Homage to Palestine

The Trump Administration has announced its “Peace to Prosperity” deal between Israel and Palestine, and it is awful as was to be expected.

The Palestinian polity it creates can best be described as Palesthatswana, a series of disconnected and largely powerless splotches of territory scattered across the West Bank, Gaza, and south from Gaza in the Negev. There is also the possibility in the future of “transferring” Arab citizens of Israel to the new entity, a clear echo of Apartheid’s intent of creating Black homelands (bantustans, a name originally used by the Afrikaners who concocted the plan but later formally dropped by the South African government) and transferring the nationality of black citizens to those “nations” in order to create a whites-only South Africa.

I make no bones about the fact that I am and always have been pro-Palestinian as an adult. I have known too many Palestinians (and yes, I have known a few Israelis too) and heard too many stories of what life under the occupation — which has gone on for more than 50 years now — has been like. No one would want to live that way.

But there is also a sad fact that Palestinians — and those who support them — will have to face. They are a conquered people. This deal is as good as they can expect. Eventually, Israel will annex land and unilaterally “create” Palestine, if only because the Israelis have always wanted control over the land without any responsibility for the people (they occupy) who live in it. And only by creating some form of bantustan for Palestinians will they get that. (To be fair, they have it now, but as the occupation nears its 60th anniversary, it is becoming less and less tenable, and needs some kid of resolution.)

It’s hard for us to think of people being conquered in this age of liberation. Since V-E and V-J days, no nation has been conquered. Wars are now waged for liberation, not to acquire territory or property.

(We may speak of Germany and Japan being “liberated” from their governments, but that is a long-after-the-fact retelling of what happened. In September 1945, Germany and Japan were both ruined, conquered, and occupied nations, their citizens understood this, and they had little idea what kind of mercy — if any — they would face from the United Nations.)

By contrast, virtually every war since 1945 could conceivably be described as liberation. I can think of few actual wars of conquest since 1945 in which territory was taken in where the results were allowed to stand. Indonesia’s occupation and annexation of Portuguese Timor, Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands Islands, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, all were reversed by military action. India’s invasion and annexation of Goa (and the other Portuguese exclaves) in 1961 was an anti-colonial taking of territory that easily passes as liberation. Despite being a NATO member, Portugal wasn’t getting any help from its Western allies to fight India.

(Yes, Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus remains, and so does Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea. That latter, however, reminds me more of Goa than Poland.)

Other major wars that involved the invasion and occupation of one nation state by another — India’s invasion of Bangladesh to secure that country’s independence in 1971, North Vietnam’s toppling of the South Vietnamese government in 1975 and then its subsequent invasion of occupation of Cambodia in 1979, Tanzania’s invasion of Uganda to topple dictator Idi Amin in 1979 — were all temporary measures, and did not involve the taking or seizing of territory (or significant acreage). China invaded India in 1962, taking a fair amount of territory in the country’s northeast, declaring a cease-fire, and then quickly withdrawing, a process Beijing would repeat with Vietnam in 1979 after much rougher fighting. The invaders could all claim — and with some very real justification — that they were liberating the people whose countries they were invading. Or that they weren't seeking a permanent change in borders.

Even the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was called a “liberation,” though the occupation that followed clearly meant it was something else. That’s what happens when you spend too much reading your own propaganda.

(There are wars of conquest in our age, but they are what happens when civil wars fail. Nigeria slowly, methodically, and brutally reconquered Biafra, Sri Lanka laid waste to Tamil Elam, and the Syrian state is slowly and certainly reconquering the remnants of rebel held territory.)

But no one liberated the poor Palestinians. Who were the Israelis “liberating” them from, what were they “liberating” them for, in 1967? Yes, Israelis promises the occupation that would come would be different from any other in history — it would be humane. But it was an occupation, a rule of a people by force against their will. Whatever the legality of the settlements (I do believe they are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, but that view has never really mattered, because law without power is meaningless), the fact that Israel was willing to take land and plant communities in the midst of the Palestinians without any consideration for them and did so almost from the beginning meant the occupation wouldn’t be humane for very long.

And it wasn’t.

The Palestinians long lived with the example and inspiration of the Algerian Revolution. France had occupied and settled Algeria for more than a century when the French surrendered and up and left. Israel is a settlement colony, but like the English settlement colonies, those who settled are numerous enough and rooted enough that they aren’t going anywhere. There’s no amount of violence the Palestinians can employ (no matter how just it is) that will do anything but harden Israeli will and intensify desire and ability to respond.

Given how disproportionate Israeli power is, that suffering generally only flows one way. I’m certain it feels good to lob rockets fueled by sugar-water from Gaza at Ashkelon, but the Israeli Air Force can level Gaza at will in response while spectators watch and cheer.

The Palestinians are a conquered people. A dispossessed people. They have lost. And no one is coming to save them. There is no getting around that.