THE IMPERATIVE OF CHANGING THE TERMS OF REFERENCE in dealing with the situation in Palestineو By: Dr. Noha Khalaf

 

PART 1

22 May 2021

THE IMPERATIVE OF CHANGING THE TERMS OF REFERENCE in dealing with  the situation in Palestine (PART 1)

By: Dr. Noha Khalaf

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".

* Palestinian ex ambassador and researcher in strategic and international affairs. - khalaf.noha@gmail.com

PART 2

25 May 2021

The imperative of transforming strategic concepts and philosophical mindsets by exchanging old biased allies with  a different set of  reliable allies (Part 2)

By: Dr. Noha Khalaf

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.

* Palestinian ex ambassador and researcher in strategic and international affairs. - khalaf.noha@gmail.com