Does Peace have a Chance?

Dozens of times in the past year I’ve asked myself why I don’t post here about the situation in Israel. I don’t have a good answer, but I have a few bad ones. First, as a lifelong Zionist and as a Jew, I feel disloyal in not supporting Israeli policy vis-à-vis Gaza, the West Bank, and the Palestinian people in general. Second, while I am generally outspoken on political issues, on this one I feel reticent because of real or imagined backlash from my co-religionists. Finally, it has taken me most of the past year to come to the conclusions that I will go into in this argument – I kept hoping for something – anything that would redeem Israel in my and the world’s eyes. Alas, nothing has come.

I know many people in Israel and have close friends there. By way of credentialing myself, in 1994 a colleague and I were asked to facilitate a multi-day session convened by the then Foreign Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, under the auspices of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. That conference included representatives of all parts of Israeli society including business, military, government, NGOs, Christians, Jews, Druse, Arabs, the UN – everyone except the PLO who bailed at the last minute fearing they would appear too conciliatory after the Casablanca meetings just a month or so before.

The conference focused on Peres’ efforts to create a new economic plan for the Middle East, and particularly on Gaza. Much of what was discussed was implemented successfully, for a while at least. So I claim the right to speak.

I saw a Facebook post recently that traced the history of the land of Israel back to biblical times with the repeated refrain that this entity existed and that one, but there was never a Palestinian land. I commented on the post that I thought it was disingenuous – I could do the same thing for the land that the US occupies, and never in history were there Americans, and only lately white people.

Here are some simple facts: When the State of Israel was established by UN mandate in 1948, the land (as distinct from the state) was populated by Jews, Arabs, Druse, and a sprinkling of others. The demand for a Jewish State was a response to the Holocaust, and the Jews who were living there had been fighting for their right to be there under the British. When the UN gave the Jewish government legitimacy, approximately half of Palestine's predominantly Arab population, or around 750,000 people, were expelled from their homes or made to flee through various means. Prior to the UN Mandate, the land was called Palestine, from the Roman designation. (The Roman Empire conquered the region and in 6 CE establishing a province known as Judaea, then in 132 CE in the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt the province was expanded and renamed Syria Palaestina).

Since 1948 Israel has walked a tightrope between including Arabs as citizens and in various governments and acting as what has been called, not without reason, an apartheid state. Israel fought wars against neighboring Arab states in 1956 (Suez Crisis), 1967 (the Six-Day War), 1973 (the Yom Kippur War), 1982 and 2006 (the 1st and 2nd Lebanon Wars), and conflicts in Gala from 2008 to the present. Some of these wars were defensive, some were pre-emptive, but all strengthened the sense of being under siege, by Arab nations and terrorist groups, and the treatment of Palestinian Arabs suffered accordingly. Finally, in contravention of International opinion and some would say International law, Israel settled or occupied (depending on your point of view) the West Bank, further displacing and restricting Arab peoples.

As I said I have a lot of friends in Israel and have visited and worked there. They tell me, and it is my sense from reading and watching, that most Israeli Jews are not anti-Arab or anti-Palestinian, acknowledge the Palestinian’s right to a state of their own, with arguments similar to those advocating a Jewish state in the 1940’s, and therefore favor a two-state solution and fair and equitable treatment for Arabs living in Israel. It is the government of the State of Israel that is the problem.

In 1993, under the Oslo Accords, Israelis and Palestinians formally recognized each other’s right to exist. This led to then Prime Minister Rabin, Foreign Minister Peres, and Yasser Arafat of the PLO sharing the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. 1995 Brought the Oslo II agreement, providing for Palestinian self-rule in parts of the West Bank. Rabin was assassinated in 1995, after which Arafat and Peres (now Prime Minister) reaffirmed their commitment to the Oslo Accords, which were endorsed by the Palestinian people when Arafat was overwhelmingly reelected over Hamas opposition to peace with Israel.

In 1996, Benjamin Netanyahu began his career began his rise to power as an anti-Palestinian hard liner and began a series of confrontations with Palestinians including over the holy sites on the Temple Mount. Netanyahu also vigorously promoted settlement in areas occupied by Arabs both in Jerusalem and in the West Bank.

And so it has gone despite efforts of the U.S. under Clinton, Obama, and a series of Israeli pro-negotiation governments. You can see the full timeline on the PBS Frontline website.

Netanyahu was greatly encouraged by the Trump presidency of the US from 2016 to 2020. When it comes to Israel Trump, who has a history of antisemitic statements, brings to mind Shylock’s description of Antonio in The Merchant of Venice as a “fawning publican” unctuously mouthing pious platitudes as a carrot for the “Jewish vote” while also brandishing the stick if Jews don’t support him.

Netanyahu, like Trump, aspires to be a dictator in the name of Israel independently going its own way. But Netanyahu’s way is not the way the people of Israel want to go or the rest of the civilized world (I exclude Russia here) wants it to go. Trump says that if he is not elected, Israel will be gone in two or three years – maybe so, but if he is elected that outcome is a certainty as he and Netanyahu march arm-in-arm as happy Pied Pipers leading those whose care they are charged with over a cliff.

As for the Israeli and the Palestinian in the street? All they are saying is “give peace a chance.”