PROMINENT ISRAELI RENOUNCES TODAY'S ZIONISM...WITHOUT SAYING SO

Opening the Zionist Trap Door

"Out of the cycle of violence the gradual, hesitant understanding - perhaps the dream - will grow, that the only way is through a struggle to create a land of Israel/Palestine that is undivided in both physical and human terms, pluralistic and open; a land in which civilized relations, human touch, intimate coexistence and a link to a common homeland would be stronger than militant tribalism and the separation into national ghettoes."

Palestinians are suffering terribly; but Israelis are in crisis. Meron Benvenisti comes from the heart of the Zionist establishment. He was the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem in the days of Teddy Kolleck. And now...after so much anguish, so much bloodshed, and propelled by so much fear of what may lie ahead, he is using terminology and concepts that go to a post-Zionist Israel, to a "undivided", "pluralistic", "common" homeland.

Is this the evolution from the remnants of the Zionist humanist left of what was once the "democratic, secular State" of Palestinian ideological evolution?

Is this the return -- if even by only by a few courageous and tortured souls at the moment -- to the early thinking of a different kind of Jewish leadership, Matin Buber and Nahum Goldman among them, who cried out for a bi-national state with full equality for all persons of Arab ancestry while so rightly warning of the corrupting dangers of narrow nationalism with any attempt to forceably expel and militarily control the Arab population? Have we all been hijacked of late by others who co-opted the terminology of peace and coexistence but turned the Holy Land into barbed-wire, military checkpoints, and Apartheid "separation"?

There have been others in recent years before Benvenisti, many also from well within the heart of the Zionist establishment -- Simha Flapan the writer, General Matti Peled the first military GOvernor of Gaza, Dan Almagor the playwright, Natan Zacht the famous poet, are all names that come to mind. Now Benvenisti has boldly opened the Zionist trap door to what in the end may be the only sane alternative to mutual annihilation.

THE WORST SCRIPT IS COMING TRUE
By Meron Benvenisti

How tempting it is to mock those who preached in favor of a crusade against Ariel Sharon: "fanatic nationalist," "blood-shedder," "yesterday's man" (Amos Oz, The Guardian, February 8), who find themselves facing the crawling of Ehud Barak (who was "ahead of [his] time" and had "the courage to compromise and make peace") and his party toward a national unity government. A few of them express fierce opposition "to the betrayal of the way of peace," but others "feel a great yearning for unity, in light of the intensification of the terror" and find solace in the agreed-upon platform of the government, according to which the "effort toward a final agreement" would continue, as well as its opposite: "advancing peace through interim agreements."

But the mockery over the sermonizing of the "Council of Leftist Sages," which evaporated in the emptiness of its words, was erased by the terrible tragedy that occurred yesterday in these parts. Now "national unity" - that tribal closing of ranks against the murderous Other - has become a necessity that no one can oppose, and any attempt to control events, even by proposing a realistic diplomatic alternative, is hopeless.

The worst script is about to take place: severe retaliatory actions will lead to acts of blood revenge whose motives are personal; these in turn will prompt even harsher collective punishment, which will ruin the remnants of authority remaining to the Palestinian Authority. Attempts to consolidate a rational approach that aspires to launch a joint effort to manage the crisis will run into internal disagreements, which will be won by those who always thrive on the rotting bed of hate and bloodletting.

The atmosphere, which enables only the increasing use of force, will lead to an extreme escalation that will create pressure for international intervention. The chances for external intervention along the lines of Bosnia or Kosovo are extremely slight, both because the world's cop is shrugging off its duties, with the United States increasingly isolating itself, and also because the intervention - which would restrain the actions of the Jewish State - would be seen as an anti-Semitic act and thus there would be hesitation to initiate it. The situation that will be created will make all the usual "solutions" - two states for two peoples, an end to the occupation, the dismantling of settlements, final status agreements, interim agreements, and others - laughable.

Reality would be exposed in all its nakedness not as a "problem" but as a "condition": a reality that was described nearly 20 years ago, earning a torrent of ridicule and the name "the theory of irreversibility." "A basic, almost primitive conflict, not an international conflict; a conflict that raises existential and meta-political questions of self-identity, denial of the identity of the opposing side, atavistic fears of physical annihilation, deep feelings of absolute justice that brooks no compromise and feelings of exclusive possessiveness; a dynamic, violent and unstable conflict - as in every binational or multi-ethnic state where the ruling group has a monopoly on the power of enforcement, the group that is ruled turns to violent civil disobedience to which the ruling group responds with violence. The confrontation escalates but it is confined to its internal, Israeli-Palestinian framework."

It's not generally accepted for someone to quote himself, but perhaps these harsh words will serve as food for thought for anyone who was drawn to illusions concerning the "end of the conflict" and is now hopeless in the face of the collapse of his illusions.

Out of the cycle of violence the gradual, hesitant understanding - perhaps the dream - will grow, that the only way is through a struggle to create a land of Israel/Palestine that is undivided in both physical and human terms, pluralistic and open; a land in which civilized relations, human touch, intimate coexistence and a link to a common homeland would be stronger than militant tribalism and the separation into national ghettoes. Many years may have to pass until the notion of a binational framework - federated or otherwise - will become a legitimate topic for Israeli and Palestinian political discourse. In the meantime, we can certainly expect a great deal of sermonizing regarding "separation" and "the establishment of a Palestinian state" as indispensable solutions; at least this preaching should be carried out with the humility dictated by events and not with the arrogance of know-it-alls. [published in Ha'aretz, 15 Feb]