Remarks by Daniel Levy

The Al Jazeera Forum

Doha, Qatar
May 2010

Session: The Future of Palestine: Quest for Alternatives

(Speakers: Abdel Bari Atwan, Editor in Chief, Al Quds Al Arabi Newspaper; Basheer
Nafi, Historian and specialist in Islam and the Middle East; Steve Clemons, Director,
American Strategy Program, the New America Foundation; Daniel Levy, Director,
Middle East Task Force; Senior Fellow, the New America Foundation; Allister Sparks,
South African writer, journalist and political commentator)

Moderator: You are one of the founders of J Street, which seeks to give alternatives and
solutions to the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict. What is the opinion of the group about
this issue?

Daniel Levy: Well, first thank you very much, Radah, Wadah and Al Jazeera Forum for
giving me this invitation. I’m not bilingual so I especially want to thank the translators
who make it possible or us to do all of this.

It’s remarkable -- people may agree or disagree with you, Abdel Bari Atwan, but after
100 years of conflict and writing about it, that you are still able to say something different
or creative is quite an achievement.

What I would like to do -- and I’m not going to speak on behalf of J Street -- but I think
the starting point is to step back and look at why the status quo. And what I would like to
do is ask a set of questions, in some way rhetorical questions, of all the actors that I think
are defining the status quo and by those questions, those challenges, those provocations
to suggest possible ways forward. I’m going to try to be unforgiving to each of the actors
that I am challenging and to do it quickly, so I apologize to the translators who I just
thanked.

It’s also easier and more challenging doing this after the words of President Mbeki who
laid the ground for this conversation in such a piercing and precise way. I have the
privilege of knowing this isn’t the first time that you have thought deeply about these
issues, President Mbeki, because I was the one of those you hosted in an Israeli-
Palestinian delegation some years ago when you were president to discuss there.

The first set of challenges I pose would be to the PLO. After all these years, is there a
strategy for de-occupation and liberation that exclusively relies on negotiations?

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During the negotiation period the number of settlers in the West Bank alone has trebled.
Can an occupied people negotiate their way exclusively out of occupation? Can you build
a state under occupation? Can you build security services? What happens in two years if
the plan of the current prime minister is not implemented? If negotiations fail -- most
people would say the word “if” is unnecessary in that sentence -- will the US deliver?
Can a deal even be sold to a divided Palestinian polity?

And even recent adoption of elements of the popular struggle that you mentioned,
elements of civil disobedience – boycott of products from settlements – can that even be
sustained when the PA is totally dependent on Israel?

And then I turn to the Palestinian resistance, and I’d say yes, occupation carries with it
the right to self-defense, the right to resist, but not in every way. Under International Law
there is no right to attack civilians. There are no extenuating circumstances that justify
violating that principle: whether it’s the residents of Sderot, or a wedding party in
Afghanistan, or people going about their business in a market in Iraq, or Palestinian
schoolchildren. There are no extenuating circumstances.

If you read and accept the Goldstone Report then you can’t just take the bits that are
convenient and that look at Israel. Justice Goldstone points out that indiscriminate attacks
against civilians are a war crime.

And if you’re going to pursue resistance, alongside this shift towards civil disobedience,
this renewed global solidarity, I would suggest that armed, targeting of civilians and this
new dynamic can’t go together. I would suggest that the flotilla of ships making its way
to Gaza right now presents a far more serious headache to the government of Israel than
another round of rocket fire targeted from Gaza onto Sderot.

The two are not sustainable together because that volley of rocket fire is not only wrong,
but it retards the international solidarity -- it diverts attention, it switches the
conversation. Is it a victory to so-called ‘liberate’ Gaza when Gaza remains blockaded
from all sides? Is the next victory going to be a blockaded sliver in a tiny part of the West
Bank? And has limited governance in Gaza become a honey trap? Has limited
governance in Gaza become a goal in itself?

To the Israeli maximalist camp, those who wish to retain control and to retain territory,
those currently in power, I would ask, is this militarily and politically sustainable? Israel
is not and cannot be North Korea. Israel can’t be a hermit kingdom existing on
subsistence, self-reliance. Israel relies on the world, Israel relies on international support,
on acceptance, on legitimacy, on sharing so-called core values and democracy.

But an ongoing occupation structurally guarantees the erosion of all of those things. And
we see it today in the clamp down on democracy and dissent inside Israel -- you cannot
entrench occupation, squeeze democracy, and retain legitimacy. Those things are not in
parallel sustainable, especially when you put that alongside demographics, not just

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Israeli-Palestinian demographics but within Jewish society and the growth of the ultra-
orthodox community. And really is anyone going to buy the idea of a Palestinian state
with provisional borders? Such a transparent act of occupation maintenance and of
punishment -- I think not.

To the Israeli realist camp -- I’m not calling it a progressive camp -- realist in Israeli
terms, supporting a significant element of contraction, of withdrawal, of repositioning
Israel based on the Clinton Parameters, the Taba negotiations, based on the Arab Peace
Initiative. The challenge to this camp, the question, the provocation: Can you win the
domestic political battle in Israel which has so shifted to the right, when settlements can’t
even be frozen, when settlers and their sympathizers are so entrenched politically, can it
really be done without outside pressure? Can you rely only on the so-called moderate
camp in the region to deliver acceptance of a new arrangement? And is this camp in
Israel ready to go far enough to really remove occupation, to really allow for Palestinian
dignity in a Palestinian state? And can you as a camp, if we achieve two states, if there’s
de-occupation, can you develop a vision for a truly equal and inclusive Israel?

To the United States -- this a different administration, you mentioned it in your

introduction, Radah. It sees the problem, it understands its centrality. It understands that
this is an American interest -- its military leaders are defining it that way. It places this as
a priority. But it has other political priorities; it has the pressures of domestic politics --
hard pressures, shifting but still hard. And the question here is can you deliver success
when you’re locked into the same failed framework of understanding and tackling the
issue, you still fail to recognize the asymmetry of power between an occupying power
and an occupied people, you still encourage political division for one side and impunity
for another side.

To the Arab and Muslim world, the subject of this conference: Of course there is no one
position, there are many differences, but if we could generalize -- Have you presented
either a compelling diplomatic or a compelling coercive strategy? Progress has been
achieved neither by a charm offensive, such as the Arab Peace Initiative, nor by an
offensive offensive. You’ve not only failed to reunite the Palestinian national movement
-- although there’s a question now as to whether that’s a good idea -- you’ve often been
complicit in its division and collapse. The key question, in the face of civil disobedience,
in the face of a new kind of struggle in global civil society – the flotilla of ships
approaches Gaza but the Egyptian border crossing with Gaza in Rafah is still closed. In
this context, what is your choice? To further marginalize and deemphasize the Palestinian
grievance? Or to develop a new diplomatic strategy, more responsive to public opinion --
Turkey has done this, while retaining relations with Israel.

To the international community and the rest of the world: Is your role still going to be to
send the cheque? Is the prism through which you primarily view your role in Israel-
Palestine donor assistance, your role as an aid community? Can you still call this state-
building after more than 15 years, when the donor assistance looks more like status quo
and occupation maintenance. And how do you respond to a shifting map of world powers

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-- Is there a space for the G20 to stand up? A world of BRIC, a world of BASIC? A
world where Brazil and Turkey stride confidently on the international diplomatic stage.

Finally, I think there is another actor to address a challenge to, and that is progressive
civil society: On the Palestinian side, on the Israeli side, in the region, and beyond.
Something interesting is happening every Friday in a neighborhood of Jerusalem, in
Sheikh Jarrah. You have progressive Zionist Israelis, progressive non-Zionist Israelis,
you have Palestinian activists, pursuing a form of struggle -- nonviolence is not non-
struggle. In Budrus, in Bilin, in many other villages, integral to that kind of struggle is an
appeal to the humanity of the other side. If you believe that you can shame someone, you
believe they have humanity - that is what you are appealing to. I’m not naïve. This
movement will have to challenge entrenched power structures, it will have to in time
come up with its own theory of political victory, will have to challenge existing
leaderships. And they don’t share a total strategy, they won’t share every ideological
point.

Part of this conversation will be in the Jewish communities around the world. The
minority supports a right-wing policy; the majority in the Jewish communities around the
world is true to a set of ethics and a set of values which are not in favor of dispossession
or occupation. They care about Israel, they certainly care about the Jewish community in
Israel in addition to caring about humanity. But they can be allies in achieving something.

So a coalition, not an ideological one but a practical one, not even direct coordination, but
all rowing, perhaps, in the direction of ‘67 de-occupation. Thank you.

***

Q: Hi– Mr. Daniel Levy, you spoke about “progressive Zionists”—and my God, that’s
an astonishing phrase. It’s a contradiction in terms and seems to reconcile the
irreconcilable, puts opposites together. It’s just like putting cat with mouse and wolf
with lamb. It’s just like saying there are progressive Nazis or progressive fascists. The
truth is that Zionism is a racist ideology founded on the theft of another people’s land.
There can’t be progressive Zionists. Zionism can only be racist, regressive and
antidemocratic. And by the way the project you endorsed has already failed. It is the
project espoused by Mahmoud Abbas and even by Yasser Arafat and the reason is that
when it comes to Palestinian issue, the difference between the Israeli right and the
Israeli left is one of a few degrees, not one of different nature.

Daniel Levy: Thank you, Radah. Clearly, it’s not a simple panel to moderate but if I can
just say I hope in the future we’ll have women both moderating and participating. We
have had a good example of why in terms of how exciting it will be.

Moderator: You have two minutes by the way. Less than two minutes. We have two
minutes.

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DL: I think you have to get your head around the idea that the Jewish community in
Israel is not going back to Poland or Germany or Morocco or Iraq. One can be a
utilitarian two-stater. In other words think that the practical, pragmatic way forward is
two states. This is my understanding of the current Hamas position. One can be an
ideological two-stater as someone who believes in exclusively Palestinian self-
determination or in Zionism. I don’t believe that it’s impossible to have a progressive
Zionism. Or one can be a one-stater. But in either of those outcomes, we’re going to live
next-door to each other or in a one state disposition.

And that means wrapping ones head around the humanity of both sides. I believe that
where Jewish history was in 1948 excused, for me – it was good enough for me – an act
that was wrong. I don’t expect Palestinians to think that. I have no reason – there is no
reason – that Palestinians should think there was justice in the creation of Israel. But if
we’re going to live as neighbors or in one state, one has to begin to develop an
understanding and a respect for who the other is. And to compare a Zionist to a Nazi
doesn’t really get you very far down that road.