Socialist Viewpoint

Many publications had already been printed and on their way to newsstands by the time the events of September 11 shook the country. Two in particular were The New York Review of Books (September 20, 2001) and Harpers Magazine of October 2001. Both featured articles with an unexpected impact on the frenzied terror-counter-terror drumbeat of the press.

The two articles provided a sharp contrast to a near-universal avoidance of the Israel-Palestine civil war when speculations of terrorist motives and connections arose. Reports did surface of Israeli tank advances and arrogant refusals by Ariel Sharon to calm things down, but there was more emphasis on diplomatic confusion and internal factional maneuvers than on the aggressive military crackdown they were meant to cover. While the American people were sorting out the meanings of terrorist actions in their own land, Israel took full advantage to step up their use of terror.

Harpers Magazine for October has a bright over-cover with the feature “Seven Days in a Palestinian Refugee Camp” [A Gaza Diary: Scenes from the Palestinian Uprising.] emblazoned across accompanied by this quote from the author, Chris Hedges:

“I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”

This startling quotation was undoubtedly intended to sell the magazine and not much more but the issue with its provocative cover was on the newsstands on September 11.

Chris Hedges is a reporter for the New York Times with extensive experience in the Middle East and a working knowledge of Arabic. Along with sufficient history he gives us eloquent but calmly written vignettes of two weeks in June during this last Intifada. He is not a dispassionate observer by any means. He shares the pain and grief of warfare and the awful anxiety that overcoats a society when its citizens are subject to inexplicable and seemingly random violence.

Inside the refugee camp—if the term “camp” can apply to a barbed wire enclosure of 59,000 people—the process of adolescence sours. Optimism and the childhood love of adventure are replaced by a blind defiance. He describes how some children take to throwing stones at the camp’s guards on the camp’s periphery. Hedges’ chilling quotation that appeared on Harpers’ cover is part of Hedges’s description of the response from the Israelis who are bunkered just beyond the barbed wire with sniper rifles equipped with silencers.

“I have seen children shot in El Salvador, Algeria, Guatemala, Sarajevo, but I have never before watched soldiers entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”

These men destroying boys are terrifying men—terrorists. The thought that these adult males may be husbands and fathers is more terrifying yet.

Certainly neither Chris Hedges nor the editors had a thought of the World Trade Center catastrophe. Given a second chance it is not likely they would publish such an obvious explanation for the logic of suicide attacks, of counter-terrorism.

The article in The New York Review of Books by Avishai Margalit is an important contribution to understanding the internal social contradictions, which have long since negated any humane visage of Zionism. The essay is entitled “Settling Scores” which is not just cute play on words but also a reflection of the collision of the Palestinian and Zionist realities. The author is trying to figure out what is to be done and how this mess came about. His presentation, however, is circumscribed by his decision for separation already made. He is for the two state solution.

Most of Margalit’s article is a valuable history of the Zionist settlements made after the 1948 truce, their ideologies, their relations with the sequence of Israeli governments, and their differences in goals. By reviewing their historical differences he allows himself to predict how they might behave if there were to be a peace-for-land deal.

Some settler groups are so fanatical that they threaten a civil war if the conquest of the Greater Israel is postponed. Others insist that they will obey orders to retreat to the Green Line if they receive compensation. He despises those who dehumanize the Palestinians such as the followers of Kahane, overtly racist, “wildly aggressive” and “… committed to a fierce struggle to enlarge the Jewish presence on the West Bank …” and he commends those settlers willing to compromise regardless of their racial views.

There is an excellent map of central Palestine with some of the settlements specially marked along with each access road. The Green Line of the ’48 truce is shown and two lines are shown where Israel “rearranged” the borders afterwards. The areas supposedly controlled by the Palestinian Authority are marked off too, although the world knows well that hardly a square inch exists not recently marked by an Israeli tank tread.

Margalit is optimistic about a two-state settlement of the civil war. He goes into considerable detail with examples about where and how a partition line could be drawn. There is no reason to doubt his expertise in carrying out this exercise. But in the real world, the right direction can be found only by recognizing what several million Arab residents of Palestine want and what several million refugees now living in Lebanon, Egypt, and Syria want. But he has not been listening to these masses. He says that the informal discussions amongst leaders at Taba, Egypt in January 2001 are sufficient for a final partition. He concludes:

“And such a solution, I believe, could be worked out along the lines of the land exchange discussed at the Taba meeting, provided that such an exchange would be an acre-for-acre swap. But this does not mean that the current leaders on both sides are genuinely concerned to find a peaceful solution. The question is when they, or subsequent leaders, will seriously seek one.”

It is impossible to refrain from preaching at this point, considering the differences between the two reviewed articles. Had Professor Margalit accompanied Chris Hedges for the two weeks in the Khan Yunis refugee camp, it is possible he now would understand the importance of calling for a unified secular Palestine instead hoping for peace-by-border, a border again of barbed wire with desperate people inside.