Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

 

• Two indications from Egypt that Gaza blockade will collapse

• The history of the Camp David Accords reveals that even a sympathetic president could not stand up for the Palestinians

• There is no practical solution, and that is why I talk about rights

• Young Palestinians in NY call for dissolution of Palestinian Authority

• Israeli diplomat who resigned in protest shows up at Sheikh Jarrah demo

• Mondo Award Winner: Robert in Antalya nominates Furkan Dogan

• Mondo Award Winner: Kathleen Galt’s paean to the Gishes

• Halperin says Muslim states in Arab world are ‘unacceptable,’ but Israel must remain a Jewish one

 

Two indications from Egypt that Gaza blockade will collapse

Mar 06, 2011

Philip Weiss

The new Egyptian Foreign Minister has called the Gaza blockade a violation of int’l law, Angry Arab reports, and David Kenner translates (h/t Ali Gharib). The Foreign Minister is Nabil Elaraby, who was a judge in the historic Int’l Court of Justice Ruling against the separation wall, in 2005, and whose concurrent opinion went further than the other judges, and held that the occupation was illegal.

Meantime, Dennis Loh reports that a march from Egypt to Gaza to bring cement into the blockaded strip today succeeded in getting in the first bag of cement. From Facebook:

We (Tahrir to Gaza March group) made it. First bag of cement through Rafah Crossing. PalestinianGandhis.org supported this effort and continues to support it on purely humanitarian grounds. Please help if you are so inclined.

Wall Photos

The first bag of cement!

By: Ken O’Keefe

The history of the Camp David Accords reveals that even a sympathetic president could not stand up for the Palestinians

Mar 06, 2011

Scott McConnell

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, left, and US national security adviser Zbig Brzezinski play chess at Camp David, 1978.

In the midst of the Egyptian revolution, a concerned Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet that the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace was “the cornerstone of peace and stability, not only between the two countries, but in the entire Middle East as well” –a pronouncement that soon made its way to the front page of the New York Times. While the peoples of Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank might well wonder how much peace and stability they got from the deal, Camp David did indeed usher in a golden age for Israel, which was freed to pursue aggressive policies without having to worry about the Arab world’s largest military.

How did this happen? A strategically-dominant Israel was not a goal of Jimmy Carter and the other Americans who negotiated the Camp David accords. Washington had been frightened by the 1973 war and hurt by the subsequent Arab oil embargo; strategists worried that continued turmoil in the region would allow the Soviet Union to make trouble with the West’s energy supplies. For the previous decade, the Beltway consensus held that Israel should give up the territory it had seized in the 1967 war in return for a comprehensive peace with its neighbors and security guarantees. The Palestinian leadership had been moving steadily towards acceptance of the two-state solution. Washington had sought a resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem, amplified by the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, since Eisenhower’s time.

The Camp David Accords are thus a puzzle, because the results – which shaped the Middle East for a generation– were so different from what its American sponsors intended. Unraveling the puzzle reveals the constraints on an American president in dealing with Israel. Indeed a principal lesson to be drawn from Power and Principle, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s memoir of his tenure as Carter’s national security adviser, and from his top Middle East aide William Quandt (in Peace Process) is that the Arabs should disabuse themselves of the idea that the United States will use its leverage over Israel to achieve a just peace.

The Camp David template governed the Mideast for thirty years. The Palestinians were stateless in 1979, and remain so. The Israel lobby displayed the muscle to define the limits of what an American president might plausibly achieve. This happened in an administration whose foreign policy principals believed that resolution of the Palestinian issue was an important strategic and moral interest, under a president who felt a warm personal connection to Anwar Sadat, which he did not feel towards Israel’s leaders.

One can see why intelligent people believed that the situation was more fluid. In Brzezinski’s account, central administration figures repeatedly broached the idea of breaking openly with Israel, and explaining to the American people their frustration with Israeli intransigence. And yet one senses this was never really a serious option. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin seemed to know this, as Netanyahu and his team do today. In the end, Begin played the administration perfectly — exploiting its yearning for a diplomatic “success,” maneuvering towards a separate peace that severed Egypt from the issue of Palestine, giving Israel a free hand to colonize the West Bank, annex the Golan Heights, and launch several wars against Lebanon.

No one can blame the consequences of Camp David on a lack of commitment on the part of Jimmy Carter and his foreign policy team. Secretary of State Cy Vance and Brzezinski differed over how to deal with the Soviet Union, but both believed a comprehensive Middle East settlement, which included a Palestinian homeland, was an American vital interest. Their staffs shared the conviction. The president was wholly on board. A devout Christian, Carter felt some emotional tie to Israel as “the land of the Bible” and was put off by the disdain some world leaders, such as French president Giscard D’Estaing, felt towards the Jewish state. But he felt strongly that Palestinians were victims of injustice.

Early in his presidency, in a 1977 March town meeting, Carter said, “there has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years.” Brzezinski recognized instantly that the comment would set off a political storm and records that “Vance and I huddled on how best to handle this new development, but we received instructions. . . directly from Air Force One that no elaborations or clarifications were to be issued on the matter.” (Almost thirty years to the day after Carter’s evocation of Palestinian suffering, Barack Obama, in an Iowa campaign appearance, used the same verb to depict the Palestinian plight. Like Carter, he came under strident attack from Israel’s backers. While one could say that some things never change, there was one significant difference. Unlike Carter, Obama did subsequently “clarify” his remarks, claiming he meant that the Palestinians were suffering because of the failings of their leadership.)

Coming into office, the Carter adminstration’s plan was to prepare the ground for an international conference at Geneva, co-chaired by Washington and the Soviet Union. The administration knew that Israel would resist, but felt such objections could be overcome. Brzezinski records that he told Carter frequently that Israel would require “persuasion” adding “given the centrality of the U.S. pipeline to Israel’s survival, most Israelis instinctively would shrink back from overt defiance of the United States, provided they were convinced the United States means business.” (Italics in original).

But the window during such persuasion could be attempted was narrow. In a succinct summary of the Israel lobby’s strengths, Brzezinski observes, “The nature of American domestic politics was such that the President had the greatest leverage in his first year of office, less so in his second, and so forth. The more time he had for persuasion and for the subsequent progress toward peace to be manifest, the more opportunity he had to act. Friction with Israel made little sense in the third or fourth Presidential years, for such conflict would be adversely reflected in the mass media and in financial support for the Democratic Party.”

The administration’s chances of using the first year effectively grew slimmer when Israel’s Labor Party lost election to Menachem Begin’s Likud-led coalition in May 1977. Washington sensed a looming showdown with the hawkish Begin. Brzezinski pressed for more administration voices speak out on the Middle East, and an initially reluctant vice president Mondale gave a speech calling for Israeli withdrawal to the lines and preparation of a Palestinian “entity”. House leader Tip O’Neill told Brzezinski that “if the choice came down between the President and the pro-Israel lobby, the country would clearly choose the President—but only if the choice was clearly posed.” Senator Abraham Ribicoff, a Jewish liberal wary of Begin, passed word through Walter Mondale that Carter needed to stand firm. Cy Vance passed on gossip from veteran Washington insider Sol Linowitz that the Jewish community had reached the conclusion that “if they pressed hard enough, the President will yield.” This apparently was the outcome of a meeting Carter had with Jewish leaders, in which he professed his commitment to Israel, while outlining his plans to push Tel Aviv towards a peace settlement.

By August, Carter, according to Brzezinski’s diary notes, “indicated his increasing frustration with the Israeli position and his unwillingness to maintain a policy in which in effect we are financing their conquests and they simply deny us in an intransigent fashion and generally make a mockery of our advice and preferences. He was extremely tough-minded on this subject and he was echoed by Vance, who suggested that if the Israelis open up a single more settlement, . . .we should initiate talks with the PLO.”

It is one thing to display tough-mindedness in a meeting with people who essentially agree with you. Carter might have survived a showdown with prominent American Jews over Israeli intransigence — we will never know. Certainly many American Jews considered Begin’s stance reckless. But it is hard to imagine any American president, especially a Democrat, with the stomach for such a showdown.

In November 1977 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, in a dramatic gesture, sought to break the logjam by going to Jerusalem. In his speech to the Knesset, Sadat made it clear that in return for peace, Israel would need to make a full withdrawal, and allow the Palestinians to build a state on the West Bank and Gaza. Perhaps Sadat, whose primary concern was recovery of Egypt’s own territory, had already decided he would settle for a separate peace. to settle for less. In the wake of Sadat’s Jerusalem speech, Begin came to Washington and Carter pressed him on the Palestinian issue. Begin floated a concept of Palestinian “autonomy” — a vague formula which Brzezinski, sensing that it might be pregnant with possibilities, sought to tease out. Autonomy, Brezezinski said, could mean anything from a “Basutoland under Israeli control” to a way station on the path to real statehood.

The spring of 1978 was taken up by a conflict over American arms sales to Jordan and Saudi Arabia, which Israel opposed. Brzezinski wrote, “during this period all of us were under severe attack from the Jewish lobby, and much time was consumed in meetings and explanations. These were rarely pleasant, even though the top Jewish leaders were more understanding of our need to develop ties with the more moderate Arab states.” Brzezinski complained sharply over dinner to Moshe Dayan about Israel’s efforts to block the arms sales, offering that the President would win a confrontation, and threatening to go public on Israel’s nuclear arsenal. In the end, the arms package, modified with more jets for Israel, did go through.

By the summer, whatever momentum had been generated by Sadat’s gesture had evaporated. The Carter team hoped to unveil a proposal bridging previous Egyptian and Israel positions, one that confirmed UN Resolution 242 (which called for Israel to withdraw form the conquered territory and the Arabs to make peace with Israel– land for peace) got Israel out of the Sinai and advanced the Palestinians along a road to self-determination. “How are we prepared to deal with an Israeli rejection of our proposal?” Brzezinski asked Carter in a July memo. “Do we have the political strength to manage a prolonged strain in U.S.-Israeli relations? What kind of forces can we marshal and in what manner in order to prevail? These are the central questions, and they touch on both international and domestic sensitivities. Above all, you must decide whether at this stage you are prepared to see this matter through to the very end. . . if we go public and then do not prevail, our Middle East policy will be in shambles. . If we go ‘public’ we must prevail.”

Brzezinski’s questions were simply too much for the Carter administration—to answer them would require a kind of war gaming about how to neutralize an important part of the American establishment and vital part of the Democratic coalition. In any case, there no record that the administration ever explored them. Carter’s response was to suggest a summit meeting with Begin and Sadat, an historic gathering where Carter himself could overcome the deadlock. Going in, Brzezinski urged the administration to be prepared for failure, to make clear that “refusal to accept our proposals would jeopardize the U.S.-Israeli relationship.”

Invitations to Camp David were sent out in August 1978. The thirteen days in September were unusual by any standard of diplomacy: three leaders and their national security entourages isolated in a compound in the Maryland hills, with no press around. Carter worked like a man possessed, drafting original language for the document and engaging in nearly continuous meetings with Egyptian and Israeli officials in search of mutually acceptable formulations. For diversion, the Americans played a lot of tennis; Brzezinski played two games of chess with Menachem Begin.*

Israel approached the summit with a single goal. Even before Sadat’s peace gesture, Tel Aviv’s foreign ministry had been working on removing Egypt from the conflict by working out a separate peace. Such a deal was overwhelmingly in Israel’s interests—something Begin and government recognized even as they quibbled over every hilltop and settlement and timetable for implementing the withdrawal. But the haggling served a larger purpose, as Brzezinski aide William Quandt points out in his analysis of Camp David:

“Begin, more than any of the other negotiators, seemed to have a feel for the strategic use of time, taking the negotiations to the brink of collapse over secondary issues to avoid being pressed on key problems. Sadat, by contrast, simply refused to negotiate over those matters of deepest concern to him—Egyptian land and sovereignty—while leaving to his aides the unhappy task of trying to stand up to Begin on the Palestinian issue.. . Begin’s position was also strengthened by his willingness to accept failure in the talks. Both Sadat and Carter were more committed to a positive outcome, and Begin could credibly use the threat of walking out, as he did, to extract concessions.”

At one point late in the negotiations, Sadat, frustrated by Begin’s refusal to give any ground on the West Bank, packed his bags and prepared to leave. Carter rushed to the Sadat cabin to explain that his departure would mean the end of the American-Egyptian relationship—that the failure of negotiations would be put on Sadat. It was a revealing moment: despite the fact that Sadat’s positions were far closer to the White House’s own than Israel’s were, when push to came to shove, an American president could threaten Egypt, and did not hesitate to do so. The same was not true for Israel.

Negotiations on the West Bank and Gaza did not come to a head until near the end of the fortnight. Before then, the Israelis persisted in arguing that the war of 1967 gave Israel the right to change frontiers. Begin refused to accept the applicability of UN Resolution 242 to the West Bank. As the Israeli set out his vision of the West Bank, outlining all the controls, veto rights and privileges he would retain for Israel, Carter exploded “What you want to do is to make the West Bank part of Israel. “ Vance seconded the President. Brzezinski added “This is profoundly sad—you really want to retain political control, vetoes, military governor, broad definition of public order. We thought you were willing to grant genuine self-government.” Moshe Dayan, ever the diplomat, responded “Professor Brzezinski, we are not after political control. If it looks that way to you, we will look at it again.” A breakdown was averted. Carter went back to redrafting, focusing on the idea that the Israeli proposal for home rule would be worked into a five year transitional period. On the seventh day of the negotiations, the Israelis were still objecting to any drafting which highlighted the words “inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war.” Dayan told Vance that the summit would end in failure, and Carter’s intransigence would be blamed.

But on September 16th, the eleventh day at Camp David hills, the key compromise, actually an American concession, emerged. According to Bill Quandt’s account, it was then that the American draft pertaining to Gaza and the West Bank was fundamentally changed. “The elements of 242, including withdrawal, which had previously been spelled out were deleted. The language was changed to make it clear that the negotiations, but not necessarily the results of the negotiations, would be based on the principles of 242. And the negotiations about the West Bank and Gaza were artfully obfuscated by creating two tracks, one involving peace-treaty negotiations between Israel and Jordan and the other involving talks between Israel and representatives of the Palestinians.” Quandt concluded, “It may take a lawyer to explain how, but Begin successfully protected his position that 242 did not apply to negotiations over the West Bank’s future, the Americans accepted the ambiguity, and Sadat may well have wondered what all the verbal gymnastics were about.”

To say the least, the ambiguity does not leap out from a simple reading of the Camp David Accords. The document does indeed make it seem that the West Bank negotiations are premised on 242, and set up a path towards Palestinian self-determination in some form. But unlike the more specific provisions over Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai, there is no explicit promise that the negotiations would actually lead anywhere. At least, Carter thought, he could help secure his preferred outcome by halting the West Bank settlement program which Begin had recently initiated. Carter, so he believed, elicited from Begin a promise to freeze the building of new settlements for the five-year duration of the Palestinian autonomy negotiations.

Carter promptly conveyed to Sadat the oral promise as he shuffled between the cabins of the two men. The Israelis promised him a letter the next day, affirming their promise. But the letter Israel delivered did no such thing. Instead it linked the settlement freeze to the duration of the Sinai negotiations, which were to be wrapped up in three months. Carter refused to accept the letter, and asked for another one. Quandt writes “alarm bells should have gone off, but so many other issues were on the agenda that day, especially a diversionary argument over Jerusalem which erupted in the afternoon, that both Carter and Vance continued to act if there had merely been a misunderstanding that would be cleared up as soon as Begin sent back a new draft.”

The Americans never did receive a letter confirming what Carter believed Begin had promised. But for the wider world, (except, significantly, the Arab world) Carter appeared to achieve what he wanted. As the summit ended, Brzezinski briefed the press. “There was an audible gasp when I announced the conditions of the Egyptian-Israeli agreement, particularly the point that the peace treaty would be signed in three months. The newspapermen could hardly believe it. The sense of excitement mounted steadily as the briefing went on I had trouble extricating myself. . . At ten thirty the President entered with Sadat and Begin, having landed a few minutes earlier by helicopter. There was thunderous applause as he announced the success. . . ”

Less than a week after this triumphant moment Carter and Brzezinski were worrying openly about what they had wrought. Begin immediately went on a media tour in the US, claiming Israel’s right to remain in the West Bank indefinitely and to continue building settlements. Brzezinski noted in his journal that Begin “is trying to create the impression that the only accord that really counts is the Israeli-Egyptian agreement. If he can get away with it, he will obtain a separate treaty and then the whole structure of peace in the Middle East will crumble.” But get away with it he did. Of course the peace did not crumble everywhere. Israel flourished. Begin and Ariel Sharon launched a bloody expedition into Lebanon in an effort to wipe out the PLO and Palestinian nationalism once and for all. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank was reinforced by hundreds of thousands of colonizing settlers, and their accompanying road and checkpoint network. Muslim extremism, whose bitter fruit was tasted by America on 9/11, began to grow in the dank spaces of the Mubarak dictatorship, the only sort of Egyptian regime which could accept Camp David as guidepost of its regional strategy.

Less than two months after the Camp David framework was completed, (but before the final treaty was signed) Carter and foreign policy team were discussing the cable of ambassador to Israel Samuel Lewis, which told of increasingly firm Israeli demands for money and of Israeli stubbornness on the West Bank. Brzezinski records that he raised the question “of whether we should in fact be pushing so hard for an Israeli-Egyptian treaty if it is our intention to resolve also the West Bank issue. Once such a treaty is signed we will have less leverage.” Carter interjected that the Israelis don’t want to yield on the West Bank and Dayan has seized the PR initiative in terms of interpreting the negotiations to the public. Brzezinski writes “When I said that I thought the Israelis wanted essentially a separate peace, then U.S. payments, and finally a free hand in the West Bank, the President said that my remarks were brutally frank and perhaps oversimplistically stated. When I sarcastically responded ‘Thank You’ he looked at me very soberly and said ‘Yes, but I agree with you.’ ”

But of course, once committed to Camp David, Carter had little choice but to push to see it through. Honesty about the U.S.-Israel relationship was kept behind closed doors. Once the accord was finally signed the following March, Israel did withdraw from the Sinai. Predictably enough, the Palestinian autonomy talks went nowhere. Begin appointed his interior minister Yosef Burg of the National Religious Party to conduct them. Burg believed Israel’s right to the West Bank was embedded in scripture. The building of settlements accelerated. Moshe Dayan, who might have held a more forthcoming view of what autonomy for the Palestinians should mean, resigned from the government in protest. By then the Israeli cabinet was in the settlers’ hands. In the midst of the 1980 election campaign, Carter of course did nothing.

To recall this history is to recognize that so long as the Israel lobby is more powerful than the justice lobby, the United States is constitutionally incapable of being an honest broker in the Middle East. This unpalatable fact has asserted itself repeatedly, with Carter, Brzezinski and Vance, with George H.W. Bush and James Baker, and with Presidents Clinton and Obama. If a trend can be observed, it is that the United States has become even less able to stand up to Israel with each passing decade. And yet, looked at from a different perspective, the situation seems as fluid and subject to human agency as ever. If Israel’s influence over the American state (witness Obama’s repeated capitulations to Netanyahu) now seems decisive, its hold over the American societal imagination is far more tenuous than when Jimmy Carter entered the White House. Knowledge of the crime inflicted upon the people of Palestine may have grown fiftyfold in the past thirty years. At some point , there will have to be a recalibration, as American government begins to reflect these changing values. The tumult in the Arab world in the past month is a reminder, if one is needed, that no injustice need last forever.

*The Brzezinski-Begin relationship touches on the historically complex relationship between Polish Jewry and Poland’s Catholic elites. On Begin’s first visit to the United States as prime minister, before a bank of TV cameras, he approached Brzezinski and presented him some documents, found in a Jerusalem archive, bearing on his father’s activity as a Polish diplomat in Germany in the 1930’s, when he was engaged in saving Jewish lives. Brzezinski was “deeply touched by this gesture of human sensitivity, especially since it came in the wake of some of the personal attacks on me and on my role in seeking to promote a peace settlement in the Middle East.”

There is no practical solution, and that is why I talk about rights

Mar 06, 2011

Shmuel Sermoneta-Gertel

A couple of weeks ago, Jerry Slater posed some questions about a comment I had made on a previous thread. I regret that I was unable to answer immediately, as I had intended, but better late than never.

First of all, thank you for addressing my comment and giving me the opportunity to clarify my position.
You asked:
First, you do not appear to reject my argument that in principle there is no inherently irreconcilable conflict  between a formal     recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and the treatment of its Palestinian citizens as full equals. Rather, you say that this was the   way it was supposed to be, but it hasn’t worked. Does that imply that it can never work?
The “original sin” of Zionism, as pointed out by Ahad Ha’am as early as the 1880s, was the belief that the wishes of the native population of Palestine were irrelevant to the Zionist project. Zionist leaders truly believed that the establishment of a Jewish homeland would benefit the local non-Jewish population (whether they liked it or not), and socialist, liberal – and even revisionist – currents in the Zionist movement envisaged a society in which all would enjoy political and civil rights. Since these beliefs and visions were entirely self-referential however, bad actions repeatedly belied good intentions, yet the Zionist self-image remained untainted. Arab resistance to the Zionist project was thus perceived as inherently unfair and irrational– offering further justification for hostile actions, without having to shoulder any of the responsibility.
It thus seemed perfectly logical by 1948 to profess a commitment to full equality in theDeclaration of Independence, while engaging in ethnic cleansing of the non-Jewish population of Palestine. The gap between “Jewish and democratic” has only widened over the years, certainly with regard to the territories under (semi-)permanent Israeli occupation, but also within the “green line”. To answer your question, it may technically be possible for Israel to be a Jewish state while affording full equality to its (minority) Palestinian citizens, but as long as the parameters of the state’s “Jewishness” and “democracy” remain entirely self-referential – i.e. based on and controlled by the sensibilities of the (majority) Jewish population, the balance will inevitably tip toward “Jewish” at the expense of “democratic”. To attempt the creation of such a state (or rather modification of the existing state) as part of a pragmatic art-of-the-possible approach to the conflict – i.e. giving preference to the concerns and wishes of the stronger side – would necessarily lack recognition of the principle of equality, and would therefore necessarily fail to provide actual equality.
Second, if so, what is the alternative?  If I understand your argument correctly, the implication of “the un-nuanced one man/one-vote approach” that you favor would require a single binational state.  If so, why would you consider that a more realistic         alternative than relatively small privileging of Jews in a Jewish state? That a binational state would be morally preferable in an ideal world is not the issue–we don’t live in that world.   If the Israelis won’t grant full equality to a minority currently constituting 20% of a de facto Jewish state, what possibility is there that they would do so if they became a minority in a binational state?
I think we are all operating under a fallacy here, and that is that there is a realistic solution to the situation in I/P. There is no realistic solution, and a viable two-state solution is no more realistic than a viable one-state solution. The fact that the words “two states” are tossed around a lot, and even “accepted” by a majority of Israelis and Palestinians, has little if any bearing on a an actual solution based on two states. One state may or may not be acceptable to a majority of Palestinians (there are very strong undercurrents favouring such a state among Palestinians, but it is often dismissed because “the Israelis would never agree”), but it is certainly unacceptable to a majority of Israelis. So what is the alternative? Forget about solutions and focus on Palestinian rights and their constant and flagrant violation. The one-state idea is utopian, but it represents a vision of true equality that is useful in describing and promoting Palestinian rights, even in the absence of a solution. Since talk of unrealistic solutions does come up from time to time however, I see no reason not to espouse the better vision.
Third, I agree that the need–or alleged need, if you prefer–for a specifically-defined Jewish state would be greatly and maybe completely alleviated if the Jewish “right of return “ to Israel could be maintained. Can you develop this?  Has it become part of the negotiating process, even informally?  Would that work even in a binational state?  And if immigration were unlimited for Jews but not for others, why wouldn’t that be an inequality?  And if you concede that it would be, then wouldn’t that undercut the argument that other inequalities–which you agree  might be nominal–cannot be allowed?
The issue of the Law of [Jewish] Return has never been on the negotiating table, formally or informally, because the agenda has always been set by Israel, which does not consider the LOR negotiable in any way, shape or form. In the context of our utopian musings however, I can envisage some Palestinian accommodation of Jewish/Israeli concerns in this matter. Assuming that the issue of Palestinian ROR has been satisfactorily resolved, I see no reason why an article cannot be included in the Israeli or Isratinian constitution affording preference in immigration (not automatic citizenship) to Jews suffering religious persecution (the main argument in favour of the need for the LOR), and even Jews in general – based on a “point system”, that would also recognise Palestinian, Arab and Muslim identities and concerns.
Here’s my own bottom line.  Given the history of the Jews, it was necessary to establish a Jewish state, somewhere, and in  light of that same history, it cannot be said that the need for a Jewish state—de facto or formal—has definitively ended, for all time. That the creation of that state in Israel in a land already inhabited by another people created an injustice is undeniable, but the dilemma of Zionism—there was an imperative need for a Jewish state, but no place to put it—could and of course should  have been mitigated in many ways by the Israelis, none of which they did.
My approach is somewhat different. I don’t believe there was ever a need for a Jewish state, and the establishment of such a state created more problems than it resolved. I believe that democratisation, international humanitarian law, and greater acceptance of diversity in our societies, have done far more to combat antisemitism (and all forms of racism) than Zionism ever has or ever will. I believe that it is the de facto existence of a Jewish state that has in fact created the “need” for such a state, in the minds of its supporters and beyond. That is my opinion, but there is little point in arguing alternate histories.
It’s not too late to mitigate the inevitable injustice to the Palestinians, but given Israeli attitudes,  not to mention the inevitable consequences of more than 80 years of binational conflict, the most that can be expected is an end to the occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state, along the lines accepted by practically everyone, including, it now appears, the West Bank leadership.
As have I explained above, I don’t believe that a two-state solution is any more pragmatic than a one-state solution, both because there is little agreement as to what such a solution would actually look like (despite the mantra “we all know what the final agreement will look like”), and because an agreement that perpetuates inequality would bear the seeds of its own potentially-disastrous disintegration.
To conclude: we live in an imperfect world, full of injustices, tragic dilemmas, and circumstances we can’t control.  There is no perfectly just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even in principle, let alone in practice.   If those who rightly abhor Israeli policies give up on a two-state settlement in favor of a binational state that under all present and foreseeable circumstances is pure fantasy, they will get nowhere at all.

On a practical level, I agree that there in “no perfectly just solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict”. In fact, I don’t believe there is any solution at all, which is why I support a rights- rather than solution-based approach. On a theoretical level however, I believe that there is an idea – one secular democratic state – that offers the possibility of maximum justice for all parties. It also offers a consciousness-challenging vision, regardless of the specific solutions we may choose to strive for. A two-state solution might indeed be a better idea, but not if it simply duplicates the problems that lie at the heart of the conflict.

Young Palestinians in NY call for dissolution of Palestinian Authority

Mar 06, 2011

Philip Weiss

Young Palestinians seeking the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority confront Palestinian mission officials in New York. They say that the P.A. is collaborationist with the Palestinian occupier. Note that a young leader of the group advocates for the Goldstone Report. And the video says, We saw what happened in Egypt…

Israeli diplomat who resigned in protest shows up at Sheikh Jarrah demo

Mar 06, 2011

Ofer Neiman

From Haaretz’s Hebrew coverage of the Sheikh Jarrah protests, we see Ilan Baruch, the diplomat who lately resigned in protest of Netanyahu policies, saying Israeli policies are alienating the country from the world’s good opinion. He was wounded in the war of attrition.

Ilan Baruch is upset about Lieberman’s rottweiler conduct,  but why did he keep quiet when Israel was using cluster and phosphorus munition against civilians Lebanon and Gaza? It’s good to see him at Sheikh Jarrah, but some things are (even/much) more important. The problem is, when Israeli government is “dignified” (Tzipi and Ehud), and Israel is more popular abroad, most members of the elite will easily accept what its government does.

Mondo Award Winner: Robert in Antalya nominates Furkan Dogan

Mar 06, 2011

Robert in Antalya

On the first day of 2011, Robert of Antalya, Turkey, nominated Furkan Dogan, the young American who was killed on the Mavi Marmara last May while filming the Israeli commando operation, for a Mondo Award for inspiration. The judges have come in; and Robert’s piece is our #3 winner. –Adam Horowitz and Phil Weiss.

I nominate Furkan Dogan, inspired by Gaza

Gaza can horrify, sadden and anger people. More than a million people – including more than 500,000 children under the age of 18 – are forced to live in desperate lives essentially cut off from the rest of the world in what can be called the largest open-air prison in the world.

Gaza can make some people feel smug. After all they’re only getting what they deserve because Gaza is governed by Hamas, and Gaza threatens Israel’s existence with their rockets, these people say.

Gaza can also inspire.

Furkan Dogan was inspired by Gaza. He was an 18 year old young man in his senior year in high school. He wanted to be an eye doctor. He wanted to go to university in the country he was born in – the U.S.A. – and become as good an eye doctor as he could become because he wanted to treat the poor, the oppressed and the dispossessed who needed eye care or eye surgery but had no access to it.

Furkan Dogan was inspired by Gaza. He wanted to go to Gaza on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla of May, 2010 to help the people of Gaza. He hoped that going there would at least show the people of Gaza that they were not forgotten. He knew that he couldn’t do much this year, and he hoped that the people of Gaza would be free by the time he finished medical school, but the desperate situation in Gaza inspired him to prepare himself so that he would be able to help people in the future.

Furkan Dogan was inspired by Gaza. He wanted to go to Gaza because it would give him invaluable practical and emotional experience which would help him become an eye doctor who was prepared and trained to work in extreme conditions helping people who were in desperate conditions. In Gaza he could see and learn firsthand what he would need to concentrate on during his long studies in medical school.

Furkan Dogan was inspired by Gaza. He was willing to participate in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, he was willing to study for many, many years, and he was willing to devote his life and his skills to helping others because he knew that even though the people in Gaza were being starved, bombed, killed, maimed and imprisoned they never gave up their dream of and struggle for freedom.

Furkan Dogan felt, acknowledged and acted on the inspiration Gaza gave him.

For me and for many others around the world the inspiration which Gaza has been trying to awaken in us to be more involved in working to make the world a better and more just place has lain dormant in the backs of our hearts and minds for too long.

Furkan Dogan was inspired by Gaza.

Furkan Dogan was brutally killed by Israel.

Furkan Dogan’s inspiration has become my inspiration.

crossposted @ Furkan Dogan.com

Update from Robert :

After Furkan’s family read the text they told me about something that happened one day soon after Furkan was killed.

While trying to comfort Furkan’s father, one man said with great sorrow in his voice “Furkan wanted to be an eye doctor so much, and now he will never be able to become an eye doctor.”

Then the man paused for a few seconds before he added with great emotion “… but … No! … He did! … He did become an eye doctor … He is helping people to see … He’s helping them to see the truth!”

Mondo Award Winner: Kathleen Galt’s paean to the Gishes

Mar 06, 2011

Kathleen Galt

On the last day of 2010 Kathleen Galt nominated Peggy Gish and her late husband Art Gish as inspirations worthy of a Mondo Award. Well the judges have now spoken, and Galt’s nomination piece has won an award, #4. We’re counting down. Galt wins a handful of books, including ones by Chas Freeman, Laila El-Haddad, and Anna Baltzer. –Adam Horowitz and Phil Weiss.

Peggy Gish and her late husband Art Gish– They Walk the Talk

Over thirty years ago Art and Peggy Gish started standing in the front of the Athens Ohio County Court House on every Monday. They began this tradition with a focus on peace and justice in the middle east. Art and Peggy would stand with signs saying “Honor the 67 internationally recognized border” “Stop the building and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements” as well as many other signs promoting peace and justice. Over the years many of us would join them. In the mid 80’s they joined with Christian Peace Maker team’s in their efforts to be witness to the human rights crimes being committed by Israel and other nations. They were going to stand with as Art used to say “with the people with far less power.” Soon after their original trips to Israel Art continued to go back to Israel and to the Palestinian territories. He worked with the Christian Peace Maker Team. He walked Palestinian children to school often through vicious illegal settlers screaming at the children and sometimes spitting on them, he protested with the Palestinians, he confronted Israeli soldiers who were humiliating Palestinians, he stood in front of Israeli tanks about to bulldoze Palestinians homes and businesses, he lived and worked with Palestinian shepherds. He would send us letters emails and finally wrote several books about his experiences. He did this for at least 15 winters. Art died this past summer in a tragic tractor accident on their organic farm in the foothills of Appalachia in southeastern Ohio. Many of us miss him daily.

Peggy Gish first went to Iraq in the fall of 2002 months before the illegal and immoral invasion of that country by U.S. and coalition forces. With the Christian Peace Maker team Peggy has documented the abuses at Abu Gharib starting soon after the invasion. Peggy and the CPT tried early on to hand their reports over to U.S. officials and were sent away by I believe Paul Bremer. Peggy has gone back to Iraq numerous times over the last 8 years. She has worked with the Iraqi people both in Baghdad and Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq. Peggy has not only shared her love with the Iraqi people but her commitment to peace and justice and to bring the truth to the American people about what our military has and is doing in that country. She has also written several books about her work in Iraq.

What is it that gets under my skin and tweaks my spirit and thousands of others in such a powerful way by the actions of both Art and Peggy Gish? Most of us are brought up with some type of religious training or spiritual belief. Many of us are aware that many do not come even close to living or being examples of those religious or spiritual beliefs. Art and Peggy Gish walk the talk of their deep Christian beliefs like no one no one I have ever met or been in the presence of. They are kind, loving, compassionate to everyone that I have observed them interact with even those they disagree with. I have watched Art over and over again try to enter into civil dialogue with those who have sometimes been quick to call his peace and justice efforts his actions in Israel, here in the U.S. and around the world as “anti semitic.” He was able to swat these false claims down by his persistent examples of compassionate actions. Along with his willingness to discuss, debate and take on anyone who made such weak claims . Even though he had become convinced over the years that Israel did not really want peace with the Palestinians but more territory by what ever means necessary. He never ever gave up on peace in the middle east. Never.

Art (bless his soul) left a formidable mark on thousands of us. A thirst, a lifetime of effort focused on peace and justice. Peggy continues to do so.

Art standing in front of an Israeli tank

Remembering Art

American peace activist Art Gish died on August 1, 2010 in a tractor accident on his organic farm in Athens, Ohio, at the age of 70. Gish and his wife Peggy – currently in Iraq – dedicated much of their lives to promoting peace in the Middle East through nonviolent action.

As a member of the Christian Peacemakers Team (CPT) based in Al Khalil (Hebron) in the West Bank, Gish lived up to the CPT’s slogan “Getting in the way” when he faced up to an Israeli tank in 2003 to try to prevent it from destroying a market in Hebron’s Old City.

Peggy interviewing people in Iraq BBC

“Eyewitness: Taking detainee testimony in Iraq US-led international forces in Iraq are currently holding thousands of Iraqi people suspected of involvement in the violent campaign against the Iraqi government and the occupying forces. But some detainees complain of arbitrary detention and abusive treatment. Peggy Gish, 62, is an American woman who has spent 13 months over the past two years logging the cases of Iraqi detainees with the ecumenical humanitarian group Christian Peacemaker Teams. She told the BBC News website about her experiences.”

Halperin says Muslim states in Arab world are ‘unacceptable,’ but Israel must remain a Jewish one

Mar 06, 2011

Philip Weiss

Last week I did a post from the J Street conference saying that Morton H. Halperin, who is the organization’s vice chair, said in so many words that American Realist critics of Israel would cast the country to the winds if they had their druthers. I didn’t provide any quotes to back up my interpretation.

I’m returning to the subject because even at 72, Halperin is a legendary figure who personifies the Jewish liberal presence in the Establishment. He was a young dove serving in the councils of the Nixon and Johnson administrations, and was famously wiretapped by his old friend Kissinger after the news got leaked that we were bombing Cambodia. He worked for the ACLU and is associated with George Soros’s Open Society Institute. (And he is the father of Mark Halperin, a journalist with insane access and little detectable ideology.)

It’s important to explore Halperin’s thinking because it helps to show the character of his Jewish generation’s faith in Israel. Below I review two of Halperin’s statements at a panel he moderated on whether supporting Israel is in our national security interest, and then offer my comment.

1. Halperin is for a Jewish state in the Middle East, but against Muslim states.

Martin Bresler, chairman of Americans for Peace Now, rose from the audience to echo a question that Halperin had asked near the beginning of the panel: “Why isn’t a one-state solution an American foreign policy strategic concern?”

Bresler went on, “Isn’t the answer to that question at least in part, If we have a country that is not a majority Jewish but a majority Muslim country, We would lose what we call our best ally in the region, and is that a major concern to the United States?”

Halperin responded:

“As we explain to the Egyptians and others, for example, that a Muslim state is unacceptable, that a modern democratic state cannot have a religious base, people will begin to notice that we have a different view about Israel, and the question I think is going to become increasingly debated, whether we think it’s a sensible question or not, of Why isn’t that territory a democratic state with one vote for every person, and a democratic government, and how is that a threat to the people in Israel? I know the answer to that question, I think all of us do.

“But I think it’s a question that is going to be increasingly asked…So when I talked about a solution of a one party state, I did not mean an Israeli apartheid state, I meant what people would describe as a democratic state. Your assumption was that somehow the American government would feel that that state would be less likely to have a foreign policy that was consistent with American interests than the current state, and I believe many American faux realists will think just the opposite.”

2. Halperin thinks the Israel lobby theory is a dangerous lie.

Halperin spoke of why it had been essential to found J Street: because of a “standoff between three groups” in policymaking circles. The first group was his group, “a very small group that believes and still believes… that a [two-state] settlement is in the security interest of the US and Israel and is attainable.”

The second group was realists, that portion of the national security establishment who don’t care to make a settlement– because it’s not easily attainable, or not necessary, because we “can pursue American interests” without getting a two-state solution.

And the third group is the Israel lobby. Though Halperin didn’t name them as such. He called it the group that would exact “a high political price if you push for a settlement [with] the Israeli government,” bringing on a “domestic crisis in the U.S… with very severe consequences for the fundraising budgets of candidates.. if not presidential elections…”

And Halperin said that the objective of his group was to change the political calculus of the issue so that “the president of the United States is told it’s good politics to push both sides to get a settlement [and] American Jews… will vote and give their money on that basis….”

At this point, Lara Friedman of Peace Now spoke of the American interest in guzzling Arab oil, and her environmentalist desire to free us from that dependence. But even if we free ourselves from oil dependence, she said, it’s a “fantasy” that we don’t have an interest in  supporting Israel.

Halperin agreed with her and followed up with another shot against the realists, by implication John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt:

“Nothing is more dangerous,” Halperin quipped, than teaching the theory of international relations, something he has done himself. “Because what [students] are taught is precisely this absurd notion that the realists know what the national security interests of the United States is and it is in Middle East oil and not in democracy in Israel, and therefore [our] whole policy in the Middle East is to be explained by the Jewish vote and the pernicious nature of the Israeli lobby. That view is in my view very much a lie, and I think a real danger over time to American support for Israel.”

3. My comment.

I think all of Halperin’s comments reflect his belief, notwithstanding all the success he’s had, in the persistence of anti-Semitism.

Why else would he believe in the need for a Jewish state when he doesn’t want Arab states to be Muslim states? And he seems to want the U.S. to take active measures to preserve the Jewish state…

And I think that belief in anti-Semitism explains his shots against the realists. They don’t really care about Israel, they have this false belief in an American interest that transcends the need for a Jewish state. They believe in the Israel lobby theory, a dangerous lie. Though even Halperin concedes that taking on the Israel lobby would create a “crisis” and help demolish a candidate’s fundraising abilities. Huh. And even Halperin calls on the realists to support a Jewish democracy, but not a full democracy.

After the panel I went up to Halperin and said, I know that many in the State Department opposed Truman’s recognition of Israel. But what is your evidence that realists today don’t care for Israel? Halperin said that it was the insistence by realists that Israel return to the 1967 line in order to achieve peace– i.e., that Israel should accept the Arab Peace Initiative to get a two-state solution.

At this point we were interrupted. But I think that this exchange shows the poverty of the liberal Zionist vision for a two-state solution: I don’t see how a re-partition that does not create a viable Palestinian state could ever create a lasting peace. And Halperin’s suggestion that realists are contemptuous of the peacemaking process and think we can pursue American interests without a peace is a flat misrepresentation of the realists I know, who see this conflict as central, who have desperately pushed a two-state solution, who are far more sympathetic to Israel than I am, and who regard the lobby-tilted peace process as a joke.

In Halperin’s caricature of their views, I hear distrust of the goyim, and a core belief on the part of a highly-successful liberal in the persistence of anti-Semitism/the greatness of Israel. (And yes I wonder whether his children are fully on board for that program, or just nod their heads and accept it as their inheritance, as so many in that generation do.)

Finally, I’d remind readers that the chairman of Peace Now said that if Israel and Palestine become a majority-Muslim state, that state would likely cease to be an American ally. Halperin wisely differed.