From Oslo to Annapolis

(Inspired by Mouin Rabbani and (who else?) Edward Said)

In the first two chapters of "The Question of Palestine," Said tells, essentially, the story of a success. The successful, but morally condemnable, protagonist in this story is Zionism. While Said makes sure that we do not disregard the Zionist project for all that it represents for its supporters as an absolute negative, he tells the story "from the standpoint of its victims" and unravels what the successes of Zionism have meant for the unheard but not silent majority: the Palestinian Arabs. Said tells the story of two nationalisms, one imperialist, colonialist-settler, and essentially Western, the second anti-imperialist and Eastern, both liberationist. It is in the striving for liberation where the two nationalisms converge in another way as well: they have both failed.

Said explains how Zionism as a coherent ideology and manifest reality has been able to appropriate notions of time and space in order to build demarcations of inclusion and exclusion, layers of absolute difference and a shockingly active and conscious project of othering. The history of the Jewish people within Zionist historiography is constructed so that it literally overwrites any possible parallel history of Palestinian Arabs. The Zionist project is merely a reclaiming, redeeming one, in fact, portrayed as a normalizing activity the purpose of which is to reestablish things the way they should be. The land of Palestine is like the damsel in distress, to be rescued by the gallant Westerner from the hands of the barbaric Oriental who fails to understand its true needs and so neglects it and leaves it to decay.

Similarly, the Zionist project is premised on a methodology of negation, where the real presence of Arab Palestinians is obliterated (literally and figuratively) by the interpretation of this presence by Zionism as an absence , or worse, a rodent like nuisance to be eliminated for the sake of the common good. Commonality, of course, not being extended outside the community of Jews. The point is that the idea behind Zionism is a fascinatingly powerful one, with the ability to transform reality into its opposite by drawing on and actively adding to the community of language and values and the history of success of Western imperialism. Said's analysis, then, is premised on his notion of the Western discourse which created the Orient and the Occident and placed them in opposition to each other, and the latter in a positional superiority to the former which he elaborated in "Orientalism."

Said does not fail, however, to make the point that Zionism is a unique form of Western imperialism. This uniqueness can be found in its exclusion of the native from its civilizing mission , in its liberationist roots (although Said does not focus on this), in its amalgamation between a Western identity which allows it to draw on a vast network of Western values, ideas and technologies and an Eastern identity which legitimizes its geographical positioning and its insider status which gives it authority to speak about the native Oriental ( in this case the Palestinian Arab). Zionism is also unique in that it is able to maintain a position of respectability, even moral superiority as an imperialist project actively dispossessing and subjugating a native population well into the twenty first century and given the international (Western) consensus on human rights and self determination in a supposedly post colonial world. Said explains this partially by his allusion to the alliance between Zionism and liberalism from the beginning of its inception. This is the power of the idea of Zionism which does not at all appear in a vacuum in terms of the history of the relationship between Orient and Occident.

It is within this understanding that Said's opposition to Oslo can be explained. The process which, for him, institutionalized power imbalances and could only create further conflict down the road was structurally flawed. This is because it accepted the epistemological basis of Zionism as elaborated by Said in The Question of Palestine. It was not just the "manner in which its application during subsequent years affected the lives and aspirations of West Bank and Gaza Strip Palestinians"but more fundamentally that it " is neither an instrument of decolonization nor a mechanism to apply international legitimacy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but rather a framework that changes Israeli control over the occupied territories in order to perpetuate it.

It was not just the structure of the conflict as controlled by Zionism since its inception that was relevant, but, importantly, the disappointment after Oslo of the Palestinians where their living conditions continued to worsen. He explains Israel's failure to implement its obligations in Oslo and its continued insistence on renegotiations previous concessions as small as they may have been in the first place. What Oslo did was create a framework which was supposedly constructively ambiguous but which allowed Israel to elude its obligations, since their terms of implementation could always be renegotiated. It is in this context that Rabbani explains the Aqsa Intifada, and details the behavior of Fatah as the main Palestinian protagonist. While Israel continues to go back to the status quo ante, Palestinians explicitly refuse the status quo ante and find it difficult to reaccept an Oslo like agreement, although it seems that this is where Annapolis is headed.

While Annapolis is attempting to reach final status negotiations, it comes in an atmosphere of Palestinian disunity, the exclusion of vital regional players (Syria, Hamas, Iran), and weakened leadership on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. Although it may have some circumstantial advantages over Camp David, it is unlikely to see how any plan come to under Annapolis could be implemented in the current situation.

If Said was right about Palestine, and about Oslo, then the same structure of conflict exists, including the same power imbalances. If Said was right, it seems difficult to negotiate with Zionism. The Hamas/Fatah split after Hamas' Gaza takeover pits two ideologies about the nature of the conflict against each other. The two understandings seem irreconcilable. While they are split, however, it is the Palestinians who suffer from the lack of a united front against Israel. The international community plays a role in this, and continues to pressure Hamas and condemn it for its violent tactics, but without providing a serious alternative, a truly different framework through which the settlement of the conflict can be reformulated. It seems that the ICG report was right in its bleak optimism in October 2006, which was expressed as "if there is a silver lining in the recent succession of catastrophic development in the Middle east, it is that they may impart renewed momentum to the search for a comprehensive settlement of the Arab Israeli conflict. It is admittedly a slender hope." And so we remain, awaiting momentum.