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The "Arab Street" and Democracy

(Los Angeles Times) Edmund Sanders interviews Benny Morris - In an interview, historian Benny Morris said: "In the 1990s I was cautiously optimistic that the Palestinians were changing their tune and becoming agreeable to a two-state solution...with the Oslo process. Before the 1980s, they just talked about destroying Israel." "By 2000, two things changed to make me deeply pessimistic. Arafat rejected the two-state proposal put on the table by [former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak and [former U.S. President] Clinton, and then the launching of the second intifada. The other thing was, I was looking at the whole conflict for a book I was writing at the time and I saw the monotony and consistency of the Palestinian stance, and their unflinching desire for all of [historic] Palestine [including Israel]." "The Arab Spring gave more of a voice to the Arab street than it's ever had. You could call that moving in the direction of democracy. But what ended up happening was that the Arab street was basically Islamic fundamentalist.... These people hate democracy. They will only use it get to power." "[I wrote] an entire history of the 1948 war. When you look at the whole war, the Palestinian refugee problem is much more intelligible and less brutal. You can see clearly it was a product of self-defense. Arabs attacked Jews and the Jews had to clear the roads and border areas because the Arab armies were about to invade. Certain actions were necessary if Israel wanted to survive." "Three years after the Holocaust, you have to give the Israelis the right to feel that when the Arabs were shouting bloody murder on the radio, they meant it. They felt that if the Arabs had won, they would have killed everybody." "I'm hopeful there will be a renewal of negotiations, but my fear is that it won't go anywhere because Palestinians, deep in their heart, don't want a negotiated peace." Benny Morris is a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University.
2012-11-13 00:00:00
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