Dear Friend,
The failure of PM Netanyahu to get an overwhelming vote of confidence yesterday (Jan. 22, 2013), may show an openness to much needed changes. There have been no meaningful conversations between I's and P's for a long time now. We must find ways to truly engage with each other. But how? That is the question.
There are many trusted friends who address the root causes of the problems in I/P. Ask me, and I'll give you names, books and groups.
Today, I want to introduce you to a man who has undergone profound changes in his outlook, in his own person, who needs to be heard. There are root causes, and True Root Causes. The man I want you to meet addresses the True Root Causes.
His name is Richard Forer and the link to a recent interview he gave is here: http://www.breathingforgiveness.net/2013/01/anti-slavery-campaign-interview-series_3080.html If you don't have time now, don't delete this message. Come back to it later. Don't miss this interview!!!!!!
A bit more background if you will. The mindset he was given during his orthodox Jewish upbringing was: "[Palestinians] can never be trusted. They hate us. They want to eliminate us".
(If truth be told, there are Palestinians who have this same mindset toward Israelis!) Richard shows how we project our suffering onto others.
I'm reluctant to send you long articles such as this link. (Our attention span is getting shorter!) But I'm making an exception with this interview. It is that transformative. Are you listening? Do you have the time and courage to be engaged at another level?
Until our rejectionist stance toward each "Other" is transcended, there will be no justice for Palestinians and security for Israelis. How open are we?
The interview is with Father Yago Abeledo (Center for Justice and Peace Building). The link takes you to their site. http://www.breathingforgiveness.net/2013/01/anti-slavery-campaign-interview-series_3080.html
For a more in-depth view, go to Richard's book: BREAKTHROUGH: TRANSFORMING FEAR INTO COMPASSION, A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON THE ISRAELI/PALESTINIAN CONFLICT
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
In Awe of Nonviolence
An Israeli in awe of a Palestinian act of non-violence
Bradley Burston
Haaretz (Opinion)
January 15, 2013 - 12:00am
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/an-israeli-in-awe-of-a-pale...
An act of non-violence is a fuse playing the role of a bomb. If the act of non-violence is creative enough, appropriate and resonant and shocking, and, therefore, dangerous enough, it will do what no bomb can: Change things for the better. Persuade. Put the lie to the liar. And cause a man like Benjamin Netanyahu to panic.
On Friday, nearly a hundred men women and children pitched tents on a Palestinian-owned plot of land in the patch of the West Bank called E1, a political and diplomatic minefield which Netanyahu has vowed to build on, and Washington has warned him not to. The place was given a new name - Bab al-Shams, the Gate of the Sun.
The Palestinians who staked down the tents were explicit in calling their rocky hilltop encampment a village. But the manner of its founding made it all too clear to Israelis what it was as well - a ma'ahaz, a settlement outpost, no less and no more illegal than the scores and scores of rogue farms, tent camps, rude shacks and proto-suburbs which Israeli settlers have staked across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
We know it in our bones, Israelis and Palestinians as one. This is how the settlement movement began. This is how it grows. This is the very engine of occupation. This is the heart and the hand of the beast.
The founding of Bab al-Shams was genius. And no one knew that better than Benjamin Netanyahu. The encampment sent a message that was clear, piercing, and entirely non-violent. The proof: Netanyahu said it had to be destroyed at once.
It needed to be destroyed despite a High Court order that appeared to give the new villagers six days to remain on the site. But in a peculiarly contemporary reinterpretation of the Naqba, the police announced that the injunction only applied to the tents. The people could be taken out. In the dead of night.
So desperate was the need to destroy it quickly, that the head of the Justice Ministry's High Court division was pressed into service at midnight Saturday, to sign a statement to the court declaring "there is an urgent security need to evacuate the area of the people and tents."
The government also sent a sealed note to the court, containing further "security information" – classified Secret, as was the reason for its being kept from the public – as to why it was necessary to give the order immediately for 500 police to move in.
But everyone here already knew the secret.
Bab al-Shams needed to be destroyed because it was fighting facts on the ground with facts on the ground.
It needed to be destroyed for the same reason that a hundred similar, patently illegal Israeli West Bank outposts are coddled, honored by visits from cabinet ministers, and rendered permanent with state-supplied electricity, water, access roads, security protection, and retrofit permits.
Bab al-Shams did not simply touch a nerve. Bab al-Shams had to be destroyed because, where the occupation is concerned, it touched the central nervous system.
On Election Day next week, when I enter the voting booth, I will be taking a small piece of Bab al-Shams with me. My respect and admiration for people who cannot vote in this election, but who each cast an extraordinarily forceful absentee ballot in booths they set up themselves in E1.
They are fighting the Netanyahu government with the one weapon against which this government has no defense - hope. Hope is this government's worst enemy, more threatening by far than Iran.
For years and years we've been taught to believe that the occupation is irreversible, unassailable, so permanent that there is no occupation, there is just this Israel of ours – like its prime minister, sour, anxious, bloated, contradictory ... but Ours. We are told what to believe by settlers and their champions in places like Ra'anana. That there cannot be two states, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians. That we, the Jews, have been here forever and will stay in East Jerusalem in the West Bank forever and ever.
It turns out, though, that other people, on other hilltops, Palestinian people, have something else to teach us. May they succeed.
On Election Day next week, and into whatever future that day propels us, I will be taking a small piece of their hope with me. I will take strength in their words in founding a village, that - like its literary namesake, Elias Khouri's epic novel of Palestinian history - exists at once only in the imagination and also in a profound unassailable reality:
"We the people, without permission from the occupation, without permission from anyone, sit here today because this land is our land, and it is our right to inhabit it."
Let a hundred Bab al-Shams bloom. An outpost for an outpost. A blind eye for a blind eye. A flout for a flout. It's what our people on the hilltops call an appropriate Zionist response.
Monday, January 14, 2013
When Will We Go BEYOND Partition?
Dear Friend,
There is a perceptive article in the Jan. 9 issue of The Christian Century that I'm appending to this message. You should at least scan it.
Also, let me give you a summary of my "Three Visions" three-column grid, still the best summary of the ferment making the pot bubble in I/P today.
The ruling Vision now is #1, maintaining the STATUS QUO, with actions by Likud (the ruling party in Isr) supported by the USA (Isr occupies all the land)
Vision #2 is the stated policy of the Israel, the US and the UN, going back to the 1947 compromise of TWO STATES, equal, living side by side in peace and security (a farce, because the Likud party (and their allies) have no interest in sharing control with the divided Palestinians; indeed they don't trust them in any way, shape or form).
Vision #3 is the contested one, because down REALLY deep in the psyche of both the Israelis and the Palestinians is the profound belief that each has a right to ALL of the LAND and is not willing to share it with THE OTHER party.
So I basically disagree with Gershom Gorenberg. I DON'T THINK the issue is partition. The issue is whether there can be ONE COUNTRY with liberty and justice for all (as in the US ideal). Making room for one another. There are forces at work now that are inexorable, nameless (although we have attached names to Vision #3), and powerful. A "Jewish" State that dehumanizes its Palestinian residents is NOT sustainable.
(Watch the Senate debate later this month on the Chuck Hagel nomination. Is US foreign policy viz a viz the Israelis open for debate? Or must US support for Israel continue into the future as it has done in the past? With no progress in sight?
A land divided
The Christian Century, (Jan 9, 2013 issue)
The internal conflicts of Zionism
Jan 03, 2013 by Gershom Gorenberg
On December 2, the Sunday after the United Nations General Assembly voted to accept Palestine as an observer state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his cabinet’s weekly meeting with defiance. Not only did he declare that “the government of Israel rejects the . . . decision,” he equated it with the infamous UN resolution of 1975 that labeled Zionism as racism.
On the surface, this was a gut reaction to superficially similar circumstances: Israel again found itself nearly alone in the UN, and Netanyahu wanted to show that it would not be moved by immutable hostility. In the same mood, he approved steps to build a Jewish neighborhood in the West Bank linking Jerusalem with the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim—a step that even Israel’s closest allies vehemently oppose.
Examined thoughtfully, the content of the two UN decisions could not be more different. The “Zionism is racism” resolution negated the idea on which Israel is built: that Jews, defined as a national group, deserve political independence. The new resolution endorsed “the vision of two states . . . Palestine living side by side in peace and security with Israel.” Prima facie, it reaffirmed the original 1947 UN vote to partition British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, the decision that led to Israel’s establishment. So why did Netanyahu, a man concerned with history and ideas, oppose it?
For an answer, look back to the 1947 partition vote. Partition was proposed as the least bad arrangement for two national communities, Jewish and Palestinian Arab, both legitimately claiming the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Arab leaders in Palestine and in neighboring countries rejected the partition plan. The mainstream of the Zionist movement, led by David Ben-Gurion, lobbied for it in the General Assembly. After partition passed, battles broke out between Arabs and Jews in Palestine, followed by war between Arab countries and newly independent Israel.
Ben-Gurion and his pragmatic colleagues believed Jews had a right to the Land of Israel, as Jews traditionally refer to the country between the river and the sea. But they settled for a piece of it. Other Zionists, especially on the radical right, regarded this as a betrayal of the Jewish homeland.
After independence, the first parliamentary motion of no-confidence against Ben-Gurion was submitted by Menachem Begin, leader of the hard-right opposition. His complaint: rather than conquer the West Bank, Ben-Gurion had signed an armistice agreement leaving it under Jordan’s rule.
At the Knesset (legislature) podium, Ben-Gurion answered that Israel could indeed seize the West Bank. “But then what?” he demanded. “We’ll create one state. But that state will want to be democratic, we’ll hold elections—and we [the Jews] will be in the minority. . . . When we faced the question of the whole land without a Jewish state, or a Jewish state without the whole land—we chose a Jewish state without the whole land.”
With these words, Israel’s founding father mapped its deepest ideological divide: between those who see Zionism’s goal as a democratic Israel with a Jewish majority, and those who insist that Zionism requires Jewish rule of the entire homeland.
The issue remained theoretical until the Six Day War of 1967 brought Israel’s unplanned conquest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and other territory. For a decade after the war, political paralysis reigned in Israel. Successive governments were unable to decide whether to give up at least part of the newly conquered land, but they slipped into the dangerous pattern of establishing Jewish settlements in areas they hoped to keep. In 1977, Begin and his Likud Party took power. Now policy was clearer: Begin, predictably, wanted to keep the whole land under Israeli rule without annexing the West Bank or giving its Palestinian residents the vote.
The 1967 war also created a tension in U.S. policy. On one hand, the Johnson administration’s postwar goal was an Israeli-Arab peace based on the pre-1967 lines. On the other hand, the administration was intensely relieved that Israel had survived the war without a need for American troops. As former national security adviser McGeorge Bundy wrote in a secret memorandum to President Johnson, keeping Israel armed well enough to defend itself was “an interest of ours as well of the Israelis.” The most effective way to pressure Israel—withholding weaponry—created the risk of America getting dragged into a future Arab-Israeli war. Washington might want to influence Israeli policy, but it couldn’t lean too hard. The Bundy conundrum is a legacy passed on to every administration since, and it still applies.
By the 1990s, the question of partition fully reemerged in the Israeli and international arena, renamed as the two-state solution. Israeli advocates of partition present it as a way of achieving peace but also as a way of preserving Israel as a democracy with a Jewish majority. When Ehud Olmert, a lifelong follower of Begin, came out for a two-state solution in 2003, he quoted Ben-Gurion’s 1949 Knesset speech.
For Israeli politicians who explicitly oppose a two-state deal or who say it is unachievable, the inescapable question is how Israel can continue ruling over disenfranchised Palestinians without undermining its own democracy. For those who support a two-state agreement, the first question is whether the Palestinian side is ready to give up its claim to the whole of historic Palestine. Prime Minister Ehud Barak argued after the Camp David summit of 2000 that Yasser Arafat was not prepared to do that. Olmert negotiated with Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s heir as Palestinian Authority president, and has insisted that an agreement was possible.
Abbas arranged for the vote on Palestinian statehood to take place on November 29, the anniversary of the original 1947 partition vote. It’s true that Abbas’s General Assembly speech was harsh rather than conciliatory, and that turning to the United Nations broke the framework of direct negotiations with Israel. Nonetheless, the resolution was as much a belated Palestinian admission of the error of rejecting partition 65 years ago as it was a Palestinian victory.
Yet Netanyahu treated the resolution as a repeat of the UN’s 1975 rejection of Zionism, a response that makes intellectual sense only if one takes the contested position that Jewish rule of the whole land is essential to Zionism. And indeed, his cabinet issued a response stressing that nothing in the UN resolution could detract “from of the State of Israel’s, or the Jewish people’s, rights whatsoever in the Land of Israel.”
For Netanyahu is a loyal heir to Begin’s political tradition. Early in his term, under American pressure, Netanyahu said he would accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But in his actions he has aimed at preserving the status quo of Israeli rule. His decision after the General Assembly vote to move ahead on construction in the E-1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim was intended as an unequivocal rejection of partition: building settlements in the E-1 area would create a wall of Israeli settlements cutting nearly across the West Bank, and it is designed to prevent establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
So when Israel forms a new government after its January 22 election, it will face the same question that has accompanied it from its birth: Is dividing the land an affront to Zionism or is it the way to preserve a Jewish and democratic state? The issue is still partition.
There is no PEACE without JUSTICE; there is no justice without LOVE.
There is a perceptive article in the Jan. 9 issue of The Christian Century that I'm appending to this message. You should at least scan it.
Also, let me give you a summary of my "Three Visions" three-column grid, still the best summary of the ferment making the pot bubble in I/P today.
The ruling Vision now is #1, maintaining the STATUS QUO, with actions by Likud (the ruling party in Isr) supported by the USA (Isr occupies all the land)
Vision #2 is the stated policy of the Israel, the US and the UN, going back to the 1947 compromise of TWO STATES, equal, living side by side in peace and security (a farce, because the Likud party (and their allies) have no interest in sharing control with the divided Palestinians; indeed they don't trust them in any way, shape or form).
Vision #3 is the contested one, because down REALLY deep in the psyche of both the Israelis and the Palestinians is the profound belief that each has a right to ALL of the LAND and is not willing to share it with THE OTHER party.
So I basically disagree with Gershom Gorenberg. I DON'T THINK the issue is partition. The issue is whether there can be ONE COUNTRY with liberty and justice for all (as in the US ideal). Making room for one another. There are forces at work now that are inexorable, nameless (although we have attached names to Vision #3), and powerful. A "Jewish" State that dehumanizes its Palestinian residents is NOT sustainable.
(Watch the Senate debate later this month on the Chuck Hagel nomination. Is US foreign policy viz a viz the Israelis open for debate? Or must US support for Israel continue into the future as it has done in the past? With no progress in sight?
A land divided
The Christian Century, (Jan 9, 2013 issue)
The internal conflicts of Zionism
Jan 03, 2013 by Gershom Gorenberg
On December 2, the Sunday after the United Nations General Assembly voted to accept Palestine as an observer state, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened his cabinet’s weekly meeting with defiance. Not only did he declare that “the government of Israel rejects the . . . decision,” he equated it with the infamous UN resolution of 1975 that labeled Zionism as racism.
On the surface, this was a gut reaction to superficially similar circumstances: Israel again found itself nearly alone in the UN, and Netanyahu wanted to show that it would not be moved by immutable hostility. In the same mood, he approved steps to build a Jewish neighborhood in the West Bank linking Jerusalem with the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim—a step that even Israel’s closest allies vehemently oppose.
Examined thoughtfully, the content of the two UN decisions could not be more different. The “Zionism is racism” resolution negated the idea on which Israel is built: that Jews, defined as a national group, deserve political independence. The new resolution endorsed “the vision of two states . . . Palestine living side by side in peace and security with Israel.” Prima facie, it reaffirmed the original 1947 UN vote to partition British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state, the decision that led to Israel’s establishment. So why did Netanyahu, a man concerned with history and ideas, oppose it?
For an answer, look back to the 1947 partition vote. Partition was proposed as the least bad arrangement for two national communities, Jewish and Palestinian Arab, both legitimately claiming the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Arab leaders in Palestine and in neighboring countries rejected the partition plan. The mainstream of the Zionist movement, led by David Ben-Gurion, lobbied for it in the General Assembly. After partition passed, battles broke out between Arabs and Jews in Palestine, followed by war between Arab countries and newly independent Israel.
Ben-Gurion and his pragmatic colleagues believed Jews had a right to the Land of Israel, as Jews traditionally refer to the country between the river and the sea. But they settled for a piece of it. Other Zionists, especially on the radical right, regarded this as a betrayal of the Jewish homeland.
After independence, the first parliamentary motion of no-confidence against Ben-Gurion was submitted by Menachem Begin, leader of the hard-right opposition. His complaint: rather than conquer the West Bank, Ben-Gurion had signed an armistice agreement leaving it under Jordan’s rule.
At the Knesset (legislature) podium, Ben-Gurion answered that Israel could indeed seize the West Bank. “But then what?” he demanded. “We’ll create one state. But that state will want to be democratic, we’ll hold elections—and we [the Jews] will be in the minority. . . . When we faced the question of the whole land without a Jewish state, or a Jewish state without the whole land—we chose a Jewish state without the whole land.”
With these words, Israel’s founding father mapped its deepest ideological divide: between those who see Zionism’s goal as a democratic Israel with a Jewish majority, and those who insist that Zionism requires Jewish rule of the entire homeland.
The issue remained theoretical until the Six Day War of 1967 brought Israel’s unplanned conquest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and other territory. For a decade after the war, political paralysis reigned in Israel. Successive governments were unable to decide whether to give up at least part of the newly conquered land, but they slipped into the dangerous pattern of establishing Jewish settlements in areas they hoped to keep. In 1977, Begin and his Likud Party took power. Now policy was clearer: Begin, predictably, wanted to keep the whole land under Israeli rule without annexing the West Bank or giving its Palestinian residents the vote.
The 1967 war also created a tension in U.S. policy. On one hand, the Johnson administration’s postwar goal was an Israeli-Arab peace based on the pre-1967 lines. On the other hand, the administration was intensely relieved that Israel had survived the war without a need for American troops. As former national security adviser McGeorge Bundy wrote in a secret memorandum to President Johnson, keeping Israel armed well enough to defend itself was “an interest of ours as well of the Israelis.” The most effective way to pressure Israel—withholding weaponry—created the risk of America getting dragged into a future Arab-Israeli war. Washington might want to influence Israeli policy, but it couldn’t lean too hard. The Bundy conundrum is a legacy passed on to every administration since, and it still applies.
By the 1990s, the question of partition fully reemerged in the Israeli and international arena, renamed as the two-state solution. Israeli advocates of partition present it as a way of achieving peace but also as a way of preserving Israel as a democracy with a Jewish majority. When Ehud Olmert, a lifelong follower of Begin, came out for a two-state solution in 2003, he quoted Ben-Gurion’s 1949 Knesset speech.
For Israeli politicians who explicitly oppose a two-state deal or who say it is unachievable, the inescapable question is how Israel can continue ruling over disenfranchised Palestinians without undermining its own democracy. For those who support a two-state agreement, the first question is whether the Palestinian side is ready to give up its claim to the whole of historic Palestine. Prime Minister Ehud Barak argued after the Camp David summit of 2000 that Yasser Arafat was not prepared to do that. Olmert negotiated with Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s heir as Palestinian Authority president, and has insisted that an agreement was possible.
Abbas arranged for the vote on Palestinian statehood to take place on November 29, the anniversary of the original 1947 partition vote. It’s true that Abbas’s General Assembly speech was harsh rather than conciliatory, and that turning to the United Nations broke the framework of direct negotiations with Israel. Nonetheless, the resolution was as much a belated Palestinian admission of the error of rejecting partition 65 years ago as it was a Palestinian victory.
Yet Netanyahu treated the resolution as a repeat of the UN’s 1975 rejection of Zionism, a response that makes intellectual sense only if one takes the contested position that Jewish rule of the whole land is essential to Zionism. And indeed, his cabinet issued a response stressing that nothing in the UN resolution could detract “from of the State of Israel’s, or the Jewish people’s, rights whatsoever in the Land of Israel.”
For Netanyahu is a loyal heir to Begin’s political tradition. Early in his term, under American pressure, Netanyahu said he would accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But in his actions he has aimed at preserving the status quo of Israeli rule. His decision after the General Assembly vote to move ahead on construction in the E-1 area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim was intended as an unequivocal rejection of partition: building settlements in the E-1 area would create a wall of Israeli settlements cutting nearly across the West Bank, and it is designed to prevent establishment of a viable Palestinian state.
So when Israel forms a new government after its January 22 election, it will face the same question that has accompanied it from its birth: Is dividing the land an affront to Zionism or is it the way to preserve a Jewish and democratic state? The issue is still partition.
There is no PEACE without JUSTICE; there is no justice without LOVE.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Pathways to Peaceful Co-existence
Dear Friend,
The New Year beckons. May this truly be a happier year for our friends, the Israelis and Palestinians. The culture of fear and distrust gives way to those in the middle, who marginalize extremists and show ways of living side by side, with liberty and justice for all.
Yesterday, disguised, undercover Israeli security forces raided Tamoun (West Bank village) and arrested an extremist. This prompted Palestinian youths to hurl rocks and firebombs to protest the arrest. The NY Times reported "up to 30 Palestinians injured" (Jan 2, A7) when "live fire" (Ass. Press) was used as well as rubber bullets.
The fear of a "jihadist" takeover of the Palestinian authorities (especially Fatah in the West Bank) has kept the Likud administration from engaging Mahmud Abbas in genuine peace talks, while increased settlement activity shows Israel's intention of deepening the Occupation over all the land, at the expense of Palestinian rights.
Excerpts from a recent Christian Science Monitor article show a better way forward for 2013:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2012/1119/A-path-to-peace-in-Israel-Gaza-conflict
. . . As democracy advances in the region, however, it opens prospects for peace. Dictators who once could use conflict with Israel to hold onto power are disappearing. More Arabs have a voice in the affairs of state, bringing hope of a deeper discussion about the differences between nations. Democracies as a rule, after all, don’t go to war with each other.
As Hillary Rodham Clinton once said about achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace, the hard work doesn’t begin or end at the negotiating table, it “begins in our hearts, in our homes, and in our communities.”
Perhaps the best model for Arab-Jewish reconciliation is a town in Israel dedicated to showing that the two nationalities can live together in a democratic way. It’s called Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, or the Hebrew and Arabic words for “oasis of peace.” (One in 6 Israelis is Arab.)
Formed more than three decades ago, the town has thrived with dozens of Jewish and Arab/Palestinian families living side by side in coexistence. They share a bilingual school and an ecumenical place to worship, and most of all, they’ve learned how to handle their respective fears during the many eruptions of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
As one of its community newsletters stated, “The families who live here have one objective in common – to prove that Jews and Arabs who dare to challenge the status quo of mutual fear can live together in peace.” (The town has a long waiting list for new families.)
The town also hosts a popular School for Peace, which has trained tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to come to grips with each other’s “realities” through rigorous, guided dialogue. The school, like the town, is built on the premise that both Jews and Arabs have claims to land and neither side is going to win in a conflict. The only choice is to work out a peace.
Hamas and Israel will soon come to that same conclusion, at least in the form of another cease-fire. And Egypt, as a new democracy, will play a critical part. Permanent peace may be far off, but at least with the ongoing Arab Spring and in models of peace like one Israeli town, the roots of peace can grow.
So dear friends, keep the faith. Spread this faith. Don't give up the struggle. Be persistent. Be patient. Be active in urging the US government to insist that Israel abide by US laws when receiving our (mostly) military aid of over $3 B each and every year. (And don't purchase Ahava beauty products, or SodaStream products, as they were produced on land the international community views as Palestinian land. JRK for FPI
The New Year beckons. May this truly be a happier year for our friends, the Israelis and Palestinians. The culture of fear and distrust gives way to those in the middle, who marginalize extremists and show ways of living side by side, with liberty and justice for all.
Yesterday, disguised, undercover Israeli security forces raided Tamoun (West Bank village) and arrested an extremist. This prompted Palestinian youths to hurl rocks and firebombs to protest the arrest. The NY Times reported "up to 30 Palestinians injured" (Jan 2, A7) when "live fire" (Ass. Press) was used as well as rubber bullets.
The fear of a "jihadist" takeover of the Palestinian authorities (especially Fatah in the West Bank) has kept the Likud administration from engaging Mahmud Abbas in genuine peace talks, while increased settlement activity shows Israel's intention of deepening the Occupation over all the land, at the expense of Palestinian rights.
Excerpts from a recent Christian Science Monitor article show a better way forward for 2013:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2012/1119/A-path-to-peace-in-Israel-Gaza-conflict
. . . As democracy advances in the region, however, it opens prospects for peace. Dictators who once could use conflict with Israel to hold onto power are disappearing. More Arabs have a voice in the affairs of state, bringing hope of a deeper discussion about the differences between nations. Democracies as a rule, after all, don’t go to war with each other.
As Hillary Rodham Clinton once said about achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace, the hard work doesn’t begin or end at the negotiating table, it “begins in our hearts, in our homes, and in our communities.”
Perhaps the best model for Arab-Jewish reconciliation is a town in Israel dedicated to showing that the two nationalities can live together in a democratic way. It’s called Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, or the Hebrew and Arabic words for “oasis of peace.” (One in 6 Israelis is Arab.)
Formed more than three decades ago, the town has thrived with dozens of Jewish and Arab/Palestinian families living side by side in coexistence. They share a bilingual school and an ecumenical place to worship, and most of all, they’ve learned how to handle their respective fears during the many eruptions of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
As one of its community newsletters stated, “The families who live here have one objective in common – to prove that Jews and Arabs who dare to challenge the status quo of mutual fear can live together in peace.” (The town has a long waiting list for new families.)
The town also hosts a popular School for Peace, which has trained tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to come to grips with each other’s “realities” through rigorous, guided dialogue. The school, like the town, is built on the premise that both Jews and Arabs have claims to land and neither side is going to win in a conflict. The only choice is to work out a peace.
Hamas and Israel will soon come to that same conclusion, at least in the form of another cease-fire. And Egypt, as a new democracy, will play a critical part. Permanent peace may be far off, but at least with the ongoing Arab Spring and in models of peace like one Israeli town, the roots of peace can grow.
So dear friends, keep the faith. Spread this faith. Don't give up the struggle. Be persistent. Be patient. Be active in urging the US government to insist that Israel abide by US laws when receiving our (mostly) military aid of over $3 B each and every year. (And don't purchase Ahava beauty products, or SodaStream products, as they were produced on land the international community views as Palestinian land. JRK for FPI
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
The Ground is Shaking!
Dear Friend,
The Ground is Shaking! The battle is being joined. Now it's the Chuck Hegel appointment as the (projected) new head of the Defense Department. All the Israeli heavy-weights (there and here in the US) are lining up against former the former Senator (from Nebraska) mostly because he is not lock-step in favor of any and everything coming out of Jerusalem and AIPAC. Watch this one carefully. Our colleague James Wall is going to tackle this again. Go to his blog, "Wallwritings" for an introductory commentary on this issue.
Hopefully this preferred appointment by our President will go through, indicating a shift in the official stance of our US government toward a more balanced approach.
In addition to this, you have this amazing story. The State Department accused Israel on Tuesday of engaging in a "pattern of provocative action" that runs counter to statements from Israeli leaders that they are committed to peace. Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "We are deeply "disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action. These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace. Israel’s leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution, yet these actions only put that goal further at risk" [Haaretz, Tuesday, Dec. 18).
At least the US must be consistent. Israel thinks it can be "for" the Two State and proceed with settlements. The US knows better. Enlarging the settlements (especially in E-1) destroys the Two State "solution". Up until this recent State department salvo, we have paid lip service to the Two State idea and tacitly supported Israeli settlement expansion.
You can't have it both ways.
I'm sending you once again, a three-column "VISIONS" sheet that gives the three main visions competing in Isr/Pal right now. Many of us have moved away from the Two-State issue (it's deader than a dinosaur), and are embracing the vision of One State, Pluralistic, and Democratic. We are practicing boycotts, (of Israeli products from Palestinian land), divestment (in companies profiting from the Occupation) and sanctions [BDS] (by our government against Israelis OR Palestinians who by their actions are not leading their people to an equitable solution. The goals must be compensating for confiscated land, allow reasonable "right of return", granting full citizenship rights to Palestinians who live there, and a greater role in governance from the bottom up.
As I am soon to write to a Muslim friend in Kalamazoo, the world has moved on from the UN idea of "two states living side by side in peace and security" of 1947. The One State "solution" will be no easier than the Two State. It will require building trust after decades of betrayal and bloodshed. Moderates must weigh in against extremism on both sides to marginalize them, instead of giving them control of the agenda. More and more people will have to build bridges to each other instead of walls. Nonviolent advocacy against the Occupation will have to increase. More and more people will have to practice BDS (as above) to bring about changes to the current apartheid-like rule of Israeli governments since 1948.
Let me add one other thing. I am not an adversary of those who sincerely wish to work for the "Two-State" solution. The key issue for me is: liberty and justice for all, not just Jews in the State of Israel. Peace . . . justice. . . love, At the High Holy Days. John Kleinheksel
The Ground is Shaking! The battle is being joined. Now it's the Chuck Hegel appointment as the (projected) new head of the Defense Department. All the Israeli heavy-weights (there and here in the US) are lining up against former the former Senator (from Nebraska) mostly because he is not lock-step in favor of any and everything coming out of Jerusalem and AIPAC. Watch this one carefully. Our colleague James Wall is going to tackle this again. Go to his blog, "Wallwritings" for an introductory commentary on this issue.
Hopefully this preferred appointment by our President will go through, indicating a shift in the official stance of our US government toward a more balanced approach.
In addition to this, you have this amazing story. The State Department accused Israel on Tuesday of engaging in a "pattern of provocative action" that runs counter to statements from Israeli leaders that they are committed to peace. Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "We are deeply "disappointed that Israel insists on continuing this pattern of provocative action. These repeated announcements and plans of new construction run counter to the cause of peace. Israel’s leaders continually say that they support a path towards a two-state solution, yet these actions only put that goal further at risk" [Haaretz, Tuesday, Dec. 18).
At least the US must be consistent. Israel thinks it can be "for" the Two State and proceed with settlements. The US knows better. Enlarging the settlements (especially in E-1) destroys the Two State "solution". Up until this recent State department salvo, we have paid lip service to the Two State idea and tacitly supported Israeli settlement expansion.
You can't have it both ways.
I'm sending you once again, a three-column "VISIONS" sheet that gives the three main visions competing in Isr/Pal right now. Many of us have moved away from the Two-State issue (it's deader than a dinosaur), and are embracing the vision of One State, Pluralistic, and Democratic. We are practicing boycotts, (of Israeli products from Palestinian land), divestment (in companies profiting from the Occupation) and sanctions [BDS] (by our government against Israelis OR Palestinians who by their actions are not leading their people to an equitable solution. The goals must be compensating for confiscated land, allow reasonable "right of return", granting full citizenship rights to Palestinians who live there, and a greater role in governance from the bottom up.
As I am soon to write to a Muslim friend in Kalamazoo, the world has moved on from the UN idea of "two states living side by side in peace and security" of 1947. The One State "solution" will be no easier than the Two State. It will require building trust after decades of betrayal and bloodshed. Moderates must weigh in against extremism on both sides to marginalize them, instead of giving them control of the agenda. More and more people will have to build bridges to each other instead of walls. Nonviolent advocacy against the Occupation will have to increase. More and more people will have to practice BDS (as above) to bring about changes to the current apartheid-like rule of Israeli governments since 1948.
Let me add one other thing. I am not an adversary of those who sincerely wish to work for the "Two-State" solution. The key issue for me is: liberty and justice for all, not just Jews in the State of Israel. Peace . . . justice. . . love, At the High Holy Days. John Kleinheksel
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Can We Talk About "Zionism? In Public?
It’s time for the media to talk about Zionism
by Philip Weiss on December 4, 2012 147
Last week, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan characterized me as "the anti-Zionist Jewish-American journalist who writes about the Middle East." That's my reputation; I can't take exception to her words. But when Sullivan quoted Jeffrey Goldberg, she did not say he was Jewish or a Zionist--or that he had once emigrated to Israel because he believed that America was unsafe for Jews, and served as an officer in Israel's army before coming back here and recommending Israel's militant policy toward Arabs to America.
Sullivan's double standard is indefensible, but it is typical of a standard of censorship in our journalism. American media are not talking to their readers about Zionism. They are not even attempting to describe the ideology that is at the heart of the problem in Israel and Palestine. The media are honest with their audiences about other movements of a religious character, from evangelism to opposition to stem-cell research to radical Islam. So they should be honest with them about Zionism.
Zionism is a 115-year-old movement inside Jewish life that says there is a need for a Jewish state in Palestine because Jews are unsafe in the west and Jews have a biblical connection to Palestine. Some people say that this is too complicated a concept to explain to Americans. (Norman Finkelstein joked that Zionism might as well be a hairspray and it’s irrelevant to the discussion at the New School in October). I don’t think so. Beliefs are very important; and Americans have a right to know why so many American Jews believe in the need for Israel at a time when this concept is warping our foreign policy.
It's not enough for a reporter to say that someone is pro-Israel. Zionism draws on a person's worldview and has a religious character, it supplies meaning to his or her life. It is often a core understanding that drives that person's positions in other areas (see Neoconservatism). And it is deeply enmeshed in the official Jewish community.
I believe the media have refused to explore the Zionist issue because it would involve a lot of squeamish self-interrogation on the part of Jews. Imagine Ted Koppel having a panel where Wolf Blitzer, Robert Siegel, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Richard Engel and Ed Rendell would have to explain what Zionism means to them. The acknowledgment of Jewish prominence in the Establishment, and of the power of Zionism, would make a lot of Jews uncomfortable, so the conversation is verboten.
But so long as these beliefs are not examined, and Israel and its supporters continue to play such a large role in our policymaking, the silence is bad for Jews. It allows people who are justifiably angry over our foreign policy to believe that all Jews support Israel, or suspect that we disguise our dual loyalty with misleading prescriptions about American security. It allows Zionists to seek cover for our country's blind support for Israel by stating that there is no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism-- when there is absolutely a difference. See Jewish Voice for Peace. See Hannah Arendt. See Judith Butler.
And it allows Jews to avoid very important historical/existential questions that we really ought to be asking publicly, and urgently answering: Do I feel unsafe in America or Europe? If I feel unsafe in America what am I doing here? (A theme of Shlomo Sand's new book.) If I feel safe do I need Israel? Do I believe in the need for a Jewish state? At what price? Who is Israel making unsafe in my name?
I think all Jews should be openly debating these matters; but they won't till the belief question is raised by the mainstream media. There are signs that the ice is melting. Last week Andrew Sullivan, an influence leader if anyone is, published a mini-essay (attacking the liberal Zionist Spencer Ackerman's dream of a laser war) in which he stated that Zionism is another hurtful 20th century "ism" that has run its course, and modern political reality is inconsistent with the goal of a Jewish-majority state. Ethan Bronner (a reputed liberal Zionist who seems to understand that Zionism has lost its way) boldly gave Rami Khouri space on the front page of the New York Times during the Gaza assault to attack Zionism. On NPR Jim Fallows said bravely that there has always been a tension between Israel’s creation as a Jewish state and a democracy; you really can’t be both, he was suggesting.
As Fallows and Sullivan seem to know (and Matt Yglesias and David Remnick will surely come to profess some day, and Jonathan Cook knew years ago, and the late Ibrahim Abu-Lughod knew when he was a teenager in Jaffa) the contradiction between democracy and Jewish nationalism has been inherent in the Zionist project from the start, but has always been described as a tension rather than a contradiction so as to make Zionists and their friends feel better about their undertaking. The Nakba of 1948 continues today with the ethnic cleansing of Area C on the West Bank and the pulverizing of Gaza. But liberal Zionists have given themselves permission to dither about the destruction of Palestinian rights by calling this longstanding contradiction a tension that will be resolved when there is a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish-majority state. As if tomorrow Palestinians will gain their rights in the context of an expansionist Jewish state. As if Oslo is a more meaningful political paradigm than the Likud Party, which draws deeply on Zionist ideology and grows more rightwing by the minute.
Zionism came out of the real condition of Jews in Europe in the late 19th and 20th centuries. I can well imagine being a Zionist at other periods of Jewish history. I would have been a Zionist if I had been in Kafka’s circle in Prague in the 19-teens with the rise of anti-Semitism. I would have been a Zionist if I had been born into the family of my mother’s best friend in Berlin in the 1930s.
But I was born in America, in the 20th century. In my lifetime Zionism has been a dangerous ideology for Palestinians and for the wider Middle East. Zionism has endorsed the Iron Wall strategy of militancy on Israel’s ever-moving borders. Zionism has created a Sparta, just as Hannah Arendt predicted that it would in 1948 when she saw that Israel was born in war, and saw the purging of Palestinian refugees from the Jewish state to be.
I consider myself a liberal anti-Zionist, or a non-Zionist (because the label is less confrontational to the Zionists I am trying to wean from their mistaken belief). I like liberal traditions of personal freedom in the United States, including the tradition of tolerance of religious and ideological claims I find preposterous. These liberal principles have guaranteed my freedom as a minority in the U.S. and granted me a darn good life, including jobs in the First Amendment business and marriage to someone who is not Jewish—a marriage that could not take place in Israel where there is no civil marriage.
I am an anti-Zionist because I reject the entire religious nationalist program: I don’t see a need for a Jewish state, I don’t see Jerusalem as my home any more than Kenya, where my people came from before the temple period. I don’t subscribe to the racial theory of the Jewish people. I take America at its word. I don’t like political separation of people on an ethnic basis and first class citizenship granted to one over the other; and I see the current militant and totalitarian aspects of Israeli society as flowing from a belief system, Zionism, the way that Soviet oppressions grew out of the Politburo's interpretation of Communism.
I oppose Zionism, too, because the Israel lobby plays such a hurtful role in our foreign policy, and the Israel lobby is inherent in Zionism as it has evolved. From the beginning Zionism depended on the support of imperial powers. Herzl turned to the Kaiser and the Sultan, Weizmann turned to the British Prime Minister, Ben Gurion turned to the American president. "We became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy," Alan Dershowitz said. Yes, and that lobby helped generate the conditions of 9/11, the Iraq War, the murders of Robert Kennedy and Rachel Corrie and Furkan Dogan, and the hysteria about Iran.
The sooner we have this conversation, the greater diversity we will see in the Jewish community and American foreign policy. We can transform the special relationship and isolate Israel for human rights violations and pressure it to transform itself.
When we have this conversation, liberal Zionists will be pressed to decide what they believe in more, liberalism or Zionism. Leading writers like Matthew Yglesias, Eric Alterman, Richard Wolffe, Peter Beinart and Spencer Ackerman, who have kept their liberal and Jewish nationalist dishes spinning forever in the air alongside one another without having to deal with the fait accompli of that ideology—the cruel joke that Oslo has been for the Palestinians, the prison that is Gaza-- will have to come down on the democracy side or the Jewish state side. And I am sure many will come down on the democracy side. I am sure that many will answer as I have, and say that they prefer a society where minorities have equal rights to one in which one group is privileged over another.
But we should not give them cover. We must have a real and open conversation in the American Jewish community for all to see. Are you a Zionist, and why? Do you feel unsafe in America? And what sort of unsafety have your beliefs created in a foreign land?
by Philip Weiss on December 4, 2012 147
Last week, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan characterized me as "the anti-Zionist Jewish-American journalist who writes about the Middle East." That's my reputation; I can't take exception to her words. But when Sullivan quoted Jeffrey Goldberg, she did not say he was Jewish or a Zionist--or that he had once emigrated to Israel because he believed that America was unsafe for Jews, and served as an officer in Israel's army before coming back here and recommending Israel's militant policy toward Arabs to America.
Sullivan's double standard is indefensible, but it is typical of a standard of censorship in our journalism. American media are not talking to their readers about Zionism. They are not even attempting to describe the ideology that is at the heart of the problem in Israel and Palestine. The media are honest with their audiences about other movements of a religious character, from evangelism to opposition to stem-cell research to radical Islam. So they should be honest with them about Zionism.
Zionism is a 115-year-old movement inside Jewish life that says there is a need for a Jewish state in Palestine because Jews are unsafe in the west and Jews have a biblical connection to Palestine. Some people say that this is too complicated a concept to explain to Americans. (Norman Finkelstein joked that Zionism might as well be a hairspray and it’s irrelevant to the discussion at the New School in October). I don’t think so. Beliefs are very important; and Americans have a right to know why so many American Jews believe in the need for Israel at a time when this concept is warping our foreign policy.
It's not enough for a reporter to say that someone is pro-Israel. Zionism draws on a person's worldview and has a religious character, it supplies meaning to his or her life. It is often a core understanding that drives that person's positions in other areas (see Neoconservatism). And it is deeply enmeshed in the official Jewish community.
I believe the media have refused to explore the Zionist issue because it would involve a lot of squeamish self-interrogation on the part of Jews. Imagine Ted Koppel having a panel where Wolf Blitzer, Robert Siegel, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Richard Engel and Ed Rendell would have to explain what Zionism means to them. The acknowledgment of Jewish prominence in the Establishment, and of the power of Zionism, would make a lot of Jews uncomfortable, so the conversation is verboten.
But so long as these beliefs are not examined, and Israel and its supporters continue to play such a large role in our policymaking, the silence is bad for Jews. It allows people who are justifiably angry over our foreign policy to believe that all Jews support Israel, or suspect that we disguise our dual loyalty with misleading prescriptions about American security. It allows Zionists to seek cover for our country's blind support for Israel by stating that there is no difference between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism-- when there is absolutely a difference. See Jewish Voice for Peace. See Hannah Arendt. See Judith Butler.
And it allows Jews to avoid very important historical/existential questions that we really ought to be asking publicly, and urgently answering: Do I feel unsafe in America or Europe? If I feel unsafe in America what am I doing here? (A theme of Shlomo Sand's new book.) If I feel safe do I need Israel? Do I believe in the need for a Jewish state? At what price? Who is Israel making unsafe in my name?
I think all Jews should be openly debating these matters; but they won't till the belief question is raised by the mainstream media. There are signs that the ice is melting. Last week Andrew Sullivan, an influence leader if anyone is, published a mini-essay (attacking the liberal Zionist Spencer Ackerman's dream of a laser war) in which he stated that Zionism is another hurtful 20th century "ism" that has run its course, and modern political reality is inconsistent with the goal of a Jewish-majority state. Ethan Bronner (a reputed liberal Zionist who seems to understand that Zionism has lost its way) boldly gave Rami Khouri space on the front page of the New York Times during the Gaza assault to attack Zionism. On NPR Jim Fallows said bravely that there has always been a tension between Israel’s creation as a Jewish state and a democracy; you really can’t be both, he was suggesting.
As Fallows and Sullivan seem to know (and Matt Yglesias and David Remnick will surely come to profess some day, and Jonathan Cook knew years ago, and the late Ibrahim Abu-Lughod knew when he was a teenager in Jaffa) the contradiction between democracy and Jewish nationalism has been inherent in the Zionist project from the start, but has always been described as a tension rather than a contradiction so as to make Zionists and their friends feel better about their undertaking. The Nakba of 1948 continues today with the ethnic cleansing of Area C on the West Bank and the pulverizing of Gaza. But liberal Zionists have given themselves permission to dither about the destruction of Palestinian rights by calling this longstanding contradiction a tension that will be resolved when there is a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish-majority state. As if tomorrow Palestinians will gain their rights in the context of an expansionist Jewish state. As if Oslo is a more meaningful political paradigm than the Likud Party, which draws deeply on Zionist ideology and grows more rightwing by the minute.
Zionism came out of the real condition of Jews in Europe in the late 19th and 20th centuries. I can well imagine being a Zionist at other periods of Jewish history. I would have been a Zionist if I had been in Kafka’s circle in Prague in the 19-teens with the rise of anti-Semitism. I would have been a Zionist if I had been born into the family of my mother’s best friend in Berlin in the 1930s.
But I was born in America, in the 20th century. In my lifetime Zionism has been a dangerous ideology for Palestinians and for the wider Middle East. Zionism has endorsed the Iron Wall strategy of militancy on Israel’s ever-moving borders. Zionism has created a Sparta, just as Hannah Arendt predicted that it would in 1948 when she saw that Israel was born in war, and saw the purging of Palestinian refugees from the Jewish state to be.
I consider myself a liberal anti-Zionist, or a non-Zionist (because the label is less confrontational to the Zionists I am trying to wean from their mistaken belief). I like liberal traditions of personal freedom in the United States, including the tradition of tolerance of religious and ideological claims I find preposterous. These liberal principles have guaranteed my freedom as a minority in the U.S. and granted me a darn good life, including jobs in the First Amendment business and marriage to someone who is not Jewish—a marriage that could not take place in Israel where there is no civil marriage.
I am an anti-Zionist because I reject the entire religious nationalist program: I don’t see a need for a Jewish state, I don’t see Jerusalem as my home any more than Kenya, where my people came from before the temple period. I don’t subscribe to the racial theory of the Jewish people. I take America at its word. I don’t like political separation of people on an ethnic basis and first class citizenship granted to one over the other; and I see the current militant and totalitarian aspects of Israeli society as flowing from a belief system, Zionism, the way that Soviet oppressions grew out of the Politburo's interpretation of Communism.
I oppose Zionism, too, because the Israel lobby plays such a hurtful role in our foreign policy, and the Israel lobby is inherent in Zionism as it has evolved. From the beginning Zionism depended on the support of imperial powers. Herzl turned to the Kaiser and the Sultan, Weizmann turned to the British Prime Minister, Ben Gurion turned to the American president. "We became part of what is perhaps the most effective lobbying and fund-raising effort in the history of democracy," Alan Dershowitz said. Yes, and that lobby helped generate the conditions of 9/11, the Iraq War, the murders of Robert Kennedy and Rachel Corrie and Furkan Dogan, and the hysteria about Iran.
The sooner we have this conversation, the greater diversity we will see in the Jewish community and American foreign policy. We can transform the special relationship and isolate Israel for human rights violations and pressure it to transform itself.
When we have this conversation, liberal Zionists will be pressed to decide what they believe in more, liberalism or Zionism. Leading writers like Matthew Yglesias, Eric Alterman, Richard Wolffe, Peter Beinart and Spencer Ackerman, who have kept their liberal and Jewish nationalist dishes spinning forever in the air alongside one another without having to deal with the fait accompli of that ideology—the cruel joke that Oslo has been for the Palestinians, the prison that is Gaza-- will have to come down on the democracy side or the Jewish state side. And I am sure many will come down on the democracy side. I am sure that many will answer as I have, and say that they prefer a society where minorities have equal rights to one in which one group is privileged over another.
But we should not give them cover. We must have a real and open conversation in the American Jewish community for all to see. Are you a Zionist, and why? Do you feel unsafe in America? And what sort of unsafety have your beliefs created in a foreign land?
Monday, November 26, 2012
Support Palestinian Statehood
Dear Friend,
The NY Times op-ed by Yossi Beilin, (below), makes sense. He was one of the architects of the original Oslo agreement in 1993.
For Israel NOT to support this bid shows the Likud government's disdain for the Two State outcome between the two peoples.
When it continues to oppose even an observer status for Palestinians in the UN, it means Israel will eventually be seen as One State, obligated to give full rights to All Residents. Is this what the Likud government wants? I don't think so.
To give no support to the Fatah-led Palestinians is to further embolden HAMAS in Gaza as the only true change agents for Palestinians. I don't think Israel wants to do that either. The US at least, needs to support the nonviolent Mahmud Abbas and his bid for non-observer status in the UN.
This might even show the US is willing to open up a little "day light" between Israel and the US.
And we should WANT reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, not their continued division. We urge their reconcilation. Hopefully, Hamas (in Gaza) will have learned a thing or two from the new Egyptian government about pragmatism. Hamas needs to give up its intransigence in "not recognizing" Israel. Hamas and Fatah (Gaza authority and West Bank authority) need to agree to deal with Israel as One Entity, not two. As long as Hamas and Fatah are divided, Israel has a good excuse in not dealing with Palestinian claims as one people. JRK
November 25, 2012
Support Palestinian Statehood
By YOSSI BEILIN
TEL AVIV
THE cease-fire that ended the latest round of violence between Israel and the Palestinians has enhanced the popularity of the militant group Hamas. This extremist organization has become the only interlocutor for the Arab world, for the West and, indirectly, for Israel. But Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s existence or to negotiate with Israelis. Meanwhile, the pragmatic Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, is rapidly losing legitimacy and Israel’s recent strikes on Gaza will only weaken it further. Negotiating with Hamas may secure a lull, but Hamas cannot be a partner for peace.
If the world wants to express support for the Palestinian party that recognizes Israel, seeks to avoid violence, and genuinely wishes to reach a peace agreement in which a Palestinian state exists alongside — not instead of — Israel, it will have its chance later this week when Mr. Abbas makes his bid for recognition of Palestinian statehood before the United Nations. If American and Israeli opposition to a Palestinian bid continues, it could serve as a mortal blow to Mr. Abbas, and end up being a prize that enhances the power and legitimacy of Hamas.
It is paradoxical that Israel’s current government is so vehemently opposed to Mr. Abbas’s bid for recognition. After all, it was 65 years ago this week, on Nov. 29, 1947, that the Palestinians and their friends in the Arab world expressly rejected United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, which recognized the need to establish a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in the former British Mandate territory of Palestine.
Now, the Palestinians are admitting their mistake and asking the same assembly to recognize a state of Palestine alongside Israel, and requesting that the boundaries of their state be determined as a result of negotiations with Israel. Meanwhile, Israel’s right-wing parties — which in 1993 rejected the Oslo Accords that envisaged Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the establishment of Palestinian autonomy in those areas — are now using, and abusing, that same agreement to prevent Palestinian statehood.
This week’s request wouldn’t be taking place if both sides had abided by the Oslo Accords’ original time frame, if Israel’s peacemaking prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, hadn’t been assassinated in 1995, and if we’d reached a permanent agreement by May 1999, as initially envisioned.
Since Rabin’s assassination, there has been little progress toward ending the conflict. No proper negotiations have taken place for four years. And because Mr. Abbas has committed to the principles of nonviolence, diplomatic means, like the statehood bid, are his only way of putting Palestinians back on the global agenda. In retaliation, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is now threatening to nullify the Oslo Accords, if the world recognizes a Palestinian state. This is preposterous.
The Oslo Accords have allowed Israel’s right-wing government to hide behind an interim agreement that, for almost 20 years, has permitted Israel to continue the expansion of settlements in the West Bank; to rid itself of the responsibility of day-to-day management in the Occupied Territories; to save itself the costs of occupation (as donor countries are financing the Palestinian budget); and to benefit from cooperation with Palestinian security forces. There is no chance that Israel will nullify the accords.
The claim that Palestinians are violating the Oslo agreement by presenting their proposal to the General Assembly is completely unfounded. The topic of Palestinian statehood was never one of the five issues (Jerusalem’s status, the fate of refugees, security arrangements, borders and settlements) that were considered “final status” issues in the 1993 Oslo accord. The Palestinians chose not to mention the issue of a state, as they saw self-determination as a basic right for their people; and it was convenient back then for Israel not to address the topic.
Moreover, Mr. Abbas has clarified that if the General Assembly decides to recognize a Palestinian state, he would agree to negotiations with Israel’s government without preconditions, a move that is in both America’s and Israel’s interests. The only difference is that these negotiations would take place between two internationally recognized states.
President Obama and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, should think twice before rejecting Mr. Abbas’s request. Blocking his bid for statehood will only empower extremists further.
There is no reason for the United States to oppose Mr. Abbas’s move, pressure the Palestinians not to raise this issue, or threaten to freeze their budget.
And Israel has no reason to wage a diplomatic war against the Palestinian appeal. Rather, Mr. Netanyahu should be the first to recognize a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama the last to prevent it.
Yossi Beilin, an architect of the Oslo Accords, has served as Israel’s deputy foreign minister and minister of justice.
The NY Times op-ed by Yossi Beilin, (below), makes sense. He was one of the architects of the original Oslo agreement in 1993.
For Israel NOT to support this bid shows the Likud government's disdain for the Two State outcome between the two peoples.
When it continues to oppose even an observer status for Palestinians in the UN, it means Israel will eventually be seen as One State, obligated to give full rights to All Residents. Is this what the Likud government wants? I don't think so.
To give no support to the Fatah-led Palestinians is to further embolden HAMAS in Gaza as the only true change agents for Palestinians. I don't think Israel wants to do that either. The US at least, needs to support the nonviolent Mahmud Abbas and his bid for non-observer status in the UN.
This might even show the US is willing to open up a little "day light" between Israel and the US.
And we should WANT reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, not their continued division. We urge their reconcilation. Hopefully, Hamas (in Gaza) will have learned a thing or two from the new Egyptian government about pragmatism. Hamas needs to give up its intransigence in "not recognizing" Israel. Hamas and Fatah (Gaza authority and West Bank authority) need to agree to deal with Israel as One Entity, not two. As long as Hamas and Fatah are divided, Israel has a good excuse in not dealing with Palestinian claims as one people. JRK
November 25, 2012
Support Palestinian Statehood
By YOSSI BEILIN
TEL AVIV
THE cease-fire that ended the latest round of violence between Israel and the Palestinians has enhanced the popularity of the militant group Hamas. This extremist organization has become the only interlocutor for the Arab world, for the West and, indirectly, for Israel. But Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s existence or to negotiate with Israelis. Meanwhile, the pragmatic Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, is rapidly losing legitimacy and Israel’s recent strikes on Gaza will only weaken it further. Negotiating with Hamas may secure a lull, but Hamas cannot be a partner for peace.
If the world wants to express support for the Palestinian party that recognizes Israel, seeks to avoid violence, and genuinely wishes to reach a peace agreement in which a Palestinian state exists alongside — not instead of — Israel, it will have its chance later this week when Mr. Abbas makes his bid for recognition of Palestinian statehood before the United Nations. If American and Israeli opposition to a Palestinian bid continues, it could serve as a mortal blow to Mr. Abbas, and end up being a prize that enhances the power and legitimacy of Hamas.
It is paradoxical that Israel’s current government is so vehemently opposed to Mr. Abbas’s bid for recognition. After all, it was 65 years ago this week, on Nov. 29, 1947, that the Palestinians and their friends in the Arab world expressly rejected United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181, which recognized the need to establish a Jewish state alongside an Arab state in the former British Mandate territory of Palestine.
Now, the Palestinians are admitting their mistake and asking the same assembly to recognize a state of Palestine alongside Israel, and requesting that the boundaries of their state be determined as a result of negotiations with Israel. Meanwhile, Israel’s right-wing parties — which in 1993 rejected the Oslo Accords that envisaged Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the establishment of Palestinian autonomy in those areas — are now using, and abusing, that same agreement to prevent Palestinian statehood.
This week’s request wouldn’t be taking place if both sides had abided by the Oslo Accords’ original time frame, if Israel’s peacemaking prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, hadn’t been assassinated in 1995, and if we’d reached a permanent agreement by May 1999, as initially envisioned.
Since Rabin’s assassination, there has been little progress toward ending the conflict. No proper negotiations have taken place for four years. And because Mr. Abbas has committed to the principles of nonviolence, diplomatic means, like the statehood bid, are his only way of putting Palestinians back on the global agenda. In retaliation, the Israeli Foreign Ministry is now threatening to nullify the Oslo Accords, if the world recognizes a Palestinian state. This is preposterous.
The Oslo Accords have allowed Israel’s right-wing government to hide behind an interim agreement that, for almost 20 years, has permitted Israel to continue the expansion of settlements in the West Bank; to rid itself of the responsibility of day-to-day management in the Occupied Territories; to save itself the costs of occupation (as donor countries are financing the Palestinian budget); and to benefit from cooperation with Palestinian security forces. There is no chance that Israel will nullify the accords.
The claim that Palestinians are violating the Oslo agreement by presenting their proposal to the General Assembly is completely unfounded. The topic of Palestinian statehood was never one of the five issues (Jerusalem’s status, the fate of refugees, security arrangements, borders and settlements) that were considered “final status” issues in the 1993 Oslo accord. The Palestinians chose not to mention the issue of a state, as they saw self-determination as a basic right for their people; and it was convenient back then for Israel not to address the topic.
Moreover, Mr. Abbas has clarified that if the General Assembly decides to recognize a Palestinian state, he would agree to negotiations with Israel’s government without preconditions, a move that is in both America’s and Israel’s interests. The only difference is that these negotiations would take place between two internationally recognized states.
President Obama and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, should think twice before rejecting Mr. Abbas’s request. Blocking his bid for statehood will only empower extremists further.
There is no reason for the United States to oppose Mr. Abbas’s move, pressure the Palestinians not to raise this issue, or threaten to freeze their budget.
And Israel has no reason to wage a diplomatic war against the Palestinian appeal. Rather, Mr. Netanyahu should be the first to recognize a Palestinian state and Mr. Obama the last to prevent it.
Yossi Beilin, an architect of the Oslo Accords, has served as Israel’s deputy foreign minister and minister of justice.
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