Palestine-Mandate

This is not an endorsement, and I do not agree with everything he writes, but this column by Bradley Burston in his section in Haaretz called “A Special Place in Hell” has some wonderfully compassionate remarks, including:

“…[T]his month, three generations since 1948, since your Nakba, this is what I ask you to consider:

“Your time is running out.

“If you do not begin to act with all of your wisdom in moving toward statehood, you run the risk of becoming the Kurds of the Mediterranean basin, the Native Americans of the Middle East, permanently stateless, eternally denied.

“If you do not begin to rethink the course which the Palestinian national movement has taken, you must begin to consider the idea of a world without a Palestine. The world is beginning to feel more and more comfortable with that possibility, and it is time for you to think hard about the reasons why.

“We in the post-modern West have spent years educating ourselves to believe that all cultures are equally valid - with the possible exception, of course, of our own. We have taken it on faith that to criticize the culture of an indigenous people is obscenely imperialist, paternalist.

“In short, we gave you a pass. And we encouraged you to give yourselves one. In respecting you for your steadfastness, we refrained from calling you on your passivity. In accepting and amplifying your contentions as to Israel’s acts of wrongdoing, we chose not to hold you accountable for your own, or to explain them away as a function of occupation.

“You learned, over time, to hold Israel responsible for the whole of your plight. You learned, over time, to ignore, explain away, blame entirely on Israel, or otherwise deny the ways in which your actions and, in particular, your passivity, have deepened and fostered your misery. You learned to excuse your leaders their corruption, and their policy of foiling Israeli and foreign attempts to improve your conditions. You learned to excuse your Arab brothers their duplicity and their lip service and their exploitation and their cold shoulder and their contempt and their consummate failure to come to your aid.

“In the process, you may have grown accustomed to a definition of time, and of indigenous peoples, that bears re-examination. There is, first of all, this:

“The Jews are an indigenous people here, no less than you.

“The Jews have every right to have a nation here, no less than you.

“The Jews are stubborn and proud and fundamentally fierce as hell, no less than you.

“You have dismissed the Jews as a foreign influence. You have dismissed their history, waved away their blood and sinew tie to Jerusalem, acted as though they have no business here but evil.

“But in the decades you have spent misleading yourself about the true nature of the culture and the origins of the Jews, generation upon generation of Jews has been born here. They are natives. They are not going anywhere. And even the leftists among them are willing to die in defense of staying on this soil…”

The full Bradley Burston column published today, entitled The Palestinians’ Time is Running Out, can be read here .

Today’s Haaretz carried a commentary from Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman on the two hot issues this fall:
(1) racism and identity in Israel, and (2) recognition of Israel as a Jewish State.

Rabbi Hartman wrote: “While most Jews - but not all - clearly define Israel as a Jewish state, not every Israeli does. To ask a Muslim or Christian who is an Israeli citizen to regard himself as a citizen of a Jewish state is to expect him to declare himself a perennial outsider within his own country. It is perfectly legitimate, and even crucial, that Israeli Jews define Israel as a Jewish state. In the Jewish understanding of the rebirth of the State of Israel, we have returned to the Land of Israel to create a sovereign Jewish state; in our understanding, the Jewish national narrative is of necessity the majority narrative here. But to assume non-Jews - equal citizens of the State of Israel by virtue of the democratic principles at the basis of Israel’s self-understanding - feel the same way as Jews is not only unreasonable, it is nonsensical. To expect that a non-Jew will accept a Jewish national identity is to fail to recognize the complexity of the multicultural reality that is the modern State of Israel. We have made this mistake since 1948; while witnesses to the growth of the Palestinian minority in our midst, we have failed to come up with a category to accommodate their distinct Israeli identity. In relegating them to the status of perennial strangers in a Jewish state, we make it supremely difficult for this people to feel a duty of loyalty to Israel or any sense of equality living in it … There must be a Jewish narrative and a broader Israeli narrative that creates a collective space with bonds of loyalty toward citizens of the State of Israel who are either non-Jews or for whom the state’s Jewishness is not the central feature of their national self-understanding. The impoverished condition of the current political discussion on this issue assumes that anyone who relinquishes an exclusive claim to a Jewish narrative is a post or anti-Zionist. Many Jews fear that by surrendering the exclusivity of the Jewish claim to Israel they facilitate the destruction of the Jewish state. This, I believe, is a mistake. Multicultural states, of which Israel is but one example, require multiple national narratives to enable their different populations to participate. It does not require particular cultures to forfeit their own national self-understanding, but to give up the claim to define others’ collective identity … With respect to the peace negotiations now underway, it is both unnecessary and unreasonable to require the Palestinian people to accept Israel as a Jewish state. It is critical that they recognize Israel as an independent state against which they have no territorial demands or aspirations” …
This commentary was published in Haaretz today here.

Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, Yediot Ahronot, wrote an editorial today questioning the Israeli Prime Minister’s declared intent to demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, according to a translated summary provided by the Israeli Government Press Office. The summary says that “The editors believe that such a demand – if acceded to – will not undercut the Palestinian demand for a ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees and assert that, ‘No self-respecting country begs for recognition of its identity or declares that recognition of it is a red line’. The paper notes that more than a few Israeli Jews disavow Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and suggests dealing with them first”.

Although the Palestine National Council has already done so, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has “rejected Israel’s demand that the Palestinians acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state”, according to both the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz. Both newspapers are reporting that Erekat said in an interview with Radio Palestine that “There is no country in the world where religious and national identities are intertwined.” Erekat told Radio Palestine.

The Palestine Liberation Organization’s late leader, Yasser Arafat, proclaimed a Palestinian State in 1988 on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which stated that the British Mandate of Palestine should be divided into two parts, one Jewish and one Arab.

The JPost says that “A senior official in the Prime Minister’s Office said in response that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insists that the Palestinians recognize Israel’s Jewish identity, as a condition for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state … Meanwhile, Olmert told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the peace conference scheduled to take place in Annapolis in late November would last for a single day. The conference, the prime minister said, would serve to launch negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and be a one-time event geared towards gaining international support for the talks”.

The JPost report is here.

Haaretz is reporting that Olmert said Monday: “We won’t hold negotiations on our existence as a Jewish state, this is a launching point for all negotiations … We won’t have an argument with anyone in the world over the fact that Israel is a state of the Jewish people. Whoever does not accept this cannot hold any negotiations with me. This has been made clear to the Palestinians and the Americans. I have no doubt that Abu Mazen [Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas] and [PA premier Salam] Fayad are committed to prior agreements and want to make peace with Israel as a Jewish state,” Olmert continued … Olmert told the gathering that immediately at the start of negotiations following the summit, Israel will set a precondition that the Palestinians recognize Israel as ‘a Jewish state’. ‘I do not intend to compromise in any way over the issue of the Jewish state’, Olmert said, thereby accepting the position of Livni and Barak. ‘This will be a condition for our recognition of a Palestinian state’. Olmert said he raised the importance of this issue during his talks with European and American officials, and their response had been positive. However, during talks in recent weeks between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams, the Palestinians refused to include the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state in the shared declaration the teams are preparing, which will be made at Annapolis. Erekat’s statement to Israel Radio on Monday did not seem to imply that refusal would waver ahead of the summit…” The Haaretz account of Erekat’s and Olmert’s remarks on recognition of Israel as a Jewish state are here.

There are already 557 comments on Erekat’s remarks posted on the Haaretz website.

According to the translated summary offered by the Israeli Government Press Office today, the Ma’ariv newspaper writes in its editorial today that: “In our peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, and in the various Oslo accords (as well as in the Roadmap), the definition of the state of Israel as Jewish state, as the state of the Jewish people, does not appear.”

The GPO summary reports that Maariv argues, in its editorial today, that: “The heart of the problem is that the Arab countries and the Palestinians (as well as some Israeli Jews) are not – in any way – prepared to recognize the State of Israel as a Jewish state, as the State of the Jewish People” … for three reasons: “The first is ideological-psychological – the unwillingness to countenance the existence of a Jewish state within the Arab-Islamic world … The second reason has to do with the Palestinian refugees of 1948 – recognizing the Jewish state basically means conceding the right of these refugees to return to Israel … The third reason is the Israeli Arabs…whose leaders openly declare that they absolutely do not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.”

According to the summary translation, Maariv states in its editorial that “The Annapolis conference must be a test for the Palestinians and the Arab countries: Are they prepared for a simple call for the vision of two states – for the Jewish people and for the Palestinian people or do they oppose this? This is the elementary basis for any structure of peace, for any future discussion.”

Haartez newspaper is reporting on Monday that Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has joined Defense Minister Ehud Barak in saying that Palestinian assurances should be obtained at Annapolis concerning Israel’s existence as “a Jewish State”:

“Olmert held a meeting on Sunday to discuss the Annapolis summit and the negotiations toward a final-settlement agreement. [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni, [Defense Minister Ehud] Barak, [and] the chief of staff and the heads of the intelligence services attended the meeting. Olmert told the gathering that immediately at the start of negotiations following the summit, Israel will set a precondition that the Palestinians recognize Israel as ‘a Jewish state’.”
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What if, in the current negotiations with Israel — and in the context of the creation of a State of Palestine — the Palestinians were to guarantee that they agree that the State of Israel will remain a Jewish state for as long as the Jewish people want it to be?

What if there were a public Palestinian commitment that Israel will remain a Jewish State regardless of how many Jews or Palestinians are its citizens and residents?

What if the issue of Israel’s being a Jewish state is de-linked from the question of numbers — that is, of how many of its citizens are Jewish?

The idea is to address the most basic and deepest concerns expressed by both Israelis and Palestinians. This could be the win-win scenario that Palestinian Ministers are all now calling for.

At its creation, Israel was proclaimed as a Jewish state (with certain values that are now identified as democratic), but not as a democratic state.

In recent years, the identification of Israel as also being a democracy is now an article of faith. But, the argument that Israeli is a democracy has led to concerns about demography — that is, how to maintain a Jewish majority within Israel so that Israel will remain both a Jewish and democratic state.

But, this open talk about demographics has led to Palestinian concerns about further population transfers under the guise of land swaps, as Israelis blithely and unblushingly discuss proposals to trade this area of East Jerusalem or that area of the Galilee for some of the enormous Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

This apparently unembarrased debate is based, at least in part, on the utterly unproven (if not totally fallacious) notion that all Arabs would prefer to be put together — even if this involves what looks like ethnic cleansing, Balkans-style, and certainly without the democratic consultation or consent of the population concerned.

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