Parallel
Michael Cohen writes:
If Israel dismantled all its settlements tomorrow, Hamas would not turn around and renounce violence; but if Hamas were to recognize Israel the path to reconciliation would be far easier to achieve.
This is totally true. But consider this proposition:
If Hamas were to recognize Israel tomorrow tomorrow, Israel would not turn around and renounce settlements; but if Israel were to dismantle all settlements the path to reconciliation would be far easier to achieve.
That’s also true. But by arbitrarily shifting the standard, so that Israeli actions are judged according to whether or not they would magically cause the other side to become reasonable, whereas Palestinians are merely asked whether or not making unilateral concessions would in some sense make reconciliation easier to achieve, Cohen has managed to put a heavily pro-Israel spin on the banal observation that both sides could do more to improve the situation but that achieving real peace requires steps on both sides.
Meanwhile, of course, there’s still such a thing as ethics and so forth. Vaguely pointing rockets at civilian areas and hoping they kill as many people as possible is wrong, completely independently of whether or not Israel is also doing things that are wrong. I think that’s a point that’s pretty well-appreciated in the American conversation on this. But by the same token, Israeli actions that are wrong are wrong independent of whether or not Hamas is launching rockets.
104 Responses to “Parallel”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was governed by ethics and logic, it would have been resolved long ago. It looks like both sides are operating in some kind of policy vacuum, knowing their cause is hopeless but not wanting to give up either.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Does every set of parties expected to negotiate the end of a war, civil war, rebellion, or occupation have some presumed requirement to recognize the “right” of the other to exist?
And in every other conflict in the world does there have to be this somersaulting each second on how one recognized set of leadership or other is too immoral or evil to be a negotiating partner, therefore just keep letting the situation rage?
This is just another stupid dodge to avoid settling this never-ending sh*t.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:33 pm
The difficulty with Mr. Yglesias’ position is an implicit assumption that there is some possibility of agreement between Hamas and Israel if only one side or the other would just do x, y, and z. This is naivete of the first order. The problem is that the Government of Israel is prepared to recognize an independent Palestinian State based on a two state solution to the problem. The Hamas terrorists adamantly refuse to accept this solution and demand that the Government of Israel go out of business. Outside from going out of Business, there is no concession that the Government of Israel could possibly offer that would satisfy the Hamas terrorists. The aim of the Hamas terrorist party is to institute an Islamist state in all of Palestine. Until Mr. Yglesias gets that through his head, he will continue to post crap like this.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:44 pm
It’s not anyone’s job to “satisfy” Hamas or any other representative of the Palestinians. It’s the job of the parties involved to settle this illegal occupation and establish a separate state.
After that is done, if the leaders of newly independent Palestine want to wage war on Israel, then that is a case of war, and not anything close to resistance to an illegal occupation. Hamas is much, much better off without statehood to take away their resistance-born perceived legitimacy.
And if a tiny and poor state wishes to wage war against the military behemoth that is Israel, well, that’s a bad choice.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:50 pm
“If Hamas were to recognize Israel tomorrow tomorrow, Israel would not turn around and renounce settlements”
That’s hard to say. Hamas has said it will never recognize Israel, so it’s fair to say that withdrawal from the settlements won’t achieve that (just as it didn’t when it was withdrawal from Gaza). But I think if Hamas recognized Israel (and then stopped aiding suicide bombers) and followed through, I suspect Israel actually would leave the settlements as a final step to peace. But who’s to say?
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Back when I was a philosophy student, we used to deal with moral quandaries. We used to be asked questions, and then quizzed upon our answers, and then the questions were subtly changed, we were asked if our answers were therefore different, and if so, why, and so on.
One of the reasons I started reading you, Matt, when you were a student, was because you would apply philosophical techniques of analysis to political problems, which I found interesting. These techniques often resulted in correct analysis which flew in the face of conventional wisdom.
But when it comes to I/P questions, you punt. You say “of course this or that is wrong,” but politically, or realistically, this is what Israel should not do, etc. And although I read your posts as coming from a perspective of wanting to solve the problem, at the expense of visceral instincts, some others make cheap accusations about your character or “secret” anti-whatever sentiments. But still, I can’t help but feel that you are avoiding real engagement somehow. It’s like you’re just tossing in your two cents whenever something happens, and I have no idea if you really feel one way or another, or if you are just tossing in your two cents because I/P is in the news this week.
I’m not saying I’m disagreeing with you or agreeing with you. It just seems that over and over, when it comes to this question, you are ducking. You have an expensive philosophy degree from Harvard. What does that training lead you to believe about this situation? Tell us.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Cohen also very oddly claims that the refusal of Hamas to recognize Israel is the “root” of the current crisis. It is hard for me to conceive of any plausible causal-historical narrative according to which that claim is true. On the other hand, it is quite easy to spin plausible narratives according to which the Israeli failure to implement UN 242 and ongoing Israeli support for ever-expanding Jewish colonization of the occupied West Bank are a key causal determinant of the entire post-1967 Israeli-Palestinian struggle, and even for the very existence of Hamas.
The colonization movement is in no sense a mere natural extension of the military occupation, which one might attempt to justify on security grounds, but is a wholly optional, security-damaging endeavor driven by greed for land.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Settlements have their roots in the original Zionist movement. Settlements were established in old Palestine to gain a foothold with the expectation that they would coalesce. I imagine Begin saying to himself and his party in 1979, it worked once as a strategy, lets do it again.
Settlements are not benign homesteads, rather they are intended to expand and coalesce. No Palestinian country is possible with such a disruptive presence in their midst. A move by Israel to remove settlements would be an excellent and necessary first step to peace.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:05 pm
It’s pretty obvious, in the US press and politicians reflexively defend everything the Israelis do and demonize the other side.
While there is plenty of argument to be made the conflict takes more than dismantling settlements to solve, there is no argument that settlements aren’t illegal or that they contribute to Israeli security in any way.
Second of all, why must the Palestinians recognize Israel’s “right to exist”? Chances are, it’ll take a long time for most Palestinians to recognize that, considering that they are refugees due to Israel and certainly don’t consider their expelling to be legitimate. I’m pretty sure that Israel by its actions have not shown any understanding of Palestinian right to exist. It seems like that’s a long term goal rather than a negotiation sticking point early on.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:08 pm
It seems to me, Matt, that you really miss the point here. Perhaps if Hamas actually recognized Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (in other words, Israel as Israel), that the government would cave to the settlers.
But if Hamas (and by extension all Palestinians) actually did so, millions of ISRAELIS would call for the end of settlements. If a leader of Hamas did what Sadat did in 1977, it would turn Israeli politics upside down. The center-left wins in Israel when it seems like a deal is possible because it is seen as an opportunity.
On the Palestinian side, similar kinds of Israeli moves are seen not as opportunities but rather as signs of weakness.
Matt, in your desire to push moral equivalence here, you are ignoring the fact that the Israeli peace movement really has no partner here, either in government or in civil society. Whereas the left and center-left in Israel has rallies, think tanks, political parties, intellectuals, etc. etc., on the Palestinian and Arab side they must be contented with twisted readings of secret documents and supposed private conversations that may never have taken place and never seem to come through when it counts.
And no–it is not good enough to say that the Palestinians are the weaker party, and so we should not expect them to come forward like the Israelis have. I don’t buy that on its own terms: you believe what you believe. But also, there are 22 Arab states, and millions of Arab-Americans. Surely SOMEONE could endorse the People’s Voice, the Clinton Parameters, or even Brzezinski’s plan (in his interview with Nathan Gardels at Huff Po)?
There are millions of Israelis and Jews who will publicly endorse and fight for a solution based on two-states-for-two-peoples. And there is no one on the Arab or Palestinian side who will do so. And that, at the end of the day, is the problem. No amount of setting up equivalences will change that.
More on this here: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/israel_/2009/01/a_question_for_zbigniew_brzezinski.php
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
“But if Hamas (and by extension all Palestinians) actually did so, millions of ISRAELIS would call for the end of settlements”
This I don’t understand. It’s not like Israel is building settlements to counter Hamas (for one they’re being built in the West Bank where Fatah is). Why would the two even be linked?
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:10 pm
I do not recognize the “right” of any nation to exist, the USA included. The humans inside nations (or outside them) have rights.
Likewise if the population of an existing state decides to change its status (i.e., merge with another nation to form 1 new nation), the state has no independent right to preserve its own existence against the wishes of its population.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:14 pm
terry312;
But I think if Hamas recognized Israel (and then stopped aiding suicide bombers) and followed through, I suspect Israel actually would leave the settlements as a final step to peace. But who’s to say?
I’m a bit more skeptical than you here. The Camp David/Taba accords in 2001 had an agreement along these lines, but there were still big settlements in the middle of the West Bank (especially Maale Adumim and Ariel) that the Israelis were insisting on keeping even though they effectively cut the West Bank into disconnected blobs. (Israel was also insisting on maintaining control of the border with Jordan for security purposes, meaning the blobs would be cut off from each other and totally surrounded by Israel.) These settlements have tens of thousands of inhabitants, and there are another 200,000-something in East Jerusalem. Given all the drama a few years back when Israel had to evacuate Gaza and its 8,000 settlers, right now I really doubt the Israeli government would be able to evacuate the big settlements in the West Bank. If for no other reason than those settlers have a lot of votes.
They were on the right track at Camp David, but evacuating Ariel, Maale Adumim, and (a lot of) E. Jerusalem is an awfully big pill to swallow. They may prove everyone wrong, but right now I think the Israelis couldn’t do that without a helpful, very large shove from Obama or somebody.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:20 pm
And no–it is not good enough to say that the Palestinians are the weaker party, and so we should not expect them to come forward like the Israelis have.
Gandhis don’t come along that often. And it’s not good enough to pretend that Israel hasn’t played divide-and-conquer in ways that have consistently empowered the radical challengers to existing Palestinian power structures.
You also miss one crucial point: in a peaceful settlement, whatever the Palestinians end up with, in terms of land and autonomy, is whatever Israel deigns to give them.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Glenn Greenwald pointed out something enormously important: According to Rasmussen polling, our country is nearly evenly divided on the Israeli assault and Democratic voters oppose the attack by a margin of 24 percentage points.
It would seem if we had a properly functioning representative democracy that there would be more outcry from our leaders given those numbers. Maybe we should be talking about why there isn’t.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Zasloff;
There are millions of Israelis and Jews who will publicly endorse and fight for a solution based on two-states-for-two-peoples. And there is no one on the Arab or Palestinian side who will do so.
Please read up on the Arab peace initiative, 1967 borders in exchange for full recognition, endorsed by all members of the Arab League and even endorsed by Hamas. There’s sniping about specifics regarding refugees and such, of course. There are plenty of other examples of Arab peace plans. This line about how Israelis want peace but there’s not one single Arab who feels the same is a bit, ummmm, not quite up to date shall we say.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Careful with the terminology, if you don’t want pundits throwing “anti-Israel” around as a term for people who oppose certain actions of the Israeli government then you should also be careful when using “pro-Israel” as you do here (”a heavily pro-Israel spin”).
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:38 pm
Matt, Israel can do no wrong. Nothing they do can be wrong. By contrast, everything Palestinians do is always wrong because they are Palestinians.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Jonathan says: “It seems to me, Matt, that you really miss the point here. Perhaps if Hamas actually recognized Israel as a Jewish and democratic state (in other words, Israel as Israel), that the government would cave to the settlers.”
Sigh. The settlements started before Hamas was even formed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Re smokeytown
I have a flash for Mr. smokeytown. The so-called Arab peace plan calls for a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem. That’s Arabspeak for resettle them in Israel. This is not a minor issue. It’s the issue that has scuttled every peace plan so far put forward. Until the Arab side publicly and unequivocally drops this demand, there will be no peace agreement.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Spokeytown–The Saudi initiative makes no mention of refugees, and the Syrian interpretation of it, accepted by the Arab League, insists on a full right of return. That’s not a “specific” regarding refugees–it’s the whole kit and kaboodle. Without a clear statement about the refugees not going to Israel, it’s a deal killer. It’s what killed the Taba negotiations. I wish it were otherwise. This is quite important in my view because it forces Arab leaders to be very clear with their populations about what they can and cannot get. No hidden meanings, no terms left vague, etc. It’s not good enough to say, “1967 borders for full recognition” and leave the refugees out of it.
To the extent, though, that you can find specific, credible references of the Saudis saying that the refugees will not return to Israel, I would welcome it. I’m not being snide here.
Zaid–The two aren’t linked, but the point is that in my view, the vast majority of Israelis have no love for the settlements or the settlers. They are going along with it because they have been persuaded by the settlers that the Palestinians won’t accept a two-states-for-two-peoples solution anyway, so why pressure the settlers to stop? On the other hand, if it were clear that the settlers were the ones standing in the way of a solution, then that would create very strong domestic pressure inside Israel, as well as withini large segments of the disapora Jewish community, to take the deal.
pseudonymous in nc–I’m not asking for a Gandhi; I’m asking for prominent Arab and Arab-Americans who claim to be in favor of a two-states-for-two-peoples solution to actually be in favor of one. There’s still a very prominent peace camp in Israel even after eight years of suicide bombings and rockets. I’m simply asking for some Arabs and Arab-Americans to be willing to accept the kinds of concessions that many Israelis and Jewish Americans are. We need a partner here.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:45 pm
On a related note, this whole latest flare up has for whatever reason prompted me to start reading The Spine. What a bunch of genocidal little shits. No wonder TNR has been wrong on so many major issues for decades – it’s run by lunatics.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:47 pm
SLC: “The problem is that the Government of Israel is prepared to recognize an independent Palestinian State based on a two state solution to the problem. The Hamas terrorists adamantly refuse to accept this solution and demand that the Government of Israel go out of business.”
First, this is bullshit. Hamas is prepared to accept, at least temporarily, a return by Israel to the 1967 borders. Whereas Israel is NOT prepared to accept Palestinians on “Jewish” soil any more than Hamas is prepared to accept a Zionist state on Jewish soil. In fact, less so, since the more Palestinians there are, sooner or later the Jewish population will be smaller than the Palestinians. It has ALWAYS been the Zionist dream to remove ALL Palestinians from “Greater Israel” and then to expand Israel as far as Iraq. Every single Israel leader has expressed those desires in one form or another in public statements.
Whereas Hamas has explicitly said in its Charter that Arabs and Jews will be allowed to live together in security under an Islamic state. Just as Persians and Jews do so in Iran.
The notion that these Zionist freaks are prepared to let Palestinians form their own state and then let them do what they want is total bullshit. Israel simply wants to crush the Palestinian resistance and make them compliant, then force them outside of the territory Israel wants. If a Palestinian state came into existence, Israel would merely provoke a war and use that war for the same ends.
Second, Hamas is perfectly correct not to recognize “Israel’s right to exist” – because Israel has no such right. Israel is an illegal, rogue, terrorist state which the UN had no legal authority to create or recognize. This fact has nothing to do with the X million Jews there – except for those who support Israel AS an illegal, rogue, terrorist state for their own benefit.
A two-state solution is unworkable as long as both Hamas and the Zionist power seekers running Israel intend to merely use those two states to go to war. And they do.
Only a bi-national state has even a snowball’s chance of working, if that. And it will only work if the international community unites behind that goal, by requiring election and civil rights monitors for the new combined Palestinian/Jewish government and by guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the new state, so that Jews don’t have to fear being attacked by their Arab neighbors.
The ostensible goal of the Zionist project is a secure homeland for Jews worldwide. Leaving aside the logic of putting all your eggs in one basket, which isn’t going to happen anyway, the ONLY way this can be achieved is by cooperation with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors, buttressed by the support of the international community.
The present plan of using a militaristic, nuclear-armed “Fortress Israel” which relies on subverting the United States government to support its every action is simply not going to work.
The problem for people like Matt is that they are too timid to deal with the root problem of Israel’s initial creation and the Zionist political philosophy because they think that just because there are X million Jews there that Israel has to exist as it does and because to criticize that root problem is to be labeled “anti-Semitic”.
And that’s simply not the case.
But as long as that perception exists, there can be no solution to the problem.
January 2nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Mythbuster–
Of course you are right, but that interprets the point far too narrowly. If HAMAS recognized Israel as Israel, then that implies that everyone else on the Arab side would as well. The settlements started in the mid-70’s, when quite literally there was no one to talk to. To be sure, as Gershom Gorenberg points out, they were driven by internal politics and domestic messianism, but if the Arabs had not issues the 3 “no’s” of Khartoum in 1967–no negotiations, no recognition, no peace–then things would have been significantly different on the Israeli side.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
Jonathan – I think you made some good points but I don’t see recognition of Israel’s right to exist coming any time particularly soon, and I think most Israelis do oppose settlers you are right in that but their political parties are largely controlled by people who were there when Israel was created and fundamentally believe in settling.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Why should Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist? First the Isralies took the Palestinians land by force, then they have treated them as less than human for the last 50 years, sure that doesn’t justify the Palestinians killing them, but who are we to judge?
How can you judge a man who has his land taken, then is humiliated by being locked up in his own country by a foreign nation which blocks his borders and blockades his harbors? If this were 200 years ago and you replace Palestinian with American and you would be calling them patriots fighting for liberty.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Defenders of Israel’s policies often short-circuit any meaningful dialogue on the Arab-Israeli conflict by reducing the problem to the Arabs and their alleged “rejectionism,” i.e. their refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist.
This argument conveniently removes Israel’s actions from the realm of moral consideration because it implies that changes in Israeli policy will ultimately have no impact one way or another on the ongoing conflict. It is quite difficult for a moral, thinking person to justify Israel’s treatment of the subjugated Palestinians. But the Arab rejectionism dodge allows AIPAC liberals to avoid confronting those uncomfortable questions — “they will hate us no matter what we do!”
The rejectionism dodge is not credible for three reasons:
1) In practice, Israel itself maintains a rejectionist attitude toward a viable Palestinian state. Under both right-wing and center-left governments, the settlements have multiplied and expanded and the attending network of settler roads and IDF security have left the West Bank riddled with Jewish enclaves and checkpoints. These “facts on the ground” make a territorially contiguous, socially functioning Palestine impossible.
2) Cries about Israel’s right exist distract from the sturdy reality of its ongoing existence. Despite the noisy hysteria of the Commentary crowd, Israel faces no immediate existential threat because, quite simply, Israel is an Washington-backed nuclear power with one of the most sophisticated armed forces in the world and its enemies are militarily pathetic in comparison. Israel ain’t going nowhere.
3) Even if the false premise of the rejectionism dodge were true, that the Palestinians and/or their leaders would reject a peace “no matter what,” this would not excuse immoral Israeli behavior. The world demands that Israel dismantle the settlements, not because it will be rewarded by Palestinian good will, but because it’s simply the right thing to do. As an analogy, Crazy Horse may very well have fantasized about driving the White Man out of North America. But the idle fantasies or maximalist demands of the Plains Indians did not excuse the waging of the Indian wars.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Zasloff;
I’m not aware of any Saudi officials who have stated the refugees won’t return, and I’d be really surprised if any did outside of private conversation. (I’m not an expert though; someone else jump in if this statement was actually made.) The plan calls for a “just solution” for the refugees, which is intentionally vague. The vagueness allows for right-of-return hardliners to sign on, while also allowing those who think holding out for return is stupid to get the plan passed. Maybe a few token refugees return, maybe return is ceremonially offered and declined, maybe they swap land, maybe they make a grand bargain out of it (”we’ll drop the return thing if you leave E. Jerusalem”). Who knows, maybe the Israelis cave on the issue and let all the refugees return. Realistically anyone who thinks that will probably be disappointed. But no one’s going to outright declare, now, that no refugees will ever return, because you save that for the negotiating table. No Israeli leader has outright stated that Israel will uproot all the settlements and pull back to the 1967 lines, for the same reasons. You take those chips to the table with you.
Look, I’m not going to argue that the Israelis should cheerfully and immediately sign the Arab peace plan as is with no questions asked. That would be dumb of them. Obviously the Palestinians and Arabs are going to have to give more than their public statements indicate they will–and the Israelis will have to do the same. But my original point was that when you stated there are no Arabs willing to endorse a two state solution, you were pretty far off the mark. I think this discussion shows that. Obviously there are plenty of things to hash out but there are lots of people on both sides willing to do at least some of the hashing.
January 2nd, 2009 at 8:46 pm
Adrian–
You are right but the point is not quite so clear-cut. If one believes that there is simply no way that the Palestinians can be trusted to honor a peace agreement, then some settlements make sense for military purposes. If you believe that they can be trusted, then you would be willing to give all of them up. So the question of the morality of the settlements is conditioned somewhat by the actions of a future Palestinian state.
This is why the refugee issue is so central, and why it is so disappointing that Matthew simply refuses to address it. If a Palestinian leader makes concessions on refugees, as he must for there to be an agreement, then he is taking a genuine political risk, which makes him more credible to Israelis.
Now, you might say, what about Israel’s trustworthiness? A good point, but remember that any peace agreement will be “land for peace,” which is another way of saying “land for a promise.” The Palestinians get something tangible; the Israelis get a promise. So the Palestinians’ trustworthiness is at a premium here.
On the question of an existential threat to Israel, in my view Benny Morris’ recent piece in the NYT encapsulates it well. It’s easy for us to say that Israel ain’t going anywhere–but Israelis don’t think so, and their fears are justified, in light of the Iranian and demographic concerns that Morris alludes to.
You are quite correct that center-left Israeli governments do not have clean hands on settlements. But I disagree with your notion that there are “facts on the ground.” Settlements can be evacuated–as they were in Gaza. If it were clear that the Palestinians were willing to concede on refugees, Israel would have to concede on settlements–and if they didn’t, then you would be completely correct to place the onus on them. Indeed, this was the issue throughout much of the 90’s–it was only after Arafat was found to be negotiating in bad faith that it became clear that they were not as critical, that it was rejectionism, not settlements that were preventing an agreement.
In all, you are right: if Israel does something wrong, then it is wrong no matter what the other side does. The Israeli Supreme Court said as much in its very correct decision on the security fence. But the justification of Israel’s actions depends to great degree on what its enemies do.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:11 pm
No matter what Hamas or any Palestinian group does Israel will continue to enjoy humiliating them till the end of time. After a couple thousand years of taking shit you want to kick some ass and fate presented them with the weakest candidate around. What luck.
This Gaza attack now is all about politics. Some Palestinian blood must be spilled to placate the right before the Feb election. That date was bad timing, after McCain lost that is. So I think they moved a bit too early. Now they have to keep pounding for another few weeks because obviously there is not going to be some kind of total victory. You can’t have total victory when there is nobody to surrender. Think Iraq.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Basta! There is no parallel between the state of Israel, which has the fifth most powerful military in the world, and Palestinian refugees under occupation.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Yeah, I’m about at the end of the ability of suspension of disbelief listening to the radio today about the “war between Israel and Hamas”.
It’s a war where one side fires shitty, estes, grade rockets at random and the other side reigns down two-ton bombs. If they run out of rockets and they are down to stones and someone manages to throw one over the wall of their prison and it hits a Jew on the head I’m convinced we’ll replay this whole thing and everyone will take very seriously the mortal risk that Hamas poses to Israel.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:23 pm
why must the Palestinians recognize Israel’s “right to exist”?
Because if the Palestinians insist on starting negotiations with “shut your government down and go back where your ancestors came from”, they aren’t going to get anywhere.
Once they come to some level of acceptance that Isrealis aren’t going to do that, then we’ll have a starting point.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:23 pm
The Hamas terrorists adamantly refuse to accept this solution and demand that the Government of Israel go out of business. Outside from going out of Business, there is no concession that the Government of Israel could possibly offer that would satisfy the Hamas terrorists.
SLC: While you may be correct on this point, there certainly are actions Israel could take that would begin to undermine the appeal of radical groups like Hamas. Nobody’s confusing Hamas with Washington, Jefferson and Madsion. But the point is, bad faith on the part of Israel (the continual expansion of its colonization of Palestinian lands) makes lots of Palestinians believe doing business with Israel doesn’t get them anything. So why bother? Change this dynamic — by demonstrating to Gazan Palestinians that constructive engagement with Israel will get you something — and you might finally begin to set the state for peaceful coexistence via a two state solution.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Re Jonathan Zasloff’s discourse of ethnic cleansing, I’m ever amazed that in the United States, among prosperous, educated people, it is so commonplace and acceptable to talk about racial purity as the desirable and justifiable foundation of a state. It is as amazing as it is primitive and repulsive.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Jonathan Zasloff:
Uh…who put the what in the where now?
Further discussion has appeared in the obscure publication the New York Times, in a 2002 op-ed by the little-known political figure Yasir Arafat:
Previously at Taba in January, 2001, there were fruitful discussions about the means of implementation. The solution clearly is that Israel must say the right of return exists, but in practice Israel will control what happens, and what happens will be a small number of older refugees will return to Israel proper. This is from the EU description of Taba:
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Because if the Palestinians insist on starting negotiations with “shut your government down and go back where your ancestors came from”, they aren’t going to get anywhere.
Re-read Zasloff’s silly, racist rant and think about what “Israel’s right to exist” means. You’ve gone way accepting that they aren’t leaving, you are saying the Palestinian refugees uniquely aren’t able to return to their homes based on basic identity and arguably that if Israel’s “demographic concerns” become a problem that the Israeli Arab population should be expelled into whatever the Israeli’s deem fit to give you to live in.
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:51 pm
The aim of the Hamas terrorist party is to institute an Islamist state in all of Palestine.
This is, of course, ever so much more illegitimate than the Jewish state that already exists in almost all of Palestine, and which demands that its right to exist *as an explicitly Jewish state* be the FIRST step in any negotiation process.
Saying Israel has a “right to exist” carries a lot more freight than it looks on the surface. Proclaiming the superiority of Jews over everyone else is built right into the name.
I think the only outcome with a chance of actually working is one state with separation of church and state principles so strong Turkey looks like a theocracy by comparison. Two states will always be at each others’ throats with accusations that terrorists are being tolerated/supported as a form of proxy warfare (and probably couldn’t agree on borders anyway) and a state that allows religions to meddle in politics will be consumed by religio-partisan factions. (The ethnic divisions will be quite bad enough anyway without piling religion on top of them.)
Massive reparations to the Palestinians for the land taken from their ancestors plus decades of oppression would probably help, too. Maybe that would be a more productive way to redirect all the Western aid currently being spent on more weapons to massacre civilians and perpetuate the hatred and violence.
January 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I’ll just throw this out there on top of what Chris said: It’s illegal to marry someone of a different religion in Israel. Maybe illegal isn’t right, but the Orthodox rabbinate control civil matters regarding Jews and it’s not going to happen. If you are a woman and you want a divorce and your husband won’t write you a gel, yer fucked. If you take the kids and run off there is a legal category called “rebellious wife” and you are going to get picked up and your kids are going to be taken from you.
I’ve never figured out if the secularist, war for modernism, freaking out about Islam for freedom of religion sake, know this or are studiously avoiding it.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Jonathan Z:
Can you imagine an Israeli PM sending in IDF conscripts from Haifa and Tel Aviv to deal with SLC’s Kahanist friends in the West Bank, who have basically said that they’re going to take the Masada option if told to leave? Because I can’t quite get my head there right now, even though the proposed relocation scheme for those who want out are to be welcomed.
But for all the talk of demographics that make the one-state option a non-starter, there’s an ever-growing number of settler kids brought up in disconnected militia compounds.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
rfv–
You are right about the formal language of the Saudi proposal, but that only proves my point: it is a boilerplate restatement of the PLO position for the past decade. To say that the Saudi initiative represents any kind of negotiating position is really missing the context. Resolution 194 says that refugees should have the choice of returning to their homes; that is tantmount to a call for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. I’m puzzled as to why you think that vindicates your position.
As for the Arafat NYT article, I’m well aware of it–as is everyone else who read it at the time. But it would require extraordinary naivete to see it as the real Palestinian position. At the same time that the PLO PR office penned these words, Arafat himself was talking about the inalienable rights of all refugees to return, saying that no one could take this right away from them, and so on.
And your selective quoting from the Moratinos non-paper does not help your position, either. Even on its own terms, the quotation justifies my argument: the Israelis make three very specific proposals, and the Palestinians respond by saying that they cannot even respond without an Israeli position. But you neglect to point out the Palestinian bottom line:
It mystifies me as to why you think that this means that somehow the Palestinians have shown any flexibility on this matter.
The broader point still holds: I’m still looking for Palestinians, Arabs, Arab-Americans who are willing to make the same sort of concessions that members of the Israeli and Jewish peace movements are making.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
“I’ll just throw this out there on top of what Chris said: It’s illegal to marry someone of a different religion in Israel.”
Dude, do you just believe what anybody tells you or something? No, it’s not illegal to marry someone of a different religion in Israel. Several of my then-resident-in-Israel relatives are married to people who weren’t Jewish. Israel is under the millet system, which they retained from the Ottoman and British Empires. Each religious community maintains it’s own marriage regulations. The problem of what to do when you’re marrying someone from another religious community apparently didn’t exist (or didn’t exist often enough to matter) under the Ottoman Empire. All Israelis have to do today to marry someone from another religious community is have a civil “service” in another country – which you can do by mail, for example (you just file the paperwork remotely for some countries).
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:34 pm
pseudonymous in nc–
You’re right; I can’t see that. I can, however, see 1) an Israeli Prime Minister saying–you guys are free to stay, but don’t expect us to bail you out; and more importantly, 2) I can see a UN Security Council resolution along the lines of the People’s Voice accord and the Clinton parameters. That will change the politics greatly.
And if it doesn’t, then I will be with you 100% demanding that the Israelis concede the point. I see no reason to sacrifice Zionism for a few thousand yahoos in Ariel.
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:39 pm
All Israelis have to do today to marry someone from another religious community is have a civil “service” in another country
Yah, I know that. That’s not exactly simple, and that wasn’t my point anyway. Is there a some place you can run off to get a divorce if you are a woman I’m not aware of? Can you do do it by email?
January 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 pm
If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was governed by ethics and logic, it would have been resolved long ago. – rmwarnick
Um … no! The (hardline) Israeli position is actually perfectly quite logical: why shouldn’t there be a Jewish state? The (hardline) Palestinian position is actually quite logical: Zionist settlers took their land they want it back.
Pardon me for getting all Kierkegaardian here, but what is needed is not more reason but a leap of faith: Israel has a policy that until there is 100% of a cease fire (which there never is) they won’t make major concessions. But since Israel won’t take a leap of faith and make partial concessions for a partial cease-fire, the Palestinians don’t trust them. Israel needs to take a leap of faith that concessions won’t send the Palestinians a message that Israel is weak (remember Israel, in many ways, even if it supposedly is a Zionist state, is really a state founded in the shadow of the Holocaust, as many will constantly remind you … and the “lesson” of the Holocaust to many is never again will we Jews be weak in defending ourselves). And the Palestinians need to take a leap of faith that if they do something major to help ease along peace, they will get rewarded with increased concessions from Israel (c.f. one of J. Zasloff’s points above).
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 am
Chris,
How is your proposed one state solution going to work? If a Muslim majority wants a Muslim state, it may require a secularist dictatorship to keep it secular. And we know how well that works in terms of human rights, etc. (c.f. Hussein, Saddam).
Certainly any solution to the I/P problem must greatly improve the status of Palestinians. But not at the cost of the rights of Jews to live freely (of course the Ultra-Orthodox religious establishment in Israel, as mentioned above, also interferes with the rights of Jews to live freely as Jews, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue).
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 am
As a thought-experiment/fantasy, I wonder what would happen if Israel just unilaterally withdrew all settlements beyond the 1967 border, withdrew all occupation forces in areas past this border, told the Palestinians the area beyond the border was theirs but there would be no “right of return” to within Israel’s borders, and built a major security wall along the border. How would Palestinian public opinion react to this? Would more moderate leaders have a better chance of winning elections, with less clear Israeli oppression to be resentful of? Even if the leaders wanted to continue to attack Israel, how much damage could they actually inflict? Maybe in this fantasy scenario, in addition to the security wall I should add a super-efficient robot missile defense system…
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:13 am
Why should Israel have to go back to the 1967 borders? It seems to me that if countries A,B,C,etc. amass armies on the border of country X and country X decides not to wait to be driven into the sea by said amassed armies but rather attacks first and ends up winning a lot of territory, country X gets to keep the land they won.
The Arab nations made a gamble in 1967. They lost. Israel won. Until Israel won, the rule was nations got to keep lands they won in such a situation (i.e. in a defensive war). How come once Israel wins like this the rules change?
*
Re. one of my previous comments (about the need for a leap of faith): the situation is really like the House of Sand and Fog, ain’t it (if it were the case that the Persian family in the movie had some Native American religious and ethnic heritage that gave them additional claim to the land they purchased from the government — analogous to Britain — that was “rightfully” the woman’s — analogous to the Palestinians)? Who was being illogical and un-ethical in that movie?
*
if the Palestinians insist on starting negotiations with “shut your government down and go back where your ancestors came from”, they aren’t going to get anywhere. – Thlayli
Of course, many Jews do have at least partial Hebrew ancestry, so that place would be Israel, wouldn’t it?
As to El Cid’s (was it him?) claim about nations’ vs. individuals’ right to exist, I would in the abstract agree with him, but two points need to be raised:
(1) the USA has no “right to exist” in theory but de facto the only nation who’s “right to exist” is meaningfully being challenged is Israel
(2) what would a “one state” solution mean to the rights of Jews? what would even a return to 1967 borders mean? No more visiting of Jewish holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem as was prevented pre-1967?
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:13 am
Sorry, Isreali Skynet link should be here.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:25 am
Back to MY’s original point. Let’s look at the two statements again:
If Israel dismantled all its settlements tomorrow, Hamas would not turn around and renounce violence; but if Hamas were to recognize Israel the path to reconciliation would be far easier to achieve.
May be true, but the problem is that many Palestinians have no evidence to believe it. What evidence is there and how is it reasonable to believe that, if Hamas did not exist, Israel would suddenly make meaningful concessions to allow a viable Palestinian state to exist?
If Hamas were to recognize Israel tomorrow tomorrow, Israel would not turn around and renounce settlements; but if Israel were to dismantle all settlements the path to reconciliation would be far easier to achieve.
Again, this may be true, but what evidence is there and why should any Israeli think this statement is reasonable?
Let’s not be racist pricks who figure that the Palestinians are simply being unreasonable, hot-headed brown people, and let’s not be anti-Semitic pricks who assume first that Israel is being teh evil Zay-on-ist entity here. C.f. my comments above regardin the need for a Leap of Faith. Both of the statements “quoted” by MY may be true, but the reason the conflict persists is that there is no rationality for either side to believe the other side’s version of the statement is true.
Until such time as Israelis understand why Palestinians have no reason to believe Cohen’s version of the statement is true, there will be no peace. Until such time as the Palestinians understand why the Israelis don’t believe MY’s revision of the statement is true, there will be no peace.
My question is why naive liberals somehow are so convinced that both statements are true: especially that MY’s version is true?
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:05 am
Yeah, right Al. Israel was in such great and imminent danger of being pushed into the sea by overwhelming forces of evil Arabs that they won the Six Day War. It was Davey and Goliath and—whoo-hoo!—land grab!
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:14 am
Jesse, according to Netanyahu, if Israel allowed Palestinians a state, its airspace, border traffice, and electronic communications would be controlled by Israel, and the Palestinians would not be allowed to have a standing military. In other words, they wouldn’t really be allowed to have a state.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:50 am
Jonathan Zasloff, do you have any inkling how completely insane you sound to anyone outside the echo chamber that is elite discussion of Israel in the US? Everyone else on earth has spent the last week watching the Israeli air force kill 400 of the poorest, most miserable people on this planet, using US weapons. Seven years ago 3000 Americans were killed in retaliation, in part, for US support for Israeli policies.
And here you are, right as Gaza is being bombed, arguing that, well, no Arabs have ever made a REAL peace offer…oh, well, there was the Saudi peace plan, but that didn’t include any language about refugees…oh, well, it DID include language about refugees, but that was just boilerplate…oh, well, Arafat DID in the most prominent way possible explain in non-boilerplate what Palestinians need, but that wasn’t the REAL Palestinian position…oh, well, maybe it was the real Palestinian position, but he didn’t deliver it while standing on his head and dressed in a giant banana costume…etc., etc., etc.
What’s obvious to anyone who actually wants peace is this: the Palestinians have gone 100% as far as they possibly can in public on the refugee question without a final agreement. They can hint, they can write op-eds in the New York Times, they can tell Clinton they’re willing to accept a limited number of symbolic refugees returning to Israel proper (as Arafat did before Camp David, according to Charles Enderlin), they can discuss among themselves how they can do it if they get a final deal (Clayton Swisher), but they’re not going to show up at the Knesset tomorrow to declare “There is no right of return, and Israel bears no responsibility for what happened to the refugees in the first place!”
As the Clinton parameters say about refugees, “the differences are more relating to formulations and less to what will happen on a practical level.” Yet the entire world witnessed Israel refusing to even respond to the Saudi peace plan (ironically what Arafat supposedly did in the standard bullshit histories of Camp David) based on the refugee issue. Apparently if Israel sat down to talk, they would get close to an agreement until at THE VERY LAST MINUTE the Palestinians would insist on an unlimited right of return and the Israelis would be forced to give in and Israel would be destroyed!!!!!
Obviously this is ridiculous. The logical conclusion everyone has drawn is that the Israeli government either (1) cares more about words and formulations than peace, or (2) is not willing to accept the rest of the Saudi peace plan, and the refugee question is simply the current excuse.
Meanwhile, here in the world everyone else lives in, no Israeli government or peace group has ever made any “concessions.” At the very, very outside (eg, Gush Shalom), they propose that Israel follow international law. Meanwhile, all movement has been on the Palestinian side, offering things to Israel that international law does not require them to give.
Finally:
Bill Clinton, January 7, 2001:
And note specifically that the parameters say the refugees should have five options, including “5. Admission to Israel…consistent with Israel’s sovereign decision.”
In other words, precisely what Arafat offered, in the most public way imaginable.
BUT WHERE WAS HIS GIANT BANANA COSTUME!?!?!?
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:32 am
Does every set of parties expected to negotiate the end of a war, civil war, rebellion, or occupation have some presumed requirement to recognize the “right” of the other to exist? hımm myhome go in thank : http://www.makkale.blogcu.com
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:01 am
It’s a sign of how hopelessly polarized this subject has become that a blog post like this—utterly banal and self-evidently true—would be controversial to anyone, let alone to perhaps the majority of interested parties.
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:11 am
That’s because Matt only uses the issue
as a means of distancing himself from the
Feith-Lieberman-Peretz crowd.
AIPAC is his Sisyphean Sister Soulijah.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:37 am
In other news, did you see that MY is featured in the Iseman/McCain lawsuit against NYT? See page 21 of this:
http://libn.com/files/2008/12/iseman-complaint.pdf
January 3rd, 2009 at 8:25 am
The PLO recognized Israel.
Ehud Barak STILL refused to implement even the most minor negotiated points that he PROMISED to enact.
The only way the anti-muslim side of this gets away with the BS they spew is to keep pretending that Israel want’s peace. Israel clearly does not want peace. They want land, and are willing to spill gallons of palestinian and israeli blood to get it.
January 3rd, 2009 at 10:14 am
All of this begs the question of how any of this is the United States’ problem – or even its legitimate business.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 am
Soullite – There was a negotiation. It did not succeed in reaching an agreement. Since there was no agreement, there were no “negotiated points” to implement.
I offer you $5000 for a used car. You agree to sell me the car, but insist on $6000. I won’t pay $6000. You are under no obligation to give me the car.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:18 am
wondering: You may wish to work on that analogy, seeing as that part of it involves an illegally appropriated car and there is in place a community demanding an arbitrated settlement of the dispute seeing as how for generations this has been creating chaos in all the surrounding used car dealerships.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Resisting a despicable Occupation and a Forced Starvation Blockade by any means necessary is what all brave and righteous people. The fact that the Occupiers and Nazi Oppressors are Jews does not mitigate their Crimes. Of course, if the scope of your humanity is that “only Jews suffer” – then you need to move to a goyim-free outer space.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
It’s true that Israel would be giving up something tangible. It’s also true that the land isn’t theirs. It seems to even out, in my view.
I don’t think this can work. It’s analogous to American settlement in Indian territory. The U.S. government would strike an agreement with Indian tribes over respective sovereignty. American settlers would nonetheless continue to move into Indian land (the U.S. government being unable and unwilling to prevent them). The Indian tribes would then take punitive action against the settlers. Tensions would build. The settlers would appeal for help to the U.S. government with lurid tales of ‘redskins’ abducting white women. The U.S. government would then ‘reluctantly’ pressure the Indian tribes into another cession of land. Lather, rinse, repeat.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
rfv–
I really don’t want to descend into insults here, but here is the issue. If the United States proposed the Clinton parameters to be the basis of discussion and set forth the People’s Voice as a Security Council resolution, presumably you would support it, as would I. I would be willing to make quite a large wager that it would be condemned by every Arab country, and also by France and Russia. I hope I am wrong about this.
Regarding Arafat, I didn’t want him dressed up in a banana costume; I wanted him to actually say something publicly that he could be held accountable for. He “accepted” the parameters–with of course a million qualifications that undermined them. Clinton himself said so both at the time and afterwards. And your scenario of all these hints and then backing off at the last minute is precisely what Arafat did repeatedly. During the very week that Clinton made that statement, the PLO negotiating team issued a statement saying that it couldn’t accept the parameters because they gave up the right of return.
That said, the man is dead. Find me some people, not in the PA, but in civil society, who could endorse the Clinton parameters and the People’s Voice publicly–as thousands of Jewish peace activists have done. You can’t. It’s always qualified, and hedged, and private, and well we didn’t really mean that. The beauty of the People’s Voice accord is that it is two pages, and extremely clear. That’s also why no major Palestinian, Arab, or Arab-American will sign the thing.
Put another way, where are the Amos Ozs, the AB Yehoshuas, the David Grossmans on the Arab and Palestinian side? All of these people have been attacked and villified by the Sa’ids of the world as fakes, racists, and imperialists. Plenty of Israelis say, “we have to get out of the territories.” No Palestinians say, “we’re not going to be able to go back to Haifa and Jaffa”.
When the United States proposed UN Resolution 1397, envisioning Israel and Palestine living side by side, it was accepted–but only if it made no references to Israel as a Jewish state.
As for Gaza, of course it is horrible. But as Egypt, and the PA, and the Germans, and even the Saudis have said, it is Hamas’ fault. You can’t start a war with someone, have them fire back, and then complain that they are killing your people. You can’t start a campaign of suicide bombings, vow to destroy Israel, say that you are allied with Hamas and Iran, take over a territory, and then expect that Israel is just going to sit there and wait for you to strengthen yourself. Hamas has a nice little game here: they hold the population hostage, attack Israel, and then blame Israel for harming the hostages. They are the Branch Davidians of the Middle East.
The same people who are complaining about Gaza have nothing to say about Darfur, or about Tibet. They were silent on Rwanda. They said nothing about Congo. They have backed Mugabe for years. If they think that I’m crazy, so be it. I read the Guardian every day, and it’s a good paper, but I’m happy to disagree with them.
But the bottom line is once again what I said at the beginning: you think that there are so many Arabs, Palestinians, and Arab-Americans who are willing to accept the Parameters and the People’s Voice? Fine. Put them in touch with me. I’m happy to work to start the movement.
website is: http://www.samefacts.com
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Ha, rfv’s demolition of Zasloff above is very funny. I know a lot of guys like Zasloff — highly educated, informed American Jews who just can’t face up to what Israel’s behavior over the past twenty years says about the country’s priorities.
Also, speaking of Zasloff, his contention above that an Israeli government could say to the settlers “stay on the West Bank, but we won’t bail you out” is really impossible. The Israeli government could never stand by and allow Jews in the West Bank to be imprisoned or killed by the Palestinian authorities, or to be the subject of violence from Palestinians, even if such violence was in self-defense. If you don’t get that you haven’t been paying attention. The presence of Jews on the West Bank makes Palestinian sovereignty impossible for this reason.
But I have to say some of Al’s posts above are rather good. Not the BS about some Israeli “right of conquest” on the post-67 territories. But the ones about how hardliners on both sides are behaving rationally in a conflict that is basically insoluble by peaceful means. It is hard to face up to the possibility that the conflict cannot be resolved because there is just too little land for two peoples to live next to each other and both have genuine sovereignty.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I wouldn’t support the Clinton Parameters because they tried to keep about 100,000 settlers in the West Bank and similarly lots of settlers in East Jerusalem. In fact, Clinton’s Parameters wanted to keep more than half of the around (now) 420,000 settlers on the land conquered by Israel in 1967.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement
Of course, the settler-enabling feature of the Clinton proposal is euphemised and obscured by its defenders, including Zasloff, whose recent post on samefacts.com said that settlements were not the problem because “Because Bill Clinton offered to get rid of them in December 2000″ (URL below). But of course Clinton didn’t offer to get rid of them at all — and the punchline “because Clinton offered to get rid of less than half of them in December 2000″ has something less of a punch.
So, no, I won’t be signing up for the Clinton Parameters. I’ll support something that’s less orientated towards the goals of jewish colonial chauvinism. That would include, at minimum, the removal of all 420,000 jewish settlers. Only bigotry can support keeping them in place, even if many bigots wants to dress up their proposals under the guise of pragmatism.
http://www.samefacts.com/archives/israel_/2008/12/not_futility_honesty.php
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I thought negotiations were about coming to some final status agreement.
If Israeli negotiation-blockers are frightened that Palestinians are going to demand things that they don’t want to give up, why don’t we hire someone to explain what negotiations are, and how lots of people keep certain things vague until there’s an agreement?
Are people frightened that Israeli negotiators will accidentally approve some refugee return strategy and then say, ooops, we just lost that city? Or that once a Palestinian state is established with clear and sovereign borders on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, the ‘assumptions’ before the negotiations will hold some mystic power to affect post-statehood affairs?
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Huh? Sari Nussibeh, Palestinian civil society moderate, is the coauthor of the People’s Voice statement, but there are no Palestinian civil society moderates who would sign on to the Peoples Voice statement? I don’t get it.
Seriously, Palestinian civil society, once very rich and multivocal, has been really ripped apart by the descent into violence and poverty that has occurred since the 1980s, a descent that is as much Israel’s fault as the Palestinians.
One reason you see a richer civil society in Israel is that its a lot easier to have a peaceful internal conversation about sensitive issues in a wealthy country with strong institutions that keep order and where everyday people are not subjected to constant harassment and violence. Israel has not permitted the Palestinians to have strong internal institutions because such institutions are invariably tied to Palestinian nationalist organizations (the link between nationalism and institution-building is true in all nations).
The same people who are complaining about Gaza have nothing to say about Darfur, or about Tibet. They were silent on Rwanda. They said nothing about Congo. They have backed Mugabe for years.
Jesus, this is such complete and total irrelevant BS. I wonder where you’re getting your information from. I’m complaining about Gaza, and I haven’t “backed Mugabe for years”. The same is true of many of my friends! Why didn’t we show up on your survey?
More broadly, the argument that you can’t fix any injustice until you’ve fixed every injustice is the height of silliness. People do and should focus more on injustices that they themselves are implicated in. Since Israel is a major American client and ally, and since American Jews also have ties to Israel, we should be more concerned about Israeli behavior. Not because it’s the worst injustice in the world (although it does rank up there), but because it is *our political problem*.
January 3rd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
MQ, I agree with you that this quote suggests the writer has completely lost it.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
If you want to raise Darfur / Sudan as an objection to Israeli / Palestinian negotiations, well, you may wish to choose a different comparison, because negotiations have been ongoing for quite a while among some pretty unsavory parties without the international community hiding and whining about how imperfect one or the other side is.
Yet along with the Sudanese government claiming a particular set of military victories, the negotiations and accords clearly seemed to have helped end mass killings for the moment at least. Perhaps this is another region of the world in which some final status talks need to be internationally arbitrated.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
The bombs all say “Made in USA” on them, and we sell them to Israel at a discount.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Here I must admit you’ve got me. Sure, according to Sari Nusseibeh in 2007, “we got more than 200,000 signatures on the Palestinian side.” But the crucial point is that none of the signatories were wearing banana costumes, nor standing on their heads.
Thus, despite your incredibly deep yearning for peace and desire to work with anyone in Palestinian society who feels the same, you will be forced once again to spend your time tonight pondering where to have dinner in Westwood. Meanwhile, the people of Gaza will return to their role, which is watching their children die of dysentery.
Yes. As you’ve pointed out, there’s incredibly deep support on the US/Israeli side for just such a Security Council resolution. Sadly, some type of invisible force is preventing the US from introducing it. If only America were a more powerful country! Then we would FINALLY be able to demonstrate who the REAL obstacles to peace are!
Good point. Meanwhile, I understand there are some particularly distasteful Hamas “intellectuals” who are obsessed with the fact that, in direct violation of the Clinton parameters, Barak sent a letter on January 4, 2001 to Israel’s chief rabbis, saying he would never allow Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount. These hardliners will also point out that the Israeli cabinet then reiterated this on January 21, 2001.
But the most ridiculous part is that they then extrapolate from this that Israel has no willingness to live in peace with the Palestinians. What amazing clowns — truly the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity!
Again, a good point. Plenty of Israelis say, “We should follow international law.” But no Palestinians say “We should give up our rights under international law.” (Except for 200,000 of them who don’t actually exist due to the banana suit problem — see above.)
OH MY GOD I HAD NO IDEA.
Truly, I have not been so shocked since the government of Poland said the Korean War was South Korea’s fault.
Ball’s in your court, Mr. Lux et Veritas.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
It is hard to face up to the possibility that the conflict cannot be resolved because there is just too little land for two peoples to live next to each other and both have genuine sovereignty.
This is the crux. Small states are doable. Small states with large minorities are doable. Small states with large minorities that have a contentious historical relationship with the ruling ethnic group (Latvia, Estonia) are just about doable. A small state that looks like the inside of a pomegranate is not doable.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:07 pm
You’re completely mistaken about this one.
If Hamas were to acknowledge the state of Israel as legitimate tomorrow, and were willing to enter into sincere negotiations, the settlements would be gone.
Land for peace is a stance Israel has had to accept for the course of its existence.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:08 pm
What if we just renamed Gaza to Southern Philistia?
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:18 pm
rfv–
I find it depressing that while I have never questioned your honesty or intentions, the more that I keep asking you to give me some names of people who would actually join in an effort to support the People’s Voice plan here in the US, the more you continue to throw out sarcasm and personal insults. When I ask you who among the Palestinians actually publicly supports People’s Voice, you can’t answer, because even with 200K supporters, none of the leadership or any major figure would come along, and so you decide to talk about banana suits. That might tell you something.
Shlomo Ben-Ami was foreign minister; he has endorsed the Clinton Parameters and People’s Voice. Yossi Beilin was justice minister; he has endorsed the Clinton parameters and People’s Voice. AB Yehoshua and Amos Oz are two of Israel’s leading literary figures; they have endorsed the Clinton Parameters and People’s Voice. Ami Ayalon came very close to knocking off Barak for head of the Labor Party: he WROTE People’s Voice. Avraham Burg was Speaker of the Knesset and head of the Jewish Agency: he endorsed the Clinton Parameters and People’s Voice. The entire Meretz Party was based on this framework. None of them has anyone to talk to.
As for “international law,” that’s simply begging the question of what international law is. As you well know, the right of return is not part of international law, and assuming that UNGAR 194 grants it, it is advisory like all GA resolutions.
As for the US being more or less powerful, the fact remains that you can’t get a UN resolution through if someone will veto it or if you can’t get a majority. The US found that out very clearly in the run-up to the Iraq War.
No, it’s not the job of the Palestinians in Gaza to die: it’s the job of their leaders, in politics, in civil society, in the Arab diaspora, in Arab countries–to give them some leadership. They haven’t. And no amount of rewriting Arafat’s record to turn him into a saint will change that.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I guess the fact that the stated goal of Hamas is to annihilate Israel is a real puzzler for Matt. Sure, Israel is loathe to tear down settlements, and that’s a real problem. However, they would enter into negotiations over that. Hamas is interested only in a short term Hudna, not in a long term peace. Until people in the West recognize that reality, no progress will happen.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Utter bullshit. In the negotiations with Arafat, Clinton/Israel never offered to remove as many as half of the settlers in East Jerusalem/West Bank. That, after having used the time since the Oslo accords to massively increase the number of settlers. The PLO recognised Israel and Israel used it to settle more and more.
Carter only got territorial concessions out of Israel by extreme pressure, and Eisenhower needed repeated threats of economic sanctions to get settlements out of the land Israel conquered in the Suez operation.
So, to the contrary, Israel has only ever responded to harsh pressure from the United States on territory and settlements, and taken consistent advantage of concessions from arabs to expand settlements.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
It’s not surprising that Israel supported the Clinton parameters. They were drawn up to satisfy Israeli colonial goals, and to offer very little to the Palestinians in East Jerusalem or the nearby West Bank, and the landswap/compensation provisions might have been used to expell Israeli arabs from Israel.
Why not support a complete return to the 1967 borders, with all Israeli settlers removed from East Jerusalem and the West Bank? The only thing stopping it is Israeli chauvinism and desire to colonise, as well as those enablers who try to exaggerate the concessions that Israel has already made.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
MQ and Otto–
The point about Rwanda etc. was simply referring to rfv’s statement that I must be out of my mind because the rest of the world thinks differently that the US. My response is that the rest of the world isn’t very good authority. I don’t think anyone should take lectures from the French, the Russians, or the Chinese about international morality. That’s all; it doesn’t say anything about whether or not the current war is or is not justified.
Otto continues to insist that the Clinton parameters left thousands of “settlers” in place; I say no, because there would be border adjustments–Palestine would get some Israeli territory in compensation. Its’ not 1-to-1, and there Otto has a point; but to say that the Clinton parameters leave the settlements in place is not really a good reading of things.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Otto–
Why is it important to you to have the settlement blocks hugging the border (i.e. not Ariel or Maaleh Adunim) to go to a Palestinian state, instead of having a one-to-one border adjustment, like People’s Voice says? Is it the quality of the land? I don’t even think that that is a Palestinian demand. For myself, it’s sort of six of one, half a dozen of another. If we could find someone credible to run the Old City who is neither Jewish or Palestinian, that would make things better.
The key, as always, is refugees. I remain unconvinced that there are Arabs, Palestinians, or Arab-Americans who are willing to take a clear stand on this, but I would be delighted to be proved wrong.
For what it’s worth, I and several others contacted ATFP, MPAC, several prominent local citizens here in LA, and Rashid Khalidi, to see if they were interested. They all said thanks but no thanks.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:39 pm
These two things are very different:
1. Clinton proposed to ‘get rid’ of the settlers
and
2. Clinton proposed that the majority of settlers (100,000s of them, in East Jerusalem and the West Bank) would stay, but that the Palestinians would be ‘compensated’ with land elsewhere of less value to the Israelis.
Honestly requires that 2. is not presented as 1, as it is much clearer why 2. is not an attractive offer than 1.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Robertson? Hush. Adults are talking, and throwing around a vocabulary drawn from LGF and other sewers just makes you look dumb.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:46 pm
Why is it important to you, and more importantly Israel, to keep its bigoted settler colonies, than remove them all? The onus should be on those justifying racist colonialism/settlers, not those trying to remove them. You take jewish settler chauvinism as one of the values to be assuaged in the deals you want to offer the Palestinians. I don’t.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
By the way, if you want concessions on refugees, you should be offering maximum generous terms on other issues which you do not claim to care about, i.e. removing all 420,000 of those settlers. But of course if you actually want your colonies, as Israel does, that trade-off is more difficult.
January 3rd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Otto–
Hmm. Okay, then as far as I’m concerned, we were talking past each other. It would seem to me obvious that an agreement with land swaps would mean that one side would value one piece of land more than the other, and vice-versa.
Now, it’s certainly true that if someone had argued “well, I offered to get rid of settlements–I just proposed to annex all of the West Bank!” would clearly be a dishonest statement. But to say, “we’re not going to leave settlements with a bunch Orthodox crazies armed to the teeth in the middle of your country and instead just swap land” is tantamount to “getting rid” of them.
If I were the Palestinian negotiating team, I would much prefer to have the Triangle than the settlement blocs. The problem, as you allude to, is that the people IN the Triangle probably don’t want to go because they would rather live in Israel than in Palestine for a variety of reasons.
It seems to me that the folks calling for a one-state solution to the problem could use this as a test case for their arguments that appropriate international institutions could protect disfavored minorities.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Otto #84:
IMHO, most of the settlers are not the religious crazy folks: they are people who got a great deal on a mortgage from the government. I carry no brief for the Kahanists, and –and here is where we might disagree most sharply — I don’t think that most Israelis do, either. I KNOW that most American Jews don’t.
In my view, the only settlements that have any justification are those that 1) are there for security reasons, i.e. protecting the approaches to Ben-Gurion Airport; AND 2) do not interfere with the Palestinian state’s viability (i.e. not in the Jordan Valley–thus Brzezinski’s proposal for a US presence there might be a bridge). And there, it would have to be accompanied by a 1-to-1 land swap.
A few years ago, I proposed the 1967 borders as long as the Palestinians agreed to take Mea Sharim and B’nai Brak off our hands.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
The problem is that Israel is using the compensate-with-landswap idea to both keep the settlers and to drive out many Israeli arabs — to get racist settler colonialism and ethnic cleansing as compensation for each other. So it’s double bigotry on the Israeli jewish side, and not at all surprising that the palestinian arabs and the Israeli arabs aren’t expressing enthusiasm.
You make it sound like it’s two individuals in Vermont swapping a patch of land between their holiday homes. Of course the Palestinians might value land with many Palestinian arabs less than the land with jewish settlers on it, but still ‘accept it’ because they are an occupied people seeking to get what they can from the bigots who’ve colonised them and mistreated them for decades. Palestinians leaders might be found who would agree to a landswap they detest not because they “would value one piece of land more than the other” in some Coaseian deal, but because of persistent coercion and impoverishment that would not cease until they agreed.
The liberal solution is to return to the 1967 borders with the removal of all 420,000 settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. You are handy with the phone – perhaps you might ring around jewish groups and Israeli political parties and see if they will agree? Or perhaps they want their colonies, and perhaps the chance to drive out some Israeli arabs, too much.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I love the commenter who wants to plug his ears and pretend that Hamas is not interested in the destruction of Israel. If you really want to see how they (and much of the Muslim world) looks at this, then consider the Crusader States (and the Arab response to them) of the 11th and 12th centuries. You might learn a lot by reading “The Crusades through Arab Eyes”.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
“off our hands”? Are you Israeli, Jonathan Z.?
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Otto–
It seems to me that that is a nonsequitur: the Palestinians shouldn’t accept a one-to-one land swap because of the occupation. The second doesn’t follow from the first. We don’t know that they hate it, and we don’t know that it is unfair. It’s not a Vermont guest house, but ain’t Switzerland, either (which is what the one-staters’ position is.).
Similarly, it’s not racist to say that Palestinians live in a Palestinian state and Jews live in Israel. It’s a practical concession to reality: multiethnic societies have an abysmal record in the Middle East.
But your position DOES follow from your seeming assumption that anything and everything about Israel and Zionism is colonialist. If you accept, as you seem to, that from its origins, and in its very essence, Zionism was (and is) a racist, colonialist movement, then of course, no Israeli demands would be legitimate on anything. No wonder, then, that any Jew living in, say East Jerusalem is a “racist settler.” The implication of this position is that any Jewish claim to any part of East Jerusalem is illegitimate racism. I don’t agree.
It might be unfair if it isn’t compensated by something else: but that doesn’t seem to be your argument.
I don’t see why land exchanges are inherently illegitimate if one accepts (as I do) that both Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are legitimate national movements. You don’t seem to: in your telling, Palestinian nationalism is legitimate and Zioinism is racist/colonialist.
You can have that position, and we can argue about it, but then that hardly seems to be a sturdy basis for a two-states-for-two-peoples solution.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Otto #90:
I’m not an Israeli, but you seem to be a literary theorist. You seem to really like taking phrases out of context and then accusing the utterer of racism. Are you a Columbia literature professor?
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
The tiny and powerless Hamas’ desire to destroy Israel, military behemoth and nuclear power, is not a convincing reason to avoid settling the illegal occupation.
However, the establishment of statehood and the undercutting of Hamas’ role as a resistance movement would seriously compromise the power of Hamas.
And, of course, even if a state is established, that Israeli military is still there. It’s not like a Hamas-led Palestinian state would suddenly grow 500x larger and have some fearsome air force.
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I asked if you were an Israeli because you wrote “off our hands” in a way that implied that ‘our’ was ‘Israel’s’. No literary theory required!
I wrote only that just because the Palestinians might be forced to agree to it doesn’t mean that they value the land they are accepting more than then land they are giving up, as your claim implied. You still seem to be clueless on this.
Yes, Israeli claims to settlers in any of the West Bank or East Jerusalem are driven by colonial bigotry. Other Israeli demands may be more legitimate, but not the ones driven by the desire to impose and keep settlers. And you seem now to be introducing a defence of jewish claims to settle East Jerusalem into your demands for a final outcome. Maybe it’s not just the Palestinians who have their stupid demands after all — maybe its those who support Jewish claim settle East Jerusalem. Perhaps you could ring round some Israeli groups and see who is committed to that, as it would be useful to know? Indeed, if this is one of your desiderata, it would have been much better to be clear from the start.
Indeed, your samefacts.com blogpost could do with a lot of updating: your position, uncovered stage by stage, appears to be:
- keep 100,000 or so settlers in the West Bank
- keep jewish settlers in East Jerusalem
- keep the door open to driving some Israeli arabs out of Israel
plus
- expressing amazement why this offer is not much supported by arab groups or leaders. Indeed, I can hardly understand it myself.
Of course the Palestinians should live in a Palestinian state, but that does not mean that Israel should be able to drive the Israeli arabs out of Israel. I can support neither further jewish colonialism on the land conquered in 1967, nor more ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian arabs from Israel – nor using one to justify the other, as many in Israel wish to do, as the double-bigot gambit.
And yes, Palestinian nationalism is anticolonialist and that is much more legitimate in general than colonialist nationalism. Israel needs nothing of the land conquered in 1967 for security reasons, only for chauvinist ones, and so all the settlers should go.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Otto–
No need to update my position; I’ve been advocating for People’s Voice for as long as it’s been around. I advocated it in that post, and other posts.
You may think it’s bigoted to say that Jews should live in Israel, and Palestinians should live in a Palestinian state. I don’t. Note that if the Triangle is part of a land swap, no one will be driven out of anywhere. What WILL happen is that they will no longer be Israeli citizens–in the same way that they were no longer Jordanian citizens when Jordan ceded the Triangle to Israel in 1949. The question is whether that is legitimate: I believe that it is for several practical reasons, but doing that and washing one’s hands of the matter would not be.
So, for example, in an attempt to be constructive, I would suggest as a starter:
–allowing people in the Triangle to keep their NIH benefits (which may sound silly but is actually of enormous importance);
–giving them Protected Status under US immigration law in case the Palestinian state turns out to be a brutal dictatorship;
–having an international presence in the Triangle (if desired by the residents there) to protect them (maybe Jordanian forces);
–massive development aid yadda yadda yadda
Yes, I do express amazement that there are no Arab leaders who are willing to make serious, painful concessions in the same way that the Israeli peace movement is able to, for example:
–having a hostile state on your border, which will be in a perfect position to lob missiles into your cities, as they have done and have repeatedly declared their intention to do, because of their alliance with Hizbullah;
–forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of your citizens, most of whom are not Kahanists;
–no longer being sovereign over the Temple Mount (which personally doesn’t matter to me-in fact I want the biggest Palestinian flag in the world flying over Al Aqsa for religious, moral and political purposes)
–dividing Jerusalem and creating a perpetual state of insecurity for Jewish worship there
–having to spend on the order to tens of billions of dollars/shekels in refugee compensation
–risking that a new Palestinian leader will arise who throws out all of these understandings, and brings up the Right of Return, only to be supported by the EU, the Arab League, etc.
So if I were a right-winger, I would, as you say, “express amazement that any Jews would support this.”
But that’s what a peace deal is about. It is about compromise between two legitimate national movements. It is about a lot of people doing what they don’t want to do. There’s no other way. As long as each side sees the other somehow illegitimate–”colonialist”, in your parlance, it won’t happen.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:38 pm
None of the above justifies or excuses your support of expelling many arabs from Israel and colonising the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Both of those political goals are marks of intense bigotry, even if both are staples of Israeli jewish politics, including ‘liberal’. Neither of these goals can be whitewashed under the guise of compromise, and it disgraces you and for that matter samefacts.com that you advocate them.
When I first read your samefacts.com piece, I thought you were just clueless about Clinton’s proposal. But in fact you well understood all its accommodation of Israeli colonial chauvinism, although that was well disguised in your original post, and you actually appear to advocate both expelling many arabs from Israel and keeping 100,000s of jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. It’s not a surprise that these sorts of colonialist/expulsionist sentiments frequently lie behind the claims that Israel/Clinton made Arafat a generous offer, but I am surprised to see these sentiments marketed under Mark Kleiman’s umbrella.
January 3rd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Well, I am glad to know that you understand my inner thoughts so much better than I do. It must be comforting to believe that everyone who disagrees with you is racist bigoted colonialist expulsionist.
January 3rd, 2009 at 8:04 pm
Jonathan Zasloff:
I haven’t questioned your honesty or intentions either. Indeed, it’s your “honesty” and “intentions” that makes your statements so horrifying, particularly on a day like today. Reread Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
Back to the subject at hand, at first you were demanding names of people “not in the PA, but in civil society” who supported People’s Voice. I pointed out there were 200,000 of them. You responded that none of these people were in the “leadership,” and then listed a bunch of Israeli politician endorsers.
Obviously, the Palestinian counterpart to these Israeli politicians would be the PA. But in any case, there were prominent Palestinian supporters of People’s Voice both within the PA and “civil society,” however defined.
Haaretz:
Haaretz:
So here’s the last thing I have to say to you. I would be genuinely impressed if you:
1. Contact all the Palestinian leaders named here.
2. Point them to this exchange, specifically this statement: “Find me some people, not in the PA, but in civil society, who could endorse the Clinton parameters and the People’s Voice publicly…you can’t…no major Palestinian, Arab, or Arab-American will sign the thing.”
3. Ask them to educate you about Palestinian society. Reassure them that you will be listening, not talking.
4. Ask them what they’d like you to do, as an American with some real measure of power and prestige.
5. Do what they ask.
It would certainly make for some interesting blog posts. I’ll be reading to see if they show up.
January 4th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Thank you for the point everyone seems intent on wishing away. Hamas is a terrorist organization, despite their many humanitarian services for the people of Gaza. But, that fact has no bearing on the wrongful slaughter of innocent Palestinians by Israel. I am waiting for a US politician with balls enough to say that to Israel.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Alice AN,
What, in your opinion, would be the correct response from Israel to the unremitting rocket attacks from Hamas?
January 4th, 2009 at 2:33 am
Otto,
What’s so great about the pre-1967 borders, in your opinion? You do realize that these borders were based simply on the armistice lines from 1949? Remember, Palestinians and other Arabs weren’t satisfied with those borders before1967 — The PLO was founded when Arabs still controlled Gaza and the West Bank. What makes you think reverting to the pre-1967 borders would make them happy now?
January 4th, 2009 at 2:38 am
Once again, as long as people keep thinking that Israel is run by anybody but power seeking Zionist freaks – SELF-AVOWED power seeking Zionist freaks who have made public statements to that effect – when that clearly is the case, I can’t see how anybody expects a resolution to this short of 1) the destruction of all Palestinians in Palestine, or 2) the destruction of Israel.
There is no third alternative as long as Zionist freaks run Israel and Islamic freaks run Hamas.
The international community has to restructure the entire issue by reversing the 1947 partition of Palestine, dissolving the Israeli state, removing Israel’s nuclear arsenal, re-instituting a Palestinian state with a constitution which allows for Islamic AND secular law in a manner similar to Turkey and civil and religious rights for all citizens, and a territorial integrity guarantee to eliminate this bullshit about “existential threat to the Jews”.
This kicks out the Hamas freaks and the Zionist freaks by enforcing a solution that sidelines both to the fringe where both the Palestinian and Israeli populations want them to be.
Failing that, only one of the other two solutions would bring resolution to the problem – the absolute destruction of Israel. Because if you only destroy the Palestinians, the Zionist freaks will STILL be stirring up trouble with Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, and everywhere else – even Georgia! And the Islamic societies will still hate them, even if those societies don’t really give a damn about the Palestinians per se.
So the only viable option other than restructuring Palestine is the absolute destruction of Israel.
Make up your mind which option you want – because you only have those 2: make the Israeli STATE go out of business or make the Israeli population go out of business.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:45 am
“Make up your mind which option you want – because you only have those 2: make the Israeli STATE go out of business or make the Israeli population go out of business.”
Ah, nonsense. Wild-eyed Arabs/Palestinians have been chanting “Death to Israel” for decades. Today, Israel is far richer, more populous, and more successful than it has ever been before. Arabs sat impotently under Ottoman rule for 400 years. They’ll impotently whine about Israel for another 400.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Settlements have their roots in the original Zionist movement. Settlements were established in old Palestine to gain a foothold with the expectation that they would coalesce. I imagine Begin saying to himself and his party in 1979, it worked once as a strategy, lets do it again http://www.makkale.blogcu.com Settlements are not benign homesteads, rather they are intended to expand and coalesce. No Palestinian country is possible with such a disruptive presence in their midst. A move by Israel to remove settlements would be an excellent and necessary first step to peace.