What the Arabs can do

I tweeted that an Egyptian revolutionary committee should address the Israeli protesters who were apparently influenced by the Egyptian intifada - as many parts of the Arab World and indeed the entire world - on what they think of their apartheid and occupation. An impassable proposal given the dogmatic position Arabs have towards normalisation with Israel expressed here in the Egyptian Independent Union Federation statement:

5. The independent unions completely reject any form of normal relations with the Zionist enemy, as they reject all forms of co-operation with any person or organisation who is involved in normalisation or is calling for normalisation. ...

Outreach to any Israeli institution or individual which may include ones actively challenging Israel's racist policies, as well as Israeli Palestinians and Palestinians living in the West Bank is rejected. As stated further in article 5, one of the main reasons why they were opposed to the government backed (now dissolved) Egyptian Trade Union Federation is "its participation in a visit to occupied Jerusalem." To be in solidarity with Palestinians is to keep them in a state of total isolation from their Arab brothers and sisters. But even more perplexing as we will read below is that visiting Gaza is not much of a problem. This championed irrational parochialism that pretends that Israel doesn't exist whilst Palestinians suffer daily form its discriminatory policies and wars does absolutely nothing to help their struggle for liberation, and needs to be challenged head-on.

Anti-normalisation is a strategy of irresponsibility towards Israel's harsh reality. It is avoiding the entirety of Israeli society and the Palestinians it subjects except in charity and rhetorical support for their Resistance, whilst at home we challenge the Zionist colonial project by treating the Palestinians with the same inverted logic applied by Israel: we reject to normalise them, many of whom have for decades been living in refugee camps, and similar living conditions to Palestinians in Israel-Palestine. If Arabs can just swallow their pride for a minute and think about the positive impression their visit to Palestine can have. Artists, writers and musicians can boost morale and culture, professionals can help build institutions, professors can give talks at universities, ordinary people can experience what it means to be Palestinian by passing through checkpoints, watching houses demolished, land stolen and trees uprooted, and join the weekly protests held in places like Bilin. Are international solidarity activists normalising with Israel when they demonstrate in Bilin anymore than than Arabs would if they attended? Is there any better act of solidarity that being physically present? A typical response from an Arab whose country has made formal peace with Israel and therefore can visit the occupied territories but refuses, "I'll visit it once it is liberated." A seemingly defiant response but one that absolves the responsibility of physically and spiritually helping them in their struggle and daily plight.

Anti-normalisation is merely symbolic and unprincipled. When a football tournament was held in Gaza which brought Egyptian, Tunisian, Jordanian and Palestinian kids together to help in "breaking the siege on Gaza," the Egyptian Minister of Youth "praised the responsive attitude of the officials in Egypt and their keenness to support the young Palestinian people and to open up areas of cooperation and communication." However when Egypt's Olympic football team was invited by the Palestinian Football Federation to play in East Jerusalem it was met with a storm of protest because the visiting Egyptians would have to accept passing through Israeli checkpoints and have the Star of David stamped on their passports. A stamp that to them signifies a defeat, recognition of Israel and acceptance of the occupation, but visiting the besieged Gaza Strip is acceptable because you can bunk the reality of the Israeli occupation when there are no Jews around. Are the Palestinians in the West Bank not worthy of our cooperation and communication? Does the nature of Israel's occupation dictate how we will treat one Palestinian locale over another?

Anti-normalization is also a strategy of ignorance. Take the refusal of Alaa AlAswany, the prominent Egyptian novelist who sued an Israeli publishing company for translating his international best selling novel The Yacoubian Building without his permission. Although he accused the company of plagiarism, he says his "position regarding normalization with Israel has not changed. I reject it completely." Edward Said countered this position eloquently,

Take the recent campaign against the translation of Arabic books into Hebrew. One would have thought that the more Arabic literature is available in Israel, the better able Israelis are to understand us as a people, and to stop treating us as animals or less-than-human. Instead we have the sorry spectacle of serious Arab writers actually denouncing their colleagues for "allowing" themselves to "normalise" with Israel, which is the idiotic phrase used as an accusation for collaborating with the enemy. Isn't it the case, as Julien Benda was the first to say, that intellectuals are supposed to go against collective passions instead of trading in them demagogically? How on earth is a Hebrew translation an act of collaboration? Getting into a foreign language is always a victory for the writer. Always and in each case. Isn't it a far more intelligent and useful thing than the craven "normalisation" of the various countries that have trade and diplomatic relationships with the enemy even as Palestinians are being killed like so many flies by the Israeli army and air force? Aren't Hebrew translations of Arabic literature a way of entering Israeli life culturally, making a positive effect in it, changing people's mind from bloody passion to reasonable understanding of Israel's Arab Others, especially when it is Israeli publishers who have gone and published the translations as a sign of cultural protest against Israel's barbarous Arab policy? 

(...) 

There is simply no rational justification from an intellectual point of view of having a policy of ignorance, or using ignorance as a weapon in a struggle. Ignorance is ignorance, no more and no less. Always and in every case.

A sustainable peace will not come about militarily nor will it be in the form of some divine intervention. And although the onus is on Israel, not the Arabs, to do what is just, to recognize their dispossession of the Palestinians and admit their equal right to the land the Arabs can certainly play an important part in calming Israeli hysteria and alluding to the prospect of a just peace by engaging with them. Liberation based on boycott alone will not suffice. We need to reassure the Jews, like the ANC and Nelson Mandela reassured the Whites of South Africa, that the land is for both groups to share, and the victorious will not rule over the defeated. This mutual element of trust must be developed, and without it there won't be a sustainable peace. What's missing is an Arab initiative.

Bassel, a Palestinian living in the West Bank responded defensively to my tweet stating that "I think we don't need to address no body..we need to fight for our freedom." My position was, and remains, that engaging with Israeli society, and especially with sectors that stand for civil and universal human rights is necessary, regardless of how unpopular their positions may be in Israel. Bassel was pessimistic of the prospects of dialogue and of the Israeli protests.

"Do you really think the Arabs should wait till the Zionists come around? or convince them?.. Do you really think they don't know? You've obviously never been here, if you really think they don't know what's going on. They know very well."

But the Arabs have been doing nothing but waiting until the Zionists come around. Consider if a truly democratic government came to power in Egypt. We might eventually terminate our gas sales to Israel, end our siege on Gaza and continue in condemnation of the state of apartheid and the settlements or even cut all diplomatic ties, but nothing substantial beyond that.

Comments on my cousin's Facebook update gave a sample of what some Arabs believe and helps to explain their lack of initiative. He noted that it was stupid of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdelnasser to expel the local Jewish population, many of whom left for Israel. He argues, I think correctly, that if they didn't leave their presence would today be a direct contradiction to the Zionist claim that only a homeland for Jews can protect them from endemic global Antisemitism because only next door exists an old and established Jewish population that has for centuries peacefully coexisted with non-Jews. Several people commented things to the effect that, It was good that they left. Well they left and it only added to the number of Jews living on stolen Palestinian land. There is an inability to differentiate between Antisemitism, hating Jews for being Jewish, and anti-Zionism, rejecting the colonial project in Palestine. The former of course is inclusive of the latter: if you are against Jews you are against their presence amongst us. We should confront equating Jews with Israeli policy - even though the majority of Israeli Jews are Zoinists - and Israelis as necessarily anti-Palestinian. Anti-Zionism is not one of the same as Antisemitism, an equation that the Israeli establishment together with American mainstream press stress endlessly.

A discussion and more sensible definition of normalisation is given here by Rifat Odeh Kassis, a board member of the Alternative Information Agency:

"Normalisation means to participate in any project or initiative or activity, local or international, specifically designed for gathering (either directly or indirectly) Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis, whether individuals or institutions; that does not explicitly aim to expose and resist the occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people."

We see that there is absolutely no objection for Arabs to visit Palestinians in the occupied territories or even in Israel proper, or with Israelis who are trying to "expose and resist" the occupation."
Recommended Readings:
Defiance, Dignity, and the Rule of Dogma, Edward Said
Inside the other wilaya, Edward Said
Excerpts from Culture and Resistance, conversations with Edward Said