It’s been already quite a few years since I last sat in a
university study room, trying to get my head around complex case studies. But I remember well a conversation I had with
a French colleague. We had done some
work together and, in-lieu of a relaxing break (oh, the irony!) we started to
debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
My colleague was very critical of Israel – everything was the Jewish
state’s fault. Most of all, he opined,
Israel was ‘stealing land’ and undermining the ‘two-state solution’. Negotiations, he said, were just a ruse, a
stalling device. “Why not just give
the Palestinians their state and be done with it?” he demanded; “we
should force you to do it!” “Well,
it’s not that simple…” I attempted to explain. “It’s very simple”, he
interrupted, with more than a hint of impatience in his voice. He pulled a block of paper, grabbed a pencil
and, with a few quick and decisive lines, sketched the map of Mandatory
Palestine ‘from the River to the Sea’. “That’s
the map”, he pronounced, stabbing the roughly sketched elongated
pentagon. Then, with another assertive
motion, he drew a horizontal line across the pentagon’s narrow waist, from west
to east. It originated somewhere in the
Mediterranean and, I figured, ran through both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, before
crossing the Jordan River. “That’s
it”, he declared, satisfied – and stabbed each half of the now divided
pentagon, first the top half, then the bottom one. “Now you guys take this bit and the
Palestinians take the other bit. I don’t
give a s**t if you like it or not, you people have got to learn to get along
with each other. That’s it, problem
solved!” He was not joking – he was
dead serious. He spoke with the hauteur
of a Louis XIV: he was ‘the state’ (or the ‘international community’); he must have felt
like a new Charles de Gaulle, annoyed at having to deal with those pesky
Algerians.
 |
The 'Middle East Quartet' met in New York to promote a 'roadmap' for Israel and Palestine.
(photo from a previous meeting in Munich, Germany) |
I was reminded of that discussion recently, when French
politicians hosted a ‘summit’ aimed at re-starting ‘the Middle East Peace
Process’ (which, despite the name, does not deal at all with the Middle East –
as in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt or Libya – but only with Israel and
the Palestinians). According to The
Guardian,
“The participants [which did
not include any Israelis or Palestinians] called on the two sides to
genuinely commit to the two-state solution.”
More recently, the Middle East Quartet (which, likewise,
isn’t really about the Middle East, but only about Israel and the Palestinians)
has met in New York and issued a statement.
Among other things, they say that
“The Quartet principals [i.e.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey
Lavrov, United States Secretary of State John Kerry and European Union High
Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Federica Mogherini]
were joined by the Foreign Ministers of Egypt and France during the second part
of the meeting to brief on their work to support Middle East peace. All agreed on the importance of close and
continuing coordination of all efforts to achieve the common goal of the
two-State solution.”
As usual, the bulk of the opprobrium was directed at the
Jewish state:
“The Quartet emphasized its strong opposition to ongoing
settlement activity, which is an obstacle to peace, and expressed its grave
concern that the acceleration of settlement construction and expansion in Area
C and East Jerusalem, including the retroactive ‘legalization’ of existing
units, and the continued high rate of demolitions of Palestinian structures,
are steadily eroding the viability of the two-State solution.”
I was still ruminating on the French (from Louis VII to Napoleon,
from George-Picot to President Hollande) meddling 3,000
miles away from Paris, when a friend e-mailed
me. She is a kind-hearted Jewish lady,
who cares deeply for both Israelis and Palestinians and would like nothing
better than to see those two populations living in peace, on either side of a
secure border. Yet all that talk about
the ‘two-state solution’ was clearly getting on her nerves:
“I have always felt uncomfortable with the trope ‘two state
solution’ in relation to Israel and the Palestinians. It isn’t the two state bit which bothers me –
it is this idea of a ‘solution’. To
start with, the word has a stark finality about it and this comes with dreadful
connotations for Jews, with Hitler combining it with the word ‘final’. He wanted to obliterate Jews – how did we come
to rehabilitate this word when working towards peace with those who have also
wanted to obliterate us?
But there are other reasons to reject the word. It is such an ahistorical concept. When in history has there ever been ‘a
solution’ to anything? The moving hand
of history weaves complex and varying stories; they change and evolve
continuously – each ‘solution’ is but the beginning of a new ‘problem’. Try putting History and Solution into Google
and the fourth, fifth and sixth entries are about exterminating the Jews. And the first three? One is about therapy, the second about showing
how one solves a mathematical problem and the third refers to an alternative
history novel, in which the Axis wins the Second World War.”
My friend’s words got me thinking. And, as always, I wanted to understand: why
is it that the word ‘solution’ is so used and abused in the West? How come that it is most frequently employed
when discussing the Middle East? And how
come that, when discussing the Middle East, Westerners appear not just to
desire ‘a solution’, but often to know what the solution should be – only to be
suddenly possessed of a desire to impose it upon the people in question?
There’s nothing new in all this, I’m afraid. The very term ‘Middle East’ is a
quintessentially Euro-centric concept: it’s only ‘East’, of course, when seen
from Europe, from ‘the West’. The Middle
East is very much ‘Middle West’ when seen from Japan, India or China. As for America… well, it depends which way
one’s looking; but under President Obama, America is looking Europe’s way.
What’s in a name? There’s
nothing new in the West’s desire to – ahem! – civilise the East (i.e., provide
‘solutions’ for the poor hapless ‘natives’).
And – interestingly – it has always been entwined with another, just-as-keen
aspiration: that of relieving those same natives of various natural resources that
they couldn’t possibly have a use for, themselves. In past centuries, it was gold and
spices. Nowadays it is oil and gas. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!
In 1920, the Western ‘solution’ was to divide the Middle
Eastern spoils of war among the victors – the French and British colonial Empires. The Arab, predominantly Muslim inhabitants of
those former Ottoman lands did not think of themselves as residents of separate
countries. True: influenced by
contemporary Western ideas, a small minority of intellectuals among them
(including, for obvious reasons, a high proportion of Christians) wanted an
Arab nation state; as for the vast majority, they showed no signs of wanting to
be anything but loyal citizens of the Ottoman Empire-cum-Caliphate.
But the wishes of brown-skinned, primitive natives were of
little concern to the new imperial masters.
They had their own economic and political interests – which demanded
that the Middle East be partitioned in chunks, along arbitrary borders.
A list of those artificial ‘countries’ reads conspicuously
similar to the ‘menu’ of perennial Middle Eastern conflicts.
 |
The League of Nations awarded Mandates for 'Mesopotamia' and 'Palestine' to Britain
and for 'Syria' and 'Lebanon' to France. |
There was
Mesopotamia,
a descriptive name invented by ancient Greeks and meaning ‘Land between the
rivers’. That was all Greek to the local inhabitants, who reverted – as soon as they possibly could –
to the 7
th century Arabic name ‘Iraq’, cousin of the Biblical ‘Erekh’
and grandson of the Sumerian ‘Land of the City of Uk’ (Ur Uk).
 |
| Map of Bilad Al-Sham (the Land of the Semites, translated these days as Greater Syria) was a province of the early Islamic Caliphate, before being incorporated in the Ottoman Empire. The province was subdivided into military districts called 'ajnad' (singular 'jund'), of which Jund Filastin (Palestine) was one. Jund Dimashq (the district of Damascus) was the largest and included most of present day Lebanon, Jordan and the southern half of present-day Syria. The Ottomans later changed the organisation repeatedly, redrawing and renaming the provinces. And so did the Western powers after World War I. |
There was, then,
Syria
– another name that the West inherited from the ancient Greeks, who simply
mispronounced the old name Aššūrāyu (Assyria).
After the 7
th century Arab Conquest, the province became
known in Arabic as Bilad Al-Sham – the Land of the Semites; an apt name, given
that its inhabitants spoke Semitic languages, Aramaic and Hebrew. ‘Sham’, by the way (and not ‘Syria’) is the
origin of the second ‘S’ in ‘ISIS’.
Bilad Al-Sham included not just what is currently known (in theory, at
least) as the Syrian Arab Republic, but also present-day Lebanon and
‘Palestine’ (another Greek name derived from the Philistines, Hellenic
colonists who – sometime in the 12
th century BCE – had established a
handful of cities on the Mediterranean shore).
 |
Around the 12th century BCE, proto-Hellenic 'Sea People' settled on the shores
of the Mediterranean (see the red patch on the map). They were called Philistines.
Which is why the ancient Greeks called the area Palestine.
The name stuck especially in the West, which inherited the classic Graeco-Roman culture. |
Although earmarked for revival as the old-new Jewish
homeland, ‘Palestine’ was partitioned by its British rulers, with the Jordan
River becoming a border and its Eastern bank (the lion’s share of the land)
fashioned into a ‘royal’ fief for Britain’s local collaborators – the Hashimite
clan, which was in the process of being ousted from its native Mecca by a rival
clan, the Saudites. The newly
established kingdom was ‘christened’ (ahem!) ‘Transjordan’ – literally ‘Beyond
the Jordan [River]’. Needless to say,
that had nothing to do with the will (or lack thereof) of local inhabitants:
the land was only ‘Beyond the Jordan [River]’ when viewed from London!
 |
Although part of the League of Nations Mandate of Palestine,
the area east of the Jordan River was detached, prohibited for Jewish habitation
and made into the Emirate (later Kingdom) of Transjordan. |
To complete the ‘menu’, let me add Egypt (at the time a
British ‘Protectorate’), Yemen (another British ‘Protectorate’), Somalia and
Libya (Italian colonies)…
Not everything is the West’s fault, of course – there’s
plenty of guilt to go around. What the
previous (Ottoman) rulers bequeathed the new ones was fairly rotten eggs; the
Western colonial powers did a good job at cracking them; and the local ‘kings’
and ‘lifetime presidents’ proceeded to vigorously scramble those ‘eggs’ – hence
the rather appalling mess we see today.
 |
Drawn by Western colonial powers, the Middle Eastern borders are being erased.
(Caricature by Dan Nott) |
But we live in the 21
st century. And much too little has changed in the
approach of some Western politicians – in the almost 100 years that passed since
those initial ‘solutions’.
They still bring to the Middle East their quintessentially
Euro-centric conceptions of ‘peoples’ or ‘nations’. In 1920, those were predicated on ‘race’ or
ethnicity; these politically-correct, ‘multi-cultural’ days, they centre on the
legal concept of ‘citizenship’ or ‘nationality’. But Middle Easterners have never been divided
in ‘races’; and why would anyone care about citizenship of states which – on
top of having been invented by foreigners – afford little protection and much
oppression?
Clan and tribe are strong elements of identity in the Middle
East. Beyond those, many define that
identity along religious and linguistic lines.
The word that best translates the Western concept of people/nation in
Arabic is أمة (pronounced ‘umma’). It
derives from the word ‘umm’ (meaning ‘mother’) and is often used in its
Qur’anic sense: the ‘Nation’ or ‘Community’ of Islam. Apart from religion, it is easy to feel a
sense of common affiliation with people who speak the same language – or at
least who are able to communicate intelligibly using a common idiom, such as
literary Arabic.
‘Multicultural’,
‘enlightened’ Westerners may have a hard time coming to terms with this
reality. But unless they do, unless they
shed the arrogance of ‘civilising’ the Middle East to their one-and-only
understanding of humanity, they have only more blood and tears to contribute.
Take, for instance,
the ‘Palestine problem’. Leaving aside
the Western name and the fact that ‘Palestine from the River to the Sea’ is a
Western invention, some Westerners have now decided that there are two peoples/nations
in that country – and hence there should be a two-state solution;
other Westerners want to turn the country into a multicultural
heaven in which everyone lives with equal rights ever after – hence a
one-state solution. Note how both
‘solutions’ juggle Euro-centric notions (in italics) and are predicated
on the concept of people/nation with its changeable but always Euro-centric meanings:
indeed, the ‘two-state solution’ uses the traditional understanding of the term
‘nation’, while the ‘one-state solution’ adopts a more recent meaning, one which
a certain Western audience has come to regard as ‘progressive’, ‘modern’ or
politically-correct.
As usual, the last
thing those Westerners care about is the opinion of the ‘two peoples/nations’
in question. In fact, they have
convinced themselves that both sides in the conflict think and behave like
Westerners; that their aspirations are Western aspirations.
Western concepts
(whether 1920-style or ‘progressive’) may indeed sound familiar and reasonable
to Israeli ears. After all, the ancient
Israelites may have originated as a super-tribal faith community, but centuries
of dwelling as isolated islands of otherness have forged for the Jews an
identity more similar to Western-style nationhood.
As for the
‘Palestinians’, however, who is to say?
Westerners have decided that Palestinian Arabs are ‘a people’ – mostly
because Westerners are familiar and comfortable with that concept. Make no mistake: I have no problem with
Palestinian Arabs declaring themselves a people – if that’s how they feel and
that’s what they wish. But it is a
‘Palestinian’ decision – not an Israeli or Western one. And the ‘Palestinians’ have yet to speak their
collective mind on the matter.
Of course, there is
the PLO, whose leaders must have ‘affirmed’ their peoplehood a zillion
times. But who do those ‘leaders’
represent? Leaving aside the fact that
they lost the only Palestinian elections that could (even superficially) be
characterised as ‘free’; leaving aside the fact that they would lose the next
ones, if they allowed them to happen; leaving aside all that, the half a
million salaried PLO ‘apparatchiks’ and stipended ‘supporters’ are little more
than mercenaries; their ‘political opinion’ is based on the bank account, not
inner sense of identity. As for Hamas
(which won those ‘free’ elections), they are much more concerned with faith and
much less with ‘nationhood’ in the Western sense of the word.
So what do ‘the
Palestinians’ really want? With no
freedoms, no plebiscite and an oppressive, taboo-enforcing society, it is
really hard to say. The best we can do,
perhaps, is to look at opinion polls.
Granted, those too are often politicised and are generally problematic
in the absence of freedom; still, I believe it is useful to look at the latest
(June-August 2016) ‘Joint Palestinian-Israeli Opinion Poll’. It contains some (however mild) criticism of
both the PLO/Palestinian Authority and of Hamas – which makes it perhaps a bit
more credible in my eyes.
The poll was conducted
in Israel by the (strongly left-leaning) Israel Democracy Institute and by the Palestinian
Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in the West Bank and Gaza. The European Union supplied the funding,
while the German outfit Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung provided ‘partnership and
support’.
Predictably, one of
the questions was:
“Do you support or oppose the solution based on the
establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, known as the two-state
solution?”
Circa 51% of the 1,270-strong Palestinian sample and circa 59%
of the similarly sized Israeli sample expressed support for ‘the two-state
solution’. This is ‘the result’ that the
poll authors and the Western funders promoted: a majority of Palestinians and
Israelis still support the two-state solution.
But, of course, some would say, the two sides have divergent
understanding of the term: Israeli politicians usually say ‘two states for two
peoples’, meaning a Jewish-majority state and a Palestinian Arab-majority
state; Palestinian leaders, on the other hand, never say ‘for two peoples’ –
their ‘two states’ are an 100% Arab ‘Palestine’ and an ‘Israel’ populated by
Jews and Palestinian Arabs endowed with equal rights – including the ‘right of
return’ for the PLO-estimated 7 million Palestinian refugees.
This time, however, the pollsters asked the question again,
using a more precise wording:
“Mutual recognition of Palestine and Israel as the homelands
of their respective peoples. The agreement
will mark the end of conflict, the Palestinian state will fight terror against
Israelis, and no further claims will be made by either side. Support or oppose?”
When presented with this version of the question, support
among Palestinians dropped to just 40%; 57% declared their opposition to the
idea. Among Israelis, support grew to
68%, with just 24% opposed.
In other words, only a minority of Palestinian Arabs support
the ‘two-state solution’ – as understood by Westerners. Interestingly, that minority dropped to just
20%, when an additional condition was added: that the Palestinian state be devoid
of “major/heavy weapons”. Even
the putative deployment in Palestine of “a multinational force” only
succeeded in raising the support among Palestinians to 36%.
But then the pollsters did something really interesting:
this time they addressed only those who answered ‘opposed’ to the ‘Mutual
recognition, etc.’ question and offered them additional incentives to change
their mind to ‘support’.
A ‘bribe’ of $30 to $50 billion “to help in settling
those refugees wishing to live in the Palestinian state and compensating them”
persuaded 31% of the ‘opposed’ Palestinians to change their mind and ‘support’. Perhaps surprisingly to some (but certainly
not to me), the biggest change of mind occurred in Gaza (41%, compared to just
25% in the West Bank). Gaza, of course,
is home to considerably more ‘refugees’, who are likely to benefit personally from
the financial windfall. By the way, that
same windfall to the Palestinians (combined no doubt with the idea of settling
the refugees in Palestine, not in Israel) persuaded 37% of ‘opposed’ Israelis to
swing to ‘support’.
But financial incentives are tricky. No doubt, they would be welcome; but what
happens after they have been paid? Even
more pertinently, what happens when much of the expected windfall is siphoned off
by the PLO kleptocracy, while a lot is wasted through the corruption and
incompetence of a ‘civil service’ populated by cronies? What happens when the windfall fails to fulfill
those great expectations?
Non-financial (or not-directly-financial) incentives are
more interesting.
When offered membership of the European Union for ‘Palestine’,
32% of the Palestinian nay-sayers changed their tune to ‘support’ the proposed
two-state deal.
The offer of a confederation with Jordan persuaded 29% of
those ‘opposed’ to change their mind to ‘support’.
Now, that’s interesting.
Both joining the European Union and establishing a confederation with
Jordan would involve a certain limitation of sovereignty, in comparison to an
utterly independent, self-standing state.
With that in mind, perhaps, only 12% of Israelis opposed to the deal
changed their mind when offered EU membership.
Yet rather than being put off, the yearning-for-independence
Palestinians interpreted those offers as strong incentives. In fact, within the constraints of the poll’s
statistical significance, they reacted much in the same way to the direct financial
incentive, to the offer of EU membership and to the idea of a confederation with
Jordan. Now, I can understand that EU
membership may hold the attraction of freedom, good governance, rule of law and
an indirect, but perhaps more tangible financial windfall. But none of the above applies to a
confederation with the Hashimite Kingdom of Jordan!
This may be surprising to those Westerners who only listen
to themselves. But it is hardly
new. West Bank ‘Palestinians’ have been ‘united’
with East Bank ‘Jordanians’ between 1948 and 1967 – and no ‘intifada’ took
place. They had representatives in the ‘Jordanian’
Parliament, ministers in the ‘Jordanian’ government and carried ‘Jordanian’
passports; in fact they carried them until 1988, when their ‘Jordanian’
nationality was unilaterally (and illegally) rescinded by the Hashimite
king. According to another opinion poll
(run by An-Najah University and published in May 2016), 42.3% of Palestinians
support the confederation project while 39.3% oppose it.
We do not know what ‘Jordanians’ think of such idea; opinion
polls in that country are viewed as ‘a bridge too far’. But, for whatever that’s worth, former
Jordanian Prime Minister Abdelsalam al-Majali, announced (speaking in the West
bank city of Nablus) that he personally supported a confederation. That’s hardly evidence of popular support, of
course; but in Jordan’s tightly controlled political environment, such ‘personal’
statements are inconceivable without the monarch’s blessing.
What, then, does all this mean in terms of that beloved Western
‘solution’? Not much, perhaps. There are no ‘solutions’ in the Middle East,
only processes. Processes that most Westerners
do not understand. Including the
self-described ‘experts’, none of whom managed to predict – or even correctly
interpret – a ‘Spring’ that (so far) killed 500,000 people and displaced ten
million.
Let us not mince words: the Middle East is still the
playground of Western politicians with neo-colonialist instincts. As ever – they lack any deep understanding of
‘Eastern’ (especially Middle Eastern) issues.
As ever – they try to advance their own interests, with no regard for the
unimportant desires and aspirations of ‘the natives’. As ever – they envisage 'solutions' that
involve drawing lines on a map. As ever –
they attempt to allay their own conscience (and dupe their constituencies), by
wrapping a mantle of noble intentions around their rather base mindset. Deep in their hearts, these white
neo-colonialists despise what they see as uncivilised, swarthy natives, forever
incapable of getting along with each other.
Like adults witnessing a fight among children, they patronisingly
command those 'natives' to 'just shake hands and be friends'.
 |
US Secretary of State John Kerry and
EU High Representative Federica Mogherini congratulate each other
in New York. They have finally set the Middle East right! |
In truth, neo-colonialist Westerners have little empathy
with Israeli Jews or with Palestinian Arabs – and even less interest in
understanding the conflict between them; what they’re really after is a
'solution' to their own worries – one that would provide: a)
uninterrupted flow of oil and b) good-old docile 'Gastarbeiter,' rather than
vindictive Islamists.
There’s only one short sentence that the Middle East owes
these Westerners – and that’s ‘Mind your own business!’
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