Zero Sum Game - republished 9/27/2014

(originally published 2005)

"Gaza, a 25-mile-long, 6-mile-wide strip of land, was part of Mandatory Palestine, which was ruled by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It was never part of the Zionist state intended by the United Nations partition plan that led to the establishment of Israel in 1948. At that point, five Arab nations immediately attacked the new nation, but Gaza wasn't even part of the territory Israel got in signing truces in 1949. It became the home of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing Israel, and Israel's armistice with Egypt in 1949 put it under Egyptian rule. In the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, Israel captured Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, along with the West Bank (from Jordan) and the Golan Heights (from Syria). Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt after making peace, but kept control of Gaza. A second agreement called for negotiating eventual Palestinian autonomy there.?"  NY Times

What a miserable place the Holy Land is!  The climate is wonderful, (something like Santa Barbara).  There is a delightful quality to the countryside.  The amber light shining on the city of Jerusalem in the afternoon is a sight never forgotten.  People on both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli gap are often warm hearted and welcoming and the holiest places in the world are there, waiting for all.  If a quiet life there were really possible I would be living at least part time in Jerusalem in what could easily be thought of as the Center of the World.

Alas... Not possible.  The two nations contesting for the land between the Jordan and the sea see the contest essentially as a tribal struggle for control of scarce resources.  These are land and water.  Both groups are filled with the kind of exclusivist nationalism that regards all other groups as "the other," and sees its relationship to "the other" in terms of a zero sum game.  I would recommend Elie Kheddourie's old book, "Nationalism" as a source for understanding the destructive potential of "Nationalism" as opposed to "Patriotism.'  As Kheddourie would have it, Patriotism is love of your own group.  Nationalism is love of your own group at  the expense of someone else's group.  In other words, in a Nationalist paradigm, if your group wins something then my group must have lost something.  This is the traditional mindset in the ME.  It probably became the normative pattern of thought over millennia under the influence of a scarcity of arable land as a result of the scarcity of dependable sources of water. 

 

There are a good number of people on both sides of this struggle who manage to rise above the self imposed trap of Nationalist hostility and selfishness.  God Bless Them, but they are and will probably remain a minority.

The Gaza evacuation should be seen as an extension of this process of zero sum gaming of the confrontation of the two nations over Eretz Israel/Palestine.  Sharon's intention is clear.  As he says "I do not wish to make peace with the Palestinians.  I want to make peace with the Americans."  He thinks that he has GWB's agreement that if he dumps the demographically untenable Israeli colonization of Gaza, then he has a "free hand" in the West Bank.  This means to him that Jerusalem is off the table, to be included in Israel without further fuss behind the barrier of the Great Wall of Israel. (GWI).  This means to him that large blocs of land on the West Bank will remain in Israeli hands as barriers to the creation of a contiguous Palestinian state.  This means to him that he will "freeze" the GWI line as the international frontier once he encloses the eastern side of the West Bank massif.  This will make the Palestinian statelet into a true Bantustan, cut off from other countries by a land barrier manned by a hostile country's troops and police.  All this, is justified by "right of conquest."  One hears this argument frequently, "after all Israel won this land in '67 after it was attacked..."

And what is on the other side?  From long personal experience of conversation with Palestinians and their Arab cousins across the world, I would have to say that there is no acceptance of Israel's existence that would stand the test of a prospect of Palestinian success in resistance.  People like to take polls in Palestine as well as in Israel.  These polls seem to indicate that lots of folks would be glad to settle for "half a loaf" in settling their long standing contest.   What is hidden in the polling is that precise definitions of peace are not the matter of the polls.  Instead of talking about final status maps and the questions of normalization so key to any real settlement, the polls ask for reactions to "feel good"  "Kumbaya" sentimentality about "peace."  What self defeating nonsense.

The Gaza evacuation?  It is just another hand played in the great game of nationalist poker.  Winner takes all!

Pat Lang

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/18/opinion/18thur1.html

Comments

[b]

The only long term solution I can think of is a South African like process and in the end one country with two people living in it.

How to get there? No idea for now, though pressure on the zionists could go a long way. Economic isolation, no more military help. Tell them "Either back to 1967 lines without exception or a one state" solution.

The other alternative is a massive genozide nobody wants.

Any other ideas?

[b]

On another very recent dirty aspekt of US-Israel relation please read Billmon's "51st state":
http://billmon.org/archives/002088.html

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks PL!

[dilbert dogbert]

I think it is the other way around. The U.S. does not have even observer status in the Knesset let alone voting membership.

[lally]

Speaking of a special relationship, it would seem that the UN is moving into active status in that regard:

""From peace in Israel, to peace worldwide, the IDF will take on new responsibilities soon when an Israeli officer will become the nation's first contribution to the United Nation's Peacekeeping forces.

The officer, a major by rank, will be stationed at UN offices in New York where he will help in efforts to organize equipment and peacekeeping troops located in conflict zones across the globe.

"This is our small contribution to peace and security in the world, but it's only the beginning of the road," said a senior source in the Foreign Ministry.

The appointment of the officer to an official UN position is the result of a long effort in communication between the UN, the IDF, the Foreign Ministry, and Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UN."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4572065,00.html