Before I began blogging, I have to confess that I had a bias against it. Most of the blogs I had run across were of a sort of writing that turned me off to the idea. But I came to Writing Up because I heard it was different. As Mitchell Allen has ex…

Maybe a Palestinian Mandela could have pulled it off at some earlier stage, but it’s hard to imagine. He wouldn’t have had nearly as favorable a press as the real Mandela, and even the real Mandela was regarded as a terrorist by a great many Western conservatives (Dick Cheney being one). A Palestinian Mandela calling for a one man one vote would have been portrayed in the US as a neo-Nazi.

Yes that’s not the biggest surprise i’ve ever had in my life. Which brings us back to the question of what SHOULD the Palestinians do, or rather it would had I not just lost the will to live.

Which specific violent act do you think the palestinians would be worse off if they had not committed?

I would be interested to hear what specific acts of Palestinian violence you DO approve of. Examples, please.

‘the immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on 25 July 2000’

As I said, the consequence of the negotiations, as things worked out, was an increase in violence. Perceived willingness to negotiate increased the incentives applicable to the Palestinian leadership to sponsor violent acts, and they reacted like homo economicus. I’m not sure if you are genuinely unable to understand that point, or merely unwilling to admit it.

In general, the Palestinians should do what they have been doing recently, but more successfully. Unity government, recognise the existence of Israel, stop firing rockets and capturing soldiers, in general try to increase the gap between ‘Palestinians trying to be nice’ and ‘angry Palestinians’.

‘Expressed in forwards time order, first there was relative peace, there there were talks, then there was more violence. Replace then with then, as a consequence and you have the standard Israeli narrative. The Palestinian leadership won’t get anywhere until they can falsify that story.’

That is total bollocks and you know it Soru (or if you don’t know it you have no right to be talking about this complex issue).

To quote Wikipedia: ‘According to the Mitchell Report, (the investigatory committee set up to look into the cause of the violence and named after the chairman of the committee, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell), the government of Israel asserted that

the immediate catalyst for the violence was the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations on 25 July 2000’

(And yes I know that the rest of that sentence goes on to blame the Palestinians (i.e. from the Israeli point of view). The point is that even the Israelis recognised that the violence began when the talks failed). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Intifada)

The Second Intifada was brought to an end (i.e. the violence was much reduced) NOT by ‘the superior Israeli forces’ or ‘not negotiating with terrorists’ or whatever, but by the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit of 2005 (google it) and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Currently the Israelis continue to reinvade Gaza (and kill within it) with impunity, but violence against Israelis civilians is at a relatively low level (historically speaking).

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Intifada).

You also ignore the various ceasefires by various Palestinian groups (e.g. Hamas: when the Israelis left Gaza they were rewarded by a Hamas ceasefire). When have Israel done anything similar? When has Israel declared a moratorium on the ‘creeping invasion’ of Palestine by its colonists? When have they promised not to reinvade (almost) sovereign Palestinian territory (i.e. Gaza)? When the Israelis do something ‘nice’ they get rewarded by less violence. But when the Palestinians do something ‘nice’ when has Israel ever promised anything similar?

In any case, the question remains: if, as you insist Soru, you abjure violence, what SHOULD the Palestinians do?

seth: ‘nigger’

where is this coming from? Do you think you can use those words and phrases without them affecting your thoughts?

For example, in the run up to the (most recent) Camp David talks, suicide bombing (etc.)went right down. It only exploded (pun intended) when this process died: i.e. the second intifada.

I’m afraid your cause and effect seems to run backwards in time, which is generally a sign that something is wrong with your logic.

Expressed in forwards time order, first there was relative peace, there there were talks, then there was more violence. Replace then with then, as a consequence and you have the standard Israeli narrative. The Palestinian leadership won’t get anywhere until they can falsify that story.

And of course they don’t always, but it helps. And it helps Israel that it’s hard for people to spread their shame and guilt around. Europe owes the Jews something because the Jews were European, and almost white. It was a crime in the household. And South Africa, white or black, is not geopolitically important. De-Beers is still there.
Tibet isn’t important, but China is.

brendan’s comment on the possibility of Palestinian passive resistance without the ability for it to spread: the refusal of liberals outside Israel to countenance economic or academic[!] boycotts was brilliant. And this on a site which railed against such things.

And again his comments did not turn on international law but on the human ability to judge. Liberals’ willingness to assume their own impartiality amazes me. brendan nailed it, as a generalist and a skeptic. How do you teach that? How does political “science” teach that?
And I admire his ability to keep his cool. I lost that years ago,

But this just proves my point. If one abjures violence one MUST choose (effective) non-violent methods. That means (for example) the boycott of Israeli goods, arms embargoes, academic and sporting boycotts and so forth (not to mention campaigns to free the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails). But the ‘decents’ oppose these moves just as vociferously!

It’s almost as if they question Palestine’s right to exist.

Why do the niggers always need the saints?

Eh? But that IS how Hamas (and others) use violence! For example, in the run up to the (most recent) Camp David talks, suicide bombing (etc.)went right down. It only exploded (pun intended) when this process died: i.e. the second intifada. Likewise the current low level of violence is because of the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. You act as if Hamas, the Martyr’s Brigade etc. just keep on throwing suicide bombers at Israel regardless but that’s obviously not true. On the contrary there has always been an obvious tit for tat quality about the situation, an incursion by the Israelis leads to Palestinian retaliation which leads to an Israeli response which leads to Palestinian retalation and so forth. It’s true that violence never went down to zero. But essentially, when the Israelis were nice( r) to the Palestinians they got less violence back, and when they were nasty, they got more violence. Or look at Lebanon. When the Israelis invaded they got missiles raining on their heads: when they left, the missiles stopped. Very very simple cause and effect. Israeli governments have always known that if they negotiate Israeli civilians live and if they don’t Israeli civilians die: that Israeli politicans choose not to negotiate regardless of this knowledge says much about their moral qualities (and their ‘deep concern’ for Israeli civilian casualties).

To go back to the earlier posts, the comparison I think you are actually making (as opposed to the comparison you think you are making) is not between the PLO/Hamas and Gandhi but between the PLO/Hamas and the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama has pursued (in relation to Tibet) what I take it is the Eustonite and ‘decent’ approach to Palestinian freedom: ie. holding international conferences, letter writing, ‘soft diplomacy’ (i.e. going to parties with rich and important people and telling them how awful things are your country) and so on. All this has got him (and the Tibetans) the total and absolute achievement of fuck all.

Gandhi, despite his pacifism, would never have been so naive. He knew that if you are going to abjure violence this necessarily means you then have to use other forms of coercion (i.e. economic means, mass civil disobedience, sanctions etc.).

Which brings us back to the problem: assuming the Palestinians should abjure violence (which in my opinion they should) what other methods should they use? i.e. assuming they want to avoid the grisly fate of the Tibetans (resulting from their appealing to the Chinese government’s ‘better nature’)?

Not quite: because the alternatives were perceived as worse than what he proposed.

The options available to Jewish Israelis now are, as they see it:

1. endure terrorism and rockets in a land of X square miles

2. endure terrorism and rockets in a land of X – Y square miles

3. worse things.

To reach the goal of a 2 state solution, the Palestinian leadership need to use violence, not be used by it. That means demonstrating, as Mandela did, the political capability to control violence, to say ‘it will happen if you don’t agree, and won’t if you do’.

The structural problem with terrorism, as opposed to a moral equivalent like using planes to bomb cities, is that it is intrinsically, in its nature, not subject to such political control.

A terrorist liberation movement is like a capitalist trade union, a libertarian dictatorship or a christian torture camp – its nature fights against its ideology.