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TITLE: Let's Face Demographic Reality in the Mideast |
AUTHOR: Amos Oz |
PUB: |
DATE: January 5, 2001 |
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Israel's peace movement should now reconsider its stance. For 30 years we have been saying that no peace can be obtained while Israel governs another nation; some of us have even been saying that Israel's insistence on governing another nation is the very reason for the elusiveness of peace. But our government no longer insists. Israel is currently offering the Palestinians a peace agreement based on the 1967 borders with minor mutual amendments. It proposes to remove the Israeli settlements scattered in the depth of the Palestinian territory, to make East Jerusalem the capital of Palestine, and to place the disputed holy sites under Muslim custody. This is the most far-reaching offer Israel can make. It is made to the Palestinians at the price of an unprecedented chasm within Israeli society, at the price of a political earthquake. The Jewish people must make a traumatic withdrawal from many of Israel's historical and theological demands, from many of its ancient dreams and religious aspirations. The Palestinian nation is rejecting this peace. Their leaders now openly claim the "right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled and were driven out of their homes in the 1948 war, while cynically ignoring the fate of hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews who fled and were driven out of their homes in Arab countries, during the very same war. Implementing the Palestinian "right of return" will make the Jewish people a minor ethnic group at the mercy of Muslims, a "protected minority." Implementing the "right of return" means eradicating Israel. The United Nations' original resolution of November, 1947, enacted two sovereign states to be established in the contested land, one for the Jewish people and one for the Palestinian people. Yet the "right of return" currently claimed by Palestinians practically means that instead of "two states for two nations," there will eventually be two Arab states in this land. In view of this dramatic radicalization of Palestinian positions, Israelis acting for peace must not pretend it is business as usual. Nor should they continue to argue, as they have habitually done for decades, that "the sole obstacle to peace is Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories." The Israeli doves ought to reshape their stance. Instead of claiming that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian zones prevents peace, we should say that even without peace, governing another nation is wrong. Wrong and harmful. The occupation, buttressed by dozens of small settlements thrust into the midst of Palestinian territory with the intention of preventing any future compromise, does not make Israel stronger but weaker. Weaker and less defendable. Israel must now deploy its forces along lines roughly corresponding to demographic realities. It must withdraw from the populated Palestinian regions and enable the Palestinian people to set up an independent state, immediately, even without a peace agreement. The new lines will not be pronounced permanent borders but, instead, taken as a basis for future peace negotiations, pending amendments. In the meantime, any Palestinian assault on these lines will not be written off as a "terror attack," but seen as an aggression by one sovereign state against the territory of its neighbour, entitling Israel to exercise its right of self-defence. A sign of change in the Palestinian rejectionist attitude could be its willingness to negotiate with Israel not "the right of return," but a comprehensive national and humanitarian solution to the 1948 refugee problem. Israel should be morally committed to such a solution. As soon as this happens, the two governments can negotiate and draw their borders of peace. Amos Oz is one of Israel's leading novelists and a founder of the Peace Now movement. END |