Commentary

27th December 1998

A new Palestinian voice against Zionism

By Mervyn de Silva

What is Wye? No, no conundrum - just the place where President Clinton made history by presiding over negotiated settlement of the Palestinian question, a problem as old as the United Nations.

"Land-for-security" is how the formula is described. President Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO (the Palestine Liberation Organisation) accepted the formula.

It has taken half a century to right a wrong, a monstrous injustice.

By a vote of 81 to 30 the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, has called for national elections. Students of international politics, and of the oil-rich West Asia, will surely study regional trends from now on. The Israeli people have rejected "the terrible policies" said Haim Ramon, a Labour party spokesman. Israel is a robust democracy and the electorate vigorously active and outspoken. Though Mr. Clinton has problems of his own (critics claim he treated West Asia as a useful diversion) no serious American politician can possibly neglect the important role played and immense contribution made to the American polity by the Jewish community. The title sole superpower sums it all up.

How do the Palestinians view the fast-changing domestic and regional scene? How do they assess the prospects? In a recent issue of the Palestine Times, the editor wrote the Palestinian struggle is not a struggle against the Jews. It is a moral struggle. It is a struggle against a political form of Judaism — Zionism which over the last century has mandated that Palestine must be the Jewish homeland. Palestinians have never quarrelled with the Jewish need for a homeland, but they have resisted and challenged the imposition of a Jewish homeland in Palestine".

What we need to note is these opinion trends in the voice of new, westernised, educated Palestinian generation. The end of the cold war has also reduced pressure from outside.

Islamic challenge

When oil was discovered a US State Dept. analysis spoke of a "stupendous source of power". The Suez canal linked Europe and West Asia and of course India and South-East Asia.

The Israel intelligence agencies and the law-and-order outfits were quite capable of containing, if not always suppressing anti-Israeli subversive groups like Hamas. The turning point though was the radical ideological transformation which followed the Iranian revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

Studies like "The Islamic Threat" by the American scholar John L. Esposito have traced the ideological changes in radical Palestinian groups. In any case, Hamas has started to practise a sophisticated high-tech "terrorism" which has even caused serious concern in agencies like Shinbeth and Mossad.

The sufferings of a persecuted Jewish people is accepted by a well-read, educated Palestinian generation. All that they point out is that the Jewish people were persecuted, not by the Arabs but by the Christian west. "It is not unusual for Palestinians to hear others including from our own community, challenging the facts of the Holocaust or our relations with the people of the Jewish faith.

The Palestinian struggle is a moral struggle. It is a struggle against a political form of Judaism - Zionism - that over the last century has mandated that Palestine must be the Jewish homeland. We are not anti-Semitic and we are proud of our own Semitism and bond with the people of the Torah, the old Testament and its inherent links to both the Christian Bible and the Islamic Quran."

Palestinian identity

If this is an authentic representative voice of the new Palestinian generation then men like Binyamin Netanyahu cannot assume power in this intellectually vibrant Israel. The author of this article is Ray Hanania, former National president of the Palestinian-American Congress.

He concludes his essay with these words.

"As Palestinians we respect all people, Jews, Christians and Muslims."

The Netanyahu leadership left little room for optimism about West Asia in 1998 or beyond, says David Gardner in a contribution to the Economist. His colonisation of conquered land has all but destroyed the peace compact reached by his Labour predecessors in Oslo.

The Norwegian trade union leaders knew Israeli (Labour) leader Shimon Peres closely and Peres met Yasser Arafat and signed the Oslo agreement. Then Labour was defeated by Netanyahu's Likud and the chance for a peace accord vanished.

The latest report speaks of prime ministerial candidates from Left, Right and Centre lined up already for the Knneset polls in April. More confusion, more political disorder.... more violence?

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