Mideast anniversaries

This day, ten years ago, I was sitting on the White House lawn watching the truly bizarre sight of all the leaders of the US Jewish community and the US Congress–people who until three days earlier had excoriated Yasser Arafat’s name with every fiber of their being–as they lined up to have their own special photo ops with the head of the PLO.
That was the signing of the Oslo peace accords. The next day, Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Holst came to our house and described some of the ins and outs of what had happened along the way.
Holst died of a stroke not long after. Rabin was killed by a Jewish extremist in 1995. Only Arafat, of those three “principals”, is still alive. And look where he is today…
Twenty-five years ago this day, I was in Beirut, Ms. eager young hotshot reporter, reporting the breaking news on the reactions of Arafat and other PLO leaders to the Israeli-Egyptian negotiations then ongoing at Camp David.
Just a few days later, Begin, Sadat, and Carter emerged from the woods to announce that the Israelis and Egyptians had concluded two parallel Accords. One laid down a process whereby Israel and Egypt would rapidly negotiate a final peace treaty. The other, a process whereby the Israelis and Palestinians would enter a transitional phase on the way to their eventual peace treaty.
The Egyptians and Israelis got theirs. The Palestinians (need it be noted?) did not.
Since then, the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied territories–including East Jerusalem, which many Israeli tallies of this figure don’t even bother to include these days– has soared to more than 400,000. Four million-plus Palestinian refugees still languish in their forced exile. Three million Palestinians live in the walled-off Bantustanettes that the occupation authority has devised for them… Six million Israelis live in fear of the next suicide bombing.
And 25 years in the future– what?

8 thoughts on “Mideast anniversaries”

  2. Just out of curiousity, Helena, how many Jewish refugees from Arab countries are there in Israel? How many were there in the 1950s?
    Could it be possible that the Arab refugees were kept in their refugee status for some reason – perhaps as a weapon to be used against Israel? The Jewish refugees were resettled onto a land which was 1/500th the size of Arab countries.
    Do you think that there were 500 times fewer Jews settled in Israel? Do you think that Israel was 500 times richer in 1948 then the Arab average? Do you think that Israel received 500 times more money from the UN through a program comparable to the UNRWA?
    Exactly how do you explain the sorry state of the Arab refugees in the territories if not as an Arab weapon against Israel?

  3. Ariel, I’m so interested to see the support you express for forced relocation of troublesome populations. What an innovative idea!
    Actually, though, there’s just a teeny-weeny problem with that. It’s called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it states expressly that every person has the right to leave the land of his/her birth or to return to it….
    So that right vests in the individuals concerned rather than in any governments. How darned annoying! Otherwise forced relocation could become quite a widespread solution, don’t you think?

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  7. Well Helena, I guess you’ve done your China thing and may well be ready to go after the bad guys who drove the US into a desatrous war. It is most satisfying that the skepticism I faced from academia when I urged a focus of its research has become standard fare for the press. You see, thousands of mid-level bureaucrats had to make a choice between playing along with the Cheney rule or taking risks– great risks– to inform the public. Well, thanks to heroines like Dana Priest and many other heroes, Richard Clarke a major one, this year we have enough facts to decide if it is prudent to put back in office dummy Bush and Cheney the evil ventriloquist. Unfortunately, people who payed for this war in blood will be detracted by the assumption that they MUST vote for Bush in order to preven gay marriages, etc.
    Americans are very peagmatic, but they face the choices only when it is too late and there isn’t much of a choice to make.
    Let me say that there are people in this adminstration that I would be most proud to have them marry my son or daughter: Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz, Abrams, Armetage, to name of few– even if I don’t consider their policy choices wise or courageous. At least I know they did it for love of nation and a sense of duty. But scum like Perle, Rumsfeld and the filthy neocon medicrities deserve full exposure to sunlight.
    Some day Americans will learn to weigh history so as not to be Santayana’s perpetual victims.
    Welcome back, I look forward much more to your analysis that your raportage. Your insight are, gee, amazing for a girl!

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