After Zionism brings together some of the world's leading thinkers on
the Middle East question to dissect the century-long conflict between
Zionism and the Palestinians, and to explore possible forms of a
one-state solution. Time has run out for the two-state solution because
of the unending and permanent Jewish colonization of Palestinian land.
Although deep mistrust exists on both sides of the conflict, growing
numbers of Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Arabs are working
together to forge a different, unified future.
Progressive and realist
ideas are at last gaining a foothold in the discourse, while those
influenced by the colonial era have been discredited or abandoned.
Whatever the political solution may be, Palestinian and Israeli lives
are intertwined, enmeshed, irrevocably.
This daring and timely
collection includes essays by Omar Barghouti, Diana Buttu, Jonathan
Cook, Joseph Dana, Jeremiah Haber, Jeff Halper, Ghada Karmi, Antony
Loewenstein, Saree Makdisi, John Mearsheimer, Ahmed Moor, Ilan Pappe,
Sara Roy and Phil Weiss.
"Nothing will change until we are capable of imagining a radically
different future. By bringing together many of the clearest and most
ethical thinkers about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, this book gives
us the intellectual tools we need to do just that. Courageous and
exciting." --Naomi Klein
Antony Loewenstein is an Australian journalist, activist and blogger.
He is the author of two bestselling books, My Israel Question and The
Blogging Revolution. He has written for the Guardian, the Nation,
Huffington Post, Haaretz and other prominent publications. He lives in
Sydney, Australia. Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American journalist,
blogger and activist. He has written for the Los Angeles Times,
Huffington Post, the Guardian and Al Jazeera English. He is currently
pursuing a master's degree in Public Policy at Harvard University's
Kennedy School of Government.
See also
Ahmed Moor
Source: Amazon &
In Books
Book Launch in London:
Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor will discuss their new book ‘After Zionism’ at SOAS on Wednesday August 22 (6.30pm , Khalili Lecture Theatre). Chaired by Frank Barat.
Book Launch in Palestine
Palestine News Network: Book Review
Journalists Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moore have succeeded in
putting together an impressive collection of essays in their new book
After Zionism: One State For Israel and Palestine.
The essays all focus on the shift that is now taking place in many
people's thinking about the Israel-Palestine conflict: from the
two-state paradigm to the emerging one-state mode thinking. The essays
cover a lot of ground both historically and politically and comprise a
mixed bag of views, sometimes divergent, that are sure to spark much
needed debate about the future of the conflict. With the fallout from
the PA's UN Statehood bid fading and shifting dynamics across the region
this book couldn't have come at a more important time!
The content covers a lot of ground. For instance, Ilan Pappe
contributes a chapter to the Nakba and its legacy as it haunts the
conflict today. There are essays here on American Jewish identity
(Philip Weiss), the Oslo process (Dianna Buttu), joint struggles in the
West Bank (Joseph Dana) and two attempts at outlining how a one-state
solution could work (Jeff Halper and Ghada Karmi). As well as chapters
on the development of Zionist thought as well as an analysis of Israel's
discriminatory land laws.
The quality of the essays varies and given the depth and breadth of
the book and so reviewing all of them is beyond the scope of just one
review. In order to be brief I will only address a portion of the book's
chapters that concern themselves with advocacy. The chapters that are
historical and literary in nature, which are dynamic and well worth
reading, I will leave aside.
-
The two-state solution is dead, announce the books contributors, and
it is time to start approaching alternatives. The alternative, the
editors write in the book's foreword, is the one-state solution. The
feeling amongst many is that the basic conditions that need to be
addressed in order to bring a just peace to Israel/Palestine – the
return of refugees, full and equal citizenship for Palestinians within
Israel's borders, the end of the occupation – cannot be fulfilled by the
two-state solution.
Editor Ahmed Moore, a young Palestinian-American journalist who's
writing on the Middle East has appeared across outlets throughout the
world and who consistently brings fresh insights into often-stale
debates, pens the first chapter of the book. He recounts his earliest
experiences of College life and the struggle to express a Palestinian
identity. He writes eloquently about the Zionist narrative in American
politics and its capacity to distort history and marginalise
Palestinians, citing the latest string of slurs by Republican candidates
claiming Palestinians don't exist. Reflecting on his return to
Palestine and finding his old neighbourhood Al-Ram partially depopulated
by the annexation wall he declares that he has borne witness to the
death of the two-state solution. This narrative is a familiar one for
many young Palestinians who have lived abroad and then returned to their
home to find it deracinated by the occupation.
This thinking is heading in the right direction and is broadly
representative of a growing number of young Palestinians and Israelis.
But the shift from the idea of a two-state solution to the one-state
solution is not as easy to make as many of the contributors to this
anthology assume. The usual thinking is that there are so many
settlements that we should by-pass the idea of a Palestinian state and
head straight for one state.
However, people need not see two states as a be all and end all. One
can view a two-state settlement (note: not solution) as an intermediary
stage toward a one-state solution. So the establishment of a Palestinian
state need not be the end of the struggle. In fact this may be a
necessary step toward a bi-national solution, which seems more feasible
given the nationalisms that are by now firmly ingrained in both
Palestinian and Israeli societies. Moore inadvertently touches upon this
point perhaps without fully grasping it. He writes at the end of the
chapter:
"It is very likely that before the one-state solution is fully developed, the Bantustan option will be established in the West Bank. But the Palestinian struggle will continue despite that."
The logical follow up to this question is if a two-state settlement
isn't the end of the struggle then why not factor that in to advocacy?
Why not see a real (not a bantustan option) two-state settlement as only
an end to the occupation and to the fighting before proceeding to push
toward a one-state solution after that?
This I think is a weak point of the Palestine solidarity movement as
it stands today. The one-state/two-state debate is conducted entirely
upon the dichotomous view that resolving the conflict must occur in one
swoop and could not possibly move through phases.
Saree Makdisi is similarly guilty of this logic in his contribution.
His chapter waxes lyrical about the power of symbols, the imagination
and the realm of ideas to bring about a one-state solution without
bothering to assess the harder problems of the conflict - those of
nationalism, ingrained identity, time frames and public opinion. Instead
he dismisses critics such as Mouin Rabbani as simply not being
imaginative enough.
Countless arguments can be in made in favour of the moral superiority
of the one-state solution and the moral poverty of its two-state
counterpart. That these arguments show the moral superiority of the
one-state solution is beyond doubt. However, what is more difficult, as
Ghada Karmi writes in her essay, is marking out a strategy from how to
get from the current dismal state of affairs to the end-goal of a single
state. Karmi briefly runs through the various formulations of both the
two-state solution and the one-state solution and argues that each one
on the table is inadequate and then proceeds to present her path
forward.
Her solution? Voluntarily annex the Occupied Territories to Israel
and force it to accept full responsibility for the Palestinian
population thus clearing the decks for a civil-rights style struggle
effectively ending Zionism which, upon its victory will create a single
secular democratic state in historic Palestine.
In her own words:
"Key to this new strategy is the idea of a voluntary annexation of the Occupied Territories to Israel, thus transforming the struggle against occupation into one for equal civil rights within an expanded Israeli state"
And that:
"Faced with such a situation, it is difficult to see what Israel could do. At one stroke, the Palestinians would call Israel's bluff over the peace process and its unrelenting colonization, which has benefited so well from the protracted and futile peace talks to date"
This approach calls for giving Israel the keys, so to speak. But
there is a very serious problem with it. Namely, that Israel doesn't
want the keys and sees no reason to take them. The Palestinian Authority
also won't dissolve itself. Quite the opposite actually since the PA
has recently shown itself willing to use armed violence in order to put
down any challenge to its control. After all it is a collaborationist
clique and has a job to do. So the strategy is a non-starter.
Jeff Halper is heading in the right direction. He offers a refreshing
approach to the problem in his chapter. Seeing the insurmountable task
of convincing an Israeli and International public to run with the
one-state solution straight out, Halper advocates a two-stage strategy
for meeting the requirements of a just peace, which he argues include
the return of refugees and economic and environmental sustainability
amongst others. The first step is to end the conflict along the lines of
a two-state settlement (note: not solution) which would 'meet "the
Palestinians' requirements for national sovereignty, political identity
and membership in the international community". The second stage is for
the international community to broker a "regional confederation among
Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon". This would ensure the
economic and environmental sustainability of both Israel and Palestine.
But what about the refugees? Halper argues that since "They could
choose to return home to what is today Israel, but they would do so as
Palestinian citizens or citizens of another member state". This would
nominally mean that both Israeli and Palestinian nationalism would
survive.
There is a lot to be said about the argument since it sensibly
recognizes that the solution to a conflict that has now been roaring for
more than a century will actually have to come in stages, even if it is
only two stages, since there is no instant solution currently proposed
that is both moral and practical.
Having said that the idea of a regional confederation is quite
convoluted and relies upon other nation states, such as Syria, Lebanon
and Jordan all agreeing to it and consistently enacting policies that
push the development of the confederation forward. As Halper himself
notes, Israel sees itself as a kind of Singapore, a wealthy and cultured
nation amongst a sea of antitheses. For this reason many Israelis would
not accept being part of a confederation with Arab states. Convincing
them might not be an insurmountable task though and would certainly be
more achievable than coercing them into abandoning zionism.
That said, a confederation need not encompass all of the countries in
the region, rather it could be between the two nations Israel and
Palestine, which would lay the groundwork for integrating to two and
eventually dissolving the already artificial borders.
-
The best elements of the book are the breadth of vision and
creativity that Halper and others present, as well as the razor sharp
analysis of Saray Roy, the leading academic specialist on Gaza, who uses
her chapter to trace the changing dynamics in the region.
The low points of the book on the other hand come when it is derivative and clichéd.
Omar Barghouti, who is fast becoming the most recognizable face in
Palestinian solidarity today, attempts a philosophical treatise as his
contribution to the book. It reads like a pretentious attempt at
literary theory and sticks out like a sore thumb between the magnificent
Zionist myth-debunking chapter by Antony Loewenstein and the honest but
misguided one-state strategy of Ghada Karmi mentioned above. The crux
of Barghouti's essay is that through assessing the power relations
between various theoretical constructs such as ethnic identity and
zionisation we come to the conclusion that a secular, unitary,
democratic state of Palestine is the morally superior way to end the
conflict.
The worst aspect of Barghouti's chapter is its tendency toward
armchair philosophy. By ignoring the obstacles that exist in reaching a
one-state solution he conjures up the sort of thinking suitable of any
coffee shop revolutionary. One particular instance of this is his
careless dismissal of bi-nationalism on the grounds that it doesn't gel
with UN Resolution 194. He doesn't explain why. Instead he just asserts
the point and leaves his reader guessing. He also leaves many of his own
questions unanswered but they aren't worth pursuing here.
By addressing the question of ethnic and national identity at a level
of abstraction his philosophizing is entirely ignorant to the long
history of violence that has resulted from forcing different ethnic and
religious groups to assimilate into one another within state borders.
For somebody who has claimed that there is nobody as violent as 'the
white race' Barghouti seems to have forgotten that Europe was for
several hundred years the most violent place on earth due in no small
part to the concerted attempts to forced different ethnic, religious and
national groups into the narrow confines of the nation state (usually
for the benefits of capital).
A second drawback to the book is that certain clichés of the current
political discourse are never properly examined. The term Bantustan,
which is used at the core of Dianna Buttu's essay and appears frequently
in the chapters of the other contributors, is all too common amongst
activists and commentators of this conflict.
The reason this concept becomes problematic in Palestine is because
the intention of the Israelis is different from the intention of the
Afrikaners. The intention of the Bantustans was the maintain
segeregation and a flow fo cheap back labour. This was because black
South Africans made up the overwhelming majority of the workforce and so
they couldn't bare to part with them. However, the intention of the
Israeli occupation is, as Moshe Dayan said when the occupation first
began in 1967, to make the Palestinians live like dogs and if they want
they can leave (the crucial word being
leave). The goal is to
drive the Palestinians off the land – ethnic cleansing. The goal is not
to keep them on the land and use them as cheap labor like the Afrikaners
did.
It is not that there aren't glaring similarities between the two
situations. Of course there are. But terminology has a point to it and
if it is misleading, distracting or both then it won't advance one's
argument anywhere and in fact bogs it down in moslty pointless debates
about historical similarities and dissimilarities.
There is one crucial similarity to South Africa that isn't often
mentioned but that is instructive nonetheless. And that is the role that
the US played in propping up the Apartheid regime even after it was a
pariah state. The is happening with Israel.
The lack of attention paid to US Imperialism and the role that has in
shaping America's policies of hegemony throughout the region is a
definite shortcoming in all of the chapters. For this reason it would
have been worth, in my opinion, including a chapter on America and
Imperialism/Anti-Imperialism as it relates to the Middle East since this
is a crucial determinant in whether the conflict will even end at all
let alone end in one-state of two.
The omission of any analysis of this relationship also gives the
uninformed reader the impression that Israel is a lone ranger of sorts
and in control of its own foreign policy.
It is not.
Israel's policy must fall in line with US policy since Israeli is wholly dependent on the US for survival.
This incorrect framing has damaging consequences for advocacy since
it distracts people's attention away from US support for Israeli crimes,
without which such crimes as the blockade of Gaza, occupation of the
West Bank and settlement enterprise could not occur.
-
These criticisms aside there is a lot here that will breath new life
into a stale debate. All in all this is an ambitious book that captures
at the right time the paradigm shift that is happening within debates
about Israel-Palestine. Its contributors consist an all-star lineup of
commentators and scholars who have played a prominent role in shaping
public debate and the chapters mostly reflect this. The breadth of the
book is ambitious and, the criticisms that I've raised aside, it is
quite comprehensive. The editors state in the introduction that
naturally they do not agree with everything in the book's diverse
chapters and so the book itself is really a debate.
Where will the debate lead? How will the Palestinian national project
respond? Only time will tell. But this collection is bound to have an
impact one way or the other.
Source
PNN
