Transcript: Q&A
The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
Gideon Levy
Columnist, Haaretz
Yezid Sayigh
Senior Associate, Carnegie Middle East Center
Chair: Dr Claire Spencer
Head, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House
7 October 2014
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Question 1
Thank you, Mr Levy, for your talk. I appreciate especially you coming to London and doing a very non- British thing, which is generalizing about all Israelis. I am Israeli. I don’t think – I took personal offence at you calling us ignorant and unaware of international law. I think that is not true. There are different aspects to Israeli society when it comes to considering the Palestinian problem. But my question is, briefly: is there anything that the Palestinians themselves should or are recommended to do, you think, in order to improve the situation as it is right now? And if there is something like that, how do you think presenting such a one-sided picture, as you do, contributes to the discussion and to advancement in this matter?
Question 2
I think it was very depressing hearing you say about the lack of hope. I was in Gaza just this last week and certainly people there feel that total sense of a lack of hope. I’ve never seen people so lacking in it. I do feel though that that puts a responsibility on the international community, as I think you mentioned, Gideon. But I wonder what it is that we can actually do that will have the impact. I just wonder if you could comment a bit on whether economic measures are perhaps the way that we should be moving now.
Question 3
Gideon, you painted a picture of the psychology of Israelis that, as the previous questioner said, was an adverse picture. You were critical of the mass psychology. I wonder if Yezid could paint a picture of the Palestinian psychology as a counterpoint to Gideon’s picture of the Israelis.
Question 4
I was reading last month in Haaretz that your colleague, Amira Hass, was banned from the Palestinian university at Birzeit. I was wondering, how do you feel about that? Because I studied last year at Tel Aviv University and I can tell you that I really disagree with your assertions that Israelis are ignorant, because there is an academic discourse happening every single day, every single evening. There are Palestinians and Israelis living side by side and with international students at the dormitories. I see a real – Israel is the number-one start-up nation and I can see a real spark in there. I think your generalization really doesn’t do it justice.
Question 5
First of all, I want to thank Gideon Levy for illuminating, or obliterating or erasing completely any lingering doubts I personally had about the vital importance of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). I think if Israel needs a wakeup call, that’s the only way to do it. But just a question about that magnificent article you had, calling Israel a binational state. Intellectually I thought it was a real – it opened a whole new front here. There is already a two-state problem in the sense Israel faces the question of whether it 3 Q&A: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
becomes a democracy or it lives with a de facto apartheid state. So I am one of these people who still clings to the notion that a two-state solution is still possible and you, although clearly pessimistic – the fact that the binational state already exists and Israel faces such a shattering choice, is there not some hope in that? That it still is viable with some kind of effective regime of sanctions and boycott, which I know how idealistic that must sound, but it did sound that way regarding South Africa once upon a time.
Question 6
How long can the US disengagement last?
Question 7
I’m trying to bring together both conclusions. Gideon Levy said, if I’m right, that the Israelis are not really willing because there isn’t enough pain. You said that the Palestinians don’t yet know what their agenda is. What would happen if pressure on Israel would come now and the Palestinians actually don’t know what they want? What should the international community actually do?
Question 8
About the Palestinians, a couple of points. First of all, the question of dissolving the Palestinian Authority is actually I think really very important. It’s a very important threat to Israel, no doubt about it. I think what people mean by dissolving the Authority is dissolving those functions of the Authority which are enabling Israel and the international community to do what they do with the pretence that the Palestinians have their own quasi-government, they have their own representation, etc. The full idea is that the Palestinian Authority would be dissolved and the territories turned back to Israel, inviting Israel to be the sole authority without an intermediate layer, which is what the Palestinian Authority is providing us. So that’s the actual, isn’t it? That’s the idea. I think it’s a very worthwhile idea, it’s very important.
Second and very quickly, of course we cannot go on with this discussion without constantly taking into account the fact that Israel continues to colonize the land. It’s not that there are no – it’s a moving picture. Because of that, Israel’s actions may well determine the final outcome, without anybody scratching their heads to know what to do. The binational reality: Israel is one state already, and the more it colonizes, the more of a one state it becomes, an apartheid state. So that in itself will probably determine the whole outcome.
Question 9
Apart from cloning a few million of you in Israel, what do you think will really change the mind of the society to realize exactly what’s happening – for them, not only for the Palestinians? For Yezid: what’s 4 Q&A: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
wrong with the Palestinians? How come they live in comfort with such oppression? It’s really interesting. How come they are able to accept all that?
Question 10
My question is about what you said, Claire, at the very beginning, that if there was a unity government, would it convince the Israelis? I’m puzzled by that premise, that the Israelis are convincible by anything. I would have thought that this Israeli government is, like its people, very happy with the status quo. I wonder what Gideon says about that.
Gideon Levy
First of all, there was one thing that I would like very much to clarify, because it came in a few questions mainly from Israelis in the audience. How dare I generalize about the Israelis? How maybe I am wrong, they are not so bad as I described them. I would like to say about it: sure you can generalize, but there is something which is called the zeitgeist. There is something which is called the atmosphere. And the atmosphere in Israel, in my view, and I think I am an involved enough witness and documenter of what’s going on in Israel, and I think the atmosphere is of apathy, of ignorance, of dehumanizing the Palestinians – of a lack of something very basic which I think is the core maybe to everything: I truly believe that the big majority of Israelis never did think about the Palestinians as equal human beings. Never did they do it, almost none of them. If you scratch a little bit under the skin, leftists and right-wingers, you will finally find out that the basic attitude is not of real equality, not only in terms of political rights – which goes without saying – but in the most basic attitudes. And that’s the core, and this is becoming worse in the recent years.
Whoever thinks that Israeli society is so vivid and not blind and not apathetic, look at what happened in the last war. Look at the role of the media. Look at how the Israelis reacted. Look at this total support not only in the war but continuing it as much as possible. Look at the reaction to the crimes in this war. This is the real spirit of this society. Sure there are exceptions, remarkable exceptions, of groups, of activists, of all kinds of circles which are different. But the mainstream? Again, I’m always more worried by the mainstream rather than the right-wingers or the extreme right-wingers or the settlers. The mainstream of Israeli society is living in total denial, and I stand for it. So this came throughout too many questions, so I had to say this.
I say also – I didn’t say that Israel should pay, that pain will be the solution. I think awareness, taking responsibility, knowledge and open eyes –
Question
But you said pain would bring the –
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Gideon Levy
Pain or payment, unfortunately, yes. But the goal is not to make the Israelis pain, be painful – the goal is to wake them up. But I go through now all the other questions quickly.
If I draw a one-sided picture, what contribution does it bring? You see, I don’t know if I’m drawing one- sided. In your one-sided eyes, my picture that I portray is one-sided. I portray what I see, what I feel, what I believe in. I don’t think it’s one-sided or two-sided, it’s the truth as I see it after documenting for 30 years at least the occupation, after travelling at least once a week for 30 years to the Occupied Territories, after living in Israel, in Tel Aviv, writing and trying to struggle. I don’t know. I don’t think I have much contribution – on the contrary, you see the outcome. The outcome is that Israel is turning exactly to the opposite direction. So what contribution?
Question
So why are you doing it?
Gideon Levy
That’s a good question. I guess I should ask it. I do it because I believe in what I do. I do it because I’m a journalist who decided that this will be my field. I think that at least for the archives, at least so that one day a little less Israelis will have the benefit to say, oh, we didn’t know that all this happened, we didn’t know. So at least a few of them will have to admit that they saw it in Haaretz and it did happen, and this excuse that we didn’t know that all this happened will not stand for them. And I do it because I don’t know to do anything else, or I’m incapable of doing anything else. By the way, I will continue to do so. Those who care about the image of Israel and the damage that my articles create to the image of Israel – one hour in Gaza created more damage to Israel than all my articles together. So anyone who cares about the image of Israel, stop this and not me.
I am not a great believer of economic steps as a solution. Economic steps are needed, the economy is vital, but finally we are dealing with a political dispute. Those who speak about economical peace, by the way – Benjamin Netanyahu believes in economical peace. Those are those who break away from the real issues and have no guts or no understanding to confront the real issues. We have had already very prosperous years in the West Bank; the years of Oslo were quite well. The first 20 years of the occupation were quite well for the Palestinians in economic terms, and it didn’t solve anything. So anyone who believes that by bribery, by creating more jobs and letting more factories produce more production in the West Bank, the problem will be solved – no, because it is a national, political problem.
About what happened to Amira in Birzeit University, I think that Amira by herself wrote what she felt about it. I feel the same. In many ways, I understand it; in many ways, I don’t understand it. I can very easily understand the sentiment of Palestinian students who don’t want to see an Israeli in their university and who are not ready to make this separation between good Israelis and bad Israelis. All the Israelis carry responsibility for the occupation, especially because Israel is a democracy. So I can understand this sentiment. On the other hand, it’s a very un-clever and unfair sentiment toward people like Amira who dedicate their lives to fighting against those things, who lived in Palestine now over 10 6 Q&A: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
years already, first in Gaza and now in Ramallah. But to tell you that I’m shocked – I’m not shocked by this. This just shows how far did we go that even Amira Hass is not acceptable anymore by certain Palestinian circles. It’s getting worse and worse.
One state, two state – this is an issue for another lecture and time is running out, so I will just say really, in a very superficial way, all my life I supported a two-state solution. I think this train left already the station. I don’t see any Israeli politician evacuating over half a million settlers from their places. Without evacuating over half a million settlers, there is no two-state solution. Without evacuating all the settlements until the last one, there is no real, viable Palestinian state. I’ll be so happy to be wrong but I don’t see this happening anymore.
What I can see is that using the two-state solution is another excuse to waste more time. Let’s discuss it. Most of the Israelis, as you said, Claire, polls show they are for the two-state solution. Not now, obviously, and not here, maybe somewhere else, but as a principle or idea, it’s a wonderful idea. Even Netanyahu supported it. Why not? Why not support it? Wonderful, let’s support it. We are all for this. But as a real, practical solution, I lost hope. Again, this would have been the best solution. The question is if it’s still implementable, if it’s still real to believe in it, or are we prisoners of those ideas, just to continue and to show that we are doing something. Because the one-state solution in Israel is totally unacceptable. But is there any other alternative left? I don’t know about a third way, either two-state or one-state.
I’m less frightened of the one-state solution than most of the Israelis. But really, this is a whole topic. As I wrote it, I was so kindly by you quoted here, in my last article, I think that all this discussion is yesterday’s discussion because Israel is a one-state country for 47 years now. You can claim that it’s not a democracy, but you can’t claim anymore that it is temporary. It is very simple. It is two peoples who live under one rule, one control, one regime, one government, because finally Jerusalem decides for the Jews in Palestine and for the Palestinians in Palestine. The fact that one regime is a totalitarian, brutal regime and the other one is a democratic regime, in the same piece of land, does not make it as two separate entities. Finally, it is one state, for many years.
I don’t know about the United States. This is another enigma for me. How long will it last? Why is this the American policy? How come the United States does not change its policy? Far beyond my understanding. I can’t believe it. Above all, after Barack Obama is part of it, and not only part of it but in many ways he became much worse than George Bush. This is far beyond my understanding. When I see Susan Rice sitting in the General Assembly and they are discussing Palestinian questions, and she is either putting veto or condemning Abbas for his speech, I really ask myself, what goes through the mind of those people who know something about oppression, who know something about human rights, who know something about minorities, who know something about history and who know something about the Palestinians? Beyond my explanation, especially when it starts to be against the American interest, this automatic support to Israel, this blind, automatic support.
I heard the State Department, what did they have to say about the Swedish step? Did you hear their reaction? ‘It is too early’. After 47 years, it is too early? We have to wait a little bit, really? Too early.
You rightly asked: if pain is the answer and the Palestinians don’t know what they want – I think it’s first of all about implementing the international law above all. Then what the Palestinians want or don’t want, what Israel wants or doesn’t want – there are some things which are wrong and must be corrected unconditionally, if Palestinians or Israelis want it or don’t want it. We are dealing here with an ongoing crime which must be corrected. Many times I say Israelis don’t even have the right to put conditions for 7 Q&A: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
putting an end to the occupation. You know if I steal your car, I’m not in a position to put conditions for returning it to you. Let’s speak about the conditions after I return it to you. It’s not less than this.
What will change the Israelis’ opinion? If I know it, I would do something about it. But as I tried to explain in my opening remarks, it will not happen by itself. For many years I believed that a new leadership might do something but we saw that, first of all, also promising leaderships didn’t take us anywhere. Besides, I don’t see any alternative leadership in Israel. I don’t expect that if Labor or any one of the so-called Israeli centre-left parties will take over, there will be a meaningful change. By all means, not. The only difference will be that we’ll get another waste of time because again Israel will talk with a nicer face than Netanyahu’s face and there will be more photo opportunities with Abbas, and the world will again applaud those heroic efforts of Israel to bring peace. But except for this, nothing will change, because this is the core: Israel has no intention to put an end to the occupation. No intention. Neither Likud nor Labor nor Lapid nor anyone. None of them wants or has any idea, never thought to put an end to occupation. Never was there an Israeli politician who really sought seriously to put an end to the occupation, and I include in my view Rabin and Nobel Prize winner Shimon Peres obviously, above all. For a second, not.
So I don’t know how to change it. Sure, I don’t know. I think this will be enough.
Claire Spencer
Thank you very much. I think we’ve got the message. Yezid, no hurry. I would recommend to the organizers of this, by the way, an hour and a half on this subject, minimum. We can never do this in an hour. Thank you, everyone, for staying.
Yezid Sayigh
The gentleman asked me to paint a picture of Palestinians that’s sort of equivalent to the intra-Israeli debate has left, but I’ll still say something about it because I was struck by the way in which that debate was about how Gideon labels Israelis, and so it became a bit of an internal thing about image. Which is interesting but it didn’t tackle the substance, of course, of whether the people who are making these comments actually agreed with his fundamental analysis on the situation or not, which would be interesting.
I say that because I had an Israeli counterpart and colleague, an academic, who I saw on and off at various conferences. We’ve read each other’s work. Most of his is on Arab and Palestinian politics. Almost everything I’ve written since 1983 on Palestine, Palestinian politics, has been focused on Palestinians and mainly critical of this and that: PLO politics, the armed struggle. So I got rather fed up finally when after an article I wrote in 2007, among other things, touched on what the Americans – not the Israelis but the Americans – had done to precipitate the Fatah-Hamas clash since 2007 and the Hamas takeover of Gaza, he wrote me an email saying: but you didn’t say anything about the Palestinians, don’t you think they bear part of the blame? I thought: I’ve written about almost nothing except about what the Palestinians have got wrong and the faults in PLO politics, time after time. I wrote back – I just got fed up and I said: look, when I see you writing one article criticizing Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories, then maybe you’ve 8 Q&A: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
got some standing to ask me this question. But I’ve done nothing but criticize Palestinians so give me a break.
I’m sort of using this to say I guess I’m not painting a picture of the Palestinians and I’m not really too sure what was asked of me. I will say, by the way, I had a different kind of email from a Palestinian, rather elder gentleman, former friend of my father’s, who was upset because on TV during the Gaza conflict (or around the end, anyway) I was asked a question about whether I saw the peace process restarting as a result of the Gaza conflict and the ceasefire. I said no, and one reason why was that there was mutual distrust: Israelis distrusted Palestinians, regardless of what the rights and wrongs were, and Palestinians distrusted Israelis. He was upset that I was suggesting a moral symmetry, in his mind, that I’d somehow equated the occupation with whatever. All I was saying was that as an objective statement of fact, that whether they’re right or wrong, Israelis don’t trust the Palestinians and that’s one factor there, just as the Palestinians do on the other side.
I’m giving that as an example of how difficult it is, I think, to work one’s way through all this – which allows me to segue a little bit into some of the questions I was asked from the front row. First of all, I wasn’t saying that there are no Palestinian agendas or that the Palestinians don’t have an agenda. I think, on the contrary, I said very specifically that the principal parties are agreed fundamentally on a two-state solution. Most Palestinians are agreed on a two-state solution. They lack any idea of how they’re going to get there, how to translate this into something that can be put into practice anymore.
In that sense, what I fear is we end up in a situation of continuing colonization – this is exactly what I was saying earlier – where bits and pieces of Palestinian society are pulled in different ways and reintegrated into the Israeli control system. I wasn’t saying, incidentally, that Palestinians are comfortable and living comfortable lives – not at all. Just because I referred to the private sector doesn’t make all Palestinians comfortable. The unemployment levels overall, or among youth especially in the West Bank, are extremely high, and something like 20 percentage points higher in Gaza. Income levels per capita are where they were maybe 20 or more years ago. Just very simple indicators.
But I was talking about this situation of paralysis, stasis, the fact that Fatah doesn’t operate as a meaningful policy-making organization anymore. Hamas has this challenge it has to deal with, because it has moved towards a two-state solution but it wants to play the game, both domestically and externally. What I’m trying to say is these various dynamics and those that – I mean, if you were to reconstruct Gaza tomorrow, of course it’s going to happen on terms that don’t challenge overall Israeli control. At best we could hope for the Europeans and the Americans to provide some sort of security presence at an airport or a seaport – which won’t happen, of course – but at the land border crossings with Egypt, assuming Egypt even allows this anymore. That would allow Israel to feel secure about the movement of people and goods again.
But that will happen without a political dialogue about the bigger issues of fundamentally changing the dynamic and the relationship, and so at best what we’ll have is that Gaza gets some of the reconstruction it desperately needs and richly deserves, but it will be done yet again in a way that simply helps perpetuate the status quo – because, as Gideon again rightly mentioned in his responses there, the economic solution has been put forward time and time again, since 1993, in the same tedious way, with the same exact results, and then is reinvented again in 2000 and 2002, and 2005 with the Gaza disengagement, and then 2007 when all the money was focused on Salam Fayyad’s government in the West Bank and the Annapolis conference. It’s complete – what’s a polite word for this? Well, there isn’t one. 9 Q&A: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
Claire Spencer
I think we’ve understood.
Yezid Sayigh
Incidentally, I’ll just respond to the point about the PA dissolution. It’s powerful, but I think it still lacks substance. I suggested this, as one option the Palestinians need to think about, 12 years ago, in which the Palestinian Legislative Council (the elected parliament, in other words) would transform itself into the national body for civilian resistance, and would promote an agenda of national liberation through peaceful means, civil resistance to Israeli occupation. It was something that, in my view, was already on the cards in 2002, when I wrote about it.
However, all I’m trying to point out is that although this has a certain sort of appeal, in a somewhat rhetorical manner, I was trying to point out all the obstacles internally to this, on the Palestinian side, and why I suspect it won’t gather ground, it won’t gain traction – partly because the real discussion about just what that actually means has not been engaged in. I’ll take it seriously when people in Fatah or Hamas or the PA or the Communist Party or whoever it is actually start thinking about this in a systematic manner, working out just how to implement it, what to keep and what not to keep, what can be kept, etc.
I’ll end on – there was a question about the international community. I’m not sure I’m addressing it directly but I’ll use it anyway. Let’s consider one possible way of breaking the logjam, breaking the deadlock, the stasis – without war and without simply civil resistance, which sadly has reduced down to one or two locations in the West Bank where people go and resist the wall, and the rest of Palestinian society hopes that somehow this is going to change everything. That’s not going to happen.
But coming back to the diplomacy. When the Palestinians, time and again over the last two or so years, or three years, have gone to the UN, of course there were those who understood this was never going to change the world. But I think it was an interesting assay, an interesting attempt, in saying – I mean, going to the UN is hardly dangerously radical. You’d think that although the Israelis – the comment on the Swedish recognition of the Palestinian state (I mean, the promised recognition) was that this was dangerous unilateralism. Unilateral diplomacy, a very interesting concept. You’d think, well, everyone should be blessed to have an opponent whose most worrying weapon is to go to the UN. I wish this would happen in Syria.
But what was the British reaction to the Palestinian attempt in September 2001 – or was it last year, I’ve even forgotten, when they went to the General Assembly and got sort of recognition as a non-state member – 2012, sorry, I lost my dates already. Why on earth was it so difficult for the Europeans, given the Berlin statement I referred to earlier, of 1998, endorsing unequivocally Palestinian statehood and that it should happen within a timeframe of one year – why was it so difficult for any of these countries to say: it’s actually a very healthy thing that the Palestinians, in trying to rock the boat and break the logjam and get all uppity, do it with nothing more radical than going to the UN, rather than a Kalashnikov or an explosive suicide vest or whatever? They shouldn’t be concentrating on that anyway, but when they do consider something else – and I’m not going to start saying the Palestinians after all are poor things, look at them, they’re nice guys. I’m just trying to say that there’s something fundamentally pathetic, in my 10 Q&A: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: No End in Sight?
view, about the British government’s response to this issue, not to mention the rest of the Europeans, who thought it was too much to give Palestine even minimal recognition.
Had they given recognition, would this have changed everything? No. Was this going to shift the American position? No, because the American position is based on a whole host of different historical and local and domestic factors and so on. I’m just trying to give one little example of an attempt to say: the system as structured for the last 21 years of peace processing isn’t working. We need to kick-start it. That doesn’t mean another conference in Annapolis or another conference in Berlin or wherever it was in 2007-2008. It means a restructuring of this, or at least a demonstration – in this case I’m talking about the Europeans and the Brits – of enough political will, and slight daring or independence, to say: by voting on this in a way that the US doesn’t like, we’re not changing the UN system, we’re not demolishing diplomacy. We’re just saying you guys can’t go on doing the same old thing again. It’s got to shift a little bit. Now let’s sit down and have a civilized discussion about reordering the terms of reference here.
I’m just saying here was one example of something that could have been done, that was pretty modest. The political cost would have been pretty low for the governments concerned. And they wouldn’t even take that little, low-lying fruit. The idea that they might actually stand up to Israel seriously on settlements and on colonization, on the Gaza war, may be a little bit of a stretch. But couldn’t they have done something peaceful and diplomatic at the UN, to just say this has gone on long enough? As the Swedish incoming prime minister said: we still believe this has to be done by negotiation and within international law. Fine. But he did something that was a little bit different.
Imagine if the UK had done that and pulled the French along, or others in the EU. Revolutionary stuff, right? We’re suddenly supporting revolution in Syria; everyone’s got a Che Guevara beret on now in Whitehall and the Champs-Élysées when it comes to Syria (not that they really put their boots and money where their mouth is on that either). But we’re talking about such inoffensive, innocuous stuff here. I’m just using that to belabour that point. I’ll stop.
Claire Spencer
Thank you very much. I’d like to start by thanking you, the audience. I’m afraid that second round of questions isn’t going to happen but I’ll use this as an advertisement that we’ll have more of these discussions. I also think I was justified at the beginning saying that we have invited our two speakers today because they have interesting and different perspectives to give. I think those of you who have been courageous enough to stay for the extra half-hour have been fully rewarded. Please join me in thanking them.