On Palestine (16 page)

FB: Historians are subjective, right? For example, how can you and Benny Morris agree on the facts of '47
/
'48 but come to very different conclusions? How do you deal with that?

IP:
First of all, I think there is a factual infrastructure. We all have to know it and in this respect it is good that Benny Morris at least headed the charge to voice this idea that you should stop the nonsense of saying that Palestinians left voluntarily in 1948. This was a factual debate: did they leave voluntarily or were they expelled? What you feel from this debate when it continues is that this is not the most important issue because before historians appeared in Israel, we knew that Palestinians were being expelled, we just did not believe the Palestinians. There were five million Palestinian refugees who kept telling us, “We were expelled,” and we said, “No, you are Palestinians. When you say it, we don't believe you.” It is only when the Israeli historians came to say, “You know what? They are right,” they had documents that confirmed what the Palestinians were saying that suddenly they were telling the truth. This was only a first step, the more important thing was not what happened, but what to learn from what happened. What are our conclusions? This is a moral and ideological debate. The artificial attempt to say that historians can only deal with what happened and not say anything about what the implications are constitute false approaches that can be seen in Morris's own work. He writes in his first book that he is a bit sorry for what has been done in 1948, and in his last book, he is sorry that the Israelis did not complete the ethnic cleansing. He has not changed one fact in both books. They are the same facts, but the books are being written very differently: one book doesn't like the idea of an ethnic cleansing, the other book endorses it—not only justifies it in the past, but endorses it as a plan for the future.

Florent Barat: It's time for a musical break. Ilan, you've chosen two tracks that you wanted to listen to. Could you introduce the first one and maybe tell us the reasons why you've chosen this one?

IP:
The first track is a song by Cat Stevens; it is called “Peace Train.” I've always loved Cat Stevens. I am a product of the seventies and he is one of my musical heroes. I also like his very bold move by converting to Islam and not being terrified by everything that was said about him. I think there is some honesty in this guy. This song, for me, was encapsulating although I'm not sure he meant the same things that I mean, but that doesn't matter! It encapsulates what I was always longing for, to have this peace train coming to Israel and Palestine. You have to understand who is the driver and who are the passengers. I wrote in one of my articles (I can't remember which one) that there is a difference between a peace train that takes us all to a better destination, which is the peace process that we don't have, and the peace train that runs over everyone on the way to the so-called peace, which I think is our present peace process so it is a very powerful metaphor for me.

FB: You moved to Exeter in the UK in 2007 but still go back to Israel very often. How has the situation evolved in Israel in the last few years?

IP:
The task of changing Jewish society from within is formidable. This society seems to be more and more entrenched on its positions. The more I think about it the more desperate I am about succeeding in changing it from within. On the other side there is a growing number of young people who seem to grasp reality in a different way. There are very few, but I do not remember having such a young generation before in Israel. So although the short-term future does not harbor any chance for a change from within, there are signs that with pressure from outside, there is a group of people there with whom one will be able in the future potentially to create a different society. If you compare Israel today with the Israel I left, or the Israel I grew up in, the trend is to become more chauvinistic, ethnocentric, intransigent, which makes us all feel that peace and reconciliation are very far away if we only rely on our hope that Jewish society will change from within.

FB: Should we therefore put all our energy on applying pressure from the outside or should we still try to talk to Israelis to help them change their views?

IP:
The reason why we are all debating this is because on the ground the machine of destruction does not stop for one day. We therefore don't have the luxury to wait any longer. Time is not on our side. We know that while we wait, many terrible things are happening. We also now there is a correlation between those terrible things happening and the realization of the Israelis that there is a price tag attached to what they are doing. If they pay no price for what they are doing, they will even accelerate the strategy of ethnic cleansing. It's therefore a mixture. We urgently need to find a system by which you stop what is being done now, on the ground, and to also prevent what is about to happen. You need a powerful model of pressure from the outside. As far as people from the outside are concerned, international civil society, I think the BDS movement is as good as it gets. Still, it can't be the only model or factor. There are two additional factors to make it a successful process. One is on the Palestinian side. The question of representation needs to be sorted. You need a good solution. Secondly, you need to have a kind of educational system, inside, that takes the time to educate the Israeli Jews about a different reality and the benefit it will bring to them. If those factors all work well together, and we have a more holistic approach to the question of reconciliation, things could change.

Florent Barat: As a teacher, wouldn't you be more useful teaching in Israel than abroad? Could you be the teacher you are in the UK in Israel?

IP:
I don't think I want to be a teacher in a university anyway. Universities are not the best place to teach people about the realities of life or can change their point of view. Universities are sites for careers now, not for knowledge and education. I am teaching in Israel as well, in my own way, through my articles, through the tiny amount of public speaking I am allowed to do. I would like to continue this. I feel like what I am doing in Britain is working on the pressure from the outside less than education. You cannot sustain a BDS campaign without explaining to people why it is necessary, to give them the tools and the background they need to understand it. To legitimize it. We do not cease to be educators as well as activists all the time. It's important to try to combine and find the time for the actions that you take and the educational process. We can't be too impatient if people do not get it straight away. We have to be patient and explain our positions again and again until people understand them.

FB: I am very interested in the question of solidarity. About its real meaning. What does solidarity mean for non-Palestinians? Whom do we stand in solidarity with? What about if whoever represents the Palestinians decides that they want a state on 11 percent of historical Palestine and that they want a neoliberal, capitalist state. How am I supposed to stand in solidarity with that?

IP:
First of all, the solidarity is with victims of a certain policy and ideology even if these victims are not represented. You are in solidarity with their suffering and you support their attempt to get out of this suffering. Now, you raise an interesting question. I think that part of solidarity is like a good friendship. As a good friend, you can tell your friend that you understand what he is doing, but that you think he is wrong. Those of us in solidarity with the Palestinian people, we find ourselves, when it comes to our debates with good friends that still support the peace process, the two-state solution, disagreeing with them. Part of our role is to tell them that we think they are wrong. The assumption in your question is not realistic. Not one Palestinian will ever agree with that. Still, if that happens, yes, maybe we will have to rethink the whole idea of solidarity. Those debates are organic and stem from the situation; we are not inventing them. If you have a position between one state or two states or what kind of means the Palestinians should adopt, you connect to issues the Palestinians have themselves, you're therefore not an outsider. You will be betraying your solidarity if you stopped having a position on the current and important debates. I know that sometimes there is a nationalistic position saying that because you're not Palestinian, you cannot comment and are not entitled to have an opinion. For me, movements are made of people and people are different from one another. Not everybody is going to play according to the same rules. I think that solidarity is also agreeing on what is right and what is wrong to do. What are the boundaries of the involvement of people from the outside? There is no dogmatic answer to this. Usually when someone says something like “You cannot advocate one state if you're not Palestinian or Israeli,” it's usually to stifle a debate. We should not waste too much time on this question. By now I think that everyone involved knows what solidarity means and what it entitles you to do.

FB: Let's talk about the “solution.” Is there really a debate right now about this? The two-state solution as far as the institutions are concerned, the governments, still seems to be the only solution on the table. When you mention one state, people either call you a utopian or say that you are against Jewish self-determination. Even the so-called Palestinian political leaders, despite what's happening on the ground, still support a two-state solution. The more rational and humane solution, which would be one state, is still not debated and thought about enough in terms of the practicalities of it, the how to get there.

IP:
I think two things are taking place. One is the issue of Palestinian representativity. The people who claim to represent the Palestinians from the West Bank became the representatives of the whole Palestinian people. As far as the West Bank is concerned, you see why a two-state solution is attractive. It could mean the end of military control in their lives. One can understand this. But this disregards the other Palestinians. The refugees, the ones from Gaza and the ones that live inside Israel. That's one of the difficulties. You have certain groups of Palestinians that, in my opinion, wrongly believe that this is the quickest way to end the occupation. I don't think it is. You're right when you are saying the Oslo agreement ensured the continuation of the occupation, not the end of it. The second reason is that the two-state solution has a logical ring to it. It's a very Western idea. A colonialist invention that was applied in India and Africa, this idea of partition, while the non-Western world is a far more holistic world. [The idea of partition] became a kind of religion to the extent that you do not question it anymore. You work out how best to get there. To my mind it makes very intelligent people take this as a religion of logic. If you question the rationality of it, you are criticized. This is while a lot of people in the West stick to it. Nothing on the ground would ever change their mind. Of course you're right. Five minutes on the ground shows you that one state is already there. It's a non-democratic regime, an apartheid regime. So you just need to think about how to change this regime. You do not need to think about a two-state solution. You need to think about how to change the relations between the communities, how to affect the power structure in place.

FB: Right. So, as you're saying, why are very intelligent people, very rational ones, still saying that the two-state solution is the compulsory step, the first unavoidable one, toward something better? I went to lectures about this, but I still don't get it. How would this work in practice?

IP:
Again, it goes back to a rationalist Western way to look at reality. It says that I can only advocate for what I can get, not what I want. At this moment in time it seems that you have such a wide coalition for a two-state solution, so you go for it. You do not evaluate its morality, its ethical dimension, even if it's likely to change the reality later on. This whole idea that this is a very reasonable approach is of course reasonable to a point. But it's totally insane because it has nothing to do with the conflict. It has to do with the way Israel wants the world to accept this idea, constructed in 1967, that it needs most of the territory that it occupied then, but that it is willing to allow some autonomy to the Palestinians in that territory. That's the debate in Israel. It's never about the principles. The thing that Israel has always needed is international support. They need their policies rubber-stamped by the international community. They also need a Palestinian representative. In 1993 the PLO surprised them when it agreed to have a small autonomous area on a small part of the West Bank and leave all the rest to Israel. That's the two-state solution that everybody wants to convince us is the only way forward. The problem is that not one Palestinian can live with this, hence the continuation of the conflict.

FB: Edward Said died ten years ago. He was one of the last Palestinians, with Mahmoud Darwish, that the majority of the Palestinians looked up to. I know you knew him well. Can you end by giving us a few words on Edward Said and the role he played during his life?

IP:
We miss him very much. I don't think only Palestinians looked up to him for inspiration. He was one of the greatest intellectuals of the second half of the last century. We all looked at him for inspiration. On questions of knowledge, morality, inspiration, activism, not only on Palestine. We are missing his holistic approach. His ability to see things from above in a more wholesome way. When you lose someone like that, you have people that are taking the fragmentation that Israel imposes on the Palestinians and act as if this is a reality itself. What we need is to overcome the intellectual, physical, and cultural fragmentation that Israel imposes on us, Palestinians and Jews, and to strive to come back to something far more organic and integrated so that the third generation of Jewish settlers and indigenous native people of Palestine could have a future together.