I’m reading Haaretz of Israel and there’s an article “Strenger than Fiction” where he talks about two-state vs one-state “solutions” (mind you, none of them sound like solutions) and I want to make a comment about another commenter’s comment. But Haaretz never, ever publishes my comments – ever. This feels frustrating so I decided to publish my comment here. I guess I should provide a little bit of background first.
The article itself is interesting. This guy Strenger always is spot-on from my point of view. I rarely, if ever, have disagreed with anything he writes. But here, while he takes apart the proposed solutions he doesn’t provide anything new for consideration. I notice a trend among some Israeli writers – they are tearing things down without building anything else back up. They pick and pick at their own people, to illustrate how progressive they are (attracting labels of “betrayer” and worse) however nothing is being built in the process. When you tear things down without building anything back up, you are left with nothing but a gaping hole. Somehow I don’t think that was the objective …. I know that self-criticial Jewish/Israeli writers mean very well, but they have a unique way of bringing people down.
These days I don’t believe there is much point in bringing people down, unless there is a very specific reason for it. Things in our world are very delicate at the moment and we should all have respect for one another if we can.
But Strenger made some good points. The PA is losing authority among Palestinians, the UN statehood bid likely won’t change reality on the ground. If so, then Palestinians will likely request full Israeli citizenship – but then Israel won’t be “Jewish” anymore since Pals are 40% of the population. Yikes, sounds like there is no viable solution to this. (That means that one would have to be made up, an entirely new arrangement never before conceived … but that’s for another time)
Here’s “Gili”‘s published comment:
When Palestinians realize that negotiations imply not getting 100% of what you’re asking for. Simple example: they demand all of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem and unlimited population transfer into Israel. Any time Israel has proposed anything less than that they cry bloody murder and say “Israel is being unreasonable. This is non-negotiable. Israel is holding up peace.” Excuse me, but no. Negotiations are about compromise. Israel pulled out of major areas of the West Bank and all of Gaza permanently. What did Palestinians give permanently? Words are meaningless.
Here’s my drafted comment in response:
Gili – I think it is you who doesn’t know how to negotiate. Of course each party starts off with a strong position but you criticize Palestinians for doing so. And no, they’ve never walked away from the table for any reason other than settlement expansion. Interesting how you fail to mention settlements as the single most vexing issue which keeps ruining the peace talks. Why don’t you mention the settlements, Gili?
Nobody has ever heard of a party negotiating boundaries while at the same time continuously expanding their boundaries into the territory of the other party they’re negotiating with. That is plainly ridiculous. The only reason Israel doesn’t see how ridiculous it is, is because of all the religious rhetoric, the Rabbis, the “definitions” – and the massive cultural insecurity being fought off constantly by Israelis.
Slightly off topic, but Ahmadinejad always plays directly into these Israeli cultural insecurities with his inflammatory statements about Israel. He might be stupid but he’s smart about that, he knows just where to poke you to get the most extreme reaction which he no doubt finds amusing.
The point is that Israelis need to work on somehow getting rid of this feeling that the world doesn’t like you or respect you. This is leftover from all those centuries of persecution but that’s over now. You do have respect everywhere (certainly everybody respects the IDF for sure). Yes, people do like you. Nobody in their right mind thinks that Israel should be destroyed. Nobody is delegitimizing you, you only do that to yourselves once in a while but people just move on and forgive you. You are a wounded people and you need to heal. You’ve taken quite enough throughout history. You deserve your homeland.
Everything I just said above about Israelis would apply equally to Palestinians. (end of comment)
Oh boy. This is not looking good at all I guess. Israel is bracing for a violent month. Here’s the thing I don’t understand – why doesn’t anybody call them on this assumption that Palestinians are going to get violent? I just read a settler stating “If they start marching towards our settlements, we’ll start marching towards them, and then the police will step in to protect them, because those are the only people police are willing to protect these days.” Of course, he says this because the settlers just had 3 homes demolished and they are insanely angry about it.
Again – this anger, this rage, stems from massive cultural hurts against Jews which have accumulated. It is far too easy to hurt a wounded soul. Reactions are not proportional when a person has unhealed emotional wounds. We have to treat many of these settlers as just this – a wounded, sensitive soul who is tensed against further being hurt. When viewed in this sense, confused & violent prounouncements can be forgiven. Maybe we shouldn’t pay so much attention, in the media, to the various things that angry settlers are saying. Maybe give them a chance to change by allowing them to spout off without forever enshrining it in a news publication.
right, well that’s all I had to say this morning on this topic (I think). I will rack my brains and put on my thinking cap and activate my imagination, to see if there isn’t some way to resolve these issues without anybody having to give up a whole lot of what they feel they must have. If I come up with anything, I’ll be sure to tweet about it. And then somebody else can come in & see my tweet, and then go away and write a long, complicated dissertation for the other academics to read based on what I tweeted. Then, I’ll go in and read their long, tedious piece and translate it for the masses into another tweet. This is how we are all working together these days, isnt’ it. Fine.
