Rashid Khalidi Outlines Peace Prerequisites at Open Tent Plenary

By Pat McDonnell Twair

Speaking just two days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dispatched F-16 fighter planes to bomb Palestinian cities, University of Chicago scholar Rashid Khalidi told the plenary session of a May 20 international conference at UCLA, produced by the Open Tent Middle East Coalition, that Americans are finally beginning to realize the enormity of what is going on in the Middle East.

“We are citizens of the country giving all these weapons to Israel,” Professor Khalidi said. “The Israelis aren’t fighting with sticks and stones. I can’t imagine the impact these weapons have wreaked on the Palestinians, especially over the course of several months.”

The academic’s angry words drew rounds of applause from an audience of 200 attending the closing session of the day-long event on the theme, “Solving the Crisis: The Future of Co-Existence.”

“The Palestinians…made a terrible mistake,” Khalidi continued. “Ten years ago, there were 100,000 fewer settlers; bypass roads didn’t exist. Tragically, there is no Palestinian voice because the leaders…don’t even speak to their own people. So we must insist upon our government to change the situation.”

If negotiations are to be resumed, Khalidi said, six prerequisites must be met, the first of which is the acceptance of U.N. Resolutions 181, 194 and 242.

The second is full, unconditional recognition of both peoples’ rights to sovereignty. While the Palestinians have recognized Israel, he pointed out, Tel Aviv has not reciprocated.

The third prerequisite, Khalidi said, is Israel’s acceptance of the pre-1967 Green Line.

“If we proceed that far,” he continued, “the fourth prerequisite is a reversal of settlements, which have led to the settlers-only bypass roads, apartheid, racist zoning and violence.”

Fifth is to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of both states. Sixth, according to Khalidi, is the right of return, compensation and acknowledgment by Israel of its responsibility to refugees it drove from Palestine. “It is outrageous that Israel ignores U.N. Resolution 194 and says the 300,000 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon cannot return,” he asserted, “while any Jew in the world can go to Israel.

“Oslo failed because it deferred every important issue,” Khalidi maintained. “I would argue that if these measures are not accepted, this conflict could be endless, producing nothing but a wasteland.”

Discussant Marc Ellis, who teaches at Baylor University, was pessimistic. “Look at the reality of the control of the occupied territories,” he said. “The settlements won’t be removed, that idea is finished. There won’t be two states. The next 50 years will see a land that is unjustly shared and a struggle by the Palestinians for civil and equal rights.”

When the Washington Report asked Professor Ellis to elaborate on his gloomy outlook, he said Israel is gambling that its U.S. patronage will leave it immune from ending the occupation of East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank.

To the argument that there are, after all, 1.5 billion Muslims and at most 5 million Israeli Jews, Dr. Ellis replied: “Now you are making a rational argument. I am stating what Israel is counting on. Israel is a relentlessly expanding state and there is no power to meet it. The Palestinians can’t continue to live as they are—a collision could be in the offing.”

When asked how other world powers could help the Palestinians, Dr. Khalidi commented: “I don’t foresee an apocalypse, but there must be intervention to halt the apartheid. This downward spiral is dangerous for the Palestinians. What Washington doesn’t see is the fury of the people in Arab countries. What is being done to the Palestinians is hidden in the U.S. but not in Arab states. The people are going to react and boycott U.S. products.

A Multicultural Isreal?

Addressing the possibility of a multicultural model for Israel, Prof. Ella Habib Shohat said that Israel has committed atrocities against its own citizens in terms of class, race and gender. Questioning the democratic stance of Israel, the Iraqi-born Israeli cited the case of Mordechai Vanunu, who remains in solitary confinement for releasing documents verifying Israel’s cache of nuclear bombs.

“We know Vanunu is still in prison, but we can’t articulate this,” she said.

“The rights of the Palestinians must be linked to the end of occupation,” Shohat stated. “This oppression shouldn’t be used in the name of protecting Jews. If one is critical, you’re called a traitor for criticizing Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians.”

A communications specialist at the City University of New York, Dr. Shohat criticized the U.S. media’s empathy for Israel.

“The perspective is of a civilized nation versus terrorists,” she noted. “In the May 19 New York Times, we read horrible stories about the wounded Israelis at a Netanya mall, but we didn’t hear the individual stories of the Palestinians who were bombed by F-16s. There are debates in Israel about the militarization of the country, but we do not hear this in the States.”

Gila Svirsky of the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace recalled how, eight days earlier, she had been part of a group taking food, clothing and medicine to villages under siege.

“As we drove on the fancy bypass settler roads, there was nothing to demarcate the Green Line,” she told the audience. “When we left the four-lane highway and turned onto a narrow road full of potholes, I was reminded of how Israel has ignored its responsibility as an occupier and has never put money into the Palestinian West Bank.”

The human rights activist said that the villages they tried to approach had been cut off by bulldozed mounds of dirt and boulders.

“It is a primitive system of laying siege,” she said, “of digging ditches and piling mounds of earth to prevent villagers from accessing schools, markets or hospitals by car.”

Regardless of Dr. Ellis’ views, Svirsky said Israel is vulnerable to international pressure. “The operative principle is for a strategic mass of Israelis to demand an end to the occupation,” she emphasized.

Svirsky called on the audience to be informed and to counter arguments of well-meaning people who say Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat rejected the best offer possible from Ehud Barak.

“Visit us, come lie down with us in front of the Israeli Defense Ministry or sit with us in jail,” Svirsky continued. “Many Israelis are losing their stomachs for killing and being killed. The settlers are being regarded more and more as liabilities. Fifty-five percent of Israelis favor the freeze of settlements. The media are starting to criticize Sharon’s policies.”

Responding to a question about Barak’s “generous” offer to Arafat, Dr. Khalidi replied: “Arafat should have made an immediate counterproposal and said what was wrong in the offer. It took the PA months to formulate a response, and by then Clinton had accepted the Israeli argument.”

Pat McDonnell Twair is a free-lance writer based in Los Angeles.