In my new article at The American Prospect, I argue that choosing either the Israeli or the Palestinian version of history as correct is no way to make peace.
Spring is national trauma season in the land between the River and the Sea. The wildflowers that blossom briefly after the Mediterranean winter wilt, and Jews and Palestinians relive their agonizing memories, symbiotically, backs turned to each other.
Their memories negate each other. Nonetheless, they are tellings of the same story. Because there is now an American administration interested in diplomacy, because the public debate in America about Israel and Palestine may be opening up, this small truth bears mention: Deciding that one side’s telling is valid, and the other’s is false, is not an act of peacemaking. The trauma itself is a strategic fact, as important as topography, borders, and water.
April and May is the the time of year to pay attention, because this is when Israeli and Palestinian holidays are celebrated as national passion plays. The holidays don’t just commemorate the historical events that formed each nation. They teach that the sacrifices of the past are constantly being repeated, that all present-day events are re-enactments of primal cataclysms. Examine the holidays, and you understand why we who live here seem trapped by history.
The Israeli cycle, over a week long, is already in full swing. It started on Monday night and Tuesday, when the country marked Holocaust Day. As happens every year, the Holocaust filled the media — stories of the past, and of current threats. Haaretz ran a front-page report (in Hebrew) on the discovery in Yad Vashem of a letter written by 9-year-old Aharon Barak (who later became the liberal, activist chief justice of Israel’s Supreme Court) after surviving the war in Lithuania. In it, he expresses his hope of joining his father’s friends in Palestine. The subtext was an article of civil faith: The Jews died in the Holocaust and could only be reborn through independence in their homeland…
Read the rest at The American Prospect, and come back to South Jerusalem to comment.
Nice Post-Modernist anaysis…..”there is no reality, there are only different narratives”.
Gershom says:
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The Palestinian commemoration of the Nakba (Catastrophe) of 1948 comes soon after, on May 15. That’s the date on which the British mandate over Palestine ended — that is, the day on which Palestinians did not achieve independence. Nakba Day therefore marks not only the exodus of 1948 but also the Palestinian’s lack of a state and the humiliation of defeat.
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I note that you stated “the Palestinians did not achieve their state”. Of course the truth is they REJECTED a state in 1948, just as they did with Arafat in 2000 and as they have done now with Olmert’s proposals.
Another nice adjustment made in this article is the preposterous claim that the “Three Noes of Khartoum” supposedly means that the Arabs WANTED peace with Israel and that they did NOT want to “erase Israel”. This is a nonsensicle reading of the declaration. If they did not openly say “we intend to push the Jews into the sea”, then they wanted to maintain enough ambiguity to pull the wool over the eyes of naive peaceniks and Western diplomats. “NO PEACE, NO NEGOTIATIONS AND NO RECOGNITIONS. A five year old can understand that. I rely on the pshat. In any event a few weeks earlier, before the war, Nasser and the other Arab leaders were saying that the upcoming confrontation would lead to the eradication of Israel (see Michael Oren’s book on the Six-Day War which is full of quotations taken directly from the Arabic language declarations).
Then there is the inane Mitchell Report saying the Palestinians were not to blame for the 2001 suicide bomber war. This report was not meant to establish the truth, it was a political whitewash meant to allow the Americans to continue give money and support to Arafat’s regime. Moshe Yaalon in his recent book at length shows that this claim in nonsense. In fact Arafat and other Palestinians leaders said OPENLY from the time he signed the Oslo Agreements that he would use violence to get what he wanted if Israel didn’t capitulate first. Yes, there are no documents with Arafat’s name on them with orders to do it….it is the same with Hitler and the Holocaust. David Irving used the fact that no explicit documents with Hitler’s signature on them ordering the Holocaust to claim that “Hitler didn’t know about it”. Rubbish, just like Mitchell’s claim about Arafat.
Gershom, the Arabs are not interested in a peace agreement along the lines you think is reasonable. They will not give up their ‘narratives’ and they will never acknowledge the truth of facts such as that there was a Jewish Beit HaMikdash on the Temple Mount. Arafat told Barak and Clinton he would be assassinated if he ever signed a paper saying that there was. For years, the Oslo-pushers kept saying “it doesn’t matter what they say, it is only propaganda meant for internal consumption”. Finally, Israelis are beginning to understand that they DO mean what they say, that they will never make peace with Israel even if they were to sign some agreement and that they view any Jewish state of any size as being illegitmate and temporary. Even former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami , a far, far Leftist and post-Zionist agrees with this. You want the Palestinians to forget their “narrative”? Well, go convince one billion Muslims that their religion is false. Good luck.
For those of hoping for a confrontation between Obama and Netanyahu, Aluf Benn in Ha’aretz writes about why you will be disappointed:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1080670.html
All this stuff about different histories, competing narratives – it’s way over-rated when the issue is a resolution of this century-long war. In reality, neither side demands that the other accept its narrative. Zionists demand that the Palestinians let them keep sovereignty over the part of the Palestinian homeland taken in 1948 in exchange for that taken in 1967; Palestinians demand sovereignty over all of Palestine from the river to the sea. If the Zionists get their way, Palestinians will be able to keep their narrative of the Zionist theft of their homeland and its partial redemption, as long as they postpone the full redemption until some indefinite future date. If the Palestinians get their way, they’ll let Jews (in effect, dhimmis) teach their children pretty much whatever narrative they want in their Jewish public schools, as long as the Jews pay lip service to the Muslim Palestinian state in which they live. Resolution does not depend on reconciliation.
So my advice to all you blessed peacemakers is to forget about reconciling competing historical narratives. It’s not important to ending the war. The war will end when Palestinians agree, as the Israelis already have, to postpone the redemption of the remainder of their homeland till the indefinite future.
Let’s face it, both sides are unable to come up with a solution, even though the situation has been unresolved for 42 years now! No real surprise, in our daily life we wouldn’t expect two diehard fanatics to be able to resolve their problemes on their own, too. We would call the police instead. On a global scale, in such a situation the UN should settle the issue, once and for all. And every side that violates the UN decisions should be subject to draconian measures designed to enforce compliance. Hard fisted force seems to be the only language that both sides understand. Let them have it!
Gray, your ignorance of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict is truly stunning. The conflict did not start “42 years ago” as you stated. Do you mean there was peace before that? Then why were there wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967 if the conflict is over the “occupied West Bank”.
In any event you want outside forces to come in and impose your idea of “peace”. As a German I presume you are recommending taking up what you guys tried in 1942 with your charasmatic Field Marshal Rommel. He also tried to do what you want, i.e. “take care of the problems in Palestine” by using outside force in the name of “The New World Order”.
How long has the Nakba actually been commemorated? My understanding is it came into being rather recently as a form of negation of Israeli Independence Day. I’ve also heard that there was talk among the Palestinians of using two minute long siren blasts in commemoration, an obvious mimicry of Israel if true.
This simply reflects the reality that one side is extremely capable of statehood and the other isn’t. I don’t mean that as a cheap shot. Everybody deserves to be a free citizen wherever they are, but while the Israelis have managed to create a state in the face of numerous obstacles, the Palestinians have managed to fail despite the apparent goodwill of so much of the world and an incredible amount of publicity.
What Palestinian nationalism seems to be about is not manifesting a viable statehood, but rather obstructing the Zionist drive and discrediting its narrative.
Good luck making a state out of that.
It’s one thing to equate Yom Ha’atzmaut and Nakba Day for semantics, but to directly equate the two and by proxy the entire national enterprises they represent in order to try to create a Palestine by committee is to set yourself up for failure. Dreaming up a viable Palestine won’t make it real. How different are today’s would be two state peace diplomats from the Europeans in 1925 hunched over a globe drawing up the Middle East borders? How many of the people who think the notion of regime change and nation building in Iraq was a simply reprehensible and idiotic notion also think that if they do their gosh darn best, they can create a geographically noncontiguous, democratic, contented Palestine more than happy to live next to a much bigger, richer, and much better armed Israel?
I completely sympathize with Israelis who are opposed to the Gush Emunim philosophy and who want their country to be as western, peaceful, secular, and enlightened as possible, but nonetheless I find myself becoming more skeptical about the viability of the two state solution and with that skepticism comes less enthusiasm and patience for maintaining the sanctity of the Palestinian narrative.
Ben-David, your ingnorance about the world having had enough of the ongoing stagnation of the peace process is truly stunning. “The situation” started in 1967, when the Israelis occupied the Westbank (after a pre-emptive war. just like Iraq). And since then, Israel has been mostly dragging its feet, showing no real enthusiasm for giving the Palestinians their won state. The sole exception was Yitzchak Rabin, but was killed by a right wing extremist, and his successors have paddled back quickly. The long list of reasons why they allegedly couldn’t seriously resume the peace plans is pathetic. And all propaganda moves by Israel can’t hide the truth any longer: A large majority of that nation, and of its politicians, doesn’t want to give the westbank to the Palestininians, and instead want to illegally annex it for themselves, because of fancy dreams of a “biblical Israel”. Well, again, the world has had enough of this charade, and its time for the proper body, the UN, to apply serious pressure. If Israel can’t bring itself to doing the right thing, it has to be forced to accept international interference. As simple as that.
Oh, and btw, your attempt at launching an ad hominem attack is ridiculous! I was born long after WWII and don’t care about you living in the past.
And by the way, Gray, based on your analysis above it’s pretty clear you have a beginner’s grasp of the conflict at best. It’s cute to see how some people oversimplify the conflict, but it’s tacky when a German dismisses both sides as fanatics.
With all due respect, you and the UN are irrelevant.
dave, we “leftists”, “peaceniks”, or whatever aren’t all what you dream us up to be. Others can speak for themselves; I’m certainly no two state peace diplomat, if anything, a would-be one-state diplomat. And to hell with all the atavistic tribalist paranoid xenophobic nonsense. That’s how diplomatic I am.
Your dismissal as “tacky” when a German dismisses both sides as fanatics only illustrates the point. Presumably we as a people still have the monopoly on fanaticism, just like the Jews, those underdogs of Palestine, have the monopoly on being the eternal victim.
Not so.
You may have good reason to be sceptical about the viability of the two state solution (so am I), but what does that have to to with the sanctity of the Palestinian narrative? The Palestinians in 1979/80 accepted the two states paradigm in spite, not because of their narrative, as a compromise. This, not Barak’s in 2000, was the most generous offer ever made in this conflict.
I’m not telling you any news either that opposition to Gush Emunim doesn’t necessarily come from a desire to have a western, peaceful, secular, and enlightened Israel. Some of it is simply grounded in fear of demographics.
Well fiddler, I’m not sure what point my dismissal of the preaching by an underinformed German illustrates, but otherwise your post sounds good to me.
By ‘the sanctity of the Palestinian narrative’ what I meant was the notion that every discussion has to be framed with platitudes about “two sides, both parallel in so many ways, one side has a state, the other side deserves one, and would have one if only all the haters on both sides would learn to love, and that this state will become a democratic, peaceful beacon, so that Arab and Jew can live side by side in the partioned land happily ever after.”
I’m not accusing anyone in this discussion of talking that way, but that notion seems to inform a lot of the thinking amongst “world opinion”.
To put it more bluntly, I’m not interested in the sort of feel good, empty but symbolic measures of co-existence. In ‘In the Land of Israel’ Amos Oz interviews a Palestinian and asks him “what would you rather be, the Israeli ambassador to Palestine, or the Palestinian ambassador to Israel?” And the man laughs with such warmth over the question. And the reader is supposed to think “wow, if only we could all think this way, the problem would be solved.”
Point being, I have less and less patience for indulging in these sort of group hug exercises, and that includes a fawning over the Palestinian narrative and how significant it is when Israelis and Palestinians sit in the same room at the same time.
That’s high school workshop stuff.
I’m not entirely sure what you’re referring to when you say the Palestinians accepted the two states paradigm in 1980, but based on subsequent events I’d say it’s rather meaningless. After all, Arafat certainly accepted Israel’s right to exist and a two state paradigm in 1993, right? How’d that work out?
I was disappointed that you took down Mr Kami’s post. Distasteful as it is, it illustrates the mindset of many of our neighbors, and we ignore it at our own peril. Just removing it because it doesnt fit your convenient narrative is intellectually dishonest
I meant the Algiers declaration and the PLO’s acceptance of UNSCR 242 and 338 in 1988 (not 1980), which imply the recognition of Israel. This recognition, and the one of 1993, led nowhere because at no time after 1967 was Israel prepared to recognise itself, so to speak, in its established pre-6-day-war borders (borders in all but name). The insane acceleration of the settlements building during the Oslo years in particular speaks volumes about the standing of “two states” in Israeli policy, whatever its leaders paid lip service to.
When terrorism ceases, it’s over. When settlement building ceases, there still remains the herculean task of reversing it.
Precisely because Israelis and Palestinians are condemned, sort of, to “either hang together or hang separately” one narrative is just as significant as the other – which doesn’t mean, obviously, that 100% of both are true and just. But the parts that are will have to have their significance be honoured for any solution to prevail, and other parts will have to be discarded, on both sides.
We should indeed be wary of substituting “balance” for fairness (unlike much of the establishment we-report-you-decide-media), but it would likewise be a fallacy to give credence only to one side and summarily dismiss the other. When Palestinians tell you that peace for Israelis and justice (not just land) for Palestinians are inextricably linked, you’d better listen.
Well, I”m not sure how much value should be placed in the Algiers Declaration. Again, this seems like an exercise in semantics over which side did a better job of recognizing the other via a 2 state solution. What some exiles may or may not have decreed (it takes a bit of selective interpretation to see Algiers as an unassailable recognition of Israel’s right to exist in 1948 borders) 20 years ago, bears little resemblance to reality. I believe they also declared a Palestinian state on that occasion too. Declaring something doesn’t make it real. Regardless of what was said in 1988, or 1993, 4, or 5 for that matter, what we should be looking at is reality on the ground.
You point out that settlement building accelerated during this time. Yet, technically, no new settlements were built. And, when discussing settlements, I feel it’s important to distinguish between religious settlements, Nahal style outposts, bedroom communities, and East Jerusalem. Describing French Hill and Ramat Eshkol as equal to Tapuach and Kiryat Arba does a disservice to reality.
To me the remarkable thing about the Israeli position during this time was that they were willing to relinquish at least 80% of the territories right off the bat. Now, if I’m the Palestinians, that’s something I can work with.
But this is all academic at this point. What matters to me is the breakdown of Oslo, and how easy it was for the greater Moslem world to fall into the Days of Rage as a result of Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount. I’m sorry, but nothing I saw coming from the PA et al at this juncture made me even remotely confident that a viable, peaceful, two state solution could come from this, notwithstanding as the old canard says “Israel’s accelerated settlement building.”
What I saw from 200o onward (when I really started paying attention) from the Palestinian side indicated that continuing to pretend that a nice orderly quid pro quo form of negotiations would yield the desired result of 2 states or some sort of status quo the Palestinians would be happy with. It wouldn’t matter how many settlements had been built between 1996-2000, the results of Arafat’s form of politicking and Sharon’s walk on the Mount would have been the same.
I’ll skip to your last sentence: When Palestinians tell you that peace for Israelis and justice (not just land!!!) for Palestinians are inextricably linked, you’d better listen.
Indeed. What that tells me is that the Palestinian side will use extortion and threat of terror to express their discontent whenever they feel like it. As you said, not even land will be enough, there also must be justice. I don’t know how you define justice, but from what I’ve seen and heard over the last 8 years, I know how the Palestinians and their supporters define justice (not all of them, but definitely a critical mass). Quite simply, I don’t see how a state, even with maximum Green Line borders, will be enough to quench their thirst for justice. There will always be another level of injustice to exploit.
How would you describe the Palestinian national movement to date: a group of people dedicated to creating a peaceful, viable Palestinian state willing to live next to a completely legitimized Israeli state, or a group of competing strongmen and their cronies who use mafia tactics to extort money from the world (pay us or we’ll blow stuff up) and buy support through payoffs and brute force?
The minute there stops being an injustice to rage against, the Palestinian leadership class loses its raison d’etre and the Palestinian cause is forgotten by the world. Now, there are two ways of looking at that, 1) Israel and the world will have to work extra hard to make sure that no injustices whatsoever remain for the Palestinians, or 2) that the Palestinians will make sure there is always an injustice or two being perpetrated against them.
I posted the following at “Realistic Dove” but it is quite relevant to the discussion here so I am including below, due to its relevance to what we are celebrating today, Yom Ha’aztmaut
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On this Yom Ha’atzmaut I want to recommend everyone to read Benny Morris book about Israel’s War of Independence called “1948″. This is THE indespensable book about the origins of the Arab/Israeli conflict. I now quote from his final chapter:
“The 1948, to be sure, was a milestone in a contest between two national movements over a piece of territory. But it was also-if only because that is how many if not most Arabs saw it (AND SEE IT TODAY) [my emphasis-YBD] – part of a more general, global struggle between the Islamic East and the West, in which the Lando of Israel/Palestine figured and still figres, as a major battlefront. The Yishuv (Jewish community in Eretz Israel-YBD) saw itself, and was universally seen by the Muslim Arab world, as aembodiment and outpost of the European “West”. The assault of 1947-1948 was an expression of the Islmaic Arabs’ rejection of the West and its values (YBD-so much for Bernard Avishai’s “Hebrew Republic” being accepted by the Arabs) as well as a reaction to what it saw a a European colonialist encroachment against sacred Islamic soil. There was no understanding (or tolerance) of Zionism as a national liberation movement of another people. And, aptly, the course of the war reflected the civilizational disparity, in which a Western society, deploying superior organizational and technological skills, overcame a coalition of infinitely larger Islamic societies.”
“HISTORIANS HAVE TENDED TO IGNORE OR DISMISS, AS SO MUCH HOT AIR, THE JIHADI RHETORIC AND FLOURISHES THAT ACCOMPANIED THE TWO-STAGE ASSAULT ON THE YISHUV (my emphasis-YBD) and the constant references in the prevailing Arab discourse to that earlier bout of Ilsamic battle for the Holy Land, against the Crusaders. This is a mistake. The 1948 War, form the Arab’s perspective, WAS A WAR OF RELIGION (my emphasis-YBD) as much as , of not more than a nationalist war over territory. Put another way, the territory was sacred, its violation by infidels was suffieicent grounds for launching a holy war and its conqueston, or reconquest, a divenely ordained necessity.”
I now skip some of the text…we resume with “Jihad for Palestine was was seen in prophetic-apocalyptic terms, as embodied in the following Hadith periodically quoted at the time (and today as well-YBD) “The day of resurrection does not come until Muslims fight against Jews, until the Jews hide behind trees and stones and until the trees and stones shout out: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’”.
There you have it. Benny Morris is no “right-winger”. He sat in jail once because he refused to do reserve service in Judea/Samaria. But he is an honest historian. And the crucial point is that today, finally, after decades of delusions spread by the Israeli “peace camp” that said “the Arabs don’t really take the radical incendiary, things they say seriously”, an honest historian like Morris and now, the clear majority of the Jewish population of Israel now realize this, that nothing has changed regarding the Arab/Muslim perception about how they view the Arab/Israel conflict. That is why Netanyahu feels he has the backing to say (as he did NOT have in his first term as Prime Minister in the 1990’s) that the “2-state solution” is a dead end. Wailing about AIPAC’s supposedly negative influence as all the “progressive” bloggers and now doing compulsively is merely putting themselves into a denial state about the real reasons that a peace agreement is not attainable. The Arabs do not want one and will not agree to one any terms that an Israeli government AND A RESPONSIBLE AMERICAN ADMINISTRATION can accept. Go ask Bill Clinton. He heard it with his own ears.
YBD, just one point. IMO it’s disingenuous from Morris (who wasn’t a right winger once, but certainly is now) to paint the Yishuv as one monolithic block. There was the tiny Jewish community that had always existed in Palestine, those who were in every sense natives no less than their Arab neighbours. I understand that relations between these two communities had been amicable enough, and Palestinian Jews were certainly not seen as “outpost of the West”. And then there were those who came from this very West (which in this context includes Eastern Europe, of course; perhaps “Christian dominated cultures” would be more precise) with the explicit goal of “ingathering” in Palestine as many Jews as possible – Jews who, outside of religion and mythology, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Levant. By 1947 this latter group had far outnumbered the former. Even if “outpost of the West” slightly misses the point – Zionism is after all not a classical colonial outfit to benefit a homeland somewhere else – how could the Arabs *not* think of the Crusades? From their POV there were strangers coming to conquer – “redeem” they called it – the land, citing some article of their faith, just like the Christian Crusaders had done earlier.
dave, that 80% of the West Bank, and all such numbers that have been floated from the original Allon Plan of 1967 to Olmert’s New And Improved version of last year, are highly misleading. Those 20%, give or take a few, that Israel refuses to put on the table include not only East J’lem and the Jordan valley (hence leaving every centimetre of the WB’s borders under Israeli control), but the larger settlements deep inside the WB and the roads connecting them, and the Jordan valley, to Israel proper and with each other, leaving the Palestinians at best with “transportation contiguity” – tunnels and bridges. That’s not something I could work with if I was a Palestinian.
“Technically no new settlements” is disingenuous as well. About 100 “outposts” have been established since 1996; the fact that they’re illegal even under Israeli law shouldn’t matter to you, since you’re so concerned about facts on the ground. Meanwhile the route of the separation wall is de facto annexing some 8-9% more land, East J’lem is being “connected” to Ma’ale Adumim (A1 construction); presumably in a few years the Jordan river will be within walking distance, all by way of construction within existing settlements. So much for “technically”.
correction: E-1, not A1
fiddler, I appreciate the information and don’t dispute it. Yet, none of that matters in the slightest. The fact is, Israel was willing to concede the majority of the land right up front. You say you would be unable to work with 80%? How about the Zionists of 1947 and previously, were they “unable” to work with the UN Partition Plan, or the earlier decision to limit the Balfour Declaration to only Palestine and not Trans-Jordan? Sure, you had and still have some territorial maximalists in the Zionist camp, but the point is, the Zionist government were indeed able to work with the vastly reduced version of Eretz Israel they were offered in 1947, while the Arabs rejected it.
How did that work out for them?
This all keeps going back to my point that one side is capable of building a state out of scraps, and one seems more interested in prolonging the conflict by fixating on their grievances and has little desire or aptitude to actually undertake the thankless job of building a state. Their nationalism isn’t predicated on building a state of their own, but on derailing the Zionist state.
dave, again, it’s not so much the percentage number (although that leaves just 80% of 22% = 17.6% of the land for a population roughly equal in size to that of Israel), but where exactly those missing 20% are located. If this was part of land swap with Israel ceding the same amount, value (arable land and water, not some rubble in the Negev), and with a similar distribution, no Israeli in their right mind would accede to that.
The Zionists were able to work with the land apportioned to them by the partition plan because it was more than appropriate, given the respective population sizes back then. What do you mean by “vastly reduced”? Compared to what? Even then, long before the Rolling Stones were born, you couldn’t always get what you wanted. But they sure did try.
After the failed attempt to settle the matter peacefully with the Faisal-Weizmann agreement the Arabs finally rejected the partition plan because they didn’t think some British Lord (whose declaration to Baron Rothschild had eventually fathered the plan) was entitled to be that generous with their homeland just because the Brits had won a war against Syria’s former colonial power, the Ottomans.
80% (or whatever the actual number was) was a starting point for negotiations. That’s definitely something to work with.
Even with 100% of the West Bank and Gaza, creating a viable, single, noncontiguous state is a challenging task. The only way to do it is become completely pacifist and work within the confines of being Israel’s little neighbor and getting along with each other and everyone else, sort of like a small European nation surrounded by larger ones. Nothing I see or believe tells me that the Palestinians are ready or willing to go that way. capabilities,
The viable, unarmed, unified Palestinian state is a long shot of a proposition to begin with. We tried. But based on the unfurling of events post-Oslo it looks pretty clear to me that it’s even more of a long shot than most of us thought. Even if they had all the land, things would still fall apart the same way over the same issues. Look at what happened when Israel left Gaza and southern Lebanon. Gaza is a more complicated story, but southern Lebanon, Israel withdrew to the UN mandated lines and what has happened since? Of course, if we want to delude ourselves we can say as Hezbollah does that Israel didn’t withdraw from Shebaa Farms and is therefore still occupying Lebanon, and of course unlike with Sinai, Israel left without an agreement. But still, the notion that peace can’t be reached until you give up every inch of territory, and once you do that peace will happen can no longer hold water in the face of the Lebanon and Gaza withdrawal.
Anyway, you mention land size to relative population size. If Partition size Israel was big enough when the yishuv population was small, does that mean that Green Line Israel is too small for its current population?
And the real question is, how is Gaza ever going to become viable? Population density is certainly problematic there, but there is no more land to give back, Israel has already withdrawn from all of Gaza.
If we’re going to let little things like population density get in the way, then there’s no hope. Either way you look at it, there’s barely enough land for one state, let alone two. So if little things like population density are enough to derail the plan, then what hope is there?
Will the honor restoring measures like giving the Palestinians all of East Jerusalem and every inch of the West Bank make up for the very real logistical problems that entail creating a peaceful noncontiguous Palestine made of up the two vastly different entities of Gaza and the West Bank?
If land/population ratio is such an important issue in the West Bank, how come it’s seemingly never even brought up with Gaza, is it because it makes it harder to visualize the dream peace?
I’m just getting started here. I can go through item after item of all the reasons I’m skeptical that anything like a peaceful single Palestinian state bisected by Israel can work.
dave, if the occupation was truly meant temporary, strictly for security purposes (which happens to be the only way it would be legal under international law), then it would’ve been foolish (besides illegal) to plant your civilians right among the very bloodthirsty savages you’ve just had your army invade in order to pacify them. The very existence of the civilian settlements puts the lie to the security pretext.
A similar point can be made about the ethnic cleansing of some 700,000 Palestinians in and after the 1948 war, which, btw, is the reason for the current overpopulation of Gaza.
Let’s call a spade a spade. The “state” you are willing to give the Palestinians, really a number of disjointed reservations that they can call whatever they want, will have one single purpose: absent full-scale ethnic cleansing, which you may be uncomfortable with, it will safely keep the Palestinians out of the Israeli body politic, so you can continue to have your tribal wagenburg and call it democratic.
(See? I told you I was a one-stater.)
Fiddler-The reason there are a lot of refugees in the Gaza Strip is because their leaders said they were going to push the Jews into the sea (if you don’t believe me read Benny Morris’ history of the Israeli War of Independence “1948”). THE ARABS STARTED THE WAR. It was the Arabs who declared it a war of “ethnic cleansing” as you put it. Fortunately they lost and the refugees are paying the price for the stupidity and fanaticism of their leaders. Enough with the myths you are attempting to spread.
fiddler, the population of Gaza was much smaller in 1967. Perhaps part of the reason for Gaza’s overpopulation is that it has one of the highest birth rates in the world?
And while I appreciate your ability to self-criticize Israel and its part in creating the current problem, I notice that you also don’t have an answer for how Gaza will be a viable state, only “it’s Israel’s fault that it’s too crowded.”
That’s not much of a solution, is it?
I don’t have an answer for how Gaza, on its own, will be a viable state because I’ve never been asked that question. That Gaza and the West Bank are a unit, even if territorially non-contiguous, is unanimous consensus among all Palestinian factions. You could just as well ask how Qalqiliya will be a viable state, virtually separated from the rest of the WB by the wall, as is is.
I had hoped, just a little, that you wouldn’t feel the need to resort to the “Arabs breed like rabbits” meme. Well, hope dies last. Overpopulation has as much to do with population density as with lack of resources and hinterland. For years Gazans haven’t even been able to fish in their waters (20 miles out, according to Oslo, but that turned out to include a coveted natural gas field). Only recently fishermen have been shot at, kidnapped, and their boats impounded as close as 200 m from shore. What were they going to do, shoot at Sderot with rotten fish?
http://fishingunderfire.blogspot.com/2009/04/words-of-fishermen-under-fire.html
You stated Gaza’s large population was a result of Israel’s ethnic cleansing. I pointed out that Gaza’s population has increased massively from natural growth in the last 40 years and not from Israel expelling people there. There is no need to start getting preachy, no one said “they are breeding like rabbits” except you.
Once again, inconvenient facts I bring up are countered with emotionalism.
“All Palestinian factions being unanimous on Gaza/WB being one state” is about as meaningful as the Warsaw Pact era declarations such as “all Soviet Socialiist Republics are unanimous on declaring the United States and Israel obsolete capitalist lackey stooges”.
Remember East and West Pakistan? How did that work out? In fact, find me any noncontiguous nation that has lasted longer than a generation.
But of course, as in every other way, Palestine is going to be the exception to the rule. It is going to be a unified, noncontiguous state because “all the Palestinian factions are unanimous” on that.
So, how’s that unanimously decreed unified Palestine been working out since Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza?
With an utter lack of answers to the problems implementing a two state solution entails, and instead only sneering dismissal of skepticism as primitive right wing talk, it’s easy to see why the Israeli left has been abandoned by the Israeli center.
dave, I don’t know why you’re so eager to have me advocate a two-state solution. I don’t believe in apartheid, whether the form it took in South Africa or the somewhat different form in Israel/Palestine. I don’t believe in sectarianism and tribalism, and the mafia mentality they breed, all the worse if it’s poured in concrete and called a state. I don’t believe walls are a force for good – together with the evil they purport to prevent they also prevent the overcoming of that evil. Worst of all are the walls that people have erected in their minds.
So the fraternising going on in Bilin and the Hebron hills, the work of Breaking the Silence and Combatants for Peace are 100% welcome to me. More of that, and not duplicating one sectarian state, will be what it takes in order to coexist on the same small strip of land.
(And if you think I’m Israeli, you’re wrong.)