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Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine PDF

328 Pages·2007·1.53 MB·English
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Married to Another Man KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree ii 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4422 KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree iiii 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4422 Married to Another Man Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine GHADA KARMI P Pluto Press LONDON (cid:127) ANN ARBOR, MI KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree iiiiii 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4422 First published 2007 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106 www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Ghada Karmi 2007 The right of Ghada Karmi to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Hardback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2066 3 ISBN-10 0 7453 2066 X Paperback ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2065 6 ISBN-10 0 7453 2065 1 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree iivv 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4422 Following the fi rst Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 at which the idea of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine was fi rst mooted, the rabbis of Vienna dispatched two representatives to investigate the suitability of the country for such an enterprise. The men reported the result of their explorations in this cable to Vienna: The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man. To their disappointment they had found that Palestine, though highly eligible to become the Jewish state the Zionists longed for, was not, as the writer, Israel Zangwill, later claimed, ‘A land without a people for a people without a land’. It was already inhabited, spoken for by a native Palestinian Arab population whose homeland it already was. KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree vv 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4433 Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 1 The Cost of Israel to the Arabs 10 Nurturing a fl edgling Israel 12 Israel’s damage to the Palestinians 16 Israel’s damage to the Arab world 20 Forcing Arabs to normalise with Israel 37 Provoking the rise of Islamic fundamentalism 39 What to do about Israel? 43 Arab reaction 48 Still no solution for the Palestinians 53 2 Why Do Jews Support Israel? 56 Israel’s signifi cance for Israeli Jews 60 The Zionist narrative’s hold on Jews 64 Where did European Jews come from? 66 Looking for a connection with Palestine 68 So are Jews a nation? 69 A persuasive Zionist myth 72 Zionism and Jewish assimilation 74 Jewish identifi cation with Israel 77 Dual loyalty 81 3 Why Does the West Support Israel? 84 The US and Israel 85 The Israel lobby 86 The role of the neoconservatives 89 Who controls America? 91 KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree vvii 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4433 CONTENTS vii Pro-Zionist infl uence and the media 92 What did it all mean? 94 Israel and the great powers 98 Israel in control 101 Christian Zionism 103 Europe and Israel 112 A persistent European affi nity with Israel 115 What did it all mean for Arabs? 117 4 The ‘Peace Process’ 121 The size of the problem 123 The Arab–Israeli peace process 126 After Camp David 131 What was in it for the Palestinians? 139 Arafat’s agenda 143 Rescuing the Oslo process 145 The Camp David talks 147 Salvaging Camp David 152 The Road Map 155 Conclusion 158 5 Destroying the Palestinians 160 Arafat’s destruction 162 What did Israel want? 165 The Sharm al-Sheikh agreement 166 Israel’s response 168 US collusion 172 Israel’s agenda 174 Sharon’s vision 177 Consequences for the Palestinians 181 The election of Hamas 184 Who was to blame? 193 Ignorance or cynicism? 197 6 Solving the Problem 201 Israeli ideas for a solution 202 The Jordanian option 211 No other way for a Zionist Israel 213 KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree vviiii 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4433 viii MARRIED TO ANOTHER MAN The two-state solution 218 Making the two-state solution impossible 222 Neither feasible nor desirable 225 The right of return 227 7 The One-State Solution 229 Sharing the land 231 How acceptable was the one-state solution? 248 Binational or secular democratic? 251 A formidable challenge 254 Desirable and feasible? 257 Epilogue: The End of the Zionist Dream? 260 Notes 268 Bibliography 295 Index 303 Maps 1 UN Partition Plan of 1947 and Israel/Palestine in 1949 13 2 Jerusalem settlements, 2006 206 3 Metropolitan Jerusalem, 2006 207 4 The Wall, 2006 210 5 The West Bank after Oslo 224 KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree vviiiiii 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4433 Preface My chief reason for writing this book was to lay out my vision for solving the Israeli–Palestinian confl ict. This is both a personal and a political imperative. On the personal level, I had long felt I would never be at peace if I did not see this terrible confl ict resolved in my lifetime, that a situation so dangerous and tragic could not be allowed to persist. I found the fatalistic opinion of many Arabs that ‘in the fullness of time’ all would be solved depressing, and the so-called ‘realistic’ political assessments that a durable settlement, given the balance of forces existing today, would take many decades if not a hundred years, disheartening. My quest for a solution was certainly tied up with my own origins as a Palestinian who had experienced at fi rst hand Israel’s creation in 1948 and was still living, along with millions of others, through its consequences. But on the political level, it seemed to me that the prevailing pessimism about fi nding a satis- factory solution was unwarranted if one thought through the logic of the situation. This book examines the various solutions to the confl ict and concludes that, logically, only one is possible. Married to Another Man is not about the one-state solution as such and yet it also is. Much of it is devoted to what I considered a necessary review and analysis of the previous history and events that led me to advocate the position I reached. Hence, the book discusses many areas relevant to this question (all of which, incidentally, could form the subject of separate books in their own right), and covers the origins of the confl ict, its Arab, Jewish and Western dimensions, and the ways devised for its solution to date. This review, which was as exhaustive as the limits of a single book permit, led irresistibly in my mind to the only conclusion possible in the circumstances. As Sherlock Holmes put it to Dr Watson, ‘Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth.’ I am conscious that, even though it forms only a small part of the book, the one-state solution is not easy topic to write about. It ix KKaarrmmii 0000 pprree iixx 55//44//0077 0077::4444::4433

Description:
Two rabbis,visiting Palestine in 1897,observed that the land was like a bride,''beautiful,but married to another man''. By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for Israel in Palestein,where would the people of Palestine go? This is a dilemma that Israel has never been able to resolve.В
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