--------------------------------------------------------- Palestine/Israel: Why not to call 1948 the "original sin" --------------------------------------------------------- In his article "Ethnic Cleansing: Past, Present and Future," Ran HaCohen offers some thoughtful observations about the ongoing process of ethnic cleansing in historical Palestine, or Palestine/Israel, and issues a very timely warning that this process could again dramatically escalate. As a Jew living in the USA, I would like to focus on one critical issue which HaCohen raises, hoping that my remarks may invite reflection among antiwar activists generally, and especially welcoming dialogue with HaCohen and other citizens of Israel, both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews. -------------------------------------------- 1. Ending al-Nakba: A just peace is possible -------------------------------------------- Certainly I agree with HaCohen that al-Nakba, the Palestinian Catastrophe of 1947-1950 which has continued for the last 55 years, is at the heart of the problem. Often al-Nakba is called the "original sin" of Israel, but I would like to suggest that such a label can, paradoxically, tend to legitimize precisely the political and social arrangements which can and must dramatically change if a just peace is our objective. A problem with the concept of "original sin" is that in politics, as in theology, it can imply something that is regrettable but beyond our power to correct or repair, at least by ordinary human means. The result, ironically, can be an enervating and dangerous acquiescence in an evil which is actually well within our power to remedy. During the long struggle to free South Africa, for example, I heard apartheid denounced as many evil things -- but not as "original sin." Religious leaders such as Bishop Desmond Tutu indeed condemned apartheid as a very grave "sin," but as a sin with social and political causes which could be corrected, however arduous the struggle needed to achieve this end. The remedies themselves were in principle attainable and simple: the abolition of apartheid laws and of the "homelands" system of bantustans, and the adoption of a new Constitution based on "One Person, One Vote, One Country." After several decades of struggle and a horrible amount of bloodshed, inevitable or otherwise, this is precisely what happened in 1994. Of course, the "original sins" of colonialism and racism have left marks on South Africa and its people and socioeconomic structure much harder to erase than the apartheid system itself -- but that system, at least, has been happily replaced by real if imperfect democracy. Similarly, the last 55 years of Nakba apartheid and oppression in Palestine/Israel are a result not of some inevitable "original sin," but of political and social arrangements which can, should, and must change dramatically as part of any "peace settlement" worthy of the name. Putting first things first, the most obvious injustice of al-Nakba can be remedied by the simple measure of permitting all Palestinian refugees displaced in the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and their descendants, to exercise their Right of Return if they so wish to their ancestral towns, villages, or districts within Israel's pre-1967 borders (the "Green Line" defined by the 1948-1949 armistice lines). Even if all of the estimated 5.5 million refugees actually chose to return, there would be room to accommodate them without displacing any of the present inhabitants. In practice, one could guess that something like half might choose to return, with the others preferring compensation and any appropriate assistance for local integration in the countries they are now living (including the 1967 territories of East Palestine and Gaza), or resettlement in some other country. As Dr. Salman Abu-Sitta has shown[1], the process of repatriating the refugees would involve the rebuilding or reconstitution of villages and farming communities in sparsely populated regions of Israel such as the fertile land of South Palestine across the Green Line from Gaza. Many refugees would be returning to already predominantly Palestinian areas such as Galilee (al-Jalil) and the Triangle, and some to the mixed cities of Haifa, Lydda, Ramle, and Yaffa. In keeping with the demographic patterns established by 1947, the eve of al-Nakba, relatively few would be returning to predominantly Jewish areas. Issues of social integration and economic democracy would remain -- but the refugees would have indeed come home. As in South Africa, the logical political step accompanying this end to physical apartheid is the adoption of a Constitution based on "One Person, One Vote, One Country" in Palestine/Israel, with equal citizenship for Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews throughout the unified country. This process of democratization and unification would address the main issues of both the 1948 and 1967 wars. Such a solution might seem "utopian" to many -- much as end to South African apartheid might have seemed in 1978, or an end to Jim Crow in the USA might have seemed in 1948. The struggle against entrenched prejudice and privilege is often an uphill battle, to say the least -- but a battle against unjust structures and behaviors which can change, not against "original sin" or the laws of physics. Actually, the problem of constitutional arrangements for a post-apartheid Palestine/Israel are not quite as simple as for South Africa: "One Person, One Vote, One Country" must somehow be harmonized with the complications of "One Country for Two Peoples." To see why this is so, let's consider both the actual "original sin" in Palestine/Israel, and the Nakba of 1948, a bit further. ------------------------------------------------------- 2. Binationalism: An equal partnership conceived in sin ------------------------------------------------------- The "original sin," in my view, goes back earlier than 1948, but not as far back as the fateful encounter of Abel and Cain, or of some mythical conflict "from time immemmoral" or "clash of civilizations." Rather this sin dates to the late 19th century, when a group of European Jews set out on an adventure of "equal opportunity colonialism" in Palestine, or of unequal opportunity oppression from a Palestinian-Arab point of view. The idea, as frankly set out by Theodor Herzl as early as 1895, was to create a "Jewish state" in some territory -- be it Uganda, Argentina, or Palestine -- and "transfer" the indigenous population somewhere else. There were two parts to the project: the creation of a new "Jewish" nationality; and the establishment of that nationality in an exclusive territorial state by the displacement (voluntary or otherwise) of any native inhabitants. By 1913 or so, when the young Moshe Menuhin was growing up in Yaffa and attending the Gymnasia Herzlia accordingly established, these prevailing currents of the movement known as Zionism were already in evidence: he was taught that the goal of the Jewish people was to make Palestine _goyim rein_, "free of Gentiles." This was not merely racist rhetoric, but a policy pursued by concrete policies regarding land and labor. The "conquest of land" involved the new Jews purchasing as much as possible, for future ownership and use by Jews only. The "conquest of labor" similarly mandated the employment on this land, and in Jewish enterprises, of "Jews only," thus increasingly taking over the territory and economy of the country, and making the Palestinian Arabs unwelcome in their own land. Given this original sin, the coming of European Jews to Palestine not as immigrants seeking to merge with or live alongside the indigenous Palestinians, but as settler-colonists seeking to replace them, the violence of the following decades and the Nakba of 1948 are hardly surprising. The machinations of British imperialism, and the unspeakable horrors of the Third Reich, would each play a role in the unfolding tragedy: but by 1913, the original sin was already a "fact on the ground" in Palestine. As scholars such as Nur Masalha[2] have documented, al-Nakba was not merely an excess of some conflict between two nations or ethnic communities, but the logical culmination of the Zionist concept of "transfer" or ethnic cleansing discussed and planned for decades before the 1948 war, or "War of the Transfer" as I call it. From this viewpoint, al-Nakba should be considered both a war crime and a crime against humanity: it was not only a crime committed in the conduct of a war, but a war taken as a welcome opportunity to carry out a crime of ethnic cleansing or "transfer" long premeditated. In fairness, I should add that not all who called themselves "Zionists" accepted this agenda of a "Jewish state" and ethnic cleansing. An illustrious example is the Rabbi Judah L. Magnes, founder of Hebrew University in al-Quds/Jerusalem, who advocated the creation of a Jewish cultural and spiritual "center" in Palestine, with political arrangements based on "Arab-Jewish unity" and some form of state based on power-sharing between the two communities. If the kinder and gentler form of "Zionism" represented by Magnes had prevailed, the tragedies of partition and Nakba might have been avoided -- but with another consequence of the "original sin" nevertheless remaining. In this history, as in ours, Palestine would have become a land not only of three main religions, but of two distinct peoples or nationalities: the Palestinian Arabs (Muslims, Christians, and Jews) and the new Hebrew-speaking Jews. Consider, in contrast, a scenario where the "original sin" doesn't happen: like earlier Jewish immigrants to Palestine and other Arab countries, the new European Jews arriving in the decades around 1900 seek and receive the hospitality of the Palestinian Arabs, integrating into Palestinian society and becoming Palestinian citizens. This usual etiquette of immigration is quite different from newcomers either striving to displace the established inhabitants, or asserting their entitlement as a distinct "nationality" to negotiate an equal partnership for the government of the country. This is not to say that all governments formed as partnerships between two or more nationalities must be conceived in "original sin." A striking example in the Indigenous history of the continents now often known as the Americas is the acceptance of the Tuscarora Nation into the Haudenosaunee or Confederation of Six Nations, previously the Five Nations (Kanienkehaka or Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca). In the early 18th century, the Tuscarora sought the protection of the Haudenosaunee, and were admitted into the Confederation. Here, as in the immigration of individuals, a certain etiquette applied: the Tuscarora were accepted, but as junior partners or "younger nephews." Retaining their own national language and customs like their elder partners, they would gradually learn the customs of the Confederation as codified in the Great Law of Peace. This kinship model reminds one of the reaction of an Arab delegation around 1920 when they learned from the British that more European Jews would be seeking a haven in the Middle East: the Arabs would welcome the Jews, their Abrahamic "cousins," and offer them protection. Tragically, however, the Zionist newcomers sought not to become part of a multi-ethnic Palestinian society, but to construct a new nationality on Palestinian soil. Two consequences were the evolution of an Israeli-Hebrew national identity distinct from that of the Palestinian-Arab identity; and the outrages of Nakba ethnic cleansing and oppression since 1947. The crimes of al-Nakba can be corrected by permitting the Palestinian refugees to return; ending Israeli military rule and ethnic supremacy; and enactment of a Constitution unifying Palestine/Israel on the basis of "One Person, One Vote, One Country." The existence of an Israeli-Hebrew national group living in historical Palestine, however, is a "fact on the ground" which could be changed only by another act of ethnic cleansing, or by some kind of forced "Arabization" (cultural genocide). Although "conceived in sin," the Israeli-Hebrew nationality is now an accomplished reality, and in politics as in theology one must live with the consequences of original sin as gracefully as possible. In challenging the 55-year nightmare of Israeli apartheid, we must therefore recognize the reality of binationalism: the need for a democratic Constitution making it possible for the Palestinian Arab and Israeli Hebrew nationalities to live together in the same country based on equal citizenship. We must draw a distinction between the Zionist-supremacist state of Israel, which has a legitimacy comparable to that of the old South Africa; and the Israeli-Hebrew people, who have legitimate national rights which should be guaranteed within a democratic and nonsectarian state of Palestine/Israel. While it derives from an "original sin," the Zionist project not of normal Jewish immigration but of colonialism and conquest, this reality of two nationalities sharing the same country need not itself be an evil: it can become a basis not only for harmonious democracy in Palestine/Israel, but for a new current of liberation throughout the Arab world and the Middle East. ------------------------------- 3. Democracy: a basis for unity ------------------------------- What the peace and justice movements of the world must squarely reject is Israeli apartheid: al-Nakba is the common enemy of the Palestinian Arab and Israeli Hebrew peoples alike. This means not only an end to military rule and paramilitary "settler" terrorism in East Palestine (the West Bank) and Gaza, but full and generous implementation of the Palestinian Right of Return within the Green Line for all who wish to exercise it, and a Constitution establishing a nondiscriminatory "state of all its citizens" in Israel proper with full nationality rights for the 1.2 million Palestinians already within the 1948-1949 borders and the returning refugees. All of these requirements for a just peace can best be achieved by the creation of a democratic, nonsectarian, and binational state in all of Palestine/Israel, with Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews enjoying full nationality rights throughout the country. A very attractive solution for realizing binational and multi-ethnic unity in diversity subdivides the country into possibly 12 or 15 cantons organized somewhat along the Swiss model. Each canton would have its own local character, and citizens would be free to live in any canton, with constitutional requirements such as nondiscrimination and availability of basic services in at least both Arabic and Hebrew applying to the cantons as well as the federal government. The scholar Emile Nakhleh has suggested a bicameral legislature with one house elected based on popular representation, and the other based on equal representation for each canton -- rather like the House of Representatives and Senate in the USA.[3] Similarly, the Palestinian law professor Lama Abu-Odeh proposes a federal system in all Palestine/Israel with "regions" or "units" representing the diversity of the country, and very possibly leading to some new affinities and alliances -- for example, between Palestinian Arabs and Mizrahi or Sephardic Jews.[4] In Palestine/Israel, as in South Africa, a dominant group must give up the perilous "security" of domination and oppression in return for the constitutional security of equal and democratic rights. For the Israeli Jews, this means recognizing that the return of those refugees who so wish, in combination with the unification of the whole country, will mean becoming a demographic minority -- although one of very healthy size, one might guess around 40%. In the main concentrations of Jewish population, they will retain strong majorities; a federal system of cantons or regions could nicely represent the variety of decidedly Palestinian or Jewish communities and more mixed ones. A binational solution in Palestine/Israel additionally addresses a psychological element not present in South Africa: the element of ha-Shoah, the Jewish Catastrophe or Holocaust of 1933-1945. For many Israeli Jews, their "Israeliness" is the essence of survival and security. A democratic Constitution recognizing and honoring this identity, and making the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews equal co-founders of a new Palestine/Israel[5], could help both peoples and the world at large move beyond the horrors of ha-Shoah and al-Nakba alike, while more fully appreciating the lessons of both catastrophes. ----- Notes ----- 1. Salman H. Abu-Sitta, "The Feasibility of the Right of Return," ICJ and CIMEL paper (June 1997), available online at: . This paper was based on an estimate at the time of 4.6 million refugees. 2. Nur Masalha, _Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of "Transfer" in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948_ (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992). 3. Emile Nakhleh, ""Palestinians and Israelis: Options for Coexistence," _Journal of Palestine Studies_ 22(2), Winter 1993, pp. 5-16 at 12-14. 4. Lama Abu-Odeh, "The Case for Binationalism," _Boston Review_ (December 2001/January 2002), available online at: . 5. As Judah L. Magnes observed in 1946, this would be "the one country in the world where the Jews would be a constituent nation, that is, an equal nationality within the body politic and not just a minority as everywhere else." Amikam Nachmani, _Great Power Discord in Palestine: The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, 1945-1946_ (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1987), p. 171. As'ad Ghanem presents a fascinating perspective in "Toward Fulfilling the Right to Be Included: The Arabs' Future in a Binational State," a chapter in his book _The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel, 1948-2000: A Political Study_ (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), pp. 175-200, finding that the Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel "overwhelmingly support the establishment of a binational, Jewish-Arab state, within Israel (inside the Green Line)." See ibid. p. 182. Ghanem proposes this solution for the unification of all Palestine/Israel. In peace and solidarity, Margo Schulter mschulter@value.net