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M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy Analysis for , a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.
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By M.J. Rosenberg
June 29, 2007
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Bantustans For The Palestinians
Not surprisingly, neocons and other elements in the far right flank of the pro-Israel community are celebrating what they hope is the end of the two-state solution.
My favorite reaction came from Martin Peretz, the Harvard lecturer and former owner of the New Republic, who recounted what he thought was an amusing story about a Jewish boy in his neighborhood who saw a sign with the words "Peace Now" written in Hebrew ("Shalom Achshav"). Shalom, in Hebrew, not only means "peace" but also "hello" and "goodbye."
Let me quote the rest of Peretz's story. "The child read, with only a bit of difficulty, the words, Shalom Achshav. 'Daddy, I know what that means. It means 'Good-bye now'." Peretz concludes: "The child got today?s meaning perfectly: Peace Now, Good-bye now."
Peretz is all laughs because he sees the threat of peace receding. Although his take is sillier than the other commentary I have read on the subject of Gaza, the sentiment is typical.
Brett Stephens, the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal and former editor of the Jerusalem Post, doesn't aim for cuteness, but rather virulence. He predicts the end of the idea of Palestine. ?Palestine as we know it today, will revert to what it was ? shadow land between Israel and its neighbors ? and Palestinians, as we know them today, will revert to who they were: Arabs. Whether there might have been a better outcome is anyone's guess. But the dream that was Palestine is finally dead."
Peretz and Stephens are not alone. All the usual suspects have come out of the woodwork to proclaim the two-state solution dead. Not that they believe it; they know that establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with a negotiated presence in East Jerusalem is inevitable.
But the rejectionists believe that predicting the death of "the dream that was Palestine" can help make it happen.
It won't. It won't happen because the entire world ? including the Americans ? have come around to the understanding that the Palestinians have a right to statehood. That right, like the Jewish right to Israel, is not conditional. It is a right.
Hamas may be deemed an unfit negotiating partner for Israel but that in no way vacates the Palestinian right to statehood. It is as if Israelis had chosen the violent way of Menachem Begin's Irgun rather than of David Ben-Gurion's liberal Haganah in 1947. The Jewish right to statehood in Palestine would not have been revoked although it possibly would have seen its realization delayed by a year or two.
More significantly, the two-state solution will not die because there is no alternative to it for Palestinians, Israelis and our own country.
If the Iraq war ended tomorrow, with the last American soldier back home, the standing of the United States in the Muslim world would not significantly improve because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remain.
So long as it does, so long as the United States is perceived as the enemy of the Palestinian people, US interests in this strategically vital region will decline. Even worse, intensifying Arab and Muslim rage over the Palestinians jeopardizes the survival of the two most pro-American regimes in the Arab world ? Egypt's and Jordan's. Burying the Palestinian hope for nationhood could also end up burying these two regimes along with their peace treaties with Israel.
For Israel, holding on to the West Bank, while Gaza evolves into an isolated Hamastan, would rob it of any possibility of negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That would mean the inevitable return of terrorism along with the possibility that Israel would have to assume direct control of the West Bank and responsibility for its entire people (something Israel cannot afford and which it is also probably incapable of doing). As for Gaza, it is just a few miles from Israel's population centers. With the backing of Iran or even Al Qaeda, how long would Israel be immune from the spillover of terror?
Then there is the demographic question. Israel will not long remain a Jewish state if it absorbs the Palestinians in the West Bank.
The right's answer to all this is "no problem." It no longer argues that Israel should formally hold on to the West Bank. It says that Israel should simply let the acceptable (to them) elements in Fatah nominally control it (although not its borders or air space) while Israel maintains the checkpoints and settlements. As for Gaza, it is essentially a prison anyway; the Israelis withdrew but control its points of entry, its air space and its sea lanes. And the IDF can enter Gaza whenever it so chooses. For the right, this is the perfect solution: the conflict ends not with compromise but exclusively on the settlers? terms.
Michael Oren, the American-Israeli historian, argued in the Wall Street Journal piece that the Palestinians essentially deserve nothing, while generously recommending the following: ?The U.S., together with its Quartet partners, can work to establish areas of extensive Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. Within these districts, local Palestinian leaders will be fully empowered to manage all aspects of daily life including health, education and resource management.?
In other words, Bantustans.
It is no coincidence that the people who have this vision of Israel and Palestine's future are pretty much the same ones who believed that the Iraq war would be a "cake walk" and that the Iraqi people would greet the United States with flowers and dancing in the street.
That is because they are ideologues who tend not to think of actual people when they discuss geopolitics. For them, Palestinians do not exist because they believe they do not exist. In the world of ideologues, four million people simply disappear. That is why Brett Stephens insists there are no Palestinians, "just Arabs." Ideology trumps reality.
They are determined to bury Palestinian nationhood with a smothering embrace of the West Bank regime while rejecting Gaza's. Divide and conquer. It won't work.
This is what General Shlomo Gazit, who was Israel's first Coordinator of Government Operations in the Administered Territories (1967-1974) and Head of Military Intelligence (1974-1979), wrote in Ma'ariv earlier this week.
"Just a [short time] has gone by since the establishment of Hamastan, but we have already seen how Israel responds on two levels. The moment it took control of Gaza, Hamas declared a unilateral ceasefire with Israel. For over a week, not a single Qassam rocket was fired at Sderot; but, after just one day in the job, the new defense minister (Ehud Barak) approved a new operation against wanted terror suspects in Khan Yunis. Five Palestinians were killed and four were injured and, unsurprisingly, the very next day the Qassam attacks on Sderot started again. On the diplomatic front, Israel continues to pin all of its hopes on Abu Mazen and his Fatah movement.
"The current Israeli policy (toward Fatah) is a failure and is the opposite of the siege policy that we implemented until now. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip will not support Fatah; a movement that has passed its prime. It will certainly not support a leadership that has the backing of Israel and the United States. This is surely the time for Olmert and Israel to reevaluate the situation."
Will he? Who knows. Unlike the cheering neocons in the United States, Olmert has to worry about the safety of Israelis, civilians and soldiers. He also is old enough to remember the euphoria that engulfed Israel and the Jewish community worldwide after the Six Day War. Could any victory be more complete? Could any people be as utterly defeated as the Arabs in June 1967?
For the next several years, the Israeli government sat on its expanded borders, rejecting several opportunities to negotiate with Egyptians, Jordanians, and Palestinians, all of whom Israel considered too weak to ever again pose a threat.
In 1973, the same Arabs who were vanquished in '67 came back with a literal vengeance. Israel, which lost 700 of its troops and conquered territory four times it own size in '67, lost 3000 soldiers and barely held on to the state itself. In the end, the Yom Kippur War forced Israel into negotiations with Egypt it had rejected previously. The '73 war remains the worst disaster in Israel's history and it could have been prevented by a little humility and foresight as well.
Olmert remembers this. He knows the terrible price of hubris even if some of Israel's American cheerleaders neither know nor care.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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