More on Evelyn Gordon's Essay

Ben:

Evelyn Gordon makes a number of interesting points in her article, but none that proves, or even advances, her stated hypothesis that Israel's international standing is worse because of Oslo.

To prove that point, one would expect Gordon to have identified some component of the international community that was pro Israel pre Oslo (and presumably because it liked Israel's claim to the West Bank and Gaza and its refusal to contemplate a Palestinian state) and is now anti-Israel. She points to none.

Her references to CUPE and British academic boycotts do not advance her argument because she does not contend (nor could she) that the sponsors of these vile intiatives were pro Israel pre Oslo and she concedes that even now they lack broad support.

She glosses over the advances in Israel's international standing in the wake of Israel's opening of peace initiaitves with the Palestinians --peace with and an exchange of ambassadors with Jordan, relations with China, Russia and Eastern European states, etc. She seems to give no attention at all to just how bad Israel's international standing was pre Oslo. And she seems to give her whole argument away when, after criticizing Oslo because it involved Israel conceding before the world that the Palestinians may have legitimate rights regarding the West Bank and Gaza, she states that "Granted, much of the world was disposed to accept the Palestinian claim even before Oslo".(Page 19)

I think many of Gordon's points support other conclusions that she suggests--that the Palestinians have not responded fairly to Israeli concessions and treat them as weakness, that enemies of Israel give her no credit for concessions, that certain policies are tactically unwise for Israel regardless of their PR effect in the Western media. I just don't think her arguments support what she says her article is about.

Me:

I’d put It differently and ask, leaving Oslo to the side for a moment, whether Israel’s international standing has in fact suffered badly since Oslo. If that proposition is a predicate, then is the question: whether the relation between Oslo, itself also standing for Israel’s attempts at peace, and that decline is one of causality or coincidence?

If the posited answer is the former—and Gordon seems to assert it —“..Israel’s standing has declined so precipitously not despite Oslo but because of Oslo. It was Israel’s very willingness to make concessions for the sake of peace that has produced its near-pariah status.”—then your brief critique is to the point.

But I think despite what I quoted, the theme of her essay is broader than you give her credit for and broader than her own apparent framing. The theme has to do with the wrongheadedness, as she sees it, of Israel’s unnecessary concessions as incidental to her quest, sometimes desperate, for peace and then the anomaly that despite that quest—which Oslo typifies, inaugurated but does not exhaust—her stature has declined so dramatically since Oslo.

If her essay is looked at this way, rather than as a tight A caused B, people can note the anomaly, assess the reasons for it differently and all without disserving her overriding argument. Her suggestion, which makes sense to me, is that by relinquishing the legitimacy of its claims to the West Bank and Gaza—which claims can be conceded in bargaining—Israel has leached herself of her own narrative:

“,,,Oslo marked the moment when Israel stopped defending its own claim to the West Bank and Gaza and instead increasingly endorsed the Palestinian claim. And with no competing narrative to challenge it any longer, the view of Israel as a thief, with all its attendant consequences, has gained unprecedented traction…”

This observation is well argued for by the dynamism of the various peace concessions, such as withdrawals, begetting violence, begetting necessary counter measures spanning checkpoints, to a blockade, to a defensive barrier, to military incursions against terrorists who collapse virtually all distinction between civilian and fighter. Perversely, Israel bears increased ignominy every step of the way.

So you may think that Gordon has not advanced a particular thesis. But I think she raises the need to wrestle with the conundrum she describes and to ask, as she tries to, what, if any, corrective changes in policy or approach might be in order better to frame further negotiations with a more assertive claim of legitimacy and right.