“We were incredibly stupid.” Israel Matzav, July 13, 2014.
[Translates original Hebrew version of Avineri article with comments]
Avineri:
The Palestinians do not recognize the Jews’
right to a state, so Israel must take steps on its own to improve the
atmosphere.
In the
Haaretz magazine for its Israel Conference on Peace, Aluf Benn raises an
important question about the reasons for the failed process that began 21 years
ago in Oslo. There’s no doubt that those who launched the process truly
believed it would lead to a historic compromise between us and the
Palestinians.
Oslo’s
sponsors saw the conflict as one between two national movements and believed –
as did I – that direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO could find a
solution to the territorial and strategic issues that were the cornerstones of
the dispute. It wasn’t easy to convince Israelis, even those in the Labor
Party, that the other side was a national movement – one that admittedly had
terrorist facets but was fundamentally entitled, just like the Zionist
movement, to exercise national self-determination.
We were
wrong.
The
Palestinians don’t think this is a conflict between two national movements.
From their perspective, this is a conflict between a single national movement –
the Palestinian one – and a colonialist, imperialist entity that is destined to
vanish from the world. Therefore, the analogy that appears in Palestinian
textbooks is Algeria: not the West Bank as Algeria, but all of Israel as
Algeria. And the Israelis will disappear one way or another, just as the French
settlers in Algeria did.
The
Israeli position talks about “two states for two peoples.” But in the
Palestinian version, the phrase “two peoples” doesn’t appear; it only talks
about “two states.” If anyone thinks this is hairsplitting, let him ask a
Palestinian interlocutor for his opinion on the “two states for two peoples”
formula. Sooner or later, he’ll get the answer that there is no Jewish people.
This is also why the Palestinians rejected the formula proposed by U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry that spoke of an agreement between “two
nation-states.”
The
truth is that in the Palestinian narrative, the Jews are neither a people nor a
nation, but merely a religious community; therefore they aren’t entitled to a
state. This is also the reason for the sweeping, uncompromising Palestinian
refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish nation-state.
This is
the root of the conflict – not borders, not the settlements, not even
Jerusalem. And of course, the Palestinian refusal to give up the principle of
the “right of return” is tied into this. There are good reasons to criticize
the Netanyahu government’s conduct during Kerry’s attempts to revive the talks,
but to deny these deeper reasons is intellectual dishonesty.
Zionism
in 1948, when it accepted the principle of partition, believed, just as the
people behind Oslo did, that the Palestinian national movement was a mirror
image of what Zionism thought – that this was a conflict between two national
movements. In such a conflict, compromise is possible. But if you view your
movement as fighting against a colonialist, imperialist movement, there is no
chance of compromise and no moral justification for it.
What
can be done? Even in the current difficult atmosphere, it’s necessary to think
ahead.
Nothing
can be expected from the United States or the Netanyahu government. The Obama
administration has failed in every foreign-policy challenge – Crimea and
Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, the Iranian nuclear issue, the delusional flirtation
with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Obama’s declarations of personal
friendship with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is revealing
himself more and more as an autocrat. The Netanyahu government is focused
solely – and unsuccessfully – on public diplomacy enabling it to continue the
status quo, which anyone with eyes in his head understands is disastrous.
This
presents an opportunity for the opposition, headed by the Labor Party, to
propose an alternative. There’s no reason to keep reiterating the mantra that
we must resume peace talks, because even if we do, it’s clear that, just as in
the past, they won’t bear fruit.
Without
retreating from the principle of “two states for two peoples,” the opposition
must propose interim steps right now – not as an alternative to a permanent
solution, but as a gradual way to move toward it. The opposition must demand a
complete halt to construction in the settlements, the evacuation of illegal
outposts, a reexamination – once the current tension has ebbed – of the Israel
Defense Forces’ deployment in the West Bank, and the removal of what remains of
the Gaza blockade (possibly in coordination with Egypt after the current
fighting ends). Finally, it must propose an initiative to reduce Israel’s
civilian presence in the West Bank by developing an evacuation-compensation
plan.
Most
Israeli settlers in the West Bank came there not for ideological, nationalist
or religious reasons, but for the economic vistas opened by government
subsidies for spacious, comfortable housing. The Israeli left must recognize
that for tens of thousands of families, the possibility of moving to subsidized
housing in the West Bank, in the absence of meaningful public housing in Israel
proper, was a lever for social mobility and a significant improvement in their
lives.
Therefore,
they must be offered an alternative: Anyone who wishes to return to Israel will
receive generous government support. This is likely to create a rift between
some settlers and the right-wing government. The idea is also likely to find
supporters among those who voted for the centrist Yesh Atid and Hatnuah
parties, as well as their representatives in government.
Those
of us who supported Oslo – and who still think it was the right step – must
recognize that salvation won’t come from the Palestinians. They’re genuinely uninterested
in a solution of two states for two peoples because they’re unwilling to grant
legitimacy to the Jewish right of self-determination. We can rely only on
ourselves – not in the sense of our military power, but of our wisdom, our
desire to maintain a Jewish nation-state here, and our ability to realize this
desire, even under difficult conditions of deep-seated rejection by the other
side.
