By John Whitbeck French President Jacques Chirac's public acknowledgment in 1995 that his country bears heavy responsibility for the deportation of French Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II was greeted with universal applause. Since the truth of his acknowledgment was so self-evident, one wonders in retrospect why it was so difficult and why it took so long. With the Middle East "peace process", which began in Madrid and accelerated in Oslo, having reached a definitive dead end, a similar statement of self-evident truth could produce immense psychological and practical benefits, restoring hopes for a decent future and a life worth living for both Israelis and Palestinians. Richard Goldstone, the eminent South African jurist who served as the first chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, stated in connection with the human rights atrocities with which he had to deal that "the victimised group must be dehumanised or demonised. Once this is done, it frees ordinary people from the moral restraints that would normally inhibit them from doing such terrible things." His principle is one of universal and timeless validity and is applicable to most of the settler-colonial transformations of recent centuries. For the past few years, the European-descended majorities in Australia, Canada and New Zealand have been making enormous efforts to provide compensation to their countries' dispossessed indigenous populations while implicitly or explicitly apologising for the injustices inflicted upon them. While, at a governmental level, the United States has not gone so far, American books and films have in recent decades depicted the "winning of the West" in less than glorious terms and have exposed the brutality and shame of the genocide of the Native Americans. At least for now, South Africa is a miracle. If the elixir of forgiveness and reconciliation drunk by Nelson Mandela and his compatriots of all colours could be identified, it should be bottled and widely distributed. Both demographically and chronologically, Israelis face a much more difficult problem in accepting in their hearts and minds that those who preceded them on the land which Israelis have colonised and made their own are human beings entitled to basic human rights. In South Africa, the indigenous people remain an overwhelming majority, while in other settler-colonial states they have been reduced to tiny minorities. In Israel and Palestine, the victors and the vanquished are closer in numbers and the dispossession is closer in time. The wounds are still raw. A durable Israeli-Palestinian peace is unimaginable so long as Israelis continue to dehumanise and demonise Palestinians and to treat them accordingly. Yet, psychologically, how can they do otherwise? If Palestinians are human beings entitled to basic human rights, then the transformation of Palestine into Israel (indeed, the entire Zionist experiment) is morally and ethically indefensible, since no moral or ethical framework (other than a purely race-based one) could justify doing to human beings what has been done to the Palestinians over the past century and continues to be done to them. As Rehavam Ze'evi, leader of Israel's Moledet Party, which publicly advocates "transfer" (the Israeli euphemism for the forced expulsion of the remaining Palestinians living in Israel and Palestine) and which Mr Netanyahu has recently invited to join his governing coalition, has stated: "We came to conquer land and settle it. If transfer is not ethical, then everything we have done here for 100 years is wrong." Exactly. Yet how many Israelis, who, like Palestinians, are human beings, can stare that reality in the face? The 20th century's major "isms" -- communism, fascism and Nazism -- are now almost universally recognised to have been tragic mistakes, even if many who embraced them were idealists who honestly believed that they were working to build a better world. Now that 50 years have passed since Israel's replacement of Palestine on the map of the world, perhaps it will no longer be taboo to pose the question whether political Zionism may not also have been a tragic mistake -- not just for those who found themselves in its path but also for those who embraced it. Whether there will ever be a true peace between Israelis and Palestinians depends less on the negotiated terms of any agreement than on the achievement of a moral, spiritual and psychological transformation among both Israelis and Palestinians. Achieving such a transformation will be devilishly difficult, particularly after the crash of the once soaring hopes engendered by the recent "peace process". However, three sentences of self-evident truth, spoken solemnly, publicly and with humility by an Israeli prime minister (perhaps the next one, reasonably soon) would be an excellent starting place: "We recognise that the realisation by the Jewish people of their destiny and their self-determination as a people and a nation has, inevitably and unavoidably, entailed great suffering for the Palestinian people. We understand that the Palestinian people view their fate as one of almost unparalleled injustice. We deeply regret this and hope that Palestinians (as well as Israelis) can now put the past behind them, focus firmly on present realities and future possibilities and accelerate and redouble their efforts to build a new and better society of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect and human dignity in the land both our peoples love." The writer is an international lawyer who writes frequently on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
