The move could be a substantive
gain for the Palestinian people, merely a symbolic victory, or a measurable
setback if the United States and Israel translate their vindictive rhetoric
into hard policies. While we wait for the impact of the U.N. move to become
clearer, we should acknowledge nevertheless that this has been a historic week
in several ways.
The most important new development that future historians
will record is that this last week in September represented the moment when the
Arab-Israeli conflict structurally transformed into the Arab conflict with
Israel and the United States, because of the profound and explicit manner in
which the Obama administration and others in Washington have come down on the
side of Israel.
The U.S. historically has tried, without much success but
with visible endeavor nevertheless, to express its support for Israel’s
survival and security while also trying to mediate a resolution of the conflict
that sees the birth of a Palestinian state in much of the lands occupied in
1967. That balancing act, unconvincing as it was, is formally dead for now –
repeatedly shot in the heart by a firing squad of American politicians who have
unleashed volleys of shotguns at the weak and doomed phenomenon that was once
called “American mediation.”
The U.S. has chosen to stand by Israel in two important
ways: President Barack Obama has made it clear that the White House values
Israeli rights more than it values Palestinian rights; and the
Republican-dominated U.S. Congress has taken on the mantle of being the
representative of Zionism as well as of the American people. Israel has moved
from the phase of seeing its national wellbeing and restoration in ancient
times as the “city on a hill” to the situation today where it relies for its
national wellbeing on simply controlling The Hill, or the American Congress.
The new conflict that sees the Arab world confronting the
Israeli-American combine will not be fought with military means, as has been
the case since 1947 during the old Arab-Israeli conflict. This new conflict
will see Arabs and their supporters and friends exploring political and other
peaceful means of standing up to, resisting and challenging Israel and America
in the same manner that the world did with Apartheid South Africa decades ago.
The reason for it is that the U.S. has now unambiguously
shown that it accepts the Israeli position on the existential issues of
statehood, sovereignty and national rights that form the heart of the
Palestinian-Israeli and wider Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel-America, a
collective single political actor, has squarely positioned itself beyond the
confines of the immense and universal legal and ethical sentiments that see the
need to recognize a Palestinian state as the best means to end the failed
American-mediated bilateral negotiations and seek justice and security for all
sides in this conflict. Israel-America is isolated and criminalized in the eyes
of most of the world.
From being the “new Jerusalem” that Israel-America often
portrayed itself as, it is now the “new South Africa.”
A second historical development this month is that the
Palestinians, Arabs and most of the rest of the world no longer hesitate to
confront Israel-America. The immense power that Israel-America wields is no
longer a deterrent to those who disagree with it or wish to resist its excesses
and its criminality against Palestinians and other Arabs. That even a weak
leader like Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas could resist the intense
pressures, threats and bribes that Israel-America subjected him to during the
last several weeks indicates that we have now entered the third intifada –
directed against Israel-America’s political position and not just against
Israeli occupation.
The implications of Palestinians and others fearlessly
challenging Israel-America will be immense, and will take months to clarify. If
political moves like the U.N. initiative are combined with popular civic
disobedience and mass resistance against Israel in every arena where it comes
into contact with Arabs – on its frontiers, in the West Bank, Gaza, East
Jerusalem, inside Israel and at Israeli embassies around the world – we are
likely to see significant pressures to design an entirely new mechanism to
attempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict peacefully, which remains the
preferred option for all.
These are historic days in the Middle East, on every
front: within the Arab countries, in Turkish relations in the region, in the
Arab-Israeli conflict, in Arab interactions with the U.S., and perhaps also
soon in new roles for Europe or Russia in some form. The synthesis of these
five domains will take some years to become clear. When that happens, we will
probably look back on this month of September 2011 as the critical turning
point in the behavior of the key actors.
**Rami G. Khouri is published twice weekly by THE DAILY
STAR.