Daniel Levy on the Palestinians at the UN

President Obama's UN speech this week underlined the decreasing possibility of a two-state solution being worked out for Israel and Palestine.

Daniel Levy writes The Palestinians are the new Jews in Haaretz 09/22/2011, reminding us once again that the Israel-Palestine conflict is discussed in a far greater range of opinion in Israel and the Israeli press than we normally see in the US press. Although, as Stephen Walt points out, the fact that Tom Friedman, who is considered a Very Serious Person despite his general fatuous superficiality, is talking about the unwholesome effect of the Israel lobby on US politics is a sign of a change in the American discussion. (Well, Duh... Foreign Policy 09/18/2011)

Israel at its birth was considered a model society, far more than Palestine at its birth. It bequeathed the world socialist and feminist values, the kibbutz and the moshav, absorption of immigrants and equality of women - a lighthouse of equality and social justice. The Palestinians are now in an inferior position: Their society is more corrupt and less egalitarian than ours, nor did they establish a state-in-the-making for themselves, with impressive institutions such as the ones we had.

But here the situation has become reversed beyond recognition. Israel of 2011 is no longer considered a model society in any area. With quite a number of corrupt Israeli politicians in prison or on the way there, with capitalism that is quite swinish and an occupation that is quite brutal, the story of the great national and social success of the 20th century is now considered a story of missed opportunity of the 21st century. The path to repairing this fateful missed opportunity must now be by way of a new partition plan.

The Palestinians bled for 63 years and paid the price for the fateful mistake of their leaders' opposition to the 1947 partition plan; the Israelis must not now have regrets for another 63 years and pay a high price for their stubborn and surprising opposition to the 2011 partition plan. Look at them and look at us. They are what we once were.

Matthew Taylor (Gideon Levy (unintentionally) lays bare the contradictions of liberal Zionism Mondoweiss 09/22/2011) is at least somewhat unfair to Levy when he writes:

But there's a huge elision in this comparison –– no direct statement that the early Zionist political program was predicated on a premeditated campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its indigenous non-Jewish population. This is where liberal Zionism consistently runs afoul of reality, a stubborn unwillingness to come to grips with or even acknowledge the crimes of 1948.

The last paragraph of Levy's quote above shows that he does very much recognize the injustice done to the Palestinians and he does reference it back to 1948, not to 1967.

Philip Weiss, whose Mondoweiss blog incorporates his surname, thinks a two-state solution is no longer feasible. "And now the two-state dream-- once the fantasy of 'leftists,' in the words of former Obama Treasury aide Stuart Levey back in 1985-- is a shell, destroyed by the militant right wing."

Weiss is optimistic that American Jews will become increasingly vocal against Israeli policies in the occupied territories:

It is true that the great majority of American Jews are still wed to Zionism, but our liberal intelligentsia is shocked by what Zionism has produced: Barack Obama imitating a fool, Rick Perry, to gain the approval of a racist, Avigdor Lieberman. An American Jewish spring is in the air.

He also cites an article by Henry Siegman, Palestinians Declare Independence from U.S. The National Interest 09/22/2011, who argues that the Palestinians' diplomatic action at the UN "is likely to be transformative, changing the rules of the game for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking." He means that the "peace process" that has dragged on sporadically for decades without producing a conclusive end, will now proceed differently:

The real meaning of the Palestinians' decision to defy the United States is that they will no longer accept their occupier’s role in their quest for statehood. They demand national self-determination as a right—indeed, as a “peremptory norm” that in international law takes precedence over all other considerations—and not as an act of charity by their occupiers.

The American insistence on aborting the Palestinians’ initiative and returning them to a peace process in which their fate remains dependent on Israel is shameful. It stains America’s honor. It will not succeed, for the Palestinian decision to defy the American demand is itself a declaration of independence; that genie cannot be returned to the bottle.

On the ground, little will be changed by a UN affirmation of Palestinian statehood. But nothing will be the same again in the Palestinians’ dealings with Israel and the United States. The notion that Israel will decide where negotiations begin and what parts of Palestine it will keep is history. It is sad that America, of all nations, has failed to understand this simple truth, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. Sadder still is Israel's continuing blindness not only to the injustice but also to the impossibility of its colonial dream. That dream may now turn into a nightmare as the international community increasingly sees Israel as a rogue state and treats it accordingly.

The grim liklihood of a Goodhair Perry or Mitt Romney President can scarcely to expected to make things better. But, as Weiss puts it, "Obama piped the hard-right Israeli line for the purposes of winning an election." The Israel-Palestine issue is one on which the American political system has also failed across the board.

Zbigniew Brzezinski on the PBS Newshour yesterday (U.S. Standing in Mideast May Pivot on Palestinian Statehood Bid 09/21/2011) argued that with the Arab Awakening and the protracted impasse on Israel-Palestine, the US influence in the Mideast will likely decline in a major way:

I think what's happening in the Middle East is clearly a sea change in the direction of continued decline, accelerating decline, and eventually termination of the central role that the United States has been playing in that region since the end of World War II. We were welcomed into the Middle East by the Arabs because they saw in us a party that wasn't part of this imperial colonial tradition of the British and the French that were dominating the region.

But over the last 50 years or so, they have become increasingly dismayed by our unwillingness to address seriously the problems particularly arising out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I think this week may be decisive. If we don't recoup, I think we will really be witnessing in the near future the end of the American role in the Middle East. And that will be disastrous for the United States in the first place, in the longer run for Israel. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure what he means when it says a decline (or "the end") of the US role in the Middle East would be "disastrous." If it means that we don't invade countries like Iraq or Iran, don't get involved in civil wars in places like Libya or Syria, and stop firing missiles from drones into various countries, that sounds like a significant improvement to me!

Tags: israel, palestine