Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 21)
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- Democratic Palestine : 35 (ص 21)
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generation of the PLO as more radical than the older leaders,
and warns that prolongation of the conflict holds out the
possibility of radicalization of the Arab world. He advocates
negotiations now, while the Arab states are «beset with pro-
blems,» because the «crude balance of forces» is evolving in
favor of the Arabs due to their greater ability to absorb losses.
Harkabi cautions that «damage to Israel from Arab civil
unrest will be much greater than the damages from terrorism,»
countering the common contention that the West Bank will
become a «base for terrorism» in the event of withdrawal.
3. Harkabi’s most compelling argument is related to Israel’s
moral fiber. He decries the country’s moral decline and lack of
self-criticism as more serious than the economic crisis or the
Lebanon war. He connects the moral decline to the ascent of
the Likud and Revisionist ideology, the growth of religious
fanaticism and chauvinism, and harnessing the Jewish religion
to the wagon of territorial maximalism. For him, it is a ques-
tion of survival that Israel abandon the «Zionism of acreage»
for the «Zionism of quality.» He connects this with the inter-
national aspect, emphasizing Israel’s relationship with Jews all
over the world: «Should the Zionist enterprise collapse, the
Jewish religion will be blamed for its share in the calamity since
it recommended the path that led to disaster, and the major
factor in the Jewishness of most Diaspora Jewry - identifica-
tion with Israel - will vanish» (op. cit., p. 208). He also notes:
«The capacity to achieve goals does not depend only on the size
of the local forces that have to be overcome, but also on the
support for these goals in the world community...» (op. cit, p.
215). «The need to behave in accordance with international
norms... has now become a condition for the survival of both
the state and the people» (op. cit., p. 199).
Harkabi’s book in English is based on a book he published
in Tel Aviv in 1986, i.e., well before the outbreak of the in-
tifada. In the preface to the English edition, he writes: «Three
years ago, when I began to write this book, the urgency of
changing Israeli policy arose from the opportunity offered to
Children in Khan Al Sheeh camp, Syria: Do they threaten Israel?
Israel after Jordan and the PLO, in February 1985, reached an
agreement based on a principle unprecedented in the history of
the Arab-Israeli dispute - namely ‘land for peace’.» He con-
tinues that the intifada has only strengthened his arguments,
and urges Israel to negotiate with the PLO, based on mutual
recognition.
LIMITATIONS TO CHANGE
No matter how comprehensive their analysis and compelling
their arguments, these think tanks and experts suffer from
significant limitations due to their own relationship to Labor
Zionism, at least in its original version. It is this mainstream
Zionism which has actually shaped Israel as it is today, yet
most often they analyze Israel’s problems without taking into
consideration that they stem from Zionism’s very nature, not
simply a wrong interpretation or implementation of Zionist
principles.
While on one level, the 1977 Likud election victory appeared
as a rupture in traditional Israeli politics, on another level it
was the logical ripening of a society which evolved via col-
onialism, military conquest and expansionism - processes
begun by Labor. Parallel to the rise of the Likud, we have
witnessed the rightward evolution of the Labor Party,
culminating in the 1984 national unity government and conti-
nuing up to today. Thus, those who see the two poles of
Zionism as fundamentally different may lack the means to
draw the Israeli body politic towards their ever so rational
arguments, for Israel’s inner dynamics are moving in another
direction, according to a different logic.
This point will have importance in evaluating how the in-
tifada has affected Israeli security thinking. For example, in as
much as the Labor Party and various analysts view the
demographic danger as the greatest one, they advocate the
«land for peace» formula. The right has another recipe for this
problem; it is called «transfer.» However, these two models are
not so far apart as they seem. For one, the territorial com-
promise envisioned by Labor is generally much less than need-
ed to fulfill Palestinian demands for an independent state.
Moreover, according to Heller, «The purpose of territorial
compromise is to transfer the bulk of the Palestinian popula-
tion to Jordanian jurisdiction» (op. cit., p. 35, our emphasis).
Harkabi, in Arab Strategies and Israel’s Response, 1977,
wrote: «by announcing its readiness to withdraw and let a
Palestinian state be set up outside Israel’s borders, Israel
would return the Palestinian problem to its true natural habitat
- inter-Arab politics - and free itself from a heavy burden»
(quoted in Journal of Palestine Studies 54, Winter 1985).
It is a far cry from such thinking to attitudes which would
enable Palestinian-Israeli coexistence in two parallel states, as
many now advocate. It is hard to separate in the Zionist mind
between the perceived need for security and the racism that has
accumulated from years of being colonizers. Why else does the
Israeli army persist in brutalizing the masses of the intifada all
the while many soldiers and officers are reported to think that
the problem can only be solved via political means? We will try
to address these questions in the next issue of Democratic
Palestine when we discuss the impact of the intifada on Israeli
security thinking.
y & e
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