Take yes for an answer [UPDATED]
Earlier this week, in a piece for The New York Times titled "The Two-State Solution Doesn't Solve Anything," Robert Malley and Hussein Agha argued that those framing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a land dispute grounded in the 1967 war have it wrong:
[The conflict] can be settled, both sides implicitly concur, only by looking past the occupation to questions born in 1948 -- Arab rejection of the newborn Jewish state and the dispossession and dislocation of Palestinian refugees.
The New Republic's Marty Peretz pounced on the piece as evidence of the author's (and The Times') desire for a binational (read: not Jewish) state:
... Why the essential Jewish character of Israel should be problematic when all of the neighboring states--those actually adjoining and also the non-abutters--define themselves as both Arab and Muslim are exempt from the tribulations of self-definition is difficult to assess. It's not that any of those states are at all achievers. In fact, there is no Arab state that is a success, let alone a secular success.
Imagine for a moment the one-state solution in historic Palestine west of the Jordan. What peace will there be? What economic progress? What laws and what justice? What science? What kind of class system? Try to deny that all of this would be a nightmare.
The one-state solution is a fraud. Those who press it know that it is a fraud. And those who publish it do, as well.
JTA has heard from several Jewish organizational types offering the same complaints about Malley and Agha, citing the duo's final paragraph:
For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees’ rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.
It reads to me like the authors are simply summing up their argument that the debate is really about 1948, not 1967. But Peretz and others say the authors are going further, they are choosing the Palestinian side in the 1948 debate. [UPDATE: Malley himself has weighed in -- denying that he was calling for a one-state solution. But what does he know.]
Either way... it seems to me that the larger point is that Malley -- after doing more than anyone to challenge claims that the failures of Camp David and the ensuing Intifada were Yasser Arafat's fault -- has now essentially ended up validating that view (at least from the perspective of most Jewish organizations). In the end, the duo is saying, the hawks have been right: The issue isn't that the Palestinians want a state of their own, it's that they won't accept a Jewish state.
Commentary's Jonathan Tobin makes the point:
But they do stumble upon a key truth about the entire peace process -- they understand that what the Palestinians want isn’t merely sovereignty in the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. Jews want a Jewish state and are willing to let the Palestinians have their own state too in order to live in peace. The problem is that the core of Palestinian national identity is a desire not for a Palestinian state but for eradicating the Jewish one, which they view as illegitimate no matter where the borders are drawn.
And so does Shmuel Rosner:
They might think that such threat will make Americans more prone to pressure Israel - or Israelis more prone to change the character of their country. I think this is a pipe dream. Thus, the practical conclusion for their fairly-accurate analysis should have been this one:
It is obvious that a solution cannot be realized before there is a change in the Palestinian position and the Palestinians accept Israel's right to exist in peace and security as a Jewish state. The reason the Palestinians refuse to accept this is because for them this is not a territorial dispute, but an existential conflict. The media's failure to report this most basic point, the evidence of it, and the implications of it, creates a dangerously misleading portrayal of the situation and prospects for its resolution.
You see? Agha and Malley might pretend to be wave-of-the-future peace processors. But they are really Likudniks. ...
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“BIRTHRIGHT ISRAEL” The title of the banner just to the right of this comment section, explains more about the nature of this conflict than the article itself, or any of the articles mentioned in it.
A Jewish minority had been in the land for thousands of years, but a Jewish majority had not. The real problems started with a flood of Jewish immigration that was carried out under the British occupation. Had the British not promised the Palestinian’s current homeland to the Jews for the declared purpose of re-establishing their ancient homeland, thus creating the “Jewish” state, we wouldn’t have this problem today. As it is, the Jewish majority can only be maintained as long as the displaced Palestinian’s ‘right of return’ is denied. Rejecting this ‘right of return’ in order to preserve a democratic majority for the Jews should be seen as a clear attempt to both legitimize and finalize the act of ethnic cleansing. That’s not Democracy.
Immediately after the fall of the Ottoman empire, the entire mandate of Palestine was under the threat of becoming a “Jewish” state. Rejection was natural. WWI placed the future of Palestine into the hands of the British occupation. The British then promised that land away like it was a prize to be handed out for those who helped in the war effort. Back then, this was all fairly normal, and without the ease of global communication we have today, acceptable meant something entirely different. Today, the history doesn’t look so good, and brings Israel’s “right” to exist into serious question. This is the angle I think should be pursued if Israel remains in contempt over the settlement issue, or continues to blame Palestine rather than admitting the injustice that has been forced onto the Palestinians through back to back occupations. Putting Britain in the spotlight might be more effective than keeping all the attention on Israel. It’s time to move forward.
Braying the “Paley” narrative, does not make it history. Jews were a minority in the Ottoman district, but Jewish immigration started well before WW1. Jews paid for the land they bought from absentee landlords and developed it. When the poor, backward region started to grow and prosper due to Jewish effort and initiative, Arabs flooded in and now the al-Baghdadis, the al-Masris and al-Libis claim to be natives with the “right of return”. No other displaced group makes such a claim: neither the Sudenten Germans, nor the Polish Volkes Deutsch, nor the Indians/Pakistanis, not the Japanese from the Kuriles, nor even the Jews from Arab lands. The Mohammedans just cannot abide the thought of a Jewish state on waqf lands, nor the shame of being beaten in battle by Jews.
All that, however, is beside the point. The point is that Israel is a democratic nation and the Arabs who have brand named themselves as “Palestinian”, want to destroy it far more than they want to have a state of their own. They could have had a state in ‘67, in 2000 and ‘08. It is utter chutzpah for any person or nation to tell Jews in Israel how to define themselves. It is delegitimisation to tell Israel how to accommodate a defeated entity which has no response to any situation except violence and delegitimisation of Israel is one form of antisemitism.
Paul - you tell the truth - the truth backed up by history and written word. Good comment. Thanks for doing a great job.
James - you need to consult history. 1)Read what Mark Twain wrote in the 1860’s on his visit to the land. No Arabs - no Palestinians - that obviates their claims to the same land the Jews have owned and occupied for thousands of years. AFTER the Jews came and developed businesses, the Arabs came for work. 2)Have you read the Balfour Declaration and noticed the date? The whole area (what is presently Israel and Jordan) was supposed to be ‘given’ to the Jews to create a homeland. Britain ‘gave’ 2/3 of the territory to King Hussein to create a Palestinian homeland (Jordan). 3)And, the 800,000 or so Jews expelled from Arab countries - what happened to them, their property and possessions? Are they in camps living off the welfare of other nations? Please get educated.
Mussa - great idea. How do we get anyone to listen? As Golda Meir said - the Arabs want to die, the Jews want to live - there is no way to bring those two together.
Karen Rose
Mr. Ehrens:
Yes, Netanyahu is not rushing to create a Palestinian state, but for far different reasons than Hamas opposes a two-state solution: Having seen Israeli-evacuated land handed over to the Palestinians so the Palestinians, instead of building a peaceful state, could use it to launch rocket attacks on Israeli cities, perhaps Netanyahu rightly questions whether ceding more land would put more Israeli lives at risk—hardly an incentive for Israel to turn over more land. Hamas opposes Israel based in large part on its antiSemitic charter. The two aren’t comparable.
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David
08/14/09 11:18 AM
Eden’s strange conclusion, that Malley and Agha’s final paragraph implies that the Palestinians “won’t accept a Jewish state is a complete mis-reading. Sometimes it’s best to actually read a paragraph and accept its meaning, as the title of the very blog post itself ironically suggests. Here’s that final paragraph:
“For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the refugees’ rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.”
In other words—having dismissed the idea of Two States because now even Netanyahu and Hamas are mouthing the phrase only for international consumption—the issue then becomes the One State—Zionism and the nature of the state of Israel (and with it the settlements, occupation, and all the rest of its baggage), not obdurate Palestinians.
The fact remains that the average Israeli and Palestinian citizen would probably accept Two States—just not under Hamas or Likud/Beteinu.