Re: BHA: <fwd>Wallerstein "Israel/Palestine: Can There Be Peace?"

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Jan Straathof wrote:
>
>                        Commentary No. 85, Mar. 15, 2002
>
>                    "Israel/Palestine: Can There Be Peace?"
>
> It's getting harder and harder to believe that there is an end in sight for
> the warfare. It was always a difficult political situation with no easy
> solutions. It wasn't, however, inevitable that we came to where we have come
> today. What we have is a situation in which two modern nationalist movements
> have laid claim to the same land. It is not however merely that they have
> both claimed a limited stretch of contested land. They have both claimed the
> entire land area in question.

The point of departure (at least for those who claim to be leftist) for
this discussion must be the absolute non-right of the _state_ of Israel
to exist. The Palestinians did not "claim" the land, they simply lived
there for a thousand years or so until an invading force from Europe
settled like a vampire on their land and drove them from it.

But without getting into the philosophical arguments over "might vs
right," it is obvious that might is always a fact. That is, any
temporary solution will have to pretend to recognize the "right" of the
state of Israel to exist, and both temporary and longterm solutions will
have to recognize or rather create rights for the Israeli "citizens" on
the ground (excluding the Settlers on the right bank: they are war
criminals by being there and must leave without compensation).

That leaves it still pretty complicated -- but let us not complicate the
Palestinians out of existence, which is what acknowledging in principle
any right to exist of the apartheid state of Israel. Israel is an
(unfortunate) fact that the world has to deal with. It is not a
legitimate enterprise in any sense.

Carrol


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