US to UN: recognize Israel's legitimacy

Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice: "[U.N.] Member states must
once and for all replace anti-Israeli vitriol with recognition of
Israel's legitimacy and right to exist in peace and security."

President Obama: "The time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. And the goal is clear: Two states living side by side in peace and security - a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people." September 23, 2009, UN Speech




The lesson of Oslo, Camp David and Annapolis is clear-cut: Even the most moderate Palestinian leadership is not prepared to accept Israel's most far-reaching peace proposal. In 16 years of a painstaking and exhausting peace process, the Palestinians never agreed to a single concession on a core issue. Their refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, to agree to demilitarize a Palestinian state or to give up their demand for the return of refugees to Israel has blocked peace in the past, is blocking peace in the present and will continue doing so for the foreseeable future. As of now, there is no genuine Palestinian partner for the partition of the country. Obama's Palestinian problem can't be swept under a carpet of words. -- Avi Shavit , September 24, 2009 Ha'aretz

Netanyahu on prospects for peace

If the leader of the Palestinian Authority genuinely steps forward and says, "We recognize the State of Israel, we're willing to make peace with the Jewish state, and it will be a peace of the recognition and security," then my government will make peace.
-- Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, September 22, 2009 CNN Interview

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (14)

" The real problem lies in the fact in the Arab and Islamic worlds there are
still too many people who have not come to terms with Israel’s existence in this part of the world. They continue to consider Israel an alien body or a cancer that needs to be removed for once and for all.

And that’s basically why there still isn’t peace in the Middle East."

Khaled Abu Toameh, September 15, 2009 Hudson New York


Who is Obstructing Middle East Peace?

The US Administration is in the final stages of preparing a new initiative that would, according to recent reports in the media, require Arabs and Muslims to embark on a process of normalization with Israel once the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu freezes construction in West Bank settlements.

However, even if Netanyahu were to announce tomorrow morning that he is suspending all construction in the settlements, it is highly unlikely that the Arab and Islamic countries would rush to normalize relations with Israel.

Many Arab and Islamic countries have already made it crystal-clear that even if Israel would stop the construction, they would not take such a step.

Lebanon"s top Shiite cleric: Sharia prohibits normalizing relations w Israel

Lebanon's top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah on Sunday [ September 13, 2009] issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, banning the normalization of ties with Israel.

"Normalization with the Zionist enemy in any form is prohibited by Sharia (Islamic law)," Fadlallah said in [a] statement.

"We confirm that the fatwa against normalization applies to every Muslim," he stressed.

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (13)

"Peace in the Middle East does not hinge on settlements. And in Israel, a country governed by democracy and rule of law, a country that has made and will still make sacrifices for peace, settlements are no obstacle to progress.

What the Palestinians need now is leadership that is brave enough to establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people."

-- Asaf Shariv, Israeli consul general in New York. September 13, 2009

What the Israel-Palestinian conflict is really about (12)

What Is Peace?


By YOSSI ALPHER, Op Ed, New York Times, September 10, 2009 excerpt. Yossi Alpher, former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University, co-edits bitterlemons.org.

Israelis ... perceive ... a deep-seated Arab and Muslim rejection of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.

That was not an obstacle to a “cold peace” with Israel’s neighbors, with whom the borders were clear. But when the Palestinians’ quarrel with Israel touches on fundamental issues of ownership, whether in the claims of 1948 refugees or in the competing claims to the Temple Mount, the question of legitimacy comes to the fore.

This is how even moderate Israelis view the public rejection by the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s peace offer in 2008 — a set of proposals that Israelis deemed extraordinarily generous.

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (11)

What prevents peace?
From Arab perspective, Jewish sovereignty, self-determination are anathema

Moshe Dann, Ynewnews.com September 7, 2009 excerpts

The real issue is Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 as a Jewish state.

No "peace plan" - even the most extreme which requires Israel to withdraw from all territory conquered in 1967 - will solve the Arab-Muslim problem of allowing a nominally Jewish state to exist in any form.

The struggle is not over dividing territory, but whether Israel deserves to exist at all.


The author, a former assistant professor of History (CUNY) is a journalist and writer living in Jerusalem

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (10)

Alex Grobman, an historian and author, has written an article entitled, Is Anyone Listening to What The Arabs Are Saying About Israel? Dated 9/07/2009, it is found online at www.hnn.us/articles/112782.html.

In it Grobman argues that the chief impediment to Israeli-Arab peace is the Arab refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state. Why? Because, according to Grobman, "[T]he Arabs regard themselves as the only 'legitimate repository of national self-determination' in the Middle East."

In making his case, Grobman discusses the prevalence of pan-Arabism, which he asserts, "For historical, cultural and religious reasons, ... resonates among all segments of Arab society."

Although not cited specifically by Grobman, the following by Khalil Nakhleh, a Palestinian anthropologist, independent development and educational consultant and writer,[resident in Ramallah] exemplifies the mindset and perspective pertinent to Grobman's argument. Nakhleh's document, dated August 2008, is available online at www.kanaanonline.org/articles/01633.pdf, and is worth reading.

As Grobman asserts, the pan-Arabist considers Palestine (subsuming Israel)part of the whole Arab Homeland.

From Nakhleh ( page 2): The overall objectives of our collective national struggle, to which I am committed, seek to achieve the legitimate historical Palestinian rights, which, as used here, are the right of all Palestinians to live free and independent in their historical land, understood to be an integral part of the whole Arab Homeland (Watan)...

As Grobman asserts, "[T]he Arabs regard themselves as the only 'legitimate repository of national self-determination' in the Middle East."

From Nakhleh (page 5): If they [non-Zionist Jews] chose to live with us [in a single state], they will have the guaranteed right to exercise their cultural and religious values and customs,with freedom and respect, like any other minority with different religious beliefs and values. But they are not eligible to claim a “right of self determination”, as if they constitute a “national” group.

And also, on Nakhleh, page 5, the following -- a denial of Jewish history: Populations of Jewish faith existing in other parts of the world are an integral part of the countries in which they exist; they have no historical or religious claim over the land of Palestine, as if they were part of a “disbursed people”. The “historical disbursal” of the “Jews” from the land of Palestine is equally mythical; their “coerced” claim, so far, has been putative and fabricated. [end]

Grobman's is another voice in the collective and disparate body of voices now asserting that -- for the conflict to end in an honorable two state solution-- the Palestinian leadership ( and Arab governments ) must unambiguously and explicitly recognize Israel as the state of the Jews. Not to imply that Israel need not make important concessions for peace, but there is simply too much history of dogmatic Arab rejectionism and too much obvious verbal avoidance by Palestinian leadership of the specific words indicating recognition of the Jewish state of Israel to subordinate the demand.

-- Mark Finkelstein Send comments to jcrc@dmjfed.org

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (9)

"[The core of the conflict is] the Arabs' total-denial approach to Israel... [The Palestinian leadership] are bothered by Jewish settlement in Israel in general.

It's enough to browse through the books of the "moderate" Palestinian Authority to see that Haifa, Jaffa and even Tel Aviv are considered Palestinian cities, while Hamas believes the Wakf land of all Palestine should be expropriated from the Jewish state, which doesn't have the right to land on either side of the Green Line."

-- Raphael Israeli The author is a professor of Islamic, Middle Eastern and Chinese history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. September 6, 2009 Ha'aretz

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (8)

If it is to be successful, a Palestinian-Israeli permanent status agreement will end all claims that each national group has on the other. If it is indeed to end all claims, once and for all, it will have to address not just issues raised by the 1967 war, but issues left unaddressed from the 1948 war.

The first and foremost is recognition of what the relevant UN resolutions repeatedly called "the Jewish state." Without an unambiguous statement of recognition [of Israel as 'the Jewish state,"] it is difficult to imagine that any agreement will indeed have ended all claims.

It is not surprising that an Israeli government has made this demand a sine qua non of a permanent status agreement. What is surprising is that no Israeli government has made this a sine qua non until now.

The U.S. voted for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine 62 years ago. The U.S. should not be indifferent to Israel's request that endorsing its status as the Jewish state be enshrined in a permanent status agreement designed finally to end the conflict over Palestine, once and for all.

-- Robert Satloff, Executive Director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and member of MESH, Middle East Strategy at Harvard. Comments. August 30, 2009

Prior installments of this series are archived on the sidebar of jcommunitynews.blogspot.com

The Israeli Left: its perspective and its current decline

Although the Israeli Left gets a lot of media and political attention in the U.S., its position within Israeli politics is not as pronounced as one would suppose. In the following opinion piece, Carlo Strenger empathetically takes on the topic, Why Israel's left has disappeared.

Following Strenger's piece is a retort penned by an Israeli, "Amichai." Amichai's explanation for why the Israeli Left is at present a non-factor is " because it has failed to understand that the conflict is based squarely on the Palestinian and Arab "[refusal] to accept Israel`s right to be, to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people."

[In accord with the premise identified by Amichai, Why recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a prime requirement for Israel-Palestinian peace is explained by Barry Rubin.] //Mark Finkelstein



Why Israel's left has disappeared
Ha'aretz August 17, 2009

By Carlo Strenger The writer teaches at the psychology department of Tel Aviv University and is a member of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists.


Israel's left has disappeared; it has nearly no parliamentary representation and remarkably little public presence. At first glance, this is a paradox, because the left's program has, in many ways, won, as Yossi Sarid said when he left the Knesset for good. The idea of a Palestinian state, anathema in Israeli society a few decades ago, is now accepted by the mainstream.

The left has dissipated because it has failed to provide a realistic picture of the conflict with the Palestinians. Its ideological foundation was based on a simple prediction: If we offer the Palestinians a state in the territories occupied in 1967, there will be "peace now."

Then things started to go wrong. After the Oslo process began, the newly formed Palestinian Authority educated its children with violently anti-Israeli and often straightforwardly anti-Semitic textbooks. The suicide bombings of 1996 were not prevented by Arafat (some say they were supported). What brought the left down completely were the failures of Camp David in 2000 and Taba in 2001, as well as the onset of the second intifada.

On the face of it, Israel's left should have said "we were wrong in our predictions. We underestimated the complexity of the situation. We didn't see that the Palestinians were not ready to renounce the right of return and we underestimated how much murderous rage there was against Israel. We still believe that we need to end the occupation as quickly as possible, but we need to face reality."

Instead of admitting that it had been partially wrong, the left tried to explain away all the facts that didn't square with its theory by putting the onus of responsibility for Palestinian actions exclusively on Israel's policies. The left argued that the bombings in 1996 happened because the Oslo process was too slow and the Palestinians wanted to avenge the targeted killing of Yihye Ayash; Camp David failed because prime minister Ehud Barak's offers were insufficient. The second intifada started because of Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000. Hamas came to power because we turned Fatah into collaborators with the Zionists, and so on.

The Israeli left's thinking is governed by what I call SLES (Standard Left Explanatory System). This intellectual construct gained popularity in Europe and the United States in the 1960s after the demise of European colonialism. The basic principle of SLES is simple: Always support the underdog, particularly when non-Western, and always accuse Western powers, preferably the United States and its allies, for what the underdog does. Anything aggressive or destructive a non-Western group says or does must be explained by Western dominance or oppression. This ranges from the emergence of Al-Qaida, which is blamed on the United States' dropping of its support for the Mujahideen in Afghanistan after the Soviets were expelled, to corruption and violence in Africa, which is blamed on the aftereffects of European colonialism.

SLES is built on very questionable psychology: It assumes that if you are nice to people, all conflicts will disappear. It simply disregards the human desire for dominance, power and a belief system that gives them self-respect. As a result, SLES, under the guise of humanitarianism, assumes that non-Western groups don't have a will of their own; that all they do, feel or want is purely reactive to the West. It is also devoid of respect for non-Western groups: It assumes that they are not responsible for their deeds, and that all they do must be explained by victimization by the West.

If you listen to the left's explanations of Palestinian behavior, you might easily conclude that Israel is omnipotent and that Palestinians have no self will. In conversations with Palestinians I have heard more than once that they feel that the right wing respects them more than the left because the left always presumes to know what the Palestinians really want. [end of citation]
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Comment from Amihai City: Jerusalem State: Israel

The Left is gone because it has failed to understand that the conflict is not an Israeli-Palestinian one but rather an Israeli-Arab conflict, one between Israel and the entire Muslim-Arab world and civilization that has refused to accept Israel`s right to be, to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

In its attempt to resolve the conflict whose nature the left has misunderstood it has come to blame Israel and even Zionism for standing firm and demanding recognition of right of the Arab side.

And when that demand has not been met, indeed when Barak offered peace for such recognition and the end of conflict and received a war-of-attrition-through-terror that lasted for years, the Left, instead of siding with Barak`s loyalty to his people and his state, left him and became closer to Arafat and Bargouti.

It has now paid the price.

ADL: Path to peace begins with the recognition of Israel

The Problem Isn't Settlements,
It's Arab Rejection of Israel

The ADL's letter can be signed online.

Dear Mr. President,

We all support peace in the Middle East. But pressuring Israel is not the right approach.

The obstacle to peace is not Israel. The settlements are not the impediment. The issue is simple: the Arab and Palestinian rejection of Israel's right to exist, including through violence and terrorism, for over 60 years. Israel's right to exist is undeniable and is based on its right to self-determination in its historic homeland.

The path to peace is clear. With recognition, Israel has said again and again that everything is on the table without preconditions.

Mr. President, it's time to stop pressuring our vital friend and ally. It's now time to direct your attention to the rejectionists who refuse to recognize Israel and negotiate an end to the conflict.

With your leadership, yes, we can have peace.

But the path begins with the recognition of Israel.

Sincerely,
The Anti-Defamation League

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (7)

Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state

Aug 27th, 2009 by MESH From Robert O. Freedman

In his June 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asserted that Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” was one of Israel’s requirements for agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state. Both Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat,immediately rejected the requirement. However, if there is to be a long-lasting peace between Israel and a Palestinian state, Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a necessity.

.... Palestinians have [four] objections to Israel being recognized as a Jewish state, [the fourth] objection about which they do not speak openly... lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict....

... [It] is that many Palestinians simply do not accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism (Zionism). For the Palestinians, and for many other Arabs as well, a Jew is defined by religion, not nationality or ethnicity, and given the position of Jews as dhimmis, or second-class religious subjects in Muslim history, the Palestinians feel that Jews have no right to be rulers, let alone rule over what they consider Muslim territory.


Middle East Strategy at Harvard (MESH) is a project of the National Security Studies Program at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (6)

There is one - and only one - cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict, even if that single cause is buried beneath an avalanche of media mud designed to obfuscate and confuse. That single cause is the refusal of the Arab world to come to terms with Israel's existence within any set of borders whatsoever.

The Middle East conflict is not about the right of self-determination of Palestinian Arabs, but rather about the total Arab rejection of self-determination for Israeli Jews....

The Palestinians tell each other, in their newspapers, their mosques and their internal political debates, that any two-state solution is but a stage in a "plan of stages," after which will come additional steps ultimately aimed at ending Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

Why shouldn't we believe them?

--Steven Plaut, Two-state solution -- or Potemkin peace? August 26, 2009

Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa

What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is really about (5)

Neither the state of Israel nor any other nation is above criticism, and there are numerous mistakes Israel's government has made in dealing with Palestinians. However the fallacy that settlement of the West Bank issue is at the core of the dispute should be laid to rest. United Nations resolution 181 in 1947 partitioned the disputed area between the two peoples, just as colonial India had been divided a few months earlier. Israelis accepted the agreement and Arabs rejected it, which led to a series of wars against Israel, in each of which the Jewish state prevailed.

At any time through 1967, the Arabs then in complete control of the West Bank and Gaza could have declared a state, as not one Jewish settlement existed on their land, but refused to do so.

[The core of the conflict, then, is that most] Arab [countries have still] refused to accept the legitimacy of any Jewish state, the position Hamas maintains to this day.

-- Barry Kay: Palestinians pay high price for follies of their advocates August 24, 2009

Barry Kay is a political science professor at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

What the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is really about (4)

[T]he Arab-Israeli conflict... has a source, and it is the refusal to acknowledge that source - rather than any failure to "engage" - that is the main reason for the failure of decades of peacemaking. ...

[T]he engine of the conflict is the Arab refusal to accept Jewish history, peoplehood or sovereignty anywhere in the Land of Israel.

[T]he Arabs will not end the conflict... so long as they still have hopes that Israel will become delegitimized and will weaken and disappear.

-- Saul Singer, Interesting Times: The power of truth, August 13, 2009

What the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is really about (3)

[T]he Palestinians, through their rejection of the UN Partition Plan, refused to recognize the Jewish state and embarked on a war to destroy it. This is, after all, the root of the conflict.

Indeed, the Palestinian narrative is based on the rejection of the existence of a Jewish nation state in any part of the territory they call Palestine.... The Palestinians fought the Jewish state, and if they truly and sincerely wish to forge peace, they must be willing to come to terms with the Jewish state, and to do so explicitly, without stuttering.

-- Shlomo Aveneri, The Palestinian position is important, August 20, 2009

What the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is really about (2)

"This conflict is actually about accepting Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people in this part of the world. The Palestinian media should be asked to "lower the tone" and start relating to Israel as a potential peace partner and not as an alien body that needs to be uprooted from the Middle East."

from How to Solve the Arab-Israeli Conflict - Khaled Abu Toameh, August 11, 2009

PALESTINIANS MUST RECOGNIZE ISRAEL, ITALIAN PRESIDENT SAYS

(ANSAmed Italian Press Agency) - JERUSALEM, NOVEMBER 27 -

"We must never let matters slide as considers the delegitimization of Israel," said Giorgio Napolitano [President of Italy] at the [Hebrew] University in Jerusalem, expressing his "concern" over the "harsh conditions in which people live in Gaza", but adding that this "can never obscure," for any Palestinian or Arab, "the issue of the full and unequivocal, consistent recognition of the state of Israel, its legitimacy, its right to exist and its security."

This part of his speech met with thundering applause in the auditorium. Immediately afterwards Napolitano left for Bethlehem where, this morning, he will be meeting with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). On the subject of the delegitimization of Israel, Napolitano spoke once again of the condemnation of the negationist and threatening statements made by Iranian president Ahmadinejad (whose name he did not mention, but only referred to him as 'a head of state or government'). To these threats, said the Italian president, "we oppose the tormented history to which we have borne witness or have been active participants in, the ever-present duty of memory especially as concerns the tragedy of the Holocaust."

The duty of memory, said Napolitano, compels Italians to also remember the Italian Jews who are part of Italian history, since they were "among the leaders of the Risorgimento" and "suffered the vile persecutions in our country of the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation," as also Antonio Gramsci and Enzo Sereni and many other Italians who to the Jews "chose to give solidarity and assistance in the most dangerous moment."