At the origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict: political morality and historical rights

I am going to be, I apologize for it, less topical, but I think that within the framework of the International Federation of Humanistic and Secular Jews, it is perhaps also fitting to speak of political morality.

I think that what distinguishes the forces of peace from the forces of war in Israel is the acceptance, by the former, that political morality has a historicity, whereas for the latter political morality is static and eternal. Let me explain, first as regards morality: to own slaves in the time of Alexander the Great, in the time of the First or the Second Temple, was not perceived as contrary to morality; to stone an unfaithful woman was not perceived as contrary to morality. It will take more than a thousand years for one to begin to perceive the other as one’s equal, hence as having the same rights. On the plane of political morality, in somewhat more schematic terms, you have first religious rights, then dynastic rights — a period during which countries pass under the domination of another State following the marriage of an heiress princess to the king of another State; it was dynastic claims that lay at the root of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England. Later, when peoples begin timidly to make their voice heard in the political world of States, during the period from the 17th to the 19th centuries, dynastic rights give way to the historical rights of nations.

It is only in 1945 that historical rights give way to the right of peoples to self-determination.

Within the framework of these historical rights, in the 19th century and in the first part of the 20th, States will often seek to incorporate within their national borders those territories of which their nation was, in some past era, dispossessed; think of Alsace, long claimed by both France and Germany, think of

Savoy, claimed by Italy as recently as not long ago.

It is only in 1945, after the first attempts by Wilson in 1917, that historical rights give way to the right of peoples to self-determination — that is to say, it is no longer religious, dynastic, or historical rights that are taken into account, but the will of a people, on a territory, to take charge of its destiny in respect for the other peoples surrounding it. The Jewish and Arab national movements were born in the second part of the 19th century, within the framework of the reawakening of nationality, at a time when political morality still meant historical rights.

In 1947, when the UN partitions Palestine into two States, it does so on the basis of the right of peoples to self-determination: there are two peoples in Palestine at that time, so two States are created by the partition of Palestine. This is done on the same bases the UN used to create Pakistan, the Muslim part of India that did not wish to be subjected to the Hindus, who were in the majority in the rest of the country. When one examines the legitimacy of the claims of the Jews and the Arabs to Palestine, one must therefore do so on the basis of historical rights, which were the political morality at the moment when these two national movements developed, and on the basis of the right of peoples to self-determination, the new norm of political morality after the Second World War.

Let us look quickly at the historical rights of the Jews: 1200 years before Jesus Christ, tribes gather around a monotheistic ideology. It is revolutionary because the conception of the organization of society at the time was that of one God, one king, one country, whereas among the Hebrews it will be one God, one people, one country. For more than 1500 years, the Hebrews will, in one form or another, lead a national existence in the country called Eretz Israel; it must be recalled that they had conquered the land of Canaan and had absorbed the Canaanite people into the Hebrew people; they had imposed their ideology upon them and had taken up Canaanite culture, which at the time was superior to Hebrew culture. From the 5th century onward, there is no longer any national life in Palestine; the Arab invasion at the beginning of the 7th century announces the decline of the Jewish communities in Palestine, who, together with the Samaritans, were still in the majority at the moment of the Arabs’ arrival. For 1400 years, there will no longer be a Jewish national community in Palestine.

Let us look at the historical rights of the Arabs: around a revolutionary ideology, monotheism, Muhammad gathers the pagan tribes and will make of them a nation; the beginning of the Arab nation is very similar to the beginning of the Jewish nation. In the space of 10 years, between 634 and 644 of our era, the African and Near Eastern part of the Christian Empire of Byzantium is conquered, as well as the Persian Empire. The Arabs will take all these regions, all these regions that were made up of Christians, of Zoroastrians, and of strong Jewish minorities. An Arab dynasty settles in Damascus and governs all these peoples, among them Palestine, where moreover the princes of the Caliphal house build themselves palaces. So as not to lose their identity within this immense empire where Byzantine civilization and Persian civilization were superior to the Arab civilization of the time, the Arabs formed an apartheid society. This would be the first great apartheid society; we must not judge it by our morality — we may even think that it was at the time when slavery existed. To impose their religion, their faith, they acted in a wiser manner than the Spaniards of the 16th century, who massacred a part of the populations of South America to impose their religion. But all those who are not Muslim live under a very restrictive status: in an essentially peasant society, they lose the ownership of their land, if not the right to work it. But they can become Muslim, be adopted by Arab tribes, and thus receive all the privileges of the masters of these immense territories. It is therefore different from apartheid in South Africa, where one could not change one’s skin. But very quickly, too many non-Muslims adopt Islam, and the Arabs no longer wish to share their privileges with the new converts, and they decide that the new converts will not have the same privileges as they do. In 750, that is to say a century after the seizure of power by the Arab nation in all these regions, the new Iranian converts revolt, drive the Arab dynasty from power, install a member of Muhammad’s family as Caliph, and take power into their own hands; the center of the empire passes from Damascus to Baghdad. They impose a Muslim empire in which the Arabs, very much in the minority, are driven from power, from the army, and will even lose, with time, a part of the pastures for their herds. In fact, it is an empire of Arab culture and civilization, an original synthesis of Arab, Byzantine, Persian, and Indian civilizations, but in which the inhabitants are not Arab but Muslim. In the 11th century, with the arrival of the Turkish tribes in the Middle East, the last Arab tribes are driven from their lands. For more than 800 years, except in Arabia, although living within an Arab civilization, not only the Arab nation, the Arab people, has disappeared, but also Arab identity. One is an Arabic-speaking Muslim of the Ottoman Empire, but one does not consider oneself an Arab.

If the Jews can return to Palestine to build a national community within the framework of the political morality of the time, that of historical rights, it is because they do not have before them a constituted nation, and one must be aware of this. They come into territories of the Ottoman Empire, where Muslim populations live, where there live not Palestinians or Arabs, but Arabic-speaking Muslim populations.

Weizmann said in 1925 at the 14th Zionist Congress: “Palestine must be built without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs.”

It must be said that the Jews, when they arrive in the 1880s, had been preceded by Muslim Slavs; as the Ottoman Empire lost territories to Russia and Austria, the Muslim populations of those territories were transported to Syria, to Lebanon, and to present-day Palestine — without, moreover, those Muslim populations protesting, for these populations consider themselves essentially Muslim. Being progressive for the time, of the socialist or liberal movement, the Jews, when they come to Palestine in the 19th century, settle in territories where the bulk of the Arab population does not live, that is to say in the plains along the Mediterranean and in the west of Galilee. They will not go to their historical places — Hebron, Nablus, Jericho — for these are regions where the bulk of the Arab populations live. The Arabic-speaking Muslim populations will begin to become conscious of their identity in the second part of the 19th century, and especially after 1908, when Turkish officers seize power in Istanbul, in the Ottoman Empire, and wish to Turkify the empire, that is, to make Turkish the national language. At that moment, the Arabic-speaking populations awaken. And when England brings down the Ottoman Empire, the Arabic-speaking populations will choose themselves and awaken as Arabs. In 1917 and 1945, we will have two peoples in Palestine, two young national movements, the Arabs and the Jews, struggling to recover their national rights within the framework of historical rights. But the consciousness of the right of peoples to self-determination makes its way. The Jews will very quickly understand that there cannot be a State for the Jews without partition, and will do what is necessary so that, through their settlement, the future map of the partition of Palestine is drawn. Look at what Weizmann said in 1925 at the 14th Zionist Congress: “Palestine must be built without violating the legitimate interests of the Arabs, not a hair of their head must be touched, the Zionist Congress must not content itself with platonic formulas, it must become aware that Palestine is not Rhodesia and that 600,000 Arabs live in this country and, in the conception of what justice is in the world, have the same right to their home as we have to our national home. As long as this thought has not penetrated into our skin and into our blood, you will always seek artificial narcotics, but you will see the future in a false perspective. The Arabs, by contrast, will act as if there had always been an Arab empire and will refuse the reality of the presence of another people that also has historical ties to Palestine.”

Begin and his own refuse the modernity of the right of peoples to self-determination.

When the rights of peoples to self-determination are applied to Palestine in 1947, the Israeli right, the Irgun, led by Begin, refuses the Jewish State because it would legitimize the Arab State on the other part of Palestine. In fact, Begin and his own refuse the modernity of the right of peoples to self-determination and wish to implant religious rights that are no longer in force and a conception of historical rights, without any respect for those same rights of the other, the Arabs. For 40 years, the Arabs will cling to rights that are no longer in force in present-day political morality and will refuse to recognize that the other also has rights. When at last rationality is going to triumph among the Arabs in Palestine who, thanks to Arafat, have integrated their identity as Palestinians, it is the Israelis who are going to abandon that rationality and keep in power the children of Begin, for 4 years (Shamir), and lately are going to elect Netanyahu and his party.

We have today in Israel a government whose vision is that of the 19th century, a government whose men, and Netanyahu first of all, have not understood that the right of peoples to self-determination in respect for the rights of other peoples is the answer of our civilization to the terrible tragedies of our century. It is not for love of Eretz Israel, it is not for love of the Jewish people, that Netanyahu also refuses these rights to the Palestinians. It is simply out of hatred of the other, hence of his fellow man, hence also out of hatred of the Jewish people in what it ought to be at the dawn of the 21st century. •