/ 13 July 2004

A compelling vision of Palestine

The South African government hosted a United Nations conference on the Inalienable Rights of Palestinians on June 29 and 30. It was unfortunate that the government of Israel chose not send a delegation.

The tone for the conference was set by President Thabo Mbeki’s opening address. This was not going to be a furious affair with wild denunciations of the state of Israel, and especially not of its right to exist.

Taking his cue from the Palestinian Authority, Mbeki unambiguously endorsed claims for a sovereign Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem. It is a false view, he argued, that support for the political rights of Palestinians is necessarily an attack on Israel. ”It is a false position because we want peace and prosperity and stability for the Palestinian people and we want peace and prosperity and stability for the Israeli people.” As long as rights are denied to Palestinians, such a situation is not realisable.

This was the overall message of the conference. Israel’s insecurity arose not from the fanatical blood-lust of Palestinians. It arose from an illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and from the day-to-day suffering and humiliation of ordinary people on the West Bank and in the Gaza strip. Israel’s security lay not in a wall of partition, in violent military incursions into Palestinian settlements, the violation of international law, the assassination of Palestinian leaders, the destruction of homes, collective punishment, the imprisonment of Yasser Arafat and the extension and consolidation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Israel’s security lay in a sovereign Palestinian state. Herein lies the dilemma.

Palestinian society is deeply divided on the desirability of a two-state solution. There is little agreement, too, on what kind of state it will be.

Let us assume for a moment that Mbeki is correct. Israel’s security lies in the recognition of a Palestinian state. Two conditions follow from this hypothesis. Such a state needs to be legitimate in the eyes of its citizens and a peaceful and stable neighbour. If the principle of the existence of Israel as an independent state alongside a sovereign Palestine is widely contested among Palestinians, then Israel has a legitimate worry.

Hamas and other like organisations refuse the principle of a two-state solution. They seek a unitary state on all of Palestine, including the territory of the existing state of Israel. Their recent acceptance of a Palestinian state founded on the 1967 borders is strategic. It will grant them a more powerful base from which to pursue the dissolution of the state of Israel. This is the uncomfortable retort to Mbeki’s hypothesis. It is precisely this rejoinder that the conference wanted to repress.

There were no representatives of Palestinian organisations or political movements outside of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. Those Palestinian speakers representing so-called civil society, moreover, were staunch defenders of a two-state solution. When there was conflict at the meeting it was precisely on these terms. Attempts by delegates from the Palestine Solidarity Movement, a South African group, to remind the conference of dissonant Palestinian voices on this question, drew angry replies from Saeb Erakat, the minister for negotiations for the Palestine Authority.

In a video message in Arabic the leader of the Palestinian Authority made a similar argument to that of Mbeki. Israel’s security, he said, lay in the recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and founded on the West Bank and on the Gaza strip. He knows, however, that in many quarters this is not a popular message. Despite attempts by the conference to create the impression of an overwhelming consensus among Palestinians and the International community in favour of a Palestinian state founded on the borders of the 1967 truce, there is no Palestinian unity on this point.

This is only half the problem. In her address, Frene Ginwala, the former speaker of the South African Parliament, told the conference that merely describing and condemning the actions of the Israeli government was not enough.

What is the vision of a Palestinian state beyond territorial considerations? Here again there is no consensus. The fact that the fragmentation of Palestinian resistance to Israel was, in part, crafted by the governments of Israel and the United States, does not change circumstances on the ground. If in South Africa the image of a non-racial democracy animated political struggle against apartheid, there is no such clarity or commonality of purpose amongst Palestinians. The vision of a secular, democratic society in Palestine is often vigorously countered by one that foresees an Islamic theocracy. Even if they are deeply unpopular among most Palestinians, suicide bombings only reinforce the image of a dangerously fanatical society.

Secular Arab nationalism too has a sorry record. Where it has succeeded it has mostly given rise to authoritarian regimes, and has flirted dangerously with fascism.

An international solidarity movement seeking to support a just and democratic end to the conflict in Israel-Palestine cannot pretend that there is unity where there is not. What is required is a compelling vision of a Palestinian State that democratic forces in Palestine, Israel and in the international community can rally behind.

Ivor Chipkin is chairperson of Jewish Voices South Africa