Works In Progress - August 2003 - A Radical Roadmap for Peace: Interview with Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad

Although the Bush administration's Roadmap for Peace is mentioned in the mainstream media, the realities of Palestinian life are often distorted or unreported. Many Americans hear nothing about the Separation Fence (a.k.a. the Apartheid Wall) that Israel constructs, separating many Palestinians from their land, water, schools and services, thus putting Palestine under even tighter Israeli control. It is rare that Americans are able to hear critical analyses of the situation or perspectives that connect the situation to overall American foreign policy.

On July 9, 2003, I interviewed Toufic Haddad and Dr. Tikva Honig-Parnass, the co-editors of "Between the Lines," a journal that focuses on the political, economic, and social realities of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Dr. Honig-Parnass and Toufic Haddad were on a national speaking tour and spoke that night on A Radical Roadmap for Peace. Dr. Honig-Parnass is an activist, sociologist, and Jewish-Israeli feminist. She is also a member of the '48 generation, the generation that founded the Zionist project in Palestine. Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American who grew up in Kuwait. He lived in the United States for seven years, and then went to Palestine in 1997. He is the founder of a progressive educational center in Bethlehem. He now lives in Ramallah.

What follows are interview excerpts. I began the interview by asking them to describe the journal, "Between the Lines."

Toufic Haddad: Between the Lines comes out once every one or two months. It is in English. We try to provide a radical alternative to media coverage; analysis, information, critiques from Palestinians and Israelis who are actively involved in the struggles and who are able to connect the dots of race, national, cultural, gender, and class oppression that takes place under the Zionist regime, and their links to imperialism/the New World Order. It is distinctly different (because) it breaks down a lot of the myths of how the conflict is portrayed in the corporate media. The media coverage I've seen in the States, mainstream and even some not mainstream, is continually repeating the same absurdities that have nothing to do with what is on the ground. We try to tell people what is behind the news, particularly activists, because they need a progressive source of information about what is going on in Palestine and in Israeli society so that their activism can be well focused.

Can you talk about your perceptions of the Roadmap for Peace? How does Sharon's Apartheid Wall fit into the Roadmap?

Dr. Honig-Parnass: The first stage of the Roadmap says that proceeding to the next stage (depends) only upon conditions (fulfilled) by Palestinians and nothing about Israel. It says that the Palestinians should not only stop violence, but dismantle all of their infrastructure, i.e., community centers, schools, and services which the Israeli occupation does not provide. The second condition of the third stage is that the Palestinians stop any incitement. What does it mean "incitement?" Even talking about the occupation can mean incitement.

The main thing is not the wording of the Roadmap. One just has to look at a map to see how the occupied territories are fragmented into cantons with Israeli settlements (separating Palestinian) centers of population and the ethnic cleansing of 350,000 Palestinians who are disconnected from their cultivated areas. Look at the eastern wall that no one speaks about. Look at all this of this and even if the Roadmap will be implemented, which is far from sure What is it going to bring the Palestinians? A small Bantustan state. Bantustan was a South African apartheid established state, a supposedly independent, black state. No one in the world even related to it as if it were independent. Palestine is like a small Bantustan state, with Israel controlling the water, and air, with an integrated economy. Who will accept this? Palestinians won't accept it.

Toufic Haddad: The Roadmap is quite clear actually. It's guised in a language of some sort of resolution, but it is very clear that the Palestinian/Israeli conflict will be solved in the context of a two-state solution, but only after the Palestinians end violence and terror. What they mean is that they want the unconditional end of the Palestinian Intifada, which is the Palestinian resistance to Israel and the Zionist project's unimpeded plans for Palestine. This plan's inception (dates back) all the way (to) 1948, where two-thirds of the Palestinian people were ethnically-cleansed, through 1967, when Israel occupied the remainder of Palestine, through the Oslo Accords in 1993, where they sought to create these autonomous zones; all through that period, the infrastructure for the Bantustan state was established... You had in Sept 2000, Palestinians rejecting the peace process as a guise behind which Israel continued to colonize and build more settlements and build more bypass roads and bulldoze more houses and arrest more people, and contain more Palestinians on less and less land. That has been Israel's policy ever since its inception.

The Intifada represents a massive rejection of this. It is not just Israel behind this plan. America is behind it very clearly. The American administration gives five billion dollars a year to Israel; US taxpayer dollars and military aid, not to mention diplomatic support, etc. The America administration knows exactly what is going on here, and you cannot look at Israeli policy as anything less than the continuation of American policy.

The Roadmap explicitly seeks to liquidate the uprising before anything else. It seeks to put back the old model which the Oslo process created and the old dynamics which are nothing less than formalizing exactly how to contain the Palestinians to continue the settlement process and to continue the paradigm whereby Palestinians are supposed to police themselves as an oppressive security force to police anti-occupation and anti-Zionist opposition. The Intifada is about resisting that and that is why it is so important for Israel, Zionism, and America to put an end to it.

Dr. Honig-Parnass: There is a kind of a discourse that is going on in America, as if the Zionists and Jewish people here are putting pressure on America, poor America, the innocent who has no choice but to implement the powerful demands

of Israel and the Jewish people. Actually it is in America's interest to crush any buds of nationalism in the Middle East. I don't have to tell you why they need it for the interests of oil, and crushing the national movement of the Palestinians and their society so that no organization will be there to start the Palestinian national movement again. Palestinian nationalism is a symbol, it is motivation for the entire population of people that are exploited by the corrupt regime and US imperialism in the Middle East; so it is joint interest, big America and big Zionist Israel in this role.

What are your opinions in terms of a viable, peaceful and just solution to the conflict?

Toufic Haddad: I think that it is actually deceiving to speak at this stage of a viable solution. It detracts attentions, energies, and thought from where we should be placing our energies and our focus; that is in the struggles on the ground. The Palestinian struggle for an end to occupation, a right to self-determination, and to return to their homes and villages from which they were expelled, are the basic issues which comprise the Palestinian national aspirations. Beneath these are a whole range of sub-issues the fight against racism, the fight against Apartheid, the fight against Zionism, the fight against colonialism, the fight for indigenous people's rights, the fight for land for landless peasants, the fight for water. This is just within the Palestinian context, to say nothing about how Zionism is oppressing the Israeli-Jewish society.

We cannot place ourselves in the position of being a virtual negotiator. It's repeating the same mistakes that the media makes one day the cycle of violence exists, and then tomorrow we might be able to strike the deal that will make everything peaceful. It doesn't happen that way. We are talking about systems. We are talking about deep-rooted infrastructures, economies, mindsets within which these issues are upheld, and so we have to focus on the struggles that are there. Anyone that holds progressive values can fight for these struggles because it is a long process. We are calling for a deep transformation of the entire nature of the political struggle; in historical Palestine we are fighting against the forces of what capitalism and imperialism are doing.

Dr. Honig-Parnass: We must struggle for democratization of the state of Israel, a Jewish state established by the Jews and for the Jews. A Palestinian is then a second-rate citizen, because full-citizenship is defined in religious terms. I don't want to go into the details of this camouflaged Apartheid state to which I, as a citizen of Israel, feel my responsibility to the struggle for the national rights and against imperialism because the Jewish-Zionist state is the watchdog of US imperialism in the Middle East and has been from the beginning. Under British imperialism and then US imperialism, (it) eliminated any struggle for democracy of all the people in the region. Democratization of Israel is the main target of our struggle.

What are the prospects for recovery of Palestine's devastated economy in the future? What would it take to restore the economy there?

Toufic Haddad: Gaza, for instance, is entirely an open-air prison camp. It's 48 kilometers x 6-10 kilometers, which is a captive market for Israeli goods and goods imported by a comprador class. There is a very good book called, "The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of Development" by Sarah Roy. Roy is an economist from Harvard and she talks about how systematically a plan was established to make sure that Gaza has no development. So it's no surprise that there is no development. It's a place where 86% of the population lives on less than $2 a day.

Of course, Palestinians have economic rights to live at a level where they are not suffering from malnutrition as is the case now. I think that at least one out of every three Palestinian children suffers from malnutrition. You have a massive humanitarian catastrophe. It just can't fall within the conception that we can eliminate the problem if we just alleviate the poverty of the Palestinian. It's not a question of poverty; it is a question of international political rights. They are not fighting for a loaf of bread; they are fighting for something much larger than that.

Dr. Honig-Parnass: Development is anchored in economic agreements. The Palestinian economy is integrated into the Israel's economy; most of the exports of Palestinian goods are through Israel. Most of the input is from Israel. There are clauses in the agreements that prohibit Palestinians from forming new commercial relationships with other countries unless Israel agrees to it. What we are facing is a Bantustan state with Israel exploiting the market. This is part of the plan to dissolve society; to bring it on its knees to defeat it.

What role should people in the US or international activists play in supporting the Palestinian cause?

Toufic Haddad: Americans have a particular position that is different from the rest of the world,

because America, being the primary backer of Israel, has a special role in this regard. First, a simple connection to make is the tax money that America gives to Israel on a yearly basis.

Israel controls all of historic Palestine from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea and they have laid the foundation for an Apartheid regime that exists right now. You would be naïve not to acknowledge it; in fact more than naïve, you would be deliberately deceptive and deceiving people if you don't say that at this stage. Israel and the Zionist regime control all of historic Palestine; a primary objective for people is to get this message out.

The nature of what is taking place has to define the nature of how we define our struggle and so just like in South Africa. We must use all means necessary to try and fight them the way the ANC organized in Africa and that means organizing massive boycott cam paigns of Israel, because how long can the supposed free and enlightened world accept the Jewish state? Are we allowed to accept other exclusivist states? There has to be a massive boycott campaign of products, goods, the country, the Olympics, etc. Our strategy has to be focused on getting the message out and defining the values about what we are talking about. We are fighting against the racist, colonialist, apartheid state of Israel and its historical dispossession of Palestinian people.

Dr. Honig-Parnass, could you talk about your experiences in the 1948 war?

Dr. Honig-Parnass: My generation was pre-'48, and when the war came and the expulsion of the Palestinian people was taking place, we were ripe emotionally and psychologically ready to do it, to be quiet about it, and not to question it. We were brought up in a culture which sees Zionism and the coming Israeli state as the supreme value which any individuality or human rights, or even class interest should be subservient to for the goal of the state and its security. This political culture has been strengthened during the years. It was embraced in the slogan of security that behind it everything can go and any human violation can go. Many people and the establishment thought that the Oslo Agreement was going to be decisive solution of the Palestinian question, but once all the assumptions of the Oslo agreement were refuted... Palestinians inside Israel are challenging the Jewish state, now you can see how this culture, which is a fascist culture, is being strengthened among what is being called progressive circles for which the idea of expulsion or ethnic cleansing became legitimate, a legitimate discourse of can we do it or not do it?

The concept of right and left when it comes to Israeli are distorted, Israeli left is pro-anti-terrorism, pro-American, nothing to do with class struggle, it is only defined in terms of peaceful solution of the conflict, but it does not recognize the root causes of the conflict and it looks at the 1967 occupied territories as the creation of the problem. But the 1967 occupied territories were only a prolongation of the unfinished rule and conquest in 1948, and the peace camp never sees the whole picture and fights against the occupation, instead of fighting for resolving the root causes in terms of doing away with a Jewish, racist state, recognizing the right of return of Palestinians, and creating a new strategy which will feed the new emerging situation which is different now as the entirety of Palestine under the control.

Toufic Haddad: Victory to Intifada!

For more information on Between the Lines, visit the website at http://www.between-lines.org .