Paraphrasing the American literary critic Fredric Jameson, who wrote, “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism,” it can be said that it is easier to imagine the end of the State of Israel than to imagine the end of the occupation.
It’s true that it isn’t being mentioned, and that accrediting the anti-government protest movement with opposition to the occupation sounds forced, or like wishful thinking. And yet, it’s a protest against the occupation. Furthermore: Nothing will change for the better, and things won’t suddenly go back to normal, until the mighty force standing in the streets and crying out “enough” also cries out “end the occupation.”
There’s a reason the occupation isn’t talked about. The main peace movements, both in the Knesset and outside of it, crashed into the wall of Jewish (Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir) and Palestinian (terror attacks).
The Book of Kings gave us the expression “have you murdered and also inherited?” Benjamin Netanyahu murdered the peace process and inherited the fear of territorial compromise, the fear that crushed the left.
With his political slyness, he managed to remove Israel’s national conflict from the national agenda; along the way, he weakened the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli left while empowering Hamas and the Jewish radical right. With the conflict absent from Israeli politics, the axis of the country’s political divisions has shifted from the conflict to the sectarian/class division. Instead of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has become the Ashkenazi-Mizrahi conflict.
The fight against the occupation is now seen as a political throwback that has no chance of ever coming back into fashion, except for elitist antique collectors. Even in the vintage shops, there’s no demand for the slogan “two states for two peoples.” To be honest, the word “peace” is also not in demand.
So should we expect the Israeli mainstream to act as a political vanguard, to bring back old ideas and dare to restart the debate about the occupation? And returning to Jameson, that after 56 years of occupation, it’s hard to think about Israel outside the borders of the occupation.
The protests are succeeding. When the nation genuinely demands something, the nation gets it. But what is the nation genuinely demanding? Does it know? This feeling – that the nation is fed up – is not expressed when it comes to the question of the occupation. The protest is expressed according to that pair of opposites, democracy and dictatorship. The protest literally imagines the end of the State of Israel when it warns of its destruction. Why? Because it’s easier to protest against the destruction of the state than to protest against the occupation.
The next step is to understand that all the problems are byproducts of the occupation, and that there will be no solution to a single one as long as there is no solution to the conflict. A new social contract between the citizens and the state, and among Israel’s “tribes,” is inconceivable unless conflict is resolved. There’s no solution to the inequality of Israel’s Arab citizens without a resolution of the conflict. And there is no, and will be no, cure for the ethnic divide, nor for the infection of racism, as long as the national wound remains open. And it’s obvious that no constitution can be drafted until the conflict, above all else, is resolved, Can anyone even imagine a country without borders having a constitution? And there will be no peace inside Israel without an Israeli-Arab peace agreement.
Even if it’s hard, the Israeli mainstream must demand that the state provide a solution to the conflict. The political dispute must return once again to being about the root of the Israeli problem – the occupation. The political division must be reorganized around the axis of the conflict. And the right and the left – each according to its worldview – must demand an Israeli initiative to resolve the conflict. In other words, what’s necessary now is for them to stop imagining the end of the State of Israel and start imagining the end of the occupation.
Imagining the End of Israel’s Occupation
27
18
10.04.2023
Paraphrasing the American literary critic Fredric Jameson, who wrote, “Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism,” it can be said that it is easier to imagine the end of the State of Israel than to imagine the end of the occupation.
It’s true that it isn’t being mentioned, and that accrediting the anti-government protest movement with opposition to the occupation sounds forced, or like wishful thinking. And yet, it’s a protest against the occupation. Furthermore: Nothing will change for the better, and things won’t suddenly go back to normal, until the mighty force standing in the streets and crying out “enough” also cries out “end the occupation.”
There’s a reason the occupation isn’t talked about. The main peace movements, both in the Knesset and outside of it, crashed into the wall of Jewish (Baruch Goldstein, Yigal Amir) and Palestinian (terror attacks).
The Book of Kings gave us the expression “have you murdered and also inherited?”........
© Haaretz
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