Full transcript of Ilan Pappe interview

Alan Philps

• Last Updated: May 18. 2008 9:08PM UAE / May 18. 2008 5:08PM GMT

Ilan Pappe, interviewed by Alan Philps, associate editor of The National, in Bristol, United Kingdom, on April 27 2008.


Q: You have said that the academic energy of the New Historians was exhausted in 2000 due to the second Intifada. Is their work finished as a group?

IP: In a way it is. They did their bit. There is a kind of closure. The story has been properly told now. It is up to politicians, activists, members of the public to decide how to act upon the story. I don’t think there is a need to revise the story again and again. The truth has come out. It is a simple truth, an unpleasant truth.

Q: But there are different interpretations. I have read Ephraim Karsh for example: he does not accept any of it.

IP: The Holocaust has its deniers and the Nakba has its deniers. Because someone denies a basic and simple truth does not turn it into a lie. I think the struggle over the memory has been won by the Palestinians and people like myself who support them. How to translate the achievement in the struggle over the memory into changing the realities on the ground today, it’s still a very big question.

Q: Avi Shlaim says in a new article that there are four results of the new historians’ work: they changed the way history is taught in Israeli schools, they helped Israeli public understand the point of view of the Arabs, they showed the Arabs that the Israelis are capable of real history, and finally they helped create the climate on both sides for Oslo. History that made a difference. Did it really make a difference?

IP: Time will tell whether this wishful thinking of my good friend Avi is a reality. He is one of my best friends. He is a very optimistic friend; he always looks for the positive side. What he mentions, I do not think is yet a reality. Let us take it point by point. Israeli text books have not changed. There was an attempt to change them, but due to political pressure, the ministry of education retracted. So the books are back to where they were before.

On the second point he is right. Israeli society cannot any more say it does not know what happened. What Avi forgot to mention is - the reaction to the acceptance was: OK – we were right to do it. It was self-defence. Many of them would say, like our third colleague in the new historians group (ed: Benny Morris), if necessary we should do it again. In a way he is right that the Israeli public is better educated on 1948 than before, however the positive results of that are not very clear. There are quite a lot of negative results to the new knowledge.

Q: People have hardened their hearts?

IP: Yes they hardened their hearts. Israel went through two phases. I was very happy with the phase of the 1980s when they were ashamed of what happened in 1948 and therefore denied it. I am afraid now the Israelis who are interested in this issue at all, whether politicians or just members the public, are not ashamed of what happened. They are not ashamed of what happened. They are more likely to accept the version I am writing about, but of course without the moral and political implications.

Q: Did the New Historians inspire the Oslo process?

IP: That is a valid point that Avi made in his article. I think he is right that the new version that the New Historians produced helped to create confidence in the initial stages of the Oslo process. As you may remember, the formula for Oslo was that the Israelis insisted the Palestinians accept their point of view that the conflict began in 1967 and they promised at the end of the day they would return to 1948. In order to prove to the Palestinians that they meant it, they produced the books of the new historians. It is also important to mention – and I don’t think that Avi mentioned it – that in the Camp David negotiations of summer 2000, exactly the opposite happened. The Palestinian delegation produced the works of the New Historians to tell the Israelis they cannot demand what they called “generous concessions” from the Palestinians. They can’t demand the Palestinians accept a closed deal, that totally bypasses and ignores 1948. So it works both ways.

Q: What will it lead to?

IP: It is too early to judge whether this effect is significant or not.

Q: You write: “I have no illusions that it will take more than one book to reverse the reality that demonises a people who have been colonised, expelled and occupied…” What will it take, and what will your contribution be?

IP: I think there I was a bit too megalomaniac. I don’t think books change people’s views. I think it depends on what we are talking about. If we are talking about a significant change on the ground, you need activism, policies and actions. You need pressure, cultural and economic, on Israel, making Israel a pariah state. It will not work otherwise. This is what is required to change the immediate reality on the ground, which is oppressive, destructive and dangerous. For building confidence out of the reality today – to build a new reality – books like my own can serve a very positive purpose. They can build a bridging narrative. They should be able to build an agreement on the past so that people can live together in the future.

Q: Is that a condition for peace – to agree on the past?

IP: Yes. Israel controls 80 per cent of Palestine. It is built on the ruins of 500 villages and 11 towns. For the people who belong, as a first generation or a second generation to that area, to accept the Jewish presence in Palestine in whatever form – two states, one state – in order to be able to say, all right they can stay, despite what they have done, they need the acknowledgement of what happened in the past. The Israelis so far are unwilling to give this acknowledgment.

Q: Can you provide an example from history where this has happened? After World War II, vast numbers of Germans were expelled from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Towns which had been German were made Polish or Czech. This is a process which has happened in the recent past.

IP: These are not the relevant historical examples. The relevant historical examples are Germany in the second world war and France in Algeria, South Africa and Northern Ireland. In all these cases the political process was incomplete without an acknowledgement of past crimes. In each of the cases I mentioned, you needed an acknowledgement and a recognition. If the Germans had denied the Holocaust, they would not have been re-admitted to the community of civilised nations.

Q: The French have not been so forthcoming over Algeria.

IP: But they are beginning. It is very slow. The French now realise that their troubled relationship with the Algerian immigrants is not just about socio-economic conditions. It is about identity, it is about narratives of the past. In South Africa – a bloodbath was prevented in South Africa because the narrative of the past was accepted.

Q: You mean the whites accepted the black narrative?

IP: And the blacks. The Africans accepted the need to re-introduce the white presence in South Africa as part of the national narrative. This is restitution, not retribution, compared to Rwanda and Zimbabwe, where the past was not recognised and because of that people were saying, “I’m not interested in what happened, I’m interested in punishing you.” One day the Palestinians and the Arabs will have the upper hand. There is no doubt about it.

Q: How long will that be?

IP: Maybe more than 100 years. The Crusaders hung on for 120 years. Alien communities that remain alien, and are alienated by the area, have no chance of existence in the long run. It’s very clear to me. However it’s not to late to find a modus vivendi. Israelis are an entity inside the Arab world. They are not outside the Arab world. They will have to accept this. How many nuclear bombs do you need to be in the Middle East but not part of it? How many wars can you afford to lose with the Arab world by being inside the Middle East but not feeling part of it? It’s impossible. A hundred years in history is not even a second. It’s a millisecond.

Q: Are you still working on a bridging narrative?

IP: The time is right. It is a clearer project than it was before. There is a large group of Israeli and Palestinian historians who feel committed to a very universal agenda, both in the way they look at the past and in the way they view the future. When we started we were very few. Most of the historians on both sides were very nationalistic and very loyal to their own political system’s ideologies. The number of historians - and not just historians, people who are writing academically - that are willing to work for a future that is based on universal principles of civil rights, human rights, citizens rights is growing. On the Palestinian side we are working closely with people like Salim Tamari and Rashid Khalidi. It does not matter that Khalidi is in America. The Palestinian refugee community is a very respected and important part of the Palestinian entity. It’s only the Israelis and some sections of the PA that exclude them. For me, they are the most important part of the Palestinians.

Q: When will this work bear fruit?

IP: It will be a very long period. First you need political closure on the ground. I don’t think it will happen in my generation, but maybe in my children’s generation. They have a fair chance of viewing something new developing. (They are 11 and 13). So I’m optimistic… In the Middle East, things can happen quicker than you think… or drag on. Both options are open.


Q: Are you still working on a book about South Africa?

IP: I’m editing a book which has Israelis, Palestinians and South Africans in it. They compare Israel and South Africa. Very interesting results. A lot things I thought were identical come out in this book as not at all the same. It’s a work in progress.

Q: South Africa was different. The blacks wanted a full part of the white state but the Palestinians don’t want to be part of Israel.

IP: They don’t want to be part of Israel. Neither do I want to be part of Israel. We want to be part of a new state which is not Israel and not Palestine. Something else. I don’t know what the shape would be of new political model. The big success of the ANC was that it was not a national movement. It was fighting for individual rights, not collective rights. Not just for Blacks. The Palestinians will have to learn this lesson. They have a better chance of changing the reality if they have a movement based on human rights and civil rights.

Q: Like when they called for a secular, democratic state in the old days?

IP: But when they talked about it then it was an Arab national state. Secondly you need the South African model to create the kind of action that was taken against South Africa in the west. You need something similar to the anti-apartheid movement. You need a boycott. Economic, but mostly cultural. The difference between South Africa in 1970 and Palestine in 2008 is that the world has gone through an amazing transformation. You can’t really know who is paying whom. Economic sanctions are very problematic nowadays. Whereas Israel cares very much about its image in the west and we have to puncture that image.

Q: Israel does not play rugby or cricket…

No but it plays football in Europe. And it goes to Eurovision. For many Israelis the inability of Israel to participate in cultural events and sport events would be a very, very worrying indication that they were losing a connection to Europe. Final point: when we compare present reality to apartheid south Africa, we should be aware that in some cases the reality is much better, namely situation of Palestinians in Israel is much better than in South African apartheid. But some sections of occupied territories they suffer much more than any African has suffered under apartheid. We have to be very clear when we use the South African model for what purposes we are using it, and be aware there are differences as well as similarities.

Q: This book you’re doing would be a manual for creating the boycott?

IP: Far more important is a constructive movement for the future - of how Palestinians and progressive Jews like myself can work together. It was not there before. The two-state solution is very segregative model. And anyway, it’s impossible now.

Q: You wrote in an article “If I am right to apply the term ethnic cleansing to 1948”. You had a moment of doubt. Do you have any doubts about the fact of ethnic cleansing or the appropriateness of the term?

IP: On the contrary. The book has been published in 13 languages but not Hebrew – no publisher would dare to publish it in Israel. I will publish it at my own expense. I’m translating it. I wrote it in English and now I’m doing the Hebrew version. It’ll take me a year or so. Since the book was published I had so many reactions of all kinds. Very negative reviews to positive reviews. I don’t regret any of it. It has withstood the most crucial criticism that has come from a team - from people like Ephraim Karsh and Benny Morris - who was sitting day and night to find every possible mistake. And they could not come with any factual mistake.

Q: But the term ethnic cleansing is ahistorical, isn’t it?

IP: I don’t think it is ahistorical. It’s not something you find in a document. It’s like genocide. The Nazis did not say they committed genocide. We say what they did was genocide. They said what they did was purification of the race. Israelis said what they did was redemption of the land. We have to deconstruct these terms. I’m not putting the Nazis and the Israelis in the same place. I think genocide is far worse than ethnic cleansing. But I think that the Nazis at an early stage were doing ethnic cleansing as well. I do think there are things to be learned from every case. But I do not think that what the Nazis did to the Jews is similar to what the Jews did to the Palestinians. It’s bad enough, but it is not par with the Holocaust.

Q: Before you left Israel, you said going to the UK was an attempt to see if you could live outside Israel. You have ended up in the English West Country. I was brought up in Bodmin, in Cornwall. So as a Cornishman, I can ask, don’t you feel it’s the end of the earth?

IP: Falmouth is even beyond Bodmin! It’s not even a year. Luckily I’m at two campuses, the Exeter campus, which is a bit more cosmopolitan, and the Falmouth one which is very interesting and also a very new place. I like fresh beginnings. There is a lot of good energy there.

After 10 months I am very happy and proud to be part of British academia. I may miss something but it is most decent academic system I have ever been part of. And I’ve been part of many academic systems. However I’m not sure I totally dissociate myself from Israel and Palestine. I’ll use Exeter university as my academic base, but I’ll be in constant touch with the ground. I went back for the first time for a week ago. As long as I’m allowed to go back, I’ll go back.

Q: America is looking quite weak at the moment. Will this have any effect on Israel and American’s unconditional support?

IP: I can’t give you a time frame to tell you when I think it will happen. But there are many precursors and undercurrents that indicate something very fundamental is changing on the American side. First of all on level of civil society. I just toured America a month ago. I don’t remember (A) being received in such a way and (B) seeing the sentiment against Israel, in many areas which I would not expect to see it. I’m talking about students, public lectures in libraries, the sheer numbers. It still does not reflect the mainstream point of view. If you add to this one the view of President Carter, I think something is changing there.

Q: This change – is connected to the Iraq war, the situation in Gaza, or what?

IP: I think it’s more of a long-term process. If you remember, the shift in American policy was beginning to be evident at higher levels before 9/11. In this respect 9/11 really played into Israel’s hands. That’s why so many people have – to me unacceptable - conspiracy theories. You cannot escape the feeling that it came at a moment when for the first time Israelis felt under pressure in the US. I think the overall support of America for Israel was beginning to be questioned in certain very patriotic American places.

Q: Finally, how much do Israelis think of 1948?

Not very often. For the younger generation, it’s the distant past, and the older generation who lived through it is very old now. I think 48 plays a very important role in the educational system. It is part of the initiation of Israelis into Zionism. They know – they have a metaphoric image of 1948. Every school ceremony is connected to 1948, every army initiation ceremony is connected to 1948. Every national festival which is not a religious one is connected to 1948. The year that everything that happened was moral, right and just. So people used a lot of 1948 in talking. If you tell them that in 2006 the Israeli army was not very good they would immediately compare it to 48 when everything went right. If you point to an atrocity they would say unlike 48 when Israel was pure and moral and just. The Palestinians cannot pass a day without thinking about it – mainly because there is no closure. Imagine being mugged, raped or wounded, or your family being murdered, and for 60 years, everyone tells you , this didn’t happen. You made it up. Sometimes it’s worse than the crime itself. I think they would love to put it behind them – the Palestinians – but you cannot if everyone denies it.