MAY 2007

Bassem Eid v Ali Abunimah
Exchange, "Comment is free" blog (The Guardian), 6 April 2007

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6773.shtml


The Palestinian Right of Return was considered 28 March 2007 at the 
Doha Debates, a public forum for dialogue and freedom of speech in 
Qatar. Yossi Beilin, a Knesset member and Chairman of the Meretz-Yachad 
party, and Bassem Eid, of the Palestine Human Rights Monitoring Group, 
argued for the motion that "the Palestinians should give up their full 
right of return." Ali Abunimah, cofounder of The Electronic Intifada 
and the son of Palestinian refugees, and Israeli academic Ilan Pappe 
challenged the motion, which was rejected by almost 82 percent of the 
audience. The Debate will be broadcast on BBC World on the 14th and 
15th of April. The following is an email exchange between Bassem Eid 
and Ali Abunimah published on the Guardian's Comment is free blog.


Bassem Eid to Ali Abunimah (nigelparry.net):

It was a pleasure meeting you at last week's Doha Debate on the 
Palestinian right of return. I think that both of us are in very 
interesting positions to discuss this issue as we are both refugees, 
but neither of us changed the other's beliefs. My belief is that 
building peace between enemies needs painful compromise.

In 1947, the Palestinians rejected the UN Partition plan for the 
division of our country and after that, Israel reoccupied us in 1967. 
Even though the Oslo accord didn't guarantee the future foundation of 
the Palestinian State, on 13 September 1993 Yasser Arafat signed a 
peace accord with Israel but the right of return for the Palestinian 
refugees became an obstacle to any potential peace plan.

Since the UN resolution 194 of 1948 until today, nothing has changed. 
Regardless of propaganda or enthusiastic declarations by Palestinian 
leaders entering refugee camps in Syria or Lebanon, nothing has 
changed.

I believe that the foundation of a nation state that has struggled with 
occupation for more than 40 years will only be achieved if some rights 
are abandoned. If the International Community won't guarantee the right 
of return for the Palestinian Refugees then what is the Palestinian 
guarantee for this right?

Ali to Bassem:

Basically you are admitting that despite the concessions the 
Palestinians granted to the colonial movement that dispossessed and 
occupied them, Israel has given them nothing. Therefore, Palestinians 
should make even greater concessions in the hope that the coloniser 
will finally take pity on them.

This country has proven unpartitionable and yet people who insist on 
Jewish supremacy are trying to find a Bantustan solution that will 
absolve Israel of giving political rights to the five million plus 
Palestinians it rules, while maintaining the fiction that it is a 
"Jewish democracy". This racist state can only maintain this fiction by 
insisting on the exclusion of millions more Palestinians and their 
descendants forced out of their homes.
The only viable solution is to end this structure of racism and to 
allow all people who live in Palestine-Israel to live in peace and 
democracy

The only viable solution is to end this structure of racism and to 
allow all people who live in Palestine-Israel to live in peace and 
democracy. This will not be easy, but it will be better than the 
apartheid that exists now. Our willingness to respect the right of 
return is a measure of whether we consider all the humans who call 
Palestine-Israel home to be equal.

There are racist arguments that the Palestinians are incapable of 
living in peace with Jews, but history belies this. Palestinians want 
peace, and that means ending the occupation, ending racist 
discrimination against Palestinians inside the 1949 ceasefire lines, 
and ending the forced exile of refugees who want to return and live in 
peace with their neighbours. That is the key to peace.

As Professor Ilan Pappe put it so eloquently at the Doha Debate, no 
people should have to choose between military occupation and forced 
exile. The Palestinians are being asked to make this choice for the 
sake of preserving the racist state that oppresses them. It's no wonder 
you lost the debate by such a massive margin. [In a vote almost 82 
percent of the audience rejected the motion: "This House believes the 
Palestinians should give up their full right of return." -- Ed.]

Bassem to Ali:

We are losing time in not doing what it is necessary to reach peace. 
Yes, we may be losing property but when compared to people losing their 
lives the choice seems clear.

Remember that when President Sadat made peace with Israel in 1979 he 
got back all of his country's land from the Israelis, without shedding 
any blood. This is a real peace. Arafat rejected Sadat's offer to join 
him in Israel but imagine if he had accepted. Think how many 
settlements would never have been created in the occupied territories 
and think that Palestine could have been established all that time ago.

I want to move forward and to look to our children's future. In my 
opinion, history should be dismissed and people like us should look 
ahead.

Palestinian leaders continue to demand that Israel remove more than 160 
checkpoints in the occupied territories, evacuate so-called "the 
illegal settlements", allow Palestinian workers to enter Israel to 
work, and demolish the wall that separates Palestinians from Israelis 
(and other Palestinians). But to what end? After the last six years of 
Intifada, we Palestinians have lost so much -- not least more than 
4,000 of our people killed by the Israelis.

Consider also that since Israel left Gaza in September of 2005, the 
Palestinians have created chaos. So who will make this right of return 
applicable? In January 2007 there were 17 Palestinians killed by 
Israelis, but there were 35 Palestinians killed by Palestinians, so, 
right or return of right to live?


Ali to Bassem:

What's most notable about your reasoning (if one can call it that) is 
that you equate the occupier with the occupied, the settler with the 
dispossessed. Well, you should never forget that your occupier does not 
view you even as entirely human, let alone equal. As a Palestinian in 
the West Bank, you have no right, legally or morally, to try to trade 
the rights of your fellow Palestinians in exile for slightly better 
conditions from your jailers.

There's no evidence Israel is interested in giving you a state: it 
continues to invest billions in new Jew-only colonies up and down the 
West Bank. As you know, only one-third of Palestinians live in the West 
Bank. Since 1993, PLO leaders have tried to sell out the majority of 
Palestinians in order to try to achieve a little tinpot statelet for 
them to rule over in the West Bank.

The occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is only one face of Israeli 
racism and colonialism. Instead of trying to sell out your Palestinian 
sisters and brothers who live as third-class citizens inside Israel, or 
as refugees in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan or Canada, you ought 
to be standing in solidarity with all Palestinians.

Bassem to Ali:

I really don't want to go move away from the subject and discuss the 
issues you mention in your last email. Let us go back to the issue of 
the right of return.

Three years ago, I went to visit the Palestinian village of Qariut, 
located between Ramalla and Nablus. The Israeli occupation confiscated 
their land and established a settlement called Eli. When I left the 
people in Qariut I asked them once specific question: if the Israelis 
were to evacuate Eli settlements tomorrow, would you agree to give the 
land and the houses for your brothers, the refugees? And nobody agreed 
...

So, if even the Palestinians are not willing to accept this right of 
return, how can we expect Israelis will do it?
For the lack of the common ground, we are loosing, land, property and 
lives

All of the peace accords and initiatives since 1993 talk about the 
return of the Palestinian refugees to the Palestinian state, and all of 
these peace accords and initiatives got the blessing of the Palestinian 
leaders, but all of these initiatives have been rejected by the 
Palestinians refugees themselves. There is no common ground or status 
between the Palestinian refugees and their leaders. And for the lack of 
the common ground, we are loosing, land, property and lives.

Ali to Bassem:

You are talking about settler colonialism and racism as if they are 
lifestyle choices that we are bound to respect and accommodate 
ourselves to. The reason the settlers do not want to give up the land 
is because (a) they believe they have special and better rights than 
the Palestinians and (b) because they do not have to; they have the 
power.

There is an obvious analogy to apartheid South Africa. As long as 
whites did not have to give up power and recognise the rights of the 
majority, they did not. It was only because of internal pressure, as 
well as the international campaign of boycott, divestment and 
sanctions.

Instead of advocating that Palestinians abandon more of their human 
rights in order to appease racist settlers, you should be supporting 
the call made by hundreds of Palestinian organisations to support the 
international academic and cultural boycott of Israel. I believe 
strongly in peace and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. 
But peace can only be based on justice and full equality. Can you 
imagine if Mandela had adopted your sort of reasoning?

Bassem to Ali:

I would like to say that racism, extremism and corruption are spreading 
around the world so these reasons make no sense for the right of 
return. I would never support a boycott because it is not an effective 
measure. I believe that South Africa is a totally different place with 
a different catastrophe at that time.
The cause of the Palestinian refugees is precisely Arab countries

We have to remember that the cause of the Palestinian refugees is 
precisely Arab countries. They opened their borders for the Palestinian 
refugees during the war of 1948, and these Arab countries today like 
Syria and Lebanon, are using these Palestinian refugees for their own 
confrontation with Israel. So these refugees have become a strong card 
to play for the Arab regimes. This is racism and also corruption. So, 
if you are seeking justice and equality in Israel-Palestine, please ask 
for justice and equality for the Palestinian refugees in the Arab 
countries where they have been living for more years than the settlers 
in the occupied territories.

Ali to Bassem:

As you know, the largest number of Palestinian refugees have lived 
under Israeli military tyranny since 1967. So while you can fault Arab 
states for how some of them have treated Palestinian refugees, it is 
Israel's treatment of them which is by far the worst. And of course it 
is Israel that uses them politically. By denying them their fundamental 
human right to live in equality and dignity within their country, 
Israel hopes to maintain an illegitimate racist ethnic state and stave 
off democracy.

I have been to refugee camps in Lebanon, as well as Jordan, and of 
course I join you in calling for proper treatment of refugees in all 
countries. But none of this absolves Israel of its responsibility for 
expelling the refugees and keeping them out. Your argument is very weak 
Bassem. It seems to boil down to this: "Israel is strong so we should 
appease it and give up our struggle. The Arab states are bad and 
corrupt, so we should turn a blind eye to Israel's crimes." But 
Palestinians have the right to fight for justice for their own country. 
Israel is the last settler colonial state supported by Western power 
and ideology. There is a moral duty, as there was against apartheid, to 
oppose its practices, and advocate for democracy for all the people who 
live in it.

Bassem to Ali:

As you know, I am still struggling against the occupation. Over the 
past 18 years I put myself on the front line, defending the rights and 
the lives of the Palestinians. As you also know, I am still leaving in 
a refugee camp but while I am living in a hole I must stop digging. I 
would not wish anyone, even my enemies, to live in a refugee camp. 
Believe me Ali, life in a refugee camp is a miserable life. The sewage 
runs out in the narrow streets that my children are growing up in. 
Imagine the unhealthy situation we are living in.

I envy you because you live in Chicago. I can only imagine the 
wonderful life you live. I believe that you are still full of energy to 
continue fighting and struggling, but I am totally out of energy. 
Believe me Ali, it could be better for you to continue fighting and 
struggling from one of the Refugee camps in Gaza Strip or the Wet Bank. 
Then your struggle would be much more effective than the one you are 
having in Chicago.

Ali to Bassem:
Who is steadfast in defending the right of return? It is the millions 
of dispossessed in the refugee camps of the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon 
and Jordan

I don't think its right to try to reduce this to a personal issue and 
to try to play off my privileged position against your suffering. There 
are people who have suffered and sacrificed much more than both of us, 
and who have not lived off the foreign grants you receive who have not 
given up their rights. Who is steadfast in defending the right of 
return? It is the millions of dispossessed in the refugee camps of the 
West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan. Who is willing to give it up? It 
is a tiny segment of the Palestinian elite who signed the Oslo Accords 
and benefited from them personally. It is the small western-backed 
coterie around Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas who are 
desperate to maintain their privileges.

The fact is this: despite the efforts of this co-opted minority, the 
vast majority of Palestinians have shown at every opportunity 
(including the democratic election in the West Bank and Gaza in January 
2006) that they refuse to give up their human rights and equality in 
order to submit themselves to a racist state that considers them 
unwanted garbage. The difference between me and a refugee in Beirut's 
Shatila camp is only this: I was lucky that when my mother's family was 
expelled they drove east to Jordan, while theirs drove north to 
Lebanon. Dumb luck.

I will not betray them and I will use my privilege and opportunity to 
stand up for their rights from wherever I stand. I really hope you will 
join us and join the growing movement that understands that peace will 
only come in a decolonised Palestine where Israelis and Palestinians 
have equal rights regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or any other 
arbitrary characteristics.

Bassem Eid is the director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring 
Group. Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and 
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian 
Impasse.

Related Links
# Doha Debates backs Palestinian refugees' right to return, The 
Peninsula (29 March 2007)
# Prominent Jews to speak at Doha Debates, The Peninsula (25 March 
2007) 


[newprofile message1093] 

Shalom, Shin Bet
Uri Avnery

RECENTLY, THE CHIEF of the Shin Bet declared that the "Israeli Arabs", a fifth of Israel's population, constitute a danger to the state.

He requested permission for the General Security Service to act against anyone who aims at changing the official designation of Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state" - even if they use nothing but completely legal means.

It follows that In the view of the chief of the Security Service, a central figure in the Israeli leadership, the task of the Shin Bet (now commonly known in Israel as Shabak) is not only to protect the state from spies and terrorists, but also from any challenge to its ideological designation, like the KGB in the former Soviet Union and the Stasi in communist East Germany. (The excellent Oscar-winning movie "The Life of the Others", now screening in Israel, shows how this worked in practice.)

ALL THIS is reminiscent of things past. Rather naively, I had thought that they belonged to bygone days which could never return.

Two weeks ago, the Israeli tabloid Yedioth Aharonoth published an interview with the lawyer Arieh Hadar, nicknamed Pashosh, a former chief of the interrogation department of the Shin Bet.

Pashosh disclosed that "In the 50s, the great enemies of the Labor Party - and therefore of Issar Harel, the chief of the security services, the Shin Bet and the Mossad - were Uri Avnery and his weekly magazine, Haolam Hazeh. Avnery called the Shin Bet "the Apparatus of Darkness", and Issar was convinced that Uri Avnery would destroy the state. Avnery and his magazine were under constant surveillance. A colleague of mine earned himself quick promotion by recruiting an employee of Haolam Hazeh's printing press. Every week, this employee gave him a smuggled copy of the magazine a day before its official publication date. My colleague gave it to Issar, who brought it every week personally to Ben-Gurion."

Pashosh added: "Issar had the Shin Bet publish a competing magazine, disguised as privately owned. The aim was to destroy Avnery."

These revelations were not news to me. Years ago, Issar Harel himself disclosed that he regarded me as "Enemy No. 1 of the regime". It may be remembered that in those days, three bombs were laid in our editorial offices and printing plant and two employees were injured. The fingers of both my hands were broken in an (unsuccessful) attempt to kidnap me. None of these crimes was ever solved.

In 1977, after coming to power, Menachem Begin revealed in an interview that at the end of the 50s Issar Harel approached him and told him that he had proposed to the Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, to put me in "administrative detention" - arrest without trial and without time limit. Ben-Gurion agreed, but posed a condition: that Begin, then the leader of the opposition, agree to it too, so that it could be done quietly. Begin demanded that Issar show him the evidence that I was a traitor, otherwise, he said, not only would he not agree, but he would raise hell. Issar never mentioned the matter again.

Begin did not leave it at that. He sent me his trusted lieutenant, Yaakov Meridor, to warn me. In spite of the extreme difference of opinion between us, which found its expression many times in Knesset debates, Begin accepted me, it seems, as an Israeli patriot.

THE QUESTION is, of course, why Ben-Gurion and the security service chief considered me "Enemy No. 1 of the regime".   

That brings us to the subject now raised again by the Shin Bet chief.

I attacked Ben-Gurion on many subjects: the total domination of all affairs in the country by the Labor Party (then called Mapai), the corruption that was then starting to infect the ruling class, the discrimination suffered by Jewish immigrants from Oriental countries, the religious coercion, etc.

But the pivot of this struggle was the definition of Israel as a "Jewish state".

What is a "Jewish state"? That was never made clear. A state whose citizens are all Jewish? A state that belongs to Jews only? The "state of the Jewish people", which also belongs to millions of Jews who do not live here and are citizens of the US, Argentina and France? A state ruled by the Jewish religion? A state that expresses Jewish values (and if so, which ones?)

Furthermore - who is a Jew, in this context? After many hesitations, the Knesset adopted the religious definition: a Jew is a person born to a Jewish mother or who has converted to the Jewish faith, and who has not adopted another religion. The contradiction between the definition of Judaism as a religion and the assertion that the Jews are a nation was solved by adopting the fiction that with us, unlike other nations, religion and nation are one and the same.

The term "Jewish state" is nebulous. It can be interpreted in several ways. When one adds the word "democratic", it becomes an oxymoron - if a state belongs only to a part of its population it is not democratic, and if it is democratic then it cannot belong to a part of its population, even if they compose the majority.

Instructing the Security Service - our name for the secret police - to act against those who strive by legal means to change the "Jewish state" definition - simply means to cripple Israeli democracy. It is one of the basic principles of democracy that everyone has the right to propagate his views and convince people to change the laws and the constitution, as long as only legal means are used. If he or she succeeds in convincing the majority of the citizens, the desired change comes about.

Activating the secret police to abort this process would mean turning Israel into a police state. Not a "democracy protecting itself", but, rather, a state protecting itself from democracy.

I HOPE that the State of Israel remains a state with a Hebrew majority, that the Hebrew language will remain its main language, that it will express the modern Hebrew society and its culture and also keep alive the Jewish tradition of generations past. (About the Arab side of the matter - see below.)

But it must not do so by force, by way of oppression, by using the secret police and other means of compulsion. Natural processes must be allowed to work freely, whatever the results. We are not the only nation in the world in this situation.

If Israel is an attractive country, natural increase will rise and many will knock on its doors, people who desire to join our nation. The Israeli nation - unlike the Jewish religion - can in principle absorb everyone who wants to belong to it.

The relationship between a modern state and its citizens must be based on one consideration only: citizenship. The state belongs to all its citizens, and all of them must be equal before the law. That is what the 1948 Declaration of Independence promised: "The State of Israel… will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex."

Some Israelis use the term "nation-state" as a pretext to oppress the Arab minority. They think about a nation-state in the spirit of the late 19th and early 20th century. In Poland, for example, where many of Israel's founders were born, the state fought against large communities of its own citizens - Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Jews and others.

The most extreme example was the Nazi state, which was based on the idea that the individual exists only as a part of his nation, as a mere cell in the national organism. This model drowned in blood and has been besmirched for all eternity by the horrors of the Holocaust.

Today the model that appeals to many is the American one. The American nation includes everybody who holds a US passport. A person who receives American citizenship - whether Mexican, Korean, Indian or Nigerian - at that moment joins the American nation and becomes an heir to George Washington, Abe Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

All modern nations are moving towards this model, each according to its own rhythm. Poland, too, now belongs to the EU, where millions of people are moving from country to country without restrictions. In most countries there now live millions of foreigners who are gradually being absorbed into the national population. Their children grow up with the local culture and the local language and study in the local schools. Without this massive reinforcement, many Western societies could not exist any more, as far as the economy and demography are concerned.

Will Israel, which misses no opportunity to describe itself as a Western country, turn its back on this reality and adopt the model of Pakistan, a state that was founded - at the same time as Israel - on an ethnic-religious basis?

MY IDENTITY consists of many different layers.

I am a human being, and as a human being I am a citizen of the world, bearing responsibility for the entire planet. I am committed to humanist values, to the ecology of the globe, to freedom, peace and justice for all. I hope that in the not too distant future, these values will be guaranteed by an effective world order.

I am a member of the Israeli nation, together with all the other people who hold an Israeli passport. Israel is my state. I want it living in peace, secure, flourishing and respected throughout the world. I want a state in which it is good to live, and of which I can be proud.

I am a son of the Jewish people. I am an heir to Jewish tradition, much as Australians and Canadians are heirs to the Anglo-Saxon tradition. There are Jewish values in which I believe, values of justice, peace and non-violence, which are very different from the values of the settlers in Yitzhar and Tapuah. I am close to the Jews around the world, and I am very glad that Jews around the world feel close to Israel. That is an emotional matter, which should not concern the state.

When the State of Israel really belongs, practically and officially, to all its citizens, it will be much easier for the Arabs here to decide on their status. If they choose to belong to the Israeli nation, much as Hispanics in the US belong to the American nation, that will be fine. If they prefer the status of a national minority, they should enjoy the rights of such a minority in a modern state. Either way, the Arabic language and Arab culture must be fully recognized by the state. The affinity of the Arab citizens with the Palestinian people and the Arab world must be considered just as legitimate as the affinity of the Hebrew citizens with the Jewish people throughout the world.

THAT IS my view. I intend to advocate it by all the legal means at my disposal in the democratic state that I helped to establish.

And if the Shin Bet does not like it, well, that is a pity. I just hope that they will not put me under administrative detention because of it.

GUSH SHALOM p.o.b. 3322 Tel Aviv 61033