In the following I make three claims, which I will state upfront in exaggerated terms, both to get the point across and so my errors are more visible. (1) The United States (or factions in it) has more of a stake in the outcome in the Israel/Palestine conflict than Israel does. (2) Israel does not need the U.S. (3) Understanding (1) and (2) is key to resolving the Israel/Palestine conflict. Or so anyway I want to try to argue. My argument will take the form of a discussion of a post from Juan Cole, although what I want to say is not primarily about Cole's post.
On Sunday, Juan Cole posted a longish piece about Israel, Palestine, and the current fighting between them. Typically for a Cole piece, it provides a good bit of historical background and original thought. He makes a more-or-less elaborate argument about The Big Picture for the two peoples, to which I will get in a moment. The argument he makes is worthwhile and non-simplistic; but I think he overlooks or slides past an obvious point -- and I think that addressing that obvious point requires making the Big Picture, Bigger.
As an aside, I am not here attempting to argue for a position in The Standard American I/P Debate. I have a position in the SAI/PD -- I largely agree with david mizner's recent diary -- but knowing my position in the SAI/PD is about as helpful, I think, as would be knowing my opinion of the Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense in chess, if the real issue were that Sicily was burning down. Chess has nothing much to do with the flammability of Sicily, and The Standard American I/P Debate has nothing much to do with the problems in Israel and Palestine. The frame of the SAI/PD is all wrong. The debate misses the point. And what is "the point"? Well, (1), (2), and (3) above. I'll get to them. First, back to Cole. The next few 'graphs are about his piece.
Cole argues that the fighting between Israel (or "the Israeli government" if you prefer, though at the moment Israeli opinion polls show that most Israelis support their government's actions, or did prior to the ground invasion) and Palestine, and more generally the ongoing and often violent dispute between Israel and her neighbors, is ultimately a war for global public opinion. How the conflict is resolved will depend crucially on what the world thinks about the players in the region. This is so, Cole argues, because Israel relies heavily on commerce, tourism, and immigration of Jewish people from abroad. Israel can win every battle, but if in doing so Israel disgusts the world so much that the world wants nothing to do with it, Israel will collapse. Israel knows this, and so do her neighbors. Cole writes:
The Israeli leadership knew that it could not reply to Hamas's microwar without engaging in total war on the Gaza population, and that this step would be unpopular with the world's publics. But the Israeli leadership has successfully thumbed its nose and world public opinion so often and so successfully that this sort of consideration does not even enter into their practical calculations (except to the extent that they are careful to do a lot of propaganda for their war effort). Their estimation that they will suffer no practical bad consequences of attacks on civilians is certainly correct in the short to medium term.
-- snip --
Israel will suffer no practical sanctions from any government. Egypt and Jordan are afraid of Hamas and are more or less handmaidens of Israeli policy toward Gaza. Syria and Lebanon are weak. Iran, for all the hype it generates, is distant and relatively helpless to intervene. European governments have largely ceded the Palestinian-Israeli issue to the US and Israel.
-- snip --
War on them [the Palestinians], circumscribe them, colonize them all you like. They aren't going anywhere, and you can't keep them stateless and virtually enslaved forever, occasionally exterminating some of them as though they were vermin when they make too much trouble. That, sooner or later, will lead to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state.
It may still be 10 or 20 years in the future. But because of Israel's economic and demographic vulnerabilities, for it to lose the war of global public opinion may ultimately be more consequential than either macro-war or micro-war.
As a related factor, Cole makes the sometimes stated but often overlooked point that the one of the real goals behind Hamas and Hezbollah rocket attacks is to scare Jewish people from immigrating to Israel, or to provoke Jewish moral condemnation of Israel's response -- in any case, to keep Jewish people from wanting to move there. Israel is small enough, the thought would go, that Hamas and Hezbollah can ultimately win even if they lose every battle, simply through demographic attrition. This seems like it should be a sobering thought for Israelis: no one wants to live in a place like the one the conflict creates, no matter who wins the conflict.
In any case, let me restate Cole's conclusion:
It may still be 10 or 20 years in the future. But because of Israel's economic and demographic vulnerabilities, for it to lose the war of global public opinion may ultimately be more consequential than either macro-war or micro-war.
There is a curious and non-trivial lacuna in Cole's argument, here. As he surely knows, Israel has lost "the war of global public opinion." The people of planet Earth have made up their minds about this issue, even if America has not. March 2007 BBC report quoted at the University of Maryland's PIPA (PDF, page 5):
Israel is viewed quite negatively in the world, possibly because the poll was conducted less than six months following the Israel/Hezbollah war in Lebanon. On average, 56 percent have a mainly negative view of the country, and just 17 percent have a positive view, the least positive rating for any country evaluated. In 23 countries the most common view was negative, with only two leaning towards a positive view and two divided.
Unsurprisingly, the most negative views of Israel are found in the predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, with very large majorities in Lebanon (85%), Egypt (78%), Turkey (76%), and the UAE (73%) having negative views.
Large majorities also have negative views in Europe, including Germany (77%), Greece (68%) and France (66%). Indonesia (71%), Australia (68%) and South Korea (62%) are the most negative countries in the Asia/Pacific region. Brazilians (72%) are the most negative in Latin America.
The two countries with mostly positive attitudes about Israel do so in modest numbers. Forty-five percent of Nigerians and 41 percent of Americans have positive views of Israel’s influence in the world, while nearly one-third in each country has negative views. Kenya and India have populations with divided views of Israel.
This would seem to refute Cole's argument. World opinion is against Israeli actions towards her neighbors; the world takes Israel to be a belligerent nation. Yet, this fact is not, so far, doing anything like, in Cole's words, "lead[ing] to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state." So that would seem to undermine the Big Picture being painted by Cole.
But, why not? If I could ask a blockheaded question: why isn't Israel subject to more boycotts? After all, there have been more U.N. resolutions against Israel than any other country, both in the General Assembly and the Security Council, even if the U.S. tends to veto the latter.
Well, it's obvious. Israel doesn't get boycotted because it is an ally of the United States. But that makes the following remark from Cole all the more interesting: "sooner or later, [Israeli actions] will lead to boycotts by rising economic powers and by Europe that could be extremely damaging to Israel's long-term prospects as a state." Cole is here imagining a future in which "rising economic powers" and "Europe" are willing to cross the U.S.
This means we can't discuss the future of Israel or Palestine without discussing the future of U.S. dominance in the world. The three are, at the moment, inextricably entwined. I take it that this is the primary reason that we as citizens of the U.S. have such a hard time discussing the I/P conflict -- the range of acceptable opinion in the U.S. on this matter is even more restricted than it is in Israel itself. In a funny kind of way, the U.S. has an even bigger stake in the I/P conflict than Israel does. Hence, (1), my first claim in the first paragraph of this post.
Now, (2): Israel does not need the U.S. Let me put this as strongly as possible, so it can be most easily disagreed with: The United States creates more problems for Israel than it solves, and it creates more problems for Israel than Palestine, or Hamas, or Hezbollah do. In exchange for military assistance, Israel is willing to play the part of the US's Western Bulldog in the Middle East; it is willing to make itself into practically a giant military base for US control of ME resources. This is a bad deal for Israel: it creates the illusion of necessity of conflict, strife, and ill feeling between Jewish and Arab peoples. It creates, and this is the devilish part, the illusion that Israel needs all that military assistance in the first place. Thus, we have a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one whose spell can be broken.
Perhaps the longstanding dream of a U.S.-brokered peace deal between Israel and Palestine is itself just a trick, meant to keep us from seeing that what is really needed is for Israel to broker a peace between the U.S. and Palestine, and between the U.S. and the Middle East more generally. But in order to see things this way we have to readjust a lot of perceptions and biases -- perceptions and biases even deeper than the ones motivating the endless Standard American Israel/Palestine Debate. Dare I call those biases "racism against Arabs and Jews"? Sure, why not; this is just a blog post, and if I am accusing everyone in America of getting sucked into it then I am also accusing myself.
Thinking about the good of Israel, as opposed to the good of the U.S., perhaps the best thing Israel could do is make its own peace, and tell the U.S. (or, as I say, factions in it) to piss off -- to abandon the bulldog deal. Now that would be giving peace a chance. And that would be (3), and my conclusion.
I don't know if this is right, but I do know that engaging in the same old Standard American Israel/Palestine debate is no better. My suspicion is that the SAI/PD is not about Israel and Palestine at all (two peoples who would both do well to tell us to shove it), but about us, and the occasional American vanity -- even on the left -- of trying to rule the world while convincing ourselves we are saving it.
Update 10:28 pm: further discussion of Cole's article is in Lefty Coaster's diary Juan Cole on Gaza the West Bank and global public opinion.