How, and where, did the idea of a Jewish national home arise and take shape since recorded history on the matter is somewhat hazy?
Rarely has social media summed up a situation so succinctly. According to the Urban Dictionary, the noun Israel ‘got israeled’ as a verb to mean when someone is asked to share something of yours, then claims it as their own, and takes it for themselves.
Origin and questions
The 40th anniversary (in 1988) of the establishment of the Israeli state, however, and the release of official documents, coincided with the effort by Israeli scholars to challenge it. The historian Ilan Pappé contested ‘the Ten Myths’ about the origin and identity of the contemporary state of Israel. Five of these related to the origins: that Palestine was an empty land; that the Jews were a people without land; that Zionism is Judaism; that Zionism is not Colonialism; and that the Palestinians left their land in 1948.
Bilateral and multilateral efforts to seek a solution to the resulting problems brought forth no compromise. On the contrary, and early in 2018, Israel’s ruling Likud Party unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for the annexation of West Bank settlements. The Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan declared, “We are telling the world that it doesn’t matter what the nations of the world say. The time has come to express our biblical right to the land.”
Subsequent writings, and official Israeli assertions, have confirmed the validity of these questions. The war of June 1967 changed the landscape to Israel’s benefit. It was followed by United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). In 1974, the Palestine Liberation Organization was officially recognised by the Arab League and the United Nations General Assembly as being the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”, and was invited to participate in all UN activities under observer status. The Arab states, after much meandering, developed a common position in the Arab League Declaration/Initiative of March 2002. This was followed a few months later by the Palestinian Non-Paper (June 12, 2002) outlining a vision for Permanent Status Negotiations based on it and stating that ‘the border between the state of Palestine and the state of Israel will be the June 4, 1967 Armistice Line’.
Light on this was shed by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi of Haifa University in Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel: ‘Out of the original sins of the world against the Jews grew the original sins of Zionism against the Palestinian’. Looking at the future he argued that ‘the main obstacles to a solution have to do with exorcising the past, admitting past and present injustice for one side; forgiving the past, and the present for the other. The Israelis’ problem is asking for forgiveness; the Palestinians’ the readiness to forgive…Israelis seem to be trapped in a peculiar and impossible situation. Any concession to the Palestinians may lead to the unravelling of the whole Zionist enterprise’.
Balance of forces
A realistic assessment of the balance of forces was made by former negotiator and Ambassador to Washington, Prof. Itamar Rabinovich of Hebrew University, in Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs 1948-2003: ‘The military might that Israel displayed in June 1967 convinced the Arabs that they could not reasonably hope to end the conflict through a military victory… The effect of the 1967 defeat was qualitatively different from that of the defeats of 1948 and 1956…In the Arab’s ensuring soul-searching, several alternatives were fiercely debated…but a recommendation to seek a political settlement based on a historic compromise was not made.’
Further turmoil, regional and global, including the arrival in Israel of nearly a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and the long and profound effect on the Israeli public of the Intifada, eventually led to the Madrid Conference of 1991. The letter of invitation to invitees did not include the phrase “territories for peace” but was mentioned in the letters of assurance addressed to the Arab invitees.
Writing in 2004, Rabinovich concluded that ‘Israel is far more powerful than its Palestinian adversary, but it cannot translate its military superiority into a total, definitive victory….The military might that Israel displayed in June 1967 convinced the Arabs that they could not reasonably hope to end the conflict through a military victory…The effect of the 1967 defeat was qualitatively different from that of the defeats of 1948 and 1956…In the Arab’s ensuring soul-searching, several alternatives were fiercely debated…but a recommendation to seek a political settlement based on a historic compromise was not made.’
In a study published recently by a the Tel Aviv University think-tank, two experts assessed that the American support for Israel in the present war ‘has been unprecedented’ in terms of diplomatic support, ongoing military assistance and strategic support but also in growing criticism of Israel’s conduct and increasing efforts to shape the post-war situation. It adds that the predominantly Jewish community (in the U.S.) and particularly its younger members ‘are distancing themselves from Israel’ and the same can be said of in assessing domestic attitudes in Israel.
The Israeli argument, and the substance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reasoning, is guarantee of a continued Israeli control over the majority of West Bank land, water, internal and external movement and transportation, and overriding security. This, in effect, is a recipe for preventing the creation of a normal Palestinian state. The American way out of it is a two-state solution whose small print shall be a de-militarised Palestine guaranteed by a de-facto U.S.–Israeli alliance.
The players
The respective requirements of the affected or interested parties to this long-standing dispute, in the light of the experience of October 7, can thus be summed up:
Palestinians: recognition of their existence as a state along with rights as a state under international law and in terms of the Palestinian Non-Paper of June 12, 2002;
Israel: retention of the acquired territory. ‘The Palestinians would be given all the powers to govern themselves but none of the powers that could threaten Israel. Put simply, the solution is self-government for the Palestinians with vital security powers retained by Israel.’
The United States: A two-state solution with a de-militarised Gaza, a Saudi normalisation with Israel, a role for the moderate Arab countries in rebuilding Gaza, and in keeping Iran isolated.
In the last week of February, Thomas Friedman wrote about ‘the increasingly rapid erosion of Israel’s standing among friendly nations’ and if [U.S. President Joe] Biden is not careful, America’s global standing will plummet right along with Israel’s.’
Arab states: A revitalised Palestinian state, devoid of radical elements after the experience of the Arab Spring, and a benefiting from the experience of Egypt and Jordan and of the governments party to the Abraham Accords. Some of may not be averse to American suggestions of an Arab Mandate.
One needs to be an optimist, even a ‘panglossian’, to consider these to be realisable.
Hamid Ansari was the Vice-President of India (2007-2017)
