"We Need a New Consensus Against Ethnic Purity in the Middle East - We Must Show that Israel's Current State System is Unacceptable"

Wim de Neuter, journalist and editor of Oxfam-Solidarity Magazine, in an interview with BADIL in Brussels

Knowing that you do not share the expectation - common now in Europe - that the new Israeli Labor government will bring us closer to a just solution, what is your scenario of the Israeli-Arab conflict?

The hidden agenda of Zionism has always been the transfer of the Palestinian people. After 1967, Israel lacked the political means for a massive transfer, because of UN Resolution 242 which demanded the Israeli withdrawal from the 1967 occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and because the Palestinian national movement had become strong, regionally and internationally. This is why Israel could not implement massive transfer.

Now, the Oslo Accords are a variation of the same transfer ideology, i.e. "if we cannot transfer the Palestinians, they must be isolated in small bantustans." The Oslo Accords have shattered Palestinian national unity. This is why the defense of the Palestinian right of return is a central issue. Defending the right of return means taking a first step towards rebuilding Palestinian unity. At the same time, the Oslo Accords and the new political alliances facilitated by them, represent a defeat and a huge problem for the whole region, not only for the Palestinians, but also for Arab unity in general. Just imagine what will happen to the Middle East if Israel and Turkey will succeed to dominate the distribution of water in the region!

What we need is a large and deep reconstruction process of the progressive forces in the region. Such a process will take time, but I am convinced that it will take place. The main problem in the Middle East is the issue of control over the oil production, and I don't think that the acceptance by the Arab people of US control will be eternal.

Palestinians tend to develop high expectations of Europe, whenever there seems to be a European voice that speaks differently than the United States. The recent Berlin Declaration by the European Union is an example. Should Palestinians count on Europe? How do you see European interests and aims in the region?

Europe does not have an independent political position anywhere; it did not have one on the Gulf War, and it does not have one in regards to Yugoslavia, Iraq and the Middle East. There is only the US position. Palestinians should not expect anything from Europe, because the European Union is no more than a regrouping of the powerful capitalists in the European countries. Politically they fully accept the US framework designed for the Middle East. All European declarations on the Middle East just serve to protect special European interests in that region, they do not stand for an alternative political program. This has been the case from the 1980 Venice Declaration until the 1999 Berlin Declaration. These declarations are usually contradicted by actual European policy in the Middle East, because when it comes to policy implementation, Europe cooperates with the United States and is - as in the case of Oslo - doing a major part of the work for the US.

In the meantime, the friction resulting from the commercial war between the United States and Europe is the only chance for the so-called Third World in general, and the Middle East in particular. But also here we are confronted with capitulation by Europe all the time.

As we are witnessing an effort at rebuilding a Palestine solidarity movement in Europe, what do you now consider the priorities for a European solidarity campaign?

I think that in the past, European solidarity groups and NGOs were correct in highlighting their support of the Palestinian right to self-determination and statehood. However, I feel that we must now - after Oslo - shift the focus. Solidarity work in Europe must show that the Oslo project is an apartheid project and based on racism. We have to oppose the racist notion of a state based on ethnic purity in the Middle East. We must work to create a consensus in Europe that the Palestinian people were thrown out in 1948 and in 1967 in order to create a pure Jewish state. We need to establish a new political consensus which states clearly that the current Israeli state system is unacceptable, and that Israel is the problem, not the Palestinians. The solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be recognized as an issue of decolonization, and a new solidarity campaign with the Palestinian people must follow the lines of anti-apartheid struggle.

We have to use, in our argument, the strong rejection by the European public of ethnic cleansing in Kosova and the broad demand for the return of the Kosovar refugees. We must create a linkage between this and Palestinian rights. We must expose the hypocrisy of NATO and its supporters and bring the Palestinian refugee question back on the agenda.

We need to create a new mass-media strategy. We must make use of the many journalists who are unsatisfied with the current trend to "infotainment" and would like to do serious investigative journalism. We should send such journalists to Palestine.

We know that rebuilding solidarity with the Palestinian people in Europe has not been easy. What are the main obstacles faced by solidarity groups and NGOs in Europe?

The main obstacle is of course the fact that also in Europe, not only in the Middle East, we are confronted with a defeat of the left and progressive forces. Also here, there is a need for comprehensive reconstruction, mainly against the new version of economic liberalism, which dominates people's lives. And this will take a long time. However, we do have indications that people are fed up - with the heavy social price of economic liberalization, with the wars in Yugoslavia - and a new opposition front is forming with new means. Unions and NGOs play an important role here, and so does the use of the internet. This opposition has already had some successes, such as, for example, the prevention of a clandestine OECD agreement for total liberalization of investment ("Multilateral Agreement on Investment-MAI") last year. When it comes to Israel, a major obstacle remains the ideological confusion in the heads of even progressive people.

Lobby work must be increased, because the public debate is weak - not only on the Middle East, also on European issues, such as the introduction of the new European currency, in which European states were treated like "Third World" countries by the IMF.

What can Palestinian organizations do to support the reconstruction of the solidarity movement in Europe?

We need Palestinian NGOs to be very principled when they speak to the European audience; not compromising and defining their position in the framework of "what is needed by Israel." They should send the message every day that Oslo is a dead-end road, also economically, not only in human rights terms. They should put emphasis on the Palestinian refugee question, because the refugee question is central if we want to build solidarity with the rights and needs of the Palestinian people as a whole. The presence of refugees in the West Bank and Gaza, for example, must become as visible to the European public as the Israeli repression and human rights violations there.