The Inevitable Cost Of Low Expectations

Well, the peace talks have failed, as everyone was expecting. Oslo has degenerated to the point now that not only is no-one surprised when the process has collapses - no-one can actually summon up the indignation to be surprised by the lack of surprise, either. If there has ever been another diplomatic engagement recently which was so universally regarded as doomed that even the alleged optimists just hope for a good outcome from its inevitable demise, then I should care to see it.

This is not the death throes of Oslo - this is merely the continued decomposition of its rotting corpse. The low expectations we have for the process have led us to a position where we treat this as normal. In doing this we are playing into the hands of the Israeli right, who are trying to slowly build a fait accompli in the territories. Our indifference, our expectation that "this is just how things are done here" isn't common sense, it's one of the major factors preventing the international community's facilitation of an effective peace deal.

All three parties shoulder a great deal of blame. The US government chose to tackle the Israeli government on the wrong issue and in the wrong way and then, in the way we have all become accustomed to, Obama capitulated twice over in the face of right-wing bluster. The Netanyahu government used Lieberman as an excuse to avoid properly engaging in these talks, playing a duplicitous double game. Then the Palestinian Authority showed little leadership and even less determination. Once the Israelis and the Americans reconciled after the Biden incident, the only reason to press the Israelis was in order to keep the Palestinians at that table.

Yet they've given up and Abbas has decided to stick with the proximity talks.

Today in the Middle East is a (relatively) tranquil present with a scary future. The new route for the Palestinians, if they are going to get anything and anywhere, is to follow the path of unilateral development. Declare their state, demand recognition from the world and once more follow the lessons of resistance from the First Inifada, being careful to avoid the awful mistakes and immoral terror of the Second. Already relatively uninvolved and disinterested states such as Brazil and Argentina have begun to recognise the PA as the legitimate government of the Occupied Territories.

This has been under-reported, but it represents a significant moment in this conflict where supporting unilateral Palestinian actions is no longer the preserve of the global left or Muslim community and has instead become 'common sense' from an international community which no longer regards Israel as a rational actor which responds to persuasion and moral reasoning. The Palestinians have a chance, right now, to build their state on their terms through growing external pressure and the construction of a domestic political force for independence.

A peace deal can no longer suffer from the corrosive effect of low expectations. If this cycle of cynicism and despair can only be broken by recognising that the Oslo framework has outlived its usefulness, then this is a price we should gladly pay. The alternative is a far longer conflict which will result in a disaster for the Israeli and the Palestinian people, as well as cementing the imminent death of liberal Zionism.

EDIT: Didn't post the right version...

Campfired

The most fashionable argument made by American liberals when trying to defend immigration has always been "they are willing to do the jobs no Americans are willing to do". I always found such an argument to be quite a cop-out from the left, as it is pretty much tantamount to saying "okay, fine, we will let you into our country, but only if we exploit you and degrade you to a degree considered unacceptable by both U.S. labor law and our basic concepts of dignity and humanity". This can best be seen in regards to the debate surrounding Arizona's recent passing of new laws on immigration in which racial profiling would be used to track down illegal immigrants. Liberals demanded such a ruling be blocked, but nothing more, thereby merely calling for a return to a normalization of a situation characterized by economic insecurity and vulnerability. To be sure, such discourse represents the inability of American liberals to move beyond a focus on fighting for cultural rights and racial/sexual equality and fully embrace class-based politics (a fight which would encompass the struggle for other equalities within it by addressing the materialist conditions and social structures that underpin much of this cultural politics).

But I digress...What this post was originally intended to address was a phenomenon I accidentally was alerted to while waiting for Jeopardy to come on (incidentally, one of the categories of the night was "Lenin", which I aced, thus earning $3000-worth of Marxist street cred...). This ABC News piece spoke of the "Amazon Gypsies", a cohort of the terminally unemployed and the elderly poor who travel around the country in their RVs looking for temporary work, in this case at an Amazon.com packaging plant. These flexible, casualized laborers receive around $10 an hour and live in their RVs. While the company pays for electricity, heating and water, the camper must pay rent for the land on which they park. According to the above-cited article on the subject, although the existence of such mobile workers has been a reality for some time, the recent economic downturn has swelled the ranks of these "gypsies", with over 500,000 such people now being documented as such from around the country. But what had once been a way for intrepid baby boomers to experience the world while financing their adventures with temporary work along the way, has now become a last resort for "economic refugees" without a home, permanent job or guarantee of health care.

The question is, is this a blip in on the radar of the American economic landscape, a temporary occurrence that will correct itself once the economy bounces back, or a foreshadowing of a new economic order in which the backs of the American worker have finally been broken, in which Americans have become the (internally) migrant labor force doing the jobs previous Americans had been unwilling to do? Could this be the a prime example of "creative destruction" in action, in which the resistance of the republicans to supporting welfare and social safety net initiatives finally pays off and the U.S. can reinvigorate its manufacturing sector on the back of an unprotected American workforce (for better or for worse)? Are these workers just the seeds of the creation of the American version of the rise of slums that already characterizes major cities across the world--something akin to the "floating population" of China--with RVs instead of shacks (got to hand it to Americans, even when we become refugees we still manage to drive huge fuck-off cars)?

Obviously my phrasing is meant to be a bit over-dramatic, and the answer to such questions will depend on a plethora of contingencies related to the way in which trajectories in geopolitical relations and social struggles unfold themselves. But I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't a symptom of a larger attack against labor that is already underway in the Republican's opposition towards the passage of any bill that would provide the poor with welfare or a social safety net, the same way that Thatcher used inflation-fighting policies as a way to create an "industrial reserve army".