The Middle East Is Heating Up -- Again: An Interview With Richard Falk
Monday, March 26, 2018
By C.J. Polychroniou, Truthout | Interview
Palestinian protesters burn tires in response to Israeli forces' repression
of a demonstration against Donald Trump's announcement to recognize
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and plans to relocate the US Embassy from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, on March 09, 2018, near Israeli border in eastern
part of Khan Yunis, Gaza. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
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The Middle East is heating up again, in part due to President Trump's
decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. The Trump
administration has also incited upset with its unconditional support for
Israel's aggressive policies, which violate basic principles of
international law and threaten the region with the eruption of military
confrontations. For an assessment of the latest developments in the Middle
East, C.J. Polychroniou spoke to Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of
international law at Princeton University, former UN special rapporteur for
Palestinian human rights and author of scores of books and hundreds of
academic articles on international relations and international law.
C.J. Polychroniou: Richard, let's start with Donald Trump's decision to
officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move the US
embassy there by May of this year. First, is this legal from the standpoint
of international law, and second, what are likely to be the long-term
effects of the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital on the region
as a whole?
Richard Falk: There is no question that Trump's Jerusalem policy relating to
recognition and the move of the American embassy is provocative and
disruptive, underscoring the abandonment by Washington of even the pretense
of being a trustworthy intermediary that can be relied upon by both sides to
work for a sustainable peace between the two peoples. Some critics of the
initiative are saying that the US is free to situate its embassy in
Jerusalem, but it isn't Israel, as the status of the city is undetermined
and East Jerusalem, where the "Old City" is located, is considered to be an
"occupied territory" in international humanitarian law.
Recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is a clear violation of
international humanitarian law, which rests on the central proposition that
an occupied territory should not be altered in any way that changes its
status and character without the consent of the occupied society. It also is
a unilateral rejection of a near universal consensus, endorsed by the United
Nations, that the future of Jerusalem should be settled by negotiations
between the parties as a part of a broader peacemaking process. Israel had
already violated both international law and this international consensus by
annexing an enlarged Jerusalem, and declared that the whole city, within
expanded boundaries, would be the "undivided, eternal capital" of Israel. It
is notable that the UN General Assembly on December 21, 2017, approved by an
overwhelming majority of 128-8 (35 abstentions) a strong condemnation of the
US move on Jerusalem, with [the US's] closest allies joining in this vote of
censure.
It is difficult to predict the long-term consequences of this diplomatic
rupture. It depends, above all, on whether the US government manages to
restore its claim to act as a conflict-resolving intermediary. The Trump
administration continues to insist that it is working on a peace plan that
will require painful compromises by both Palestine and Israel. Of course,
given the unconditional alignment of Washington with Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's Israel, and the orientation of those entrusted with drafting the
plan, it is highly unlikely that even President Mahmoud Abbas and the
Palestinian Authority will be inclined to enter a diplomatic process that is
virtually certain to be weighted so heavily in favor of Israel. Yet as many
have come to appreciate, nothing is harder to predict than the future of
Middle Eastern politics. At the same time, Jerusalem has an abiding
significance for both Islam and Christianity that makes it almost certain
for the indefinite future that there will be formidable regional and
international resistance to subsuming Jerusalem under Israeli sovereign
control.
Israel appears bent on restricting Iran's rising influence as a regional
power in the Middle East. How far do you think the US can go in assisting
Israel to contain Tehran's strategy for empowering Shias?
Israel and Saudi Arabia are both, for different reasons, determined to
confront Iran, and quite possibly, initiate a military encounter with
widespread ramifications for the entire region, if not the world. A quick
glance at the Syrian conflict suggests how complex and dangerous is this
effort to destabilize the Iranian governing process, with the dual
objectives of destabilizing the governing process mixed with the more
ambitious goal of causing civil strife of sufficient magnitude as to produce
a civil war, and ideally, regime change.
The Israeli adherence to this recklessness seems partly motivated by its
overall security policy of seeking to weaken any country in the region that
is hostile to its presence and has the potential military capability to
threaten Israeli security in a serious manner. Israel has been so far
successful in neutralizing each of its credible adversaries in the region
(Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria) with the exception of Iran. In this sense, Iran
stands out as the last large unfinished item on Israel's geopolitical
agenda. The question of Israel's real intentions [is] hard to pin down, as
the alleged Iranian threat is also frequently manipulated by Netanyahu and
other Israeli leaders to mobilize domestic support for sticking with an
aggressive foreign policy. In this latter context, Israeli security
specialists express an appreciation of the risks of an actual military
confrontation with Iran.
Saudi motivations are quite different, associated with a fierce regional
rivalry that is articulated in terms of the clash between Shia and Sunni
Islam, aggravated by the fear that Iran's influence increased as a result of
the Iraq and Syrian Wars, which both seem to have outcomes favorable to
Tehran. The sectarian rationale of the conflict seems intended to disguise
the more real explanation, which is that there is a power struggle between
these two sovereign states to determine which one will achieve regional
ascendancy. The sectarian explanation was somewhat undermined by the
intensity with which the Saudis and other gulf monarchies used their
financial and diplomatic resources to crush the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
despite its strong Sunni identity. It is also no secret that, from the time
of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Tehran looked upon the monarchy governing
Saudi Arabia as corrupt and decadent in the same manner as the Shah's
dynastic rule in Iran that was risen up against.
Your focus on how far the US can go in restricting Iran's influence is
difficult to assess at this point. Trump's virtual repudiation of the
agreement on Iran's nuclear program seems to express a commitment to join
with Israel and Saudi Arabia to engage in coercive diplomacy, consisting of
intensifying sanctions, covert operations to encourage internal opposition
and a variety of military threats. Where this will lead, if indeed it goes
forward in defiance of the other parties to the agreement and most important
UN members, is anybody's guess, but it is a highly irresponsible diplomatic
gambit that risks a deadly "war of choice."
Trump's regional diplomacy, such as it is, has been most notable for giving
even greater emphasis to the "special relationships" with Israel and Saudi
Arabia than earlier American leaders. Even previously, under Obama, George
W. Bush and prior presidents, American strategic interests and national
values were subordinate to this posture of unquestioning support, which is
the concrete meaning of designating these links as special relationships.
Syria's civil war continues unabated and the country has become a
battlefield for the spread of the influence of various powers in the region,
including Turkey and Russia. Do you see a way out of this mess?
The Syrian War is among the most complex conflict patterns in the history of
warfare. Not only is there an internal struggle for control of the Syrian
state that has been waged by not one, but by several insurgent movements
that are not even compatible with one another. There is also a regional
proxy war pitting Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar against
Iran, with Turkey playing a confusing role that sometimes seems guided by
anti-Damascus goals but at other times is preoccupied with curtailing the
Kurdish challenge. The various national struggles of the Kurds for
autonomous rights, possibly independent political communities, threaten the
territorial integrity of several Middle Eastern states, as well as Syria. In
addition to all of this, there are major multi-faceted and fluid Russian and
American involvements on opposite sides, although not even this opposition
is clear-cut and consistent. For a time, there was an almost collaborative
effort to defeat ISIS (also known as Daesh) and obtain a Syrian cease-fire,
although the basic involvement has been to put Russia on the side of the
Damascus government and the US as aligned with the insurgencies.
Because the anti-ISIS dimension of the conflict is at odds with the
anti-Damascus dimension, depending on the priority accorded to one rather
than the other, alignments are contradictory and shifted over time.
Sometimes precedence has been given to achieving regime-change in Damascus
by removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power, and in such
contexts, it was acknowledged silently that ISIS was the most effective
military challenge on the ground being mounted against the Syrian
government. At other times, the counterterrorist campaign against ISIS was
given uppermost prominence, and there [were] even high-level indications
that Washington was willing to live with the Assad regime, a position given
added credence recently due to the success of the Syrian government in
quelling its opposition, making continued opposition futile politically, and
irresponsible ethically. Whenever pragmatism gained the upper hand, Russia
and Iran were accepted as partners in these efforts to defeat and destroy
ISIS.
All wars eventually come to an end, and I am sure Syria will not be an
exception. Yet it is difficult at present to project a solution that brings
about more than a cease-fire, and even this kind of ending ... is highly
elusive, as each of the many parties to the conflict jockeys violently for
minor positional advantages to improve its bargaining leverage when the
conflict enters some kind of negotiating phase.... Internal wars of this
kind, especially with such complex regional and international aspects, can
simmer for decades with no clear winner or loser as has been the case in the
Philippines and Colombia. It seems as if at present the Syrian government
believes it is on the verge of victory and is pressing for an outcome in
East Ghouta and Idlib such that it will not be expected to make significant
concessions.
The best hope, which has been the case for several years, is that the
various parties will recognize that the situation is indeed a mess that is
causing mass suffering and widespread devastation without producing
political gains. Yet translating that recognition into a formula that
produces an end to the violence has so far proved futile and frustrating as
each party sees the conflict from its partisan perspective of gain and loss.
With the two-state solution having ceased long ago being a viable
alternative, what are the most likely prospects for the future of
Israeli-Palestinian relations?
The safest response is to anticipate a persistence of the present status
quo, which involves continuing Israeli expansionism by way of the
settlements and the persistence of the Palestinian ordeal, with some
resistance in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and a growing
global solidarity movement exerting pressure on Israel in the form of the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. There may be some
attention given to a variety of proposals to end the conflict by revived
diplomacy. Trump's blustery promise of "a deal of the century" has received
skeptical attention, but its likely one-sidedness makes it almost certain to
be a non-starter, especially as the Israeli government feels insufficient
pressure to produce a peaceful solution based on a genuine political
compromise and the Palestinian Authority remains unwilling to accept a
demilitarized statelet as a token Palestine state, or even to participate in
negotiations that are so obviously stacked against it. For public relations
reasons, the international consensus clings to the two-state solution even
though, as your question suggests, its viability has long been superseded by
Israeli expansionist policies intended to fulfill the Zionist goal of making
the boundaries of Israel coterminous with the whole of the Jewish biblical
conception of the "promised land."
There are other outcomes that are possible. [Right-wing historian] Daniel
Pipes has been promoting what he dubbed "the victory caucus," which posits
Israel as the victor in the struggle to establish a Jewish state and
Palestine the loser. Pipes argues that diplomacy has failed to resolve the
conflict after years of effort, and hence ... the only alternative is for
one side to win and the other to lose if peace is to be established. He
encourages Israel to escalate pressure on the Palestinians to make them see
the light, accept the reality of a Jewish state and move on. Such an
initiative is distasteful to those who support the Palestinian struggle, and
it seems oblivious to the claims of international law and international
morality as these are generally understood in the 21st century when
colonialism and ethnic nationalism are illegitimate forms of political
control and the right of self-determination has become universally accepted
as an inalienable right of an oppressed people in the circumstances of the
Palestinians.
In my view, neither the two-state nor a consensual one-state outcome of the
struggle is currently within the realm of political feasibility. We are
necessarily speculating about future political scenarios within the domain
of "political impossibility." Yet the impossible sometimes happens.
Colonialism was successfully challenged, the Soviet Union collapsed, South
Africa renounced apartheid, the Arab Spring erupted. In none of these cases
did such occurrences seem possible except in retrospect. After the events,
as expected, experts appeared who explained why these impossible
developments were, if closely considered, inevitable.
In this spirit, I think it useful to acknowledge the limits of rational
assessment, and either remain silent, or offer for consideration, a solution
that is "impossible," yet "desirable" from the perspective of humane values,
which in this case involves a secure, equitable and sustainable peace for
both peoples that is, above all, sensitive to their equality and to their
distinct, yet legitimate, claims to self-determination. I find it
unimaginable to realize such a peace within the current structure of the
Middle East, which consists of a group of artificial and autocratic states
held together by varying mixtures of coercion, corruption and external
military assistance. An Israel-Palestine peace cannot unfold in a benevolent
manner without a structural return to the Ottoman framework of regional
unity and ethnic community, and possibly an Islamic caliphate adapted to
post-colonial realities. Such a stateless Middle East would reverse the harm
inflicted on the region by the imposition of European territorial states
through the infamous Sykes-Picot diplomacy.
South Africa's former apartheid system has been employed analytically by
many to describe the current status of the state of Israel with regard to
its treatment toward Palestinians. Indeed, it is from such a comparison that
the BDS movement was born, but to what extent are the two cases compatible?
South Africa was pretty much isolated by the early 1980s, but the same
cannot be said about Israel today. In fact, Israel has even managed to
expand recently its network of allies with Greece and the Sunni states. So,
what are your thoughts on the comparison between the former South African
apartheid regime and Israel and the effectiveness of the strategy of BDS?
Your question raises two distinct issues: Is Israel responsibly regarded as
an "apartheid state?" If so, is Israeli apartheid similar to South African
apartheid?
Prior to responding to these questions, it seems helpful to clarify the
status of the international crime of apartheid as it has evolved in
international law, taking particular note of the fact that although the name
and core idea is based on the specific condemnation of South African racism,
the international crime is detached from this precedent. The essence of the
international crime is any form of discriminatory domination by one race
over another that relies on "inhuman acts" to sustain its purposes. In this
important sense, Israeli forms of domination over the Palestinian people may
be quite different than the domination of whites over Blacks in South
Africa, and yet constitute the international crime of apartheid. Treating
apartheid as an international crime is based both on the 1973 International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and
on the 2002 Rome Statute governing the operations of the International
Criminal Court that categorizes "apartheid" in Article 7 as one of 11 types
of crimes against humanity.
In a study commissioned by the UN Economic and Social Commission, Virginia
Tilley and I concluded that the policies and practices of Israel toward the
Palestinian people as a whole satisfy the requirements of the international
crime of apartheid. Our conclusion is based on the view that Israel, to
maintain an expanding Jewish state, has subjected the Palestinian people to
structures of subjugation and victimization that are sustained by excessive
violence and other inhuman means. It was our judgment that Jews and
Palestinians are distinct "races" as the term is understood in international
law. The scope of Israeli apartheid is based on coherent strategies designed
to subjugate the Palestinian people whether they are living under
occupation, the most obvious case, or as a discriminated minority within
Israel, or as residents in refugee camps in neighboring countries, or living
in a global diaspora as involuntary exiles. Each of these domains is
connected with the Israeli efforts to ensure not only the prevalence of a
Jewish state, but also a secure Jewish-majority population that could only
be achieved by a process of dispossession, dispersion and fragmentation, as
well as by the denial of any right of return.
South African apartheid was very different in its operation as compared to
Israeli apartheid. For one thing, white South Africa was a minority
demographic in the country and critically dependent on Black labor. For
another, the South African concept of law, citizenship and democracy was
delineated along racial lines, while Israel claims to be an inclusive
democracy, although is more accurately understood to be an ethnocracy.
Despite these fundamental differences, the core reality of "inhuman acts"
and "discriminatory structures of domination" are present, although
distinctly enacted, in both national settings.
Finally, it should be understood that such allegations of Israeli apartheid
are made on the basis of academic study, and while they may be persuasive
morally and politically, it is also true that until a valid tribunal passes
judgment on such allegations, the legal status of the allegations remains
unresolved and is, of course, feverishly contested by Israel and its
supporters.
Overall, what are the prospects for restored stability and a positive future
for the countries in the Middle East?
Without the intervention of unanticipated developments, the prospects are
poor. On one level, the extreme turmoil in countries such as Syria, Yemen,
Iraq and neighboring Libya are likely to continue and could spread to
additional states. On a second level, the regional rivalries between Iran
and a Saudi-led coalition on the one side and Israel on the other, seem
likely to intensify. On a third level, there is no plausible scenario for
establishing a sustainable peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.
On a fourth level, with the reassertion of Russian engagement and the US
pursuit of a strategic agenda related to Israel, oil, political Islam, Iran
and nuclear nonproliferation, the region has, as in the Cold War, become a
site of dangerous geopolitical maneuver and confrontation. On a fifth level,
perhaps less serious than the others, is the sort of intra-regional tensions
that have given rise to the Gulf Crisis centered upon the relations of Qatar
to other gulf countries, and to the role of Turkey as partner and
antagonist, especially in relation to the continuing search of the Kurdish
peoples for self-determination. Finally, on a sixth level, there is almost
certain to be new expressions of internal strife and various extremisms that
strike against the West, inviting retaliation, which will probably be
accompanied by further migratory flows that aggravate relations between the
Middle East and Europe.
The drastic and prolonged victimization of the Middle East also exhibits the
failure of the West to understand, much less address, the root causes of
conflict and chaos that have produced mass suffering and material
deprivations throughout the region. These root causes can be traced back at
least a century to the imposition of European style states on the region,
reflecting colonial ambitions, in the aftermath of World War I and by way of
a colonial pledge to the world Zionist movement to support the establishment
of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, then inhabited by a Jewish minority not
larger than 6 percent. The other principal root cause related to the
abundance of oil in several parts of the Middle East, which created rentier
mentalities in development contexts and provided strong strategic
motivations for intervention and control by global political actors.
In the end, this complexity joining the historical past to the tormented
past creates a dismal set of prospects for the future of the Middle East. At
this point, only paradoxical, although unrealistic, hopes for prudence and
moderation can make the portrayal of the situation less gloomy than the
evidence and trajectory suggest.
Note: The transcript of this interview has been lightly edited for length
and clarity.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
C.J. Polychroniou
C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has
taught and worked in universities and research centers in Europe and the
United States. His main research interests are in European economic
integration, globalization, the political economy of the United States and
the deconstruction of neoliberalism's politico-economic project. He is a
regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout's Public
Intellectual Project. He has published several books and his articles have
appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news
websites. Many of his publications have been translated into several foreign
languages, including Croatian, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
and Turkish. He is the author of Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On
Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change, an anthology of interviews with
Chomsky originally published at Truthout and collected by Haymarket Books.
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