I've long read the Christian Century. Now I'm subscribing. In this week's issue is a fine editorial by Editor John Buchanan.
It's balanced, pleading, practical, sensible (and thus naive), even wistful, as though our hopes and dreams might some day be fulfilled.
BTW, I'm strongly considering taking another PILGRIMAGE to Israel/Palestine, with mostly Presbyterians. Want to hear more?
Give me a holler and I'll send you details. JRK
Editor's Desk
Double duty
Jun 14, 2011 by John M. Buchanan (The Christian Century)
When George Mitchell quietly resigned as special envoy for the Middle East, I was dismayed. I've always thought of him as a man of strong convictions but also as a pragmatist, a practitioner of politics as the art of compromise. Did he find the Israel-Palestine puzzle so intractable that he concluded that his efforts on behalf of the U.S. government were futile?
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, observed recently that while Israel continues to be successful economically, it is increasingly isolated internationally; indeed, it is regarded by most of the world as the chief obstacle to Middle East peace (Time, May 2). Although the Middle East is in a particularly difficult time, with Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel's borders, the future of the Jewish state is at stake.
Churches, including my own, have a long relationship with the people of the Middle East and a mission presence nearly a century and a half old. We established schools, colleges and hospitals in the region and have ecclesiastical relationships with indigenous Middle Eastern churches. Our partners on the ground want and need American church support as they work for an end to the military occupation by Israel and for the self-determination of the Palestinian people.
At the same time American churches are partners with the American Jewish community. Many congregations are enriched by healthy and respectful relationships with neighboring synagogues. On a national level Christians and Jews have long been partners in working for peace and justice.
Sometimes the Jewish community sees Christian sympathy for the plight of the people of Palestine and their cause as hostility toward Israel and as insensitivity to the fact that Israel is surrounded by hostile nations and organizations. Criticism of Israel's policies is sometimes regarded as anti-Semitic.
I believe that Christians need to respond to this situation by doing two things: support the cause of a secure and viable Palestinian state that will live peacefully beside a secure and viable Israel and at the same time reach out to the Jewish community and to our Jewish neighbors in friendship and love and shared commitment to the common good.
Time is running out on the dream of a viable Palestinian state even though most people know that such a state is necessary for the sake of the entire region. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes that he can scold President Obama and count on unqualified support from American Jewish organizations. Is it too much to hope that U.S. Jewish leaders will publicly or privately tell the prime minister that he must take political risks for the sake of peace? And that continued settlement expansion, for instance, flies in the face of any verbal commitment to peace and a viable Palestinian state?
Is it too much to hope that Hamas will stop insisting that Israel must be destroyed? Nation-states do not ordinarily declare that neighbors have a "right to exist." But neither do nation-states ignore a neighbor whose charter calls for the elimination, presumably violently, of that state. Why can't Hamas simply say: Give us the right to exist as a state and we'll stop trying to eliminate you.
The Israeli prime minister's fragile coalition includes far-right parties that abhor the thought of any accommodation to Palestine's needs and rights. His counterpart, Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, must deal with Hamas as a partner in government.
Do these challenges make any initiative too simple, too naive to undertake? Or will someone do something to break the impasse and move toward the peace the whole world so desperately needs?
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Mark Braverman, Part 2
Dear Friends,
In my previous post, I posted Mark's Part 1 of his recent visit to S. Africa. Here is part two with a brief intro and Mark's intro comments. Remember, Mark is a Jewish psychologist, advocating for systemic changes to the US/Isr policy toward the native peoples in Palestine.
Here is the second part of Mark Braverman's effort to apply the S. African experience to the "Kairos" moment in Isr/Pal relationships. It is lengthy, relevant and applicable to the situation in I/P right now.
Here is Mark's introduction to Part 2: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent appearance before a joint session of the U.S. Congress and the shameful behavior of the members of Congress in rising to their feet 29 times to applaud his radical, intransigent positions should shatter any remaining illusions that peace will come through negotiations under current conditions. Politics has failed to bring about a just peace in Israel-Palestine. In fact, the political/diplomatic process, based on false assumptions (Israel will accept a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders; the U.S. is an honest broker to the negotiation process) is itself actively advancing the building of Israeli Apartheid...Our situation today is strikingly similar to that faced by a group of South African pastors and theologians confronting the intransigence of the South African government in ending Apartheid. In 1985, they sat down to compose a historic, prophetic document. It had been a long journey to reach that point -- the result of a struggle of the churches in South Africa to come to terms with their silence and their sometimes active complicity with the system that had poisoned and brutalized their society. By 1985 the church had finally arrived at a place from which there was no escape, no compromise, and no way back....
Part 2: A Moment of Truth for the U.S. Church
The first task of a prophetic theology for our times would be an attempt at social analysis or what Jesus would call “reading the signs of the times” (Mt 16:3) or “interpreting this Kairos” (Lk 12:56). Kairos is actually a moment of truth, of discernment, of discovery. It is a revelation of the reality we live in, of what is at stake and our responsibility in that moment.
Allan Boesak, “Kairos Consciousness,” 2011
A moment of truth
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent appearance before a joint session of the U.S. Congress and the shameful behavior of the members of Congress in rising to their feet 29 times to applaud his radical, intransigent positions should shatter any remaining illusions that peace will come through negotiations under current conditions. Politics has failed to bring about a just peace in Israel-Palestine. In fact, the political/diplomatic process, based on false assumptions (Israel will accept a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders; the U.S. is an honest broker to the negotiation process) is itself actively advancing the building of Israeli Apartheid. There is an urgent need to continue to build the international grassroots movement to delegitimize Israeli Apartheid and to exert economic, social and diplomatic pressure on Israel and on the countries supporting its policies, especially the U.S. Historically, the churches have played a significant role in creating political and social change through movements of nonviolent resistance. Examples of this in recent history are the U.S. Civil Rights movement, organized opposition to the Vietnam War, and the movement to end Apartheid in South Africa.
Our situation today is strikingly similar to that faced by a group of South African pastors and theologians confronting the intransigence of the South African government in ending Apartheid. In 1985, they sat down to compose a historic, prophetic document. It had been a long journey to reach that point — the result of a struggle of the churches in South Africa to come to terms with their silence and their sometimes active complicity with the system that had poisoned and brutalized their society. By 1985 the church had finally arrived at a place from which there was no escape, no compromise, and no way back. The authors of the South Africa Kairos document articulate this in their preamble (passages from the document appear in italics):
We as a group of theologians have been trying to understand the theological significance of this moment in our history. It is serious, very serious. For very many Christians in South Africa this is the KAIROS, the moment of grace and opportunity, the favorable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action… A crisis is a judgment that brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. A crisis is a moment of truth that shows us up for what we really are. There will be no place to hide and no way of pretending to be what we are not in fact. At this moment in South Africa the Church is about to be shown up for what it really is and no cover-up will be possible… It is the KAIROS or moment of truth not only for apartheid but also for the Church.
Like South Africa in the 1980s, suffering under four decades under the Apartheid regime, the situation in the Palestinian territories after over 40 years under military occupation is serious, very serious. For Israel and the entire civilized world, entering the seventh decade of refugee status for the now five million descendants of the Palestinians displaced by the establishment of the State of Israel, there is no longer any place to hide.
The American context
The situation in Palestine has created this moment of truth for the church on a global level, but churches in different geographical regions face differing contexts, necessitating different Kairos agendas. The context for the Palestine Kairos document is military occupation and the implementation of an apartheid system of dispossession, discrimination and control over all aspects of Palestinian civil society. The context for the Southern Africa Kairos is (1) solidarity with Palestinians living under this apartheid system and (2) the need to unify and energize the church in South Africa by taking on the Palestinian cause. The U.S. context is multifaceted and compelling. It includes: (1) U.S. responsibility for financing the building of Israeli Apartheid and for shielding Israel from accountability in the international arena, (2) the American church’s acquiescence with our government’s support of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, (3) theological support (along a spectrum of conservative, mainstream and progressive theologies) for a superior Jewish claim to the land and the right to expel and/or exert political dominance over non-Jewish inhabitants, and (4) the American church’s renewal movement — its quest to return to the fundamental principles of Christianity.
“The favorable time” is now. The Palestinian Spring has arrived in the form of the Nakba Day protests, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal in Cairo and the upcoming United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood. These events unfold against the backdrop of the 2005 Palestinian call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, the Palestine Kairos document of 2009, the 2011 Kairos Southern Africa endorsement of Kairos Palestine, the recent popular uprisings throughout the Arab world, and the growing awareness throughout the U.S. churches of the need for education and direct action to bring about a peace based on justice. The Palestinian and South African Kairos documents provide examples for the American church of what it means to take a clear stance on the theological unacceptability of any ideology, theology, or legal system that that grants the members of one group dominance over another. The parallel to our situation is the sham of the U.S.-sponsored “peace process” and the myths that support it, such as the picture of an Israel that makes “generous” offers – offers that serve only to further its colonialist aims. The implications of this are as clear and inescapable for the U.S. church as they are for Palestinians living under occupation today and as they were for the South Africans three decades ago. Any theology and course of action (or inaction) that supports the oppression of an illegitimate regime has to be replaced with an alternative theology and course of action.
Activity within the American church in support of the Palestinian cause is not new. It has been going on for decades, at local and denominational levels, through educational programs, peace pilgrimages, connections with Palestinian and Israeli civil society organizations, and most recently through boycott and divestment initiatives. However, apart from the work of local taskforces and denominationally-based groups devoted to the cause of Middle East peace, a coordinated, ecumenical effort by the American church as a whole has been lacking. Churches for Middle East Peace is an ecumenical organization dedicated exclusively to this issue, but there is a growing awareness that CMEP’s cautious agenda, limited to legislative advocacy, falls short of the activism needed to meet this Kairos moment. It is time for the U.S. church to takes its place alongside the Palestinian, Southern African, and nascent European and Asian Kairos movements.
Lessons from 1985: A primer in “Church theology”
Although both the Palestinian and South African documents need to be studied by American Christians, the 1985 South African document, with its focus on church complicity, provides a particularly useful set of guideposts for the U.S. church. To be sure, there are differences in the historical situation and in the particular configuration of the challenges – indeed, South African colleagues tell me that what we are facing now makes their past struggle look like child’s play. But the core issues of complicity and responsibility, and the perfect storm of theology, ideology and civil religion that support the continuation of an oppressive system are startlingly similar.
The heart of the South African document is its analysis of what it calls “Church Theology:” that is, a theology and set of attitudes, opinions and assumptions that are employed by the church to maintain the status quo and to directly and indirectly support immoral government policies. Church theology tries to create the appearance of opposing injustice and oppression. In reality, however, it is devoted to shoring up the very system that perpetrates the evil:
‘Church Theology’ tends to make use of absolute principles like reconciliation and non-violence and applies them indiscriminately and uncritically to all situations. Very little attempt is made to analyze what is actually happening it our society and why it is happening…Closely linked to this is the lack of an adequate understanding of politics and political strategy.
The document identifies three such “church opinions” or assumptions: reconciliation, justice, and non-violence.
Reconciliation
‘Church Theology’ often describes the Christian stance in the following way: “We must be fair. We must listen to both sides of the story. If the two sides can only meet to talk and negotiate they will sort out their differences and misunderstandings, and the conflict will be resolved.
The fallacy here is that ‘Reconciliation’ has been made into an absolute principle. But there are conflicts where one side is a fully armed and violent oppressor while the other side is defenseless and oppressed. To speak of reconciling these two is not only a mistaken application of the Christian idea of reconciliation, it is a total betrayal of all that Christian faith has ever meant.
In our situation in South Africa today it would be totally unchristian to plead for reconciliation and peace before the present injustices have been removed…No reconciliation is possible in South Africa without justice …
This analysis goes to the heart of the problem when applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict. One of the most striking features of the discourse about Israel/Palestine in the United States is the preoccupation with the need for a “balanced” perspective. Here is how this typically plays out: you may not talk about house demolitions, humiliation at checkpoints, restrictions on movement, the death of innocent civilians, targeted assassinations, or any other examples of Palestinian suffering, without presenting what is usually termed the “other side.” The “other side” is the recognition of the suffering of the Israelis, who have endured five wars, terrorist attacks, and the sense that they are surrounded by implacable enemies. (The fact of Israelis’ fear of annihilation is not in dispute. The question of the reality of the threat, however, is relevant. Ira Chernus takes up this issue in his recent piece in The Nation, “The myth of Israeli vulnerability”). You may not talk about the dispossession of the Palestinians to make way for the Jewish state without noting historic Jewish suffering or the displacement of Jews from Arab countries. On its face, this seems fair. But in the current discourse, the demand for “balance” is not about being fair. Rather, it is used to blunt scrutiny of those actions of Israel that are the root cause of the conflict. As the South African document so effectively sets out, appeals here to principles of “reconciliation,” “dialogue” and “balance” serve not to advance but to obscure the issue of justice. The example of South Africa clearly demonstrates that it is only when the structures of inequality and discrimination have been removed that activities devoted to reconciliation between the parties can be undertaken.
Justice
The very serious theological question is: What kind of justice? An examination of Church statements and pronouncements gives the distinct impression that the justice that is envisaged is the justice of reform, that is to say, a justice that is determined by the oppressor, by the white minority and that is offered to the people as a kind of concession. It does not appear to be the more radical justice that comes from below and is determined by the people of South Africa.
There have been reforms and, no doubt, there will be further reforms in the near future. And it may well be that the Church’s appeal to the consciences of whites has contributed marginally to the introduction of some of these reforms. But can such reforms ever be regarded as real change, as the introduction of a true and lasting justice.
True justice, God’s justice, demands a radical change of structures.
Reform was a major issue for the anti-Apartheid struggle. The offers of reform by the Pretoria government, coming too little and too late, mirrored for the authors of Kairos South Africa the attempts of some of the churches to enact superficial changes that did not address the underlying racial inequalities built into church practice and by which the churches continued to support racist government policies. In similar fashion, “progressive” thinkers among Jews disturbed by Israel’s behavior attempt to find ways to remove or remediate the most egregious and blatant aspects of Israeli policy. These efforts, however, do not address the root cause of the abuses, which arise inevitably from the attempt of Israel to maintain a Jewish majority and to continue Jewish rule over a diverse population. In similar fashion, church bodies attempt to find ways to “balance” or soften the prophetic witness to Palestinian suffering in order to deflect or avoid opposition by Jewish groups and groups within the churches who brand any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.
Non-Violence
The problem for the Church here is the way the word violence is being used in the propaganda of the State. The State and the media have chosen to call violence what some people do in the townships as they struggle for their liberation i.e. throwing stones, burning cars and buildings and sometimes killing collaborators. But this excludes the structural, institutional and unrepentant violence of the State and especially the oppressive and naked violence of the police and the army. These things are not counted as violence… Thus the phrase ‘Violence in the townships’ comes to mean what the young people are doing and not what the police are doing or what apartheid in general is doing to people.
In practice what one calls ‘violence’ and what one calls ‘self-defense’ seems to depend upon which side one is on. To call all physical force ‘violence’ is to try to be neutral and to refuse to make a judgment about who is right and who is wrong. The attempt to remain neutral in this kind of conflict is futile. Neutrality enables the status quo of oppression (and therefore violence) to continue. It is a way of giving tacit support to the oppressor.
The parallels are obvious. Israeli state terrorism is contextualized as self-defense. Palestinian resistance is framed as terrorism. Again, Ira Chernus’ recent piece in The Nation is instructive.
The challenge to the American church
The South African document arose from a context of a church – black and white, theologians, pastors and lay leaders – acknowledging its complicity with a tyrannical regime. The document points out that the Bible is very clear about regimes that violate fundamental principles of justice and equality. “A tyrannical regime,” it states, “has no moral legitimacy. It may be the de facto government and it may even be recognized by other governments and therefore be the de jure or legal government. But if it is a tyrannical regime, it is, from a moral and theological point of view, illegitimate.” Thus the church saw no alternative but to oppose the regime itself as unreformable, and to challenge the “church theology” that supported the illegitimate system.
This is where the U.S. church finds itself as it witnesses Israel’s ongoing dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians. It has become increasingly clear that Israel’s goal is not a sovereign and independent Palestine, but the continued colonization of Palestinian lands, the subjugation of its people, and the blocking of any prospect of return for refugees. Like the South Africans in 1985, we are looking today at an Israeli government that has shown itself to be illegitimate according to fundamental religious and humanitarian principles as well as standards of international law. It is the policies themselves, and the government that implements them, that must become the focus of church activity. In the South African case, an appeal to the governments of the world to employ sanctions against the South African government became an increasingly important component of the anti-Apartheid movement. In our U.S. case, it is particularly clear that besides holding Israel itself accountable, we must confront directly our own government’s key role as a supporter of Israel’s illegal, self-destructive and dangerous policies. As was true in the South Africa case, the stakes are very high. The moral imperative for Christians and for all people committed to peace and to social justice is powerful and increasingly urgent:
A tyrannical regime cannot continue to rule for very long without becoming more and more violent. As the majority of the people begin to demand their rights and to put pressure on the tyrant, so will the tyrant resort more and more to desperate, cruel, gross and ruthless forms of tyranny and repression. The reign of a tyrant always ends up as a reign of terror.
The South Africa Kairos document was the product of decades of a church struggle to claim its prophetic heart. The U.S. church is now engaged in a process to remain faithful to its core principles. The time has come to name the struggle and to take sides. It is the choice between conservative theologies that hew to exceptionalist doctrines that pervert the words of scripture into supporting oppression, land taking, and even genocide, and a movement of renewal and return to core values of universalism, social justice, and human dignity — the building of the Kingdom of God here on earth. It is the choice between following denominational hierarchies and cautious clergy more concerned with maintaining church structures, protecting funding sources and preserving relationships with the American Jewish establishment, and following the example of the early church in taking a prophetic stance against injustice. The challenge to the U.S. church is as clear as that faced by the South African church three decades ago. Contemporary theologians, historians and social critics have observed that the religious exceptionalism that is the legacy of our Puritan past is being enacted in our support of Israel. They point to how the current dominant American metanarrative driving the “war on terror” interlocks with the metanarrative of a democratic Israel defending itself (and us) from the implacable hatred of an enemy who embraces a false religion committed to hatred and destruction. They point out the parallels to the first century, when a visionary and iconoclastic Palestinian Jew challenged the oppressive political order of his time (represented by the Temple in Jerusalem), calling instead for a Kingdom based on compassion and social justice.
The argument is made that the situation is complex, the relationships multifaceted and fraught with history, and that the conflicts between equally justifiable “claims” or “rights” create ambiguities and conflicting courses of action. Kairos –“a moment of truth, of discernment, of discovery” — cuts through these intellectual confusions and moral snares. Status confessionis, as American theologian Robert McAfee Brown has written — a confessional situation — is a time when “the issues are so clear, and the stakes are so high, that the privilege of amiable disagreement must be superseded by clear-cut decisions, and the choice must move from ‘both/and’ to ‘either or.’” The Palestinian document is a cry of pain and a call to action. The South African document holds up a mirror to our complicity and to our responsibility to core principles of faith and humanity. The church is called – along with those from other faith traditions and the peace community who join it in this struggle.
Here we stand.
And here is my response to his blog: Dear Mark, Thank you for this clear assessment and application to the I/P situation.
What is not clearly stated is a ringing call for BDS, boycotts, disinvestments and sanctions. I think that is what you are asking “the American churches” to undertake. It seems that only this action got the attention of the Dutch Reformed leaders of the Apartheid regime. They saw “the handwriting on the wall” (the prophecy of Daniel in the OT), and dismantled the policy.
Unfortunately, these were blacks, coloreds and “whites” from the same “Christian” background. Jews, Christians and Muslims in I/P, though “children of Abraham” (with a common father), have long centuries of animosity, distrust and conflict.
We need more studies on how Abraham acted among the “people of the land” (I have such a study of Genesis 23, for example).
I’m not suggesting BDS is the wrong route to take, I just suggesting that attitudes must slowly evolve, making room for “the other”, if true progress is to be made. JRK
In my previous post, I posted Mark's Part 1 of his recent visit to S. Africa. Here is part two with a brief intro and Mark's intro comments. Remember, Mark is a Jewish psychologist, advocating for systemic changes to the US/Isr policy toward the native peoples in Palestine.
Here is the second part of Mark Braverman's effort to apply the S. African experience to the "Kairos" moment in Isr/Pal relationships. It is lengthy, relevant and applicable to the situation in I/P right now.
Here is Mark's introduction to Part 2: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent appearance before a joint session of the U.S. Congress and the shameful behavior of the members of Congress in rising to their feet 29 times to applaud his radical, intransigent positions should shatter any remaining illusions that peace will come through negotiations under current conditions. Politics has failed to bring about a just peace in Israel-Palestine. In fact, the political/diplomatic process, based on false assumptions (Israel will accept a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders; the U.S. is an honest broker to the negotiation process) is itself actively advancing the building of Israeli Apartheid...Our situation today is strikingly similar to that faced by a group of South African pastors and theologians confronting the intransigence of the South African government in ending Apartheid. In 1985, they sat down to compose a historic, prophetic document. It had been a long journey to reach that point -- the result of a struggle of the churches in South Africa to come to terms with their silence and their sometimes active complicity with the system that had poisoned and brutalized their society. By 1985 the church had finally arrived at a place from which there was no escape, no compromise, and no way back....
Part 2: A Moment of Truth for the U.S. Church
The first task of a prophetic theology for our times would be an attempt at social analysis or what Jesus would call “reading the signs of the times” (Mt 16:3) or “interpreting this Kairos” (Lk 12:56). Kairos is actually a moment of truth, of discernment, of discovery. It is a revelation of the reality we live in, of what is at stake and our responsibility in that moment.
Allan Boesak, “Kairos Consciousness,” 2011
A moment of truth
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent appearance before a joint session of the U.S. Congress and the shameful behavior of the members of Congress in rising to their feet 29 times to applaud his radical, intransigent positions should shatter any remaining illusions that peace will come through negotiations under current conditions. Politics has failed to bring about a just peace in Israel-Palestine. In fact, the political/diplomatic process, based on false assumptions (Israel will accept a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders; the U.S. is an honest broker to the negotiation process) is itself actively advancing the building of Israeli Apartheid. There is an urgent need to continue to build the international grassroots movement to delegitimize Israeli Apartheid and to exert economic, social and diplomatic pressure on Israel and on the countries supporting its policies, especially the U.S. Historically, the churches have played a significant role in creating political and social change through movements of nonviolent resistance. Examples of this in recent history are the U.S. Civil Rights movement, organized opposition to the Vietnam War, and the movement to end Apartheid in South Africa.
Our situation today is strikingly similar to that faced by a group of South African pastors and theologians confronting the intransigence of the South African government in ending Apartheid. In 1985, they sat down to compose a historic, prophetic document. It had been a long journey to reach that point — the result of a struggle of the churches in South Africa to come to terms with their silence and their sometimes active complicity with the system that had poisoned and brutalized their society. By 1985 the church had finally arrived at a place from which there was no escape, no compromise, and no way back. The authors of the South Africa Kairos document articulate this in their preamble (passages from the document appear in italics):
We as a group of theologians have been trying to understand the theological significance of this moment in our history. It is serious, very serious. For very many Christians in South Africa this is the KAIROS, the moment of grace and opportunity, the favorable time in which God issues a challenge to decisive action… A crisis is a judgment that brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. A crisis is a moment of truth that shows us up for what we really are. There will be no place to hide and no way of pretending to be what we are not in fact. At this moment in South Africa the Church is about to be shown up for what it really is and no cover-up will be possible… It is the KAIROS or moment of truth not only for apartheid but also for the Church.
Like South Africa in the 1980s, suffering under four decades under the Apartheid regime, the situation in the Palestinian territories after over 40 years under military occupation is serious, very serious. For Israel and the entire civilized world, entering the seventh decade of refugee status for the now five million descendants of the Palestinians displaced by the establishment of the State of Israel, there is no longer any place to hide.
The American context
The situation in Palestine has created this moment of truth for the church on a global level, but churches in different geographical regions face differing contexts, necessitating different Kairos agendas. The context for the Palestine Kairos document is military occupation and the implementation of an apartheid system of dispossession, discrimination and control over all aspects of Palestinian civil society. The context for the Southern Africa Kairos is (1) solidarity with Palestinians living under this apartheid system and (2) the need to unify and energize the church in South Africa by taking on the Palestinian cause. The U.S. context is multifaceted and compelling. It includes: (1) U.S. responsibility for financing the building of Israeli Apartheid and for shielding Israel from accountability in the international arena, (2) the American church’s acquiescence with our government’s support of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, (3) theological support (along a spectrum of conservative, mainstream and progressive theologies) for a superior Jewish claim to the land and the right to expel and/or exert political dominance over non-Jewish inhabitants, and (4) the American church’s renewal movement — its quest to return to the fundamental principles of Christianity.
“The favorable time” is now. The Palestinian Spring has arrived in the form of the Nakba Day protests, the Fatah-Hamas unity deal in Cairo and the upcoming United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood. These events unfold against the backdrop of the 2005 Palestinian call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, the Palestine Kairos document of 2009, the 2011 Kairos Southern Africa endorsement of Kairos Palestine, the recent popular uprisings throughout the Arab world, and the growing awareness throughout the U.S. churches of the need for education and direct action to bring about a peace based on justice. The Palestinian and South African Kairos documents provide examples for the American church of what it means to take a clear stance on the theological unacceptability of any ideology, theology, or legal system that that grants the members of one group dominance over another. The parallel to our situation is the sham of the U.S.-sponsored “peace process” and the myths that support it, such as the picture of an Israel that makes “generous” offers – offers that serve only to further its colonialist aims. The implications of this are as clear and inescapable for the U.S. church as they are for Palestinians living under occupation today and as they were for the South Africans three decades ago. Any theology and course of action (or inaction) that supports the oppression of an illegitimate regime has to be replaced with an alternative theology and course of action.
Activity within the American church in support of the Palestinian cause is not new. It has been going on for decades, at local and denominational levels, through educational programs, peace pilgrimages, connections with Palestinian and Israeli civil society organizations, and most recently through boycott and divestment initiatives. However, apart from the work of local taskforces and denominationally-based groups devoted to the cause of Middle East peace, a coordinated, ecumenical effort by the American church as a whole has been lacking. Churches for Middle East Peace is an ecumenical organization dedicated exclusively to this issue, but there is a growing awareness that CMEP’s cautious agenda, limited to legislative advocacy, falls short of the activism needed to meet this Kairos moment. It is time for the U.S. church to takes its place alongside the Palestinian, Southern African, and nascent European and Asian Kairos movements.
Lessons from 1985: A primer in “Church theology”
Although both the Palestinian and South African documents need to be studied by American Christians, the 1985 South African document, with its focus on church complicity, provides a particularly useful set of guideposts for the U.S. church. To be sure, there are differences in the historical situation and in the particular configuration of the challenges – indeed, South African colleagues tell me that what we are facing now makes their past struggle look like child’s play. But the core issues of complicity and responsibility, and the perfect storm of theology, ideology and civil religion that support the continuation of an oppressive system are startlingly similar.
The heart of the South African document is its analysis of what it calls “Church Theology:” that is, a theology and set of attitudes, opinions and assumptions that are employed by the church to maintain the status quo and to directly and indirectly support immoral government policies. Church theology tries to create the appearance of opposing injustice and oppression. In reality, however, it is devoted to shoring up the very system that perpetrates the evil:
‘Church Theology’ tends to make use of absolute principles like reconciliation and non-violence and applies them indiscriminately and uncritically to all situations. Very little attempt is made to analyze what is actually happening it our society and why it is happening…Closely linked to this is the lack of an adequate understanding of politics and political strategy.
The document identifies three such “church opinions” or assumptions: reconciliation, justice, and non-violence.
Reconciliation
‘Church Theology’ often describes the Christian stance in the following way: “We must be fair. We must listen to both sides of the story. If the two sides can only meet to talk and negotiate they will sort out their differences and misunderstandings, and the conflict will be resolved.
The fallacy here is that ‘Reconciliation’ has been made into an absolute principle. But there are conflicts where one side is a fully armed and violent oppressor while the other side is defenseless and oppressed. To speak of reconciling these two is not only a mistaken application of the Christian idea of reconciliation, it is a total betrayal of all that Christian faith has ever meant.
In our situation in South Africa today it would be totally unchristian to plead for reconciliation and peace before the present injustices have been removed…No reconciliation is possible in South Africa without justice …
This analysis goes to the heart of the problem when applied to the Israel/Palestine conflict. One of the most striking features of the discourse about Israel/Palestine in the United States is the preoccupation with the need for a “balanced” perspective. Here is how this typically plays out: you may not talk about house demolitions, humiliation at checkpoints, restrictions on movement, the death of innocent civilians, targeted assassinations, or any other examples of Palestinian suffering, without presenting what is usually termed the “other side.” The “other side” is the recognition of the suffering of the Israelis, who have endured five wars, terrorist attacks, and the sense that they are surrounded by implacable enemies. (The fact of Israelis’ fear of annihilation is not in dispute. The question of the reality of the threat, however, is relevant. Ira Chernus takes up this issue in his recent piece in The Nation, “The myth of Israeli vulnerability”). You may not talk about the dispossession of the Palestinians to make way for the Jewish state without noting historic Jewish suffering or the displacement of Jews from Arab countries. On its face, this seems fair. But in the current discourse, the demand for “balance” is not about being fair. Rather, it is used to blunt scrutiny of those actions of Israel that are the root cause of the conflict. As the South African document so effectively sets out, appeals here to principles of “reconciliation,” “dialogue” and “balance” serve not to advance but to obscure the issue of justice. The example of South Africa clearly demonstrates that it is only when the structures of inequality and discrimination have been removed that activities devoted to reconciliation between the parties can be undertaken.
Justice
The very serious theological question is: What kind of justice? An examination of Church statements and pronouncements gives the distinct impression that the justice that is envisaged is the justice of reform, that is to say, a justice that is determined by the oppressor, by the white minority and that is offered to the people as a kind of concession. It does not appear to be the more radical justice that comes from below and is determined by the people of South Africa.
There have been reforms and, no doubt, there will be further reforms in the near future. And it may well be that the Church’s appeal to the consciences of whites has contributed marginally to the introduction of some of these reforms. But can such reforms ever be regarded as real change, as the introduction of a true and lasting justice.
True justice, God’s justice, demands a radical change of structures.
Reform was a major issue for the anti-Apartheid struggle. The offers of reform by the Pretoria government, coming too little and too late, mirrored for the authors of Kairos South Africa the attempts of some of the churches to enact superficial changes that did not address the underlying racial inequalities built into church practice and by which the churches continued to support racist government policies. In similar fashion, “progressive” thinkers among Jews disturbed by Israel’s behavior attempt to find ways to remove or remediate the most egregious and blatant aspects of Israeli policy. These efforts, however, do not address the root cause of the abuses, which arise inevitably from the attempt of Israel to maintain a Jewish majority and to continue Jewish rule over a diverse population. In similar fashion, church bodies attempt to find ways to “balance” or soften the prophetic witness to Palestinian suffering in order to deflect or avoid opposition by Jewish groups and groups within the churches who brand any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism.
Non-Violence
The problem for the Church here is the way the word violence is being used in the propaganda of the State. The State and the media have chosen to call violence what some people do in the townships as they struggle for their liberation i.e. throwing stones, burning cars and buildings and sometimes killing collaborators. But this excludes the structural, institutional and unrepentant violence of the State and especially the oppressive and naked violence of the police and the army. These things are not counted as violence… Thus the phrase ‘Violence in the townships’ comes to mean what the young people are doing and not what the police are doing or what apartheid in general is doing to people.
In practice what one calls ‘violence’ and what one calls ‘self-defense’ seems to depend upon which side one is on. To call all physical force ‘violence’ is to try to be neutral and to refuse to make a judgment about who is right and who is wrong. The attempt to remain neutral in this kind of conflict is futile. Neutrality enables the status quo of oppression (and therefore violence) to continue. It is a way of giving tacit support to the oppressor.
The parallels are obvious. Israeli state terrorism is contextualized as self-defense. Palestinian resistance is framed as terrorism. Again, Ira Chernus’ recent piece in The Nation is instructive.
The challenge to the American church
The South African document arose from a context of a church – black and white, theologians, pastors and lay leaders – acknowledging its complicity with a tyrannical regime. The document points out that the Bible is very clear about regimes that violate fundamental principles of justice and equality. “A tyrannical regime,” it states, “has no moral legitimacy. It may be the de facto government and it may even be recognized by other governments and therefore be the de jure or legal government. But if it is a tyrannical regime, it is, from a moral and theological point of view, illegitimate.” Thus the church saw no alternative but to oppose the regime itself as unreformable, and to challenge the “church theology” that supported the illegitimate system.
This is where the U.S. church finds itself as it witnesses Israel’s ongoing dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians. It has become increasingly clear that Israel’s goal is not a sovereign and independent Palestine, but the continued colonization of Palestinian lands, the subjugation of its people, and the blocking of any prospect of return for refugees. Like the South Africans in 1985, we are looking today at an Israeli government that has shown itself to be illegitimate according to fundamental religious and humanitarian principles as well as standards of international law. It is the policies themselves, and the government that implements them, that must become the focus of church activity. In the South African case, an appeal to the governments of the world to employ sanctions against the South African government became an increasingly important component of the anti-Apartheid movement. In our U.S. case, it is particularly clear that besides holding Israel itself accountable, we must confront directly our own government’s key role as a supporter of Israel’s illegal, self-destructive and dangerous policies. As was true in the South Africa case, the stakes are very high. The moral imperative for Christians and for all people committed to peace and to social justice is powerful and increasingly urgent:
A tyrannical regime cannot continue to rule for very long without becoming more and more violent. As the majority of the people begin to demand their rights and to put pressure on the tyrant, so will the tyrant resort more and more to desperate, cruel, gross and ruthless forms of tyranny and repression. The reign of a tyrant always ends up as a reign of terror.
The South Africa Kairos document was the product of decades of a church struggle to claim its prophetic heart. The U.S. church is now engaged in a process to remain faithful to its core principles. The time has come to name the struggle and to take sides. It is the choice between conservative theologies that hew to exceptionalist doctrines that pervert the words of scripture into supporting oppression, land taking, and even genocide, and a movement of renewal and return to core values of universalism, social justice, and human dignity — the building of the Kingdom of God here on earth. It is the choice between following denominational hierarchies and cautious clergy more concerned with maintaining church structures, protecting funding sources and preserving relationships with the American Jewish establishment, and following the example of the early church in taking a prophetic stance against injustice. The challenge to the U.S. church is as clear as that faced by the South African church three decades ago. Contemporary theologians, historians and social critics have observed that the religious exceptionalism that is the legacy of our Puritan past is being enacted in our support of Israel. They point to how the current dominant American metanarrative driving the “war on terror” interlocks with the metanarrative of a democratic Israel defending itself (and us) from the implacable hatred of an enemy who embraces a false religion committed to hatred and destruction. They point out the parallels to the first century, when a visionary and iconoclastic Palestinian Jew challenged the oppressive political order of his time (represented by the Temple in Jerusalem), calling instead for a Kingdom based on compassion and social justice.
The argument is made that the situation is complex, the relationships multifaceted and fraught with history, and that the conflicts between equally justifiable “claims” or “rights” create ambiguities and conflicting courses of action. Kairos –“a moment of truth, of discernment, of discovery” — cuts through these intellectual confusions and moral snares. Status confessionis, as American theologian Robert McAfee Brown has written — a confessional situation — is a time when “the issues are so clear, and the stakes are so high, that the privilege of amiable disagreement must be superseded by clear-cut decisions, and the choice must move from ‘both/and’ to ‘either or.’” The Palestinian document is a cry of pain and a call to action. The South African document holds up a mirror to our complicity and to our responsibility to core principles of faith and humanity. The church is called – along with those from other faith traditions and the peace community who join it in this struggle.
Here we stand.
And here is my response to his blog: Dear Mark, Thank you for this clear assessment and application to the I/P situation.
What is not clearly stated is a ringing call for BDS, boycotts, disinvestments and sanctions. I think that is what you are asking “the American churches” to undertake. It seems that only this action got the attention of the Dutch Reformed leaders of the Apartheid regime. They saw “the handwriting on the wall” (the prophecy of Daniel in the OT), and dismantled the policy.
Unfortunately, these were blacks, coloreds and “whites” from the same “Christian” background. Jews, Christians and Muslims in I/P, though “children of Abraham” (with a common father), have long centuries of animosity, distrust and conflict.
We need more studies on how Abraham acted among the “people of the land” (I have such a study of Genesis 23, for example).
I’m not suggesting BDS is the wrong route to take, I just suggesting that attitudes must slowly evolve, making room for “the other”, if true progress is to be made. JRK
Monday, June 13, 2011
Learning from the South Africans!
Jewish activist Mark Braverman has been in South Africa, meeting with persons wanting to learn how the S. Africans beat back the Apartheid government some time ago. He has now published the first of two blog entries, sharing what he has learned. Go to www.markbraverman.org and click on his "blog: the Politics of Hope" for the text. Please read his comments on what he has learned.
What happened in South Africa is especially relevant to Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian types, many of whom participated in the "boycotts" that finally got the attention of the "white" (Dutch) establishment who wanted to confine the "coloreds" to "their part of the land" and minimize their political rights.
I'm attaching my comments to his blog entry. His response to my entry follows below.
Please follow this discussion and stay tuned in. JRK
Mark Braverman: Your comment on the post [My visit to South Africa Part 1], has a new reply
Here is your original comment:
Dear Mark: I'm looking forward to Part 2. Hard as it was to attain the breakthrough, the architects of Apartheid and the "colored" churches shared a common (Christian) heritage, and were able to find reconciliation without a lot of bloodshed. Much "grace" and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped with the aftermath. Unfortunately, I/P is made up of three religious groups, that are not as "close" as the blacks and whites in S. Africa. OK, well, they are children of Abraham, but many generations ago and a lot of water has passed over the dam. Karen Armstrong's "Compassion" creed is helpful and we have to accent the common humanity we have and the values we hold in common (love for God and neighbor, ala "The Common Word Between Us", etc). Thanks for your efforts to bring the OT (and NT) prophetic vision to bear on our region, dear colleague. John [Kleinheksel]
Here is the reply (apparently from his new friends in S. Africa):
Hi John: Thanks for your reflections on the similarities and differences between South Africa and Israel-Palestine. You are right - Bishop Tutu was able to say to the leader of the most right-wing group "whether you like it or not, you are my brother". (He said this to point out that they are both baptised in the same baptism). What we must pray for is not necessarily a Palestinian Mandela or Gandhi (because there are several), but rather an Israeli De Klerk. (FW de Klerk was the last president of apartheid South Africa). In faith terms, he belongs to a church that is even to the right of the Dutch Reformed church but I know that his faith helped him to some extent. But it was his realisation that things could not go on in the same old way, and that sanctions - even people to people sanctions e.g., sports - would only become worse, that ultimately made him move politically. This is why BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is so important. It would put the pressure on all Israelis to think creatively about a solution, and we in South Africa believe that it will come, but it will NOT come without pressure from everybody. The extreme right-wing will always be there and their bark will be worse than their bite...BDS will help to move most people into the centre...
What happened in South Africa is especially relevant to Dutch Reformed and Presbyterian types, many of whom participated in the "boycotts" that finally got the attention of the "white" (Dutch) establishment who wanted to confine the "coloreds" to "their part of the land" and minimize their political rights.
I'm attaching my comments to his blog entry. His response to my entry follows below.
Please follow this discussion and stay tuned in. JRK
Mark Braverman: Your comment on the post [My visit to South Africa Part 1], has a new reply
Here is your original comment:
Dear Mark: I'm looking forward to Part 2. Hard as it was to attain the breakthrough, the architects of Apartheid and the "colored" churches shared a common (Christian) heritage, and were able to find reconciliation without a lot of bloodshed. Much "grace" and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission helped with the aftermath. Unfortunately, I/P is made up of three religious groups, that are not as "close" as the blacks and whites in S. Africa. OK, well, they are children of Abraham, but many generations ago and a lot of water has passed over the dam. Karen Armstrong's "Compassion" creed is helpful and we have to accent the common humanity we have and the values we hold in common (love for God and neighbor, ala "The Common Word Between Us", etc). Thanks for your efforts to bring the OT (and NT) prophetic vision to bear on our region, dear colleague. John [Kleinheksel]
Here is the reply (apparently from his new friends in S. Africa):
Hi John: Thanks for your reflections on the similarities and differences between South Africa and Israel-Palestine. You are right - Bishop Tutu was able to say to the leader of the most right-wing group "whether you like it or not, you are my brother". (He said this to point out that they are both baptised in the same baptism). What we must pray for is not necessarily a Palestinian Mandela or Gandhi (because there are several), but rather an Israeli De Klerk. (FW de Klerk was the last president of apartheid South Africa). In faith terms, he belongs to a church that is even to the right of the Dutch Reformed church but I know that his faith helped him to some extent. But it was his realisation that things could not go on in the same old way, and that sanctions - even people to people sanctions e.g., sports - would only become worse, that ultimately made him move politically. This is why BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is so important. It would put the pressure on all Israelis to think creatively about a solution, and we in South Africa believe that it will come, but it will NOT come without pressure from everybody. The extreme right-wing will always be there and their bark will be worse than their bite...BDS will help to move most people into the centre...
Monday, June 6, 2011
Holy Land Trust Involved in Sunday's Protest
Hello Friend,
This morning I sent you the introductory piece on Sami Awad's Holy Land Trust.
Turns out it was his group that called for "nonviolent action" on Naksa Day (yesterday), presumably at all borders. There were 25 killed at the Syrian border with 350 injured. Israel (and US) are desperate to claim self-defense, but I find no evidence that protesters tried to breach the borders, only to go up to them nonviolently.
Below is the essence of a June 2 article prior to yesterday, detailing how the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was preparing to deal with "nonviolent" protesters.
You will not be pleased with the description. The latter half of the article tells of Sami's work in mobilizing Palestinians to go up to the borders WITH NO WEAPONS, and nonviolently protest against the occupation, trying to guard "borders" that have not even been declared to be borders of the Jewish state.
Pray for protection of those seeking to nonviolently protest occupation forces, forces that are trying to seal the theft of Palestinian land and rights. JRK
Killing Them Softly?
Arieh O'Sullivan
The Media Line (Opinion)
June 2, 2011 - 12:00am
http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=32344
“Here’s what they did,” says the commander of an Israeli reserve combat company deployed in the northern West Bank. “They [military higher-ups] dumped on us thousands of rounds of rubber bullets, cases of stun grenades and tear gas and that’s it. That’s the great Israeli army doctrine on how to cope with this Naksa.”
“God help us if [the Palestinians] start staging a non-violent march our way,” the officer told The Media Line, on condition he not be identified.
If there is anything that generates fear in the Israeli army beyond a surprise attack, it is the prospect of facing unarmed demonstrators. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was made to fight wars, and is uncomfortable confronting unarmed civilians.
But that’s just what Palestinians are planning for this Sunday. Grassroots activists working through the social media are calling people to come out and stage a mass assault on Israel’s borders to mark Naksa day, which commemorates what they call the “setback” of the 1967 Six Day War and Israel’s seizure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. . . .
The IDF Spokesman declines all requests to interview officers on non-lethal weapons and declined to allow reporters to examine how the IDF was, or wasn’t, preparing its troops for non-violent protests. While the IDF has trained its forces to flight low intensity conflicts, which are combat situations in a non-battlefield environment, it has been notoriously slow in using “less-than-lethal” weapons and only provides its troops with rudimentary riot-control training.
But, in the Central Command, a senior officer told The Media Line that they had deployed at key sites the “Skunk” and the “Screamer.” The Skunk is a water cannon that sprays protesters with foul-smelling liquid and the Screamer is a high-wattage acoustic weapon that causes human insides to vibrate to the point that the target turns into a quivering, vomiting, diarrheic mess.
“Our tactic is to contain the non-violent demonstrations and disperse them if they erupt and arrest the instigators with the tools we have at our disposal,” says a senior officer.
“We have a few of the Screamers deployed and the Skunks which fire a foul smelling organic sticky spray that is awful and pretty much makes you want to just stop what you’re doing and get away.”
For years, the IDF and security forces around the world have been seeking a politically correct tool that would stop demonstrators without seriously harming them. The IDF likes to point out that there is no silver bullet exists that incapacitates protest-hardened demonstrators.
Some projects on the drawing board include a flashing red light that sends anyone gazing at it into an epileptic fit, or bees that become highly aggressive when sprayed with a pheromone. The army even developed blank round for tanks that brings the idea of a stun grenade to a higher level. None of these have ever been deployed.
The Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust has been one of the most visible organizations promoting non-violent resistance as a Palestinian weapon. Its founder and executive director Sami Awad acknowledged that Palestinian society has come a long way in shedding the perception that pacifism and non-violence are a sign of weakness in Arab society. Watching the effect of the mass protests of the Arab Spring helped greatly.
Awad says he and his organization were once called traitors and collaborators but that has come full circle and advocacy of non-violence actions has been adopted by both the Fatah and Hamas.
“The Israeli leadership and military see [non-violent resistance] as a nightmare,” Awad told The Media Line. “The Israeli establishment is trying to plant fear in the heart of Israeli society. Just look at the way they presented the marches as an existential threat to Israel.”
Awad worries that non-violent actions will not guarantee that the other side will not use lethal weapons in response. “It’s actually not even a fear, but an expectation,” Awad said.
Palestinian peace activist Hanna Siniora says it took time for the Palestinians to realize this, partly due to what he called the brutal suppression of the Israeli army of the violent second intifada, which broke out in 2000 and saw the large-scale use by Palestinians of suicide bombers and armed attacks.
“Before, Palestinian society wasn’t ready for it, but now the Palestinians are much more aware because of the second intifada and because of its violence ended up doing much more damage than good,” Siniora told the Media Line. “The non-violent demonstrations are bearing fruit. This is a message to the public that it’s the best process.
So I am wondering what REALLY happened yesterday!!!!!! Reports of newly dug trenches have surfaced, marking new lines across which protestors would not be permitted to trespass. And land mines have been set there (admitted by the IDF). Israel seems intent on NOT PERMITTING protesters. It is not permitted to protest. If you protest against our rule, you will be shot, whether you throw stones or not, whether you have guns or not. It makes no difference. We tolerate no dissent. Does this sound like someone in Europe around the time of 1938 - 1945?
What indeed, do you do with nonviolent protesters? JRK
This morning I sent you the introductory piece on Sami Awad's Holy Land Trust.
Turns out it was his group that called for "nonviolent action" on Naksa Day (yesterday), presumably at all borders. There were 25 killed at the Syrian border with 350 injured. Israel (and US) are desperate to claim self-defense, but I find no evidence that protesters tried to breach the borders, only to go up to them nonviolently.
Below is the essence of a June 2 article prior to yesterday, detailing how the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) was preparing to deal with "nonviolent" protesters.
You will not be pleased with the description. The latter half of the article tells of Sami's work in mobilizing Palestinians to go up to the borders WITH NO WEAPONS, and nonviolently protest against the occupation, trying to guard "borders" that have not even been declared to be borders of the Jewish state.
Pray for protection of those seeking to nonviolently protest occupation forces, forces that are trying to seal the theft of Palestinian land and rights. JRK
Killing Them Softly?
Arieh O'Sullivan
The Media Line (Opinion)
June 2, 2011 - 12:00am
http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=32344
“Here’s what they did,” says the commander of an Israeli reserve combat company deployed in the northern West Bank. “They [military higher-ups] dumped on us thousands of rounds of rubber bullets, cases of stun grenades and tear gas and that’s it. That’s the great Israeli army doctrine on how to cope with this Naksa.”
“God help us if [the Palestinians] start staging a non-violent march our way,” the officer told The Media Line, on condition he not be identified.
If there is anything that generates fear in the Israeli army beyond a surprise attack, it is the prospect of facing unarmed demonstrators. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was made to fight wars, and is uncomfortable confronting unarmed civilians.
But that’s just what Palestinians are planning for this Sunday. Grassroots activists working through the social media are calling people to come out and stage a mass assault on Israel’s borders to mark Naksa day, which commemorates what they call the “setback” of the 1967 Six Day War and Israel’s seizure of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. . . .
The IDF Spokesman declines all requests to interview officers on non-lethal weapons and declined to allow reporters to examine how the IDF was, or wasn’t, preparing its troops for non-violent protests. While the IDF has trained its forces to flight low intensity conflicts, which are combat situations in a non-battlefield environment, it has been notoriously slow in using “less-than-lethal” weapons and only provides its troops with rudimentary riot-control training.
But, in the Central Command, a senior officer told The Media Line that they had deployed at key sites the “Skunk” and the “Screamer.” The Skunk is a water cannon that sprays protesters with foul-smelling liquid and the Screamer is a high-wattage acoustic weapon that causes human insides to vibrate to the point that the target turns into a quivering, vomiting, diarrheic mess.
“Our tactic is to contain the non-violent demonstrations and disperse them if they erupt and arrest the instigators with the tools we have at our disposal,” says a senior officer.
“We have a few of the Screamers deployed and the Skunks which fire a foul smelling organic sticky spray that is awful and pretty much makes you want to just stop what you’re doing and get away.”
For years, the IDF and security forces around the world have been seeking a politically correct tool that would stop demonstrators without seriously harming them. The IDF likes to point out that there is no silver bullet exists that incapacitates protest-hardened demonstrators.
Some projects on the drawing board include a flashing red light that sends anyone gazing at it into an epileptic fit, or bees that become highly aggressive when sprayed with a pheromone. The army even developed blank round for tanks that brings the idea of a stun grenade to a higher level. None of these have ever been deployed.
The Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust has been one of the most visible organizations promoting non-violent resistance as a Palestinian weapon. Its founder and executive director Sami Awad acknowledged that Palestinian society has come a long way in shedding the perception that pacifism and non-violence are a sign of weakness in Arab society. Watching the effect of the mass protests of the Arab Spring helped greatly.
Awad says he and his organization were once called traitors and collaborators but that has come full circle and advocacy of non-violence actions has been adopted by both the Fatah and Hamas.
“The Israeli leadership and military see [non-violent resistance] as a nightmare,” Awad told The Media Line. “The Israeli establishment is trying to plant fear in the heart of Israeli society. Just look at the way they presented the marches as an existential threat to Israel.”
Awad worries that non-violent actions will not guarantee that the other side will not use lethal weapons in response. “It’s actually not even a fear, but an expectation,” Awad said.
Palestinian peace activist Hanna Siniora says it took time for the Palestinians to realize this, partly due to what he called the brutal suppression of the Israeli army of the violent second intifada, which broke out in 2000 and saw the large-scale use by Palestinians of suicide bombers and armed attacks.
“Before, Palestinian society wasn’t ready for it, but now the Palestinians are much more aware because of the second intifada and because of its violence ended up doing much more damage than good,” Siniora told the Media Line. “The non-violent demonstrations are bearing fruit. This is a message to the public that it’s the best process.
So I am wondering what REALLY happened yesterday!!!!!! Reports of newly dug trenches have surfaced, marking new lines across which protestors would not be permitted to trespass. And land mines have been set there (admitted by the IDF). Israel seems intent on NOT PERMITTING protesters. It is not permitted to protest. If you protest against our rule, you will be shot, whether you throw stones or not, whether you have guns or not. It makes no difference. We tolerate no dissent. Does this sound like someone in Europe around the time of 1938 - 1945?
What indeed, do you do with nonviolent protesters? JRK
The Nonviolent Way to Go
Dear Friend,
Sami Awad is the son of Bishara Awad, President of Bethlehem Bible College.
The below article appeared in the Huffington Post recently. It articulates the nonviolent approach that is in keeping with Jesus of Nazareth, whom, to follow, is "The Way" to go.
Sami Awad
Executive Director, Holy Land Trust
WWJD? A Non-Violent Conflict Resolution for Palestine
How could a person living under military occupation, experiencing first-hand suffering and humiliation, even think about loving the enemy, let alone urge family, friends and neighbors to do the same? This challenging message came from a young rabbi named Jesus in his "Sermon on the Mount."
Of course, Jesus could have suggested we make peace with our enemies or negotiate peace agreements or peacefully resolve conflict; those statements would have been as shocking to the suffering Jews of that time. Instead, he entreated them to go further: to "love" them. This was the word he chose -- a command to all those who seek to follow him.
I studied history to better understand what life in my homeland was like under Roman occupation. The Jewish people had been displaced and lost their property. Many had been tortured, enslaved and imprisoned. Numerous had died at the hands of their oppressors. Sadly, many Jewish religious and political leaders even compromised and corrupted themselves by their Roman superiors.
In a way, my own history seems to parallel what happened more than 2,000 years ago. Like those hearing Jesus' words for the first time, I too have grown up living under military occupation. I have witnessed suffering and the loss it brings. As a Palestinian, I could share countless stories of brutality and abuse. I could explain how fear and grief can quickly turn into anger and resentment.
However, it may surprise some in the West that I am an Arab who was born into an evangelical Christian family. I expect that my family's "conversion" to Christianity happened thousands of years ago on the day of Pentecost, not through mission work. As a boy growing up in Bethlehem, I went to church every Sunday and to Sunday school every Friday, fully immersed in a faith-based culture no different than a Christian family in Bethlehem, Pa., or Palestine, Texas.
As I was learning Bible stories, my day-to-day reality and experiences were teaching me to become bitter and hateful of Israeli soldiers and all they represented. I knew this was not what my faith, schooling or my family had instructed, but these were the life lessons I was learning.
Everything changed for me in the early 1980s when my uncle returned from the United States to establish the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Bethlehem. Now I found a place to address my resentment and vent my anger. I began participating in many nonviolent activities to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands -- from planting olive trees in threatened areas to participating in children's street festivals with balloons colored like the Palestinian flag. When the Israeli government deported my uncle for his nonviolence efforts, I committed myself to engaging in this important work. I was 16 at the time.
For more than 20 years, I have been studying, practicing and teaching nonviolence both inside and outside of Palestine. I started Holy Land Trust in 1998 to promote the idea that nonviolence can be a path toward peace and a greater humanity in this land we all call Holy. Our organization is made up of Palestinians -- both Christians and Muslims -- who work together to develop awareness campaigns, provide training, organize demonstrations, etc. Our efforts often receive the support of internationals, including a growing number of Israeli Jews.
So while I had grown up knowing about the Sermon on the Mount, living it creates a different meaning and purpose. The first step in loving the enemy is to love and honor myself as a person loved by God, to break free from the fear and hatred within me, and to no longer claim victimization and seek pity as a result of the oppressive forces around me. This takes creating a deep distinction between those who stand before me and their behaviors and recognizing that every human being is created in the image of God. It requires acknowledging that conditions, traditions, experiences, traumas and assumptions can shape who we have become but are not who we truly are and, more importantly, who we can be. It's understanding that our core common identity is in our humanity and not in political, ideological or even religious associations.
As a follower of Jesus, I am compelled to promote a process of healing and liberation for those being oppressed as well as for their oppressors. Loving the enemy means you ultimately eliminate the label of "enemy" and engage in loving action to help them recognize and acknowledge your humanity. This is how to love your enemy, to really love them.
Sami Awad is the son of Bishara Awad, President of Bethlehem Bible College.
The below article appeared in the Huffington Post recently. It articulates the nonviolent approach that is in keeping with Jesus of Nazareth, whom, to follow, is "The Way" to go.
Sami Awad
Executive Director, Holy Land Trust
WWJD? A Non-Violent Conflict Resolution for Palestine
How could a person living under military occupation, experiencing first-hand suffering and humiliation, even think about loving the enemy, let alone urge family, friends and neighbors to do the same? This challenging message came from a young rabbi named Jesus in his "Sermon on the Mount."
Of course, Jesus could have suggested we make peace with our enemies or negotiate peace agreements or peacefully resolve conflict; those statements would have been as shocking to the suffering Jews of that time. Instead, he entreated them to go further: to "love" them. This was the word he chose -- a command to all those who seek to follow him.
I studied history to better understand what life in my homeland was like under Roman occupation. The Jewish people had been displaced and lost their property. Many had been tortured, enslaved and imprisoned. Numerous had died at the hands of their oppressors. Sadly, many Jewish religious and political leaders even compromised and corrupted themselves by their Roman superiors.
In a way, my own history seems to parallel what happened more than 2,000 years ago. Like those hearing Jesus' words for the first time, I too have grown up living under military occupation. I have witnessed suffering and the loss it brings. As a Palestinian, I could share countless stories of brutality and abuse. I could explain how fear and grief can quickly turn into anger and resentment.
However, it may surprise some in the West that I am an Arab who was born into an evangelical Christian family. I expect that my family's "conversion" to Christianity happened thousands of years ago on the day of Pentecost, not through mission work. As a boy growing up in Bethlehem, I went to church every Sunday and to Sunday school every Friday, fully immersed in a faith-based culture no different than a Christian family in Bethlehem, Pa., or Palestine, Texas.
As I was learning Bible stories, my day-to-day reality and experiences were teaching me to become bitter and hateful of Israeli soldiers and all they represented. I knew this was not what my faith, schooling or my family had instructed, but these were the life lessons I was learning.
Everything changed for me in the early 1980s when my uncle returned from the United States to establish the Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence in Bethlehem. Now I found a place to address my resentment and vent my anger. I began participating in many nonviolent activities to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands -- from planting olive trees in threatened areas to participating in children's street festivals with balloons colored like the Palestinian flag. When the Israeli government deported my uncle for his nonviolence efforts, I committed myself to engaging in this important work. I was 16 at the time.
For more than 20 years, I have been studying, practicing and teaching nonviolence both inside and outside of Palestine. I started Holy Land Trust in 1998 to promote the idea that nonviolence can be a path toward peace and a greater humanity in this land we all call Holy. Our organization is made up of Palestinians -- both Christians and Muslims -- who work together to develop awareness campaigns, provide training, organize demonstrations, etc. Our efforts often receive the support of internationals, including a growing number of Israeli Jews.
So while I had grown up knowing about the Sermon on the Mount, living it creates a different meaning and purpose. The first step in loving the enemy is to love and honor myself as a person loved by God, to break free from the fear and hatred within me, and to no longer claim victimization and seek pity as a result of the oppressive forces around me. This takes creating a deep distinction between those who stand before me and their behaviors and recognizing that every human being is created in the image of God. It requires acknowledging that conditions, traditions, experiences, traumas and assumptions can shape who we have become but are not who we truly are and, more importantly, who we can be. It's understanding that our core common identity is in our humanity and not in political, ideological or even religious associations.
As a follower of Jesus, I am compelled to promote a process of healing and liberation for those being oppressed as well as for their oppressors. Loving the enemy means you ultimately eliminate the label of "enemy" and engage in loving action to help them recognize and acknowledge your humanity. This is how to love your enemy, to really love them.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
This Sums it Up
Dear Friend,
Uri Avnery has been deferring to his associate Adam Keller lately. What follows is Mr. Keller's assessment of the crucial two-day period when 1) President Obama gave his ME policy speech and 2) the following day when he met for two hours with Prime Minister Netanyahu in the White House (prompting the famous outburst).
Mr. Mersheimer calls the present mess, "Obama's Iron Cage". There seems no way for the President to escape it and stay in "power" in 2012.
It remains to be seen where this whole matter is going and whether there can be any "progress" on negotiations. JRK
Obama, Netanyahu and the 1967 borders
Adam Keller, May 21 2011
President Obama has made his long awaited speech and uttered the magic number which some hoped and other dreaded that he would mention РNineteen Hundred Sixty Seven. And Prime Minister Netanyahu retorted with an angry outburst and total denunciation and rejection of the 1967 borders. Israel's newspapers all came out with banner headlines proclaiming "Confrontation!" and "Collision Course!". In the evening, Obama and Netahayhu met at the White House and made a rather pale effort to paper over the cracks and present the TV cameras with a friendly, smiling, hand-shaking fa̤ade Рwhat today's Wall Street Journal called "The most undiplomatic moments of international diplomacy ever offered for cameras".
From the shallow perspective of 48 hours after the speech, how are we to gauge it? A historical breakthrough? A tawdry, soon forgotten media gimmick? Or something in between?
***
It is already many years since the idea of a Palestinian state has become almost universally accepted in Israel, excluding only a thin layer of extreme-right diehards. Several Israeli Prime Ministers in succession talked of the creation of a Palestinian state as a positive and desirable event, notably including Binyamin Netanyahu who announced his adherence to the idea in the celebrated Bar Ilan Speech, soon after getting to power in 2009. Yet, with virtually everybody agreeing, the State of Palestine did not come into being and with every passing year it became more doubtful that it ever would.
The State of Palestine, as mainstream Israeli politicians conceive of it, lacks two ingredients indispensable for a theoretical state to become a real entity in the real world – namely, space and time. Israeli politicians – even and especially the more right-wing of them – would have been overjoyed to recognize a supposedly independent state embracing the present areas of the Palestinian Authority, a collection of isolated enclaves surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements and military camps. Others, slightly more generous, were willing to grant the Palestinians a bit more territory, making for some territorial continuity – but still with Israel retaining control of the Jordan Valley, which constitutes at least thirty percent of the West Bank. And controlling the Jordan Valley, Israel could and would control all of Palestine's contact with the outside world, all entry and exit of persons and goods – in effect, a larger replication of the situation of siege which Gaza had been enduring for the past five years, (without even a sea shore which international relief flotillas could try to reach at great risk).
When Palestinians expressed a marked lack of enthusiasm for having a state so delimited and constrained, successive Israeli governments had a ready answer: "Let's talk about it". Negotiations, an ongoing Peace Process with glittering photo opportunities and handshakes, were good for Israel's international image, deflecting pressures and distracting attention from unsavory brutality and the ongoing creation of settlement accomplished facts on the ground. Reaching an agreement, not to mention its actual implementation, were an entirely different issue. Much better to avoid or fritter away any definite timetables and target dates (as was the fate of the late, lamented Road Map for Peace, which set 2005 as the time for a final status agreement between Israelis and Palestinians).
Anyway, the Israeli side increasingly reiterated that talking was in essence theoretical, as in fact there was "no partner" and the time was "not ripe". For example, the negotiations carried out for more than two year by PM Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were explicitly aimed at producing a "shelf agreement", which would be duly signed and then placed on a shelf to gather dust until conditions for its implementation "ripened". The reasons for there being no partner and conditions being unripe constantly shifted, PM's s and their aides and PR experts showing considerable ingenuity and creativity: Because Yasser Arafat was an arch terrorist and because his successor Abu Mazen was a powerless "chick without feathers"; because the Palestinians were divided with rival government in Ramallah and Gaza or because they had reached a reconciliation to which one party included terrorists; because the surrounding Arab World was ruled by dictators which did not represent their peoples, or because the Arab World had become unstable and engulfed by popular revolts and demands for democracy.
The demand for Israel to freeze the process of settlement creation on the West Bank, clearly made in Obama's first major Middle East speech in Cairo and placed at center stage in his administration earlier efforts at peace making, actually served Netanyahu as a new ploy to endlessly delay and put off the substantive issues. Instead of talking about where Palestine would have its borders and when Palestine would come into being, there was an endless wrangle over whether settlement construction would be or would not be frozen, for exactly how many months, which exceptions would be tacitly or explicitly tolerated , and whether or not the freeze would apply to East Jerusalem.
It might have been different had Obama proven able and willing to put strong and unequivocal pressure on Netanyahu, to freeze settlement construction without further ado. But such was not the case – there were two years of struggles, ups and downs and confrontations and confrontations and sensational headlines in the Israeli media. Obama did apply some pressure, but Netanyahu proved able to apply counter-pressures in the American politics, playing on the Democratic Party shaky position in the 2010 mid-term elections. In the end, Obama gave up the point and ceased further efforts to enforce a settlement freeze. In the international arena, Netanyahu was saddled with responsibility for the collapse of the talks, but evidently considered this an acceptable price. Obama's less than glorious record in implementing what he proclaimed at Cairo two years ago should certainly be taken into account in assessing what he announced at Washington two days ago.
It was while Obama unsuccessfully grappled with settlement construction that Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad – probably the least charismatic leader in Palestinian history – conceived of a way to break out of the futile game of endless negotiations and negotiations about negotiations. In effect, Palestinians would take a leaf from Israel's own book and start creating accomplished facts of their own and fill in the blanks left by the recalcitrant Israeli politicians. Whether or not Israel liked it, Palestine would arise at a specified time, September 2011, and within specified borders, the 1967 borders.
Fayyad spoke openly and in detail about his plan – gathering international support for a crucial recognition vote at the UN, while building up state institutions on the ground and (to a limited degree) supporting unarmed protests and demonstrations by Palestinian villagers confronting Israeli soldiers and settlers.
It was a considerable time before Palestinians in general started to take seriously Fayyad's plan, and even longer before Israelis and the rest of the world followed suit. Eventually, however, the Israeli political and military establishment started to take seriously indeed what Defence Minister Barak termed "The Diplomatic Tsunami" awaiting Israel in September.
Nethanyahu has obvious reasons to dislike the idea of the Palestinians going to the UN to ask for recognition of a Palestine in the 1967 borders, rather than going on waiting for Godot. He and his emissaries had been frantically running around European capitals – Berlin, Prague, London, Paris, Rome – trying with mixed success to get governments to oppose the Palestinian drive in the UN. It was to culminate with getting himself invited to make a speech at the US Congress – more of a home ground then virtually any other place in the world – and effectively pose a threat to Obama in the arena of internal US politics, gearing up towards the 2012 Presidential race.
Obama obviously disliked Netanyahu's plalnned expedition to Capitol Hill. But he also had his own reasons for disliking the Palestinian approach to the United Nations. Because the US, under whatever President, is used to controlling world events and using the UN as its subservient tool, and does not take kindly to somebody else trying to usurp that tool. And because a Palestinian statehood resolution in the UN might face Obama with the problematic choice of casting a veto – and finding the US in international isolation – or not vetoing and then facing the fury of Netanyahu's friends on Congress.
Obama already faced that dilemma in February, when the Palestinians presented the Security Council with a resolution condemning settlement construction, and the US emerged battered from having cast its veto, solitary against the unanimous Yes vote of all other fourteen members of the Security Council, including the United States' European allies. That was, in effect, the dress rehearsal for the expected September vote. With the real thing, the stakes would be far higher, the consequences from any US decision might be drastic and far-reaching indeed. All the more so with the Middle East in a state of revolutionary flux whose outcome none can predict with any certainty and with young Palestinians increasingly and effectively taking up the methods of grassroots organizing via Facebook, as they did on Nakba Day a week ago.
Clearly, Obama's interest lay in trying to preempt the Palestinian diplomatic offensive – and also Netanyahu's Washington venture. Hence, a high-profile policy speech on the Middle East, setting up a supposedly attractive alternative for the Palestinians, delivered just ahead of Netahyahu's arrival in the American capital and relying on Obama's strong position in American public opinion following the killing of Bin Laden. All of which meshed quite well with the need to present a clear formulation of the administration's policy towards the revolutionary upsurge in the Arab World, a policy often charged with being incoherent and self-contradictory.
***
Given all the above, what is Obama offering the Palestinians in exchange for halting the drive towards their appointment with the UN in September? What inducement can they have for once again taking up, instead, the route of negotiations – a route discredited by eighteen years of bitter experience since Oslo?
Taking the speech at face value, it can be said to include several conspicuous inducements, the most obvious being that magic number – 1967. "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states".
"Negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt". (A Palestinian border with Jordan means no permanent Israeli rule in the Jordan Valley, an outspoken Netahyahu demand).
"Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state".
Also the question of timing is addressed in a very coherent way: "There are those who argue that with all the change and uncertainty in the region, it is simply not possible to move forward now" (Netanyahu is conspicuous among those who so argue). "I disagree. At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever". " The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome". "The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace".
With all of that, Palestinians would still have every reason to feel suspicious of Netanyahu. Even were he to officially accept the 1967 borders as the basis for the negotiations, there is every reason to suspect that once "Resumption of the Peace Process" is publicly proclaimed in a new ceremony and photo opportunity, he would find dozens of ways to wriggle out. For example, accept the principle of "mutually agreed swaps" but in practice lay claim to large tracts of fertile West Bank land, complete with underground water sources, and offer in exchange tiny bits of desert land with not a single drop of water. (That is what Ehud Barak, Netanyahu's Defense Minister, did when he was PM himself in 2000 – a major reason for the disastrous collapse of the Camp David Summit.) Or Netanyahu could make use of Obama's numerous references to Israel's security in order to make demands in practice nullifying the sovereignty of Palestine and amounting to de-facto continued occupation.
Netanyahu could have placed the Palestinians on the horns of a difficult dilemma by agreeing to the principle of the 1967 borders, and agreeing to arrive at the negotiating table on this basis. But he chose not to. He chose the very opposite course – declaring outspokenly his complete and utter rejection of the 1967 "indefensible" borders (actually, on the one occasion when it came to a test, Israel defended itself splendidly from within these borders…). A vehement rejection of 1967, made from Jerusalem immediately upon hearing the speech, and reiterated at the White House while being seated at the President's side, and likely to be reiterated once again on Capitol Hill – in effect asking US Senators and Representatives to choose between their President and the Prime Minister of Israel.
It has been argued that accepting the 1967 lines – however insincerely – might cause Netanyahu serious trouble in his ruling coalition, even a rebellion by nationalist hardliners within his own Likud Party. This is likely true, but it is not necessarily all. To the extent that any politician can be said to be acting out of sincere convictions, Binyamin Netanyahu seems to be acting sincerely now. An adherent of Greater Israel, born and bred, he had been ready to dissemble and make tactical moves and seeming concessions. No more, it seems.
So, what next? Given the events of the past two days, the most likely prediction would be: more of the same. Calls by the United States and the international Quartet for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which would go unheeded, as with Netanyahu's rejection of the 1967 borders there would be no common basis for negotiations – and given his record up to date, Obama would not be able to compel Netanayhu to change his fundamental position. And there would be more intransigent declarations and intransigent actions by the Government of Israel, violent confrontations of all kinds in various times and places (the next relief flotilla to Gaza is due within a month), an increasing international isolation of Israel and an increasing polarization inside Israel. A continued Palestinian drive to build up support in the UN. And finally, the September showdown coming, with no viable alternative offered, and Obama still facing the dilemma he wanted to avoid – to veto or not to veto. And then?
Uri Avnery has been deferring to his associate Adam Keller lately. What follows is Mr. Keller's assessment of the crucial two-day period when 1) President Obama gave his ME policy speech and 2) the following day when he met for two hours with Prime Minister Netanyahu in the White House (prompting the famous outburst).
Mr. Mersheimer calls the present mess, "Obama's Iron Cage". There seems no way for the President to escape it and stay in "power" in 2012.
It remains to be seen where this whole matter is going and whether there can be any "progress" on negotiations. JRK
Obama, Netanyahu and the 1967 borders
Adam Keller, May 21 2011
President Obama has made his long awaited speech and uttered the magic number which some hoped and other dreaded that he would mention РNineteen Hundred Sixty Seven. And Prime Minister Netanyahu retorted with an angry outburst and total denunciation and rejection of the 1967 borders. Israel's newspapers all came out with banner headlines proclaiming "Confrontation!" and "Collision Course!". In the evening, Obama and Netahayhu met at the White House and made a rather pale effort to paper over the cracks and present the TV cameras with a friendly, smiling, hand-shaking fa̤ade Рwhat today's Wall Street Journal called "The most undiplomatic moments of international diplomacy ever offered for cameras".
From the shallow perspective of 48 hours after the speech, how are we to gauge it? A historical breakthrough? A tawdry, soon forgotten media gimmick? Or something in between?
***
It is already many years since the idea of a Palestinian state has become almost universally accepted in Israel, excluding only a thin layer of extreme-right diehards. Several Israeli Prime Ministers in succession talked of the creation of a Palestinian state as a positive and desirable event, notably including Binyamin Netanyahu who announced his adherence to the idea in the celebrated Bar Ilan Speech, soon after getting to power in 2009. Yet, with virtually everybody agreeing, the State of Palestine did not come into being and with every passing year it became more doubtful that it ever would.
The State of Palestine, as mainstream Israeli politicians conceive of it, lacks two ingredients indispensable for a theoretical state to become a real entity in the real world – namely, space and time. Israeli politicians – even and especially the more right-wing of them – would have been overjoyed to recognize a supposedly independent state embracing the present areas of the Palestinian Authority, a collection of isolated enclaves surrounded on all sides by Israeli settlements and military camps. Others, slightly more generous, were willing to grant the Palestinians a bit more territory, making for some territorial continuity – but still with Israel retaining control of the Jordan Valley, which constitutes at least thirty percent of the West Bank. And controlling the Jordan Valley, Israel could and would control all of Palestine's contact with the outside world, all entry and exit of persons and goods – in effect, a larger replication of the situation of siege which Gaza had been enduring for the past five years, (without even a sea shore which international relief flotillas could try to reach at great risk).
When Palestinians expressed a marked lack of enthusiasm for having a state so delimited and constrained, successive Israeli governments had a ready answer: "Let's talk about it". Negotiations, an ongoing Peace Process with glittering photo opportunities and handshakes, were good for Israel's international image, deflecting pressures and distracting attention from unsavory brutality and the ongoing creation of settlement accomplished facts on the ground. Reaching an agreement, not to mention its actual implementation, were an entirely different issue. Much better to avoid or fritter away any definite timetables and target dates (as was the fate of the late, lamented Road Map for Peace, which set 2005 as the time for a final status agreement between Israelis and Palestinians).
Anyway, the Israeli side increasingly reiterated that talking was in essence theoretical, as in fact there was "no partner" and the time was "not ripe". For example, the negotiations carried out for more than two year by PM Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were explicitly aimed at producing a "shelf agreement", which would be duly signed and then placed on a shelf to gather dust until conditions for its implementation "ripened". The reasons for there being no partner and conditions being unripe constantly shifted, PM's s and their aides and PR experts showing considerable ingenuity and creativity: Because Yasser Arafat was an arch terrorist and because his successor Abu Mazen was a powerless "chick without feathers"; because the Palestinians were divided with rival government in Ramallah and Gaza or because they had reached a reconciliation to which one party included terrorists; because the surrounding Arab World was ruled by dictators which did not represent their peoples, or because the Arab World had become unstable and engulfed by popular revolts and demands for democracy.
The demand for Israel to freeze the process of settlement creation on the West Bank, clearly made in Obama's first major Middle East speech in Cairo and placed at center stage in his administration earlier efforts at peace making, actually served Netanyahu as a new ploy to endlessly delay and put off the substantive issues. Instead of talking about where Palestine would have its borders and when Palestine would come into being, there was an endless wrangle over whether settlement construction would be or would not be frozen, for exactly how many months, which exceptions would be tacitly or explicitly tolerated , and whether or not the freeze would apply to East Jerusalem.
It might have been different had Obama proven able and willing to put strong and unequivocal pressure on Netanyahu, to freeze settlement construction without further ado. But such was not the case – there were two years of struggles, ups and downs and confrontations and confrontations and sensational headlines in the Israeli media. Obama did apply some pressure, but Netanyahu proved able to apply counter-pressures in the American politics, playing on the Democratic Party shaky position in the 2010 mid-term elections. In the end, Obama gave up the point and ceased further efforts to enforce a settlement freeze. In the international arena, Netanyahu was saddled with responsibility for the collapse of the talks, but evidently considered this an acceptable price. Obama's less than glorious record in implementing what he proclaimed at Cairo two years ago should certainly be taken into account in assessing what he announced at Washington two days ago.
It was while Obama unsuccessfully grappled with settlement construction that Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad – probably the least charismatic leader in Palestinian history – conceived of a way to break out of the futile game of endless negotiations and negotiations about negotiations. In effect, Palestinians would take a leaf from Israel's own book and start creating accomplished facts of their own and fill in the blanks left by the recalcitrant Israeli politicians. Whether or not Israel liked it, Palestine would arise at a specified time, September 2011, and within specified borders, the 1967 borders.
Fayyad spoke openly and in detail about his plan – gathering international support for a crucial recognition vote at the UN, while building up state institutions on the ground and (to a limited degree) supporting unarmed protests and demonstrations by Palestinian villagers confronting Israeli soldiers and settlers.
It was a considerable time before Palestinians in general started to take seriously Fayyad's plan, and even longer before Israelis and the rest of the world followed suit. Eventually, however, the Israeli political and military establishment started to take seriously indeed what Defence Minister Barak termed "The Diplomatic Tsunami" awaiting Israel in September.
Nethanyahu has obvious reasons to dislike the idea of the Palestinians going to the UN to ask for recognition of a Palestine in the 1967 borders, rather than going on waiting for Godot. He and his emissaries had been frantically running around European capitals – Berlin, Prague, London, Paris, Rome – trying with mixed success to get governments to oppose the Palestinian drive in the UN. It was to culminate with getting himself invited to make a speech at the US Congress – more of a home ground then virtually any other place in the world – and effectively pose a threat to Obama in the arena of internal US politics, gearing up towards the 2012 Presidential race.
Obama obviously disliked Netanyahu's plalnned expedition to Capitol Hill. But he also had his own reasons for disliking the Palestinian approach to the United Nations. Because the US, under whatever President, is used to controlling world events and using the UN as its subservient tool, and does not take kindly to somebody else trying to usurp that tool. And because a Palestinian statehood resolution in the UN might face Obama with the problematic choice of casting a veto – and finding the US in international isolation – or not vetoing and then facing the fury of Netanyahu's friends on Congress.
Obama already faced that dilemma in February, when the Palestinians presented the Security Council with a resolution condemning settlement construction, and the US emerged battered from having cast its veto, solitary against the unanimous Yes vote of all other fourteen members of the Security Council, including the United States' European allies. That was, in effect, the dress rehearsal for the expected September vote. With the real thing, the stakes would be far higher, the consequences from any US decision might be drastic and far-reaching indeed. All the more so with the Middle East in a state of revolutionary flux whose outcome none can predict with any certainty and with young Palestinians increasingly and effectively taking up the methods of grassroots organizing via Facebook, as they did on Nakba Day a week ago.
Clearly, Obama's interest lay in trying to preempt the Palestinian diplomatic offensive – and also Netanyahu's Washington venture. Hence, a high-profile policy speech on the Middle East, setting up a supposedly attractive alternative for the Palestinians, delivered just ahead of Netahyahu's arrival in the American capital and relying on Obama's strong position in American public opinion following the killing of Bin Laden. All of which meshed quite well with the need to present a clear formulation of the administration's policy towards the revolutionary upsurge in the Arab World, a policy often charged with being incoherent and self-contradictory.
***
Given all the above, what is Obama offering the Palestinians in exchange for halting the drive towards their appointment with the UN in September? What inducement can they have for once again taking up, instead, the route of negotiations – a route discredited by eighteen years of bitter experience since Oslo?
Taking the speech at face value, it can be said to include several conspicuous inducements, the most obvious being that magic number – 1967. "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states".
"Negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt". (A Palestinian border with Jordan means no permanent Israeli rule in the Jordan Valley, an outspoken Netahyahu demand).
"Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state".
Also the question of timing is addressed in a very coherent way: "There are those who argue that with all the change and uncertainty in the region, it is simply not possible to move forward now" (Netanyahu is conspicuous among those who so argue). "I disagree. At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever". " The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome". "The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace".
With all of that, Palestinians would still have every reason to feel suspicious of Netanyahu. Even were he to officially accept the 1967 borders as the basis for the negotiations, there is every reason to suspect that once "Resumption of the Peace Process" is publicly proclaimed in a new ceremony and photo opportunity, he would find dozens of ways to wriggle out. For example, accept the principle of "mutually agreed swaps" but in practice lay claim to large tracts of fertile West Bank land, complete with underground water sources, and offer in exchange tiny bits of desert land with not a single drop of water. (That is what Ehud Barak, Netanyahu's Defense Minister, did when he was PM himself in 2000 – a major reason for the disastrous collapse of the Camp David Summit.) Or Netanyahu could make use of Obama's numerous references to Israel's security in order to make demands in practice nullifying the sovereignty of Palestine and amounting to de-facto continued occupation.
Netanyahu could have placed the Palestinians on the horns of a difficult dilemma by agreeing to the principle of the 1967 borders, and agreeing to arrive at the negotiating table on this basis. But he chose not to. He chose the very opposite course – declaring outspokenly his complete and utter rejection of the 1967 "indefensible" borders (actually, on the one occasion when it came to a test, Israel defended itself splendidly from within these borders…). A vehement rejection of 1967, made from Jerusalem immediately upon hearing the speech, and reiterated at the White House while being seated at the President's side, and likely to be reiterated once again on Capitol Hill – in effect asking US Senators and Representatives to choose between their President and the Prime Minister of Israel.
It has been argued that accepting the 1967 lines – however insincerely – might cause Netanyahu serious trouble in his ruling coalition, even a rebellion by nationalist hardliners within his own Likud Party. This is likely true, but it is not necessarily all. To the extent that any politician can be said to be acting out of sincere convictions, Binyamin Netanyahu seems to be acting sincerely now. An adherent of Greater Israel, born and bred, he had been ready to dissemble and make tactical moves and seeming concessions. No more, it seems.
So, what next? Given the events of the past two days, the most likely prediction would be: more of the same. Calls by the United States and the international Quartet for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which would go unheeded, as with Netanyahu's rejection of the 1967 borders there would be no common basis for negotiations – and given his record up to date, Obama would not be able to compel Netanayhu to change his fundamental position. And there would be more intransigent declarations and intransigent actions by the Government of Israel, violent confrontations of all kinds in various times and places (the next relief flotilla to Gaza is due within a month), an increasing international isolation of Israel and an increasing polarization inside Israel. A continued Palestinian drive to build up support in the UN. And finally, the September showdown coming, with no viable alternative offered, and Obama still facing the dilemma he wanted to avoid – to veto or not to veto. And then?
Friday, May 20, 2011
Obama's Isr/Pal Remarks, May 19, 2011
The President gave a 45 minute address on US Middle East policy at the State Department yesterday, (May 19).
He shifted US policy away from supporting order/stability and on to the side of democratic reform/change, especially in places like Libya, Syria, Egypt and Bahrain.
Then, at the end of his address, he took aim at the Isr/Pal "conflict", setting forth the US position in re Israelis and Palestinians.
He meets with the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu today, and addresses AIPAC this Sunday, where he will try to stay in the good graces of our Friend.
There are many noteable positions he has taken. Let me number a few:
1) The US is committed to security for Israel and statehood for Palestinians (self-determination, mutual respect)
2) The present state of affairs is a "stalemate" and "unsustainable". (Basically, he said the "occupation" must end, a first for an American President).
3) Key quote: "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states".
4) Applauding Israeli and Palestinian parents whose could stoop to hate, but are resolved to move beyond hate to resolution of the conflict, reconciliation
Read it for yourself and move on from there.
Text of Obama’s May 19, 2011 references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (last part of larger address).
For decades, the conflict between Israelis and Arabs has cast a shadow over the region. For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could be blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them. For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own. Moreover, this conflict has come with a larger cost to the Middle East, as it impedes partnerships that could bring greater security and prosperity and empowerment to ordinary people.
For over two years, my administration has worked with the parties and the international community to end this conflict, building on decades of work by previous administrations. Yet expectations have gone unmet. Israeli settlement activity continues. Palestinians have walked away from talks. The world looks at a conflict that has ground on and on and on, and sees nothing but stalemate. Indeed, there are those who argue that with all the change and uncertainty in the region, it is simply not possible tomove forward now.
I disagree. At a time when the people of the Middle East and North Africa are casting off the burdens of the past, the drive for a lasting peace that ends the conflict and resolves all claims is more urgent than ever. That’s certainly true for the two parties involved.
For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.
As for Israel, our friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums. But precisely because of our friendship, it’s important that we tell the truth: The status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.
The fact is, a growing number of Palestinians live west of the Jordan River. Technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself. A region undergoing profound change will lead to populism in which millions of people -– not just one or two leaders — must believe peace is possible. The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome. The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation.
Now, ultimately, it is up to the Israelis and Palestinians to take action. No peace can be imposed upon them — not by the United States; not by anybody else. But endless delay won’t make the problem go away. What America and the international community can do is to state frankly what everyone knows — a lasting peace will involve two states for two peoples: Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people, each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.
So while the core issues of the conflict must be negotiated, the basis of those negotiations is clear: a viable Palestine, a secure Israel. The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.
The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their full potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.
As for security, every state has the right to self-defense, and Israel must beable to defend itself -– by itself -– against any threat. Provisions must also be robust enough to prevent a resurgence of terrorism, to stop the infiltration of weapons, and to provide effective border security. The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in asovereign, non-militarized state. And the duration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness of security arrangements must be demonstrated.
These principles provide a foundation for negotiations. Palestinians should know the territorial outlines of their state; Israelis should know that their basicsecurity concerns will be met. I’m aware that these steps alone will not resolve the conflict, because two wrenching and emotional issues will remain: the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees. But moving forward now on the basis of territory and security provides a foundation to resolve those two issues in a way that is just and fair, and that respects the rights and aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians.
Now, let me say this: Recognizing that negotiations need to begin with the issues of territory and security does not mean that it will be easy to come back to the table. In particular, the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel: How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist? And in the weeks and months to come, Palestinian leaders will have to provide a credible answer to that question. Meanwhile, the United States, our Quartet partners, and the Arab states will need to continue every effort to get beyond the current impasse.
I recognize how hard this will be. Suspicion and hostility has been passed on for generations, and at times it has hardened. But I’m convinced that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians would rather look to the future than be trapped in the past. We see that spirit in the Israeli father whose son was killed by Hamas, who helped start an organization that brought together Israelis and Palestinians who had lost loved ones. That father said, “I gradually realized that the only hope for progress was to recognize the face of the conflict.” We see it in the actions of a Palestinian who lost three daughters to Israeli shells in Gaza. “I have the right to feel angry,” he said. “So many people wereexpecting me to hate. My answer to them is I shall not hate. Let us hope,” he said, “for tomorrow.”
That is the choice that must be made -– not simply in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but across the entire region -– a choice between hate and hope; between the shackles of the past and the promise of the future. It’s a choice that must be made by leaders and by the people, and it’s a choice that will define the future of a region that served as the cradle of civilization and a crucible of strife. . . .
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