Palestine- A South African Answer, not an Irish One

I've avoided writing about the Israel/Gaza/Hamas situation till now.

The reasons why are numerous.
Firstly, I think my opinions on the question of who has moral right on their side are generally well known and why.
But the more I think about it, the more I realise that I'm not sure it matters. Answering this question in terms of some kind of ethnic/historical story of who's right and who's wrong doesn't help.

I was initially going to write a post outlining yet again the history of the whole thing and the points at issue, but really, none of that helps, because it's the wrong question anyway. It's not a useful question and it doesn't have a useful answer.
But perhaps, to demonstrate that, it might actually be useful to pursue the question according to traditional thinking to demonstrate why the question and the way we view it is not helpful.

Honest truth? The British government had absolutely no right to participate in the Zionist experiment in 1917. By any rational standard, it was racism. It was deliberate expropriation of a non-European people to provide a 'homeland' for a culturally European people who in many ways looked like any other European people, because the history of that people within European society had been hard. It was a half-baked idea and it had no moral justification. A minority within an existing state has a right to self determination. A geographically dispersed minority has no right to ask for land in someone else's country to make it their home and then gain self-determination in it. The vast majority of Israelis are second or third generation colonists. Israel is a colony.

Some people point out that Hamas are unreasonable because their ultimate aim is the total removal of Israel from the map. All of it.
Well- yes, because actually Palestine is- all of Israel. Not just the West Bank. There is one thing Israel and Palestine have in common. They are the same place. The Greater Israel of the Zionist, is exactly the same as the Palestine that existed before 1947. It's the same place. It's not the same type of problem as the Northern Ireland problem, because ultimately, it's not that the two sides see the same territory as actually being part of a different country, it's that to each side the other side's country is an imaginary one.

And the answer to the question 'Who's country has more right to be considered real', if you have to choose and only one can exist, the answer is Palestine.

But this doesn't help us very much. Which of course, is the problem. I would imagine a lot of people catch their breath at such a stark statement, because then what happens to the Israeli population?

Well- aren't we missing the point here?

It's a South Africa type problem. And the answer isn't partition. When apartheid collapsed, some extreme Afrikaaners wanted to be able to set up an all white homeland, a kind of inversion of the old bantustans, where they could have a whites only state. Quite rightly, the idea was quashed.

Partition doesn't work. Didn't work in Ireland, doesn't really work in India. It's a short term fix that staunches the bleeding a while from long term problems.

Think about. Palestine and Israel, in the extreme versions on either side, are the same place. And yes, the Zionist state is an abomination. In a sense, it should be dismantled. Note I say IN A SENSE.
The point is, what's actually being argued over?



If it's the same land, what is the difference between the Zionist Israel and the Arab Palestine?

Now do you get the point? The history doesn't matter as such. It's the difference between the presents being offered. The name difference reflects what is done ON the land. In Israel the forces of state, will be entirely in the hands of Jews and most Palestinians will be refugees living outside their homeland (about eighty percent of Jordanians are refugees, or descendants of refugees from Palestine). If the name of the state is Palestine, all the refugees come home, and the Jews get expropriated. But where do they go? Doesn't matter much where their grandparents came from. That's hardly the fault of the living.

Surely the real problem is this. Each side wants race or religion to determine who is top dog. Each side believes that the state that exists in that area should be one where a particular race or religion is in control and will attempt to maintain racial or religious superiority.

As I say, the answer long term has to be a South Africa answer. If all the Palestinian refugees returned, then the whole of Israel/Palestine would indeed be an Arab majority state. But if South Africa can make majoritarian democracy work, so can Israel. White South Africans- against the dire predictions- have got fully behind the new South Africa and blacks and whites are working together there, so it can be done.

Why can't we have a Palestine like that? If Israelis want to live in what they see as their homeland, then that should be ok. Most of them were born there, why should they leave? But why should the Palestinians? Why does the national identity of the state that exists between Syria and Egypt have to define itself as a 'Jewish state' or a 'Muslim state'. Was South Africa a 'White' country and has it now become 'Black'?
No, of course not.

So surely it's possible for a democratic country called Palestine to exist with a narrow Muslim majority living side by side with a peaceful Jewish minority, both living together in the land they see as home, a country practising freedom of religion and freedom of speech?
And the country wouldn't be either Arab OR Jewish.

So yes, the solution actually, is to give in to Hamas- in a way.

Say yes, Israel will be dismantled.
Say yes, all the Arab refugees must be allowed to return.
No state of Israel will exist anymore.

BUT. No Israeli people are to be displaced and free and fair elections must happen in the new Palestine.

You say it's impossible?
Who would ever thought the old National Party would finally disappear by MERGING into the African National Congress?
It's hard to imagine a South African cabinet without a black majority, because the majority of the people are black, but likewise, it's hard to imagine one without white members either.
And that's the Palestine that should exist.

The government of this uneasy new SECULAR Palestine would be a radical shock at first- A Hamas cabinet with Likud members, but one day it would be accepted as the norm. That the country had two main religions, Islam and Judaism, but both were Palestinians and both considered their land a holy one. And in time perhaps, Likud would merge into Hamas. And it would be normal for all cabinets to have Muslim and Jewish members.

So actually, the point is this.

To the Israelis- Are you prepared to allow every refugee to come back to their homeland and then allow free and fair elections across the whole of the territory, an election in which more Arabs will be voting than Jews? And allow the democratic majority to define the name of that unit?

To the Palestinians- are you prepared to allow your definition of the identity of Palestinian- once your Palestine includes the whole of Israel, which it would do if the Israelis agreed to the above- to include a minority population almost as great as the majority population, who descend from colonists, practice a different religion, but see this as their homeland too? Can you unite together out of love for the same country? Can you make your definition of Palestine into one that isn't dependent on ethnicity and religion?
Will you show the majority of ordinary Jewish people that they have nothing to fear from the dismantling of the Zionist state?

Can you together forge between you a Palestinian national identity that isn't based on ethnicity or religion, where neither of you want to be the jack boot and the other the underdog in what is the same country?



Because until one side shows commitment to that concept, then neither side can claim the moral highground.

You both live there. The logical boundaries of the country are those that existed under the British Mandate. Live there- both of you- elect the government of that territory democratically, elect it using proportional representation, with everyone treated equally regardless of whether they think that the religion of Moses or the religion of Abraham is the purest. And then live with that government.

Not a Zionist state. Not a Muslim state.
A democratic, multicultural state. Where the main faiths are Islam and Judaism.

It's a sorry situation indeed when nobody actually WANTS this.

But people have to start wanting it.
The answer is a South African one, not an Irish one.