After Lebanon: a personal reflection on Israel and Palestine

In contrast, Palestinians seem to define peace not as the absence of war per se, but rather as the restoration of their national, territorial, and political rights. This is not a tangible or concrete concept that is easily resolved via western-style negotiations. The Palestinians view themselves as the victims of an historical wrong (the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the associated Naqba or catastrophe) which can only be resolved by the implementation of a just solution. Justice is defined in absolute rather than relative terms, and all opposing narratives are unequivocally rejected.

In short, while a Palestinian state may be a prerequisite for peace, it is also possible to have a Palestinian state and a continued state of war.

So if I was to summarise my position on the peace process now - given the recent tragic events in Lebanon, and the ongoing concerns around Iranian nuclear ambitions - I would suggest the following:

There is no doubt that the international community has to find some way of convincing the Israelis to permit the establishment of a viable, sustainable Palestinian state leading to a two-state solution, and perhaps the current introduction of an international peacekeeping force into Southern Lebanon also suggests a potential way forward in Gaza and eventually the West Bank that will satisfy both sides.

This is not to deny the obvious barriers to a two-state solution including the Israeli settlements and the reluctance of Israel to withdraw from the West Bank, Palestinian demands for a right of return, the current domination of Palestinian politics by the hardline Hamas party, and the violence from both sides. But there are arguably potentially creative means of overcoming these barriers in the longer term. Having just read former Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Ala’s excellent book From Oslo to Jerusalem, it is possible to see how quickly things can change from conflict to peace making.

And all the alternatives are far worse. On the one hand, the Greater Israel project involves a racist denial of the existence let alone legitimate national aspirations of the Palestinians. And alternatively the so-called one-state solution favoured by some Palestinians can only be called “Genocide with a human face”.

Of course, the two-state solution will never work unless or until the Arab world ends its 58-year-old military, political, trade and intellectual siege of Israel. This siege is not about what Israel has actually done - good or bad - during its existence. It is simply - as noted by the famous French Trotskyist Nathan Weinstock - about what Israel symbolises to the Arab world in terms of the reversal of the traditional role of Jews as an inferior, second class minority (known as dhimmis).

What is required then is a revolution in Arab attitudes so that conflicts with Israel over borders or territory are negotiated as ordinary neighbourly disputes, rather than seen to be reflecting seminal cultural and ideological events. Maybe the current Arab League plan signals some positive movement in that direction, but as a starting point for negotiations rather than as something to be imposed on Israel.

If this change in attitude occurred among both fundamentalist and secular Arabs, I believe we would then see a similar change in attitude within Israel leading to a far greater Israeli willingness to seek non-military solutions to political problems.