Daily Times

Will Israel’s internal politics make much difference to how it will deal with the Palestinian issue? The question arises in the context of elections in Israel. The answer is: whether it has a right wing, left wing or centre-right government, most Israelis — apart from a small number bothered by their conscience and human rights considerations — are convinced that the problem lies with the Palestinians who are not reconciled to the creation of Israel. Hence, there is no point pursuing peace with them.

This is generally the easiest way to dismiss a problem and absolve oneself of all responsibilities as most Israelis do in regard to Palestine. And in the process even feel self-righteous arguing that Israel has to fight for its security and survival and teach the Palestinians a lesson. During the recent Gaza operations, Gilad Sharon wrote in The Jerusalem Post, “We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza…The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima — the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki too.” He just dismissed the idea that there were innocent civilians in Gaza. He said that since they elected Hamas they “must live with the consequences”.

Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister, proposed ‘a bigger holocaust’ if Gaza continued to resist during the 2008 Gaza invasion. This time, in 2012, Israel’s threatened invasion of Gaza was averted with Egyptian intercession. But such belligerent threats and actions are part of the Israeli political and military currency to browbeat the Palestinians.

Many Israelis tend to see the Palestinians and Arabs in very negative terms. Here is an example. In a 2010 television debate, Naftali Bennett, leader of the fast-rising Jewish Home Party, told a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, “When you were still climbing trees, we had a Jewish state here…We were here long before you.” This was his flat justification for Israeli annexation of much of the West Bank and rejection of the two-state solution. In other words, the Palestinians and Arabs are sub-human and unworthy of any civilised treatment. Once such stereotypes are mentally established and entrenched, it becomes easier to come to terms with the most heinous treatment of the enemy — the Palestinians in this case.

The Jews in Europe were stereotyped as bloodthirsty moneylenders, as portrayed in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and many other books and literary works. Worse still, they were demonised as Christ-killers. And it is these stereotypes that led to pogroms against them in European countries, and Hitler’s worst crime of the Holocaust. This is what is so sad that Israel’s Jews, whose forefathers suffered so much, are creating stereotypes of the Palestinians to justify their oppression, occupation and frequent military operations. Here is Effi Eitam, a former cabinet minister and Netanyahu adviser, advocating in 2006, “We’ll have to expel the overwhelming majority of West Bank Arabs from here and remove Israeli Arabs from the political system.”

Avigdor Lieberman, until recently foreign minister and Netanyahu’s political ally, is even more draconian about the Arabs. He reportedly wants to revoke the citizenship of Israeli Arabs who will not swear a loyalty oath to the Jewish state. And he even suggested that Arab Knesset (parliament) members who met representatives of Hamas should be executed. In other words, Israel should have two kinds of citizens: Jews whose loyalties are unquestioned and Arabs who have to prove their loyalty all the time for fear of expulsion and, possibly, execution.

This is not to say that all Israeli Jews think and talk in those terms, though most would like their version of Judea and Samaria to include much of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Lately, there is concern in some Israeli circles about the way Netanyahu is going about incorporating the West Bank territories by seemingly offending the Obama administration through his provocative settlement policies. He is not too fond of the two-state solution, which the Obama administration has supported ever since it took power.

This concern has recently been articulated by Israel’s President Shimon Peres. He reportedly said, “We must not lose the support of the United States. What gives Israel bargaining power in the international arena is [US] support.” Standing alone, in his view, would be “like a lone tree in the desert”.

At another level, Peres is also worried about the changes in the Arab world and its likely effect on the Palestinian question. As he said in an interview to The New York Times, “The silence that Israel has been enjoying for the last few years [in the occupied territories] will not continue, because even if the local inhabitants do not want to resume the violence [another intifada], they will be under the pressure of the Arab world.” Elaborating, he said, “Money will be transferred to them, and weapons will be smuggled to them, and there will be no one who will stop this flow. Most of the world would then blame Israel for the violence, and it would be branded a ‘racist state’.” In other words, the loss of support from the US and isolation from the rest of the world would make Israel pretty lonely and vulnerable. Peres’ view reflects difficult times ahead for Israel, and hence the need to maintain US support by some sort of movement on the Palestinian question, even if it is for form’s sake.

There is another constituency in Israel — albeit very small and generally ignored — urging a humanitarian and practical approach to the Palestinian question through peaceful co-existence. In a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu, translated and published in The New York Review of Books, Nomika Zion, a border-town kibbutz resident, makes a powerful plea and raises important questions like, “…How did peace become the enemy of the people, and war always the preferred option?” Furthermore, “…And how has a nation [Israel] that has occupied other people’s territory for forty-five years continued to tell itself, with such deep conviction, that we are the single and ultimate victim in this story?” In apparent sadness, she adds, “And the evil of occupation has become so banal that no one sees the evil anymore.”

Another Jewish writer and philosopher, Hannah Arendt, said the same about Hitler’s massacre of the Jews, calling it the banality of evil. Netanyahu and his ilk are so drunk with power and self-righteousness that such parallels elude them.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.co.au