[Marxism] Uri Avneri against the "One-State-Solution"

["Lüko Willms" <lueko.willms@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 10 Jun 2006 18:20:23 -0300, Nestor Gorojovsky wrote:

> I am fully conscious that these lines may sound stupid when an
> Israeli battleship has stormed a bathing station near Gaza less than
> one day ago, but this is what I really believe.

  and I think that what you said, and what I said, is absolutely not in
contradiction (relatively speaking, if I may add this side kick).

> > On Thu, 08 Jun 2006 12:34:52 -0400, Marvin Gandall wrote:
> >
> > > mount an "anti-apartheid" struggle for citizenship rights
> > > and transform it into a secular, democratic binational state.
> > > Who wouldn't want that?

  And points to the "Zionists" which I expanded as including

> >         all those Israeli peaceniks like Uri Avneri and his
> > Gush Shalom.
> >
> >   Uri Avneri's shibbolet is the idea that the "Jewish State" could
> >  only be preserved when it contents itself with the conquests and
> >  expulsions of 1948 instead of continually expanding
> >  the "Jewish State".

   what you protested as misleading, explaining that

> What Uri Avnery believes (and I don't think this belief to be too far
> away from actual truth) is that -whatever the reasons, means and
> historic origin- the 20th Century has witnessed the creation, on what
> was Arab (not yet Palestinian) soil, of a particular new nationality,
> the _Israeli_ nationality, whose very existence is linked to a de-
> Zionistisation of the entity whereby it is governed.  His idea of a
> two-state solution has little to do with other people's idea in that
> he wants one of the states to be Palestinian and the other one to be
> "Israeli", as opposed to "Jewish", viz. Zionist.
>
> If the Israelis could break their links with the Zionist movement,
> then they would tend to link with their immediate neighbours and
> establish at first a good general agreement with them.  This is the
> actual idea of Uri Avnery.

  for me it is a "you say potato, I say potatoe", and I do not want to
make it sound stupid, as you fear that your contribution might sound.
No, it doesn't.

  The point is that Avnery also does recognize the "right to return" for
the Palestinian Arabs expelled in 1948 and 1967, but stipulates that
this "return" has to be regulated by the Israeli "Jewish" state, and
that the main body of the returning refugees have to be settled in the
Palestinian Arab state on the territory of Palestine which had not been
conquered in 1948.

   The new Israeli nation, which you are talking about, is based
according to Avneri, on the exclusion of most of the Arab Palestinians
which had been driven out of their homes and whose villages had been
destroyed by the hundreds in 1948.

   See some of his recent columns.
> full list at <http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/>

   From his May 14 article on the "Prison Document":

><http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1147564801>
------ cut -------------------
For the Israeli public, the most problematical part concerns, as usual,
the refugee problem. No Palestinian leader can give up the Right of
Return, and this document, too, raises this demand. But in practice, the
Palestinians acknowledge the fact that this problem can be solved only
in agreement with Israel. That means that return to Israel must
necessarily be limited in numbers, and the greater part of the solution
lies in a return to the Palestinian state and payment of compensation.
There is a difference between the recognition of the Right of Return in
principle, as a basic human right, and the exercise of this right in the
real world.
----------------- off ----------

  Avneri sees the importance of this "Prison Document" signed by
prisoners of many different political parties in Israeli's prisons, as
helping to bring Hamas to senses, and to accept "the policy of Yasser
Arafat: the Two-State solution, a Palestinian state in all the territory
occupied in 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital, the release of all
Palestinian prisoners. This means, of course, the recognition of Israel
in practice."

  In that May 14 article, Avneri sketched the possible outcome:
----------- cut ------------------
The possible line: the PLO, led by Mahmoud Abbas, will conduct
negotiations with Israel and present the agreement (if there be one) for
ratification by a Palestinian referendum. Hamas will undertake in
advance to accept the result. At the same time, Hamas will declare a
Hudna (armistice) for many years, allowing an end to violence from both
sides.
------------------- off ------------

  That is also how he sees his contacts with the Palestinian resistance
movements, both with Fatah in the 1980ies and now with Hamas, as Avneri
explained in his June 3 article on meeting the Hamas leader Sheikh
Muhammad Hassan Abu-Tir (that is the read-bearded government minister
who is threatened to be expulsed from his residence in East Jerusalem,
if he doesn't renounce his seat in the PA parliament). Avneri met him
more or less by accident while fleeing from an tear gas attack by the
Israeli army and police repressing a demonstration in A-Ram against the
separation wall, and later visited him formally in his Jerusalem home,
making public that visit with a press statement.
>press release <http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en>
>pictures <http://gush-shalom.org/pics/abutir-7-6-06/>

   Avneri wrote about that meeting:

><http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1149374737>
------- cut -------------------------
To me, the meeting brought back old memories. 32 years ago I established
the first contacts with the emissaries of Yasser Arafat, who was then
considered an arch-terrorist, the leader of a terrorist organization
whose charter called for the elimination of the State of Israel. These
contacts led in 1982 to my meeting with Arafat in besieged Beirut. It
was his first meeting with an Israeli, but the circle widened rapidly
and prepared the ground on both sides for the Oslo agreement and the
Two-State Solution.

I believe that now it is the job of the Israeli peace movements to do
the same again: build the first bridge between Israelis and Hamas and
pave the way for a dialogue between the Government of Israel and the
Government of Palestine.
---------------- off ------------------

  and he concludes:

------- cut ---------------------------
More than half the population in the Palestinian territories voted for
Hamas. Hamas is an existing fact. It will play a major role in any
conceivable scenario.

The majority of Israelis long for an end to the conflict, and so do the
majority of Palestinians. Both governments must, in the end, accept this
reality.

Our task is to help them cross this bridge.
--------------- off --------------------

  And in his May 27 article, Avnery makes a long list of "missed
opportunities" of the state of Israel to establish peace with its Arab
neighbours, starting right after the 1948 war:

><http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1148758367>
------ cut ------------------------------
N THE morrow of the war of 1948, in which Israel was founded, we could
have achieved peace.

During the war, all the territory in which, according to the United
Nations resolution of November 1947, the Arab Palestinian state should
have been established, was occupied by Israel, Jordan and Egypt. Israel
conquered and annexed about half of it, and the rest was divided between
Jordan (which annexed the West Bank) and Egypt (which occupied the Gaza
Strip). More than half the Palestinians were driven from their homes -
partly by the war itself, partly by a deliberate Israeli policy. The
name Palestine disappeared from the map.
--------------- off ----------------------

  And Avnery dreams that establishing the Palestinian Arab state on the
remaining part of Palestine, with even less territory, could have
created peace:

----- cut -----------------
David Ben-Gurion did not want any negotiations that might have compelled
him to take back at least some of the refugees, and perhaps even to give
back some of the territory just occupied. Contrary to the UN resolution,
he was determined to prevent at all costs the establishment of a
Palestinian state. He believed that the Palestinian question had been
closed, that the very name Palestine had disappeared forever, that the
Palestinian people had ceased to exist. Much blood was shed because of
this monumental mistake.
------------------ off -----------

  Avnery does not discuss the fact that a "Jewish State" could not be
established in Palestine without drastic violence against the Arab
majority of that former British colony, not even within the
UN-gerrymandered "Jewish State" which had a slight 51% Arab majority,
and even less in the territory expanded by the war, which had a 60% Arab
majority of the population.

  Avnery recalls how he had approached during the 1967 war the Israeli
prime minister:

------ cut ------------------------
THE HISTORIC opportunity, the mother of all opportunities, came with the
1967 Six-day War.

The Israeli army won an incredible victory over four Arab armies. After
the six days, Israel was in possession of all the territory of historic
Palestine, as well as the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The
entire Arab world was humiliated and powerless, and reacted with empty
and bellicose phrases (the famous "No's" of Khartoum). The Palestinian
people was in a state of shock. It was one of the rare historic moments
when a whole people is able to change its basic conceptions.

At that momentous time we could have made peace with the Palestinian
people and offered them life in a free state of their own, within the
pre-war borders, in peace with Israel. While the war was still going on,
I personally proposed this to the Prime Minister, Levy Eshkol. He
rejected the idea out of hand. The temptation to acquire new territories
and settle there was just too strong.
---------------- off --------------------

  As one may note, Avnery thinks of a "peace" based on the humiliation
based on the defeat by violent force.

  After a long list of other opportunities missed by the state of
Israel, Avnery sums up:

------- cut -------------------------
Throughout the region, extreme Islamist elements are gaining strength.
One of the reasons is the festering wound of the Palestinian problem in
the heart of the Arab world.

For 58 years, our governments have missed every opportunity to heal this
wound. We could have achieved peace between Israel and secular-national
Palestinian leaders. If the conflict, God forbid, turns into a clash
between religions, there will be no opportunity to miss opportunities -
there just will not be any opportunities.

The number of the opportunities rejected and the consistent way they
were trampled upon by all Israeli governments may lead to the conclusion
that they did not want peace at all. There has always been a tendency in
Israel to prefer expansion and settlement to compromise and peace.
According to this outlook, there always is "no one to talk with", there
is "no solution", we shall "forever live by the sword". "Unilateral"
steps, whose real aim is to annex more land, are consistent with this
tendency.

If this tendency achieves final victory in Israel, it will be a disaster
for the state, which has just become 58 years old.
---------------- off ------------------


   I do not want to belittle the importance of the work of Uri Avnery
and his "Gush Shalom" or human rights organizations like B'Tselem,
"Rabbis for Human Rights", "Committe against house demolitions",
"Anarchists against the wall" and others, but I want to point the
limitations of these forces, which we should beware of.


Comradely yours,
Lüko Willms
Frankfurt, Germany
--------------------------------
visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in
German



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