Turning on the “Jewish state.” By Ari Shavit. Haaretz, March 20, 2014.
Shavit:
There’ll be no peace if the Palestinians
don’t contribute their share; but they won’t contribute their share unless
people who want peace insist they contribute it.
In
Washington, New York and even Tel Aviv, an overall offensive is being waged on
the Jewish people’s national state. American and Israeli peace seekers are
furiously attacking the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Suddenly
not only the settlements are a war crime, but also the Jewish people’s demand
to recognize its right to self-definition. Suddenly Zionism’s fundamental idea,
which was recognized in the Balfour Declaration, the UN’s partition resolution
and the Israeli Declaration of Independence, is not legitimate.
The
thought that alongside the Palestinian (non-democratic) nation-state there will
be a (democratic) Jewish nation-state makes many good people fly off the
handle. People who are usually committed to equality are not ready to grant the
Jews what they firmly demand for the Palestinians. People who want peace are
rejecting out of hand the threshold demand of peace – real mutual recognition.
More
than enough has been said about the essence of the matter. It’s a conflict of
mutual blindness. We didn’t recognize the existence of a Palestinian people
entitled to its own sovereign state and the Palestinians didn’t recognize the
existence of a Jewish people entitled to its own sovereign state. It’s clear,
therefore, that the end of the conflict must entail an end to the blindness. It
must involve each side’s recognition of the other, whose existence and rights
it has ignored for the past 100 years or so.
Israel
has already opened its eyes. In 1993 it admitted that there is a Palestinian
people; in 2000 Israel agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state and
in 2009 the right’s leader embraced this double recognition. So now it’s the
Palestinians’ turn to open their eyes. When Israel accepts the principle of
dividing the land on the basis of the 1967 borders, they will have to declare
that there is a Jewish people with legitimate rights to the land, which is
entitled to define itself as a Jewish democratic state (as long as it respects
all its citizens’ rights and preserves full religious freedom). Simple, so
simple. Elementary.
Yet, at
the moment of truth, the simple suddenly becomes complicated. The elementary is
seen as surreal, wacky. Even though Yasser Arafat already recognized the Jewish
state and even though John Kerry’s peace plan was based from the start on
recognizing the Jewish state, the term has suddenly become a four-letter word.
The
most basic demand directed at the Palestinians is suddenly seen as a whim. Why?
Because when Mahmoud Abbas says no, many in the international community and the
Israeli left cave in. They lack the courage required to stand up to the
Palestinians and tell them “this far.” Even when the Palestinian stance is
clearly immoral, they feel an obligation to toe the line.
Prof.
Alexander Yakobson is an historian who was formerly active in a peace party.
When he left his party he told me its platform was excellent. The problem, he
said, was that beneath the platform there was a clause written in invisible
ink, saying that all the previous principles are subject to the Palestinians
not opposing them. So the moment the Palestinians veto anything, the Zionist
left’s platform collapses and loses its validity.
The
invisible ink is the in-depth problem of the international and Israeli peace
camp. Paradoxically, the invisible ink is currently one of the greatest
obstacles to peace. There will be no peace if the Palestinians don’t contribute
their share to it. But the Palestinians won’t contribute their share if people
who want peace in Israel and the world don’t insist they contribute it.
So it’s
time that those who really want to end the occupation and divide the land stand
up, face Abbas and demand that he too crosses the Rubicon. If he fails to do
so, the landslide will be immensely dangerous. Abbas is in danger of burying
not the Jewish state, but the two-state solution.
