19.03.2009

Dead and buried

Neither Nasser's pan-Arabism nor the discredited two-state solution can be revived, argues Yassamine Mather

Centuries of colonial and imperialist domination, followed by several decades of the rule of reactionary nationalists and Islamists, have left the Middle East a region of unresolved national and religious conflicts.

Many nationalities, some divided across arbitrary borders drawn by the imperialists and deprived of basic rights, make claims to vast sections of the region and, although the Israel/Palestine conflict is the prominent one of the region, we should remember that occupied Palestine is not the only contested land in the Middle East. Arab nationalists, both religious and secular, have ambitions of regaining the frontier the Islamic state of the 7th-8th century (from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to central Asia in the east); Christian (Assyrian/Chaldean/Armenian) as well as Zoroastrian nationalists harbour ambitions of revenge against Islamists; Iranian (Shia Islamists) are obsessed with control of most of the old Persian empire well beyond the current frontiers of Iran. Kurds have ambitions of a ‘greater Kurdistan’, from Kermanshah in Iran to Istanbul in Turkey. Complicated national and geographical claims, some with defenders who are more fanatic than those who are currently supporting the 2,000-year-old claim of Israelis to the land of Palestine.

These conflicting claims on the same land cannot be answered through a simplistic interpretation of the right of nations to self-determination, especially if they imply advocating further separation. In order to find ‘realistic’ solutions to the religious and national conflicts of the Middle East, socialists should take time to study the history of the region over the last few centuries and seek radical solutions beyond contested territories and religious aspirations.

The Iranian left has made its own mistakes regarding many of these disputes and I would be the last person to prescribe a solution for Palestine or Kurdistan or Armenia. However, it is possible to look at recent history and say with confidence that any solution involving partition/separation would be disastrous for the long-term interests of the working class in that region. If we are serious about defeating imperialism and fundamentalism in the Middle East, we should avoid reworking their proposals, which are often based on the principle of divide and rule, and consider instead multinational, multi-ethnic solutions as both interim and long-term means to resolve such conflicts.

As far as the Palestine/Israeli conflict is concerned, the two-state solution, in its original format (Clinton-Kadima-PLO-Oslo accord version), and in its new format proposed by Peter Manson and Jack Conrad, is a good example of a ‘solution’ that will not work. This article is a critique of two-state solutions, presenting some of the arguments put forward by Israeli and Palestinian socialists in support of a binational, single state. Accepting the right of nations to self-determination implies listening to these voices rather than the views of rightwing nationalists or fundamentalists from either side.

Religious and national

Marxists can only define the current Israeli state as a religious/racist state: only those born to a Jewish mother have a right to settle in Israel, ensuring religious or racial descent. Over the last few years, legislation regarding land repossessions and citizenship have moved the country further towards a “racist Jewish state”, in the words of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.¹

According to the same paper, citizenship legislation passed in 2008 stipulates that “the interior minister does not have the authority to approve residence in Israel for a resident of Judea and Samaria (unless, of course, they are Jews - that is, settlers). This is so even regarding family reunions, meaning marriage, when it comes to Palestinian spouses who are younger than 35 (for men) or 25 (for women). In effect, the law prevents young Israeli citizens from marrying the spouse of their choice and living with this spouse in Israel, if the spouse is a Palestinian from Judea and Samaria.”

It is in the aftermath of such legislations that the United Nations Durban II summit branded Israel an occupying state that carries out racist policies.³ Moshé Machover, although he is against calling Israel an apartheid regime, defines it as a racist state: “To be sure, the two [Israel and apartheid South Africa] have many features in common. Both are perniciously racist; both impose a degree of separation between ethnic groups. And this is no accident: both are instances of the genus, ‘colonial settler state’.”⁴

Writing in the Weekly Worker, the same author states: “‘Israel’ is the name of a state, not of a nation; strictly and legally speaking, ‘Israeli’ denotes citizenship, not national affiliation ...

“… according to Zionist ideology, there is no Hebrew nation, but merely members of the worldwide Jewish nation, who have already ‘returned’ to their homeland, an advance guard of their brethren in the diaspora, who have a right - indeed a sacred duty - to follow the vanguard and be ‘ingathered’ in the Land of Israel.

“Zionism portrays itself as the national movement of this worldwide alleged nation. But this self-description cannot seriously be taken at face value. Zionism cannot really be regarded as ‘Jewish nationalism’, except in a very far-fetched and highly paradoxical sense, for the simple reason that world Jewry is not a nation in any recognisable modern sense of the term: it lacks all the objective attributes of a nation. A British Jew living in London and, say, an Iranian Jew living in Tehran have nothing in common except religion: the religion practised by themselves; or (if they are ‘secular’ Jews) residual memories of the religion practised by their parents or grandparents. Needless to say, nationhood in the modern sense … is a secular concept, unrelated to religion.

“So Zionism is not the nationalism of the real Hebrew (‘Israeli-Jewish’) nation, because Zionist ideology denies the existence of this nation. And it cannot rightly be the nationalism of the alleged worldwide Jewish nation, because such a nation does not really exist.”⁵

In fact recent legislation stipulates that new immigrants who have converted to Judaism will not be allowed to bring non-Jewish family members into the country.

It is also true that the state of Israel and the Jews currently inhabiting it all consider themselves belonging to different nationalities: Ethiopian Israelis, Iranian Israelis, American Israeli ... and Israel’s official position on this issue is clear.⁶

The majority of Israeli Jews are not nationalist, but ‘religious’. They believe they are ‘god’s favourite children’ and they have returned to their promised land. As bad as nationalism is, this is worse and one of the reasons why socialists should not advocate the setting up of a nation-state based on religious identity, be it for Muslims, Christians or Jews.

In countering the religious, racist character of the Israeli state, language is important. That is why in defending the rights of the current Hebrew-speaking inhabitants of Israel we should avoid talking of a Jewish nation and use instead the term ‘Hebrew nation’. That covers non-practising Jews, secular Jews, etc … and the use of this term would be a step towards envisaging a non Zionist (non-religious) entity in the region. According to comrade Machover, ‘Hebrew nation’ refers to “all those who have settled in Israel, provided they adopt Hebrew language and culture, excluding anyone who settles there without any wish to adopt Hebrew.”

The current Jewish state based on religious/racial birth is anti-democratic. Marriages (as well as other aspects of civil law) are officiated over by religious courts that do not recognise marriage between Jews and Palestinians. Civil marriages are not recognised. The Israeli government pays the salary of rabbis, and the employees of municipal rabbinates and religious councils. In Israel citizenship and nationality are two different things. Citizenship (ezrahut) may be held by Arabs or Jews. Nationality (le’um), which bestows much greater rights than citizenship, is for Jews alone.

If anyone has any doubts on this issue, it is sufficient to look at the history of the last 60 years. When there has been conflict between the religious ‘essence’ of Israel and the character of its government (democracy of a kind), the essence has won. That is why there is no contradiction in calling for an end to this religious/racist notion and defending the collective rights of the Hebrew nation and the individual rights of Jews to practise their religion.

That is why the “most fundamental element in a genuine resolution of the conflict is removal of its fundamental cause: the Zionist colonisation project must be superseded. This means not only de-Zionisation of Israel, but also repudiation of the Zionist claim that the Jews at large, constituting an alleged ‘diasporic nation’, have a special right in - let alone over - the ‘land of Israel’.”⁷

Some comrades speak of the “right of Israeli Jews to a separate, non-Zionist state”, but there is clearly a contradiction in such a claim. Israel was set up as a Zionist state and a non-Zionist state for ‘Israeli Jews’ is meaningless. As Tony Judt, academic and former supporter of Zionism, says, “Israel has imported a characteristically late 19th century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers … The very idea of a ‘Jewish state’ - a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded - is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.”⁸

I would add that proposing a non-Zionist Israeli state is also an anachronism. Instead of envisaging an impossible scenario, a non-Zionist Israel, one should go beyond the narrow confines of a two-state solution and seek multinational and multi-religious entities.

One state vs two

The Oslo/PLO/Kadima version of the two-state solution is so discredited that no-one in their right mind would defend it. However, long before Oslo, it was obvious that a Palestinian state based on bits of land separated by the Israeli Defence Force could only lead to a Bantustan-type solution, this time with concrete walls separating the ‘settlers’ from the local population.

In the new proposed two-state solution, one nation/religious group (Israeli Jews) have a right to a state in that region, while all Arabs (Muslims) should unite and form a single state to prepare an ‘agency for change’. It is very difficult to find any rational reasons for this. Why not a state for every national or religious grouping? A Sunni state encompassing parts of Syria, a Shia state for the Alavis in Syria and Shias in Lebanon, a Christian state for the Maronites, a Yazidi Kurdish state in northern Kurdistan, a Kurdish Shia state in the southern Kurdistan …After all, there is a history of conflict between any two of these nations and all of them advocate that their right to self-determination means separation.

If we agree that the conflict is embedded in the regional context of the Arab east, and cannot possibly be resolved in isolation from it and in the absence of a profound transformation of the entire region, we should look beyond the limited horizons presented by ‘realistic’ solutions such as the two-state solution.

The collective rights of the Hebrew and Arab nations and the individual rights of Christians, Jews, Sunnis, Shias, Alavis, Bahaiis to practise their religion can and should be guaranteed in single-state solutions. However, the long-term resolution of all the national conflicts of the region can only be achieved by envisaging wider, more multinational entities. Hebrews, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians and Syrians of all religions and none have more in common than what divides them.

Until recently Palestinians were amongst the most secular sections of the Arab population. Historically Palestine was and to a certain extent remains multicultural, multi-religious. The constant compromises of Fatah-PLO, Egypt and Jordan, the eagerness to find ‘realistic’ solutions acceptable to the US and the Israeli lobby in that country, together with the brutal suppression of secular and leftwing forces in Arab countries, have led to Hamas’s strength. This trend has begun to change and most reports indicate that the recent war has made Hamas unpopular in Gaza. We should build on this to revive the slogan of a secular, democratic state, emphasising support for the collective and the individual of the Hebrew and Arab nations, rather than move back to solutions favoured by Islamist and Jewish religious zealots - separation and segregation.

There are valid criticisms of a particular definition of the ‘one-state solution’, where the old PLO (pre-Oslo) used the slogan, “secular, democratic state”. At the time this slogan was wrongly assumed to imply a non religious single state. Comrade Machover is correct in saying that what the PLO meant by this was the “vision of an Arab Palestine, in which ‘Jews’ (along with Christians and Muslims) would be accorded equal individual status and freedom of worship as a religious denomination, but would not be recognised as a nationality … it was counterposed not to ‘theocratic’, but to ‘binational’.”⁹

The secular option talked about these days is very clearly a non-religious single state. Most socialists (secular Jews, Muslims, Christians) in the Middle East, referring to a binational, secular state, clarify their differences with the old Fatah position and Arab nationalists. However, even the supporters of the bourgeois one-state solution never advocated ‘driving Jews into the sea’. This type of emotional labelling of defenders of the one-state solution by supporters of social-imperialism will help no-one.

Of course, the Socialist Workers Party, together with large sections of the Stalinist and Trotskyist left, are profoundly mistaken regarding the progressive role of political Islam … However, one should not use the accusation of anti-semitism lightly. Every leftwinger, every anti-Zionist who has criticised Israel has at one time or another been accused of anti-semitism. The Zionist state has tried to appropriate Jewish symbols as part of its own symbols and identity, so that when anyone attacks the Zionist state’s flag they can come back and say, ‘You are anti-semitic’. Last, but not least, Arabs are semites, so being pro Arab does not make the SWP or others anti-semitic (at least in the Middle Eastern understanding of the term).

The tragic position taken by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty last summer and the pro-war position of supporters of Euston manifesto are the consequences of hysterical reactions to the growing sympathies for political Islam in sections of the British and European left. In Hands Off the People of Iran we have managed to avoid this hysteria by combining a principled anti-war position with opposition to the Islamic state on Iran: there is no reason to soften this line when it comes to Palestine/Israel conflict. Arguing for or against the one-state solution has nothing to do with Islamists or the ‘pro-Islam’ groups in the British left and this argument should not be used to dismiss the one-state solution. Many Jewish socialists and even some Zionists have supported this call. Ex-muslims and socialists in the region are unanimous that this is the only answer to a situation inherited from colonialism/imperialism and communists who advocate the single-state solution have never advocated throwing the Jews currently living in Israel ‘into the sea’.

For those concerned with realistic approaches and ‘practical’ agencies for change, my advice would be to listen to Israelis who have changed their position regarding the ‘two-state solution’ and now advocate one state. Former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti admits that the settlements have made a two-state solution unworkable: “The geopolitical condition that’s been created in 67 [the year the Israeli occupation began] is irreversible. Cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg.” Benvenisti changed his mind in the 1990s. The “connection between territory and ethnic identity which was applicable 20-25 years ago cannot be implemented. It will complicate matters rather than solve it. Dismantling of settlements will cause civil war.”¹⁰ Contemporary history and Israeli action have already proved him right.

In other words, Israelis accept that the pace of settlement and expansion into the occupied territories since 1993 has created the ‘geography of a single state’ (1,627 tenders for new Jewish houses in West Bank). The two-state solution - separation - is increasingly impossible.

Knesset member Azmi Bishara said in 1997: “When it becomes clear that an independent and democratic state occupying every inch of West Bank and Gaza (and east Jerusalem …) free of Israeli settlement is not realisable, Palestinians will re-examine the entire strategy and we will then begin to discuss a bi-national solution.”¹¹

According to Virginia Tilley, an American living in South Africa, “My own recent experience … has confirmed that the death of the two-state solution has become the elephant in the room for diplomats, human-rights activists, and the ‘Arab street’ alike. Judging by confidential reports, belief that a one-state solution has become inevitable is circulating within the Palestinian Authority … Nor is this analysis confined to Palestinians: broad layers of diplomats and other staff from European states and the UN are privately discussing the one-state solution. Moreover, some of the most eloquent endorsements for such a solution are from prominent Jewish professionals in Israel and abroad.”¹²

Tilley’s observations are confirmed by a wide variety of liberal thinkers and activists. For example, Ha’aretz Online editor Peter Hirschberg notes that “a growing number of Palestinian intellectuals” are taking up the one-state model.¹³ And Palestinian-American writer and internet activist Ali Abunimah contends that ordinary Palestinians are significantly more supportive of the one-state solution than are Palestinian intellectuals!

There can be no doubt that the demise of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority is directly related to their defence of the two-state solution, which has become synonymous with ineptitude, corruption and repeated failure. According to Moshé Machover, Fatah’s two-state solution eventually led to the 1993 Oslo accords between the PLO and Israel. No wonder today even amongst Fatah leaders those who have any credibility advocate the one-state solution and blame the PLO’s capitulation to two state-solution for the rise in Hamas’s popularity. Amongst ordinary people in the region (from Arabs of north Africa to Baluchis in Afghanistan), the two-state solution is a discredited, failed policy.

Today there are signs that a Hamas-Fatah deal is on the cards. However, even before latest developments, one could list many Hamas statements supporting a two-state solution in exchange for a long-term ceasefire. In any case, there is no doubt that religious groups amongst both communities have more to lose than anyone else in a binational secular state.

In defending the ‘realistic’ solution, Jack Conrad reminds us that “Israel is allied to the most powerful nation on earth and is a regional superpower in its own right”.¹⁴ Surely if we take this argument to its logical conclusion we should compromise with US allies throughout the world. Should we support Mubarak in Egypt or King Abdullah in Jordan because the US is their powerful ally?

Contrary to the position of successive US administrations, from Bill Clinton to Bush and now Obama, people from every political camp may be ready for a one-state solution: “Many Democrats have lost patience with the ‘separation wall’ and the West Bank settlements, violence and threats of violence by all parties in the conflict; many Greens and the US Green Party have inserted into their platform a plank calling for ‘serious reconsideration of the creation of one secular, democratic state for Palestinians and Israelis’.”¹⁵

Why give up on all these developments, which make the one-state solution a much more realistic option than the incredible ‘deZionised Israeli Jewish state’ coexisting with an Arab unity state? No-one can doubt that in its original version the two-state solution is dead and buried - surely this is not to time to revamp it, but to ‘think beyond the box’?

Some comrades defend the two-state solution on the basis that Israel (as it exists now) and the Hebrew nation in general might consider such a solution, while a binational one-state solution is ‘impossible’ - and they propose better borders for this new version of the two-state solution: Palestine as a state which joins Gaza and the West Bank and has east Jerusalem as its capital. Yet we know that Jewish settlements cover around 3% of the West Bank, make use of the extensive network of settler ‘corridor’ roads and impose restrictions on Palestinian access. Israeli settlements cover more than 40% of the West Bank.

Clearly none of the political parties in Israel have any intention of accepting a two-state solution even in its limited Bantustan version - otherwise they would not have invested so much in maintaining houses in 3% of the West Bank. The reality is that under pressure from the international community, two parties (Labour and Kadima) have paid lip service to the two-state solution, but this did not stop them allowing new settlements in the West Bank. The idea that any Israeli government will dismantle existing settlements is far more utopian than envisaging a binational one-state solution. The result of recent elections in Israel shows the direction of public opinion in that country. Clearly the proposed Netanyahu coalition government with the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu will not support any form of two-state solution.

Comrades then add that the two separate states should give appropriate rights to minorities. We already know of discrimination against Arabs (Christian and Muslim) minorities in Israel. The assumption is that the new non-Zionist Jewish state, which would still be a religious state, would give equal rights to minorities in exactly the same way that the religious Islamic republic in Iran pays lip service to equal rights for Jews and Christians (allowing one MP for each community, while discrimination in every aspect of economic, political and social life continues ...). Yet another anachronism: why accept a national/religious entity and then demand rights for minorities when the obvious solution is to call for a secular, multinational entity?

Then there is the question of the 1948 refugees. If one defends their right to return as a basic democratic demand, these refugees, in Sabra or Shatila, who have kept the keys to their homes in ‘Israel’ proper, will not want to return to Egyptian Gaza or Jordanian West Bank. They would want to return to Haifa, East and West Jerusalem. The potential conflicts within the two new states will make the current situation look like a calm, peaceful period - making a nightmare of the ‘realistic’ solution.

Arab nation

Comrades talk of an Arab nation that will unite many binational Arabs in Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan … Jack Conrad writes: “Though studded here and there with national minorities - Kurds, Assyrians, Turks, Armenians, Berbers, etc - there is a definite Arab or Arabised community. Despite being separated into 25 different states and divided by religion and religious sect - Sunni, Shi’ite, Alaouite, Ismaili, Druze, Orthodox Christian, Catholic Christian, Maronite, Nestorian, etc - they share a strong bond of pan-Arab consciousness, born not only of a common language, but of a closely related history.”

In all of these countries there are still Jewish and Christian communities, discriminated against by the majority Arab/Muslim state. A united Arab/Hebrew vision for the region attempts to deal with the future of the entire region, including Israel, not just the Arab states.

Moshé raises the issue of Arab unity in order to encourage us to think beyond the box of Jewish-Muslim divide: “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can then be resolved by accommodating both national groups within the regional federal union. The Palestinian Arab people will take its place alongside the other components of the Arab nation. And the Israeli Hebrews can be offered equal membership with full national rights, on similar terms to the other non-Arab nationalities located within the Arab world (Kurds, south Sudanese).”¹⁷ This approach has nothing to do with the new versions of the discredited two-state solution!

As for the idea of a new Arab entity acting as ‘an agency for change’, it should be remembered that various ‘Arab unity’ projects, including Nasser’s United Arab Republic and attempts at Ba’athist unity (Syria/Iraq), failed because Arab nationalism is often defined as unity of some Arabs against other Middle Eastern nations (Persians, Hebrews, Kurds, Turks ...) and at times against other Arab countries.

Such projects have never gained support amongst the working class and in fact it was their total failure that led to the rise of political Islam. The clock cannot be turned back to revive the good old days of ‘Arab nationalism’. It is unlikely and indeed undesirable to seek such unities, unless it is within the wider framework of a multinational, multi-religious entity.

The support of the Arab working class for the Palestinian cause in Marrakech or Algiers should not be mistaken for a desire for Arab unity beyond the borders of greater Syria. Many north African Arab countries have a different history and national characteristics to Arabs in greater Syria and will only remember wars and conflicts in their ‘closely related history’. Support for the Palestinians throughout the Middle East, and especially amongst the working class, has nothing to do with either religion or Arab nationalism.

The peoples of the region see the injustice against Palestinians as a manifestation of imperialist arrogance. That is why socialists in the region have a responsibility to come up with radical solution regarding the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, as an example to solve the many religious/national conflicts of the region as part of a the working class strategy of regaining the leadership of the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist struggles, while exposing reactionary, corrupt Islamic groups and states.

Notes

1. See ‘A racist Jewish state’ Ha’aretz editorial, March 11.
2. Ha’aretz June 27 2008.
3. www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3675242,00.html
4. M Machover, ‘Is it apartheid?’: pamolson.org/ArtApartheid.htm
5. M Machover, ‘Zionism: reality and sordid propaganda’ Weekly Worker September 18 2008.
6. “A group of Israeli public figures petitioned the high court of justice in December 2008 to order the interior ministry to register them as Israelis. ‘We’re Israeli, and wish to be registered as such,’ said the petition, presented by attorney Yoela Har-Shefi. The interior ministry has a list of 137 nationalities, including Abkhazi, Assyrian and Samaritan - but you won’t find ‘Israeli’ among them. The state of Israel doesn’t recognise the existence of ‘Israeli’ as a nationality. Among the petitioners are those categorised on the identity cards as ‘Jew’, ‘Druze’, ‘Georgian’, ‘Russian’, and even one ‘Hebrew’. Tel Aviv district court judge Yitzhak Shilo rejected Tamrin’s suit, stating: ‘A person cannot create a new nationality just by saying it exists, and then saying he belongs to it’” (Ha’aretz March 18).
7. M Machover, ‘Breaking the chains of Zionist oppression’ Weekly Worker February 19 2009.
8. New York Review of Books October 23 2003.
9. M Machover, ‘Breaking the chains of Zionist oppression’ Weekly Worker February 19 2009.
10. Quoted in International Socialist Review March-April 2009.
11. Journal of Palestine Studies spring 1997, pp67-80.
12. New Left Review March-April 2006.
13. Ha’aretz December 16 2003.
14. ‘Zionist imperatives and the Arab solution’ Weekly Worker January 22 2009.
15. Radical Middle Newsletter April 2007.
16. ‘Zionist imperatives and the Arab solution’ Weekly Worker January 22 2009.
17. M Machover, ‘Breaking the chains of Zionist oppression’ Weekly Worker February 19 2009.