During his time in the office, he has brought rot to every corner of the country. His continued rule will bring disaster to Jews and Arabs alike.

Salman Masalha ||

Netanyahu's Disastrous Rule Is a Dream for an Arab Nationalist

If I were an Arab nationalist, I would pray for Benjamin Netanyahu to be extricated from all the troubles that have befallen him. I would also hope he continues to head Israel’s government for many years to come. Netanyahu is the great boon that every Arab nationalist seeks. After all, no one else has managed to bring rot into every corner of this country the way he has.

Uri Avnery, with his sharp political senses, wants Netanyahu ousted from power because he believes he’s “a disaster for the country” (Haaretz in Hebrew, February 26). Avnery is obviously correct in this assessment. Therefore, if I were an Arab nationalist, I’d pray for Netanyahu to escape all his legal troubles and for this “disaster for the country” to remain in power and go from strength to strength, until all the immune systems of the Zionist state go into total collapse.

And so if I were an Arab nationalist, I’d urge all the Palestinians to sit quietly. They don’t need an intifada or resistance. Let Israel and its leader continue to build settlements and completely erase the Green Line. After all, even if an apartheid regime is imposed in the occupied territories, all these steps will ultimately bring about Israel’s demise. It’s the irony of history that the Palestinian nationalists’ one-state vision will actually be realized by someone who denies the existence of the Palestinian people.

They should sit quietly and wait. Israel under the right-wing’s rule will swallow up the entire territory with all its inhabitants. The demographic trend won’t change, and the day will come when the majority in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will have its say.

No apartheid system can be sustained over time. Perhaps it will work for 10 years, 20 years, even 30. But when the day comes, all the Palestinians will have to do is speak to the world in a language it understands – the language of equal rights for all residents of this land. There’s light at the end of the tunnel, and any such apartheid regime is destined to be abolished. That’s the law of history.

But I am not an Arab nationalist. On the contrary, I see nationalism of any type, and especially that which rests on religious foundations, as a cursed disease that destroys everything good in man’s body and soul. The battle over this land, which is gradually becoming infected with the nationalist-religious virus, doesn’t leave any possibility of normal life in a single state in which all citizens would be equal.

The inhabitants of this land aren’t Scandinavians. The Arabs aren’t Swedes and the Jews aren’t Danes, so the disciples of Zionism on one hand and the disciples of Palestinian nationalism on the other aren’t headed for the solution of a Scandinavian-style life. In fact, they’re on the path to a Balkan-style clash.

Explosive charges of hate are scattered throughout the length and breadth of this well-guarded land. Therefore, there’s no road to a confederation as a solution. To arrive at a solution of either confederation or a single, normal state – and I doubt this is possible at all, due to the great bitterness and hostility between the two national movements – it would be necessary for each nation to first pass through the stage of national pride in its own nation-state. Only those who have passed through this national stage and understood the pointlessness of nationalism can someday give up this national pride for the sake of a different kind of civic vision.

If I were an Arab nationalist, I’d vote for Netanyahu, the Zionist “disaster for the country,” as Avnery termed him. But I’m not, and as a native of this land and someone who loves it, I fear for all its inhabitants.

The continued rule of Netanyahu and the messianic right will indeed bring disaster down upon Jews and Arabs alike. This disaster must be prevented while there’s still time.
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Haaretz, March 6, 2018

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Nobody sees what lies ahead, and nobody is thinking about solutions for those who are now living on earth and those who will be living in the coming generations.

Salman Masalha ||

Trees instead of graves

What’s the first thing that meets the eye of those stuck in traffic in the bottleneck at the entrance to Jerusalem? Those entering the gates of the city are greeted by a city of the dead looking down from the mountain. In the holy tongue, such a site is called a House of Life, an Eternal Home and a Home That Awaits the Living.

Maybe it’s a metaphor for the state of the holy city and the land. Not a city or land of many days, but a city and land of many graves, which take up every good corner of nature. The metaphorical “tree of the field,” from the biblical verse and the popular song, is uprooting every sapling, eliminating the greenery and destroying nature. And all in the service of the dead and their sanctity.

Whether it’s the way of the world since man was created, or it’s the nature of those who fight over this fortified land, the dead are constantly multiplying. And because the dead have long since taken over the mountain and don’t rest for a moment, they are creating a necro-demographic and necro-topographical problem.

Recently we’ve been reading about a grandiose project in the advanced stages of construction. Across Har Hamenuchot cemetery they are digging tunnels to be used for future burials. Those in charge explain that it will provide burial places for the next 20 years. None of those responsible is asking the obvious question: And what next? Should providing for the needs of the dead be our only major concern?

Nobody sees what lies ahead, and nobody is thinking about solutions for those who are now living on earth and those who will be living in the coming generations. This land is so small, and it’s becoming more crowded from day to day.

That’s why this is the time to think about the future. Not about the quality of death of those who are gathered to their forefathers, but about the quality of life of this generation and those to follow. Just as there is a need for denser construction and for encouraging development that leaves open spaces, we have to think about an optimal solution for burial. In a small and crowded country like ours, we have to think about a green solution. It’s called sustainability. We have to think out of the box and to find another way to absorb, store or recycle human waste, which is generated by human beings on their journey to the “House of Life.”

In a place where the multiplying dead will settle all over this small and crowded country, as cities of the dead are built for them that spread and blight nature, the governmental authorities must impose regulations or pass laws forbidding the takeover of areas of land for cemeteries. Instead, the government must promise to provide cremation services for all the dead. After all, it already says in the Book of Books: “For you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

For that purpose, citizens would be asked to register a will in which they would choose a species of tree that the state would plant in their name after their death. The hole in which the chosen tree was planted would be their grave and their ashes would be placed in its soil.

Everyone would profit from such a solution – the dead who have returned to dust, those who are alive today and those who will be alive tomorrow. In that way it could well and truly be said that the words of the poem were fulfilled: “With their death they commanded us life.”
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Haaretz, Jan 15, 2018

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For Hebrew, press here