer is `yes we can`.
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