THE WALL IS PEACE 2

A poster on the message boards I try my damnedest to avoid reprinted the most recent article by Professor Noam Chomsky regarding the wall cross-stitching the map in the Holy Land these days. I object to Chomsky on so many levels save our mutual - well, in his case, feigned - disregard for government, so - in a rare fit of recycling and indulging in the "C&P" myself, I responded with my previous response to Jonathan Kay, with a few editorial flourishes thrown in to compensate for my prior sloppy tone.

Anyway, Miss Ivmeer wrote back with some fine questions I was only too happy to answer:

"I have an honest question, astropolis.

If what the Palestinians want is their own land, then isn't the wall essentially giving it to them? I mean, the wall separates them formally from Israel so that they can do whatever they want on their own side.

It's not as though if the Palestinians were given their own land that the border between Israel and Palestine would be open. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis would want it that way.

So why don't they take advantage of their own space and live their own lives?"

So why don't they take advantage of their own space and live their own lives?

Because it is not that simple (but what is?, I know). They're being aggressed against by another state. See, if I am told that "Here, we're making two states - one Palestinian, the other Israeli - now be happy, you each got your own land" I am being told that collectivism is solving the problem. Simply by virtue of belonging to one group or another, I am being forced by that group to meet a standard that basically assumes we are all one and the same. It does not account for every other difference I might have apart from my neighbor, only that we come from a similar ethnic heritage.

But the larger issue. Simply by being confined in a single territory made up of ethnic brethren, we expect to see some modicum of a solution. But private property has been violated. Destroyed. That will effect no solution. The obvious outcome of this negation of the individual for the group is why we have so many landless refugee Palestinians (understand, I do understand the history - Arab governments compelled the oldest of them to flee in the first place in 1948 - perhaps the single most disastrous act in the history of the conflict). By cordoning them off with "the rest of them", "with their own land" we've essentially seen them thrown into chaos. "Land", property, and the happiness and cultivation derived from both, comes from mutual exchange. This is force and it won't have the expected outcome. They are expected to part ways with their confiscated property and - what - new magical properties appear in an independent Palestine?

Now, I also realize these "refugee camps" are actually cities and some semblance of property is being affirmed within them given time (which, if we were to examine Chomsky's economic beliefs, we'd see them rightly repudiated in this context - his socialist-anarchist negation of private property is an unnatural proposition). A Palestinian claim to property confiscated coming on 60 years ago is impossible to satisfy - and at this point, probably shouldn't be. What needs to happen is an affirmation of property rights as they are and fend off any further encroachments. But to continue property confiscation, as Sharon's government is doing, is insane. It will perpetuate the problem well into the future.

My concerns always stem from regard to private property. Which is why I take any statements emanating from Noam Chomsky with a grain of salt, because he explicitly calls for the destruction of private property rights - which, purposefully or not, tend to result in wanton destruction because there is no mechanism by which cultivation, personal protection, innovation, and mutual exchange can exist any longer - though I value his criticisms of government, his alternative is government no longer called government (because none of these ends can be achieved without resort to coercive force) - and for a linguist - a celebrated one at that - such language dilution is especially appalling. Because some people aggress on another's property - leading to self-defense (reprisal), Chomsky's solution is to - far from penalizing the aggressors - punish the victim by making property illegal (how he ever expects to do this without force is anybody's guess) - thus, without property, no one can aggress on another! What magic! He's a linguist alright.

"If the innocent honest Man must quietly quit all he has for Peace sake, to him who will lay violent hands upon it, I desire it may be considered what kind of Peace there will be in the World, which consists only in Violence and Rapine; and which is to be maintained only for the benefit of Robbers and Oppressors."
-- John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government

Take that, Noam Chomsky.

It's not as though if the Palestinians were given their own land that the border between Israel and Palestine would be open.

I'm not talking about giving them land. I'm talking about them being able to retain what land - property, more rather - that they have already and at least have their rights recognized to apply for redress concerning property already taken or destroyed. If that's too difficult, consider the alternative (already outlined).

I'm further not talking about forcing it to be open - akin to the state coming in and say "trade with that person" - I'm talking about allowing it to be. If some individuals or groups of want to keep to themselves and not trade outside of the group - they should have the ability to not want to if that's what they should so want. If other individuals or groups of want to hob-nob and trade goods, services, labor, etc. with those outside their ethnicity or nation, then they should be allowed to as well.

This is why Switzerland works. Freedom of association and private property is paramount. Four different languages and attendant customs flourish without friction under the banner of one geo-political unit because no force is put upon any of them to trade or not trade with one another. People always retort to me that Switzerland is an anomaly. I say that is so because they are the only state to have actually considered it.

Neither Palestinians nor Israelis would want it that way.

You may be able to state that as a generalization, but not an absolute. If a single Palestinian dissents and says "I want to trade with Israel" it throws a kink into the whole observation.

The thing is, people already have their own land, and the construction of this wall is an attempt to decimate this reality. The land isn't collectively owned by one of two masses. Palestinian personal property is being altered, destroyed, confiscated (for that matter, and not much discussed, so is Israeli individual personal property being assaulted) by the state. That won't solve any problems, it will exacerbate them.

The thing is, to the best of my knowledge, nobody involved in the conflict is prescribing a market solution to the problem. The governments involved don't want the headache (for them, for everyone else it's far more convenient) of having jurisdiction over territory that isn't contiguous - which IS, I rather admit, what would happen if my perspective were to be adopted. But by affirming the right of the individual, you're far less likely to aggress against said individual. Palestinians may be collectively embittered against Israelis but it cannot be denied that this bitterness is intensified by their personal experience. The same Palestinian family who has lived in the same house for 150 years, moves about freely for the most part, and hasn't lost any sons or daughters to the conflict isn't probably likely to be near as bitter as they who had their first home confiscated, their second home bulldozed, and their third sluiced off from a significant portion of their yard by some concrete monstrosity.

A single act of Palestinian aggression in Israel always results in collective punishment within the Palestine Authority. That's suicidal.

Private property rights are the key. Insisting on forgetting that they even exist will bring us no further to the best conclusion. I don't expect a perfect solution to this, or even one at all, but an affirmation of private property per Israelis and Palestinians is one good first step towards lessening the destructive effects of this conflict. It has, however, rarely been ventured as even a consideration.