Though the Israeli lobby often overreacts, its power is greatly exaggerated, including in this post.

Trying to prevent Mousawi from speaking is not, however, an exaggeration in my mind. After all, saying that Hezbollah advocates peace is rediculous. Maybe peace after the destruction of Israel and the subjugation of the Islamic Republic of Palestine (and Lebanon) to radical Shi’ite sharia rule.

Hello Emmanuel,

It is bemusing to read that you consider the Israel Lobby influence exaggerated, yet have no problem in allocating grossly exaggerated religious fanaticism or power to Hezbollah in your perception that they would wish to enact sharia rule. On the contrary, their politics are secular and they attract cross-religious support. Lebanon is a multiconfessional country, and Hezbollah wish to keep it that way, recently entering into an alliance with Aoun, a Christian. As for the “destruction” of Israel, would you deem a reasonable return to 1967 internationally recognised borders a “destruction” of sorts, or really is that hyperbole-speak?

I invite you to show me why preventing Dr Mousawi to speak is permissible–is it something objectionable he’s said? Your subjective opinion that Hezbollah advocates peace being somehow ridiculous has little rootedness in reality. Even if the advocacy of peace by Hezbollah is objectionable (to you), why would you wish to prevent Dr Mousawi from speaking? I should think people can make up their own minds. The claim that Hezbollah doesn’t want peace is an attempt to de-legitimise it. Hezbollah didn’t invade Israel or occupy it. They captured two soldiers—combatants, not civilians— in exchange for just some of the thousands of Lebanese (and Palestinian) prisoners illegally held without charge or trial by Israel. Indeed, Hezbollah emerged as a reaction to Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon, and were successful in forcing Israeli withdrawal in 2000. You should know this.

Palestinian Muslims are mostly Sunni, not Shia, so enacting a “radical Shia sharia” government in the Occupied Palestinian Territories would be pretty difficult.

I support a return to 1967 borders. It is the Hezbollah that doesn’t. They see all of Israel as occupied territory that should become a unified Palestinian State after the destruction of Israel.

“The claim that Hezbollah doesn’t want peace is an attempt to de-legitimise it.”

Of course it is. I don’t see Hezbollah as legitimate and I really don’t understand how an organization that has vowed to keep fighting Israel and never make peace with it can be seen as peaceful.

I don’t want a guy who works for what I see as a terrorist organization going around advocating the destruction of Israel. On the same token, I wouldn’t want someone advocating the killing of all Arabs going around the world and being able to spread his venom.

Arguing about Hezbollah vs. Israel and the last war again won’t bring us anywhere. I think the big question here is whether it is ever legitimate for any group to try to prevent someone from speaking because of what they see as hate speech.

I agree with your last proposition. So my invitation is still there: where is the hate speech? Most groups now support a return to 1967 borders and peace with Israel on that basis, as do you and I, including Palestinian groups, Arab states and organisations. I met with a number of Hezbollah leaders some weeks ago in Lebanon in a party that included American Jews, and which included meeting with Hezbollah’s chief in the South. Their main concern is Lebanon, not Palestine, though they support that cause and the end of the occupation.

This ill-defined “they’re calling for the destruction of Israel” mantra gets rather tiresome and loses its cache. Israel is a fact, let’s now concentrate on establishing dialogue which Israel has refused; on ending the occupation and defining its (1967) borders, ceasing illegal settlements and withdrawing from the West Bank. On all accounts Israel has not done a thing and have in fact worsened their actions. And it professes surprise that rocket attacks continue?

“An old Jewish joke tells of a devoted mother who briefs her son before he sets out to battle”, relates Nehemia Shtrasler in So what have we done to them (Ha’aretz, 19 Dec 2007). “Kill a Turk and rest,” she advises. But the son asks: “And what happens if in fact the Turk tries to kill me?” She opens her eyes wide in surprise: “Why would he want to kill you? What have you done to him?”

I appreciate that you “wouldn’t want someone advocating the killing of all Arabs going around the world and being able to spread his venom.” There is, however, no parallel or equivalency here: Dr Mousawi does not go around the world advocating the killing of any or all Jews.

This caused me to go off and read this interview with Avrum Burg-
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/868385.html
I think the time has come for the discourse on the zionist reality to overcome their frantic opposition- which you neatly document here. Shouting ‘anti-semitism’ at any criticism of a nation states actions is simply ludicrous, the war on terror scam does suit this hysterical demagoguery though, it has reinvigorated the McCarthyite wing unfortunately. But I think their activities bely the truth -that even they realise- they are losing because their postion is so patently dishonest. Maybe not so much among ruling elites and politcal hacks right now, but to many people they are a joke, if/when that feeds into the politcal classes remains to be seen. But as you say NGO’s & civil society aren’t waiting around for that, which is good, certainly the monolithic narrative handed down from on high cannot survive against networks of people talking from truthful experience. Or at least that’s my hope.

This isn’t about the two state solution here, since Hezbollah as an organization doesn’t support it. Hassan Nassrallah doesn’t support it and refers to places like Haifa and Tel-Aviv as settlements in occupied Palestine. Hassan Ezzeddin, Hezbollah’s spokesman, told the New Yorker a few years ago that their mission is to “liberate” all of pre-1948 Palestine and kick out the Jews.

Now, you might say that this is irrelevant since Mousawi doesn’t necessarily share these views. Let’s see what his views are:

“[Zionism is] an ideology that informed the theft of Palestine from its rightful inhabitants who are overwhelmingly Christians and Muslims.”

My interpretation: Israel is illegitimate, and peace will come only when the entire stolen property will be returned to its rightful owners. In other words, when Israel becomes Palestine.

“We don’t want compromises and we don’t want to go again and again to the same vicious cycle every 10 years or five years, where you make a temporary settlement and you end up with another war coming. The roots of the problem, the roots of the cause of the problem, should be addressed.

I agree with the rejection of temporary settlements that disintigrate quickly, but no compromise?!? A permanent settlement can’t be achieved without compromises. When he refers to the roots of the problem he’s hinting that the root cause is Israel itself, and he isn’t willing to accept Israel’s existence, not even grudgingly. I truly doubt a two-state solution would be acceptable to him.

Overcoming zionism = overcoming Israel = the destruction of Israel

How would you feel about someone going around the world calling for the destruction of Australia?

Rick, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I also take hope from the fact that, as you put it well, the “monolithic narrative handed down from on high cannot survive against networks of people talking from truthful experience” and thank Goodness for these networks in civil society.

I’ll have to have another look to see whether Burg’s Overcoming Hitler is now available in English yet. At last check it was only in Hebrew. It should be quite a read.

***

Emmanuel, thank you for considering Dr. Mousawi’s views. There is nothing in fact that I would disagree with in your citation of his words. You appear to have a fatalistic reading into his words where you seem stuck in the groove of always seeing calamity, albeit implied. The root cause is indeed Israel, particularly as the player with the most power (the other ‘player’ is virtually powerless) — to achieve security and peace with its neighbours, the ball is in its court. Jews have always lived in the holy land, yet he is right to point out that numerically, the native Palestinians were mostly Muslims and Christians. The Jews were “rightful owners” too. The difference is that no one group claimed exclusivity and denied their fellow Abrahamic faith, by systemic force, ethnic cleansing and intimidation. Yes, there were a few violent episodes that punctuated otherwise peaceful coexistence, but these were not systemic and programmatic.

Many people don’t now support the two state solution, since Israel has made it nigh on impossible, but that’s another story, the point here is that you again infer a stance that he does not expressly state. Your reliance upon your own alarmist reading of what you think is implied is not, I’d suggest, a sturdy foundation for reasoning.

If in 2008 Australia were based on an apartheid-like system that separated two groups, let’s say the Australian Aborigines, I would be actively advocating and calling for the destruction of this system and the end of this gross injustice. It is not Australia itself that would be destroyed, but this system of injustice, just as South Africa was not destroyed, only the ideological and legal system of apartheid. There are other examples: the USA didn’t just survive after racial segregation ended, it thrived. New Zealand has prospered post-Treaty of Waitangi with its indigenous Maori population.

The world has moved on from what should be anachronistic exclusivist colonial ideologies that posited the perceived superiority and perceived entitlement of one people trumping another: isn’t it time for Israel to also embrace the challenge? If Israel has few friends on the international stage and routinely attracts international condemnation, it is not because of prejudice, but as a direct result of its policies. Isn’t it time Israel acted more as a vaunted light rather than blight upon nations, and recognised its own enlightened self-interest?

Whether or not zionism can be progressive (such as with liberal zionism and groups like Machsom Watch) is a larger question, but what’s wrong with scrutinising the worst aspects of this ideology as Howard Zinn, Joel Kovel and many other leading minds advocate, with a view to indeed overcoming them?

In any case, this is an organic and natural process, nobody is forcing an intellectual movement that increasingly calls for zionism to evolve from some of its quite barbaric and exclusionary ideological underpinnings that depend upon a sustained existential anxiety which views the rest of the world and region in hostile terms, informing its perpetual bellicosity. These are causing Israel nothing but insecurity and are a potential and despicable prelude to causing genocide in the Gaza Strip. That your country’s representatives can actually boast about depriving a million and a half people of basic human rights shows the rest of the world what the fruits of your country’s unexamined ideology are, and the world is really tiring of it. If Israel does not evolve, destruction is already the logical conclusion of its ideologically-informed behaviour calling for war (Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, OPT), and we are all going to be dragged along — no thanks.

Overcoming zionism is not destroying Israel, but not overcoming zionism (in its dominant likud permutation) will bring destruction — to a great many of us, not simply in Israel.

Saying that Likud-style Zionism is the dominant form of Zionism is a distortion of reality, especially when a majority of Israelis support the two-state solution and the government is going in that direction as well. We haven’t done enough to make that solution a reality, but it is far from being only our fault. The situation is much more complicated than a simplistic big bad Israeli Goliath vs. the weak Palestinian David.

Regarding Israel as an apartheid and colonial state: Once the two-state solution is implemented there won’t be any apartheid, since the territories are the only place where there’s any kind of apartheid. There won’t be anymore colonialism either. Inside Israel (which I know you’ll say is a colony itself and I, of course, disagree and neither of us will convince the other one on this point), there are serious problems with discrimination that should be fixed, but they are not apartheid.

“Your reliance upon your own alarmist reading of what you think is implied is not, I’d suggest, a sturdy foundation for reasoning.”

Considering that groups like Hezbollah and Hamas oppose the two-state solution, and he is a member of Hezbollah, I’d say my conclusions are reasonable. If he’d say he’s willing to accept the two-state solution though he’d rather see a one-state solution I’d have no problem with that. I have no reason to believe he’s willing to accept that Israel as a state isn’t going anywhere.

When people say Zionism was a mistake I get pissed but people have the right to say that. It is when people start talking about completely reversing Zionism - the whole thing, and not just the expansionist settler version of it - that I get worried.

Regarding Gaza: Olmert shouldn’t boast. The civilians shouldn’t be the target, since it is both immoral and counterproductive. The target should be Hamas and their rockets. Israel can fight the Qassams in Gaza while moving forward with peace with Abu Mazen. Hopefully, by next month we’ll have a better prime minister than Olmert, maybe Tzipi Livni, who will deal with the whole situation better and more intelligently.

By the way, anti-Zionists are a tiny minority of Jewish Israelis. Also, Avrum Burg isn’t exactly a one-state advocate. He’s disappointed with what’s become of Israel internally, but I don’t think he abandoned the two-state solution.

On the contrary, the Likudniks are not only closest to zionism’s founding programme and intent as outlined by the likes of Jabotinsky, but polls consistently show that the most popular politician in Israel is none other than Benyamin Netanyahu. There is scant evidence for the claim that the Israeli government is doing anything whatsoever in the direction of a two state solution other than paying lip service. Some of the MKs in the Labor Party make the most encouraging noises and they should be commended, along with others, but the ruling Kadima coalition has followed the pattern of dismal failure and outright obstruction. Even Condoleeza Rice recently warned that the “window for a two-state solution” would soon be closing, a prospect that the not insignificant number of those who still want their Eretz Israel could care less about.

We haven’t done enough to make that solution a reality, but it is far from being only our fault.

Actually, it is. The ball is in Israel’s court. The Palestinians can not make any more concessions. They have nothing to give, especially when they are increasingly subject to slow genocide in actions that only increase the cycle of violence. As more and more seasoned commenters are noting, it is Israeli government obstruction and obstinacy that is blocking a meaningful and just resolution.

From the start, and as shown in key military and security doctrines, Israel’s goal has been to weaken what it saw as external enemies among its geographic neighbours, which feeds into the other goal to isolate and weaken the position of the Palestinians. This was deemed a strategic imperative to counter the internal and expressly stated “demographic threat” that is seen as the greatest danger to an ethno-exclusive Jewish state. This would actively involve breaking up its neighbour states, key among them Iraq as we are on the threshold of seeing happen, but also Syria and Lebanon. This is not an aberration, this is at the heart of zionist military doctrine: the destabilisation of the region was posited as a state of affairs that would bolster Israel and cement its regional hegemony.

Just some of the key documents include the infamous 1996 paper entitled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, by Israeli think tank the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies for then Israeli PM Netanyahu.

The paper recommended that Netanyahu “make a clean break” with and reject the Oslo peace process and aggressively reassert Israel’s claims to the West Bank and Gaza, Occupied Palestinian Terroritories. It presented a plan whereby Israel would (re)”shape its strategic environment” throughout the entire region, starting with the overthrow of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

It is not insignificant that these recommendations were made by the major neoconservative figures who later served in the current Bush maladministration, and who set about putting their plan into effect.

Only a decade prior to that we have Oded Yinon’s A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties. As translated by Israel Shahak (The Zionist Plan for the Middle East, 1982), Yinon called for the break-up of Lebanon and other states in the region:

Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the Arabian peninsula and is already following that track. The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target.

And:

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul, and Shi’ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization.

As may have been previously mentioned, the significance of the fact that these are strategic-military doctrines means that they are essentially also political programmes in Israel, often described as a military with a state (rather than a state with a military), and where the military is so revered within Israeli society.

The ideas of the Israel-firster neocons in the United States who have actively sought to create an ideological convergence between Israeli and US foreign policy in the last two decades may also not be shared by the bulk of the US populace, but the point is that they are influential in directing policy because of the position of the officeholders. Oligarchic elite values are not always or even commonly shared by their populaces. It is also worth noting that these neoconservatives who maneuvered into power were called The Crazies in the first Bush administration, again a point I think may have been mentioned before.

The question of the political shift within zionism is also pertinent, with the ascendancy of the Likudniks from the 1970s to the present. In drawing upon Yoram Peri, former advisor to Prime Minister Rabin and European representative of the Labor Party, Noam Chomsky describes this left to right shift thus:

The earlier conception [during the reign of the leftwing Zionists] was based on the search for “coexistence” and maintenance of the status quo. Israel aimed at a peaceful settlement in which its position in the region would be recognized and its security achieved. The new conception is based on the goal of “hegemony,” not “coexistence.” No longer a status quo power, having achieved military dominance as the world’s fourth most powerful military force, and no longer believing in even the possibility of peace or even its desirability except in terms of Israeli hegemony, Israel is now committed to “destabilization” of the region, including Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. In accordance with the new conception, Israel should now use its military dominance to expand its borders and “to create a new reality,” a “new order,” rather than seek recognition within the status quo.

Source:
Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians, updated edition (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1999), p. 462, drawing upon Yoram Peri, ‘From coexistence to hegemony,’ Davar (Labor party journal), October 1, 1982.

This journey into the heart of darkness of Israeli policy and the shift within zionism is not intended to depress you. You naturally would want to look to the future with some hope and faith in the political process and your leaders. It is my contention however that Israel can not collectively prosper peacefully into the future until it comes to terms with its past and present policies. Some things can not be undone, but the ones that can be rectified should be, for Israel’s continued existence to be a peaceful one finally.

First of all, the neo-cons aren’t Israel-firsters, they’re America-firsters. They aren’t the product of Zionism, they’re the product of what they see as America’s best interest, which in their minds coincide with what they see as Israel’s best interests. And for the record, I oppose the neo-cons.

Second of all, Netanyahu may be the most popular politician, and if elections were held today he’d be the next prime minister, but still polls show that a vast majority of Israelis support the two-state solution. Indeed, a contradiction, but when Israelis see Hamas taking over Gaza they freak out and turn rightward.

Even Netanyahu rejected the report he got from the American neocons. Though he said Oslo was a mistake he did continue negotiations with the Palestinians and signed the Wye Plantation agreement.

Oded Yinon suggested a plan that Israel never actually used. In the 1982 Lebanon War there were two objectives: getting rid of the PLO and regime change. The war was wrong, especially the part about regime change, but it wasn’t this “five province plan” you suggest. Israel never tried to break any other country either.

Of course the Likud is closest to Jabotinsky - he was the founder of Beitar, which later become Herut, which later became the major component of Likud. Zionism has always had different views.

Israel, and especially the last two prime ministers, haven’t done nearly enough to promote the two-state solution, but things are moving in that direction. Israel should do much more, starting with getting rid of the settlements that are illegal even under Israeli law and transfering more of the West Bank to Palestinian control. But as I’ve said before, it is far from being only our fault that things are stalled.

By the time I answered your comment it became longer, so I may have missed a few points.

“It is my contention however that Israel can not collectively prosper peacefully into the future until it comes to terms with its past and present policies. Some things can not be undone, but the ones that can be rectified should be, for Israel’s continued existence to be a peaceful one finally.”

I totally agree with this paragraph. The way to do this is to kick our politicians’ butts into truly working toward the 2-state solution.

The first statement is debatable, but perhaps moot given their moves in coalescing the two country’s policies. The so called Christian Zionist Right in America may not be a ‘product’ of zionism, but it is very much informed by it and its support only too gratefully accepted by AIPAC and other groups.

Hamas didn’t take over Gaza, they were duly elected. Moreover, they were funded covertly by Israel for a number of years, only as a divide and rule tactic, but funded nevertheless. In any case, they were hardly given a chance, were they? They were sabotaged from the start. As Uri Avnery repeatedly called for, to his credit, dialogue with Hamas is the best antidote to “freaking out”. The spurious condition of having to “first accept the existence of Israel” is further made nonsensical: Hamas was never recognised as the legitimately elected government by Israel.

My understanding of Jabotinsky is that he did disagree with zionists such as Ben Gurion, but that he launched and considered himself a revisionist zionist.

Reports need not be wholly effected on every specific action recommendation, they can inform the climate of opinion and doctrinal framing of the security and political environments. Nevertheless, more than one of the key recommendations (not all) in Clean Break were in fact effected eventually, and only involved a longer gestation.

Your claim that Israel has not tried to break up any country is highly contentious. Palestine aside, the Israeli government actively advocated for the US invasion of Iraq, and as we have seen in security documents, for that country to be broken up into smaller regions, as well as others.

As for Israel needing to be doing more, on that point we agree.

The way to do this is to kick our politicians’ butts into truly working toward the 2-state solution.
Kicking politician butt (and joining in grassroots people-to-people civil society actions towards achieving a Palestinian state) will find only support here.

Hamas didn’t take over Gaza, they were duly elected.

Yes, they were elected, but at some point a civil war broke out in Gaza and they killed their opponents from Fatah. The situation was so bad that Fatah’s remaining people, such as moderate Sufian Abu-Zaida, had to flee to the West Bank for fear of being murdered.

Moreover, they were funded covertly by Israel for a number of years, only as a divide and rule tactic, but funded nevertheless.

As far as I know, Israel never funded Hamas, though Israel didn’t do much against them when they were first founded. Anyway, Israel’s policy 20 years ago doesn’t seem very relevant to the current situation.

The spurious condition of having to “first accept the existence of Israel” is further made nonsensical: Hamas was never recognised as the legitimately elected government by Israel.

If we’re playing “the chicken or the egg”, Hamas has refused to recognize Israel (or at least stop vowing to destroy it) long before it ran in the elections. There is no reason to speak with them as long as the best they can offer is a temporary hudna before they go back to trying to destroy us.

Your claim that Israel has not tried to break up any country is highly contentious. Palestine aside, the Israeli government actively advocated for the US invasion of Iraq, and as we have seen in security documents, for that country to be broken up into smaller regions, as well as others.

Israel saw Saddam Hussein’s regime as a threat. Our intelligence services thought he was developing WMD, which of course turned out to be wrong.

What security documents are you referring to? Anything specific about Iraq I?

Yes, they were elected, but at some point a civil war broke out in Gaza and they killed their opponents from Fatah.

Let’s be specific about the “at some point”. The inter-factional violence that erupted was well after Hamas had been elected, and is a direct result not of some innate propensity from Hamas towards violence against their brethren, but a direct result of USraeli neocon ‘divide and rule’ tactics. Let’s be more specific: let us recall that the Bush administration last year approved $40 million to train the 4000 troop-strong Palestinian Presidential Guard under Fatah leader Abbas’s direct control (Fatah Troops Enter Gaza With Israeli Assent: Hundreds Were Trained in Egypt Under U.S.-Backed Program to Counter Hamas), with another transfer of $86 million dollars earmarked for the near future. Bush administration plans to completely sabotage the emerging Palestinian National Unity (Hamas+Fatah) Government was also featured recently in the Asia Times: Document details ‘US’ plan to sink Hamas).

As I noted seven months ago, Amira Hass and others such as Uri Avnery (see The Great Experiment) have rightly observed that this is a playing out of the truism that in situations such as this, ‘those who tear out the peoples eyes condemn them for being blind’, and then disingenuously point figures at the fighters in the ring as if to suggest they had no causal hand in staging the fight whatsoever.

Even if some inter-factional violence took place, which I argue—along with people like Ali Abunimah and Tony Karon—is best understood as a proxy war, how does this at all justify Israel’s interference, unless it is a pretext? Does Egypt get involved in Israel’s internal power struggles? If it is that cover-all “security issue” for Israel, the Israeli regime should not have helped create the problem in the first place, which brings me to the second issue of Israeli government funding for Hamas.

As far as I know, Israel never funded Hamas, though Israel didn’t do much against them when they were first founded.

Israel’s support for Hamas “was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,” according to a former senior CIA official interviewed by Richard Sale of UPI.

Israel “aided Hamas directly — the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),” said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. “The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place,” according to an anonymous U.S. government official cited by Sale.

Further:

According to former State Department counter-terrorism official Larry Johnson, “the Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism.”

“The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer.”

“They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it,” he said.

See also Justin Raimondo, Hamas, Son of Israel: The Israelis birthed and nurtured their Islamist nemesis for further reading.

There is no reason to speak with them as long as the best they can offer is a temporary hudna before they go back to trying to destroy us.

While they faithfully stuck to their year and a half long ceasefire, Israel never stuck to its end of the bargain. Sonic booms, the occupation, illegal settlements, checkpoints continued. This wasn’t a small gesture of merely a month, but well over a year. And they got nothing in return. Again you make a mighty leap of presumption when you assume “before they go back to trying to destroy us.” How can they possibly destroy Israel, armed to the teeth? And how can an otherwise intelligent person like you take some simplistic assumptions as articles of faith? How can a government that is sabotaged from the start and whose land is constantly under siege and not given any concessions in good faith change from wanting to retaliate and resist Israel’s brutality rather than form any genuine diplomatic relations with its former enemy? Conflict resolution starts with talk, dialogue, concessions. Talking with your enemy is at the essence of conflict resolution. Israel’s refusal to do this means it is not really interested in a just resolution to this conflict. While Hamas has so far only refused to formally recognise its “enemy”, Israel has gone much much further and has taken many steps to actively destroy it. One side has destruction only in its rhetoric, the other is actually doing it.

In any case, with careful and patient diplomacy and back-channel negotiations, Hamas was on the verge of recognising Israel’s existence. I am glad I blogged on this because after it was reported it sank from the newswires and the link is lapsed, and my blog friend Richard Silverstein also noted it.

I have reproduced part of it for you here:

Hamas leader says Israel’s existence is a reality
By Sean Maguire and Khaled Oweis Wed Jan 10, 2007 1:08 PM ET

Hamas acknowledges the existence of Israel as a reality but formal recognition will only be considered when a Palestinian state has been created, the movement’s exiled leader Khaled Meshaal said on Wednesday.

Softening a previous refusal to accept the Jewish state’s existence, Meshaal said Israel was a “matter of fact” and a reality that will persist.

“There will remain a state called Israel,” Meshaal said in an interview in the Syrian capital, in what appeared to be clearest statement yet by the Islamist group on its attitude toward the state it previously said had no right to exist.

“The problem is not that there is an entity called Israel,” said Meshaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in 1997. “The problem is that the Palestinian state is non-existent.”

Second, “recognition” is a furphy and a meaningless cliche as examined previously, and one that is designed to prevent meaningful peace talks. Must a Native-American recognize the right of the United States of America to exist? John Whitbeck argues: “Recognition would imply acceptance that they deserve to be treated as subhumans.” Jonathan Cook argues in a similar vein in The Recognition Trap and Jeffrey Blankfort reminds us that this spurious precondition was not demanded of either Egypt or Jordan before Israel signed treaties with those countries, and they were also just as hostile against Israel. Why of Palestine, then? It is simply not needed in order for talks to proceed as they did with Egypt and Jordan, unless of course Israel doesn’t want peace talks with Hamas, as it has stated. This is yet another example of double standards and hypocrisy.

As for the security documents that Israel favours the breaking up of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon into microstates to diminish the perceived threat they pose to Israel’s hegemony in the region, please refer to some of the previous links mentioned (Oded Yinon, A Clean Break) and/or do a search online to test this assertion for yourself.

Israel supported Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO, but wasn’t expecting it to turn into a terrorist organisation. Even if it is true that the government hoped Hamas would sabotage a peace treaty, that was 20 years ago. Now we’re still getting screwed by the policies of the ’80’s. One way or the other, helping out Hamas was a mistake, just like the US made a mistake when they armed the mujahedin in Afghanistan.

And how can an otherwise intelligent person like you take some simplistic assumptions as articles of faith?

I’m not assuming anything. Hamas leaders in the territories say it out loud all the time. Should I not believe them? Are these only scare tactics?

While they faithfully stuck to their year and a half long ceasefire, Israel never stuck to its end of the bargain.

The Qassams never stopped hitting Sderot and other places along the border. So much for a ceasefire. Maybe it wasn’t Hamas that was shooting, but nobody even tried to stop Islamic Jihad and others from doing this to preserve the Hudna.

Hamas leader says Israel’s existence is a reality

I remember this interview being reported. The problem was that he said they’d consider recognizing Israel only after a Palestinian state would be established. That means he himself has a precondition for talking to Israel.

While recognition of Israel should not be a precondition to negotiations, it should be a condition for the establishment of a state. When the agreement creating the State of Palestine is signed and implemented, there should be no more demands other than what’s in the agreement.

Second, “recognition” is a furphy and a meaningless cliche as examined previously, and one that is designed to prevent meaningful peace talks.

I had to go check what furphy is in the dictionary. Turns out it is a word used only in Australia. But I digress.
I agree that recognition shouldn’t be a precondition (a point on which my government unfortunately disagrees with me). We can’t expect to turn the Palestinians in general or Hamas in particular into Zionists. Demanding that they stop calling for our destruction is something else, though. We can’t talk to each other and fight each other at the same time (unless we’re only talking about a ceasefire), or at the very least, they can’t keep fighting us in Israel proper.

As for the security documents, you seem to be basing your argument on only one document by Oded Yinon, which as I’ve said before, there’s no indication the government actually took his advice.

The balkanisation of the region has been a long-standing theme of Israeli strategic thinking, from the Sharrett diaries to Clean Break, not just Oded Yinon. Obviously I’m not privy to top secret strategic documents but the publicly available documents and Israel’s advocacy of and involvement in current wars in the region (eg training Kurds in northern Iraq) suggests otherwise. The US and UK governments and military establishments have als come under scrutiny for possibly employing a ‘Salvador Option‘ strategy in Iraq, its not just Israel, but its regional hegemon Israel we’re focusing upon here.

One could equally call Israel a terrorist state by its actions, that ought not stop the Palestinians from talking to it, either. Covertly funding a group and playing one off against the other is a recipe for disaster — its rather weak to say that “Israel didn’t expect it to turn into a terrorist organisation” after aiding and abetting (including funding and training) its militant activities and it would have known about the group’s aims and attitude toward Israel.

When Hamas was elected almost exactly two years ago to the day, it offered a ten year ceasefire (Israel did not take it up on this or any other offer) and Israel missed a sterling opportunity for dialogue with a Palestinian government that, with its greater internal discipline and lack of corruption in contrast with Fatah, would have represented a stronger chance at achieving a lasting ceasefire, if not a peace then a foundation for peace, with Israel.

The fear in Israel is that a ceasefire with Hamas would only serve to strengthen Hamas ahead of its next round of war with Israel instead of being a basis for peace. It’s a legitimate concern.

It’s true that Israel has trained and supported the Kurds for decades. They were being oppressed by the Iraqi government, so Israel and the Kurds had a common enemy. But right now, Israel is not involved in the internal affairs of any independent country, except for the assistance to the Kurdish government.

One could equally call Israel a terrorist state by its actions, that ought not stop the Palestinians from talking to it, either.

I suppose saying Israel’s target isn’t the civilian population, as opposed to Hamas, won’t convince you.

Somehow we always start from one topic and end up discussing a million different aspects of the whole Zionist-Arab conflict. I don’t think it’s very productive and it only pisses me off and I’m sure it pisses you off too. How did we get from a Hezbollah man trying to speak abroad to the Kurds and divide and conquer tactics?!

It doesn’t bother me so much since everything tends to be interrelated and I think context is important. Frustration may ensue with dialogue but that’s just the nature of the game.

The argument that you use by claiming that Israel is targeting Hamas and not the civilian population is the same erroneous one levelled at Hezbollah: Hamas are the civilian population. When a young boy takes up a rifle he is automatically deemed a ‘militant’. You can not really separate the two. Scores of non-combatants are dying who are Hamas supporters, so they are Hamas too. We commit epistemological (resulting in actual) violence by effectively branding a whole society ‘terrorist’. It serves only to justify atrocities, if not slo-mo genocide; to abrogate responsibility and deflect guilt, and entrenches the dehumanisation of the other with the inhumane assurance “but its OK, they were only terrorists/ terrorist-supporters”. They were people. ‘Terror’ is all too often an obstructionist weasel word.

Strengthening Hamas might help reform it further too, and confer some dignity. Look at the IRA. The reasoning that Israel would reject a ceasefire on the basis of preventing the ’strength’ of a legitimately elected government from operating in a future, not-yet-happening, obviously anticipated, war is just bogus, absolutely ludicrous to an outside observer. The ‘war’ is happening anyway and Hamas has even more support, so the result is bringing about the very outcome that the Israel government claims to want to avoid. This ‘keep ‘em in the scrapheap’ strategy is demonstrably failing and worsening the situation and works against Israel’s enlightened self interest. Israeli official intransigence is the major culprit here.

How about anticipating a scenario that a war won’t happen, that strengthening Hamas would mean that they were in an even better position to keep the peace, and working towards that? This attitude and others in Israel that “we can’t negotiate with Hamas because it would strengthen it in any future conflict which we obviously are expecting” just beggars belief. Its also cold comfort to the residents of Israeli settlements bordering Gaza who are subject to the mostly non-lethal home-made rockets, too. Dialogue breeds trust and capacity-building. Wholesale rejection and branding of a government or group so rooted in the community and inseparable from its social programs as ‘terrorist’ is counter-productive and non-sensical. The Irgun et al were ‘terrorists’ yet eventually integrated into Israel’s military establishment. Hamas needs to be given that opportunity. They have offered a great deal and been unduly dismissed at every turn.

And it is only branded ‘terrorist’ by a few countries, by no means all the international community.

I don’t see how bringing everything up is useful, especially when speaking of policies abandoned long ago (I’m surprised you didn’t mention “Jordan is Palestine”).

When I say civilians I mean uncombatants - unarmed civilians, even the ones who are Hamas supporters. If they aren’t directly involved in fighting Israel, they aren’t, and shouldn’t be, Israel’s targets.

Right now there’s a limit on Hamas’s ability to fight Israel. The Qassams have a limited range. I don’t want to give Hamas time to improve their abilities. Preparing for a future war that the Hamas itself is preparing for openly, is not silly. They have refused to talk of peace and said repeatedly that the best they can offer is a temporary ceasefire after which they would take over the rest of “Occupied Palestine”, so I’d say that this is a legitimate concern.

I don’t think it is wise for Israel to talk to Hamas directly. Neither is a near-total blockade the right thing to do. A big military operation would be a disaster. I think the best strategy is to let the Palestinian Authority talk with Hamas and after some agreement will be settled between the two Palestinian factions we can discuss Gaza issues through Abbas as president of the PA.

That, along with blowing up Qassam launchers and cars on their way to lob rockets at Israel.

… residents of Israeli settlements bordering Gaza …

In the Israeli-Palestinian context, the word settlements has a colonial connotation to it. I hope you distinguish between towns and communities within Israel and settlements in the West Bank and Golan Hights, and formerly in Gaza.

Well, I share an aversion to loghorrhea, though I think mentioning relevant issues is not exactly “bringing everything up”. Dialogue is usually exploratory, and purposively directed.

With respect to past events, as Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “The use of history is to give value to the present hour”. I would also contend that many policies were not exactly abandoned long ago, and that we are still witnessing them in operation, such as the creation of bantustans as Michael mentioned. Illegal settlements have unfortunately not been relegated to history, they are continuing today.

One reason why we persist, in this thread, is that for me there has still been no compelling reason posited as to just why the Israeli government should not talk directly to Hamas. In essence, what’s the difference that would prevent this or justify one’s continual refusal to speak to the other? Both are rhetorically sworn to the other’s destruction/ engage against each other militarily/ won’t recognise the other etc. The “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” claim is a nonsense, an excuse, a cop-out.

To an outside observer, as well as to many inside Israel as we have seen, it is very unwise — and simply precious as well as obstructionist — to refuse to talk to your own neighbour, particularly as they are territorially discontiguous from the West Bank, and when they have several times offered their hand in talks, and offered ceasefires, which are downplayed or dismissed or derided. It is common sensical that all this will serve only to prolong and worsen the deadly conflict.

The only real danger I can think of is the resistance you’d get from the Israeli hard right rather than the Palestinians (as we saw in Yitzhak Rabin’s killing by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir), but the possibility of forming negotiation backchannels obviates this. Likud’s profligacy with the label “terrorist” might be shown up by a potential agreement as we saw in Oslo which used diplomatic backchannels successfully (without going into the pros and cons of the Oslo agreement itself), as long as it could be safeguarded from sabotage.

Yes, a big military operation would be a disaster.

Let’s look at your two-fold proposal vis-a-vis Hamas. First, you think the Israeli government should talk to Hamas only through the PA. This might be fine if there were no other agenda rather than to torpedo a result; the Israeli government has expressly stated its wholesale rejection not only of Hamas but of any PA government that includes Hamas. We have addressed the efficacy of the “three preconditions” elsewhere and I will not raise them again here.

So rather than Israel talking to both of them, or a unity government as was proposed eleven months ago, let’s look at what we can expect from Israeli talks with the Israeli-acceptable Abbas—not through speculation, but from results we can glean from trumpeted summits. As Annapolis has shown us, the Israeli government talks with Abbas have yielded nothing, not for the West Bank, not for Gaza, nothing at all for the Palestinians.

Basic end of the occupation? Nope. End of the two year siege on Gaza restricting and controlling movement in or out, preventing aid and even paper for education as Michael pointed out? Nope. A reduction of the hundreds of checkpoints and the impunity with which the IDF often acts, outside the law? No. A cessation of building further illegal settlements? No. And so on. What message does this send to Palestinians supporting Hamas about the Israeli preference to negotiate with Abbas? Don’t they have a right to choose and put forward their own representatives of their own choosing?

With the worsening of events, even Abbas has threatened to walk out. Even for him, there comes a recognition that these talks are simply a cover for imposing new de facto realities that intensify and prolong the conflict rather than containing or alleviating it. Is it a peace Israel is really after, or simply a Palestinian surrender and capitulation after six decades of prolonged injustice? It certainly will not get the latter. Uri Avnery and others have already persuasively argued that Israel’s policy would be the same whether there were Qassams being launched or not.

Yes, the peace process is “complicated”, as you have pointed out. What is not so hard to discern is the unmitigated lack of any concessions on Israel’s part, and in some cases things have really regressed rather than simply remained static. It stands to reason that Israel has more causal responsibility in all this because it is overwhelmingly the more powerful partner. It has far greater agency as you have already acknowledged. The way it chooses to assert its greater agency, and its results, is what is up for examination.

Second, you support “blowing up Qassam launchers and cars on their way to lob rockets at Israel.” My reckoning is that this is a band-aid response that only breeds more of the same, and endangers civilians. Will it and has it made the rocket launchers stop, ever, or prevented the will and means to keep building them? No. Is it a successful policy, then? In view of these less than sterling results, nay outright failure, would you then start to consider treating the roots of the cause as a policymaker?

With respect to my use of the term settlements, perhaps it is a semantic difference if one considers a town like Sderot (est. 1957 on ethnically cleansed Arab village of Najd, town population was significantly settled last decade in the 1990s) but essentially I accept the distinction you point out. The only important qualifier is that Israel’s borders have yet to be declared and illegal settlements continue; until this stops and borders are finally declared will the phrase towns “within Israel’s borders” acquire fully consistent and mutually-recognised meaning.

Actually, we do negotiate with terrorists, including Hamas. We’re currently negotiating a prisoner swap. Why not go on to peace talks? Hamas doesn’t want to discuss peace, and just a ceasefire isn’t enough to legitimize Hamas by talking to it. If we talk to them so will the rest of the world. They’ll be welcome in every capital while they still call for our destruction. They’d be emboldened, and the moderates who are actually willing to reach real peace will lose even more power.

Israel doesn’t need to talk to Hamas members in a unity government, but they shouldn’t stop such a government from being formed. We should talk to Abbas and members of Fatah in the unity gov’t.

Yes, blowing up Qassam launchers is only a bandaid. It should be used very carefully to reduce civilian casualties, and it should be used alongside a non-military method of stopping the Qassams.

As I’ve said before, Israel hasn’t done much recently in the way of peace building. Don’t forget that Israel has made many concessions in the past, most recently in Gaza. Yes, it was not a complete withdrawal because we still control the border and airspace, and I myself thought the disengagement was a huge mistake (because of the unilateralism), but it is still a concession. It is certainly time for more.