Ilan Pappe - The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question (2012)

Ilan Pappe: I would like this evening to challenge what I will call the false paradigm of peace. Paradigm is a set, as you know, is a set of ideas, set of assumptions mainly, through which one understands a reality. And the paradigm of peace with regards to Israel and Palestine is set of assumptions about what is the essence of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, how should one interpret the reality today, and in many ways it's also a set of assumptions which forms the basis for a vision for the future. And there is a dominant paradigm about all these questions, how to understand the past, analyze the present, and look forward towards the future. And that paradigm is very powerful. It is very solid in many ways because it is supported by an incredible coalition of forces. Successive American administrations since 1967 support this paradigm. Most of the Western governments support this paradigm. Leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organization support this paradigm. Almost all the political parties in Israel support this paradigm. Some of the most impressive and important moral voices in our time, one of them co-authored the book that we have on sale here, support this paradigm. So you have to be a bit eccentric, as I am, to believe that you can challenge such a formidable coalition of forces. But I really think they're all wrong. Of course, they come to the paradigm from different perspectives. Some of them use it as a cynical tool to justify injustice. Some of them really believe that that's the only game in town. So I don't think They are all made of the same mold. But I think in the end of the day, they all support the same paradigm. And I think this is not just a false paradigm, it's a very dangerous paradigm. It's the paradigm of peace that allows occupation, colonization, and oppression to continue. And if that paradigm would still be dominant in the next decade, occupation, colonization, and dispossession will continue. The paradigm assumes that there is a conflict in Israel and Palestine between two national movements. And therefore it also assumes that you have to respect these two national movements, you also have to accept that both of them are to be blamed for the conflict, and you have to satisfy them both. political way of satisfying them both is to offer a two-state solution. That's one version of the paradigm. I'm sure there are others, but it's not that far away from everybody's understanding of what the paradigm is all about. The former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, used to say in this regard that if you want to solve the Palestine problem, you have to look at everything which is visible and make it divisible in Palestine and Israel. So what is visible? Land, territory, population, resources, maybe even blame. And then she added, we have to avoid looking at the invisible, because the invisible is indivisible, by which I assume she meant the refugee problem, the Palestinians inside Israel, the issues of justice, the issues of colonization, and other issues which before the Oslo Accord were very high on the Palestinian national agenda but somehow disappeared with the last phase in the attempt to impose the paradigm of the two-state solution on the area. Now, I understand very well why people under occupation would support the two-state solution, for instance. They would think that this is the best way to end a military occupation, and they thought that by supporting the two-state solution they would see the back of the Israeli occupying forces. But they were wrong. In fact, supporting the two-state solution allowed the Israeli army to extend its presence and deepen its presence in the occupied territories. But the wish to end the occupation among occupied Palestinians is understandable, and yet unintentionally they lend their support by adopting this position to a false paradigm that would keep the military occupation forever. I can understand why my good friends like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein support the two-state solution as an idea that is, or their idea is that this is a real politic kind of position that they take. That if you take that position, you at least engage with what is possible, not with what is impossible. It's a bit like the divisible and the indivisible. Well, I'm made of different mold. I'm not interested in what is possible. I am interested in what is just. And if the just is not possible, I will continue to work for it until it will become possible. But I think more than anything else, I find that among the great supporters of the paradigm, and especially among the people who genuinely believe that there are acting in the name of peace and justice and reconciliation, I think what is missing, and this is what I hope to do this evening, what is missing is a historical dimension. Maybe because I'm an historian, I tend to look for answers to a question like, how come such a paradigm is so powerful in history? And I repeat, it's a powerful If the President of the United States and moral philosophers and Palestinian leaders and Israeli leaders support the same paradigm, it's a powerful paradigm. I think what they are missing, had they looked more thoroughly in history, they would find out that actually what they do by supporting this paradigm is supporting directly an old Zionist plan or an Israeli strategy, which is more important, of how to have most of Palestine without having most of the Palestinians in it? That, for me, is what the false paradigm is all about. And in order to answer that question historically, I go back to in time, and I should say to the credit of the Israeli state that it still offers us an easy access, a relatively easy access to documentation of the past. I hope they will continue to do it. It's very important for professional historians like myself to base our work on that kind of material. And recently they have opened the cabinet meetings between roughly 1965 to 1968, which for me is the formative period in which the false paradigm was conceived and born. And therefore I was very glad that I could go and check that formative period in order to understand how the false paradigm developed into a consensual peace plan in the eyes of so many good and important people. I go back to 1965 because in that year there was an event that most Israelis were not aware of. that I think was very important for the conception of the false paradigm. It took place in Givat Ram, which is one of the two campuses that make the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. One campus is on Mount Scopus. It used to be there until 1948. Then it turned into no man's land, and then Israel rebuilt the Hebrew University campus on it in 1967. The other campus is built on the ruins of a Palestinian village called Shech al-Bader, which was ethnically cleansed in 1948. And the Israeli custodian of absentee property sold it to the Hebrew University for the awesome amount of money of one Palestinian pound, the equivalent of one Canadian dollar. Now, in that campus, which was quite, still today probably is, but definitely was in 65, a very beautiful campus, a very interesting group of Israelis met, or was rather invited by the Israeli military to convene. They were mostly the chiefs of the military rule inside Israel, which was imposed on the Palestinian minority in the state. Many of you may know that after the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, a small Palestinian minority was left in the country. They became known as the Israeli Arabs or the Arab Israelis. And they were subjected to military rule, quite a ruthless military rule, under British mandatory regulations, which lasted until 1966, some cases until 1967. Now, there was already a lot of pressure inside Israel to abolish this military rule. And the chiefs of the military rule assumed that they were called to discuss the end of the military rule, which in a way is true, but this was not the main reason that they were invited, together with some important legal minds in the country and other high officials of the Ministry of Interior of the Israeli government. What they were told is that It is true that the military rule over the Palestinians in Israel is about to end, but they should prepare themselves to transfer that military rule from one Palestinian group to another. And they were told that the next Palestinian group that would have to be administered militarily in the same way that the Palestinian minority was ruled are the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And mind you, this is two years before the June 1967 war. Now, they took a very interesting course. I won't go into all the details of what they learned or were supposed to learn. But what comes out, and that's the bottom line, is that they were prepared to run the affairs of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a military occupied area should they have to do it the next day. Of course, the next day They did not occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It took another two years before they did this. They were waiting for the opportunity, and the opportunity was provided to them by Jamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian leader, in his not very wise brinkmanship policy, which did not work. Sometimes you do a brinkmanship policy and you walk on the abyss and you fall. Sometimes you succeed. in surviving. He didn't. And that gave Israel the opportunity not only to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as you know, but also the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Now, what was decided in 1965 was how to run or how to maintain an occupation. What was not decided in 1965 was what would be the fate of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And That was left in the hands of the Israeli government immediately after the end of the June 1967 war, around the 8th and 9th of June 1967. The 13th government of Israel made the decisions that would form the basis for what I call the false paradigm of peace. The decision they made was the cornerstone of all the Israeli policies until today, without any exception, towards the fate of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, to my mind, including the Oslo process. The Oslo process was also not a deviation from what the Israeli ministers have decided during the months of June 1967. There are two things I want to say about that government that I think is important. The 13th government of Israel was the most consensual government Israel ever had or would ever have. Every shade of the political map of Israel was represented in that government. From the extreme right to the extreme left, from the socialist to the capitalist, from the ultra-orthodox to the most secular Jews, everyone was represented around the oval table that, or rectangular table, I don't remember anymore, that the cabinet was meeting. Actually, they were meeting around two kinds of tables. One in Givat Ram, where the prime minister's office is this ugly lump of cement that was built next to the lovely campus I was talking about. There was a rectangular table. And they used also to meet in the Knesset, in the Israeli parliament, around an oval table. It doesn't matter. The decisions were the same, whatever the shape of the table was. But I thought that since you made such an effort on a Saturday night, I'll give you some color. And this is my seventh lecture. I mean, I have to revive myself a bit as well. Anyway, putting furniture aside, it's important to understand that it was a consensual government because they understood, and they were justly thinking so, that they represented faithfully the Jewish-Israeli consensus. And that gave them force. That gave them impetus to decide what they decided. Second thing I want to say about that government is that half of the ministers in that government were generals in the 1948 war, or 1948 ethnic cleansing. And when they were generals, In 1948, they were in their early 20s. Now they were in their early 40s or mid-40s. It depends how old they were in 48. And during the 48 War, they formed a lobby, these young generals, that pressured David Ben-Gurion, the leader of Israel, to occupy the West Bank. Because they said to themselves, if we were so successful in occupying 80% of Palestine, Why don't we complete the job and take the whole of Palestine and create a Jewish state between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean? And they pressured Ben-Gurion to take the decision, but he refused. He was 40 years older than they were. He was in the early 60s. And there were two reasons why he didn't agree to the occupation of the West Bank in 1948. Gaza was not so much on I don't want to offend anyone, but nobody was particularly interested then or today in the Gaza Strip. But don't take it personally if you are from the Gaza Strip. I like the Gaza Strip. I want it if you want to give it to me. But at that time, nobody was particularly interested in it, either in Israel or in Egypt or anywhere else. Now, the Ben-Gurion, there were two reasons why he did not accept this pressure. One was he had a tacit agreement with the Jordanians that in return for the annexation of the West Bank to Jordan in the 48th War, Jordan would limit its military participation in the Arab military effort against the Jewish state. My colleague Avi Shlame has written a book about it called The Collusion Across the Jordan. Maybe some of you have read it. It's an excellent book. There's a book which is not less good about it by Ilan Pape called The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. For some reason, in Amman, the Jordanian Mukhabarat have removed all my books and left Avish Lame's book. He is more liked by the royal family. I don't know why, but I'll try and amend fences with the royals if I can in my next visit and convince them to return the books to the bookshops, but... There is one bookshop where you can say that you want the books that do not exist and then they give it to you. In any case, this was one consideration, respecting the strategic alliance between Israel and Jordan and the price was given the West Bank to the Jordanians. The second reason was that Ben-Gurion was not sure that the Israeli army had the stamina to ethnically cleanse the West Bank as it did the rest of Palestine. This was a far more densely populated area. He didn't think that the Israeli army had the will or the capacity to do that as well, and he decided to leave that open. But this group of generals who became Israel's ministers in 1967 have never given up the idea that it was a terrible mistake not to turn the West Bank into an integral, organic part of Israel. And now they were in government. Now they could decide it. Two of them are very famous. One of them was the Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, who was a general in 1948. And the other one was Igal Alon, who was a great hero of the 1948 war. And he ethnically cleansed the Galilee. But in 1967, he was the Minister of Labor and Agriculture. He was not very interested in those two portfolios. He was much more interested in how to solve the problem of the West Bank. And together with Moshe Dayan, sometimes at loggerheads, sometimes together, they orientated the Israeli government policy on the West Bank. And they had to deal with a very weak prime minister, Levi Eshkol. So it wasn't much of a problem to decide what they decide. Now, according to the documents, they took three very important decisions, which I think quite a lot of Israelis are not aware of it, and definitely a lot of people around the world are not aware of it. Because the Israeli public continued to debate between itself whether it should withdraw from the territories or not, but the politicians were never part of that debate. The first decision that they took was that they would not ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. that they cannot repeat in 67 what they did in 1948. There were a million and a half Palestinians. It's not that they didn't contemplate this idea, didn't play with the idea, but they thought that after the war, given the different kind of media you had in 67, there was already television, and given the Israeli army already demobilization, it was not a good idea to contemplate massive expulsions of Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It was not by mistake or accidental that they did contemplate it, because if you expel one million Palestinians, it doesn't make sense that you incorporate another million and a half 19 years later. So there was a problem, a demographic problem for them, but they decided to leave them intact. There were here and there, as some of you know, massive expulsions, but not on the same scale as 1948 and definitely not as a result of a policy from above. The second decision that they have taken was that Israel could not exist without direct or indirect control over the West Bank. Again, the Gaza Strip did not fare in these discussions, but the West Bank did. There were two reasons that the ministers at the time gave for the need to keep either directly or indirectly the West Bank under Israeli control. One was strategic. And they, again and again in the cabinet meeting, described the Jordan River as the natural border of the Jewish state. And that's one of the reasons you want the West Bank, because you need a natural border. I don't know how many of you have seen the Jordan River. The word river is a bit exaggerated. It's not even a creek, or maybe it's a creek on a good day. Now, even if you are 19 years old, you can still, and you're not exercising on a regular basis, you can still cross the river with one leap to the other side. But you can join the Israeli generals, some of them unfortunately quite obese these days, on the tours and they will take the broken antenna from their car and point to the river and say, this is the natural border. Here the tanks cannot cross. Here the F-16 cannot fly. Here the big eastern front cannot cross this natural border. Well, it's ridiculous, but for example, Prime Minister Netanyahu is in love with this argument. He also has some sort of essential metaphor of the shape of the Israeli country as a lean woman that would not survive. He somehow prefers them to have... Anyway, okay. That's the price of being on the road for too long. But the strategic argument was basically that this is the... the kind of buffer zone between the Eastern Front and Israel. Of course, in 2012, this is ridiculous given how armies performed, but open the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and you will see these arguments are commodified all over the world. The second set of arguments to keep the West Bank inside Israel or as part of Israel was, of course, the ideological one, the biblical one. This is the ancient land of Israel, this is the heart of the ancient land of Israel, and like a person cannot exist without his or her heart, this is the same argument. As the years went by, the ideological argument became more important than the strategic one. There was an interesting kind of idea that Dayan and Alon developed already in the very beginning of of the second week of June 1967 about how to settle this idea that you want the West Bank but you don't want directly to control it. Part of the problem was also that there was the United Nations pressure and American pressure to say at least that Israel is willing to withdraw from the territories in return for bilateral peace with Jordan and Egypt and Syria. So there was a pressure not to say directly and openly Although in the cabinet meetings they say very openly that the West Bank is part, will always be part of Israel. But the outside world, it was not the right thing to say. Not even domestically to the Israeli public did they want to say that this is what they had in mind. So they had this idea that you can divide the West Bank into two West Banks if you want. There's a Palestinian West Bank in the areas which are densely populated by Palestinians. There the Palestinians can have an autonomy. or they will be connected to Jordan, depends on which part of the history we're talking about. But that could develop into eventually a state. This is the state in the two-state solution, this part of the West Bank. Then there is the West Bank that Israel needs to annex, where there are hardly any Palestinians. And there, Alon says already on the 9th or 10th of June of 67, we have to settle Jews there. That's the only way you can annex it because you cannot annex it officially. You cannot announce, I'm annexing the West Bank. This will get you into trouble even with the Americans in 1967, right? So you Judaize these areas instead of declaring that they are part of Israel. That was the tactic. So there was the kind of two divisions you had between the direct and indirect. The problem for the various Israeli governments was that there was also a new ideological movement emerged after 67, Gush Emunim, that had different ideas where they should settle or not. And they liked also to settle in the Palestinian or Arab West Bank. And the Israeli government and the settlers movement negotiated, still do negotiate, between which part would be the Palestinian West Bank, and which part would be the Jewish West Bank. And as you know, as the years go by, the Jewish West Bank gets larger and larger, and the Palestinian West Bank gets smaller and smaller. And yet this is part of the powerful paradigm of two states and peace and so on. The third decision, which is very important, is the decision what to do with the people who live there. If you don't expel them, and you want to keep the West Bank, what do you do with the people? So the Israelis invented something, which is called a citizenless citizens. It's like what you like in North America to do to the rest of the world with ideas such as Diet Coke and decaffeinated coffees, if this is really a possibility in life. But you believe in it. You should go on believing in it, that Diet Coke Diet Coke is Coke and that decaffeinated coffee is coffee. So stateless, citizenless citizens are citizens according to this idea. But of course the problem was not abstract or philosophical. The problem was in reality that if you maintain such status of people for such a long period of time, you actually create a huge prison for a million and a half people. And Israel built the biggest mega prison ever seen in modern human history. In that prison, in 67, one million and a half Palestinians were incarcerated. There are now three and a half millions in this prison. And these people are, there's already a fourth generation of the inmates, if you want, in that prison. The prison becomes more and more prison-like as the years go by because at first there was a lot of movement between the West Bank and outside the West Bank. Then suddenly the Israelis, not suddenly, gradually the Israelis closed the gates and the last thing they did before building a real wall around the prison was to say to Palestinians that they cannot get out of the West Bank through Ben Gurion Airport. They can only go out through So it really, I mean, the metaphor of prison becomes a reality as the years go by. And there were two models of the prison. And in these two models lies the false paradigm of peace. One model was the open prison model, where people were allowed autonomy, relative freedom. Even they were allowed to work outside the prison, provided they would go at night back to the prison. And they could eventually call the prison, or part of the prison at least, a state if they want to. But then if they resist the imposition of this model, they would be punished by being introduced to the maximum security prison. The maximum security prison has collective punishments, the imprisonment of people without trial, demolition of houses, expulsion, the whole repertoire. of Israeli collective punishment I'm sure you're familiar with. Maybe it's a good time to mention the 1,400 Palestinian prisoners who are on hunger strike and support their struggle for peace and justice. The maximum security prison was a retaliation against the 68 uprising, the 87 uprising, the 2000 uprising, and of course, it may happen again. Now, as Tom knows, I like to leave a lot of time for questions, so I'm beginning to wrap things up. But before I do that, I want to say that What is important about this mega prison that I think is far better reality for, or a far better metaphor in my eyes at least than occupation or colonization even, is that in order to maintain such a prison, you need thousands of people to operate it. So the number of Israelis who were involved in this incarceration, is huge, and there's already a third generation of wardens and jailers, as there is a third generation of inmates. And because the paradigm of peace created the illusion that you have on the ground a kind of a development towards peace, while actually it was the same story all over again of maintaining the prison, it would be very difficult to get out of this situation. Because what you need today in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians with particular focus on the West Bank, and of course you need similar solutions for the Israelis and the other Palestinian groups, but with particular focus on the West Bank, you don't need peace. You have to ask yourself how in human history, when in human history were we able to turn a situation of wardens and prisoners into a situation of equality. This is far more difficult than peace. It's far more important than peace. This is more in the line of what was attempted in apartheid South Africa. This is more in the line of truth and reconciliation. But even that is not enough to my mind because it's really, it's sort of taking saying the prisoners And the wardens should be equal citizens. That would take a lot to create. And I'm hopeful. I think it is possible, despite the fact that it was three generations. But if we will continue to describe that reality as ripe for a two-state solution, we will go to the fourth and fifth generation of the mega prison of Palestine. That's why we have to get rid of this paradigm. I'm not saying that I know exactly which paradigm should replace it, I just know very well that this is the wrong paradigm. That doesn't mean that we won't have to work very hard to think of how then to reframe the relationship between Jews and Palestinians instead of the two-state solution or the paradigm that the West Bank is the future Palestine or the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Even that is not on the cards as a future Palestine. To do that, we have to do three things, and with this I will end. One, I think we should stop, and I say to myself and I say to everyone else who is either in a powerful or a less powerful position, I think we should stop believing and telling others that peace is around the corner, that the two-state solution is around the corner. I don't know where this corner is. Maybe in Vancouver. I don't know. I haven't checked Vancouver yet, but I've checked most places around the world. There is no two-state solution around any corner. Maybe on Mars there is a two-state solution around the corner. There is nothing around the corner. There isn't even a corner. And this created false expectations among people and frustration. And I don't have to tell you that frustration produces violence. So if you want to mitigate violence, stop creating false assumptions and telling people that there is a kind of a reasonable, logical solution that is just around the corner. In the last sentence, none of the words I used is right. They're all false. The second thing I think we should do is not accept the basic logic of the false paradigm. The false paradigm says, There will be peace, and then there will be an end of occupation, colonization, and whatever. No, it's the other way around. First of all, there will be an end of occupation, the end of colonization, the end of oppression, which by the way never ends just by negotiations. You need other means to end it. And then you can talk about peace. You cannot do it the other way around. And the third thing that we should do, and that is very important to my mind, is to at least avoid the demographic and geographical definitions of the false paradigm of peace. The false paradigms of peace assumes that Palestine is 20 percent of Palestine. We should not accept it. Palestine is 100 percent of Palestine. And the second assumption is that Palestinians are only people who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. That's not true. That's only 50 percent of the Palestinians. Palestinians are all the people who live inside Israel, and they're also the refugees. And they're also people who live in exilic communities around the world. All of them are Palestinians, and any solution that would exclude them and ignore their wishes and aspirations is bound to fail. Thank you very much. The first question was about the role of Christian Zionism and how important it is. I'm glad you mentioned it. In the book I co-authored with Chomsky, I have a chapter on the history of American support for Israel, and I highlight the importance of Christian Zionism on both sides of the Atlantic ever since the early 19th century. both in the conception of Zionism as a colonialist movement that regarded Palestine as its homeland, whereas there were other options. This was very much under Protestant Christian Zionist influence, and also its present impact on policy. So I think, yes, Christian Zionism is definitely a strong force. It's kind of a third leg in a triangle, that gives unconditional American support to Israel together with AIPAC and the military industrial complex. But we may come back to this issue with other questions in mind. Is the Jewish state, is this Judaism based on ethnicity or based on religion? I think that it's ethnicity. I think there is an ethnic, organic Jewish group now in Israel, few millions, an equal number of Palestinians who live between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. So the Jewish state is a state that gives a preference and a first citizen status to to anyone who is considered ethnically, not only religiously, Jewish. It's an ethnocracy, as some of the Israeli new sociologists like to call it. So it's not a democracy. It's a state which gives preference in all walks of life to one ethnic group, which happens to be a third generation of settlers over the indigenous native population of Palestine. Steps toward the future. I'm very hopeful. I don't know why. Maybe it's my tiredness. I've been all over Canada. I'm very hopeful. I've never been as hopeful as I am today. I'm serious. And the reasons I don't give a map, my roadmap, what does it matter? I mean, I'm a professor from the University of Exeter. I'm not a leader. I'm not a state. I'm not in administration. I'm not even a movement. I may be half a movement of the new historians, but the other half became so fanatic that maybe I'm the only movement. I don't know. It doesn't matter. But what is important is that there is a division of labor that can give us an idea of how we move from here to a better future. And the division of labor is important, not the steps, one, two, three, four, five, of an individual. Only prophets give ten points and ask the people to follow them. I'm not a prophet. I'm hardly an historian. I'm definitely not a prophet. But I think there is a division of labor, and I want to be part of that division of labor towards the future. The Palestinians have to get their act together. They know it. They haven't solved the issue of representation for years now. We need the Palestinian unity. We need the Palestinian representation. We need to know who are we talking to when we talk about the Palestinian political leaders. We don't know yet. And because of the fragmentation that happened on the ground. So without Palestinians solving the issue of representation, it's very hard to move forward. So that's one thing. And I can't go to the Palestinians and say to them, solve your issue of representation. I can say it, but it doesn't matter. Now, on the ground in Israel and Palestine, we have to start, and some of us have started, a very huge project of re-education, engaging with the Israeli fear which is both manipulated and genuine, engaging with everyone who lives there and rebuilding trust between people who used to think that their ethnic group is everything and all the rest are nothing. This is a huge project, and I've been involved in this for 25 years, but I hope to see many more people involved in this. But the one effort does not exclude the other. All these efforts have to go together. You in the West have a very important role to play. Contrary to what you think, it's not so much the role of bringing the two sides together. You can still do it if you want, it's okay. I like Vancouver. If you want me to meet my Palestinian friends here, I'll come any day. But we need you to stop the destruction on the ground by supporting boycott, divestment, and sanction against the state of Israel. We need this pressure from the outside in order that there will be a chance from the inside and in order that Palestinians and Jews alike eventually would build something else. Because one of the reasons I think people don't talk that much of the next steps is that actually we have one state in Palestine. There is already one state. There's one regime that controls everything between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean. In it, there are Palestinians who live in conditions which are far better than were in apartheid South Africa. And in it are Palestinians who live in conditions which are far worse than ever Africans have experienced in apartheid South Africa. Now, we need to change that regime, and I'm not offering changing that regime the way Americans change regimes. I don't want you to bomb Tel Aviv. I have too many friends there. But I do think we have to think about an evolutionary way of changing it. And I know that the vast majority of the Jews in Israel don't want it. Don't think I'm naive. I'm coming from there. I know what kind of government Israel is going to elect in September 2012. But that's not the point. The point is that you can with clean hands say to Israelis and Palestinians that the idea of equal rights, equal civil rights, equal individual and human rights is something that the 21st century demands from every society. As for the right of return, I think that because it was so much excluded, a lot of issues concerned to the right of return have been left aside and not dealt with. And a few principles that I think are very important about the right of return without even yet understanding maybe how exactly or fully we'll implement it. One principle is that this is an individual right. internationally recognized by the United Nations. So it doesn't matter if a Palestinian leader is giving it up. It doesn't matter if Israel doesn't accept it. This is an internationally recognized individual right of every Palestinian refugee, and it will remain so despite everything everybody would do. So this is something to take into account if you want to move on with a solution that doesn't respect the most basic right of people to come back to their homes. This will not be a solution. This would be managing a conflict, one of these terms that political scientists in America use in order to produce 10 articles a year which are needed for their promotion. But this has nothing to do with what solutions in real life are. The second thing about the right of return, which is very important, is to understand the Israeli refusal for the right of return. This has nothing to do with capacity. This has nothing to do with demographics as such. This has to do with racism. And my best friends, and I say this with all my heart because these are my best friends, among the most leftist in Israel, including your friend Uri Avnery, when they are honest enough, they tell you that their greatest fear is to live in a place where the Jews are not a majority. And I respect those at least who say it openly. I don't like liberal Zionists. as a rule because they don't, they think the same but they don't say it. So they say we'll give up the West Bank so that we could be racist only in 80% of Palestine. This is Meretz, this is Gush Shalom unfortunately. I say no, no, either you think and that's your right but you will pay the price for this. That you are entitled in the 21st century to have an ethnic state which will use every means possible to remain ethnically Jewish, both demographically and geographically. It's okay. But don't then also ask to be a member in the club of democracies. You cannot be the only democracy in the Middle East and a racist ethnic state. It doesn't work. You can be one or the other. That's all. How many Palestinian refugees would want to return, we have no idea. We have no idea. We have no idea how many people would want to come and visit, how many people would want to have a second house there, how many people would want to build their house there. We can discuss all these issues only, but only after we acknowledge this as a sacred right and we don't use the demographic argument that if there will be too many Palestinians, there will be not a Jewish state. If this argument you want to use, it doesn't matter how many refugees you are willing to accept. So just don't accept anyone. But we have to be open about it. Israel, as a society, has to make a choice between two options and stop squaring the circle. You know, again, liberal Zionism is a bit like Diet Coke and decaffeinated coffee. You see, I've been here a week. I've tried all your gastronomic inventions. I was not impressed, I must say. Now, Uri Avnery says that we will be, by supporting BDS, people like him will be more entrenched, more demonized by the Israeli society. I don't think it's true, by the way. I think the facts show exactly the opposite. The facts show that since the BDS campaign has started, two things have happened. The Israeli society for the first time returned to discuss the occupation because of the BDS. It's much better than what caused it to discuss the occupation in 2002. You know what caused the Israeli society to discuss the occupation in 2002? Suicide bombs. I prefer BDS to suicide bombs. The second thing which is not true is that then Liberal Zionism is shrinking, he's right, but it is replaced by anti-Zionism. There's a new generation of anti-Zionist Jews in Israel, which people like Guri Avnery find difficult to accept and digest. But this is the new Israeli left. The new Israeli left does not differentiate between Palestinians in Haifa and Palestinians in Nablus, and Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camp. They don't. They are a minority, don't misunderstand me, they are a minority but they are third generation Israelis and they have a chance. They have a chance of changing Israel from within. I believe in them. I'm an historian. I have a very long span of, I look at history as something very long. I'm not impressed by activists who tell me they've been two years in this business and nothing happened. I say to them, good morning, I've been 50 years and nothing happened, so what? I always tell my children, when you become an activist, Don't ask yourself how much have I achieved, but how much did I do yesterday? That's the only question you ask. You don't try to collect dividends. This is for politicians from above. This is not for real people. Finally, I think you asked about losing hope. Well, I think I answered it, but let me just repeat it. I'm very hopeful. If you say that eventually there will be no Israel, I don't see it that way. I never accepted this accusation that, you know, people said to me, you don't recognize the right of Israel to exist. I said, how can I as an individual not recognize or recognize a right of a state to exist? What am I? The United Nations? The International Court of Justice? I'm a human being. I'm hardly that even. So how can I not recognize? Of course I can only recognize the state. I cannot not recognize it. It's there. Believe me. Believe me. I know it. I know it. It's there. The question is, what are your hopes for? If your hopes are for an Israeli Jewish state, then yes, I think this may change in the future. I don't know. It makes me hopeful if this is going to change. I want to live in a place, to be frank, and that's also about the right of return. I want to live with my friend Mahmoud Yazbak in Nazareth, with whom I have much more in common than my cousin in Vancouver, and I think I have one. Maybe he's here, I don't know. Are you here? Whom I've never met. I have no wish to see him in Israel. I hope he has no wish to come to Israel. I want to share the future with Mahmoud in Nazareth, not with Chaim from Vancouver. That's my future. And that's the future, I think, for most people who live in Israel. That doesn't mean that Jews should not continue to come if they want to immigrate to Israel. and refugees should return to Israel. We can have space for everyone there. It's when we start to exclude people on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion that we create abominations and evil systems that eventually would collapse whether we recognize them or not. Zionism as a movement was born out of two very noble impulses. There's nothing wrong with that. the wish to found a secure place for Jews in a very dangerous Europe in the mid and late 19th century. One should respect the wish to survive, especially when one knows what happened to the Jews later on. And the second noble and acceptable impulse was to redefine Judaism as a national movement, as everybody else did in the late 19th century. There was nothing problematic, I think, with that. The problem with Zionism was when it decided that Palestine is the territory for obvious reasons, but the moment Palestine was chosen as the territory in which to satisfy these two impulses of security and identity, the moment they chose Palestine, Zionism became a settler colonialist project and remained so until this very day. Now, I think what should make it easier for us to discuss these issues without falling into unnecessary demonizations and descriptions is to understand that it's not the only settler colonialist movement in the world. Not far away from here, about five meters from here, there is a nation that also was born as a settler colonialist nation. And sometimes when you genocide the native people, you have less problems than when you just ethnically cleanse them. And I think that The problem with Zionism is that it's a 21st century settler-colonialist movement. That's why we find it so difficult. Not because the story is complex. The story is not complex. Europeans left Europe for all kinds of reasons, settled in non-European countries. Usually they either genocide or colonize the local people. In no case in history did they offer them peace, prosperity, and joint life. There isn't such a chapter in colonialism. There isn't. What we need is the Israeli Jewish society, first of all, to acknowledge that it is a settler-colonialist society. And then go for the complex issue. The complex issue is how you decolonize settler-colonialist society. That's not easy. And to say to themselves, we are lucky. We are not as bad as people who genocide the people. We didn't genocide the Palestinians. So there's still hope. There's still chance. As the whites, probably most of them still don't believe that they did the right thing, but eventually were forced to decolonize apartheid South Africa. If, therefore I'm not impressed with the term Zionism or not Zionism, I'm not interested in this. Israel, if it continues to be an ethnic settler colonialist state, it will not win the legitimacy of the world and of the Arab world and of the Palestinians. It should have a different model in hand. And I think this is for me the whole question. Now, ethnic cleansing for me is an inevitable result of a settler colonialist movement that for historical reasons decided that it had no other choice. And maybe in many ways, rightly so, some of them felt they had no other choice but to continue the colonialist project which Britain helped them to establish in Palestine. So if you continue to harbor these ideas, then ethnic cleansing is inevitable, not only in 1948, but also in 2015 and 2016. That's the danger, that the Nakba is not a closed chapter in the history of the Palestinians. It's an ongoing chapter. And this is the kind of thing that I think we have to find. I don't have magic formulas of how to do it, but... All my life I'm seeking this formula, how to engage with my own society and show them the mirror. Last time I tried to show them the mirror, they broke the mirror over my head. So I'm looking for other ways, but they have to look in the mirror. It won't help them. And they cannot hide behind the Holocaust and behind anti-Semitism. All these masks abuse the Holocaust memory, abuse the crime of anti-Semitism. It won't help them. It won't help them, and eventually the world will get tired of these kind of cloaks that they use to hide instead of boldly saying, we need to change, and it will be a painful change. There's no doubt. What can you do? I mean, some operations are not nice to save the patient. Now, you're right, social networking and media, I think it played a very important role. I think you're right. I think that the one thing the Israelis realized is that they cannot hide what goes on. But look what they're doing with the flight dealer. They don't allow people to go through Ben Gurion Airport to see with their own eyes what's going on. They don't allow reporters to roam freely to see what they're doing. Somehow they still believe, I don't understand the pathology there, but they somehow still believe that they can hide it. I think you're right. I mean, it's absurd to think in 2012 that you can hide from the world what goes on. Or that you can tell stories about the Mavi Marmara that everybody knows are not true. But they still believe in it. God knows why, but they do. And I think with time, this will hopefully have a positive impact on them. The idea that what they do is far more transparent than they think. Far more transparent. And that can be a very positive idea to continue exposing it. Now, there are two questions. One about the Arab dimension and the American dimension. I agree. I think the Arab dimension is very important and in many ways I think it's not so much the Arab society's commitment to the Palestine cause with which is the most important fact that used to be. I think it's far more important, but that's my view, to look for the success of the democratization of the Arab world. I think the basic cartography of Israel is going to be seriously challenged in the next 10 years. What the Israelis were selling with a certain element of success, especially after 9-11, was that they are an island of democracy in a sea of barbarism. And I think what's happening is that the sea becomes more and more democratic, and the limelight is now on the island, and the island doesn't look very democratic anymore. And I think this is something that they will have to engage with. So I think that is important. But I think it's also true, and maybe you meant that as well, I think it's also very, very true, and I'm glad you mentioned that, because I forgot to mention that in my lecture. Zionism is a movement that forced itself on the Arab world. Nobody invited the national Jewish movement to build its home in the midst of the Arab world. Now, the Israelis have never, as a state and a society, never reconciled with this geographical location, which is also, of course, a cultural location, religious location, and a civilization location. So they have, as I always say, they have this dream that one day there will be an earthquake that will take them away from the Middle East and append them, I don't know, to Italy, or maybe better, to Norway. Now, I'm not a geologist, but I don't think such an earthquake is on the cards. And they behave like the thug in the neighborhood, and they are surprised that the neighborhood doesn't like them. And I think this alienation of the neighborhood and alienating the neighborhood, so to speak, is something the Israelis would have to come to terms with. They have to be part of the Arab world, and they have to be part of its problems and solutions. They had the chance. They brought one million Arab Jews to Israel. They had the chance of using that community and they de-Arabized them. And they gave them the message that if you want to be part of the Jewish state, you have to be even more anti-Arab than the European Jews. So they missed the chance with this particular group of people. And that's a pity. That's a great pity because this was something that could have changed the history of Israel and Palestine. But they decided knowingly that they don't want that to happen, and they are paying the price for this. So I think this could happen. As for the American connection, in this book, as I said, I have an article. Because I'm an historian, I don't like to accept that what you see in the last 10 years is what history offers you or the future offers you. I think it's very important to mention that American policy was not always anti-Palestinian, contrary to what people say. And because it was not always anti-Palestinian, we have some hopes that it can again be pro-Palestinian. I want to mention two historical junctures which are very important to remember. When the Balfour Declaration was made, the American administration was, and especially President Wilson, was very annoyed with this idea that you can give something which doesn't belong to you to someone it doesn't belong And he suggested that one should ask the majority of the people of Palestine what kind of a state they want. Unfortunately, he fell ill in 1920, and America went into splendid isolation until Pearl Harbor. But this was the American policy against the colonialist powers, Britain and France. Second, we should mention the Eisenhower administration. Now, the Eisenhower administration had its follies in all kinds of things it did in the Arab world. But on the Palestine question, it was crystal clear especially John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State. He came to Israel and he wrote to the President and said, to President Eisenhower, I see no reason in the world why all the Palestinian refugees cannot come back home. All the Israelis' accusers seem to me feeble, he said, and unrealistic. We should pressure the Israeli government to allow the refugees to return. And he even suggested suspending a special loan to Israel on this basis. In fact, that prompted Abba Even, who was the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, to create AIPAC. Because suddenly they realized that the American administration is very volatile. And they had this idea that you have to pressure the American administration. Kennedy was not better from an Israeli perspective. I'm not saying that the Israelis assassinated. I leave it to Oliver Stone to hint, but I don't think so. But it's very true, and you can see it in the documents. The Israelis were elated when L.B. Johnson was not elected but appointed. So there were other chapters in the American relationship with the Palestine question, and there could be others. But I do agree that in the last 20 years, of course, this is something that the only thing you want to see is an end for American involvement rather than an extension of it. What I meant is that in the false paradigm, when people talked about Palestinians, they meant only the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And when they talked about Palestine, they meant only the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Now, the Israelis are already included in any peace process. Now, of course, when I talk about, for instance, a one-state solution, I'm looking for a state with equal rights for everyone who lives between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, regardless of their religion, ethnicity, or state. And I think that it's – I know the place. Believe me, I've lived there all my life. There is enough space for Palestinian refugees who want to return. There's enough place for Jews who want to come back. This is not a matter of capacity. This is a matter of ideology. If we as Jews would lead the way, because we have now the powerful hand, if you want, if we would lead the way and say in a very evolutionary way, I'm not naive, there's 100 years of bloodshed, you have to do it carefully, you have to do it in a very responsible way, you don't just do it like this, but if we will build the way for a political outfit which would give equal representation for everyone, we would have done a great service not only for the Palestinians, but also to ourselves. Now, the settlers, yes, I think the settlers are part of the wardens. But I think if you've seen the settlements, they are themselves gated communities. And when you put them on the map, they create a kind of invisible, sometimes visible wall around Palestinian areas. So the settlements and the settlers are part of what I call the mega prison, although I don't think all of them want to be in such a capacity and all of them would have liked that capacity. Now you asked a very interesting question, why do settlers want to go and live with loaded guns and so on. I think we have to understand that half of what we call settlers are living in neighborhoods and urban areas where they don't need to carry any loaded guns. So not all the settlers are carrying loaded guns. In fact, half of the settlers, there are many Israeli research on this, half of the settlers don't regard themselves as settlers. The greater Jerusalem area, which is kind of an amoeba that keeps growing in Israel, it's always, it will swallow Vancouver if you're not dangerous, will be also part of greater Jerusalem in no time. The greater Jerusalem area is an urban sprawl that doesn't have people who carry guns. doesn't have people who think that ideologically they are there as settlers. They think that they are part of Israel as most Israelis think that they are part of Israel. I think that's one of the success of various Israeli governments to create this ambiguity between what is settlement or not. You are probably talking about the hardcore of the settlements where, which are still in isolated area in the midst of Palestinian areas. You know, I don't know if you've been in the army. I was in the army. Loaded guns are very dangerous. They can mesmerize you. They can mesmerize a Palestinian freedom fighter, they can mesmerize a young Israeli soldier, and they can mesmerize an Israeli Jewish settler. Guns, not far away from here, you have a society that adores gun culture, so it's nothing Jewish about it. Yes, carrying gun can give you... all kinds of sublimation and sometimes replacement if you have nothing else. I don't want to go into it. You look too young to explore that avenue. But yes, I'm not surprised, really, because I know the feeling as a soldier. I know the feeling. So that's not something that you can easily dismantle. I think what you have to dismantle is a mentality of siege and mentality of war. I think every Israeli Jew who goes through the educational system is being given a doctrine that very few of us have decided to challenge. And that doctrine says, unfortunately, this area wants to destroy us. The people around us are our sworn enemies. So we have two chances, two options, either to leave or to stay but living in an abnormal way, where you need a strong army, where you need everyone to be part of the army, where you have to protect yourself with your gun and so on. For Israeli Jews, this is not something unreasonable. And it doesn't mean that they all like it, but they accept it as kind of a necessity. I think they're wrong. I think that the best weapon is to offer what I had tonight was offering. And I think you won't need all these But this is the mentality. It's a militaristic mentality that relies on this ethnic ideology. Now, Iran. I think the dissent is interesting between the chief of the security services and the trio that wants to take Israel to war, the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Foreign Minister Lieberman, and the Defense Minister Barak. So it's very encouraging in a way that the Israeli security establishment, first of all, doesn't want a war with Iran. That's good news. Although I always remind myself that in 1982 that same military establishment said to Menachem Begin that it would be a terrible mistake to invade Lebanon. And they invaded Lebanon. So the fact that the military apparatus is against it unfortunately does not ensure that this will not happen. Far more interesting, I think, for our case tonight is what the former head of the Shabak said about Israel's treatment of Palestinians in general. I don't know if you saw that. He said, we treated them as a racist nation unjustly and undemocratically. Now, I don't know exactly how to digest such a thing for someone who was heading the apparatus that did all these things. If it had been as part of the new Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Israel, I would have, of course, felt very good about it. But it's not part... On the other end, who knows? Who knows? Maybe something is moving even up there. Who knows? I do believe people are decent, whether they're Jews or Arabs, whether they're Israelis and Palestinians. And I think sometimes this decency, I hope always, this decency will come out eventually. I hope so, that they would understand it. But time will tell. This is an exception that so far doesn't prove the rule. Now, about the flight tiller, and so on. I'm very careful about it. I respect every initiative that wants to break a siege, that wants to encourage people, empower people, and so on. So I would say it in the following way. I think the impact of the flight tiller, you all know what the flight tiller is, right? Yeah. No? The flight tiller was an attempt by mainly European and American, North American activists to fly through Israeli airport and to go to the West Bank to show solidarity with the occupied people. And Israel blocked that attempt twice with the collaboration of the airliners that were supposed to fly these people. Now, the effect in Israel itself was minimal. I think most Israelis felt that The government was absolutely right in not allowing the people to come. They don't believe that these are people with good intentions. So one should assess the importance of such messages. But I'm not sure that this was the purpose, to change the Israeli public opinion. If this was the purpose, it's not a very good tactic. If the purpose is to give the Palestinians in the West Bank a hope that they are not alone and someone is interested in them and so on, That's a very good purpose, and it worked. But as a kind of a game changer with Inside Israel, it's not the way to do it. I don't think that's what's going to make. I think the two drastic actions and pressure from the outside and building a new kind of education from the inside are the only thing that will really change their perspectives and mentality. I'm sure there are more than just the Canadian examples. There are many other examples for people sharing or finding reasonable solutions for national identities within the mega national identity. I mean, after all, all the nation states in the world are not made of one nation group. And of course, this could be shown in many ways. Although I don't think the 21st century needs national solutions. I think it needs a national solution. I never understood the attraction of nationalism, I must say. Who wants to be with his relatives all year round? I mean, you can see them on Christmas or Hanukkah or I don't know what, but you want to be with them all the time? This must be sickening. But there you have another European invention that we all cherish as if there's some great wisdom in it. But if people want to be nationalists, we'll have it by a national state. I mean, I won't leave Israel because of it. It's much better than what we have now. And it's much better than a two-state solution. So I have nothing against it. But I think what I keep reminding myself, I keep remembering a letter that Mahatma Gandhi wrote to Martin Buber, I think sort of fills the essence of this. Buber was very angry with Gandhi for not supporting Zionism. So Gandhi wrote back to him, and by the way, and this is why there's no street named after Gandhi in Israel. We punished him. There's no Gandhi Avenue. We showed him. And he wrote to Buber that, you know, I understand the wish to live next to the Palestinians. I don't understand the wish to live instead of the Palestinians. And as long as that's what you want to do, I will not support you. So I think this is the model that we should look for. So however it will be formulated eventually. Ten years without a peaceful solution is very much of the same but much worse. I mean, we know how Israel and Palestine develops. It's incremental. It's getting worse but not in a dramatic way. Main media attention is very hard to catch on this. It's a daily occurrence. This is not big dramas apart from events such as Gaza. And that's why they don't focus on it, not just because they're sometimes afraid to do it, but because it's not big news, two Palestinian prisoners dying out of hunger, five Palestinians being expelled, two Palestinian houses being demolished. Newspapers cannot accumulate things that happen on a daily basis and present a 10-year kind of criminality. And I think we'll have another 10 years of criminality. But, of course, nothing is frozen. The Palestinians may uprise. The Arab world may show a very different attitude towards what's going on in Palestine. Who knows? Even the Western, one or two Western governments will begin to change their attitudes more dramatically towards Israel. So without peace, I think there will be more bloodshed, more oppression, but also more severe opposition to that oppression. So it's very – it's much better to think that there is a way forward. Why I left Israel, and I didn't understand how it's connected to Norman Fingalstein. We didn't leave together, Israel. We don't live together either. I don't understand. Or maybe you meant what happened to us? Where is the guy who asked? Well, yeah, I mean, he got ridiculed in the same way that... Oh, I see, I see, yeah. No, I think professional academics in Israel and in the United States who dare to challenge the hegemonic paradigms were definitely treated in a way that is familiar to us from the medieval times, where when the message was not nice, you killed the messenger. instead of encountering the message. I paid for this with my job in Haifa University. He paid for this with his job in DePaul University. And we both are wandering around the world looking for positions. But I think the situation is far better. You mentioned the social network. The Western academia has changed dramatically. This is not the Western academia of 10 years ago. You can see the attempt of Israel to build Center for Israel Studies all over the place, injecting millions of money to what they call the war over the campuses, because they've lost the campuses. They've lost the campuses. And this is the erosion of the Israeli moral pillar, what they call the war of legitimization. And the only people who can give them legitimization, contrary to what they thought for many, many years, are the Palestinians. For many years, Israelis said, oh, it doesn't matter what the Arabs think or the Muslims think or the Palestinians think. We have legitimization from the United Nations, from Europe, from the United States. And they discovered that this is not enough. When you victimize someone, only the victims can legitimize you. And the victims have, that's the only powerful asset they still have in an otherwise an imbalanced kind of relationship. So I think it's, It's important to remember this. I didn't put in one boat Chomsky and Finkelstein and Uri Avnery. I said that unfortunately people whom I admire, who are my mentors in many ways, are supporting the false paradigm. Of course, I said it in my talk, they support it for different reasons that the Israeli government supports it. But in the end of the day, if you support a two-state solution, It means that you ignore 80% of Palestine, and you ignore half of the Palestinians, even if you are the Pope himself. So I think this is a valid and an important argument, and I'm very glad Norm and I, it was his initiative. We wrote this book because we think that this is an important debate. He hasn't changed his mind, although I'm confident that in the next edition he will change his mind. But we wrote this in order to show that despite of the dissent, we are part of the same solidarity movement with the Palestinians. But that doesn't mean I should be silent when I think that this is a false paradigm. I'm sorry. I mean, Norman Finkelstein is such a persuasive speaker that he persuaded himself about the false paradigm, but he did not persuade me. Now, when I say false paradigm, it doesn't mean that I think that the people who support it are not moral, are not logical, are better or worse, I'm just saying I want them to join me and my friends, and I'm not alone, as you know, and many more people join us, in pushing towards the creation of one state over Israel and Palestine. I think this is the future for me as an Israeli who lives there, for Mahmoud Yazbak, my friend in Nazareth, for people who are refugees who live in Canada. I think that is the best solution, and I think the two-state solution is taking us away from life of justice, reconciliation, and peace. And I will argue even with my father, and sister, and brother, and with my best friends and mentors on this. And this is what I'm doing. And I'm very glad that we found a very civilized way of doing it, because we believe that this is an important debate. At least one thing has happened. If you remember, 15 years ago, people supported the one state solution. We're treated either as lunatics or at best as lunatics and at worst as people who work for some subversive organizations. This debate is legitimate now. It's a legitimate debate. And it's very difficult to argue today that the two-state solution is working, that there is a two-state solution around the corner, or that there's something terribly wrong with someone who has a vision for a democracy that would benefit all those who live there and all those who used to live there. I always liked the Israeli Consul General in New York, Alan Pincus, the former one, who said in a public debate with me, this is a dangerous man, and he meant it. He wants a democracy in Israel and Palestine. I'm willing to be this dangerous man in the next 10 years. Thank you.