Election Similarities

The results of the Palestinian elections are pretty disturbing. As poor a choice as Fatah is, voting in Hamas not only destroys the legitimacy of a fledgling democracy but does not bode well for peace talks or stableization. Hopefully the humanitarian and militant wings of Hamas become autonomous entities like Sinn Fein and the IRA; the alternative is a return to the heights of intifada. If Israel decides to continue its policy of assassination against terrorist leaders and kills an elected member of Palestinian parliament – an act of war by international standards – the results could be disastrous.

Quote by Tim:

The results of the Palestinian elections are pretty disturbing. As poor a choice as Fatah is, voting in Hamas not only destroys the legitimacy of a fledgling democracy but does not bode well for peace talks or stableization.

If anything, the election of Hamas demonstrates, not destroys, the legitimacy of the democracy. The election was free and fair according to international observers. Hamas has been given a clear mandate.

As Ryan points out, you can’t cast aside the legitimacy of democratic elections just because someone you don’t like is elected.

The truth is that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been dead in the water for years, mainly as a result of Israeli intransigence and failure to live up to its international obligations, although the ineptitude of Arafat’s leadership has certainly compounded the hardship of Palestinians.

There are a few important things to keep in mind when analyzing the Israeli-Palestinian situation. First, we are awash in propaganda:

Zionist propaganda is active, highly organized and widespread; the world Press, at any rate in the democracies of the West, is largely amenable to it; it commands many of the available channels for the dissemination of news, and more particularly those of the English-speaking world. Arab propaganda is, in comparison, primitive and infinitely less successful: the Arabs have little of the skill, polyglottic ubiquity or financial resources which make Jewish propaganda so effective. The result is, that for a score of years or so, the world has been looking at Palestine mainly through Zionist spectacles and has unconsciously acquired the habit of reasoning on Zionist premises.

That was written in 1938 by the eminent historian George Antonius and is no less true today.

Second, Israel holds the cards and always has. Unquestioningly supported by the US and most other Western nations and armed to the teeth (including, illegally, nuclear weapons of mass destruction), Israel is in full control of the situation, as their iron-gripped occupation, going on almost 40 years now, has clearly demonstrated.

Third, there is a simple solution to the entire problem: Israel abides by UN Security Council Resolution 242 and withdraws from the occupied territories to it’s pre-1967 borders. This isn’t rocket science, it’s a simple solution agreed on by the international community. Under the Geneva Conventions, it is illegal to transfer a civilian population into a territory acquired by war. This means Israel’s policy of creating and populating settlements in Palestinian territory is a war crime.

Finally, it is hypocritical and counter-productive to demand Palestinians renounce violence without calling on Israel to do the same. Hamas’ tactics, including suicide-bombings, are vicious, especially so when they are directed at Israeli civilians. But Israel is just as brutal as Hamas, and the death toll on Palestinian civilians, which has always outpaced that of the Israelis, is clear evidence of this.

Tim wrote, “I don’t mean it destroys the legitimacy of the democratic process, but that the government is now viewed as illegitimate – or at least not worth dealing with – by much of the Western world.”

If the Western world refused to deal with governments that use violence to achieve their objectives, then the UN wouldn’t exist. In the real world, many organizations resort to violence.

I don’t approve of violence as strategy or tactics; I’m not sure how I feel about the “just war” hypothesis, but I know damn well no wars waged in recent years have fit a reasonable set of “just war” criteria.

However, I do believe in using a single standard of ethics when evaluating different political entities. Hamas uses violence to achieve its objectives; I believe this is ethically objectionable. Israel uses violence to achieve its objectives; I believe this is ethically objectionable.

Before you try to draw a false distinction between “terrorism” and “self-defence”, kindly recall that Ariel Sharon, the Prime Minister of Isreal who recently suffered a stroke and remains in hospital, was personally implicated in the slaughter of between 460 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees during the 1982 Lebanon War when he was the Israeli Minister of Defense. Despite its limited scope, the Kahan Commission, established by the Israeli government to investigate the massacre, concluded:

We have found, as has been detailed in this report, that the Minister of Defense bears personal responsibility. In our opinion, it is fitting that the Minister of Defense draw the appropriate personal conclusions arising out of the defects revealed with regard to the manner in which he discharged the duties of his office – and if necessary, that the Prime Minister consider whether he should exercise his authority … according to which “the Prime Minister may, after informing the Cabinet of his intention to do so, remove a minister from office.”

As Ade points out, the Israeli government is guilty of straightforward war crimes for annexing land captured during war, building and maintaining settlements (a practice that continues to this day), performing acts of “collective punishment” by razing whole neighbourhoods to the ground when they are suspected of harboring suspected terrorists, conducting extrajudicial assassinations, even on foreign soil, and so on.

When Israel kills civilians, even though this is a predictable result of Israel’s actions, it is dismissed as “collateral damage”, as if the conscious decision to commit acts of violence that result in civilian casualties is somehow not terrorism. The simple fact is that there are two sets of rules: one set that deems the Israeli government “legitimate” and Palestine “illegitimate”.

Overheated rhetoric about “moral equivalence” is just intellectual sleight of hand to draw attention from the essential similarities of two groups each justifying acts of violence against the other.

Hi Tim,

I didn’t mean to suggest you were defending Israel’s tactics or accusing me of moral equivalence; I just wanted to present a, um, pre-emptive response to anyone who did so. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

As for your contention regarding Hamas’s policy of genocide, I share your concerns. Hamas is an extreme group with a violent mandate, and it remains to be seen whether political power softens their appetite for extralegal violence.

I regard the majority vote for Hamas to be an act of desperation and even despair by the Palestinian electorate. They have suffered through two decades of the “peace process”: the proliferation and growing of settlements, the construction of a wall that cleaves their communities in two, encroaches on their farmland (ironically, one of their few sources of productive labour), targeted assassinations, aerial bombing sorties, and the humiliation, destruction, and death of collective punishment as whole neighbourhoods are bulldozed into rubble.

Suicide attacks against Israelis notwithstanding, the Palestinians are the losers in this struggle, with no country, no power, no prospects, and little hope for the future. At the high water mark of the “peace process” in 1998, Ehud Barak offered a fragmented bantusan comprising several non-contiguous blobs of land with no air or water rights and no free passage through the intervening Israeli territory. Arafat rejected the offer, walked away from the talks, and provoked, either deliberately or incidentally, an uprising of violence that has yet to subside fully.

Here’s an ugly fact: terrorism tends to be a successful means of wearing down an occupying government until it loses the political will to remain. Essentially, it is a means – possibly the only means – of raising the price of occupation until its benefits are no longer worth it. It worked for the ANC in South Africa; it worked for Hazbollah in Lebanon, it worked for the IRB in Ireland (and sort of worked for the IRA in Northern Ireland). It even worked for the separatists in the British Colony of America, whose anti-colonial tactics would certainly be regarded as terrorism today.

Another fact is that time is an equalizer. If the occupation lasts long enough, the terrorists discover and exploit weaknesses in the occupying power’s offensive and defensive systems. Before the end of Isreal’s occupation of Lebanon, for example, Hezbollah insurgents were able to blow up Israeli tanks with homemade bombs. For now, the Great Fence around Israel is keeping terrorists out, but it’s only a matter of time before someone finds a way to breach it.

For Israel, the benefits of the Palestinian occupation include water rights (extremely valuable in a heavily populated, hot region with little fresh water), a buffer zone between itself and its often-hostile neighbours, and a chance to impose some discipline on former residents who are still resentful decades after being displaced.

In many ways Israel’s national identity is tied up in its long, painful history of survival and internal cohesion against the abuses and transgressions of its hostile neighbours, a tragic history that continues to this day. This is another benefit of the occupation: a concrete way to preserve Isreael’s integrity and historical continuity from the dis-integrating forces of history.

One tragedy (among many) is that Israel and Palestine aren’t able to see past their mutually exclusive land claims to the history of repression and subjugation they both share. Unfortunately, that history has tangled in such a way as to make this connection difficult to make, let alone sustain: at one time or another, each group has been responsible for repressing and subjugating the other, and both have clearer memories of their roles as oppressed than as oppressor.

Now, for the first time, Isreal has the power: a vigorous democratic political system, a solid industrial base, a well-educated public with a high standard of living, a vast, powerful, and well funded military apparatus (including hundreds of nuclear weapons), and the unwavering support – moral, financial, and military – of the world’s most powerful nation. Coupled with its collective memory of repression and abuse, Israel’s newfound power and status all but beg to be employed in Israel’s protection.

Hence, the impasse.

One one side, a country with a long memory of abuse, ever-fearful of random acts of terror in the sanctity of homes or the shared realms of civic places, the fresh sting of regular threats to wipe it off the face of the earth or drive it into the sea, and the power to defend itself.

On the other, a culture trapped in a dark age, physically and politically oppressed by Israel, exploited by its own ruling class, abandoned by its other neighbours (except when they want to use it as a rhetorical tool against Israel), caught up in a religious hysteria that turns on violent self-sacrifice while providing a source of pride in a world of humiliation, despairing of peace, so desperate for a self-determination that it will elect terrorists to represent its aspirations.

On both sides, the real fear of dis-integration and destruction provokes responses drawn from the worst of human behaviour. Those very fears, and the tangled relationship of the two groups, prevent them from seeing beyond their particular situations to the larger unifying human experiences that might otherwise bridge the gulf and allow each a chance to identify with the other’s plight.

There are three possible resolutions: a two-state solution, the total destruction of one or both sides, or a unified single-state solution.

I honestly don’t think a two-state solution will ever really work, despite its popularity among observers. It is the physical, structural embodiment of us-vs-them, a tragic human dynamic with no future and no hope for peace. Neither can I imagine the horror of obliteration, although Hamas obviously can, and I expect many Israelis can as well (though their official policy does not endorse this).

That leaves a unified state that welcomes mutual acceptance and respect. I must admit the prospects for this arrangement are poor as well. How does one learn to trust one’s enemies? How, when such an arrangement depends on consensus and the actions of a single violent dissenter can bring the whole enterprise to a crashing halt? This may be the most tragic fact of all: that peace would be so easy to achieve but is nearly impossible to reach.

Ade writes, “Personally, I think the current situtation, far from being an ‘earthquake’ for Israel, could work out quite well from their perspective.”

I recently read an essay by professional contarian Gary North that made a similar argument for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad viz. America. North points out that Ahmadinejad “has positioned himself as the Middle East’s preeminent nose-tweaker of the United States,” largely because he benefits whether or not the US responds. If America does launch attacks, “Iran instantly wins the legitimacy sweepstakes.”

Ditto Israel, which holds most of the cards in its ongoing occupation of Palestine.

On a different tack, the January 28 New York Times had an interesting op-ed on America’s hypocritical approach to elections in countries it doesn’t like.

The article contrasts President Bush’s message to Iranian voters (the election “ignores the basic requirements of democracy”) with his message to Iraqi voters (“Your destiny is in your own hands”), but its logic applies to the election in Palestine as well. The author concludes, “boycotting semi-democratic elections ultimately will not make such a system more democratic.”

Having democratic institutions certainly helps. I’m wary, though, of any idea that hints at the old colonial adage that the savages need (and want) a leader who rules with an iron grip. We’ve heard that before, in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Regarding the Israel-Palestine issue, perhaps this is the heady wind of the blogosphere again, but I fail to see why it has to be so complicated. It’s a turf war, plain and simple: the Jews took a bunch of land, and the Palestinians want it back. The Israelis are still taking land, and that upsets the Palestinians.

That’s not to say there weren’t some good reasons why the Jewish people wanted a land to call their own, the Holocaust certainly ranking as #1. The unfairness of expelling the Palestinians from their land aside – by rights, the Jews should have been entitled to a large chunk of Germany instead, with some parts of France thrown in for good measure to make up for the Vichy regime – Israel is where it is, and it has the right to exist. None of this is the fault of Israeli children, and they deserve to grow up in safety and peace just like Palestinian children do.

At this point, the Palestinians have been getting screwed so hard and for so long that I really think if Israel were to withdraw to it’s pre-1967 borders – or even just give up most of the land it has taken, allow the Palestinians to have a contiguous chunk of land and rights over air and water access, as well as everything else that comes with proper statehood – Palestinians could live with it.

Would this solution be fair to the Palestinians? Well, nothing short of giving them back everything that was taken from them is fair – but history cannot be rewritten. But a solution that is negotiated in good faith by both sides, with both sides but especially Israel willing to make compromises (let’s not forget who is the occupier and who is the occupied), could work.

Show a child a cake and tell her that two people want to eat all of it, and she’ll tell you to divide it up the middle, giving each half. Unfortunately, no one seems interested in simple, fair solutions – instead, we get convoluted agreements that are intentionally vague, fundamentally unfair, and ultimately not followed.

Where is Solomon when you need him?