Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope

 

 

Yousef Munayyer:  Today’s event is a book talk and it is named for the title of the book, Palestine the Legitimacy of Hope and of course we have copies available here for you to check out by Richard Falk, who’s Professor Emeritus of International Law and practice, Princeton. He’s a distinguished legal scholar and he recently completed his term as UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestine. With Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope he has powerfully illuminated the transformation of the Palestinian struggle over recent years into a struggle for legitimacy similar to that pursued by all the anti-colonial movements of the 20th century. He also was an Edward Said Memorial Lecturer here at The Palestine Center in 2009. So, we’re very happy to have Professor Falk here with us today to speak about Palestine:  The Legitimacy of Hope.

Richard Falk: Thank you all for coming and I thank The Palestine Center for inviting me to talk a bit about the thinking that underlies the book which derived from my blog, really and was made into a coherent volume by a very dedicated and talented editorial effort by the publisher. An effort that I probably wouldn’t undertake on my own had I realized how big it was but having done it, I’m glad it’s been done.

Let me say a few things as a matter of background about my own understanding of Palestinian national struggle. In my view, it’s gone through four rather overlapping phases that are important to understand because I think it underscores the way in which the struggle now is unfolding and in a way these remarks of mine are trying to justify the title, The Legitimacy of Hope, because if you adopt the kind of realist perspective that is so prevalent among political leaders, one would have to say the legitimacy of despair, because if you consider the continuous encroachment on Palestinian rights by way of the settlement expansion, the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the general drift of Israeli internal opinion, I think symbolized by the election of the most recent president, Reuven Rivlin, who is a life-long exponent of a one-state Israeli solution, and the fact that he was selected by the Knesset despite the opposition of Netanyahu, in that context seemed like… it’s hard to say even, relatively more moderate, in at least, openly or blatantly endorsing what I would call the maximalist Zionist vision.

This is the culmination of the Zionist project, is the claim to establish a Jewish state that encompasses the entirety of historic Palestine. And this new precedent has throughout his career as a political figure, has openly endorsed that solution. Interestingly, he combines that with a view that is very critical of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. He’s way to the left of Netanyahu in the terms of internal policy. He favors dismantling the separation wall, getting rid of the checkpoints, making life on a day to day basis much more reasonable for the Palestinians, so all they’re expected to do is give up their political aspirations, and in exchange they would have a “normal and economically decent life” within the territorial scope of a Jewish state. It’s a very increasingly accepted as an outcome of the conflict by Israelis internally. Either through this kind of explicit sort of claim or implicitly as a de facto reality that arises through the continuous annexation of land in the West Bank, which as you know, even at the ‘67 borders, only represents 22 percent of historic Palestine and has been abridged continuously even ever since 1967. Not only by the settlements, but by the network of roads associated with the settlements and land that’s set aside for so called nature preserves, military, security purposes, plus the wall and the territory surrounding the wall.

So this is a major development in my view of a negative character and as I say if I were a strict realist, the title of my book would be “The Legitimacy of Despair: From the Perspective of the Palestinian Struggle.” But, I’m not a realist, so I chose a title that is, in keeping with my understanding of reality. Even though I’m not a realist, I do try to understand what is real.

In that setting, I think it is important to understand these four phases of Palestinian national struggle. The first phase was the effort of the Arab neighbors to reject by force the imposition of any kind of Zionist political reality or political entity upon Palestine and specifically to prevent the establishment of a state of Israel and once the state was established to attempt to eliminate it by force of arms. So, the initial wars were not wars carried on by Palestinians, but by the Arab countries, neighboring countries that took upon themselves this idea of regional solidarity in reaction to what was perceived as a European colonial solution to the so called Jewish problem. And that led to the wars, 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. And intermingled with this effort to prevent the permanent presence of the Israeli state, was the wider anti-colonial drive that was perhaps best embodied in Nasser’s Egypt and its effort to nationalize the Suez Canal and eliminate the vestiges of European colonialism in the region.

And as we all know, this first effort at resolving the Palestinian ordeal, was unsuccessful, was a failure. The Arab military capabilities proved no match for the Israeli capabilities and the 1967 outcome in particular had a very strong effect here in the U.S., both in the Jewish community and in the government, particularly the Pentagon Intelligence Services. Because, prior to ‘67, there was a sense that Israel was a strategic liability because of the importance of oil and friendly relations with the oil-producing countries, particularly in the Gulf, and their hostility to the whole idea of establishing a Jewish state in the midst of the Arab world. But what the 1967 war conveyed was the strategic capabilities of Israel as a partner in the region and especially with the demonstration that despite all the weaponry that Saudi Arabia and others had, they were not really a very significant military player in the region. This view of Israel’s strategic importance was reinforced by the Iranian Revolution in 1978-1979, which meant that Israel and some degree Turkey were the only strategic allies that had military capabilities in the region and that could uphold not only Israeli security, but the security of the Gulf and the oil reserves.

So this period that started really in 1948 with repudiation of the UN partition plan and continued in one form or another until the 1973 so called “Yom Kippur War” represented the first phase and it was succeeded by a second phase that really involved the focused embrace by the Palestinian leadership of a national liberation struggle based on armed resistance, armed liberation, imitating in its explicit models were the role of Vietnam in opposing the United States. It’s interesting in the career of Edward Said, that he was awakened to the Palestinian struggle by the defeat in 1967 and had that sense that he could no longer turn away to devoting himself to a professional career but it was incumbent upon him to participate as a Palestinian in the struggle for Palestinian national liberation. It was a period of I think hopefulness on the part of the Palestinian people, partly because they were taking ownership of their own struggle. If what is at stake in the end is self-determination, it is very important that the self be actively engaged and not be sort of a passive beneficiary of what the Arab countries in the region might do. And it was in this period also that the PLO and the Palestinian National Council adopted in 1988 what should have been a breakthrough to achieve a sustainable peace for both sides. They accepted the legitimacy of Israel as a state in the region and they accepted the 1967 borders as the basis for a Palestinian state. This is an extraordinary gesture toward peace by the Palestinian movement that has never been appreciated, much less, reciprocated because what it did really was to say the Palestinian movement will live with 22 percent rather than the 45 percent that the partition arrangement that the UN had endorsed and had been found unfair and unsatisfactory in 1948.

In other words, it was relinquishing even that kind of more equal partition in favor of accepting the realities that resulted from the Israeli success in their so-called War of Independence. And this national movement of liberation relied on armed resistance. It was an effort to use what violent capabilities were at the disposal of the Palestinians and it’s in that context that of course they were characterized as a terrorist organization and a terrorist movement which I think never represented the reality of their resistance although some of the tactics certainly were associated with any plausible definition of terrorism but at every stage, in my view, Israeli state terrorism far exceeded Palestinian terrorism from below, if one wants to distinguish terrorism from below and terrorism from above, which is I think an important distinction. Of course, states including the U.S. try to reserve the terminology of terrorism for those who act against the established order and not use it as it should be used to focus on violence against civilian innocence. Whoever uses violence against civilian innocence is engaged in what I think, should be characterized as a form of terrorism, certainly as a war crime. This effort at national liberation was also successfully thwarted by the Israeli security capabilities and by casting the PLO as a terrorist organization, it was able to command for itself the high moral ground in the struggle and portray itself as the victim rather than the victimizer.

This effort at national liberation was also, successfully, thwarted by the Israeli security capabilities and by casting the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) as a terrorist organization it was able to command for itself the high moral ground in the struggle and portray itself as the victim rather than the victimizer. This led to two parallel developments, as I say – they are not strictly in a temporal sequence. The first was the Intifada of 1987, which was the beginning of the shift in the Palestinian struggle from a governmentally organized movement to a civil society generated resistance and liberation undertaking.

This was paralleled by the move toward a diplomatic approach to resolving the conflict – the so called, Oslo approach in 1993 – which, again, referring to the interesting trajectory of Edward Said’s perception of the issue, had the exact opposite effect of 1967. He prophetically understood the 1993 Declaration of Principles and the famous handshake on the White House lawn as tantamount to a Palestinian surrender. And he took this view on the basis of the failure of the Palestinian leadership to even assert their rights of national self-determination, their willingness to accept a diplomatic framework in which, the United States would be the intermediary – despite it’s undisguised partnership. It’s a very flawed framework where the ally of the stronger side has the mediating role – it’s a guarantee that the weaker side will be blamed for any failures to achieve the desired outcomes. But what was most flawed in the Oslo approach was the exclusion of international law from the diplomatic process because the one area where the Palestinians hold a clear, systematic advantage is in relation to the international law interpretation of the main issues in conflict. Whether it’s the status of refugees, or Jerusalem, or water, or borders. All of the settlements, of course, all of these issues – the wall, the day-to-day practices – objectively perceive – from an international law point of view – are extremely favorable to the Palestinians. And for them to accept a diplomacy that excludes these issues can only be understood either by their naiveté or by their weakness – or some mixture of the two things. It was in this context where Said and others were very critical of Arafat saying that the only path to peace was through the American White House and his deference to Washington was accounted, or was partially accounted, for the fact that he was willing to accept this very one-sided form of diplomacy, which, interestingly, American liberals greeted as a great breakthrough because it brought the PLO in from the terrorist cold and it seemed to create a path that would lead to a solution of the conflict.

So you, ironically, have Said turning toward the Palestinian struggle in ‘67, where it apparently suffered a terrible defeat, and turning around from it in 1993, when it seemed to be having a political victory. And in both cases, I think he chose the right path in doing this. What has happened with this inter-governmental diplomacy has not been a neutral failure because what’s allowed Israel to do is consolidate its control over Jerusalem and extend the settlement phenomenon and the Palestinian situation on the ground is ever worse. The unlawfulness has not only been overlooked, but the American political leaders have said that this creates a new foundation for what Palestinians can reasonably expect. You may remember George W. Bush’s famous exchange of letters with Ariel Sharon in 2004, in which, he in effect said the settlement blocs would, of course, be part of any part of resolution of the conflict and that Palestine would have to somehow get some land in the desert to overcome the land that was given up – which was the best land in the West Bank, actually – for the settlements. Hillary Clinton referred to this kind of unlawful accretion of Israeli claims as subsequent developments that must be incorporated in the diplomatic process.

Whenever the Palestinians became brave enough to raise it in the negotiation process, they were told, this obstructs the peace process. Wait until the final stages and negotiations are completed and then those questions will be appropriate, but in the meantime, don’t talk, don’t create waves by raising these issues. When you do that, in effect, you’re saying that diplomacy is a bargaining process and that makes the disparities in power the decisive element in achieving some kind of agreement – and that of course, was what Israel and the U.S. sought to achieve. Not a sustainable and just peace, but a peace that the Palestinians would be forced to swallow – a peace that is unjust and unsustainable, probably.

The second Intifada, for instance, was as much a message to the PLO leadership not to swallow some kind of inadequate understanding of Palestinian self-determination as it was a reaction to Israel’s oppressive occupation.

The fourth and to me, decisive, phase of this long conflict is the civil society momentum that started with the two Intifadas and has grown, especially, in extension to a global solidarity movement that centers on the BDS campaign – which is important to know was initiated by a call from 170 Palestinian civil society organizations back in 2005. It is, in my view, expressive of the political aspirations and will of the Palestinian people better than the former leadership in Ramallah or any kind of governmental entity – neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority can speak with authenticity on behalf of the Palestinian people.

Increasingly, it is recognized that the civil society orientations do provide a clear understanding of what could, in the end, provide a realization of Palestinian rights under international law and under international morality.

And the other thing that I wanted to say about the argument of the book is that if you look at the way in which conflicts, political conflicts, have been resolved since World War II – in the Global South, or the Middle East, Asia, Africa – the side that wins is not the side that controls the battlefield. The side that wins commands the heights of morality and law. It’s a mysterious assertion and it contradicts what was true before 1945 where, military power was the primary agency of history, but since 1945, the primary agents of history has been people, not military weaponry. And that’s an anti-realist lesson that neither Israel nor the United States have learned. It was the lesson that the U.S. should have learned after the Vietnam War, where it controlled every dimension of the military conflict and had total domination of the battlefield, and yet, lost the war. So how did that happen? How it happens is that the advantage of an indigenous population is it’s patience, it’s national resolve, it’s resilience in the face of being able to absorb enormous losses that the intervening or dominating side usually can’t handle. The Afghans have a proverb: “You have the watches, you have the time.” That’s a very instructive proverb.

There was a conversation between an American counterinsurgency colonel and his Vietnamese counterpart shortly after the Vietnam War. The American said to the Vietnamese, “You know you never beat us on the battlefield”. The Vietnamese response was, “You are correct, but it is irrelevant.”

It is irrelevant because of this quality of indigenous nationalism being able to absorb pain in ways that foreign interveners are not and not to lose it’s political will to persist in its pursuit of its aspirations. I think that this is where the Palestinian conscience has been moving toward and it’s what enabled the South African anti-apartheid movement to succeed against the odds, also. It recalls a little bit the often-quoted Gandhi statement, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.” It is the path of these struggles in the last 75 years, where the aspirations converge with the sense of legitimacy of what was being demanded.  That sense of legitimacy didn’t exist previously, nor did the sense of entitlement exist previously. Really, the non-Western peoples learned from the West, the legitimacy of national liberation. This template, I think, is a source of hope for the Palestinian struggle and people applies only in situations of foreign domination or foreign intervention. It doesn’t apply to national movements of oppression that are autocratic in their character. For instance, Tibet doesn’t win or Chechnya doesn’t win. The Egyptian people don’t win because they are essentially being suppressed by their own leadership, by elements of their own society. But to the extent that the Zionist project is seen as a foreign intervention, and of course, everything about it, legitimated in events that were either colonialist or European in their character, makes it the primary instance of an unresolved colonial struggle. It’s not a pure colonial struggle, but none of them were all together pure – particularly, the struggles of settler colonialism of the sort that existed in South Africa, where there was no home country to retreat to.

How this development plays out – under what conditions will Israel recalculate it’s interests in such a way as to be ready to make a sustainable and just peace – is of course, one can’t foretell. In my view, two essential moves Israel would have to make. One is releasing Marwan Barghouti from prison. He is not Nelson Mandela, but he would have the capacity to unify Palestinian people and would be a symbol of that shift in determination on Israel’s part. The other part would be to accept the original conception of the Zionist project, which was to establish a Jewish homeland, not a Jewish state. The move from homeland to state is a crucial move that has made the attainment of any kind of sustainable agreement extremely difficult. I am told that my time is up and I must be obedient to our hosts. Thank you for your patience and I welcome your questions.