Reading President Bush’s remarks yesterday about his plans for Palestine brought to mind a whole range of questions about why this should be any different than in the past, why we should believe what he has to say about supporting Palestinians or pressuring Israelis, or why he wouldn’t address the critical issue of changing the minds of American Jews and Arab-Americans toward the possible future in the Middle East. But, just as Secretary Rice’s comments did last month, for me, it still raises questions and thoughts about "choice" and "life" in Eastern and Western Palestine and Israel.
Here is what the President said to the Palestinian people, about their choices:
This is a moment of clarity for all Palestinians. And now comes a moment of choice. The alternatives before the Palestinian people are stark. There is the vision of Hamas, which the world saw in Gaza -- with murderers in black masks, and summary executions, and men thrown to their death from rooftops. By following this path, the Palestinian people would guarantee chaos, and suffering, and the endless perpetuation of grievance. They would surrender their future to Hamas's foreign sponsors in Syria and Iran. And they would crush the possibility of any -- of a Palestinian state.
There's another option, and that's a hopeful option. It is the vision of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad; it's the vision of their government; it's the vision of a peaceful state called Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people. To realize this vision, these leaders are striving to build the institutions of a modern democracy. They're working to strengthen the Palestinian security services, so they can confront the terrorists and protect the innocent. They're acting to set up competent ministries that deliver services without corruption. They're taking steps to improve the economy and unleash the natural enterprise of the Palestinian people. And they're ensuring that Palestinian society operates under the rule of law. By following this path, Palestinians can reclaim their dignity and their future -- and establish a state of their own.
Only the Palestinians can decide which of these courses to pursue. Yet all responsible nations have a duty to help clarify the way forward. By supporting the reforms of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad, we can help them show the world what a Palestinian state would look like -- and act like. We can help them prove to the world, the region, and Israel that a Palestinian state would be a partner -- not a danger. We can help them make clear to all Palestinians that rejecting violence is the surest path to security and a better life. And we can help them demonstrate to the extremists once and for all that terror will have no place in a Palestinian state.
And if you don’t recall, here is what Secretary Rice had to say about the issue last month:
A fundamental choice confronts the Palestinians, and all people in the Middle East, more clearly now, than ever. It is a choice between violent extremism on the one hand and tolerance and responsibility on the other. Hamas has made its choice. It has sought to attempt to extinguish democratic debate with violence and to impose its extremist agenda on the Palestinian people in Gaza. Now, responsible Palestinians are making their choice and it is the duty of the international community to support those Palestinians who wish to build a better life and a future of peace.
I continue to wonder what the meaning of this "choice" the Palestinians have, at least as of right now. No doubt the President and the Secretary know far more than I do about what’s happening on the ground (or they should anyway), but from where I sit, behind (in front of?) the Separation Wall in Jerusalem, I am hard-pressed to comprehend this "choice" that so clearly faces Palestinians on July 17, 2007.
First there are the Palestinians in Gaza (or maybe we will just decide to stop considering them Palestinians anymore?). What choices do they have? Some would like to leave, perhaps they would indeed like to choose "tolerance and responsibility." But if they can get through Hamas checkpoints and arrests, Israel won’t let most of them leave. They’re stuck. So I have trouble seeing the choice there.
They could choose to try to sneak into Egypt, as as some have chosen to. But again, even if they can get in to Egypt, I’m not so sure that’s a destination brimming with "tolerance and responsibility" or where they can find "a better life."
Should they take to the streets? Well, if they do so with guns, they’ll likely be labeled terrorists. Or, even if supported nominally by the West (although as this recent article describes, the West seems content to basically forget Gaza), they will likely end up where Fatah did: running for their lives. And if they choose to stand up and take to the streets without guns, they’ll likely face the wrath of Hamas and its "violent extremism." And since the international community is leaving Hamas to its own devices, without any kind of negotiations or interaction other than basic aid, there will hardly be much leverage should more such carnage happen.
Or should they simply sit back and wait? Well, if they simply do what they can to survive physically and economically to make sure they and their families live until tomorrow, then we will probably label them as Hamas sympathizers because they stayed in Gaza and did not rise up.
In the end, not a lot of real "choice."
Next there are the Palestinians in the West Bank. Sure, the aid is coming, the tax revenues are finally flowing, and, as reiterated yesterday, the support seems steadfast.
But, of course, that’s support for Fayyad and Abbas and, apparently, for Fatah. Not necessarily for the Palestinian people, despite the rhetoric. Now, Fayyad has managed over the years to maintain a solid record and profile, so I can understand the move in his direction. But this is quite clearly a Fatah and Abbas-led government.
Yet it is Fatah, after all, that was deemed so corrupt that the Palestinian people so overwhelmingly voted for Hamas. As we know with President Bush, just because he says the Fayyad-led government will not be corrupt won’t necessarily make it so. This was the talk about Abbas before the 2006 elections, too, yet despite most not agreeing with its ideology, and millions of dollars of aid from the U.S. directly to Fatah to help it try to win those elections, Hamas still won. As the Washington Post editorialized – in a piece appropriately called "Hamas’s Choice" – after the elections:
Many Palestinians who voted for Hamas don’t support the Islamists’ fundamentalist agenda: Polls show that large majorities want an end to violence and a resumption of peace talks with Israel. Wednesday’s vote was not an embrace of extremism, but — as President Bush suggested yesterday — a rejection of the corrupt and incompetent clique of leaders left behind by Yasser Arafat. Since Arafat’s death more than a year ago, his Fatah movement had been unable to reform itself or control its violent elements, despite the good intentions of Mr. Abbas. Now, perhaps, a new generation of secular leaders will be able to purge Fatah and prepare to offer Palestinians a better alternative, while crooks and armed thugs are cut from the government’s payroll.
But here we are again: Fayyad is relatively new in such a position, but this is still Fatah and Fatah is still led by Abbas. Can we really be sure there will be no corruption? That the government will actually work for the people? That the "crooks and armed thugs" are gone?
And although the Palestinian people, both in Gaza and the West Bank, so clearly did not choose them in the open and fairly-contested elections in 2006, they are now supposed to choose them? Now that...what? Now that they have been routed in Gaza but held on and propped up in the West Bank? Now that Prime Minister Olmert and President Bush have reversed course and now say they will be a "partner" for peace? Now that Tony Blair is on board to sell the whole deal?
I don’t necessarily believe Abbas to be the problem, but how can he be seen as the only "choice" for a "better life and a future of peace," two things he clearly has not brought to the Palestinian people, even when he was in more or less complete control between Arafat's death and the Hamas victory?
What if the Palestinians in the West Bank want to choose someone else now, some party other than Fatah (or Hamas, obviously), because, unlike the Bush Administration apparently, their memories go back before January 2006? Will they be allowed? Will this be a choice they can make? What if they would like to choose someone like Marwan Barghouthi?
What if they wait six months or a year, and nothing much has changed? Or are they allowed to "choose" only if it means choosing the one choice we have put before them and thus might approve of? Will the Administration still be paying attention in six months or a year? Will it still believe in Palestinian "choice?" As Ha'aretz reporter Danny Rubinstein wrote in this insightful article, many Palestinians have already given up on Abbas.
What if Palestinians in the West Bank would like to choose a "better life" that involves, say, being able to get to school or work on a road of their choice? Or getting to school or work at all? Or trying to find work in and enter Israel? Or pray at al-Aqsa? If they would like to live a future of peace and "tolerance and responsibility" on land not surrounded by settlements and the IDF? How about if they would like to build a larger home on land adjacent to their house, but for which their only title document may date from the Ottoman era? Can they choose to build and not have their home demolished?
As veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar wrote yesterday, the reality and details of Palestinian life are now defined by low level officers, not by senior policy-makers. Whether a Palestinian in the West Bank can get to the hospital, to school, or simply to visit friends or family, will be up to the spot decision of a young officer. But the decisions they make in the moment form the reality that Palestinians face. The "choice" that Palestinians have is ultimately to be made up of thousands of choices made, in the end, by Israeli soldiers. An excerpt from Eldar's valuable piece:
In essence, the battalion commander, and often the officer in charge of a roadblock, influence the daily lives of the population - and hence its political inclinations - a lot more than the prime minister or defense minister. When the political leadership does not offer any policy, the natural tendency of the young officer is to minimize risks; to close, not to open, to arrest, not to release. When those who are publicly elected ignore their commitment to remove outposts, is it any surprise that the army holds onto every roadblock between Nablus and onto an endless line of settlements called Itamar? Why should those in uniform quarrel with Jewish looters of land, when their political leaders, including the "followers of the way of Yitzhak Rabin," belittle the report on the outposts that they themselves requested and whose findings they adopted? When the government allows the expansion of settlements under the noses of the Palestinians, why should the Defense Ministry not plan the route of the separation fence to match the wishes of the settlers, at the Palestinians' expense?
As a symptom of the ills of the occupation, the wounded Israeli democracy is developing another side-effect: the rule of the minor officials. The facts are decided at the bottom and they dictate policy decisions made above. The flight of statesmen from decision-making and the passing on of responsibility to the lower ranks does not stop at the Green Line.
So, I ask you President Bush, will you and your Administration work with these "minor officials" and understand these tangible choices? Will you help the Palestinians get through checkpoints so can they make choices of how to live their lives? Will you stand so clearly behind them then as you do when it is Hamas on the other side? Will you stand with the Palestinians when the choices are a little harder to make, to implement? When the choices are tangible and real, rather than rhetorical?
Will you really be there, to stand behind Palestinian "choice," when those choices involve pushing Israel a bit more than you have chosen to so far? Will you support their choices then, when Israel pushes back?
Now, I do not mean to imply the Palestinians have no choices to make, or have not had choices to make over the past decades of Occupation and Oslo. Surely they have, and in so many cases, some Palestinians have made terrible choices that have resulted in only more pain and tragedy for them and for so many Israelis.
But perhaps it’s time for the Administration, for Israel, for the American Jewish community, for the West to own up to their own choices here. To stand behind the Palestinians, to support the choices that they believe will lead to this future of peace the President and the Secretary of State speak of so gallantly. Not just asking them to choose the choices that Israel would choose for them in the name of its own security. Call that whatever you want, but do not call it choice.
No matter what you believe about how or why we got here, why the conglict continues, no matter whose choices or mistakes or ideology you would place blame on, I pray that we all realize these choices are not really for the Palestinians to make alone. They are for all of us to make.
Two final notes on the concept of choice – one from the Palestinian author Raja Shehadeh and one from Moses (quite a duo). Shehadeh, as many of you will know, has written several must-read books on the situation here, both from legal and personal perspectives. One of his older memoirs is entitled "The Third Way." As he explains about halfway down in this piece, the title is actually based on a saying from Treblinka:
Raja himself demonstrated in choosing the title of his book, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank. On the back cover, the origin of the phrase "the third way" is explained: "From the wisdom of the Treblinka concentration camp: ‘Faced with two alternatives-always choose the third.’ Between mute submission and blind hate-I choose the third way. I am Samid [the steadfast].
For his part, Moses, at the end of Deuteronomy, while ending his leadership of the Jewish people, announces a second covenant of sorts with the people. That is, the first covenant under Moses’ leadership took place at Sinai, but Abravanel teaches us that this covenant was only with those souls present at Sinai. But as the people stood ready to enter the Land, a second covenant – binding on the souls of all those present and all future generations – is initiated.
And within that covenant, we read the following verses in Deuteronomy 30:
15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil,
16 in that I command thee this day to love HaShem thy G-d, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances; then thou shalt live and multiply, and HaShem thy G-d shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest in to possess it.
17 But if thy heart turn away, and thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them;
18 I declare unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish; ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over the Jordan to go in to possess it.
19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before thee life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed;
On the Sabbath following 9/11, I gave a d’var torah (a "word on the Torah;" or sermon, of sorts) on this passage and those around it (you can see most of the text excerpted on the Shalom Center’s website here). And I essentially suggested there that we should, perhaps in a sort of post-9/11 renewal of the covenant with God, read the end of this passage to say not just "choose life" for you and your seed, but for you and all seeds to live.
So, since it did not exactly play out that way post-9/11, let me ask this again, post-Gaza. Let us not see only two choices, involving two failed options, innumerable failed leaders, tragically failed realities. Let us use this moment, all of us, to be like Shehadeh, to choose neither submission nor hate, but to be steadfast: steadfast in our pursuit of what Moses commanded, to choose life.
Choose all life: Israeli, Palestinian, American, Iraqi, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and those of every seed on earth.
