Those peace-averse Israelis
Israel Doesn’t Want Peace, Gideon Levy writes. These two picks by Thalif Deen and Gideon Levy here present a sobering and accurate assessment of the state of play with the Israeli government’s stalling, nay rejection, of the Arab League peace initiative. It lays to rest the other major canard trotted out by past apologists, that it was somehow the Palestinian leadership who “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity” (the other major historical one being “a land without a people for a people without a land”).
This opportunity is a great one and the Israeli government is deliberately and willfully giving it a miss, making it guilty of all of its projected accusations (“never a partner for peace” etc). See also Opportunity Knocks: The Arab League Renews Its Peace Plan Offer for a good backgrounder.
Thalif Deen in Arab Leaders Resurrect Land-for-Peace Deal (IPS, 2 April) writes about the sticking point in the resurrected Saudi-led initiative below:
The Arab League summit proposal — which would guarantee not only peace but full normalisation, trade and tourism, and complete regional integration of Israel into the Middle East — is premised on Israel’s withdrawal from all of the territories occupied in 1967, meaning all of the West Bank, all of Gaza and all of Arab East Jerusalem, said Bennis, author of “Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer”.
But it also requires a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on U.N. resolution 194, which guarantees the right of return and compensation.
… In fact, Olmert has escalated his rejection, saying not a single Palestinian would be allowed to go home. …
The real goal of the revitalised discussion is to divert global attention from Washington’s continuing economic embargo against the entire Palestinian population despite the new unity government; to try to raise Olmert’s now three percent approval ratings at home; and to encourage Arab rulers’ backing for a U.S. strike on Iran by providing the political cover for them to be able to claim that a solution on Palestine is at hand.
“Actually ending the occupation, unfortunately, is not on anyone’s agenda,” Bennis said.
Israel’s Gideon Levy comes to the sober realization many of us have, writing in Ha’aretz (8 April 2007):
The moment of truth has arrived, and it has to be said: Israel does not want peace. The arsenal of excuses has run out, and the chorus of Israeli rejection already rings hollow. Until recently, it was still possible to accept the Israeli refrain that “there is no partner” for peace and that “the time isn’t right” to deal with our enemies. Today, the new reality before our eyes leaves no room for doubt and the tired refrain that “Israel supports peace” has been left shattered.
It’s hard to determine when the breaking point occurred. Was it the absolute dismissal of the Saudi initiative? The refusal to acknowledge the Syrian initiative? Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s annual Passover interviews? The revulsion at the statements made by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in Damascus, alleging that Israel was ready to renew peace talks with Syria?
Who would have believed it? A high-ranking U.S. official says Israel wants peace talks to resume and instantly her president “severely” denies the veracity of her words. Is Israel even hearing these voices? Are we digesting the significance of these voices for peace? Seven million apathetic Israeli citizens prove that we are not.
Entire generations grew up here weaned on self-deception and doubt about the likelihood of achieving peace with our neighbors. In our younger days, David Ben-Gurion told us that if he were only able to meet with Arab leaders, he would have brought us peace in his time. Israel has demanded direct negotiations as a matter of principle and Israelis have derived great pride from the fact that their daily focus on “peace” has concealed their state’s lofty ambitions. We were told that there was no partner for peace and that the ultimate ambition of the Arabs is to bring about our destruction. We burned the portraits of “the Egyptian tyrant” at our bonfires on Lag Ba’omer, and were convinced that all blame for the lack of peace lied with our enemies.
After that came the occupation, followed by terror, Yassir Arafat, the failed second Camp David Summit and the rise of Hamas to power, and we were sure, always sure, that it was all their fault. In our wildest dreams, we wouldn’t have believed that the day would come when the entire Arab world would extend its hand in peace and Israel would brush away the gesture. It would have been even crazier to imagine that this Israeli refusal would have been blamed on not wanting to enrage domestic public opinion.
The world has been turned upside down and it is Israel that stands at the forefront of refusal. The policy of refusal of a select few, a vanguard of the extreme, has now become the official policy of Jerusalem. In his Passover interviews, Olmert will tell us that, “The Palestinians stand at the crossroads of a historic decision,” but people stopped taking him seriously a long time ago. The historic decision is ours, and we are fleeing from this crossroads and from these initiatives as if from death itself.
Terror, used as the ultimate excuse for Israeli refusal, only helps Olmert keep reciting, ad nauseum, “If they [the Palestinians] don’t change, don’t fight terror and don’t adhere to any of their obligations, then they will never extract themselves from their unending chaos.” As though the Palestinians haven’t taken measures against terrorism, as though Israel is the one to determine what their obligations are, as though Israel isn’t to blame for the unending chaos Palestinians suffer under the occupation.
Israel makes a point of setting prerequisites and believes it has an exclusive right to do so. But, time and time again, Israel avoids the most basic prerequisite for any just peace – an end to the occupation. Of all the questions asked during his Passover interviews, no one bothered to ask Olmert why he didn’t react with excitement to the recent Arab initiatives, without preconditions? The answer: real estate. The real estate of the settlements.
It’s not only Olmert who is dragging his feet. A leading figure in the Labor party said last week that “it will take five to 10 years to recover from the trauma.” Peace is now no more than a threatening wound, with no one still talking about the massive social benefits it would bring in development, security, freedom of movement in the region and by establishing a more just society.
Like a little Switzerland, we are focusing more these days on the dollar exchange rate and on the allegations of embezzlement leveled against the Finance Ministry than on the fateful opportunities fading away before our very eyes.
Not every day and not even in every generation do we encounter an opportunity like this. Although it’s not for sure if the initiatives are completely solid and believable, or if they are based on trickery, no one has stepped up to challenge or acknowledge them. When Olmert is an elderly grandfather, what will he tell his grandchildren? That he turned over every stone in the name of peace? That there was no other choice? What will his grandchildren say?
Related: See also Khody Akhavi, Syrian Lion Back in the Arab Fold? (IPS, 2 April) and Jim Lobe, Tough Week for Bush Middle East Strategy (IPS, 1 April)
Hi Ann!
Wouldn’t this be kind of like the American indians uprising and then telling Americans that they will offer peace if we just leave our homes and give the country back? How about if America imposed sanctions and planted terrorists in Australia in an effort to get Australians to give the land back to the aborigines? Just because we’ve been here longer does that mean that we have a right to it? Is it time that everyone in the world packs their bags, give up their homes and leaves? By this reasoning, I shouldn’t be here–I should be in some African country (who knows where?) taking cow urine baths.
I just don’t see the practicality of these things. Isn’t telling a country that they should give up territory to obtain peace essentially blackmail? Saying, give us land or we’ll kill you? I don’t see that as a peaceful solution or an offer of peace. If one does, then what is the difference between that and the mentality of the Neo-cons who think that peace can be brokered through the threat or carrying out of violence. (Dismantle wmd’s or we’ll pound you, discontinue your nuclear program or we’ll sanction you, give us your land or we’ll continue to encourage terrorism, etc.)
In my simple way of thinking, if someone did this to me, my response would be the same as Israel’s–
-Jack
P.S. I am still working my way through the last post I commented on. It took on so many dimensions, I had a hard time keeping up!
Hi Jack,
Thanks for your dissenting comment. I don’t think they are at all comparable and here’s why. I respect the American Indians grievances on their own merits, first of all. The genocidal policies perpetrated against them in the past are absolutely abhorrent, and if history should teach us anything, surely it should teach us to learn something from this and other genocides, including the Shoah.
Neither your American-Indian or US-Australia analogy apply, in my contention. First, the Palestinians aren’t asking Israel to give up the country as most of the international community defines it (1967 borders). It simply asks that it stops encroaching upon Palestinian land (further theft) with its illegal settlements which continue to this day. Tell me, Jack, would you like your newcomer neighbour suddenly claiming land you’ve lived on for generations and continually moving their border into your land, with the state turning a blind eye, simply because they are an Israeli Jew?
Second, global migration patterns over generations and in colonial times doesn’t equal wholesale land dispossession and ethnic cleansing and genocide, and in the twenty first century. The historical occurences you cited should be just that — consigned to history.
Last time I checked, the American Indians and Aborigines still live in the US and Australia respectively, they haven’t been killed off or transferred as some racist Israelis are seriously proposing with the Palestinians, including the racist Avigdor Lieberman, who was made Deputy Prime Minister. In any other country there would have been an international outcry.
How on earth do we expect the Palestinians to accept the founding of the State of Israel only sixty years ago with the uncompensated donation of their lands? Clearly, no rational person could defend such an action, so it has been justified with the religious-based claim that “God gave us these lands” –not exactly a
sound basis for building a new state (on the backs of another people) nor a rational basis for international policy!
So what are you proposing, Jack? That all the Palestinians be killed off or transferred in their millions off the land their families have lived on for generations, for newcomer off-the-boat Jewish settlers from Russia? Are you willing to see this mass displacement, mass immiseration, loss of homes, livelihoods, dignity and identity continue, and continue to be bankrolled by the US government thanks to the Israel Lobby and European guilt for past crimes?
Have we not at all moved beyond racist-supremacist settler conquer ideologies such as that of militant zionism? This is such a conflict that is currently happening, not one from hundreds of years ago.
You state:
First, its not a case of Israel “giving up” land that as if it were theirs — it belongs to the Palestinians. OK, the past before 1967 is the past, the Arab states are willing to forego all that for an eminently reasonable return of patches of land that Israel has no right to occupy and control, and for Israel to finally define its own borders as is required of any state. These are small pieces of land that properly belong to the Palestinians. This is called justice. Who exactly is saying “or we’ll kill you?”
In my study of this conflict, if anyone is applying blackmail and sanctions it is the Israelis, not the Palestinians. It can be seen in the tax credits collected and withheld by Israel, in the thousands of prisoners in “administrative detention” without trial, including Arab women and children, it is seen in the draconian sanctions Israel has applied and pressured others into applying, most notably the US and the EU.
So I would agree with you about the similarity in the mindset between neocons in the US, and neocons in … Israel. For I think that you have your characterisation of actors misplaced — this mentality is Israel’s and not the Palestinian government. Indeed, a more symbiotic relationship as between the neocons in the US and Israel can hardly be found.
If someone did this to you and I, I really don’t at all think our response would be like the Israelis, who are the ones actually applying the militarised heavy hand you describe.
The Arab Summit initiative is hardly a threat, it is an offer. It is a concerted endeavour to finally bring an end to this unsustainable conflict and occupation, for which there is and can be no military solution.
If you’ve time, please see the award-winning video I posted that shows the Palestinian perspective.
I look forward to your promised rejoinder to the other thread with great interest.
I learn new things every day, Ann! I was under the impression that Israel was being asked to give back land that was in thier possession, not that they were continuing to expand into areas they shouldn’t be. I think the “land for peace” phrase threw me on that. The way I saw it, if I was threatened by violence to give back land that was mine, I would react badly toward it. I also don’t know that I think time is a very good ethical meaure of whether something belongs to someone or not. Saying that Americans have owned it for 200 years is no different to me than saying that Israel has owned it for 60. It seems that right or wrong, land has always belonged to those who are strong enough to keep it, or who have strong enough friends to help them keep it. This is the unfortunate way the world works in reality–a world without borders would be great.
I don’t know if you mentioned it, but I am very much against racial, ethnic, religious or any other kind of division. The problem is, that I have rarely ever seen a situation where the division is just brought about by just one side. I guess I can point to several situations that seem to be that way–the French population in Quebec who don’t want o be a part of Canada’s English population seems to be one. It seems that the divisions are often fueled by one or the other–a pendulum that swings one way and then the other. For example, a lot of the racial division in the United States that was once a result of white people now seems to have shifted and become a result of its black population. Racism is all but dead among the majority of whites in the United States, but the flames of segregation, hatred and division are fanned by the leaders of our demographic and filter down to the general population. My dear father used to say, that as long as two people existed on the earth there would be hatred and division–we would somehow figure out something not to like about others.
Ok, I’m rambling…
Back on topic:
“Tell me, Jack, would you like your newcomer neighbour suddenly claiming land you’ve lived on for generations and continually moving their border into your land, with the state turning a blind eye, simply because they are an Israeli Jew?”
Absolutely not. I agree with you here, Ann 100%. Are these people just taking land that doesn’t belong to them? Are they paying for it? If not that is wrong.
“Second, global migration patterns over generations and in colonial times doesn’t equal wholesale land dispossession and ethnic cleansing and genocide, and in the twenty first century. The historical occurences you cited should be just that — consigned to history. ”
I’m not sure I agree 100%. Colonial migration accounted for a lot of ethnic cleansing and genocide. :) But I do see the bit of difference that you point out.
“Last time I checked, the American Indians and Aborigines still live in the US and Australia respectively, they haven’t been killed off or transferred as some racist Israelis are seriously proposing with the Palestinians, including the racist Avigdor Lieberman, who was made Deputy Prime Minister. In any other country there would have been an international outcry.”
But…they have largely been consigned to reservations (albeit government subsidized ones). But I would disagree with them also just like you do, Ann. Do these proposals actually have any chance of success? In all societies we have the loud and radical – Russia has its Vladimir Zhirinovsky, we have Nancy Pelosi (Ha! Just kiddin’), etc.
““God gave us these lands” –not exactly a
sound basis for building a new state (on the backs of another people) nor a rational basis for international policy!”
I agree! Also there is that “who was here first” argument that just doesn’t seem to hold up real well. Can you imagine playing that game in my country of origin? ha!
“So what are you proposing, Jack? That all the Palestinians be killed off or transferred in their millions off the land their families have lived on for generations, for newcomer off-the-boat Jewish settlers from Russia? Are you willing to see this mass displacement, mass immiseration, loss of homes, livelihoods, dignity and identity continue, and continue to be bankrolled by the US government thanks to the Israel Lobby and European guilt for past crimes?”
No, I would certainly hate to see this. I personally think that we, as a nation, should stay out of Israel’s, Palestine’s, Iraq’s, Iran’s or anyt other country’s business and let it them make thier own way. I am very much into non-interference–very much an isolationist in philosophy.
“First, its not a case of Israel “giving up” land that as if it were theirs — it belongs to the Palestinians. OK, the past before 1967 is the past, the Arab states are willing to forego all that for an eminently reasonable return of patches of land that Israel has no right to occupy and control, and for Israel to finally define its own borders as is required of any state. These are small pieces of land that properly belong to the Palestinians. This is called justice. Who exactly is saying “or we’ll kill you?” ”
If someone offered me peace for something I had, and I refused, I guess my conclusion is that they wouldn’t be peaceful. Again, I think that this is what I picked up from “land for peace” phrase. “Give me land, I’ll be peaceful, don’t give me land, I won’t” Keep in mind, Ann, that I am not a very complicated man–and tend to look at things like most (black and white). I try to see the greys, but fail often. :)
Ann, I consider myself educated and corrected on this issue. I have been trying to study more on this issue–it has never been a large interest to me until I started hearing more about it recently. My perspective and limited study into the matters involved were more along the line of “just another two groups in the world way over there who just can’t get along.” I am by no means an apologist for Israel or Palestine. I don’t know enough yet about either to do that. I have spent much time in the Wikipedia of late researching, but realize I have much to learn on the topic. And it is interesting people like you, Ann who have opened my eyes more to the issues involved.
You had previously admonished me to read many conflicting sources on any given subject before completely formulating my ideas, and I am doing my best to do so. I will watch the video soon, and holler back with my thoughts.
Thanks so much for your time, Ann–It means a lot for you to take this much time to explain points of view that I may not be privy to.
Take care!
-Jack