Israel is fighting an unwinnable war

Nov 28, 2006


By: Jamal Bittar / The Arab American News


Israeli aggression and brutality in Gaza over the last month are nothing new - Israel has been practicing both with impunity against the Palestinians for decades now. In fact, Israel exists today because it succeeded in carrying out the plan of the early Zionists, which was to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Arab population. It did so in 1948 with massacres and the threat of massacres - 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, and 2,000 to 3,000 Palestinians were massacred in about 30 villages. About 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since it became a state in 1948.

Israel believes that the only response to Arab riots and guerrilla warfare is to intensify the military struggle. Israel is exploiting every move by Hamas deemed to be hostile to Israel to brand Hamas as a terrorist organization hell-bent on the destruction of Israel. Comparison can be found in the war over Algerian independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The French fought valiantly and brutally in Algeria. They won the military contest but by the end could no longer justify to themselves or the outside world that it was worth being there. They had few allies when it was all over. The political, emotional, and financial costs for France were enormous.

Israel now faces many of the same difficulties as did the Diaspora Jews for many centuries. The Zionist state will have to live with uncertainty, insecurity, and the remaking of its safety year by year, perhaps even day by day. Of course, such instability is not Israel’s lot alone. Many other states and nations live in lasting discomfort and even danger. The difference is that Zionism did not ask those who took up its cause to live with uncertainty. It promised them just the opposite. The chaos today seems to give the lie to the pledge made by the Balfour Declaration in November 1917, when the Jews were told that they could look forward to the happiness and stability of a national home of their own. They would find peace and acceptance in the land where their ancestors had once fashioned their religion and culture. But it was not to be. Instead, from its very beginning to this very day, Zionism has confronted a century of war.

The Western world believes that Israel has a right to exist as a refuge for Holocaust survivors and as a compensation for Jewish suffering in the past because of discrimination in Europe and because of the Holocaust. But the genesis of the state of Israel began in the 19th century; the earliest European settlements were in 1882 and the growth rate of Zionist Jews migrating into Palestine from Europe was a steadily increasing curve well before Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany. Further, no more than two percent of Holocaust survivors chose to migrate to Israel. Thus, the connection between the Holocaust and the state of Israel exists only in the propaganda use Israel has made of the Holocaust. The state of Israel has exploited the suffering that was the Holocaust to justify its existence.

The West must also understand that Palestinians too are victims of the Holocaust, as their land has been taken, and is being taken, to pay for the sins of Europeans. The world has left the Palestinians powerless. They do not have tanks, missiles, and helicopters. They can’t fight back. Yet they must. They must defend themselves from attack and all they have to sacrifice is their lives. Everyone in Palestine is ready to do so. Israel has made them become a nation of suicide bombers.

Whenever the Israeli hard liners are given the slightest leeway, they establish new settlements, sometimes in the guise of beefing up older communities, sometimes for some other reason, such as contributing to Israel’s security by protecting lines of communication. Among the Palestinians, the anger at the loss of more and more of the West Bank into the hands of Israeli settlers, and the loss of more and more water into the swimming pools and gardens of beautiful model suburbs, has passed the explosion point. Not only have scores of farmers gone bust in the last year, unable to export crates of tomatoes and cucumbers to Israel, the West Bank, Egypt , and Jordan; without basic supplies and money to pay workers, everything from tailor shops to construction firms has ground to a halt. The Israelis, who keep gun ships off the coast, have curtailed the range of fishing boats. Tourism to places such as Bethlehem, which hosted half a million visitors in previous years, has dried up.

Is there any hope for the future? Yes, but only if Israel abandons its messianic dream and remembers that great ideological problems cannot be resolved. The time has come for Israel to make a clear-cut and pragmatic choice in its own interest. It must end its creeping annexation. Otherwise, the riots and the guerrilla warfare will continue. Palestinians have to control their own roads, borders, and economy. An enduring peace requires sovereignty over East Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque, sacred land that was in Muslim hands from the seventh century until 1967. An acceptable settlement must also provide an agreement for the return of the Palestinian refugees who fled Israel.

Unless these changes occur, the Palestinians appear set to go on fighting for their land. Israeli hard liners must believe it - for the very essence of the Zionist dream is crumbling before them.


The writer is Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio

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