THE END OF PRE-HISTORY

Peace Rally Trafalgar Square Saturday October 13,2001
By Afif SAFIEH

    We are the coalition: the coalition for peace and justice. We are gathered here today because of our firm belief that the best retaliation is justice. Our firm belief that in our constantly shrinking world, the highest standards should be required and applicable to all. Our firm belief that there is only one mankind, and not different kinds of women and men. Our firm belief in a necessary, respectful and cross-fertilising dialogue of cultures, civilisations and religions. Our firm belief that the Palestinian people are not, definitely not, children of a lesser God.

    Today, in the USA, there are three schools of thought. The first is the 'minimalist school' that is against the elastic extension of the designated targets of this campaign. The second is the 'maximalist school' that advocates expanding the theatre of operations to engulf more countries in a devastating war with unpredictable repercussions. And a third school of thought, represented by Cardinal Egan of New York, who lucidly and courageously invited his compatriots, in the tragic days that followed the horror of September 11th, to initiate a soul- searching exercise on the role of America in the world.

    Unsurprisingly, the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington operates as the hawk of the hawks. That lobby has grown accustomed to use one muscle too many and to go one pressure too far. I happen to have lived in the USA in the mid-80s when the imminent downfall of the Soviet Union was being predicted in academic and political circles. While, in the third world and within the left, some were worried by the implications of the loss of ' a friend and ally', the pro-Israeli lobby in Washington was even more worried by the possible repercussions of the loss of the... 'Enemy.' Magazines like 'commentary' and 'The New Republic' were 'studying' how the demise of the Soviet Union might affect the 'raison d'être' and the strategic function and utility of Israel in Western strategies. It is in those magazines that an alternative global enemy was ideologically fabricated: Islam and the Muslim world in confrontation with the 'Judeo-Christian' world. A frightening scenario that could become self-fulfilling.

    Two weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon, in between two massive bombings of Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps, plaintively declared that Israel was the Checkoslovakia of 1938, abandoned by the policy of appeasement. General Sharon will be well advised to read Jewish historian Isaac Deutscher, who wrote, already in 1967, that Israel was rather the 'Prussia of the Middle East.' 34 years later, Israel still occupies territories of three neighbouring countries: Lebanon, Syria and Palestine and, in the most ferocious manner, tries to crush our cry for freedom out of captivity and bondage.

      We support the third school of thought, soul-searching. Soul-searching in Israel where they should finally become aware of the human cost paid by the Palestinian people- individually and collectively- for the creation of the State of Israel. Israel was supposed to be the answer to the Jewish Question. As a result we are now the question - the Question of Palestine, yearly on the UN agenda since 1949- awaiting a convenient and equitable answer.

    The issue of Israeli democracy is constantly used as an argument to improve Israel's public image abroad. I believe that the fact that Israel is a democracy for its Jewish component is not an extenuating factor but an aggravating one. There is nothing more morally disturbing than a democratic oppression supported by the informed consent of the voter and the citizen. They ought to remember what Rabbi Abraham Heschel stated during the Vietnam War: 'in a democracy, if a few are guilty, all are responsible'. 

    So far Israeli society has been insensitive to the ordeal they inflicted: the geography occupied, the demography dispossessed and dispersed on the periphery of our ancestral homeland. We were victims of four successive denials: the denial of our mere existence, then the denial of our rights followed by the denial of our sufferings coupled with the denial of their responsibility for our suffering. There constantly were attempts to banalise and trivialise the tragedy that befell us.

    I have never compared the Palestinian Naqba of 1948 to the Holocaust. My conviction has always been that there is no need for historical analogies and comparative martyrology. No one people have a monopoly on human suffering and every ethnic tragedy stands on its own. If I were a Jew or a Gypsy, Nazi barbarity would be the most atrocious event in History. If I were a Black African, it would be slavery and apartheid. If I were a Native American, it would be the discovery of the New World by European explorers and settlers that resulted in near-total extermination. If I were an Armenian, it would be the Ottoman massacres. If I were a Palestinian, it would be the Naqba/Catastrophe of 1948. Humanity should consider all the above morally repugnant and politically unacceptable.

    I do not consider it advisable to debate hierarchies of suffering. I do not know how to quantify pain or how to measure suffering but I do know that we are not children of a lesser God.

    Dear friends, I believe that a Palestinian State is not only a right for the Palestinian people. It is the ethical duty, the moral obligation of the Israeli and Jewish communities.

    In Washington, a serious debate has started on whether Israel is a strategic asset or a strategic burden and a liability. The U.S.A. is committed to Israel's existence, a message we, in the Arab world, have understood since decades. Does it also need to be perceived as endorsing Israel's expansionist inclinations and its territorial appetite? Isn't this perception of constant alignment on the Israeli policy that has antagonised Arab public opinion from Morocco to Mascat and Muslim public opinion from Nigeria to Malaysia?

    American society is a nation of nations. In today's monopolar international system, nonalignment in regional conflicts should be what characterises American foreign policy, because alignment on the preferences of one belligerent actor results not only in antagonising other regional players but also in alienating one component of its own domestic American national fabric. For over half a century it has not been easy to be an Arab American seeing that your country of adoption was unfriendly to your countries of origin.

    In his memoirs 'Present at the Creation', former American Secretary of State Dean Acheson writes that the UN Charter was a condensed version of American political philosophy. All I can hope for is that America will reconcile tomorrow its power with its principles.

     Both, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, have recently pronounced the 'P' word: Palestine, that General Sharon would like to purge and censor out of the vocabulary of western leaders. Tony Blair was very enthusiastically applauded by the delegates of the Labour Party Conference when he arrived to 'justice to the Palestinians, equal partners of Israel' proving again that we are no more marginal but mainstream.

    It is now almost 10 years to the day since the peace process was triggered in Madrid in October 1991. In the peace process we were interested in peace. The other side seemed more interested in the process. This is why, 10 years on, instead of durable peace, we have a ... permanent peace process made of talks about talks about talks, negotiating pre-negotiations and pre-negotiating negotiations.

    Peace in the Middle East- justice for the Palestinian people, -implementation of all relevant UN resolutions is the unfinished business of international diplomacy. The unfinished business left over by the Republican administration of Bush senior and two Democratic administrations of Bill Clinton. It is a noble and worthy cause for a decisive bipartisan endeavour. I personally believe that a territory that was occupied in 6 days can also be evacuated in 6 days so that some can, at last, rest on the 7th and we, the Palestinian people, can start the fascinating journey of state building, reconstruction and economic take off. We have so much suffered from the notion of Palestine 'the Promised Land' that we intend simply to turn it into 'the promising land.'

    Francis Fukuyama wrote brilliantly and very controversially about 'the end of History.' We, in Palestine, we have been blessed or burdened by several millennia of history, theology and mythology. The end of occupation will be for us the end of pre-history and the beginning of a new era of constructive contributions in the concert of nations.