Well, guess who I’ve been hanging out with in Gaza these past couple of days…
If you guessed Ismail Haniyeh, well yes, you could be right. (Did you see this bellicose statement from Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, warning that Haniyeh is “not immune” from being assassinated? Or this, from Olmert saying Haniyeh should fear for his life if Hamas militants resume their attacks on Israel?)
If you guessed Dr. Mahgmoud Zahhar, you could be right.
And if you guessed Leila el-Haddad, the talented author of “Raising Yousuf” and the Gaza correspondent of the Al-Jazeera English-language website, you’d be right, too.
It’s been a huge pleasure getting to know Leila a bit. She’s the same age as my son, which is fun. She’s also a plucky mom-journalist trying to juggle a zillion things. She’s a Palestinian from Gaza, got a BA from Duke University and an MA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She could be working here as a journalist along with her spouse and child except that–
Her spouse is a Palestinian originally from Haifa, who was born in the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in Lebanon just three months before the Israeli-backed Flangist forces stormed the camp in 1976. He carries the travel document that the Lebanese government gives to Palestinian residents of Lebanon. And guess what–
The Palestinians don’t have the right to control who comes in and out of Gaza. Even after the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Strip: Israel still gets to detrmine that. So Leila’s Palestinian husband is among that majority of Palestinians who are actually forbidden from coming to Gaza. He can’t even come under “family reunification.”
So anyway, she’s working here. He’s actually doing a medical residency in the States. They have a long-distance commuter marriage. Luckily she has a great set of parents who have recently retired– both of them were phsyicians– and she and her two-year-old, Yousuf, live with them.
What I love about her blog is her sense of connectedness to the society here.
51 thoughts on “More Gaza”
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Helena, if you can, drop by and greet our friends at the Atfaluna School for the Deaf. They are such wonderfully compassionate people. Let them know that we will be placing another order for their exquisite embroidered treasures.
Judy
Her spouse is a Palestinian originally from Haifa, who was born in the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp in Lebanon just three months before the Israeli-backed Flangist forces stormed the camp in 1976.
What’s wrong with this sentence?
“If you guessed Ismail Haniyeh, well yes, you could be right. (Did you see this bellicose statement from Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, warning that Haniyeh is “not immune” from being assassinated? Or this, from Olmert saying Haniyeh should fear for his life if Hamas militants resume their attacks on Israel?)”
As usual it’s a TERRORIST STATE.
BTW Helena, your tour around mostly showing the Palestinians some officials and others their reactions and thoughts which well known to us, but you never give us the picture who those Israelis /Occupier thinking and what their response for the everyday suffering of Palestinians specially your trip to GAZA that you described although your position better because you are US Passport holder not like normal Arab Palestinians.
Did yo see them how they treated everyday by those check points?
Did you ask those Settlers how they think?
Why to stick to with one side?
Ismail Haniyeh
Haniyeh was born in the Shati refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, although the exact date of his birth is unknown. He began studying Arabic literature at the Islamic University in Gaza in 1987, where he became active in Islamic student movements. In 1992, he was deported to Lebanon , but was eventually allowed to return to Gaza. Upon his return, he was appointed dean of the Islamic University.
This his backgrounds which tell his academic side also some call him moderate and well skilled in international diplomacy and negotiations.
I think Israelis fear from some one had this skill that causes trouble to them so it’s better to assassinate him.
” Will you recognize Israel? If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them. Israel does not have a charter calling for the destruction of the Palestinian state. Our only position will be declared once Israel recognizes our right to exist. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon accepted a two-state solution as did President Bush. What do you say about the two-state solution? It all starts with Israel. (© 2006 The Washington Post Company 02/26/06).
http://www.unitedjerusalem.org/index2.asp?id=709119
Israel does not have a charter calling for the destruction of the Palestinian state
It’s so funny some one asked this silly question how fool this, where is Plastein State?
And what the Israeli did with Palestinian State is it in their Charter? What about the Assassinations is it in Israeli Charter… so stupid question and bathetic.
JES, i’ll bite: is it that someone “originally from Haifa” could be born in a refugee camp in Lebanon? Or that the forces who stormed Tel Al Zataar were backed by the Syrian government not the Israelis?
I’m inclined to trust Helena on this one (didn’t she write a book on Lebanon????) but I’m eager to hear her explanation.
The bellicose comments from Olmert and Mofaz really parse down to: “If you shoot at us we’ll shoot back”. This is not exactly a surprise. If the warning are taken to heart they might be responsible for saving many lives, most of them Palestinian.
Olmert is running for PM and his main opponent is Bibi, who is further to the right, so Olmert is widening his base.
As I’ve said, everything between now and the elections needs to be taken with an extra grain of salt.
The Palestinians don’t have the right to control who comes in and out of Gaza. Even after the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the Strip: Israel still gets to detrmine that.
Which suggests a potential strategy for Hamas: offer to recognize Israel’s right to exist on condition that it renegotiate certain Israel-PA agreements that are not to the Palestinians’ advantage. These could include family reunification and control over the population register as well as other issues such as the Oslo stipulation requiring the PA to buy electric power from Israel. Hamas could take this symbolic step without making any concessions on final borders, it would put the ball squarely in Israel’s court, and if done before the election, might give a boost to those parties that favor continued negotiation.
Of course, it’s fairly obvious why Fatah never attempted to renegotiate the population register issue and why Hamas isn’t likely to do so: the fear that any agreement allowing Palestinian refugees to return to PA territory would be seen as a concession of their right to return to Israel. Perfect, meet your enemy: the good.
JES, i’ll bite: is it that someone “originally from Haifa” could be born in a refugee camp in Lebanon? Or that the forces who stormed Tel Al Zataar were backed by the Syrian government not the Israelis?
I’m guessing it’s that Israel didn’t yet support the Phalange in 1976.
Vadim and Jonathan,
I found it interesting that someone could be “originally from Haifa” while having been born in a refugee camp nearly 30 years after the nakba. That would be the logical fallacy in the sentence, but the possible historical discrepancy is also interesting to ponder.
Wasn’t Arafat “originally from” Egypt but “born” in Jerusalem?
JES, Jonathan Edelstein, vadim
i’ll bite: is it that someone “originally from Haifa” could be born in a refugee camp in Lebanon? Or that the forces who stormed Tel Al Zataar were backed by the Syrian government not the Israelis?
Hay guys what about you? Are you claming that the Promise land yours? Are you all from around the world claming that this lands yours? What you forgot yourself or what? Make a jukes on your clams before you say any thing here guys.
It’s obvious that his family from Haifa and she born in a refugee camp after 1948 when her family moved to a refugee camp.
Helena
Thank you for yor reference to “Raising Yousouf” and the background on the author.
It is a good as finding the reference to Amira Hass and her books in Robert Fisk’s book.
Both give an insight into real life in Gaza and the territories.
As a result of a quick scan of Raising Yououf I followed a link to Open Bethlehem and was pleasantly surprised to find the Cardinal calling for rescue of the town and that the Pope has received a Bethlehem Passport.
http://www.openbethlehem.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=47
All us good Catholic lads have to do as the Cardinal says!!
I suspect you might qualify for a passport too.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07318814.htm
Salah
It is always the same with these guys.
Thwacking their heads on the low-lying limbs of every tree because the can’t see the forest.
Instead of lifting their heads up when analysing important international concerns, their approach to criticizing text is to look for any t’s not crossed, or i’s not dotted.
You know, come to think of it, it is the same with that old trick about step-by-step peace negotiations. Anything to drag out the negotiations; anything to avoid dealing with the “comprehensive” big picture; anything to dodge the “viable” solution because they lack honest intentions.
because they lack honest intentions.
Sd, clearly not everyone shares in your idea of “the big picture” or selective standard of honesty. Knee-jerk Israelophobia is an important part of the “big picture,” and that tendency is what springs to mind when a massacre of thousands of Palestinians is falsely attributed to Israelis. That Al-Haddad’s spouse is described as “originally from” a city within which he (& perhaps even his parents) wasn’t himself born begs substantial and important questions regarding the “right of return” of both Jews and Palestinians.
Instead of lifting their heads up when analysing important international concerns, their approach to criticizing text is to look for any t’s not crossed, or i’s not dotted.
The main post is only secondarily about “important international concerns;” its main subject is Helena’s meeting with a very admirable individual and that individual’s family history. And while I’m not sure if I’m one of “these guys,” I don’t think it’s out of line to object if something is incorrectly attributed to Israel. If Israel wasn’t involved in the attack on Tel al-Za’tar camp, then it should be attributed to the Phalange plain and simple.
In any event, further research compels me to partially retract my previous statement. Israel was just beginning to develop a relationship with the Phalange in 1976, and there were meetings between IDF officers and Phalangist figures in March of that year. The Tel al-Za’tar attack occurred in July, about four months later. I’m not certain how well-developed the Israeli-Phalangist connections had become by that time, whether alliances had shifted (as they did fairly often in Lebanon during that period) or whether Israel contributed any supplies, weapons etc. that were used in the attack. My impression is that there was not yet a weapons pipeline in July 1976, but I haven’t found anything that would allow me to rule one out.
[That Al-Haddad’s spouse is described as “originally from” a city within which he (& perhaps even his parents) wasn’t himself born begs substantial and important questions regarding the “right of return” of both Jews and Palestinians.]
Mathematicians use to start quite serious discussions from seemingly pointless reminders like hey, Pythagoras theorem is still here and without it, the notion of distance between points A and B makes no sense.
Unfortunately, journalists and political scientists have no habit to keep the basic facts clear, this results in lots of pointless terminological bickering.
But the meaning of “Palestinian X is originally from Y” is already explained in one of the posts. So what?
I think that vicious threat issued by Minister Mofaz should be simply dismissed as meaningless rhetoric only said to feed the masses, just like how the Hamas commitment to destroy Israel should be dismissed as meaningless rhetoric to feed the masses………
Although Syria provided artillery for the Phalangist attack on the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp, the Phalangist forces had been armed and trained by the Israelis and the Israelis provided the Phalangist forces with logistical support from 1976 onwards.
See this article by Americans for Middle-east Understanding and this post by Lawrence of Cyberia.
BTW, a lot of articles on the Tel al-Zaatar massacre say it was caused by the Palestinian massacre of some Christian residents of Damour. That is only part of the story. Damour was a response to the Phalangist massacre of Palestinians in the Kantarina Massacre.
It would be kind of nice, wouldn’t it, if some of the people making snipey comments here had even mentioned in passing that they thought it was really sad that a woman and her husband can’t both live together in the country of her birth and of both of their national origin?
But no. The snipey commenters want to go off on all kinds of their own ideological tangents. Tells us more about them than about anything else, I think.
The main point of what I was writing about Leila’s situation was to note how outrageous that situation is.
Re the fall of Tel al-Zaatar. I was there and covering both it and the war in general at the time. So why don’t you guys rely on my account– perhaps in my book on Lebanon or my book on the PLO, neither of which as it happens I have to hand here in Jerusalem– but you can all run out to your libraries and pick ’em up.
Basically, in August of 1976 the Israeli weapons pipeline to Camille Chamoun’s Ahrar militia had been running for a number of months already. Chamoun used those weapons to give aid to Bashir Gemayyel to maintain and then escalate the siege of the TZ refugee camp, an action that also strengthened Bashir’s hand within the political echelons of the Falange…
At the same time, the Syrians did maintain a general security perimeter around the whole area, so they were crucial enablers of Bashir’s siege and storming of the camp. Not the first time, some Palestinians would tell you, that the Syrians and Israelis have acted in concert against them.
The day the camp fell, I covered the story of the distraught women and children who were trucked out of it in a makeshift convoy of vehicles. (Many, though, were killed along the way.) The Palestinian fighters had tried to sneak out during the night when they knew the camp was about to fall. The Arab League was trying to mediaste the peaceful surrender of the camp, but did so very unsuccessfully.
All the men who had not snuck out during the night were separated from the women and kids by the Falangists at the camp’s entrance and a large proportion of them were simply taken out and slaughtered. This was exactly like Srebenica. The best account of the bestiality of that is in Jon Randal’s great book, “Going All the Way.”
I didn’t get over to the Falangist side of town till the next day, when Bashir Gemayyel held a press conference before taking us into the camp. In it he said– and I can never forget this– “I am proud of what you’re going to see there.” Then he took us and showed us terrible scenes of carnage inside the camp that I’ve decsribed more fully elsewhere… and with the horrendous sight, too, of Falangist supporters driving into the camp in pickups– right over the bodies of some of the dead Palestinians left lying in the road– each with a little written “license” to loot the pathetic remains of the lives the camp residents had built up there over the preceding 28 years…
All of which is to say that when Sharon, just six years later, claimed he had “no idea” how bestial the Falangists would be when he let them in to Sabra and Shatila the guy was lying through his teeth.
Anyway, one day soon I need to go back to my clippings file and my very old notes and write a fuller memoir of the fall of Tel al-Zaatar. Till then, read Jon Randal’s book.
The main point of what I was writing about Leila’s situation was to note how outrageous that situation is.
Yes, it is an outrageous situation and, as I said above, one that Hamas should consider renegotiating as a condition of recognizing Israel. It might even be an appropriate case for unilateralism, which is a game more than one can play.
Thanks for the information about Tel al-Zaatar. So the pipeline at that time was Israel to Ahrar to the Phalange?
I think that vicious threat issued by Minister Mofaz should be simply dismissed as meaningless rhetoric only said to feed the masses, just like how the Hamas commitment to destroy Israel should be dismissed as meaningless rhetoric to feed the masses………
I think you are out of the story…
Could you tell us why Israeli boycott Hamas then? Whey US requested the US$50Millions aid back?
All these acts due to that “Hamas commitment to destroy Israel” aren’t Inkan1969?
I think when Israelis officials say things it will happen there is no doubt about that.
BTW, when Palestinians put a case in one of Europe court about Sabra Shatila massacres done by Sharoon the case dismissed because he is PM so he has immunity!
What’s the difference here between Palestinians PM Ismail Haniyeh and Israeli PM Sharoon? Can some one explain the difference?
Yes, it is an outrageous situation and, as I said above, one that Hamas should consider renegotiating as a condition of recognizing Israel
Who the hell are you putting conditions?
Can you speaks fairly and split your ideology when you posting?
Israeli occupiers they should negotiated without putting condition this story we got sick of this sick condition every time we read and here about peace. What Peace if all it’s wrong from start.
Who the hell are you putting conditions?
If you read carefully, I was talking about Hamas putting conditions.
Hi Helena, its me Laila, I’ve just noticed this post and am flattered you thought to write about us.
You mentioned that “The day the camp fell, I covered the story of the distraught women and children who were trucked out of it in a makeshift convoy of vehicles. (Many, though, were killed along the way.)”
Yassine’s uncle was one of these many-except they never found his body, he is still “missing”. His wife and 7 young children-the younges 3 months old, were able to flee in one of these trucks, but never found their father/husband again. Till this day, they have heard rumors he is in Israeli prisons. The family split up, the wife moving to southern Lebanon, Yassine’s family to Baalbeck’s Wavel camp, where his Aunt was. And the Palestinian tale weaves on and on…
BTW, Laila, my apology is to you as well.
Jonathan-
Your suggestion sounds like something out of that little old textbook by Roger Fisher called “Getting to Yes.”
Do you really think if Ismail Haniyeh took your advice and sent a note to Ohlmert that this would have any chance of changing the sad realities of the Israeli-Palestinian situation?
Would these tit-for-tat, small steps really amount to anything, given the gross imbalances of power between Israelis and Palestinians?
Back in the 1980s or the 1990s was there ever anything wrong with setting a diplomatic equilibrium between Israelis and Palestinians? Approaching land for peace with honest intentions? Requiring Israelis to give up major settlement complexes, so that millions of refugee families like Laila’s husband could return and start a decent life?
And if these major settlement complexes could not be abandoned, then perhaps the US could have mandated that Israel give up pre-1967 land and housing and water resources, say Haifa and Acca with a land bridge running through the Galilee to the northern West Bank? Or perhaps a triangular swath of land running from the eastern boundary of Gaza to the southern West Bank?
Now that would be Getting to Yes, wouldn’t it? Think of bold starting points, man; and propose truly logical first steps. These desparate times call for bold diplomacy on the part of Israeli leaders.
You know, Israelis always talk about Sadat’s bold diplomacy in the 1970s as the model other Arabs should follow. But if Sadat once did this on behalf of Arabs, why is it that Israelis were never expected even once to match his actions and initiate a bold commitment to the Palestinians? Why is it that instead every Arab has to line up and submit to the Sadat standard?
Imagine what a different world it would be, if an Israeli leader had half the guts of Sadat, and announced that Israel must make room for Palestinian refugee families to return and live in the land that they too consider holy land.
Imagine if Sharon woke up from his coma tomorrow, sat up straight in bed and thwacked his own head so hard on the bed brace holding his oxygen supply that it knocked some sense into his thick skull. Imagine if he resumed leadership by offering Maale Adumim to Palestinian refugees around the world, and promised to use the next five years of American military aid to develop a 20 mile wide connecting strip between Gaza and the West Bank for the exclusive use of Palestinians?
Now we are talking about Getting to Yes.
Look at the forest, not the trees.
You know, Israelis always talk about Sadat’s bold diplomacy in the 1970s as the model other Arabs should follow. But if Sadat once did this on behalf of Arabs, why is it that Israelis were never expected even once to match his actions and initiate a bold commitment to the Palestinians?
Hmmm, isn’t that a good description of Rabin’s overture to the Palestinians at Oslo, or Barak’s Taba proposal? Even though the one went sour later and the other failed, they were certainly bold initiatives at the time. The Israelis have not been devoid of ideas or proposals.
In any event, shorn of the hyperbole (a corridor twenty miles wide? relocating the quarter-million inhabitants of Haifa?), what you’re proposing is basically a variation on Taba, with the settlement blocs paid for with land from within the Green Line. At Taba, some of the proposed exchange was adjacent to the West Bank and the rest was adjacent to Gaza, and both are still feasible. Any agreement could include provisions parceling out rights to shared aquifers etc. The Israelis and Palestinians almost reached agreement at Taba; there’s no reason why they can’t go the rest of the way if the will is there.
But the real “bold initiatives” are those that increase the size of the pie rather than dividing it a different way. Why not a joint project to increase the Palestinian water supply through desalination, so the aquifers will no longer be worth fighting over? How about a multilateral capacity-building project for Palestinian industry, housing etc., with a staged return of refugees to the Palestinian state (and maybe 100,000 or 200,000 returning to Israel under family reunification)? These things have also been floated – the Geneva initiative called for some of them.
And to answer your first question, yes, I think it would make a difference if Haniyeh took my advice. When hard-liners make concessions, they generate a great deal of political capital, as we all saw when Sharon pushed through the Gaza withdrawal. If a rejectionist faction like Hamas says that it will recognize Israel if the Israelis take the first step in renegotiating one-sided agreements, then there will be both domestic and international pressure upon Israel to do so, and not to lose the chance! And given the distrust that has built up between the parties, it might be a good idea to take the small steps first and save the sweeping (and danger-fraught) ones for later.
I don’t expect that Haniyeh will take my advice, though, so all this is likely to stay in the realm of theory. “Getting to No” is a very old game in this region.
http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/W_report/English/2006/02-03-2006.htm
Why not a joint project to increase the Palestinian water supply through desalination, so the aquifers will no longer be worth fighting over? How about a multilateral capacity-building project for Palestinian industry, housing etc.,
You joking Jonathan Edelstein, are you really thinking like this.
Look to Iraq and the democracy is it what US shooting for more than three years!!
Read this report may help you
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19679
SD
regarding your suddestion Israel give up parts of Haifa, Acco, and the Galilee to the Palestinians, it might interest you to know that the Arabs living there don’t want that. Every once in a while, someone comes up with a suggestion to swap settlement blocks for Arab towns near the Green Line; invariably, the response is protests in those towns.
It would be kind of nice, wouldn’t it, if some of the people making snipey comments here had even mentioned in passing that they thought it was really sad that a woman and her husband can’t both live together in the country of her birth and of both of their national origin?
Yes, Helena, it would be nice. I do think that it really is sad and, further, I do advocate an independent Palestinian state endowed with the right, without interference, to decide who may enter and who may not.
Unfortunately, this is not the point. My comment was neither “snipey” nor an “ideological tangent”. It has to do with the implied – for lack of a better term – “hereditary” definition of origin that your statement clearly implies.
As an example, my parents legally entered Palestine in 1934 and left in 1937, in part as a result of the Arab uprising that began in 1936. During that time, to paraphrase the UNRWA charter, their “normal place of residence was Palestine” – more specifically, a kibbutz of Hashomer Hatzair near Hadera – for a period of more three years. I don’t think that I can claim to be “originally from Hadera”, having been born 12 years later in Los Angeles. The fact that they emigrated did not negate my right to immigrate to Israel under whatever laws the sovereign government of that state has chosen to adopt in this regard. By the same token, I don’t think that Israel, or anyone else, should have the right to dictate to Palestinians whom exactly they allow to enter into a future Palestinian state.
But the real “bold initiatives” are those that increase the size of the pie rather than dividing it a different way. Why not a joint project to increase the Palestinian water supply through desalination, so the aquifers will no longer be worth fighting over? How about a multilateral capacity-building project for Palestinian industry, housing etc., with a staged return of refugees to the Palestinian state (and maybe 100,000 or 200,000 returning to Israel under family reunification)? These things have also been floated – the Geneva initiative called for some of them.
Jonathan, I couldn’t agree with you more. It is, indeed, about enlarging the pie. This is truly a progressive approach in comparison with the reactionary positions of both Hamas and the extreme right wing in Israel. The former espouse a view that all land conquered once by Islam is waqf until “Judgement Day”; the latter that all the land from the river to the sea was granted by God until the same mythical date. Both, as a result of ideologies based primarily on religion and mystical deed to a finite piece of land, see the issue as a zero-sum struggle rather than looking for the joint potential of creating a better future.
Jonathan-
On Oslo: the Palestinians initiated the peace overtures that led to the offer at Oslo. And what Rabin offered in exchange was more of the same from the Israeli side. Step-by-step, slow measures that tied the Palestinians down, and allowed the Israelis to expand.
On Taba: Barak’s offer came far too late and it came at the end of that restricted step-by-step process initiated by Rabin.
So, no, neither of these qualify as a bold initiative like Sadat’s in the 1970s, an initiative that clearly brought a dramatic change on the ground, and a change that has endured 30 years.
The proof is in the pudding, and everyone sees what Israel’s leadership intended from the beginning of Oslo through the conclusion at Taba. This is why Palestinians feel Arafat got taken.
I was not using hyperbole, but merely suggesting the kind of bold maneuvre Sadat initiated in the 1970s. The fact that something Sadat-like is regarded as hyperbole on the Israeli side shows how unwilling the Israelis are to take serious initiatives to live with Palestinians as equals.
Instead the Palestinians are offered crumbs from the table in exchange for the large swaths of land the Israeli government clearly intends to hold in the West Bank. In exchange for this, it is pitiful to offer bits and pieces of land adjacent to Gaza or the northern West Bank.
If Haifa-Acca and the Galilee were set aside for Palestinians, I am not thinking of the reception that internal town residents would give to the offer, but rather the refugee families who sit in camps in Lebanon or Palestinians who have moved overseas but remember their families’ attachments to the land.
This thinking is only perceived as win-lose by the Israeli side because they don’t realize what they are taking from the Palestinians in wide swaths of land in the West Bank. For Palestinians this thinking is exactly the kind of win-win solution that would allow both communities the potential for economic viability.
Think how much prosperity could be created jointly if Palestinians were truly put on equal footing with Israelis. This is all I am suggesting. Think BIG. It is only hyperbole if you look at this from one side. The kind of tiny proposals you speak of: joint projects for desalination–that is going nowhere.
IT is a big getting to NO.
And what Rabin offered in exchange was more of the same from the Israeli side.
We will never know the full extent of what Rabin offered in exchange, because he was murdered. The Beilin-Abu Mazen document, drawn up less than a week before he was shot, shows that his government was thinking in terms of Palestinian statehood, division of Jerusalem and withdrawal from nearly all the settlements. It’s probably not a good idea to make assumptions about what Rabin would or would not have done had he lived and been re-elected.
In exchange for this, it is pitiful to offer bits and pieces of land adjacent to Gaza or the northern West Bank
Who said anything about bits and pieces? I’m talking one for one, dunam for dunam.
I was not using hyperbole, but merely suggesting the kind of bold maneuvre Sadat initiated in the 1970s.
Sadat made peace in exchange for getting his own territory back. That’s nothing to belittle, but none of his proposals involved tearing a hole through the middle of his own country, making it non-contiguous or dislocating hundreds of thousands of its citizens. The things you’re proposing aren’t Sadat-like; they go beyond anything Sadat would have dreamed of doing.
I accept the principle of treating Palestinians like equals. I don’t accept that this involves dismembering Israel. There are plenty of ways to make room for everyone on the basis of two contiguous states. Those who insist that “equality” means dismemberment of Israel are doomed to be disappointed, because they will get neither dismemberment nor true equality.
kind of tiny proposals you speak of: joint projects for desalination
If you think water supply issues are “tiny,” then in my humble opinion, you’re missing a great deal of what the fighting is all about. Part of the reason the Ariel salient is such a big deal, for instance, is that it sits on an aquifer. The land can be paid for with a one-for-one exchange; the water can’t without some fairly complicated shared-sovereignty arrangements.
For less than three billion dollars and a $250M annual operating cost, however, it’s possible to build sufficient desalination capacity to make the Palestinian per capita water supply equivalent to Israel’s. That’s well within the international community’s ability to finance and makes a one-for-one land swap possible where such a trade was unfeasible before. And as an added bonus, it increases Gaza’s agricultural and industrial carrying capacity severalfold, and makes it possible to develop any new territories adjacent to Gaza that are ceded to the Palestinian state. That’s what I mean by increasing the size of the pie.
Tiny? That’s in the eye of the beholder, but it isn’t a word I’d use for any measure that would turn the conflict into a non-zero-sum enterprise.
For less than three billion dollars and a $250M annual operating cost, however, it’s possible to build sufficient desalination capacity to make the Palestinian per capita water supply equivalent to Israel’s.
I’m surprised you place the cost even as high as this. Using 400 mm gpd, and construction cost of $4/gallon capacity, I’d have guessed closer to USD 1.5 bn. Neither figure seems all that high, considering.
I’d have guessed closer to USD 1.5 bn
You’re probably right. A while ago, I ran some very rough numbers and came up with a projected cost of under $1 billion to increase Gaza’s per capita water supply to Israeli levels. For all of Palestine, the capacity would have to be about a million cubic meters per day, which is equivalent to three Ashkelon plants, so allowing for cost overruns, $1.5 billion seems about right. Given a conservative operating cost of 75 cents per cubic meter, that would yield an annual cost in the $250 million range, although it could probably be done for less. This is the kind of capacity building that really ought to be getting done – water independence will be extremely important to any final settlement.
Sadat made peace in exchange for getting his own territory back. That’s nothing to belittle, but none of his proposals involved tearing a hole through the middle of his own country,
This is untrue.
Israeli policy to negotiate each country as a lone as she will get the “surrender Terms” that what we see with the Sadat visit.
Simple example why Israeli objected to negotiate Lebanon and Syria as one as they many times offers?
Please when some poste here let talk the exact polices and plans for Israeli for 55 years in the region and why the Arab suffered to get real deal from sloppy Israelis.
We see it from Oslo to Madrid and Road Map all these just names meaningless the goal of Israeli build more settlements and grape land check how much Israeli groped land from Oslo till now? How many settlements build till now? Even after the withdrawn from the Gaza.
The recent offer by Arabs when the Arab League approved the offer presented by Saudis King Abdullah for complete peace with Israeli.
Why Israelis refused and objected the Arab offer made by Saudis King Abdullah if they consider they are genuine looking for peace in the reign as you speak?
Whatever differences and words and points offered if there is a well to do peace should taken state forward and negotiate that offer not rejecting it.
Then after that we hear about Road Map and then Sharoon changed his mind about it.
Its obvious rejecting offers made by Arabs by no ground of negotiations in that offer its complete blindness from Israeli for all action from Arab stats as one entity and they like to do deals one by one on Surrender terms.
If Haifa-Acca and the Galilee were set aside for Palestinians, I am not thinking of the reception that internal town residents would give to the offer, but rather the refugee families who sit in camps in Lebanon or Palestinians who have moved overseas but remember their families’ attachments to the land.
You’re being awfully cavalier about the wishes of the people currently living there (including, as noted above, the Arab populace)
Eyal, with all due respect, its not a matter of wishes, its a matter of rights, 58 years overdue. And interesting to note that there is no outcry when people, i.e. settler-colonists, even some who have never before visited Israel, but who can claim even a fourth-generation link to Judaism, can decide to settle there with the blessing and endorsement of the government, at the expense of its native inhabitants. But when someone like my husband is denied his right of return, all of a sudden, it won’t or can’t work because the local residents feelings might be hurt (leaving aside so-called “fears” of national suicide).
Laila
You miss my point. You can’t, on the one hand, condemn Israel for trying to take control of Palestinian territory – while, at the same time, advocating shifting the border to include Arab-populated areas in Israel in the Palestinian state against the wishs of those same Arabs. I’ll stress this (again, ebcause everyone keeps mising this) – I’m not, at the moment, even discussing the feelings of the Jewish inhabitants.
“Sadat made peace in exchange for getting his own territory back. That’s nothing to belittle, but none of his proposals involved tearing a hole through the middle of his own country, making it non-contiguous or dislocating hundreds of thousands of its citizens. The things you’re proposing aren’t Sadat-like; they go beyond anything Sadat would have dreamed of doing.
“I accept the principle of treating Palestinians like equals. I don’t accept that this involves dismembering Israel. There are plenty of ways to make room for everyone on the basis of two contiguous states. Those who insist that “equality” means dismemberment of Israel are doomed to be disappointed, because they will get neither dismemberment nor true equality.”
Jonathan-
Lawyers are qualified to practice logical analysis, even if (as Bill of English fame noted) they rarely do so in their professional work.
Think logically about your posted statement above. Keep in mind that Sadat in the 1970s represents the Arab side of the “land for peace” process (the same side the Palestinians are on, except their situation is far worse than Egypt’s was when Sadat came to power). This is the side that has already made bold diplomatic moves in the past (actually Arab diplomatic moves go back to the late 1940s and early 1950s –in the case of Egypt as well as Syria, but the Israelis refused to deal until they could strengthen their already dominant hand).
Now my suggestion was that Israel in the 1980s or 1990s should have made a bold diplomatic move toward the Palestinians like Sadat did toward the Israelis. Since Sadat was on the Arab side, he was the one to consider offering an unexpectedly large peace deal in order to get his land back. Since Israeli leaders are on the other side of this equation, their bold move would (logically) not look like Sadat’s move. Instead it would involve the consideration of an unexpectedly large land deal in order to gain the other side’s (the Palestinians’) commitment to peace. My point is simply to say that this is what would be necessary for Israel to meet the requirement of “boldness.”
If you think logically, it is obvious that Sadat would never have considered tearing a hole through the middle of his post-1967 territory. Why? Because he is the one who wanted to get his pre-1967 land back. His “bold” move was to capitulate, demilitarize Egypt’s orientation toward Israel, and align his country with allies of Israel. This is something that stunned the Egyptian population. In political terms, Sadat’s move was the equivalent of tearing a hole through the middle of Egyptian territory, and he was assassinated as a result.
Now in your statement above, you are asking readers to appreciate how hard it would be for Israelis to tear a hole through their country, creating non-contiguous territories, displacing hundreds of thousands of citizens, and essentially “dismembering” the country. Yes, that is a hard thing to think about. But what you have described hypothetically for the Israelis is an exact description of what has already happened to the Palestinians. Anyone who looks at your argument and is capable of logical analysis would realize that the shoe is on the other foot.
The question that needs to be asked is how are Israeli leaders ever going to be able to meet the requirement of “boldness,” not just for the purpose of making amends with the Palestinian people (who have already experienced what you describe as such an outrageous outcome), but for the purpose of gaining a commitment to peace on the Palestinians’ part. Just think what must be required of Israeli leaders to meet this standard of “boldness,” after what they did to the Palestinian people. This should be the point of emphasis for anyone looking at the region’s problems and expecting an Israeli leader to match Sadat’s level of “boldness” in this larger “land for peace” process.
Now it is true that Rabin (like Sadat) was assassinated by a fellow countryman as a result of returning land to Palestinians in the 1990s. But the tiny bits of land that Rabin returned to Palestinians does not indicate how “bold” Rabin was in his relationship with the Palestinians. It indicates how unbelievably whacko-with-the rams-horn-and-matzo-crackers is the religious element in Israel. In truth Rabin was being very cautious in his relationship with the Palestinians, after receiving Arafat’s silly on-demand capitulation, “I oppose all forms of tourism.”
Rabin never moved boldly, despite what the pro-Israel Clinton White House crowd said about his actions. Just look at the tape of Rabin’s limp hand shake with Arafat on the White House lawn. He moved reluctantly and slowly at all times; he was stingy when returning land to full Palestinian control. This was no “bold” offer of land for peace, the kind of offer one would expect from the leader of a country that did what Israeli leaders did to the Palestinians. And when Barak took power, he was even less bold than Rabin.
I still think the best chance for the Palestinians to find a partner on the Israeli side who is capable of bold leadership is for Sharon to jolt awake from his coma and thwack his head so hard that he knocks some sense into his thick skull, suddenly realizing how Israel desperately needs to change its “land for peace” offer to the Palestinians … change, in fact, its entire orientation to the Palestinians, both in qualitative and quantitative terms. Peretz, the new Labor candidate, seems like the kind of person who could be a bold Israeli leader, but the odds he will win the upcoming election are lower than Sharon returning from brain-dead status.
In the end, Jonathan, you and everyone who pretend to hold balanced “equal status” concerns for Israelis and Palestinians should support bold Israeli commitments (promising truly fair and “viable” land- water- resource- and Jerusalem-sharing agreements) aimed to ensure that Palestinians are no longer “doomed to be disappointed.” Why is the onus on Israel? Because the shoe is on the other foot, and the shoe is a boot that Israel has kept on the throat of Palestinians for almost 60 years.
What is necessary is for Israel to put all its cards on the tables and give a clear and comprehensive 2-3 year timetable for implementation. This also means that old solutions like “areas A, B, and C,” and old distractions like your “water desalination” proposal, are no longer sufficient. If desalination is a win-win solution for water problems, then good. But Palestinians and the world know that this is a mere distraction unless Israel makes the larger “big picture” commitments. It is supplementary to the peace settlement, not a substitute.
It is impossible to explain why the Palestinians should accept water-desalination and a dunum-for-dunum exchange of land that leaves Israelis in full control of Jerusalem and its sprawling suburbs (thus choking off Palestinian movement in the West Bank), while the Palestinians get stuck with some extra sq kms along side Gaza? This would qualify as a balanced “equal status” arrangement only on Israeli TV or the Fox News Channel. My proposal of Haifa and the Galilee is only to point out how absurd Israeli presumptions of “fair and balanced” truly are.
From all that has happened over the last five or six decades, it is clear that Israel presumes the Palestinians are just going to give up and go away. But it is not happening. Israelis will tragically incite more and more venomous hatred. They are driving the Palestinians into more and more extreme forms of militancy. Meanwhile Israel’s fanatics and extremists and “brave” nihilistic warriors think they are “winning” (basically getting away with murder) and “showing the world” how to build a model state with “national security” — but they are just digging a deeper and deeper hole.
The existential blindness of “don’t worry, be happy” has an Israeli translation, not a Palestinian one.
a word about
Sd, this is from his blog, it’s obviously he is interested to legitimatize the occupations and enquires of gangs for other land.
i.e. if we look back to the European and how they invaded the new world and after slaughtering 20-25 millions of people (Red Indians) and created new states their or the other nations in Pacific.
So he is one of the fans of invading killing /slaughtering there living people and time will fix the problem and created new logical/legitimate society by suppressing original societies and humans.
This is the law that Jonathan Edelstein believe in.
SD, if you want to read the whole entry that Salah quoted from, it’s here. I’m having a little difficulty understanding how those two paragraphs (or even the whole post) make me an “obvious” fan of genocide and ethnic cleansing, but maybe you’ll be able to figure it out.
I’ll reply to your arguments over the weekend, time permitting.
make me an “obvious” fan of genocide and ethnic cleansing,
Law, both domestic and international. American and Israeli politics.
This is the source and reference you interested.
Tell me what Israeli politics all about
Can you clarify for us what Israeli state believe this state in ME planted there on suppressing a society on their homeland?
We all know Israel created on clams of Promised Land, using genocide and ethnic cleansing this is the state of Israel how created!!! Isn’t this politics you believes Jonathan Edelstein?
Salah,
If you go back far enough – and in many cases not very far – then nearly every country was founded by ethnic cleansing, warfare and folk migration. This is true not only of the United States and Israel but of every New World state, Australia, New Zealand and even those in Africa, Asia and Europe. That doesn’t mean that the politics of those countries today are about ethnic cleansing.
There are very few politicians in Israel today who support ethnic cleansing. I certainly don’t support it. However, I also don’t believe that the United States, Israel, Argentina, New Zealand etc. are illegitimate states because of the way in which they are founded. Instead, all these countries, including Israel, have an obligation to make amends (although, as proven by the conversation between SD and me, there’s plenty of room for argument about what “making amends” really means).
An interest in the politics of Israel doesn’t make a person into a supporter of ethnic cleansing.
SD, you said:
In political terms, Sadat’s move was the equivalent of tearing a hole through the middle of Egyptian territory, and he was assassinated as a result.
I agree: it was politically revolutionary, and it cost Sadat his life. But to paraphrase something you wrote elsewhere in your comment, that says more about how batshit crazy the Muslim Brotherhood was than about how “bold” his move was in rational terms.
The 1978 peace treaty cost Egypt nothing. Egypt got the Sinai back – every inch of it – without firing a shot. It didn’t have to give up one whit of its independence or sovereignty. Israel agreed to submit all future border disputes to arbitration, which ultimately resulted in Egypt being awarded Taba. Egypt got billions a year from the United States as part of the peace settlement, along with millions more spent annually by Israeli tourists in the Sinai. And in return, it had to recognize a fact – i.e., Israel’s existence – which it had no realistic hope of changing.
Which is what puzzles me about your reference to the treaty as “an unexpectedly large peace deal.” There was nothing particularly “large” about it. The 1978 treaty was peace simpliciter – a cessation of declared hostilities. It did not obligate Israel and Egypt to support each other diplomatically or cooperate on any political, economic or cultural level, with the very limited exception of allowing each other’s nationals to cross the border as tourists. All it did was end the war. And if you want proof of this, you need look no farther than modern Egyptian political discourse, in which “peace” and “normalization” mean two very different things and the consensus from Mubarak on down is that the treaty does not require the second.
Again, I don’t intend to belittle what Sadat did. Sadat was indeed a man of courage, and paid for that courage by being murdered. But his boldness consisted, not of offering a “large” peace in return for land, but in accepting the land-for-peace formula at all. No Egyptian other than Sadat paid any price at all for the treaty – none of them had to move, their taxes didn’t go up, they remained free to personally boycott Israel if they so desired, their lives did not change in any other respect. That anyone would consider this “the [political] equivalent of tearing a hole through the middle of Egyptian territory” is proof that the Israelis aren’t the only ones with a boldness problem.
Now in your statement above, you are asking readers to appreciate how hard it would be for Israelis to tear a hole through their country, creating non-contiguous territories, displacing hundreds of thousands of citizens, and essentially “dismembering” the country. Yes, that is a hard thing to think about. But what you have described hypothetically for the Israelis is an exact description of what has already happened to the Palestinians.
Yes, I think we’re all aware of that. On the other hand, I think we all agree that what happened to the Palestinians in 1948 was wrong, and that it’s something for which Israel must make amends. In light of this, you’re essentially suggesting that two wrongs are necessary to make a right, and that the only way to make amends for ethnic cleansing is with another ethnic cleansing. Just out of curiosity, do you think that similar “boldness” is necessary to remedy the wrongs done to the Greek Cypriots, the Ostdeutsch, the Armenians and Azeris, the Indians and Pakistanis or any other victims of post-WW2 ethnic cleansing?
This is even aside from the fact that, as Eyal pointed out above, the areas you’re proposing to cede contain a majority of Arab citizens, who are themselves ethnically Palestinian. strongly object to their homes being ceded to the PA. So your proposal would ethnically cleanse the Palestinian Arabs of the Galilee and Haifa to make room for other Palestinians of a different citizenship. Note that the only Israeli politician currently suggesting such a thing is the right-wing racist, Avigdor Lieberman.
Basically, your suggestion – and you still aren’t clear if you mean it seriously or if you’re just trying to make a point – is that a million people who are living within their internationally recognized borders and who have become indigenous to the land (the second generation is always indigenous) be ethnically cleansed as the remedy for the cleansing of 700,000 people sixty years ago. The immorality of such “eye for an eye” proposals should be obvious. If you’re going to talk realistically about peace, the only way to do it is through a formula for compensation – which, if you read Baba Kamma 84a, is what “eye for an eye” really means in the first place.
Rabin never moved boldly, despite what the pro-Israel Clinton White House crowd said about his actions.
I think you’re missing something here about Rabin’s and Sadat’s comparative ability to “move boldly.” Sadat was the boss in Egypt – if he decided to make peace, then peace would be made and no obstreperous parliament would get in the way. Rabin, on the other hand, was leading a minority government for much of his term, and had to get every measure past a hostile Knesset. That’s one of the drawbacks of democracy: radical moves are harder and slower than in a dictatorship.
Given the political circumstances Rabin worked under, he was as bold as he could be. Indeed, he was bold in the same way Sadat was: he took the land-for-peace formula which Israel had previously applied only to Arab states, and applied it to an indigenous population that did not yet have a state. Rabin recognized Palestinian national rights, which Israel had never done before, and therefore applied land-for-peace to a new forum. This was only a first step, of course, and was not sufficient by itself – but on the other hand, Sadat’s treaty was only a first step toward true peace (or what Egyptians refer to as “normalization”). Neither journey has yet been completed.
And, as I said, it’s a bad idea to judge Rabin’s boldness (or otherwise) strictly by what he did before he was killed. The Beilin-Abu Mazen document (linked above) suggests that he would have been far bolder had he lived and won a second term.
In the end, Jonathan, you and everyone who pretend to hold balanced “equal status” concerns for Israelis and Palestinians
I guess “equal status” is one of those terms that depend upon definitions. My definition of “equal status” involves (1) the internationally recognized border being the baseline for negotiations, (2) any deviations therefrom being made by mutual agreement without regard to “facts on the ground” or the power differential between the parties, and (3) all valid Palestinian claims being recognized and compensated in a fair and agreed-upon manner. What does the term mean to you?
(BTW, I notice that you make a couple of references to “what Israel has done to the Palestinians.” Fair enough. But if so, then what the Palestinians have done to Israel must also be considered. That’s one reason why I think backward-looking remedies are so counterproductive – Israeli crimes are no more unforgivable than the Palestinian variety, and any settlement that focuses on past wrongs inevitably degenerates into an argument over who did what to whom. Far better to concentrate on what will enable people to live well in the future.)
It is impossible to explain why the Palestinians should accept water-desalination and a dunum-for-dunum exchange of land that leaves Israelis in full control of Jerusalem and its sprawling suburbs (thus choking off Palestinian movement in the West Bank),
I think you’re putting words in my mouth again. I support a division and/or sharing of Jerusalem as agreed by the Israelis and Palestinians, with the Old City under a condominium or, if that is unfeasible, internationalized. But if you feel that dunam-for-dunam exchange is not enough and that some degree of interest or a fine is necessary, then I’m willing that it should be two for one.
I agree that a “larger than expected” deal might be called for. What you don’t seem to realize is that this is exactly why I suggested measures like desalination and joint economic development. There are two ways to make a land deal larger – by giving more land, or by making the land worth more. You may call desalination a “distraction,” but it’s one way to make the deal larger – by enabling currently unproductive land to support agriculture and industry, and by enabling Palestinians to use that land as productively as Israelis do! Is the land barren? Then include as part of the deal – i.e., as an Israeli obligation, not as largesse – the tools, training and funding to make it not barren!
If that isn’t bold – if that isn’t “larger than expected” – then what is? A two-for-one exchange of land adjacent to Gaza with the water and tools to develop it would be worth a hell of a lot more than your 20-mile-wide corridor through the Negev, wouldn’t it?
From all that has happened over the last five or six decades, it is clear that Israel presumes the Palestinians are just going to give up and go away.
The evidence seems pretty conclusive that Israel has learned otherwise. If the Israelis believed that the Palestinians were going to give up and go away, then there would have been no Oslo, no Taba, no withdrawal from Gaza, not even the slightest concession. Even Lieberman, by now, realizes that the Palestinians aren’t going to go away – the only people who still believe that are
It seems, on the other hand, that a significant part of the Palestinian leadership believes that Israel will give up and go away – if not, then why the refusal to entertain offers of compensation for the refugees, or to negotiate a settlement (such as that proposed at Taba) combining return for a certain number and compensation for the others? A deal could have been done very much along these lines in 2001. I don’t think that a majority of Palestinians believe that Israel will give up any more than a majority of Israelis believe the opposite, but the leadership of both has, shall we say, a bit of trouble with boldness.
Jonathan,
Sorry it took me until today to respond. For me, this is neither occupation nor hobby. I have too many other things in life to be concerned with blogging on a daily basis.
1) For starters it was a good laugh when you downplayed the significance of Egypt’s peace. I originally brought up the point because the Israeli government is the one that plays up Sadat’s bold “offer of the olive branch.” And Israel continues to expect the Palestinians and other Arab states to behave as Sadat did. So if Sadat’s “minimal peace” offer had such little significance for Israelis, then why would the Israelis constantly repeat this point? And if Sadat’s “minimal” offer had so many benefits for Egyptians, then what is keeping other Arabs from stepping up and doing the same? Especially when there is potentially so little cost to themselves and so little potential gain for the Israelis?
Of course the truth is that Egypt’s peace was large and significant in the history of Israel’s existence. Since Egypt was Israel’s main military threat for the previous two decades, Sadat’s offer of peace shifted the entire nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And once this military threat was removed, it eventually allowed Israel’s tech-based economy to boom. Today this tiny land with a tiny population, plugged into the top echelons of the American government and the global institutions of the US (WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc.) is one of the leaders in the world’s high-tech industry.
As for Egypt, a country with a population approaching 100 million? You suggest there were no costs and only benefits, but Egypt experienced what most third world countries experience after signing onto US-backed, Israel-friendly neo-liberal development schemes. A few Egyptian elites got very, very wealthy; the Egyptian government became more and more distant from the mass of people; and the political undercurrent of Egyptian society became increasingly radicalized. At the same time Egypt was isolated in the Arab world for more than two decades. No costs?
2) Linking me to Avigdor Lieberman’s plans for ethnic-cleansing is a clever rhetorical stunt, but I am not the one who suggested “two wrongs are necessary to make a right, and … the only way to make amends for ethnic cleansing is with another ethnic cleansing.” That would be Jabotinsky, Begin, Shamir, Ben Gurion, Dayan, and those like Rabin who carried out the elimination of entire Palestinian towns, villages, and urban neighborhoods in 1947-1949 (as well as those like Netanyahu who privately share the same ideas today).
You cite my reference to Haifa, Akka and the Galilee, and say “you still aren’t clear if you mean it seriously or if you’re just trying to make a point.” Of course I am just making a point, don’t be ridiculous. And I see you have trouble with irony, in addition to logic.
Who in their right mind (Irony Alert) would suggest allowing Palestinian control of Haifa, Akka and the Galilee, when Palestinians already form a majority there, and when hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian refugees come from homes in these same areas? Of course, these areas were also part of Palestine under the original UN partition plan, and the return of their control would help the Palestinian segment of Israel-Palestine recover some balance, but no one in post-9/11 America would suggest something ridiculous like this.
At an historic moment when GWOT is in full gear, when America and Israel are united in arms, who would want to deny this unprecedented opportunity (Irony Alert) to extend OUR hyper-charged uber-secular democracies to THEIR undemocratic, unsecular control? Reducing the territory of Palestine under Israeli control would be moving backwards, right?
3) I will say that you are right about one of the drawbacks of democracy: prior to his assassination Rabin was working in very difficult domestic circumstances. In a multi-ethnic environment, the Israelis managed to turn their pre-1948 ethnic minority status into a demographic majority after the forced exile of Palestinians in 1948-49. As a result Israelis were able to develop some degree of democratic government, even though this democracy functioned as a one-party ruling system through much of its early history. After Israelis seized additional Palestinian lands in 1967 the demographic balance of this majority-minority issue shifted again, especially considering that the Palestinians’ higher birth rates would make them a majority in the not too distant future. Prior to war in 1967 there were cracks in Israel’s stable one-party rule, but afterward Israeli democracy became increasingly divided under unstable coalition governments that shifted power to minority extremist parties.
In multi-ethnic democracies it is difficult for minority ethnic groups to maintain political control, so they usually practice things like exclusion, segregation, ethnic cleansing, or genocide. Prior to 1967 the Israelis practiced exclusion and ethnic cleansing. After 1967 they practiced exclusion and segregation; and this remained the strategy when the Israelis finally considered giving land back to the Palestinians during the Oslo years. This strategy failed when it ended up looking too much like the bantustan policies of the former South Africa. When the Israelis acted very late in the game to stitch together enough Palestinian territories to make the new bantustans “contiguous” and thus appear unlike South Africa, it was simply not believable. After the deal broke down at Camp David II, the Israelis went even further in offering more concessions. However, at this time there was already massive fighting on the ground, and the Palestinian leadership could not be seen to capitulate under Israeli armed pressure; and besides the sweeter deal remained unbelievable, since the Israelis were continuously seizing more and more territory for settlement.
In democratic systems when minority (or future-potential minority) ethnic leaders begin to see the demographic “light of day,” and take the first steps toward reconciling with previously disempowered majority (or future-potential majority) groups, there are always rival ethnic minority leaders who act as demagogues to undermine the reconciliation efforts by appealing to the worst ethno-national bigotry. This is the context for your reference about Rabin’s difficult situation prior to his assassination by a right-wing Israeli bigot ( who was inspired by the broader demagogic right wing of Israeli politics). Under these circumstances it takes truly great democratic leadership to denounce the demagogues and bigots, while pushing ahead (with the protection of reliable personal security) to implement the kind of bold policies necessary to achieve a breakthrough for long-term justice and peace.
You clearly think Rabin did as much as he could have under the circumstances. I still think Israel needs bolder leadership than what Rabin offered (as well as better personal security than was offered Rabin). Israelis need someone who (in no uncertain terms) can acknowledge the injustice of Zionism for the Palestinian people, and can extend to the Palestinians a bold land settlement that proves (again in no uncertain terms) the Israeli people want to share the land as co-equals. There is no longer any reason to postpone this from happening, unless the intention of Israelis is to deny the Palestinians a chance to live as co-equals while sweeping the whole history of injustice under the carpet. But as long as this happens, the legacy of injustice will simply continue to grow, along with the ever-increasing horrific levels of violence.
Israelis need bolder leadership if they are going to make a multi-ethnic democracy work in the long-run with Palestinians. In multi-ethnic countries aspiring to democracy, there is generally a need to de-emphasize ethnic-sectarian identities. Yet, since the founding of the Zionist movement, Zionists living among Palestinians have done the exact opposite. They have hyper-emphasized ethnic-sectarianism, and this is the heart of the problem.
4) “Equal status” can of course have many definitions, depending on the context in which it is used. I was using the term in the context of some personalities such as … let’s say, Dennis Ross who pretends to be value-neutral toward the Israelis-Palestinians, and pontificates on-and-on about what would be a fair peace settlement between the two sides without acknowledging he has a dog in the fight. Now the idea that Dennis Ross could be an honest broker between Israelis and Palestinians, acting as a neutral mediator capable of treating the two sides as if they had “equal status,” is of course ludicrous. Anyone who stays modestly informed about the history and dynamics of this long-running conflict is capable of seeing that Dennis Ross was biased in his support of the Israeli side throughout the Oslo years (despite the denials of Israelis who protest far too much, like Bibi).
Some social conflicts like Israel-Palestine require more than the services of a pretentious value-neutral mediator, and in fact demand the work of an arbitrator empowered to right the balance of justice. When the search for just settlements takes place between two sides of unequal weight, where one side has clearly been the offending party and the other side the party trying to defend its rights, it is commonly acknowledged that mediators must go beyond merely upholding “equal status” in negotiations. Instead the effective mediator must play the role of arbitrator upholding the rights of the aggrieved party to ensure that justice is served. Thus during the Oslo years Israelis and Palestinians required the services of a mediator who could act in “biased” ways not for the sake of Israelis, but rather for the sake of the Palestinians.
In conflict resolution this is called “empowerment for justice,” and without it the pretentious value-neutral mediator becomes an advocate for the stronger party, as is apparent in your following statement: “Israeli crimes are no more unforgivable than the Palestinian variety, and any settlement that focuses on past wrongs inevitably degenerates into an argument over who did what to whom. Far better to concentrate on what will enable people to live well in the future.” Israeli crimes may be no more unforgivable than Palestinian crimes, since all crimes in this bloody conflict will eventually have to be forgiven. But to get to that point you must focus on the nature of past wrongs in order to uphold justice and truly “enable people to live well in the future.” If you ignore the way that Israelis displaced Palestinians from the land — and the way they continue to implement a strategic plan for displacing Palestinians from the land, and if you fail to return substantial territory and resources to the Palestinians, then you will never enable the Palestinians to live well in the future.
Only the Israelis would allow a just resolution of the conflict to “degenerate into an argument over who did what to whom” because they are yet to acknowledge that the Palestinians are the aggrieved party in this conflict.
5) You are on the right track when you say, a “larger than expected” deal “might” be called for. I would correct you and say that such a deal is without a doubt “called for.” The only question is how much “larger than expected” it will eventually be.
The Israelis have continually had very low expectations for what they will have to give Palestinians in a final deal. This was true of Rabin; it was true of Beilin; it is true of the whole lot of Israeli officialdom. And the Clinton administration unfortunately allowed the Israelis to keep thinking this was true. The point is that the Israelis will eventually have to give the Palestinians a substantial stake in the territory known as Israel/Palestine to enable them to live well.
You suggest a 1:2 exchange between the West Bank settlements retained by Israel and the land given to the Palestinians next to Gaza that will be irrigated with desalinated water. This is still a low expectation. Without a more substantial commitment on the part of Israelis to enable the Palestinians to live well, the Israelis will simply set up for worse forms of violence in the future.
6) The onus for bold diplomacy remains on Israel’s leadership.
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