Peace and its Discontents: Gaza-Jericho 1993-1995
By Edward Said
Vintage Press, 1995. 197 pp., $14.95
Reviewed by Adam Hanieh
Edward Said has been a prominent Palestinian critic of the peace accords since the signing of the Declaration of Principles between the PLO and the Israeli government in September 1993. One of the original refugees from the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948, Said was more fortunate than most, ending up as an academic in the United States, where he has written numerous books on the Middle East and literature.
This book is a collection of articles written from 1993 to 1995 for a variety of English and Arabic newspapers. The resulting collection is a powerful condemnation of the peace process made even more pertinent by the events of recent months. Said says he felt his job to be "... to tell the truth and not let the language of hypocrisy, flattery and self delusion rule".
A strong theme throughout Said's writing is the importance of retaining the sense of struggle and sacrifice that guided the Palestinian movement for many decades. He believes that the September 1993 agreement and those following it represent a capitulation to pragmatism and an acceptance of the New World Order promoted by the US establishment following the Gulf War of 1991.
Rather than the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, Said sees the agreements as leading to a bantustan-like arrangement. In 1993, he claimed that the Palestinian entity that would emerge would legitimise the Israeli occupation with an undemocratic Palestinian government responsible for the security of Israeli settlers.
Indeed, since 1993 Israeli settlements have increased at an unprecedented rate. Accompanying this attempt to create "facts on the ground" has been the construction of bypass roads which link settlements and divide Palestinian-controlled areas. These Israeli-controlled roads were used to great effect in the recent closure of the territories: a number of Palestinians who required hospital attention died because Israeli troops prevented them from crossing from one area to another.
Said concentrates much of his attack on the PLO leadership around Yasser Arafat, which he characterises as "... incompetent, autocratic and corrupt". He laments Arafat's approach to the United States as "[the] woeful ignorance of a mind untrained in contemporary history" — referring in particular to Arafat's comments that he had a friend in the White House.
In contrast, Said details the unequivocal support that the US has given to Israel (over $5 billion in annual aid, much of it given as free grants).
One of Said's criticisms is the narrowing of the Palestinian question to only those who live in the occupied territories. He claims that the recent agreements have isolated and thrown away the rights of more than half of the Palestinian population who live in the diaspora, including the 400,000 refugees in Lebanon. He points out that Israel guarantees citizenship rights to any Jew from any country in the world, yet compensation and right of return for the diaspora Palestinians has not been addressed during the negotiations.
One of the most interesting articles in this collection was written shortly after the Hebron massacre in February 1994, in which Israeli settler Baruch Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians at the Hebron mosque. Said points out the attempt made by the media to portray Goldstein as part of "extremist political zionism" as opposed to "mainstream zionism".
He details the well-organised right-wing Zionist organisations in the United States which recruit people such as Goldstein to settle in Israel. He demonstrates that Zionism as a whole is based on an identification of Judaism with support for Israel and the exclusion of non-Jews. Zionists of all shades promote the myth of Palestinians as intruders in a Jewish land despite the reality of historical fact.
Said comments that the first theocratic state in the Middle East is Israel, and that most of the present day leaders of Israel are themselves responsible for acts of terror (the late Yitzhak Rabin led the ethnic cleansing of Ramleh and Lydda in 1948, for example). Israeli law still deems that any land seized from Palestinians becomes state land, to be used exclusively by Jews; 92% of land in Israel belongs in this category.
Said also discusses the role that Western liberals have played in promoting Zionism. The cause of Israel has always been seen as a liberal cause in the US, and it has been left to radicals such as Noam Chomsky to detail the crimes of Israeli colonialism. Said clearly shows how the interests of US imperialism have been closely identified with those of Israel. He sees the latest agreements as a mere extension of this interest as Israel attempts to normalise economic relations with other Arab countries while preventing any independent Palestinian economy from developing.
Said's most pertinent comments relate to the development of political Islam. In an article written in the middle of 1995, he details the massive campaign led by the US, Israel and "responsible" Arab governments to portray Islamic extremism as the "super-devil". Iran, Syria, Libya and other "rogue states" were seen as masterminding this threat to the peace process.
Western and Israeli liberals chimed in with the "extremism (Jewish or Islamic) is the enemy of peace" line. Said demonstrates that such a position rests on an enormous ignorance of fact. The west and Israel have no problems with promoting Islamic movements when it suits them, e.g. the US support of Islamic movements in Afghanistan in the early 1980s and Israel's previous support for Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO.
Most importantly, he identifies these movements as what they are — acts of defiance and a refusal to accept the continuation of Israeli occupation and Palestinian complicity with it. Said decries their methods but points out that for many Palestinians they "express a courageous protest against the humiliations and demeaning denials of identity".
Said writes with a passion about the realities of Palestinian life in the territories. It is easy to share his anger when he talks of the situation in the West Bank, where there are more than 200 Israeli settlements and 320,000 settlers strategically located between Palestinian population centres to prevent any continuity of Palestinian territory. Or life in towns like Hebron, where 100,000 Palestinians must endure continuous curfews because of 450 settlers who live in the middle of the town. The Israeli movement Peace Now estimates that there was an increase of 70% in settler activity from 1993 to 1994.
What alternative does Said promote? For many this has always been a criticism of Said — a passionate critic but without an alternative. He certainly sees no future in groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, whose thinking he characterises as reductive and vision as reactionary. He strongly criticises the undemocratic structures of the PLO under the rule of Arafat.
Said believes that hope for the future lies in the rebirth of a democratic secular movement. He sees some hope for this in struggles such as the women's movement and human rights struggles in other parts of the Arab world. He points out that the present reality of Jews and Arabs in the Middle East is one that is intertwined and inseparable.
Said believes that telling the truth about the peace process is the absolutely necessary first step in reaching a future where the "two communities are seen as equal to each other in rights and expectations, then proceeding from there to do justice to their living actualities".