An Absence Of Reason, A Failure Of The Imagination
Two observations in Tom Segev’s recent Foreign Affairs piece, “Israel’s Forever War,” shimmer in a deeply dark text.
The Palestinians also hold on to the illusion of return, the principle that they will one day be able to reclaim their historic homes in Israel itself—a kind of Palestinian Zionism that, like Israel’s maximalist aspirations, can never come true.
And
When the fighting is over, imaginative, resourceful, and compassionate management of the conflict between the two sides will be more crucial than ever. Rather than devoting energy and political capital to deeply unpopular—and unsustainable—peace plans, the United States and other leading powers must do more to ensure that Palestinians and Israelis can find a safer and more tolerable existence in a world without peace.
They shine, don’t they, these two? More because of the timing than content. There’s nothing original in equating Zionist covetousness for Palestine with Palestinian insistence on holding on to it. The analogy has always been part of the parlance of “Liberal” Zionism: the tragic incompatibility of two rights. Segev’s is, of course, pure chutzpah in calling Palestinian yearning for return “Palestinian Zionism,” but this audacity emanates from the same liberal Zionist logic.
Had Segev written the two statements before the 1948 War, he would have been prophetic. Had he written them soon after the 1967 War, he would have been correct about Zionist maximalism and patently incorrect about the Arab and Palestinian positions. The true irreconcilables thereafter were territory and peace versus territory for peace. Curiously, Segev knows that and still deploys Israeli and Palestinian maximalism as the premise of his argument.
But the Israeli historian advances these statements post-October 7, when the very political and military foundations on which Israel had meticulously built the status quo, inside the Jewish state and out, have all but shattered. It’s something for a revisionist historian like Segev, who has specialized in exposing Zionist myths and conceits, to suddenly be spinning them as our guide to the future.
Look at the photo below. It is a visual depiction of all that Segev has written about the struggle over Palestine and the ruinous consequences of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza since 1967. He is essentially proposing to “the United State and other leading powers” to “manage the conflict” between this Israeli soldier and that Palestinian boy. Because this soldier and that boy have been and are more than ever today the crux of the conflict. And here’s the stunner, Segev counsels these so-called powers to continue to manage it but more imaginatively, resourcefully, and compassionately.
How exactly does Israel compassionately oppress an unwilling nation “between the river and the sea” equal in number to its own? How does it compassionately steal its land and property? How does an apartheid state compassionately institute and elaborate racist laws designed to separate and segregate and forever suffocate an entire people? How does it imaginatively and resourcefully and compassionately do all this in the shadow of the fracturing world in which it could, at will, dictate and dominate.
Because, in the end, an Israel-Palestine where the Jewish state doesn’t get to dictate and dominate is an Israel-Palestine free of this conflict.
It’s an expression of moral bankruptcy when a venerable scholar champions intelligent management of an eternally subjugated people. It’s a form of intellectual rigor mortis when this same scholar fails to appreciate the passing of the old order that allowed and enabled this subjugation. What makes Segev’s failure worthy of this post is that it happens to mirror that of his country’s.
Quite aside from what this means for the Palestinians, it spells catastrophe for Israel itself. It would have behooved a sage like Segev to devote much more thought to how Israel might imaginatively, resourcefully, and compassionately envision with the Palestinians a future that is no less just and promising for one people than it is for the other.
The question is: why didn’t he?
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On Another Note
It feels like a particularly mad moment in modern history, doesn’t it? In the rather acute case of Great Britain, a day rarely passes without a strong attack of the giggles. To reassure friends there who are mortified at the palpable smallness of the country’s current politics, I’ve been meaning to share this three-part brilliant series on “Britain in 1974,” courtesy of Tom Holland’s and Dominic Sandbrook’s The Rest is History podcast.
By the end of the third episode, I suspect you will be sending me much love and gratitude. Enjoy!
Britain in 1974: State of Emergency (Part 1)