I have been so sad to learn of the death, both early and I think sudden, of Tanya Reinhart. (Hat-tip for David for alerting me to this.)
Tanya was a strong proponent of Palestinian equality and national independence and a fierce critic of the particular round of the ‘peace’ process — that is, all process, no peace– that was inaugurated with Yasser Arafat’s signing of the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993.
I had never met her until I went to Israel and Palestine with the International Quaker Working Party in 2002. We met her at Tel Aviv University, where she was a very distinguished member of the faculty of linguistics until last December, when she found the situation in Israel had become so hostile to her that she left Tel Aviv and moved to New York to teach at NYU.
Since I came to England two weeks ago I have had several impassioned discussions with Palestinian friends old and new about the whole course, meaning, and content of Oslo. My position, in a nutshell is that Oslo was specifically designed by the Israeli party to to be an indeterminate process, that is, to leave quite open the nature of the ‘final outcome’ whose negotiation, according to the text of the Oslo Declaration of Principles, should be completed by mid-1999.
To me, that indeterminacy was a very serious structural flaw in the DOP. A peace agreement whose negotiation is completed but whose implementation is phased according to an agreed schedule is one thing– there, at least, everyone knows what the final destination will be. But a peace ‘process’ that leaves quite undefined the final outcome will (a) provide more continuing power within the process to the existing power holders and (b) leave everyone from all sides extremely jittery regarding what the final outcome will be, and therefore prone to over-reactions to any tiny blip or setback along the way.
Such as we saw from both sides in the years that followed Oslo– but particularly, perhaps, from the Israeli side.
Having said that, I would say– as someone who sat bemused on the lawn of the White House on that bizarro day in September 1993 when the Oslo Accords were signed there– that despite that flaw there was still a chance the Palestinians could do well out of the process, provided they had wise strategic leadership that maximized the many levers of potential power at their people’s disposal.
Which included, let us remember, considerable sympathy from many parts of the international community and from a still-vibrant peace movement inside Israel.
Instead of which, they had Yasser Arafat (Abu Ammar), a man who (a) had zero concept of how to develop and pursue a strategy, and (b) proceeded, immediately after the return to the Occupied Territories that Oslo bestowed on him, to dismantle all the organizations and networks of community-based ‘people power’ that by then were the Palestinians’ major strategic asset. (And whose activities during the largely nonviolent First Intifada had, indeed, led to the conclusion of the Oslo Agreement in the first place.)
Arafat was a truly terrible negotiator– one might even say recklessly or criminally so, from his people’s perspective. The major case in point was his allowing the Israelis, under the terms of the Oslo DOP, to build a whole entire new road system within the West Bank with which successive governments of Israel then proceeded to strangle the Palestinian communities there.
So maybe Tanya Reinhart was right– maybe there was nothing the Palestinians could have done to “improve” Oslo, or to pull from that sow’s ear of a flawed agreement the silk purse of an acceptable, final-status peace agreement? I honestly don’t know, though I do strongly think that with much wiser leadership, the Palestinians could have had a good shot at doing that.
Where Reinhart was absolutely right, however, was to note the terrible effects that Oslo had on the balance of political and demographic power within the occupied West Bank. The new, Israelis-only road system was an absolute disaster for the Palestinians. So was the building of additional settler-only housing there– the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank doubled in the five years after Oslo, and today stands at around 500,000 (counting East Jerusalem settlers along with the rest.)
Where she was right, too, was to roundly criticize the claim that Ehud Barak made, that the ‘deal’ he offered Yasser Arafat at the end of of 2000 was a “generous offer” whose inexplicable rejection by the Palestinians just “proved” their bad intentions all along… That claim– coming from a Labour Party Prime Minister– did more than anything else to kill the Israeli peace movement as a large, significant force within Israeli society.
And now, that brave and percipient advocate of human equality Tanya Reinhart is dead. What a terrible, terrible shame.
As for the Palestinians, at least they now have a unity government. Let’s hope it can start to turn around the situation of their people, still reeling from more than a year’s-worth of the tough and deeply anti-humane siege.that Israel initiated but in which all the major governments of the world have shamefully colluded.
10 thoughts on “Tanya Reinhart, RIP”
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Helena, have you ever been “harrassed” for your views? It would be interesting to hear of any of your stories-I have heard of scholars being forced out of Israel for their views. How sad. I can see how it happens-I know when the war on Lebanon occured, I was being inadvertently harrassed all the time. It was awful!
Regarding the unity government, here is where the US stands (Norway has recognized the government, while the EU and the US seek clarifications around the use of violence)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-6493405,00.html
This is a huge, huge loss, and a terrible shock coming completely unexpectedly.
I was shocked and saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Prof. Tanya Reinhart. What a noble person she was fighting for the human rights of the brutally oppressed Palestinian people.
I am almost certain that devious, evil Israeli agents assassinated her after the Israeli academia had forced her into exile in New York. The Russians did the same thing to Litvinenko,the harsh critic of Putin, in London, a few months ago. By a covert method.
There is no way that Prof. Reinhart died naturally. We in the civilized world should demand a full investigation into the latest Zionist atrocity.
I was shocked and saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Prof. Tanya Reinhart. What a noble person she was fighting for the human rights of the brutally oppressed Palestinian people.
I am almost certain that devious, evil Israeli agents assassinated her after the Israeli academia had forced her into exile in New York. The Russians did the same thing to Litvinenko,the harsh critic of Putin, in London, a few months ago. By a covert method.
There is no way that Prof. Reinhart died naturally. We in the civilized world should demand a full investigation into the latest Zionist atrocity.
Brett,
I’m impressed by the way you go from pure conjecture to a statement of certainty regarding a “Zionist atrocity”. Just to point out a few things that might get in the way, Prof. Reinhart was barely known by the Israeli public, was no more influential or outspoken than numerous other academics in Israel who, to the best of my knowledge, are still alive and kicking, employed at Israeli institutions of higher education, and continuing to publish in all the same places that Ms. Reinhart did. Further, people do die of natural causes all the time – irrespective of their political beliefs and how vociferously they express these.
Prof. Reinhart’s sudden death is indeed sad, but let’s not turn this into a political cause or outright libel.
KDJ,
What I think would be interesting would be for you to tell us exactly which “scholars… [have been] forced out of Israel for their views.”
I agree completely with JES. It is, after all, hardly unheard of for a 63 year old person to have a stroke, strokes generally occur without warning, and often kill swiftly. On top of that, I really do not think the likes of Tanya Reinhart would be targetted for assassination. Israel does not have a history of assassinating or even milder actions against the growing number of Israeli academics who expose uncomfortable realities about Zionist/Israeli history, society, and politics.
That does not mean life in Israel is easy for such adacemics. They do pay consequences in both their professional and personal lives. But assassination? Come on! Israel has plenty of real ills for which there is real evidence. It is not necessary to invent stuff.
JES:
I always appreciate your aggressive approach. Illan Pape, while not forced out has been under seige, Baruch Kimmerling also left Israel for sometime during the Sharon II phase and their is another academic who left for Germany, whose name escapes me at the moment…Will get it for you, though.
JES, the other person I was referring to is Felicia Langer.
KDJ,
Neither Ilan Pappe nor Baruch Kimmerling have been “under seige” in my opinion. Both have been cfriticized, but largely based on academic grounds.. Where there have been political criticisms of these these, and other academics, it has been because of and related to their political activities. Or is that not ligitimate in your eyes?
Ilan Pappe has not even come close to being “forced out”, as you say. And if Baruch Kimmerling spent some time in Germany, I don’t think that this was because of any pressure from his academic environment – which, as a matter of fact, tends to be left of center. Many, if not most, academicians in Israel spend time outside the country either teaching or carrying out research. I hope that you don’t want to suggest that they were all “forced out”.
Falicia Langer is not a scholar. She is an attorney who represented terrorists. Whether or not Ms. Langer was “forced out” of Israel is highly questionable.
Thank you for appreciating my “aggressive approach”. I think that you might want to check out the facts before making sweeping statements.
Just friendly reminder to JES who keeping argue of his state records of Human Rights and the sever treatments of Palestinians under Israeli occupations.
“The international community, speaking through the United Nations, has identified three regimes as inimical to human rights – colonialism, apartheid and foreign occupation,” Dugard says. In his 24-page report, which will be presented to the United Nations General Assembly for debate on 15 March 2006, the South African lawyer accuses Israel of all three.”
Occupied Gaza like apartheid South Africa, says UN report