By Bill Glucroft
Common Ground News Service
September 17, 2009
COPENHAGEN - If we are to believe the pundits and partisans, relations between Israel and the United States have never been worse. The Barack Obama administration appears to be taking the toughest tone of any in recent memory. The Cairo speech didn’t help, leaving an already vulnerable-feeling Israel with the sense that it's getting thrown under the bus.
A major division is settlements. President Obama wants an immediate halt, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will agree at most to a partial pause. Even left-leaning Israelis feel the American demand is too much too soon; a 35-year problem shouldn’t be hurried.
There are now more than 285,000 settlers in the West Bank beyond East Jerusalem. Though many might be coaxed back to Israel proper following an agreement with the Palestinians, a menacing minority has made clear its intention of preventing peace at any price, while simultaneously claiming to be a non-issue. However this minority can become a non-issue if Israeli, Palestinian and international negotiators re-think the path to peace.
In every attempt, those involved in cutting deals between Israel and the Palestinians have always tried going through the settlers, a self-defeating tactic because doing so only gives them more power. A new approach is to outmanoeuvre them — set a border that’s defensible for Israel and functional for Palestine, and urge the settlers to either get behind that border, with government assistance, or become a Jewish minority in the Palestinian state.
That may seem unthinkable. Settlement expansion has been de facto Israeli policy for nearly as long as Israel has controlled the territory. To now hand them over to a Palestinian state would be to punish people for doing what their leaders encouraged them to do.
Except, while politicking postponed any clear decision-making on what should be done with land captured in 1967, the settlers were gaining numbers, and with numbers, strength which they use to promote interests detrimental to the whole. They demanded services at a huge expense to the treasury, they exposed soldiers to unnecessary danger and they defied court orders to cease and desist. The more extreme settlers use violence, leading a soldier-friend of mine to remark, “Hebron is the only place in the West Bank where a soldier feels safer around Palestinians than around Jews.” This is not behaviour a democracy should tolerate, nor tacitly condone.
An ultimatum to settlers would force them to choose between the modern state of Israel and its biblical promise, possibly encouraging many to acquiesce without major incident. Those who remain could retain their Israeli citizenship, with an open invitation to return, but would become Palestinian citizens. Living no differently from other Diaspora Jews, they would be subject to the laws and values of their state.
At first blush, a Palestinian Jew may sound like an oxymoron, but no more than Israeli Arabs — Palestinians living as Israeli citizens, who comprise more than 20 percent of the Jewish state's population. Since Palestine would have to resemble a democracy, as Israel does, there is no reason minorities could not live there. In fact, it could help Palestine feel like a normal country.
The idea of withdrawing Israel but leaving Israelis has yet to go mainstream, but there have been hints. Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said as much at the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, when he declared that Jews would be welcomed in a future Palestinian state. Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, suggested in a recent Jerusalem Post column to “link the rights, privileges and obligations of Palestinians in Israel to those of Jews in Palestine ... to close the gaps of discrimination against Palestinians in Israel and prevent the discrimination against Jews in Palestine.”
That’s a good idea, and should go further to require that Jewish holy sites that fall outside Israel be protected and accessible to non-Palestinians. This would ensure spiritual sovereignty over the land regardless of political jurisdiction.
The hard part would be getting the current Israeli government, which includes settler allies, to agree. The good news is that Prime Minister Netanyahu, though hawkish, is a pragmatist, whose relationship to ideologues remains one of convenience. He already believes in building the Palestinian economy, something hard to do with Israel’s security apparatus stifling the flow of goods, services and labour.
Netanyahu will pursue the most politically and financially expedient course and will only go so far in alienating Israel from the American administration. The influential foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, may have little compassion for Palestinians, but he cares deeply that Israel remains a Jewish state — more so than the particulars of the boundaries that come to define it.
Though a settler himself, Lieberman could be counted among those who might return to Israel under the right conditions, as evidenced by his decision to distance himself from the settlement issue when it became clear that it posed a conflict of interest.
Given their savvy, Netanyahu and Lieberman can find a way to circumvent the most ardent elements of the settler community, thereby minimising their political weight. If Israelis can see a Palestinian state as beneficial to them as it is for Palestinians, the settlers would become exactly what they say they are: a non-issue.
Bill Glucroft is a writer who has worked in Israel for both Zionist and Israeli-Arab organisations. He blogs at mediabard.org. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
Showing posts with label Palestinian state. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestinian state. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Sunday, August 30, 2009
The Holocaust's shadow over Israel's choices
The Jewish state's fixation with preventing annihilation actually undermines its security.
By Bill Glucroft
The Christian Science Monitor
August 17, 2009
Haifa, Israel — No people mourn better than the Jewish people. For seven days after death, the family sits shiva, a vigil at home for loved ones to comfort one another and reflect on the life lost. During the following year and then beyond, the stages of mourning develop to allow next of kin to continue their lives while still remembering who is gone from them.
The process is successful for Jews, but it is failing the Jewish state. Six decades since the gravest of their tragedies, Jews have collectively yet to find a sustainable way of moving on without forgetting the Holocaust. The inability to do so poses dire consequences for Israel and the possibility for peace.
For Israel, the Holocaust didn't end in 1945, but reconstituted itself in the country's political and social cultures. It's no accident that Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, is physically connected to Har Hertzl, Israel's national cemetery. The symbolism hits you over the head: Israel was born out of the Holocaust, and the price to protect the Jewish people from another one is steep. There is truth in that, but also danger. Binding too tightly the slaughter of Jewish civilians by Nazis and the deaths of Israeli soldiers by Arabs turns every threat to Israel into another Holocaust.
"Whenever someone is killed in a terror activity," says Israeli writer and former Knesset member Avrum Burg, "It is one victim on top of seven wars on top of 6 million on top of 2,000 years of problems." There are no isolated incidents in Israel; the past builds up until a whole way of life is buried by it.
Invoking the Holocaust is the way Israeli policymakers evade the difficult decisionmaking needed to shift the status quo; nothing else matters, and anything is justified, when everything is about surviving annihilation — a rationale that serves especially well in delaying the creation of a Palestinian state.
The two-state solution undoubtedly comes with significant security risks to Israel, requiring a trust and confidence that remain to be seen. Should the West Bank become what Gaza became following the 2005 evacuation of Jewish settlements, all of Israel would be vulnerable to rocket attack and Iranian influence.
Less discussed, however, are the moral, social, and security implications of doing nothing, allowing the occupation to fester, settlements to expand, and tensions to grow.
The situation, as it stands, strains Israel's awkward identity as both Jewish and democratic. Eventually, Israel will be forced to choose one or the other because it will become impossible to untangle itself from an unrealized Palestine.
To remain Jewish will require apartheid measures that ensure Jewish minority control over land that will soon have a Palestinian-Arab majority, or (and even more unthinkable) ethnic cleansing. To remain democratic will mean merging Israel proper and the occupied territories — the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
With these alternatives in mind, two states becomes a much more palatable option – not for Palestine's sake, but for Israel's, and that's how it needs to be sold to Israel and its supporters.
Absent occupation, Israel could allocate more money and attention to internal necessities, namely poverty, education, and environment. With the army out of the West Bank, the 1.2 million Palestinians who live as Israeli citizens might begin to feel more Israeli, no longer viewing their state as at war with their people. The world could finally see Israel the way many Jews have long seen it: tranquil and vibrant, with a brash but pensive culture; Zionism, at last disconnected from occupation, would again be understood as a positive force for justice and social welfare.
None of this can happen until Israel gets its mind out of the Warsaw ghetto and embraces its 21st century strengths. It would be a substantial sociological shift, but it could be hastened in the near term politically if the Netanyahu government agreed to truly unconditional talks about two states. Such a move would force the fractured Palestinian camp to decide whether it is more interested in forming its own state or destroying the Jewish one.
Israel risks little by talking because it holds the keys to a home for Palestinians. Palestinians are free to demand right of return, for example, but do so at their peril. Such nonstarters only serve the notion that they aren't serious enough to make the painful choices necessary to obtain a state, as Jews did in 1947 when they accepted an imperfect UN partition. Ultimately, Israel can walk away without affecting day-to-day life. The Palestinians don't have that luxury; the occupation consumes them.
Israel's founders, given only three years between Auschwitz and independence, didn't have time to process the trauma that had besieged their people, entwining the Holocaust into Israel's DNA. Those who today fill their shoes must find a way to remember the Holocaust without reliving it, lest Israel be forever haunted by memory and never see the power it now wields to make peace and save its moral core.
Bill Glucroft is a writer who has worked in Israel for both Zionist and Israeli-Arab organizations. He blogs at mediabard.org.
By Bill Glucroft
The Christian Science Monitor
August 17, 2009
Haifa, Israel — No people mourn better than the Jewish people. For seven days after death, the family sits shiva, a vigil at home for loved ones to comfort one another and reflect on the life lost. During the following year and then beyond, the stages of mourning develop to allow next of kin to continue their lives while still remembering who is gone from them.
The process is successful for Jews, but it is failing the Jewish state. Six decades since the gravest of their tragedies, Jews have collectively yet to find a sustainable way of moving on without forgetting the Holocaust. The inability to do so poses dire consequences for Israel and the possibility for peace.
For Israel, the Holocaust didn't end in 1945, but reconstituted itself in the country's political and social cultures. It's no accident that Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, is physically connected to Har Hertzl, Israel's national cemetery. The symbolism hits you over the head: Israel was born out of the Holocaust, and the price to protect the Jewish people from another one is steep. There is truth in that, but also danger. Binding too tightly the slaughter of Jewish civilians by Nazis and the deaths of Israeli soldiers by Arabs turns every threat to Israel into another Holocaust.
"Whenever someone is killed in a terror activity," says Israeli writer and former Knesset member Avrum Burg, "It is one victim on top of seven wars on top of 6 million on top of 2,000 years of problems." There are no isolated incidents in Israel; the past builds up until a whole way of life is buried by it.
Invoking the Holocaust is the way Israeli policymakers evade the difficult decisionmaking needed to shift the status quo; nothing else matters, and anything is justified, when everything is about surviving annihilation — a rationale that serves especially well in delaying the creation of a Palestinian state.
The two-state solution undoubtedly comes with significant security risks to Israel, requiring a trust and confidence that remain to be seen. Should the West Bank become what Gaza became following the 2005 evacuation of Jewish settlements, all of Israel would be vulnerable to rocket attack and Iranian influence.
Less discussed, however, are the moral, social, and security implications of doing nothing, allowing the occupation to fester, settlements to expand, and tensions to grow.
The situation, as it stands, strains Israel's awkward identity as both Jewish and democratic. Eventually, Israel will be forced to choose one or the other because it will become impossible to untangle itself from an unrealized Palestine.
To remain Jewish will require apartheid measures that ensure Jewish minority control over land that will soon have a Palestinian-Arab majority, or (and even more unthinkable) ethnic cleansing. To remain democratic will mean merging Israel proper and the occupied territories — the end of Israel as a Jewish state.
With these alternatives in mind, two states becomes a much more palatable option – not for Palestine's sake, but for Israel's, and that's how it needs to be sold to Israel and its supporters.
Absent occupation, Israel could allocate more money and attention to internal necessities, namely poverty, education, and environment. With the army out of the West Bank, the 1.2 million Palestinians who live as Israeli citizens might begin to feel more Israeli, no longer viewing their state as at war with their people. The world could finally see Israel the way many Jews have long seen it: tranquil and vibrant, with a brash but pensive culture; Zionism, at last disconnected from occupation, would again be understood as a positive force for justice and social welfare.
None of this can happen until Israel gets its mind out of the Warsaw ghetto and embraces its 21st century strengths. It would be a substantial sociological shift, but it could be hastened in the near term politically if the Netanyahu government agreed to truly unconditional talks about two states. Such a move would force the fractured Palestinian camp to decide whether it is more interested in forming its own state or destroying the Jewish one.
Israel risks little by talking because it holds the keys to a home for Palestinians. Palestinians are free to demand right of return, for example, but do so at their peril. Such nonstarters only serve the notion that they aren't serious enough to make the painful choices necessary to obtain a state, as Jews did in 1947 when they accepted an imperfect UN partition. Ultimately, Israel can walk away without affecting day-to-day life. The Palestinians don't have that luxury; the occupation consumes them.
Israel's founders, given only three years between Auschwitz and independence, didn't have time to process the trauma that had besieged their people, entwining the Holocaust into Israel's DNA. Those who today fill their shoes must find a way to remember the Holocaust without reliving it, lest Israel be forever haunted by memory and never see the power it now wields to make peace and save its moral core.
Bill Glucroft is a writer who has worked in Israel for both Zionist and Israeli-Arab organizations. He blogs at mediabard.org.
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