As anyone who has been involved in peace-making efforts between Israelis and Palestinians knows, there comes a moment where you are compelled to say “fuck it.” This is the moment when you say to yourself: “Let’s be honest, this peace-process is an exercise in futility. These people deserve each other. I am going to wash my hands clean of this mess. Fuck it!”
Yesterday, Thomas Friedman had his own “fuck it” moment. He shared it with the world, arguing in the NYT that until Israelis and Palestinians reach a mutually hurting stalemate, until both parties prove they really want peace, the United States should remove itself completely from the peace process.
Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”
It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.
If we are still begging Israel to stop building settlements, which is so manifestly idiotic, and the Palestinians to come to negotiations, which is so manifestly in their interest, and the Saudis to just give Israel a wink, which is so manifestly pathetic, we are in the wrong place. It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility.
If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.
Over at Al Jazeera, I report on J Street’s first national conference.
They came in droves. Over 1,500 people mobilised in Washington last week to support J Street – the nascent Jewish-American lobbying organisation that defines itself as “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace”.
J Street’s vision is for a secure and democratic Israel existing side-by-side in peace and security with a Palestinian state. As a lobbying organisation, it is recognised by many as an alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Unlike the more established and powerful AIPAC, which tends to tailor its support to Israel’s governmental point of view, J Street differentiates between support for Israel and support for the policies of the Israeli government.
The mood at the conference was buoyant and forward-looking. For three days, participants listened to speeches by notable politicians and intellectuals; gathered for panels headed by some of today’s top Middle East analysts; and networked in the hallways of the Hyatt hotel.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s executive director, “The numbers of participants far exceeded our expectations – 148 congressmen supported the event, 250 students, and reporters from 17 countries came. This is truly the birth of a movement.”
The enthusiasm of Ben-Ami was shared by many other attendees.
In Haaretz, my fruitful exchange/debate with Palestinian writer Aziz Abu Sarah on whether the Palestinians should accept Israel as a Jewish state.
Should the Palestinians Accept Israel as a Jewish State?
By Roi Ben-Yehuda and Aziz Abu Sarah
Ever since his June speech at Bar-Ilan University, Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that peace with the Palestinians is conditioned on the latter accepting Israel as a Jewish state.
During his much-lauded address at the United Nations, Netanyahu reiterated his position:
“We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. As simple, as clear, as elementary as that. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
The Palestinians, for their part, have rejected Netanyahu’s position. Their claim rests on three assertions: It is not the business of Palestinians to recognize the Jewish nature of Israel. Such recognition would endanger the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Acknowledging the Jewish state would negate the Palestinian right of return.
So, should the Palestinians accept a Jewish State? Israeli and Palestinian writers Roi Ben-Yehuda and Aziz Abu Sarah got together to explore the topic. The following is their exchange.
Ben-Yehuda: Aziz, I am happy to have the opportunity for this exchange with you. I will start off this discussion by stating that I think Netanyahu’s position (which was first articulated by Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni) is a good one.
I support this position because it provides the Palestinians a real opportunity to put their cards on the table: To state in an unequivocal fashion that they are ready to make peace with Israel, i.e. to renounce the right of return which is incompatible with a two-state solution.
I also support this position because recognizing Israel as a Jewish state will go a long way toward allaying some of the basic existential fears of the Israeli people. In so doing, it will enable the government to conduct negotiations without fearing that concessions will lead to loss of identity or security (not to mention loss of political power back home).
I say this as an unapologetic Zionist and peacenik – as someone who believes that both the Jews and the Palestinians by virtue of being a people with deep historic ties to the land have a right to a state in part of Israel/Palestine.
Abu Sarah: Roi, you are right that recognition is important to allay the fears of Israelis, but Netanyahu’s demand is not a fair request. Palestinians still don’t even have a state as a direct result of Israel’s creation and the subsequent occupation of the West Bank. Equal recognition means the Palestinian recognition of Israel’s right to existence and Israeli recognition of Palestinians’ right to a state.
Recognizing Israel as a Jewish state would require a change of the Palestinian narrative and identity and would affect the rights of Palestinians citizens of Israel. Furthermore, such recognition before a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem would dishonor the suffering of these refugees. Palestinians would be accepting the right of return of Jews who never lived in the land over those who were expelled from it.
Israel has peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, yet neither of them had to recognize Israel as a Jewish State. These agreements have been successful regardless.
To read read the rest of the debate clickhere. As always, if the spirit moves you, please share your thoughts and repost.
As last week’s trilateral meeting in New York showed, forces outside the control of the offices of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, have pulled these leaders back into the peace camp.
This brought to mind a quote by the Roman statesman Seneca who once wrote: “The fates lead him who will; him who won’t they drag.”
So, what is next for the peace process? One word: Leadership.
The historian J. Rufus Fears once noted that great leaders – from Pericles to Lincoln to Churchill – share four characteristics. They are anchored in principles, guided by a moral compass, posses a vision, and have the ability to build a consensus to achieve their vision.
These are the qualities that distinguish them as statesmen, rather than mere politicians.
If Netanyahu and Abbas are sincere about bringing the century-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict to an end, they must stop being politicians and start being statesmen.
To read the rest, please click here. As always, if you like what you read, please leave a comment and repost elsewhere.
The poll reveals major changes in attitudes since 2000, when Palestinians rejected compromises proposed at the Camp David summit with Israel, and the 2006 Palestinian elections, when Fatah was defeated by the Islamist Hamas party.
A clear majority of Palestinians – 55% – favor a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, separate from Israel, according to the survey. Just 11% favored either of the other alternatives under discussion, a bi-national state of Palestinians and Israelis or a confederation with neighboring Jordan and Egypt. (The rest favored none of these options or didn’t know which they preferred).
There was also majority support among Palestinians for a two-state peace plan. Almost two-thirds (64%) preferred the plan, based on proposals from post-Camp David negotiations at Taba in 2001 and informal Israeli-Palestinian talks in Geneva in 2003, while just 17% preferred the status quo.
The poll gave Fatah 45% of the parliamentary vote and 24% to Hamas, although a Fatah legislative council majority would depend on the choices of swing voters and the electoral system used. It also found that Abbas would defeat Haniyeh in a head-to-head contest across Palestine, though with a fairly narrow majority of 52%.
Over at Harry’s Place, a good article about the wrongful treatment of messianic Jews in Israel. The article also quotes and references what I have written on the subject for Jewcy.
It seems that the unholy alliance between state and the ultra-Orthodox establishment has created the absurd reality of inverse crypto-Judaism: Where in the medieval era Jews who had converted to Christianity kept their Judaism in secret, today many Messianics feel compelled to hide their beliefs from the rest of Israeli society. The price of disclosure may not be a visit to the Israeli equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition, yet social ostracism, harassment, bullying, and state-sanctioned discrimination is enough to keep many (though not all) living secret lives.
The article was written by the Rosh Pina Project, a new blog that describes itself as:
An online meeting place for Messianic Jews and all those who believe that Messianic Jews deserve fair treatment in Israel and the Diaspora, and protection as a religious minority in Israel. Yeze and Gever, both affiliated with Messianic Jewish fellowships, are currently the main contributors to this site. The Rosh Pina Project will be highlighting the persecution of Messianic Jews in Israel, unfair treatment of Messianic Jews in the mainstream media, and post cultural and political reviews.
Please visit the blog and support the important work that they are doing.
Over at Al Jazeera, MJ Rosenberg, Steve Clemons and I weigh-in on a report (below) that exposes the negative (and often racist) views that many Israelis have of Obama. We were asked to specifically comment on whether there is a growing divide between the views of American Jews – 78 per cent of whom voted for Obama – and Israelis.
Rosenberg:
The racist attitude toward Obama that we see in this clip will make it harder for Obama to produce an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. Israelis miss George Bush who was very unpopular with American Jews. Israelis thought he was the “best friend” Israel ever had while American Jews thought he was disastrous for America and Israel.
The good news is that if the Obama administration decided to push hard for an agreement, it won’t matter what these racists on the Israeli street say. Even if these people represented a majority of Israelis, and I don’t think they do, their views would not matter. An American president has the power and authority to achieve an end to the occupation and peace if he has the will.
Clemons:
Today, what is more worrisome than the views on the street that Al Jazeera was able to record is the absence of national condemnation of those views.
I remember when a former deputy spokesman of Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs once told me that Israel’s diaspora – including AIPAC – often try to help so much that it hurts, that Israel’s view of the world sometimes was different and less dire and certainly more complicated than the diaspora groups could comprehend.
Well, in this case, I think it is the American Jewish community that has a far greater fix on appropriate conduct with regard to Barack Obama than some of the rank and file citizens of Israel. This is a time when listening to the diaspora voices would be important.
Ben-Yehuda:
Given Netanyahu’s chronic intransigence regarding the peace process, it is likely that the emerging ideological cleavage between the two communities (Israeli and American Jews) will continue to grow.
It is precisely at this point of dissonance that American Jewry needs to step into the picture.
Instead of divorce (a secret desire of some liberal Jews), American Jews should make a concerted effort to come closer to Israelis – to engage them in dialogue and debate. American Jews need to successfully make the case to their brothers and sisters in Israel that Obama’s policies are in the interest of both countries.
A couple of weeks ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced his intention to pass a bill that would ban alcohol from kiosks and gas stations as well as limit its sales and advertisement. The purpose of the bill is to reduce the seemingly rising level of violence and road accidents inside Israel.
The subject of violence and alcohol has been recently seared into the consciousness of Israelis when a group of inebriated teenagers attacked a family of three at a Tel-Aviv beach, brutally murdering the father.
That killing was just one of many harrowing accounts of high-profile crimes reported in Israel this summer – including a mother starving her child, a father killing his toddler, a dismembered woman found in a burning garbage bin, another dismembered woman found in a river, and a shooting at a gay youth center.
Reflecting on this phenomenon, Haaretz columnist and former politician Yossi Sarid aptly wrote that violence in Israel is undergoing privatization
“The state no longer has a monopoly over the use of force. We meet violence everywhere: in the army, schools, hospitals, publicly, privately, driving and parking.”
While there may be a relationship between violence and alcohol consumption, in a society like Israel, where heavy drinking is not the norm, Netanyahu’s new law is akin to putting a band-aid over a tumor.
If the Prime Minister is really interested in meaningfully reducing violence in Israeli society, which he surely is, he should focus all his energies on ending the conflict with the Palestinians.
To read more, click here. As always, if the spirit moves you, please leave a comment and/or repost elsewhere.
