A Month by the Sea (17 page)

Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University has recently put it another way:

Not since staying with Mazin Qumsiyeh in Beit Sahour had
I met such a dedicated and confident binationalist as Anwar. Listening to him, I remembered Mazin’s conviction that a ‘
well-organised
, united grass-roots movement could bring about a
win-win
situation for all the people of the Land of Canaan’. The key word is ‘united’. Hence the unremitting US/Israel efforts to stoke disunity.

‘After all,’ said Anwar, ‘binationalists are only seeking justice. We’re ready to share, to become equal citizens in a one-man-
one-vote
multicultural state.’ He paused, laughed, corrected himself. ‘Forgive – I meant one-
person
! We’re way ahead of our political leaders – even those knowing it’s the only solution fear to say so. Or else have a vested interest in the status quo – though they’d be a minority. But an influential and unscrupulous minority! To the fearful it looks like defeat, after years of claiming total independence. But when that can’t happen, why not march on to claim what could happen? We never were an independent nation-state the way Europeans think of it. We’ve been robbed of our lands, our water, our homes, our rights to trade and study and travel – not of our sovereignty because we never had it! If we must think of “victory” and “defeat”, binationalism also defeats the Israelis. It really inflicts a worse defeat on them, losing their artificial “Jewish” state – which never really existed with its one-fifth Palestinian population. Naturally Zionism’s political leaders can’t bring themselves even to think about one state. But some Israeli intellectual heavyweights know the score, have spelt it out in their 2004 Olga Accord. What’s needed now is open discussion all over the place – everyone having to think about the unthinkable, as Ali Abunimah might say.’

I mentioned the difficulty of ‘selling’ binationalism to Palestinian support groups in Ireland and Britain – and no doubt elsewhere. People whose favourite cause is a ‘Free Palestine’, and who haven’t experienced ‘the matrix of control’, tend to reject the need for a new campaign. Especially one that may not bear fruit until the old among them are dead and the young themselves old.

Anwar thought my timescale too pessimistic. ‘Barriers looking insuperable now could quickly come down if we unite to use clever weapons. Our foreign friends must learn two states were never on the Zionist agenda but served them well as a Trojan horse. They must stop calling for a free Palestine – that’s backing the Trojan horse and blocking the only road to peace. They must invite more binationalists to address their rallies, explaining the twenty-first-century realities.’

One such meeting, I told Anwar, was held in Dublin in February 2010, addressed by Ghada Karmi, Ilan Pappé and John Rose. I couldn’t go but a friend kept detailed notes and remarked, ‘There was no real attempt made to engage with the horrendous difficulties of working towards a one-state solution.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Anwar. ‘What counts is those three being heard – all thinkers, much respected by our foreign friends. As discussions widen and deepen, attitudes will change.’ I nodded, remembering how well Anwar’s friend, Ali Abunimah, has put it in
One Country
:

I quoted Ghada Karmi’s plea for a mass-binationalist movement working with kindred Israeli groups and advanced through Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). At that, Anwar grimaced and shrugged. ‘For me, as a professional scholar and amateur diplomat – well, BDS has to be problematic, intellectually and emotionally. But we don’t have a wide choice of weapons – I can’t oppose it. Ghada is right. Run a global BDS campaign, demand one-
person-one
-vote and a constitution like South Africa’s. When we’re not
demanding independence we can’t be demonised as terrorists threatening security. All perspectives change!’

We set about stoking each other’s optimism. I said, ‘Now is the time for a big push, given so much more support for Palestinians since Cast Lead and the Flotilla murders. No more haggling about borders, simply asking for justice, asking Israelis to share the land the same as South Africa’s whites do.’

‘And the world is watching,’ said Anwar. ‘Watching like never before! Imagine our Tahrir Square – truly non-violent, no
stone-throwing
kids, no jeering slogans, no flag-burning – but all those Palestinians calling for citizenship, the vote, equality before the law … The IDF daren’t attack, within micro-seconds they’d be seen by millions! They’d have to leave at home their rubber bullets, tear-gas canisters, sewage-cannons, prison vans!’

Here a big dark cloud of realpolitik overshadowed my optimism. ‘How are the US reacting to all this? How long before their foreign policy shifts?’

‘Maybe only years, given a certain convergence of pressures. We’re sensing so many tremors, like aftershocks – Egypt the earthquake. I know you’ve talked with Mahmoud al-Zahar – don’t look so surprised! The Strip is small and you’re conspicuous. He probably knows you’re sitting here now! From him and your younger Hamas friends you’ll have picked up atmospheric changes – right?’

I nodded. ‘They told me their manic Charter didn’t feature in the ’06 electioneering – and we went on from there.’

‘On Fatah’s side,’ said Anwar, ‘Abbas’s stupid “Statehood” game with the UN signals more change – some West Bank PA factions falling out of step with the US-funded Dayton Brigade. In the short term it’s a bad game, confusing and deluding people like Oslo did. It’s meant to be anti-binationalism but it’s so crazy it’s having unintended consequences. I’ve many grand-nephews and -nieces here on the Strip and they and their friends on the West Bank have
registered the end of an era. To them Abbas, Netanyahu, Obama – all look irrelevant, so moulded by the past. And so focused on personal concerns – like winning the next election – sensible kids can’t take them seriously. The young are in the majority. And they want new leaders, nearer their own age, creatively concerned about their future. They’re much more willing than their grandparents and parents to consider binationalism. The recent input from young Mizrahi Jews is part of the same pattern. Some of them want to jump barriers, be with their Palestinian peers, have people admit all Israelis are not Europeans settled in the Middle East. There’s change too across the Atlantic. Even AIPAC, the ADL and the rest of the constellation – my US friends tell me they can’t recruit enough replacements as the grandads die off.’ (A few months later I had an email from Anwar saying, ‘Net’s 29 standing ovations in the US helped us a lot by giving such publicity to AIPAC’s control over US politicians. We laughed over the choreography with the background music of dollars streaming into bank accounts!’)

Even among Israelis, BDS has been gaining momentum since Cast Lead. The ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions’ movement acquired a coherent strategy in 2005, following a Palestinian Civil Society call for a global support group that would steadily concentrate on the essential coloniser-colonised relationship at the root of Palestine’s tragedy. In the words of Lisa Taraki, a
cofounder
, ‘The basic logic of BDS is the logic of
pressure
– not diplomacy, persuasion or dialogue.’ Understandably, activists like Anwar find this strategy testing. Can it be right to punish ordinary decent Israelis who need to export their produce? Is it wise to boycott cultural and academic exchanges when communication is so often prescribed as the cure for conflicts? (Don’t shoot! Talk to the IRA! To FARC! To the Taliban! To Hamas! To everyone …) In fact all my Israeli BDS friends are exceptionally dedicated communicators – but time has proved that their government, and all its institutions and international backers, are allergic to talking
honestly about justice as the basis for peace. Although BDS never targets individuals, its successful operations will inevitably penalise some academics, artists and writers who are amiably disposed, in a vague way, towards the Palestinians. However, as one of my Haifa friends observed, ‘If you’re vague you’re supporting the Occupation. Not liking it but going along with it. As BDS bites, those
Ha’aretz
-reading liberals will have to see themselves as others see them.’ And when it comes to ordinary decent citizens – given the ‘silence and passivity’ of Israel’s majority, it seems nothing less stringent than BDS will prompt them to overcome their ‘studied blindness’.

Anwar was among several Palestinian friends who registered disappointment – rather than surprise – when the Irish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign failed to organise a boycott of a four-day, state-funded Israeli film festival in Dublin. As the
Irish Times
reported on 24 November 2011, the Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Modai, claimed that:

‘Freedom of speech’ is a tricky one and sure enough the pressing of that button gained Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore’s official attendance at the festival’s opening night.

Perhaps the Government of Ireland is uninformed about ‘Brand Israel’. This global campaign, launched (coincidentally?) in 2005, is funded by various Israeli government agencies and major
pro-Zionist
international (mainly US) groups. Its primary purpose is to promote Israel as a ‘normal’ country involved in tourism, sports, innovative science, cultivation of the fine arts, a vibrant youth culture – and so on. ‘Brand Israel’ can afford to employ
high-powered
PR firms and all Israel’s consulates and embassies are kept busy on its behalf.

In 2008 the Israeli writer Yitzhak Laor revealed the ‘price tag’ attached to government sponsorship of ‘Brand Israel’ operations. Any Israeli accepting funding from the Foreign Ministry for taking his or her cultural or artistic work abroad is obliged to sign a contract undertaking ‘to act faithfully, responsibly and tirelessly to provide the Ministry with the highest professional services. The service provider is aware that the purpose of ordering services from him is to promote the policy interests of the State of Israel via culture and art, including contributing to creating a positive image for Israel’.

So much for freedom of speech.

Mr Modai’s claim that the Dublin film festival was
non-political
is scuppered by Judith Butler’s reflections on BDS and ‘normalization’:

Many of Judith Butler’s family were Holocaust victims. She grew up in the US in a household sympathetic to the new State of Israel and is now Maxine Eliot Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at Berkeley. One of her closest friends, Udi Aloni (Israeli-American writer and film maker), has referred to:

During Dublin’s film festival fracas Ireland was accused, in the Israeli press, of being ‘the most anti-Israel country in Europe’. This brought a frightened squawk from our addle-pated Department of Foreign Affairs: ‘We are not hostile to Israel. We are critical of certain policies, particularly in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. These are not the same things.’ Here is a vivid illustration of Judith Butler’s point: ‘To work to the side of the Occupation is to participate in its normalization.’ For whatever reasons, the Irish government (and most others) want to ‘continue to act as normal’, to maintain friendly relations as though Israel’s repression of the Palestinians were some isolated error of judgement, the choice of a wrong policy in a specific case, when in truth it is central to the State’s existence and has been since 1948. ‘Neutrality is not an option’; we all have a moral duty (usually occluded by realpolitik) to be hostile to a government that deliberately and relentlessly inflicts so much suffering on successive generations of a people who did nothing to deserve the Nakba and its consequences. To make our hostility effective, BDS is ‘the most powerful non-violent means available’. If millions were saying, ‘We cannot continue to act as normal’ while the repression continues, then things would change – and everyone would be that much closer to binationalism.