NORMAN FINKELSTEIN(From a
lecture by Norman Finkelstein at University College Dublin, 2015)
What I think is possible and what I think is not possible.First of all, let's start with the basics. As a formula of how to end the conflict: that to me is completely uncontroversial. It's two states in the 1967 border - what's called the 1967 border - and a just resolution of the refugee question. Everybody in the world agrees on that, except for Israel, backed by the United States. I'm not even going to discuss what the goal should be. There's no break in that consensus. Formally, legally, in all institutions, whether it's the United Nations, human rights organizations, judicial bodies like the International Court of Justice, they all put forth the same terms for ending the conflict, and everything else to me is just flights of fancy having nothing to do with the real world.
The question is how to budge Israel. That's a real tough nut to crack. They are tenacious. They are tenacious and they are - I hate to use a word that sounds like it is from Dr. Spock - the baby doctor, not Star Trek: they're just spoiled silly, and it's very hard to get them to budge.
There have been basically three strategies that have been tried. One strategy is international diplomacy, basically the strategy of the Palestine Authority or Palestine Liberation Organization, what they've pursued basically for the last twenty or more years: basically beginning with the Oslo Accord of September 1993. With international diplomacy, the cornerstone is: if we can show the Israelis that we pose no threat to them, that we're happy to live with them, if in fact we cooperate with them in terms of security, then the Israelis will recognize we pose no existential threat and they'll withdraw and give us our state. And if they don't, the world will see, the United States in particular, that we negotiate in good faith, the Israelis are acting in bad faith, and the US will put the pressure on Israel to withdraw.
Those are the basic premises. And the basic premises, as everybody knows, are false, because Israel is not staying in the occupied territories because it fears for its security, and therefore all you have to do is make them feel secure and they'll leave. They're staying in the occupied territories because they don't want to give up the occupied territories. They want to keep them.
And so 20 years after the process began in September 1993 there were 250,000 settlers in the occupied Palestinian territories. Now the last numbers I saw were 576,000. They have more than doubled. I would say looking at actions and not words, that's proof enough that this diplomacy thing will never work, because Israel is determined to stay not to preserve its security but because it wants to keep the territories. And the United States is not going to risk a frontal collision with Israel. (Exactly why is a separate question.) They're not going to do it simply to placate the Palestinians. The international diplomacy strategy doesn't work.
The second strategy has been the Hamas armed resistance. Under international law they have the right to use armed force to end an occupation, so for me that's not a relevant question. Or course they have the right to use armed force to end what is not just an occupation but a double criminality: it's an illegal occupation and it's an illegal siege of Gaza. So in my opinion of course they have the right. But the question is not whether they have the right. The question is whether it's a prudent strategy. Does it work? And I think all the evidence shows that armed resistance won't work. It can't work. It's a dead end for the Palestinians.
And then you might ask what's then the only option? Is there another option? And I think there is, and I think the third option is mass nonviolent resistance that is coordinated with the solidarity movement in the West. If they do it on their own, the Palestinians are just going to be shot down. That's pretty clear. It has to be done in coordination with the solidarity movement in the West. If we give our all - obviously they're going to be giving a lot more than their all. Many of them will be giving their life. But if they can summon the internal resources - about which I'm pretty skeptical now - but if they could, then I think in combination with the solidarity movement, basically my own view is that the strategy that can be most successful among the Palestinians is the strategy that succeeded in the American South, to desegregate the American South. You create enough national embarrassment for the government. And internationally, because our civil rights movement was unfolding during the Cold War, and it was just incredible propaganda for the Soviet Union that these black people were being beaten and killed just for demanding their right to vote. And that put a lot of pressure at the time on President Johnson to do something about what was happening in the American South. If the civil rights movement had unfolded in the American South and it was just confined there, there was no resonance nationally or internationally, it would of course have failed. Black people would have just been mowed down. It required not just incredible, superhuman, really astonishing courage of the people of the South. That was a very scary place, the American South - as one person put it, that was "mean country." The hatred of black people: for your generation it's not even possible to convey. You just have to read about it and watch the newsreel footage. It was a very ugly place. If it had just been confined to the south - look - every mayor, governor, police force was all Ku Klux Klan. That was what it was like there. The"white citizens councils." But once you expand the arena, the courage of the people there, but then making it a national issue in the United States and an international issue, they were able to succeed. And I think the same thing can happen with the Palestinians. Right now it's not on the drawing board because the Palestinians in particular in the West Bank are a defeated, atomized, cynical people. But that's the only way I see it can end.
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