Haaretz continues to publish articles wherein prominent leftists introspect. This is one example. But this idea of “Arab world first, Palestinians later” was a key point made by PM Netanyahu at the UN this week. Ted Belman
For the past 12 years Israel has had at its doorstep a strategy that would enable a U-turn: One that goes from the general (the Arab world) to the specific (the Palestinians).
The two-state solution – if it still has any chance of realization – will not be implemented in negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The path of direct negotiations between the two has been sterile for years, and no additional fertility treatments will help. How can something that has been infertile all these years become fertile? Why should something that has been unsuccessful so many times in the past succeed now?
Israel and the Palestinians simply don’t know how to save themselves by themselves. And the involvement of the United States and the European Union in the past 20 years has also yielded spoiled fruit.
For the past four decades the Israeli left has diagnosed the need for a solution to the conflict between us and the Palestinians as being a precondition for Israel’s acceptance in the region. For the past 30 years the left has been explaining that this solution will be implemented only by means of direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian representatives – namely, the PLO. In the past 20 years Israeli governments have adopted this thesis. The left can console itself by thinking that although it is not in power, it has succeeded in writing Israel’s diplomatic agenda vis-a-vis the region.
But for the past 20 years the Israel-PLO path has been a disappointment. Without apportioning, in terms of percentages or proportions, the responsibility of the Israeli and PLO governments for this failure – this fact is unequivocal. Negotiations (direct and indirect) between the PLO and Israel don’t lead to anything. Maybe only to short intermissions between the rounds of war.
The diagnosis that Israel’s future is linked to its relations with the Palestinians is completely valid even today. But the medication we are taking – negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – is no more than a placebo. Anyone who still believes that the two-state solution is possible has to come up with real, effective medication.
What was the basis of the strategy the left bequeathed to Israel? The approach that the process of finding a solution would begin from below (i.e., involving the PLO and Israel) and move upward – that is, “from the bottom up.” That a solution to the Palestinian question would enable normalization of Israel’s relations with the Arab world, from the specific to the general. This is a dangerous mistake that we can already admit to making. The theory of “Ramallah first” does not hold water. Israel is unwilling and the PLO is unable, or perhaps it’s vice versa. It makes no difference. The result is the same.
The pathetic hope that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority will play a central role in mediating between Israel and Hamas will also prove to be a disappointment. And we will once again open our eyes wide in astonishment and think that there’s something wrong with us. The only thing that’s wrong with us is out adherence to a sterile mode of conduct.
In the past two decades the regional picture has changed drastically: The tension between Israel and the Arab world is gradually lessening, and is far more moderate than the level of tension between Israel and the Palestinians. This constitutes a deep-seated trend with strategic implications for ways of solving the conflict. For the past 12 years Israel has had at its doorstep a strategy that would enable a U-turn: One that goes from the general (the Arab world) to the specific (the Palestinians).
The 2002 Arab League proposal is the alternative route offered by the strategy of “from the top down”: first, a comprehensive agreement with the outer Arab circle, and only afterward an agreement between Jerusalem and Ramallah, or between West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem. An accord with the Palestinians would be derived from an agreement with the Arab world rather than vice versa.
We can assume that the Arab world is also tired and despairing of the meager achievements produced by the direct contacts between Israel and the Palestinians, and that the Arab League countries no longer believe in U.S. mediation. Is it any wonder? If the left is interested in an agreement and in saving Israel, it must offer an alternative strategy – without giving up its vision. And “along the way,” the left can once again earn its place in determining the national agenda.
Israel’s difficulty – clearly manifested the left – is the difficulty of the pilot who is suffering from vertigo. The instruments are telling him one thing with scientific certainty, but some accursed habit tells him to behave in a way that will cause him to crash. The diplomatic flight instruments are telling us that there is a path that is likely to prevent the crash, but our bad habits, and the endlessly repeated words, and the thousands of contacts, and the ties that have been formed, and our inner convictions – all our maneuvering us toward a crash only because we have become addicted to a placebo.
The writer was a Meretz MK.
@ bernard ross:
Spot on, mr Ross!
I find it interesting that the militaries of the world are operating in the ME, albeit small. I wonder how all this activity would relate to or affect any attack on Iran? all those international planes flying around the area, who is who?
Although I believe that BB has been seeking and operating with regional arab understandings I also belive this cannot be a panacea or be depended upon. It is all about temporal self-interest which can shift as self-interest perceptions change. everything that is wrong with the pals is also wrong with the gulf nations and any rapprochement should be considered temporary and undependable even if currently advantageous. Israel sails in dangerous waters and that will not change in the medium term. Israel must rely on no one. It must look to its resources and security but also start to factor in the possible efficacies of exerting its military capabilities as a vehicle for strengthening Israel in diplomatic, economic and geopolitical sphere. Israel has the capacity to shake up world energy supplies and possibly the ability to SEIZE resources to maintain its independence in the face of sanctions and isolation. Israel has not exploited sufficiently its military capabilities much beyond arms sales. the future appears to be favoring the emergence of raw power in the forms of china, russia, Iran who have no problem exerting their capabilities and using them for gian.
yamit82 Said:
the keyword is not justice but “demand”. the arabs always demand everything while Israel always demands nothing. Israel has created an image of itself as a thief in the world by refusing to demand, SEIZE, IMPLEMENT AND EXECUTE Jewish rights of settlement. It is absurd that Israel accepts that the world is telling the jews where they can live in Israel. Israel must go on the offensive in the diplomatic, legal, counterterror and settlement theaters. the defense mode is an erosion failure. the arabs attack as they have nothing to defend, Israel leaves them in peace which is the first mistake.
yamit82 Said:
In more ways than one: it is the enemies who must be made to defend against terror. israel should facilitate the creation of plausibly deniable terror groups who make sure that chaos and bombings occur in the enemy areas who seek the same for the Jews. when they suffer the pain they give they will beg for calm and mercy. they rely on the Jews restraint and proportionate reply while they engage in terror. give them no respite, let them always live in chaos. the best thing for israel has been the arab spring and a euro spring would also be good for Israel.
The greatest enemy of the jews is the Jews themselves: the leftists, the naturei kartas and satmars,…..each of them have played a role in endangering the jewish people and Israel. If Israel was united in demanding Jewish rights and rejecting double standards then the world would ultimately follow suit. Tel Aviv sells out the settlers thus engaging in the same process that europe did with its Jews.
yamit82 Said:
but only the justness of the other side was presented to Israelis and Jews. Jewish rights appear to be unheard of. I maintain that the beginning of a paradigm shift would be the foreign minister call in in all the euro and western reps and demanding that they cease their libels and fulfill their treaty obligations to the Jews: the “facilitation of immigration and the encouragement of close settlement in the palestine mandate territory” that they have reneged upon. It cannot be acceptable that they continue to repeat the anti semitic canards of illegal OR illegitimate jewish settlement in Israel. it cannot be acceptable that they renege on their agreements and then there is business as usual. At least the arabs stick to their “principles” while the Jews abandon principle for the bazaar, which cannot be successful. anytime the word illegal or illegitimate is used Israel must react as if it has been slapped in the face and cease further talk or negotiations.
yamit82 Said:
I agree with this but was disheartened by the reliance on american resupply in this latest op and on the disruptive warning to Israel by Obama with the FAA.
@ yamit82:
Wow!
This comment (like so many others) should be memorized and repeated almost VERBATIM whenever the occasion calls for it. And if not , then DIRECT the conversation so this could be a natural and factual presentation.
Nuclear weapons replace depth of defense
A Lessen not yet learned: The peace movement is in reality a cult!! whatever are Israel’s intentions, they will always be interpreted in the worst possible light by the purveyors of Peace.
Nothing will satisfy this cult of Peace other than the dismemberment of the Jewish Zionist State. By supporting the Arab vision of Peace they support Israel abandoning the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, dismantling dozens of Jewish villages, IDF troops evicting Jews from their homes, Arab mobs dancing on the ruins of synagogues—there will be a tremendous victory for the Arabs. For many years, images of Israel’s defeat in the West Bank will energize young Arabs to continue the struggle to liberate the last areas of what they consider their land from the Jews. And the Arabs would not be that wrong. The Jews, who vacated their historical homes in Judea and Samaria and settled into the beachfront occupied previously by the detested Philistines and Greco-Roman pagans, hardly deserve even that ten-mile-wide state.
The peace process evolved as a means to attain security, but evolved into a quest for justness because the security objective proved unattainable. When it became evidently unjust as Jews lost their holy sites, it became a matter of reaching a consensus with the international community.
When people cannot evaluate the truth, they look for social proof instead of objective truth. The number of adherents to a particular idea and intensity of their beliefs is mistaken for proof. Israel’s population cannot evaluate the intricacies of the peace process, and so the population looks to the peace zealots for a social example. The mass political suicide of an Israeli society that follows the peaceniks is not unlike the Holocaust , where masses of Jews and non-Jews walked to their deaths because imitation was their only behavioral benchmark.
The Peace Zealots both home and abroad preach that absolutes are never attainable, and absolute justice is a myth. They claim that sometimes we have to abandon justice for the sake of peace.
But a treaty with Arabs leaves Israel about as peaceful as Syria and Iraq today.
Jews are framed as enemies of peace because Arabs are unflinching, they do not compromise and adhere to a simple message never deviating from it’s main thrust. The Jews stole their land and dispossessed the poor aborigines who are the rightful owners. They demand JUSTICE and a return to the status quo ante. Justice for Arabs vs security for Israel: [who is acknowledged as a near military superpower with Nukes], is in the worlds view and too many Jews and Israelis as a slam dunk for Justice.
Did some Jews who went meekly without resistance to the ovens encourage the Nazis and Ukrainians to murder Jews in other places?? I think they did. “Solzhenitsyn: if Soviet citizens had met the KGB agents with axes, there would have been no Gulag.” Not only is life, but also the quality of our death becomes expendable for the good of others. In our case, we’re not allowed to seek peace with the Arabs for the benefit of our own immediate safety . We must stop the Arabs and the Western anti-Semites firmly, and accept suffering now for the safety of our nation in the future.
Israel must begin to emulate our enemies and other nations who refused to compromise their national interest and national survival on the alter of compromise and appeasement even at the expense of not attaining some ethereal condition called peace. Instead of trying to appear nice, Israel must up the stakes and refuse to cooperate. At that point, the West would either blame the Arabs for not yielding to the mad Jews, or forget the issue as it ignores scores of unsolvable conflicts around the world.
The problem is Judeophobia is deep-seated in the Arab World along with paranoia and a belief in conspiracy theories. Which limits the potential for a real breakthrough. With the Arab World as pathologically sick as it is, real peace is impossible. The only thing Israel can do is to manage the conflict.
Its quite a downer from the heady Oslo days when peace and mutual recognition seemed to be around the corner. That will never be. People are recognizing that the so-called two state solution in fact is a chimera. The prospects of it being revived in the years to come are exactly zero.
@ woolymammoth:
That is QUITE a statement…
So what will it be like, woolymammoth?
‘The writer was a Meretz MK.'[And is now a male prostitute trying to explain away the insanity of The Israeli Left.]
Toward a crash? The Israeli Left has crashed alright and crashed again, like 100,000 Arafats stumbling in the dessert mumbling something about “I told that stupid pilot to gas up the plane before we took off…but he showed me the tank was nearly full.” The Israeli Left is just as full of shit today as it was when it castigated PM Begin for attacking Iraq’s nuclear reactor. They can be expected to put their foot to mouth [hoof and mouth disease]if and when Israel implements it’s Iran protocol, which by the way will not be quite like what people may expect, in case you may have been wondering why bibi was so smug in The UN; he has got his duckies all lined up.