An Interview with Dr. Asher Susser

By: Matt Gordner

Egypt’s failure to broker an effective reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah makes it a strong probability that the January elections will be considered illegitimate by the Palestinian people – that is, if they happen at all. Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) recently declared that the elections will be postponed pending more suitable national conditions. This, of course, renders the possibility of a virtual three state arrangement a viable reality for Israelis and Palestinians in the near future.
 

For a number of reasons, the speeches delivered this summer by Obama, Netanyahu, and Fayyad promised to bear fruit. Instead, they withered on the vine.
 

Fayyad’s recently declared two-year deadline for building a successful Palestinian state elicited questions regarding Abu Mazen’s legitimacy. Indeed, Mazen’s recent decision not to push the Goldstone report (consistent with the Obama administration’s wishes) coupled with his possible abdication from leadership in the West Bank, has created serious doubts over the future of Palestine.

While Israel made a few minor moves to improve conditions in the West Bank, they have not lead to a fundamental change in the basic barriers that continue to block progress. These efforts include Israel's commitment to halt incursions into four major West Bank cities this summer, enabling the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)  to gain better control over the security situation in the West Bank, and Israel's recent Supreme Court decision prohibiting the Jewish-only status of at least one major artery in the West Bank. Nevertheless, Israel’s continued consolidation of ‘facts on the ground’ vitiates against a mutually accepted Palestinian state and thus, the resumption of the peace process.

PNA authorities continue to call for a check to settlements as a precondition for peace talks, while Netanyahu’s government is fixed on “economic peace” as a precursor to political peace and final status negotiations. Lately, settlements and “natural growth” figure prominently in the international news media’s coverage of the conflict, but many argue that the settlement issue has become a popular red herring that diverts attention away from the peace process itself since land-for-peace agreements are reiterated throughout numerous previous near-agreements and accords.

The EU’s statement this summer issued by outgoing High Representative Solana - that the UN would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state if the peace process does not resume - may or may not have teeth or represent popular European sentiment. Lieberman, among others, responded that ‘peace must be built, not imposed.’ Shaul Mofaz, a former Likud defense minister, suggested the establishment of a Palestinian state on 60% of the West Bank. But Netanyahu's government is perhaps the most rightwing in Israel's history and it seems to prefer managing the conflict over resolving it.

Meanwhile, the international community’s pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel factions and loyalties are increasingly characterized by mutual animus and contempt rather than mutual respect and dignity. The polarization between the Diasporas is also widening as a growing chorus of still marginal movements call for the boycott, divestment, and sanction of Israel. ‘Israeli Apartheid Weeks’ are encroaching on many university campuses, The result is that acts of dialogue in the Diasporas, let alone a détente between Israelis and Palestinians, remains as rare and remote as ever.

I witnessed first hand many of the competing narratives and competing ‘truths’ of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this summer while interning with the Multilateral Sector of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among the most salient points of discussion on both sides of the Barrier (also the “security fence” and “apartheid wall”) are East Jerusalem, the right of return, settlement expansion, the continued Israeli military presence in the West Bank and their legitimate ever-present security concerns - not to mention the relationship between the Jewish state and Eretz Israel, and how they reflect Israeli democracy.

I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Asher Susser, a former professor of mine from Tel Aviv University and Senior Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and North African Studies, about many of these concerns. The following is the first of a two-part series on these and other pressing areas of contention between Israelis, Palestinians, and the international community:

Q: In one of your recent articles you drew a line between the “just Zionism of self-defense” and what you call “aggressive Zionism.” For many people Zionism is a monolithic entity called the “Zionist enterprise.” I was wondering if you could clarify that position?

Susser: First of all the Zionist enterprise in my mind is a very reasonable term. It’s actually translated from Hebrew. And the Zionists themselves refer to the enterprise as the Zionist enterprise in Hebrew as a very positive enterprise - a very legitimate term that doesn’t portray Zionism in a negative sense at all. What I’m talking about, the difference that I’m talking about is a Zionism that recognizes alongside its own rights to self determination that the Palestinians also have a right to self-determination; and the logic of this approach is the partition arrived at by the UN in 1947. There are two legitimate movements in this country – the Palestinian national movement and the Zionist national movement – both deserving of statehood and self-determination. And that is essentially the logic of partition. It is the Zionists who accepted it in 1947 and the Palestinians who rejected. When the Palestinians rejected the logic of partition in 1947 it is they who initiated the war that followed.

What has happened since 1967 is that a new kind of Zionism has emerged which rejects the notion of partition, an element of religious Zionism in Israel post-67 has developed as what I would say is an aggressive approach to Zionism that sees all of Eretz Israel as the land of the Jews in which the Palestinians essentially have no national rights and that therefore is an aggressive form of Zionism which denies the Palestinians any part.

What I am saying is that traditionally and historically, and for most of Israel’s history, Israel has been that party which has suggested compromise and the two-state solution. It is the Palestinians who have rejected it. Temporarily, for a while in the last few years since 1988, the Palestinians did accept the two-state solution, but now, however, it seems like they are taking a more aggressive nationalist stand which doesn’t talk about the illegitimacy of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza but essentially speaks of the illegitimacy of Israel as a whole.

And the whole campaign of Israeli apartheid week, for example, is an effort not to delegitimize Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but to delegitimize Israel itself; and this is going all the way back to the pre-1948 position of the Palestinians which is a rejection of the two-state solution, a rejection of Israel’s right to exist at all - and therefore setting us back a half a century in the peace process. And those who make these kinds of South African allusions are delegitimizing Israel as a whole. What these people are trying to do is eliminate the state of Israel, which is what the PLO started as in the 1960s. So it is essentially going to the pre-Oslo period, the pre-peace period where this is all out war between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And if they think it’s going to serve to make peace, I beg to differ.

Q: There’s an oft-stated position by some of the settlers that I’ve spoken to that there needs to be a distinction between the Jewish state and the democratic state of Israel, and from their position the Jewish state is paramount. What happens when the Arabs within Israel outnumber the Jews, thereby making the democratic state paramount politically to the Jewish State?

Susser: I think that that position, like many others taken by the settlers, is a position I strongly disagree with. Just the same as I don’t accept their position that all of Eretz Israel has to be part of Israel and the Palestinians have no collective rights I disagree with that position entirely. The state of Israel, in its own mind, in the minds of the founding fathers of this country has to be simultaneously the state of the Jewish people, democracy, and a legitimate member of the family of Nations. The settlers are taking us in the wrong direction.  The settlers are trying to deny us from being a legitimate member of the family of Nations, they want to deny our democratic character, all in the name of the Jewish domination, riding roughshod over the other side as having no rights at all. And I disagree with that.

The Jews have a right to self-determination like all people. People who deny that the Jews have a right to self-determination are themselves taking a racist position. Because of all the nations on the face of the earth they are denying only the Jews the right to self-determination. What I’m saying is that the Jews have a right to self-determination like all nations, so do the Palestinians have a right to self-determination, like all nations. And the solution to our problem is that there should be a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli state, and hopefully these two states should be in peace with each other. We shouldn’t ride roughshod over their rights, and they shouldn’t ride roughshod over our rights. And therefore I don’t accept the Palestinian position that sees no rights for Israel. I don’t accept the Israeli position that sees no rights for the Palestinians. I accept that Israeli position which sees self-determination for all peoples. That the state of Israel has the right to exist as the state of the Jewish peoples just as next door to us the state of Palestine has the right to exist as the state of Palestine.

Q: That said, and polls will show that half or more of Israelis would agree with partition yet, there is support from the government that allows for the settlers to remain there, funding electricity, water and security. Could you talk about how the settlements play out in Israeli domestic politics and where this support is coming from?

Susser: Well, first of all, the settlers have support in the Israeli public. I would say it’s a very well organized minority and a minority all the same. What the settlers have succeeded in doing despite the fact that they’re a minority, they have succeeded through their determination, to create facts on the ground pretty much in the face of any Israeli government and have succeeded through a measure of support in various ministries, in different parts of different governments, to have their way against the wishes of most Israeli governments. And they have succeeded, not entirely, but in a significant measure, in forcing the settlements on a variety of Israeli governments.

What the Israeli state has to do, as it did do in Gaza, is to explain to the settlers that [we will remove them] if need be, by force… What is difficult for Israeli governments to do is to remove settlements, to withdraw from the territories, when what it is that Israel gets in exchange from the Palestinians is not very conducive to the peace process. A good example is what happened in Gaza - when Israel withdrew from Gaza in its entirety - an exchange in which Israel did not get what it desired. And many would say today that if we withdraw from territories from the West Bank peace is not what we would get, so why should we withdraw? I would argue that Israel should withdraw even if peace is not to be offered by the other side if only to maintain Israel as the state of the Jewish people in a manner that does not create a situation in which the Jews become a minority in their own country. Therefore I think that in the not too distant future Israel may have to withdraw from all sorts of territories, as it has done from Gaza it may have to do so in the West Bank as well, in order to maintain Israel as the state of the Jews.

Q: When I spoke to the PLO negotiations department they framed the security fence, or what they termed the “Apartheid Wall” in terms of the Allon Plan, in terms of taking away the aquifers that are situated underneath some of the larger settlements, and insinuated that this was not only a ploy for final status negotiations but a ploy to solidify Israel’s borders along the ’67 line, actually within the West Bank on the ’67 borders. Can you comment on the Allon plan, natural resources, and why it is that the Wall is situated within the Palestinian territory along the ’67 border?

Susser: First of all, the terminology. The “Apartheid Wall” as they call it. If you use that terminology, which comes from the racist situation in South Africa, what you are suggesting is that Israel put up the wall for racist reasons. That I would argue is a dehumanization of the Israeli people. The fence was put up after hundreds of Israelis had been slaughtered in restaurants and on buses by the suicide bombers. Referring to the fence as if it were a racist exercise completely ignores the hundreds – the exact figure of 1100 Israelis - killed by the suicide bombers as if Israeli losses just don’t count. As if our people are human dust. But our people are not human dust. They are real people that we seek to protect at all costs… The security fence was set up to keep the bombs out, and has succeeded in doing so. Since the fence was put up the suicide bombing has stopped. So to use the racist terminology instead of explaining the fence in its conflictual context (which is where it derives from), placing it in a racial discrimination context, is a deliberate de-contextualization of the story, a deliberate distortion of the reality, and it is a dehumanization of the value of Israeli lives. And I find that particularly obnoxious and disrespectful to our humanity. So that’s as far as the terminology goes.

Most of the security fence is in fact along the Green Line. If you were to do a percentage study of where the fence is on the Green Line and where it is not on the Green Line, most of it is on the Green line. Some of it is not and that’s true. And the reasoning for that is the inclusion of certain settlements that are already in place. I don’t think it has anything to do with the aquifer. It has nothing to do with the Allon plan whatsoever. The Allon plan was based primarily on the preservation of the Jordan Valley as part of Israel. The fence has nothing to do with that. The Jordan Valley is completely excluded from the fence, it’s way on the other side and the fence doesn’t include even one centimeter of it.  The comparison with the Allon plan is completely absurd… The fence does include the major settlement blocs. But if we are talking about the major settlement blocs the Palestinians in the negotiations at Camp David actually agreed on the settlement blocs to be included in Israel.  That is not the major problem between the Israelis and the Palestinians. What the Palestinians want in exchange for the settlement blocs is that Israel compensates the Palestinians for this territory taken for territory of equal status and size from Israel itself. That is, that there would be a land swap. The principle of the land swap has been agreed. That is not the major stumbling bloc for a peace settlements.

The major stumbling bloc for a peace settlement is in two other issues: that is Jerusalem and refugees. Those are the issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians far more than the territorial matter which more or less is satisfactory as coming from Camp David.

Q: Following up on the difference between the Palestinian State and the Israeli State, why is it, do you think, that Israelis so often talk about ’67 instead of ’48 if we are going to use International Law as a justification or measure?

Susser: Well actually the people who talk about ’67 far more than anyone else is the Palestinians. Quite honestly the ’48 boundaries and the ’67 boundaries essentially is one and the same thing. If one wants to make some difference between ’67 and ’48 then it should be ’47. That is the partition plan boundaries. And indeed the partition boundaries of 1947 are very different form the boundaries at the end of the war in 1948, which are the boundaries that Israel had until 1967, which are what we now call the ‘67 boundaries.  Essentially the ’67 boundaries were created in the 1948 war sanctioned by the 1949 armistice agreement, which remained intact until the ’67 war.

The partition boundaries of 1947 are indeed very different, and had the Palestinians accepted the partition boundaries maybe they would have remained the boundaries of Palestine and of Israel. But since the Palestinians declared war on the partition boundaries of 1947 they did not remain in place. And I don’t think the Israelis are in line to apologize for having won the war. The Israelis are not about to apologize for not losing. They did not lose in 1948, and thankfully they did not lose in 1967 either. The fact that they did not lose was not for the Arabs’ lack of trying.

Therefore, the Palestinians in this confrontation must also bear responsibility for the actions and decisions that they have taken. Had the Palestinians accepted the partition resolution there would have been no war in 1948, and no refugee problem, and none of the other problems that emerged from 1948. And had the Arabs not threatened to destroy Israel in 1967 there would not have been a war in 1967 either.  In all fairness, one must understand the losses and suffering of the Palestinians and the other Arabs but in all fairness the Arabs who have launched these wars against Israel initiated conflict and must also bear in mind that there is a price to pay for the decisions they have taken.

PART 2, COMING SOON...