If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. -Moshe Dayan
The late Moshe Dayan was a wise man who knew a thing or three about defending Israel. The wisdom of the Palestinian prisoner release is debatable at best, and while I support what Prime Minister Netanyahu did in the hope of advancing peace, I can understand those who disagree. What I cannot understand are those on the right who oppose any negotiation for peace. I cannot understand those who say Israel should not sit down at the table and talk.
I am an old peacenik going way back. Most of my friends know this. I guess I still am. I still believe in my heart that the only way Israel will ever know security is if there is peace. I believe every Prime Minister of Israel except Yitzhak Shamir has understood this and worked for the day that Israel will have peace with her neighbors. I believe the senseless deaths in endless wars has to end someday. That day will come only when there is peace.
The reason my family did not stay in Israel, the reason I finished growing up in the United States, is simple. My mother put her foot down. She said she did not want her children to go to war. If it was up to my father, who came to the States from Israel in the 1950s, we'd have settled in Israel permanently. A few years earlier when most Israelis were celebrating the great victory in the Six Day War in 1967, my father saw nothing to celebrate. His words: "Occupation. Bad business." I believe history has proven he was correct.
I believe Israel has the right to defend herself. I believe that unequivocally. However, I also believe, based on the liberal Jewish values I was raised with, that Israel also has an obligation to seek peace at every opportunity. The Jewish people have prayed for thousands of years for the peace in Jerusalem and all Israel.
Many right wing Americans, on various Internet sites, claim to be great supporters and friends of Israel. They also are dead set against peace talks. If you are opposed to peace talks, if you think war is preferable to compromise, if you believe annexation and expulsion is somehow the correct answer to the dispute, if you would in any way oppose even sitting down and talking, then I believe you are no friend of Israel or the Jewish people.
One of the most important principles in Judaism is pikuach nefesh, the obligation to save a life. It is so important it trumps all other religious considerations. It is perfectly permissible to travel on Shabbat, on a holiday, even on Yom Kippur, if you can save a life. Another important concept I was taught when I was growing up is tikkun olam, which literally means repairing the world. We have an obligation to leave the world a better place than what we found when we came into it. What could do more to make the world a better place than achieving peace?
I am really and truly skeptical that these peace talks will go anywhere, at least in the near term. I just don't see Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership being ready to compromise on pretty much anything, and compromise is essential on both sides to achieve a peace agreement. Having said that, if you had asked me in college during freshman or sophmore year if Egypt would ever make peace with Israel I would have said "no way". I know because that is precisely what I said. I would have pointed out that Anwar Sadat flew planes for the Nazis and led his country in the Yom Kippur War. Then, late one evening in 1979, I was sitting in Wilson Commons, the student union building on the University of Rochester campus, watching the premiere of "Battlestar Galactica" with friends. The network interrupted the show... to announce the signing of the Camp David accords. What had seemed impossible to me a year earlier became reality that night. I will never forget it.
If you would condemn us to more war, more death, more destruction without so much as sitting down and trying to talk to our enemies, as Moshe Dayan said we must, then you are no friend of Israel and the Jewish people. I say "us" because so much of my family and so many friends, so many people I love dearly, live in Israel. I say "us" because anyone who has read my writing over the years knows that once I meet certain obligations here in the States and reach some goals which would make aliya successful for me, I plan on finally moving to Israel.
To those who say no talks, I say: די כבר - enough already. Give it a rest. We've had enough killing, enough death. We must at least try to make peace even if we are doomed to fail. It is our moral obligation.
Showing posts with label Abbas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abbas. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Thursday, May 02, 2013
Time to March on Jerusalem? I Don't Think So
Yesterday on The Times of Israel website, blogger Emanuel Shahaf wrote an article imploring Israelis to march on Jerusalem and demand that the Israeli government gets serious about making peace with the Palestinians. He concludes:
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I've read the article as well as the comments and responses. עמנואל שחף, with all due respect, you can only make peace when both sides want peace. The majority of Israelis still accept a "two state solution." I put it in quotes because today that means a four state solution within what was the original British Mandate of Palestine: three Arab states (Jordan, Gaza, West Bank) and a Jewish one which would be much weakened. Most of the recent polling I've seen from the P.A. indicates a two state solution is only acceptable as a step to liberating "all of Palestine," meaning, of course, all of Israel. The percentage that accepts the idea of living along side of a Jewish state is around 19%, and that was the most generous number I've seen.
The fact is that Ehud Olmert's 2008 offer, while now "off the table" as you point out, certainly was about the maximum Israel could ever offer. Mahmoud Abbas didn't even grace it with a formal response. There was no counter offer. Prime Minister Netanyahu lost his first government, in part, over the Wye River Accords. Yes, I know the budget was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, but after withdrawing from most of Hebron he lost most of his support from the right. In his second term he tried the settlement freeze which was ignored up until the last minute by Abbas and then it's end was used as an excuse for not negotiating. Recently we heard of a possible freeze again and Abbas suddenly needed every last Palestinian prisoner released no matter what they had done. Neither the Prime Minister nor his predecessor have failed to work for peace at all.
The reality is that Abbas has little popular support and nowhere near the courage to risk his life for an agreement even if he believed in peace. Having read and listened to his statements over the years, and what he has to say to his fellow Arabs in particular, I don't really believe he has any interest in peace at all. Once upon a time I was a peacenik. Like so many in the '90s I thought peace might be right around the corner if only we worked hard enough for it. Like so many I've since come to realize that I succumbed to a popular delusion.
Israel should always leave the door open to peace. We should always be ready to sit down and negotiate in good faith. We shouldn't beg those who fire rockets into Israel daily or those in Judea and Samaria who plot destruction to please, please, please make peace. That smacks of weakness and achieves nothing.
A mass march on the government that fails to work for peace is a wonderful idea. You would need to march on Ramallah, not Jerusalem.
Respectfully,
קייתלין מרטין
If the Israeli public doesn’t take the initiative, gets its act together and without much further ado marches on Jerusalem to convince our fearful politicians that this is crunch time, that we have to act, seize the moment and negotiate this conflict away before it consumes us, then we deserve no better.I strongly disagree with Mr. Shahaf and wrote a response which I posted as a comment. Here it is in full:
_________________________________________________________________
I've read the article as well as the comments and responses. עמנואל שחף, with all due respect, you can only make peace when both sides want peace. The majority of Israelis still accept a "two state solution." I put it in quotes because today that means a four state solution within what was the original British Mandate of Palestine: three Arab states (Jordan, Gaza, West Bank) and a Jewish one which would be much weakened. Most of the recent polling I've seen from the P.A. indicates a two state solution is only acceptable as a step to liberating "all of Palestine," meaning, of course, all of Israel. The percentage that accepts the idea of living along side of a Jewish state is around 19%, and that was the most generous number I've seen.
The fact is that Ehud Olmert's 2008 offer, while now "off the table" as you point out, certainly was about the maximum Israel could ever offer. Mahmoud Abbas didn't even grace it with a formal response. There was no counter offer. Prime Minister Netanyahu lost his first government, in part, over the Wye River Accords. Yes, I know the budget was the final straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, but after withdrawing from most of Hebron he lost most of his support from the right. In his second term he tried the settlement freeze which was ignored up until the last minute by Abbas and then it's end was used as an excuse for not negotiating. Recently we heard of a possible freeze again and Abbas suddenly needed every last Palestinian prisoner released no matter what they had done. Neither the Prime Minister nor his predecessor have failed to work for peace at all.
The reality is that Abbas has little popular support and nowhere near the courage to risk his life for an agreement even if he believed in peace. Having read and listened to his statements over the years, and what he has to say to his fellow Arabs in particular, I don't really believe he has any interest in peace at all. Once upon a time I was a peacenik. Like so many in the '90s I thought peace might be right around the corner if only we worked hard enough for it. Like so many I've since come to realize that I succumbed to a popular delusion.
Israel should always leave the door open to peace. We should always be ready to sit down and negotiate in good faith. We shouldn't beg those who fire rockets into Israel daily or those in Judea and Samaria who plot destruction to please, please, please make peace. That smacks of weakness and achieves nothing.
A mass march on the government that fails to work for peace is a wonderful idea. You would need to march on Ramallah, not Jerusalem.
Respectfully,
קייתלין מרטין
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The Villification of Prime Minister Netanyahu
Part of the reason, of course, is that he is from the Likud party. Likud is seen as the Israeli equivalent of the Republican Party by many American liberals. That is an oversimplification and is really incorrect. The Prime Minister himself corrects journalists, steadfastly referring to Likud as center-right. Israel is a multi-party system and, much unlike the Republicans, those right of center divide into a number of secular and religious parties. Prime Minister Netanyahu has committed himself to "two states for two peoples" and he is the elected leader of Likud. That position is an anathema to the truly right-wing parties, for example, National Union, which is in opposition to the current government.
This Prime Minister lost his government during his previous term when the right wing parties pulled out of the ruling coalition, including breakaway members of Likud. It wasn't the left that brought him down; it was the right. Why? He signed the Wye River Memorandum and gave control of more land to the Palestinian Authority, including most of Hebron. I have no doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu would do the same again if there was a real chance for peace. Right now there isn't one.
The problem is, and always has been, the Palestinian leadership. They have had a total of three leaders since 1919: Haj Amin al-Husseini, who sided with the Nazis in World War II and wanted to bring Hitler's final solution to Palestine, his nephew and chosen successor, Yassir Arafat, and Arafat's hand-picked successor, Mahmoud Abbas, whose doctoral dissertation amounted to Holocaust denial. Yes, people can overcome their past. Anwar Sadat flew planes for the Nazis and led Egypt to war on Yom Kippur in 1973. Today we remember Sadat as a man who gave his life for the sake of peace. Sadly, Abbas is no Sadat. He insists on terms that he knows Israel can never meet as preconditions to negotiation, guaranteeing their failure in advance.
Look what Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered the Palestinians in 2008: land equal in area to what Jordan and Egypt occupied prior to 1967 with land swaps to account for present demographics, a divided Jerusalem with holy sites under international control, and a symbolic, limited acceptance of some Palestinian "refugees" into Israel. It's the most Israel probably could ever offer. The Palestinians didn't even respond and offered no counter-proposal.
What on earth could Prime Minister Netanyahu offer that hasn't already been offered? How is Prime Minister Netanyahu an obstacle to peace when he repeatedly says he will negotiate at any time in any place the Palestinians may choose? He's made the same offer to Syria. The answer is simple: Prime Minister Netanyahu is not a problem except in the minds of those who always find reason to blame Israel and those who believe them.
Friday, December 07, 2007
Abbas: "No Concessions"
I read in the Jerusalem Post that the Palestinian Legislative Council is in the process of passing a law making it illegal to make any concessions on Jerusalem and defining such concessions as "high treason." From the article:
That's it then. Negotiation over since the Palestinians, both Hamas and Fatah, including President Mahmoud Abbas, say they will make no concessions whatsoever.
Jerusalem, the Old City in particular, is the holiest place in the world to the Jewish people. My father fought to lift the siege of Jerusalem durig the 1948-49 War of Independence. Some things ARE worth fighting and even dying for. If the only way to achieve "peace" is to surrender our holiest sites in Jerusalem then I am opposed to this so-called "peace". Surrendering our history, our culture, our religious heritage, the very heart of the Jewish people is not worth it.
I expect to be called an intransigent right winger for this post. That's fine. I've always voted for liberal candidates, always supported the Oslo peace process prior to 2000 when the Palestinians abandoned it in favor of war, and always thought that accommodation was possible. No more. The Palestinians, through their actions and words, have convinced me. They have a "red line". So do I. I can only hope that the majority of Israelis see the same red line I do.
However, many Fatah legislators have made it known that they too support the law, which states that Jerusalem is a Palestinian, Arab and Islamic city and that it is totally forbidden to give up or conduct negotiations about any part of the city.
[...]
Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a top aide to Abbas, said in response that, as far as the PA was concerned, Jerusalem was a "red line" that cannot be crossed.
Abbas told supporters in Ramallah Thursday that he did not go to Annapolis to make concessions. "There are some people who are trying to distort the truth," he said. "They are saying that we went to Annapolis to sell our cause, negotiate and sign agreements. But we went there to convey our principle and fixed positions."
That's it then. Negotiation over since the Palestinians, both Hamas and Fatah, including President Mahmoud Abbas, say they will make no concessions whatsoever.
Jerusalem, the Old City in particular, is the holiest place in the world to the Jewish people. My father fought to lift the siege of Jerusalem durig the 1948-49 War of Independence. Some things ARE worth fighting and even dying for. If the only way to achieve "peace" is to surrender our holiest sites in Jerusalem then I am opposed to this so-called "peace". Surrendering our history, our culture, our religious heritage, the very heart of the Jewish people is not worth it.
I expect to be called an intransigent right winger for this post. That's fine. I've always voted for liberal candidates, always supported the Oslo peace process prior to 2000 when the Palestinians abandoned it in favor of war, and always thought that accommodation was possible. No more. The Palestinians, through their actions and words, have convinced me. They have a "red line". So do I. I can only hope that the majority of Israelis see the same red line I do.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
No Basis For Negotiation
This week, in the wake of the "peace conference" at Annapolis, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. 60 years ago last week the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181 ending the British mandate and specifically creating a Jewish state. Israel's purpose, it's raison d'être, was and is to provide a safe haven for the Jewish people. This, plus the fact that the Jewish people originally come from Israel, was the reason the international community created Israel in the first place. This took place in the wake of the Holocaust and growing persecution in the Arab world.
It's simple: if Abbas doesn't recognize Israel as a Jewish state that means he doesn't recognize Israel as defined and created by the U.N. It means he does not accept U.N. resolutions that are inconvenient for him. It means that he, like Hamas' leadership, wants Israel destroyed. Only his methods are different.
Why don't the U.S.,. the U.N., and the E.U. deal with Hamas? Why won't Israel negotiate with Hamas? Once again, it's simple: Hamas won't recognize Israel. Now it turns out Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas don't either, at least in any meaningful way. It seems to me there is no basis for negotiation. What applies to Hamas applies equally to Fatah. Look, I understand the hasbara (PR) value of Annapolis and going through the motions of a peace process. Having said that there are some principles that can't be bargained away. A nation's right to exist as constituted by it's people is one of them. Prime Minister Olmert should call off the next round of negotiations in Moscow until President Abbas recognizes Israel properly. Nothing less will do.
It's simple: if Abbas doesn't recognize Israel as a Jewish state that means he doesn't recognize Israel as defined and created by the U.N. It means he does not accept U.N. resolutions that are inconvenient for him. It means that he, like Hamas' leadership, wants Israel destroyed. Only his methods are different.
Why don't the U.S.,. the U.N., and the E.U. deal with Hamas? Why won't Israel negotiate with Hamas? Once again, it's simple: Hamas won't recognize Israel. Now it turns out Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas don't either, at least in any meaningful way. It seems to me there is no basis for negotiation. What applies to Hamas applies equally to Fatah. Look, I understand the hasbara (PR) value of Annapolis and going through the motions of a peace process. Having said that there are some principles that can't be bargained away. A nation's right to exist as constituted by it's people is one of them. Prime Minister Olmert should call off the next round of negotiations in Moscow until President Abbas recognizes Israel properly. Nothing less will do.
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