This said, I do have faith in the efforts of progressives on both sides to eventually achieve something. And its not just because, like many other persons with a vested interest in the resolution of the conflict, I am motivated to believe so by a commitment to a specific politics. Clearly, the efforts of anti-Occupation activists helped influence the outcome of last year's Disengagement. For as imperfect as it remains, it was something, and would not have happened without the work of both Israelis and Palestinians seeking to change the consensus about the rationality of the Occupation.
And, speaking purely from within the realm of Israeli politics, for as many problems as I have with the Labor Party and Amir Peretz, I would never have imagined the discursive elevation of social concerns in Israel, (however little they will most likely be adhered to by Israel's new government) during the March elections. Given how fundamentally neoliberal Israeli political discourse had become since the beginning of the Occupation in 1967, the emergence of this discourse in the political mainstream holds a potential for inculcating anti-market sensibilities in Israel in a way that had not existed before.
And yet, of course, the new "social" coalition raised the price of bread its first day in office, and has yet to challenge the legislation. Two steps forward, three steps back, or so the saying goes.
> Joel S. wrote:
>
>> I basically line-up behind the same position expressed by Brian
>> Atinsky in
>> his post this morning regarding the one-two state question.The daily
>> struggle to assert basic values and equal rights is a way of
>> establishing
>> certain facts which over time will hopefully become reality.
> ===================================
> I also think this is true - "over time". I don't think Zionism can
> survive
> an extended period of peace, except as nostalgia and certainly not
> in its
> present virulent form. It's an ideology appropriate to armed
> settlers who
> feel themselves besieged. It wasn't coincidental that you had
> already begun
> to see the development of "revisionist" anti-Zionist thought among
> Isreali
> intellectuals during the brief Oslo honeymoon, accompanied by a
> greater
> reaching out to their counterparts on the Palestinian side.
> Lacking the
> perception of a common enemy, it's to be expected that the fault lines
> within the two societies would begin to run on horizontal rather than
> vertical lines, with the left reviving on both sides as the
> economic and
> religious conflicts within Israeli society move to the forefront,
> and the
> Palestinians struggle to improve their living standards in the face of
> continuing Israeli economic hegemony over an enfeebled Palestinian
> state, if
> one eventually results.
>
> However, it will probably take a generation or more. There is a
> century-long
> legacy of bitterness on both sides which needs to be overcome.
> Polls are now
> showing, for example, that for the first time a majority of the Jewish
> population wants to ethnically cleanse Israel of its Palestinian Arab
> citizens, and, if Israeli attitudes to the current infighting between
> Palestinians in Gaza is any indication, most would choose to ignore
> whatever
> happens beyond their sealed borders. A US defeat in Iraq and
> defiance by
> Iran would likely stimulate Palestinian nationalism and further harden
> attitudes on both sides. But things often change more quickly than we
> expect, so perhaps it's not unrealistic to hope that we will get to
> see
> greater unity between the two communities in "the daily struggle to
> assert
> basic values and human rights" during our lifetimes.
>
>
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