September 7, 2002Introspection as a Prerequisite for PeaceWith a response YKH AST
This is very obvious from what follows. YKH AST One sentence in and Halevi is already obfuscating. Did a "terrorist
war" really begin two years ago? Here's a little refresher for all those
who like to prove their points by conveniently rebuilding the past. First,
there is a relatively objective analysis of the situation in the Mitchel Plan of April, 2001. The key conclusion: In their submissions, the
parties traded allegations about the motivation and degree of control exercised
by the other. However, we were provided with no persuasive evidence that the
Sharon visit was anything other than an internal political act; neither were
we provided with persuasive evidence that the PA planned the uprising. In other words, this was not a planned response of the PA to force
Israel's hand after Camp David. It was a spontaneous result of frustration
with Oslo on the Palestinian street. Moreover, in the first few months of the Intifada, casualties were
mostly on the Palestinian side. It was only after months of brutality by the
Israeli army, especially subsequent to Arik Sharon becoming Prime Minister,
that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad initiated their suicide terror campaign.
Graphic reminder can be found here. YKH ...and provoked official campaigns of Jew-hatred throughout the Arab
world... AST Another blatant lie. What official campaign of Jew hatred? I challenge
YKH to name one Arab country that has initiated an official anti-Jewish campaign,
let alone anti-Israel campaign? The irony is that during this Intifada, while
the official Israeli policy has been to demonize all Palestinians (and implicitly
all Arabs) as terrorists, all Arabs as crudely anti-Jewish, and to negate
the possibility of a negotiated settlement, the Arab world as a whole has
consistently called for the end of violence and for a return to negotiations
and a just settlement. In fact, the whole official Arab world has officially
endorsed the Saudi-Arabian peace initiative through the Beirut
Declaration of March, 2002. YKH AST Since the premise is false the conclusion is meaningless. If YKH truly is willing make far-reaching compromises, he should be urging his government to pursue the Clinton Plan, the Mitchell Plan, the Beirut Declaration, UN Security Council Resolution 1397 and the most recent EU initiative, all of which have been accepted by the Palestinians as a basis for negotiations. Instead, he, and the majority of Israelis, support brutal violence against millions of innocent Palestinian civilians, all in the name of the "war on terrorism." It is any wonder that the Palestinians are convinced that YKH and his ilk are more interested in ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and not reconciliation? YKH Once I was prepared to reach different conclusions. During the first
intifada that began in the late 1980's, I served as a reservist in Gaza's
refugee camps. For one month a year I became an occupier, entering family
bedrooms in the middle of the night to arrest suspects for crimes ranging
from terrorism to failure to pay taxes. Now YKH lets us know how sensitive and caring he is. He is deeply
touched by his experience of being an occupier "one month a year." Of course,
what he conveniently forgets to note is that for the Palestinians the occupation
isn't a one month stint in the reserves. Its 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,
52 weeks out of very year since 1967. And from their perspective the injustice
and loss began long before that in 1948. YKH That experience taught me that both sides share ample rights and
wrongs. I was hardly alone. The first intifada reduced to a minority those
hardliners who believed that only the Jewish people had legitimate claims
to the land. The majority of us learned to accommodate a competing narrative.
AST Is this really the case? The fact is that except for a very brief period immediately after the signing of the Oslo accords, their never was a majority in the Israeli parliament that supported the process. And certainly, only a very small minority of Israelis ever were willing to accommodate a competing narrative. Israelis wanted out of the West Bank and Gaza because the first Intifada proved to them that the occupation was a burden. They wanted to get rid of the Palestinian nuisance, not address the just grievances of the Palestinian people. YKH We neutralized our attachment to the biblical territories and accepted the inevitability of uprooting most of the West Bank settlements. AST Did we indeed? During every Israeli government subsequent to Rabin's
assassination, the investment in the settlements grew, not diminished. Under
the great "left-wing" leader Barak, the population of the settlements doubled.
If indeed we planned to uproot the settlements, why did we continue to invest
so heavily in their growth and expansion? YKH We offered to share our most precious possession, Jerusalem, with
our bitter enemy, Yasir Arafat AST Oh really? First of all, while it may be true that Barak put the
issue of Jerusalem on the table at Camp David, when he went there he did not
have a Parliamentary majority behind him. The issue of Jerusalem was never
put to the test in Israel. In fact, it is likely that Barak would not have
succeeded in getting parliamentary support for a compromise on Jerusalem.
Moreover, the very way he phrases this sentence shows that YKH has never,
in fact, "accommodated a competing narrative." From the Palestinian perspective,
Jerusalem has been under Islamic control from the days of Muhammad, except
for the brief and bloody period of the Crusaders. In their eyes, the fact
that the Arab world is willing to share Jerusalem, one of their most precious
possessions, with their bitter enemy, is a huge act of generosity. Unlike
Israel, the Arab world in the Beirut declaration has now officially declared
their willingness to do so. The current Israeli government's position is that
Jerusalem will never be shared. YKH For me, that process of examination meant undertaking a journey into Islam and Christianity. As a religious Jew, I went on pilgrimages to mosques and holy places, seeking to experience something of the devotional life of my neighbors. I joined the Muslim prayer line and learned the power of its choreographed surrender. I prayed in a refugee camp that I had once patrolled as a soldier. AST How sensitive Mr. Halevi is. YKH In turn, I sought from Palestinians an acknowledgment that I wasn't a crusader or a colonialist but an exiled son returning home. I waited for Palestinian leaders to tell their people what the late Yitzhak Rabin told us: that we must withdraw from our exclusive claim to the land. Those words never came. AST
I don't hear Barghouti making an exclusive claim to the land, nor denying Israel's legitimate rights. Quite the contrary. No, Barghouti and the Palestinians never became Zionists. They still look at Israelis as colonialists. And the historic reality is that Israelis are. Whether we like to admit or not, the land belonged to the Arabs when the Jewish settlers first came at the turn of the century. And no matter how legitimate the goals and aspirations of the Zionist movement might have been, the fact is that the Zionists did not work very hard at taking into consideration the legitimate rights of the local population. YKH might argue that the Palestinians should have been more generous and accommodating when Jewish refugees sought a refuge in Palestine before and after the war. But the fact is that the rest of the world wasn't very generous and accommodating either. And the Palestinians ended up paying the price for the European war against the Jews, even though they were not responsible. Despite this, as Barghouti points out they and the whole Arab world are willing to recognize Israel's borders within 78% of historic Palestine. They only ask that they be allowed to live in freedom and dignity in a small piece of the original Palestine. YKH Few Palestinians seem prepared even now to examine their own share of responsibility for the conflict. Instead, most remain barricaded in a self-righteous understanding of history, apportioning all innocence to themselves and all blame to us. AST In fact, this article just proves that YKH and most Israelis are guilty of what Freud calls " projection." Substitute "Israeli" for "Palestinian" and vice versa in the above sentence, and you are far closer to the truth. YKH Perhaps their inability to acknowledge the historical complexity of this conflict is understandable: The Palestinians, after all, were its losers. Yet that failure led them to commit their greatest blunder in a history of missed opportunities. AST Again, YKH continues to barricade himself in the long-discredited narrative that it is the Palestinians, and not the Israelis, who have a long history of missed opportunities. And of course, he reveals his arrogance here: the Palestinians have to accept Israel's dictates because they are the "losers." YKH By declaring war two years ago against an Israeli government that was as far left as any in history, they turned Israelis like me from supporters of Ehud Barak into supporters of Ariel Sharon. AST We already addressed the issue of the Palestinians "declaring war" above. As for the myth of Ehud Barak being "far left" and the implicit appeal to the myth of his "generous offer," see this and this. YKH What the first intifada was for Israelis, this intifada should be for Palestinians: a precious moment of self-examination. The Oslo process failed because of an asymmetry of self-criticism: Only one side came to the realization that this is a conflict between two legitimate national movements. AST The Barghouti quote above, and myriads like it, and of course the Beirut declaration, belies the validity of this statement by YKH that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of Oslo. The Palestinians for their part claim that the Oslo process failed precisely because those like YKH who claimed to support it, simultaneously continued the growth and expansion of the settlements and the occupation, thereby showing by their actions that they were not really interested in redressing the wrongs done to the Palestinians by 35 years of occupation in the West Bank, much less the wrongs done by the establishment of the state of Israel. YKH The time has come for Palestinians to partition their sense of historical justice. They need to admit that much of their suffering, especially now, has been self-inflicted. And they need to confront the repeated moral failures of their leaders, from supporting Nazi Germany to backing Saddam Hussein. Yet so far, there are few signs of moral unease. An ad placed earlier this summer by Palestinian intellectuals urging an end to suicide bombings because they are ineffective isn't good enough. Few Palestinians have challenged the historical revisionism now increasingly prevalent in Arab culture that denies the ancient roots of Jews in this land, the existence of the gas chambers and even Arab involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. AST And the Palestinians would say that the time has come for those Israelis who truly treasure the values of tolerance, democracy and justice to partition their sense of historical justice, and recognize the deep hurt the establishment of the State of Israel caused the Palestinian people. Isaac Deutscher was a Jewish historian who had lost much of his family in the Holocaust. He was a committed leftist, and was interviewed for the New Left Review in 1967. Here is what he had to say: These words, written over 35 years ago, sound prophetic today. Yet so far, the moral obtuseness and short sightedness of the Israeli leadership and people, grows ever day. YKH In my journey into Palestinian Islam, I encountered the profound Muslim ability to live daily life with a constant awareness of mortality — an awareness that can create humility, a prerequisite for reconciliation between enemies. Peace will come only through mutual introspection and atonement. Many Israelis went far in trying to understand Palestinian claims and grievances. To resume that necessary process among Israelis now requires a self-critical moral dialogue among Palestinians. AST The arrogance of this conclusion is breath taking. The morally superior tone, the total lack of humility and introspection on Halevi's part, is symptomatic of Israeli society as a whole. Truly Israel is rushing victoriously to its grave, with people like Halevi leading the way. Yossi Klein Halevi, Israel correspondent of The New Republic, is the author of "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for Hope with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land." The Mitchell Plan, April 30, 2001 - WHAT HAPPENED? |
ERUSALEM— On this Rosh Hashana, a time of self-examination, I confess that
my capacity as an Israeli for self-criticism has been exhausted. 