Devildogg4ever
07-26-03, 05:34 AM
By DOUG SAUNDERS
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
I won't blame you if, upon seeing the words ''Middle East'' in a headline, you turn the page, muttering about the ceaseless conflict between unchanging forces. The same old implacable Arabs, the same old intractable Israelis, the same old awkward Americans . . . A broken record.
May I politely suggest that you might be very wrong? Across the Levant, there are so many reports of deep-seated changes in public moods and popular philosophies in the last generation that it's worth throwing away many of our assumptions. The headlines may look like they did in 1978 or 1993, but there are many observers who believe the mood on the ground is very different, more sophisticated, more fatigued and less extreme.
Why haven't we noticed this? Perhaps because the dwindling extremists have stolen the day. Or perhaps because the three key nations are led by men who don't really represent most of their people. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, has never faced an election. George W. Bush was opposed by a majority of American voters in 2000. And Ariel Sharon, under an unfortunate electoral system known as proportional representation, holds office despite having been opposed in this year's election by more than 60 per cent of Israelis.
Important changes in the popular outlook have been shielded from public view by leaders who are stuck in a previous era. This doesn't mean that the new public ethos can't prevail. Every once in a while, it shines through the cracks.
This week, for instance, we learned how much more advanced the citizens of the region have become: Even their most extreme members are more willing to compromise than their leaders. First, the Palestinian Arab political scientist Dr. Khalil Shikaki surprised the world with a large-scale, credible survey of the 4.5-million Palestinian refugees living on Israel's borders. It showed that a startling 73 per cent would give up their claim to homes and lands seized by Israel since its foundation in 1948, if they were just given cash compensation.
Only 10 per cent want to return to Israel, meaning that the controversial "right of return" demanded by many Palestinians would not, as is often argued, result in Israel's cultural destruction.
Then, on Wednesday, the same question was put to the Israeli Jewish settlers living defiantly in Arab territories. Amazingly, 74 per cent of these 200,000 zealots said they would leave their homes in return for cash compensation. Only one per cent said they would consider resorting to violence to keep their homes. In other words, the Orthodox extremists are far fewer in number, and therefore easier to get past, than was previously believed.
The leaders were not ready for this explosion of moderation. Both the Palestine Liberation Party and Ariel Sharon's Likud Party denounced the pollsters this week for even asking such questions. They seemed embarrassed by the news that the vast majority of Palestinians don't actually want to drive the Jews into the sea, and that even the most religious Israelis are very unlikely to be Zionist madmen bent on overtaking the whole region.
What has changed, and where has the change come from? The most profound and explicit explanation I've seen comes from Tom Segev, the Israeli historian. This week, Mr. Segev pointed out that there is an uncanny symmetry between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Both are diverse societies, impossible to summarize. But both are marked by a third generation, which has now fully come of age and appears to have rejected the projects of total conquest (or total defense) initiated by their grandparents.
Within Israel, Mr. Segev has won a reputation for referring to this belief as "post-Zionist," a term he employs as a compliment, and which he says now represents the majority view of Israelis.
This term has become an enormous subject of debate in Israel during the past two or three years. It appears in the pages of the Jerusalem Post almost every day, usually as an insult. Outside of Israel, though, the term almost never appears. It sounds incomprehensible: How can Israeli Jews be anything but Zionist?
In his new book Elvis in Jerusalem, an elegant and witty essay on the history of Zionism and its Israeli alternatives, Mr. Segev offers his definition of post-Zionism: "It means that Zionism has done its job, with notable success, and that Israel must now move on to the next stage. Some see this as a goal," he admits, "and others see it as a threat."
While Zionist is a word used by Arabs, anti-Semites and Jewish conservatives to describe all Israelis and sometimes all Jews, it only describes one of Israel's many conflicting ideological communities. It is a distinctly 20th-century notion that a people, a culture and a piece of land can be single and contiguous. Its successors come from the left (multiculturalists who believe in a two-state or secular-state solution) and from the right (Orthodox Jews who believe Jewish law is opposed to a nationalist project).
"In the year 2000," Mr. Segev notes, "some 35 per cent of all Israeli children were not enrolled in Hebrew-Zionist schools. About a quarter of Israel's children are Arabs, and another 20 per cent [of the rest] study outside the framework of the national school system, the great majority in ultra-Orthodox schools. They dwell in a state entirely different than that of the Zionist dream."
Where is this entirely different state located? If the tiny minority of extremists and their representatives will stand aside and let the majority will prevail in Israel and Palestine, we may just find out.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030726.fcdoug/BNStory/International/
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
I won't blame you if, upon seeing the words ''Middle East'' in a headline, you turn the page, muttering about the ceaseless conflict between unchanging forces. The same old implacable Arabs, the same old intractable Israelis, the same old awkward Americans . . . A broken record.
May I politely suggest that you might be very wrong? Across the Levant, there are so many reports of deep-seated changes in public moods and popular philosophies in the last generation that it's worth throwing away many of our assumptions. The headlines may look like they did in 1978 or 1993, but there are many observers who believe the mood on the ground is very different, more sophisticated, more fatigued and less extreme.
Why haven't we noticed this? Perhaps because the dwindling extremists have stolen the day. Or perhaps because the three key nations are led by men who don't really represent most of their people. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, has never faced an election. George W. Bush was opposed by a majority of American voters in 2000. And Ariel Sharon, under an unfortunate electoral system known as proportional representation, holds office despite having been opposed in this year's election by more than 60 per cent of Israelis.
Important changes in the popular outlook have been shielded from public view by leaders who are stuck in a previous era. This doesn't mean that the new public ethos can't prevail. Every once in a while, it shines through the cracks.
This week, for instance, we learned how much more advanced the citizens of the region have become: Even their most extreme members are more willing to compromise than their leaders. First, the Palestinian Arab political scientist Dr. Khalil Shikaki surprised the world with a large-scale, credible survey of the 4.5-million Palestinian refugees living on Israel's borders. It showed that a startling 73 per cent would give up their claim to homes and lands seized by Israel since its foundation in 1948, if they were just given cash compensation.
Only 10 per cent want to return to Israel, meaning that the controversial "right of return" demanded by many Palestinians would not, as is often argued, result in Israel's cultural destruction.
Then, on Wednesday, the same question was put to the Israeli Jewish settlers living defiantly in Arab territories. Amazingly, 74 per cent of these 200,000 zealots said they would leave their homes in return for cash compensation. Only one per cent said they would consider resorting to violence to keep their homes. In other words, the Orthodox extremists are far fewer in number, and therefore easier to get past, than was previously believed.
The leaders were not ready for this explosion of moderation. Both the Palestine Liberation Party and Ariel Sharon's Likud Party denounced the pollsters this week for even asking such questions. They seemed embarrassed by the news that the vast majority of Palestinians don't actually want to drive the Jews into the sea, and that even the most religious Israelis are very unlikely to be Zionist madmen bent on overtaking the whole region.
What has changed, and where has the change come from? The most profound and explicit explanation I've seen comes from Tom Segev, the Israeli historian. This week, Mr. Segev pointed out that there is an uncanny symmetry between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Both are diverse societies, impossible to summarize. But both are marked by a third generation, which has now fully come of age and appears to have rejected the projects of total conquest (or total defense) initiated by their grandparents.
Within Israel, Mr. Segev has won a reputation for referring to this belief as "post-Zionist," a term he employs as a compliment, and which he says now represents the majority view of Israelis.
This term has become an enormous subject of debate in Israel during the past two or three years. It appears in the pages of the Jerusalem Post almost every day, usually as an insult. Outside of Israel, though, the term almost never appears. It sounds incomprehensible: How can Israeli Jews be anything but Zionist?
In his new book Elvis in Jerusalem, an elegant and witty essay on the history of Zionism and its Israeli alternatives, Mr. Segev offers his definition of post-Zionism: "It means that Zionism has done its job, with notable success, and that Israel must now move on to the next stage. Some see this as a goal," he admits, "and others see it as a threat."
While Zionist is a word used by Arabs, anti-Semites and Jewish conservatives to describe all Israelis and sometimes all Jews, it only describes one of Israel's many conflicting ideological communities. It is a distinctly 20th-century notion that a people, a culture and a piece of land can be single and contiguous. Its successors come from the left (multiculturalists who believe in a two-state or secular-state solution) and from the right (Orthodox Jews who believe Jewish law is opposed to a nationalist project).
"In the year 2000," Mr. Segev notes, "some 35 per cent of all Israeli children were not enrolled in Hebrew-Zionist schools. About a quarter of Israel's children are Arabs, and another 20 per cent [of the rest] study outside the framework of the national school system, the great majority in ultra-Orthodox schools. They dwell in a state entirely different than that of the Zionist dream."
Where is this entirely different state located? If the tiny minority of extremists and their representatives will stand aside and let the majority will prevail in Israel and Palestine, we may just find out.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030726.fcdoug/BNStory/International/