Quest for Peace
A historian who writes about the recent past walks on eggs. Things happen suddenly in the Middle East, and projections for the future are always hazardous. Even without a major breakthrough toward peace or a new drift into war, who knows what the twenty-first-Century reader will see as the main Middle Eastern events and trends from 1973 to 1978?The Palestinian radical Islamist group Hamas which currently controls the Gaza Strip refuses recognition of Israel and makes no excuses for its mandate, that of the destruction of the Jewish State, popularly termed the "Zionist Entity". For Hamas, a brief cessation of hostilities is called a hudna, a "truce", whereby they may be enabled to restore themselves to a condition where they feel confident once again to attack, having recruited more members and satisfactorily re-supplied themselves with new munitions and arms, smuggled into Gaza through underground tunnels reaching into Egypt.
But what do we mean by peace? One simple answer is that peace is the absence of conflict. But in the Middle East many conflicts smolder for years, then suddenly flare up. The Arab-Israeli conflict was dormant most of the time between 1956 and 1967, and yet there was no peace. Or we could define peace in another way: it is a condition of harmony within and between every person, every group and every nation in the world. Two people cannot be a peace with each other unless they feel at peace with themselves. If the members who make up a group disagree among themselves, they will not be able to agree with some other group. A country riven with factional, sectional, or ethnic hostility cannot reach a lasting peace with another state. Such idyllic conditions are rare in human life, though. Many past disputes have died down, enabling the parties to stop fighting each other, and yet they have never reached an agreement.
When addressing the question of peace with Israel, some Arabs say they will accept salam but not sulh. What is the difference? both Arabic words mean "peace", but in modern usage salam carries an undertone of a temporary cessation of hostilities. Two closely related words are salamah (meaning "safety") and islam ("submission" or surrender"). The word sulh means "reconciliation". Those Arabs who make this distinction may envisage an armistice with Israel, a respite from hostilities in which they can regain their political and economic strength, but not a true reconciliation with the Jewish state. Since this distinction naturally arouses the fears of Israel and its supporters, it hardly seems likely to lead to peace. But then is Israel simply a Jewish state? It is in fact a country inhabited by Jews and Arabs who must somehow find a just basis of co-existence that does not involve domination or repression of one side by the other.
A Concise History of the Middle East - Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr., c. 1979
Ah, but then there is the West's favourite Palestinian group, Fatah, whom they celebrate as being the 'moderates', and with whom they invest colossal sums of money to create a neat atmosphere of normalcy, and where West Bank Palestinians may feel, from time to time, that they are coming closer to a state of their own. The side-by-side ideal of two nations, no longer at war, living with a modicum of civil harmony, the more advanced state assisting the emerging one toward social and economic maturity. Generations of American presidents and European Union collectives and United Nations general assemblies have spoken emotionally, heatedly and enthusiastically about the need for Israel to accommodate itself to the reality of a nascent Palestinian State.
And then there is the real reality, not the reality that is so fondly imagined by those outside the Middle East, but the living one that eclipses fantasy and of which, from time to time, we get a whiff.
A current article in Arutz Sheva, an Israeli newspaper, by reporter Hillel Fendel elucidates, clearly demonstrates precisely the reality that hovers under the radar of the West. In truth, a reality that is readily visible, but one that most Western sources simply will not acknowledge exists:
On a television panel broadcast by Palestinian Authority TV, Kifah Radaydeh, deputy head of the Jerusalem chapter of Fatah sets it out: "Our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine". Palestine being commensurate not with that land apportioned by the United Nations specifically for Palestinians, absent that portion meant for the creation of the State of Israel through partition, but all of that geography. Evident in the complete absence of the State of Israel on geographical maps used by the Palestinian Authority.
Moderate Fatah - whose head is Mahmoud Abbas, famed for his thesis questioning the Holocaust, and who claims, like his predecessor Yasser Arafat, to represent the interests of Palestinians - is as quietly dedicated to Israel's destruction as Hamas is bellicosely so. But it is Fatah, not Hamas, through whom international aid money flows. And it is Fatah officials who have enriched themselves enormously with international bank accounts, cheating the Palestinian people of the financial support the international community has meant for them.
And, in the voice of Kifah Radaydeh, assures their Palestinian and larger-Arab audience that the Palestinian Authority has every intention of renewing its 'struggle' against the 'occupier' of Palestinian land, which is to say Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, all-inclusive. When Fatah considers itself to be "capable", and "according to what seems right", they will once again - as has been done as follow-ups to seemingly conclusive peace agreements formerly - launch subsequent "intifadas". "It has been said that we are negotiating for peace, but our goal has never been peace. Peace is a means; the goal is Palestine."
Palestine Media Watch, established in 1996 to "gain an understanding of Palestinian society through the monitoring of the Palestinian Arabic language media and schoolbooks", according to its web site, has taken great pains to reveal these messages meant for Arab eyes and ears, to the world at large, a world that is distinctly disinterested. PMW "analyzes Palestinian Authority culture and society from numerous perspectives. Its purpose, to play the role of documenting the contradictions between the image the Palestinians present to the world in English and the messages to their own people in Arabic."
When Fatah makes reference to "Palestine", the reference is inclusive of the State of Israel. Another Fatah MP, Najat Abu Bakr in another PA television interview a year ago, clearly stated Fatah's goal remains that of the destruction of Israel, even while their political goal for international consumption is the return of Israel to the 1957 borders. "It doesn't mean that we don't want the 1948 borders. Our current political program is to say that we want the 1967 borders."
Mohammed Dahlan, a senior PA official reaffirmed that Fatah has no intention of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, that the PA's recognition is meant to ensure that foreign aid continues to flow. "...the Fatah movement does not recognize Israel, even today ...[such recognition is] required of the government but not of the Fatah, so that this government will be able to offer the necessary assistance, to carry out the necessary reconstruction, to offer assistance to the sick, to bring relief to needy families.... This can be dealt with only by a government that has relations with the international community, one that is acceptable to the international community, in order that we can work together and benefit from the international community."
Deception, hypocrisy in the extreme, but quite in keeping with the stolid expectations of the international communty, reality apart.
Labels: India, Middle East, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 13, 2009
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