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Changing the terms of
reference when thinking and talking about Palestine, requires first to break
down all the myths that have been produced by the Western colonial mind in
order to present a distorted narrative about what really happened in
Palestine and what is still happening today.
The main problem, I believe
is not only in the mind set of the West which has always adopted
and supported the Zionist colonial narrative, but especially in the pervasion
of their terminology in the Palestinian narrative, particularly in the three
decades that led to a lopsided peace process.
The United States, attempted
to transform the original Palestinian revolutionary mindset and narrative
even prior to 1982, when the Palestinian leadership was still establishing
its headquarters in Beirut.
A very interesting document
published by "The Washington Institute for Near East Policy"
in 1988, just after the first Palestinian Intifadah in 1987, was entitled
"building for peace: A PRESIDENTIAL STUDY GROUP ON U.S. POLICY IN THE
MIDDLE EAST" and drew its legitimacy from being a bipartisan document
written by a panoply of strategic thinkers and politicians from both American
parties, some being well know rightist hawkish thinkers like Laurence
Eagleberger while others known to be more moderate like Walter Mondale.
This document started to be
largely diffused among the Palestinian leadership in Tunis at the time, with
some of them considering it a god- sent creative blueprint for action and an
optimistic road map for the future peace process.
Several poisonous concepts
were introduced in that document among which referring to the dominant
features of the Arab-Israeli environment "an intractable communal
conflict, a potentially dangerous inter-state conflict and a regional
leadership unwilling or unable to take the risks necessary to make a
negotiated settlement possible. The inter-communal conflict between
Palestinians and Israelis, manifested in the uprising, has now become a
chronic problem, rendering peacemaking both more urgent and more
difficult".
The document added that:
"Previous administrations have developed four basic principles, proven
effective in negotiating peace between Israel and Egypt, which we believe
should continue to guide American peacemaking: The legitimate rights of the
Palestinians should be secured through direct negotiations. The principal
participants in the negotiations must be Israel, Palestinian representatives
and Jordan. Any Palestinian participant must accept UN Resolutions 242 and
338, renounce terror and recognize Israel's right to exist. There should be a
prolonged transitional period in which the intentions of the Palestinians to
live in peace with Israel and Jordan could be tested. Once all the parties
are ready to accept these principles, active American diplomacy will become
critical in helping them negotiate a settlement. But the conditions for
reaching agreement on these principles simply do not exist in the current
environment. The first task of U.S. diplomacy is to lay the foundation upon
which negotiations can be built. This will require the next administration to
Focus on three elements: - Encouraging the Emergence of a Responsible
Palestinian Leadership. For nearly ten months, the Palestinians have
demonstrated a willingness to resist Israel but they have not yet shown an ability
to convince Israelis that they are ready to live in peace. They need to
produce a leadership capable of clearly communicating and delivering on a,
commitment to coexist in peace with Israel. The PLO has repeatedly failed
this test, but in this environment, it would be a mistake for the next
administration to retreat from its conditions - acceptance of UN Resolutions
242 and 338, renunciation of terror and recognition of Israel's right to
exist - and send the signal that something less might be acceptable."
In the framework of this
present article, it is not possible to refer to all the political terminology
used in this document but suffice it to say that it has greatly influenced
the Palestinian Leadership who had been waiting since 1982 for a sign from
the USA to engage in a peace process similar to that engaged by Egypt and
Israel in 1979.
In November 1988, six years
after the murderous siege of Beirut, and during the 15th of November
Palestine National Council, the "Declaration of Palestinian Independence"
was proclaimed and several UN Resolutions were reiterated and accepted such
as UN resolution181. This happened only 3 years before the Madrid process and
5 years before the lopsided OSLO accords.
It is evident that the 1988
a American document influenced highly the minds of the Palestinian leadership
who started to transform themselves into a moderate leadership to be acceped
by the USA while renouncing the concept of "terrorism" as imposed
which unconsciously and paradoxically constituted the false assumption by the
Palestinian leadership that the previous Palestinian legitimate revolutionary
process had in fact been "terrorist".
The situation today has
changed dramatically, but in a positive way for the Palestinian resistance
and the Palestinian people in general and it is a waste of time to continue
using imposed UN and US terms of reference when talking about Palestine.
A diplomatic stance and the
use of a lopsided terminology is not possible anymore, whether on an
academic, media or political level.
Speaking of “two states”
based on the Oslo process, or even on the basis of an ineffective
international legality does not stand anymore. Speaking of two peoples or two
"communities" sharing the same land should be replaced clearly by
referring to the relation between an armed occupier imposing itself on an
armed Palestinian population for over 73 years.
All the political jargon
that has been imposed on the Palestinian people by a western and imperialist
set of mind bent on supporting and promoting the Zionist racist
expansionist state created by them in the region, while camouflaging
historical truths, has to be relegated to the dustbins of history.
Violence against the
Palestinians has not only been physical: assassinating them, imprisoning them,
uprooting them, stealing their homes throwing them out of their villages,
transforming them into poor refugees for over seven decades, but has also led
to subjecting them to moral and psychological terror for years in order to
twist and pervert their narrative, in order to overthrow not only their
geography, but also their history.
Although Palestinian
refugees have witnessed the 1948 Nakba or "catastrophe" which
has left them homeless and drowned them in poverty, know the real story,
along with Palestinian historians who have investigated the crimes
committed against Palestine and its people, still all western academia basing
itself on western and imperialist dominant ideology continues to
deny the real plight of the Palestinians’ multiple and complex tragedy, while
only reiterating the tragedy of the Jewish people which no one denies, but
which has also been created by the West, which is still using its
guilt complex towards the Jews, in order to transform their original
victims, into armed monsters exercising the same old methods of genocide and
ethnic transfers and perpetrating hundreds of
"shoahs" against the Palestinian people.
Moreover, not only has
historical truth been camouflaged by the supporters of Israel but a new set
of concepts has been developed by the so called objective international
institutions and by some intellectuals, constantly inventing hypocritical
concepts trying to save Israel and its Zionist ideology on one hand, while
forcing the Palestinians to accept the unjust status quo and denying their
own narrative.
This moral violence which
has been multiplied against the Palestinians since the launching of the
lopsided peace process between Egypt and Israel in 1979, culminating with the
Oslo accords in 1993 has caused tremendous damage and harm on the legitimate
moral resistance of the Palestinian people and their identity, which must not
be underestimated, nor neglected by Palestinian thinkers and historians.
These accords were justly criticized by the late thinker Edward Said as
having transformed the wretched Palestinians into "consenting
victims". These accords have been exploited to the full by the Zionists,
viewing Palestinian concessions as a sign weakness leading them to reinforce
their clout and their seizure of Palestinian lands while encouraging the
building of more settlements and increasing their aggressiveness and
arrogance, while continuing their criminal ethnic cleansing and seizure of
Palestinian lands. The last example being their plan for the seizure of the
Cheikh al Jarrah Arab quarter in Jerusalem as part of their general strategy
to stop the Palestinians from establishing their capital in Jerusalem, in
conformity with the latest Trump’s administration “Deal of the Century”
declaring Jerusalem as the eternal capital of the Zionist state while moving
the US Embassy to Jerusalem. This deal which is in fact a deal between
crooks, falsely calling it "the normalization" of relations between
a number of Arab Rich Gulf states and the Zionist entity, whereas in fact it
constituted an "abnormal" twist in middle Eastern history, since
most Arab and even ‘third world’ states had refused to have even normal
diplomatic relations with the Israeli state before 1992.
The concept of
"coexistence" between a colonized people and an armed military
colonial outpost in the Middle East composed of a terrorist army calling
itself "Israel" is not possible anymore. In fact It has never been
possible, despite all attempts to impose such a vicious coexistence since the
Oslo Accords, while depending on the 73 year old "international
legitimacy" unjustly given to this entity since 1948, in an era which
had not yet been transformed into a post colonial one and in which many
states had not liberated themselves from the old colonialism which was still
plotting to reorganize its hegemony under a new masked face.
Changing the terms of
"political reference" imposed by the United States and supported by
"international legitimacy" concerning Palestine is long overdue.
The change in the stance of
the Palestinian resistance which has evolved recently makes the
destabilization of the Zionist military outpost and all of this old
terminology possible today and dreaming of the "impossible" as has
been expressed by in the historical meeting between Edward Said and Mahmoud
Darwish, now both gone, where they both referred to the
"impossible" dream, reveals that their dream can today come a
reality.
For almost ten days, Israel
has been bombing Gaza massively killing innocent people, as well as shooting
demonstrators in all Palestinian cities in the West Bank, as well as in all
the Palestinian cities that were occupied in 1948 and which are referred to
diplomatically but falsely as "mixed" cities whereas Israel has
been in fact treating the original arab Palestinian population as second
class citizens while using all devious methods to transplant their original
arab culture by an imposed Israeli imported culture, an imposed hybrid
"mixed" identity.
The academic terms of
reference must change if we want to have a truthful debate about the
whole Palestinian situation. Terms still used today such as
reducing the colonial situation into one referred as an internal protracted
communal conflict, from wgich emerges the distorted concept of "Mixed
cities" whereas the truth is that these cities, like all of Palestine
reflect a relation between a colonizing and colonized population subjected to
an "apartheid" system, on the original inhabitants, which were also
referred to for years simply as Arabs and not Palestinians since 1948.
Biden should really reread
his history before calling the aggression that Israel is launching a
"self defensive" campaign against unarmed civilians whom he still
refers to a "terrorists" while implying that the present conflict,
which is inclusive of all the Palestinian people is simply a conflict between
"Hamas" and "Israel" in a continuous attempt to break the
unity of the Palestinian people, with the old vicious colonial dream of
"divide and rule".
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The Palestinian resistance has achieved an unprecedented victory in its
latest valiant battle with the Zionist military forces of occupation.
What is vital today is the upgrading of this victory in political terms,
especially through a transformation in strategic thinking, in order not
to fall back within the treacherous traps of past
prejudiced so called ‘peace brokers’ who have failed the test of
history and whose methods have always aimed at ‘breaking Palestine piece
by piece’, while engaging once again in step by step diplomacy, with the
hope of reversing Palestinian achievements, instead of seeking a
global and just peace through the liberation of all Palestinian lands from
the military grips of the Zionist army of occupation.
One has therefore to be constantly skeptical about any real change
occurring in the strategic thinking of major arab political and research
centers, which are still revolving around western and classical diplomatic
concepts, with their bunch of brokers still believing
that only money and reconstruction will resolve the 73 year old Palestinian
plight without any real moral or ethical attempt leading to the
long awaited liberation for Palestine , the only path to the alleviation of
all regional problems. Even the term ‘Brokers’ whether honest or dishonest,
should be dropped from our vocabulary, since a broker is usually someone
seeking personal benefit from a deal, whether it is called ‘the Deal of the
Century’ or ‘the Oslo Deal’. The US, their European, and Arab allies, have
been incapable for decades to find a solution to the ‘Palestinian
problem’, that is in case they have not contributed to make it worse, and
this for various reasons which have to be deconstructed if Palestine is to be
liberated from the violent inhuman Israeli occupation.
In order for the Arab and Palestinian mindset to be transformed, in view
of a viable future for the Palestinian people with the achievement of all
their rights, above all the need to liberate all their lands allowing for the
return of all Palestinian refugees and members of their worldwide
dispersed populations , it is imperative for them to seek out for other
international partners and allies, outside the traditional old western
pro- Zionist circles and their Arab regional allies, which have always been
the fastest in jumping at the Palestinian scene with promises of financial
support, to push for their agendas which in fact aim at saving the Zionist
occupation, especially after every Palestinian successful battle, as we
can observe today.
Unfortunately, the real and genuine international strategic allies of the
Palestinian Liberation Movement, are much slower in moving at the front
scene, but are surely working behind the scenes to solidify Palestinian
achievements, while the poisonous ‘primacy’ of the United States functions
with the logic of ‘rapid diplomatic forces of intervention’, backed
financially by all its rich Gulf allies who have
normalized with the Zionist entity.
The main reason, for the West’s long time support
for Zionist ideology, as we well know is due to the fact
that the Zionist entity, having been their precious original creation,
has been acting as their proxy in the region, while poisoning the lives
of millions of people inside and around Palestine for 73 Years. The other
main deep rooted cause, which makes the US and its allies incapable of
achieving any peace, is their ‘military mindset’ when dealing with world
conflicts, given that they are the main producers and suppliers
of military equipment around the world, functioning as commercial arms
sales ‘brokers’ benefiting, since their economy is based on profits from arms
production, dominated by what the past American president Eisenhower
has referred to since decades as the “the military
industrial complex” in the following terms: ‘In the councils of government,
we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether
sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the
disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.’
The other international allies and partners which the Palestinian
decision makers should seek out to replace their old ‘brokers’ are
mainly China, Russia, Iran along with a great number of revolutionary pro
Palestinian nations scattered around the globe. It is up to the Palestinians
to seek a positive and strong strategic alliance with these allies, instead
of sliding back into a lazy and opportunistic dependence on the Western
powers to propose and impose their failed solutions.
The Palestinian people have been very fast, active and efficient in
facing the murderous forces of occupation, with their bare chests and have
accepted the high price of death, martyrdom and homelessness. It is time for
their leadership to follow their example by rejecting all attempts to
benefit from what they call cease fires, but which in fact aim at short
circuiting the process of Palestinian resistance, and this implies the
strategic rejection of all the past imposed terms of reference based on the
hegemonic deep rooted military mindset of the USA and Zionism.
The power of such a military mindset persists until this day and as
a distinguished Russian Strategic thinker Andrey Kortunov has observed
about the doings of the Trump administration, in his 2018 speech entitled:
‘Politics as the continuation of war by other means?’ saying: “On the
surface, we can see that the role of the military in formulating and
implementing foreign policy is growing throughout the world. Look at the key
figures in the Trump administration: never before have there been so many
senior military officers in the White House. Even the Brookings Institution,
a purely civilian establishment, is headed by a retired general. And which
has the more influence over U.S. policy in Syria and Afghanistan, the
Department of State or the Pentagon?”
What is most pertinent in Andrey Kortunov’s strategic and
philosophical analysis is made clear through the title of his essay:
‘Politics as the continuation of war?’, which is an attempt to reverse the
classical and international accepted famous definition of ‘war’ as being ‘the
continuation of politics by other means’, coined by the prominent German
Prussian military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz around 200 years ago, and
which remained for years a major concept influencing Western and
world strategic thinking..
Actually a few decades ago, the famous French philosopher, Michel
Foucault, expressed the same idea saying: “we can invert Clausewitz’s
proposition and say that ‘politics is the continuation of war’ by other
means...the role of political power is perpetually to use a sort of silent
war to reinscribe that relationship of force, and to reinscribe its
institutions, economic inequalities, language, and even the bodies of
individuals. This is the initial meaning of our inversion of Clausewitz’s
aphorism—politics is the continuation of war by other means.”
The essential difference between these two contradictory concepts:
‘Politics as a continuation of war by other means’ and ‘war as a continuation
politics by other means’ might not be clear at first hand, but in fact when
dealing with the colonial set up in Palestine , the precept of ‘politics as
the continuation of war by other means ’ should be kept in mind since the
Zionist entity is a military bastion, referred to as a ‘garrison’ state, was
built on violence and terror, with all of its ‘politics’ no matter
how it is called, whether democratic or apartheid, can only be a
continuation of war, since as a nuclear military outpost armed to the
teeth, the ‘Zionist entity’s strategy cannot but be based on war,
never able to transform itself into a peaceful ‘political’ entity. Similarly
the United States with its military mindset will never be able to
transform itself into a peace loving state seeking a long standing peace in
the Middle East.
The original idea of ‘war being the continuation of politics by other
means’, is still adopted by the West which, when dealing with a protracted
revolutionary war of liberation as in the Palestinian case ,
views battles as passing phenomena which seek to achieve some
partial political goal, followed by a new set of ‘peaceful’ negotiated
settlements, in view of achieving a win-win situation for both occupier
and occupied, aiming at some kind of forced violent coexistence, while
forgetting that liberation from a colonial settler apartheid occupation
is an irreversible uncompromising process.
Andrey Kortunov, in his reference to Clausewitz’s definition has
stated that “two world wars have made people think that politics should not
actually be continued on the battlefield. Alternative, predominantly
diplomatic instruments of politics gradually relegated war to the footnotes
of history – or, at the very least, it appeared to many that this was what
was happening” but he adds “It seems that this situation is beginning
to change now. War, with its own internal logic, special mentality,
principles and priorities, is beginning to penetrate the fabric of global
politics with ever greater intensity. Clausewitz’s formula is beginning to
work in reverse, with ‘politics being the continuation of war by other
means’. This victory of war over politics and diplomacy cannot but cause
concern about the direction in which the modern world is going”.
Kurtonov adds “The aim of war is to cause maximum damage to the
adversary. Here, too, we are observing the military mentality advancing on
the political mentality. The introduction of various sanctions is a classic
example. It is clear to everyone that, more often than not, sanctions do not
cause any changes in the behavior of their target, especially when it comes
to unilateral sanctions. Nevertheless, the world continues to resort to them;
in fact, sanctions are turning into a universal instrument in the foreign
policy toolkit and are largely replacing traditional diplomacy. But all
this, however, is just an outward manifestation of ‘war’ infringing on
the domain of politics. Much more serious is the nascent expansion of a
militarized mindset into the civilian aspects of global politics.”
Kurtonev adds “One more manifestation of military logic dominating
political thinking is manifested in the fact that, in recent decades, great
powers usually win the wars but lose at peace. Material, political and
intellectual resources for waging wars are surprisingly easy to find, whereas
peace building resources are universally scarce. Humanity is prepared to
bankroll wars but not peace. This was the case in Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq,
Libya and many other places. The same fate may befall Syria. We keep falling
into the same trap of having no weighted and realistic strategy for
extricating ourselves from crisis situations, adding that’ while
‘Foreign policy is historically the art of discerning 50 shades of grey
in a black-and-white image. ‘War’, for its part, does not tolerate shades. It
is a zero-sum game, and if politicians increasingly perceive the world
as a global battlefield, then they inevitably begin seeing it in black
and white’. Reflection and introspection are no longer an option”.
Finally, in our opinion, it seems clear that the pervasion of the logic
of war is what explains the persistence of the military occupation of
Palestine since 1948, no matter how many attempts have been made by the
strong military and political powers to look for different shades and
options, while trying to embellish the ‘black’ side of occupation with
a ‘rosy’ political jargon, unfortunately reiterated by
international organizations and institutions, also controlled by these
same powers, constantly eroding the moral and ethical concept of
‘ legitimacy’ by having recognized from the very start, an occupying
power based on terror as a ‘normal’ state, while persisting in calling
today the relationship of the Zionists with their new Gulf allies as a
process of ‘normalization’, which is an attempt to create an optical
illusion by calling an abnormal and inhuman situation as ‘normal’, which
means imposing the logic of ‘war and aggression’ as a ‘normal’process.
It seems today that the philosophy of war developed by Kurtonev
applies exactly to what is happening in Palestine. I would like to add in
this context that many Soviet and presently Russian strategic
thinkers are of the same caliber as Kurtonev who reflect constantly on
global security issues, within prestigious institutions. Unfortunately their
ideas have been ignored by Arab politicians whose mindset has always
preferred to deal with hypocritical and vicious thinkers, like
Kissinger, and hawkish Zionist ideologues such as Bernard Lewis, Samuel
Huntington and Lawrence Eagleberger while dealing on the
political level with the likes of Martyn Indyk, Dennis Ross and
recently with the mediocre Jared Kushner (to mention only a few such
notorious politicians).
Of course language, has been a barrier for arab strategists, inhibiting
their understanding of other strategic thinkers, whether Russian, Chinese
or Iranian, since the colonial Anglo Saxon heritage has not only
influenced their thinking but also installed in them a feeling of
cultural inferiority when dealing with the West.
While it is perhaps difficult at this point, to communicate with
Chinese strategists due to the cultural and language barrier,
it is clear that China’s alliance with Russia has been
strongly consolidated in recent years, with Russia fulfilling
more the diplomatic and political role of this alliance, especially in
dealing with the Arab Region where the Russians have a longer
diplomatic tradition based on historical and geopolitical proximity.
While Chinese and Russian intervention in the Palestinian present
situation might appear more passive, yet their positions have been made clear
on the international level, while Iranian logistic support and influence
on the Palestinian Resistance has been more prominent and successful.
At this point, it is also necessary to note that before 1982, several
research centers in Beirut had started to develop some kind
of elaborate strategic thinking. But the destruction of this
momentum, by the Israeli 1982 war and siege of Beirut, led to years of
political wandering for the Palestinian resistance, which
ended up falling into the trap of a mediocre and failing peace
process.( as shown in part 1).
This present study deals mainly with revealing the poverty of Arab
strategic thinking and the future dangers incurred due to the persistence of
their mindset. It should not be considered as an apology for Russian or
Chinese strategic thinking . It simply calls for a reconsideration of
Palestinian strategic options today, especially that we still unfortunately
hear Biden and his allies, coming out with their old jargon using the
same obsolete terms that have been used in previous conflicts with the aim of
pulling the Palestinians back to a failed peace process , with some
analysts pretending that Biden’s policy is that of a pure ‘savior’
caring for both ’sides’ while insisting on Israel’s ‘defensive posture’, and
this in contrast, with that of the ‘cowboy’ methods of his predecessor Trump.
This is not the first time that the Palestinian resistance has led
victorious military battles,(the list is too long), while unfortunately
the political increments and achievements have been eroded so
many times by the so called peace ‘brokers’.
The resistance movement has been launched recently by a much better
trained and well equipped military leadership, supported by its regional
allies and has been supported by all the Palestinian people, who are
waiting to put an end to the belligerent military occupation of
Palestine.
Moreover, all Palestinians today are optimistic that the present
revolutionary steadfast leadership with the support of their regional
allies, will lead them to a total and final victory by strategically
avoiding to fall into the old traps and deviationist illusionary
pretenses of support used by their many pro Zionist declared and undeclared
enemies.
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