By Jewish Renaissance Media editorial
June 28, 2001
Reprinted from the Detroit Jewish News with permission.
Last week, U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, suggested that physical separation of Palestinians from Israelis may be the only route toward a permanent peace in the Mideast. It was a surprisingly naive thought from a political leader whose presidential campaign last year was marked by so much common sense on so many issues.
It also is dangerous talk because it could encourage an American policy founded on the belief that separation is an ultimate answer. It is not clear that the Bush administration does have an underlying philosophy about what an eventually peaceful relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians might look like, so McCain's comments could push the White House and State Department down the wrong road.
It isn't that others haven't thought greater physical separation was desirable. Toward the end of his brief tenure as prime minister, Ehud Barak spoke of building a physical wall along some lines that, presumably, Israel would have to determine because the Palestinians were so busy rejecting the exceptionally generous offer he had made to Yasser Arafat at Camp David. The current prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has spoken not about a wall so much as new "security zones" within the West Bank and Gaza, a tactic tried with no success in southern Lebanon.
Both approaches rest on an Israeli presumption that separation would make security easier to enforce.
A new vision
The Palestinians, naturally, reject the idea of a line or zone drawn by Israel. They say that the Jewish nation should be removed, replaced by a greater Palestine with returning Arab families making up the majority population as they did before the land was partitioned more than 50 years ago. And Israel has its share of expansionist nationalists as well as the deeply religious who believe that they must work to fulfill God's promise that the Jews would get all of the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.
Never mind, of course, that Arab and Israeli holdings in the most important location of all, Jerusalem, are hopelessly intertwined. Faced with the impossibility of building a wall between the Kotel (Western Wall) and the Temple Mount, for example, and remembering the destruction under Jordanian rule, Israel simply intends to hold on to all of the city.
It is possible that a strong Israeli government could contain further expansion of West Bank settlements, though the track record on that score is not promising. But it is impossible to believe that the current generation of Palestinian leadership, filled as it is with the rhetoric of unending hatred, would respect boundaries however they are drawn.
When Palestinians tire of the current Intifada, they may be able to reflect on its futility, and may come to realize that they need a different leadership, one that secures a nation built on the premise of advancement through cooperation with its neighbors. That sort of nation does not need to be walled in or walled out, any more than Arizona needs to be fenced off from New Mexico. And Israelis may realize that individual settlers who choose to live in the territories will have to do so under Palestinian governance and not behind an IDF shield.
If America is to play a useful role in reducing the tensions of the Mideast, it must have a vision for the future of Israel and of the Palestinians. It will be a failed vision if it relies on physical barricades to assure a lasting peace.
Views expressed by the author do not
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