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Edited on Sat May-24-08 04:44 PM by The Magistrate
Is that anything that might actually constitute the 'better, smarter, more effective resistance' you desire would be denounced roundly as 'submission' and even 'collaboration' in the prevailing political climate of Arab Palestine. In many ways this strikes me as the actual point of the article above.
One feature of such a 'better, smarter, more effective resistance' would have to be the absolute relinquishing of military action. This, viewed rationally, should be no difficulty, as military action has proved absolutely futile as a means of securing any benefit, in any field, for the people of Arab Palestine. Indeed, it is resorted to for two reasons and two reasons only. First, for emotional gratification, to provide the warm glow of thinking at least something is being done to cause some degree of pain to an enemy, and second, in order to goad the enemy into actions that cause suffering to the people of Arab Palestine, which brings direct benefit in terms of recruitment to the militant bodies, and which it is imagined will eventually turn world opinion against Israel as a paragon of evil and brutality. But that latter card has got about all the mileage it can, and it has failed, and will continue to fail, to mobilize the world effectively against Israel. We all have, after all, great fortitude when bearing the sufferings of others, and the threshold for cracking that is so far above what occurs in the Israel v. Palestine matter that it is out of reach as a thirty-foot bar to a high jumper. The simple careerism of militant leadership, for by now that is all that it is, is a motive for violence no more respectable, and no more fruitful, than the self-aggrandizement and self-perpetuation of any criminal gang. To employ violence for mere emotional gratification, for the sending of a message, is something more in the field of aberrant psychology than that of military endeavor. But when something has been clung to hard for nigh on ninety years, it simply is not going to be let go willingly any time soon, and the idea of glorious struggle, conceived as violence it is hoped will frighten the Jews into flight, has been clung to that hard, and that long, and in the face of overwhelming evidence it has not, and will not ever, succeed. So on this score, the prospects seem grim for any favorable development.
A second feature of such a 'better, smarter, more effective resistance' would have to be forthright acceptance of the existence of Israel, a recognition that its establishment is not going to be reversed, that its establishment was not a crime, and its perpetuation is not a crime. Until this is done (and there is no point in crying up a few alterations to a document here and there, or some veiled statements by a leader now and then, for what is necessary is a sea-change in the entire political and cultural climate of Arab Palestine), it will not be possible to establish a viable state of Arab Palestine, that can exercise real sovereignty within recognized boundaries, including control of immigration and regulation of alien residents on its soil. It is one of the enduring mysteries of this situation that the political leadership of Arab Palestine has declined, and continues to decline, to declare itself a sovereign state: this is, after all, one of the first things movements of national liberation typically do. It is hard by now to avoid the conclusion that the reason they have not done this is because they will not accept the present boundaries such a state would necessarily have, and imagine 'recovery' of territory now part of Israel to be a serious possibility in the future. It is not. And while this pipe-dream is clung to, the actual territory such a state might claim as a matter of practical fact continues to dwindle. The security barrier, fast becoming a new de facto boundary for Israel, has taken a sizeable bite out of it just since the launching of the 'second intafada', chock-ful of glorious martyrdom and studded with dead Israelis as it might have been. There will be further encroachments as the thing cripples on in its present course. The boundaries that could have been had in '47, by mere acceptance of the Partition, begin to seem positively roomy by compare to present lines and worsening future prospects.
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