{"id":15871,"date":"2012-02-23T08:04:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-23T04:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=15871"},"modified":"2012-02-23T08:20:52","modified_gmt":"2012-02-23T04:20:52","slug":"israel-palestine-and-the-intellectual-square-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/showcase\/israel-palestine-and-the-intellectual-square-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel-Palestine and the Intellectual Square Circle"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can do a \u201cnumber\u201d on intellectuals. \u00a0It can whipsaw them from left to right and back again.<\/p>\n

\n

Benny Morris is an example of an intellectual who was mugged by the disturbing realities of the conflict during the Intifada, and who lost any hope that the Palestinians could be reasoned with. \u00a0As a result, he\u2019s turned into a caricature of his former self. \u00a0Instead of a tough, probing, precise historian who marshaled facts and allowed them to dictate his rather disturbing conclusions when he was a founder of the New Historians, he\u2019s become a transferist who believes Ben Gurion didn\u2019t do a good enough job of ridding the new State of those who represent the seeds of its destruction.<\/p>\n

\n

Sari Nusseibeh represents a Palestinian example of the pre-eminent intellectual who seems to have become unnerved in a fundamental way by the conflict. \u00a0An early supporter of a two-state solution and collaborator with well-intentioned Israeli peace crusaders including, at one time, Ami Ayalon, Nusseibeh has just published a new book offering some astonishing proposals for ending the conflict.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In\u00a0their probing review<\/a>, Avner Inbar and Assaf Sharon (the leader of the Sheikh Jarrah protest movement) note that Nusseibeh has retreated from politics altogether in favor of a moral construct that posits supreme power to individuals to overcome the obstacles that have prevented healing. \u00a0Though he still wavers on whether a two-state solution is still possible, he favors a different model: a one-state solution\u2026of sorts.<\/p>\n

In this state, he would offer the Palestinians of the Territories full civil rights, but no political rights. \u00a0This will be an instant non-starter for anti-Zionists who argue quite correctly that justice demands immediate and full rights for both Israeli Jews and Palestinians in this single state. \u00a0But it\u2019s worth trying to understand his thinking. \u00a0First, he understands the enormous fear and opposition the one-state idea will have in the eyes of Israelis. \u00a0They will fear the end of their cherished notion of the Jewish state. \u00a0The Palestinian political philosopher believes that he can short-circuit a good deal of this by reassuring the Israelis that those millions of new Israelis will not threaten their political control of the State.<\/p>\n

To the Palestinians he argues, Abbas and Hamas have gotten you nothing but promises and talking about talking about this mythical Palestinian state. \u00a0Meanwhile, the Israeli bulldozers erase our patrimony with every load of dirt they dig to build new settlements. \u00a0Looking all around them they are ringed by such seemingly immovable, immutable Israeli\u00a0faits accompli<\/em>. \u00a0Isn\u2019t it time to get something that will allow you to live and prosper, even if it doesn\u2019t offer you everything you want? \u00a0He argues you can continue agitating for the perfect solution while getting nothing. \u00a0Or you can get something approximating a reasonable solution.<\/p>\n

You can see why a two state solution no longer carries any appeal for Nusseibeh. \u00a0What would be left for the Palestinian state? \u00a0A bantustan? \u00a0How could East Jerusalem be a true capital of a Palestinian state when it is completely cut off geographically from the rest of what would be Palestine by these huge encroachments of settlements?<\/p>\n

But Inbar and Sharon correctly raise the terminal weakness of the argument for divorcing civil and\u00a0political\u00a0rights. \u00a0They can\u2019t be separated. \u00a0Civil rights without political rights will eventually become no rights at all.<\/p>\n

Which is why I found\u00a0this Der Spiegel interview<\/a>\u00a0to be interesting. \u00a0In it,\u00a0Nusseibeh\u00a0notes that his proposal for denying political rights to Palestinians from the Territories would be \u201ctransitional,\u201d though he doesn\u2019t define what this means (I have not yet read his book, so I don\u2019t know if he fleshes this out there). \u00a0If we expand upon what it could mean (without necessarily agreeing with his argument), he may be proposing an eventual awarding of full political rights to these individuals. \u00a0I can imagine this going something along the lines of counting Palestinian political votes in the same way African-American slaves were originally counted as a fraction of a person for the purposes of the political census. \u00a0You could increase the proportion gradually over time till West Bank Palestinians had full political rights. \u00a0Yes, I know that this suggestion carries an enormous historical stigma, and once again I\u2019m not arguing for it myself. \u00a0But I\u2019m trying to understand the logic behind it.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, you could delay awarding of political rights to these Palestinians for a period of time (say, ten years) that would allow Israeli Jews to adapt to the change in status that their world and country would undergo.<\/p>\n

The main benefit of Nusseibeh\u2019s ideas, even if they are vehemently rejected by those on both sides of the argument, is that they provoke thought and grappling with ideas in new ways. \u00a0Lord knows, we\u2019ve been grappling with the same old ideas for decades and none have resonated enough to persuade both sides. \u00a0These may not either, but they make you look at things a little differently than before, and that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n

As a Palestinian, Nusseibeh is doing a remarkable and daring thing: he\u2019s telling his audience that Israelis are scared, and that they must be partners in this enterprise if it\u2019s to work in the long-term. \u00a0Just as the Palestinians refuse to allow themselves to be dictated to\u2013so the Israelis refuse as well.<\/p>\n

Personally, I don\u2019t believe any Israeli who rejects the notion that Palestinians\u00a0ever<\/em>\u00a0deserve equal rights in an Israeli state, will come to accept the idea that such individuals deserve such rights at a date certain in the future. \u00a0You might argue that circumstances and reality will persuade such people over time that they must throw in their lot with each other. \u00a0But that\u2019s a rather frail reed on which to build your one-state solution.<\/p>\n

After all, there remains a significant minority of Israelis who believe they would be better off if they expelled ALL their current Palestinian citizens, let alone absorbed millions of new ones. \u00a0I don\u2019t see how even Nusseibeh\u2019s significant concession to them will be persuasive. \u00a0Of course, it would be nice if it would. \u00a0It would be nice if both sides did have something to talk about; if they could offer each other something meaningful.<\/p>\n

Finally, it\u2019s worthwhile remembering this appraisal that concludes Sharon and Inbar\u2019s review, which argues that the Palestinian author\u2019s views are meant to shock people on both sides out of their complacency:<\/p>\n

\u2026His proposal is intended less as a political program than as \u201cshock therapy\u201d aimed at shaking leaders from their complacent intransigence, and the desperation this betrays must be heeded. Nusseibeh used to be one of the staunchest and bravest supporters of the two-state solution. His departure from that position expresses a growing sense of disillusionment and despair among Palestinians, which does not bode well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

NOTE<\/strong>: Muhammad Sahimi and I have co-written an op-ed just published in the Christian Science Monitor,Israeli Iran Attack? What Goes Around Comes Around<\/a>. It discusses the vicious tit for tat terror war between Israel and Iran that could lead to a major misjudgment and war for the entire region. This is my first publication in CSM.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN: Nusseibeh is doing a remarkable and daring thing: he\u2019s telling his audience that Israelis are scared, and that they must be partners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":468,"featured_media":15881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,83,82,171,119],"tags":[7483,8763,11647,5780,227,18306,18311,11135,726,18297,1747,11655,11654,580],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15871"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/468"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}