By Amira Hass
It is not the “process-ization” or the business-world terminology that killed the notion of peace. But the tedious, two-decade-long ritual of meetings-for-meetings-sake and the overdose of “mechanisms” have certainly exposed the enormous gulf between what peace means for Israeli Jews and what it means for the Palestinians. It is a gulf that separates surrender from dignity.
The gulf can just as well be named a “missed opportunity” for the Jewish community in our region. The gist of the matter is that Israel rejected the generous offer the PLO made in 1993: peace according to long-accepted international resolutions and understandings. Thus, for the long term, Israel endangers the future of this Jewish community. Instead of getting rid of its character of crusader shtetl, Israel strengthened it. But in the short term, this policy has had devastating implications for the Palestinian community.
The “process” has become an end in itself for Israel’s shrewd, calculating negotiators, from Shimon Peres to Binyamin Netanyahu. They have excelled at using the interim period to predetermine the shape of a future, presumably final settlement. This same process has allowed a Palestinian ruling clique to pathetically cling to the meager privileges that the title entails and that the Israeli Civil Administration — the epitome of colonial bureaucracy — allows. This, at a price of de-facto collaboration with Israeli schemes and growing alienation from a disenchanted, captive constituency.
For Israel, the process has yielded a suitably stable status quo (with occasional and manageable protests and disruptions). Therefore, Israel does not really need a renewed process.
What does this “peace gulf” comprise? First, Gaza and its large Palestinian population are cut off from the prospective Palestinian state. Contrary to Israelis’ popular, ignorant narrative, this was not the result of Hamas taking over or the Qassam rockets or suicide attacks. This has been a steady process since 1991 (which I have described and documented countless times), fully initiated by Israel. The intra-Palestinian geopolitical schism is a result of Hamas and Fateh’s failure to comprehend Israeli measures, including the 2005 disengagement, or their unwillingness to let go of sectarian, self-centered considerations.
Second, Palestinian East Jerusalem has been experiencing a steady process of pauperization and a deliberate, multifaceted policy of expulsion and land grab, in tandem with its severance from the prospective Palestinian state.
Third, with the ingenious invention of areas A, B and C, the reality of an isolated Gaza Strip was replicated in the West Bank in the form of several smaller Bantustans. What was presented as “temporary” has become permanent, rendering area C and its expanding colonies a part of Israel.
Fourth, a false notion of symmetry in status between the Palestinian Authority and the state of Israel has been created. This has allowed Israel to disengage from its responsibilities as the occupying power.
Fifth, the semblance of “peace” and the false symmetry allowed the West to forego any serious claim to exercise political leverage against Israeli disregard of international law, resolutions and understandings. The opposite is true: the West has put more pressure on the occupied, to the point of overall boycott.
And finally, the West balances its support for the stronger party by subsidizing the cost of occupation, closure and military assaults, and by sustaining the PA and its false statehood.
“Peace” for Palestinians originally implied undoing injustice. Foreign Israeli rule over the Palestinians contains too much evil-doing to be recounted or even summarized here. It was so before Oslo, but the trickery and hypocrisy that have been added under the guise of a “peace process”, plus draconian restrictions on the freedom of movement, have rendered the infliction of evil much heavier.
The two-state solution in its original form (23 percent-77 percent) that the PLO accepted when embarking on the Oslo track, contained a nuanced historiography that says: Israel is not only the product of a colonialist movement and period, but also the result of the German-European industry of murder. This approach also contained the potential for both Israel and Palestine to eventually grow out of the nation-state model and develop into a bi-national form, to be determined by the two peoples. This potential is probably what made Israel fight so ferociously against the 23-77 compromise.
But then came the “process”, with Israel insisting on a black-and-white historiography: yes, Israel is a colonialist entity; yes, Israel does aim at dispossessing as many Palestinians from their land and retaining as much “empty” land as possible within its borders.
Under the guise of a peace process, the main Israeli compromise has been with an inbuilt desire to expel all Palestinians from their homeland. The world today would not permit such an outright repetition of 1948. Hence the result: disconnected, over-populated Palestinian enclaves.
No wonder, then, that “peace”, and not only the “process” part, has become one of those hollow, cynical concepts like dialogue, co-existence, reconciliation, and people-to-people. No wonder a renewal of that futile process does not appeal to the great majority of Palestinians.
Amira Hass has been Haaretz correspondent in the occupied territories since 1993. This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with bitterlemons.org
