Except for palestine, p.1
Except for Palestine, page 1
EXCEPT FOR PALESTINE
The Limits of Progressive Politics
Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick
To the loving memory of Teo Hunt Surasky, who left this world in 2020 much too soon. And to his mothers, Carolyn Hunt and Cecilie Surasky, who have enriched and strengthened Mitchell’s life in more ways than they can imagine.
To Ahmed Erekat (), a beautiful spirit stolen from the world two weeks before his wedding. May his grave be made spacious, filled with light, and placed in paradise.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Palestine Cannot Be an Exception
1. The Right to Exist
2. Criminalizing BDS
3. Trumped-Up Policy
4. The Crisis in Gaza
Conclusion: Beyond the Limits
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Preface
As this book was going to press, Joe Biden had just defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Despite Trump’s defiant protests to the contrary, Biden garnered a decisive popular and electoral college victory. In doing so, the election effectively ended four years of the greatest corruption, mismanagement, and hateful leadership that the United States had seen in many years.
Still, Biden’s victory was a qualified one. Although he lost the popular vote by nearly 6 million votes, Trump still scored the support of more than 73 million Americans, hardly an overwhelming rebuke of his proto-fascist presidency. While significantly better than Trump on several key matters, Biden won by running on a platform that offered no radical vision of the future and promised no fundamental social change. Rather, the Biden presidency promised a return to the status quo ante that proved such fertile ground for Trump’s authoritarian hucksterism.
This is not to suggest that Trump’s defeat was a small matter. To the contrary, Biden’s presidency offered, to borrow a phrase from James Baldwin, “a means of buying time.” By removing the immediate threat of fascism, white nationalism, and extraordinary incompetence, the American people cleared a little bit of space to better fight the perennial threats of white supremacy, capitalism, and empire.
Embracing such a sober analysis of president-elect Biden’s platform enables us to set aside any illusions about the current political moment. We recognize that the effects of Trump’s reign will not magically disappear in the wake of the 2020 election. We also understand that President Biden is incapable, and in some cases unwilling, to repair the damage wielded by the previous administration. With such reduced expectations, we have little reason to believe that the Biden presidency will properly attend to the systemic issues that preceded and, indeed, helped produce the Trump phenomenon. This analysis applies not only to domestic matters, but also to U.S. foreign policy.
During the Trump presidency, American policy toward Palestine and Israel dropped all pretense of even-handedness. Many of the normal diplomatic niceties and policy charades deployed by previous presidents were simply abandoned. Trump’s agenda was driven openly and unabashedly not just by pro-Israel forces, but by the most radical of those forces: the religious-nationalist settler movement. Trump’s administration came together with an Israeli government that had been moving further and further to the right with each election, and a compromised and divided Palestinian leadership consumed by its own internal squabbles over the crumbs of authority Israel tossed it. The purpose of this collaboration was to create a final status solution in the region that forever excluded the possibility of a free, functional, and self-determined Palestinian state that included Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents of the West Bank and Gaza, and those currently living as refugees around the world. Given this relationship, it is no surprise that Israel received many gifts from the United States, including recognition of Western Jerusalem as its capital and Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights; a U.S. plan for permanent Israeli control of the West bank dubbed, in the best Orwellian tradition, “the Deal of the Century”; the ending of funding for basic services to Palestinian refugees; and other large concessions. Even more telling is that the Israeli government was not asked to give anything in return, even as a token exchange.
In the three months prior to the election, as he rushed to score more diplomatic “victories,” the Trump administration forged agreements for normalization of relations between Israel and Arab states Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Sudan. These agreements often required the forceful stifling of dissent against them.1 This was a sharp departure from the recent past, when there was an Arab consensus that backed an exchange of normal relations with Israel for the creation of a Palestinian state, with uniform support for the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which promised just such an arrangement.2 The shift in the United States’ position and its heavy pressure on Israel’s behalf made it possible to break that Arab state consensus. In so doing, they further diminished what little bargaining leverage Palestinians had.
President Biden almost certainly would not have made the decisions Trump did, some of which we explore in this book. But as we enter the dawn of his presidency, he has also made it clear that he has no intention of reversing them. Known during his time as vice president as Obama’s “salesman” to the pro-Israel community,3 Biden is not as enamored as he once was of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Still, he is absolutely committed to, as his presidential campaign website stated, “… urge Israel’s government and the Palestinian Authority to take steps to keep the prospect of a negotiated two-state outcome alive and avoid actions, such as unilateral annexation of territory and settlement activity, or support for incitement and violence, that undercut prospects for peace between the parties.”4 Such goals are nearly identical to those of the Barack Obama administration, whose failures occurred before Trump gave Israel all it requested for four years, raising Israeli expectations of Washington and destroying what little Palestinian faith remained in the United States.
This book, written in the age of Trump, carries an even more powerful message as we enter the age of Biden. We must remember that nearly nothing that Trump did—as ill-advised, cruel, or reckless as it may have been—was an original idea. His decisions were all based on long-held policy positions of various sectors within the pro-Israel community. Many were bipartisan, such as the move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which, as we explain in detail, was based on a law passed during the Clinton administration with an overwhelming majority of Democrats and Republicans.
Long before Trump came along, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and siege on the Gaza Strip had become a part of the background of the American media landscape. Although it occasionally flared up and appeared in the headlines, it was nonetheless understood as a part of the violent tapestry of daily life in the Middle East. That Orientalist perception, along with the normalization of the occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people, was cemented within the public imagination during the Obama-Biden years. Those are the “good old days” to which Biden promises to return us.
In the United States, we are struggling to reckon with a legacy of structural injustice that has defined our history. American policy in Palestine and Israel has always been hopelessly intertwined with our own longstanding struggles with white supremacy, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and ethnocentrism. As we’ve come to understand that racism, sexism, religious bigotry, anti-LGBTQIA hate, and other prejudices are intersectional, we must also recognize how these systems of oppression inform our foreign policy. We cannot truly grapple with our history if we ignore how it has also affected the rest of the world. If we are to adopt a progressive political outlook—one rooted in anti-racist, anti-imperialist, humanistic, and intersectional values—we must begin to prioritize the freedom, dignity, and self-determination of Palestinians.
As with Barack Obama’s tenure, we will be tempted to view Palestine through a relative lens during the Biden presidency. Rather than analyzing policies on their own terms, we will feel compelled to compare them to those of his Republican predecessor, just as we did with Obama in relation to George W. Bush. While such an approach can serve as a pragmatic measuring stick, it cannot be permitted to shape our values, nor determine the boundaries of our advocacy.
The imbalance of power between Israel and the Palestinians, a circumstance reinforced by the overwhelming political, economic, and military influence of the United States, can never be ignored or understated as we develop workable analyses and principled solutions. This means that any hope for a future in which all people of the region can live in peace, security, freedom, and hope requires the involvement of other states. It is up to us, as Americans, to ensure that our involvement is based on universal humanistic values that are applied in a consistent manner. Such an approach has not historically been part of U.S. policy. As we enter the Biden era, we must change direction. We must no longer render Palestine exceptional.
EXCEPT FOR PALESTINE
Introduction
Palestine Cannot Be an Exception
“I don’t care what they say. I don’t care what the fake media says. That’s an invasion of our country.”
These words were uttered by President Donald Trump in advance of the fall 2018 midterm elections. Trump had taken to Twitter and the campaign trail to warn the nation of what he portrayed as a growing immigrant threat stemming from the southern U.S. border. In his remarks, the president not only referred to a caravan of immigrants coming from Central America as an “invasion,” but suggested that the
Trump’s harsh words were coupled with unprecedented action, as he deployed thousands of troops to the border. Although his words and actions sparked considerable outrage from voices across the political spectrum, the response to Trump was nearly universal among those Americans who politically identified as “progressives.” As expected, American progressives expressed sympathy for those fleeing persecution, who were desperately pursuing a better life for themselves and their families.1 Their response to Trump’s draconian immigration views, as well as the policy proposals reflected and foreshadowed by those views, stood in stark contrast to another major announcement that the White House made just weeks earlier.2
In the summer of that same year, the Trump administration decided to cut off funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the agency that provides emergency food, shelter, medication, supplies, and education to millions of Palestinian refugees living in the West Bank, Gaza, and camps in neighboring countries.3 As a result of this decision, fewer people would have access to proper schooling, health care, and basic life-saving services. This time, rather than outrage, progressives offered little more than silence or apparent indifference.
Of course, these two situations are not exactly the same. After all, the idea of Honduran and Guatemalan refugees heading slowly up to the U.S. border to seek asylum would be expected to cause anxieties, however racist, among nativist Americans. With regard to UNRWA, however, the goal was simply to meet the basic needs of a vulnerable population. And with a cost of around $200 million for that fiscal year, support for UNRWA was a drop in the ocean of the U.S. budget. American taxpayers would incur no other costs to substantially relieve the threat of starvation, lack of shelter, absence of education, and shortages of medicine to millions of refugees. For most people, but especially those who identify with liberal or progressive values, this should have been an easy call. Sadly, it was not.
In response to the migrant caravan controversy, many in the United States uttered the familiar American refrain: “This is not who we are.” Such claims, often made at moments of national tragedy or moral crisis, appeal to both a singular American identity and a coveted set of collective social values. For liberals, the idea that America could turn its back on people running from dictatorships, women escaping abuse, or racial and ethnic minorities fleeing persecution was morally outrageous. It not only contradicted core political values stemming from our notions of democracy, but our very conception of self.
In contrast, such questions were not raised about the UNRWA cuts. Indeed, there was little policy debate at all. Supporters of Palestinian rights complained, of course, that the cuts were needlessly cruel to innocent people. And their voices were joined by some of the more liberal supporters of Israel, who added that President Trump’s decision would make the Palestinians more desperate, and thus undermine Israel’s security concerns. But these were largely minority positions. Even when Trump went a step further and eliminated $25 million in funding for Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem and another $10 million that funded people-to-people exchanges between Israel and the Palestinians, the larger liberal community in the United States was silent, if not apathetic.
This double standard was thrown into even sharper relief when Trump suggested that U.S. troops respond with live fire against anyone from the Central American caravan throwing rocks.4 Most Americans, and virtually all liberals, were outraged that the president would call for such disproportionate use of force against unarmed people. Yet Israel has responded for many years in this very manner. Recent years in the Gaza Strip have seen hundreds of Palestinians shot with both rubber-coated bullets (which can be lethal) and live ammunition, despite presenting no immediate threat to any Israeli soldier or civilian. Such actions have a long history and have been well documented by Israeli, Palestinian, and international human rights groups. Still, even when American citizens have been in the line of fire while protesting alongside Palestinians, there has been no widespread outcry for a debate on U.S. policy regarding these incidents, much less the broader policies that have failed to deliver freedom, justice, equality, or peace in the region.
Why Is Palestine the Exception?
It is tempting to view the ethical and political contradictions of American policy on Israel-Palestine as a result of the current political moment. Such an approach allows us to frame Donald Trump as a political outlier whose policies were out of step with both the global community and his political predecessors. While this was true on many fronts—from his denialist approach to climate change, to his desire to build a wall along the Southern border, to his inhumane and market-centered response to the COVID-19 pandemic—it was far less true regarding Israel-Palestine. Rather than introducing a radically different policy agenda, Trump was simply the most aggressive and transparent articulation of long-standing bipartisan policies.
Through his approach, Donald Trump removed the veneer of even-handedness that prior administrations worked hard to maintain. For example, cutting funds to UNRWA was an idea that had been floated in Washington for years, dating back at least to the George W. Bush administration. Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem caused enormous controversy in the U.S. In so doing, he fulfilled a promise that one presidential candidate after another, Democrat and Republican, had campaigned on, only to backtrack once in office. By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital, Trump altered the status quo on which the international community based its support for a two-state solution. To accomplish this, however, he did not need to fight for new legislation. Rather, he merely invoked a law that was created in 1995, with overwhelming bipartisan support, during the presidency of liberal Democrat Bill Clinton.
It was during the comparatively progressive presidency of Barack Obama—seen by many as the most sympathetic U.S. president to the Palestinian cause since Jimmy Carter more than three decades earlier—that negotiations toward a two-state solution collapsed under the weight of years of collective frustration. The Palestinians had become fed up with a quarter century of talks that always prioritized Israeli concerns over their own. As these talks dragged on with no end in sight, Israeli settlement construction increased exponentially, and the occupation became ever more repressive. The leaders of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization could no longer make the case to their people that there was hope in negotiations with Israel. Meanwhile, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was declaring that there would be no Palestinian state on his watch, even while his government’s official stance was to support the two-state solution.5 Netanyahu squared this circle by claiming to support Palestinian “self-rule” while also making clear his stance that Israel’s security required that it maintain full control of the strategic Jordan Valley, a long-contested area that makes up some 30 percent of the West Bank, as well as other key parts of the occupied land.6
This is not to suggest that Obama was responsible for the lack of a legitimate peace deal, nor that he offered full-throated support of Israeli policy. In fact, Obama’s disagreements with Netanyahu over illegal settlement expansion, the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, and the United States’ role in the wider Middle East have been well documented. Still, despite the disagreements with Netanyahu, the Obama administration continued the bipartisan U.S. practice of extending extraordinary financial and military support to Israel. President Obama’s $38 billion aid package to Israel, finalized in 2016 as he was leaving office, marked the “largest military aid package from one country to another in the annals of human history.”7 Such resources, which were offered without any concrete policy demands regarding Palestinian human rights or self-determination, provided Israel the financial security and “qualitative military edge” necessary to resist compliance with international law or earnest engagement with the peace process.8 Obama’s relative progressivism offered a distinction without a difference in the lives of Palestinians.
