Why America's Undying Devotion to Israel Guarantees New Peace Talks Will Fail

Continued from previous page

The civil rights movement, originally, Martin Luther King, his original strategy was: "Let’s try to melt the hearts of the Southern racists." That was a classic Gandhian strategy, you know, melting the heart of your opponent. But then he realized, you’re never going to melt the hearts of these people. So what are we going to do? We’re going to look for the most repressive, the most violent Southern sheriffs, people like [Jim] Clark in Selma, Alabama, Eugene "Bull" Connor in Birmingham. We’re going to confront them, knowing full well that if we confront them, they’re going to unleash their dogs, unleash the fire hoses, unleash the horsemen, and then you will create an indignant national community which will impose its will on the South. And that strategy, to me, is workable among the Palestinians. If they don’t use that strategy, I think it’s hopeless.

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Munayyer, your final comment?

YOUSEF MUNAYYER: Well, to sum up, I would say that Israel has been trying to sell for a very long time the notion that its occupation of Palestinian territory is temporary. It’s been saying that over and over again. And it’s only that claim that keeps the apartheid label off the Israeli state. All of its actions, however, including up until last week when they announced plans to build a massive railway network throughout the entirety of the West Bank, say that its occupation is anything but temporary and it is, in fact, permanent. What these negotiations do is they allow the Israelis to say, "Well, actually, our occupation may still be temporary," and create a façade to cover their continued colonial activities in the West Bank. Once these negotiations fail—and I believe ultimately they will—that façade will fall. And once again, we will be looking at—the international community will be looking at what is essentially an apartheid system, and the continued isolation of Israel will grow. And more and more states around the world will move towards punitive policies to get Israel to change its behavior, knowing full well that Washington will not be able to deliver any sort of agreement.

AMY GOODMAN: Yousef Munayyer, I want to thank you for being with us, executive director of The Jerusalem Fund and its educational program, the Palestine Center. And Norman Finkelstein, author and scholar, his most recent books, Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End, another of his books, What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage.