I´m sitting by the pool on Grande Terre, an Island in the southwest Pacific Ocean, listening to a French engineer who is describing the relationship between the French and the natives. We have just survived the millennium bug, and I´m on my way into the jungle to spend a few days with the natives; the Kanak people.
My French host is not too impressed by the Kanaks who have inhabited the island for so long that their origin is unclear. When I ask about their revolts against the French in the 60s and 80s, he finds it so amusing that his laughter soon transforms into the common cough of a smoker.
- Mr Wall, the natives, what can you expect? When they arrived to the Island, do you know what they did to the people living here? They killed the men, raped the women and ate the children!
More laughter and more coughing. Fortunately, he has a glass of wine and a cigarette to help him from choking completely.
I have not found much support for his anecdote, but it might very well be true, cannibalism was not uncommon in the area. Back in the good old days that was how nations were created; foreign people appeared from nowhere, sometimes over a more extended period of time and sometimes in a few rapid bursts. At some point, the scale of power changed and the natives suddenly realized that they either had to blend in or prepare to be put on the barbeque. To the annoyance of the French, they had to play according to new more civilized rules.
For this reason, I have always been fascinated with Israel. It is the last western nation that has emigrated to an area and created a country. It all happened in the conjunction where archaic rules of engagement were blended into a new more kosher approach; a stronger group of people, motivated by historical circumstances, took over the land but would not go for ethnical cleansing as they had the last time around.
In the late 19th century a bunch of Jewish versions of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates sat in their parent's garage and came up with the utterly utopistic idea of creating a Jewish state. Later on, they made the drastic decision that Uganda would not be the place for a new homeland but instead they concluded that the only alternative worth fighting for would be Eretz Israel; the promised land. The Zionist movement was finally gathering momentum and the saying "next year in Jerusalem" got a whole new meaning.
Legend has it that a Jewish emissary was sent to Palestine to spy out the land. He soon returned with the painful news; the bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man. This inconvenient truth was ignored. It would be like telling Steve Jobs that the iPhone would be impossible to build; an unacceptable suggestion made by those who don´t dare to dream big.
Fast forward through some promises made by Balfour, some adventures with Lawrence of Arabia, a few wars and Arab revolts, and of course the Holocaust, and suddenly the Establishment of the State of Israel was declared in 1948. But the infidelity problem never went away and has haunted the state of Israel ever since; what the hell to do with all those Arabs living in the holy land?
The Arabs were disorganized and ill-prepared for what the Zionist movement would eventually lead to; waves of Aliyahs to Palestine quickly increased the Jewish population. The Arabs were like frogs sitting in a boiling pan not realizing the water was getting hotter. When they finally did it was already too late. In the late 60s, many of them started defining themselves as Palestinians, some had become Israeli Arabs, and a few could not make up their minds. Be it as it may, it did not unify them or increase the quality of their bickering, corrupt, and radicalized leaders.
The neighboring Arab states used the Palestinian question to unite their own people in their new and fragile nations. But it soon became clear that the Palestinians could not expect much help from them. And, of course, none of them stood a chance against the extraordinarily efficient and resilient Jewish state that eventually received the unconditional support from the United States.
Some scholars argue that the Palestinian enigma is some kind of a key for the future of the world and the stability of the Middle East. As if solving this Gordian knot all the other pieces in this incredibly complex puzzle would magically fall in place. The Arab states would bloom into a spring of social reforms, the militant Salafists would call off their jihad, and the continuous flow of cheap oil would run without interruption. Maybe even democracy could permanently be exported to the region?
Many a leader has given it a try, but they have all failed miserably. The latest Messiah on a sacred mission has been Trump's son-in-law; Jared Kushner the 38-year-old real estate mogul from New York. Personally, I have my doubts concerning his abilities. When asked about his credentials his wife Ivanka said how she this one time ran for an errand and left him with a Middle East specialist. When she returned 30 minutes later, she was flabbergasted over how much he had learned! The story certainly impressed me; give me 30 minutes, and I can barely find my socks.
What makes it even more misfortunate for the Palestinians is the widening cultural difference between the Judeo-Christain world and the Muslims in the area. The west has made sweeping reforms; like making rape within the marriage illegal and improved their human rights record. In 2013 the Israeli government went as far as to advise the end of gender segregation in public spaces despite angry protests from some ultra-Orthodox Jews.
The Muslim world, on the other hand, has not only stagnated but arguably taken a few steps backward. Gone are the days when Afghan women had equal rights, and some walked around in miniskirts on their way to Kabul's University. Not to mention the Egyptian leader Nasser who in the '50s publically laughed and made fun of the Muslim Brotherhood for their ridiculous suggestion that women should be required to wear a hijab.
The more this cultural difference grows, the easier it is to dehumanize the enemy. The newly re-elected prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu has successfully been pushing the narrative that the Palestinians are the successors of Hitler, the Arab grand mufti of Jerusalem inspired the Holocaust, and "they" wish to kill the Hebrew people. King Bibi (Netanyahu) is irreplaceable and everything humanly possible has been done to achieve peace, but the stubborn Palestinians just cannot shut up and get in line. They need to suck it up and pay the price for the sins of their fathers.
Many Palestinians still naively long for the time before Nakba; the day of Catastrophe in 1948, when some of them lost everything, and the beginning of the end started. Hamas has made it more challenging for the left to argue against King Bibi´s narrative. It is understandable that an agreement can be seen as a betrayal on both sides.
There will be no peace. The great war for civilisation will go on. Over the years there have been several different partition and state plans for the Palestinians; none of them will ever materialize. Slowly but surely the West Bank and its inhabitants will be eaten up, one settlement at a time, by the Israeli state. The Gaza strip will remain an open-air prison guarded by Israel in the North and Egypt in the South. Eventually, Hamas leadership will make it collapse, and its remains will fall into the lap of its unwilling southern neighbor.
On an even more pessimistic note, if the most fatalistic climate change models are correct; in a few decades, no one will be able to live in the Middle East. The historical circumstances will once again force millions to roam aimlessly in the hope of finding a place where they can survive. The Armaggedon, ignited by climate change, will make the Palestinian question seem futile.
On a positive note; while writing this I finally found my socks. Allāhu Akbar!
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