RIGHT FOR BOTH PEOPLES
by Tanya Reinhart
In the past two weeks, we are witnessing the beginning of a new phase: Israelis and
Palestinians are extending a hesitant hand to each other, across the IDF's barricades and
checkpoints.
It happens simultaneously on both sides. On the Palestinian side,
more voices were heard of those calling for months already to return
to a popular and civil uprising, like in the previous Intifada, when
no weapons were used.
International law and norms acknowledge the right of an occupied people to an armed
struggle against the occupying army (unlike terror against civilians). But this does not
mean that this way can always lead to a true solution. Under the present circumstances, of
such unequal forces, the use of arms verges on suicide. The easy way to exterminate a weak
nation has always been dragging
it into a hopeless war. A whole generation of Palestinian youth is
dying out in a desperate confrontation with the prison walls, while
most of the Palestinian society - women, students and ordinary
civilians - are drawn out of the struggle and all they can do is wait
in their besieged home to the next IDF collective punishment, or to
deportation.
Senior IDF-officers are admitting now openly that they have never
believed in a compromise with the Palestinians, and that 'force is
the only way'. The Palestinian use of arms gives the Western media
and public opinion the excuse to look aside while the IDF is carrying
out a slow extermination of the Palestinian people and identity.
The tragedy of the Palestinian people is that its official leadership
is still the same corrupt and power-driven leadership that has
cooperated with the occupation during the Oslo years. But in the months of the Intifada,
the Palestinian identity is reshaping.
Han Yunis, isolated between the fences of Gaza prison, has thus been freed also of the
control of the Palestinian Authority and started to form popular committees that lead the
communal struggle, like in the previous Intifada.
Now Ramallah awakens and prepares itself to a
popular democratic
uprising and civil disobedience. At the same time, the voice of Bir
Zeit University and many others is heard, calling to strive for
cooperation with the Israeli opponents of the occupation, like in
the previous Intifada.
From the Palestinian Diaspora, Edward Said
phrased the clear spirit
of this message in an article of two weeks ago. He quotes Mandella's
words: The struggle of the Blacks in South Africa could attract the
imagination and dreams of the entire world, because it offered the
whole society - even the Whites who apparently benefited from the
Apartheid - the only way that enables the preservation of basic human values. The
Palestinian struggle, says Said, must be based on the understanding that the Jewish people
is here to stay. The struggle must strive towards a settlement that will enable
coexistence based on human dignity, a settlement that will capture the imagination of the
world.
On the Israeli side, 140 academics have published on the 20th of March an ad in three
Palestinian newspapers. "We extend our arms to you in solidarity with your just
cause" they open, and express their wish "to cooperate with you in opposing the
IDF's brutal policy of siege, closure and curfews". In the spirit of Mandella and
Said, they too believe that this cooperation "may serve as a precedent-setting
example for future relations between the two communities in this country, our shared
country".
And on the ground - new pictures. A group of Israeli demonstrators
joined a civil demonstration in Ramallah last Saturday. Last Friday
in the village of Rantis near Tul Karem, I watched, bewildered, about
200 Israelis - youth along with old veterans - demolishing with their
> > > bare hands the stone-and-ground battery erected by the IDF. They know that
as soon as they leave the liberated road, IDF bulldozers will reconstruct the barricade.
Still, they look happy. Because they know that they too will be there again.
They know that they will be there for the only
future worth living
- a future based on basic human values. Because the choice gets clearer every day. What
was until a short while ago the lunatic right-wing of the Rehavam Zeevi school, is now
becoming the political center. 'Ha'aretz' of March 23 reports a conference of about 300
"prominent personalities from the core of Israel's political and defense
establishment" - the center of the center. The conclusions of the forum were solemnly
presented to the president of Israel, and what they suggest there is the
transfer-solution: "It will be necessary to find some place for resettlement outside
the State of Israel (perhaps to the east of the Jordan) for the Palestinian population of
the territories".
Israeli Arabs would be deprived of their
citizenship by "transferring
them to Palestinian sovereignty." The state's resources should be
invested in "fostering quality" that is, in the "strong population",
and not in the "non-Zionist population", which includes "Arabs,
ultra-orthodox Jews and foreign workers", whose natural increase is
a source of concern.
This is the other way, and it is not far away.
The USA has approved
of Israel's plans, Europe and the Arab League will look the other
way. No international protection for the Palestinians will happen
of its own. The eyes of the world can be opened and its imagination
excited only by the people of the two nations - like in South Africa. |
