The catastrophic crisis devastating the Palestinians in Gaza will no doubt persist as long as unchecked Israeli arrogance and belligerence, blessed with diabolical American and European support, persist. Yet there is an increasing conviction worldwide that the Palestinian fortitude, which has stunned the world and unleashed sympathy towards the Palestinian cause, would inevitably lead to the establishment of a Palestinian State. This would be the ‘happy ending’ to the heinous massacres, destruction, and homelessness left in the trail of the current Israeli war against Gaza. The pain and suffering have been so appalling; the Palestinian plight has been termed the “second Nakba”; the first took place in 1948.
Observers note the flagrant sense of insecurity that engulfs Israelis, the anxiousness towards the future, and the widespread questioning of the benefit of the brutal oppression of Palestinians. A wave of Israeli emigration from Israel to Europe and the US has been observed; Israelis look to be fleeing an expected long term backlash by Palestinians to the disastrously oppressive policies implemented against them by Netanyahu’s government. Yet anyone following up on the tide of affairs is bound to sense that we might be closer than any other time to working a resolution to the Palestinian cause, and to taking Israel to account for war crimes before the International Criminal Court.
Today, I resume citing viewpoints by Israeli and international experts on the Palestinian cause and the rights of Palestinian people. One such excellent view was delivered on al-Jazeera English TV channel’s Centre Stage, presented by Dareen Abughaida. Her guest was Daniel Levy, a British Israeli analyst, commentator, author, and former advisor to the Israeli government. Mr Levy has extensive expertise on the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and was formerly an Israeli negotiator at part of the Taba summit under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Oslo B peace process under PM Yitzhak Rabin. He is current president of the US/Middle East Project.
During the Centre Stage episode, Mr Levy talks of the failed peace initiatives in the last three decades, the Right of Return for Palestinians forcibly displaced during the 1948 Nakba, and the weaponisation of antisemitism by Israel and the West.
Ms Abughaida asked Mr Levy: “Was there a turning point? Was there a shift to allow that to happen?”
Mr Levy’s reply: “I think life is a journey; we learn as we go through life. I always believed in peace; that’s what I thought I was doing when we were in those negotiations. I believe in justice. If that means speaking out for Palestinian rights, for Palestinian freedom against what we see right now, then that’s what I’m going to do. And yes, there were experiences I had when I was in an official capacity and when I was in an unofficial capacity. There was exposure to Palestinians, also of course exposure to Jewish Israel. I personally believe that Israelis can never have security. That equation, the equation that you can impose a regime of structural violence on another people, you can deny another people their basic rights, then live with your own security, that equation never works. I hope one day Palestinians, but also Jewish Israelis, experience the idea of how liberating it can be to no longer be an oppressor. Because when you’re oppressing people, you know at the back of your mind that you’re generating a desire for retribution. You can’t actually sleep securely at night if you know what you’re doing.
“Oslo was predicated on the idea that if the Palestinians accepted and recognised Israel, and if the Palestinians accepted a State on just 22 per cent of the land, then Israel would end the occupation. I’m not saying that was a just peace, I’m not saying that was a perfect peace, but it was something that the PLO accepted. It perhaps gave us a way forward. Looking back, and probably at the time as well, it probably would have been so wise of the Israeli side to have said: ‘Here is a historic opportunity, let’s be large, let’s go the extra mile’. But instead, those negotiations were, for Israel, all about grinding down the Palestinians; not accepting just 78 per cent, but also a bit more land. And also making sure East Jerusalem couldn’t really be a Palestinian capital. I could go on… By the way, some years later the Arab League produced the Arab Peace Initiative, but Israel again unfortunately decided its answer would be No.
“One crucial lesson for me from that period which is hyper-relevant to where we are today is perhaps we can’t get to know the counter factual. What if the Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, hadn’t been assassinated by a militant Jewish nationalist extremist, but perhaps was able to get to that finishing line we needed? That was a moment of unipolarity of US superpower following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Israel needed to be held accountable when it didn’t come forward with a serious negotiating proposal, when it continued to build settlements, when it violated the accords; it wasn’t held accountable. I highlighted that one specific component because I don’t think we could have possibly gotten to that finishing line unless there was a willingness to leverage some pressure on Israel. And that’s the journey we’ve been on ever since. Because ever since then, Israel has been given more and more impunity. There had been no cost and consequence, and then we get to today. You get to an Israeli government with people who openly proclaim ethnic cleansing and eradicationalism; you get to what we see now in Gaza, an impunity that has been handmaiden to extremism.”
“So where does this leave us?” Ms Abughaida asked.
“First of all,” Mr Levy said, “one thing that has to be absolutely clear is the architecture of how we’ve gone about trying to make peace is inadequate, is not fit for purpose, and by that I primarily mean the monopoly that the US has had on the peacemaking. I wish it weren’t so. I think America has done a huge disservice to its own national interest, but this is the reality. But we don’t live in the world of the 1990s. We don’t live in a unipolar American moment. Geopolitics is shifting. We have to make sure that in any future peace efforts there is the engagement not only of the region, though the region needs to engage in different ways. I talked about Israeli impunity: the greatest moment of success for the Israeli mission to marginalise the Palestinians was the normalisation accords. That, I think, gave the biggest boost to Netanyahu’s belief that he could crush the Palestinians and get away with it. So we need a different architecture with the region, but also with global south actors, which I think is hugely important.
“The other thing I would say is that matters look incredibly bleak. I find it hard to confront what’s going on in Gaza every day. You know, this has been an incredibly disruptive moment, and I don’t want to spread false optimism but, against the backdrop of such bleak times, perhaps this disruptive moment when everything has been turned on its head, will cause people to stare into the abyss because that’s where we are right now, certainly for Palestinians. But I would argue that Israel has proved how insecure it is.”
Ms Abughaida’s final question was: “But let me ask you: Do you believe that Palestinians have a right to return? Do you believe that I, a Palestinian whose father is from Haifa and left it in 1948 when he was kicked out during the Nakba, does he have a right to return? And do I? Do you believe that, You Daniel Levy?”
Mr Levy’s reply: “My family escaped, on my mother’s side escaped the holocaust, my father’s side from Eastern Europe. As someone who never came from this part of the world [Palestine/Israel], how can I possibly have the right to go and live here if someone indigenous to that land whose family was driven from there does not have that right?”
“So that’s a Yes?” Ms Abughaida exclaimed.
“I think you could say that,” Mr Levy smiled.
Watani International
12 January 2024
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