Baruch Kimmerling: Politicide

Baruch Kimmerling's death silences one of Israel's most perceptive, persistent, and principled critics. With Joel S. Migdal, he wrote the pioneering The Palestinian People: A History. In January 2003, he published an insightful and prophetic book on Ariel Sharon, his political ascendency, and that that portends: Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians (2003, Verso; later in paperback). I read this book when it came out, before I developed my habit of flagging paragraphs, so the following quotes are ones I noticed in thumbing back through. Actually, much of the book could be quoted here.

The book's main thesis (pp. 3-4):

Israel under Ariel Sharon became an agent of destruction, not only for its surrounding environment, but for itself as well, because its domestic and foreign policy is largely oriented toward one major goal: the politicide of the Palestinian people. By politicide I mean a process that has, as its ultimate goal, the dissolution of the Palestinian people's existence as a legitimate social, political, and economic entity. This process may also but not necessarily include their partial or complete ethnic cleansing from the territory known as the Land of Israel. This policy will inevitably rot the internal fabric of Israeli society and undermine the moral foundation of the Jewish state in the Middle East. From this perspective, the result will be a double politicide -- that of the Palestinian entity and, in the long run, that of the Jewish entity as well. Therefore, the current Israeli Government poses a considerable danger to the stability and the very survival of all the peoples of the entire region.

I'd add that it also adds to the rot of American political society, both as a cause and as a model for American policy.

Kimmerling continues (p. 4)

Politicide is a process that covers a wide range of social, political, and military activities whose goal is to destroy the political and national existence of a whole community of people and thus deny its the possibility of self-determination. Murders, localized massacres, the elimination of leadership and elite groups, the physical destruction of public institutions and infrastructure, land colonization, starvation, social and political isolation, re-education, and partial ethnic cleansing are the major tools used to achieve this goal.

The politicide of the Palestinian people did not begin with Ariel Sharon's election. Rather, it is a consequence of the 1967 War and, partially, of the very nature and roots of the Zionist movement, and has been supported and reinforced by a series of regional and global events and processes.

Sharon, however, advances the peril (p. 7)

The most crucial element in Israel's recent drift toward fascism is the defintion of "the other" (in this case the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and even the Arab citizens of Israel, collectively) as a danger to the very existence of Israel as a nation and every Israeli individually. This definition prepares Israeli, Jewish, and world public opinion for drastic measures against the Palestinians. What before Sharon was considered unthinkable, or at least politically incorrect, has now become an explicit and respectable issue in mainstream Israeli political discourse -- ethnic cleansing as a legitimate solution to the "demographic problem" of there being an Arab majority or approximate majority on the land.

This direction has continued to develop since Kimmerling wrote, especially as formerly far right fringe figures, like Avigdor Lieberman, have moved into what is ostensibly a "centrist" government. Kimmerling allows that threats of ethnic cleansing may be "just a psychological warfare tactic" but we should be cautioned that rhetoric tends to be self-convincing, and therefore self-fulfilling.

On the consequences of the 1967 war (pp. 15-16)

Quite apart from the economic interest in the territories, a new complication arose after the 1967 War -- the desir eof Israeli society as whole, both left and right, to annex the historic heartland of the Jewish people in the West Bank without annexing its Arab residents. A formal annexation would mean that Israel would no longer have a Jewish majority. Demographic changes would destroy the Jewish character of the state even if the Palestinians were not granted citizenship. Political and demographic considerations collided with economic considerations and both contradicted the Kantian moral imperative as well as the Jewish Sage Hillel's demand not to do the "other" what you don't wish the other to do you. This triple contradiction created a built-in crisis, leaving the Israeli state and society unable to make the important political decisions that are necessary to resolve the conflict. As time passed, the crisis became more explicit and the contradictory interests became aligned with political parties and were absorbed into personal and group identities and even into various religious streams ("hawks vs. doves," "right vs. left," or "Zionists vs. post-Zionists").

Kimmerling denies the intent to write a biography of Sharon, but the bulk of the book traces Israeli history through Sharon's involvement. One example is the Sharon's orchestration of the invasion of Lebanon, and his role in the Sabra and Shatila massacres (pp. 94-96):

Accepted wisdom regards the massacre as a spontaneous reaction (revenge, so to speak) to the assassination of Bashir Gemayel two days earlier, but this is a simplistic attempt to explain and even excuse this horrifying event. The massacre, when seen in its proper political context, is even more dreadful. Following the departure of the PLO and the Syrians from West Beirut and its Muslim neighborhoods, a question arose as to who was to take over these areas and how, since it was assumed that a lot of "terrorist" weapons and ammunition remained there. The Israelis preferred Christian troops like the almost nonexistent Lebanese Army. [ . . . ] The second best choice was the Phalangists, and throughout the invasion, Israel made efforts to merge these two Christian "armies" (and other Christian militias) without success. In any case, both Christian military organizations wanted to see Beirut and all of Lebanon cleared of "terrorists," namely Palestinians, but they demanded that Israel do the job. In fact, the Christian Lebanese openly blamed Israel for all their troubles with the Palestinians, seeing the Zionists as responsible for the uprooting of the Palestinians in 1948 and their subsequent flight to Lebanon.

When Sharon urged the Phalangists to enter West Beirut, contrary to his testimony before the Kahan Commission, he was well aware of the atrocious past and present tendencies of the militia, having been warned several times by his intelligence and other officers and even by his colleagues in the Cabinet. One must also keep in mind that in inter-communal wars and conflicts, massacres and other atrocities committed against non-combatant populations are not just consequences of hatred and emotional outbursts, but also the results of calculated actions designed to force a population to flee to other lands and to ethnically cleanse an area without the difficult logistical problems of a forced evacuation.. The Maronite community never hid their desire to expel the Palestinians from the country. Their only problem was where the Palestinians should go: neither Syria nor Jordan (nor of course, Israel) would welcome them. In addition, even their removal from the Beirut region to a more peripheral area would be only a partial victory for the Maronites. There was also some conflict of interest between the Israelis and the Maronites. Schiff and Ya'ari report that, in the first phases of the invasion, one of Begin's and Sharon's goals was to push the Palestinian inhabitants of southern Lebanon -- not only the combatants -- to the north, and for this reason, as many houses as possible were destroyed by Israel's artillery and air force and measures were taken to prevent their being rebuilt. But this policy was not pursued for long because it was blatantly opposed to the interests of Israel's supposed ally.

After the massacre, the Israeli Government tried to diminish its significance and gravity and to downplay its own responsibility, hoping that domestic and international indignation would soon be abated. The insensitivity and ethnocentric nature of its approach were demonstrated by Begin's famous pronouncement, "Gentiles kill gentiles and then accuse the Jews."

The second part of the book, "The Road to Sharonism" opens with an outline of four key events in Sharon's return to power (p. 105):

These events are the first Intifada, the Oslo Accords, the abortive negotiations between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat at Camp David under the auspices of Bill Clinton, and the earlier stages of the current al-Aqsa Intifada. The major aim of the second part of this volume is to provide insights into the underlying reasons for two dramatic and contradictory shifts in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship -- namely, the first major attempt at reconciliation and its collapse into a bloody inter-communal war that has greatly distorted and critically demaged both societies, albeit in different ways, and whose end is not yet in sight.

On Barak's election and government (pp. 126-127)

On May 17, 1999, Ehud Barak was elected Prime Minister on the Labor Party ticket under a slogan promising the "continuation of the Rabin legacy." His election raised hopes for the restoration of trust between Israel and both the Palestinians in particular and the Arab World in general. Yet, at least during the beginnning of his term, Barak seemed to be working under the traumatic cloud of Rabin's assassination. He tried to renew the diplomatic process through a coalition government composed of a "stable Jewish majority," that is, without the support of Israeli Arab voters, 95 percent of whom had cast their votes for him and to whom he owed a great deal of his success in Israel's first direct election for the premiership. Instead, from the beginning, the government cooperated with religious parties and those with rightwing tendencies (such as the National Religious Party, Shas, and the Russian Immigrant Party), and brought about the withdrawal from the coalition of the one Zionist party most dedicated to the reconciliation process, Meretz, simply to avoid even a resemblance to Rabin's coalition.

In retrospect, many, including Yossi Beilin for instance, suspected Barak of calculating his steps so that he could make his proposals look like huge compromises on Israel's part while knowing that they would be completely unacceptable to the Palestinians. Thus he could seemingly unmask the true face of the Palestinians and declare "Israel has no real partner in peace." It seems more likely that Barak genuinely believed that Israel was strong enough to coerce the Palestinians into accepting an agreement based on his own conditions. That is why he spent his first year in office attempting to reach an agreement with Syria in order to isolate the Palestinians. In Barak's own words, "achieving peace with Syria would greatly limit the Palestinians' ability to widen the conflict."

This seems too generous to Barak, who was notably opposed to the Oslo Accords in the first place, and who while in the IDF had a close relationship with Sharon. Kimmerling credits Hafez Assad with turning down a treaty with Barak, but my understanding is that it was Barak who balked at the last minute. The year Barak spent negotiating with "Syria first" saw a major expansion of Israel's West Bank settlements, further undermining his commitments to finalize the Oslo process. After he failed at Camp David, Barak went out of his way to make it easier for Sharon to end the entire Oslo process by withdrawing all of his supposedly generous offers. After Sharon defeated Barak, Barak tried to secure a position in Sharon's government as Minister of Defense.

While Sharon spurned Barak, he did cut the Labor Party into his first government (pp.150-152):

Perhaps the wisest political move was made promptly after his first election tothe premiership, when he offered the Labor Party an opportunity to join a so-called National Unity Government, despite the fact that he did not need them to establish a coalition and could have formed a stable and purely rightwing government. In fact, this was a well-calculated move directed primarily at Shimon Peres and Benjamin Ben Eliezer. Ben Eliezer (nicknamed "Fuad") -- who immigrated asa child from Iraq to Israel in 1950 -- was the first on-Ashkenazi chairman of the Labor Party and a symbol of the party's efforts to accommodate itself to changing social realities. Ben Eliezer spent most of his adult life (about thirty years) in the military, and was for a certain time under Sharon's command. He was known as a docile admirer of his superiors (even during the Lebanese War), was considered a hawk, and filled some peripheral posts in Barak's Cabinet. Sharon's invitation to serve as Minister of Defense was an offer he could not refuse, as he hoped to strengthen his weak political profile. Peres wa another story. An aging politician, he is, despite his international respectability, considered an eternal loser in Israel (last time he lost the party's chairmanship to Ben Eliezer) and a wishy-washy, cynical politician. Peres can adapt his attitude to any political circumstance, becoming alternately hawkish or dovish, a supporter of a Palestinian state or an opponent of it. Predictably, Ben Eliezer and Peres accepted Sharon's offer and explained their decision to join his cabinet by the need to restrain Sharon, to counterbalance the extreme right, and to ensure the continuation of the Oslo process. [ . . . ]

Sharon's gains from Labor's participation in his first government were obvious: he managed to crush internal political opposition by forming the largest government in Israel's history and to gain an unprecedented domestic legitimacy. The man who many consider a war criminal by any standard, and who had been Israel's most notorious politician for twenty years, had become the country's most popular and highly regarded premier.

Labor has remained powerless ever since, unable either to influence Sharon or to oppose him. After Sharon passed from the political scene, Labor once again joined a government led by Sharon's successor Olmert, and once again found itself badly tarnished by its participation in Olmert's policies, especially the 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

Kimmerling's politicide concept is shrewd but not fully developed. What should be explained is that it rests on the notion that only politics matters anymore. Sharon's agenda -- and of course many more Israelis were involved in this, as well as a few critical Americans, not least Elliott Abrams -- has been to reduce the reduce Palestinian political effectiveness to near zero. If Palestinians cannot function in the political sphere, the only recourse they have left is violence, excusing Israel from responsibility.

Of course, that depends on Israelis (and Americans) being able to deny that Palestinians should be entitled to the same political rights we take for granted. That this has even seemed possible is a remarkable feat of arrogance and brutality -- traits Sharon's entire career have been dedicated to.

posted 2007-06-13