भारतीय मुसलमान की हालत फिल्म के पर्दे और राजनीति के मैदान में एक सी है। फिल्मी परदे पर उसका किरदार एक साधारण इंसान का नहीं होता। कभी वो बेइंतेहा रुमानी शायर तो कभी बेवजह अपनी देशभक्ति की मिसाल देता पुलिस अफसर नजर आता है। जिस तरीके से हम बॉलीवुड के परदे पर एक सामान्य मुसलमान की कल्पना नहीं करते उसी तरह राजनीति के मानसपटल पर भी हम एक सामान्य मुसलमान को नदारद पाते हैं।
भारतीय राजनीति में मुस्लिमों को हम देश की बाकी जनता से अलग करके देखते हैं। हर कोई मान कर चलता है कि राजनीति का सामान्य नियम मुसलमान पर लागू नहीं होता। ये विचार सिर्फ बाहरी लोगों का फैलाया हुआ नहीं है। खुद मुसलमान नेता और जनता भी ये यकीन करती है कि हो न हो वो कुछ अनूठे हैं। यहीं से भारतीय राजनीति में मुसलमानों को बंधक बनाने की कड़ियां शुरू होती हैं। मिथकों का एक ऐसा सिलसिला शुरू होता है, जहां मुस्लिम वोटर की अपनी स्वतंत्र पहचान खो जाती है। वो एक अकेला वोटर नहीं रह जाता, वो एक भीड़ में तब्दील हो जाता है। अपने आप को असाधारण मानते-मानते वो दूसरों की निगाह में असामान्य दिखने लगा है और राजनीति के मिथकों का पात्र बनने के लिए अभिशप्त है। आइए उन मिथकों की एक बानगी देखते हैं, जो मुसलमान को बाकी लोगों की तरह एक आम वोटर स्वीकार नहीं करते।
सबसे पहले है देश की राजनीति में उनकी भागीदारी का सवाल। माना जाता है की मुसलमान राजनीति में ज्यादा शिरकत करते हैं। वो देश के बाकी वोटरों से इतर बड़ी संख्या में वोट डालते हैं। ये सच है कि जिन लोकसभा क्षेत्रों में मुस्लिमों की आबादी ज्यादा है, वहां औसत से ज्यादा वोट पड़ते हैं। लेकिन इसकी वजह साम्प्रदायिक ध्रुवीकरण में छिपी है। जिसके चलते इन इलाकों में हिंदू और मुस्लिम दोनों खुलकर अपने वोट का इस्तेमाल करते हैं। लेकिन ऐसे लोकसभा क्षेत्र बहुत गिने-चुने हैं। हमारे देश में मुस्लिमों की आबादी महज 13.4 फीसदी है। मतदाता सूची में यह आंकड़ा और सिकुड़ जाता है। देश के अधिकांश चुनाव क्षेत्र ऐसे हैं, जहां मुस्लिम वोटर 10 फीसदी भी नहीं हैं। नेशनल इलेक्शन स्टडीज के जुटाये आंकड़ों से साफ है कि मुसलमानों की चुनाव और देश की राजनीति में भागीदारी बाकी समुदायों से अलग नहीं है।
पिछले चार लोकसभा चुनावों में 59 फीसदी मुसलमानों ने वोट डाले। इसके मुकाबले पूरे देश में औसतन 60 फीसदी लोगों ने अपने वोट का इस्तेमाल किया। दरअसल, अगर कोई फर्क है तो उल्टा है। साल 2004 के लोकसभा चुनाव में मुसलमान वोटरों ने औसत के कहीं कम वोट डाले। अगर हम चुनावों में प्रचार जैसी ज्यादा सक्रिय भूमिका को देखें तो मुस्लिम और हिन्दुओं में कोई बहुत फर्क देखने को नहीं मिलता। इतना ही नहीं, ये आंकड़ा बाकी अल्पसंख्यक समुदायों से अलग नहीं बैठा। शिक्षा और हैसियत जरूर राजनीति में हिस्सेदारी पर असर डालती दिखती हैं, लेकिन मजहब से कोई फर्क नहीं पड़ता।
शायद सबसे प्रचलित मिथक ये है कि सभी मुसलमान मिलकर किसी भी एक पार्टी या उम्मीदवार को वोट डालते हैं। यानी कि मुसलमान एक वोट बैंक हैं। लेकिन आम चुनावों में मुस्लिमों के वोट का रुझान यह साबित नहीं करता कि वो एक वोट बैंक की तरह काम करते हैं। पिछले आम चुनाव में पूरे देश भर में 37 फीसदी मुसलमान वोट कांग्रेस को पड़े। और 17 फीसदी कांग्रेस के सहयोगी दलों को। समाजवादी पार्टी को 16 फीसदी वोट मिले। तो बीजेपी को भी सात फीसदी मुसलमान वोट मिले। इसे वोट बैंक का नमूना कैसा बताया जा सकता है।
बेशक, अगर हम इस पहलू को राज्य की जमीं पर टटोलें तो साफ हो जाता है कि यहां मुस्लिम मतदाता कहीं ज्यादा एकतरफा व्यवहार करता है। लेकिन इसके बावजूद वो वोट बैंक की तरह काम नहीं करते। सिर्फ विकल्पहीनता की हालत में ही वो एकतरफा वोट डालते हैं। खासतौर से जब उसे कांग्रेस और बीजेपी में से किसी एक को चुनना पड़ता है। अगर उन्हें कोई तीसरी पार्टी मिल जाती है तो कांग्रेस की ओर उनका झुकाव कम हो जाता है। या फिर जहां बीजेपी और उसकी किसी सहयोगी की गैरमौजूदगी में दूसरी पार्टियों में मुकाबला सामने आता है। कुल मिलाकर राज्य में मुसलमान वोटर का व्यवहार बहुत हद तक सामान्य जातियों की तरह ही है। आजकल खासतौर पर बिहार और उत्तर प्रदेश में मुसलमान समाज के भीतर जात बिरादरी का फर्क भी उनकी राजनीतिक पसंद नापसंद पर असर डालने लगा है।
एक मिथक ये भी है कि मुसलमान एक रणनीति के तहत आखिरी घंटों तक अपने फैसले को टालते रहते हैं। कुछ इलाकों में ऐसा होता भी है। लेकिन पूरा देश एक स्तर पर आंकड़े की बात की पुष्टि नहीं करता। अगर 33 फीसदी हिन्दू चुनाव के दिन या एक दिन पहले अपना वोट तय करते हैं तो मुसलमानों में यह आंकड़ा महज 31 फीसदी था। एक और मिथक ये भी है कि मुसलमान अपना फैसला खुद नहीं लेते। इनका फैसला पारंपरिक नेताओं और मौलवियों के जरिए होता है। ऐसा भी कहा जाता है कि मुस्लिम वोटर का फैसला रोजमर्रा के जरूरी मुद्दों की बनिस्पत इस्लाम की सोच और समुदाय के मुद्दों पर ज्यादा टिका होता है। लेकिन मुस्लिम वोटर को लेकर बनी इस धारणा में भी कोई दम नहीं है। वोटिंग पर किए गए शोध ये दिखाते हैं कि बाकी हिन्दुस्तानी वोटर की तरह वो भी पहले पार्टी देखता है, फिर उम्मीदवार और आखिर में जात। मुसलमान पुरुष हो या महिला-ये दोनों ही मौलवी या किसी धार्मिक नेता से उतना ही प्रभावित होते हैं, जितना किसी दूसरे समुदाय के वोटर।
अमेरिका से चली ये धारणा हमारे देश में भी फैल रही है कि इस्लाम और लोकतंत्र का छत्तीस का आंकड़ा है। इसी सोच का एक और सिरा भारत में उभार लेता है। इसके मुताबिक भारतीय मुसलमान खुद का राजनीतिक ढांचे से अलगाव महसूस करता है। लेकिन हाल ही में दक्षिण एशिया के पांच देशों में किए एक सर्वे के नतीजे साबित करते हैं कि लोकतंत्र मे सहयोग देने को लेकर मुस्लिम और हिन्दुओं में कोई फर्क नहीं है। मुसलमान लोकतान्त्रिक राजनीति से खुद को अलग नहीं कर रहे हैं।
भारतीय मुसलमानों की राजनीतिक तस्वीर को समझने के लिये जरूरी है कि इन टूटते मिथकों के साथ-साथ हम दो बड़े सच को भी जोड़ लें। सच्चर कमिटी की रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक मुस्लिम न सिर्फ हाशिये पर हैं, शिक्षा रोज़गार, आवास और आर्थिक तौर पर भी उनसे भेदभाव किया जाता है। दूसरा एक बड़े सच से रूबरू कराया है प्रोफेसर इकबाल अंसारी ने। इन्होंने मुस्लिम सांसदों और विधायकों का आकलन किया। इनके मुताबिक राज्य स्तर पर भी मुस्लिम का प्रातिनिधित्व अपनी आबादी के अनुपात से आधे से भी कम था।
अगर हम इन मिथकों और सच को एक साथ रख लें तो हम मुसलमानों की राजनीतिक त्रासदी से रूबरू होते हैं। भारत के मुसलमान की हालत अमेरिका में अश्वेतों की तरह है। रिपब्लिकन उनके बारे में इसलिये नहीं सोचते क्योंकि वो जानते हैं कि उनका वोट उन्हें नहीं मिलेगा। डेमोक्रेट इसलिये उन्हें भाव नहीं देते क्योंकि उन्हें भरोसा है कि वो उन्हें ही वोट देंगे। मुस्लिम के आस पास बुने इस मिथकों के मकड़जाल ने उन्हें राजनितिक बंधक बना दिया है। पहले कांग्रेस उन्हें बंधक मानकर चलती थी, आज कांग्रेस के साथ-साथ समाजवादी पार्टी और आरजेडी जैसी पार्टियां भी यही सोचती हैं। दरअसल,मुसलमान को साधारण बताने और उनको बंधक बताने के बीच गहरा रिश्ता है। मुसलमान वोटर की राजनितिक मुक्ति के लिये उन्हें मिथकों के इस मकड़जाल से बाहर निकल कर देखना होगा। एक आम हिन्दुस्तानी वोटर की तरह।
इन सब के बीच मौजूदा चुनाव मुसलमानों के लिये राजनीतिक मुक्ति का एक नया दरवाजा खोलता है। अब मुस्लिम वोटर पहले से मौजूद पार्टियों से इतर नए विकल्प तलाश सकता है। असम मे एयूडीएफ कांग्रेस को चुनौती दे रही है। उत्तर प्रदेश में समाजवादी पार्टी के सामने मिल्ली काउंसिल है। बिहार में पसमांदा मुस्लिम राजनीति आरजेडी के लिये परेशानी का सबब है। केरला मे इंडियन मुस्लिम लीग के सामने पीडीपी है। इसमें कोई शक नहीं है कि ये चुनौती कमोबेश सांप्रदायिक राजनीति के भीतर से आ रही हैं। ये विकल्प अक्सर बहुत मौकापरस्त पार्टियों के जरिए आ रहे हैं। बहुत दिन तक बने रहने की संभावना नहीं है लेकिन ये नए विकल्प दीर्घकाल में मुसलमान वोटर को बाकी समुदायों की तरह इस लोकतान्त्रिक मुकाबलों मे अपने पांव पर खड़े होने में मदद जरूर करेंगे।
पोस्टेड योगेंद्र यादव
ibn se sabhar
Showing posts with label Matters of Secularism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matters of Secularism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
Religions: For the Nation
The World Parliament of Religions, opened on September 11, 1893 in Chicago where Swami Vivekananda was the greatest figure, reminds us of the importance of religion in every sphere of human life. A nation is not just a conglomeration of people unrelated to any religion or ideology. Religion plays a significant role in shaping a nation. The Indian society has been religiously and culturally pluralistic for a long time, more than any other country in the world. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated and grew on the Indian soil. The Semitic religions of Christianity and Islam came to this country as missionary movements. The tribal and primal religious traditions have their own unique features expressed through oral traditions and distinctive cultural life.
Religions have played an ambiguous role throughout Indian history. Very often religions have hindered social and scientific progress by clinging on to outdated beliefs and practices, such as the ideas of fate and predestination. Religions have justified and legitimized structures of injustice and oppression such as caste discrimination and patriarchal system in our society. Moreover, religions allied with political power have caused communal tensions and conflicts.
But religions also provide visions, values and spiritual resources for purposeful living. They provide spiritual and cultural resources for the survival of different people in their search for identity and dignity. Religions provide strength and resources to fight against injustice in society and propose different solutions to human problems. The plurality of religions introduces an element of choice by providing alternative visions of reality and alternative ways of life. There are peace potentialities, liberating streams or prophetic voices in every religion. Another great advantage of plurality of religions, cultures, ethnic groups and languages is that it can be a guarantee against fascism because it will refuse to accept any ‘‘one and only’’ imposition of a religious or political ideology on all people.
The unity and integrity of our nation is of primary importance. There is a constant fear of terrorism, militancy and other divisive forces operating within and across the borders. For national integration, our first and foremost identity should be as Indian citizens, then our religion or region. For instance, an Indian Hindu should be dearer than a Bangladeshi Muslim to an Indian Muslim and likewise for an Indian Christian vis-a-vis a Christian in the West. Our religious convictions should not contradict patriotism which is inherent in all religions. A Hindu prayer says Om Shanti; Islam means ‘‘peace or submission’’; and a Christian believes Jesus as the ‘‘prince of peace’’. Thus, there is no reason why people of all faiths cannot work together for peace in society.
Historically, it is true that the gap between profession and practice in any religion has been almost unbridgeable and that religious fanaticism has caused untold harm to the society. All religions can play important roles in the process of national integration: by teaching each community to practise what is professed; to be tolerant and respectful toward other religions; to avoid fanaticism and fundamentalism; and then to collaborate with other communities in matters of social and humanitarian concerns towards the making of the nation. Moreover, interfaith relations and cooperation can foster communal harmony and remove misconceptions and prejudices of one community against other communities, thus building trust and fraternity among them.
The basis for interfaith relations should be the common concerns of all religions such as search for peace and justice in society, and unity and integrity of the nation in which religions can play a very vital role. This envisages certain issues that can be sorted out. The great advantage of religions playing significant role in our country lies in our secular democracy. Our secular democracy provides perspectives and challenges where people can enjoy religious freedom and equality and can come together for dialogue and collaboration to tap religious resources in bringing about greater communal harmony, to generate common action to correct social evils, and to work together for national reconstruction. Therefore, interfaith cooperation in this attempt is both disirable and inevitable in our country.
Aziz-ul Haque
(The writer is the Pastor of Guwahati Baptist Church)
Religions have played an ambiguous role throughout Indian history. Very often religions have hindered social and scientific progress by clinging on to outdated beliefs and practices, such as the ideas of fate and predestination. Religions have justified and legitimized structures of injustice and oppression such as caste discrimination and patriarchal system in our society. Moreover, religions allied with political power have caused communal tensions and conflicts.
But religions also provide visions, values and spiritual resources for purposeful living. They provide spiritual and cultural resources for the survival of different people in their search for identity and dignity. Religions provide strength and resources to fight against injustice in society and propose different solutions to human problems. The plurality of religions introduces an element of choice by providing alternative visions of reality and alternative ways of life. There are peace potentialities, liberating streams or prophetic voices in every religion. Another great advantage of plurality of religions, cultures, ethnic groups and languages is that it can be a guarantee against fascism because it will refuse to accept any ‘‘one and only’’ imposition of a religious or political ideology on all people.
The unity and integrity of our nation is of primary importance. There is a constant fear of terrorism, militancy and other divisive forces operating within and across the borders. For national integration, our first and foremost identity should be as Indian citizens, then our religion or region. For instance, an Indian Hindu should be dearer than a Bangladeshi Muslim to an Indian Muslim and likewise for an Indian Christian vis-a-vis a Christian in the West. Our religious convictions should not contradict patriotism which is inherent in all religions. A Hindu prayer says Om Shanti; Islam means ‘‘peace or submission’’; and a Christian believes Jesus as the ‘‘prince of peace’’. Thus, there is no reason why people of all faiths cannot work together for peace in society.
Historically, it is true that the gap between profession and practice in any religion has been almost unbridgeable and that religious fanaticism has caused untold harm to the society. All religions can play important roles in the process of national integration: by teaching each community to practise what is professed; to be tolerant and respectful toward other religions; to avoid fanaticism and fundamentalism; and then to collaborate with other communities in matters of social and humanitarian concerns towards the making of the nation. Moreover, interfaith relations and cooperation can foster communal harmony and remove misconceptions and prejudices of one community against other communities, thus building trust and fraternity among them.
The basis for interfaith relations should be the common concerns of all religions such as search for peace and justice in society, and unity and integrity of the nation in which religions can play a very vital role. This envisages certain issues that can be sorted out. The great advantage of religions playing significant role in our country lies in our secular democracy. Our secular democracy provides perspectives and challenges where people can enjoy religious freedom and equality and can come together for dialogue and collaboration to tap religious resources in bringing about greater communal harmony, to generate common action to correct social evils, and to work together for national reconstruction. Therefore, interfaith cooperation in this attempt is both disirable and inevitable in our country.
Aziz-ul Haque
(The writer is the Pastor of Guwahati Baptist Church)
Saturday, 2 June 2007
For A Secular Democratic State
This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Four decades of control established and maintained by force of arms--in defiance of international law, countless UN Security Council resolutions and, most recently, the 2004 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague--have enabled Israel to impose its will on the occupied territories and, in effect, to remake them in its own image.
The result is a continuous political space now encompassing all of historic Palestine, albeit a space as sharply divided as the colonial world ("a world cut in two") famously described by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. Indeed, Fanon's 1961 classic still enables an analysis of Israel and the occupied territories as fresh, insightful and relevant in 2007 as the readings of Cape Town or Algiers that it made available when it was first published.
Israel maintains two separate road systems in the West Bank, for example: one for the territory's immigrant population of Jewish settlers, one for its indigenous non-Jewish (i.e., Palestinian) population.
The roads designated for the Jewish settlers are well maintained, well lit, continuous and uninterrupted; they tie the network of Jewish "neighborhoods" and "settlements"--all of them in reality colonies forbidden by international law--to each other and to Israel. The roads for the West Bank's native population, by contrast, are poorly maintained, when they are maintained at all (they often consist of little more than shepherds' trails); they are continuously blockaded and interrupted. A grid of checkpoints and roadblocks (546 at last count) strangles the circulation of the West Bank's indigenous population, but it is designed to facilitate the free movement of Jewish settlers--who are, moreover, allowed to drive their own cars on the roads set aside for them, whereas Palestinians are not allowed to drive their cars beyond their own towns and villages (the entrances to which are all blockaded by the Israeli army).
The wall that Israel has been constructing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2002 makes visible in concrete and barbed wire the outlines of the discriminatory regime that structures and defines everyday life in the occupied territories, separating Palestinian farmers from crops, patients from hospitals, students and teachers from schools and, increasingly, even parents from children (it has, for example, separated one parent or another from spouses and children in 21 percent of Palestinian families living on either side of the wall near Jerusalem)--while at the same time enabling the seamless incorporation of the Judaized spaces of the occupied territories into Israel itself. And a regime of curfews and closures, enforced by the Israeli army, has smothered the Palestinian economy, though none of its provisions apply to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.
There are, in short, two separate legal and administrative systems, maintained by the regular use of military force, for two populations--settlers and natives--unequally inhabiting the same piece of land: exactly as was the case in the colonial countries described by Fanon, or in South Africa under apartheid.
All this has enabled Israel to transplant almost half a million of its own citizens into the occupied territories, at the expense of their Palestinian population, whose land is confiscated, whose homes are demolished, whose orchards and olive groves are razed or burned down, and whose social, economic, educational and family lives have been, in effect, all but suspended, precisely in order that their land may be made available for the use of another people.
The result has been catastrophic for the Palestinians, as a World Bank report published in May makes clear. While the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem enjoy growth rates exceeding those of Israel itself, Palestinian towns and villages are slowly being strangled. While Jewish settlers move with total freedom, the combination of physical obstacles and the bureaucratic pass system imposed by the Israeli army on the Palestinian population has not only permanently separated the Palestinians of the West Bank from those of Gaza, East Jerusalem and Israel (movement among which is forbidden for all but a tiny minority) but has also broken up the West Bank into three distinct sections and ten enclaves. Half of the West Bank is altogether off-limits to most Palestinians; to move from one part of the rest of the territory to another, Palestinians must apply for a permit from the Israelis. Frequent bans are imposed on movement into or out of particular enclaves (the city of Nablus, for example, has been under siege for five years), or on whole segments of the population (e.g., unmarried men under the age of 45). And all permits are summarily invalidated when Israel declares one of its "comprehensive closures" of the West Bank--there were seventy-eight such days in 2006--at which point the entire Palestinian population stays home.
The lucky few who are able to obtain passes from the Israelis are channeled from one section or enclave to another through a series of army checkpoints, where they may be searched, questioned, hassled, detained for hours or simply turned back. "The practical effect of this shattered economic space," the World Bank report points out, "is that on any given day the ability to reach work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land is highly uncertain and subject to arbitrary restriction and delay." Given the circumstances, it is hardly any wonder that two-thirds of the Palestinian population has been reduced to absolute poverty (less than $2 a day), and that hundreds of thousands are now dependent for day-to-day survival on food handouts provided by international relief organizations. Not only has the international community refused to intervene; it has actively participated in the repression, imposing--for the first time in history--sanctions on a people living under military occupation, while the occupying and colonizing power goes on violating the international community's own laws with total impunity.
To all of these charges, Israel and its supporters have but one response: "security." But as the World Bank report argues, it is "often difficult to reconcile the use of movement and access restrictions for security purposes from their use to expand and protect settlement activity." Moreover, the Bank notes, it seems obvious that Israeli security ought to be tied to Palestinian prosperity: By disrupting the Palestinian economy and immiserating an entire population--pushing almost 4 million people to the edge--the Israelis are hardly enhancing their own security.
Such arguments miss the point, however. No matter how fiercely it is contested inside Israel, there remains a very strong sense that the country is entitled to retain the land to which it has now stubbornly clung for four decades. Even while announcing his scheme to relinquish nominal control over a few bits and pieces of the West Bank with heavy concentrations of Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted on his country's inherent right to the territory, irrespective of the demands of international law, let alone the rights and claims of the Palestinians themselves. ("Every hill in Samaria and every valley in Judea is part of our historic homeland," he said last year, using Israel's official, biblical terminology for the West Bank.)
Although some people claim there are fundamental differences between the disposition of the territories Israel captured in 1967 and the territories it captured during its creation in 1948--or even that there are important moral and political differences between Israel pre- and post-1967--such sentiments of entitlement, and the use of force that necessarily accompanies them, reveal the seamless continuity of the Zionist project in Palestine from 1948 to our own time. "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing," argues Israeli historian Benny Morris, with reference to the creation of Israel. "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."
Israel's post-1967 occupation policies are demonstrably driven by the same dispossessive logic. If hundreds of thousands have not literally been forced into flight, their existence has been reduced to penury. Just as Israel could have come into being in 1948 only by sweeping aside hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Israel's ongoing colonization of Palestinian territory--its imposition of itself and its desires on the land's indigenous population--requires, and will always require, the use of force and the continual brutalization of an entire people.
Indeed, the discriminatory practices in the occupied territories replicate, albeit in a harsher and more direct form, those inside Israel, where the remnant of the Palestinian population that was not driven into flight in 1948--today more than a million people--continues to endure the systematic inequalities built into the laws and institutions of a country that explicitly claims to be the state of the Jewish people rather than that of its own actual citizens, about a fifth of whom are not Jewish. Recognizing the contradiction inherent in such a formulation, various Israeli politicians, including Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman, have explicitly called for the territorial transfer--if not the outright expulsion--of as much as possible of Israel's non-Jewish (that is, Palestinian) minority. Although it would be intended to mark the ultimate triumph of the dispossessing settler over the dispossessed native (Lieberman is an immigrant from Moldova who enjoys rights denied to indigenous Palestinians simply because he happens to be Jewish), such a gesture would actually amount to a last-ditch measure, an attempt to forestall what has become the most likely conclusion to the conflict.
For, having unified all of what used to be Palestine (albeit into one profoundly divided space) without having overcome the Palestinian people's will to resist, Zionism has run its course. And in so doing, it has terminated any possibility of a two-state solution. There remains but one possibility for peace with justice: truth, reconciliation--and a single democratic and secular state, a state in which there will be no "natives" and "settlers" and all will be equal; a state for all its citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation. Such a state has always, by definition, been anathema for Zionism. But for the people of Israel and Palestine, it is the only way out.
By Saree Makdisi
Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on the Middle East, is writing a book on Palestine, forthcoming from Norton.
The result is a continuous political space now encompassing all of historic Palestine, albeit a space as sharply divided as the colonial world ("a world cut in two") famously described by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. Indeed, Fanon's 1961 classic still enables an analysis of Israel and the occupied territories as fresh, insightful and relevant in 2007 as the readings of Cape Town or Algiers that it made available when it was first published.
Israel maintains two separate road systems in the West Bank, for example: one for the territory's immigrant population of Jewish settlers, one for its indigenous non-Jewish (i.e., Palestinian) population.
The roads designated for the Jewish settlers are well maintained, well lit, continuous and uninterrupted; they tie the network of Jewish "neighborhoods" and "settlements"--all of them in reality colonies forbidden by international law--to each other and to Israel. The roads for the West Bank's native population, by contrast, are poorly maintained, when they are maintained at all (they often consist of little more than shepherds' trails); they are continuously blockaded and interrupted. A grid of checkpoints and roadblocks (546 at last count) strangles the circulation of the West Bank's indigenous population, but it is designed to facilitate the free movement of Jewish settlers--who are, moreover, allowed to drive their own cars on the roads set aside for them, whereas Palestinians are not allowed to drive their cars beyond their own towns and villages (the entrances to which are all blockaded by the Israeli army).
The wall that Israel has been constructing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2002 makes visible in concrete and barbed wire the outlines of the discriminatory regime that structures and defines everyday life in the occupied territories, separating Palestinian farmers from crops, patients from hospitals, students and teachers from schools and, increasingly, even parents from children (it has, for example, separated one parent or another from spouses and children in 21 percent of Palestinian families living on either side of the wall near Jerusalem)--while at the same time enabling the seamless incorporation of the Judaized spaces of the occupied territories into Israel itself. And a regime of curfews and closures, enforced by the Israeli army, has smothered the Palestinian economy, though none of its provisions apply to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.
There are, in short, two separate legal and administrative systems, maintained by the regular use of military force, for two populations--settlers and natives--unequally inhabiting the same piece of land: exactly as was the case in the colonial countries described by Fanon, or in South Africa under apartheid.
All this has enabled Israel to transplant almost half a million of its own citizens into the occupied territories, at the expense of their Palestinian population, whose land is confiscated, whose homes are demolished, whose orchards and olive groves are razed or burned down, and whose social, economic, educational and family lives have been, in effect, all but suspended, precisely in order that their land may be made available for the use of another people.
The result has been catastrophic for the Palestinians, as a World Bank report published in May makes clear. While the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem enjoy growth rates exceeding those of Israel itself, Palestinian towns and villages are slowly being strangled. While Jewish settlers move with total freedom, the combination of physical obstacles and the bureaucratic pass system imposed by the Israeli army on the Palestinian population has not only permanently separated the Palestinians of the West Bank from those of Gaza, East Jerusalem and Israel (movement among which is forbidden for all but a tiny minority) but has also broken up the West Bank into three distinct sections and ten enclaves. Half of the West Bank is altogether off-limits to most Palestinians; to move from one part of the rest of the territory to another, Palestinians must apply for a permit from the Israelis. Frequent bans are imposed on movement into or out of particular enclaves (the city of Nablus, for example, has been under siege for five years), or on whole segments of the population (e.g., unmarried men under the age of 45). And all permits are summarily invalidated when Israel declares one of its "comprehensive closures" of the West Bank--there were seventy-eight such days in 2006--at which point the entire Palestinian population stays home.
The lucky few who are able to obtain passes from the Israelis are channeled from one section or enclave to another through a series of army checkpoints, where they may be searched, questioned, hassled, detained for hours or simply turned back. "The practical effect of this shattered economic space," the World Bank report points out, "is that on any given day the ability to reach work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land is highly uncertain and subject to arbitrary restriction and delay." Given the circumstances, it is hardly any wonder that two-thirds of the Palestinian population has been reduced to absolute poverty (less than $2 a day), and that hundreds of thousands are now dependent for day-to-day survival on food handouts provided by international relief organizations. Not only has the international community refused to intervene; it has actively participated in the repression, imposing--for the first time in history--sanctions on a people living under military occupation, while the occupying and colonizing power goes on violating the international community's own laws with total impunity.
To all of these charges, Israel and its supporters have but one response: "security." But as the World Bank report argues, it is "often difficult to reconcile the use of movement and access restrictions for security purposes from their use to expand and protect settlement activity." Moreover, the Bank notes, it seems obvious that Israeli security ought to be tied to Palestinian prosperity: By disrupting the Palestinian economy and immiserating an entire population--pushing almost 4 million people to the edge--the Israelis are hardly enhancing their own security.
Such arguments miss the point, however. No matter how fiercely it is contested inside Israel, there remains a very strong sense that the country is entitled to retain the land to which it has now stubbornly clung for four decades. Even while announcing his scheme to relinquish nominal control over a few bits and pieces of the West Bank with heavy concentrations of Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted on his country's inherent right to the territory, irrespective of the demands of international law, let alone the rights and claims of the Palestinians themselves. ("Every hill in Samaria and every valley in Judea is part of our historic homeland," he said last year, using Israel's official, biblical terminology for the West Bank.)
Although some people claim there are fundamental differences between the disposition of the territories Israel captured in 1967 and the territories it captured during its creation in 1948--or even that there are important moral and political differences between Israel pre- and post-1967--such sentiments of entitlement, and the use of force that necessarily accompanies them, reveal the seamless continuity of the Zionist project in Palestine from 1948 to our own time. "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing," argues Israeli historian Benny Morris, with reference to the creation of Israel. "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on."
Israel's post-1967 occupation policies are demonstrably driven by the same dispossessive logic. If hundreds of thousands have not literally been forced into flight, their existence has been reduced to penury. Just as Israel could have come into being in 1948 only by sweeping aside hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Israel's ongoing colonization of Palestinian territory--its imposition of itself and its desires on the land's indigenous population--requires, and will always require, the use of force and the continual brutalization of an entire people.
Indeed, the discriminatory practices in the occupied territories replicate, albeit in a harsher and more direct form, those inside Israel, where the remnant of the Palestinian population that was not driven into flight in 1948--today more than a million people--continues to endure the systematic inequalities built into the laws and institutions of a country that explicitly claims to be the state of the Jewish people rather than that of its own actual citizens, about a fifth of whom are not Jewish. Recognizing the contradiction inherent in such a formulation, various Israeli politicians, including Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman, have explicitly called for the territorial transfer--if not the outright expulsion--of as much as possible of Israel's non-Jewish (that is, Palestinian) minority. Although it would be intended to mark the ultimate triumph of the dispossessing settler over the dispossessed native (Lieberman is an immigrant from Moldova who enjoys rights denied to indigenous Palestinians simply because he happens to be Jewish), such a gesture would actually amount to a last-ditch measure, an attempt to forestall what has become the most likely conclusion to the conflict.
For, having unified all of what used to be Palestine (albeit into one profoundly divided space) without having overcome the Palestinian people's will to resist, Zionism has run its course. And in so doing, it has terminated any possibility of a two-state solution. There remains but one possibility for peace with justice: truth, reconciliation--and a single democratic and secular state, a state in which there will be no "natives" and "settlers" and all will be equal; a state for all its citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation. Such a state has always, by definition, been anathema for Zionism. But for the people of Israel and Palestine, it is the only way out.
By Saree Makdisi
Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on the Middle East, is writing a book on Palestine, forthcoming from Norton.
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