Jihad, competing norms and the Israel–Palestine impasse

Abstract

A central factor in the failure to resolve the Israel–Palestine conflict is the direct competition that exists between its two most central international norms: ‘self-determination’, the fundamental claim of the Palestinians, and ‘self-defence’, the overriding concern of Israelis. Particularly since 9/11, Palestinian violence has been a liability for their cause and has served to validate Israel's self-defence arguments. Increasingly, Palestinian violence has been perpetrated by the Islamically oriented under the banner of jihad, which is understood almost exclusively in terms of armed struggle. Non-violence — which has the potential to undermine Israel's self-defence arguments and generate external pressure on Israel to adhere to the terms of a just peace — has been under-appreciated by such Palestinians. Non-violence is far from having a normative status in the Muslim world as an Islamically legitimate response to occupation and it is yet to be conceptualised as an effective form of resistance. The concept needs to be reformulated in accordance with the realities and opportunities confronting the Palestinians. Contextualisation combined with a maqasid or objective-oriented approach establishes non-violence as a preferable option to violence both in terms of the higher objectives of jihad, enshrined in the Quran, as well as of the attainment of Palestinian self-determination.

Abstract

Notes

1. In a poll conducted between March and May 2006 by the Pew Research Centre nearly all Egyptians and Jordanians (97 percent) said that they sympathised with the Palestinians. Almost three-quarters of Indonesians (72 percent) expressed the same sentiment, while 63 percent of Turks and 59 percent of Pakistanis also support the Palestinian cause (Kohut 2006). Moreover, research into the causes and consequences of conflict in the Middle East since 1945 has concluded that a defusion of the conflict between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’ depends on just resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Milton-Edwards & Hinchcliffe 2005).

2. Over 85 percent of Americans consider that a resolution of the conflict should be an important US foreign policy goal. In a January 2005 Pew poll, just over one-third of Americans stated that a permanent settlement of the Israel–Palestine conflict should be the top US foreign policy priority, while another 42 percent said it should be a high priority. These percentages have remained fairly constant in Pew polls since 1993 (Allen & Tyson, 2006). The majority of Americans also believe that there cannot be peace in the Middle East without a resolution of the Israel–Palestine conflict and that a resolution of it is important for winning the ‘war on terror’ and would reduce the likelihood of terrorism (WorldPublicOpinion.org, 2006).

3. By April 1948, when the Arab armies had decided on sending troops to Palestine, ‘a quarter of a million Palestinians had already been expelled, two hundred villages destroyed and scores of towns emptied’ (Pappe 2007: 118). Thus, Pappe regards the ‘war’ of 1948 as a ‘phoney war’ because:

hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been expelled by force before the war began, and tens of thousands more would be expelled in the first weeks of the war. For most Palestinians, the date of 15 May 1948 was of no special significance at the time: it was just one more day in the horrific calendar of ethnic cleansing that had started more than five months earlier (p. 131).

4. ‘Landslide’ is the term the 6 February 2006 issue of Time magazine used to describe the Hamas victory. Hamas won 76 seats in the 132-seat Palestinian parliament.

5. In 1917 the Balfour Declaration was made; the British Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, pledged British support to World Zionist Organisation (WZO) leader, Chaim Weizmann. Britain agreed to support ‘the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’.

6. A ‘commitment to Israel's security’ has been a long-standing mantra of Western leaders, particularly US presidents (Marcus 1989). The concern for Israel's security is reinforced not only by pro-Israel lobby groups and Israeli leaders but by other world leaders as well, who, when addressing the issue of Israel, tend to make its security concerns a principal focus. In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in May 2004, president Bush informed the crowd that ‘by defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you're also serving the cause of America’, that ‘AIPAC is calling attention to the great security challenges of our time’ and that ‘the United States is strongly committed, I am strongly committed, to the security of Israel…Israel is a democracy and a friend and has every right to defend itself from terror’ (Bush 2004). Similarly, when Australia's former foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, addressed the Annual General Meeting of the United Israel Appeal of New South Wales in November 2005, he remarked that ‘Australia is an unqualified supporter of Israel’, that ‘Israel must continually fight for its existence’ and asked ‘how can anyone expect the Israeli people to stand by as they see their friends, their spouses, their children blown apart in cafes and on buses?’ (Downer 2005). More recently, in interviews featured in the October 2007 issue of the Australia/Israel Review, both the then prime minister, John Howard, and Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, expressed their support for Israel, acknowledging its security concerns, and pledging their opposition to Hamas so long as it fails to adhere to the conditions set by Israel (recognise Israel, accept agreements and renounce violence).

7. Alvaro de Soto was the UN Under-Secretary General, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Personal Representative of the Secretary General to the PLO and the PA, and Envoy to the Quartet (1 June 2005 to 7 May 2007).

8. It is pertinent to note that Alvaro de Soto's (2007) report documents that Israel only accepted the Roadmap subject to 14 reservations. Moreover, he notes that Israel stands in violation of its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention; the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice concerning the barrier; its Roadmap obligations (which include freezing construction, dismantling unauthorised settlement outposts, opening Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem, and facilitating the movement of Palestinian Authority representatives); and its Agreement on Movement and Access (AMA) obligations (easing West Bank checkpoints, reaching targets for movement through crossing points in and out of Gaza, facilitating a seaport and airport in Gaza).

9. According to the maqasid-oriented approach, this does not present a problem, however. The 14th century scholar of Islamic law, Al-Shatibi, explains that, while a maqsad may not be identifiable from a single verse of the Quran, the reading of multiple verses on a certain issue will reveal an associated purpose, intent or objective (Masud 1995; Raysuni 2006). Mohammad Hashim Kamali (2006: 124) elaborates:

There may be various textual references to a subject, none of which may be in the nature of a decisive injunction. Yet their collective weight is such that it leaves little doubt as to the meaning that is obtained from them. A decisive conclusion may, in other words, be arrived at from a plurality of speculative expressions.

Raysuni (2006: 323) concurs with this view, contending that ‘every principle which is in keeping with the actions of the Lawgiver [God] and whose meaning is derived from sufficiently numerous and varied pieces of evidence that it may be affirmed with definitive certainty may be built upon and treated as authoritative even if it is not attested to by any specific text’.

10. Shakir (2003), for instance, refutes the notion of jihad as perpetual war and documents that, even in the classical period, there were scholars, including al-Qurtubi (d.1293), Ibn al-Arabi (d.1165) and Imam at-Tabari (d.932), who opposed the dominant understanding, interpretation and application of offensive jihad and interpreted such verses as the ‘sword verse’ (Quran 9:5) in defensive terms. Neither Shakir nor the classical jurists he quotes, however, have moved beyond the dominant perception of jihad as involving the use of armed force and conceived of non-violent resistance as a legitimate form of jihad; they have confined themselves to the debate over offensive versus defensive jihad.

11. According to Kamali (2006) 140 of these verses refer to devotional matters (prayer, fasting, charity, pilgrimage), 70 concern family matters (marriage, divorce, custody, maintenance, inheritance), 70 relate to commercial transactions (sale, loans, leases, mortgage), 30 are about crimes and penalties (murder, theft, robbery, adultery, slander), 30 address issues of socio-political order (justice, equality, evidence, consultation, rights and duties of citizens), and 10 relate to economic matters (relations between rich and poor, workers’ rights and conditions).

12. It should be noted that in Shia Islam jihad is the sixth pillar of religion and therefore jihad is even more central to Islam for Shiites than it is for Sunnis. However, as the Palestinians are almost exclusively Sunni Muslims, this article concentrates on the place of jihad within the Sunni context.

13. Interview conducted on 22 March 2006 at the interviewee's office in Ramallah.

14. Research published by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org in 2007 found considerable support for the UN as the key organisation for conflict resolution. Fifty-four percent of Israelis said that ‘when dealing with international problems, Israel should be more willing to make decisions within the United Nations even if that means Israel will sometimes have to go along with a policy that is not its first choice’ (Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Halim Rane

Dr Halim Rane has a Bachelor of Human Sciences degree in Sociology and Islamic Studies which he obtained from the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). He completed his PhD in 2008; his dissertation, ‘Reconstructing Jihad amid Competing International Norms: Implications for a Resolution of the Israel-Palestine Conflict’, was awarded ‘academic excellence’ and is nominated for the Chancellor's Medal for 2008. Dr Rane is currently the Deputy Director of the Griffith Islamic Research Unit and lecturer in the National Centre of Excellence in Islamic Studies at Griffith University. He is the author of Reconstructing Jihad amid Competing International Norms published by Palgrave Macmillan, New York.