In Perspective: Obama is right, it’s time for honesty
Jun. 11, 2009
Daniel Gordis , THE JERUSALEM POST
In the days leading up to his landmark speech in Cairo, US President Barack Obama said it was time for “honesty” between the United States and Israel. Now he has spoken, and we should respond in kind. For Obama is right – it is time, at long last, for honesty.
Too many analyses of the speech have ignored the fact that it was addressed primarily to the Muslim world, and was delivered in Egypt. And in that setting, Obama insisted that the US-Israel relationship could not be upended. He mentioned the Holocaust, (implicitly) berated Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his Holocaust denial, quoted the Talmud and called on Hamas to recognize Israel and abandon violence.
Not bad.
To be sure, it was not the speech that many Israelis would have written. Obama’s articulated position on Iranian nuclear power is unacceptable, just as an absolute freeze on natural growth in “settlements,” even in places where settlements are essentially cities, is both unfair and thoroughly unrealistic. And linking Israel’s right to exist to the Holocaust is a significant intellectual and moral mistake.
We could go on, but to spend our time pointing to all our disagreements with Obama while avoiding his call for honesty would be a mistake. With stunning clarity, he has told the world where he stands. Now it is time for us to do the same. What are we committed to? What are our red lines? Do we even know?
Ironically, what Obama’s first shots across the bows of both Israel and the Palestinians have inadvertently highlighted for us is that we’re a country that does not know how to be honest, even with itself. For too long we have avoided the national conversation that would have been required for us to have a vision as clear as Obama’s. Now is the time to have that conversation, and then, as Obama has requested, to be honest about what we decide.
WHERE SHOULD we begin? As but one example, let’s begin with some of the questions that the West Bank raises: Are we ever willing to give up the West Bank? For a moment, let’s set aside the obvious security issue and the devastating consequences if Kassam rockets start flying from the West Bank as well. Let’s assume for a minute (a wild assumption, I admit) that the Palestinians decide that it really is time to move on, to abandon terror and accept a division of the land. Are we willing?
I believe that we don’t know anymore. Our unwillingness to state our position is not a reflection of dishonesty or of hiding. It’s simply a result of the fact that we have for so long seen no possibility of progress on the Palestinian front that we’ve stopped asking ourselves what we would do if we could.
So let’s be honest: What would we do?
Are we willing to leave the West Bank, land that is no less ancestrally Jewish and religiously significant than any other part of Israel? If we are committed to staying there permanently, for historical, theological or even security reasons, isn’t it time just to say that? Or to annex it and stop pretending we haven’t made that decision?
When some of us speak about not making any change until the Palestinians have built a genuinely democratic infrastructure (bottom-up, we call it), are we serious? Or do we simply assume that they’ll never accomplish that under present circumstances, so what we’re effectively doing is announcing, though not with the “honesty” that Obama is rightly calling for, that we plan to stay, no matter what?
IF WE PLAN to stay, which could well be defensible, let’s be honest about the endgame. What do we plan for the Palestinian population there? The status quo forever? Are we going to make them citizens, and thus further erode Israel’s fragile Jewish majority? Are we going to give them some sort of citizenship that involves full civic rights but not the right to vote on matters that determine the nature of the state? Is that the democracy we seek? Do we have any alternative? Or are we planning to move the Palestinians to some other location (a plan which didn’t work very well with India and Pakistan, but which worked flawlessly in Cyprus)?
But if, alternatively, we do plan to leave the West Bank, what would we do if it turned into Hamastan, as happened in Gaza? We had no contingency plan for Gaza, and the results have been devastating. Will we make the same mistake again? And if we could solve the security issue, will we force all the Jews on the West Bank to leave? Or will we insist on their right to continue living there, even if under Palestinian rule?
And if Jews do have to be moved, are we accepting the international community’s tacit premise that only Jews can be moved (out of Gaza, and later, out of the West Bank)? Why can’t Arabs be moved? As even Benny Morris has noted, the Peel Commission “recommended that the bulk of the 300,000 Arabs who lived in the territory earmarked for Jewish sovereignty should be transferred, voluntarily or under compulsion, to the Arab part of Palestine or out of the country altogether,” and suggested that 1,250 Jews living in those areas slated for Arab sovereignty be moved as well, in “an exchange of population.”
How has it come to be that what the British once advocated we are too timid to raise? If Jews had to leave Gaza and might eventually have to leave the West Bank, is the movement of (some?) Arabs from Israel so it can remain a Jewish state so obviously out of the question? Why?
THESE ARE the questions we never discuss, because each of our leaders inherits a coalition so fragile that even raising such questions threatens to topple the government. So what if we were to use this new “crisis” as an opportunity?
What if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were to begin speaking with the Americans, and with any Palestinians who publicly recognize our right to exist, but at the same time forged a coalition of Labor, Kadima, Israel Beiteinu and Likud, all of which called for dramatic electoral reform? He’d have the votes needed to pass the reform (several plans are ready) and make Israel governable. He’d make it possible for Israelis to finally talk about the issues we never discuss in the public square. He’d end the cynical and self-destructive culture of “Yisrabluff,” and ultimately he’d make it possible for us to form a national consensus about which we could finally be honest – with the world, but more importantly, with ourselves.
Imagine that. If Netanyahu seized this opportunity, Barack Obama, despite everything we didn’t love about his Cairo address, might actually enable us to discuss our vision for the future of Israel.
And with that, Obama may have saved the Jewish state.
The writer is senior vice president of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His most recent book is Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End. He blogs at www.danielgordis.org.
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Tags: America, dispatch, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama
Dr. Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center, where he is also a senior fellow. The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel...
The Jewish State must end, say its enemies, from intellectuals like Tony Judt to hate-filled demagogues like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even average Israelis are wondering if they wouldn't be better off somewhere else. 
Daniel,
As always, thanks for your clarity. Good friends need to challenge each other, pose tough and sometimies painful questions.
Through both the tone and content of his Cairo speech, let’s hope that “Obama may have saved the Jewish state.”
Shabbat Shalom!
Daniel,
I can not agree that your hopes for Obama are anything that he can fulfill. I do not think that it is safe to be an apologist for Obama. With bittersweet emotion,I must say that the mold in which he was cast and raised, will not aid Israel in any way, at any time.
He is what he is (not what he seems) and we simply must brace for it.
Sandi
If the settlements remain in the West Bank and this territory does become a Palestinian State, Jews living there must be considered citizens of Palestine. If not, no Arabs living in Israel should have the right of Israeli citizenship.
The thing is that we don’t have answers to these questions. No one has. But you are right – we need to start asking such questions in public.
If, and that’s a big if, the Arabs agree to recognize Israel, I’d be in favor of a population exchange. That’s only fair. If the West Bank has to be Judenrein, the same should apply to the Arabs in Israel.
They won’t like it, but neither will the Jews of the West Bank. That’s life….
It’s worth it to have peace and a Jewish state.
If they don’t recognize Israel, we keep the West Bank and the hell with world opinion!
And no waffling, either. This should be their last chance!
Daniel,
Very happy to have made your acquaintance this morning. I like the piece you wrote and agree that we need some honest discussion about the future. Regrettably, it will not come about before the electoral system is changed and a stable, homogenous government is in place. But this will never happen because Israeli politicians, from Rabin and Sharon to Barak and Liberman, tend to do thoe opposite of what they promised before the elections, once elected. Good luck!
Spot on, as usual, Daniel.
It’s an unlikely mental picture : Barack Obama as Mama with a big spoonful of bitter medicine for us, and it would be nice if our unfriendly neighbors were choking down a similar dose.
There are many reasons, historical, geographical and political, for us to lie to ourselves, but it is time to relinquish victimhood and use a mirror that is undistorted.
Too bad our leadership isn’t, and hasn’t been, a collection of Pinocchios, whose lies would have caused noses to grow. Then, since our vital decisions seem to have been based on a world view that reaches no further than the ends of those noses, we might be able to see beyond the current crisis or the next election.
Sure, our adversaries lie to themselves and to the world, certainly more than we do, but it’s time for all of us to achieve some clarity and find another way. Didn’t Truman say, “ratify but verify?” How about that one?
Lack of candor is not necessarily lack of honesty. Historically, the lack of candor has served Israel well as long as push did not come to shove. It is still an open question whether the time has come to change that. For their part, the Arabs have been brutally honest – no Jewish state. Whether immediately, or in their never-retracted “policy of stages”. So, in putting our cards clearly on the table, whatever we set out will become the new “starting point” for the next round of negotiations to whittle down whatever the geographic and security aspects the people and government of Israel determine as their “red lines.” And the pressure will be on from Obama and friends, to concede even more. Remember, not so long ago, even the hint of considering re-dividing Jerusalem was far beyond any “red line” thought possible. Now, it has been offered by several preceding administrations. If the Jews of the world and Israel can set realistic requirements for survival, get behind them, and stand by them, come what may, then sure, O.K. So far, however, our record in that regard has not been stellar.
It is about time!!!!!!! I have been wondering for ages about the unspoken question: If Jews are moved out of the “West Bank” then the Arabs should be moved out of Israel. It is so obvious and no one has spoken till now!
Sir:
I came across this piece via Google News in The Jerusalem Post, and am I ever glad I did.
Not previously familiar with you (perhaps unsurprising, given I’m a non-Jewish American living in Southeast Asia who has never been closer to Israel than I am right now), I am deeply imp-ressed by your frank honesty in mentioning some of the troublesome, problematic questions the Israeli people, first and foremost, need to begin considering. As must their many friends abroad, particularly Jews.
Incidentallly, I thought Dr. Milek’s opening observation that “[l]ack of candor is not necessarily lack of honesty” to be especially insightful, a comment that informs and reinforces your own argument.
I wish all involved in that unhappy conflict well. And thanks for a positively brilliant piece.
Tough questions indeed, Dr. Gordis!
I believe that the question is not only of honesty, but of priorities. Are we as a society willing to continue to occupy and rule over the population of the West Bank in the name of an ideology that not all of us share, and in the name of security that it will not really bring, and possibly at the expense of our Jewish majority here?
Most Israelis are unaware of what goes on in the West Bank on a daily basis. There have been references on the comments on this blog attesting to the idea that the checkpoints are essential for Israel’s security and for preventing the terrible suicide bombings that we knew during the 1990s. This is one example of dishonesty. The half dozen checkpoints that are actually located on the Green Line are legitimate border crossings, and are essential for our security and comparable to border crossings between any two countries. The rest are not “crossings” at all, but “checkpoints” and prevent Palestinians from moving about in their own territory. They are not essential for Israeli security, since people have to go through another crossing anyway in order to enter Israel.
Is limiting the amount of water laborers can take across the border into Israel (during the hot summer months people are limited to one half liter bottle) essential to our security? Is limiting the amount of food people can take across (2 pita breads, a small container of cheese, no olives, a small tin of tuna fish, no home cooked food) essential for our security? Is punishing a person by taking his permit away for 30 days because he returned to the West Bank through a different checkpoint than he left it because he was busy at work in his own fields and failed to arrive at the same checkpoint before it closed -essential to our security?
It is time we put these fallacies aside and stop justifying what goes on by claiming that it is in the name of security. Most of it is not, but it is in the name of inertia, procrastination, and unnecessary subjugation of others. If we want a security barrier, it needs to be built on our piece of turf. Not theirs. If we want to check people entering Israel, it needs to be done at border crossings, and only at border crossings. And it needs to be done efficiently, and with dignity and respect.
The other thing we are not being honest about is the need for “natural growth” of settlements in the West Bank. Is it ethical for a city to actively usurp other people’s land in order to make room for natural growth of its residents, and make conditions that offspring of the present population must live in the same city? What about natural growth of Palestinian towns and villages?
It is time we stopped hiding behind excuses. The longer we procrastinate, the more excuses our government seems to come up with, and as they say, if you lie to people enough times, those lies eventually become the truth. And each of those excuses is cloaked in actions that are far from what I would call the Zionist idea and the set of ethics that go along with it.
Bracha Ben-Avraham
I have almost laughed when reading your comment because clearly you are such a good example of a person who does not want to ask tough questions, only those for which you have easy answers. So what do you have to say on this?
“But if, alternatively, we do plan to leave the West Bank, what would we do if it turned into Hamastan, as happened in Gaza? We had no contingency plan for Gaza, and the results have been devastating. Will we make the same mistake again?
. . .
How has it come to be that what the British once advocated we are too timid to raise? If Jews had to leave Gaza and might eventually have to leave the West Bank, is the movement of (some?) Arabs from Israel so it can remain a Jewish state so obviously out of the question? Why?”
Nodoby,
But if, alternatively, we do plan to leave the West Bank, what would we do if it turned into Hamastan?
I do not have all the answers, but I seldom make suggestions without thinking them out. You may accept or reject my answer:
If the West Bank were returned to the Palestinians and a state established, Hamas would have trouble getting a foothold there. Hahas ideology holds water in the eyes of the world and the majority of the Palestinian population only as long as Israel occupies the West Bank. I firmly believe that if the occupation of the West Bank ends, Hamas will lose much of its raison d’etre. If the West Bank were returned and the formation of a Palestinian state there were enabled, moderates would leave Hamas and it would splinter and weaken. Certainly its hard core fanatics would continue to promote the idea that Israel in any shape, size, or form, is unacceptable. But they would win no support in the international community and would be recognized as the fanatics they are. Israel with pre-67 borders would be in a far more favorable position in the international community than it is now.
Most important of all, we have an army, and the West Bank would be devoid of one. Israel would have international support in preventing any shipment of weapons to extremists in the West Bank. Remember that the West Bank is contingent only with Jordan and Israel. Would the Jordanians permit weapons smuggling? I doubt it.
Nobody,
If Jews had to leave Gaza and might eventually have to leave the West Bank, is the movement of (some?) Arabs from Israel so it can remain a Jewish state so obviously out of the question? Why?
It is not a matter of being timid. It is a matter of being wiser than the Breitish were 80 years ago who had little regard for either of the two population groups in the area, and primarily wanted to avoid additional bloodshed in Palestine. Their idea was bereft of concern for either side, and bereft of ethics. No Arab will be willing to leave Israel and move into Palestinian territory in order to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel.
If you want to even the score of Arabs and Jews being torn from their homes, you will have to contend with descendants of 1948 refugees who will want retribution in the form of moving Jews out, too. For that reason, I believe we had better be careful of what we wish for and qwhat we recommend.
Bracha
I reject your answer. For one I don’t see how increased international recognition makes it easier for Israel to respond to rocket fire in Gaza. I do remember that the West Bank is contingent only with Jordan and Israel. I also remember that Gaza is contingent only with Egypt and Israel, that’s why they are shooting home made rockets.
I am also unsure about Hamas losing its razon detre if Israel pulls out of the West Bank. I rather suspect that PA will lose its razon detre if it signs any permanent agreement sealing the issue of borders and refugees. Have you considered this?
Have you considered dozens of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon the PA will have to repatriate once Palestinian state is established? Do you know that Palestinian camps in Lebanon are jurassic parks still living in pre 1948 and infested with global Jihadists and rejectionist groups? The last time the Lebanese Army had to enter one of them it has to flatten the whole camp. What do you think these people will do once let into the West Bank?
Do you take into account that most of the country will be within the range of Palestinian rockets and any prolonged rocket fire may start emigration from Israel and undermine its ethnic composition? A failure to respond to this fire may well become fatal to this country.
Do you take into account that creation of the Palestinian state may embolden Israeli Arabs to the point of staging their own Intifadah inside Israel? You think it’s such a far fetched scenario? I would advise you to think again.
Tough questions, aren’t they? And unlike your hand pick questions they won’t make you feel good about yourself.
One, I doubt that refugees in Syria and Lebanon would all flock to the fledgling Palestinian state. It would never be able to absorb them until it can boast resources and an infrastructure to do so.
Two, the entire country is already within rocket range of Hezballah or Hamas or Iran. I don’t see any mass emmigration. Living in a fortress and pushing minority groups beyond the borders, surrounded by armies bristling with weapons and hostile neighbors will not keep Israel afloat as a moral Zionist Jewish state. Peace with our neighbors is what will.
Out of courtesy to Dr. Gordis, I would prefer not to continue a one on one debate on this blog, as it is meant for commentary on his article.
“Out of courtesy to Dr. Gordis, I would prefer not to continue a one on one debate on this blog, as it is meant for commentary on his article.”
I agree with this one. Thank you again for your impressive demonstration of how any tough question is not really tough as long as you know how to sweep it under the carpet.
Mr. Gordis, You have written a masterpiece. I think there is the touch of a divine message somewhere in there. It could have not been stated more appropriately.
Let’s just be honest!
Shabbat Shalom!
I respect Dr. Gordis posing such fundamental questions to us Israelis first and world Jewry second, I assume. I would like to pose a few other questions: why are the 800 to 900,000 Jews who have been displaced from their lands of origin for centuries and millenia not being addressed in this debate? And furthermore why is that number not now counted to include their descendants? The countries from which they were expelled confiscated their property, businesses, residences and worldy goods or valuables. Is it because they were absorbed by Israel and copuntries around the world? SO WHAT! Exile is exile, theft is theft, Judenrein is Judenrein. Then do the comparison game: 450,000 Palestinian Arabs, of questionable national and regional origin and of very questionable status (homeless and stateless then be honest about the length of time from migration from dozens of countries which are their true homelands, until finally finding refuge in Palestine AFTER JEWISH settlement outside the four or five populated cities had been started in earnest. In other words: why are we, the grantees of a Jewish homeland, being saddled with the problem of the world’s non-Jewish refugees of the 19th century?
My bottom line is, by being as silent as lambs about the fact that our claim to homes, properties, livelihoods in every Arab country in the Middle East is TWICE AS GREAT as the specious claims of displaced persons who found a home in Palestine only after the Ottoman Empire began letting Jews buy and reclaim worthless land, introducing civil society based on Utopian ideals of Europe and biblical injunctions to return to Zion. Prior to 1860, less than 90 years before the creation of the State of Israel, there were few if any displaced refugees able to settle under Ottoman rule. Why? As the direct result of usurious oppression from the representatives of the Ottoman rulers located in Egypt, Damascus and Beirut, not from the Jewish immigrants who actually provided safe haven in Palestine for these displaced migrants. Yes it is time to tell the truth: the Jewish homeland, the State of Israel and the plight of the migrant peoples, Arabs, definition: desert wanderers, DID NOT START AS A RESULT OF THE HOLOCAUST. I plead with our intellectuals, historians and politicians to lift the scales of ignorance from their eyes and the eyes of the world, and start the debate 100 years before the Holocaust, then asnd only then will we shed light on the truth and start moving to a new, legitimate solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I would like to end with a question: when did the Arab world and European powers incite the first incident or incidences of violence and hatred amongst the various migrant populations who had for lived side by side in peaceful and symbiotic for several decades? relationships in Palestine?
The problem with moving Arabs out of Israel is that they are citizens of the state in which their homes are located. The residents of the West Bank are, with the exception of those living in the annexed portions of Jerusalem and the Golan, citizens of a country that occupies the land but does not claim it as sovereign territory. So moving settlers back across the Green Line is really not the equivalent of moving Arab citizens of Israel to the PA (and essentially stripping them of their citizenship).
Daniel, I’m not sure if that’s what you are implicitly suggesting, but it seems that way.
An alternative would be what I understand Avigdor Liberman’s proposal to be–adjusting the borders of the State of Israel so that nobody leaves their homes but that residents of the Arab Triangle are now living in the PA. Current Israeli Arab citizens could maintain their rights but all new births/arrivals to that area would become PA citizens.
Speaking of Liberman, while I don’t agree with much of what he says, he seems to be the only person willing to open discussion in the political arena about some of these issues (Daniel of course has just published Saving Israel which certainly addresses them as well– but he’s not in electoral politics, at least not yet.) While a loyalty oath may be somewhat heavy-handed especially if applied only to Arabs, what about universal national service? This applies just as much to the haredim as to the Arab population.
@Mike Harris
If we are on asking tough questions, then I would like to take ask one. Admittedly most Israeli Arabs will not agree to be reunited with the future Palestinian state and this is for no reasons of loyalty or sympathy for Israel, but out of purely economic and similar considerations. Given that the right to self determination is generally upheld for minorities who don’t want to stay within a bigger nation, is such a right exists for majorities who want to separate from their minorities by unilaterally moving the border?
Are we ever willing to give up the West Bank? Perhaps you should look at the rule book. We never annexed it, nor was it ever awarded to the modern State of Israel by any world body; hell, our greatest allies won’t put their embassies in our capital city because of that. So the first candour/honesty test for us is: you can’t give up something you do not own = one invalid question means we’ve failed it already.
Are we willing to sacrifice access to the West Bank? In a peace deal, there would be no need to ask such a question because access there would be.
Can one just annex land without approval from the international community? Let’s take a look at the Golan. Is our ownership over it recognized by the outside world? No, not one country. Hell, it’s not even recognized by us because returning it to Syria in exchange for peace was actually on our negotiating table recently, wasn’t it? Not even a security risk if the peace is genuine, said Avi Dichter.
Making no change until they deliver the kind of government we know they can’t deliver is perpetuating a brutalizing and brutalized status quo in which the police and the army are obliged to participate to great detriment of their ability to do the jobs each was intended for.
If we intend to stay…. it will never be defensible so if we’re honest about the endgame we will know that and all that remains is to be candid about it. As for working flawlessly in Cyprus, I suggest you look at a history book and not judge by its absence in the news. Negotiations are ongoing as as we speak between Christofias and Talat over a confederation. We’re looking at long-term solutions now, right? No more stop-gaps, right? Not so flawless then. What do you propose to do about the demographic problem if we do a Cyprus and head for one federal state?
Hamastan: what if Jordan or Egypt or Syria turn into Hamastan? Will the West Bank save us? What would save us more, peace with the Arab world in a country that world consensus agrees is ours or filched territory surrounded by enemies that no-one will be willing to defend us against?
Rabbi Gordis, to my mind the only truly honest question asked in your article is the one about moving Jews and Arabs. The rest betray the same wishful thinking, the same delusional muddles between what God promised and what the world gave that have blinded us since 1967.
Dear Danny,
Thank you for asking the questions out loud. I am looking forward to hearing your answers, reading the thoughtful answers of others, and trying to put in writing my own answers.
Rav Todot,
Loren
Hi David,
Long time no see, not since we were at UJ. The unfortunate thing about it all is that we are not very honest in the United States about our own behavior. I have been constantly asking the following question: What was the difference between Hitler invading the countries he did invade in World War II and our invasion of Iraq? This horrid move has killed thousands and thousands of people for no good reason at all, since the adminsistration knew full well that the excuse to invade Iraq and its WMD was a big lie. Oh yes, once the lie became obvious we started to propagandize the fact that we did it to create a democracy there. Still, as a Shoah survivor I recognize the act for what it was, a horrendous war crime. So why do we bury the entire issue and do not indict Bush and Cheney as war criminals? As long as the current administration is not prepared to do that then the concern about the truth in Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians is not the big issue in my mind. First you clean your own house, then you worry about the other houses on the block. On the other hand, let’s face it. The Arabs have but one thing in mind and that is to destroy Israel. Gaza should have taught us a lesson, and we would be fools not to take that lesson seriously. A 16th century society can’t possibly live peacefully with a 21st century society. The jealousy level is just too great!
Dear Dr. Rabbi Gordis,
Was Netanyahu honest enouh for you? And look what a hogh pogh has already been made of it.
I ask this question: What if the soon to be major minority in (you name it — England France etc.)start to claim that their host country is theirs by right – for whatever reason, what will the hosts say then? Remember that when Gaza and the West Bank were ruled by Egypt and Jordan respectively, there was no complaint of “Palestinian Territory”
Remember too that the Palestine Liberation Movement was started before there was an “occupation”!
…And couldn’t you find a better picture of Netanyahu?
With respect to Dr Gordis, I think the wrong question is being asked here. The reason Israelis dont think in terms of a West Bank withdrawal is that they have come to realize over the past 9 years that this conflict is not about land, it is about identity. There are 2 conflicting identities. The Jewish/Israeli identity ultimately comes from the Torah, in which the land of Israel is G-d’s gift to the people of Israel. Without this belief, there is no argument to counter Israel being a colonial implant. That is why there is so much “scholarship” in denying Biblical claims to the land of Israel, and why the Jerusalem Waqf is busy destroying Jewish antiquities on the Temple Mount.
The Palestinian narrative is that Israel is a colonial implant based upon an unholy collaboration between Jews, who have falsified a historical claim to the land of Israel (no Kng David, no 1st or 2nd Temples, no Holocaust, etc) and guilt riddent Europe. That is why Arafat couldnt agree to the terms at Camp David, because it would legitimize Jewish claims to at least some of stolen Palestine. No Palestinian leader can agree even to the 1967 borders, because it allows Jews to retain some of stolen Palestine. Therefore Dr Gordis, your question is premature. If there was some semblance that Palestinians would recognize a Jewish state, then we could discuss borders. However, recognizing a Jewish identity in Palestine means negating Palestinian identity. That is where we need to start being honest
If you want honesty this is it. There is a Palestinian State – Jordan.
How many Palestinians States does the world want. There is no way on earth you can have a two state soltuion in a country that is the size of Wales. The two state solution was never accepted by the arab world because lets be honest they dont want a Jewish State in the middle east. The palestinian arabs are being used and abused by their own as a thorn in the worlds side to make Israel disappear. The arab world cares little for the palestinian people – what have they done except bring upon them grief and total mental madness.
My daughter, Donna E. Arzt, who passed away on November 15, 2008, published a book, “Refugees Into Citizens
- Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israel Conflict” (A Council On Foreign Relations Book) in 1997. This book answers many of the questions on solving the Palestinian-Israel situation that is being discussed today.
Donna was Professor of Law at Syracuse Law School and a leader in Human Rights.
When she passed away in November, Syracuse University flew the US flag at half-mast in her memory.