Jan 16, 2008

It is perhaps time we look back and admit that the events of 1948 have been misunderstood. The establishment of a Jewish state on the larger part of Palestinian territory and the dissolution of the Arab national community in Palestine did not lead to a winding down of the national conflict over Palestine. The newly established state, alongside other newly established states in Surriya al Tabi'iya, Greater Syria, remained contested terrain. Indeed, the dynamic of the Jewish state in the making became itself the predominant challenge. The 1949 armistice agreements put an end to armed hostilities but at most they amounted to a declaration of unfinished business.

The significance of the 1967 war was similarly misunderstood. It resulted in the creation of a new entity, the occupied territories, and gave birth to a novel Arab demand, the removal of the results of the aggression. Since then, Israel, which in 1948 managed to unburden itself of the larger part of its indigenous population, found itself in control of coveted territories, but with a large and rapidly growing native Arab population, negating its claims to Jewishness. This has been called a state of exception. There is constant recall of a virtual Israel that conjures up images of Israel within its 1967 borders. Not, it needs to be stressed, within the 1947 UN partition borders. And then there is the really existing Israel in control of the whole of British mandated Palestine and a portion of Syrian territory in the Golan Heights, a temporary detour and by no means representing a state of normality yet, at the same time, accepted as part of a still ongoing process and the fulfillment of the state imperative. The survival of the state has been linked to its willing abandonment or rectification of these borders, while maintaining in the main the demographic and geographic transformations it has affected in 41 years of uninterrupted repression, settlement and regional military dominance.

Sixty years on, the dominant regional and international political actors have arrived at a consensus--now that Israeli political culture appears to have opted for a two-state solution--that partition is the sole way forward. It remains however to negotiate the terms of this new arrangement, taking into consideration that the Israeli mainstream arrived at this way station out of fear of demographic attrition and the onslaught of contemporary notions of citizenship that threaten the ethnic foundations of the state. The Peel Commission in July 1937 published a report that affords us a glimpse of what this portends. It is encapsulated in the conclusion that "partition offers a chance of ultimate peace. No other plan does." The authors of the report offer two arguments: One, that neither Arab nor Jew want to continue to live together. Two, that the situation can only be perpetuated through the use of violence, either by an outside power or through the assumption of political and military control by one side or the other, and that there is no political system of self-government which could ensure justice to both sides.

Of course the Peel Report was trying to resolve a British imperial problem. It was already clear that Britain was no longer able to maintain its control of Palestine at the increasing cost Arab and Jewish intransigence was extracting from it. There was trouble ahead and much closer to home. Britain wanted out. Unable to satisfy either Arab or Jewish claimants, and absolving itself of any responsibility for the creation of the impossible situation it was now pleading to abstain itself from, Britain rejected handing over either Arabs to Jewish rule or Jews to Arab rule and offered separation as what it thought was the least unjust proposal. Only an ongoing regime of repression can maintain a situation of peace, though this will not be able to overcome the incompatibility of nationalist aspirations. The empire was now sheltering behind the nationalist imperative to plead the case for partition, dispossession and statehood.

In 1937 all sides rejected partition. And when it did come about ten years later, it bore no resemblance to the vision conceived in the Peel Report. Resort to military force led to an outcome favorable to the stronger party, but the framework was no longer UN-sanctioned. The temporary borders of the only newly established state were the outcome of the balance of forces between Israel and the neighboring Arab states, and the new state itself was shaped internally as a result of the outcome of the struggle to subdue and exclude the native Arab inhabitants of the country. The one-state solution, which was the actual outcome of 1948, did not resolve the internal Arab Palestinian-Jewish Israeli conflict. June 1967 represented a continuation of the dynamics of state formation. The Jewish state-in-the-making was taking shape, but under new conditions: This time, sharing the same geographic and urban space as the native inhabitants, leaving the heroic age behind, and apprenticing all Israelis in the profession of colonial masters.

The world Palestinians and Israelis inhabit today bears little resemblance to that of 1967. Partition, which lasted a mere 19 years, has been overcome. Contrary to the fears of the Peel Commission's authors, a political system of self-government has been found, or is in the process of being established. It represents an innovation in that it is part and parcel of the design of overall Israeli hegemony, military, economic and political. Arabs and Jews in the southern part of Bilad al-Sham have been living in one state for the last 40 years. Attempts to turn back the wheel seem doomed to failure.

Events overcame the British Empire's attempts to maintain its hold in Palestine. Partition was its retreat position. But Palestine was a tiny and distant asset, expendable in the service of the larger interests of the British Empire. Israel, a colonial warrior state assuming the role of regional power in an environment it deems dangerous and hostile, has transformed the region, and in doing so has transformed itself as well. While pursuing the path of ethnic cleansing, when and where it is possible, it cannot turn back whatever the cost. The only salvation for Israelis and Palestinians is for new forms of struggle that are based not on historical nostalgia or worn-out recipes, but on the realization that peace and a necessary modicum of justice can only come about on the basis of a shared homeland. The longer this notion takes to take hold, the costlier it is going to be. Partition was not a solution then and cannot be one now.

Musa Budeiri teaches political science at Birzeit University

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