Future Vision vs. dividing and ruling
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update – 10:18 15/03/2007
By Meron Benvenisti
The documents of the “Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel” are, as expected, continuing to preoccupy academic circles and Shin Bet investigators, and are enjoying limited public attention. Those who are reacting to them are attributing elements of extremism to the documents.
The historical analysis, the definition of the state as an ethnocracy “trying to preserve the hegemony of the Jewish majority” and “the marginality of the Arab minority,” and mainly the demand for “consensual democracy” and participation in the government, are seen as a major attack on the foundations of the Jewish state. Although the rhetoric sounds radical, the initiative and its publication can be interpreted in an opposite manner: an expression of the acceptance of Israel’s strategic victory of dividing and ruling.
The Israeli Arabs are complaining that the Israelis are severing “the link in identity between the Palestinian Arabs and the other parts of the Palestinian nation” and are preventing “the maintenance of physical and spiritual ties with their brothers in Jerusalem, on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, and with the Palestinian refugees [in the diaspora].” They enumerate the five splinter groups of the Palestinian nation, but by formulating a separate “Future Vision” for one of the sub-communities that was created by Israel’s policy of fragmentation they are confirming the success of this policy. Of course, the “Future Vision” pays lip service to the unity of the Palestinian people and demands an end to the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories, but its main thrust is the demand for recognition of a national minority, since the Israeli Arabs are “the original natives of the country.”
The very demand to recognize them as a minority, when the demographic ratio in the Israel/Palestine as a whole is approaching equality, serves as proof of Israel’s success in forcing arbitrary conditions on each of the Palestinian sub-communities, which require them to formulate a separate future vision in response to the Israeli challenge. Thus Israel can deal separately with over 1 million Arabs who are Israeli citizens, over 1.5 million residents of Gaza who are represented by the Hamas government, over 2 million residents of the West Bank who are represented by the Fatah leadership, over a quarter of a million residents of East Jerusalem west of the separation wall, and millions of refugees in the Palestinian diaspora – all at once without any connection among the various areas of contact.
Israel, which is confronting five weak and separated groups, can dictate the agenda and its priorities. When it comes to Arabs who are Israeli citizens, one talks about their “integration” as second-class citizens in the Jewish state, and the attempt to demand collective equality is “an expression of extremism.” As far as the Hamas government is concerned, the discussion is only about “cessation of terror and recognition of Israel’s right to exist,” and any other subject is not on the agenda.
In their weakness, the Palestinian communities accept the dictates of Israel and do not dare to consolidate a uniform front of a united Palestinian nation, since Israel can exact a price from each one of them.
Israeli Arabs are demanding the redress of a historical injustice “such as the issue of the refugees in their homeland ["present-absentees"] and their return to their original villages and cities.” But they do not mention their neighbors-relatives who in 1948 found themselves beyond the armistice lines. If they demand that their injustice be redressed as well, they will be accused of extremism and even of incitement against the very existence of the State of Israel. It is preferable for each Palestinian subgroup to commemorate its own “nakba” (catastrophe) separately for the purpose of the separate agenda it conducts with the Israelis.
The “Future Vision” can be seen as a positive radical step, but also as the opposite: another step on the way to turning Israel/Palestine into Bantustans.
