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Mideast
Conflict only Understandable as a Classic Anti-Colonial Struggle
By
Rami G. Khouri, Pacific
News Service, June 12, 2001
Violence between Israelis and Palestinians has reached new
levels, and settlement seems less a possibility than ever. One
path to peace might begin with an understanding of the current
struggle not as a war between states but as a classic anti-colonial
uprising. PNS Commentator Rami G. Khouri is a Palestinian-Jordanian
syndicated political columnist, author, and television talk
show host.
RAMALLAH -- Traveling regularly to Palestine and Israel in recent
years, I have seen diplomatic and emotional tension between
the two sides move to ever-higher levels. There is a total lack
of trust, a sense that people on both sides would rather fight
than negotiate.
My impression, from speaking regularly with journalists, academics,
and politically engaged people on both sides, is that they are
behaving very much like antagonists in a classic colonial situation:
one party (Israel) occupies the other's land and uses overwhelming
military force to maintain its position, while the other side
(the Palestinians) turns to anti-colonial armed resistance to
free itself.
The political debates we watch every night on television are
not relevant, because their focus on who's right and who's wrong
in using violence excludes the central fact of what is happening
in Palestine and Israel.
No logical, political, or moral justification is possible for
the violence perpetrated by both sides, including killing infants
and children, sowing terror in the hearts of entire communities,
bombing civilians, applying oppressive collective punishments,
and other dreadful deeds.
The one context in which these deeds are both logical and inevitable
is the context of colonialism and anti-colonialism.
Over the past eight years (since the Oslo process started),
the Arab-Israeli conflict has been transformed from a conventional
dispute between sovereign states into a Palestinian struggle
for liberation from occupation by Israel. The conflict has been
reduced to its essential core -- Zionists and Palestinian-Arab
nationalists contesting ownership of the land between the Jordan
River and the Mediterranean coast.
Neighboring states, as well as the United States and everyone
else, seems so irrelevant to the core battle.
Both sides act as if engaged in a classical colonial conflict.
Israel uses massive military overkill to pacify a besieged Palestinian
population whose lands it continues to confiscate and settle.
The Palestinians respond by attacking Israeli military and civilian
targets, and by refusing to negotiate a cease-fire unless the
symbols and realities of Israeli colonial domination come to
a speedy and total end.
The intense violence, the sheer brutality of the manner of killing
signaled to us months ago that this was one of the modern world's
last colonial occupations and anti-colonial liberation struggles.
Like most such struggles, it is likely to be a protracted battle.
Also, like most anti-colonial struggles, this will have to end
with a full withdrawal by the colonial occupying power. The
sooner we all adjust to this, the sooner we are likely to find
a way to resolve this conflict in a manner fair to both sides.
Is the conflict still resolvable peacefully? My impression is
that it is. I am convinced that majorities of Palestinians and
Israelis will accept living side-by-side in two separate sovereign
states. But achieving a negotiated peace accord will be harder
and will take much longer, in view of the reality we are now
living through. |
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