Language of War, Language of Peace by Raja Shehadeh

Author:Raja Shehadeh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile Books

The power of the settlers’ lobby has given rise in Israel to strange linguistic formulations. Thus, to calm opposition to the release of Palestinian prisoners in October 2013, one of the conditions agreed upon between Israel and the Palestinian Authority for renewing peace talks, the settlers called for an ‘appropriate Zionist response’ and persuaded the government to agree to the construction of some 5,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. What bizarre logic this is, building more illegal settlements on occupied land to ‘offset’ the prisoner release. The PA condemned the move. It was like a molested person condemning his molesters. One wonders what this means and what effect Palestinian condemnation can have. Perhaps it would have been better for the Palestinians, who are impotent in the face of further Israeli construction on the West Bank, to have remained silent. While the peace talks were proceeding, Israel continued to prejudice their outcome by enlarging the settlements in the West Bank and the PA continued to issue condemnations.

Reviewing the pronouncements of the Israeli leadership during the time of the negotiations, compromise did not appear to be in the offing. This was why many anticipated that these talks were doomed. In a speech given to the Saban Forum at the Brookings Institute in Washington, DC, on 8 December 2013, the Israeli prime minister claimed, ‘Few people still link the problems in the Middle East to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict’, implying that it is not so important to resolve the conflict. He avoided the subject of negotiating borders by contending that ‘the core of this conflict has never been borders and settlements. It’s about one thing, the persistent refusal to accept the Jewish state in any border.’ How strange to argue and try to convince the world that a state does not need to demarcate its borders, and that it can keep on expanding and still expect to have peace with its neighbours, whose lands are threatened by that expansion.

This denial of history is commonplace not only with the prime minister of Israel. In an interview he gave to the Israeli press on the eve of Independence Day, Shimon Peres, the former president of Israel, said:

I remember how it all began. The whole state of Israel is a millimeter of the whole Middle East. A statistical error, barren and disappointing land, swamps in the north, desert in the south, two lakes, one dead and an overrated river. No natural resource apart from malaria. There was nothing here. And we now have the best agriculture in the world? This is a miracle: a land built by people.7

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