To the first point: One of the things I don’t like about blogging is the demand for conciseness. Though I could in theory write a 5,000-word blog post, I don’t have the time to write it, and no-one wants to take that long to read a blog post. And so I compress, and avoid explaining some of the nuance. My mother, like every human being on the planet, is a complex person.

As to the second point, I relied mostly on a memory I had when I was ten. My father was going to take us to an amusement park near the Kentucky border. My mother said that he couldn’t because he was violating the divorce decree. The police got involved and everything. (In the end, our father took us, but it wasn’t a fun trip. He sat at the entrance and just told us to run off and do whatever. He wouldn’t give us any money whatsoever for concessions, and they charged five cents for water, and so we ran around on a hot day with no fluids.)

And so I tried to remember why there was the big brouhaha, and I thought it had to do with taking us out of the county. But now I have to admit that my memory was wrong here somehow. The trouble could have been that my father never told my mother directly that he was going to take us on the trip, having my brother tell her instead. It could be that, at the time, my mother misunderstood the divorce decree. Or it could have been something else that I can’t think of right now.

All of this calls to mind two important issues. First, autobiography is not memoir. In an autobiography, the author is reporting history. She collects facts and does research, even though she’s writing about her own life. An autobiography focuses on facts. In memoir, the author relies on her memory and the memory of those around her to inform the writing. And a memoirist is not merely reporting history, but is telling a story. She is using plot devices and story structures and all the other elements we use to tell a good story. But real life is not a “good story”. In real life, things don’t have a beginning, middle, and end–life just flows on. But stories demand a beginning, middle, and end, and so the memoirist frames her life to conform to the conventions of storytelling. Similarly, human beings are ridiculously complex, but for the sake of telling a story, especially a shorter story, the writer doesn’t dive into the 37 reasons why a character does what he does.

I am not an autobiographer, I am a memoirist. That distinction is crucial to understanding what I write. I have no intention to get facts wrong or to misrepresent anyone or anything. But I do try to tell a good story. And if I do get something wrong, as I did yesterday, I want to be called out on it so I can get the facts straight. I have learnt that it is better to be wrong and speak up than to be wrong and remain silent. If I speak up, then my wrongness can be pointed out, and I can change my mind and be right, whereas if I remain silent, I stay wrong.

“The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dalí

And then there is the niggling issue of the reliability of memory. Science keeps showing us it’s not particularly reliable. The human brain is constantly restructuring itself and putting the pieces together the best it can, albeit imperfectly. We only have the illusion that our memory persists, when in fact our memory warps and melts and drips.

Is this a terrible thing? I’m of the same mind as a former professor of mine, Leah Savion of Indiana University (probably the best teacher I’ve ever had). She has an idea (which I really wish would get some notice in the academic community) that she calls “naive logic”. It’s the premise that, despite all the demonstrable failings of the human mind–its inconsistencies, its inability to grasp even basic logic, and yes, its faulty memory–it has nonetheless served humanity well for several hundred thousand years and is responsible for getting us to evolve to the point we are at. Therefore, despite our brains’ deficiencies, they serve us well nonetheless and therefore ought not to be dismissed when we delve into a deeper understanding of philosophy.

Now, the implications for this idea are profound in many areas of philosophy and cognitive science, and I won’t bother to dive into those here (because, again, none of us wants a 5,000-word blog post). Suffice it to say that I think I, and all of us, are usually doing the best we can with that wad of grey stuff between our ears. It’s part of why I try to treat people with trust and grace, even when others might consider doing so unwarranted. I believe that to live otherwise would be pretty much impossible. We would always be paralyzed, doubting every little fact of the universe.

So keep doing the best you can. I will.

Following the protests in São Paulo (and supporting demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro) last Thursday, the weekend saw protests spread throughout the country. On Saturday, as the Confederations Cup kicked off in Brasilia, protesters demonstrated against the costs of preparing for the Confederations Cup and World Cup. Those expenses were also subject to protests in Rio de Janeiro yesterday, protests that turned violent when police launched tear gas and attacked protesters who voluntarily chose not to provoke the cops (to little avail). And though a Facebook RSVP is far from a rock-solid statistical analysis, over 200,000 people on Facebook said they would attend protests in São Paulo today. As the unrest continues at least in the short term and begins to become something more than an isolated protest gone awry, the question remains: what exactly is going on?

First thing’s first: it’s not a “Brazilian Spring.” The “Arab Spring” was a wave of popular movements demanding an end to decades of repressive and undemocratic regimes; despite the flaws in Brazilian democracy [or democracy more broadly], such conditions do not apply to Brazil, nor is it the subject of protest for Brazilians in the streets. Though police violence was common both in the countries of the Arab Spring two years ago and in Brazil now, the broader political systems are fundamentally different, as are the issues confronting the people. And it’s far from some widespread movement; thousands have taken to the streets, and that’s not insignificant, but in metro areas of 20+ million (São Paulo) and 11+ million (Rio de Janeiro), thousands or even hundreds of thousands is far from a mass movement. That’s not to say people don’t quietly support the demands and issues without taking to the streets, or to say it can’t grow further. But calling it a “Brazilian Spring” (or any popular expression of discontent) is as lazy as slapping a “-Gate” on the end of every political scandal in the US.

So what is it? Well, simply put – it’s complicated. While a quick glimpse seems to suggest a broad movement, the causes of protest in Brazil over the last few days have varied, from bus fares in São Paulo and then to police violence and even to soccer. Throughout it all, on the surface there has not been a unified message that offers a coherent set of political demands. That said, these seemingly disparate issues actually tap into some of the broader, and more historically rooted, processes that are fueling the protests. Indeed, when looking at the actual structural issues at play in bus fare increases, government spending on athletics, or police violence, one sees the long-term historical processes of governance that helps the few at the cost of the many as a common thread throughout.

On the one hand, the bus fares are about a basic issue – increasing the cost of travel for the majority of an urban population, even while the wealthy, with their cars (or helicopters), who can most afford increases in daily expenses, remain exempt from such increases. This issue is not a new one in Brazil; in the 1950s and 1960s, student movements regularly protested against bus fares and demanded exemption for students who had to travel to school. Nor was such activity limited to students; as JF String reminds us, Sao Paulo witnessed protests over an overnight bus fare hike in 1958. Such protests were not just minor incidents of public anger, either; the 1958 protests left four dead after the police and protesters came into conflict.

Which leads us into a second process that has deep historical roots. The brutal and grotesque use of tear gas and rubber bullets against unarmed civilians last week was but another incident of police violence in what is a decades-old phenomenon (and one that arguably has its roots in slavery in Brazil). Throughout the twentieth century, police violence was a feature of arrests and crowd control, especially in poor areas. Even in the 1960s, police death squads operated in favelas during the military regime, prompting the press to distinguish between death squads against “criminals” and torture against political prisoners. The end of the dictatorship did not bring an end to such violence, in no small part because such violence well predated the military regime of 1964-1985, and such violence has continued to define police tactics and methods throughout much of urban Brazil well into the 21st century.

Likewise, government largesse going to those who need it the least also has deep historical roots. The First Republic (1889-1930) was an oligarchy in which regional elites were able to look out for their own interests; the creation of Brasilia in the 1950s gave Brazil a flashy capital to show the world even while it failed to provide for the rural poor who helped build the high modernist capital; the “Brazilian miracle” of 1967-1974 that dramatically expanded the gap between Brazil’s rich and poor even while it laid the groundwork for the economic “lost decade” of the 1980s; or the neoliberalism of the 1990s, whose zealous quest for privatization that affected everyday expenses in Brazil in a dramatic fashion even while multinational corporations got richer. The government spending on the World Cup itself is vulgar; the costs of preparing for the World Cup have been astronomical, with $13.3 billion originally scheduled for preparations, money that went to new fancy stadiums far more than it did to infrastructural improvements that would benefit all Brazilians. That so little of that money went to infrastructural improvements that would genuinely affect the lives of most Brazilians is unsurprising, just as it is unsurprising that some are now bristling at it.

But these are historical processes that go back decades. Why are Brazilians protesting now?

In part, the answer is because the political space and will are there. There is no openly repressive dictatorship that will support the immediate, disproportionate use of police violence to silence dissent, and that’s not nothing – though it seems a long time ago, it’s only 49 years since Brazil’s 21-year military regime began, and only 28 years since the country returned to democracy (and 24 years since the first direct presidential elections since 1960). Certainly, in many ways, socially, economically, and in terms of police power, Brazil remains undemocratic, but it is still a functioning electoral democracy that cannot support police repression openly the way the military regime did. That’s not to say the police won’t try to use such repression – indeed, that’s exactly what they are trying to do – but in an electorally democratic system, the federal government cannot support such violence without losing much of its legitimacy.

But it’s not just a change in political systems that help explain why these protests are taking place. After all, Brazil was under an electoral democracy throughout the 1990s, when stories of police-led massacres were common, be it the Candelaria Massacre of eight unarmed street children in 1993 or the murder of 102 prisoners (another nine apparently died at the hands of their fellow inmates) in the 1992 Carandiru Massacre. And even in the 2000s, as  Though many condemned the violence, it did not bring people to the streets. So what has changed?

I think in part, it comes back to what has happened in the past ten years. At the macro-economic level, the gap between the rich and poor overall shrank somewhat, but it’s still grossly unequal.  On top of that, the economic message, both within Brazil and projected to the rest of the world, has I think played no small part in helping to explain the protests. By the second Lula term, both the government and outside economic analysts were pointing to Brazil as a new emerging global powerhouse. They pointed to its ability to weather the global recession of 2008-2009 and the efforts to eliminate extreme poverty as example of Brazil as a new economic haven, one that had finally found the path of widespread growth and stability after decades (or centuries) of exploitation, inequalities, and uneven growth. Even its inclusion in the fictional BRIC [Brazil-Russia-India-China] made it seem like a new economic age had arrived, one that disregarded the lack of unity between the four countries and smacked more of analytical laziness than any genuine explanation of global economics. Many commentators viewed Brazil winning the right to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics as the final example that the country was set to show the world how far it has come.

And at first, many people in the mid-2000s began to feel this change. The purchasing power of the working class expanded, even while analysts trumpeted the apparent growth of the middle class. For decades, many Brazilians had been told that the economy was about to give them more, only to find such promises to be hollow. The last ten years seemed to suggest to many people that finally, the time where they, too, could finally have “more” – more stuff, more purchasing power, a more improved standard of living, a more just and equal society. Yet such promises may have been premature, as recent macroeconomic policies and trends have once again shaken Brazil in the global economy. Yet this time, things are different than previous times when economic success was promised, only to not arrive to a majority of the population. This time, it seemed the change could be real, that perhaps such promises of sustained and more-equally distributed stability could happen. Though it is “only” about ten years of relative economic stability for many (though certainly not for all), ten years is a long time in a country where dramatic economic troubles hit in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Indeed, for many Brazilians, recent years have marked  the first time government optimism and reality seemed even close to corresponding for nearly a decade.

And then the bus fare hikes happened amidst growing inflation and economic uncertainty, affecting most those who could least afford it. And then the police turned to the same transparently repressive, brutal, and excessive tactics that they’ve used for decades. And then, on Saturday, Brazil kicked off a sporting event displaying opulence and excess to the world, even while it in reality benefited very few Brazilians in substantive ways (and indeed denied many the right to live in their own homes). And as these superficially disparate inequalities erupted at the same time, a general discontent that old structures of inequality have persisted became the discourse that draws these protests together. That helps to explain why some protesters are now (in many ways erroneously) equating the government of center-left president Dilma Rousseff with the conservative political elites; even though she has very real differences from conservatives in Brazilian politics, her government (and Lula’s before her) have apparently not done enough to erode those structures.

And in some ways, it is. Programs like Bolsa Familia and Fome Zero have had real impacts for millions of Brazilians, and  affirmative action has helped address racial inequalities in higher education. But, as the bus fares, the spending on athletic boondoggles, and the police violence all made clear in the last few days, many other things remain the same. The problems that brought Brazilians to the streets aren’t strictly economic, but economics is involved; they aren’t strictly social, but social struggles are involved; they aren’t strictly political, but the history of political hierarchies is involved. In short: the conditions for protest are perhaps new, but the problems fueling those protests are old.

Beat G was going strong in 1963. That was self-evident. By 1967, the hippie counterculture movement was everywhere in the City and the Beats were gone.

So, when did this rollover really happen?

It wasn’t a light-switch deal. But it also wasn’t a slow morphing. The change was farily swift by usual social standards, and the Beats were forever scattered, absorbed, whatever. Many of us geezers who are still around like to think of 1965 as the year the world changed.

In fact, we can even pinpoint the month and the day. It was Friday, December 3, 1965. The event was Bob Dylan’s San Francisco press conference at the KQED studio just prior to his five concert tour of the Bay Area.

Well, maybe this is a bit too precise for anal-retentive historians. But many of my fellow geezers will tell you that Dylan’s press conference was an hour of transition that stood squarely between Beat G and hippie counterculture. The seasoned Beats sometimes look at that event with swampy eyes. Beat G was morphing very fast, even before Dylan’s arrival in the City. After his press conference, Beat G seemed to vanish, forever.

KQED was the City’s educational channel. It started broadcasting in 1954 from an old truck warehouse on 4^th Street. The station was a completely volunteer effort, down to the second-hand furnishings. It also grew up with the Beat Generation and was an early, progressive voice for the arts of the time. If you were City Beat G, you knew and loved KQED because it gave you a voice and a vision. By 1965, the station was well established in the City, although it still struggled financially. It had become locally legendary for innovation in broadcasting and spoke to the artsy side of life in San Francisco.

Dylan was the musical voice of Beat G prior to his City press conference. But he also had a keen eye toward a future counterculture. His words were clear enough to those who would listen carefully. It was all about change, the same message that Beat G loved to hear and express. But it was just a little askew. Dylan’s album, Highway 61 Revisited, had a massive impact on Beat G as well as the new, still-forming counterculture movement. He spoke both languages and was constantly re-defining himself quicker than the rest of us could keep up. It was his December 1965 press conference that laid it all out most clearly, in plain English and in the City.

Looking at Dylan during the press conference paints the picture of Beat G, but just a tiny bit twisted out of shape. His music and words went beyond the aging message. It was clear that he was looking farther than the established limits, signaling something that transcended our localized art message. Dylan seemed to be calling for a more dramatic, universal view of the world that we had never envisioned. He was different, in nearly every way. Yet, for the Beat G folks, his message was also familiar.

Dylan was the essence of enigmatic, even for Beat G. He left us dangling, uncertain, and he seemed to thrive on the process. Was he just pimping the press or was he carving out a new direction? In December 1965, we weren’t sure. Within a year, we were all certain about it. Looking back, it seems obvious.

Check out a few of the press conference exchanges:

Press: Do you think of yourself primarily as a singer or poet?

Dylan: Oh, I think of myself as a song and dance man, ya’know.

Press: Why?

Dylan: Oh, I don’t think we have enough time to really go into that.

What! That was definitely not a traditional Beat G answer. Who was this guy who was not a poet yet wrote great poetry, was a lousy singer but created unforgettable music, and set himself up as a “song and dance man?” He was claiming a path that none of us expected, none of us could quite figure out.

Press: What poets do you dig?

Dylan: Rimbaud, I guess; W. C. Fields; The family, you know, the trapeze family in the circus; Smokey Robinson; Allen Ginsberg; Charlie Rich – he’s a good poet.

Wow! If you were Beat G, this came right out of left field. Who among us would have considered Smokey Robinsion and Allen Ginsberg in the same sentence? We were obviously hearing something very new here. We never gave much thought to the trapeze family, nor to W. C. Fields. In fact, we shunned the circus as much too square to be of consequence. W. C. Fields would never have been considered cool. That was pure heresy.

Press: If you were going to sell out to a commercial interest, which one would you choose?

Dylan: Ladies garments.

Press: Mr. Dylan, I know you dislike labels and probably rightfully so, but for those of us well over thirty, could you label yourself and perhaps tell us what your role is?

Dylan: Well, I’d sort of label myself as “well under thirty.” And my role is to just, ya’know, to just stay here as long as I can.

Press: Do you consider yourself a politician?

Dylan: Do I consider myself a politician? Oh, I guess so. I have my own party though.

Press: Does it have a name?

Dylan: No. There’s no presidents in the party – there’s no presidents, or vice presidents, or secretaries or anything like that, so it makes it kinda hard to get in.

Press: Is there any right wing or left wing in that party?

Dylan: No. It’s more or less in the center – kind of on the Uppity scale.

Uppity? My Lord of Beat! What is this guy trying to say here? Uppity is OK?

Press: Do you think your party could end the war with China?

Dylan: Uh – I don’t know. I don’t know if they would have any people over there that would be in the same kind of party, ya’know? It might be kind of hard to infiltrate. I don’t think my party would ever be approved by the White House or anything like that.

Press: Is there anyone else in your party?

Dylan: No. Most of us don’t even know each other, ya’know. It’s hard to tell who’s in it and who’s not in it.

Press: Would you recognize them if you see them?

Dylan: Oh, you can recognize the people when you see them.

Where is this guy heading? He’s a party of one! That’s about as anti-Beat G as you can get and still be a credible artist. Unheard of! So, the message is clear – art is about the individual, not the collective. Politics for one is good. Commercialsm has its place. Who needs Beat G anymore?

Press: Mr. Dylan, when would you know that it was time to get out of the music field into another field?

Dylan: When I get very dragged.

Press: When you stop making money?

Dylan: No. When my teeth get better – or God, when something makes a drastic – uh – when I start to itch, ya’know? When something just goes to a terrifying turn and I know it’s got nothing to do with anything and I know it’s time to leave.

OK, that’s the bottom line. There it is. You go your own way, on your own time, on your own dime. That’s a different message, for sure. No Beat G here, boss. It’s a world of one. Where have we been lurking all these years? Individualism was the word from this poet, and he had a loud voice.

By the time of this press conference, Dylan was already a prominent figure. He had influence, followers, Beat G’ers who gave him love. But he also embodied something that Beat G missed – unabashed, unashamed individuality. Dylan was going to go his own way, regardless. He was breaking new ground with each song, each appearance, each of his enigmatic one-liners. It was a zig-zag road trip, nothing familiar or comfortable. This was fresh stuff.

When Dylan spoke, it was with his own, unique voice. Willingly or not, he pointed out the fatal flaw with Beat G. We spoke mostly to ourselves, to our art, and not to the bigger world. For Dylan, it was all about finding his unique path and having no fear of playing it out in public throuh his art. He had walked away from the beloved folk music to folk-rock (although he denied it) and had a vision that could not be shared, or even understood at times.

By December 1965, it was clear enough that Beat G needed to move on, somehow. We each had to find our own path and could no longer live within the comfort of a small enclave, no matter how talented or ground-breaking its members.

Like Dylan, we had to change our game. There were no other options. Dylan finally broke our collective backs, probably without any awareness of the meaning. We had to be ourselves to be real, just like him.

Looking back, he did us a big favor. His legacy and his word-lessons were good.

You can read the entire Dylan press conference here, thanks to Rolling Stone. Thanks to Kripes ProBoards for the Dylan press conference images. Thanks to KQED for all they’ve done over the years, and for having the insight to bring Dylan to San Francisco.

A few other articles on San Francisco Beat G:

Soppy Writer Nostalgia and City Lights Books

The 1963 Novelist

Cool Beat G in 1963

            From many sources there is a widespread effort to resume a peace process that has in the past led to failure, frustration, and anger, and often to renewed violence. The newly appointed American Secretary of State, John Kerry, is about to make his fifth trip to Israel since the beginning of 2013, insisting that the two sides try once more to seek peace, and warning if this doesn’t happen very soon, the prospects for an agreed upon solution will be postponed not for just a year or two, but for decades. Kerry says if this current effort does not succeed, he will turn his attention elsewhere, and that the United States will make no further effort. So far, aside from logging the air miles, seems perversely to be responsive to Tel Aviv’s demands for land swaps to allow settlement blocs to be incorporated into Israel and to promote further Palestinian concessions in relation to security arrangements, and totally unresponsive to Ramallah’s demands for some tangible signs from the Israeli government that resumed negotiations will not be another slammed door. In this vein, Kerry’s most ardent recent plea was at the Global Forum, an annual event organized under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee. Kerry told this audience that they possessed the influence to make the peace talks happen.

            Somewhat surprisingly, even Marwan Barghouti writing from prison, has seemingly endorsed this Washington activism, and seemed to go further, calling upon the United States Government to use its leverage with Israel to resolve the conflict in a manner that recognizes Palestinian rights, and at the same time serves the broader American interest of stability in the Middle East. If Barghouti’s response to written questions submitted by Adnan Abu Amer of Al-Monitor, and published on May 28, 2013, is read carefully, it reinforces an extremely pessimistic assessment of current prospects for peace. Barghouti is urging the U.S. Government that it must make a 180 degree turn away from its posture of unconditional support for Israel if it wants to be credible with Palestinians in the search for a solution to the conflict that accords with natural justice. The United States would need, above all, to insist that Palestine becomes a fully sovereign state within the 1967 borders, have East Jerusalem as its capital, while supporting the full implementation of UN Resolution 194 that affirms the right of return of Palestinian refugees, and the removal of the settlements without noting any exceptions. These are all reasonable positions to take, each in furtherance of the relevant standards of international law. Yet it must be observed, and I am sure this is not news to Mr. Barghouti, Palestinian reasonableness in the context of the Israel/Palestine struggle means choosing not to be politically relevant.

            It is from precisely this perspective that Barghouti words should be carefully and respectfully pondered. He calls the two-state solution “the only possible solution” and adds that it “must not be abandoned.” It is a vision of a two-state solution that comes superficially close to what the Israeli peace activist, Uri Avnery, advocates, but seems light years away from the kind of ‘solution’ that Israel might consider or Kerry advocate. In other words, there are two radically different two-state solutions that are often not being carefully distinguished: what might be called ‘the American conception,’ originally detailed in Barack Obama’s May 21, 2011 speech delivered at the U.S. State Department, which at the time of its utterance seemed to look toward Israel’s withdrawal to 1967 borders, with minor border adjusments, but included a general acceptance of Israel’s refusal to implement the Palestinian right of return behind the green line and its expectation that the main settlements would be incorporated into Israel sovereign territory . As so often has happened suring the Obama presidency, what seemed initially forthcoming, was soon altered by backpedaling in a manner that has severely damaged American credibility as a fair-minded third party. The U.S. Government in this instance has gradually come to acquiesce in, even if does not openly avow, these Israel’s unyielding demands, which makes Washington approach to the idea of two states for two peoples radically different than the Barghouti/Avnery conception of Palestinian statehood and self-determination. This latter conception is premised on the establishment of a genuinely sovereign and independent Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, and a genuine equality of the two states on matters bearing on security, resources, and refugee identity. There are, to be sure, important differences between Barghouti and Avnery with respect to the right of return, with Avnery opting for a more territorial view of the conflict consistent with the more moderate and humane Zionist views about limiting rights of Palestinian refugees and of the second-class status of the Palestinian minority living in Israel, but still rather far from the Barghouti position on these crucial matters so often ignored by the Western media.

            In the background is the persisting unwillingness of the Netanyahu government, despite the overall backing it receives from Washington, to make Kerry’s life easier by undertaking some obvious confidence-building gestures: a settlement freeze and the release of some Palestinian political prisoners. Netanyahu insists on no preconditions for resumed negotiations, which means no letup in settlement expansion, no lifting of the Gaza blockade, and the continuing abusive treatment of the West Bank population. Kerry was probably hoping that his remarks at the AJC event would generate some pressure on Netanyahu to be somewhat more forthcoming. It is clear that if the Palestinian Authority are to enter direct negotiations while settlement expansion continued unchecked, it would likely be extremely detrimental to the claims of Mahmoud Abbas to be the sole legitimate voice of the Palestinian people, a view that Barghouti rejects despite his Fatah affiliation.

            If Netanyahu was more adroit he could yield on these confidence-building prerequisites, and put Abbas in a bind. What has the Palestinian Authority to gain by entering into negotiations with an unabashedly expansionist and settler oriented Israeli government? Perhaps, it would win momentary favor in Washington. But for what benefit in relation to the struggle of the Palestinian people for a just solution? There are no signs whatsoever that Israel would even consider an outcome for negotiations that remotely resembled the Barghouti/Avnery two-state conception even if their differences are set aside for the moment. What would likely happen is that the negotiations would breakdown, as in the past, with the Palestinians receiving the lion’s share of the blame. Israel has much more spin control in the world media, especially if its narrative is backed by the United States, as has been the case in the past and would almost certainly be in the future. The likely hasbara assault would put the Palestinians in the position of once more being seen as rejecting what would be put forward to the world as generous Israeli proposals for a two-state solution that if looked at closely offered a statelet instead of a state, and even then subject to a humiliating and intrusive Israeli regime of control, all in the name of security, which should recall the disingenusous Israeli claim that its ‘disengagement’ from Gaza in 2005 put an end to the ‘occupation’ of the Gaza Strip.

            Barghouti distance from what Kerry is trying to broker was also underscored by his expression of anger directed at the recent acceptance by the Arab League of modifications of its 2002 Arab Peace Initiative made in response to pressures exerted by Kerry. Barghouti’s comment on this aspect of Kerry’s diplomacy is worth reproducing: “The Arab Peace Initiative is the lowest the Arabs have gone in terms of a historical settlement with Israel. The statements of the Arab ministerial delegation to Washington in regards to amending the 1967 borders and accepting the land-swap inflict great damage on the Arab stance and Palestinian rights, and stimulate the appetite of Israel for more concessions. No one is entitled to amend borders or swap land; the Palestinian people insist on Israel’s full withdrawal to the 1967 borders, in addition to removing the settlements.” In effect, what Kerry put forward as a diplomatic coup, Barghouti denounced as an Arab betrayal. It all goes to show that there are many contradictory understandings cohabiting within the two-state tent.

            It is notable that Barghouti also warns Israel and the United States that reliance on the status quo, which seems so comfortable from Tel Aviv’s perspective in recent years, is dangerously shortsighted: “security cannot be achieved without peace.” And further by implication, although not expressed in these words, “peace cannot be achieved without justice.” In this spirit of defiant nationalism, Barghouti also affirms that a right of resistance belongs to the Palestinian people, but its exercise should be sensitive to the limits of international law—“The tortured and oppressed Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves by all means approved by the UN Charter and international law. Total resistance is the most effective.” Barghouti in his responses strongly stresses the importance of moving to fulfill the tentative agreement between Fatah and Hamas to achieve Palestinian unity, while restating his awareness that resolving the refugee issue is central to a just solution while reaffirming his faith in an eventual Palestinian victory.

            Both Kerry and Barghouti reject a one-state solution as not of any political interest, unfortunately leaving the peace process where it currently belongs—in an undurable limbo of indefinite extension. Netanyahu and Kerry have a Plan B that might really be their Plan A. It involves what Netanyahu shamelessly calls an ‘economic peace,’ a persistence of the occupation and status quo, but in a manner that makes life materially somewhat better for West Bank Palestinians (Gazans are no where to be found on this most dubious ‘map of conscience.’). It cannot be a coincidence that at this time Kerry is peddling a scheme to induce $4 billion of investment in the West Bank, presumably to convert the occupation and Palestinian statelessness into a new kind of ‘golden arch.’ The moment may have arrived to chase the moneychangers from the temple!

            In pondering this dismal landscape of peace talk without peace, one wonders what became of ‘the roadmap’ and ‘the Quartet.’ It may be a small blessing that their irrelevance is being tacitly acknowledged. These creations never seemed more than a thin and deceitful veil thrown over a one sided American control over Israel/Palestine diplomacy. [For compelling documentation see Rashid Khalidi’s Broker of Deceit (2013)] In this sense the boldness of Kerry’s statecraft and Barghouti’s implicit recognition that the peace ball is in America’s court at least moves in the direction of ‘eyes wide open.’ For Kerry this means another set of grand gestures, for Netanyahu it means remaining immobile in the comfort zone created by the Palestinian shift away from the tactics of violent resistance,  for Barghouti it means a call for resistance, a plea for  more  solidarity, and a kind of longing for an Israeli, or even an American, France’s DeGaulle or South Africa’s De Klerk who bothdramatically ruptured prior expectations by replacing confrontation with accommodation. Until something as drastic as this occurs, although not necessarily the work of a charismatic counter-hero, we need at least to have the honesty to admit that the end of the tunnel is dark except for occasional flickers of light. I discern such a flicker in the undertakings of those engaged in a legitimacy war against Israel, step by step gaining the high moral and legal ground, which may soon uncover political tipping points that will abruptly alter the relations of forces in support of Palestinian justice claims. The Palestinian Legitimacy War combines Palestinian resistance with a global solidarity campaign that is being waged on a global battlefield.