Uri
Avnery
October
4, 2014.
IF I
could choose between the two rhetorical gladiators, I would rather have Mahmoud
Abbas representing Israel
and Netanyahu representing the other side.
Abbas
stood almost motionless and read his speech (in Arabic) with quiet dignity. No
gimmicks.
Netanyahu
used all the tricks taught in a beginners course in public speaking. He rotated
his head regularly from left to right and back, stretched out his arms, raised
and lowered his voice convincingly. At one point he produced the required
visual surprise. Last time it was a childish drawing of an imagined Iranian
atom bomb, this time it was a photo of Palestinian children in Gaza playing next to a
rocket launcher.
(Netanyahu
was carrying with him a stock of photos to exhibit – ISIS
beheadings and such – rather like a salesman carrying samples.)
Everything
a bit too slick, too smooth, too "sincere". Like the furniture
marketeer he once was.
Both
speeches were delivered to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Abbas
spoke two weeks ago, Netanyahu this week. Because of the Jewish holidays, he
came late – rather like the person who arrives at the party after all the main
guests have already left.
The hall
was half empty, the sparse audience consisted of junior diplomats sent to
demonstrate the presence of their government. They were obviously bored stiff.
The
applause was provided by the bloated Israeli delegation in the hall and the
Zionist dignitaries and indignitaries packed into the galleries, led by
casino-mogul Sheldon Adelson. (After the speech, Adelson took Netanyahu to an
expensive non-kosher restaurant. The police cleared
the streets on the way. But Adelson publicly criticized the speech as too
moderate.)
Not that
it matters. One does not speechify in the General Assembly in order to convince
its members. One speaks there for the home audience. Netanyahu did, and so did
Abbas.
THE
SPEECH of Abbas was a contradiction between form and content: a very moderate
speech clad in very extreme language.
It was
clearly addressed to the Palestinian people, who are still boiling with anger
over the killing and destruction of the Gaza
war. This led Abbas to use very strong language – so strong as to defeat its
main purpose of promoting peace. He used the word "genocide" – not
once, but three times. That was a bonanza for the Israeli propaganda machine,
and it immediately became known as the "Genocide Speech".
During
the Gaza war, more than 2000 Palestinians were killed, mostly civilians, many
of them children, almost all by bombardment from land, air and sea. That was
brutal, even atrocious, but it was not genocide. Genocide is a matter of
hundreds of thousands, millions, Auschwitz, the Armenians, Rwanda, Cambodia.
Also,
Abbas' speech was totally one-sided. No mention of Hamas, rockets, offensive
tunnels. The war was solely an Israeli affair: they started, they killed, they
genocided. All good for a leader who
needs to defend himself against the accusation of being too soft. But spoiling
a good case.
The
speech itself, shorn of the strong language, was quite moderate, as moderate as
it could be. Its crux was a peace program identical with the terms Palestinians
have proposed from the start of Yasser Arafat's peace policy, as well as with
the Arab Peace Initiative.
It stuck
to the Two State
Solution: a State of Palestine with East
Jerusalem as its capital "alongside the State of Israel", the 1967 borders, an
"agreed-upon solution to the plight of the Palestinian refugees"
(meaning: agreed upon with Israel,
meaning: essentially no return). It also mentioned the Arab Peace Initiative.
No Palestinian leader could possibly demand less.
It also
demanded a "specific time frame" to prevent the charade of endless
"negotiations".
For this
he was attacked by Netanyahu as the incarnation of all evil, the partner of
Hamas, which is the equivalent of ISIS, which is the heir of Adolf Hitler,
whose latter-day reincarnation is Iran.
I HAVE
KNOWN Mahmoud Abbas for 32 years. He was not present at my first meeting with
Yasser Arafat in besieged Beirut, but when I met
Arafat in Tunis,
in January 1983, he was there. As chief of the Israel
desk of the PLO headquarters, he was present at all my meetings with Arafat in Tunis. Since the return
of the PLO to Palestine,
I have seen Abbas several times.
He was
born in 1935 in
Safed, where my late wife Rachel also grew up. They used to ruminate about
their childhood there, trying to work out if Abbas was ever treated by Rachel's
father, a pediatrician.
There was
a striking difference between the personalities of Arafat and Abbas. Arafat was flamboyant, extrovert and
outgoing, Abbas is withdrawn and introvert. Arafat made decisions with
lightning speed, Abbas is deliberate and cautious. Arafat was warm in human
relations, fond of gestures, always preferring the human touch (literally).
Abbas is cool and impersonal. Arafat inspired love, Abbas inspires respect.
But
politically there is almost no difference. Arafat was not as extreme as he
seemed, Abbas is not as moderate as he looks. Their terms for peace are
identical. They are the minimum terms any Palestinian leader – indeed any Arab
leader – could possibly agree to.
There can
be months of negotiations about the details – the exact location of the
borders, the exchanges of territories, the symbolic number of refugees allowed
to return, security arrangements, the release of the prisoners, water and such.
But the
basic Palestinian demands are unshakable. Take them or leave them.
Netanyahu
says: leave them.
IF YOU
leave them, what remains?
The
status quo, of course. The classic Zionist attitude: There is no Palestinian
people. There will be no Palestinian state. God, whether He exists or not, promised us the whole country (including Jordan).
But in
today's world, one cannot say such things openly. One must find a verbal
gimmick to evade the issue.
At the
end of the recent Gaza
war, Netanyahu promised a "new political horizon". Critics were quick
to point out that the horizon is something that recedes as you approach it. Never
mind.
So what
is the new horizon? Netanyahu and his
advisors racked their brains and came up with the "regional
solution".
The
"regional solution" is a new fashion, which started to spread a few
months ago. One of its proponents is Dedi
Zuker, one of the founders of Peace Now and a former Meretz member of the
Knesset. As he explained it in Haaretz: The Israeli-Palestinian peace effort is
dead. We must turn to a different strategy: the "regional solution".
Instead of dealing with the Palestinians, we must negotiate with the entire
Arab world and make peace with its leaders.
Good
morning. Dedi. When my friends and I put forward the Two-State Solution in
early 1949, we advocated the immediate setting up of a Palestinian state
coupled with the creation of a Semitic Union, to include Israel, Palestine and
all Arab states, and perhaps Turkey and Iran, too. We have repeated this
endlessly. When the (then) Saudi Crown Prince produced the Arab Peace
Initiative, we called for its immediate acceptance.
There is
no contradiction at all between an Israeli-Palestinian solution and an
Israeli-pan-Arab solution. They are one and the same. The Arab League will not
make peace without the consent of the Palestinian leadership, and no
Palestinian leadership will make peace without the backing of the Arab League.
(I pointed this out in an article in Haaretz on the day of Netanyahu's speech.)
Yet some
time ago, this "new" idea sprang up in Israel, an association was formed,
money was spent to propagate it. Well meaning Leftists joined. Not being born
yesterday, I wondered.
Now comes
Netanyahu in the General Assembly and proposes exactly the same. Hallelujah!
There is a solution! The "regional" one. No need to talk with the
wicked Palestinians anymore. We can talk with the "moderate" Arab
leaders.
Netanyahu
could not be expected to touch on the details. What terms has he in mind? What
solution for Palestine?
Great men cannot be bothered with such details.
The whole
thing is, of course, ridiculous. Even now, when several Arab states are joining
the American coalition against ISIS, not one of them wants to be seen in the
company of Israel.
The US has asked Israel
discreetly and politely to please keep out of it.
NETANYAHU
IS always quick to exploit changing circumstances to promote his unchanging
attitude.
The
latest hot issue is ISIS (or the Islamic
State, as it prefers to be called now). The world is appalled by its
atrocities. Everyone condemns it.
So
Netanyahu connects all his enemies with ISIS.
Abbas, Hamas, Iran – they
are all ISIS.
In logic
classes one learns about the Inuit (Eskimo) who comes to town and for the first
time sees glass. He takes it in his mouth and starts to chew. His logic: Ice is
transparent. Glass is transparent. Ice can be chewed. So glass can also be
chewed.
By the
same logic: ISIS
is Islamist. ISIS strives for a world-wide
Caliphate. Hamas is Islamist. So Hamas wants a world-wide Caliphate.
They all
want to dominate the world. Like the "Elders of Zion".
Netanyahu
counts on the fact that most people do not know what he is talking about. By
the same logic, France
belongs to ISIS. Fact: the French revolution
chopped off heads. ISIS chops off heads. Some
time ago, the British chopped off the head of their king. All ISIS.
In the
real world, there is no similarity at all between Hamas and ISIS, except their
professed adherence to Islam. ISIS disclaims all national borders, it wants an
Islamic world-state. Hamas is fiercely nationalist. It wants a State of Palestine. Nowadays it
even talks about the borders of 1967.
There
cannot be any similarity between ISIS and Iran. They stand on opposite sides
of the historic divide: ISIS is Sunni,
Iran is Shiite.
ISIS wants to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, and possibly chop off his head, too,
while Iran
is Assad's main supporter.
ALL THESE
facts are well-known to anyone interested in world politics. They are certainly
known to the diplomats in the corridors of the UN. So why does Netanyahu repeat
these misrepresentations (to use a mild word) from the UN rostrum?
Because
he was not speaking to the diplomats. He was speaking to the most primitive
voters in Israel,
who are proud to have such a fluent English-speaking representative to address
the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment