Tomgram

Maps, roads, and a flicker of hope

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With the president’s arrival in the Middle East, we are about to embark on a “roadmap” to peace with neither a road, nor a map truly in evidence; or rather, the road and map have long been in evidence, but neither Israelis, Palestinians, nor the Bush administration have seemed willing to come anywhere near facing up to the difficult decisions that might need to be taken to settle the conflict. It’s for this reason that, in addition, to offering four provocative views of the present situation, I also recommend (at dispatch’s end) an old assessment, both grim and hopeful, of what such a settlement might look like. Tony Judt wrote it for the New York Review of Books in May 2002. What’s grim about it is that it was written a year ago and not a word, I believe, would need to be changed today. It’s nonetheless hopeful — or I found it so anyway — because Judt, citing examples from French Algeria to Northern Ireland, refuses to deal with the Israeli/Palestinian situation as if it were unique, and so uniquely beyond the power and possibility of solution. Unfortunately, the piece is now in the New York Review of Books archives and so, if you haven’t squirreled away your ancient copies of that magazine, you would have to purchase it on-line.

Below, I include a piece by the always impressive Israeli novelist David Grossman (from the Los Angeles Times Sunday opinion page), who offers a “flicker of hope” based on Ariel Sharon’s latest statements; a column by Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun, who is deeply pessimistic that anything of value is likely to emerge from the present moment; an assessment by the fine Ha’aretz journalist Amira Hass of the realities “on the ground,” where “roads” and “maps” (and walls) bear no relation at all to the “roadmap”; and finally a discussion of a recent Bush appointment by Michael Scherer, the Washington editor for Mother Jones, who indicates what road he thinks our administration is likely to be driving down. Nonetheless, I’m with Grossman. I prefer to hold out for that flicker of hope, for the possibility of redemption. Tom

Flicker of Hope
If only Ariel Sharon means what he says
By David Grossman
Los Angeles Times
June 1, 2003

JERUSALEM – Even though experience has taught us that Ariel Sharon must be judged by his actions and not by his words, it may well be that his words last week set in motion a process that Sharon could not have envisioned. He may have intended to do no more than get on the good side of international public opinion, or he may have been serious. But whatever his intentions, his words have roused strong feelings. He has been accused of being a left-winger – a traitor even – by his colleagues in the Likud Party. Senior right-wing Cabinet ministers have accused Sharon of pushing Israel toward something more dangerous than the Oslo accords, which were until last week the most despicable thing they could think of.

What was it that Sharon said?…

Israeli novelist David Grossman is the author, most recently, of “Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years After Oslo.” This piece was translated by Haim Watzman.

To read more Grossman click here

This road map leads nowhere
Bush’s plan fudges on too many problems to have a chance to succeed
By Eric Margolis, Contributing Foreign Editor
Toronto Sun
June 1, 2003

JERUSALEM – Even though experience has taught us that Ariel Sharon must be judged by his actions and not by his words, it may well be that his words last week set in motion a process that Sharon could not have envisioned. He may have intended to do no more than get on the good side of international public opinion, or he may have been serious. But whatever his intentions, his words have roused strong feelings. He has been accused of being a left-winger – a traitor even – by his colleagues in the Likud Party. Senior right-wing Cabinet ministers have accused Sharon of pushing Israel toward something more dangerous than the Oslo accords, which were until last week the most despicable thing they could think of.

What was it that Sharon said?…

Israeli novelist David Grossman is the author, most recently, of “Death as a Way of Life: Israel Ten Years After Oslo.” This piece was translated by Haim Watzman.

This road map leads nowhere
Bush’s plan fudges on too many problems to have a chance to succeed
By Eric Margolis, Contributing Foreign Editor
Toronto Sun
June 1, 2003

Call me cynical, but the latest flurry of summit meetings on the proposed road-map for Mideast peace looks like another dead end.

I have been steeped in Mideast affairs since the early 1950s, when my late mother, Nexhmie Zaimi, was one of the first female American journalists to cover the Arab world, interviewing Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Jordan’s King Hussein and Iraq’s strongman, Nuri as-Said. She began reporting the plight of 750,000 Palestinian refugees driven from their homes by the newly created state of Israel.

Few Americans had ever heard of Palestinians. They were told Israel was “a land without people for a people without land.” My mother’s newspaper articles and lectures brought her constant death threats and attacks on our New York home. The newspapers for whom she wrote were pressured by major advertisers to drop her columns.

To read more Margolis

The state Sharon is talking about
By Amira Hass
Haaretz
May 28, 2003

Talk and declarations have more influence than facts and actions on the ground. This can be seen once again in the contradictory reactions – furious or welcoming – to the government’s approval of the road map and to the fire-breathing statements by Ariel Sharon that it’s wrong to rule over 3.5 million Palestinians, that occupation is not good, that there’s no alternative but to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

The facts on the ground, which don’t create as strong an impression as the rhetoric, are established every day. The facts are called the separation fence and security fences around settlements, security roads and bypass roads that continue to cut off the Palestinian villages from each other and the villages from their land, and construction in the settlements that were already vastly expanded during the Oslo era to the point where they constitute about half the total area of the West Bank.

To read more Hass click here

Daniel Pipes, Peacemaker?
By Michael Scherer
Mother Jones Magazine on-line

May 26, 2003

Like many other Middle East scholars, Daniel Pipes sees a way to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But unlike most of his peers, Pipes sees no room for negotiation, no hope for compromise and no use for diplomacy. “What war had achieved for Israel,” Pipes explained at a recent Zionist conference in Washington DC, “diplomacy has undone.”

His solution is simple: The Israeli military must force what Pipes describes as a “change of heart” by the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza — a sapping of the Palestinian will to fight which can lead to a complete surrender. “How is a change of heart achieved? It is achieved by an Israeli victory and a Palestinian defeat,” Pipes continued. “The Palestinians need to be defeated even more than Israel needs to defeat them.”

Michael Scherer is the Washington Editor of Mother Jones.

To read more Scherer click here

The Road to Nowhere
By Tony Judt
The New York Review of Books
May 9, 2002

In 1958, at the height of the Algerian crisis, with Arabs bombing French cafés in Algiers, Paris tacitly condoning the use of torture by the occupying French army, and paratroop colonels demanding a free hand to end terror, the French philosopher Raymond Aron published a small book, L’Algérie et la République. Cutting through the emotive and historical claims of both sides, Aron explained in his characteristically cool prose why the French had to quit Algeria. France lacked both the will and the means either to impose French rule on the Arabs or to give Arabs an equal place in France. If the French stayed the situation would only deteriorate and they would inevitably leave at some later date-but under worse conditions and with a more embittered legacy. The damage that France was doing to Algerians was surpassed by the harm the Republic was bringing upon itself. However impossible the choice appeared, it was nonetheless very simple: France must go.

To read more Judt click here