The Earth Hearing

by Daniel Plonix

  The motorcade made its way toward the awaiting dignitaries and came to a halt about a dozen paces away from the honor guard. An off­icer yelled a command and hundreds of sabers went up in salute and flashed in the sun as limousine doors opened and people emerged from them. Fifty men and women from throughout Earth walked briskly toward the platform, many smiling amiably. Another yelled command, and the swords thrust high up and over, forming an honorary saber arch as the first Earth delegates marched between the two rows of ceremonial guardsmen.

  The seven commissioners stepped down the stairs to greet them.

  Chapter 61

  1968, on the Outskirts of Hangzhou, China

  They found Puddeck sitting on a ledge with an almost empty bottle of dark rice wine and another bottle next to it, empty. He was muttering to himself and drunkenly singing.

  Hagar and Aratta aided their squat companion to his feet. Puddeck put his arms up, one arm around each of them, and they helped him walk.

  “I will miss it, Aratta,” said Puddeck, looking blearily at Aratta and then at Hagar. “My beloved China,” he crooned, half-shuffling half-walking between his two comrades.

  He broke out into song.

  Chairman Mao loves the people,

  Chairman Mao, he is our guide.

  To build a new China,

  He leads us forever forward.

  Hagar caressed his bald head. “He always gets sentimental when we’re about to depart a world,” she reminded Aratta. “You know how much the Cultural Revolution meant to him.”

  She kissed morose Puddeck. “There will be other worlds with civilizations like this, hon.”

  “Who is like Chairman Mao?” he mumbled.

  He broke into another song.

  The east is red,

  The sun is rising.

  China has brought forth a Mao Zedong.

  He works for the people’s happiness,

  He is the people’s great saving star.

  They came to a stop on a hilltop.

  “Look!” said Aratta. A red sun rose up in the east heralding a new morning, and Puddeck gave a faint smile, encouraged.

  The wind stirred their garments.

  “Ready, Aratta?” asked Hagar.

  “Always, dearest,” he replied.

  The three smiled at each other and vanished from Earth.

  Deleted Excerpts

  Two early-stage excerpts follow. They have not made it into the novel, and to an extent they are somewhat at odds with the final version of the story and its characters. Furthermore, they may or may not be in a polished form. All the same, the content of these two excerpts may be of interest.

  Excerpt I

  “What about the Palestinians of the West Bank?” asked Brandon, staring at a persimmon bruschetta he had picked up.

  “What about them?” asked him David.

  Brandon took a bite. “They are people native to that area; they aspire for full, true independence.”

  “Tons of people want to establish a nation-state of their own,” told him David. “You seem to imply indigenous nations as a matter of course obtain self-determination. This flies in the face of the existing political paradigm. The Basques want to get a part of France. The Nagas want to carve Nagaland out of India. The ancient Assyrians want a part of northern Iraq to call their own. The Kurds have been yearning to establish Kurdistan. The Tamils fought for independence in Sri Lanka, and the Chechens fought in Russia. There is a long line of wishers, but it ain’t happening for most of them. That is the way of our world. And all those wishers have been nations for many hundreds of years—unlike these Arab clans who acquired a distinct identity within the broader Arab nation only during their diaspora, during the fifties and sixties.”

  “It is different from those cases. You conquered the West Bank, and they just want it back.”

  David raised an eyebrow. “Back? They never had it—not politically. The hill region had been a politically undifferentiated territory within the Ottoman Empire. In the heels of World War I, the League of Nations established a trust territory that included this area. About thirty years later, the protectorate collapsed, and the Jordanians invaded and took over that part of the territory by force, which they named the West Bank, and declared it theirs. Two decades later, after the Jordanians initiated hostilities, Israel wrested it from them and controlled the territory ever since. Been about fifty years now.”

  David smiled at Susan and Lee. “Curious isn’t it? From around 1948 through 1967, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were under Jordanian and Egyptian control, respectively. Neither thought to withdraw and allow the local Arabs to form a state of their own. And just as telling, the alleged occupations did not raise any great outcry in the international community. Campuses did host clubs clamoring for an independent state for the Palestinians in the area under oppressive Egyptian military occupation. No one divested Jordanian goods in protest of their takeover of an alleged Palestinian territory.”

  For a few minutes, everybody ate quietly.

  Brandon looked reflective. “Look, beyond the political record to whom The West Bank may have belonged, for all intents and purposes, the experience has been thus: The Israeli has taken a foreign territory by force and have ruled over an unwilling subject population for decades, while concurrently allowing—and at times encouraging—its own populace to gain control over substantial portion of the land.”

  “How this thing came about?” asked Susan, curious.

  It was Aratta who spoke, “Shortly after wresting the West Bank from Jordan, Israel established as a matter of course an interim military rule over the local populace. The days turned to weeks, the weeks to months, the months to years.

  “The Israeli and Jordanian governments neither assumed real responsibility for the future of population of West Bank nor could reach a mutually satisfactory security arrangement. Without a clear mandate and plan from the top, things on the ground ended up dictating the dynamics of things to come.

  “In the years that followed the takeover, Jewish Israelis started settling the West Bank, creating a reality in their wake, one which dragged the government and military after it in a de facto creeping annexation. The years turned to decades, and hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis have made the Territories their home. Most were lured by a short commute to Jerusalem coupled with cheap housing and ample land. Others came to fulfill their aspirations of Greater Israel.”

  Galecki entered the room, and Lee motioned to the elderly man to help himself to some of the canapés.

  Aratta continued, “The animosity and mutually incompatible claims of the Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank brought about the obvious: fences, guards, and occasional flares of violence between the two groups.

  “From the start, the Israeli military set an intelligence network, arr­ested suspects, imprisoned agitators, set curfews and other suppr­essive measures. In the heels of the Palestinian uprising that started in 2000, the military has instituted permit system, road barriers, and checkpoints.

  “The presence of Israeli security has been ranging from nonexistence to oppressive—responding to the ever-changing situation on the ground and from area to area. Almost everything that can be said about the West Bank is true. Including the contradictions.

  “A big chunk of the territory is under Israeli administration and control. It includes the land that abuts the Dead Sea, which is a source of tourism money and has vast deposits of potash and bromine. This Israeli-controlled area is largely off-limits to the Palestinians of the West Bank, who have an acute need for land to expand housing, roads, and water treatment plants.”

  David chimed in, “Most of the Palestinians live in what in effect is a complex tapestry of autonomous enclaves governed by their own government with their own ministry of education, parliament, and police. Their housing conditions range from rundown housing projects
in Balata to mansions dotting the town of al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya. And in Israel proper, you will be hard-pressed to find more glamorous buildings than the Sa’ir Municipality building, the Nablus Mall, or the amphitheater in the new, luxurious town of Rawabi.”

  Susan drummed her fingers on the table slowly, eyeing David. “May­be no group has a right for self-determination, but everyone has the right to be a citizen in the full sense. You cannot keep them decade after decades, in the shadow of occupation, intrusive, non-intrusive, or otherwise. As the Russian expression goes, either shit or get off the potty. Either you annex West Bank and its people, forming a genuine bi-national state, or completely disengage from the territory.”

  “Oh, just disengage.” David laughed bitterly.

  “Susan, I don’t think you fully realize what you are advocating,” said Galecki. “We are not talking about anything like a possible withdrawal of Indonesia from West Papua, Morocco pullout from Western Sahara, Russia’s retreat from Chechnya, or China’s from Tibet. None of those poses existential threat to the sovereign country in question and incidentally none of which is likely to happen all the same. Disengaging from the West Bank is a different animal.

  “The West Bank dominates the Israeli coastal plain below, which contains most of Israel’s population, vital infrastructure, and industry. Thousands of rockets raining down on this narrow coastal plain can paralyze Israel, shut its main transportation arteries, and also make general mobilization of its reserve force very difficult. That is not all.

  “It takes three minutes for an enemy fighter bomber to cross from the Jordan River over the West Bank clear across Israel to the Mediterranean. Without an airspace control over the West Bank, Israel will have not enough time to identify and intercept an incoming plane. A hostile jet flying in West Bank airspace can slam into the financial district of Tel Aviv within two minutes. Literally.”

  Galecki rubbed his shoulders. “Retaining airspace control, having troops deployed in the outer perimeter of the Jordan Valley, and keeping the West Bank demilitarized are but bare essentials to mount any credible defense.”

  Susan studied Galecki then David. “For argument’s sake, let’s assume that Israel retains control over the airspace and maintains a military presence at the Jordan Valley. Then what?”

  “See for yourself,” offered David. “In 2008, with about six percent land swaps to account for the established Israeli cities and towns in the territory, Israel offered the Palestinians a non-militarized state over the West Bank with an international force stationed in the Jordan Valley while retaining the right for commercial and military overflights over Palestinian space. Gaza Strip and the West Bank were to be connected via an underground highway. Furthermore, all Jews currently living in what was to be a Palestinian state were to be uprooted and made to leave.”

  “Why to uproot anyone?” asked Lee.

  “The Palestinians have maintained they don’t care to have in their territory fanatic Jews or any Jews, for that matter, as their very presence will be provocative.”

  “Fully a fifth of Israel citizens are Arabs, many of whom are hostile to the state and wish it away. How is it any different?”

  “Your point is well taken,” told her David. “At any rate, contingent on the Arabs relinquishing any additional claims, we offered our subject population, the Palestinians of the West Bank, the opportunity to lead a dignified life in a context of a peaceful co-existence with us—and they did not accept the offer.” He slammed his hand on the table. “During the first few decades of military rule, the moral responsibility for the status quo was on us. But since their de facto rejection, it is theirs to bear.”

  “Lucky you,” said Galecki, directing his words to David. “It is virtually certain that irrespective of what the local inhabitants may think or do, in the case of a complete disengagement, the West Bank will become a staging ground for forces bent on destroying the Jewish state. If the local Palestinians do not man up, you will have other militant forces that will set up shop in West Bank—much as has happened in Gaza Strip, Southern Lebanon, and Sinai desert. Be it Hamas, an Iran proxy, or some other militant Islamist group of the day.”

  Susan smiled. “I now have this distinct feeling that there is a lot more to the conflict.”

  Puddeck looked over at Aratta. “She wants you to tell her the rest of the story.”

  Aratta squinted. “The rest of the story?”

  Laughter.

  “I suppose that’s what I deserve for getting into a political discussion.”

  More laughter.

  “Well, let’s see what we can do here,” Aratta said.

  “Jews always had a nominal presence in the land,” he opened. “Jewish settlers were another matter, though. That started in the 1880s. Some Jewish migrants were driven by the desire to carry out the Zionist dream of establishing a homeland for the Jewish nation. Most came because of intolerable conditions in their home countries.

  “Beyond the fact that the Jewish migrants paid for the land they settled, outwardly little differentiated them from the Circassians or Chechens who also settled the Levant during that time. All these groups were subjects to attacks by the local tribes. All fended for themselves as they asserted themselves in the region.”

  Aratta busied himself with his pipe. Soon a pleasant faint cinnamon aroma wafted in the air. He continued, “During those years, the land was an undefined territory within the Ottoman Empire, whose presence in the land was nebulous and remote. The indigenous non-Jewish peasants formed the vast majority of people in the area: an agglomeration of multitude clans in an intricate feudal relation of loyalty and protection, inhabiting many hundreds of villages. The indigenous inhabitants had no national identity or affiliation; their country and world were the clan they belonged to and to a lesser degree the village they lived in.”

  Brandon raised his eyebrows. “What of the Palestinians?”

  “As David said, Palestinians as a distinct identity came later. Much later.”

  “But people referred to Palestine during the nineteenth century and earlier, no?”

  “Yes. However, it did not go along with a Palestinian nation any more than the Mosul region went with a Mosul nation or Caucasus region went with a Caucasus nation.”

  Aratta continued his narrative. “In addition to sedentary communities, nomads roamed the Levant. The Bani Sakhr stomping grounds straddled both sides of the Jordan River; the powerful Annazah tribe roamed the land from Arabia in the far south to Palestine; while the Bani Hamida held sway over the region east of the Dead Sea.

  “Through the ensuing decades, the numbers of both ethnic groups have swelled in the region, and their political and social structures undergone a slow metamorphosis.

  “During World War I, the Entente Powers conquered the territories of the Ottoman Empire and proceeded to carve them into areas of control amongst themselves. The League of Nations instituted trust territories of limited duration. One of these areas roughly paralleled that of present-day Israel and was termed Mandatory Palestine. It was to come under the United Kingdom’s orbit.

  “The charter of this territory contained an explicit and somewhat contradictory mission statement: To the extent that the cultural civil rights and physical position of the indigenous populations will not be compromised, the Palestine Mandate mission was to facilitate the establishment of the Jewish national home. This included the development of Jewish self-governing institutions, encouragement of a dense settlement of the land by Jews, and the facilitation of Jewish immigration.

  “Through the ensuing decades, the number of both ethnic groups swelled. The Jews, due to immigration. The Arabs primarily due to natural causes.

  “From the start, the locals resented the influx of foreigners, who were slowly changing the character of the province, displacing some of the tenant farmers, and at later decades foiling their growing desire for an independent
state of their own. The resistance and alarm have gradually grown in scale. It became progressively self-evident to the local Arabs that the Jews were after establishing a Jewish hegemony in the area.

  “It came to a head with the collapse of the British administration and their pullout in 1947. It was time for the United Nations to determine the future of this land under its trust. And so it did. The territory was to be partitioned to two democratically-run states. One state was to be an Arab state. The other was designated as a Jewish state but, given its demographics, in actuality it was to be a binational state with a modest Jewish majority. The two states were to function under a confederacy with a common currency, railways, postal services, and irrigation services.”

  David said, “The decision to lump Jews and Arabs in almost equal numbers in the so-called Jewish state has put an end to the prospect of a nation-state for the Jewish people.” David shrugged. “For all intent and purpose, this was the end of the road.”

  They all looked at him.

  “Yes, November 29, 1947, was the day the Zionist dream was to be over.”

  “How did the Jews in Palestine react to the partition plan?” Asked Susan.

  “They danced in the streets. They never looked past the ‘Jewish state’ designation in the UN plan.”

  “What happened next?” She wanted to know.

  “The Arabs of Palestine both violated and foiled the UN resolution; they initiated hostilities intending to drive out the Jews and secure the entire territory for themselves,” replied Aratta. “And thereafter all bets were off. Might was to decide the day.”

  David nodded in agreement. “Had the Arabs chosen to accept co-existence and abide by the UN decision, two conjoined states would have emerged. There would have been no war and no refugees. There would have been no cycles of violence and reprisals in the generations to come. And no genuine Jewish polity in the region,” he said. “As it turned out, their decision made everything to come possible.”