Topics in this digest: This was published in this week's (December 3) Toledo
Jewish News.
BL
by Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
Congregation B'nai Israel
Yuval Zaliouk wrote in in the November Toledo Jewish News that another
Arab country (Palestine) would be a bad idea.
To paraphrase what Churchill said about democracy, "Another Arab country
(Palestine) is the worst possible solution, except for all other
solutions." In other words, there really is not any other choice.
Four years ago I was living in Israel. I sent an email home which
described certain facts which seem pretty obvious to reasonable people on
both sides of the separation fence. There are certain facts which both
sides need to accept. Nothing has changed in those facts--they remain true
today. Only 3,000 Israelis and Palestinians have died in the meanwhile.
Israel does not have an obligation to give the Palestinians a state.
Israel would be perfectly justified in simply annexing all the territory
acquired in the 1967 war. But if Israel does that, they would have to
grant citizenship to all of the Palestinians. Jordan has made it very
clear more Palestinians are not welcome in Jordan (can you blame them?)
and it would be both morally wrong and world opinion would not stand for
creating an apartheid state where the Palestinians lived in Israel but
could not vote. There is no viable alternative to a Palestinian state. The
email I wrote four years ago follows. What I said then is absolutely as
true today as it was four years ago.
Thursday, November 16, 2000
18 Cheshvan 5761
"Wake up and smell the coffee"
Reading the news reports here is becoming increasingly frustrating. It
seems like on both the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side there are
large groups of people who steadfastly refuse to face a reality they don't
like. My latest fit of frustration was generated by an article I read that
quoted some Jews living in settlements in the Territories, who "demand
that the government "allow the IDF defeat the Palestinians."" Right wing
demonstrations demanding a harsher response against the Palestinians are
now far more frequent and noisy in Israel than left wing demonstrations.
I do not understand how people can make a statement like "they should
allow the IDF to defeat the Palestinians:" there is no way the IDF can
defeat the Palestinians in the current conflict. I doubt that killing 100
Palestinians a day would bring a quick end to the conflict. The
Palestinians do not seem to be afraid of martyr-hood. It seems to me that
the conflict could be settled a lot quicker if both sides could accept
certain things which have come to seem obvious to me in the months I've
been living here, to wit:
Israel needs to accept:
You can't "win a war" against stone throwing children (with machine
gunners hiding behind them).
Even when it's self defense, using guns against stone throwers and
missiles against snipers seems like excessive force to much of the rest of
the world. It's bad PR. Especially when innocent bystanders get killed in
the process.
You can't have isolated settlements that are surrounded by people who hate
them. On a long term basis you can't force Palestinians to drive through
multiple Israeli checkpoints to go from one West Bank town to another.
A Palestinian state is preferable to having a large number of Palestinians
voting in Israel.
The Palestinians are not going to leave for some other Arab country.
Jerusalem already is a divided city.
The Palestinians need to accept:
The Jews are not going to go "back to where they came from."
Israel will not give them total sovereignty over the holiest site to
Judaism.
There is nothing magic about the borders as they were in 1948, or in 1967.
Every time they go to war against Israel, their territory shrinks.
Both sides should understand that to their citizens there are huge
benefits to peaceful coexistence and cooperation. Each has a lot it can
offer the other in terms of economic exchange.
In the end, Israel will have to give up on a lot (most) of the
settlements, and the Palestinians will have to give up on the Temple
Mount. I suspect most Israelis and most Palestinians would agree on these
points. The problem is that the Israeli coalition would collapse if all
the right wing parties pull out, as they would if Barak were to abandon
the settlements, and Arafat will have a hard time convincing his radical
fundamentalists that they don't need sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
But I think these two difficult steps will be needed if peace is to be
achieved. The test of Israeli and Palestinian leadership is selling these
concepts to their constituents.
In the meantime more lives, innocent and not, will continue to be lost
because the leadership on both sides does not have the vision, strength,
and skill to convince minorities in their governments and populations of
some fundamental realities.