Interesting to see that the comments board here recently attracted an interesting and well-written comment from emerging young blogger Michael Totten, who’s just completed a short junket to Israel paid for by the American Jewish Committee.
To his credit, Totten– unlike so many earlier beneficiaries of all-expenses-paid junkets provided by pro-Israeli organizations– did at least admit his sponsorship upfront. However, he did not admit in the comment submitted here, if it was indeed he who submitted it, that the whole text of that comment ran on his blog, here, a month ago.
Since I missed it then, I’m interested to see it now, since it not only paints an interesting picture of the views of many members of the Jewish Israeli policy elite but it also conveys pretty clearly to an English-speaking audience the messages those Israelis want to have conveyed.
Overwhelmingly that message is that “There is no fast or easy solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
You could also, certainly, link that argument with description– which by all accounts seems an accurate one– of the degree to which Israelis feel happy or satisfied with the results of the recent Gaza war. As he blogged on January 26, “Most Israelis I spoke to in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem last week feel a tremendous sense of relief and seem more at ease than they have been in years.”
In other words, they feel– or as of January 26, they did feel– under no immediate pressure to change any of their existing practices in the security/strategic field. Those practices include, though Totten makes no mention of these issues, their continued building of additional settlements in the West Bank, the continued maintenance of the ‘movement control’ noose around West Bankers, and most shockingly of all the continuation of the tight siege around Gaza that prevents the delivery of even basic construction materials that are desperately needed to rebuild the thousands of badly damaged and completely destroyed homes, water systems, and other basic infrastructure there.
“Israelis feel okay about themselves– so therefore, there’s no need for anyone to rush hard toward making peace with the Palestinians”: That seems to be the general trend of the extremely self-referential argument that Totten is both describing and subscribing to.
In the blog post “The mother of all quagmires”, which was what was sent here as a comment, Totten adduces several pieces of “evidence” as to why the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is currently unsolvable.
The most important of these items of ‘evidence’ is his argument that (1) Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s to exist (and by clear implication, that it cannot be made to accept this, even perhaps grudgingly, in the context of a broad peace bargain in which others of its important demands get met); and (2) that this rejection by Hamas of Israel’s “right to exist” and a concomitant rejection of a two-state solution, are widely shared among Palestinians.
Regarding the first part of that argument, of course diplomatic balancing of all the issues is quite possible, in the context of a true, wide-ranging peace negotiation– as Khaled Meshaal and other Hamas leaders have very clearly indicated. (But Hamas, unlike Fateh, is unlikely to give away all its negotiating cards upfront.)
Regarding the second part of the argument, Totten is just plain wrong. He writes,
- Hamas speaks for a genuinely enormous number of Palestinians, and peace is impossible as long as that’s true. An-Najah University conducted a poll of Palestinian public opinion a few months ago and found that 53.4 percent persist in their rejection of a two-state solution.
Where did he get that figure?
You go to any of the series of very professionally conducted polls that have been conducted among the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, and you’ll din the picture is almost the direct obverse of what Totten claims.
The PCPSR (Shikaki) poll of early December 2008 found that:
- * 53% accept and 46% reject a mutual recognition of Israel as the state for the Jewish people and Palestine as the state for the Palestinian people; 48% think a majority of Palestinians support the mutual recognition while 38% think a majority of Israelis support it.
* 66% support and 30% oppose the Saudi Initiative that calls for an Israeli withdrawal to the lines of 1967 in return for an Arab recognition of Israel and normalization of relations with it.
The JMCC poll of late January 2009 found, in Q.11, that, of a list of different final outcomes suggested (and some not suggested) by the poll-takers, 54.8% of respondents preferred the two-state outcome, as against 18.4% for a “A binational state on all of historic Palestine”, 1.6% for an Islamic state, etc.
These most recent poll results, I should note, are remarkably consistent with findings of polls undertaken by these and other polling organizations for many years past. Back in the early years of this decade, I recall that the level of Palestinian support for a two-state solution was around two-thirds. Yes, it has declined since then; but only slowly. And crucially, even in the context of complete stasis in the negotiations, a continuation/acceleration of Israeli settlement building, and the recent Gaza war, it still remains noticeably above 50%.
That certainly gives peace negotiators a great basis of public support to work on– if they use it swiftly and well.
(Ah, but how about the levels of Israeli support for a robust two-state solution like the one the Saudi/Arab peace initiative calls for? Those figures would be far, far lower, I think… )
So why does Michael Totten distort (or, unquestioningly accept and re-propagate the Israeli distortions of) this part of the Palestinian record?
I guess there are two separate questions there. One is about Totten. In a sense it’s a trivial question. Totten is a journalist-provocateur, on the same order as his friend Chris Hitchens (with whom he got into a little adventure in Beirut last week, after the ever-pugnacious Hitchens decided to deface a mnument of the veteran Lebanese party the SSNP.) Hitchens is so “famous” now that he doesn’t even have to pretend to do real reportorial journalism. Totten is still up-and-coming, however; and he does make some effort to do real reportorial journalism (which also builds up his value to those who want to use him as a journalist-provocateur.) But he does his “journalism” in an unabashedly biased way. He goes to Israel on the dime of the AJC and he makes no attempt whatsoever, while there, to seek out any Palestinians and gain anything even approaching a “balanced”– as between Israelis and Palestinians– view of the conflict between these two peoples. Instead, he just parrots the views and impressions of local anti-Arab propagandists like Martin Kramer.
(I recall that last August, during the Ossetian war, Totten went to Tbilisi and did some blatantly propagandistic flacking for Saakashvili, while there. I’d love to know who picked up those expenses for him… Is it the neocon ideology that drives his work, I wonder; or the taste for “Boys’ Own” adventures of the most laddish kind; or the excitement of getting noticed and adopted by powerful and rich organizations like the AJC? Maybe a bit of all that.)
But a more interesting question is why the influential Israelis with whom he met want to put about the idea that there is “no hope for peace” because “the Palestinians are all hate-filled irredentists who don’t even, really, want the two-state solution they claim is their goal.”
Ah, I guess once I write it down that way, that question looks pretty obvious and trivial, too.
Helen. you really shouldn’t get into arguments with prats like this ‘Totten’ fellow.
Who is he? Has he got an experienced journalistic background? Who publishes his stuff and pays him? (It seems the American Jewish Committee paid for his last trip)
He met with ‘Israeli military officers, politicians, academics, and journalists on the far-left, the far-right and at every point in between’ he says.
He quotes an Israeli politician: “Unfortunately we Westerners are impatient,” said an Israeli politician who preferred not to be named. “We want fast food and peace now. But it won’t happen. We need a long strategy.”
The sooner the Israelis realise they have no ‘long strategy’, and that they are not ‘Western’ , the better.
They are a mediaeval religious cult holding out in a small territory. They should be dealt with, just like Koresh’s cult at Waco.
There is a salient distinction that (naturally, given US media and political culture bias in favor of Israel’s hardliners) seems to always be missed: Hamas, like (I presume) most Palestinians seems unwilling to recognize Israel as legitimate, but willing to recognize it’s de facto existence. That is a natural and reasonable stance for them to take, given the history. It obviously does NOT necessarily translate to an existential threat against Israel, despite all the propaganda from Israel’s right wing and its supporters. In fact, as you point out, Cobban, most Palestinians, like most israelis, appear ready and even eager to negotiate a settlement.
Where did he get that figure?
My guess was that he got that figure from An-Najah University, just as he said. And would you believe that the poll he is citing is actually found on the “Inter-Net” on the “website” belonging to this august institution?
http://www.najah.edu/index.php?news_id=4262&&page=1393
Do you support or reject the creation of two states on the historic land of Palestine (a Palestinian state and Israel)?
Support: 42.5
Reject: 54.3
The sample size is 1360, with a margin of error of 3%, a somewhat larger sample size than the PCPSR poll you cited.
There are lots of interesting findings in this poll, including things that might rebut parts of Totten’s argument. But this would require reading the poll, whereas you seem preoccupied with character assassination. What a shame.
If the Palestinians would agree to a settlement with no or essentially no right to return, no external borders and demilitarized then a settlement would have been reached already.
If the Israelis were able to offer acceptable concessions on all three, a settlement would have been reached already.
There has been no settlement because these aren’t resolvable issues.
The practical alternatives are, and have been for years, a one-state solution with an Arab majority or the status quo.
If 55% of Palestinians would accept something Israel would never offer, that means nothing at all.
This insistence that an agreement is just around the corner, when it really isn’t, actually is advocacy for the status quo.
a short junket to Israel paid for by the American Jewish Committee… He goes to Israel on the dime of the AJC..I’d love to know who picked up those expenses for him..
Actually the Totten link doesn’t say anything about “all expenses paid” — just that Totten was brought to Israel by the AJC ie they covered his travel expenses.
So should we question the integrity of your reporting on Lebanon and Saudi Arabia because your “basic travel expenses” (to conferences at AUB eg) have in the past been borne by members of the Saudi royal family, or because you accept money (horrors!) to write in Saudi-government-owned newspapers like Al Hayat?
I admit I would say or write anything for a free trip to Gaza, but I had no idea that journalists as a class were quite so venal as this.
Helena, if you accept as authoritative a poll showing only 1.6 % of Palestinians support an Islamic state, why is it you have never criticised Hamas for its (therefore) disgraceful behaviour since 2006 when it refused to accept the agreements entered into by the PA, thereby going against the wishes of the Palestinian people?
Why have you never criticised Hamas for imposing islamic law on the people of Gaza?
Secondly, in your recent visit to Ramallah did you conduct interviews with members of the present PA government? If not, why not?
66% support and 30% oppose the Saudi Initiative that calls for an Israeli withdrawal to the lines of 1967 in return for an Arab recognition of Israel and normalization of relations with it. … This statistic doesnt include the fact that the Saudi plan requires the “right of return”, which we all know is the suicide of Israel. Thus, it is a nonstarter among Israelis
“the Saudi plan requires the “right of return”, which we all know is the suicide of Israel.”
This is my very favorite lame excuse for Israel giving the middle finger to a truly generous offer from the entire Arab world – an offer that gives Israel everything it claims it has ever wanted – peace, recognition, and normal diplomatic relations with embassies, ambassadors and everything. It is my favorite because it is so transparently specious.
As anyone who knows who has actually bothered to read the Arab League* proposal, it does not require the right of return at all. Here is what the official English translation calls for:
“Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194.”
Clearly there is nothing there that requires the right of return. It requires the achievement of a “just solution” to the refugee problem. It further requires that the terms and details of this solution be agreed upon by the parties concerned, meaning that the terms and details are negotiable.
The Palestinians have been ready for decades. The Arabs have been ready for at least the last eight six years. The problem is that there really is no one to talk to on the other side. There is no Israeli peace partner.
*Since this proposal has been unanimously adopted by the Arab League every time it has come up for renewal, and repeatedly re-offered to Israel by the Arab League, it is most accurate to call it the Arab League peace proposal.
If Totten’s reporting on Israel/Palestine is as good as his reporting on Georgia/Russia, it is worthless!
Oh, it’s not entirely worthless. The people on whose behalf he is reporting are quite thrilled with it, no doubt, and he probably has a group of fans who actually buy whatever he writes.
Vadim, in the Najah poll to which you helpfully provide the link we have this question and answer: “Do you support or reject the creation of a Palestinian state on the 1967 occupied territories?” Support came to 67.1%, reject came to 29.6%.
The question that got the 54.3% support was this: “Do you support or reject the creation of two states on the historic land of Palestine (a Palestinian state and Israel)?”
The results gathered on these two questions may seem contradictory– unless you look at the word “creation”. One surmise would be that the Palestinian respondents, asked about the “creation” of two states in this area– and this in the context where many local settler groups speak from time to time of creating their own “State of Judea” if they are asked to evacuate– might have expressed their opposition on this basis. but who knows? It seems strange to have these two questions, with their noticeably different wording but referring, possibly, to the same thing, in the same poll.
In light of the consistency of all other polls on still finding majority support among OPT Palestinians for the two-state outcome, I would say anyone looking at the 54.3% figure would see it as the outlier, and do some deep probing as to whether the wording of the question affected that.
But Martin Kramer– who seems to have been the source for Totten– just waved that outlier figure around to “prove” his argument.
More to the point, Totten made not the slightest attempt to seek out Palestinians and discover their own views, as fellow humans, face to face, but just relies on the assessments of their Israeli overlords about those views.
Speaking about wording, the question about a two state solution offered the choices:
a- 2 state solution
b- Binational state where Palestinians and Israelis have equal representation
c- No solution
Some respondents went outside of the questions or gave no answer.
So a Palestinian or Islamic state was not one of the choices, but over 10% of Palestinians offered it spontaneously.
The binational state choice went out of its way to say Israelis have equal representation – regardless of if “Israelis” are an equal proportion of the population.
In other words, a very leading question. Really a bizarre question. I’ve never heard a one-state solution described that way by anybody, especially not an advocate.
I guess it’s what you have to do to maintain the illusion that the Palestinians and Israelis are, as always, one negotiation from producing an offer that is acceptable to both sides. Which means you get to grudgingly, but with less guilt, accept and even support the continuance of the status quo.
Why support Mubarak’s dictatorship? Because it is necessary to reach the peace that is one negotiation away. Why support the Jordanian dictatorship? Same reason. Why support starving the people of Gaza? Why support Abbas assuming powers explicitly denied him in Palestine’s general law? The imprisonment of elected Parliamentarians?
That doesn’t violate your values at all? Oh, it’s all in the name of the peace that is one negotiation away, and has been one negotiation away for a generation.
There is no two-state solution one negotiation away. Most Palestinians do not accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in Palestine. Ask directly and they’ll tell you. Ask the kind of contorted questions above and you’ll get what you’re looking for.
You accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state. And you have the right to. Most Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims do not. One day you’ll understand that. For now, you block it out of your mind like a traumatic memory.
In the mean time, you’re a supporter of the injustices, and misery necessary to maintain an ethnic based state in a region that, rightly, does not accept its legitimacy.
More to the point, Totten made not the slightest attempt to seek out Palestinians and discover their own views, as fellow humans, face to face, but just relies on the assessments of their Israeli overlords about those views.
This is an ambitious inference. It seems like maybe you aren’t trying to seek out Mr. Totten’s views as a fellow human, but simply pigeonholing him as some kind of paid Israeli shill (harping on his honesty, laddishness, venality etc. rather than addressing what he wrote.) Ad hominem like this may feel good to write and read, but it isn’t terribly effective as criticism. Have you ever attempted to communicate with Mr. Totten directly? I notice you didn’t even reply to his posted comment.
Had you invested fifteen seconds of research, you would know that Totten did in fact interview Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh. Unfortunately it seems that he was asked to remove the transcript of this conversation from his site, but it’s easy to find elsewhere:
http://middle-east-analysis.blogspot.com/2009/02/khaled-abu-toameh-surveys-palestinian.html
I’m sure some of this had to do with accusations from low-rent McCarthys like the “Angry Arab” (who at least seems to have read the piece, but whose only reply is bitter vacuous ad hominem, just like yours.)
Might I say I detect a note of envy here? Michael Totten has been a rising star in the blogosphere, while Ms Cobban has not reached those heights. Actually Helena, I think you may be as talented as Michael, but you have one disadvantage. You are tethered to the American Friends Service ideology, which abhors violence against people, but not against Jews. This forces you to do all sorts of contorions, siding with people who use children as human shields,siding with suicide bombers, and other things that you would not be able to do if the victims were true humans
Angelle accusing Cobban of believing Jews aren’t humans.
Cobban has dealt with people like Angelle for her entire career, I’m sure while rationally Cobban laughs this accusation off, on some level it hurts that even maybe someone like Angelle honestly thinks she is a bigot.
I think this is where Cobban’s insistence that there be a Jewish state comes from. To question the legitimacy of a Jewish state brings fire not only from Angelle, and it brings it from her too, but it brings this accusation from more respected and more seemingly reasonable Jewish people whom Cobban has to get along with day-to-day.
Palestinians do not live in the emotional environment Cobban finds herself in. Cobban accepts a Jewish state partly not to be in disagreement with Jewish people who feel very viscerally about the issue, feel threatened by anyone who disagrees, and who transfer that feeling of threat into accusations, yes unfounded but still hurtful, of anti-Semitism.
Palestinians are more free than Cobban to doubt Israel’s legitimacy and to believe that they should have a full right to return, rendering Israel as Jewish as South Africa is now Afrikaaner.
Denying Palestinians that freedom, the Cobban cannot even perceive herself as having lost, requires weird polls that in their questions brush over what Israel considers necessary requirements for any Palestinian state. It requires threatening to starve Palestinians who vote wrong and carrying out that threat. It requires dictatorships over ten or twenty times the amount of Arabs as the amount of Israeli Jews who thereby get to enjoy a “Jewish Democracy”.
The charge of anti-Semitism has been a potent weapon employed in small but steady and consistent measures in distorting Western views of the possibilities of the Middle East.
Not by a conspiracy with marching orders, but by Jewish people who feel attached to Israel, feeling threatened by and lashing out at anyone who disagrees the best way they know how.
Angelle, I am quite sure that Helena would prefer to retain her position in the blogger pantheon than to sell her soul to attain “star” status, rising or otherwise.
If Helena has a “disadvantage” relative to someone of Michael Totten’s ilk it is her entegrity, including her refusal to be bought.
Oh yeah – and Helena also knows something about her subject. She does the tough digging and the sometimes even tougher thinking required to be more than just a propagandist-on-the-rise.
Arnold, why do you have more of a problem with a Jewish state than the majority of Palestinians, Saudis or the other members of the Arab League that are working to accommodate this state’s existence?
There are dozens of “ethnic” states, many of them with citizenship requirements and special privileges for citizens much more noteworthy than Israel’s. Jus sanguinis is in fact the norm throughout most of the world (including the entire EU.)
To add to Shirin’s point on refugee return, thinking of refugee provisions in the Arab League proposal as an obstacle is pure propaganda. Israel voted for UN General Assembly Resolution 194 60 years ago in the UN, and the Arab states agreed on the refugee provisions a few months later. So the evil Saudis merely require Israel to reaccept something it accepted decades ago and has never repudiated.
Bringing up Hitchens and the (mad) but widespread Israeli view that there is no quick and easy solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem reminds me of a quote from that ignorant evil Jew-hater Abba Eban that Hitchens likes to cite – that what is striking about the conflict is how easy it is to solve (by the 2-state solution).
Vadim:
The Arab states are nearly all US-propped dictatorships that according to polls disagree with their people on the issue of Israel’s legitimacy.
Worse, it seems that you and Cobban take that as a good thing.
I take dictatorships being necessary to secure Israel as a bad thing. I take Western liberals closing ranks with these dictatorships as bad in a different way. Something of a betrayal. But I understand, based on the environments you live in.
But as I come to understand the motivation behind it, I’m expressing my conclusions.
Shirin-what excites you some mouch about the Israeli Palestinian conflict? Is it to deflect attention from the Iranian nuclear weapons program? Is to to deflect attention that Iran is the Austro-Hungarian empire of Asia, a loose collection of oppressed minorities (Azeris, Kurds,Ahwaz Arabs, Baluchis) under the iron heels of ethnic Persians? Is it to cover up Iran’s disgraceful treatment of Bahais? Is it your belief that Khamenei is the 12th Imam, and that nuclear war with Israel is necessary to resolve old grudges between Shiism and Sunni Islam over the Battle of Karbala
B-b-b-but……..I thought Muqtada Sadr was the 12th Imam! Now you tell me it is Khamenei?!
I swear I just cannot keep up!
Arnold,
What polls are you talking about? Every poll I have seen says something else, eg
http://www.brookings.edu/topics/~/media/Files/events/2008/0414_middle_east/0414_middle_east_telhami.pdf
Here 73% of Arabs from a wide range of Arab nations endorse a 2-state solution. Do you have some other poll data in mind? Please share it.
Of course what other Arabs want is a distant second to what Palestinians and Israelis want. Or what WE might want in western countries (of what “environment” are you speaking?). So I’m really interested why you take such great offense with Israeli law of return but you seem to not care very much about the European citizenship laws (all EU nations tie bloodline to nationality) that make them just as much “ethnic states” as Israel. Please share your thoughts.
There is nothing very complicated about the difference between Israel’s doctrine, allowing those it designates as Jews the right to settle in Palestine, and the right of Palestinian refugee families to return.
The difference is this: The Palestinians, expelled from the land, wish to return to it.
As to the Israelis, their claim on the land is wholly ideological, it has no real basis in history and none of those involved(eg Peres or Liberman) has any connection with the land except that of sharing in its conquest.
It really is high time that the world stopped indulging Israelis in, what they know themselves is a colony established, Rhodesia style, on other people’s land; transparently sanctified by a weird C19th combination of hysterical nationalism and unrelenting mind numbing propaganda.
The great fear is that, having convinced a large number of ignorant people that they have a superior claim to Palestine, (a task which on the face of it would have to be regarded as impossible) the Zionists have now come to believe that they can convince people of anything. Including the obvious nonsense that Hamas is armed by Iran, that Iran has a nuclear weapons programme and simnilar affronts to reality.
Headed by an overtly fascist government and afforded an unlimited supply of sophisticated weapons and ammunition by the US, Israel, which daily issues blood curdling threats against Iran, has become the single greatest threat to peace in the world.
We should all insist that our governments stop arming it while publicly declaring that an attack on Iran will be interpreted for what it is an act of unprovoked aggression calling for coordinated international action against the aggressor.
Vadim, are you kidding me?
I am prepared for a just and comprehensive peace with Israel if Israel is willing to return all the territories occupied in the 1967 war including East Jerusalem, and the Arab governments should put more effort into this
I am prepared for a just and comprehensive peace with Israel if Israel is willing to return all the territories occupied in the 1967 war including East Jerusalem, but I don’t believe the Israelis will ever give up these territories peacefully.
73% agree with one of these statements. But um, Israel is not willing to return all the territories occupied in the 1967 war. Right?
That’s kind of my point. Now you can find a poll that says if Arabs agree there can never be a right to return Israelis want a two state solution.
You have to understand that polls that issue as prerequisites things that the other side considers off the table are meaningless. So why refer to them?
I feel like you can’t be serious. But you’re kind of clinging to the idea of a two state solution and just won’t let yourself believe it is non viable. I guess the alternative that there might not be a Jewish state one day is too painful for you to face.
I can’t reach you at this point.
But um, Israel is not willing to return all the territories occupied in the 1967 war. Right?
The question is not what Israel will or will not do, it’s what non-Palestinian Arabs would accept. Huge majorities would live with an Israeli Jewish state within 1967 borders, subject to certain conditions that of course may never be met by Israel, or accepted by radical factions like HAMAS (which also rejects those borders).
Obviously Arabs of the region have no problem with a “Jewish State” as such, merely the contours of the state as currently enforced by the powers that be in Israel. Your position (which rejects not only “Jewish” but also Arab, Christian, Greek, German and many other ethnic nationalities) seems quite a bit more extreme than theirs.
It’s not my place to say “what’s viable” because like all those non-Palestinian Arabs I have no skin in the game, and neither do you or most of the people on this board. The only people whose consent would underpin any peace are Israelis and Palestinians, and you speak for neither group.
Ah, Vadim, thanks for your dedicated digging, and for giving us the link to that lengthy record of the meeting Totten participated in– along with, as that blog post makes clear, all the other members of the AJC-funded delegation– with the Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh.
Khaled was apparently provided as a “resource”to this AJC-funded group by its AJC sponsors, and indeed the account tells us that he “even blogged for a while at Commentary Magazine,” which of course is funded by the AJC.
So I would submit it is still true that we have no evidence that Totten sought out the views of Palestinians on this trip. What he did was take part in the AJC-provided session with its own apparently favored Palestinian. Not quite the same thing as doing independent reporting…
other members of the AJC-funded delegation… Yes, Mr Totten has come clear on who funded his visit. Please show the same transparency and let us know who funds your blog?
Free Baluchistan now!!!