Not an Inch More

With its size and the number of writers it invites from all over the world, Jaipur Literature Festival has attained the status of a forum where renowned journalists, writers and journalist-writers meet and discuss several ideas of conflict resolution. Considering that it started when the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq was already on, and the continued repression of Palestinians only grew stronger, it is but natural that some of these themes are discussed here every year and by some of the best-known voices on the concerned issue.

During the fest, in the conflict resolution section, two of the sessions were particularly well-attended and appreciated this time. The first was by Philip Gourevitch, a celebrated journalist and author who exposed the Abu Ghraib prison torture and was years ago among the first to provide a detailed study of the Rwandan massacre. The other session was on “the way ahead for Palestinians” in the context of an ultra-right wing government in place in Tel Aviv, as well as the complete surrender of the Obama regime in Washington DC. The participants included noted writer and academician Sari Nusseibeh, who heads al-Quds University in Jerusalem, Raja Shehadeh, a noted lawyer and writer, and other voices from the region.

While the issues are different in several respects, there is an underlying theme of occupation and dehumanisation in both the cases - Iraq-Afghanistan and Palestine. There were several ideas that were mooted in these sessions. Philip Gourevitch was particularly articulate and spun a few theories that really lit up the session. Recounting his Abu Ghraib experience, Gourevitch maintained that when he first experienced it, it was traumatic. In most of the cases, people who were arrested were people who were arrested because of mistaken identity, and these people used to be subjected to torture so that they would open up. As most of these people knew nothing, it was impossible for them to say something. They were brutalised and mutilated for nothing. In several of the cases, the interrogators themselves were pretty unaware of what they were supposed to ask and what they expected these inmates to reveal. “In many ways, it is like a can that is sealed and has caught your fancy. You don’t know what will come out of it but you continue to shake it and forcibly open it. At the end, when nothing comes out, you move to another can,” Gourevitch explained.

Gourevitch also criticised the way western intervention has made the situation complex in some of the countries in the region. He was especially critical of events in Libya. “When we attacked Libya, what was the motive? Ostensibly, it was to save people’s life in Benghazi. But what we actually ended up doing was to support one side against the other in what was essentially a civil war. So, did we achieve our motive of stopping the killing of people? No. We just helped a side in the civil war that was important for West’s interest. That is a farce,” Gourevitch laments.

On the other hand, the session on Palestine saw some ideas being proposed and discussed. For the first time, some of the most famous voices from the region travelled to India to tell a truth that has remained buried under the western media’s onslaught. The participants expressed concern over the radicalisation of the Israeli position under Benjamin Netanyahu.

“In 1948, the Israelis wanted to construct a state without Palestinians, and they roughly succeeded in forcing them out. In 1967, their triumph brought together the refugees with those who had remained in Israel. We were strewn, they in a way gathered us back. So, basically, the Israelis are being pushed towards their own collapse by their triumph. The continued occupation and colonisation of Jerusalem and the West Bank, which makes a two-state resolution unfeasible, will compel Israel to live with a considerable Arab population and reassess its  methods,” explains Sari Nusseibeh.

There was a heated debate when Nusseibeh proposed an idea where Palestinians in the occupied territory would be offered full civil and economic rights but devoid of any political rights. It would look in ethos something like what is in place in occupied East Jerusalem.

Noted British writer and activist, Karl Sabbagh, raised an objection to the proposal, saying no civil and economic right can sustain in the long run in absence of
political rights. “I hate to use the word compromise now. I mean Palestinians have compromised since the division initiated by the UN. From half of the land, they have come down to merely 22 per cent. And they are clinging to that. What compromise do we want? It should be pretty clear by now to everyone that not a single inch of additional land will be shed,” Sabbagh protested.

Noted British playwright David Hare and author-lawyer Raja Shehadeh recounted the horror of the apartheid wall in the West Bank that has not only cut through Palestinian villages, but has also, in more ways than one, annexed more lands. David Hare maintained that the wall is one of the many ways by which Palestinians have been dehumanised and it is frustrating and enraging to see the humiliation they go through on a daily basis.

Raja Shehadeh, on the other hand, took listeners inside the mind of Israeli strategists who come up with such ideas.

“For me the most significant aspect about the wall is its two-sidedness. On the Israeli side, to make the existence of the wall more appetising to Israelis, it is decorated with scenic of landscapes, imagery of what they would have seen in the absence of the existing wall. The wall on no account obstructs Israeli roads. It only carves out a new boundary next to the highways. Conversely, Palestinians are forbidden from approaching most sections of the wall. The spectacle of the bare concrete evokes incarceration, misery, destruction and land theft,” he explained.

In the backdrop of the recent incident of the desecration of the bodies of dead Afghans by US Mariners, the entire debate of dehumanisation takes a centre-stage. And as Gourevitch maintains, the war itself is an act of dehumanisation. The incidents what we see comes as part of the package itself.