open Democracy News Analysis - Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited, Avi Shlaim - Comments

kleinyy on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

kleinyy — Mon, 19 May 2008 12:14:00 +0100

-----edited by moderator------

There's an important omission of fact in this little piece, one that Palestinian advocates don't like to dwell on: Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians. They don't like to acknowledge this for two reasons: First, once you extend diplomatic recognition to the incontrovertible fact of Palestinian terror, the argument that Israel is somehow morally inferior to the poor Palestinians is unsustainable to the impartial judge. Israel may even be superior, because it acts against armed terrorists (with collateral civilian casualties) to defend its own innoent civilians. Second, once you realize that the wall (which I disapprove of, for reasons that have nothing to do with Shlaim's arguments) was built to reduce terrorism, the Machiavellian arguments about a land grab in concrete seem silly.

As to the territorial aspect, Shlaim himself argues that the future is a Palestinian state on most of the West Bank with the rest going to Israel. If you assume that Israeli settlements east of the wall are going down, and take the wall as a divider, that's what you get. Why is Shlaim, then, outraged about the wall? The land between the wall and the 67 border is the same nickel the Palestinians are arguing over. It's hard to take seriously the claim that some fundamental moral issue is involved in the difference between 90% and 92% or 96%. So why are the Palestinians so upset about it, other than for propaganda purposes which impartial observers should discount 90% or 92% or 96%?

The answer is that the Palestinians have an iron wall of their own. They will never make peace with Israel. They didn't in 2000--which is why Sharon won his first election--and they don't know, when Hamas (with the approval, despite the civil war between them, of Fateh elements like the Al-Aksa Brigades), is bombarding what they call "occupied Sderot" and encouraging Israeli Arab celebrations of "nakba." Which is why I disagree with Shlaim--the conflict is unlikely to end with a territorial division of the West Bank. Most Israelis now think so as well.

focused21 on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

focused21 — Sun, 18 May 2008 17:31:59 +0100

i conoclast : One could turn the expression around: The longer the Palestinians deny the Jews the right to self-determination, the more their own legitimacy will be called into question.

Jordan was the greater part of the Palestine Mandate. The solution will probably have to be found there - for the Palestinians

blessdkrumheit on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

blessdkrumheit — Sun, 18 May 2008 03:15:41 +0100

GPFrank As long as there is this back and forth between iron fences, God brokered

the territory to the Jews originally (though the Torah chronicles the Arabs from the beginning) there will be no stability, and with all the right wing bluster about one sided

liberal and leftism to them war and threat of wars is the only answer. Why should we keep continuing to debate as if all arguments are equal but then again the right wing is being persecuted by fools, so it goes on and on.

Lets get this straight about what has happened since the Oslo accords:, Arabs are going to keep saying ,encouraged by their demagogues, "Keep the Jews out, Death to the Jews" as long as they are not convinced of the permanence of Israel,

that Israel is going to stay like Jordan, Egypt, Syria. Israel through all its various vectors has produced a resultant of an occupied territory that is illegal because it is occupied by citizens of the occupying country so that the United Nations could not

even displace that occupation by a peacekeeping force. Israel allowed some of its citizens to become willing hostages and build mansions in the face of Arab peasants, drain their water, block them from traveling within their own neighborhoods by these damn checkpoints. What else can you expect but that Arabs are going to let their own racketeeers fire rockets because who can oppose them doing after what is done to us? And you say this is a leftist argument?

Any fool knows walls are going to fall, like Jericho and armies will eventually dissolve. Israel is not going to be permanent under these circumstances so the Arabs, the Palestinians will keep trying.

The right wing argues that Islam is dreaming of imperialism, a caliphate, restoration of the Ottoman Empire (Though they don't like the Turks much and they are already part of NATO) and the grand prize is that little territory of Israel, What a poobah that is, Israel defending the free world against that swarm of shiites and Sunnis, and Berbers and Kurds, by putting up fences. Perhaps the Grand design of all of this is the Dumbing Down of Judaism.

jdubow on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

jdubow — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:24:47 +0100

Avi Shlaim is certainly a person who has a strongly held and strongly expressed point of view. It is typical of the liberal viewpoint of so-called Open Democracy (open from the left side only). It is too bad that Shlaim's distortion of facts and contexts weakens his arguments. For example, he quotes Jabotinski in 1923, a time when a majority of early Zionists and a sizable minority of Arabs were trying to negotiate acceptance of Jews settling peacefully in Palestine. At that time there was growing support for a Jewish homeland, in no small part driven by the sound of anti-semitic trees falling in European forests. Then, as now, the local Arabs refused to allow Jewish refugees into the area. It also is not made clear that Jabotinsky was just one voice amongst many, including others who were on the ground in the area and doing the actual settling and negotiating. The Turkish governors of the region and their regime proved singularly unhelpful and, as much as the British, paved the way for current unrest.

Shlaim also adopts the usual conceits of Israel-bashers of claiming familiarity with what Israeli leaders "really mean". As if they would confide in so strongly negative individuals. In his descriptions of the settlements he chooses to select the most negative possible interpretations at the expense of the obvious. Two realities intrude on his "it's all Israel's fault" narrative. One is that Israel removed settlements in Gaza and in parts of the West Bank as part of earlier peace settlements. These unilateral removals netted nothing but shows a willingness to bargain for real, which is the key word here, progress. The second is the existential necessity of bargaining chips given the nature of negotiations governed by the West. The usual negotiation is tangible land and settlement concessions by Israel for verbal assurances with no penalties for breach of contract by the Arabs. An objective review of the settlement terms show that the Arabs in general and Arafat in particular violated the terms of the agreement as much or more than Israel. Ask Bill Clinton about this.

The essence of the problem has been stated thousands of times but is routinely ignored by people who call themselves liberal (which I, as a classical liberal, see as one of the worst forms of identity theft). Israel has accepted the two state solution with an independent Palestinian state. The wish, in return, a meaningful cessation of hostilities and mutual recognition. The Palestinians and Arabs refuse to accept the existence of Israel despite the continuous presence of Jewish people in the area for as long as the Arabs were in the area and longer than the existence of Islam. The purposeful blindness of Europe, the UN and the mainstream media only enhances the instability of the region and decreases the chance of peace. It also decreases the credibility of liberal principles and the rule of law. I can't see rational reasons for doing it, but the evidence of the past couple of decades, including articles like this, is dispositive that it is occuring.

michael.brenner on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

michael.brenner — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:54:00 +0100

It basically proves that Opendemocracy is indistinguishable from the Guardian newspaper. I have no idea why they published this; it is wholly unoriginal and we have heard all of this before. And G-d forbid they should publish a mainstream Israeli voice on the subject of Israel's 60th anniversary, a miracle by any meaningful standard. Clearly, there is complete lack of mainstream Israeli voices present in European media today.

This pandering to the base by Opendemocracy editors is unfortunately not surprising. This website is wholly unbalanced and does not present the full story on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it never has.

david fisher on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

david fisher — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:28:48 +0100

Perhaps the problem is with the idea of self-determination itself. The idea behind self-determination is that a people with a sense of shared identity establish a nation-state to express that identity. Since people are intermixed all over the globe it is impossible to make political boundaries that will not include some people who do not share the identity unless there is ethnic cleansing. That means some people within the boundaries of the state are second class citizens.

Another state in the territory between the Jordan and Mediterranean is not a solution. From all indications it will be an undemocratic Muslim state which will make Christian Arabs second class citizens and will not allow Jews to live there. In Israel as a Jewish state non-Jews are second class citizens. In a Palestinian state non-Muslims would be second class citizens. The hatreds would remain, and a Palestinian state would probably be the staging ground for the next Arab-Israeli war. More ethnic nationalism is no solution.

My hope is that eventually there will be a state between the Jordan and Mediterranean which does not discriminate among its citizens on the basis of ethnicity or religion. Self-determination has been a massive failure. Post-Apartheid South Africa may become a success as a multiethnic nation precisely because self-determination was not allowed. Some Zulus and Afrikaaners wanted to set up their own states, but the new South Africa recognized the potential for strife in such undertakings. There is the same potential in the creation of a Palestinian state which would be less democratic than the state of Israel.

david fisher

Michael T Sager on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

Michael T Sager — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:24:10 +0100

Trying to reestablish a caliphate across and drive all non-Muslims out of the Middle East and North Africa sounds a lot like Imperialism to me! It also sounds like a good label for what Iran is doing in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine.

Babur on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

Babur — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:37:12 +0100

Islamic Imperialism? Imperialsim is commonly understood to be the forceful extension of the authority of one nation or people over another through the use of military conquest or economic force (a more modern definition may include a kind of cultural imperialism, but this is a more complex entity). The Islamic world has not been in much of a position to engage in these kinds of activities for some centuries. Perhaps you'd like to enlighten us with your narrative?

Culture War Watch on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

Culture War Watch — Sat, 10 May 2008 06:22:21 +0100

Well yaaaiirs. This sort of dominant narrative suffers like the others from a wilful silence of the role of Islamic imperialism in all this. There are far more nuanced approaches that better explain Israel's 60th birthday.

http://culturewarriorwatch.blogspot.com/2008/05/israel-at-sixty-culture-war-issues-this.html

itsnowornever on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

itsnowornever — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:46:57 +0100

What a contradiction in this article! While positing a negotiation from strength as the only way, the writer concludes only with a dismal capitulation. Instead of beating Israel over settlements in a miniscule soccerfiield land which Israel desperately needs - why not confront Jordan for some land help - there's more there than they know what to do with, and it was created not for Jordanians but for the Arabs of Palestine?

After all, OSLO proved Israel's compromises, and Jordan continues violating the only condition of its creation: housing the Arabs of Palestine, and calling Jerusalem 'OCCUPIED' in its edia. Has the writer forgotten - Israel is being villified because she still *OCCUPIES* less than 16% of the land originally allocated to her in the Balfour? What strength is this - Oslo and post-Oslo represents its antithesis.

Joseph

rosross on "Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited"

rosross — Fri, 09 May 2008 06:17:43 +0100

This is an excellent article to be commended not only for its honesty but its common sense. There is a 'change' at work in the world with more and more the truth about What Israel has become and has done and continues to do, being told.

Full credit must go to Israelis and Jews who are brave enough to tell the truth for they are the most villified, but credit must go to all who are brave enough to speak out in support of human rights and basic principles of justice and decency.

At this point in time the only threat to Israel is Israel itself. If Israel is to survive then this Zionist entity must pass from the pages of history to make way for a civilized and democratic Israeli State which either offers full citizenship within expanded borders or makes a home behind pre:67 borders with a viable Palestinian State alongside.

Israel at 60: the “iron wall” revisited, Avi Shlaim

Thu, 08 May 2008 22:40:21 +0100

In 1923, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of revisionist Zionism, published an article entitled On the Iron Wall. He argued that Arab nationalists were bound to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Consequently, a voluntary agreement between the two sides was unattainable. The only way to realise the Zionist project was behind an "iron wall" of Jewish military strength. In other words, the Zionist project could only be implemented unilaterally and by military force.

Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at St Antony's College, Oxford. Among his books are The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (WW Norton, 1999) and (as co-editor) The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2001). His most recent book is Lion of Jordan: the Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (Penguin, 2007).

Also by Avi Shlaim in openDemocracy:

"Israel, free speech, and the Oxford Union" (13 November 2007) The crux of Jabotinsky's strategy was to enable the Zionist movement to deal with its local opponents from a position of unassailable strength. The iron wall was not an end in itself but a means to an end. It was intended to compel the Arabs to abandon any hope of destroying the Jewish state. This was to be followed by a second stage: negotiations with the Arabs about their status and national rights in Palestine. In other words, Jewish military strength was to pave the way to a political settlement with the Palestinian national movement which laid a claim to the whole of Palestine.

The history of the state of Israel is a vindication of the strategy of the iron wall. The Arabs - first the Egyptians, then the Palestinians, then the Jordanians - learned the hard way that Israel could not be defeated on the battlefield and were compelled to negotiate with her from a position of palpable weakness. The Oslo accord between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) of 1993 was a major turning-point in the century-old history of the conflict over Palestine. It marked the transition from the first to the second stage of the iron-wall strategy, the transition from deterrence to negotiations and compromise.

By signing the Oslo accord, Israel and the PLO recognised one another and agreed to settle their outstanding differences by peaceful means. The Palestinians believed that in return for giving up their claim to 78% of pre-1948 Palestine, they would gradually gain an independent state stretching over the West Bank and the Gaza strip with a capital in East Jerusalem. Fifteen years on, the Palestinians are bitterly disappointed with the results of the historic compromise that they had struck with Israel.

The invisible partner

The Oslo peace process broke down partly because the Palestinians reverted to violence in the second ("al-Aqsa") intifada sparked in September 2000, but mainly because Israel, under the aggressive and uncompromising leadership of the Likud, reneged on its side of the bargain. The most blatant transgression against the spirit, if not the letter of the Oslo accord was the constant expansion of the illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank and the construction of more and more roads to connect them with Israel.

These settlements are a symbol of the hated occupation, a constant source of friction, and a threat to the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state. To the Palestinians, settlement expansion suggested that Israel had not been negotiating in good faith and that the real intention behind the Oslo accord was to repackage rather than to end the occupation.

With the election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister in 2001, Israel regressed to the first stage of the iron-wall strategy with a vengeance. Sharon had nothing to offer the Palestinians on the political front. He had always been a man of war and the champion of violent solutions. As a politician he had consistently opposed all the earlier attempts at reconciliation with the Palestinians, including the Oslo accords. His sole response to the al-Aqsa intifada consisted of employing military force on an ever growing scale, culminating in the use of F-16 warplanes against the Palestinian people.

Throughout his five years in power, Sharon adamantly refused to resume the negotiations on the final status of the territories until the Palestinian Authority (PA) delivered a complete end to the violence. He knew that this condition was impossible to meet; that is why he insisted on it. He treated the Palestinian Authority not the government of a state in the making but a sub-contractor who was failing in his primary duty - to safeguard Israel's security. The great majority of Sharon's compatriots believed his claim that there was no Palestinian partner for peace. The truth of the matter, however, is that under his leadership there was no Israeli partner for peace.

A long-term effort

While using the rhetoric of peace, Sharon's real purpose was politicide: to deny the Palestinians any independent political existence in Palestine. In June 2003, the Quartet (the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia) launched the "roadmap": a plan designed to pave the way to an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2005. Sharon's government pretended to go along with the "roadmap" but its policies remained completely unchanged. It continued to order Israel Defence Forces (IDF) incursions into the Palestinian territories, targeted assassinations of Palestinian militants, demolition of houses, uprooting of trees, curfews, restrictions, and the deliberate inflicting of misery, hunger, and hardship to encourage Arab migration from the West Bank. At the same time, settlement activity continued on the West Bank under the guise of "natural growth" but in blatant violation of the provisions of the "roadmap".

Last but not least, the government begun to build the so-called security barrier in the West Bank. The declared purpose of the wall is to prevent terrorist attacks but it is as much about land-grabbing as it is about security. By building the wall, Israel is unilaterally redrawing its borders at the expense of the Palestinians. It is "in your face" violence against the Palestinians. It separates children from their schools, farmers from their land, and whole villages from their medical facilities.

Also in openDemocracy on Israeli politics and the conflict with the Palestinians:

Eyal Weizman, "Ariel Sharon and the geometry of occupation" - in three parts (September 2003)

Stephen Howe, "The death of Arafat and the end of national liberation" (18 November 2004)

Eric Silver, "Israel's political map is redrawn" (25 November 2005)

Jim Lederman, "Ariel Sharon and Israel's unique democracy" (12 January 2006)

Menachem Kellner, "Israel reverses gravity" (30 March 2006)

Thomas O'Dwyer, "Slouching towards Kadima" (27 March 2006)

Thomas O'Dwyer, "Did Hizbollah miscalculate? The view from Israel" (14 July 2006)

Laurence Louër, "Arabs in Israel: on the move" (20 April 2007)

Eric Silver, "A united, worried Israel" (21 July 2007)

Thomas O'Dwyer, "Israel's post-heroic disaster" (30 April 2007)

Yossi Alpher, "Israel: you can't reverse time" (7 June 2007)

Volker Perthes, "Beyond peace: Israel, the Arab world, and Europe" (22 January 2008) The wall is a flagrant violation of international law. It was condemned by the International Court of Justice and by the United Nations general assembly but construction continues regardless. It was not for nothing that Sharon was called "the bulldozer". For Jabotinsky, the iron wall was a metaphor for military strength; in the crude hands of Ariel Sharon it was turned into a hideous physical reality, an instrument of oppression, and an insurmountable barrier to reconciliation and peace.

Realising that time and demography were not on Israel's side, Sharon and his deputy, Ehud Olmert, cast around for ways of distancing Israel from the main Palestinian population centres while keeping as much of their land as possible. The plan they came up with in 2005 was not a peace plan but a plan for a unilateral Israeli disengagement from the Gaza strip and four isolated settlements on the West Bank. Characteristically, the plan ignored Palestinian rights and interests and it was not even presented to Palestinian Authority as a basis for negotiations.

To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to the "roadmap" and to the building of peace based on a two-state solution. But to his rightwing supporters he said: "My plan is difficult for the Palestinians, a fatal blow. There's no Palestinian state in a unilateral move." The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of greater Israel by incorporating Jerusalem and the four main settlement blocs in the West Bank. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term Likud effort to deny the Palestinian people an independent political existence on their land.

An unequal contest

Much of the opposition to the unilateral disengagement from Gaza came from within the Likud and some of it was connected with an internal power-struggle. Ariel Sharon, buoyed by public support for the move, quit the Likud and set up his own party - "Kadima", which in Hebrew means "Forward". Sharon suffered a stroke in January 2006 and went into a coma from which he has not recovered. Ehud Olmert took over as acting leader of the new party and proceeded to win the elections on 28 March 2006 and to form a coalition government with the Labour Party as a junior partner.

These internal political developments had no significant effect on foreign policy. In fact, the continuity in foreign policy was remarkable. Like Sharon, Olmert was a lifelong supporter of greater Israel who only changed course after he realised that the demographic balance was shifting inexorably in favour of the Palestinians. The idea of a unilateral disengagement from Gaza, worked out jointly, was indeed first floated by Olmert.

On becoming prime minister, Olmert gave every indication that he intended to carry this idea to its logical conclusion by redrawing unilaterally Israel's eastern border. There is only one difference. Sharon denied that the "security barrier" is intended to mark the country's final political border. Olmert, on the other hand, declared at the outset that the main policy objective of his government is to complete the building of the barrier and that the barrier will constitute the final border of the state of Israel.

Like Sharon, Olmert is reluctant to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority about the final status of the occupied territories. Like Sharon, Olmert is a unilateralist. Both men repudiated the central belief of years of negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - that giving up land would buy peace. Both men were elected to end the violence but their policy served to sustain a conflict that can only be resolved by mutual agreement. As long as this policy remains in place, there will be no chance of turning a corner because there are no corners in a vicious circle.

Like all his predecessors, Ehud Olmert constantly invokes spurious security arguments in order to defend policies that are indefensible. The Palestinians do not pose a threat to Israel's basic security; it is the other way round. The contest is an unequal one between a vulnerable Palestinian David on the one hand and a heavily armed and heavy-handed Israeli Goliath on the other.

Israel's choice

Sixty years on, Israel is not fighting for its security or survival but to retain some of the territories it conquered in the course of the war of June 1967. Israel within the "green line" is completely legitimate; the Zionist colonial project beyond that line is not. The war that Israel is currently waging against the Palestinian people on their land is a colonial war. Like all other colonial wars, it is savage, senseless, directed mainly against civilians, and doomed to failure in the long run.

An independent Palestinian state is bound to emerge sooner or later over the whole of Gaza, most of the West Bank, and with a capital city in East Jerusalem. It would be weak, crowded, burdened with refugees, economically dependent, and insignificant as a military force. The choice facing Israel is between accepting the inevitable with as much grace as it can muster and continuing to resist, restrict, and frustrate the emergent Palestinian state.

Considerations of self-interest as well as those of justice and morality point to the first option - because the longer Israel persists in denying the Palestinians their right to national self-determination, the more its own legitimacy would be called into question. Israel should negotiate withdrawal from the bulk of the West Bank, not as a favour to the Palestinians but as a huge favour to itself. For, as Karl Marx observed, a nation that oppresses another cannot itself remain free.

Average rating

(7 votes)