Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine

328 Pages·2007·1.53 MB·English

by  Ghada Karmi

Married to Another Man
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Married to Another Man
Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine
GHADA KARMI
P
Pluto Press
LONDON (cid:127) ANN ARBOR, MI
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First published 2007 by Pluto Press
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and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
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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.
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ISBN-13 978 0 7453 2066 3
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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