"One hates to be a Cassandra," she added, "but unfortunately, I was 100 percent right."
Unlike Arafat, Ashrawi had been living under the Israeli occupation and understood how it worked. Not having experienced the occupation in person, the exiled PLO leadership, she understood, simply couldn't imagine Israel's true intentions.
In truth, it took no Cassandra-like clairvoyance to see what would come of the Oslo agreements. Twenty years earlier, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had made Israeli intentions perfectly clear, explaining his plans for the occupied territories this way: "We'll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlement in between the Palestinians and another strip of Jewish settlement right across the West Bank so that in 25 years' time neither the U.N. nor the U.S., nobody will be able to tear it apart."
Another major feature of Oslo was the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the entity empowered (and funded) by Israel to administer the occupied territories alongside the Israeli Defense Forces. This, too, Ashrawi had resisted when, "way back in the 1980s," the Israelis offered a similar arrangement "and we refused; we said we are not collaborators. I remember telling the military governor at the time that we are quite capable of running our lives, but we will not work under you." When the PLO agreed to the formation of the Palestinian Authority in 1993, Ashrawi understood all too well that the new entity's institutional survival, and (not incidentally) the jobs of its many employees would eventually come to depend on how well it served the occupation.
It's not surprising then that, drawing on the insights of people like Ashrawi, some of us predicted a version of Israel's endgame for Gaza back in 2005 when Ariel Sharon's government announced its plan to "disengage" from that strip of land, granting to the Palestinian Authority the duty to run what has since come to be known as the world's largest open-air prison.
And When Did We Know It?
This capacity to predict the future is beginning to feel a bit de'j-vu-ish. Right now, it's not too hard to foresee the approaching catastrophe in Gaza. Indeed, at my own university and across the country and the world, even in Israel, students are desperately trying to prevent a genocide already in progress. While the "grownups" debate the legal definition of genocide, those young people continue to point to the murderous reality still unfolding in Gaza and demand that it be stopped before it's too late.
There are enough dangers looming right in front of us that you don't need second sight to realize how bad it is. In addition to the clear and present dangers of climate change, not to mention the potential for a new global pandemic, there's another foreseeable horror looming over this country, which, despite blaring sirens and flashing lights, the mainstream media seems unable to quite believe is real. Ignoring the clanging alarms, many media outlets continue to treat the 2024 election season as just another contest between two equally legitimate political parties.
The reality is entirely different. In this year's presidential election, we are facing the potential elevation of a genuine instrument of fascism. I think it's appropriate to characterize Donald Trump as an "instrument" of other people's ideology, because I suspect that he personally has neither the knowledge nor the attention span to elaborate any political theory or coherent plan for the future. His previous presidency was, in fact, marked by chaotic, instinctive stabs in the direction of whatever target presented itself - or was presented to him by those seeking to influence his decisions. The world is probably lucky that the people surrounding Trump then were a greedy, self-serving lot.
We wouldn't be that lucky in a second Trump presidency. It doesn't take a prophet to imagine what such a regime might look like. All you have to do is dip into the 887-page Mandate for Leadership the Heritage Foundation has prepared for his future presidency. It lays out an explicit vision of an authoritarian government serving the interests of the wealthy, one likely to unfold under the auspices of Project 2025, a step-by-step plan to replace our democratic government apparatus with Heritage-vetted-and-trained political functionaries.
We don't need Cassandra to predict that future. All we need to do is pay attention to what's right in front of us right now.
Copyright 2024 Rebecca Gordon
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