Issue 92, July/August 2005

Post-Oslo Dilemmas

N June Israel entered its 38th year as occupier. We chose to mark this anniversary by interviewing Professor Anat Biletzki, who has struggled uncompromisingly against the Occupation. Biletzki chairs the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Since 2001 she has headed the board of B’tselem (“In the image…”), arguably the most important human-rights organization in Israel. She is the Coordinator of Ha-Campus Lo Shotek (The Campus Will Not Stay Silent), whose branch at her university includes about 400 faculty and students. Biletzki is among eight women in Israel, and a thousand worldwide, who have been nominated collectively for the Nobel Peace Prize. Roni Ben Efrat met her in her office for two riveting hours on July 3, 2005.

Ben Efrat: At the end of May, B’tselem organized a meeting about the effects disengagement is likely to have on the rights of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. In your opening remarks, you mentioned a problem that is endemic to human-rights organizations: they generally wind up treating the effects of political decisions after their implementation. In the case of disengagement, though, B’tselem took the unusual step of issuing an anticipatory paper, very comprehensive and important, in which you tried to foresee what would happen in Gaza after the Israeli pullout. Yet when we talked in the corridor during a break, you surprised me by saying that you didn’t think disengagement would happen. That seems to me a very maverick position.

Biletzki: Ariel Sharon, in my view, never had the slightest intention of leaving Gaza, not even on the limited concept of disengagement that he has in mind, which is to evacuate settlements. But even supposing he went that far, it wouldn’t be real disengagement. The army will stay. Nominally, it will merely envelop the Strip, but there is a clause in the government decision decreeing that the army can enter whenever it deems that the situation may be dangerous. That is why I say it’s not disengagement. It’s guarding a prison.

When Sharon first mentioned “disengagement,” toward the end of 2003, he hurled a term in the air. It was nothing more than an attempt to sidetrack the public criticism that was then being leveled at him. The pilots were talking of refusal. People from both sides had just come out with the Geneva Initiative. So he put up this decoy. I thought it was just that even before Dov Weisglass [a key Sharon adviser – RBE] confirmed as much in a newspaper interview [Haaretz Weekend Supplement, October 6, 2004]. In that interview, it’s important to stress, Weisglass says that they knew if they began to talk about withdrawing from Gaza, it would put the peace process in formaldehyde. He didn’t say, “If we leave Gaza,” rather he said, “if we begin to talk about leaving Gaza.” And that provided me with the definitive indicator that the point was not to get out of Gaza, rather to give us the runaround. At the end of April 2004 I bet Sari Nusseibeh [President of Al-quds University and co-sponsor, with Ami Ayalon, of the “People’s Voice,” a peace initiative] that disengagement won’t happen by the end of 2005. He was the first person I bet. Since then I’ve made the same bet with more than a hundred people. This is one bet I’ll be happy to lose.

There were other people who said that there would be no disengagement, because they know Sharon, and it’s simply impossible to believe him. There are also people with sharp political senses, more so than mine, who don’t indulge in utopianism. They say that the day after Sharon leaves Gaza, no one will need him, not on the Left and not on the Right. So he has to hover perpetually on the threshold of withdrawal.

Ben Efrat: But that goes against everything we are seeing on the ground.

Biletzki: What we see on the ground are just the trappings of disengagement, not the real thing. The case is clear. If they really wanted to evacuate 7000 people, they'd say: "Friends, here's your chance. On August 15 your cell phones, electricity and water will be disconnected, the army will leave, and you'll need to fend for yourselves." That's what they did in Algeria, remember, where the number was much larger, 150,000.

Ben Efrat: So tell me why the Left is so entranced by this theory? True, it sees it as the lesser evil, but why does it blindly follow Sharon? You yourself point out that Israel will be the jailer there.

Biletzki: I have good friends who oppose disengagement because they see it as a step toward absolute consolidation of our hold on the West Bank. Unlike me, they do believe Sharon wants to leave, but the price in their view is intolerable. And Sharon doesn't hide his intentions! That's the astonishing thing. He keeps repeating that he'll vacate the settlements in Gaza and the four in Samaria and that's the end of it – finis!

On the other hand, there are those on the Left that you're asking about: they see the departure from Gaza as the first step in a bigger retreat, and that’s the reason they support Sharon. But this is a delusion.

And here I would mention two people. One is my friend, Salim Tamari, who told me in January, "Understand that if they evacuate even one settlement, it will be a conceptual earthquake." And this is a serious claim.

Ben Efrat (interrupting): How do you answer him?

Biletzki: First, I don’t think it will happen. Second, we’ve already been through events that seemed at the time like a conceptual earthquake – for example, the vacating of certain areas – but no earthquake followed. Instead, the situation got worse. The classic case is Hebron. When Bibi (Netanyahu) withdrew from that city in 1997, my Palestinian friends said to me: “Don’t tell us what we ought to want. First they should get out.” Well, I was in Hebron two months ago, and believe me, things were better there in 1996. Then it was supposed to be a step in vacating areas, and today it’s supposed to be a step in vacating settlements. There’s a lot of wishful thinking in the belief that the precedent will bring about a serious conceptual change.

The second person I would mention here is Hanan Hever, who told me that "A true leftist can't vote against disengagement." I understand him to mean that we, together with the Palestinians, must support every step that has even a remote chance of moving in the direction of peace. Today I don’t see how any step whatsoever can do that.

Ben Efrat: Did the failure of Oslo and the second Intifada contribute to this feeling of yours?

Biletzki: Yes, because I was among the naïve ones who clung to Oslo for years. I remember saying we had passed the point of no return. That idiotic mantra. Today I can understand people like Tanya Reinhart, Noam Chomsky and you people at Challenge, who said that Oslo couldn't succeed because it was so structured as to render progress impossible. When I accept this, though, I go into despair. And I'd like to say something about despair, because the topic very much occupies me. It's customary to speak of despair as an emotional state that is irrational. Hair pulling and cries of Weh's mir! I look on despair, though, as a logical conclusion from premises. I teach logic, where there are premises and rules of inference. So if the premises are the conditions that obtain today – namely, the players and heroes of politics, Bush's war against terrorism and its ramifications – then I conclude that there isn't any chance of things getting better. Therefore my despair is completely rational. And if I retain here and there a patch of optimism, then that is irrational, dependent on the vagaries of history.

Ben Efrat: Do you think there will be a third Intifada?

Biletzki: Yes. I just don't know how soon. There are those who say within a year, but I think it'll take much longer, for the simple reason that Israel has demolished so much. Everyone says that the wall has reduced terrorism. Not true. There is less resistance because we obliterated its human infrastructure. An entire generation was killed or crippled there, and I think it will take years – an entire generation – to build up a new and serious leadership.

Ben Efrat: I would like to go back a bit to the roots of the conflict. The Left is divided between those who claim that these may be located in the conquest of 1967 and those who date them from 1948. How do you see it?

Biletzki: I'm not a Zionist. I don't know when I stopped being one. Although I was born here, I spent my childhood and youth in the US and Canada, grew up in a leftist family, took part in the demonstrations of the 60’s for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. But at 17, when I came back here, I didn't refuse to enter the army. I served. On the logical, conceptual plane, however, already in 1972 I favored a one-state solution. This was before the Yom Kippur War. I remember thinking that I had no commitment to a Jewish State. We weren't talking, in those days, about a two-state solution; it was about one bi-national state, period. In the Yom Kippur War the issue of two states did come up for discussion in groups on the Left, and I thought, “If it turns out that a majority of Jews wants a Jewish State and a majority of Palestinians wants a Palestinian State, who am I to tell them that they ought to want one state?”

But what’s turned out is that the two-state solution cannot succeed. It isn't feasible.

Ben Efrat: Why not?

Biletzki: Because on the other side of the Green Line there are more than 440,000 Jewish settlers, and because on this side of it, 20% of the population is Palestinian. So I don't see the slightest chance for two states. Once I heard a Palestinian say in a lecture, "…all ten million of us," and I thought I'd like to write an article with that title. All ten million who live here have to solve the problem, although I don't today see any way of doing that. Incidentally, if today someone could show me that the two-state idea is possible, I wouldn't say a word in opposition. Just as I didn't speak out against Geneva in public. There are lots of things there that I don't agree with, but if someone can show me that Geneva can succeed, I'll be the first to rejoice.

Ben Efrat: The problem with the one-state solution is simple: there is no apparatus today for bringing it about. Of course that's our ideal. But in order for such a thing to happen, Israel would have to cease being Israel, and the international balance of forces would not be the one we have now. Therefore, discussion of this topic seems to me very remote and theoretical. That's why few people identify with it.

Biletzki: The talk about one state is not theoretical. Ronny Talmor, who for years was on the board of B’tselem, wrote long ago that if we don't manage to establish two states here, then there will be a single apartheid state. That is what's happening today. It might be easier to fight against apartheid than it is to fight for a two-state solution.

Ben Efrat: And that will mean the cancellation of the Jewish-democratic State.

Biletzki: The expression "Jewish-democratic State" is an oxymoron.

Ben Efrat: Why?

Biletzki: Because a democratic state cannot be ethnic or religious. Democratic values do not permit the favoring of one group. Period. There is no way around this. A state is basically an apparatus for governing. A state is not a culture. A state is not a society, nor a particular community – it’s a governing apparatus. A governing apparatus mustn't favor a specific group – that's unacceptable. A Jewish State does favor one specific group; a democratic state does not. It is self-contradictory, therefore, to speak of "a Jewish democratic state." This seems to me so basic that I don't understand why people find it impossible to grasp.

I see my leftist liberal friends, all the Peace Now-niks, all those who talk about a "Jewish democratic state." Look where they get to, pondering what we must do in order to preserve a Jewish majority. When I hear people discussing "the demographic problem," I say, "Listen to what you're saying!" The concept "demographic problem" is itself racist. But of course, if they want to speak of a Jewish State, they have no choice but to discuss "the demographic problem."

They fail to understand that talk of a demographic problem automatically forecloses any turn to democratic values. And then they say: Yes, yes. We want to preserve democratic values, so we have to preserve the majority. But if you take measures to preserve a majority for a specific group, then it isn't democracy. That's exactly what you mustn't do.

Ben Efrat: You were one of the signers of the Olga Document [July 2004], issued by Israeli leftists and calling for fulfillment of the Palestinian right of return. That is a very radical position. Israeli public opinion is light years from that. Even the Geneva Accord opposes the right of return. Were you just taking a moral position for its own sake, or do you think it's realizable?

Biletzki: Both. It's a moral declaration, in that it gives up the principle of a Jewish State, and I also think that we can and must recognize the rights of the refugees.

Ben Efrat: Do you really mean that they ought to return to their homes?

Biletzki: Not precisely, because here I do know the legal material and its moral basis – e.g., that one should not correct one evil by perpetrating another. That is, if the refugee's house is occupied, then you give her another nearby.

Soon after the start of the second Intifada I met two people, a former Knesset member and a cabinet minister, at a family event. The first was among the signers of a declaration in the newspaper that went something like this: "Dear Palestinians, we know that you were wronged, and we want to consider your demands, only don't demand the right of return!" I told him: "But the right of return is their right!" He replied, "An abyss has opened between us." The cabinet minister pronounced this spine-chilling sentence: "What! Are you willing for them to live next to you?" I couldn't believe that someone could let such a sentence spring out of his mouth. And a cabinet minister at that. So yes, it's important to me that this be written: I don't mind if they live next to me – I don't care who lives next door.

We did research at B'tselem concerning the right of return. We nearly began writing a report about it in August 2000. We'd reached the point of deciding on the outline, when the Intifada broke out. Since then we haven't gone back to it. But any human-rights group writing about refugees immediately understands that this is a human-rights issue.

Ben Efrat: So is there a chance that B'tselem will come out with a decision calling for the right of return?

Biletzki: There is a chance that B’tselem, as a human-rights organization, will come out with a statement relating to the rights of the Palestinian refugees. And let me say, incidentally, that there are various ways to fulfill a right. Some will return to their homes, some will live next door, some will receive financial compensation, some will find solutions elsewhere, and some will get a combination of these. In general, I think that one way to neutralize Israeli fear is to talk about “refugee rights.” Even when you talk to leftists, all will agree that the refugees have rights, but if you specify the right of return, Oy Gewalt!

Ben Efrat: I don't think we've fully discussed the failure of Oslo, nor the Intifada that followed. As one who supported Oslo, how do you see the present situation?

Biletzki: Today I have no doubt that Oslo was a new phase of occupation under another name. As a member of the board of B'tselem, I remember how shaken I was quite early, in 1996, when the question of closure became acute. I suddenly understood that the situation of the Palestinians had become much worse since Oslo. Israel did not fulfill the Accord's requirements, but what if we had? I really don't know. It's clear that the settlements kept expanding, and the concept of human rights does not appear in Oslo. What exactly did they think they were doing?

Ben Efrat: One could say that the problem of Oslo continues today, when Abu Mazen is willing to act as Israel's policeman during disengagement without getting anything in return.

Biletzki: So, sadly, we have to be patronizing and tell him that he has no right to agree to it.

Ben Efrat: Why "patronizing"? We touch here on the question about the role of the leftist in a situation where, in a geographical or ethnic sense, she’s on the side of the occupier. I mean, what comes first, your existence as an internationalist or your ethnic origin?

Biletzki: I see myself both as a leftist – a communist, a Marxist – and as a humanist. The reduction of suffering seems to me the immediate goal, which I sometimes have to pursue at the expense of my ideological views.

I once took part in a discussion with Sari Nusseibeh. He said he was willing to forgo the right of return for the sake of his freedom, and he asked who was I to tell him he couldn’t do that. After all, he said, the right of return is his own, so it's also his right to forgo it in exchange for freedom. I was nonplussed when he said this, but I slept on it, and the next day I told him he's naïve if he thinks that yielding up his right of return will give him his freedom. But more important, I said that I fight for the right of return not for him, but for my own society: that it should become a just society. In order to transform ourselves into non-occupiers, we must recognize the rights of the Palestinians.

www.challenge-mag.com/en/article__94/post-oslo_dilemmas
02.12.2008, 10:12