The delicate balance
Thursday, 18 June 2009 19:32
Ghada Karmi
For many, Barack Obama's speech in Cairo last week was a breath of fresh air. It seemed to lay out a clear vision for transforming American relations with the Arab world from traditional exploitation and paternalism to mutual respect. At the heart of it was his determination to tackle the Israeli-Palestinian problem. Welcome sentiments, even if marred by the ritual Western obeisance to Jewish feeling -- he reiterated America's unwavering support for Israel, spoke of Jewish suffering in Europe and insisted on Israel's "right to exist", which he exhorted Arabs to recognise.Yet the thrust of the speech was along promising lines. But will Obama now follow through on what he has started? To bring real change to the Middle East he will need to bring the policy he has started towards Israel to its logical conclusion. He has rightly demanded a halt to Israeli settlement expansion, relaying this message to Israel's prime minister and affirming it in his Cairo speech. Already, though, there are signs of faltering. Reports say that America will soften the pill for Israel by asking Arab states to normalise relations with the Jewish state ahead of substantive peace moves on its part, which is entirely the wrong approach to take.
A significant coincidence: Obama's policy speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds in Cairo took place on the eve of the anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. On 5 June it was 42 years since Israel's victory and its occupation of surrounding Arab land. Its seizure of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, completing its takeover of the whole of Mandate Palestine, dates from then. This cataclysmic event created two realities that have damaged the Palestinian cause and frustrated all subsequent efforts at resolving the conflict. First, it set the parameters for all future Arab-Israeli peacemaking efforts. Second, it gave Israel the overweening arrogance and sense of invincibility that has only grown with time. The indulgences showered on Israel by the US and its allies over the last 40 years bolstered these feelings, granting Israel impunity for its actions that no other state in history has enjoyed
The indulgences showered on Israel by the US and its allies over the last 40 years bolstered these feelings, granting Israel impunity for its actions that no other state in history has enjoyed
UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed in November 1967, called for Israel to end its occupation of Arab land in exchange for peace. In so doing the resolution implicitly legitimised Israel in its expanded, post-1949 borders, although these had also been acquired through war. It also confined the area of conflict to the post-1967 territories. It suggested, by implication, that if Israel's occupation ended the problem would be solved. This thinking has permeated all proposals for solving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, and has led to the present squabble over dividing West Bank territory.
Obama's recognition of the 1948 roots of Palestinian dispossession, and his sympathy for the refugees, do not alter this fact. He is still wedded to the primacy of a Jewish state on Palestinian land, without seeing any contradiction between this and the Palestinian "dislocation" he spoke of. He still envisages a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, and accepts Israel's evasion of responsibility for the refugee issue and its occupation of the 1948 territories as essential ingredients of any peace process. The only price required from Israel for this magnanimity is a withdrawal from the land it illegally seized in 1967 and has since illegally occupied. In practice, this condition has already been watered down in proposals about the West Bank settlement blocs being annexed by Israel, and by talk of land swaps. Likewise, Jerusalem's legal status, of huge importance to the Arabs, is clear in theory but ambiguous in practice.
This emphasis on the post-1967 origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a major cause of the current impasse: the larger, unresolved conflict over Israel's initial 1948 seizure of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the majority of Palestine's people is lost; instead the parties are bogged down by quarrels over percentages of 1967 land and the future of settlements. A more important cause, however, is Israel's unassailable military and diplomatic dominance over its neighbours. This supremacy has been assiduously cultivated by successive US administrations since the time of president Nixon. Israel was consciously armed and supported so it would have the edge over the Arabs. This was explicable in 1969, when America was principally concerned with the Cold War and Israel was a valuable regional proxy. That time has passed, but the value accorded to Israel has not. It receives the latest US weaponry, has been allowed to build a nuclear arsenal, and shares sensitive intelligence and advanced technology with the US. The concept of a strong Israel has become US dogma, unquestioningly followed by all American presidents.
How anyone imagines a situation in which one party to the conflict is denied the justice of their case, the other maintained to be so powerful as to dictate the terms of any agreement, can lead to a peaceful outcome is a mystery. If Obama, who seems to understand this, wants to resolve the conflict, he will need to confront this imbalance and tackle Israel's inflated ego. Once Israel, which has thrived on pretending it is a part of the West, is forced to understand it is in fact a part of the Arab region, questions concerning the equitable division of land, and of justice, can be resolved. Reversing decades of Israeli delusion and changing fundamental attitudes is a tall order. But Obama probably has the stature to do it. And if the hysterical reactions we are witnessing in Israel to his modest moves are anything to go by, he is on the right track. He must not falter now.
Ghada Karmi is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.
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