Edition 11 Volume 1 - September 18, 2024

Ideology and politics

• Zionism & the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - by  Shlomo Avineri

To the Arabs, the Jews are not a nation, but merely a religious community.

• Ideology and violence - by  Abderraouf Ounaies

An ideology based on the principle of superiority denies the one and basic concept of man.

• The Arab Communist experience: between Marx and the Soviets - by  Rifaat al Said

Much of what Marx said was never applied.

• What happened to Palestinian nationalism? - by  Salim Tamari

Palestinian nationalism is being re-defined today.

Zionism & the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
by Shlomo Avineri

In the 1950s an American sociologist, coming from the social-democratic tradition, published an influential study called The End of Ideology. In it he argued that with the emergence of the welfare state, the old divisions between “left” and “right” are being blurred, and the political discourse is becoming de-ideologized, more “pragmatic” and less polarized.

The last half-century has not borne out this assessment. Even the description of the dissolution of the Soviet Union--by another American thinker, this time coming from the right, Francis Fukuyama--as the “end of history,” has once again turned out to be simplistic, as shown by the cruel wars in the former Yugoslavia or Chechnya.


Certainly the Middle East is a good--or bad--example of the staying power of ideologies. One way of looking at the role of ideologies in the region is to try to conceptualize the Arab-Israel conflict in an ideological framework.

On the Israeli side, the fundamental ideological underpinning of the Israelis’ self-understanding is grounded in Zionism. This ideology, growing out of the impact of secularization, the Enlightenment and the ideas of the French Revolution on Jewish identity, views the Jews as a nation with a historic homeland--the Land of Israel--a national language and culture, and the claim for self-determination.

This understanding is the framework within which most Israelis also see the conflict with the Palestinians. While initially many Israelis were reluctant to view the Palestinians as a nation, today most agree that the conflict is between two national movements--the Jewish (i.e. Zionism) and the Arab/Palestinian. It is based on this understanding that the Zionist movement accepted the 1947 United Nations partition plan, when the international community viewed a territorial compromise as the only means which would give each of the two national movements a place in the sun in part of the area which each claims as its homeland. While Israeli left- and right-wingers currently disagree about the boundaries between the two entities, it is now the mainstream Israeli position that a conflict between two national movements can be solved only on the basis of a compromise.

The Arab position on the conflict is viewed in totally different ideological terms. Historically, Arab nationalism grew in the 19th century out of a similar impact of the ideas of the Enlightenment and secularization on the Arabic-speaking people of the Middle East: hence, incidentally, the high proportion of Christians among the founders of Arab nationalism. Yet for Arab political discourse the Middle East conflict is not between two national movements. To the Arabs, the Jews are not a nation, but merely a religious community: hence they lack the right of self-determination and the claim to sovereignty. Arab ideology views the conflict not as one between two national movements, but between one national movement (the Arab/Palestinian) and a phenomenon--Zionism--which in the Arab understanding is akin to European colonialism and imperialism. Zionism is thus basically illegitimate, analogous to the French presence in Algeria—and, basically, destined to suffer the same fate.

Hence the Arab refusal to accept the l947 UN partition resolution, hence the historical reference to “the Zionist entity,” hence the consistent avoidance of reference to a Jewish people, hence the claim for a right of return for 1948 Palestinian refugees. Hence also the occasional parallels drawn with the Crusaders, and the intellectual inability to recognize in Zionism anything other than rapaciousness, aggression and intolerance.

It should be added that the refusal of mainstream Arab nationalism to accept the Jewish national movement is coupled with a wider reluctance to accept any other legitimate nationalism in what is considered “the Arab region.” Hence the refusal, over decades, to accept the right of the Kurds to self-determination; the refusal (until recently) to grant language rights to the Berber community in Algeria; and the insistence that the Maronites, despite their historical distancing from Arab nationalism, are Arabs with no further qualification. This hegemonistic and exclusivist aspect of Arab nationalism makes it , of course, difficult for it to embrace universalistic norms; it is not an accident that the only serious challenge to Arab nationalism came from the communists, with their supra-national ideology.

These conflicting views of the conflict--one viewing it as a conflict of two national movements, the other seeing it as a conflict between a national movement and a foreign colonial phenomenon--cannot be overlooked if one wishes to find a solution to the conflict. Previous attempts to find a mutually acceptable solution have foundered when the ideological issues were addressed. So long as they prevail, the chances for reconciliation are slim.- Published 18/9/2003©bitterlemons-international.org

Shlomo Avineri is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and former director-general of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among his many books are "The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx" and "The Making of Modern Zionism".

Ideology and violence
by Abderraouf Ounaies

Vulnerable nations are prone to exalt their specific differences and to identify themselves with heroic legends, divine legitimacy and transcendent privileges over the rest of mankind. A legitimate feeling of exaltation, when based on a symbolic act deep-rooted in history or culture, could easily turn into abnormal doctrines and transpolitical strategies. In the Middle East, a chain of events has built up a series of ideologies of that kind. So long as they affect the political culture within the domestic arena, they only breach universal principles and democratic standards, and degenerate into a source of aggression and violence when other nations fall victim to such aberrations.

The Israeli representative to the Peace Process Steering Group, then Deputy Foreign Minister Yossi Beilin, advocated such an ideology when he openly stated, during a meeting in Montebello, Canada, in February 1994, that “the Israeli government was not ready to endorse the principle of equal status for the peoples of the region.” He repeated the same pledge at two successive meetings in Cairo in January 1995 and in Montreux, Switzerland, in May 1995. Within the peace process, this stand prevented the adoption of the Steering Group Guidelines and proceeded also to block the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) Working Group Statement of Principles. The doctrine is not confined to the negotiating table alone. Indeed the Israeli government has enforced it through a number of acts and practices in the field such as:

  • denial of political rights, and discriminatory practices against the Palestinians;

  • use of fait accompli within the territory of neighboring states;

  • annexation of territories and confiscation of aquifers;

  • claiming privileges regarding the nature and quality of armaments;

  • claiming non-equal status with regard to international conventions and treaties.

We are all aware of the cost to Europe and the world when a European government adopted the principle of non-equality as its basic national ideology. And the more so when this ideology is combined with huge military potential. We are also aware of the consequences of that ideology on the people it concerns as well as the suffering inflicted upon those who fall under the yoke of military occupation by that government.

Whatever its justification--religious, historic or racial--an ideology based on the principle of superiority stems from another era and denies the singular and basic concept of mankind that is the hallmark of our present day civilization. Apart from the fact that it upsets the balance of the ordinary citizen, it implies a series of consequences in the regional and international arena.

The conviction of a transcendent ideology helps to legitimize inhuman violence and the unlimited use of force. Furthermore when this ideology traces its legitimacy to a divine source, it can then provide a plausible justification for the destitution of neighboring peoples, the confiscation of their land and resources, and the crushing of their resistance. It can also be advocated to delegitimize counterclaims for respecting the law and human rights. Only an ideology of transcendence can encompass such strategies, together with the unscrupulous elimination of scores of human beings.

The danger of an ideology of superiority does not lay only in taking over Palestinian and Syrian land and the containment of both peoples, but also in achieving a status of regional supremacy. Two consequences derive from this option: regional domination lays the ground for segregation and confrontation which results in a permanent state of alert and readiness to react to outbursts of anger and acts of resistance. The cost of maintaining and defending such a position is always disproportionately high. Besides its domestic cost, this policy means that the neighboring peoples are required to recognize a “special status” for Israel; it is only at that price that regional normalization will be possible. However, a special status is indeed offensive morally, unrealistic politically and untenable diplomatically.

A special status means not only the pursuit of indefinite confrontation with the neighboring states but, above all, a challenge to the international community. The conflict is not developing in a vacuum; the attempt to impose a unilateral manner of settlement raises--beyond the legitimate resistance of the direct victims--the opposition of the international community, which ought to act in keeping with international law. The belief in transcendent ideology may be a way of asserting national identity; it should not be a way of eschewing international legality.

Respect for other nations and for their specific identity and culture is part of the civilization of our time in as much as those nations comply with recognized, basic and universal principles. It may not substitute international legality, which is basic and binding to all. The principle of equal rights has a fundamental link with international peace and security and clearly illustrates the concept of normalcy and dignity in any civilized society. This was the case for the white community of South Africa after decades of an ideology based on superiority.

National ideology based on religion has become a political substratum for many peoples all over the region. As an expression of religious absolutism, it is inconsistent with a culture of pluralism, tolerance and universal values, which are the premises for mutual respect and regional cooperation among nations of different faiths and cultures. Since the election of the first Likud government in June 1977, religious extremism has expanded from Israel to Iran and thereafter, to other neighboring Islamic and Christian societies, all along the south and north Mediterranean. These movements use violence in their effort to replace secular governments with theocratic regimes determined to fight the rival extremisms and to revive the exclusivist values of their religion, using terror, assassination and sacrifice. Jewish and Arab societies can free themselves from the blind and violent cycle of intertwined dogmatism and archaism. They could develop a political culture based on principles consistent with the universal values of our time.

The challenge to violence in our region relates to the principles of rationality, normality and modernity. This means endorsing international legality, acceding to moral and political rules consistent with the universally admitted values and standards of our time. This means also admitting equal status with other human societies. The insertion of these principles in the ethos of the Middle East would ensure a process of normalization leading to the reduction of extremism and the overcoming of enmity and violence. It would give the region a chance for redemption, harmonious development and mutual respect in keeping with the respective faiths and cultures. Only through the process of normalization can Israeli and Arab societies be appeased and be made to transcend the destructive structure of confrontation and antagonism.

We find in the Barcelona Declaration of November 1995 these simple answers to our regional dilemma: “The Participants undertake to…:


  • respect the equal rights of peoples and their right to self-determination…;

  • respect the territorial integrity and unity of each of the other partners”.-Published 18/9/2003©bitterlemons-international.org

    Abderraouf Ounaies is former Tunisian ambassador to Moscow and Delhi, and currently professor of international relations at the Faculty of Law and Political Sciences, University of Tunis.

    The Arab Communist experience: between Marx and the Soviets
    by Rifaat al Said

    In 1972, I published a book entitled "Reflections on Nasserism," in which I told of a report that had been published in Pravda, and broadcast on Radio Moscow. We listened to that report, called "Joys on the Banks of the Nile," as we sat in the Wahat Egyptian jail. The report was meant to glorify Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose devils beat us harshly that very night.

    My book was received very negatively by Arab communists. Comrade Khalid Bakdash, secretary general of the Syrian Communist Party at the time, told me that it was not appropriate to attack Soviet journalists because they were Lenin’s sons. In fact, Arab communists had a rough time with Marxism in two areas. First, they demonstrated an over-reliance on the texts and the most educated among them ornamented their discourse with quotations of Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin or even Joseph Stalin in his glory days. But the text here was meant for its own sake, not to illustrate reality. In fact, realities had to be twisted in order to adapt to the text. (And here I recall the fundamentalism of the Islamists that I criticize emphatically; there is also a fundamentalist Marxism.)

    The other area of difficulty is sanctification of the Soviet model as the only correct one. This model spans both the ideological vision and practical application, and has resulted in a feeling of subordination. Arab communists, like many others in the world, have become like children grasping at the edge of their mother’s dress, walking with her wherever she goes.

    The Arab communist leaders enjoyed that, as they were not required to be creative, or to think, nor to do research and study. They merely received and reiterated. They were skilled imitators. So when Stalin, for instance, rose to the throne of the party general secretary, they reiterated that this was done in accordance with the theory of deputation, whereby the people deputize the working class (the most revolutionary of classes) on their behalf, the working class in its turn deputizes the party (its revolutionary vanguard) on its behalf, then the party deputizes the party conference on its behalf, and so on up to the position of the general secretary who gathered in his hands the two triangles of authority composed of "the Party, Government and the Supreme Soviet Council" and "ideology, implementation and legislation."

    Therefore, he himself was considered the revolution. Anyone who dared differ with him, or criticize him even in a whisper, would be labeled part of the counterrevolution. When crucial ideology became a lifeless mold, to explain was reserved for the Kremlin’s "pope" alone. Marx said that "all the authority belongs to the masses," but the deputation put all authority in the hands of the general secretary, and thus the general secretaries of the Arab communist parties gathered all authority in their hands and were dwarf tsars before the great tsar.

    Much of what Marx said was never applied. Hundreds and even thousands of specific directives in Marxist ideology disappeared before the bureaucracy and brutality of the Soviet application. Arab Marxists, like others, did not notice any defect, nor did they doubt or feel contradiction. The Stalinist era only made Arab Marxist leaders strive for more authority. As a result, the Marxist ideology, which was intended to be vibrant, was petrified. "Marxism is renewed with every new scientific discovery," said Friedrich Engels, but no one was allowed to think or to be creative, because criticism was not to be practiced.


    ----

    Perhaps because Egyptian Marxism began in Egypt in 1894, a quarter of a century before the Bolshevik revolution, as well as for numerous other reasons, Egyptian Marxists did not fully adapt to the Soviet version.

    The Egyptian Socialist Party was established in 1921 as the first socialist party in the Arab world and Africa. The founders of the party decided two things: to include the entire socialist spectrum, and therefore form a leadership of four (Mahmoud Husni al Arabi, a Marxist, Ali al Anani, a leftist, Muhammed Abdalla Anan, a social democrat, and Salamah Musa, a Fabian), as well as to exclude from the leadership any foreigners. Egypt at the time was crowded with foreign communities (Greeks, Italians, Armenians, French, etc), all of which enjoyed foreign concessions that put them in a higher class than Egyptians. As such, Egypt was particularly sensitive to foreign hegemony and concession.

    But this Egyptian vanguard was shocked when they requested to join the Soviet Comintern, as they were subsequently asked to call themselves the Communist Party. They protested that the Egyptian constitution prohibited the establishment of communist parties, and made a brilliant suggestion--that they call themselves the "Egyptian Socialist Party--The Egyptian Branch of Comintern." The Soviets refused this offer, and formed a committee to look into the Egyptian application. Among the impossible conditions set by that committee were that the party should call itself the Egyptian Communist Party and accept all 21 conditions laid down by the Comintern, and that the party should include in its ranks any communist living in Egypt, which meant opening party doors to a foreign majority.

    The Egyptian party was thus forced to submit to these conditions, and came under the penalty of the law. Egyptian authorities subsequently issued a decision to disband the party of 2,000 members, dissolve the associated Workers’ General Federation, and confiscate its offices and funds. All central committee members were arrested.

    At the Sixth Comintern Conference held in 1928, the Egyptian communists revolted against the Stalinist idea that the national bourgeois (in the second-degree colonies like Egypt) had thrown the flag of freedom in the mud, and should therefore be fought by a newly established revolutionary bloc of workers and peasants. The Egyptians refused to attack the Egyptian Wafd Party, as it was waging a fiery battle against the constitution and against the British occupation. The Egyptians again suggested a compromise where they would not ally with the Wafd Party, but acknowledge the inevitability of joint actions--but did Stalin ever accept a compromise? Seven years later, the Soviet Encyclopedia published a list of communist parties worldwide that did not mention the Egyptian Communist Party, thus deposing the party from Soviet-subordinate good children’s heaven.

    When the July Revolution broke out in Egypt, the Soviets considered it a coup d’etat loyal to the Americans, and of course, world communists reiterated that view. But the Egyptian communist organization, the Democratic Movement for National Liberation, was partner to the revolution, with two members in its command council. Thus, the July Revolution became a nationalist revolution. In 1955, the Soviets offered their blessings to Abdel Naser while the majority of the communists suffered brutal torture in his jails. Due to this history of divergent visions, the collapse of the Soviet Union did not have a similarly bloody impact on Egyptian Marxism.-Published 18/9/03©bitterlemons-international.org

    Dr. Rifaat al Said is president of the National Progressive Party and a member of the Shura Council (the upper house of Parliament) in Egypt.

    What happened to Palestinian nationalism?
    by Salim Tamari

    Every decade or so since the 1948 War it seems that the Palestinian national movement goes through periods of historical re-thinking. Almost all of those episodes are focused on inherent tensions and dynamics between the remnants of Palestinian society that remained on the land (in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) and those forces that led the movement in the dispersed communities in the Arab host countries (primarily in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon). But today the challenge comes also from an ideological source: an Islamic vision of salvation that is not tied to the territorial principle.

    We can point out three critical junctions in the growth of secular Palestinian nationalism in the period preceding the Oslo accords: the merger of the Palestinian movement into mainstream Arab nationalism during the late fifties and sixties (the Ba’th Party, the Greater Syria Movement, and Nasserism); the rise of the armed struggle movement after 1967 as inspired by Maoism and Guevarism; and the decline of the doctrine of liberation through notions of guerrilla struggle and people’s war after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon (1982) and the dispersal of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its militias. Throughout this period the Islamic movement (mainly the Muslim Brothers) was busy with moral rearmament, and distancing itself from effective politics.

    The main lessons of these achievements (and defeats) were epitomized in the Palestine National Congress meeting in Algiers (November 1988), when Yasser Arafat announced the Declaration of Independence and the Peace Initiative. The gist of that declaration was that Palestinian nationalism was now reconciled to two states in historic Palestine (Israel and Palestine) on the basis of the 1947 partition plan. The border of the two states would be the June 1967 borders in line with international legitimacy and consensus, underwritten by Security Council Resolution 242.

    Obviously, this new development at the time was protracted and had been in the works for 18 years of debate, polemics, and occasionally, armed conflict within the various factions of the PLO. It started hesitantly with the early 1970s launching by the Democratic Front of the notion of independent Palestinian territory "that can be liberated from the enemy" (again a Guevarist formulation). The subsequent adoption by a majority vote in the tenth PNC in Amman (1974) of the same idea amounted to the first step towards independent statehood (as opposed to the total liberation of Palestine). The result was that the PLO was now split into two currents: the pro-state trends (Fateh’s majority, the DFLP, and the communists), and the "rejectionists" led by the Popular Front, and the opposition tendency in Fateh led by Abu Musa and the pro-Syrian Palestinian Ba’thists.

    The great turning point in this reformulation of nationalist ideology was the return of the PLO to Palestine after 1994. The main consequence of this return was that the historic apposition between a localized political culture that paid symbolic allegiance to "its" leadership in Tunis (and before that in Beirut and Amman), and that of the PLO, came to a historic end. The returning leaders of diasporean nationalism now forged a new institutional edifice (the Palestinian Authority) with local urban elites and the internal wings of Fateh that effectively marginalized the PLO in all but name, and with it sidelined the role of Palestinian diaspora communities in affecting the course of Palestinian politics.

    It was the state-in-the-making, and its various components, that became the instrument of this new transformation: the enhanced presidency, the parliament, the security apparatus and the bureaucracy. While the elections of 1996 legitimized the new regime in the eyes of the world and the local constituencies, it was the public sector bureaucracy which allowed Arafat and the returning leadership to underwrite an effective (but not so efficient) system of clientalism and patronage. It was also the institutional lynchpin that created a new political apparatus uniting the returnees (external leadership) with local elites and movements. But the main weakness of this process was an endemic inability of the new/old leadership to create effective and accountable institutions of governance.

    This whole symbiotic process between the two wings of Palestinian nationalism, and the inevitable decline of the diaspora came to a sudden reversal with the collapse of the Camp David talks. The inability of the state-in-the-making to bring about territorial consolidation of its population base (i.e. sovereignty), and the rise of the Israeli right, which was keen at preventing any Palestinian state (barring a quisling segmented regime) from having contiguity, dealt an effective blow to the whole idea of a two-state solution.

    Palestinian nationalism is being re-defined today as a result of these twin developments: the failure of the project for independence (two-state solution) mainly due to intransigent and superior Israeli settlement policies under conditions of an overwhelmingly uneven power relationship; and secondly, the rise of Islamist movements positing themselves as an alternative paradigm of national deliverance.

    Of the former it must be said that Palestinian civil society failed to present an effective challenge to the system of patronage and segmental power that was inherited from the years of the PLO in exile. But the main blow was dealt by an Israeli system that seems to be unable and unwilling to tolerate another state between the river and the sea. (Israel today adopts the mirror image of those stands of territorial maximalism adopted by the Palestinians and Arabs during the fifties and sixties vis-à-vis Israel.) The rise of Islamic movements was predicated on this weakness. Hamas and their allies have presented themselves, paradoxically, as both an alternative worldly and millenarian system of adherence--worldly, through a seemingly accountable network of social services for the poor (something that the patronage-based institutions of the PA were unable to deliver). The Islamists have also promised a paradigm of otherworldly salvation, through the cult of martyrdom. But this combination has built-in limitations on its ability to set itself as the alternative to the PLO, since it feeds on the inability of secular Palestinian nationalism to create a state, rather than its own (Islamist) ability to create a workable system of governance. These limitations are most obvious in the country where they reached their highest success: Iran.

    We are witnessing an impasse today: the major blow to the project of self-determination in Palestine has not led to a revitalization of extra-territorial Palestinian nationalism, as in the sixties and seventies, nor has the set-back of the two-state solution given rise to a movement to adopt binationalism. The most likely short-term possibility is the current Israeli version of apartheid rule and cantonization. At no time was there a more pressing need for intellectual coherence and political leadership to give the Palestinians a new direction, in a time when the old formulas (Arab nationalism, steadfastness, and people’s war) ring hollow.-Published 18/9/03©bitterlemons-international.org

    Salim Tamari is director of the Institute for Jerusalem Studies. Until recently, he co-directed the Mediterranean Studies Unit at Birzeit University, Palestine.

 
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