Najeh Shahin
2007 / 12 / 1
It’s almost a civil war. And nothing could be more appropriate to the agendas of Washington and Tel Aviv more than that. The problem is that in the “west bank” they do not want to see it directly conducted because it reaches their boundaries. That’s why they did not favor it. So let it be some limited civil war in the west bank with a more severe one in Gaza. Let that bad community eat it self since we cannot bring Rabin’s wish that the sea swallows Gaza into fulfillment. After that, things are going to be so easy. The democratic nationalist government in Ramallah chooses its political priority as defeating the gangsters of Hamas in Gaza. There is no occupation in Gaza and the west bank and the settlements are not threatening to take the less than 5% remaining land of Palestine. Anyway, if there is any problem, Annapolis is going to settle it soon. The nice story is that Israel will take the land and some few thousands of Palestinian mercenaries take some pocket money. Peace and love is going to prevail. That’s definitely the scenario in the wishful thinking of Israel, the U.S and their puppet Palestinian Authority led by Abbas and some business elites. Unluckily history proved that it’s more cunning than that and the story would produce another plot of its own and then, only then, Americans as well as Israeli’s probably would remember that they would produce another smart and revolutionary Hezbollah in Palestine. There arms and financial support to the puppet in Ramallah is only undermining the little credibility that it still has, changing it into completely traitor gangsters in the eyes of the Palestinian people. But let us forget about all this and try to read some history.
American main stream politics does not like talking about the past. They prefer always to start from the “here and now”, but who can blame them? When everybody knows that this would entail starting that entire boring story about how they conducted a fabulous genocide wars against the native people then imported a few millions from Africa to be enslaved at the temple of American unbelievable heavens of democracy. How could any reasonable man expect America’s politics to fall in love with historical studies? However, there is no choice. When you face Arabs – an absolutely stupid Semitic people- there is no way to avoid history. They would all the time ask for some historical evidence to support your argument or claim…etc. That’s why –perhaps- Moshe Dayan made use of his leisure time to develop his talents as an archeologist. With Arabs you need some narration. And here the narration goes back to some seven hundred years before Christ when there were some small cities all over greater Syria which were inhabited by the Canaanite people. Some of the Canaanite people would go to Iraq through the Assyrian wars and there they would stay for almost tow centuries. When the Persian Empire conquered Iraq those Canaanites would be converted into monotheism and they would be sent back to Palestine as a different people. They are the friends of the Persian Empire’s interest in the area. There had been empires long ago before Columbus discovered America.
In general the Canaanites of Syria had to be come gradually Arabs. It’s only those who went to Iraq who kept a new identity as Jews. And that sect had never had any problems with its native brothers. However, it suffered with foreigners like the Romans or the Crusades. When the Arabs were defeated in Spain in the late decades of the fifteen century, the Spanish started their bloody party with the Arabs and the (Arab) Jews before turning towards the new world to practice the worst genocide and holocaust in history. In less than a century they reduced the population of the “Americas” by more that 90%, almost a hundred million had been killed.
One need not be smart to tell how “different” people were treated by the Europeans in the medieval and modern times. The Jews suffered though that history as or even worse than anybody taken to be a heretic or a Muslim or an Averrosist or…there were no chance for assimilation. Despite the fact that they were citizens of modern Europe –but so what! just look at this heavens of democracy and see how others have been treated, even before sep 11-they were saved there for the justification of bad luck with nature or God or economy. Human beings in their mythological eras need some “magical” and “supernatural” interpretation of their suffering and the Jews were very appropriate for that.
Napoleon had the merit of finding some “business” for the Jews. Why not use them in the war against Britain. And he brought the idea of the Jews establishing their state in their promised land Palestine. But Napoleon fell sooner than he thought. And that idea had to wait till India became so important for the British imperialist activities in the 19th century. The British capitalism is indebted to India more than any thing else in the “hegemonic” position that it achieved in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. In the context of the invasion of Egypt and then Palestine itself at the end of the First World War (1917), Napoleon’s idea was adopted by Great Britain. And then the application of the idea did not take more than thirty years. By 1949 Palestine was almost cleansed –to use the term used nowadays by most historians including prominent Israeli historians like Ilan Pappe- and Israel was established on 80% percent of the land of Palestine. And in 1967 Israel in a lightening and fascinating war defeated Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, and so captured a lot of the Arab land including the remaining 20”% of Palestine.
Israel did its best since that time to create a situation were there would be nothing called Palestine for Palestinians to claim. When it ran short of Jewish immigration in the last two decades it started to “import” all sorts of “white” people including Russian Orthodox Christian. Some researchers think that a million of them had immigrated to Israel in the 1990’s.
Now the Palestinian Arabs- unluckily- are still wandering in the neighborhood. They have not disappeared, which make the story a little bit more complicated than that of the Native American people –the red Indians-. And despite many similarities, history does not look like repeating itself. At the moment the Palestinians are asking for only the 22”% of their land which was left in 1948. Personally I think that the best thing for both sides is a one state for Palestinians and white European Israeli’s. However, Israel is still thinking that there is some hope for some ways –massacres, cleansing, transference…- to get rid of the Palestinian’s completely. This is of course possible, but there is also another possibility that the U.S loses its powerful hegemonic position or losing it interest in the middle east after oil withers away and then Israel would not be in the same situation of dominating Arabs and Palestinians so easily. That’s why I think it’s even in the interest of Israel to give up its racist identity and practice and to try assimilating in the area as part of the Arab world. Being a European white man’s colony is not in favor of the interests of Israel if it hopes to be a natural and normal part of that piece of the world. The problem is that the elites in Tel Aviv are now more than any time in the past seeing themselves as superior white people. I don not think this identification with European supremacy is going to be particularly helpful in the common life in this little land. However, this is another story that needs some independent treatment.
|
|
| Send Article | Copy to WORD | Copy | Save | Search | Add to Favorite | | ||
| Print version | Modern Discussion | Email | | Close |