Posted by Philip Weiss
Friedman
Here are two pieces in the mainstream press that reflect the paradigm shift that is upon us with the smashup of the Kerry effort.
Tom Friedman at the Times is preparing American Jews for a one-state solution. He’s against it, of course; John Kerry is doing the “Lord’s work.” But the worthy business of Friedman’s column is explaining that the Israel American Jews fell in love with is gone, and it is now a society of rightwing zealots. “You did not go to summer camp with these Jews.” (Non-Jewish readers are chopped liver).
Friedman is inching toward Max Blumenthal’s view of that society, in more msm-palatable terms. The man who gave chalktalks on Israel’s military victory when he was in high school now states in neutral terms that young Palestinians want a one-state solution and that the Israel lobby has locked down Congress and the White House. That’s progress too (Dennis Ross used to debate Walt and Mearsheimer by saying, the lobby has Congress, yes, but it can’t affect the White House; horse feathers).
Friedman is Mr. Nutshell, and this time it works for me. Notice how he puts “Jewish state” in quotations.
We’re not dealing anymore with your grandfather’s Israel, and they’re not dealing anymore with your grandmother’s America either…
Israel, from its side, has become a more religious society — on Friday nights in Jerusalem now you barely see a car moving on the streets in Jewish neighborhoods, which only used to be the case on Yom Kippur — and the settlers are clearly more brazen. Many West Bank settlers are respectful of the state, but there is now a growing core who are armed zealots, who will fight the I.D.F. if it tries to remove them. You did not go to summer camp with these Jews. You did not meet them at your local Reform synagogue. This is a hard core.
But even the more tame settlers are more dominant than ever in the Likud Party and in the Israeli army officer corps. It is not a fiction to say today that the Likud prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, represents the “center” of Israel’s right-wing bloc. And it is not an accident that Israel’s housing minister, Uri Ariel, who comes from a pro-settler party to the right of the Likud, approved a tender for 700 homes in Jerusalem’s Gilo neighborhood, across the Green Line — just as Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace talks were coming to a head. As Minister Livni, Israel’s chief negotiator, put it: “Minister Ariel purposefully and intentionally did what he did to torpedo” the peace talks.
There are now about 350,000 Jews living in the West Bank. It took 50,000 Israeli police and soldiers to remove 8,000 settlers from Gaza, who barely resisted. I fear the lift in the West Bank to make peace there is now just too heavy for conventional politics and diplomacy. The only way settler resistance can be trumped would be by a prime minister, and an Israeli majority, who were really excited about the prospects for peace or truly frightened of the alternative.
But I do not believe Netanyahu will ever be anything other than ambivalent. And his ambivalence is reinforced by many factors: Israel today is so much more powerful, economically and militarily, than the Palestinians; Israeli (and Palestinian) security forces have effectively shut down Palestinian suicide bombers and the Israel lobby in Washington has effectively shut down any pressure from the White House or Congress. Israel has never been so insulated.
But these are not your grandfather’s Palestinians either. There is a young generation emerging that increasingly has no faith in their parents’ negotiations with the Jews, have no desire to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state” and would rather demand the right to vote in a one-state solution.
The comic contradiction in Friedman’s piece is that It’s not your grandfather’s Israel, not your grandmother’s America, and not grandpa’s Palestinians either. But it IS your grandfather’s lobby! That’s as powerful as ever. (Thanks to Donald Johnson.)
Another deathbed intervention comes from France: “If Kerry Fails, What Then?” in Le Monde Diplomatique, by Tony Klug, vice chair of the Arab-Jewish Forum in England, and Sam Bahour, the Palestinian businessman. The authors gives Israel a three-year deadline to put up or shut up and withdraw from the occupied territories, and asks us to start imagining a single democracy between the river and the sea. Though of course the authors are against that!
For over twenty years process has trumped outcome, but it is now in danger of being out-trumped itself by the total collapse of the only internationally recognized paradigm for a solution to the conflict. A new international strategy urgently needs to be devised and made ready as an alternative to the prospect of failed bilateral negotiations. Any such strategy should be rooted in a vision of the endgame, based on the principles of a rapid end to the Israeli occupation and equality between Palestinians and Israelis….
Our contention is that the occupying power should no longer be able to have it both ways. The laws of occupation either apply or do not apply. If it is an occupation, it is beyond time for Israel’s custodianship — supposedly provisional — to be brought to an end. If it is not an occupation, there is no justification for denying equal rights to everyone who is subject to Israeli rule, whether Israeli or Palestinian. Successive Israeli governments have got away with a colossal bluff for nearly 47 years. It is time to call that bluff and compel a decision.
The Israeli government should be put on notice that, by the 50th anniversary of the occupation, it must make up its mind definitively one way or the other. A half a century is surely enough time to decide. This would give it until June 2017 to make its choice between relinquishing the occupied territory — either directly to the Palestinians or possibly to a temporary international trusteeship in the first instance — or alternatively granting full and equal citizenship rights to everyone living under its jurisdiction.
Should Israel not choose the first option by the target date, it would be open to the international community to draw the conclusion that its government had plumped by default for the second option of civic equality. Other governments, individually or collectively, and international civil society, may then feel at liberty to hold the Israeli government accountable to that benchmark.
The three-year window would be likely to witness vigorous debate within Israel and induce new political currents that may be more conducive to a swift and authentic deal with the Palestinians over two states, probably within the framework of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative for which there is polling evidence of growing support among the Israeli population.
We need to break free of the divisive and increasingly stifling one-state-versus-two-states straightjacket that tends to polarize debate and in practice ends up perpetuating the status quo — which is a form of one state, albeit an inequitable one. The aim of our proposal is to bring matters to a head and to enable people to advocate equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis, in one form or another, free of the implication that this necessarily carries a threat to the existence of the state of Israel.
To be clear, this is not a call for a unitary state. How Israelis and Palestinians wish to live alongside each other is for them to decide and the indications still are that both peoples prefer to exercise their self-determination in their own independent states. Our proposal would not foreclose this option. It would remain open to the Palestinians to continue to agitate for sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza, for a future Israeli government to relinquish these territories and, in extremis, for the Security Council to enforce the creation of two states through the UN Charter’s Chapter VII mechanism. However, until this is finally determined, equal treatment should replace ethnic discrimination as the legitimate default position recognized by the international community.
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