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Petra Marquardt-Bigman is a German/Israel citizen with a Ph.D. in contemporary history with a focus on European public opinion relating to the Middle East, Islamic Terrorism, the US and Israel.
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By Petra Marquardt-Bigman
February 26, 2007
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Not that long ago, the pundits pronounced "realism" to be the watchword for politics in 2007 -- particularly for the Middle East. William Safire devoted a column to this "comeback word in foreign policy" and provided some samples of pertinent expressions, from the simple "We are all realists now" to the more sophisticated (and perhaps somewhat sinister) "Kissingerism is king." As Safire pointed out, we could expect that the association of "realism" with coldly calculated "Realpolitik" would soon result in attempts to qualify the concept's harshness by pairing realism with adjectives to make it democratic, progressive, prudent, or even idealistic and ethical.
However, it seems that we are currently witnessing attempts to get back to basics: there is a growing chorus of voices that advocate forgetting what might be desirable in the Middle East, and instead pursuing what is "realistic." With respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adherents of this approach tend to argue that the Quartet -- Europe, the US, Russia and the UN -- should give up the demands that Hamas must recognize Israel, accept previous agreements and renounce violence before direct aid to the Palestinian government will be resumed and before the group can be accepted as a negotiation partner.
The arguments advanced by those who want the Quartet to back down often focus on the demand that Hamas must recognize Israel. Many argue that Israel does not need the recognition of Hamas, others believe that there are statements that should be construed as implicit recognition of Israel by Hamas, and still others contend that Hamas is justified in withholding recognition until a Palestinian state is established and recognized by Israel.
Indeed, Israel's insistence on being recognized by Hamas is often seen as a manipulative demand designed to sabotage the possibility of meaningful negotiations, and it is a measure of the deterioration of Israel's position that it is increasingly Israel that is criticized for insisting on recognition by Hamas, while Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel is gaining legitimacy as an acceptable opening position for negotiations. Moreover, it is Israel that is increasingly blamed for making an issue of its right to exist, and it is somehow regarded as irrelevant that the Jewish state is the only state in the world whose right to exist is routinely questioned by Islamists -- and their not necessarily Muslim supporters -- all over the world. And while denying or questioning Israel's right to exist has become acceptable even in the mainstream media and is becoming a requirement in some academic circles in order to be counted among the "progressive" thinkers, it is supposedly the "Jewish lobby" that keeps the issue in the headlines.
However, the "Jewish lobby" certainly had nothing to do with an article that recently appeared both in Counterpunch and, with minor revisions, in the Christian Science Monitor. In Counterpunch, the article appeared under the title: "A Moral Judgment is Called For: On Israel's 'Right to Exist'"; in the Christian Science Monitor, the title was "What 'Israel's right to exist' means to Palestinians" -- and to avoid any doubt, the subtitle explained: "Recognition would imply acceptance that they deserve to be treated as subhumans." The author, John V. Whitbeck, was introduced as "an international lawyer [...who] has advised Palestinian officials in negotiations with Israel." So here is your peek at the advice Palestinian officials are getting:
"JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA - Since the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel and much of the West have asserted that the principal obstacle to any progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace is the refusal of Hamas to 'recognize Israel,' or to 'recognize Israel's existence,' or to 'recognize Israel's right to exist.' [...] 'Recognizing Israel's right to exist,' the actual demand being made of Hamas and Palestinians [...] does not address diplomatic formalities or a simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral judgment. There is an enormous difference between 'recognizing Israel's existence' and 'recognizing Israel's right to exist.' From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba -- the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 -- is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was 'right' for the Nakba to have happened would be something else entirely."
Whitbeck goes on to elaborate: "To demand that Palestinians recognize 'Israel's right to exist' is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians' acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them."
It is quite interesting to observe what Whitbeck is doing here: for an "international lawyer" to argue in such terms as "subhumans" may seem beyond the pale, but in the world with which Whitbeck identifies, this is of course a common concept used to refer to Jews, and Whitbeck simply turns it around to insinuate that this is how Jews view and treat Palestinians. From there it follows naturally that the Nakba can be compared to the Holocaust, and, equally naturally, it follows that the perpetrators of the Nakba must be comparable to the Nazis. All that's left to do is adding a title like "A Moral Judgment is Called For: On Israel's 'Right to Exist'" ...
In trying to establish "that the demand that Hamas recognize 'Israel's right to exist' is unreasonable, immoral, and impossible to meet," Whitbeck argues that this demand violates the "Palestinians' deeply felt need to cling to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings. That this need is deeply felt is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian population that approves of Hamas' refusal to bow to this demand substantially exceeds the percentage that voted for Hamas in January 2006."
The point that Whitbeck quite successfully obfuscates with all this heartbreaking pleading is why this demand was made in the first place: it is not that one sunny summer day Israel just invented that demand to humiliate the poor Palestinians, it is that the poor Palestinians put into power a party whose charter leaves no doubt that Palestinians will never ever give up their claim to all of historic Palestine and that there "is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad."
However, from the debate in the media and in the blogsphere one would have to conclude that realism 2007 requires that Israel will nonchalantly agree not to take the Hamas charter serious, nor to take repeated statements of Hamas representatives reaffirming the charter serious; at the same time, realism 2007 apparently requires that Israel will accept a Hamas government as a serious partner for negotiations that will result in a serious peace agreement -- naturally without sabotaging the process with unrealistic demands like a recognition of Israel's right to exist. Indeed, there are some indications that realism 2007 may even come to mean that Israel should be willing to bargain for its right to exist at the negotiation table.
Views expressed by the author do not
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