The Only Alternative - Edward Said
I first visited South Africa in May 1991: a dark, wet, wintry
period, when Apartheid still ruled, although the ANC and
Nelson Mandela had been freed. Ten years later I returned,
this time to summer, in a democratic country in which Apartheid
has been defeated, the ANC is in power, and a vigorous,
contentious civil society is engaged in trying to complete
the task of bringing equality and social justice to this
still divided and economically troubled country. But, the
liberation struggle that ended Apartheid and instituted
the first democratically elected government on 27 April
1994, remains one of the great human achievements in recorded
history. Despite the problems of the present, South Africa
is an inspiring place to visit and think about, partly because
for Arabs, it has a lot to teach us about struggle, originality,
and perseverance.
I came here this time as a participant in a conference on
values in education, organized by the Ministry of Education.
Qader Asmal, the minister of education, is an old and admired
friend whom I met many years ago when he was in exile in
Ireland. I shall say more about him in my next article.
But, as a member of the cabinet, a longtime ANC activist,
and a successful lawyer and academic, he was able to persuade
Nelson Mandela (now 83, in frail health, and officially
retired from public life) to address the conference on the
first evening. What Mandela said then made a deep impression
on me, as much because of Mandela's enormous stature and
profoundly affecting charisma, as for the well-crafted words
he uttered. Also a lawyer by training, Mandela is an especially
eloquent man who, in spite of thousands of ritual occasions
and speeches, always seems to have something gripping to
say.
This time it was two phrases about the past that struck
me in a fine speech about education, a speech which drew
unflattering attention to the depressed present state of
the country's majority, "languishing in abject conditions
of material and social deprivation." Hence, he reminded
the audience, "our struggle is not over," even
though -- here was the first phrase -- the campaign against
Apartheid "was one of the great moral struggles"
that "captured the world's imagination." The second
phrase was in his description of the anti-Apartheid campaign
not simply as a movement to end racial discrimination, but
as a means "for all of us to assert our common humanity."
Implied in the words "all of us" is that all of
the races of South Africa, including the pro-Apartheid whites,
were envisaged as participating in a struggle whose goal
finally was coexistence, tolerance and "the realization
of humane values."
The first phrase struck me cruelly: why did the Palestinian
struggle not (yet) capture the world's imagination and why,
even more to the point, does it not appear as a great moral
struggle which, as Mandela said about the South African
experience, received "almost universal support... from
virtually all political persuasions and parties?"
True, we have received a great deal of general support,
and yes, ours is a moral struggle of epic proportions. The
conflict between Zionism and the Palestinian people is admittedly
more complex than the battle against Apartheid, even if
in both cases one people paid and the other is still paying
a very heavy price in dispossession, ethnic cleansing, military
occupation and massive social injustice. The Jews are a
people with a tragic history of persecution and genocide.
Bound by their ancient faith to the land of Palestine, their
"return" to a homeland promised them by British
imperialism was perceived by much of the world (but especially
by a Christian West responsible for the worst excesses of
anti-Semitism) as a heroic and justified restitution for
what they suffered. Yet, for years, and years, few paid
attention to the conquest of Palestine by Jewish forces,
or to the Arab people already there who endured its exorbitant
cost in the destruction of their society, the expulsion
of the majority, and the hideous system of laws -- a virtual
Apartheid -- that still discriminates against them inside
Israel and in the occupied territories. Palestinians were
the silent victims of a gross injustice, quickly shuffled
offstage by a triumphalist chorus of how amazing Israel
was.
After the reemergence of a genuine Palestinian liberation
movement in the late '60s, the formerly colonized people
of Asia, Africa and Latin America adopted the Palestinian
struggle, but in the main, the strategic balance was vastly
in Israel's favor; it has been backed unconditionally by
the US ($5 billion in annual aid), and in the West, the
media, the liberal intelligentsia, and most governments
have been on Israel's side. For reasons too well known to
go into here, the official Arab environment was either overtly
hostile or lukewarm in its mostly verbal and financial support.
Because, however, the shifting strategic goals of the PLO
were always clouded by useless terrorist actions, were never
addressed or articulated eloquently, and because the preponderance
of cultural discourse in the West was either unknown to
or misunderstood by Palestinian policymakers and intellectuals,
we have never been able to claim the moral high ground effectively.
Israeli information could always both appeal to (and exploit)
the Holocaust as well as the unstudied and politically untimely
acts of Palestinian terror, thereby neutralizing or obscuring
our message, such as it was. We never concentrated as a
people on cultural struggle in the West (which the ANC early
on had realized was the key to undermining Apartheid) and
we simply did not highlight in a humane, consistent way
the immense depredations and discriminations directed at
us by Israel. Most television viewers today have no idea
about Israel's racist land policies, or its spoliations,
tortures, systematic deprivation of the Palestinians just
because they are not Jews. As a black South African reporter
wrote in one of the local newspapers here while on a visit
to Gaza, Apartheid was never as vicious and as inhumane
as Zionism: ethnic cleansing, daily humiliations, collective
punishment on a vast scale, land appropriation, etc., etc.
But, even these facts, were they known better as a weapon
in the battle over values between Zionism and the Palestinians,
would not have been enough. What we never concentrated on
enough was the fact that to counteract Zionist exclusivism,
we would have to provide a solution to the conflict that,
in Mandela's second phrase, would assert our common humanity
as Jews and Arabs. Most of us still cannot accept the idea
that Israeli Jews are here to stay, that they will not go
away, any more than Palestinians will go away. This is understandably
very hard for Palestinians to accept, since they are still
in the process of losing their land and being persecuted
on a daily basis. But, with our irresponsible and unreflective
suggestion in what we have said that they will be forced
to leave (like the Crusades), we did not focus enough on
ending the military occupation as a moral imperative or
on providing a form for their security and self-determinism
that did not abrogate ours. This, and not the preposterous
hope that a volatile American president would give us a
state, ought to have been the basis of a mass campaign everywhere.
Two people in one land. Or, equality for all. Or, one person
one vote. Or, a common humanity asserted in a binational
state.
I know we are the victims of a terrible conquest, a vicious
military occupation, a Zionist lobby that has consistently
lied in order to turn us either into non-people or into
terrorists -- but what is the real alternative to what I've
been suggesting? A military campaign? A dream. More Oslo
negotiations? Clearly not. More loss of life by our valiant
young people, whose leader gives them no help or direction?
A pity, but no. Reliance on the Arab states who have reneged
even on their promise to provide emergency assistance now?
Come on, be serious.
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are locked in Sartre's
vision of hell, that of "other people." There
is escape. Separation can't work in so tiny a land, any
more than Apartheid did. Israeli military and economic power
insulates them from having to face reality. This is the
meaning of Sharon's election, an antediluvian war criminal
summoned out of the mists of time to do what: put the Arabs
in their place? Hopeless. Therefore, it is up to us to provide
the answer that power and paranoia cannot. It isn't enough
to speak generally of peace. One must provide the concrete
grounds for it, and those can only come from moral vision,
and neither from "pragmatism" nor "practicality."
If we are all to live -- this is our imperative -- we must
capture the imagination not just of our people, but that
of our oppressors. And, we have to abide by humane democratic
values.
Is the current Palestinian leadership listening? Can it
suggest anything better than this, given its abysmal record
in a "peace process" that has led to the present
horrors?
Source: by courtesy & © 2001 Al-Ahram Weekly &
Edward Said
by the same author:
The Tragedy Deepens
American Elections: System or Farce?
One More Chance
Palestinians under Siege
Too Much Work
The Right of Return, At Last
Source : http://www.mediamonitors.net/edward9.html
