http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=126147&d=7&m=9&y=2009
Monday 7 September 2009 (17 Ramadan 1430)
The boycott revisited
Uri Avnery | [email protected]
Since sending out last week's article, "Tutu's prayer", I
have been flooded with responses, some laudatory, some abusive, some
thoughtful, some merely angry.
Generally, I don't argue with my esteemed readers. This time
I feel that I owe it to my readers to clear up some of the points I was trying
to make and answer some of the objections. So here we go.
I have no argument with people who hate Israel. Hatred does
not lead toward peace. Let me be quite explicit about this, because I sense
that some people, in their righteous indignation over Israel's occupation, have
lost sight of this.
When I receive a missive that is dripping with hatred of
Israel, that portrays all Israelis (including myself, of course) as monsters, I
fail to envision how the writer imagines peace. Peace with monsters? Angels and
monsters living side by side in peace and harmony in one state, hating each
other's guts?
I also have no argument with those who want to abolish the
State of Israel. It is as much their right to aspire to that as it is my right
to want to dismantle, let's say, the US or France, neither of which has an
unblemished past.
Reading some of the messages sent to me and trying to analyze
their contents, I get the feeling they are not so much about a boycott on
Israel as about the very existence of Israel. Some of the writers obviously
believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a terrible mistake to
start with, and therefore should be reversed. Turn the wheel of history back
some 62 years and start anew.
What really disturbs me about this is that almost nobody in
the West comes out and says clearly: Israel must be abolished. Some of the
proposals, like those for a "One State" solution, sound like euphemisms. If one
believes that the State of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a State
of Palestine or a State of Happiness - why not say so openly?
Of course, that does not mean peace. Peace between Israel and
Palestine presupposes that Israel is there. Peace between the Israeli people
and the Palestinian people presupposes that both peoples have a right to
self-determination and agree to the peace. Does anyone really believe that
racist monsters like us would agree to give up our state because of a boycott?
The French and the Germans did not agree to live in one joint
state, though the differences between them are incomparably smaller than those
between Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians. Instead, they set up a European
Union, composed of nation states. Some 50 years ago I called for a similar
Semitic Union, including Israel and Palestine. I still do.
Anyway, there is no sense in arguing with those who pray for
the disappearance of the sovereign State of Israel, rather than for the
appearance of the sovereign State of Palestine at its side.
The real argument is among those who want to see peace
between the two states, Israel and Palestine. The question is: How can it be
achieved? This is an honest debate and is generally conducted in a civil
manner. My debate with Neve Gordon is in this framework.
The advocates of boycott believe that the main, indeed the
only way to induce Israel to give up the occupied territories and agree to
peace is to exert pressure from the outside.
I have no quarrel with the idea of outside pressure. The
question is: Pressure on whom? On the government, the settlers and their
supporters? Or on the entire Israeli people?
The first answer is, I believe, the right one. That's why I
hope that President Barack Obama will publish a detailed peace plan with a
fixed timetable and apply the immense powers of persuasion of the US to get
both sides to agree. I don't think that this is politically possible without
the support of a large part of Israeli society (and, by the way, of the US
Jewish community). Some readers have lost all hope in Obama. That is, without
doubt, premature. Obama has not surrendered to Netanyahu - indeed, it is quite
conceivable that the opposite is happening. The struggle is on, it is a hard
struggle against determined opposition, and we should do all we can to help
Obama's peace policy to prevail. We must do this as Israelis, from inside
Israel, and thereby show that this is not a struggle of the US against Israel,
but a joint struggle against the Israeli government and the settlers.
It follows that any boycott must serve this purpose: To
isolate the settlers and the individuals and institutions which openly support
them, but not declare war on Israel and the Israeli people as such. In the 11
years since Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements,
this process has been gaining momentum. We must laud the Norwegian decision,
this week, to divest from the Israeli Elbit company because of their
involvement with the "Separation Fence" that is being built on Palestinian land
and whose main purpose is to annex occupied territories to Israel. This is a
splendid example: A focused action against a specific target, based on a ruling
of the International Court of Justice. I think that far more can be done by a
concentrated national and international campaign. A central office should be
set up to direct this effort throughout the world against clear and specific
targets. Such an effort could be helped by world public opinion, which recoils
from the idea of boycotting the State of Israel, and not only because of the
memory of the Holocaust, but will identify itself with action against the
occupation and the oppression.
I have been asked about the Palestinian reaction to the
boycott idea. At present, Palestinians do not boycott even the settlements,
indeed it is Palestinian workers who are building almost all the houses there,
out of economic necessity. Their feelings can only be guessed. All
self-respecting Palestinians would, of course, support any effective measure
directed against the occupation. But it would not be honest to dangle before
their eyes the false hope that a worldwide boycott would bring Israel to its
knees. The truth is that only the close cooperation of Palestinian, Israeli and
international peace forces could generate the necessary momentum to end the
occupation and achieve peace.
This is especially important because our task in Israel today
is not so much to convince the majority of Israelis that peace is good and the
price acceptable, but first that peace is possible at all. Most Israelis have
lost that hope, and its revival is absolutely vital on the way to peace.
I am an Israeli patriot. I want my state to be democratic,
secular, and liberal, ending the occupation and living at peace both with the
free and sovereign State of Palestine that will come into being next to it, and
with the entire Arab world. I want Israel to be a state belonging to all its
citizens, without distinction of ethnic origin, gender, religion or language;
with completely equal rights for all; a state in which the Arabic-speaking
citizens will be free to cherish their close ties with their Palestinian
brothers and sisters and the Arab world at large. If this is racism, Zionism or
worse - so be it.
