For justice to be reunited with history, liberal and democratic forces in Palestine and the Arab world must be capable of reaching, and changing, the minds of Israelis, writes Azmi Bishara The current trend in the relationship between Palestinians and public opinion ultimately gives the "balanced European stance" considerable leverage over the Palestinians. The same does not apply in the case of Israel. This, in effect, puts the European role in the current spate of Israeli-Palestinian dialogues taking place in Europe in a nutshell. Official European policies do not reflect the growing belief among European public opinion in the justice of the Palestinian cause. If European public opinion tends to trace American confrontational policies at the global level to a first cause or a single original sin -- its absolute and unconditional support for Israel -- official Europe rejects such a premise. One consequence of this is that official Europe finds itself apologising to Israel for popular European attitudes and opinions, which Israel regards -- as it is in its interest to do so -- as latter-day manifestations of European anti- Semitism. Who knows? Perhaps this recent turbulence may prove so awkward for European officialdom that it will stimulate a renewed process of European introspection. That Europeans have taken the Palestinian flag as an emblem in their protest movement against the war on Iraq is a major indicator of the moral stature the Palestinian cause has attained in Europe. Certainly, ultraconservative, anti-Semitic forces continue to exist. However, not all anti-Semites are anti- Israel; indeed, there are many instances of the reverse. In all events, the most rabid form of racism in the West at present is that directed against Arabs and Muslims. One also finds that European conservatives often sympathise with conservative Arab regimes, whether out of conservative fellow-feeling or the nostalgia for Europe's erstwhile colonies. In what one presumes is a natural development, a shift is currently in progress among the more progressive, liberal and democratic forces in Europe in favour of the Palestinian cause. Indicative of this transition is Blair's determination, during the buildup to the war against Iraq, to press Washington into a more accommodating stance on Palestine so as to furnish some moral cover for the war on Iraq and alleviate the pressures of the anti-war opposition. The result was the roadmap as a bid to appease public opposition. However, this does not obviate the fact that a significant segment of these forces have a historic empathy with Israel and continue to support the existence of a Jewish state in the region as a solution to Europe's Jewish question, even if they are increasingly sympathetic with the demand that Israel cease its occupation of Arab territories colonised since 1967. Meanwhile, the Israeli right, which has been ruling Israel intermittently for two and a half decades, has adopted a particularly boorish attitude towards Europe. The first major exponent of this trend was Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister who inaugurated the almost routine invocation of the Holocaust as a foreign policy weapon against Europe. The policy led to vehement exchanges with then Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and brutal insults targeting German Chancellor Helmut Shcmidt, who did not dare rise to the challenge as did his Austrian counterpart. This was the same Menachem Begin who, in 1982, described Arafat as "the Hitler of Beirut", regardless of how such tactics diminish the magnitude of Hitler's crimes and demean the suffering of the victims of the Holocaust. At the same time, Israeli political rhetoric began to dwell more assertively on Jewish millenarianism and other such mystical elements. Be that as it may, the increasing stridency of the holocaust rhetoric gave rise to unprecedented displays of European self-admonition over the Holocaust and to unfamiliar rites of commemoration of its Jewish victims, even if such displays did not necessarily reflect a deeper soul-searching. However, this rhetoric also began to alienate European opinion from the Israeli position, as resentment accumulated against Israel's unremitting emotional blackmail of countries that, until 1967, were its primary source of economic, political and military support. In all the time Labour was in power, its consummate pragmatism never drove it to manipulate Europe into grovelling gestures of apology as a means to secure financial or military support. As the policy of the Israeli right under Netanyahu and Sharon veered increasingly towards the absurd and mystical on issues that the West regards as questions of national interest, and as it embarked on a collision course with European peace initiatives, which were crowned by Oslo and which, for all practical purposes, were reduced to a means to use European influence pressure the Palestinians, the gap between the European and Israeli positions broadened. Simultaneously, the deepening alliance between the Israeli right and the ultra- conservative forces in the US worked to strengthen the embrace of the Palestinian cause by liberal and democratic forces throughout the world, including in the US itself. One would presume that Israel's rush to ally itself with the fundamentalist Christian right would have weakened its position within the American democratic and liberal left, which is increasingly exasperated with the ultraconservative US administration for both foreign and domestic policy reasons. Yet, Israel still enjoys the support of the majority of Americans who adopt otherwise liberal positions on such domestic issues as national health coverage, abortion, freedom of expression, the McCarthyist tendencies of Attorney General Ashcroft, and the internment camp in Guantanamo. There are many reasons why Israeli influence remains powerful among these circles. One is that support for Israel is not entirely rational; the political mystique binding the US and Israel has a powerful hold. However, the more pressing reason is lack of sufficient credible Arab and Palestinian democratic forces with the time and energy to lobby among these circles. We note, for example, that the Arabs have almost lost the natural support one would expect Palestinians to have among African-Americans, given Israel's alliance with a symbolic and historic adversary -- the apartheid regime in South Africa. On the one hand, large numbers of pro-Israeli and Zionist Jews sided with American blacks in the struggle against racism in the US and against apartheid in Africa. On the other, at the time when the Palestinian cause converged with the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, and when a number of Arab governments campaigned officially against that system within the Non-Aligned Movement and other frameworks, the number of Arabs in the solidarity movement in the West was negligible. This was perhaps only natural since Arab presence in western civil rights movements was scarce to begin with, as has been the case with many immigrants from the Third World. There is a continually growing scope and irreplaceable opportunity for Arabs and Palestinians to mobilise support from among potential natural allies for a just cause that combines the fight against the oppression of apartheid with the fight against the tyranny of occupation. At this international level, what is required more than anything is the addition of a moral dimension -- the struggle for justice and fairness -- to negotiations which have long been conducted in accordance with the dictates of power. The US, Europe and others that "sponsor" the negotiating process, and its associated dialogues, are primarily focussed on persuading the Palestinians to become more realistic -- which is to say, more accepting of the current balances of power. However, the concession to Israel's position in the configuration of balances of power implies deference to what Israel will or will not accept, which in turn becomes deference to Israeli public opinion. Then, before you know it everyone gets absorbed in scrutinising the latest Israeli popular opinion polls, and instead of examining ways to influence Israeli public opinion we search for ways to modify our positions to make them more acceptable to the Israeli public. To cite a case in point, the daily obsession with opinion polls prevented Barak from realising a peace with Syria based on his pledge to the US administration to fully withdraw from the Golan Heights. Instead of altering public opinion by imposing a peace settlement, Barak reneged on his commitment, leaving Europe and the US scrambling to pressure Syria to take Israeli public opinion into account. According to the opinion polls, 80 per cent of Israelis support the construction of the separation wall. What should we do? Are we to come up with a formula that will make this wall more palatable? Rather, it seems that we should bear in mind the difference between the logic of the current negotiating/dialoguing process and the logic of winning the support of democratic forces in Europe, the US and elsewhere in order to pressure their governments to take positive action, rather than merely acting as intermediaries. Support for the separating wall in Israel runs deep inside the Labour Party -- the party most preferred and coddled by Europe. This is why it is so important to establish common ground with democratic forces in Europe and the US over a moral stance opposing Israeli apartheid, embodied in the separating wall, and then to create a realistic plan for promoting this position among the Israeli public. Similarly unequivocal stances must be adopted and propagated against occupation and settlement construction and in support of the borders of 4 June 1967, in the event of a two-state solution, and equal citizenship. But, if we are to succeed in this task, we must have Arab democratic forces capable of explaining the contradiction between Zionism and democracy. We must have liberal forces capable of holding their own in the debate as to why Israel is not a liberal state. We must have Arabs opposed to racism of all forms and sympathetic to all victims of racial injustices, inclusive of Jews, in order to convince the West that anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are heinous crimes that should not be reduced to political tools in the service of Israeli foreign policy, or as means to intimidate democratic forces in their fight against Israeli injustices. What we do not need are Arab forces that pay mere lip-service commiseration for the suffering of Jews in the West as a means to ingratiate themselves to the powers that be, since, after all, this is only an inverse form of anti- Semitism that takes as its basis the belief that the Jews rule the world and, therefore, must be wooed. Indeed, Israel only benefits from such grovelling insincerity. It welcomes those who believe that the relationship with it holds the key to the heart of the US, even if that belief is founded on premises that were once deemed anti- Semitic. Arabs and Palestinians seeking solidarity with democratic forces abroad must ask themselves the following question: Why should I assume that the average American or European does not support independence for the Palestinians, or Palestinian control over Jerusalem, or does not perceive Israeli settlements as a colonialist enterprise, or the Palestinian right of return as a natural human right? No national liberation movement can hope to obtain any measure of justice unless it proceeds from the basis that its demands are just and that it can convince other democratically-minded people of the justice of their cause. Without such an approach or mindset -- that is to say, if there is no liberation movement, but rather a group of politicians and people with vested interests who attempt to link groups of politicians and people with vested interests in the West or in Israel in order to hammer out the best terms and conditions, exploiting the suffering of the Palestinian people in this process, for a political entity that would enable this group to pursue its own interests within the current delimitations of power -- then whom should this concern? Those concerned with justice believe it necessary to take advantage of the growing popular support for the Palestinian cause in Europe. To some this means investing their energies in European-sponsored Israeli- Palestinian dialogue. This is surprising, for such semi- official dialogues work both to embarrass the Europeans and to dissipate the solidarity movement for Palestinian rights. Instead of the Palestinians investing their political energies in actions that parallel their sacrifices on the ground, any Palestinian who knows how to read (the hyperbole is intended, of course) can now become an unofficial negotiator or a hypothetical spokesman. What with the leaders of the security apparatus added to the long list of spokespersons, to the extent that we no longer know who is speaking in the name of whom, we may soon expect half of the Palestinians to become self-appointed negotiators on behalf of the other half. It also appears as though every foreign journalist has become a self-appointed advisor to Palestinian politicians, counseling them on how to conduct policy and manage dozens of negotiating processes in addition to the negotiating processes with the Israelis. Must negotiations inevitably beget more negotiations? The mentality behind the current dialogue craze seems to be governed by the desire to reap results rather than to create them. We need Palestinians and Arabs ready to contribute to changing public opinion and capitalising on a public opinion that is open to change, instead of impulsively taking the balance of powers as is and hastening to reap results at a time when there is no hope for a political settlement, and when every concession the Palestinians make is futile. When there is no real negotiating process in progress, we should remain silent -- we should not go about creating hypothetical negotiations in which everything we say can be held against us.
