Saying that just a small minority of israeli jews are opposed to a Palestinian state, while palestinians in general want the destruction of Israel is a grave misrepresentation of the actual facts.
Please have this carved in stone at your earliest convenience.
Saying that just a small minority of israeli jews are opposed to a Palestinian state, while palestinians in general want the destruction of Israel is a grave misrepresentation of the actual facts.
In case that is what you understood from my previous message, I suppose I'll have to reiterate:
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Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
It has been known for many years now, that a majority of Israeli citizens are ready to accept the inception of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories in exchange for peace;?
That is based on opinion polls and other forms of research abiding by some modicum of scientific criteria. So it can be termed as ?known?.
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?it is also my understanding?
Based on personal experience and mainly upon discussion with Palestinians living in the occupied and/or autonomous territories.
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?that a sizable part of the Palestinian population (?) had come to terms with Israel's existence and would accept such compromise.
Although it is my understanding that part is sizable, and may well be in the majority, I have no reliable data upon which to actually assess its size. To the best of my knowledge, it is probable that both populations are now mature enough for a territorial compromise, that is the bottom line of the statement above.
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The "minority" of israeli jew opposed to abandoning the area occupied in 1967 is not that small. And did, according to polls, only very recently turn into a minority.
It did so around the beginning of the Oslo process, that's a decade ago.
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I suspect, like with all polls, the results are influenced by the way the questions are put. And that if you asked the question about the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees, the results would not be the same.
Israelis are rather open to a compromise over Jerusalem, as long as it's a compromise, rather than a caving in to Palestinian demands. It is actually Jerusalem inhabitants of Jerusalem who ar e reluctant to finding themselves under Palestinian sovereiognity, but that;s another story.
Now, there is no Israeli objection to the idea of having Palestinian refugees absorbed by the Palestinian state. The idea of Israel having to absorbe them is as ludicrous as resettling the children and grand-children of Polish refugees in Lviv (formerly Lwów) or Vilnius (formerly Wilno), or the offspring of German refugees in Gdańsk (formerly Danzig) or Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg), or sending Muslim offspring of the refugees of the 1947/48 Subcontinental war from Pakistan to India and the Sikh and Hindu offspring to Paksitan and Bangladesh. There is no way Israel would accept suxch a precedent, and much of the actual Palestinian population in the territories know it's not on the table and come to term with that.
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So, yes, there is a majority for a two state solution. But is there a real will to pay the price for peace. Well, let's just say it still an open issue.
As long as the price is something one can live with, the answer to your open question is an affirmative one.
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The majority of the palestinian people have accepted Israel as a state a long time ago.
In 1990 many of them they were still hoping some great Arab leader (at that time Saddam Hussein) would destroy Israel and thus solve their problem. It's only after having understood the futility of such hope that many have begun to accept, first the reality of Israel, and then gradually, its legitimacy.
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So has the PA, more recently. What they demand is a solution to the issue of Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements.
Scores of refugee issues, many more dire that the Palestinians' have been solved, none of them by any form ?return of the refugees?.
Settlements have been dismantled in Sinai (guess under whose responsibility?), it be can be arranged if the rest of the requirements are met.
When the PA officially let's go of the ?al-?Awda? nonsense, will Israel be copnvicned that its existence is really accepted by the PA.
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The minority who wants the destruction of israel are more extremist than their israeli counterparts (those who oppose a palestinian state). What popular public support they have is more due to frustration with the lack of progress towards peace, and the hardships the palestinians live under daily.
Most of these hardships result from the current wave of violence which, as was assessed earlier, was initiated by the PA.
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If Israel said it was ready to withdraw to the 67-borders, or something resembling that.
One doesn't declare a definite line to which it would withdraw, one negociates it. There are no ?67-borders? and never have been; there are the 1949 armistice lines, which were never recognised international borders. It is understood that an overwheloming majority of the territories beyond those lines will be relinquished, however, the precise definitive boundaries will be negociated. The stronger side is willing not to dictate that to the weaker side, but it will certainly not be dcitated to by the weaker side.
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Discuss the status of Jerusalem and some kind of compensation for the refugees. Then we could have a two state solution tomorrow.
That has actually been discussed at Taba, amonmg other places.
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And with that in place. The only reasonable way forward in the future would be to link these to States together in some kind of federation. As democratic states. With equal rights for all citizens.
If some time after peace is settled, the states in the area might decide to form a confederation or a federation, or not, is theirs to decide, not to be tied to the peace treaty.
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The right of all jews to get an israeli citizenship, is an idea that has to be abandoned.
There was never an idea that all Jews get an Israeli citizenship. Any state is free to grant citizenship to whom it chooses, Israel chooses to grant citizenship to any Jew immigrating to Israel and asking to be naturalised. Palestine might choose to do the same for any Palestinian asking it the same, and would certainly be free to do so.
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And maybe the solution to the problem of the palestinian refugees can be solved without the return of all of them.
It can certainly be solved without any of them going to Israel, for that shall not be.
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If proper compensation is offered. Remember that jews in Europe are still getting compensated for property lost during WWII.
Compensation for lost property is a very common arrangement and certainly not a problem. Israel could also assist the future state of Palestine in absorbing them in its territory, since Israelis probably have the most reliable experience in that domain.
The "minority" of israeli jew opposed to abandoning the area occupied in 1967 is not that small. And did, according to polls, only very recently turn into a minority.
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Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
It did so around the beginning of the Oslo process, that's a decade ago.
(...)
Israelis are rather open to a compromise over Jerusalem, as long as it's a compromise, rather than a caving in to Palestinian demands. It is actually Jerusalem inhabitants of Jerusalem who ar e reluctant to finding themselves under Palestinian sovereiognity, but that;s another story.
I think you are exaggerating the Israeli peace-will enormously. May I remind you that in no other period in history has there been built more illegal settlements than during the years after Oslo. In direct conflict with the oslo-agreement. These are the so-called "peace-years".
Jerusalem is mostly referred to in Israel as the "eternal undivided capital of Israel", while its eastern annexation is illegal by international law, and few countries recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital at all.
If the arab population of eastern jerusalem is do want to be a part of israel, why is it that nearly all 200 000 of the boycott israeli elections?
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The idea of Israel having to absorbe them is as ludicrous as resettling the children and grand-children of Polish refugees in Lviv (formerly Lwów) or Vilnius (formerly Wilno), or the offspring of German refugees in Gdansk (formerly Danzig) or Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg), or sending Muslim offspring of the refugees of the 1947/48 Subcontinental war from Pakistan to India and the Sikh and Hindu offspring to Paksitan and Bangladesh. There is no way Israel would accept suxch a precedent, and much of the actual Palestinian population in the territories know it's not on the table and come to term with that.
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Scores of refugee issues, many more dire that the Palestinians' have been solved, none of them by any form ?return of the refugees?.
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There was never an idea that all Jews get an Israeli citizenship. Any state is free to grant citizenship to whom it chooses, Israel chooses to grant citizenship to any Jew immigrating to Israel and asking to be naturalised. Palestine might choose to do the same for any Palestinian asking it the same, and would certainly be free to do so.
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It can certainly be solved without any of them going to Israel, for that shall not be.
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Compensation for lost property is a very common arrangement and certainly not a problem. Israel could also assist the future state of Palestine in absorbing them in its territory, since Israelis probably have the most reliable experience in that domain.
The policy of Israel to refuse any return of refugees at all is wrong, and unlawful.
I clearly see the problem with letting children and so on return. In Norway there are 4 million people. But there are 8 million people of norwegian heritage in the US. There is no way Norway could absorb these people.
however, there are still people, original refugees, who have papers to their old land in Israel, and should be permitted to return. The fact as it is today, is that more and more Israeli arabs are loosing their israeli citizenship, and the arabs of East-Jerusalem are struggling to retain their right to live and reside in East-Jerusalem.
At the same time Israel is importing scores of people. Russians of whom as many as 30% might not be jews at all. A lot of these people are now living on old Palestinian property. Some even in settlements.
There is an absurdity to the claim that the return of refugees is impossible, while jews from all over the world should have some "ancient " right to return based on biblical history.
Israel should accept the return of some refugees, even if only as a symbolical gesture of compliance with the UN resolutions and international law.
The "minority" of israeli jew opposed to abandoning the area occupied in 1967 is not that small. And did, according to polls, only very recently turn into a minority.
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
It did so around the beginning of the Oslo process, that's a decade ago.
(...)
Israelis are rather open to a compromise over Jerusalem, as long as it's a compromise, rather than a caving in to Palestinian demands. It is actually Jerusalem inhabitants of Jerusalem who are reluctant to finding themselves under Palestinian sovereiognity, but that's another story.
I think you are exaggerating the Israeli peace-will enormously. May I remind you that in no other period in history has there been built more illegal settlements than during the years after Oslo.
Actually the growth of the settlements between 1986 to 1993 was larger than between 1993 and 2000.
Other than that, most Israelis are favouring a negociated territorial compromise, one that includes a Palestinian state, That is common knowledge.
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In direct conflict with the oslo-agreement. These are the so-called "peace-years".
Do remind me where does the agreement stipulates that no building will occur in the settlements. The Rabin cabinet greatly reduced the budgetary facilitations and to the settlements at the time.
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Jerusalem is mostly referred to in Israel as the "eternal undivided capital of Israel",?
No, that is a grandiloquent slogan only used in grandiloquent speeches. When Barak presented to the Israeli public his intent to negociate over Jerusalem, it wasn't dismissed as unacceptable by the Israelis.
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?while its eastern annexation is illegal by international law,?
All inhabitants of annexed territories receive citizenship on demand, And many do.
That's more important for me than validation by the ignorant masses.
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?and few countries recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital at all.
I think Costa Rica does. Good enough for me.
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If the arab population of eastern jerusalem is do want to be a part of israel, why is it that nearly all 200 000 of the boycott israeli elections?
If you are Arab, going to the Zionists' poll booths might incur you some trouble in your neighbourhood.
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The policy of Israel to refuse any return of refugees at all is wrong, and unlawful.
Do you know of any war of the 1940s, after which refugees were sent back to where they fled from?
And do you know of any whose grand-children were?
Other than that, there were those whos were reunited with their relatives under the Israeli family reunion law, and that's as far as it's ever going to get.
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I clearly see the problem with letting children and so on return. In Norway there are 4 million people. But there are 8 million people of norwegian heritage in the US. There is no way Norway could absorb these people.
however, there are still people, original refugees, who have papers to their old land in Israel, and should be permitted to return. The fact as it is today, is that more and more Israeli arabs are loosing their israeli citizenship, and the arabs of East-Jerusalem are struggling to retain their right to live and reside in East-Jerusalem.
There are more Arabs living in irrelgular situation in Israel than those losing (with one o) citizenship due to bureaucratic hell, and rents in Jerusalem aren't all that cheap for neither Jews nor Arabs.
Anyway, many palestinian understand it is futile to hope to dictate to Israel its immigration and naturalisation policy and so are forsaking that issue. I refer you to the Nusseiba-Ayalon understanding.
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At the same time Israel is importing scores of people.
I think the word ?importing? is more appropriate to merchandise than to people, but perhaps I'm just being old-fashioned here.
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[B]Russians of whom as many as 30% might not be jews at all./B]
People related to Jews and of Jewish origin, who'd have risked being recycled into organic fertiliser some decades ago, are granted safe haven in Israel, but not on-demand naturalisation. Some of them have abused that haven and have been expelled.
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A lot of these people are now living on old Palestinian property. Some even in settlements.
Most of what you call ?Palestinian property? was owned by feudal absentee landonwers living in Beirut, Damascus, and as far as Cairo. And while I am no supporter of the settlments, I have no problem in pprinciple, with Arabs living in the Galilean hills or Jews lving in the Judean hills.
And I won't bore you with the property lost by Jews (like some of my relatives) from Iraq to Algeria, since they got over it and got on with their lives.
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There is an absurdity to the claim that the return of refugees is impossible, while jews from all over the world should have some "ancient " right to return based on biblical history.
Jews all over the world have the right to return to Israel, because Israel grants them that right. Israel wouldn't demand Palestine to grant the same right to those Jews, and so Pslestine won't be demanding Israel to grant the same to Arabs.
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Israel should accept the return of some refugees, even if only as a symbolical gesture of compliance with the UN resolutions and international law.
No it should not, and it is under no obligation to.
Since the Palestinians in the Territories don't want Jewish sovereignity over them, and the Jews in Israel don't want Arab sovereignity, two nation-states are a solution both sides could live with, but Israel will only grant them a state when they grant it peace.
Hear hear !!! Imanuel - I couldent have said it better myself - and yes guys - it is really that simple!!!
It's well-known that the right of return is the number one obstacle to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Three days of deliberations at an Ottawa conference that examined research studies on the refugees, showed that the issue of the right of return is also the number one obstacle to the solution to the refugee problem.
Every time one of the participants got up to present a study or idea for rehabilitating the refugees, there was someone who diverted the discussion to the right of return.
[?]
There was always someone from Syria, Lebanon, Israel?
[Probably some far-left activists]
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?or one of the Western countries, who was ready to fight for the right of return down to the tears of the last of the children of the camps.
Over and over, demands were made of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah to stand firm on rules of international law and
universal morality, which, according to the latest spokesman, mean the right of every Palestinian to go back to their abandoned home.
But it was the representatives from the territories who tended to relinquish the old slogans in favor of realistic positions. One
presented a comprehensive public opinion poll pointing to a large gap between the insistence on the right of return to the old Palestine, meaning Israel, and readiness to fulfill the right in the new Palestine, meaning the West Bank, Gaza, and any other territory that Israel gives the Palestinians in a land exchange.
According to the poll, due for publication in detail in the near future, the refugees prefer to be part of the Muslim majority in Ramallah rather than part of the Muslim minority in Haifa.
(Bold in the body of the article is mine)
Which seems to corroborate my previous posts on the matter.
Chinney first I would like to note that I appreciate your genuine goodwill, idealism and open approach to this issue and while I agree with you on a philosophical level, however, on the practical level I believe the scenario you draw is flawed and impossible to achieve, and I also think that it has one basic flaw - it does not take into consideration the basic right of BOTH nations for self determination... a right enshrined in the UN charter.
So as an Israeli jew let me explain to you how I see this:
One of the problems with this solutions is the so called 'right of return' - Palestinians claim there are today nearly 4 million Palestinian refugees living throughout the Arab world and the OT. these people are supposed to have originated or are descendants of people who originate from areas that became Israel in 1948 (the accuracy of these numbers remains to be ascertained) and they demand a full right of return into Israel for all of these millions - if this happens the single federal state will be in a situation where it has around 8 million Arabs and 5 million Jews.
Now, even if we choose to ignore the economic and social repercussions of a sudden influx of 4 million refugees into the land - how would the rights of the minority Jews be sustained especially in light of the much higher rate of population growth amongst Palestinian Arabs and the extremely bad blood and violence ridden history of these two nations' relationship?
One of the main reasons and purpose for the establishment of the state of Israel in the eyes of most Jews is for it to provide a safe heaven for the Jewish people against the repeated persecution experienced by Jews across the world for thousands of years. Israel has served this purpose extremely well - after WW2 millions of refugees from Europe who became displaced as a result of the war immigrated to the new Jewish state and started new and successful lives there. of the nearly 1 million Jews expelled and mistreated in the Arab world (during the 40s and 50s) around 700,000 made their way into Israel and today constitute nearly half of its Jewish population. in the beginning of the 90's when the USSR crumbled and the Iron wall came down nearly one million Jews from russia immigrated to Israel to build themselves better lives and flee from a growing wave of anti-Semitism and nationalism in the new Russia. in the late eighties in a massive operation nearly the entire Jewish community of Ethiopia was air lifted into Israel (some 150,000 people in less then a few days) at a time when civil war was threatening the survival of the community there - one of Israel's basic laws is the law of return - a law inviting any jewish person to immigrate and receive citizenship in Israel - now what would become of that most basic purpose and principle for the Jews in a federal state?
Arabs would probably object to such a policy while they would still expect their 'right of return' to be respected and having majority numbers would be able to prohibit such policies - this would probably be intolerable to the Jews... how would this issue be resolved?
To clarify (hopefully once and for all): The DECLARED intention of many Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular for the past 100 years is, was and probably will be for some time yet to come the REMOVAL of Jewish presence from the middle east - I have not invented this, its been said again and again by practically every single one of their leaders (including the main guys like Arafat etc) Many Arabs see Israel (even though a massive majority of its population are native to the middle east) as an alien seed in the region - in the past and even today in some countries Muslim Arabs have systematically brought about the disappearance of every non Arab non Muslim ethnic group in the region - just two examples are the treatment of Arab Christians by Arab muslims and the treatment of arab Jews by Arab Muslims not to mention how they treat the Druz or the Copts etc....
Now, under this backdrop I think Its pretty darn obvious what will happen once the Palestinians gain majority control of Israel/Palestine in your single state scenario - they will seek to dispossess the Jews and impose their hegemony in the new Palestine. why you expect me to welcome such an idea is beyond me - show me a single shred of evidence that such a solution would be fair and peaceful. please EXPLAIN to ME why I as an ISRAELI JEW should put my head on the block and expect it would not be chopped. show me any recent historical evidence that such idilic coexistence has ever been in existence between Jews and Arabs. you expect us to give up everything for your ideals but offer no convincing explanation why that would not be a quick suicide for us... do you see my point?
Let me tell you this - the minute the Palestinians show that they are truly willing to embrace those values you hold so highly yourself and relinquish their supremacist claim to the land, live as brothers in the land with Jews and share the same human rights and duties under one democratic and open state - that day I will be willing to support your idea of a single multi-national state between the river and the sea - until such an eventuality occurs, accepting such ideas will simply mean suicide for me and my fellow Israelis. this is why I believe that currently a two state solution is the only practical way to stop the bloodshed today!
As Immanuel has said above, the current trend in the world is for countries to become fragmented along ethnic lines rather then to become glued together like you suggest we do with the israelis and Palestinians. just look at the dismal record of multinational states and the problems they cause in civil wars and ethnic strife - Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Rowanda, Nigeria, Lebanon, Spain, Mexico, Sri-Lanka and many others have tried and in many cases failed to make separate nations into one country - in almost all of the examples above the result is constant strife and conflict at best and full blown civil wars and genocide at worst...
In a perfect world there should be no borders or boundaries between people - we are all the same, are we not?!
In the real world however, sadly - as the history of Europe and so many other places has shown us recently - it takes separation and self determination to make friends of nations and ultimately remove those borders, you cannot force people to like each other you can only find ways in which they can compromise and then hope that time and human nature makes friendship and trust work.
Your solution, although it might ultimately become true in the far future can only happen over the long term and can not -under any circumstance - be imposed on either side, it must happen organically.
Thank you for your very thoughtful post Rashumon (and thanks to others who made posts to this thread). I originally thought that it would be fitting to allow you, Rashumon, the last word in this forum (although I certainly can't control that in any event). However, I then thought it would be wrong not to respond to at least part of what you have posted at such length and with such obvious commitment to this issue. If you want to get the last word (or maybe Immanuel will) you will just have to post again. Maybe then discussion of general matters on peace in Israel will continue in that other thread.
I was aware, of course, of many of the general background matters that you put forward to help explain why, in your view, my own idea for a resolution to the crisis in Israel/Palestine is simply not realistic. It was nevertheless an education for me to see these background matters marshalled to respond to the particular idea I have put forward (an idea I have harboured for many years).
I do, however, want to respond to some of what you say. First, you make a strong point about the need to respect the right of peoples to self-determination and later note that a resolution cannot be imposed on the parties in Israel and Palestine. I agree. This especially would apply to my own idea - the very nature of it would require that it have the very highest level of acceptance to succeed.
I do want to say a word, however, about self-determination and your (and Immanuel's) point about the splintering of states along ethnic lines. I agree that this splintering is a tendency, but it is not, in my view, a good tendency. In fact, I think it is one of the tragedies of recent history. Your examples might have us believe that the splintering is an example of the failure of multi-national states. I feel, to the contrary, that the splintering itself almost always causes far more harm than staying together would have done (short term and often even long term). Yugoslavia had some success as a unified nation - even struggling under the handicap, to put it mildly, of Communism - but has had much less success, again to put it mildly, since the breakup. The idiotic idea of partitioning India along religious lines lead to almost unimaginable bloodletting and has left India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as lesser than they would have been united - and has also failed to bring real peace, either between the nations or internally. I could give more examples. My point is that the multi-national state is often more successful than its 'offspring'. The failure of these states is not due to any inherent problem with a multi-national state, but the failure of imagination and morality of educated men (it is often educated men who are the initial instigators) who turn their capacities to the terrible idea of ethnic nationalism instead of toward the real problems facing humanity.
As for Israelis and Palestinians, are they really incapable, in the near future, of living in the same state together in peace? Perhaps you are right that they are not now capable and the result would be a war that could lead to the slaughter or exile of Jews in the Middle East, and to the deaths of many, many Arabs. There is probably no war worse than civil war. Believe me when I tell you that this is not purpose of my idea. My fear, however, is that the current roadmap will also not lead to peace, and may also lead to the destruction of Israel. Stuck between hopelessness and hopelessness, I cling to the 'ideal' hopelessness.
Perhaps you and Immanuel are right, however, and the current roadmap has real support from both sides (from afar, it does not generally seem that way - in fact it looks as though it is being ?imposed?, contrary to principles referred to above). If the process can bring peace, I wish this process well, notwithstanding my philosophical objection to the splitting of peoples.
I will nevertheless continue to suggest my idea to anyone patient enough to listen. Perhaps it is not realistic and never will come to pass. Even then, however, perhaps the ideal underlying what I am suggesting can still have some effect on how the realistic resolution is managed. The ideal can instruct the realistic.
Thanks Chinney, its always good to discuss stuff rather then to argue like aggressive fools as we sometimes end-up doing in this forum...
I think I have pretty much said what i have had to say about this issue but one addition I would like to make is the article quoted bellow- its written by one of the most respected researchers of the Arab Israeli conflict, a Cambridge educated Israeli Professor of history form Be'er Sheva university who has been responsible for uncovering many crimes perpetrated by Israeli forces throughout the years and who is considered to be the world's foremost authority on the subject of the Palestinian refugee problem - his book 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 ' is probably the most through investigation ever performed in this field.
I find this article so concise and pertinent because it does not come from one particular political (left or right) perspective and its written by a man of true integrity who does not flinch at the prospect of criticizing either sides. I believe that the analyses contained therein is spot on and I could find very little in there to disagree with...
Instead of being informed, accurately, about the Israeli peace offers, the Palestinians have been subjected to a nonstop barrage of anti-Israeli incitement and lies in the PA-controlled media. Arafat has honed the practice of saying one thing to western audiences and quite another to his own Palestinian constituency to a fine art. Lately, with Arab audiences, he has begun to use the term "the Zionist army" (for the IDF), a throwback to the 1950s and 1960s when Arab leaders routinely spoke of "the Zionist entity" instead of saying "Israel", which, they felt, implied some form of recognition of the Jewish state and its legitimacy.
At the end of the day, this question of legitimacy - seemingly put to rest by the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties - is at the root of current Israeli despair and my own "conversion". For decades, Israeli leaders - notably Golda Meir in 1969 - denied the existence of a "Palestinian people" and the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty. But during the 1930s and 1940s, the Zionist movement agreed to give up its dream of a "Greater Israel" and to divide Palestine with the Arabs. During the 1990s, the movement went further - agreeing to partition and recognising the existence of the Pales tinian people as its partner in partition.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian national movement, from its inception, has denied the Zionist movement any legitimacy and stuck fast to the vision of a "Greater Palestine", meaning a Muslim-Arab-populated and Arab-controlled state in all of Palestine, perhaps with some Jews being allowed to stay on as a religious minority. In 1988-93, in a brief flicker on the graph, Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organisation seemed to have acquiesced in the idea of a compromise. But since 2000 the dominant vision of a "Greater Palestine" has surged back to the fore (and one wonders whether the pacific asseverations of 1988-1993 were not merely diplomatic camouflage).
The Palestinian leadership, and with them most Palestinians, deny Israel's right to exist, deny that Zionism was/is a just enterprise. (I have yet to see even a peace-minded Palestinian leader, as Sari Nusseibeh seems to be, stand up and say: "Zionism is a legitimate national liberation movement, like our own. And the Jews have a just claim to Palestine, like we do.")
Israel may exist, and be too powerful, at present, to destroy; one may recognise its reality. But this is not to endow it with legitimacy. Hence Arafat's repeated denial in recent months of any connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount, and, by extension, between the Jewish people and the land of Israel/Palestine. "What Temple?" he asks. The Jews are simply robbers who came from Europe and decided, for some unfathomable reason, to steal Palestine and displace the Palestinians. He refuses to recognise the history and reality of the 3,000-year-old Jewish connection to the land of Israel.
On some symbolic plane, the Temple Mount is a crucial issue. But more practically, the real issue, the real litmus test of Palestinian intentions, is the fate of the refugees, some 3.5-4m strong, encompassing those who fled or were driven out during the 1948 war and were never allowed back to their homes in Is rael, as well as their descendants.
I spent the mid-1980s investigating what led to the creation of the refugee problem, publishing The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 in 1988. My conclusion, which angered many Israelis and undermined Zionist historiography, was that most of the refugees were a product of Zionist military action and, in smaller measure, of Israeli expulsion orders and Arab local leaders' urgings or orders to move out. Critics of Israel subsequently latched on to those findings that highlighted Israeli responsibility while ignoring the fact that the problem was a direct consequence of the war that the Palestinians - and, in their wake, the surrounding Arab states - had launched. And few noted that, in my concluding remarks, I had explained that the creation of the problem was "almost inevitable", given the Zionist aim of creating a Jewish state in a land largely populated by Arabs and given Arab resistance to the Zionist enterprise. The refugees were the inevitable by-product of an attempt to fit an ungainly square peg into an inhospitable round hole.
But whatever my findings, we are now 50 years on - and Israel exists. Like every people, the Jews deserve a state, and justice will not be served by throwing them into the sea. And if the refugees are allowed back, there will be godawful chaos and, in the end, no Israel. Israel is currently populated by 5m Jews and more than 1m Arabs (an increasingly vociferous, pro-Palestinian irredentist time bomb). If the refugees return, an unviable binational entity will emerge and, given the Arabs' far higher birth rates, Israel will quickly cease to be a Jewish state. Add to that the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and you have, almost instantly, an Arab state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river with a Jewish minority.
Jews lived as a minority in Muslim countries from the 7th century - and, contrary to Arab propaganda, never much enjoyed the experience. They were always second-class citizens and always discriminated-against infidels; they were often persecuted and not infrequently murdered. Giant pogroms occurred over the centuries. And as late as the 1940s Arab mobs murdered hundreds of Jews in Baghdad, and hundreds more in Libya, Egypt and Morocco. The Jews were expelled from or fled the Arab world during the 1950s and 60s. There is no reason to believe that Jews will want to live (again) as a minority in a (Palestinian) Arab state, especially given the tragic history of Jewish-Palestinian relations. They will either be expelled or emigrate to the west.
It is the Palestinian leadership's rejection of the Barak-Clinton peace proposals of July-December 2000, the launching of the intifada, and the demand ever since that Israel accept the "right of return" that has persuaded me that the Palestinians, at least in this generation, do not intend peace: they do not want, merely, an end to the occupation - that is what was offered back in July-December 2000, and they rejected the deal. They want all of Palestine and as few Jews in it as possible. The right of return is the wedge with which to prise open the Jewish state. Demography - the far higher Arab birth rate - will, over time, do the rest, if Iranian or Iraqi nuclear weapons don't do the trick first.
And don't get me wrong. I favour an Israeli withdrawal from the territories - the semi-occupation is corrupting and immoral, and alienates Israel's friends abroad - as part of a bilateral peace agreement; or, if an agreement is unobtainable, a unilateral withdrawal to strategically defensible borders. In fact in 1988 I served time in a military prison for refusing to serve in the West Bank town of Nablus. But I don't believe that the resultant status quo will survive for long. The Palestinians - either the PA itself or various armed factions, with the PA looking on - will continue to harry Israel, with Katyusha rockets and suicide bombers, across the new lines, be they agreed or self-imposed. Ultimately, they will force Israel to reconquer the West Bank and Gaza Strip, probably plunging the Middle East into a new, wide conflagration.
I don't believe that Arafat and his colleagues mean or want peace - only a staggered chipping away at the Jewish state - and I don't believe that a permanent two-state solution will emerge. I don't believe that Arafat is constitutionally capable of agreeing, really agreeing, to a solution in which the Palestinians get 22-25% of the land (a West Bank-Gaza state) and Israel the remaining 75-78%, or of signing away the "right of return". He is incapable of looking his refugee constituencies in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Gaza in the eye and telling them: "I have signed away your birthright, your hope, your dream."
And he probably doesn't want to. Ultimately, I believe, the balance of military force or the demography of Palestine, meaning the discrepant national birth rates, will determine the country's future, and either Palestine will become a Jewish state, without a substantial Arab minority, or it will become an Arab state, with a gradually diminishing Jewish minority. Or it will become a nuclear wasteland, a home to neither people.
Comments
Originally posted by New
Saying that just a small minority of israeli jews are opposed to a Palestinian state, while palestinians in general want the destruction of Israel is a grave misrepresentation of the actual facts.
Please have this carved in stone at your earliest convenience.
Originally posted by bunge
Please have this carved in stone at your earliest convenience.
hehe, carving things in stone has made to many problems already...
Originally posted by New
Saying that just a small minority of israeli jews are opposed to a Palestinian state, while palestinians in general want the destruction of Israel is a grave misrepresentation of the actual facts.
In case that is what you understood from my previous message, I suppose I'll have to reiterate:
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
It has been known for many years now, that a majority of Israeli citizens are ready to accept the inception of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories in exchange for peace;?
That is based on opinion polls and other forms of research abiding by some modicum of scientific criteria. So it can be termed as ?known?.
?it is also my understanding?
Based on personal experience and mainly upon discussion with Palestinians living in the occupied and/or autonomous territories.
?that a sizable part of the Palestinian population (?) had come to terms with Israel's existence and would accept such compromise.
Although it is my understanding that part is sizable, and may well be in the majority, I have no reliable data upon which to actually assess its size. To the best of my knowledge, it is probable that both populations are now mature enough for a territorial compromise, that is the bottom line of the statement above.
The "minority" of israeli jew opposed to abandoning the area occupied in 1967 is not that small. And did, according to polls, only very recently turn into a minority.
It did so around the beginning of the Oslo process, that's a decade ago.
I suspect, like with all polls, the results are influenced by the way the questions are put. And that if you asked the question about the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees, the results would not be the same.
Israelis are rather open to a compromise over Jerusalem, as long as it's a compromise, rather than a caving in to Palestinian demands. It is actually Jerusalem inhabitants of Jerusalem who ar e reluctant to finding themselves under Palestinian sovereiognity, but that;s another story.
Now, there is no Israeli objection to the idea of having Palestinian refugees absorbed by the Palestinian state. The idea of Israel having to absorbe them is as ludicrous as resettling the children and grand-children of Polish refugees in Lviv (formerly Lwów) or Vilnius (formerly Wilno), or the offspring of German refugees in Gdańsk (formerly Danzig) or Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg), or sending Muslim offspring of the refugees of the 1947/48 Subcontinental war from Pakistan to India and the Sikh and Hindu offspring to Paksitan and Bangladesh. There is no way Israel would accept suxch a precedent, and much of the actual Palestinian population in the territories know it's not on the table and come to term with that.
So, yes, there is a majority for a two state solution. But is there a real will to pay the price for peace. Well, let's just say it still an open issue.
As long as the price is something one can live with, the answer to your open question is an affirmative one.
The majority of the palestinian people have accepted Israel as a state a long time ago.
In 1990 many of them they were still hoping some great Arab leader (at that time Saddam Hussein) would destroy Israel and thus solve their problem. It's only after having understood the futility of such hope that many have begun to accept, first the reality of Israel, and then gradually, its legitimacy.
So has the PA, more recently. What they demand is a solution to the issue of Jerusalem, the refugees and the settlements.
Scores of refugee issues, many more dire that the Palestinians' have been solved, none of them by any form ?return of the refugees?.
Settlements have been dismantled in Sinai (guess under whose responsibility?), it be can be arranged if the rest of the requirements are met.
When the PA officially let's go of the ?al-?Awda? nonsense, will Israel be copnvicned that its existence is really accepted by the PA.
The minority who wants the destruction of israel are more extremist than their israeli counterparts (those who oppose a palestinian state). What popular public support they have is more due to frustration with the lack of progress towards peace, and the hardships the palestinians live under daily.
Most of these hardships result from the current wave of violence which, as was assessed earlier, was initiated by the PA.
If Israel said it was ready to withdraw to the 67-borders, or something resembling that.
One doesn't declare a definite line to which it would withdraw, one negociates it. There are no ?67-borders? and never have been; there are the 1949 armistice lines, which were never recognised international borders. It is understood that an overwheloming majority of the territories beyond those lines will be relinquished, however, the precise definitive boundaries will be negociated. The stronger side is willing not to dictate that to the weaker side, but it will certainly not be dcitated to by the weaker side.
Discuss the status of Jerusalem and some kind of compensation for the refugees. Then we could have a two state solution tomorrow.
That has actually been discussed at Taba, amonmg other places.
And with that in place. The only reasonable way forward in the future would be to link these to States together in some kind of federation. As democratic states. With equal rights for all citizens.
If some time after peace is settled, the states in the area might decide to form a confederation or a federation, or not, is theirs to decide, not to be tied to the peace treaty.
The right of all jews to get an israeli citizenship, is an idea that has to be abandoned.
There was never an idea that all Jews get an Israeli citizenship. Any state is free to grant citizenship to whom it chooses, Israel chooses to grant citizenship to any Jew immigrating to Israel and asking to be naturalised. Palestine might choose to do the same for any Palestinian asking it the same, and would certainly be free to do so.
And maybe the solution to the problem of the palestinian refugees can be solved without the return of all of them.
It can certainly be solved without any of them going to Israel, for that shall not be.
If proper compensation is offered. Remember that jews in Europe are still getting compensated for property lost during WWII.
Compensation for lost property is a very common arrangement and certainly not a problem. Israel could also assist the future state of Palestine in absorbing them in its territory, since Israelis probably have the most reliable experience in that domain.
Originally posted by New
The "minority" of israeli jew opposed to abandoning the area occupied in 1967 is not that small. And did, according to polls, only very recently turn into a minority.
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
It did so around the beginning of the Oslo process, that's a decade ago.
(...)
Israelis are rather open to a compromise over Jerusalem, as long as it's a compromise, rather than a caving in to Palestinian demands. It is actually Jerusalem inhabitants of Jerusalem who ar e reluctant to finding themselves under Palestinian sovereiognity, but that;s another story.
I think you are exaggerating the Israeli peace-will enormously. May I remind you that in no other period in history has there been built more illegal settlements than during the years after Oslo. In direct conflict with the oslo-agreement. These are the so-called "peace-years".
Jerusalem is mostly referred to in Israel as the "eternal undivided capital of Israel", while its eastern annexation is illegal by international law, and few countries recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital at all.
If the arab population of eastern jerusalem is do want to be a part of israel, why is it that nearly all 200 000 of the boycott israeli elections?
The idea of Israel having to absorbe them is as ludicrous as resettling the children and grand-children of Polish refugees in Lviv (formerly Lwów) or Vilnius (formerly Wilno), or the offspring of German refugees in Gdansk (formerly Danzig) or Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg), or sending Muslim offspring of the refugees of the 1947/48 Subcontinental war from Pakistan to India and the Sikh and Hindu offspring to Paksitan and Bangladesh. There is no way Israel would accept suxch a precedent, and much of the actual Palestinian population in the territories know it's not on the table and come to term with that.
---
Scores of refugee issues, many more dire that the Palestinians' have been solved, none of them by any form ?return of the refugees?.
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There was never an idea that all Jews get an Israeli citizenship. Any state is free to grant citizenship to whom it chooses, Israel chooses to grant citizenship to any Jew immigrating to Israel and asking to be naturalised. Palestine might choose to do the same for any Palestinian asking it the same, and would certainly be free to do so.
---
It can certainly be solved without any of them going to Israel, for that shall not be.
---
Compensation for lost property is a very common arrangement and certainly not a problem. Israel could also assist the future state of Palestine in absorbing them in its territory, since Israelis probably have the most reliable experience in that domain.
The policy of Israel to refuse any return of refugees at all is wrong, and unlawful.
I clearly see the problem with letting children and so on return. In Norway there are 4 million people. But there are 8 million people of norwegian heritage in the US. There is no way Norway could absorb these people.
however, there are still people, original refugees, who have papers to their old land in Israel, and should be permitted to return. The fact as it is today, is that more and more Israeli arabs are loosing their israeli citizenship, and the arabs of East-Jerusalem are struggling to retain their right to live and reside in East-Jerusalem.
At the same time Israel is importing scores of people. Russians of whom as many as 30% might not be jews at all. A lot of these people are now living on old Palestinian property. Some even in settlements.
There is an absurdity to the claim that the return of refugees is impossible, while jews from all over the world should have some "ancient " right to return based on biblical history.
Israel should accept the return of some refugees, even if only as a symbolical gesture of compliance with the UN resolutions and international law.
Originally posted by New
Originally posted by New
The "minority" of israeli jew opposed to abandoning the area occupied in 1967 is not that small. And did, according to polls, only very recently turn into a minority.
Originally posted by Immanuel Goldstein
It did so around the beginning of the Oslo process, that's a decade ago.
(...)
Israelis are rather open to a compromise over Jerusalem, as long as it's a compromise, rather than a caving in to Palestinian demands. It is actually Jerusalem inhabitants of Jerusalem who are reluctant to finding themselves under Palestinian sovereiognity, but that's another story.
I think you are exaggerating the Israeli peace-will enormously. May I remind you that in no other period in history has there been built more illegal settlements than during the years after Oslo.
Actually the growth of the settlements between 1986 to 1993 was larger than between 1993 and 2000.
Other than that, most Israelis are favouring a negociated territorial compromise, one that includes a Palestinian state, That is common knowledge.
In direct conflict with the oslo-agreement. These are the so-called "peace-years".
Do remind me where does the agreement stipulates that no building will occur in the settlements. The Rabin cabinet greatly reduced the budgetary facilitations and to the settlements at the time.
Jerusalem is mostly referred to in Israel as the "eternal undivided capital of Israel",?
No, that is a grandiloquent slogan only used in grandiloquent speeches. When Barak presented to the Israeli public his intent to negociate over Jerusalem, it wasn't dismissed as unacceptable by the Israelis.
?while its eastern annexation is illegal by international law,?
All inhabitants of annexed territories receive citizenship on demand, And many do.
That's more important for me than validation by the ignorant masses.
?and few countries recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital at all.
I think Costa Rica does. Good enough for me.
If the arab population of eastern jerusalem is do want to be a part of israel, why is it that nearly all 200 000 of the boycott israeli elections?
If you are Arab, going to the Zionists' poll booths might incur you some trouble in your neighbourhood.
The policy of Israel to refuse any return of refugees at all is wrong, and unlawful.
Do you know of any war of the 1940s, after which refugees were sent back to where they fled from?
And do you know of any whose grand-children were?
Other than that, there were those whos were reunited with their relatives under the Israeli family reunion law, and that's as far as it's ever going to get.
I clearly see the problem with letting children and so on return. In Norway there are 4 million people. But there are 8 million people of norwegian heritage in the US. There is no way Norway could absorb these people.
however, there are still people, original refugees, who have papers to their old land in Israel, and should be permitted to return. The fact as it is today, is that more and more Israeli arabs are loosing their israeli citizenship, and the arabs of East-Jerusalem are struggling to retain their right to live and reside in East-Jerusalem.
There are more Arabs living in irrelgular situation in Israel than those losing (with one o) citizenship due to bureaucratic hell, and rents in Jerusalem aren't all that cheap for neither Jews nor Arabs.
Anyway, many palestinian understand it is futile to hope to dictate to Israel its immigration and naturalisation policy and so are forsaking that issue. I refer you to the Nusseiba-Ayalon understanding.
At the same time Israel is importing scores of people.
I think the word ?importing? is more appropriate to merchandise than to people, but perhaps I'm just being old-fashioned here.
[B]Russians of whom as many as 30% might not be jews at all./B]
People related to Jews and of Jewish origin, who'd have risked being recycled into organic fertiliser some decades ago, are granted safe haven in Israel, but not on-demand naturalisation. Some of them have abused that haven and have been expelled.
A lot of these people are now living on old Palestinian property. Some even in settlements.
Most of what you call ?Palestinian property? was owned by feudal absentee landonwers living in Beirut, Damascus, and as far as Cairo. And while I am no supporter of the settlments, I have no problem in pprinciple, with Arabs living in the Galilean hills or Jews lving in the Judean hills.
And I won't bore you with the property lost by Jews (like some of my relatives) from Iraq to Algeria, since they got over it and got on with their lives.
There is an absurdity to the claim that the return of refugees is impossible, while jews from all over the world should have some "ancient " right to return based on biblical history.
Jews all over the world have the right to return to Israel, because Israel grants them that right. Israel wouldn't demand Palestine to grant the same right to those Jews, and so Pslestine won't be demanding Israel to grant the same to Arabs.
Israel should accept the return of some refugees, even if only as a symbolical gesture of compliance with the UN resolutions and international law.
No it should not, and it is under no obligation to.
Since the Palestinians in the Territories don't want Jewish sovereignity over them, and the Jews in Israel don't want Arab sovereignity, two nation-states are a solution both sides could live with, but Israel will only grant them a state when they grant it peace.
Hear hear !!! Imanuel - I couldent have said it better myself - and yes guys - it is really that simple!!!
How are things in the sunny Entity?
About the gap between the actual Palestinians from the Territories and those from the outside who claim to care so much for their cause:
Haaretz: Trite Of Return Or Ohe Refugee Problem
By Akiva Eldar
It's well-known that the right of return is the number one obstacle to solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Three days of deliberations at an Ottawa conference that examined research studies on the refugees, showed that the issue of the right of return is also the number one obstacle to the solution to the refugee problem.
Every time one of the participants got up to present a study or idea for rehabilitating the refugees, there was someone who diverted the discussion to the right of return.
[?]
There was always someone from Syria, Lebanon, Israel?
[Probably some far-left activists]
?or one of the Western countries, who was ready to fight for the right of return down to the tears of the last of the children of the camps.
Over and over, demands were made of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah to stand firm on rules of international law and
universal morality, which, according to the latest spokesman, mean the right of every Palestinian to go back to their abandoned home.
But it was the representatives from the territories who tended to relinquish the old slogans in favor of realistic positions. One
presented a comprehensive public opinion poll pointing to a large gap between the insistence on the right of return to the old Palestine, meaning Israel, and readiness to fulfill the right in the new Palestine, meaning the West Bank, Gaza, and any other territory that Israel gives the Palestinians in a land exchange.
According to the poll, due for publication in detail in the near future, the refugees prefer to be part of the Muslim majority in Ramallah rather than part of the Muslim minority in Haifa.
(Bold in the body of the article is mine)
Which seems to corroborate my previous posts on the matter.
So as an Israeli jew let me explain to you how I see this:
One of the problems with this solutions is the so called 'right of return' - Palestinians claim there are today nearly 4 million Palestinian refugees living throughout the Arab world and the OT. these people are supposed to have originated or are descendants of people who originate from areas that became Israel in 1948 (the accuracy of these numbers remains to be ascertained) and they demand a full right of return into Israel for all of these millions - if this happens the single federal state will be in a situation where it has around 8 million Arabs and 5 million Jews.
Now, even if we choose to ignore the economic and social repercussions of a sudden influx of 4 million refugees into the land - how would the rights of the minority Jews be sustained especially in light of the much higher rate of population growth amongst Palestinian Arabs and the extremely bad blood and violence ridden history of these two nations' relationship?
One of the main reasons and purpose for the establishment of the state of Israel in the eyes of most Jews is for it to provide a safe heaven for the Jewish people against the repeated persecution experienced by Jews across the world for thousands of years. Israel has served this purpose extremely well - after WW2 millions of refugees from Europe who became displaced as a result of the war immigrated to the new Jewish state and started new and successful lives there. of the nearly 1 million Jews expelled and mistreated in the Arab world (during the 40s and 50s) around 700,000 made their way into Israel and today constitute nearly half of its Jewish population. in the beginning of the 90's when the USSR crumbled and the Iron wall came down nearly one million Jews from russia immigrated to Israel to build themselves better lives and flee from a growing wave of anti-Semitism and nationalism in the new Russia. in the late eighties in a massive operation nearly the entire Jewish community of Ethiopia was air lifted into Israel (some 150,000 people in less then a few days) at a time when civil war was threatening the survival of the community there - one of Israel's basic laws is the law of return - a law inviting any jewish person to immigrate and receive citizenship in Israel - now what would become of that most basic purpose and principle for the Jews in a federal state?
Arabs would probably object to such a policy while they would still expect their 'right of return' to be respected and having majority numbers would be able to prohibit such policies - this would probably be intolerable to the Jews... how would this issue be resolved?
To clarify (hopefully once and for all): The DECLARED intention of many Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular for the past 100 years is, was and probably will be for some time yet to come the REMOVAL of Jewish presence from the middle east - I have not invented this, its been said again and again by practically every single one of their leaders (including the main guys like Arafat etc) Many Arabs see Israel (even though a massive majority of its population are native to the middle east) as an alien seed in the region - in the past and even today in some countries Muslim Arabs have systematically brought about the disappearance of every non Arab non Muslim ethnic group in the region - just two examples are the treatment of Arab Christians by Arab muslims and the treatment of arab Jews by Arab Muslims not to mention how they treat the Druz or the Copts etc....
Now, under this backdrop I think Its pretty darn obvious what will happen once the Palestinians gain majority control of Israel/Palestine in your single state scenario - they will seek to dispossess the Jews and impose their hegemony in the new Palestine. why you expect me to welcome such an idea is beyond me - show me a single shred of evidence that such a solution would be fair and peaceful. please EXPLAIN to ME why I as an ISRAELI JEW should put my head on the block and expect it would not be chopped. show me any recent historical evidence that such idilic coexistence has ever been in existence between Jews and Arabs. you expect us to give up everything for your ideals but offer no convincing explanation why that would not be a quick suicide for us... do you see my point?
Let me tell you this - the minute the Palestinians show that they are truly willing to embrace those values you hold so highly yourself and relinquish their supremacist claim to the land, live as brothers in the land with Jews and share the same human rights and duties under one democratic and open state - that day I will be willing to support your idea of a single multi-national state between the river and the sea - until such an eventuality occurs, accepting such ideas will simply mean suicide for me and my fellow Israelis. this is why I believe that currently a two state solution is the only practical way to stop the bloodshed today!
As Immanuel has said above, the current trend in the world is for countries to become fragmented along ethnic lines rather then to become glued together like you suggest we do with the israelis and Palestinians. just look at the dismal record of multinational states and the problems they cause in civil wars and ethnic strife - Yugoslavia, Indonesia, Rowanda, Nigeria, Lebanon, Spain, Mexico, Sri-Lanka and many others have tried and in many cases failed to make separate nations into one country - in almost all of the examples above the result is constant strife and conflict at best and full blown civil wars and genocide at worst...
In a perfect world there should be no borders or boundaries between people - we are all the same, are we not?!
In the real world however, sadly - as the history of Europe and so many other places has shown us recently - it takes separation and self determination to make friends of nations and ultimately remove those borders, you cannot force people to like each other you can only find ways in which they can compromise and then hope that time and human nature makes friendship and trust work.
Your solution, although it might ultimately become true in the far future can only happen over the long term and can not -under any circumstance - be imposed on either side, it must happen organically.
I was aware, of course, of many of the general background matters that you put forward to help explain why, in your view, my own idea for a resolution to the crisis in Israel/Palestine is simply not realistic. It was nevertheless an education for me to see these background matters marshalled to respond to the particular idea I have put forward (an idea I have harboured for many years).
I do, however, want to respond to some of what you say. First, you make a strong point about the need to respect the right of peoples to self-determination and later note that a resolution cannot be imposed on the parties in Israel and Palestine. I agree. This especially would apply to my own idea - the very nature of it would require that it have the very highest level of acceptance to succeed.
I do want to say a word, however, about self-determination and your (and Immanuel's) point about the splintering of states along ethnic lines. I agree that this splintering is a tendency, but it is not, in my view, a good tendency. In fact, I think it is one of the tragedies of recent history. Your examples might have us believe that the splintering is an example of the failure of multi-national states. I feel, to the contrary, that the splintering itself almost always causes far more harm than staying together would have done (short term and often even long term). Yugoslavia had some success as a unified nation - even struggling under the handicap, to put it mildly, of Communism - but has had much less success, again to put it mildly, since the breakup. The idiotic idea of partitioning India along religious lines lead to almost unimaginable bloodletting and has left India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as lesser than they would have been united - and has also failed to bring real peace, either between the nations or internally. I could give more examples. My point is that the multi-national state is often more successful than its 'offspring'. The failure of these states is not due to any inherent problem with a multi-national state, but the failure of imagination and morality of educated men (it is often educated men who are the initial instigators) who turn their capacities to the terrible idea of ethnic nationalism instead of toward the real problems facing humanity.
As for Israelis and Palestinians, are they really incapable, in the near future, of living in the same state together in peace? Perhaps you are right that they are not now capable and the result would be a war that could lead to the slaughter or exile of Jews in the Middle East, and to the deaths of many, many Arabs. There is probably no war worse than civil war. Believe me when I tell you that this is not purpose of my idea. My fear, however, is that the current roadmap will also not lead to peace, and may also lead to the destruction of Israel. Stuck between hopelessness and hopelessness, I cling to the 'ideal' hopelessness.
Perhaps you and Immanuel are right, however, and the current roadmap has real support from both sides (from afar, it does not generally seem that way - in fact it looks as though it is being ?imposed?, contrary to principles referred to above). If the process can bring peace, I wish this process well, notwithstanding my philosophical objection to the splitting of peoples.
I will nevertheless continue to suggest my idea to anyone patient enough to listen. Perhaps it is not realistic and never will come to pass. Even then, however, perhaps the ideal underlying what I am suggesting can still have some effect on how the realistic resolution is managed. The ideal can instruct the realistic.
I wish you very well.
I think I have pretty much said what i have had to say about this issue but one addition I would like to make is the article quoted bellow- its written by one of the most respected researchers of the Arab Israeli conflict, a Cambridge educated Israeli Professor of history form Be'er Sheva university who has been responsible for uncovering many crimes perpetrated by Israeli forces throughout the years and who is considered to be the world's foremost authority on the subject of the Palestinian refugee problem - his book 'The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 ' is probably the most through investigation ever performed in this field.
I find this article so concise and pertinent because it does not come from one particular political (left or right) perspective and its written by a man of true integrity who does not flinch at the prospect of criticizing either sides. I believe that the analyses contained therein is spot on and I could find very little in there to disagree with...
____________________________
The full assay is available here
Peace? No chance
by Benny Morris
Instead of being informed, accurately, about the Israeli peace offers, the Palestinians have been subjected to a nonstop barrage of anti-Israeli incitement and lies in the PA-controlled media. Arafat has honed the practice of saying one thing to western audiences and quite another to his own Palestinian constituency to a fine art. Lately, with Arab audiences, he has begun to use the term "the Zionist army" (for the IDF), a throwback to the 1950s and 1960s when Arab leaders routinely spoke of "the Zionist entity" instead of saying "Israel", which, they felt, implied some form of recognition of the Jewish state and its legitimacy.
At the end of the day, this question of legitimacy - seemingly put to rest by the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties - is at the root of current Israeli despair and my own "conversion". For decades, Israeli leaders - notably Golda Meir in 1969 - denied the existence of a "Palestinian people" and the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations for sovereignty. But during the 1930s and 1940s, the Zionist movement agreed to give up its dream of a "Greater Israel" and to divide Palestine with the Arabs. During the 1990s, the movement went further - agreeing to partition and recognising the existence of the Pales tinian people as its partner in partition.
Unfortunately, the Palestinian national movement, from its inception, has denied the Zionist movement any legitimacy and stuck fast to the vision of a "Greater Palestine", meaning a Muslim-Arab-populated and Arab-controlled state in all of Palestine, perhaps with some Jews being allowed to stay on as a religious minority. In 1988-93, in a brief flicker on the graph, Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organisation seemed to have acquiesced in the idea of a compromise. But since 2000 the dominant vision of a "Greater Palestine" has surged back to the fore (and one wonders whether the pacific asseverations of 1988-1993 were not merely diplomatic camouflage).
The Palestinian leadership, and with them most Palestinians, deny Israel's right to exist, deny that Zionism was/is a just enterprise. (I have yet to see even a peace-minded Palestinian leader, as Sari Nusseibeh seems to be, stand up and say: "Zionism is a legitimate national liberation movement, like our own. And the Jews have a just claim to Palestine, like we do.")
Israel may exist, and be too powerful, at present, to destroy; one may recognise its reality. But this is not to endow it with legitimacy. Hence Arafat's repeated denial in recent months of any connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount, and, by extension, between the Jewish people and the land of Israel/Palestine. "What Temple?" he asks. The Jews are simply robbers who came from Europe and decided, for some unfathomable reason, to steal Palestine and displace the Palestinians. He refuses to recognise the history and reality of the 3,000-year-old Jewish connection to the land of Israel.
On some symbolic plane, the Temple Mount is a crucial issue. But more practically, the real issue, the real litmus test of Palestinian intentions, is the fate of the refugees, some 3.5-4m strong, encompassing those who fled or were driven out during the 1948 war and were never allowed back to their homes in Is rael, as well as their descendants.
I spent the mid-1980s investigating what led to the creation of the refugee problem, publishing The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 in 1988. My conclusion, which angered many Israelis and undermined Zionist historiography, was that most of the refugees were a product of Zionist military action and, in smaller measure, of Israeli expulsion orders and Arab local leaders' urgings or orders to move out. Critics of Israel subsequently latched on to those findings that highlighted Israeli responsibility while ignoring the fact that the problem was a direct consequence of the war that the Palestinians - and, in their wake, the surrounding Arab states - had launched. And few noted that, in my concluding remarks, I had explained that the creation of the problem was "almost inevitable", given the Zionist aim of creating a Jewish state in a land largely populated by Arabs and given Arab resistance to the Zionist enterprise. The refugees were the inevitable by-product of an attempt to fit an ungainly square peg into an inhospitable round hole.
But whatever my findings, we are now 50 years on - and Israel exists. Like every people, the Jews deserve a state, and justice will not be served by throwing them into the sea. And if the refugees are allowed back, there will be godawful chaos and, in the end, no Israel. Israel is currently populated by 5m Jews and more than 1m Arabs (an increasingly vociferous, pro-Palestinian irredentist time bomb). If the refugees return, an unviable binational entity will emerge and, given the Arabs' far higher birth rates, Israel will quickly cease to be a Jewish state. Add to that the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and you have, almost instantly, an Arab state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river with a Jewish minority.
Jews lived as a minority in Muslim countries from the 7th century - and, contrary to Arab propaganda, never much enjoyed the experience. They were always second-class citizens and always discriminated-against infidels; they were often persecuted and not infrequently murdered. Giant pogroms occurred over the centuries. And as late as the 1940s Arab mobs murdered hundreds of Jews in Baghdad, and hundreds more in Libya, Egypt and Morocco. The Jews were expelled from or fled the Arab world during the 1950s and 60s. There is no reason to believe that Jews will want to live (again) as a minority in a (Palestinian) Arab state, especially given the tragic history of Jewish-Palestinian relations. They will either be expelled or emigrate to the west.
It is the Palestinian leadership's rejection of the Barak-Clinton peace proposals of July-December 2000, the launching of the intifada, and the demand ever since that Israel accept the "right of return" that has persuaded me that the Palestinians, at least in this generation, do not intend peace: they do not want, merely, an end to the occupation - that is what was offered back in July-December 2000, and they rejected the deal. They want all of Palestine and as few Jews in it as possible. The right of return is the wedge with which to prise open the Jewish state. Demography - the far higher Arab birth rate - will, over time, do the rest, if Iranian or Iraqi nuclear weapons don't do the trick first.
And don't get me wrong. I favour an Israeli withdrawal from the territories - the semi-occupation is corrupting and immoral, and alienates Israel's friends abroad - as part of a bilateral peace agreement; or, if an agreement is unobtainable, a unilateral withdrawal to strategically defensible borders. In fact in 1988 I served time in a military prison for refusing to serve in the West Bank town of Nablus. But I don't believe that the resultant status quo will survive for long. The Palestinians - either the PA itself or various armed factions, with the PA looking on - will continue to harry Israel, with Katyusha rockets and suicide bombers, across the new lines, be they agreed or self-imposed. Ultimately, they will force Israel to reconquer the West Bank and Gaza Strip, probably plunging the Middle East into a new, wide conflagration.
I don't believe that Arafat and his colleagues mean or want peace - only a staggered chipping away at the Jewish state - and I don't believe that a permanent two-state solution will emerge. I don't believe that Arafat is constitutionally capable of agreeing, really agreeing, to a solution in which the Palestinians get 22-25% of the land (a West Bank-Gaza state) and Israel the remaining 75-78%, or of signing away the "right of return". He is incapable of looking his refugee constituencies in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Gaza in the eye and telling them: "I have signed away your birthright, your hope, your dream."
And he probably doesn't want to. Ultimately, I believe, the balance of military force or the demography of Palestine, meaning the discrepant national birth rates, will determine the country's future, and either Palestine will become a Jewish state, without a substantial Arab minority, or it will become an Arab state, with a gradually diminishing Jewish minority. Or it will become a nuclear wasteland, a home to neither people.