In the late spring of 2004, when I was in Jerusalem, a white Episcopalian minister who had grown up in the deep South told me that if he had the choice of being a black man in the 1950's Mississippi of his childhood or a Palestinian man in the West Bank today, he'd choose life in Mississippi.
That's how bad it is here, he said. Admittedly, he was showboating a bit for the benefit of my pad and pen, but the point survives his embroidery. His words came back to me in the midst of all the sturm und drang over former President Jimmy Carter's best-selling book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."
President Carter has taken an enormous beating from many for using the provocative word "apartheid." Provocative because it conjures images of the cruelest, inhuman abuses of South Africa before the freedom of Nelson Mandela; of inflamed bigotry, violence and forced separation of the races. Yet anyone who has spent even a small amount of time traveling in the Palestinian villages and towns of the West Bank can attest that if it's not apartheid in the worst, old Afrikaner sense, it'll do until something more invidious this way comes.
Another man I met when I was in Israel was Jeff Halper, executive director of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD). ICAHD was one of the first Israeli peace groups to work inside the occupied Palestinian territories -- it tries to prevent the demolition of Palestinian homes and helps rebuild those already demolished to make room for Israeli settlements and the famous, tortuous security wall that divides the two peoples with concrete and razor wire.
Last year, Halper, a professor of anthropology as well as an activist, was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, he was in New York, and we sat down in a neighborhood restaurant for a roaming conversation about Israel and the United States.
Halper applauds what he described as "President Carter's courage" for writing "Peace Not Apartheid," and regrets that the peace movement was not quicker to rally to the ex-president. "We should have been there and supported him," Halper said, but noted a new effort "to start really ratcheting up a full-blown, anti-apartheid campaign, saying that we are witnessing now the implementation of an apartheid regime in Israel."
Despite vocal opposition to Carter's book, Halper thinks American awareness of the Palestinian situation has become more acute. "Ten years ago, I had to convince people there was an occupation," he said. "I had to convince people that Palestinians had a right to live on their land. You don't have to do that anymore. People have the information, the State Department has the information, they have our books, they've been on our tours... I think the message has gotten through, but you hit the glass ceiling of the will to do anything about it."
Halper blames the existence of the ceiling not only on pressure from neo-conservatives, fundamentalist Christians and such organizations as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) but on the US government's perception of Israel's role in its long-term foreign and defense policy, a perception that has given Israel a certain leeway not allowed other nations.
"Last year, the Pentagon issued its Quadrennial Defense Review and it's all about the Long War, which is a phrase intended to replace the War on Terrorism," Halper explained. "It says we are in a twenty year, generational war with radical Islam... The new logic of the Long War is that we're not looking for accommodation, it's 'We're going to beat those f--kers.'
"... That throws a whole new light on the Middle East conflict," Halper said, compounded by Israel's importance as an arms supplier -- the third largest in the world -- and its value as a real-life laboratory for counterinsurgency techniques and weaponry crucial to Long War strategies.
"Israel could have had peace twenty years ago if that's what they really wanted. They think they can beat the Palestinians, they never really took them seriously, so they built the settlements, so today, they're in a situation where Israel's stuck. Even if they wanted to make peace, there's no way out."
As a result, Halper continued, "The Israelis are really depressed. Most don't want the occupation but they don't have any leadership. The Israeli leaders did to the Israeli public what President Bush did to the Americans: they told them there is no political solution. 'This isn't a political struggle, it's a clash of civilizations.' There's no partner for peace, all that stuff. So the Israelis were disempowered.
"There's a very peculiar disconnect. Maybe it's not so different in America. Nobody really cares for the leadership of any party, but you're stuck with them, what are you going to do?"
Last year's war with Lebanon scares Israelis because it demonstrates weakness in their reliance on deterrence, on Israeli's military superiority over the Arab states. Now they're perceived as vulnerable. "Hezbollah has now defeated Israel twice," Halper said. "The idea's starting to go around the Arab world that maybe Israel is not so militarily invincible. If that happens, then really, we're in for a conflagration. If 2007 doesn't see a major breakthrough toward the creation of a Palestinian state, the Arab world's going to go back on a military footing" with regard to Israel. "In fact, last week, the leader of the opposition in Egypt said the only way to deal with Israel is with a nuclear bomb...
"It's like a Greek tragedy. You see it happening before your eyes and there's nothing you can do to stop it."
Michael Winship, Writers Guild of America Award winner and former writer with Bill Moyers, writes this weekly column for the Messenger Post Newspapers in upstate New York.
Copyright 2007 Messenger Post Newspapers
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