The Second Narrative on Israel-Palestine

By Yousef Munayyer

For years, the Bush administration argued that the “evil doers” hated our freedoms. Supposedly, this was the underlying cause of the Muslim world’s angst toward the United States. It was this narrative that was used to justify a number of American policies at home and abroad. From the curtailing of civil liberties, to the war on Iraq, the narrative which claimed “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other," caused many to turn a blind eye while terrible mistakes were made in a dark period of America’s history.

Yet during this period, there was a second less-dominant narrative. One backed by a plethora of social science research that argued that the anger in the Arab and Muslim world toward the United States was not about democracy or culture wars, but rather about hated U.S. policies toward the region and specifically toward Palestine. Despite the fact that there has been no shortage of public opinion polls of Arab/Muslim attitudes to support this, the first narrative seems to have resonated more with policy makers and the media for the better part of this past decade.

The second narrative supports establishing a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians as a way to assuage irate publics. Achieving this end has always meant that the United States had to adjust its posture toward Israel, and pressure it to abide by international law, end the colonization of the West Bank and Gaza and withdraw its occupation.

With U.S. interests in the Arab and Muslim world -- like hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with a defensive Iran in between -- the United States needs more friends in the region and cannot afford an environment where recruitment for transnational groups like Al-Qaeda is ripe. In short, Arab and Muslim public perception of the United States matters greatly for U.S. national security interests.

For proponents of Israel and the current status quo in Israel/Palestine, where Israel dominates the Palestinians through occupation without foreseeable end, this second narrative poses a significant threat. The first narrative, which pits us vs. them, is far more convenient for Israel’s supporters in the United States simply because Americans are more likely to consider Israelis us while they see Palestinians as them.

Surely, nothing I have said so far should come as a surprise to anyone who has been awake for the past decade following the events in the Middle East and the United States’ response to them. What is new, however, is that we may now be noticing the second narrative over take the first for the first time.

When General Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee linking the United States’ ability to broker a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians with U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, it became clear that something had changed and the importance of this statement coming from top brass has been explored in depth. The state of Israel’s insult to Vice President Biden when they announced the expansion of an illegal West Bank settlement during his trip to the region, put this entire issue under the microscope.

Upon first hearing the news about Patreaus’ testimony and the media storm that followed the Biden insult, I anticipated that the pro-Israel types would sound the alarm having noticed that the narrative they favored has suddenly dropped in popularity.

And sure enough an extensive effort to resurrect the first narrative was intensely under way. There was Bret Stephens’ ludicrous piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that Lady Gaga (I didn’t know who Lady Gaga was before this) angered Muslims more than Israel’s policies in occupied Palestinian territory. Charles Krauthamer’s Washington Post column blamed Obama for the U.S.-Israel crisis. The way he sees it, it was the United States that insulted Israel and not the other way around. There was Robert Kagan’s piece arguing Obama should remember who America’s real friends are. According to Stephens’ follow-up piece, those real friends include “Israel, Playboy and Lady Gaga.” Alan Derschowitz argued combinations of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Al-Qaeda (he considers these groups part of the ideologically interchangeable them) could bring about nuclear apocalypse.

Still the most important sign of a shift in the battle between these narratives is not simply the way pro-Israel, pro-Iraq war, neo-con types jumped to react. Rather, it is indicated in this post by Laura Rozen at POLITICO. She describes an intense clash in the White House among advisors to the President on this issue. It should come as no surprise that Dennis Ross is in the middle of this. He, along with David Makovsky and others with ties to the AIPAC-founded Washington Institute for Near East Policy, have long argued, rather poorly, that the idea of linkage between the Israeli/Palestinian issue and other U.S. interests in the region was bogus, even dangerous.

So it should come as no surprise then that when Patreaus echoed what most serious analysts and academics have been saying for decades on the floor of the Senate, those who disagreed with Ross on the inside felt emboldened enough to make that disagreement very clear.

The important question that remains is whether the second narrative will continue to prevail among US policy makers and most opinion shapers in the media, or whether we will slip back into the misguided rhetoric that urges the United States to amicably treat Israel while it imperils U.S. interests more with every day the occupation continues.

Let’s all hope for the former.

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