Hebrew original: http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=32303

Have they missed the train?

By Gideon Spiro

http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=32373

Red Rag Weekly Column, 4 March 2009

Translated by George Malent

Have they missed the train? A short episode from history

During the years between the war of June 1967 (the Six Day War, in official parlance) and the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, Israel was suffused with an atmosphere of drunkenness with victory, as if an entire nation had taken hallucinogenic drugs and refused to wake up.

During part of that time I was a student at Haifa University. I served as editor of the student newspaper Post-Mortem and I was among one of the founders of the left-wing student movement, Jews and Arabs, called the "Yesh" bloc, which succeeded in winning the elections in the students association in 1972. The human composition of the bloc was fascinating. Not only Jews and Arabs. The composition of the Jews too was a diverse admixture of veterans and immigrants (olim in the official language) from various countries, especially South America, who could not digest the idol-worship around the army and the discrimination against Arab citizens.

The victory of the Yesh bloc precipitated tumultuous responses among the Israeli public. The cooperation between Jews and Arabs provoked the suspicions of the Israeli regime, which feared that it would be a precedent that would take root beyond the campus. Golda Meir, the Prime Minister at the time, responded in a meeting of the Labour Party Committee after the victory, and said that the bloc should be called "ein", [1] because nothing about the State is dear to them (quote from memory).

A wave of incitement against the bloc appeared in the establishment press. An interview with the rector of the university, Prof. Binyamin Aktzin, was published in Maariv under the heading "The student newspaper Post Mortem incites against Israel" (10 March 1972). Davar, the organ of the Histadrut, [2] reported on "Arabs taking over the campus" (10 March 1972). Haaretz reported on a "Victory for extreme leftists at Haifa University" (10 March 1972). An editorial in Yediot Aharonot, written by the legendary editor Dr. H. Rosenblum (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) appeared under the heading "The enemy within" (1 March 1973). Those are a few examples of the flood of hostile articles on the subject. And that was all despite the fact that the bloc had taken care not to define itself as anti-Zionist.

Those who today examine the positions that were then defined as "extreme left-wing" will be impressed by their moderation. The article I wrote under the heading "Reduce the budgets for occupation and annexation, add to the education budget" (Post Mortem, 17 May 1972) is correct today as it was then, but today a lot more people will agree with it, including many who are far from being leftists.

In the section of the Yesh platform that was dedicated to the national question, of which I had the honour of being one of the drafters, Article 4 stated that: "the Palestinian people today are the dispossessed national unit in the Middle East, and the Yesh bloc believes that it has no less of a right to national independence in part of E-I/Palestine [3] than do the Jewish people. Any political solution must take the national aspirations of the Palestinian people into account and be made in cooperation with them." (from the Yesh platform, March 1973)

In other words: two states for two peoples. In those days that was seen as the position of "the enemy at home" in the words of Dr. Rosenblum, whereas today it is the position of a significant part of the Israeli Right. Tzipi Livni, the leader of Kadima, has made acceptance of that principle a condition for her entrance into the government.

This is where the element of timing enters into the equation. Is a solution that was appropriate and capable of implementation in 1972 (when the settlement enterprise was just beginning and the total number of settlers would not even fill the Maccabi Tel-Aviv basketball stadium) still relevant in 2009, when the number of settlers is approaching 300 thousand, and the number of Jews who live today in the territories that were occupied in June 1967 exceeds 600 thousand if we include the residents of the neighborhoods that were built across the Green Line in Jerusalem?

Under these circumstances the political map is divided in a way that is "unnatural" if I may be permitted to use a term from another field. The traditional Left, Meretz and Hadash, continues to promote the two-state solution, as does part of the Right and the Centre, Kadima and the Labour Party. The distribution of the settlements today, even if they are reduced a little, does not permit a sustainable Palestinian state, but at best a Swiss cheese state effectively under Israeli control. Even Abu Mazen, whom much of the Palestinian public condemns as a collaborator with Israel, would not accept such a solution.

This is opposed by a camp which is also composed of elements from both Left and Right who for polar opposite reasons do not see two states as a suitable solution. Members of Likud and the settler parties oppose a Palestinian state politically and ideologically, and believe that they can carry on with the Occupation, the settlement and the apartheid regime, and crowd the Palestinians out in a slow process that may include one or two wars. A Nakba in stages.

Some on the Left once supported the two-state solution but now despair of it in light of the reality that Israel has created in the Occupied Territories. Today that part of the Left believes that the only way to end the Occupation and the apartheid regime is to proceed from a situation of being a master-nation to a new reality in which the two peoples will share a secular democratic state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

It should be assumed that the international community, which today supports the two-state solution officially at least, will also undergo a process of conversion as it comes to understand that the opportunity for a two-state solution has passed, and must be replaced by the democratic solution of one state for everyone.

No one is deluding themselves that the one-state solution will be easy. The hostility and the tensions between the two peoples over the course of the conflict, and the racism and the feeling of superiority that most of the Jews harbour towards Arabs will make the process of living together in equality of rights a difficult and painful one. The example of South Africa illustrates the degree to which the process is fraught with difficulties and sometimes violent. But it is not impossible. A transitional stage may be inevitable, during which Israel and the occupied territories will be placed under an international regime that will administer the transition from occupation to partnership.

[1] The literal meaning of "yesh" is "there is"; "ein" is its opposite: "there is not".

[2] The Histadrut is the largest workers organization in Israel. Its daily newspaper Davar was established in 1925 and ceased publication in 1996.

[3] E-I is a transcription of Hebrew letters that stand for "eretz yisrael", which literally means "the land of Israel"s.